An opposition-aligned television channel said Saturday that it will appeal a fine of more than $2 million imposed by Venezuela's broadcast regulator.

Globovision said in a statement on its website that it will take "all legal actions" to challenge the penalty announced Tuesday by the National Telecommunications Commission. The agency accused the channel of violating broadcast regulations during its coverage of a bloody prison rebellion earlier this year.

The agency's chief, Pedro Maldonado, has said Globovision's violations included repeatedly airing emotional interviews with relatives of inmates during the violence.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/20/...


But the 2nd Circuit panel -- Judges Rosemary Pooler, Richard Wesley, and Gerald Lynch -- wasn't interested in Mastro's recitation of the details of the alleged fraud. They took several steps back to consider what Kaplan's injunction meant for international justice. Wesley posed a hypothetical. Presume that this was a judgment by a Canadian court and it was a $12 billion judgment against Chevron, he said to Mastro. "You mean to tell me that a judge in the Southern District, before even an intermediate appeal had been completed, would have the appropriate jurisdiction to ... enjoin those plaintiffs from pursuing that?" When Mastro said yes, the judge continued: "Don't we have some sense of comity to the legitimacy of the process? Are we just to say to the people of Ecuador, 'You're all corrupt and your process doesn't matter to the United States?'"

Lynch asked Mastro if he could cite any precedent that New York law authorizes the kind of injunction Chevron obtained, barring enforcement of a foreign judgment before the Ecuadorean plaintiffs even won a ruling from the Ecuadorean court. Mastro said no. "How do you think the New York courts would react if a Venezuelan court attempted to enjoin a holder of a judgment from Russia?" Lynch said. "Do you think there's any chance that the New York courts would respect such a judgment? Or should respect such a judgment?"

Particularly because the Ecuadorean appellate process has just began, the Second Circuit asked Mastro, why did Chevron need an injunction? (Lynch even asked whether a November trial to decide the legitimacy of a preliminary Ecuadorean award was the best use of Chevron shareholders' money.) James Tyrrell of Patton Boggs, who represents the Ecuadorean plaintiffs, and John Keker of Keker & Van Nest, who represents the Ecuadoreans' onetime lawyer Stephen Donziger, told the panel that the $18 billion judgment can't be enforced until the Ecuadorean high court has reviewed the award, so there's not even a legitimate question for Kaplan to decide at the November trial, nor any final judgment whose enforcement needs to be enjoined. "The silver bullet is that there is no subject matter jurisdiction because there's not an actual controversy before the court," Keker said. "Presumably, at some point, they will make a decision. Either Ecuador will win or they'll say let's do the case again down in Ecuador ... We just don't know. It's completely, purely hypothetical."

Monday's stunning two-page order from the panel gave the Ecuadorean plaintiffs their first victory in two years of battling in federal courts in New York. But it was a huge win. The panel denied the Ecuadoreans' motion to remove Kaplan because he's biased against them. (In the 2nd Circuit, it's not enough to show just that a judge has consistently ruled against one side.) But the appellate judges lifted the injunction and stayed the November trial. The appellate judges said they'd issue an opinion "in due course," but you can be sure the forthcoming opinion will address the danger of rushing to impose U.S. jurisdiction over a foreign court's decision.

CARACAS – Venezuela’s main journalists association on Tuesday rejected a judge’s decision to censor newsweekly 6to Poder and order one of its staff arrested.

CNP said in a communique that “the closure” of the publication and the arrest of Dinorah Giron are a “clear demonstration of abuse of power ... (and) give evidence of a systematic criminalization and persecution of the media that maintain a critical line about the government” of President Hugo Chavez.

A Caracas court prohibited the “publication and distribution by any means” of the weekly, which in its latest edition published a photo montage with public officials dressed as cabaret dancers and which on Sunday led to the arrest of editor Giron.

The notification of the prohibition, issued by Judge Denisse Bocanegra, was delivered on Monday to the weekly’s offices, but it bears Saturday’s date.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=...

Only filthy, rotten, fascists jail journalists like this.

The 190-mile highway under construction in the Bolivian Amazon will pass through the Isiboro-Secure Indigenous Territory and National Park (Tipnis), a 4,600-square mile (11,900 square kilometers) preserve which boasts exceptional levels of rainforest biodiversity, including endangered blue macaws and fresh-water dolphins. Indigenous peoples who live in Tipnis are participating in a month-long protest march against the road, which they claim violates their right to self-governance.

