A transcendent fact has happened in the multicultural State of Bolivia. The mayors of the municipalities of the autonomous region of Pando, in the Bolivian Amazon, decided to expel from their jurisdictions the various NGOs, foundations and companies operating in this area with funding from the Agency of Cooperation of the United States (USAID in its acronym in English) noting that these entities “are those that generate internal conflicts within the country, interfering in our political process of national liberation to undermine the democratic legitimacy of our government,” said a statement issued on July 6 by the municipal authorities of the Amazon frontier with Brazil and Peru. Read the rest of this entry »
In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian people free of charge. Our doctors are working every day at 227 of the 237 communes of that country. On the other hand, no less than 400 young Haitians have been graduated as medical doctors in our country. They will now work alongside the reinforcement that traveled there yesterday to save lives in that critical situation. Thus, up to one thousand doctors and healthcare personnel can be mobilized without any special effort; and most are already there willing to cooperate with any other State that wishes to save Haitian lives and rehabilitate the injured.” Read the rest of this entry »
I remember the boys dressed in army surplus, the girls in hessian, silhouettes framed in beach shanties, staring across an abyss. You were not meant to talk about them. They were not counted in the census, unlike the sheep, and anyway were dirty and feckless and dying off.
Last week, many of the aboriginal people in the remote west coast village of Ahousaht were innoculated with the tamiflu vaccine. Today, over a hundred of them are sick, and the sickness is spreading.
We strongly recommend Kevin Annett’s film, Unrepentant
At one point during the film Sophie’s Choice, on the eve of World War Two, the protagonist learns of the planned extermination – “vernichtung” – of the Jews of the Cracow ghetto. Horrified, she hurries to the ghetto and walks through its crowds, a lone gentile, not knowing what to do.
Distant Voices, Desperate Lives in Sri Lanka
by John Pilger, May 14, 2009 antiwar.com
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the catastrophe facing the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, whose distant voices have appealed to the world for almost as long as the Palestinians. Read the rest of this entry »
Canadian Reverend Kevin Annett (53), who is presently on a lecture tour throughout cities in Canada lives dangerously. “I do believe that I am about to be arrested by the RCMP. My sources tell me there is a warrant being issued this week for my arrest,”he tells me in an interview this week. Reason: His suspicions regarding the disappearance and murder of aboriginal people in Vancouver, and the residential schools. Read the rest of this entry »
In These New Times 