by Latin News and Prensa Latina

Manuel Santos

According to Latin News, there was a time not so long ago when Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos seemed to have the Midas touch.

He delivered two crushing blows against the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) with surgical strikes accounting for its leader, Guillermo León Sáenz, ‘Alfonso Cano’, and military commander, Víctor Julio Suárez, ‘Mono Jojoy’; he brought Colombia back to the front rank of regional powers after the country had suffered diplomatic isolation under his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010); and he recovered Colombia’s investment grade rating, which resulted in record foreign direct investment of US$13bn in 2011. Recent weeks, however, have categorically proven that everything he touches no longer turns to gold.

Venezuela gets its Mercosur wish

After a bit of deft maneuvering by Brazil and Argentina, Venezuela will be formally welcomed as a full member of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur, founded by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) on 31 July next, reported Latin Briefs.

Lopez Obrador presents Plan in Defense of Democracy in Mexico

The leader of the Mexican left announced today its National Plan for the Defense of Democracy, a struggle by peaceful means requiring the invalidity of the presidential election on July 1st.

As López Obrador stated at a press conference, this plan includes information meetings in public places and the convening of intellectuals, artists, scientists, youth and general public to participate in creative activities in defense of democracy and Mexico’s dignity.

Over 170 meetings are planned between July 29th and August 5th in major public places in the country.

This way, citizens will know, he explained, the way the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) operated “to get the votes and justify the supposed triumph of their candidate Enrique Peña Nieto.”

­He felt that elections were purchased and therefore, he added, it was violated the Article 41 of the Constitution, referring to the elections were neither free nor authentic.

Panama advocates for Lat Am, caribbean digital inclusion

The Summit “Connecting the Americas” of the International Union of Telecommunications (IUT) advocated so that the Latin American and Caribbean governments boost the deployment of bandwidth connectivity in the region to achieve a necessary digital inclusion.

Delegates from 35 countries, convened by the IUT, are attending the meeting, whose objective is to seek a sustainable access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

The digital inclusion supposes the world, particularly indigenous people, those with disabilities, women, youth, and children, can use accessible ICT as a main tool for its economic and social development, experts stated.

IUT general secretary Hamadoun Toure recognized the Panamanian initiative of “Internet for Everyone” that seeks to achieve free access to people’s networks.

by Thomas R. Eddlem
New American

The United Nations is polishing up a global Arms Transfer Treaty (ATT) this month in a New York convention that would create a global registry of private ownership of firearms. This treaty — which would also mandate creation of a national collection agency for those guns and is contrary to the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment — has the long-standing and enthusiastic backing of the Obama State Department, headed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“Conventional arms transfers are a crucial national security concern for the United States, and we have always supported effective action to control the international transfer of arms,” Hillary Clinton noted as early as October 14, 2009. Clinton boasted that “the United States regularly engages other states to raise their standards and to prohibit the transfer or transshipment of capabilities to rogue states, terrorist groups, and groups seeking to unsettle regions.” Of course, that speech was delivered at the same time the Obama administration was transferring some 2,000 small arms to Mexican drug gangs in the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal.

The State Department website nevertheless absurdly continues to boast that “The United States has in place an extensive and rigorous system of controls that most agree is the ‘gold standard’ of export controls for arms transfers.”

In view of such obviously false public statements, one may question the sincerity of Obama State Department promises about “redlines” to the UN ATT, which supposedly protect the Second Amendment: “The Second Amendment to the Constitution must be upheld. There will be no restrictions on civilian possession or trade of firearms otherwise permitted by law or protected by the U.S. Constitution.

There will be no dilution or diminishing of sovereign control over issues involving the private acquisition, ownership, or possession of firearms, which must remain matters of domestic law.” The Obama State Department also promises “There will be no mandate for an international body to enforce an ATT.”

So America’s Second Amendment rights are safe, right? Hardly.

The draft of the treaty prepared earlier this year by the UN Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) explains that the treaty is aimed at crime control as well as rogue militias in developing nations:

The majority of conflict deaths are caused by the use of small arms, and civilian populations bear the brunt of armed conflict more than ever. Also, small arms are the dominant tools of criminal violence.

