In a wide-ranging editorial earlier this week, London's Financial Times, expressed deep concerns over the waning influence of the U.S. and the growing influence of Hugo Chavez in Latin America.  The article provides a fascinating window into the international financial communities' sober assessment of the floundering corporate agenda in Latin America -- an analysis not altogether different from our own.

Since the early 1990's, Nicaragua's campesinos have been struggling to hold onto their land as credit has dried up and prices for their crops have plummeted.  The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) threatens to deal the final blow to the economies of many communities by flooding the marked with cheap U.S. corn and grain.  But Nicaragua's campesinos aren't ready to go down without a fight.

Why are liberals suddenly so interested in defending the CIA and its secrets?

In today's Washington Post, Sam Coates reports that the U.S. and the Netherlands have reached an accord on dealing with "high potency marijuana."  U.S. Drug Czar John Walters and Dutch Health Minister Hans Hoogervorst have announced plans to hold a summit on the topic, despite the lack of any scientific evidence that "high potency marijuana" presents any real public health threat.  Its discouraging to see the Dutch government lend credence to one of the drug war's oldest and most ridiculous myths.

Any pretense that the U.S. and Colombian governments were cooperating in a real war on cocaine trafficking in Colombia was erased completely last week when the Colombian Congress passed the Orwellian "Justice and Peace Law" which allows paramilitary leaders implicated in drug trafficking to get off with a slap on the wrist, hold on to their wealth, maintain their terror networks, and escape extradition by making vague confessions and accepting light prison sentences.

In January of 2001, in a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, one of the top aides to then-U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson ridiculed the idea that any of the weapons or equipment given to the Colombian military as part of Plan Colombia could wind up in the hands of the right wing paramilitaries of the AUC.

Events this week reveal the deceitfulness or naïveté of her comments, and reflect a long-standing pattern of U.S. military collaboration with Colombian paramilitaries going back to the 1960’s.

The U.S. is gearing up its rhetoric against Venezuela again as Condaleeza Rice barnstorms through Latin America -- and there are subtle indications that the U.S. may be ready to increase Colombia's role in undermining the government of Hugo Chavez.

Both the left and the right in the U.S. have been conspiculously silent about the recent massacre carried out by the FARC in the town of Toribio in northern Colombia, a community that has been a cradle of indigenous resistance against Uribe, the multinationals, and Plan Colombia and Plan Patriota.  The right sees the people of Toribio as unworthy victims because of their organizing for justice.  And the left finds it inconvenient to admit that the FARC is capable of attrocities and no longer represents the interests of Colombia's poor.

I used to say that being a lapsed Catholic was like being a Red Sox fan . . .  you knew things would never go your way, but you always held out hope that someday things would change.  

Of course, the Red Sox won the last World Series . . .  and so I let myself let my guard down a little bit when the Papal Conclave locked its doors Monday morning.  I guess being a Recovering Catholic is more like being a recovering alcoholic than I would really like to admit.  I guess somewhere in witch school they forgot to teach me the spell for banishing latent Catholicism. And today I have one hell of a hangover, reading that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has become Pope Benedict XVI.

African palm plantation companies are playing a growing role in helping paramilitaries consolidate their control of the Uraba region of Choco and Antioquia in Colombia.