By Arun Gupta - March 03, 2010

Official denials aside, the United States has embarked on a new military occupation of Haiti thinly cloaked as disaster relief. But what is the purpose of an occupation, the fourth in the past 100 years? The official response, from the Pentagon to the United Nations, was that more U.S. and UN troops were needed to provide "security and stability" to bring in aid. Leaving aside what is really meant by security and stability, the rapid military response was actually a major reason why aid was delayed.

Jamie Scott, 38, is suffering from kidney failure. She has received no indication that a kidney transplant is being considered as an option, though her sister is a willing donor. At the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) in Pearl, where Jamie and her sister Gladys are incarcerated, medical services are provided by a private contractor called Wexford, which has been the subject of lawsuits and legislative investigations in several states over inadequate treatment of the inmates in its care.

By Edward Herman - January 01, 2010

It is of great interest and importance that the emergence, growth, and dominance of the National Security State in Latin America, complete with the widespread prevalence of death squads and torture...took place in the U.S. backyard and with crucial U.S. initiative and support. It is also notable that U.S. liberals were in the forefront in advancing this process.

By Anthony Fenton - February 24, 2010

"It's now fair to speculate that the [Olympic] Games have been used even more cynically -- as cover for a massive new NATO offensive in Afghanistan that has already claimed many Afghan civilians' lives. Operation Moshtarak, with Canadian Forces participation, was launched in the southern province of Helmand on Feb. 12, the day of the Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver."

-- Vancouver Anti-War activist Derrick O'Keefe writing in rabble.ca

By Ted Snider - February 18, 2010

We are used to viewing current events through the lens of the North American media. But how must current events look through the perspective of Hugo Chavez, born in Latin America in the same year the CIA conducted its first Latin American coup...Chavez is the current inheritor of South America’s mantel of democratic nationalism. His predecessors have all come to the same end at the hands of the Americans. So should Chavez be afraid about the recent U.S. military migration into next door Columbia? From his perspective he should.

By ADAM TURL - February 19-21, 2010

Today the largest employer in the U.S. (and the world) is the anti-union behemoth Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart's 1.4 million U.S. "associates" often earn poverty or near poverty wages...It was during the economic crises of the 1970s and the right-wing "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s that Wal-Mart first blossomed into a retail giant. As recession and free-market policies rolled back [previous working class] gains...Wal-Mart thrived [and]...reproduced the conditions of its origin as it spread outward from Arkansas through the South and Midwest.

I met Safiya in the visiting room of the Federal Correctional Institution (for women) in Dublin, California, in 1997—but when we embraced, it felt as if I’d known her all my life. At the time, Safiya was traveling to various prisons, visiting political prisoners to talk with us about Jericho ’98, the national campaign, beginning with a march rally to the White House, that she was organizing (with Herman and Iyaluua Ferguson, political prisoner Jalil Muntaqim, and others). I was in Dublin, along with six other women political prisoners.

By Derrick O'Keefe - February 11, 2010

Many of Canada’s athletes were bitterly disappointed [by the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games] in 1980, but our country’s authorities assured them that the rights of the people of Afghanistan were worth the sacrifice of their athletic ambitions...Thirty years later, it is the United States, Canada, and the other NATO countries that are occupying Afghanistan. Instead of a boycott, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics are being used to promote militarism in general and Canada’s role in the occupation of Afghanistan in particular.

"A Conservative government will stand up for full and fair compensation to persons exposed to defoliant spraying during the period from 1956 to 1984."

- Stephen Harper

I am hitting a lot of strange road blocks as I try, as an historian, to document the history of American asylums. The congregate forces that want such histories hidden seem to be more powerful than the united groups that want to bring such institutions' histories out into public transparency and open-access records. The main reason I feel these asylums and institutions in American history need to be fully documented is for the ex-"patients" who actually spent parts of their lives in these holdovers from the Dark Ages. This is not ancient history.

January 28, 2010 - Znet

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam...died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, California, where he was traveling..."His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives," Noam Chomsky...once wrote of Dr. Zinn.

By David Swanson - January 19, 2010

Members of the U.S. Foreign service told President Aristide that if he remained in Port-au-Prince, the United States would not provide any assistance when the expected attack by the insurgents occurred, and that they expected that the insurgents would kill him, his wife and many of his supporters.

By Ron Jacobs - January 21, 2010

The US involvement in Afghanistan that began under [former US President] Jimmy Carter was not an accident. It was the result of a concerted effort by the US Right to regain its power in the wake of the US defeat in Vietnam...[W]hat it meant for Afghanistan was that Washington "was (now) backing a class of mullahs and landowners that had been fighting any social reform for generations"...The mujahedin war and what followed destroyed the social progress made under previous Afghan governments.

Pat Robertson indicates that Haiti has been cursed ever since the Haitians signed a pact with the devil for their independence. He is alluding to the ceremony of the Bois Caiman that was held in Haiti during the night of August 14th, 1791 under the guidance of the Jamaican-born Voodoo Priest Dutty Bookman.

by Ted Rall - Thursday, January 14, 2010

An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince...Earthquakes are random events. How many people they kill is predetermined. In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll is attributable to poverty.