The PrepCom report of February 2012 — despite protestations by the Hillary Clinton’s minions — is not limited merely to international transfer of firearms. The draft treaty covers “transfers” as well as imports and exports of firearms:

The international transactions or activities covered by this Treaty include those listed below and defined in Annex A:

(a) Import;

(b) Export;

(c) Transfer…

In this matter, the 2012 conference is merely following the goals of the 2001 UN Programme of Action on small arms, which required national gun registries and collection agencies for those guns once they’ve been registered. The 2001 Programme of Action requires nations:

To ensure that comprehensive and accurate records are kept for as long as possible on the manufacture, holding and transfer of small arms and light weapons under their jurisdiction. These records should be organized and maintained in such a way as to ensure that accurate information can be promptly retrieved and collated by competent national authorities.

To develop and implement, where possible, effective disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes, including the effective collection, control, storage and destruction of small arms and light weapons…

The UN is still seeking this kind of broad control over private firearms ownership, and UN General Assembly resolution 66/47, adopted December 2, 2011 in advance of this month’s conference that it seeks to ban “The illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects.” [Emphasis added]

Moreover, the 2012 PrepCom report uses broad bans on any transfer of firearms:

A State Party shall not authorize a transfer of conventional arms if there is a substantial risk that those conventional arms would: Be used in a manner that would seriously undermine peace and security or provoke, prolong or aggravate internal, regional, subregional or international instability.

­Some 56 or more U.S. senators have written a letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton opposing the UN global gun registry, according to the National Rifle Association. Senatorial opposition began with a July 26, 2011 letter claiming that “the establishment of any sort of international gun registry that could impede upon the privacy rights of law-abiding gun owners is a non-starter.”

The U.S. State Department already has a State Department Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement that could be used as a control agency for domestic controls on firearms transfers.

The case in Syria today, where perfectly legal small arms in the hands of the government are crushing a largely disarmed civilian population.

It was also recently the case in the genocide in South Sudan, which recently won independence from Sudan — ending the genocide — after using “illicit” small arms in an independence effort.

In the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the “illegal” and “illicit” guns would have been those owned by the victims. And in Rwanda, the United Nations helped to facilitate arms deals to the government forces and was complicit in the genocide of some 800,000 innocent Tutsis. Gun control in Rwanda was so effectively implemented — in part with UN “peacekeeper” assistance — that much of the genocide against Tutsis was carried out by Hutu-aligned government forces with machetes — not guns!

Since the UN has traditionally backed genocidal governments over the victims who use “illicit” guns to defend themselves, it’s not surprising that human rights violator Iran is one of several regional chairmen of the UN ATT convention.

­by Emm­a Volonté
El Reportero corresp­ondent in México

Mexican campesinos vote in Chiapas. ­(PHOTO BY MOYSÉS SANTIAGO ZÚÑIGA)

Enrique Peña Nieto is the new president of Mexico. In the 1st July elections, the candidate of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) won with around 38 percent of the vote, against 31 percent for progressive Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the PRD (Democratic Revolution Party). Peña Nieto left only 26 percent to Josefina Vazquez Mota, from the governing PAN (National Action Party), and 2.5 percent to Gabriel Quadri de la Torre from the New Alianza group.

In Mexico there is only one round in the presidential election: who gets more votes wins. The president’s term is of six years and he cannot run again. The election day has developed normally, although there were several complaints of irregularities in a context where, according to a survey released a few days before the election, 71 percent of the voters believed that there could be fraud.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party is a conservative group, born from the ashes of the Mexican Revolution, who ruled from 1929 to 2000. It was over seventy years of cronyism, corruption and impunity, which did not end when the PRI was forced to cede power to the PAN, an even more conservative party.

In the 2006 presidential elections, the centerleft leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who had obtained only 250 000 votes less than Felipe Calderon accused the right-wing of election fraud, and along with his supporters he occupied the downtown Mexico City for three months.

According to analysts, the decision of Felipe Calderon – shortly after his election – to start the so-called “drug war” was just a demonstration of strength to his progressive opponent.

Mexican voters wanted to close twelve years of PAN government, exasperated by the drug war (which in six years has killed nearly 60,000 people), the economic crisis (the Mexican economy is 14th biggest in the world, but its GDP went from 6.9 percent in the period 1950-1982 to 1.97 percent today) and inequalities in the country (Mexico produces the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, and at the same Mexico is the country with more migrants to the world). Mexicans have removed the PAN by choosing the alternative promoted by the media: according to research from the prestigious British newspaper The Guardian, from 2005 the PRI has paid the network Televisa to promote their candidate and to discredit the opponent Lopez Obrador. The student movement I Am132 was born last May to expose the media manipulation by the Televisa-TV Azteca television duopoly.

