Thursday, November 14, 2019
Propaganda (2012) 'mockumentary' film
The film pretends to be North Korean, although it was made by a group from New Zealand.
https://tubitv.com/movies/443651/propaganda
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Haiti Anti-Government Protests Lose Momentum
Sandra Lemaire, Matiado Vilme. Voice of America. November 11, 2019
WASHINGTON/PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI - Only a few hundred people responded to the opposition's call Sunday to protest in the streets of Haiti's capital to continue pressuring President Jovenel Moise to step down.
On previous Sundays, tens of thousands have filled Port-au-Prince streets from morning to sundown.
Have the protests lost momentum? VOA Creole put the question to opposition leaders marching on Sunday.
Sen. Ricard Pierre said he thinks bribes and fear were partly to blame for the small crowd.
"A significant number of Bel Air residents have died — an area that heavily supports the efforts of the Alternative (opposition group). We have people hiding out in the poor neighborhoods because the government has threatened to kill them," the senator told VOA Creole. "There have been efforts to distribute weapons to residents of the slums. They've been offered money, offered food. But despite the massacres endured by the poor people, there are some of them in the streets today fighting (for a better life)."
VOA could not confirm the senator's allegations.
Downtown, evangelical pastor Prophete Mackenson Dorilas, who, perched atop a carnival-style truck had been surrounded by thousands of followers during October protests, was seen marching in the street with only a handful of protesters. He blamed fear and the absence of his truck for the low turnout.
"The first truck we were offered, I turned down because it wasn't what I requested. So, they said they would bring me another truck, and I'm still waiting. Some members of my church had intended to join the protest, but they heard the police was targeting protesters, so they ran away," Dorilas told VOA Creole, adding that the people also need motivation.
"The churchgoers don't like to see me walking on the street. They like to see me up high," he said.
Also marching with about a dozen protesters was former Haitian Army Col. Himmler Rebu, who described his participation as the right thing to do.
"There are two efforts happening simultaneously. There are those (members of the opposition) who are in offices working on plans and strategy, and there are those who are accompanying the people marching in the streets. So today, that's my job, " he said.
Up north
Early Sunday, tires were seen burning in the middle of a main road in the northern city of Cape Haitian. There were also roadblocks made of tree branches, rocks, metal and debris.
"These roadblocks are here because President Jovenel still refuses to resign. We will keep blocking the streets, and we will keep protesting until the president leaves," a protester told VOA Creole.
Opposition summit
Back in the capital, members of the opposition spent the weekend meeting at the Marriott Hotel to discuss the transition process that would be activated if Moise were to resign.
"We are in agreement on four aspects of the transition: governance, control, steps forward and duration," announced opposition Sen. Youri Latortue, who heads the Haitian Senate's Ethics and Anti-Corruption Committee. No further details were given.
On the subject of who would replace Moise, the group decided that the choice would be made by a five-member committee comprised of a representative of each opposition group. The transitional president would be chosen among the Supreme Court judges. The committee would also choose a prime minister.
"This is a historic event," prominent businessman Gregory Brandt, who represented the private sector at the meeting, told VOA Creole. "The country has been suffering through a complicated situation for two months now. We aren't selling merchandise, we aren't receiving merchandise. Port-au-Prince is beginning to face a scarcity of basic goods. We're facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, so we must sit down in all seriousness to discuss how we can resolve this crisis."
US aid
Last week, Rob Thayer, director of USAID's “Food for Peace” program, told VOA Creole the agency has earmarked 3,500 metric tons of emergency food aid for Haiti, which will be distributed to those in need.
In addition to the food aid, the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort has been docked off Haiti's shores since Nov. 6 for a seven-day medical and humanitarian mission. According to the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, the ship's staff has seen more patients per day in Haiti than on any other stop of their five-nation tour.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed concern about the situation in Haiti last week on Twitter.
President Moise
Meanwhile, Moise has been busy naming new cabinet ministers, meeting with members of the diplomatic corps, and giving interviews to the foreign press. He has also increased his visibility on the streets, in the national press and on social media.
"Since my first day in office, I have always preached the same thing — togetherness, unity — because the country is tired," Moise said during a Nov. 7 speech. "Our (nation's) motto is Unity is Power. But unfortunately, this system (of government), the system that uses people, gives us a different motto which is, Divide and Conquer. Whenever a person wants to enrich himself, he pits us against each other. And when we've taken the bait and died in battle, who benefits? Not us."
Early Sunday morning, before the anti-government protest began, Moise visited police stations in Carrefour and Petionville, his press secretary announced. According to a press statement received by VOA Creole early Monday morning, Moise sought to see the working conditions for the policemen and asked for a detailed report on the current status of affairs that will be used to "better address the needs of the agents of the PNH (National Police of Haiti)."
Bolivia’s Coup Threatens the Struggle for Social Liberation and Economic Justice
Olivia Arigho-Stiles. Novara Media. November 11, 2019
The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, has been forced from office in a coup following two weeks of civil unrest and a disputed presidential election.
