The UK is sending a nuclear submarine to the Malvinas Islands amid growing tensions between Britain and Argentina over the disputed territories. - According to media reports on Saturday, British Prime Minister David Cameron has personally approved the deployment of the Trafalgar-class vessel, believed to be either HMS Tireless or HMS Turbulent, in the South Atlantic. However, a British Ministry of Defense (MoD) spokeswoman said, "We do not comment on submarine deployments." The heavily-armed submarine is set to be in the Malvinas waters in April for the 30th anniversary of the 1982 war which the two countries fought over the islands also known as the Falklands. The Royal Navy has already revealed it is sending HMS Dauntless, a Type 45 destroyer, to the Falklands. Britain's Prince William arrived in the Malvinas on Thursday for a six-week training mission as a search and rescue pilot with the Royal Air Force (RAF).

British monarchy and government insist on their colonial stand, after planning to dispatch an advanced warship and an heir to throne to the “occupied” Malvinas Islands, fuelling speculations that it is considering a war against Argentina over the archipelago.

British government has announced that it was deploying its most sophisticated warship, destroyer HMS Dauntless, and the Duke of Cambridge to the South Atlantic to secure its last colony in Latin America.

Analysts condemned UK's decision, believing the move will also send a powerful message to the Argentina government that who acts as the “colonialist.” Argentina government expressed dismay over the war policy of the British government, condemning the deployment of the warship and the planned tour of duty of Prince William in the occupied Falklands islands while wearing “the uniform of the conqueror.”

PressTV: Argentina raps UK militarizing Malvinas

Colombia's neo-paramilitary groups continue to enjoy the protection of elements of the state, the director of a leading think tank said Tuesday. - In an interview with Colombia Reports, Leon Valencia, director of Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris, which monitors Colombia's illegal armed groups, said "it is impossible to exhibit such a degree of illegal activity without the protection of the security forces and without ties to politicians." "The day the state as a whole is directed to pursue all of these people is the only time it can be over," he added. Explaining his remarks, Valencia outlined how the organizational structure supporting such groups is made up of three essential elements. "On the one side there is the illegal [neo-paramilitaries], who are hidden away and have a secret life, the second tie is the one in civil life, who are lawyers, businessmen and people who have a good stature, and then there are the police and military." Valencia went on to explain that the frequency of failed police actions against drug trafficking operations, whereby no illegal activity could be detected despite good intelligence supporting the action, can only be the result of "immediate feedback" from within the security forces warning of the impending sting.

As the 30th anniversary of the war between Britain and Argentina over the Malvinas Islands nears, the dispute over the territory is heating up once again. - Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota says all Latin American nations back Argentina against Britain over the disputed Malvinas islands, which Britain claims as its own, calling it Falklands. Latin America and the Caribbean "back Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas and back the UN resolutions calling on the Argentine and British governments to hold talks on the issue," Patriota said in a meeting with British Foreign Secretary William Hague in Brazil.

BBC: Argentina outraged at Cameron's 'colonialism' remarks - Argentine leaders have reacted with fury after UK Prime Minister David Cameron accused Argentina of "colonialism" for continuing to claim sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.

Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon's last uncontacted tribes and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its land. - The child was said to have wandered away from her village, where around 60 members of the Awá tribe, who live in complete isolation from the modern world, and fallen into the hands of the loggers. Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão. "She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death," he said. Reports of the killing, which was said to have happened in October or November last year, were seconded by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic group which said it had seen footage of her charred remains.

The same old drug war tactics lead to more powerful cartels and illicit activity by US authorities. - U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents laundered millions in cash for a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his Colombian cocaine supplier, according to documents made public Monday. With the help of Mexican federal police officers, the DEA agents and their Colombian informant conducted at least 15 wire transfers to banks in the United States, Canada and China and smuggled about $2.5 million in the United States. Money laundering is a favored tactic of the DEA. The illicit activity – specifically sanctioned as Attorney General Exempt Operations – often violates Mexican sovereignty, facilitates additional criminal activity on the part of the drug cartels, and may be counterproductive, especially in the shadow of the failed gun-running operation Fast and Furious. Mexican military and law enforcement, trained and armed by the U.S., typically assist the Americans. But Mexico’s over-reliance on harsh law enforcement and militaristic approaches to the drug war – actively promoted by the United States – has resulted in a dramatic increase in violence and an unaccountable police and military force that is responsible for widespread human rights violations.

