Daily Features

The Summer Bliss in Curacao http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1960644
The Summer Bliss in Curacao http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1960644

The curious Curacao caper

With patches of rust scattered along the dull maroon waterline, ugly streaks on the small white cabin, and paint flaking off its faded black hull, the fishing trawler seemed a most unremarkable, dingy vessel that for years, slouched low in the open at its mooring, next to the stone walled ruins of the Curacao Trading Company complex.

Act now on African land issues

No sooner had President David Granger, in his address to the Fourth Annual State of the African Guyanese Forum at the Critchlow Labour College in August 2016, declared that his government intended to ‘establish a Lands Commission in order to rectify the anomalies and resolve the controversies which, up to now surround thousands of hectares of communal lands which were purchased in the post-Emancipation Village Movement,’ the Indian Action Committee (IAC) was on his case.

Could the next step in Venezuela’s crisis be a regionally brokered solution?

Amid the massive anti-government protests that have left at least 29 dead and more than 400 wounded, Venezuela’s National Assembly president, Julio Borges — one of the country’s top opposition leaders — told me in an interview that there are behind-the-scenes talks with Latin American presidents to create a “group of friendly countries” that would seek a negotiated solution to the political crisis.

Coupling African and Amerindian land issues

Given its historical development and situational context, outside of pure formalism (an emphasis on form rather than content), to which this regime appears particularly prone, there are no good logical, historical, political, economic, social or other reasons why it should have decided to couple the generally settled Amerindian land issue to the yet to be consensually formulated African demand for ancestral land.

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