It was created as “anti-PeñaNieto” and finally stated to be nonpartisan. With his appearance on stage at last month’s election campaign, the student movement has been an obstacle to the triumph of the PRI candidate- which according to early polls was over Lopez ­Obrador by twenty points – and has reopened the campaign.

Enrique Peña Nieto was the controversial governor of Mexico State, a body located in the center of the Republic of Mexico. The most obvious failure of his term as governor was recorded in 2006 in the town of San Salvador Atenco, when a police operation against people who resisted the construction of an airport caused – according to official figures – 2 dead, 201 arrested and 23 allegations of rape by law enforcement.

Another element that creates pessimism among human rights defenders on the future mandate of Peña Nieto is the inclusion of the Colombian General Oscar Naranjo Trujillo in the ranks of his foreign advisers on security. Naranjo, who was Director of the National Police of Colombia during Uribe’s administration is accused of being one of the leaders of Operation Phoenix – namely the bombing occurred in 2008 by the Colombian army, to a FARC camp in Ecuadorian territory that killed four Mexican citizens – and to have strong relationships with drug-trafficking (for example, in 2006 his brother was arrested for cocaine trafficking in Germany).

“With organized crime there will be no agreement or truce. The fight against crime will continue, with a new strategy to reduce violence and protect, above all, the lives of the Mexicans”, said Peña Nieto, without specifying what kind of strategy he will use against drug cartels or whether he will withdraw the army that occupies much of the country’s streets. In economic policy, Peña Nieto will undoubtedly promote neoliberal capitalism and dependent on exports, which will create debt. It provides a plan of privatization of public companies, notably Pemex, the state company that has a monopoly on oil.

Regarding foreign policy, Mexico will continue watching from afar the Latin American integration process driven by the progressive governments of the region, which is strengthening its sovereignty, and will align with the countries of the Pacific Alliance, the most faithful allies of the United States in Latin America: Colombia, Chile and Peru.

­

­por Ethan A. Huff
Natural News

If you have ever wondered why junk food is almost always artificially cheap compared to healthy food, you need look no further than federal agriculture policy. Little do most people know that the federal government funnels billions of taxpayer dollars via the “Farm Bill” into large-scale crop systems that primarily grow genetically-modified (GM) soy, corn, cotton and other commodity crops used throughout the highly-processed, industrial food supply.

Every five years, Congress reviews the guidelines of the existing Farm Bill, and comes up with new ways to allocate the nearly-trillion dollar sum typically apportioned for American agriculture programs. And since existing Farm Bill provisions are set to expire on September 30, 2012, the Obama enti-administration is currently pushing Congress to pass a revised Farm Bill known as the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012.

Hailed as encompassing “the most significant reforms in agricultural policy in decades,” the 2012 Farm Bill will allegedly end direct payments to farmers, end farm payments to individuals and entities whose gross income exceeds $750,000 per year, and consolidate risk management programs, among other things. But many of the provisions of the new bill still favor large-scale producers of mostly commodity crops at the expense of small-scale farmers, who receive little, if any, financial incentives or benefits.

“Every five years or so, Congress promises a new, improved farm bill that will end unnecessary subsidies to big farmers, enhance the environment and actually do something to help small farmers and small towns,” writes Robert B. Semple Jr. from The New York Times (NYT). “But what it usually does is find ways of disguising the old inequities, sending taxpayers (sic) dollars to wealthy farmers, accelerating the expansion of industrial farming, inflating land prices and further depopulating rural America.”

Direct payments, for instance, is a program that, since 1996, has been doling out payments to farmers for commodity crops regardless of market value or production levels. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and others, these payments have been given to farmers regardless of need.

The government has also been providing insurance subsidies to farmers who grow commodity crops such as corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, and canola, which not only causes more farmers to grow these crops, but also puts these farmers at an unfair, competitive advantage compared to farmers who grow various other crops.

This year’s Farm Bill, the Senate version of which was passed on June 21, is not really all that different from previous Farm Bills, as it still subsidizes industrial crops at the expense of non-industrial crops. This means that an organic farmer producing non-commodity crops like carrots, sweet potatoes, and beets, for instance, will not receive nearly the benefits nor the incentives that an industrial grower of GM corn will receive.