KTAR.com: US agents helped launder millions in drug proceeds

UK relegated to seventh place in world league of leading economies in 2011, according to team of economists. - Brazil has overtaken the UK to become the world's sixth-largest economy, according to a team of economists. The banking crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession has relegated the UK to seventh place in 2011, behind South America's largest economy, which has boomed on the back of exports to China and the far east. Russia and India are expected to benefit from a surge in growth over the next 10 years and push the UK into eighth place. Like most economies, India is struggling with high inflation and slowing growth, but its highly educated workforce and skills in growth areas from IT and services to engineering will push the economy into fifth place. After a decade of selling oil and gas to Europe and other parts of Asia, Russia will be at number four. The only compensation for ministers concerned by Britain's relative fall is that France will fall at a faster pace. Nicolas Sarkozy can still boast that France is the fifth-largest economy behind the US at number one, China, Japan and Germany, but by 2020, the Centre for Economics and business Research (CEBR) forecasts it will fall past the UK into ninth spot. Germany will also slip to seventh place in 2020.

A top Argentine official was found hanged in his hotel room in Montevideo during a summit meeting of the South American trade group Mercosur, police said. - Ivan Heyn, 33, the undersecretary of trade, was found dead around 3:00 pm (1700 GMT) at the Radisson Hotel downtown, police spokesman Jose Luis Rondan told a news conference. "He apparently died by hanging" with a belt, Rondan said. He said police were trying to determine whether it was a suicide, a crime or an accident. A Uruguayan official earlier said Heyn had committed suicide. A source close to the case told AFP on condition of anonymity that Heyn was naked when he was found, nearly six hours after his death. An investigating judge told local media that the circumstances surrounding Heyn's death remained unclear. News of his death shocked the Mercosur summit, attended by the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Barack Obama's sharp criticisms of Venezuela's human rights record and its ties to Iran are heightening tensions with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who on Monday responded by calling Obama a "clown" and telling him to mind his own business. - Obama appeared to stiffen his stance toward Chavez in his remarks, which were published Monday by the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal. Some of Obama's Republican opponents have also been strongly critical of Chavez, and analysts expect the Venezuelan president could become a popular target of criticism as American politicians feud over foreign policy ahead of next year's U.S. presidential election.

A judge in Chile last week issued an indictment against a retired US Navy officer in connection with the arrest, torture and murder of two American journalists, Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi, in the wake of the CIA-backed military coup led by Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet that toppled the government of President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. - Judge Jorge Zepeda has charged Capt. Ray Davis (retired) with providing the Chilean secret police with intelligence that led to the abduction and murder of Horman and Terrugi and with failing to take any action to stop the killings. At the time of the coup, Davis was the chief of the US Military Group at the American embassy in Santiago. The judge has filed a motion with the country’s Supreme Court to seek Davis’s extradition from the US. The slaying of Horman and Terrugi, who were supporters of the Allende government, was carried out as part of a savage wave of repression that saw tens of thousands of people tortured and executed and hundreds of thousands more forced into exile by a US-supported dictatorship that went on to rule the country for 17 years.

A judge wants former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis, whereabouts unclear, to face murder charges in the death of freelance journalist Charles Horman. The case was dramatized in the 1982 film 'Missing.' - Judge Jorge Zepeda wants former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis, whose whereabouts were not immediately clear Tuesday, to face trial in Chile for his alleged involvement in the deaths of Horman and U.S. student Frank Teruggi. The two Americans were arrested and executed by Chilean forces shortly after President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a military coup on Sept. 11, 1973. Horman, 31, was working as a screenwriter for state-run Chile Films when military rebel forces led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet attacked the presidential palace La Moneda. Allende committed suicide that day rather than surrender. Horman was arrested Sept. 17 and executed the next day, according to court documents. His body later was found on a Santiago street. Teruggi, 24, was killed Sept. 22 and his body also dumped on a street in the capital. Davis then was head of the U.S. military group attached to the American Embassy in Santiago. A recent truth commission found that 41,000 people were arrested, tortured or killed during Pinochet's 16-year reign of terror. At least 3,200 are thought to have died.

Gunmen in Brazil are brazenly intimidating indigenous communities with a hit list of prominent leaders, following the high profile murder of Nísio Gomes last month. - Reportedly employed by powerful landowners in Mato Grosso do Sul state, the gunmen are creating a climate of fear to prevent Guarani Indians from returning to their ancestral land. The tactics employed in recent incidents have been almost identical. Gunmen encircle vehicles transporting Guarani, force them to stop, and then verbally abuse and interrogate passengers about the names on the hit list. One Guarani leader told Survival, ’They’ve pinpointed us and they’re set to kill us. We’re at great risk. Here in Brazil, we have no justice. We have nowhere left to run.’

The Brazilian government on Wednesday suspended Chevron Corp's drilling rights in Brazil until it clarifies the causes of an offshore oil spill, the latest twist in a political firestorm threatening the U.S. company's role in Brazil's oil bonanza. - The decision was announced as the chief executive of Chevron's Brazilian unit was testifying before the Brazilian Congress, where he publicly apologized for the November 8 spill that leaked about 2,400 barrels of oil into the ocean off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's National Petroleum Agency said it decided to halt Chevron's drilling rights after determining that there was evidence that the company had been "negligent" in its study of data needed to drill and in contingency planning for abandoning the well in the event of accident. The agency, known as ANP, also rejected a request from Chevron to drill deeper wells into subsalt areas in the Frade field where the spill took place. The Frade field, which is located in the oil-rich Campos Basin, is the only block in Brazil where Chevron is producing oil and is the operator. The Campos Basin is currently the source of more than 80 percent of Brazil's oil output.