It is not the US-backed coup many have declared on social media, reading from the script of the recent past in Latin America. But it is a coup nonetheless, steered by the urban middle classes and ultra-right regional elites in Bolivia. It should be understood, in part, as a backlash against the redistributive and pro-indigenous policies promulgated by Morales over the past 14 years.
The decisive moment came when the head of the Bolivian armed forces on Sunday ‘suggested’ that Morales resign following a police mutiny in cities across the country over the weekend.
Morales’s house has since been ransacked (along with his sister’s), the ex-president of the electoral authority has been arrested and paraded on television, and groups of anti-government protesters have taken to the streets to burn the Wiphala, the flag representing indigenous peoples in the Andes.
Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia and a former coca grower, was first elected in 2005 with his social movement backed party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). Under his tenure Bolivia has slashed poverty rates, reduced inequality, overseen economic growth while rejecting IMF debt bondage, and nationalised key industries.
Bolivia also has crucially seen the ‘indigenisation’ of the state – the elevation of Bolivia’s indigenous peoples and the centring of indigenous belief systems in public life. Morales has made powerful statements on the global stage in favour of redistribution of wealth, the recognition of indigenous rights and protection of the environment. In 2010, Morales championed the ‘Rights of Mother Earth’ law which recognises the earth as a political subject enshrined with, among other things, a right to life.
None of this was without opposition from traditional white-mestizo (mixed race) elites and international capital. Bolivia is Latin America’s poorest country, with a long history of economic exploitation by foreign powers and racist discrimination against its majority indigenous population.
Problems began in earnest two weeks ago after the elections on 20 October in which Morales secured victory in the first round but the opposition accused him of fraud. To quell the unrest, Morales invited the Organisation of American States (OAS) to audit the election. On Sunday, the OAS released its report which found there had been ‘manipulation’ in some of the electoral data.
By contrast, analysis by US think-tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research found no evidence of electoral irregularity. Prior to the election, polls has consistently predicted a victory for Morales over rival Carlos Mesa. Moreover, the OAS should not be considered a neutral arbiter in Latin American politics; it is heavily dominated by the US and has a history of tacit interference in left-wing regimes, most notably in Venezuela.
There is, of course, a longer backstory to these events. Looming large is Morales’s decision to defy a 2016 referendum in which the public voted against him running for a fourth term, then prohibited under the Bolivian constitution. Although the supreme court ruled that he could run again, the decision nonetheless generated deep popular discontent and alienated many supporters.
It was not Morales’s first unpopular move. In 2010, the president was forced to back down in a conflict over the construction of a highway through a protected natural reserve home to several indigenous communities. More recently, this summer he faced criticism from both progressive environmentalists and the greenwashing right for his handling of the catastrophic fires which swept the dry forests of Chiquitania.
Yet while the left must always be critical of its leaders in power, Bolivia provides a warning for how legitimate criticism can be co-opted by regressive forces to devastating effect.
The coup does not reflect progressive sectors and the removal of Morales is certainly no victory for the indigenous-left in Bolivia or Latin America. The past two weeks have seen the rapid ascendancy of a faction of ultra-right conservatives from the lowland city of Santa Cruz – the historical nexus of regional-class antagonism to Morales and the MAS – directed by businessman Luis Fernando ‘El Macho’ Camacho, the leader of the business group Comité Pro-Santa Cruz and reportedly a former member of a fascist youth group which recently released a video of its leaders making a Nazi salute. He was not a candidate in the election, yet he has managed to exploit the political instability to emerge as a key political player; on Sunday, flanked by armed police, he entered the Palacio Quemado in La Paz with an evangelical ally clutching a bible.
Since the election there has also been an upsurge in racist and gendered violence. Smeared on the wall outside UMSA, the public university in La Paz, were the words “Indians out of UMSA”. A MAS mayor, Patricia Arce Guzman, was attacked by opposition protesters who forcibly cut off her hair, dragged her through the street and covered her in red paint and dirt. The director of radio for the peasants union CSUTCB – an organisation allied with Morales which represents rural, usually indigenous workers – was chained to a tree while anti-government protesters ransacked the union’s headquarters.
International solidarity is pouring in, with the coup receiving widespread condemnation from the likes of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Amlo in Mexico, Chilean communist Camila Vallejo and US congresswoman Ilhan Omar. But where now for Bolivia? There is currently no government, with the president, vice-president and the president of the Cámara de Diputados all having resigned. Despite Morales’s party having a majority in the legislature, it is widely expected that Jeanine Áñez, an opposition senator, will now assume the helm.
In an emotive press conference on Sunday, former vice-president Álvaro García Linera declared: “We will return and we will be millions” – paraphrasing the last words of Tupac Katari, the Andean rebel who was brutally executed by the Spanish after leading an anti-colonial uprising in 1781. Yet recent developments suggest the struggle for social liberation and economic equality is now deeply imperilled in Bolivia.
Olivia Arigho-Stiles is a PhD candidate currently based in La Paz researching 20th century indigenous movements in Bolivia.
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