Today's Stories

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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Dubious Presidential Advice on Latin American From the Council on Foreign Relations

Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

By ROBERT SANDELS

The Council on Foreign Relations issued a report in May on what the  next president should do to improve US Latin America policy. The report  (U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality) was  written by a task co-chaired by Charlene Barshefsky, former US trade  representative, and Gen. James T. Hill, former head of the US Southern  Command. It has received considerable enthusiastic approval.  How could it  not when it contains the line, "If there was an era of U.S. hegemony in  Latin America, it is over" [1]

What do they mean "if"? Anyone capable of doubting that there was an  era of US hegemony is a fool, and anyone who thinks it is over is  misinformed.

Starting off smartly on the wrong foot, the authors assert that the  problems facing US diplomacy in Latin America are not our fault.

"Recent strains in the US - Latin America relationship," argues the  report, "although real, are less a result of alleged U.S. policy failings  than a product of deeper changes...."

It is not so much that the recommendations flowing from this deeply  flawed assertion are uniformly bad - many are admirable - but rather that  the report is poisoned at the outset by its unquestioning acceptance of the  hegemonic premises whose damage to the region the report purports to repair.

Adopting orphaned premises

The report could only have been written in the form it is in by  adopting the hoary mythology that US policy has been benign, though possibly  bumbling at times. Where is the evidence to support the assertion that the  United States has had a "long-standing focus" on democracy; or the claim  that US objectives have been the promotion of "prosperity, and democracy  throughout the hemisphere"? Democracy promotion has never been a US policy,  in Latin America except as a cover for hegemonic ambitions, as the long  history of interventions, invasions and subversions amply demonstrates.

Without the democracy-promotion fallacy as a cover, many of the  report's assertions are revealed as justifications for continuing US  interventionism, albeit on a more sophisticated level than we have seen  under recent administrations.  Praising by way of faint damnation, the  report offers this zinger of understatement:  The US focus on "free and fair  elections," has been "insufficient" in dealing with "fundamental concerns."

When it looks at individual countries, the report offers little in the  way of historical context to explain current tensions.  It fails to ask, for  example, the reasons for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's hostility toward  the policies of the US government, contenting itself with repeating Bush  administration talking points about the "authoritarian" Chavez.

"Since being elected in 1998," says the report, "he has used oil  profits to fund high-profile public projects and welfare programs while  ruling by decree and systematically eradicating checks on his own power.  More worrying in the regional context, he has also embarked on a campaign to  alienate Latin America from the United States and promoted foreign policies  that could destabilize the region (such as pushing for recognition of the  Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia [FARC] as a political rather  than terrorist organization)."

There is no mention here that Chavez has repeatedly renewed his  authority through democratic elections and referendums; no mention that his  limited power of decree was legislatively approved; no mention of Washington's  support for the coup attempt against him in 2002, which might help explain  his antipathy toward the current United States government; no mention that  his regional policies, far from destabilizing the region, have been in  support of democratic elections that have challenged US-backed ruling elites  in places like Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua; and no mention that Latin  America's alienation  from the United States might be a good thing in a  region working toward unity and independence.

On other important issues, the report is silent or given to mumbling.

There is no discussion of the long history of US attacks on sovereign states  up to and including the endless war against Cuba.  For the Council on  Foreign Relations, history begins only after a Fidel Castro or a Hugo Chavez  reacts against US aggression.

How they can help us

The report talks a great deal about how the United States might help  Latin America, but it is essentially a report on how Latin America can help  the United States. The region is more important to the US than ever, the  forward begins. "[It] is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United  States."

US energy security is one of the four critical issues identified in the  report.  The others are poverty, public security and human mobility  (migration). All four are interpreted to one degree or another as to how  they threaten or otherwise affect the United States.

The report complains that the rise of resource nationalism presents "a  difficult challenge for both the United States and Latin American  countries."  Resource nationalism refers to the trend toward taking control  of oil and other resources out of the hands of foreign corporations and,  through nationalization or other means, putting them to national use.

"Since 2001," the report says, "President Chavez has sought to use his  nation's vast energy wealth for public programs and for his own ambitions by  strengthening government control over the state-owned oil company Petroleos  de Venezuela (PDVSA), limiting foreign ownership of joint ventures, and  demanding higher royalty payments from foreign oil companies."

Because of Venezuela's use of Venezuelan oil for Venezuelan purposes,  the report suggests, the impact on future supplies could "have problematic  implications for the United States."  The sentiment here seems to be that  Venezuelans are using up our oil.

Perhaps that could be offset, though.  Brazil could increase its oil  exports, which could "substantially benefit...the United States."

Then, there is natural gas: "Latin America's natural gas resources also  have the potential to play an important part in U.S. energy security in the  coming years."

Maybe Peru could export liquid natural gas to the United States.  But,  once again, resource nationalism gets in the way:  "Potential Bolivian  exports to Chile and the United States have been held up by anti-Chilean  sentiment and resource nationalism."

IMF to the rescue

To repair the damage done by the disaster economics of the Washington  Consensus, the report recommends, well, the Washington Consensus. The report  advises Washington to help Latin American nations work with the multilateral  organizations that implement the Washington Consensus, such as the World  Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the International  Monetary Fund (IMF).  But, these are instruments of US policy not of Latin  American integration and independence.

