12/10 UN Human Rights Day – Attend a “South of the Border” Screening Party

Action:  12/10 UN Human Rights Day – Attend a “South of the Border” Screening Party
In major US media, evidence of US involvement in coups in Latin America doesn’t exist. Major US media almost never acknowledge evidence of the US role in recent coups in Venezuela, Haiti, and Honduras. But Oliver Stone’s documentary “South of the Border” documents the US role in the coup in Venezuela.

Join a house party (St. Paul MN/Decatur, GA/Woodstock, NY/Los Angeles, CA/Conroe, TX/ Washington, DC/New York City, NY /Gulfport, MS/Southfield, MI/Hilton Head Island, SC/Fayetteville, AR/Corvallis, OR/Madison, WI/Calgary Alberta/San Francisco, CA/Fort Collins, CO/Seattle, WA/Oak Park, IL/Fresno CA) to watch the film and tune live to a webcast with Center for Economic Policy & Research President Mark Weisbrot, who co-wrote the script. Most events start 6pm EST, check if there’s a house party near you:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/southofobama/search

Kirchner Rescued Argentina’s Economy, Helped Unite South America

The death of Argentina’s former president is a sad loss. His bold defiance of the IMF paved the way for South America’s progress

By Mark Weisbrot

Published by The Guardian Unlimited (UK) on October 27, 2010.

The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner today is a great loss not only to Argentina but to the region and the world. Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina’s economy is comparable to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great Depression of the United States. Like Roosevelt, Kirchner had to stand up not only to powerful moneyed interests but also to most of the economics profession, which was insisting that his policies would lead to disaster. They proved wrong, and Kirchner was right.

Argentina’s recession from 1998-2002 was indeed comparable to the U.S. Great Depression in terms of unemployment, which peaked at more than 21 percent, and lost output (about 20 percent of GDP). The majority of Argentines, who had until then enjoyed living standards among the highest in Latin America, were pushed below the poverty line. In December of 2002 and January 2003, the country underwent a massive devaluation, a world-historical record sovereign default on $95 billion of debt, and a collapse of the financial system.

Although some of the heterodox policies that ultimately ensured Argentina’s rapid recovery were begun in the year before Kirchner took office, he had to follow them through some tough challenges to make Argentina the fastest growing economy in the region.

Read on here.

Guardian Op-Ed: “Oliver Stone’s new film, South of the Border …allows six of these new wave leaders to speak for themselves”

An excellent op-ed by The Guardian‘s Seumas Milne sums up the changes underway in South America, citing “South of the Border”:

Nearly two centuries after it won nominal independence and Washington declared it a backyard, Latin America is standing up. The tide of progressive change that has swept the continent for the past decade has brought to power a string of social democratic and radical socialist governments that have attacked social and racial privilege, rejected neoliberal orthodoxy and challenged imperial domination of the region.

Its significance is often underestimated or trivialised in Europe and North America. But along with the rise of China, the economic crash of 2008 and the demonstration of the limits of US power in the “war on terror”, the emergence of an independent Latin America is one of a handful of developments reshaping the global order. From Ecuador to Brazil, Bolivia to Argentina, elected leaders have turned away from the IMF, taken back resources from corporate control, boosted regional integration and carved out independent alliances across the world.

Both the scale of the transformation and the misrepresentation of what is taking place in the western media are driven home in Oliver Stone’s new film, South of the Border, which allows six of these new wave leaders to speak for themselves. Most striking is their mutual support and common commitment – from Cristina Kirchner of Argentina to the more leftist Evo Morales – to take back ownership of their continent.

Read the entire article here.

Mark Weisbrot was on KPFK 90.7 FM Global Inheritance/Contra Golpe last night. Listen to it again!

CONTRA GOLPE MP3

Mark Weisbrot will be doing 90.7 FM KPFK’s “The Insighters” today 7/29 at 12:30 PST

KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles – 98.7 FM Santa Barbara

listen live here

TUNE IN – Mark Weisbrot on KPFK Global Inheritance/Contra Golpe tonight at 10pm

Dont miss Mark Weisbrot on KPFK Global Inheritance/Contra Golpe tonight at 10pm

KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles – 98.7 FM Santa Barbara

listen live here

South of the Border to play at the Traverse City Film Festival TODAY at 6pm!

Attending the Traverse City Film Festival?

If so, be sure to catch today’s screening of South of the Border at 6pm at the Milliken Auditorium.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CLICK HERE.

REVIEW: “[US Media's] Characterization of Chavez as a “Dictator” is a Misnomer.”

Oliver Stone offers his take on Hugo Chavez

By MICK LASALLE FILM WRITER

July 23, 2010, 4:12PM

Oliver Stone might not be the ideal reporter to send on a truth-seeking mission to South America, but if nobody else wants to do it, we have to take what we can get.

In South of the Border, Stone travels to five countries to interview the left and center-left heads of state that have come to power there in recent years. The film begins with idiotic banter on cable news, in which three talk-show hosts claim that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is a drug addict. Then, after a montage of similar nonsense we call news, we see him interviewing Chávez one on one.

Chávez calls him “Oliver.” Stone calls him “Hugo.” They get along. As Stone is not a reporter, but more like a sympathetic ear, he doesn’t ask hard questions. We don’t know if the facts and figures that Chávez presents have any validity. But a couple of things do come through that seem clear, even incontestable. The American media’s version of Chávez as a clown, or “killer clown,” as one American talking head puts it, is a ridiculous distortion. Likewise, the frequent characterization of Chavez as a “dictator” is a misnomer. He keeps getting elected and re-elected.

READ MORE HERE.

New York Times Finally Allows Right of Reply to Larry Rohter’s Factual Inaccuracies

Oliver Stone’s Latin Film

Published: July 24, 2010

To the Editor:

“Oliver Stone’s Latin America” (Arts pages, June 26) tries to discredit our film, “South of the Border,” by raising questions about its accuracy.

On our Web site, www.Southoftheborderdoc.com, we deal with each of the points that your article raises: geography, oil imports, the 2002 coup in Venezuela, the 1998 presidential race there, Argentina’s economic recovery and water privatization in Bolivia. We maintain that there are no inaccurate or misleading statements on any of these points in the film.

READ ON HERE.

REVIEW: UK Guardian Congratulates Stone on US Release

Oliver Stone nails Latin America’s troubled relationship with the USA

Political interference and studio nervousness have undermined so many worthy films on the subject, it’s a wonder that South Of The Border got made, let alone seen in the USA..

The Guardian, Saturday 24 July 2010

by John Patterson

Despite my many differences with Oliver Stone as an artist, I congratulate him on having managed both to present an unhysterical assessment of Latin American leaders and issues in South Of The Border, and also to get it seen in the US. The latter, especially, is achievement indeed.

A rare precedent is Costa-Gavras‘s Missing, which netted Oscars in 1982 with its horrifying story of the US State Department’s involvement in the murder of one of its own citizens during the US-backed Chilean coup of 1973. In retrospect, it looks like the last gasp of those liberal Hollywood instincts that saw producer Bert Schneider thanking the Viet Cong leadership as he accepted his Best Documentary Oscar for Hearts and Minds in 1975.

READ MORE HERE.