Articles by Benjamin Dangl
We found 18 results.
Defying the Spies: Free Thought as Resistance in the Age of Surveillance
Benjamin Dangl – Toward Freedom,
9 May 2016
A brand new study from Oxford provides empirical evidence to prove that the very fact that the surveillance state exists spreads conformity and subservience. The study examines how, following whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about US government spying, there was “a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned ‘al Qaeda,’ ‘car bomb’ or ‘Taliban.’”
→ read full articleWhile Left Governments in South America Face Setbacks, Gains of Progressive Period Likely to Endure
Benjamin Dangl, Upside Down World – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2015
The gains of South America’s progressive period, won in the halls of power and in the streets, won’t likely be swept aside anytime soon.
→ read full articleUruguay’s Legalization of Marijuana Makes Sense in a Senseless Drug War
Benjamin Dangl, TeleSur – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Sep 2014
In December of last year [2013], Uruguay became the first country in the world to fully legalize and regulate the cultivation, sale, distribution and use of marijuana.
→ read full articleWhat the Empire Didn’t Hear: US Spying and Resistance in Latin America
Benjamin Dangl – Toward Freedom,
22 Jul 2013
US imperialism spreads across Latin America through military bases and trade deals, corporate exploitation and debt, and a vast communications surveillance network into the region’s streets and halls of power. Yet more than McDonald’s and bullets, an empire depends on fear, and fear of the empire is lacking these days in Latin America.
→ read full articleBehind Paraguay’s Coup
Benjamin Dangl – Al Jazeera,
30 Jul 2012
At the heart of the nation’s current crisis is an ongoing battle over land. Approximately two per cent of landowners control 80 per cent of Paraguay’s land, and some 87,000 farming families are landless. Lugo and his cabinet resisted the use of Monsanto’s transgenic cotton seeds in Paraguay, a move that likely contributed to his ouster. But now that Franco is in power, negotiations with the Canadian mining company Rio Tinto have moved ahead.
→ read full articleParaguay’s Bitter Harvest: Multinational Corporations Reap Benefits from Coup Government
Benjamin Dangl – Toward Freedom,
30 Jul 2012
A look at how the coup government is opening up Paraguay to multinational corporate exploitation, from the Canadian Rio Tinto Alcan mining company to Monsanto’s seeds. As Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano said in an interview regarding the coup in Paraguay, the Lugo government tried “to bring about changes that were aimed at making the country more independent and just, but this was an unpardonable sin for the power brokers.”
→ read full articleOut of the Backyard: New Latin American and Caribbean Bloc Defies Washington
Benjamin Dangl – Toward Freedom,
12 Dec 2011
The CELAC meeting comes a time when Washington’s presence in the region is waning. Following the nightmarish decades of the Cold War, in which Washington propped up dictators and waged wars on Latin American nations, a new era has opened up; in the past decade a wave of leftist presidents have taken office on socialist and anti-imperialist platforms.
→ read full articleShowdown in Peru
Benjamin Dangl – The Dominion,
26 Sep 2011
Earlier this spring, an anti-mining Indigenous movement in Peru successfully ousted a Canadian mining company from their territory. “In spite of government repression, if the people decide to bring the fight to the bitter end, it is possible to resist the pressure of mining and oil companies,” Peruvian activist and journalist Yasser Gómez told The Dominion.
→ read full articleHope in the Andes: What Ollanta Humala’s Victory Means for Peru
Benjamin Dangl – Toward Freedom,
13 Jun 2011
Ollanta is an Incan name meaning “the warrior everyone looks to.” Indeed, all eyes were on the leftist president-elect as he greeted the crowd. This election puts Humala among a growing number of leftist presidents in Latin America and offers hope to the poorest sectors of Peruvian society. The poverty rate in Peru is just over 31 percent. In Sunday’s elections, it was the impoverished rural areas that went for Humala over Kieko Fujimori.
→ read full articleBrazil: Tensions Escalate Over Amazon Mega Dam
Benjamin Dangl – Al Jazeera,
18 Apr 2011
Indigenous communities say $10bn reservoir in Brazil’s largest rainforest will destroy their way of life.
→ read full articleGoverning by Obeying the People: Bolivia’s Politics of the Street
Benjamin Dangl – Toward Freedom,
28 Feb 2011
From across North Africa to Wisconsin, activists are navigating a new terrain of global protest and relationships with their governments. Whether in ousting old tyrants or dealing with new allies in office, the example of Bolivia holds many lessons for social movements. An illustrative dynamic is now unfolding in this Andean country where the movements hold sway over the government palace, and the leftist President Evo Morales says he “governs by obeying the people.” But sometimes the people don’t give him any other choice.
→ read full articleIn South America, the Left and Indigenous Movements Are Searching for a Way to Co-Exist
Benjamin Dangl - AlterNet,
6 Sep 2010
At the heart of these conflicts is a question leftist governments and social movements across Latin America are grappling with: what should this “other world that is possible” look like? “Is it one based on constant economic growth, even if this is ‘socialist’ and would raise the real income of people in the global South?” sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein asks about today’s Latin America. “Or is it what some are calling a change in civilizational values, a world of buen vivir [living well]?” This latter philosophy includes living in harmony with others and with nature, rather than accumulating capital and material things while destroying the earth.
→ read full articleU.S. BASES IN COLOMBIA RATTLE THE REGION
Benjamin Dangl – The Progressive,
26 Mar 2010
On the shores of the Magdalena River, in a lush green valley dotted with cattle ranches and farms, sits the Palanquero military base, an outpost equipped with Colombia’s longest runway, housing for 2,000 troops, a theater, a supermarket, and a casino. Palanquero is at the heart of a ten-year, renewable military agreement signed between the […]
→ read full articlePROFITING FROM HAITI’S CRISIS
Benjamin Dangl – Toward Freedom,
21 Jan 2010
US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people. In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other […]
→ read full articleUNPREDICTABLE FUTURES: STORIES FROM WORKER-RUN FACTORIES IN ARGENTINA
Benjamin Dangl - Toward Freedom,
25 Nov 2009
Reviewed: Sin Patron: Stories From Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories, edited by Lavaca, 320 pages, Haymarket Books, 2007. Following the social upheaval in Argentina in 2001-2002 a book was published in Spanish that a lot of activists and independent journalists in the country began trying to get their hands on. It wasn’t in all of the bookstores, […]
→ read full articleTHROWING BULLETS AT FAILED POLICIES: US PLANS FOR NEW BASES IN COLOMBIA
Benjamin Dangl,
14 Sep 2009
It was a winter day in the Argentine city of Bariloche when 12 South American presidents gathered there on August 28. It was so cold that Hugo Chavez wore a red scarf and Evo Morales put on a sweater. The presidents arrived at the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) meeting to discuss a US […]
→ read full articleLATIN AMERICA BREAKS FREE
Benjamin Dangl,
6 Feb 2009
Five years ago, when Evo Morales was a rising political star as a congressman and coca farmer, I met him in his office in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He was drinking orange juice and sifting through the morning newspapers when I asked him about a meeting he just had with Brazilian President Lula. "The main issue that […]
→ read full articleFINDING COMMON GROUND IN CRISIS: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN SOUTH AMERICA AND THE US
Benjamin Dangl,
20 Dec 2008
People in the US seeking ways to confront the economic crisis could follow the lead of South American social movements. From Argentina to Venezuela, many movements have won victories against the same systems of corporate greed and political corruption that produce economic strife across the hemisphere. These movements also have experience holding politicians’ feet to […]
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