Month: July 2010

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Fired for Opposing Coup, Honduran Educators Go on Hunger Strike

Kari Lydersen July 6, 2010 Kari Lydersen

Source: In These Times

As thousands of marchers converged on the plaza outside the national Congress building on the anniversary of the coup in Honduras June 28, a handful of famished, exhausted but determined educators looked on from tents—on the 35th day of a hunger strike.

The educators are just one of the many faces of the Honduran resistance movement that has blossomed in the past year, uniting unionists, indigenous people, feminists, LGBT activists, campesinos and other factions who previously had little contact. (Read Jeremy Kryt’s reporting from Honduras for In These Times here.) read more

Slavery in Haiti

Beverly Bell and Tory Field July 6, 2010 Beverly Bell and Tory Field

"I'm struggling to end slavery because I know how I suffered," said Helia Lajeunesse, a former restavèk, child slave, who is now a children's rights advocate. Today, there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world, according to the research of Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves. This is more than at any time in history, even including during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In Haiti, the only nation ever to host a successful slave revolution, 225,000 to 300,000 children live in forced and usually violent servitude in a system known as restavèk, literally "to stay with." The numbers are at risk of rising dramatically because of the hundreds of thousands of children who lost their parents or were abandoned after the earthquake

Freedom in the Grace of the World

Chris Hedges July 6, 2010 Chris Hedges

Earl Shaffer, adrift after serving in the South Pacific in World War II and struggling with the loss of his childhood friend Walter Winemiller during the assault on Iwo Jima, made his way to Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia in 1947. He headed north toward Mount Katahdin in Maine and for the next 124 days, averaging 16.5 miles a day, beat back the demons of war. His goal, he said, was to ‘‘walk the Army out of my system.’’ He was the first person to hike the full length of the Appalachian Trail.

Book Review: The Politics of Genocide

Cyril Mychalejko July 1, 2010 Cyril Mychalejko

When President Obama released his National Security Strategy (NSS) in May he included an emphasis on the United States and the international community upholding the UN endorsed "Responsibility to Protect," a concept which declares the moral imperative to protect peoples and nations from genocide and mass atrocities, by military means if necessary. It also calls for the end of impunity.