On Honduras' swampy Mosquitia coast, entire villages have made a way of life off the country's massive cocaine transshipment trade. In broad daylight, men, women and children descend on passing go-fast boats to offload bales of cocaine destined for the United States. - Along the Atlantic coast, the wealthy elite have accumulated dozens of ranches, yachts and mansions from the drug trade. And in San Pedro Sula, local gangs moving drugs north have spawned armies of street-level dealers whose violence has given the rougher neighborhoods of the northern industrial city a homicide rate that is only comparable to Kabul, Afghanistan. Long an impoverished backwater in Central America, Honduras has become a main transit route for South American cocaine.

John Glaser: Honduras Becomes Cocaine Transit Hub

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Alfredo Astiz, Argentina's infamous "Blond Angel of Death," and 11 other death squad members from the 1970s were jailed for life on Wednesday in one of the country's biggest human rights cases. - Astiz, nicknamed for his cherubic looks, stood trial with other former officials accused of horrific crimes at the ESMA Naval Mechanics School, where about 5,000 dissidents were held and tortured during the 1976-1983 "Dirty War" dictatorship. Few of the captives survived. Marking the end of a 22-month trial in which 79 survivors gave evidence, 12 defendants were sentenced to life while four others were punished with between 18 and 25 years in jail. Hundreds of people gathered on the street outside the packed courtroom, some holding up photographs of the victims of the men inside. The crowd, bundled up against a chilly Buenos Aires night, applauded at the reading out of each sentence. "We can finally be at peace, knowing that justice has been done," a woman in the crowd told local television. Former navy captain Astiz boasted of his dictatorship-era crimes in a magazine interview in 1998, saying he was "the best-trained man in Argentina to kill journalists and politicians." "I'm not sorry for anything," Astiz said in the interview.

BBC: Argentina 'Angel of Death' Alfredo Astiz convicted
Sky News: Argentina's 'Blonde Angel Of Death' Is Jailed
Marie Trigona: Landmark Human Rights Case in Argentina Puts Torture on Trial

BUENOS AIRES — Victoria Montenegro recalls a childhood filled with chilling dinnertime discussions. Lt. Col. Hernán Tetzlaff, the head of the family, would recount military operations he had taken part in where “subversives” had been tortured or killed. The discussions often ended with his “slamming his gun on the table,” she said.

It took an incessant search by a human rights group, a DNA match and almost a decade of overcoming denial for Ms. Montenegro, 35, to realize that Colonel Tetzlaff was, in fact, not her father — nor the hero he portrayed himself to be.

Instead, he was the man responsible for murdering her real parents and illegally taking her as his own child, she said. He confessed to her what he had done in 2000, Ms. Montenegro said. But it was not until she testified at a trial here last spring that she finally came to grips with her past, shedding once and for all the name that Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife had given her — María Sol — after falsifying her birth records. The trial, in the final phase of hearing testimony, could prove for the first time that the nation’s top military leaders engaged in a systematic plan to steal babies from perceived enemies of the government.

Wikipedia: CIA activities in Argentina
Third World Traveler: State Terrorism and the United States
Marie Trigona: Landmark Human Rights Case in Argentina Puts Torture on Trial
Marie Trigona: Memory and Justice: A Photo Essay on Argentina's Human Rights Movement

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama announced his choice for the State Department's top Latin America post. - Obama's nominee Roberta Jacobson, an outspoken critic of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, recently told a U.S. Senate subcommittee that she was "particularly concerned" with the Venezuelan president, who is a great supporter of True Democracy explained in Muammar Gaddafi's Green Book, because he "continues to disrespect the legitimate role of democratic institutions" and "restricts freedom." Jacobson said to be "concerned" about the "difficult environment" currently faced by the Venezuelan people. She added that "Venezuela faces important elections in 2012" and that her colleagues at the State Department "believe that an early presence of well-trained international observers" would be necessary for Venezuela's presidential elections.

“Regardless of the historic conflict between Cuba and the United States, the U.S. Government should immediately and unconditionally release the Cuban Five,” said Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly (Parliament). - On the occasion of the 13th anniversary of the unjust imprisonment of Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, and Rene Gonzalez —internationally known as the Cuban Five—, the Trabajadores weekly published on Monday an exclusive interview with Alarcon, who said that Washington should comply with international regulations regarding the war on terrorism. “The colossal injustice against the Cuban Five had only one explanation: the interest of the U.S. authorities to protect and support anti-Cuba terrorist groups that operate with impunity from the United States,” the top legislator noted. “They openly said it during the unjust trial against them in Miami and it is written in the accusation against them and in the court’s record,” he added.