The report does not discuss the history of how the Washington Consensus  exacerbated poverty and dependence or the reality that the multilateral  financial institutions are no longer welcomed in most of Latin America and  have little money left to affect changes anywhere. Yet, the council wants  Latin America to embrace these discredited institutions.

Citing economic policies (structural adjustment, debt repayment,  privatization) thrust on the region through the Washington Consensus, the  report ignores the wholesale ransacking of national assets and the squeezing  of taxpayers to repay loans contracted by corrupt regimes coerced by US  agents, and concludes with masterly obliviousness, "these measures have had  less of an effect on job creation and poverty alleviation than was initially  indicated."

Besides papering over the failures of the Washington Consensus, the  report downplays the failures of Plan Colombia, of which it can only say,  "important progress has been made."  Still, the report offers Plan Colombia  as a model for Mexico, perhaps taking as fact Gen. Hill's ludicrous claim  that Plan Colombia's success "has been absolutely startling."[2] Nor does  the report reflect on how seriously Colombia's US-approved incursion into  Ecuador in March has damaged relations between Colombia and its neighbors.

This "startlingly" successful program, the report argues, should now be  extended to Mexico under Plan Merida, a US-financed amplification of  President Felipe Calderon's bloody militarization of his war on drug lords  and civil protest.

Unintended irony

The report points out the negative economic effects on the region of  unequal wealth distribution, of race-based economic and social exclusion and  of race- and class-based exclusion from health care.  All of these are  characteristic of contemporary US society, but the report does not draw the  same conclusion for the United States as it does for Latin America, namely  that these defects "have potentially problematic implications for democratic  development."

To be sure, many of the recommendations - if read without considering  context - are laudable. Latin American governments, for example,  really  ought to reform their tax systems by adopting more distributive schemes that  rely less on regressive value-added taxes (VATs) and more on progressive-  income and corporate-profit levies.

But, to suggest that there is any US "expertise" to support such  efforts is absurd. Just look at the inverted system of progressivity in the  US tax code, the thicket of lobbyist-procured tax breaks for the richest  percentiles, the wealthy-farmer subsidies and the relentless transfer of  wealth from wage earners to rentiers for an idea of how good the United  States is at tax reform. Latin American governments should politely tell the  Council on Foreign Relations, "Please, don't help us!"

In a council meeting releasing the report, American University scholar  Robert Pastor raised the same point. "I think those four issues that you  laid out are not issues that I would say the United States has much to teach  Latin America."[3]

Cuba: turning the clock back

This report is supposed to show how the next president can face Latin  American realities. The section on Cuba, however, wanders off into many of  the same fantasies that have driven Cuban policy for half a century. At  best, these recommendations call for a timid retreat to milder policies that  were in play prior to the passage of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, which,  besides further tightening the blockade (embargo), gives Congress the final  power to judge Cuba's behavior.

The council's task force would like to end, though only partially, the  nearly total ban on US citizens traveling to Cuba. It goes only so far as to  suggest reinstating the less stringent travel rights that existed pre-Bush.  The report does not attempt to justify the original reasoning behind the  travel restrictions and does not ask questions about the trumped-up grounds  of "trading with the enemy."

The report also wants to reduce the severity of the blockade by  revoking the Helms-Burton Act, which in itself would not change Cuba policy  but simply hand it back from Congress to the executive branch.  It does not  recommend repealing the entirety of the anti-Cuba legislation, such as the  Cuban Adjustment Act or the Torricelli Act.    Since none of the current  presidential candidates favors eliminating the blockade, the report's major  recommendation on Cuba rings hollow.

In sum, the report's timid recommendations outline a return to the  somewhat milder Cuba policy that set in after President John F. Kennedy's  failure at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and his failed Operation Mongoose terror  project.  Richard Nixon, who, as vice president, recommended the invasion to  then President Dwight Eisenhower, established a softer Cuba policy as  president than the one recommended by the task force

Some of the proposals concerning Cuba actually reinforce Bush's  hard-line approach. Both Bush and the Council on Foreign Relations want the  next president to work more effectively with partners in the Western  Hemisphere and Europe to press Cuba on its human rights record and  democratic reform, the two major propaganda points endlessly cited as  justifications for the war on Cuba.

Rather than pledging to leave Cuba's future to Cubans, the report  suggests that the next president promise, "The United States will pursue a  respectful arm's-length relationship with a democratic Cuba."

The catch is that, under current law and policy, it is up to the United  States to determine whether Cuba is democratic. Moreover, since US policy  after the 2001 Summit of the Americas links democracy and capitalism,  the unacknowledged agenda of the council appears to be destruction of Cuba's  socialist revolution. [4]

Robert Sandels is a writer and member of the Cuba-L Direct team. where this essay originally appeared.

Bibliography

[1] Council on Foreign Relations, U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New  Direction for a New Reality, 05/15/08.  All quotations are from the online  uncorrected version.

[2] U.S.-Latin America Relations: Report of an Independent Task, Federal  News Service, 05/14/08.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Summit of the Americas Information Network.  The final declaration says democracy is "fundamental to the advancement of  all our objectives," which include "hemispheric integration and national and  collective responsibility for improving the economic well-being and security  of our people." Further, any "interruption of the democratic order in a  state of the Hemisphere constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the  participation of that state's government in the Summit of the Americas  process." Accordingly, it would seem that the Bush regime, which fought to  get this language in the declaration, could be kicked out of future summits  after the 2002 stunt in Venezuela or the US-engineered expulsion of Haiti's  President Aristide in 2004.

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