South America

Despite being immensely popular among the people of Argentina, the Argentinean government’s decision to nationalize the YPF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales) oil company has continued to come under attack by those who obstinately promote extractive capitalism. The measure would nationalize YPF and restore 51 percent of the company’s ownership to Argentina.

Humanists everywhere across the Earth celebrated yet another anniversary of the emergence of the Humanist Movement, launched on May 4, 1969, with public presentations and in particular that by its founder, Silo, a harangue known as “The Healing of Suffering”. This was given in the Andes, in Punta de Vacas, near the border between Argentina and Chile. A declaration follws:

“I have the feeling that justice has finally been done after the offensive launched against me,” provincial TV journalist Teobaldo Meléndez Fachín told RWB yesterday, referring to an appeal court ruling 10 days ago overturning his November conviction on a charge of [“aggravated defamation”](http://en.rsf.org/peru-decriminalization-of-press-05-01-2012,41631.html).

Will 2012 be as bad as last year for Chileans working in the media,
particularly news photographers and cameramen, as well as journalists and
bloggers close to protest movements? The fear is well-founded and has been
highlighted once again as support for the protest movement in the poor
southern region of Aysén has spread, and students have once again gone on
the march.

A photographer for the English-language news site “The
Santiago Times” was detained on Thursday while covering a protest related to the Aysén movement.
Jason Suder, a volunteer photojournalist for the news site and U.S.
citizen, was photographing a confrontation between Chile’s police force
and protesters when an officer detained and
placed him into a police vehicle.

The bridge over the Rio Rosselot that connects La Junta with the rest of Northern Patagonia, Chile, has been closed by La Juntan’s in solidarity with the “Tu Problem Es Mi Problema” Aysen Civil Movement. A report and the protestors set of demands is brought to Pressenza from participant local resident and “Earthwalker” Paul Coleman.

Criminal gangs are becoming a threat to the world’s glaciers, which are already receding as a result of climate change, the UN reported, citing a case in Chile where police are investigating the theft of some 5,000 kilograms of millennia-old ice from the Jorge Montt glacier.

We had a chance to talk with the humanist national leader of the Teachers’ Association, in an interview carried out in “Umbral”, in the neighbourhood of Bellavista, in which we asked him to evaluate this year’s most compelling demonstrations in Chile for a high quality and not-for-profit education, also attempting to make a projection of what may happen in the future.

Thanks to a wave of demonstrations and protests in Santiago the government has abandoned plans to force journalists to hand over images to police under controversial new legislation sponsored by interior minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter, who announced on 18 January that he would withdraw that section of the bill.

Montevideo – The World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed. In December, the Doha Round is turning ten years old, with nothing to celebrate[i]. Formal negotiations of the Round expired in 2005, without any agreement, and informal negotiations stalled in 2008. Indications in December too were that an agreement to liberalize trade among its 153 member countries was eluding.