Stephen Lendman: The Cuban 5: Victims of US State Terrorism

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — The U.S. State Department is offering visas again to Honduran officials who had them revoked after taking part in a June 2009 coup that deposed former President Manuel Zelaya, a U.S. Embassy official confirmed Tuesday. - “The Department of State has determined that some of the Hondurans whose eligibility for visas was restricted following the June 2009 coup d’etat are again eligible to be considered for visas,” said a U.S. Embassy spokesperson who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to discuss the new policy. Gabriela Nunez, finance minister under the post-coup, interim President Roberto Micheletti, said she received notice in June that she could reapply for a visa. Nunez said Tuesday she didn’t know if other Honduran officials were eligible, but others said some were already traveling to the U.S. The U.S. revoked more than 1,000 visas of Micheletti officials after the coup. President Porfirio Lobo has since been democratically elected, and Zelaya has returned to the country.

Former CIA Asset Who Revealed Presence of US Special Forces in Mexico Says Hit Squads Targeting Narco Splinter Groups. - A small but growing proxy war is underway in Mexico pitting US-assisted assassin teams composed of elite Mexican special operations soldiers against the leadership of an emerging cadre of independent drug organizations that are far more ruthless than the old-guard Mexican “cartels” that gave birth to them. These Mexican assassin teams now in the field for at least half a year, sources tell Narco News, are supported by a sophisticated US intelligence network composed of CIA and civilian US military operatives as well as covert special-forces soldiers under Pentagon command — which are helping to identify targets for the Mexican hit teams.

Natural News: US government openly admits arming Mexican drug gangs with 30,000 firearms
La Jornada: Altos mandos de PGR y SSP, sometidos por agencias de EU
Stephen Lendman: Plan Mexico: Plan Colombia Heads for Mexico

WASHINGTON — At least 83 people died as human guinea pigs in macabre US research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s, a commission ordered by President Barack Obama concluded Monday. - Nearly 5,500 people were subjected to diagnostic testing and more than 1,300 were exposed to venereal diseases by human contact or inoculations in research meant to test the drug penicillin, the presidential commission found. Within that group, "we believe that there were 83 deaths," said Stephen Hauser a member of the commission, which has pored over 125,000 documents linked to the shocking episode since being set up by Obama last November. Among the 1,300 people exposed to STDs during research between 1946 and 1948, "under 700 received some form of treatment as best as could be documented," Hauser said.

Robert Parry: Guatemala: A Test Tube of Repression

An aerial view of the Amazon river. (F. Lanting/Corbis)

Scientists estimate the subterranean river may be 6,000km long and hundreds of times wider than the Amazon.

Covering more than 7 million square kilometres in South America, the Amazon basin is one of the biggest and most impressive river systems in the world. But it turns out we have only known half the story until now.

Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin – around 4km underneath the Amazon river. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon river but up to hundreds of times wider. Both the Amazon and Hamza flow from west to east and are around the same length, at 6,000km. But whereas the Amazon ranges from 1km to 100km in width, the Hamza ranges from 200km to 400km. The underground river starts in the Acre region under the Andes and flows through the Solimões, Amazonas and Marajó basins before opening out directly into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Amazon flows much faster than the Hamza, however, draining a greater volume of water. Around 133,000m3 of water flow through the Amazon per second at speeds of up to 5 metres per second. The underground river's flow rate has been estimated at around 3,900m3 per second and it barely inches along at less than a millimetre per hour.

Using the motto “Let’s stop lies and hypocrisy”, Leakymails.com was a project designed to obtain and publish relevant documents exposing corruption of the political class and the powerful in Argentina. The site was open to publish emails either from official or personal accounts, pictures, videos or any other document exposing misbehaviors or unethical actions of public figures in the Southern country, where corruption is rampant. The problem of the Website was the blurred line between the public sphere and the private sphere of public functionaries. Who decides what is really important for the general public? The site raised concerns among different sectors, some saying that the publication of private emails was risking the personal data and privacy of individuals and that the content was largely irrelevant to fighting corruption. Most of the documents published by the site so far are emails sent from personal and official accounts of prominent politicians, including the Private advisor of Cristina Fernández, the Argentinean President, Isidro Bounine and the Secretary of the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights, Santiago Canton and other visible people. The content, however, was largely irrelevant, daily or personal matters, with few exceptions.

