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by JP SOTTILE

Remember “Peak Oil?”

Neither does anyone else.

That’s because the operational theory of why, at the turn of the century, Big Oil tightened its grip on the political system and used it to acquire as much of the “dwindling” resource as possible, often through proxy imperialism, has suddenly become irrelevant.

It’s not as if the fear of an impending, precipitous decline in oil production wasn’t an effective tool to massage markets, influence decision-makers and pique oil-thirsty populations into supporting petroleum-based wars, even if only subconsciously.

It was effective.

Rather, the planet is suddenly awash in oil. New discoveries in Africa, the long-awaited Caspian Sea oil and gas pipeline, expanding reserves in the US and the possibilities of the South China Sea have turned the earth’s ecosystem into a fountain of youthful exuberance for Big Oil.

Add to that the ever-more refined technologies now employed to extract shale oil, to cook up Canada’s toxic tar-sand goop and to build massive new infrastructure projects to move it around the continent and the globe, and you’ve

What can you do for a sustainable, GM-free future?

Action! May 2013
EU-US trade deal must not compromise food safety

The European Union is about to enter into talks with the United states on a new trade agreement. A deal raises a raft of serious environmental and social concerns that could weaken safeguards and consumer choice in order to please multi-national corporations. This could include opening the door to more  genetically modified food and plants in Europe.

The European Parliament is not involved in framing the trade deals. But MEPs do have the chance to speak out and are about to agree on their position. Please ask your MEPs to speak out in favour of making Europe GM-free. Tell your parliamentarians that Europe does not want or need GM crops. Europe must keep the right to make our own decisions about food safety and GM crops.

Any trade deal should not force feed us GM food!

Tweet MEPs: 
"Citizens want a GMO-free Europe!  Don't allow free trade talks to impose GM crops: http://stopthecrop.org"

Choose a Political Group, and click on tweet:

European People's Party (Christian Democrats) - tweet! @EPPGroup

Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats - tweet! @TheProgressives

Alliance...

The Obama administration’s secret seizure of the phone records of Associated Press reporters is the latest attack on core democratic rights in the United States.

Last week, the Justice Department acknowledged that it had obtained a subpoena in February of this year to require telecommunications companies to turn over two months of phone records on some 20 lines used by the AP. The subpoena was part of

The following petition, signed by over a dozen experts on Latin America and the media, was sent today to Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor of The New York Times:

May 14, 2013

Dear Margaret Sullivan,

In a recent column (4/12/13), you observed:

Although individual words and phrases may not amount to very much in the great flow produced each day, language matters. When news organizations accept the government’s way of speaking, they seem to accept the government’s way of thinking. In The Times, these decisions carry even more weight.

In light of this comment we encourage you to compare The New York Times’s characterization of the leadership of the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and that of Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo in Honduras.

In the past four years, the Times has referred to Chávez as an "autocrat," "despot," "authoritarian ruler" and a "caudillo" in its news coverage. When opinion pieces are included, the Times has published at least fifteen separate articles employing such language, depicting Chávez as a "dictator" or "strongman." Over the same period—since the June 28, 2009 military overthrow of elected president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras—Timescontributors have never used such terms to describe Micheletti, who presided over the coup regime after Zelaya’s removal, or Porfirio Lobo, who succeeded him. Instead, the paper has variously described them in its news coverage as "interim," "de facto,” and "new."

Porfirio Lobo assumed the presidency after winning an election held under Micheletti's coup government. The elections were marked by repression and censorship, and international monitors, like the Carter Center,boycotted them. Since the coup, Honduras's military and police have routinely killed civilians.

Over the past 14 years Venezuela has had 16 elections or referenda deemed free and fair by leading international authorities. Jimmy Carter praised Venezuela’s elections, among the 92 the Carter Center has monitored, as having "a very wonderful voting system." He concluded that "the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world." While some human rights groups have criticized the Chávez government, Venezuela has had no pattern of state security forces murdering civilians, as is the case in Honduras.

Whatever one thinks of the democratic credentials of Chávez’s presidency—and we recognize that reasonable people can disagree about it—there is nothing in the record, when compared with that of his Honduran counterparts, to warrant the discrepancies in the Times’s coverage of the two governments.

We urge you to examine this disparity in coverage and language use, particularly as it may appear to your readers to track all too closely the U.S. government’s positions regarding the Honduran government (whichit supports) and the Venezuelan government (which it opposes)—precisely the syndrome you describe and warn against in your column.

