U.S. President Barack Obama’s most audacious phrase during his trip to Latin America that ended this week was “We are all Americans. Todos somos Americanos.” The phrase seemed designed to provoke rants from the right wing in the United States. But in fact, the right wing and the mainstream media largely overlooked Obama’s tour.
I have a simple question for Robert Gibbs, the outspoken press secretary of the Obama administration, where’s the money?
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to travel to Cabañas, El Salvador, to meet with some of the bravest and most successful environmental activists in the world. Ordinary villagers in this remote area of the country have joined with religious groups, research centers, and others to take on the powerful international mining companies that are seeking to plunder their country’s gold. So far, the activists have been winning this David-vs.-Goliath fight. Two successive Salvadoran governments have denied permits for gold mining on environmental and human health grounds.
The big news in the reality TV world is the intersection of Sarah Palin and Kate Gosselin. The Alaska governor is preparing her own show called “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” while Kate Gosselin runs her own pimp-my-children show called “Kate Plus Eight.” Kate has reportedly brought her kids up to Alaska for a big scramble through the woods that will be filmed for all to see in the fall.
July was the deadliest month yet for U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan. In Iraq, while political factions continue a five-month squabble over who will lead the government, insurgent violence is growing. The WikiLeaks info-dump of more than 90,000 documents, in addition to proving to the few who had not yet realized that the United States is in deep doo-doo, have shown that our ally Pakistan is collaborating with the Taliban and al-Qaeda to plan attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The differences between the policies of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama are not as great as we think.
On October 15th, La Mesa Nacional Frente a La Minería Metálica en El Salvador, also known as El Salvador’s National Roundtable on Mining, won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award awarded by the Institute for Policy Studies for their fight against mining in El Salvador.
As El Salvador transitions from decades of conservative rule to the administration of leftist President Mauricio Funes, the country faces an international showdown triggered by a restrictive free-trade agreement between the United States and Central America. Canada’s Pacific Rim Mining Corporation is suing the government for its refusal to allow it to mine gold in El Salvador’s rural north. If Pacific Rim succeeds in securing the $100 million settlement it seeks, that would set a troubling precedent. At stake is a question that affects all nations: Can private interests trump national sovereignty under international law?
President Bush’s plan to deploy National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexico border conjures the image of a war on immigrants.