Senadores de PRI, PRD y PT advirtieron que el gobierno de Felipe Calderón debe aclarar todo lo relativo a la carta de entendimiento que firmó con el presidente Barak Obama, que ha posibilitado la actuación directa de personal de las agencias Central de Inteligencia y antidrogas (CIA y DEA, por sus siglas en inglés, respectivamente), así como del Pentágono, en operativos contra los cárteles de la droga en el país. Como no se trata de un tratado ni un convenio, no requiere de la ratificación de la Cámara de Senadores, pero "necesitamos saber en qué consisten los compromisos que Calderón tiene con el gobierno de Estados Unidos, porque se está yendo más allá de lo que ordenan los instrumentos internacionales en materia de cooperación". Agregó que la sociedad repudia que agentes de Estados Unidos estén trabajando aquí. "Queremos que combatan el elevadísimo consumo de drogas en su territorio, que detengan el contrabando de armas por la frontera; con eso sí contribuirían a frenar el narcotráfico". Ni el Congreso ni la sociedad deben permitir que Estados Unidos asuma el control de la lucha contra el narcotráfico, y menos que altos mandos mexicanos estén al servicio de los agentes de la DEA , la CIA y el Pentágono que operan en el país, insistió.

La Jornada: Altos mandos de PGR y SSP, sometidos por agencias de EU
Stephen Lendman: Plan Mexico: Plan Colombia Heads for Mexico

An Amazon tribe that was believed to have had no previous contact with modern civilization may have gotten its first introduction last week – courtesy of a group of drug dealers. - Brazilian officials who keep tabs on the region's so-called "uncontacted" inhabitants from afar fear that the tribe was forced to flee the area as a result of the apparent interaction, or may have even been wiped out by the suspected drug dealers. The worries began late last week after a government-run guard post in the area was attacked by a group of armed men believed to have been smuggling drugs between Peru and Brazil, the BBC reports. Since the attack, officials have found no sign of the tribe, which was first photographed from the air three years ago. Carlos Lisboa Travassos, the head of Brazil’s Isolated Indians Department, told local media that the guards found a broken arrowhead in one of the attacker’s backpacks that was left behind, suggesting the armed men had made contact with the tribe.

All 163 passengers and crew on board a Caribbean Airlines jet survived when the plane skidded off the runway while landing at night in Guyana and broke in two on the edge of a ravine. - The Boeing 737-800 flight from New York overshot the runway and burst through a perimeter fence at Cheddi Jagan airport in Georgetown. The front of the plane snapped off and it stopped yards from a jungle gorge. No fire appears to have broken out and only three people were taken to hospital, one with a broken leg. "It's an absolute miracle what happened here in Georgetown," said Caribbean Airlines chairman George Nicholas, who visited the crash site. Passengers screamed when the plane lost control soon after touching down just past midnight.

Colombian army colonel admits his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat. - Colonel Luis Fernando Borja was sentenced to 21 years, reduced from 42 years for accepting responsibility. In a typical case in 2007, Borja admitted two men were lured to their deaths with supposed promises of work. He is the most senior officer convicted so far in what has become known as the "false positives" scandal.

MONTERREY, Mexico — At least 17 people were killed in a bar massacre Friday night in the northern Mexico city of Monterrey when riflemen opened fire on the clientele and employees, a state forensic investigator said. - Monterrey, a major industrial hub, has seen a spike of violence since the Gulf and Zeta cartels began fighting for control of drug traffic there two years ago. The medical examiner's official said his office has recovered 17 bodies, including those of women, from the crime scene. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. Police sources would not confirm the number of dead people with The Associated Press and referred the AP to local prosecutors, who are not giving an official account of the shooting. Federal police spokesman Jose Ramon Salinas said that high-powered weapons used in the shooting indicated it might have been a drug cartel confrontation. Police sealed off the crime scene, which was still heavily guarded by the Mexican army and federal police by early Saturday morning. Other downtown businesses looked closed earlier than usual after news of the massacre broke. Mexican media are reporting 20 killed. The newspaper Reforma reported five more were wounded.

BBC: Ten decapitated bodies found in Torreon, Mexico

It is now a widely-reported fact that under the Obama administration, U.S. federal agents actively placed over 30,000 fully-functional weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, then halted all surveillance and tracking activities of where those weapons were going. This is not a conspiracy theory, nor a piece of fiction. It is now an openly-admitted fact that this was pulled off by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, more commonly called "ATF") under orders from Washington. The program was called "Fast and Furious." Even Reuters is now covering the news and reporting how members of Congress are outraged to learn that this happened.

Details are also starting to leak about the cover-up inside ATF, which was led by the U.S. Attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, an Obama appointee (http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/06/i...). The engineering of the illegal gun running went right up the chain of command to the director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, who is now expected to resign. The real planning of this event went even higher up the chain of command in Washington, possibly all the way to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, has admitted in a television address that he had a tumour but had undergone a successful operation in Cuba to extract the cancerous cells and was on the road to full recovery. Chavez, 56, made his first televised speech to the nation on Thursday, weeks after he was hospitalised in the Cuban capital, Havana, sparking widespread speculation he might be seriously ill.

The mystery surrounding the medical condition of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez deepened with the postponement of a major regional summit. - Chavez perhaps seemed to have lost some weight but was acting his usual animated self, raising the obvious question of why a summit still a week away had to be scrapped. The president "is in the midst of a strict process of recovery and medical treatment," the Venezuelan foreign ministry said in a statement on the postponement, without providing further details.

