Mark Weisbrot
Codirector del Centro para la Investigación de Economía y Política (Center for Economic and Policy Research) en Washington D.C. USA (www.cepr.net).

A specter is haunting Latin America – the specter of “populism.” Hardly a week goes by without a warning from pundits that the region may return to its “populist” past. We are warned of economic failure, unfavorable investment climates, dictatorships, nationalism, Anti-Americanism, and protectionism. Non-native English speakers would be forgiven for thinking that populism was a dreaded disease, like botulism.

While a majority of Americans, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, now believe the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, the Bush administration is chalking up a lesser-known but increasingly obvious foreign policy failure closer to home.
The administration’s efforts to isolate Venezuela as "undemocratic" have been backfiring all year, to the point where every move seems to isolate our own government in the hemisphere.
For anyone who has been to Venezuela, it’s easy to see (...)

Last week the New York Times published an 1100-word note "From the Editors" criticizing its own reporting on the build-up to the Iraq war and the early stages of the occupation. On Sunday the newspaper’s Public Editor went further, citing "flawed journalism" and stories that "pushed Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets sprouting on the shoulders of editors."