The U.S. government, through its network of front organizations, is already laying the groundwork to frame Sunday’s election in Honduras as disputed—before a single ballot has even been cast.
Local media outlets have also reported on X that members of the ruling party have assaulted supporters of other political parties. One such complaint was made by Liberal Party legislator Iroshka Elvir. “When we were in District 15, groups of LIBRE supporters in El Pedregal blocked the road with sticks and stones, and verbally assaulted our candidates,” Elvir said.
Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, addressing the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala, India, on Tuesday. Credit: Reuters
A high-level U.S. congressional delegation, including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, met with the Dalai Lama at his Indian home on Wednesday, a visit that was condemned in advance by China’s government, which considers the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader a separatist.
Canadian parliamentarians have unanimously voted for a non-binding motion, put forward by Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, that refers to Tibetans as “a people and a nation” who should get self-determination. This, having occurred on June 10, 2024, is a fundamental rejection of China’s sovereign control of the Tibet Autonomous Region, and an indisputable attack on China’s sovereignty.
“We have much to learn from our counterparts in these countries, including how to confront disinformation and violent threats to our democracies,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), pictured in April, said of the delegation to Brazil, Chile and Colombia. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
The agenda (which has not yet been made public) is expected to include meetings with Presidents Lula da Silva (Brazil), Gabriel Boric (Chile) and Gustavo Petro (Colombia) and parliamentary representatives. The legislators will also meet with civil society organizations that work “on the frontlines of ecological transitions, democratic transformations and peace negotiations in the countries,” the delegation explains in a joint statement. The trip seeks to “promote a U.S.-Latin American relationship based on mutual respect, understanding and a commitment to cooperation.”
Ocasio-Cortez, a key figure in the Democratic Party’s most progressive wing, and Misty Rebik, Sanders’s chief of staff (sent on behalf of the 81-year-old veteran senator), will be joined by four congressmen: Joaquin Castro and Greg Casar (both from Texas), Nydia Velázquez (New York) and Maxwell Frost (Florida), who is the youngest congressman in the House of Representatives at 26. Castro is a member of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, which is part of the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee. He recently spearheaded a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to pressure Peru’s President Dina Boluarte over human rights violations occurring in that country. Casar is in his first term as a congressman and belongs to the Progressive Caucus, while Velazquez became the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in Congress in 1993.
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The defense of democracy is another ideal that guides the trip. According to the congresspeople, the “twin” insurrections on Capitol Hill, on January 6, 2021, and in Brasilia (on January 8, 2023) “made it clear that the fate of democracy in the United States is closely tied to that of its southern neighbors. “[Our] democracies,” they believe, “not only share the challenge of defending their institutions from political violence, disinformation and other forms of anti-democratic intervention; they also share the challenge of restoring confidence in the ability of those institutions to meet citizens’ fundamental needs.”
Ocasio-Cortez highlights another goal of the trip: exploring how to “confront disinformation and violent threats to our democracies.” The charismatic congresswoman adds that “it’s long past time for a realignment of the United States’ relationship to Latin America. The U.S. needs to publicly acknowledge the harms we’ve committed through interventionist and extractive policies, and chart a new course based on trust and mutual respect.”
Democrats in the House and Senate are going after a set of Pentagon authorities that have for years funded foreign military units across the world without proper oversight, lawmakers say.
The issue of errors in translations, innocent as well as intentionally misleading ones, may soon become an even bigger issue. The U.S. Congress is providing money to produce many more of them:
The House bill introduced by Democratic Representatives Joaquin Castro and Bill Keating and Republicans Mike Gallagher and Brian Fitzpatrick would provide for the establishment of a federally funded Open Translation and Analysis Center (OTAC) focused on China.
It would be based on the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which provided translation and analysis of Soviet bloc and other foreign government media during the Cold War.
The bill calls for funding of $80 million for fiscal 2022 and that same amount annually for each fiscal year through 2026 as well as “such sums as may be necessary for each fiscal year thereafter.”
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Referring to the acronyms of the People’s Republic of China and its ruling Communist Party and armed forces, the aide said OTAC would “systematically translate PRC/CCP/PLA speeches, documents, reports, strategies, news articles, commentaries, journal articles, procurement contracts into English and publish them freely online.”
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Castro said that for the United States “to effectively both compete and cooperate with” countries like China and Russia it needed a better understanding of them.
“A nuanced understanding of foreign countries is impossible without reading how they communicate in their own languages,” he told Reuters.
“By continuing to maintain control of the oil fields in Syria, we will deny [Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad] and Iran a monetary windfall,” Graham said in an October 2019 statement. “We can also use some of the revenues from future oil sales to pay for our military commitment in Syria.”
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