To make matters worse, large-scale growers in general are also given preferential treatment over small-scale growers, including smallscale farmers growing commodity crops. According to data collected by NYT, the top 20 percent of farm subsidy recipients between 1995 and 2010 received 90 percent of the overall allotment of subsidies, while the remaining 80 percent collectively received the remaining paltry 10 percent. These and other inequities in the federal agriculture policy are what keeps America’s food system both unhealthy and dominated by corporate, agricultural interests with no regard for human health. And they are the very inequities that groups like EWG are calling on Congress to address in this year’s farm bill.

In other related news: Support ‘local farms, food and jobs act’ to help decentralize food system Federal food policies that distribute billions of taxpayer dollars every year to subsidize the growth of ­commodity crops like genetically-modified (GM) corn and soy are largely responsible for the dismal state of food quality and health in our nation today.

But Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Oh.) have introduced a new bill known as the Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act that would help decentralize the food system and promote diversified, small-scale farming operations capable of meeting the growing demand for clean, fresh, local foods.

At least $12 billion a year is currently allocated to subsidize industrial-scale agriculture systems like pesticide-ridden GM crop mega-farms, and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that hold tens of thousands of animals in filth. Meanwhile, only about $100 million a year is allocated to support local food programs that grow and distribute fresh, clean food.

But all this can change with the passage of the Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act, which will provision more money from the Farm Bill for small-scale, organic farmers, and help bring more clean, local food into public school lunchrooms.

­

by the El Reportero news services

Enrique Peña Nieto

­México, 2 jul (PL) The presidential candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary parties (PRI) and Green Ecologist (PMVE), Enrique Peña Nieto, proclaimed his triumph in the Mexican elections.

However, according to Latin News, PRI returns to power but falls short of congressional majority.

“The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) is back after a 12-year hiatus. The party that had a stranglehold on federal power in Mexico for 71 years will once more inhabit Los Pinos from 1 December after Enrique Peña Nieto won a tighter-than-predicted contest on 1 July.”

Preliminary results strongly suggest that the PRI failed to secure a coveted congressional majority, however, which could complicate Peña Nieto’s proposed reform agenda. The party made some gains in the state gubernatorial elections but it also received some setbacks, reported Latin News.

The president of Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina, confirmed to have congratulated by telephone to Peña Nieto for having won the elections in Mexico.

Pérez Molina talked to Pérez Nieto the night on Sunday when the surveys at the ballot boxex showed him as the winner, with which the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary and Green Ecologist parties will be president in the neighboring country.

According to the Guatemalan president, he said to Peña Nieto his government interest in continuing working closely with Mexico and invited him to carry out a visit to this nation.

Yo Soy 132 movement does not recognize virtual Mexican President

The Mexican student movement #Yo Soy 132 unanimously approved not recognizing the stated results of the July 1 elections, which gave the victory to Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, said Mexican press today.

Yo Soy 132 pointed out that there had been “a process to impose candidate Enrique Peña Nieto” as President of the Republic.

In its Fifth Inter-University Assembly, the students denounced the process as plagued with presumed irregularities, among them the lack of media equity, the polling surveys – regarded as tricky – and the purchase and co-opting of votes during the elections, said Foro TV.

The movement decided to congregate indefinitely in front of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), to protest the partial electoral results.

Televisa and TVAzteca can do whatever they want and for six years they’ve been telling the people ‘this guy will be your president,’ and then they put in Felipe Calderon,” said Juan Carlos Sanchez, from the UNAM School of Political and Social Sciences.

­But in 2012, people are no longer going to swallow such an imposition, he added, assuring that in Sunday’s election “people were bribed and bused to the vote, and that votes were bought,also people were threatened, these things happen here.”

For his part, Enrique Peña Nieto told Televisa he was sure the vote recount will confirm the edge he was given in preliminary results.

Dominican president asks new international order

The Dominican Republic’s President, Leonel Fernandez advocated a new international financial order today at the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), capable of putting an end to the speculation linked to food price volatility. That phenomenon joins the crisis of sovereign debt and bank in the Eurozone, Fernandez said at FAO headquarters.

(Latin News and Prensa Latina contributed to this report).