Source: Americas Program

A decision of the Chilean Supreme Court has suspended operations at Barrick Gold’s gold mine, Pascula Lama. Monsanto had to halt construction of a seed plant in Cordoba because of widespread opposition from the population. Large extractive companies begin to reap a harvest of defeats.

“Under democracy, it’s the peoples that are the disappeared,” stated Mercedes Maidana, who defines herself as a ‘nomadic colla‘[1] that still works the land despite living in a city in northern Argentina. With that phrase, she established a thread between past dictatorships and current political regimes at the conference “From extractivism to re-building alternatives”, held in Buenos Aires in late August.[2] read more

Source: Truthout

During the latest episode of the Washington farce that has astonished a bemused world, a Chinese commentator wrote that if the United States cannot be a responsible member of the world system, perhaps the world should become “de-Americanized” — and separate itself from the rogue state that is the reigning military power but is losing credibility in other domains.

The Washington debacle’s immediate source was the sharp shift to the right among the political class. In the past, the U.S. has sometimes been described sardonically — but not inaccurately — as a one-party state: the business party, with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. read more

(IPS) – Some 2,400 kilometres from New York City, where victims of Haiti’s cholera epidemic are suing the United Nations in a U.S. federal court, the disease continues to burn through the populace with no end in sight.

In a single week between Oct. 19 and Oct. 26, the Pan-American Health Organisation reported 1,512 new cases and 31 deaths. New cases are reported in all 10 departments.

At the Cholera Treatment Centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders in Delmas 33, a commune in Port-au-Prince Arrondissement, nurse Viola Augustine says the clinic is so packed it cannot accept new patients. read more