Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's Journal‘Natural labs’ a magnet for Ecuador’s city of knowledge
‘Natural labs’ a magnet for Ecuador’s city of knowledge
16 October 2014 | By Holly Else
Recruitment is under way for Yachay University, a new campus that the country hopes will usher in a research and innovation culture
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Source: Secretaría Educación Superior Ecuador
Knowledge-based focus: Ecuador is aiming to develop a research culture, focused on a
‘city of knowledge’
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“Academia is just like soccer…You recruit good players, you win,” José Andrade told Times Higher Education on a recent visit to London, adding that he and his colleagues are “just about to recruit the Manchester United of South America” for a new institution in Ecuador.
Professor Andrade is the academic secretary of Yachay University, a new research-intensive institution that will form the cornerstone of a “city of knowledge” being built from scratch in an Andean valley.
The 4,000-hectare site, near the small village of Urcuquí, an hour and a half from the capital Quito’s international airport, will eventually house the university, Ecuador’s 13 public research institutes, a technology park and industry.
With Yachay Tech, as it is known for short, the Ecuadorian government is hoping to introduce a research and innovation culture that will transform the country’s economy, which is currently based on the export of raw materials. Fearing that these natural resources could one day run out, President Rafael Correa, who took office in 2007, decided to switch direction to a knowledge-based economy. It is hoped that this will enable the development of an advanced manufacturing sector that can process local products and export high-value goods worldwide.
More:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/natural-labs-a-magnet-for-ecuadors-city-of-knowledge/2016321.article
Venezuela: Colombia paramilitary aided in killing
Venezuela: Colombia paramilitary aided in killing
| October 15, 2014 | Updated: October 15, 2014 7:36pm
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says a Colombian paramilitary group collaborated in the killing of a young Venezuelan congressman earlier this month.
Maduro presented surveillance video and what appeared to be a taped confession during a Wednesday news conference on the stabbing death of 27-year-old lawmaker Robert Serra.
The president alleged that a Colombian paramilitary group conspired with the socialist legislator's bodyguards to commit murder with the aim of destabilizing Venezuela.
Maduro previously accused former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe of participating in the plot. On Wednesday, he said Uribe maintains links to groups working against Venezuela.
http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Venezuela-Colombia-paramilitary-aided-in-killing-5825650.php
Morales Wins: Interviews with Voters in the Bolivian Streets and at the Polls
October 15, 2014
Morales Wins
Interviews with Voters in the Bolivian Streets and at the Polls
by BENJAMIN DANGL
On October 12, Bolivia went to the polls for a general election which is expected to grant victories to President Evo Morales and many other politicians in his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) political party. (Update: Evo Morales has declared victory for a third term in office.) Below is a collection of interviews conducted today with voters from middle and working class neighborhoods in La Paz, Bolivia on how they voted and what they think of the MAS government. For more information on the election, its implications, and the successes and pitfalls of the MAS, see this article: Why Evo Morales Will Likely Win Upcoming Elections in Bolivia.
“The government of Evo Morales, which is a government that has done positive things, has also done negative things. For example, one of the positive things is the funds they have reserved in the government. Some other positive aspects are the public works the MAS has constructed, for example here in La Paz the aerial cable car, and a new two-lane highway to the city of Oruro. And in regards to the negative aspects, nationally and generally, is the level of political persecution against the opposition to the government. The other negative thing is the MAS’s focus on the rural social movements in the country, without focusing sufficiently on the middle class in the cities; this government has not helped the middle class at all.” – Ivan Villafuerte, lawyer
“President Evo does good work. He has created good public projects, and provided computers for school children. Evo does good work, and he’s not robbing everything like other presidents we’ve had in the past. This government provides support for children, pregnant women and the elderly. And for these reasons I voted for him this morning.” – Angelica Calle, street vendor
“I voted for President Evo because I am convinced that he is an excellent president. I’ve read through the history of my country many times, and I’ve seen that he is the best president in terms of the economy, education, development and other issues. With the previous governments the only thing they ever did was loot the country, and only look after their own personal interests. This isn’t the case with this government. This government is in function of the people, it is dedicated to creating an inclusive country, one without discrimination. Because here racism was very strong, and this racism is a legacy of colonialism, but now things have changed.” – Maria Isabel Viscarra, language teacher
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/15/interviews-with-voters-in-the-bolivian-streets-and-at-the-polls/
Viva Morales. 
Chiquita still fighting to withhold docs on Colombia paramilitary payments
Source: Colombia Reports
Chiquita still fighting to withhold docs on Colombia paramilitary payments
Oct 15, 2014 posted by Joel Gillin
The US multinational Chiquita is fighting to keep almost 10,000 payment documents from the public eye seven years after it was fined $25 million for its payments Colombian paramilitaries.
