Et Tu, Brute? Haiti’s Betrayal By Latin America
For the 10th year since the forcible removal of elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti, the United Nations has renewed the mandate of an occupying “peacekeeping force” in the country. The unanimous vote about Haiti happened in an October 14, 2014 meeting of the Security Council that took less than 25 minutes. The UN’s […]
What Is Consciousness and Do Humans Have a Monopoly on It?
There has not been so much excitement about the effect of electricity on the human body since Luigi Galvani discovered that an electrical stimulation of the nerves in the leg muscles of a dead frog caused it to kick. These early experiments inspired Mary Shelley in 1818 to write Frankenstein, a brilliant allegory about the […]
Ebola: Zombie Apocalypse, Biological Warfare or Marketing Hype?
Ask anyone what is Ebola, and the only reasonable answer you might get to this question is that it is a virus. The rest is fantasy, and these flights of fancy are not limited to the general public. At least one scientific editor has described the disease caused by the viral infection as a “Zombie […]
GDP, Money and the World Cup
By Gilbert Mercier and Dady Chery No. It’s not only a game. The World Cup is about money. Lots of it. Quite apart from the $15 billion that Brazil spent “pacifying” the favelas and building stadiums in preparation for the World Cup, or the $4.5 billion of profit that FIFA will make from this sports […]
Homage to My Mothers: Restavek, Vodou, and Haiti’s Stolen Children
“There are no orphans in Haiti!” After a long silence at the other end of the line, my friend Jordan murmurs: “Come again?” He must be thinking I lost my senses. I realize how I sound. Someone else might imagine that I am ignorant of the extreme poverty in which most Haitians live, but Jordan […]
