Cables from the first term of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa show how the US sought to defend the interests of US companies in Ecuador, and protect the position of foreign investors in general. Moves against the power of transnational corporations by Correa's government, first elected in 2006, were seen as attempts to increase control over the economy, which the US government views as the domain of private interests. The US Embassy in Quito therefore tried to influence Ecuadorian economic policy in conjunction with allies from other embassies and from within the private sector.
Democracy
The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI
Betty Medsger
Knopf, 2014
596 pages, $46.95 (hb)
As far as burglaries go, this one was pretty audacious. On March 8, 1971, nine anti-Vietnam-war activists in Pennsylvania burgled the FBI. They stole secret files in the regional FBI office in the small town of Media.
With careful planning, a little luck and plenty of pluck, the amateur burglars exposed, for the first time, the FBI’s political spying and suppression of democratic dissent.
On September 24, one day after the United Nations climate summit in New York once more failed to come up with any form of serious action to confront the climate crisis, Filipino socialist group Party of the Labouring Masses released the statement below.
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Philippines President Benigno Aquino concluded his United Nations speech in New York on September 23 by posing the question: What more can we do?
The question is rhetorical, even hypocritical, as the president well knows what needs to be done: to address the demands of the mass movements, which he has heard, but not heeded.
Staring down scandals related to revelations in a recently published book, Dirty Politics, and revelations of mass government surveillance, incumbent Prime Minister John Key led his right-wing National Party to become the first party with an outright majority in parliament since the current electoral system was set up in 1996.
The Labour opposition, however, slumped to about 24% of the vote ― its worst result ever.
In her previous books The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) and No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (2000), Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein took on topics like neoliberal “shock therapy,” consumerism, globalisation and “disaster capitalism”.
Klein extensively documented the forces behind the dramatic rise in economic inequality and environmental degradation over the past 50 years.
Treasurer Joe Hockey could not escape hearing the voice of the people when 100 staff, students and community activists rallied on the Smithfield campus of James Cook University in Cairns on September 18.
The rally highlighted the federal government's planned cuts to higher education and the rest of the budget.
The National Tertiary Education Union JCU branch called the rally because Hockey was speaking at a business conference at JCU before attending a G20 finance ministers meeting in Cairns.
Criminal lawyer Rob Stary has represented many people accused under Australian “counter-terror” laws. Green Left Weekly’s Karen Fletcher spoke to him about the police raids in Sydney and Brisbane on September 18.
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Last week you commented that the raids gave you a sense of “deja-vu”. What is repeating here?
If you’re an Australian citizen, you have a greater chance of being killed by the following causes than you do by a terrorist attack: slipping in the bathtub and hitting your head; contracting a lethal intestinal illness from the next dinner you eat at a restaurant; being struck by lightning.
In the post-9/11 era, there has been no terrorist attack carried out on Australian soil: not one. The attack that most affected Australians was the 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali which killed 88 of its citizens; that was 12 years ago.
More than six years ago, 21-year-old Australian backpacker Jock Palfreeman was walking home with friends after a night out in Sofia, Bulgaria, when he saw a group of 15 men attacking two others. The next morning he was in a police cell — accused of “unprovoked murder” and “hooliganism”. Held without bail, he was convicted two years later and sentenced to 20 years jail.
Besieged since September 15, the northern Syrian Kurdish-majority city of Kobane (whose Arabic name is Ayn al-Arab) has mounted a heroic, all-out resistance to the murderous Islamic State gangs.
As of September 25, despite the superior heavy weaponry deployed by the IS, it appears that fierce resistance and determined counter-attacks have halted or slowed the assault. Nonetheless, the IS has pushed closer to the city centre than ever before and the situation remains perilous.
With the US and allied nations, including Arab countries, carrying out air strikes in Syria, the Turkish government is trying to convince the West it does not support the Islamic State (IS) forces the US is targetting.
Newly elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the former prime minster) linked the adjective “terrorist” with “IS” for the very first time on September 23 during a US TV interview while attending the United Nations climate summit.
“Turkey will do whatever needs to be done to stop this terrorist organisation, militarily, and politically,” he said.
Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies & Revolution
Laurie Penny
Bloomsbury, 2014
English author Laurie Penny describes herself as a “journalist, activist, feminist, troublemaker, nerd and net denizen”. Her book, Unspeakable Things, is a collection of polemical essays in which Penny takes aim at mainstream (liberal) feminism, which she says “remains tepid and cowardly”.
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