Jesse Freeston: Over recent weeks, the regime put in place by a 2009 military coup has begun the process of destroying the Honduran teachers’ movement, a campaign that has turned Honduras’s cities into battlegrounds.  Opponents are calling it an example of what author Naomi Klein famously labeled the shock doctrine. Naomi Klein: The exploitation of […]

Part 1 Part 2 Part 1 Tom Corbett, Governor-Elect for Pennsylvania: It’s now time to come together, to tell the rest of the world — to tell the rest of the world Pennsylvania is open for business. Jesse Freeston: And that business is natural gas.  Pennsylvania’s race was unique in that it was fought primarily […]

Jesse Freeston: Ecuadorian journalist and filmmaker Oscar León has been following Arizona’s particularly harsh immigration law enforcement for three years.  He has witnessed a growing fear in the state’s Latino community as 26,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported following arrest by the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. . . . Sheriff Joe Arpaio […]

Jesse Freeston: Last week, the Bolivian city of Cochabamba and the country’s president Evo Morales played host to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.  The conference sought to distinguish itself from the United Nations conferences for giving a greater voice to civil society and expanding the conversation beyond […]

Jesse Freeston: In Part 1, we described the landmark deal negotiated by the campesinos of the lower Aguán, despite the ongoing militarization of their communities.  Land conflicts in the Aguán region are not new.  Regular occupations by landless peasants in Aguán and elsewhere in Honduras during the 1970s forced the military dictatorship to enact land […]

Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa: I will not allow armed groups of any kind in Honduras. Jesse Freeston: With that, the president of Honduras, Pepe Lobo, moved these 2,000 soldiers into the region of Bajo Aguán, a biofuel farming zone in northern Honduras, where 3,500 campesinos, organized as the Unified Campesino Movement of Aguán, or MUCA, […]

Jesse Freeston, Producer, The Real News Network: Since the inauguration of Pepe Lobo as the president of Honduras on January 27, the US State Department has been the new government’s most vocal supporter, urging the region to follow the US lead in restoring relations with the Honduran government, relations that were largely cut after the […]

  Peter Hallward: The role that journalists tend to be comfortable with when it comes to talking about Haiti is the role of victim.  If you ask why the Haitians are so poor . . . it has to do with three factors, all of which are functions really of Haiti’s independence and the strength […]

Jesse Freeston: . . . [T]he Heritage Foundation think tank responded within hours of the earthquake, with the demand that the US should use the crisis to its advantage.  They quickly took the post down, but a new one appeared soon after laying out four demands for US intervention in Haiti. Send the military. Appoint […]

Jesse Freeston, Producer, The Real News Network: The Honduran elections of Sunday, November 29 were unique in that they were less about who was going to win than they were about how many people were going to vote.  Both major presidential candidates were supporters of the June 28 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and […]

The new self-titled humanist president has been a key supporter of the regime through five months of massive human rights violations. “They’ve imposed a coup regime on us.  They’ve assassinated at least 34 of our companions since the coup that removed the legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya Rosales.  Nationwide, they’ve detained more than 5,000 […]

Bertha Oliva, Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH): I believe that the accord was destined to come out bad.  As a general rule, you can’t sit down and negotiate under imposition and repression.  This was what happened before, during, and after the agreement. . . . Jesse Freeston: The accord was broken […]