"This march will end in La Paz, so that the government understands and thinks about changing its attitude and changing the route of the highway project," protester Fernando Varges told Al Jazeera News. More than 500 activists from a coalition of indigenous groups began a protest march in the Amazon city of Trinidad last week. The protestors plan to walk 310 miles (498 kilometers) to La Paz, a trip through the lowlands to the Andean highlands that may take a month. Bolivia's 2009 constitution gives Tipnis and other indigenous communities the right to self-governance within their territories.

The proposed road would connect the Amazonian city of San Ignacio de Moxos with the highland city of Cochabamba. According to href=http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/2... > BBC Brasil, more than 900 petitions have protested the road since it was first proposed in 1990.

The Washington Post reports road construction could lead to the destruction of 2,300 square miles (5,950 square kilometers) of rainforest by 2031. Protesters say the road will speed illegal settlement of native lands by farmers from the highlands and fear that coca growers (coca leaf is used to make cocaine) could bring violence to their territory. The Tipnis area is home to 15,000 Chiman, Yurucare, and Moxos peoples who hunt, fish, and farm within the rainforest.

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0821-moukadd...

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas...

More of Colombia's indigenous peoples are speaking their native languages than at in any time in recent memory.

Thanks to a two-decades old change in education policy that ended a prohibition on teaching Indian languages, indigenous communities have become increasingly confident about speaking their own languages.

Indigenous organisations estimate that 80 per cent of the country's 1.4 million Indians speak a native language - up from around 60 per cent three decades ago.

Al Jazeera's Toby Muse has more from Bogota.

MIAMI — Journalists in Latin America are suffering through their "most tragic year in two decades," with 19 reporters murdered in nine nations so far in 2011, the Inter-American Press Association said Friday.

Restrictions on the media in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala have also contributed to the deterioration of freedom of the press in the region, the Miami-based group said.

..

The press association singled out Ecuador, calling on the government of President Rafael Correa to "cease persecution of the press" and withdraw a lawsuit against the daily El Universo.

...

Cuba came in for special criticism, with the group saying it remains the "most restrictive" country in terms of press freedom in the hemisphere where "independent journalists are still hounded, arrested and temporarily jailed."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/artic...

Call it bullying or call it horseplay. Either way, a state appellate court panel says roughhousing with a sexual connotation by a pair of 14-year-old Somerset County boys was a crime that requires them to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

In a decision handed down Monday, the three-judge panel acknowledged the severity of its decision, but said it was bound to uphold the law.

"We are keenly aware that our decision may have profound lifelong ramifications for these two boys as well as others similarly situated," Judge Jose Fuentes wrote.

One of the boys, whose case went to trial, said he had sat on the faces of a pair of 12-year-old schoolmates with his bare buttocks in November 2008 "cause I thought it was funny and I was trying to get my friends to laugh," he told a family court judge.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/crime_cour...

I think everyone support sex offender registries for people who rape or abuse kids. But, this is a perfect example about why laws should be made by rational adults after due consideration and debate instead of as emotional responses to high profile criminal cases. Yes, I am talking to you, Caylee's law supporters.

Most people who occupy key government roles do not enjoy the trust of the people. Corruption is rife in the Chavez government—and the workers and the poor of Venezuela know it.

...

In 2005 Chavez declared that the revolution would build “Socialism in the 21st century”.

These things haven’t happened.

Power has gradually moved back towards a state whose controlling class acts in many cases like its predecessors did.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?i...

LIMA, Peru — Peru’s left-leaning president-elect says he’ll keep at least one member of the current economic team: that’s central bank director Julio Velarde.

Ollanta Humala tells Peru’s Channel 4 television that he’s already asked Velarde to stay on. He said Sunday that he’ll name the rest of his team on Wednesday.


Peru’s markets tumbled immediately after Humala was elected, but businessmen since then have been reassured. Humala says he wants to emulate the market-friendly leftism of Brazil rather than the more belligerent style of Venezuela or Cuba.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/eco...


A sign the Humala has sold out to the World Bank crowd?

More than a third of all US states allow borrowers of money who find themselves unable to repay their debts in harsh economic times to be jailed.

US fudges have signed off on over 5,000 warrants since the start of 2010 in nine US counties against debtors, The Wall Street Journal found.

“In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment,” the Star-Tribune reported, “In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Illinois, man to ‘indefinite incarceration’ until he came up with $300 towards a lumber yard debt.”

