I've just read two books by two people who care passionately about Africa and the AIDS pandemic that has swept and is sweeping the continent. The first, by Canadian diplomat and humanitarian Stephen Lewis is entitled Race Against Time: Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa. The second, by Canadian journalist Stephanie Nolen is 28 Stories of Aids in Africa.
Guitar strumming and singing starts and stops with the passage of wine and steak. The gaiety of this party in Argentina is in contrast with the topic of conversation. Some of the partygoers are sons and daughters of dissidents persecuted in the dictatorship and they talk about disappearances and torture as if it all took place yesterday. The past keeps seeping into view, like the persistent smoke from the barbecue. Pinochet and Videla
There are people who, having once been in the spotlight and having left center-stage for so long, one assumes that they are dead. Thus, I was surprised when I read the short obituary in the International Herald Tribune on August 4th, 2007 that Holden Roberto, the former insurgency leader in Angola, had just died at the age of 84.Holden Roberto
An overwhelming majority of governments, including Norway, Sweden, Germany and Indonesia expressed serious concerns about the risks of large-scale production of biofuels to forests, ecosystems, indigenous peoples and local communities at a meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) in Paris in early July [1].
Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera. One of them holds an automatic weapon. John Lennon's "Imagine" plays in the background. This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by US soldiers stationed in Paraguay. The video footage and other military activity in this heart of the continent represent a new style of militarism in Latin America.
While specialists have always recognized that hunger is a complex issue and that underdevelopment cannot be measured by the number of hungry, the poster image of the underfed child has always served to draw attention to a new crisis, or a new refugee flow.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019