Sincerely,

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus, MITEdward Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance, Wharton School at the University of PennsylvaniaGreg Grandin, Professor of History, New York UniversitySujatha Fernandes, Professor of Sociology, Queens College, CUNY Graduate CenterCorey Robin, Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY Graduate CenterAdrienne Pine, Professor of Anthropology, American UniversityMark Weisbrot, Ph.D, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy ResearchMiguel Tinker Salas, Professor of History and Latin American Studies, Pomona CollegeKatherine Hite, Professor of Political Science, Vassar CollegeSteve Ellner, Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, Universidad de OrienteGeorge Ciccariello-Maher, Professor of Political Science, Drexel UniversityDaniel Kovalik, Professor of International Human Rights, University of Pittsburgh School of LawGregory Wilpert, Ph.D, author of "Changing Venezuela by Taking Power"Joseph Nevins, Professor of Geography, Vassar CollegeNazih Richani, Director of Latin American Studies, Kean UniversitySteven Volk, Professor of History, Oberlin CollegeAviva Chomsky, Professor of History, Salem State UniversityKeane Bhatt, North American Congress on Latin AmericaChris Spannos, New York Times eXaminerMichael Albert, ZNetOliver Stone, Filmmaker, "South of the Border"Michael Moore, Filmmaker, "Capitalism: A Love Story"

 

Affiliations are used for identification purposes only.

Readers can add their names to the petition at New York Times eXaminer, or contact Ms. Sullivan directly at public@nytimes.com. Please limit emails to 300 words, and follow the guidelines listed at the public editor's web page.

Update (5/14): Oscar Award-winning director Oliver Stone has added his name to the list of signatories, and a Spanish-language translation of the petition is now available at New York Times eXaminer. (Una traduccíon al español ya está disponible aquí.)

Update (5/15): Another Oscar-winning filmmaker, Michael Moore, has added his support to the petition. Other prominent signatories of late include philosopher Slavoj Zizek, author Eva Golinger, and Marjorie Cohn, former president of the National Lawyers Guild.

*

Below is a list of 16 Times articles that served as the basis of an analysis piece from which this petition was derived. None of the terms below (autocrat, despot, authoritarian, ruler, strongman, caudillo, dictator, tyrant, sultan) have been applied to either of Honduras's post-coup regimes:

News:

"Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution," Sheryl Gay Stolberg, 2/16/11: "Autocrats abhor Mr. Sharp. In 2007, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela denounced him."

"The Arab Spring Finds Itself Upstaged by a New Season," Neil MacFarquhar, 9/22/11: "In fact, this year’s gathering was suffering from something of a despot deficit, or at least the ranks of haranguers raging against the evils of capitalism and the West have been drastically thinned by revolutions or disease. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, undergoing chemotherapy treatment in Cuba, literally mailed it in . . ."

"Charges Against U.S.-Aided Groups Come With History of Distrust in Egypt," Scott Shane and Ron Nixon, 2/6/12: "Authoritarian rulers from Caracas to Moscow and beyond have long viewed pro-democracy groups financed by the United States with deep suspicion, regularly denouncing them as meddlers or spies and sometimes harassing their workers."

"A Polarizing Figure Who Led a Movement," Simon Romero, 3/5/13: "He maintained an almost visceral connection with the poor, tapping into their resentments, while strutting like the strongman in a caudillo novel. . . . He grew obsessed with changing Venezuela’s laws and regulations to ensure that he could be re-elected indefinitely and become, indeed, a caudillo."

Opinion:

"The Winner in Honduras: Chavez," Alvaro Vargas Llosa, 6/30/09: "The United States’ more measured response [to Honduras's coup d'etat], and the low-profile stance taken by some South American governments, have been lost amid the high-stakes campaign launched by Venezuela’s caudillo."

"Real Men Tax Gas," Thomas Friedman, 9/19/09: "Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by . . . increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes."

"As Ugly as It Gets," Thomas Friedman, 5/25/10: "[Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] regularly praises Venezuela’s strongman Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator — and now Ahmadinejad — while denouncing Colombia, one of the great democratic success stories. . ."

"Wallflowers at the Revolution," Frank Rich, 2/5/11: "More damning, Morozov also demonstrates how the digital tools so useful to citizens in a free society can be co-opted by tech-savvy dictators, police states and garden-variety autocrats to spread propaganda and to track (and arrest) conveniently networked dissidents, from Iran to Venezuela."

"Why Tyrants Love the Murdoch Scandal," Bill Keller, 7/24/11: "And autocrats will be autocrats, with or without our bad example. Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chávez would be just as hostile to an unfettered press if no British journalist had ever hacked a phone."

"The Stomachs of Strongmen," Ann Louise Bardach, 8/21/11: "Ironically, the hemisphere’s most indomitable strongmen and determined foes of the United States and free market economics have both been felled, at least for now, by abdominal woes . . . The symbiosis between Cuba’s emeritus or former (and in most ways, still de facto) commander in chief and the Venezuelan colonel-turned-oil-sultan is the most powerful and fascinating political alliance in the Americas."

