Venezuela’s Chavez Runs Up Debt Shunting Oil Wealth to the Poor 16 June 2005 | Bloomberg Venezuelan housewife Sabrina Munoz saves as much as a third on the price of flour, meat and beans by shopping at Mercal, a government-owned supermarket near her Caracas home overlooked by hillside shanties. She thanks President Hugo Chávez. “Mercal is an example of the good Chavez does,” says Munoz, 50, a mother of four. “He’s such a humanitarian.” Backed by a quadrupling of oil prices since he took office in early 1999, Chavez, 50, has boosted spending on food subsidies, education and health care […]
Monthly Archives: June 2005
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June 15, 2005 | Nightline Tonight’s broadcast will change the way you think about the coffee you drink and the vegetables you eat. Why? Because the production of such goods may have involved the labor of one of the estimated 246 million children worldwide for whom life is nothing but work.
[ Many Bush supporters seem not to grasp the significance of these and other recent revelations. They seem instead to prefer to grasp the nettle of absurdity (ignoring the reports, rejecting all unfriendly facts as “liberal lies”). Grasping this nettle demonstrates not the toughness of their skin, but the thickness of their skulls, their insulation from plains facts, and the impossibility of rational discourse with them. –BL ] 15 June 2005 | Los Angeles Times by John Daniszewski LONDON — In March 2002, the Bush administration had just begun to publicly raise the possibility of confronting Iraq. But behind the scenes, […]
June 12, 2005 | Agence France Presse Increasing numbers of young American children are showing signs of serious malnourishment, fueled by a greater prevalence of hunger in the United States, while, paradoxically, two-thirds of the US population is either overweight or obese. In 2003, 11.2 percent of families in the United States experienced hunger, compared with 10.1 percent in 1999, according to most recent official figures, released on National Hunger Awareness Day held this year on Tuesday, June 7. Some pediatricians worry that cuts in welfare aid proposed in President George W. Bush’s 2006 budget will only exacerbate the situation. […]
[ Thanks to Popi and Tom Natsoulas for passing this insightful piece along. –BL ] 26 May – June 01 | Progresso Weekly by Saul Landau “So what did you think of China’s recent economic foray into Latin America,” I asked a university student. “Huh”? she replied. “I read something about it,” said another, “but I don’t remember any details.” “Why not,” said a third. “They make everything I buy at Wal-Mart. So why shouldn’t they invest in other places?” He shrugged, indifferent to the news. Indeed, Washington warns China over any moves on Taiwan, but has barely responded to […]