Category Journalism

Entries 3 Total

El Universo appeals to a higher court (the gringos, obviously)

Jan 26, ’12 2:19 PM

We love a free press, but does the Latin American version always have to be so darn elitist? (Image from George Baxter, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

El Universo, the Ecuadorian newspaper that local courts have hit with a $40 million fine for slandering President Rafael Correa, took a curious tack this week as it sought to defend itself in the court of public opinion while the courts of law prepared to weigh a final appeal (cassation actually, if any lawyers are keeping score).

I got this note Monday, sent to the e-mail I use for my energy blog.

xxx@podesta.com via gmail.com to settysoutham…

Dear Steven,

I hope you are aware of the egregious attack on independent media currently underway in Ecuador and more generally across the region. If you have considered covering this topic, or already have something in the works, the next couple days are a great time to write. A high court hearing, followed immediately by a decision on the El Universo case, has been scheduled for Tuesday, January 24 at 9:00 am….

Wait: @Podesta.com?

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Inmates funding the asylum

Jan 20, ’12 1:17 AM

Ecuador's Correa and Venezuela's Chávez are pushing to weaken a key OAS freedom of expression body.

Whatever the merits of Latin America’s left-wing presidents, their track record on freedom of expression has been terrible. The administration of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez has shut down opposition radio and television stations on the thinnest of pretenses. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa is in the process of suing the country’s largest newspaper (El Universo) out of existence. Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner and her allies have gone after Clarín and La Nación again and again, most recently by passing a law declaring newsprint to be in the national interest. All three administrations regularly take time during public appearances to verbally attack specific journalists or news outlets.

While it’s been basically tough beans for local journalists and media outlets, the OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has done some good work cataloging the abuses and bringing cases before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights – often to no avail, but at the very least it has maintained a useful legal-historical record of the abuses for posterity and the purposes of international shaming.

But because of its role as a state eye-poker, the IACHR is not exactly popular with the powerful, and next week the OAS is set to hold a vote in which its member states decide whether to smother one of its more bothersome (read: effective) parts.

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Argentines & Chileans agree: Let’s hate the Jews

Jan 12, ’12 4:36 PM
Israeli Fire Truck in Santiago

Israel-sponsored fire truck in Santiago, Chile. Jews are blamed for arson, by Chileans who won't even pay for their own firefighters. Image taken without permission, click to go to original story.

Chile Hoy, a rather bland news aggregator of good news about, yes, Chile, had a headline that I figured would be some environmental story. “La Patagonia argentina y chilena en peligro,” or to put it another way, “Argentina’s and Chile’s Patagonia in danger.” Coal? Fires? Industrial fisheries?

Nope: it’s the Jews. So, you thought that the New Years forest fire in Torres del Paine National Park was an accident, caused (perhaps) by a hapless Israeli tourist who improperly burned his toilet paper? No no no: it was just another volley in an ongoing race war, run by my own Hebrew tribesmen. Who knew? I had a bar mitzvah, but somehow I never get invited to these things. The first paragraph gives a taste:

While we watch the disaster that’s been made of our world, that “future” it could be that such a “future” is right around the corner. Led by the International Zionist Movement, this silent takeover of Patagonia has progressed dramatically in recent years; not through war and invasion, but through territorial acquisitions, economic infiltration, Israeli fifth columns, global media support and geopolitical positioning.

The author, notable non-Mapuche Adrian Salbuchi, doesn’t seem to get the humor in a white Argentine warning Chileans about the “takeover” of land that was for centuries claimed by Argentina, continuously occupied by independent indigenous groups, and at one point even under the supposed dominion of a Frenchman.

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