By Staff, Prensa Latina. Peasants throughout Paraguay are demanding negotiations with the government for land plots on which to live and work. In Saltos del Guaira (east) about 1,000 small farmers and their families were forcibly evicted by police on Monday August 6 from a farm occupied by a Brazilian citizen.
Continue reading →By Jason deCaires Taylor | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Jason deCaires Taylor’s underwater sculptures develop into artificial reefs that offer an ever-changing experience.
Continue reading →By Milo Milford (kft, gp), AlterPresse | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery | YouTube. Lac Azuei, also called Etang Saumatre, is Haiti’s main natural lake. With an area of over 110 square kilometers (42.5 square miles), it is a lovely sight. The lake is also a place of feverish activity by child traffickers. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Roger B. Swain, In Field Days: Journal of an Itinerant Biologist. Lyons & Burford, Publishers, New York, 1994. Central American animals that could have swallowed and excreted avocados include mammoths; toxodon, a rhinoceros-size mammal, without the horn, that was probably semi-aquatic; gomphotheres, elephantlike beasts with tusks in both jaws; glyptodonts, that weighed a ton or more, had a domed carapace, a heavy armored tail, and an armored head that could withdraw into the shell.
Continue reading →By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The fastest runner / is a boy / who leans against a cardboard tent…
Continue reading →By Staff, UNITED HERE | Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. The hotel housekeepers union UNITE HERE gathered in Washington, D.C. on Monday, July 23, 2012, to launch an international boycott of Hyatt hotels under the banner “Hyatt Hurts.” The workers complain of injurious workloads and an employer who seeks to subcontract their jobs. In addition a class action suit is being launched on behalf of 3,000 Indiana hotel workers who estimate a liability of $10 million and claim that temporary agency employer Hospitality Staffing Solutions (HSS) regularly stole their wages and conspired with the hotels to blacklist them and deny them permanent jobs.
Continue reading →By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. At a visit to Haiti’s landmark Citadelle Laferriere, Martelly, to emphasize his disgust about the decrepit state of the 300-year old fort, took off in a huff, straight downhill on his motorcycle, leaving his motorcade to scramble after him down a steep and narrow mountain road. The result: an accident that gravely injured seven people and put in critical condition a journalist and a six-year old girl who had been inside her house.
Continue reading →By C. K. Hickey, Oakland North | YouTube | Haiti Chery. The opening up of Oakland airport to Havana represents a unique cultural and political connection between Cuba and the US’ Bay Area. “Culture cures: culture leads to communication between countries, and communication leaves everybody better off than before.” – William T. Martinez
Continue reading →By David Jessop, Caribbean Council via Stabroek News. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, is one of a growing number of US laws that are extra-territorial in effect and have been introduced on the grounds of security, to counter terrorism and organized crime, or to address tax evasion. In addition to extending US jurisdiction into the Caribbean, FATCA carries with it the possibility of being used to extend the reach of US law into areas that the legislation was not primarily designed to address.
Continue reading →By Stephen Leahy, IPS | Envolverde. Threats to coral reefs have gone from worrisome to dire. Bleaching, overfishing, pollution and disease have largely wiped out the fabulous coral communities of the Caribbean, which has lost 80 percent of its corals since the 1970s, say scientists at the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS). (English | Spanish | Portuguese)
Continue reading →By Kim-Jenna Jurriaans, IPS | UPDATE from Haiti Chery. The United Nations is increasingly hiring Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) for its missions across the world, raising concerns over the use of firms known for participation in human rights abuses, as well as an overall lack of accountability structures governing these contractors within the U.N. system. UPDATE 1: DynCorp boasts of having trained 400 “Haitian police” and is awarded a $48.6 million contract to insert 100 contractors and 10 advisors into the “UN police force” in Haiti.
Continue reading →By Marcela Valente, IPS | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. More than 600 businesspeople lost their properties to the Argentina dictatorship of 1976 to 1983. “they took everything we had, our seven companies and the company plane. And it’s a miracle they didn’t kill us,” says Alejandro Iaccarino, a prosperous dairy industry businessman during the 1970s who is suing for millions of dollars in reparations.
Continue reading →By Staff, Prensa Latina. Thousands of peasants from Ñacunday, in eastern Paraguay, have set a one-week limit for the government to hand over 37,000 acres of land, which they consider to be illegally held by agribusiness.
Continue reading →By Tortilla con Sal, YouTube. Support for Nicaragua’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), and its government led by Daniel Ortega, increased dramatically between 2007 and 2011. Young people voted overwhelmingly for the policies of the FSLN and continue to be engaged as citizens in a model of direct democracy called Poder Ciudadano (Citizen’s Power).
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