Latin America

The United States is, by far, the world’s most aggressive nation when it comes to cyberspying and cyberwarfare. The National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on foreign cities, politicians, elections and entire countries since it first turned on its receivers in 1952. Just as other countries, including Russia, attempt to do to the United States. What is new is a country leaking the intercepts back to the public of the target nation through a middleperson.

Theotonio Dos Santos is one of the pillars of the Dependency Theory and the term “World-systems”. Now, on his trip to Buenos Aires, where he was invited by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), which he co-founded, he explains the reasons why Dilma Rousseff’s government is agonizing and, parallelly, the region is experiencing a return to neoliberalism, even though it seemed to be in the past history of the continent.

Populist opposition to international integration is on the rise in much of continental Europe and has always been the norm in Latin America. The question now is what should be the guiding principles of international economic policy? How should those of us — who believe that the vastly better performance of the global system after the second world war than after the first world war is largely due to more enlightened economic policies — make our case?

The defence of national sovereignty, like its critique, leads to serious misunderstandings once one detaches it from the social class content of the the strategy in which it is embedded. The leading social bloc in capitalist societies always conceives sovereignty as a necessary instrument for the promotion of its own interests based on both capitalist exploitation of labour and the consolidation of its international positions.

Mining is the activity that causes the greatest amount of death among workers in Brazil, as reported by the Ministry of Labour (MTE). In addition to mutilation, death and serious illness directly caused by work, the main mining states in Brazil —Goias, Minas Gerais and Pará— have became the most dangerous ones.

A local leader of Venezuela’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) was gunned down in south-central Caracas Monday by alleged members of an armed criminal group. Elizabeth Aguilera, 43, was the head of the local PSUV chapter– known as Bolívar-Chávez Battle Units– in the working class neighborhood of Cota 905 in the Caracas municipality of El Libertador.

Washington has caused enormous damage to Venezuela in its relentless pursuit of “regime change” for the last 15 years. In March, President Obama once again absurdly declared Venezuela to be an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” and extended economic sanctions against the country.

Is Venezuela descending into a nightmarish scenario, as these stories suggest? To answer this question I’ve spent the last three weeks talking to dozens of people—rich and poor, Chavista and opposition, urban and rural—across Venezuela.

La défense de la souveraineté nationale, comme sa critique, donne lieu à de graves malentendus dès lors qu’on la détache du contenu social de classe de la stratégie dans laquelle elle s’inscrit. Le bloc social dirigeant dans les sociétés capitalistes conçoit toujours la souveraineté comme un instrument nécessaire pour la promotion de ses propres intérêt

Cuba’s former president Fidel Castro compared NATO’s recent statements to that of Nazi SS and accused US and its allies of igniting conflicts abroad. Castro slammed John McCain for backing Israel and accused both of being involved in the creation of ISIS.