Playing the ‘Anti-Semitism’ Card Against Venezuela (tags)
"Although the arrests helped ease the anxieties of Venezuela’s Jewish community, the international media pressed on with the storyline of a politically motivated attack. The very week that the Venezuelan Israelite Association issued a statement praising the swift and successful investigation, The Washington Post ran an editorial titled “Mr. Chavez vs. the Jews,” which again blamed the robbery on the government, or, more specifically, on an ugly comment left on a “pro-government Web site,” demanding “that citizens ‘publicly challenge every Jew that you find in the street, shopping center or park’ and called for a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses, seizures of Jewish-owned property and a demonstration at Caracas’s largest synagogue.”4 The editorial concluded that the synagogue was then “duly attacked.”5 The idea that the sacking of the Caracas synagogue was based purely on anti-Semitism has persisted, even showing up in a recent piece authored by two academics in the high-brow Boston Review. The authors claim the attack is a sign of “state-directed anti-Semitism.”
Showdown in Honduras: The Rise and Uncertain future of the Coup: Urgent please read now. (tags)
"Mobilizations and Strikes in Support of Zelaya Members of social, indigenous and labor organizations from around the country have concentrated in the city's capital,organizing barricades around the presidential palace, demanding Zelaya's return to power. "Thousands of Hondurans gathered outside the presidential palace singing the national hymn," Telesur reported. "While the battalions mobilized against protesters at the Presidential House, the TV channels did not report on the tense events."Bertha Cáceres, the leader of the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares yIndígenas, said that the ethnic communities of the country are ready for resistance and do not recognize the Micheletti government."