Blog moved

Please note that this was an initial attempt at creating our blog. The current version can be found at
http://www.everyonemustgo.blogspot.com/. We continue to maintain this blog because it is useful for experimenting on changes in the html of our current blog and to preserve the 3 posts found here.

CAFTA: Illusion and Reality

The United States, whose imperial plans are stumbling in the Middle East, has nevertheless scored a victory for economic hegemony in Central America and the Dominican Republic with the passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Deborah James of Global Exchange reports that "it really has little to do with free trade, but much to do with transferring wealth and decision-making power from the public to the private sphere, to unaccountable elites known as multinational corporations." That is to say, that having literally destroyed several of the involved countries by funding guerrilla units throughout the 1980s, the United States is now tuning to imperialism, 21st century style - simply removing control of economic policy from the public sphere.

Plan Colombia architect becomes new IDB president

Colombian Ambassador to the U.S., Luis Alberto Moreno, was elected as the new president of the International Development Bank last week. COHA comments that Moreno was "a principal architect of Plan Colombia."

The COHA piece notes that the Bank is in the midst of attempts to reform itself, the need for which was dramatized by:
an incident in 2002, when an IDB official attempted suicide in his office at the bank’s Washington D.C. headquarters. Despondent over having been demoted and both physically and psychologically ostracized by the bank’s senior officers in retaliation for his complaints of improprieties he had witnessed in the institution, the ill-fated official slashed his wrists and throat. On the wall he had scrawled with his own blood, “The bank is corrupt.”

Haitian media

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs has issued an interesting commentary on the right-wing character of the Haitian media and their role in fomenting strife in the country.