Jesus Emilio Tuberquia’s life is at risk every time he leaves his home. As the legal representative and a founding member of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in northern Colombia, he suffers constant death threats and has survived several attempts on his life. Here he talks about the Colombian state's war on his community.
Tomorrow, seven years to the day after Hurricane Katrina dodged New Orleans, the city will be venturing out to assess Hurricane Isaac’s overnight imprint on its neighborhoods. At the same time, it mourns the ongoing effects of the major flood that has left many parts of the city – especially low-income, African-American parts – devastated.
In Honduras, 300 leaders of the Afro-Indigenous Garífuna people are saying, “Not on our land.” On Monday, they and their allies around the world launched the Land Recovery Campaign in the village of Vallecito which, with 2,500 acres, is the largest single landholding of the Garífuna people. There, they are occupying land that has been taken from them to build mega-tourism projects.
Source: Indypendent
Imagine a business that rakes in billions of dollars in taxpayer funds, but provides its customers with a defective product that fails for more than half of them–though that track record hasn’t stopped the business owners from enjoying ever-increasing profits.
Sounds like the parasites of Wall Street or the insurance industry, doesn’t it?
But according to a U.S. Senate report, the same is true of a growing number of colleges and universities–the expanding sector of higher education that is run for profit.
With Iran taking over the three-year term of the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement (N.A.M.) at the end of August 2012, the question arises: does the Non-Aligned Movement still matter in world politics and how will Iran use the presidency?
Source: The Nation
On May 20, the country’s oldest “fair trade” coffee company, Equal Exchange, purchased a full-page color advertisement in the Burlington Free Press. It was an open letter to the CEO of the Vermont-based Green Mountain Coffee company, the world’s largest buyer of fair trade–certified coffee. “We wish to congratulate you for your past deeds,” Equal Exchange wrote, “but now urgently request that you withdraw your support for the certification agency Fair Trade USA…in light of its unilateral decision to change the rules of fair trade.”
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019