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Victory for Venezuela’s Socialists in Crucial Elections
James Petras
The pro-Chavez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won 72% of the governorships in the November 23, 2008 elections and 58% of the popular vote, dumbfounding the predictions of most of the pro-capitalist pollsters and the vast majority of the mass media who favored the opposition.
PSUV candidates defeated incumbent opposition governors in three states (Guaro, Sucre, Aragua) and lost two states (Miranda and Tachira). The opposition retained the governorship in a tourist center (Nueva Esparta) and won in Tachira, a state bordering Colombia, Carabobo and the oil state of Zulia, as well as scoring an upset victory in the populous state of Miranda and taking the mayoralty district of the capital, Caracas. The socialist victory was especially significant because the voter turnout of 65% exceeded all previous non-presidential elections. The prediction by the propaganda pollsters that a high turnout would favor the opposition also reflected wishful thinking.
Vanished - How the BBC disappears the news
by William Bowles
This from GazaFriends on the kidnapping of 15 Palestinian fishermen and 3 foreign nationals in international waters by the Israeli navy:
20 November, 2008 — "Darlene Wallach is in a new prison in Ramle, a men's prison, but she's in a section reserved for illegal immigrants.
"She wanted to pass on this information, "We were fishing about 7 miles off the shores of Gaza. The Israeli soldiers came on board the three boats via four Zodiacs. The frogmen came up and over each boat. They used a taser on Vik while he was still on the boat, then tried to push him backwards onto a sharp piece of wood. He jumped into the sea to avoid being hurt more than he already was and was in the water for quite a while.
Strangling the King's opponents: Swaziland's 'war on terrorism'
Dr. Jabulane Matsebula
When King Mswati III addressed the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2008, the emphasis of his speech was on the threat of terrorism. His speech was a carbon copy of what is now an outdated political discourse that dominated global politics in the turn of the 21st century. Out of touch with the shift in global politics, he sounded hollow when he called upon the world to unite and fight terrorism. World unity was achieved in 2001 but discourses about the threat of terrorism have receded from the centre stage of global politics. The recent 63rd Session of the UN General Assembly and the presidential election in the United States of America are examples of this shift in global politics. Whilst world leaders focused their attention on the global financial crisis and climate change, King Mswati III looked like a yesterday man. Nobody paid attention to him and he returned home a disillusioned, embarrassed and a frustrated man.
Obama preserves our way of life
Mickey Z.
Awakened by the muffled, distant howls of slaughtered Indians, Uncle Sam rises from his bed and hits the light switch…blissfully, purposefully unaware of how valley fills enable him to gain access to that electricity day after day.
***
Here’s how The Sierra Club begins its discussion of mountaintop removal mining: “In places like Appalachia, mining companies blow the tops off mountains to reach a thin seam of coal and then, to minimize waste disposal costs, dump millions of tons of waste rock into the valleys below, causing permanent damage to the ecosystem and landscape.” That is a valley fill.
Lurching Toward Gomorrah: More Signs of An Unstoppable Economic Meltdown
by Stephen Lendman
Crisis denialists are still around but are slowly and grudgingly giving way to the reality that global capitalism is in serious crisis as recession lurches toward depression in a continuing downward spiral.
Nearly every new data release confirm it. On November 19, housing starts and permits hit record lows, according to the Commerce Department. At an annual 791,000 rate last month, they were the lowest they've been since number tracking began in 1959 and are down 4.5% from a revised 828,000 September reading.
Centrism, Paris and the Futility of Barack Obama
By Gaither Stewart
(Paris) Some cities are open to surrounding plains or the open seas and the eternal firmament overhead. Port cities and plains cities in fact place no limits. Such cities are to be seen, possessed and participated in. They don’t need to hold onto secrets. Other cities are self-sufficient, turned in on themselves and have no need for the outside world. The latter cities hold the most intimate of secrets, shared only between the city and its own. In such great but closed cities like Prague or Paris which curb encroachments from the rest of the world you probably feel a justified longing for space.
Rahm the Mechanic goes to Washington: The Jim Zogby Dilemma
By Hesham Tillawi, PhD currentissues.tv
Every day, I am assaulted by something in the topsy-turvey world of US politics that amazes me and makes me say to myself, 'Well I guess I have seen it all now', only for it to be outdone and replaced the very next day by something even more outrageous.
Politics can do that to people. Power and the opportunity to play on the 'big field' is like a drug that makes people do crazy things, things that defy reason, logic, and sometimes decency.
Free Gaza Movement’s Story
Greta Berlin and Mary Hughes-Thompson interviewed by Joe Fallisi
Joe Fallisi : Dear Greta, dear Mary, you’re two of the founders and deeply involved organizers of Free Gaza. In my opinion, it is one of the few new world realities in the fight for human rights. It truly was and is able to make something concrete, new, positive and useful change - as well as a radical change. A change that otherwise very probably wouldn’t even happen. The initiative comes from civil society and has nothing to do with the old politics. How, where and when did it start, and what did you personally do and are continuing to do within this movement?
The Auto Bailout Shows the Failure of Corporate-Government More than the Failure of Detroit And, Solving it Presents Opportunities for a New Economy
Kevin Zeese
While the automobile companies deserve some blame for the problems in their industry, there is blame to spread around. The root cause of the biggest problems is the alliance between big corporations and government which has led to poor decision-making in Washington. It is embarrassing to hear Congress put all the blame on the Detroit triopoly and not acknowledge their irresponsible behavior in bowing to corporate pressures.
Solving the auto industry problems is an opportunity to begin to shape a more effective new economy that changes the relationship between corporations and government as well as share’s the wealth more equitably.
The Rights of Women as Casualties of War
Ramzy Baroud
Qurban-Bibi and Nahil Abu-Rada are two women, one Afghan and the other Palestinian, who made news with similar tragedies. But their losses also helped further delineate the plight of millions of women in war zones and poor countries.
The United Nations news service reported on the troubles of Qurban-Bibi, a pregnant woman who simply needed to reach a hospital. Doctors had instructed that she must deliver in an equipped medical facility, considering her previous Caesarean delivery. The desperately poor husband and her brothers opted for a delivery at home, citing the unaffordable taxi ride. The woman almost bled to death. When the delivery turned for the worst, the family rushed her to Faizabad hospital in a nearby province. Her life was saved, but, evidently not that of her baby.
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