A Fruit Smoothie

By Ilka Oliva-Corado on June 1, 2025

Nebaj Guatemala, Photo: Bill Hackwell

Tanita always longed for a fruit smoothie, an unattainable dream in her childhood. Blenders were something magical that they talked about in radio commercials when they tuned in to Porfirio Cadena’s “El ojo de vidrio” (The Glass Eye). What excitement, Tanita recalls, when it rained on the radio, listening to the thunder shaking the roof of the house, the sound of horses’ hooves walking on the cobblestones: taca, taca, taca, ta… (more…)

Government of Haiti Signs Security Agreement with Mercenary Boss Erik Prince

May 30, 2025

US mercenary Erik Prince leads a security operation in Guayaquil, Ecuador, March 27, 2025. Photo: Instagram/larepublica_ec.

The Haitian government formalized an agreement with Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary organization Blackwater/Academi and a donor and ally of US President Donald Trump, to carry out security operations against armed groups besieging the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, according to a report by The New York Times (NYT). (more…)

Israeli Troops Fire on Palestinians Waiting for Food, Killing 40

June 1, 2025

Israel has killed at least 40 Palestinians waiting to get food at two aid distribution sites in Gaza

Israel has killed at least 40 Palestinians waiting to get food at two aid distribution sites in Gaza, leaving more than 200 others injured. Israeli tanks opened fire on thousands of civilians gathered at a distribution site in southern Gaza’s Rafah on Sunday morning, killing at least 31 people, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

Soon after, another person was killed in a shooting at a similar distribution point south of the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza City, said the office’s statement on Telegram.The aid is being distributed by Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial group backed by Israel and the United States, which has completed a chaotic first week of operations in the enclave.

The United Nations and other aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, accusing it of lacking neutrality and suggesting the group has been formed to enable Israel to achieve its stated military objective of taking over all of Gaza.

Ibrahim Abu Saoud, who witnessed the attack on aid seekers in Rafah, told The Associated Press news agency that Israeli forces opened fire on people as they moved towards the distribution point. He said the crowd was about 300 metres (328 yards) away from the military.  He said he saw many people with gunshot wounds, including a young man who died at the scene. “We weren’t able to help him,” Abu Saoud said.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said Palestinians are being killed while trying to secure “one meal for their children.”   “This is why Palestinians have been going to these distribution points, despite the fact that they know that they are controversial.  They [distribution points] are backed by the U.S. and Israel, but they do not have any other option,” she said.

“The food parcels that were distributed to Palestinians are barely enough.  We are talking about one kilo of flour, a couple of bags of pasta, a couple of cans of fava beans – and it’s not nutritious.  It’s not enough for a family in Gaza nowadays.”

The GHF told the AP that Israeli soldiers fired “warning shots” as Palestinians gathered to receive food. The group denied reports that dozens of people were killed, describing them as “false reporting about deaths, mass injuries and chaos”. The Israeli army said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that it was “currently unaware of injuries caused by [Israeli] fire within the humanitarian aid distribution site” and that the incident was still under review.

The Government Media Office in Gaza condemned the attacks, describing the GHF’s distribution points as “mass death traps, not humanitarian relief points.”  “We confirm to the entire world that what is happening is a systematic and malicious use of aid as a tool of war, employed to blackmail starving civilians and forcibly gather them in exposed killing points, managed and monitored by the occupation army and funded and politically covered by … the U.S. administration,” it said in a statement.

Speaking from Gaza City, Bassam Zaqout of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society said the current aid distribution mechanism had replaced 400 former distribution points with just four. “I think there are different hidden agendas in this aid distribution mechanism,” he told Al Jazeera. “The mechanism does not cater to the needs of the people, such as the elderly and people with disabilities.”

Palestinian group Hamas, which runs the enclave’s government, released a statement, saying the Israeli shootings were a “blatant confirmation of premeditated intent” as it held Israel and the U.S. fully responsible for the killings.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said the killings were a “full-fledged war crime” and demanded international intervention to “stop this ongoing massacre and impose strict accountability mechanisms”. Sunday’s killings capped a deadly first week for the project’s operations, coming on the back of two earlier shootings at two distribution points in the south – the first in Rafah, the second west of the city – which saw a combined total of nine Palestinians killed.

In Gaza, crucial aid is only trickling in after Israel partially lifted a more than two-month total blockade, which brought more than two million of its starving residents to the brink of a famine.

translation: Ed Newman

Source: Radio Havana Cuba (RHC)

Colombia Appoints its First Ambassador to Palestine

By Lorenzo Santiago on May 28, 2025

Palestine to Colombia, victory to the resistance.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro appointed the first Colombian ambassador to Palestine on May 26. The representative of the country’s diplomacy will be Jorge Iván Ospina, former senator and former mayor of Cali and a close confidant of the president. The measure was taken a year after Bogotá broke off relations with Israel based on the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. (more…)

Washington Turns up the Heat against Cuba

By Francisco Arias Fernández on May 31, 2025

US Embassy in Havana. Photo: Bill Hackwell

While in Washington and Miami the darkest and most unscrupulous actions are being plotted to try to squeeze the Cubans with a combination of coercive measures of maximum economic pressure, anti-family and anti-immigrant walls, zero remittance and travel policies, political and racist persecution, the US embassy in Havana, a historic instrument of subversion, is trying to become, with its provocations, the trigger for a bilateral crisis that will lead to the breakdown of “diplomatic relations” between the two countries. (more…)

Cuba Summons US chargé d’affaires in Protest against his Disrespectful Conduct

May 31, 2025 from Havana

Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba

On Friday, May 30, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba summoned the US chargé d’affaires, Mike Hammer, to call his attention, once again, to the interventionist and unfriendly conduct he has assumed since his arrival in Cuba, which is unbecoming of a diplomat and disrespectful to the Cuban people. (more…)

Arrest of Leading Salvadoran Human Rights defender Ruth López Sparks Mass Outrage

By Gloria Silvia Orellana. Resumen Latinoamericano, May 24, 2025.

Ruth Eleonora Lopez being arrested

Ruth Eleonora López, a courageous and committed voice in the defense of human rights in El Salvador for years was arrested  by  the National Civil Police (PNC), who arrived at her home at around midnight on Sunday, May 18. (more…)

The US Blockade on Cuba

By Adam Kendal on May 28, 2025

May 1, 2025, Plaza of the Revolution, Havana photo: Bill Hackwell

For many Canadians, the US blockade on Cuba is thought to be a relic of the Cold War, either a product of the Soviet era or something eased under Obama’s “Cuban thaw.” This misconception allows American imperialism to go unchecked and obscures the enduring reality of one of the longest and most inhumane economic wars in modern history. In truth, the US blockade is still in full force, and under the Trump administration, it has become even more aggressive, tightening its stranglehold on the Cuban people. (more…)

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