Sean Adl-Tabatabai – Kamala Harris was left reeling this weekend after she was greeted in Guatemala by crowds chanting “go home” and holding “Trump won” placards.
Kamala flew to Guatemala to blame hurricanes, global warming and Trump for the record surge in illegals and fake refugees flooding the US border.
The Vice President was greeted by a massive pro-Trump crowd at the airport, who told her to get back on the plane and go home. Continue reading
Alex Pietrowski – The success of the Guatemalan people in defending their food sovereignty and stopping “Monsanto Law” is an inspiring example that people, when united, can overpower even the largest of corporations.
A new law was passed in Guatemala in June 2015 that would have given exclusivity on patented seeds to a handful of transnational companies such as Monsanto. The opposition brought together a diverse set of people from across the Central American nation. Trade unions and farmers, social movements, women’s organizations and Mayan indigenous people took to the streets outside of the Congress and Constitutional Court in Guatemala City to protest the Monsanto Law and to show their disdain for the role that GMO seeds and their patent holders would now play in Guatemala.
On September 2, a large group of Mayan indigenous people blocked several streets in front of the Congress and demanded the immediate overturn of the law. Coinciding with several court injunctions in order to stop the new law from taking effect, the peaceful protests finally ended on September 4, 2015, after ten days, when the Congress of Guatemala repealed the law.
To the Mayans, who make up about half of the Guatemalan population, ownership of corn seed and the freedom to cultivate their own crops means much more than just food freedom.
“Corn taught us Mayan people about community life and its diversity, because when one cultivates corn one realizes that there is a variety of crops such as herbs and medical plants depending on the corn plant as well. We see that in this coexistence the corn is not selfish, the corn shows us how to resist and how to relate with the surrounding world.” ~ Lolita Chávez, The Mayan People’s Council
In many countries, indigenous tribes and rural populations have cultural traditions concerning land cultivation that are deeply rooted in their ancestry. These traditions are often centered around essential staple foods such as corn, which make up a substantial part of the simple diet of rural and indigenous people. Cultivation of food is regarded as a cultural custom and a God-given right. By replacing heirloom seeds with patented genetically modified (GM) seeds, this freedom is often lost. Continue reading
Archeologists have uncovered a 1,600-year-old Mayan temple dedicated to the “night sun” atop a pyramid tomb in the northern Guatemalan forest near the border with Mexico.
“The sun was a key element of Maya rulership,” lead archeologist Stephen Houston explained in announcing the discovery by the joint Guatemalan and American team that has been excavating the El Zotz site since 2006.
“It’s something that rises every day and penetrates into all nooks and crannies, just as royal power presumably would,” said Houston, a professor at Brown University, Rhode Island.
“This building is one that celebrates this close linkage between the king and this most powerful and dominant of celestial presences.”
Archeologists say the temple was likely built to honor the leader buried under the Diablo Pyramid tomb, the governor and founder of the first El Zotz dynasty called Pa’Chan, or “fortified sky.”
By Farid Zakaria | Nation Of Change
November 7 2011
A new policy brief faults prominent institutions and drug companies like Pfizer, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, and Population Council, for their involvement in unethical and illegal human experimentation in Africa.
The report is titled “Non-Consensual Research in Africa: The Outsourcing of Tuskegee” in reference to the illegal human experiment conducted in Tuskegee, Alabama, between 1932 and 1972 by the US Public Health Service. In that experiment, some 600 impoverished African-American men were observed in a study on the progression of untreated syphilis. Some of the men were intentionally infected with the disease and all of them were denied the cure. Regrettably, the report notes, no one was held accountable for this crime against humanity.
The new report details human experiments led by US researchers and drug companies on Africans who are typically undereducated, poor, and lack full understanding of their rights. The human subjects often are led to believe that they are receiving medical treatment from governmental health services or health ministries.
These practices hearken back to the appalling experiments carried out by US researchers in Guatemala in the 1940s where hundreds of Guatemalans were deliberately infected with sexually transmitted diseases without information or consent. President Obama formally apologized to Guatemala for these experiments last year.