good evening. my name is unusualmusic and here is the latest news...

[the_future_modernes]

via: Vivir Latino

Why Washington Cares about Countries like Haiti and Honduras

When I write about U.S. foreign policy in places like Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple their governments. These are small, poor countries with little in the way of resources or markets. Why should Washington policy-makers care who runs them?

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Why do they care so much about who runs these poor countries? As any good chess player knows, pawns matter. The loss of a couple of pawns at the beginning of the game can often make a difference between a win or a loss. They are looking at these countries mostly in straight power terms. Governments that are in agreement with maximizing U.S. power in the world, they like. Those who have other goals -- not necessarily antagonistic to the United States -- they don't like.

Not surprisingly, the Obama Administration's closest allies in the hemisphere are right-wing governments such as Colombia or Panama, even though President Obama himself is not a right-wing politician. This highlights the continuity of the politics of control. The victory of the Right in Chile last week, the first time that it has won an election in half a century, was a significant victory for the U.S. government. If Lula de Silva's Workers' Party were to lose the presidential election in Brazil this fall, that would really be a huge win for the State Department. While U.S. officials under both Bush and Obama have maintained a friendly posture toward Brazil, it is obvious that they deeply resent the changes in Brazilian foreign policy that have allied it with other social democratic governments in the hemisphere, and its independent foreign policy stances with regard to the Middle East, Iran, and elsewhere.Read on for a taste of what teh US has been getting up to in Latin America and teh Caribbean recentlyMORE

Seven "Corporations of Interest" in Selling Surveillance Tools to China

The "Corporations of Interest"

Drawing from published news articles, EFF has compiled a list of seven corporations that are reportedly selling surveillance technology to the Chinese government and related entities. We're designating them "corporations of interest".
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1. Cisco: Cisco's deep involvement in the building of China's Golden Shield Project has been admitted by the company. Cisco's involvement has even already been raised before Congress, including the fact that Cisco engineers gave a presentation acknowledging the repressive uses for their technology that quoted their Chinese government buyers as saying that Cisco's products could be used to "combat 'Falun Gong' evil religion and other hostiles." The UK's Guardian reports that Cisco provides over 60% of all routers, switches, and network gear to China and estimates that Cisco makes $500 million annually from China.


2. Nortel: Rolling Stone and The Guardian report that Nortel has sold hardware to aid the Golden Shield Project for surveillance and censorship purposes, including working with Tsinghua University to develop speech recognition software to monitor telephone conversations.

MORE

Colombia: Doctors obstruct legal abortions

Nearly four years since the Constitutional Court decriminalized abortion in certain cases, women still face challenges to receive the procedure as many doctors and even judges have improperly declared themselves conscientious objectors.

In May 2006, the court lifted a ban on abortion in the case that the mother´s life or mental or physical health is in jeopardy, if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or if the child has fetal malformations.

Ariadna Tovar, a lawyer with Women´s Link Worldwide, a gender equality advocacy group, says doctors or the health care providers they work for have collectively declared themselves conscientious objectors to the procedure.

Judges are doing the same, she says.
MORE

Q&A: ''There's a Limit to Fish Harvesting':David Cronin interviews ISABELLA LÖVIN, Swedish fisheries policy activist>a?


ETHIOPIA: Dam Critics Won't Go Away


PAKISTAN: Community Midwives Gain Recognition But Concerns Remain


Costa Rica: Laura Chinchilla Elected First Woman President


Ukraine: Back full Circle


DRC (democratic Republic of Congo)'s Magic Dust: Who benefits?

The new American imperialism in Africa Apparently this essay is a reprint, was first published 4 years ago. But is still relevant.


Mozambique: First woman speaker a step for equality

modpost

[the_future_modernes]

I tend to do stuff and then forget to announce them. So. I added a couple of news sites to the links list. If anyone has more to add, I am looking for news sites that pick up news from the point of view of the people of the region. (So sites that pick up articles in Caribbean newspapers for example.) I also did some tagging work. See, DW has something called hierarchical tagging, and it makes things so much easier to tag and find, at least in my opinion. Try them out and let me know if you like!