Drawing on almost 2,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables on Haiti released by WikiLeaks, a partnership between The Nation magazine and the Haitian weekly, Haïti Liberté, exposes new details on how Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked with the United States to block an increase in the minimum wage in the hemisphere’s poorest nation, how business owners and members of the country’s elite used Haiti’s police force as their own private army after the 2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and how the United States, the European Union and the United Nations supported Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections, despite concerns over the exclusion of Haiti’s largest opposition party, Lavalas, the party of Aristide. We speak with the reports’ authors, longtime Haiti correspondent Dan Coughlin and Haïti Liberté editor, Kim Ives.

A rarity in the world today, the South American nation of Peru has yet to be contaminated by the import, cultivation, or breeding of any genetically-modified (GM) crops -- at least not openly -- unlike some of its nearby neighbors like Brazil that have openly and willingly accepted them. And the recent decision by Peru's Plenary Session of the Congress to enact a ten-year moratorium on GMOs, in direct defiance to previous governmental pushes for legalization, represents a huge victory for Peruvians.

Even though a recent test conducted by the Peruvian Association of Consumers and Users (ASPEC), a non-profit organization that promotes and defends the rights of Peruvian consumers, revealed the presence of GM contaminants in about 77 percent of supermarket products it tested (http://www.livinginperu.com/news/14842), at least the country itself will not be contributing to the spread of GM pollution around the world.

Latin American migrants risk life and limb to reach the US border in search of the American dream. - Men and women from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua make a beeline to cross the river that forms the border between Guatemala and Mexico. They want to enter Mexico, illegally. But they have another destination in mind. The United States of America. Each year more than one million illegals flee the poverty of their own countries, and try their luck on this road; a road to what some call "the impossible dream". On the Mexican side, the military turns a blind eye for a few dollars. The greenback is the illegals' only passport. To reach the border with Texas, they have to cross the entire Mexican coast. It is a journey of about 4,000km, and one that begins at the Arriaga train station. The freight trains are the only means of transport for the illegals. Thousands take the moving trains every day, regardless of the danger. Each one tries to find his or her own spot – on the roofs, on the axles between the coaches. There can be as many as 1,000 hitching a ride; a ride that could turn into a trap. Police stop the trains in the middle of the countryside in order to make the maximum number of arrests. And there is nowhere to run. Only 40 per cent of all those who attempt exile reach the US border.

Cartels have taken cruelty up a notch, says one drug trafficker: kidnapping bus passengers for gladiatorlike fights to the death.

The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death. In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins. In an in-person interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition that neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push cocaine worth $5 million to $10 million a month into the United States.

Law enforcement sources confirm he is a cartel operative but not a fugitive from pending charges. His words are not those of a federal agent or drawn from a news conference or court papers. Instead, he offers a voice from inside Mexico's mayhem — a mafioso who mingles among crime bosses and foot soldiers in a protracted war between drug cartels as well as against the government. If what he says is true, gangsters who make commonplace beheadings, hangings and quartering bodies have managed an even crueler twist to their barbarity.

Members of the Zetas cartel, he says, have pushed passengers into an ancient Rome-like blood sport with a modern Mexico twist that they call, "Who is going to be the next hit man?" "They cut guys to pieces," he said. The victims are likely among the hundreds of people found in mass graves in recent months, he said.

US knowingly supported rigged Haitian election - The United States, the European Union and the United Nations decided to support Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections despite believing that the country’s electoral body, “almost certainly in conjunction with President Preval,” had “emasculated the opposition” by unwisely and unjustly excluding the country’s largest party, according to a secret US Embassy cable. The cable was obtained by WikilLeaks and made available to the Haitian newspaper Haïti Liberté, which is collaborating with The Nation on a series of reports on US and UN policy toward the country.

SUMMARY: "The Plenary Session of the Congress, approved the opinion of the law project that declares a moratorium of ten years that prevents the import of Genetically Modified Organisms on the national territory for cultivation, breeding or of any transgenic production."

Yanomami and Yekuana health is suffering as thou-
sands of goldminers operate illegally on their land.

Yanomami Indians in the Brazilian Amazon have captured an airplane used by health workers, in protest at corruption within the health service.

The Yanomami are outraged by the nomination of a new indigenous health coordinator, who has little connection with indigenous peoples, and who is thought to be favored for political reasons. Yekuana Indians have also joined the protest. In 2007 political appointees to the regional health office were arrested in a major police operation, which revealed that US$19 million designated for indigenous health care had been stolen.

In a letter sent from the Yanomami organization Hutukara to the Minister of Health, the Indians state, ‘We are very angry… the politicians did not consult the leaders in the Yanomami territory. We do not know what the authorities are up to behind closed doors, when it comes to the health situation’.