"The Realest Reality Show in the World," Rachel Nolan, 5/6/12: "[I]t’s hard to imagine another political figure with the combination of manic exhibitionism and entertainer’s stamina required to star in this sort of show, never mind the autocratic control required to make it, literally, must-see TV in his home country. . . . 'Aló Presidente' has that same wacky quality. The difference is that Mrs. Mouth wasn’t the autocratic leader of an oil-rich country of 29 million people."

"Velvet Gloves Over Iron Fists," Dwight Garner, 6/10/12: "The neo-authoritarians, from Vladimir Putin in Russia to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to China’s more faceless technocrats, are still brutal, but they have learned to adapt."

"How Hugo Chávez Became Irrelevant," Francisco Toro, 10/5/12: "Mr. Chávez’s autocratic excesses came to look unnecessary and inexcusable to Venezuelans. . . . With oversight institutions neutered, the president now runs the country as a personal fief . . . Chávez-style socialism looks like the worst of both worlds: both more authoritarian and less effective at reducing poverty than the Brazilian alternative. . . . Mr. Capriles pitches himself as an ambitious but pragmatic social reformer committed to ending the Chávez era’s authoritarian excesses."

"The Missing President," Alberto Barrera Tyska and Christina Marcano, 1/22/13: "In the name of the dispossessed, he revived the ghost of the South American military caudillo, creating a new version of that traditional strongman. ... There is one element of the Chávez leadership, however, that is no different from any of Latin America's other personality-driven authoritarian regimes: its messianic nature." 

"Hugo Chávez," Editorial Board, 3/6/13: "Hugo Chávez dominated Venezuelan politics for 14 years with his charismatic personality, populist policies and authoritarian methods . . . his legacy is stained by the undermining of democratic institutions."

"Death of a Strongman," Jonathan Tepperman, 4/5/13: "Finally, after years of riding the sugar binge of Chávez’s populist politics, which left the country 'flabby, enfeebled and import-­addicted,' much of the public lost enthusiasm for their latter-day caudillo. . . . efforts to underscore the inherent absurdity of autocrats and their personality cults are nothing new."

 

 

Keane Bhatt is an activist in Washington, D.C. He has worked in the United States and Latin America on a variety of campaigns related to community development and social justice. His analyses and opinions have appeared in a range of outlets, including NPR, The Nation, The St. Petersburg Times, and CNN En Español. He is the author of the NACLA blog “Manufacturing Contempt,” which critically analyzes the U.S. press and its portrayal of the hemisphere. Connect with his blog on Twitter: @KeaneBhatt

Tags: Edward Herman Honduras Hugo Chavez New York Times Noam Chomsky Porfirio Lobo Roberto Micheletti Venezuela

by SHAMUS COOKE

The tempo of events in Syria has accelerated in recent weeks. The government forces have scored significant battlefield victories over the rebels, and this has provoked a mixture of war provocations and peace offers from the U.S. and its anti-Assad allies.

With Obama’s blessing Israel fighter jets recently attacked Syria on three occasions; in one massive air strike on a military installation in Damascus 42 Syrian soldiers were killed. Shortly thereafter Obama finally agreed to a peace conference with Russia, which had been asking for such talks for months.

Obama is entering these talks from a weakened position; the Syrian government is winning the war against the U.S.-backed rebels, and success on the ground is the trump card of any peace talks. Obama and the rebels are in no position to be demanding anything in Syria at the m

Andy Kroll writes at Tomdispatch.com

Billionaires with an axe to grind, now is your time. Not since the days before a bumbling crew of would-be break-in artists set into motion the fabled Watergate scandal, leading to the first far-reaching restrictions on money in American politics, have you been so free to meddle. There is no limit to the amount of money you can give to elect your friends and allies to political office, to defeat those with whom you disagree, to shape or stunt or kill policy, and above all to influence the tone and content of political discussion in this country.

Today, politics is a rich man’s game. Look no further than the 2012 elections and that season’s biggest donor, 79-year-old casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife, Miriam, shocked the political class by first giving $16.5 million in an effort to make Newt Gingrich the Republican presidential nominee. Once Gingrich exited the race, the Adelsons invested more than $30 million in electing Mitt Romney. They donated millions more to support GOP candidates running for the House and Senate, to block a pro-union measure in Michigan, and to bankroll the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other conservative stalwarts (which waged their own campaigns mostly to help Republican candidates for Congress). All told, the Adelsons donated $94 million during the 2012 cycle — nearly four times the previous record set by liberal financier George Soros. And that’s only the money we know about. When you add in so-called dark money, one estimate puts their total giving at closer to $150 million.

It was not one of Adelson’s better bets. Romney went down in flames; the Republicans failed to retake the Senate and conceded seats in the House; andthe majority of candidates backed by Adelson-funded groups lost, too. But Adelson, who oozes chutzpah as only a gambling tycoon worth $26.5 billion could, is und