Friday, Mar 12th 2010
Fordlandia: the rise and fall of Henry Ford’s forgotten jungle city by Greg Grandin, Metropolitan Books, New York 2009
This book uncovers the complex history of Henry Ford’s attempt to create a secure source of natural latex in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1920s and ‘30s. But it also reveals the complex and often contradictory character [...]
The Real News | Honduran Elections Exposed
Honduran coup regime’s claims of more than 60% participation in free and fair election revealed as fraud
The Real News | US military to set up in Colombia
Forrest Hylton, author of Evil Hour in Columbia, discusses the US plan to build a military base in Columbia. This will provide the US with huge potential given their recent surveillance activity in the region. Hylton also describes some discomforting activities in the Colombian military, [...]
At the heart of Rod Stoneman’s book lie questions about power. Specifically, the power to construct reality, and to create both ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’.
My first tangible encounter with apartheid was probably Richard Attenborough’s 1987 film, Cry Freedom. The moving images brought to life my incomplete, abstract knowledge in powerful ways. Apartheid, for me, was to [...]
Chavismo and democracy
The assertion that Venezuela has become a more democratic society under Hugo Chavez is bitterly contested. We can pass over the repeated claims that Chavez is a brutal dictator who has turned Venezuela into a communist state - the people making such allegations are certainly not troubled by the burden of proof. But [...]
This is the second of a three part review of Bart Jones’ Hugo! The Hugo Chavez Story. Read the first part Chavez: The Hatred of the ‘Dark-Skinned Yokel’ here and the second part Chavaz: ‘A Subversive in Miraflores’?here.
Build-up to the putsch
It’s impossible to discuss the reaction provoked by the Chavez government, of course, without addressing [...]
Castro comes to visit
In 1971, Fidel Castro went to Chile as a guest of its new president Salvador Allende. The Cuban leader left with a gloomy view of the prospects for the first democratically-elected Marxist government in the Americas. Confiding to associates in private, Castro predicted the tragic defeat of Allende’s Popular Unity experiment two [...]
Venezuela faced renewed criticism after the expulsion last month of two members of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from the country, including HRW’s Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco, after they had published a report accusing the Chavez government of undermining democracy. The expulsion was a foolish and paranoid over-reaction which should not be supported by those [...]
Journalists are too often criticised for being pessimistic, lacking balance and failing to take due recognition of good news. One Irish Independent writer referred to this alleged phenomenon as the “doom and gloom blackout of the Irish Times”.
Admittedly, few journalists are known for injecting humour into their work, without, that is, compromising the integrity of [...]
Jeremy Paxman once explained the secret of his interviewing technique - before speaking to a politician, he simply asks himself “why is this lying bastard lying to me?” In the case of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, a journalist would be well advised to stiffen the measure: “Why is this blood-thirsty, amoral gangster lying to me?” [...]