Last month, Yanomami protested outside the regional health authorities’ office, and held another plane captive in the Yanomami territory.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Hugo Chavez's government condemned U.S. sanctions imposed on Venezuela's state oil company for doing business with Iran, saying it is evaluating how fuel shipments might be affected.

Industry analysts, however, said the sanctions announced Tuesday probably won't significantly cut into the business of Petroleos de Venezuela SA because Washington is not preventing PDVSA from selling crude to the United States or through Citgo, its U.S. subsidiary. Venezuela is one of the United States' main suppliers of petroleum. "The sanctions would have only modest real impact on today's undertakings by PDVSA," said Gustavo Coronel, an energy consultant and former PDVSA executive. "The real significance has to be found in the psychological, political effect of the measure." "It constitutes the first real move of the Obama government against Chavez's Venezuela," Coronel said.

BRASILIA (AFP) – A sharp increase in forest destruction in March and April in the Amazon has led Brazil to announce the creation of an emergency task force to fight against deforestation.

The two-month total of 593 square kilometers (368 square miles) deforested represents a six-fold increase compared to the same period last year, according to official statistics. The office will be comprised of government experts and representatives of states badly impacted by recent deforestation, according to Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira, who announced the office at a press conference. "Our goal is to stifle deforestation," Teixeira said. "And we are going to do it by July." In the Amazon state of Mato Grosso alone, 480 square kilometers (298 square miles) of forest were destroyed in two months, according to official statistics based on satellite images. The land is used for cattle and soybean farming.

A lawsuit was filed Monday in a US district court on behalf of 700 Guatemalan soldiers, mental health patients, and orphans secretly experimented on from 1946 to 1948.

An apology is not enough for Guatemalans deliberately infected with syphilis by a US medical team in the 1940s. Five months after the American taxpayer-funded medical experiment came to light, victims have brought a class-action lawsuit against the US government seeking compensation for resulting health problems. Seven named plaintiffs, which include both victims and heirs living in Guatemala, filed the lawsuit Monday in a Washington, D.C., district court on behalf of 700 Guatemalan soldiers, mental health patients, and orphans. The victims were all secretly experimented on from 1946 to 1948, the complaint says. The experiments were “both unprecedented and unequivocally impermissible in the United States and throughout the civilized world,” the complaint states. The court brief charges that US public health doctors hired prostitutes diagnosed with syphilis or gonorrhea to have sexual relations with soldiers, prison inmates, and psychiatric patients in Guatemala with the intention of spreading the disease. Once the unknowing subjects were diagnosed with illnesses, the US medical team tested them for potential cures, including penicillin. Orphaned Guatemalan children as young as 6 years old were used as an uninfected test group, according to the suit.

Robert Parry: Guatemala: A Test Tube of Repression

Guatemala has declared a state of emergency after the murder of 27 people in the northern part of the country. The Zetas of Mexico are accused of the worst massacre since the end of the country's civil war.

A massacre in northern Guatemala, which has left at least 27 people dead, is another reminder of the growing influence exerted by powerful Mexican drug gang, the Zetas, in Central America. The Zetas may have first entered Guatemala at the invitation of two drug bosses, Otoniel Turcios and Hearst Walter Overdick. But instead of partnering with local Guatemalan smugglers, the Mexicans became intent on displacing them. The Zetas cemented their presence in Guatemala in 2008, when they ambushed and killed local crimelord Juan Jose Leon. Dislodging the Leon clan gave the Zetas power over key trafficking routes in the northern departments of Zacapa, Alta Verapaz, and Peten. It was in the latter that the recent massacre took place. In Peten, the government has now declared a "state of siege" similar to the security surge that failed to drive Zetas from Alta Verapaz at the end of last year.

As well as ending the killing of bulls in the ring, voters in a referendum held on Saturday outlawed cockfighting and casino gambling. More controversially, President Rafael Correa won approval for new controls on the country’s media and financial sectors.

Voters backed all 10 constitutional reforms backed by the popular Mr Correa, who campaigned hard in favour of the new measures. Provisional results though from electoral authorities show the margin of victory was tighter than expected. The president’s opponents had claimed the referendum was the latest moves in his campaign since taking power in 2007 to strengthen the power of Ecuador’s executive. However, at a victory rally on Saturday night, Mr Correa called the result a victory for his “citizens’ revolution”, saying voters had not been scared off by a “ferocious opposition” and a corrupt press. “We have beaten them all,” he told supporters.

Fidel Castro has stepped down as head of Cuba’s Communist Party. The move comes as the party holds a key congress to plot the country’s future. President Raul Castro said he has presented some 300 reforms in an attempt to end Cuba’s economic crisis by correcting past policy mistakes. The reforms aim to boost the Caribbean island’s state-dominated, debt ridden, unproductive economy. Raul Castro, younger brother of Fidel, took over the presidency in 2008 and plans to reduce the size of the state and expand the private sector while keeping central planning and control. The congress also backed a new two-term limit of 10 years for the country’s future leaders to avoid political inertia. Fidel Castro ruled the country for nearly 50 years during which time Cuba’s politics stagnated. Most of Cuba’s senior political figures are in their late 70s and early 80s.

