Global News and Analysis

Source: The Real News

Ronald Charles: Providing aid like this is a way to humiliate us and many Haitians will not accept it

Ronald Charles is a Ph.D. student in Biblical Studies at the Department of Relgion, University of Toronto. He is a poet and a violinist. And he was lecturer at Christianville University College in Haiti, where he translated parts of the Bible into Haitian Creole.

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay. Aid has begun to trickle to the people of Haiti, but apparently still only a trickle. To help us understand what’s going on in Haiti, we’re now joined by Ronald Charles. He’s a Ph.D. student in biblical studies at the school of religion at the University of Toronto. He’s a poet and a violinist, and he used to lecture at Christianville University college in Haiti. Thanks for joining us. read more

Source: Democracy Now!

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We pay tribute to the late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn, who died suddenly on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of eighty-seven. Howard Zinn’s classic work A People’s History of the United States changed the way we look at history in America. It has sold over a million copies and was recently made into a television special called The People Speak. We remember Howard Zinn in his own words, and we speak with those who knew him best: Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove. [includes rush transcript] read more

Source: Green Left Weekly

Avatar is real: the fictional planet of Pandora exists in South and Central America, and the Na’vi peoples are being displaced and killed right now. The names are different, but the facts are almost the same.

In the next generation, Central and South America will be the battlefields for rich countries to fight over natural resources, which they need to continue growing and keeping up to their consumerist, excessive ways of life. The last pristine, virgin forests on Earth will be taken over by rich and powerful military armies, working on behalf of the interests of multinational corporations.

It’s happening already in the tropical forests and mountains of the continent. Mining, oil, tourism, real estate and other corporations are trying to take over the indigenous peoples’ ancestral lands, in complicity with the local puppet governments. read more

Source: Democracy Now!

The Washington Post is reporting the US is deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops that have killed scores of people, including civilians and suspected al-Qaeda leaders, in the past six weeks. The operations were approved by President Obama and involve several dozen troops from the Joint Special Operations Command. Although US advisers are said not to take part in the raids, they’ve reportedly planned missions, developed tactics, shared intelligence, and provided weapons. read more

Source: Truthdig

Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.

The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest. read more