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SHARMINI PERIES in Toronto
President Bush’s recently unveiled plan to bring down the Fidel Castro government in Cuba bears close resemblance to the one for Iraq and is designed with the 2004 Presidential election in focus.
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. Voltaire, 1767.
FOREGROUNDING the 2004 United States election campaign, President George W. Bush announced on October 10 before a gathering of anti-Castro (…)

Heavy-handed police and propaganda tactics brought Baghdad to Miami
By NAOMI KLEIN
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In December, 1990, U.S. President George Bush Sr. travelled through South America to sell the continent on a bold new dream: "a free-trade system that links all of the Americas." Addressing the Argentine congress, he said that the plan, later to be named the Free-Trade Area of the Americas would be "our hemisphere’s new declaration of (…)

The Miami Model
Paramilitaries, Embedded Journalists and Illegal Protests. Think This is Iraq? It’s Your Country
by Jeremy Scahill
We were loading our video equipment into the trunk of our car when a fleet of bicycle cops sped up and formed a semi-circle around us. The lead cop was none other than Miami Police Chief John Timoney. The former Police Commissioner of Philadelphia Timoney has a reputation for brutality and hatred of protesters of any kind. He calls them "punks," (…)

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.
The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in (…)

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition calls on all those who have been involved in the anti-war movement to show their support for those in Miami protesting at the FTAA negotiations who are being brutalized and incarcerated in a coordinated police state action designed to stifle dissent in the United States.
Police have attacked protestors with tear gas, pepper spray, concussion grenades, stun guns and by shooting activists with rubber bullets. Medics have not been allowed in through the (…)

Liquidation of the Commons There has not been such a wholesale giveaway of America’s public assets since McKinley was president in the late 1800s
By Adam Werbach
In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=459_0_1_0_C
When the Bush administration’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency was asked to describe his goals, Gov. Mike Leavitt of Utah summed up his general approach by invoking the Latin term enlibra, which roughly means "in balance." In typical (…)

The Bubble
[On GW Bush visit to Britain - portsideMod]
By MARIA MARGARONIS
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031208&s=margaronis
The explosions in Istanbul during George W. Bush’s state visit to Britain lit up the unbridgeable gulf between the government officials sealed in their security bubble and the mass of protesters who filled London’s streets for the fourth time in a year—a gulf made of deep disagreements about the roots of terrorism, ends and means, the (…)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/3284731.stm
The South African Cabinet has approved a plan to distribute free Aids drugs to more than five million sufferers. But the health minister warned there was "still a long way to go" in the fight against Aids.
"I don’t want to raise false hopes, but a decision has been made. There is hope," Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said.
The country has been accused of not doing enough to fight the disease, despite having the largest number of (…)

by WILLIAM GREIDER & KENNETH RAPOZA
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031201&s=greider
The bearded political leader they call Lula is the new phenomenon of globalization, a man with audacious ambitions to alter the balance of power among nations. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the new left-wing president of Brazil, envisions a united South America that gains economic strength by drawing closer together in trade and bargaining collectively, much as the European Union (…)

Bolivia Offers Cautionary Tale for FTAA Negotiators By Adam Saytanides 11.16.03
http://www.inthesetimes.com/print.php?id=443_0_1_0
South American leaders participating in November talks on the Free Trade Area of the Americas should look to recent events in Bolivia as a cautionary tale.
After six weeks of massive protests calling for his ouster, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fled to Miami on October 17. Vice President and ex TV-journalist Carlos Mesa took over the (…)