BusinessInsider: Castro Resigns From Party Leadership And Calls For Liberalization

MEXICO CITY (AFP) - At least 11 more bodies have been found in unmarked graves in north Mexico, taking the total to 127 corpses uncovered near the US border, with officials earlier accusing the Zetas drug gang of most of the killings. The latest finds in Sinaloa state on the Pacific coast came only hours after authorities said Tuesday 116 bodies had been uncovered in mass graves in Tamaulipas state in the northeast. An official with Sinaloa prosecutor's office told AFP that the five graves on a Sinaloa ranch contained 11 bodies, two of them women. The Mexican government accused the Zetas gang of the Tamaulipas killings, but by late Tuesday officials had not named suspects for the Sinaloa graves.

Stephen Lendman: Border and Community Vigilantism

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexican investigators have found a total of 116 bodies in pits near the U.S. border, 28 more than previously reported, Attorney General Marisela Morales said Tuesday. Morales said a total of 17 suspects tied to the brutal Zetas drug gang have been detained in relation to the killings in the northern state of Tamaulipas, some of whom have purportedly confessed to abducting passengers from buses and killing them. President Felipe Calderon said a 19-year-old man who is among the detained confessed to killing more than 200 people. Calderon gave no other details.

A court has sentenced a former army general to life in prison and three ex-agents to 20 and 25 years for crimes against humanity in a notorious torture centre during Argentina's military dictatorship. Eduardo Cabanillas was convicted of illegal imprisonment, torture and homicide involving 65 people held at Automotores Orletti, a car body shop that served as an operations centre for Operation Condor. Condor was a co-ordinated effort by South America's dictatorships to eliminate dissidents who sought refuge in neighbouring countries. The crimes took place in 1976. Prosecutors says about 300 people passed through Automotores Orletti, including Uruguayans, Chileans, Bolivians and Cubans, most of whom were killed or disappeared.

Marie Trigona:
Landmark Human Rights Case in Argentina Puts Torture on Trial
Memory and Justice: A Photo Essay on Argentina's Human Rights Movement

An American-Venezuelan lawyer says she possesses a document that would prove Washington has plans to engage in subversive activities in Venezuela and Libya to gain control of their huge oil and gas resources. In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Eva Golinger said that the document includes a map that offers specific directions and targets. According to Golinger, the US government has been pursuing the so-called 'irregular warfare' strategies of subversion, penetration and infiltration in places that hold strategic energy resources.

“When I was doing that research and I found that the document was the same time when the US government had entered into an agreement with Colombia to increase their military presence,” Golinger said. “I also found another document called white paper all from the US air force and air force command operation team and it specifically referred to how the US needed to establish this kind of full spectrum control military control to conduct the operations in certain regions, particularly talking about South America,” she added.

Golinger warned that Washington has set an agenda to highjack the ongoing revolutions in the Arab world and North Africa in order to institute friendly regimes and secure its long-term interests.

In the past decade torture has never been very far from the headlines but the recent outbreak of protests across the Middle East has put the issue right back in the spotlight. Activists from Egypt to Libya, and Bahrain to Yemen have all included torture among the list of crimes allegedly committed by security forces. Understandably they want the perpetrators brought to justice. But as our story this week demonstrates, while legal sanctions can sometimes be applied, the physical and mental scars from torture take a very long time to heal.

In the mid 1970s a coup brought a military junta to power in Argentina. Its leader General Jorge Videla was a fanatical anti-Communist who fought a five-year dirty war against opponents. More than 30,000 people were imprisoned, tortured and murdered by the army and secret police. Though Videla was eventually convicted of crimes against humanity – and he and other junta leaders are now back in court facing further charges, only one of the people who did the actual torturing has ever been confronted with the human cost of his crimes. We first showed this film by Rodrigo Vazquez in 2009, but its themes are as relevant today as they were then. Some of the images are disturbing.

Marie Trigona:
Landmark Human Rights Case in Argentina Puts Torture on Trial
Memory and Justice: A Photo Essay on Argentina's Human Rights Movement

Counting is underway in Haiti, after the delayed second round of the country’s Presidential election. UN peacekeepers monitored the polling stations in Port-au-Prince, on hand in case of fighting between rival supporters. The first round last November was marred by violence and allegations of fraud. There had also been fears that the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide after seven years in exile in South Africa would destabilise the vote. But election officials say this time it passed off peacefully and many of Haiti’s 4.7 million voters turned out. The head of the electoral council told reporters the definitive result is due on April the16th and would reflect the wishes of the Haitian people.