According to the Star-Tribune, the man was a self-employed roofer who had broken his neck and back on the job and filed for disability. He was unable to pay because he was unable to work to earn the money. His wife was forced to borrow the $300 on a credit card in order to free him from jail.

http://rt.com/usa/news/resurgence-america-...

Wire Services: Soaring food prices are forcing many Venezuelans to change their eating habits, trim their shopping lists and set aside more of their earnings to feed their families.
...

The poor have been particularly hard-hit. Villasmil said that official figures show the poorest one-fourth of Venezuelans now spend 45 percent of their income on food.
...

He also has regularly raised the minimum wage, though government figures show that the average Venezuelan's buying power has shrunk 14.5 percent in the past four years.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=1...

While casting himself as America’s new constitutional savior, Trump has shown reckless disregard for fundamental private-property rights. In the 1990s, he waged a notorious war on elderly homeowner Vera Coking, who owned a little home in Atlantic City that stood in the way of Trump’s manifest land development. The real-estate mogul was determined to expand his Trump Plaza and build a limousine parking lot — Coking’s private property be damned. The nonprofit Institute for Justice, which successfully saved Coking’s home, explained the confiscatory scheme:

Unlike most developers, Donald Trump doesn’t have to negotiate with a private owner when he wants to buy a piece of property, because a governmental agency — the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority or CRDA — will get it for him at a fraction of the market value, even if the current owner refuses to sell. Here is how the process works.

After a developer identifies the parcels of land he wants to acquire and a city planning board approves a casino project, CRDA attempts to confiscate these properties using a process called “eminent domain,” which allows the government to condemn properties “for public use.” Increasingly, though, CRDA and other government entities exercise the power of eminent domain to take property from one private person and give it to another. At the same time, governments give less and less consideration to the necessity of taking property and also ignore the personal loss to the individuals being evicted.

Trump has attempted to use the same tactics in Connecticut and has championed the reviled Kelo v. City of New London Supreme Court ruling upholding expansive use of eminent domain. He told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto that he agreed with the ruling “100 percent” and defended the chilling power of government to kick people out of their homes and businesses based on arbitrary determinations:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/265...

Yes the source is awful, but you know.. broken clock and all.

As the conventional wisdom goes – especially in the West – Israel is the "only democracy" in the Middle East. And that is so, particularly for its Jewish citizens. However Israel has been anything but democratic for the indigenous people of the land, the Palestinian Arabs.

By nature and precedence, foreign military occupation is temporary. Colonialism on the other hand, and more precisely civilian colonisation, is a socio-political system of ruling over another people.

Since its inception at the end of the 19th century, Zionism preached self-determination for the Jewish people in "their" homeland. In reality, Israel has directly or indirectly driven Palestinians out of their homeland, confiscated their properties, rejected their right to return to their homeland despite UN resolutions, and occupied and colonised the rest of their homeland for the last four decades.

Throughout, Israeli military and security services ruled over another people against their will. They oppressed, tortured, exploited and robbed the Palestinians of their land, water and most importantly, their freedom. There has been more political prisoners in Israeli jails than any of its neighbours.

....

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opini...

http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-ufo-aliens-rosw... /

Secret FBI files have been released that detail how US officials witnessed a UFO explode over Utah and aliens landing near Roswell, New Mexico.

A document recently declassified from 1949 explained how three men on separate patrols miles from one another all witnessed a UFO explode over the mountains of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Their experiences were reported and directed to then FBI Director Edgar Hoover in a memo titled “Flying Discs.”

According to the memo, the three men were a policeman, a highway patrolman and an army guard. Each reported to have seen a “silver colored object high up approaching the mountains at Sardine Canyon” which then “appeared to explode in a rash of fire.”

US officials have acknowledged the existence of secret military-run prisons across Afghanistan where suspected terrorists are held and interrogated without charges, for weeks or months on end.

The US military previously denied operating secret prison systems in Afghanistan, although a number of human rights groups insisted they were.

Recently however US government and military officials confirmed to AP the existence of the secret prisons, but contended they existed as temporary holding centers used to gather intelligence. They said detainees were held at such sites for 14 days, unless it is deemed necessary they stay longer. According to AP some detainees have been held for nine weeks.

The program remains classified, and details from the government have been released anonymously.

http://rt.com/usa/news/secret-usa-prisons-... /


sorry if this has already been posted here as it is a few days old but I could not find it.