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It is time for the calls for reparations to the descendants of those who were enslaved by colonial powers via the trans-Atlantic slave trade to bear fruit. The European countries and the United States need to compensate for the injustices suffered by slaves and their families. African-Americans and African-Caribbean intellectuals have been agitating for reparations for many years, but the question as to how the compensation would be calculated and in what form is yet to be answered. Since 1999, the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission called for the West to pay trillions of dollars to Africa. In...

During his 2004 Senate run and again during the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama stood firm in his opposition to reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans here in the United States. “I have said in the past – and I’ll repeat again – that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed,” he said in 2008 right before his historic election. The radical solutions required to address the needs and long-festering wounds of the African American community of course had to be purged from public discourse. Yet...

Could this be the decade that slavery reparations become a reality? If not, it won't be for a lack of trying. This is the obvious next step for poor countries getting poorer because of bad economics, bad politics, and bad, bad leaders. Former colonial powers are to be milked for all the cash that can be gotten by laying a guilt trip on the good socialists who run these countries now. Any successes enjoyed by the former colonies will no doubt encourage African Americans to try the same ploy here. Jamaica is leading the way in pushing for reparations from...

Britain is being sued, with France and the Netherlands, by 14 Caribbean countries, which are demanding what could be hundreds of billions of pounds in reparations for slavery. Around 175 years after Britain freed its last slaves in the West Indies, an alliance of Caribbean nations is demanding to be repaid for the “awful” lingering legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. Caricom, a group of 12 former British colonies together with the former French colony Haiti and the Dutch-held Suriname, believes the European governments should pay—and the UK in particular. It has hired the British law firm Leigh Day, which...

While in New York attending the United National General Assembly of Heads of State, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines came to Harlem to join the New York City-based December 12th Movement International Secretariat on Sept. 24 in their report back to our community on the CARICOM First Regional Reparations Conference, held in St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sept. 14-17. At the forum, held at the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, Gonsalves stated, “As to where we are with the reparations issue and where we are going to, for 30, 40 or more years...

There’s another attempt afoot to collect reparations for the appalling effects of the slave trade and slavery. This time it’s certain of the Caribbean countries demanding that Britain, Holland and France should cough up compensation for those horrors. The unfortunate point about such attempts to collect money being that actually, in the British case at least, the money should be flowing the other way. To the British, not from them that is. Even the most basic economic analysis proves this so I’m always amused by the repeated attempts to make us pay rather than collect. Before anyone gets too hot...

Colombia has announced it is negotiating with China to build an alternative to the Panama Canal. The proposed transport route is intended to promote the flow of goods between Asia and Latin America. The plan is to create a "dry canal" where the Pacific port of Buenaventura would be linked by rail, across Colombia, to the Atlantic Coast. Trade between Colombia and China has increased from $10m in 1980 to more than $5bn last year. The announcement came from the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, who told the Financial Times that the project was "a real proposal... and it is...

The recent border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua is a sign of an ambitious plan by Venezuela, Iran and Nicaragua to create a "Nicaragua Canal" linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that would rival the existing Panama Canal. Costa Rica says that last week Nicaraguan troops entered its territory along the San Juan River – the border between the two nations. Nicaragua had been conducting channel deepening work on the river when the incident occurred. Sources in Latin America have told Haaretz that the border incident and the military pressure on Costa Rica, a country without an army, are...

Nicaragua has approved plans for a mysterious Hong Kong-based company to build an estimated $40 billion canal across the middle of the country, Luis Manuel Galeano and Michael Weissenstein of The Associated Press report. The waterway, which would have to be roughly three times as long as the 50-mile Panama Canal, would be one of the largest infrastructure projects ever. The plan has some serious detractors: Environmentalists say it would devastate Lake Nicaragua, the country's primary source of fresh water, while shipping experts say that it may be an economically unfeasible power play by China. The company, HK Nicaragua Canal...

Nicaragua's parliament is due to vote on Thursday on one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Latin America's history – a trans-oceanic canal that is to be built and run by a Chinese company. If it goes ahead, the $40bn (£26bn) scheme, which is twice as expensive as Brazil's Belo Monte dam and likely to be three times longer than the Panama canal, looks set to transform global shipping and jump start the economy of this Central American nation. As well as the waterway, the draft agreement between Nicaragua and a Hong Kong registered firm — Nicaraguan Canal Development Investment...

Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The president of the country's national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40bn (£26bn) project, which will reinforce Beijing's growing influence on global trade and weaken US dominance over the key shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The name of the company and other details have yet to be released, but the opposition congressman Luis Callejas said the government planned to grant a 100-year lease to the Chinese operator. The national...

After spending four days stranded on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, Amber Burkett is home. The 16-year-old Bridge City resident, whom Coast Guard rescuers found Wednesday 60 miles away from the Honduras island she and eight friends were trying to reach, cried and laughed, sometimes simultaneously, Saturday evening while exchanging hugs with more than a dozen friends and family members who had gathered to greet her.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Explorers using a miniature submarine to probe the sea floor off the coast of Cuba said on Thursday they had confirmed the discovery of stone structures deep below the ocean surface that may have been built by an unknown human civilization thousands of years ago. Researchers with a Canadian exploration company said they filmed over the summer ruins of a possible submerged ``lost city'' off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on the Caribbean island's western tip. The researchers cautioned that they did not fully understand the nature of their find and planned to return in January for further analysis, ...

WASHINGTON, DC (Herald de Paris) - EXCLUSIVE - Researchers have revealed the first images from the Caribbean sea floor of what they believe are the archaeological remains of an ancient civilization. Guarding the location’s coordinates carefully, the project’s leader, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, says the city could be thousands of years old; possibly even pre-dating the ancient Egyptian pyramids, at Giza. The site was found using advanced satellite imagery, and is not in any way associated with the alleged site found by Russian explorers near Cuba in 2001, at a depth of 2300 feet. “To be...

Four Canadians on a ground excursion during a Caribbean cruise thought they were going to be killed when four masked gunmen with homemade shotguns and pistols ambushed them in a lush botanical garden retreat, fellow passengers say. About 60 tourists and three guides were systematically searched at gunpoint and robbed of their money, jewelry, cameras and cellphones on Friday. They were then ordered to march forward, during which they feared they would be shot in the back, but instead the gunmen slipped away into the foliage ... The victims were on a shore excursion from the cruise ship Celebrity Eclipse,...

His burial at sea in full armour and in a lead casket was designed to ensure that no one – but especially the Spanish – would find his body. Now, more than 400 years after Sir Francis Drake's death in the Caribbean, the great seafarer's watery grave may be close to being discovered. A team of treasure hunters led by an American former basketball team owner claims to have discovered two ships from Drake's fleet lying on the seabed off the coast of Panama. The 195-ton Elizabeth and 50-ton Delight were scuttled shortly after the naval hero's death from dysentery,...

Iran making push into Nicaragua Web Posted: 12/18/2007 10:25 PM CST Todd Bensman Express-News MONKEY POINT, Nicaragua — The second military helicopter in as many days hovered over the jungle and then landed to a most unwelcome reception from several dozen angry Rama Indian and Creole villagers. Rupert Allen Clear Duncan, a leader of some 400 Creole who live along the shoreline, confronted the foreigners dressed in suits and military uniforms that day in March and demanded to know the purpose of their aerial trespasses. "This is our land; we have always lived here, and you don't have our permission...

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

Less than 10 percent of the coral reefs in the Caribbean show living coral cover and are on the verge of utter devastation, a new study reported in the Guardian states. Global warming, pollution and overexploitation are the main causes for the damage to reefs, Carl Gustaf Lundin, a director at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, .. "The major causes of coral decline are well-known and include overfishing, pollution, disease and bleaching caused by rising temperatures resulting from the burning of fossil fuels," Lundin said. .. ... Global warming is a big factor with coral reefs, the National...

To life, love and a legendary privateer’s lost fleet. U.S. archaeologists are continuing their search for real-life buccaneer Captain Henry Morgan’s lost fleet after the discovery of six cannons, a 17th century wooden shipwreck and even a barrel that may very well contain rum. Yo, ho ho indeed. Aptly backed by the Captain Morgan rum brand, a team of leading archaeologists led by Frederick “Fritz” Hanselmann of Texas State University hope to unlock the myth and mysteries of one of history’s most iconic sea captains. “We’re interested in telling the true story of Henry Morgan,” Hanselmann, who is a director...