Page 887 – Toward Freedom

Skeletons poisoning Venezuelan politics

Super User September 14, 2005 Super User

CARACAS – At least 70 paper skeletons have appeared mysteriously across Caracas, hanging from overpasses, attached to railings, and strewn on the ground. Officials blame the opposition, citing the skeletons as a poisonous attempt to stir public fear.

According to news reports, the skeletons display anti-government messages. Some are also toxic. When two police officers touched an envelope attached to one of the hand-drawn figures, they became ill and were briefly hospitalized for what appeared to be a case of poisoning. Authorities have assigned an anti-terrorism unit to the case. read more

Copper vs. Ecology in Ecuador

Stuart Schussler September 14, 2005 Stuart Schussler

Junín, a small town in the mountainous Intag region of northwestern Ecuador, is home for about 500 Ecuadorians. The community is rich in many ways. Fertile land produces organic coffee, sugar cane, and oranges for exportation. Junín is located next to the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve and the people of the village created their own community ecological reserve 8 years ago. These protected areas cover a large expanse of cloud forest and contain one of the world's most biologically diverse ecosystems. Public works projects like road maintenance or repairs on the school house are done with the traditional minga system, where members from each family volunteer to do a couple days of work for the common good. However, in the eyes of Ascendant Copper Corporation, a Canadian mining company, Junín's wealth isn't in its people or its diverse ecosystem-it's in its rocks.

Crossing the Rubicon: An Interview with Michael Ruppert

Rob Williams September 13, 2005 Rob Williams

Michael Ruppert

Most people I know have some intuitive sense that the stories told about the way the world works in our culture of daily "news" (and I use the term loosely) are suspect. The real stories about power and the ways power is exercised lie buried beneath the surface. But how deep, to quote The Matrix's Morpheus, does this rabbit hole go? For those willing to crawl down the hole, U.S. investigative journalism has its own Morpheus, and his name is Michael Ruppert.

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”: A 100th Anniversary Retrospective

Bob Feldman September 12, 2005 Bob Feldman

Among the early 20^th century muckraking writers, Upton Sinclair had perhaps the most intense immediate impact on U.S. public opinion after his novel, "The Jungle", was published 100 years ago. His target was the Beef Trust that controlled Chicago's stockyards and its meatpacking industry. The problem that Sinclair wished to expose through his muckraking was the way the Beef Trust treated its workers under an economic system that Sinclair felt was a system of "wage-slavery." But the result of Sinclair's muckraking work was only effective in exposing the unsanitary way the Beef Trust packed meat for middle-class U.S. consumers. As Sinclair wrote in October, 1906:

Sri Lanka: Assassinations and a Fractured Peace Process

Rene Wadlow September 8, 2005 Rene Wadlow

Lakshman Kadirgamar

The assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar, Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka on August 12, 2005 is a serious blow to the stalled peace negotiations and to Tamil-Sinhalese reconciliation. Kadirgamar, an Oxford educated Christian Tamil from Jaffna, the Tamil heartland, was more than a token Tamil in an otherwise Sinhalese-led government. He was a symbol that ethnic identity is not the only factor that should determine policy, but rather that there are ways of working to develop the mutual interests of all communities. In fact, the armed conflict since 1983 has generated a momentum which exceeds its original ethnic causes and has invented new, hybrid, collective identities.

Global Notebook 9-7-05

Super User September 7, 2005 Super User

FEMA failed to follow disaster plan

WASHINGTON, DC – More than a year before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) called "a very good exercise." More than 1 million residents were "evacuated" in a table-top scenario as 120 mph winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city. read more