Michael Evans of the Washington-based National Security Archive told Colombia Reports that the banana company is still demanding that the US Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC) not release more than 9,600 documents known as the “Chiquita payments documents.”
The National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requesting these documents, which Chiquita tried to block with a reverse-FOIA case in April 2013. The company attempted to argue that the potential publicity and the affect on a jury in Florida considering a civil suit against Chiquita were sufficient reasons to keep the documents private.
The SEC and a U.S. federal court disagreed, saying the speculations did not “satisfy the level of certainty required,” according to Bloomberg News. The case is on appeal.
According to Evans, Chiquita “never expected to win the case” and is simply trying to “string it out as long as they can.”
Read more: http://colombiareports.co/chiquita-still-fighting-withhold-almost-10000-docs-payments-colombian-paramilitaries/
Guatemala may weigh softer drug punishments in liberalization push
Guatemala may weigh softer drug punishments in liberalization push
By Dave Graham,
Reuters
October 15, 2014, 12:07 PM
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala will weigh easing punishments for minor narcotics-related offenses as part of a push to liberalize drug policy and explore regulating production of opium poppies and marijuana for medical use, President Otto Perez said..
Shortly after taking office at the start of 2012, Perez, a conservative retired army general, surprised many of his Latin American peers by proposing legalization as a means of curbing the power of criminal gangs and the deaths they cause.
Central America is one of the most violent regions in the Americas and Honduras, which like its neighbor Guatemala is a staging post for drug gangs moving their product to consumers in the United States, has the highest homicide rate on the planet.
"We have 17,000 prisoners in our jails. Many of them are linked to drug trafficking. Some of them are indeed criminals. And there are some who are in for minimal amounts of consumption or possession," Perez told Reuters this week in an interview.
More:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/health/sns-rt-us-guatemala-drugs-20141015-story.html
Bolivia’s Transformation
Bolivia’s Transformation
The Victory of Evo Morales
by Binoy Kampmark / October 14th, 2014
It is a sometimes overly rich recipe, starched with violence and populism, but Latin American politics is something to behold. In the Americas, experiments have been run and tried with brutal consequences. Revolutions and counter-revolutions have been plotted and enacted. The good have tended to be a short time in office, while the coup d’état has had something of a long history.
Evo Morales’ victory in the Bolivian elections for a third term with just over 60 per cent of the vote is no minor achievement. Cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina received a paltry 25 per cent, something he blamed on the late entry of ex-president Jorge Quiroga, a move that potentially split the anti-Morales vote. Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism romped in, winning eight of the nine regions, including the affluent area of Santa Cruz. A remarkable achievement, given Morales’ own background as the son of peasant Altiplano farmers.
Victory for Morales in Santa Cruz also proved particularly sweet given its base for opposition to the MAS in 2008. Then, it was the aspiring Rubén Costas, co-founder of the right leaning Unidad Demócrata (UD), who attempted to fan the flames of secession. This, it was said, was also being facilitated by US money, be it through USAID or the National Endowment for Democracy. The latest victory has prompted Morales to quash claims that the country was one of half-moons “but a full moon”.
This victory is much more than a polling matter. The conflict between wealthy settlers and the indigenous populations has been the scar that never leaves, and a Morales victory did much to stare it down. (He, himself, is a native Aymara.) In 2009, he introduced a new constitution with a focus on indigenous rights and grants of greater autonomy. Then came the fiscal redistributions – income gathered from natural gas has been used in targeted programs. While the corruption stain lingers in its accusing tone, the country has not become the victim of dedicated kleptocrats. As long as the natural resource boom continues, Morales is on a purple patch. He knows, however, that such patches do turn colour in time. (This might be a literal statement, given the environmental costs of the Morales program.)
In the main, Morales has provided a copy book on the redistribution of natural wealth via the state pocket. Infrastructure projects connected with gymnasiums, schools and medical clinics have received funding through the Bolivia Cambia Evo Cumple program. Growth rates of 5.5 per cent this year, and 5 per cent for next, have been predicted by the IMF.
More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/bolivias-transformation/
Authors see chance for breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba relations
Authors see chance for breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba relations
By Daniel Trotta
HAVANA Mon Oct 13, 2014 12:42pm EDT
Oct 13 (Reuters) - The authors of a new book detailing 55 years of informal communications between the United States and Cuba see a rare opportunity to normalize relations, provided President Barack Obama wants to seize the moment.
William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh co-wrote "Back Channel to Cuba," which was officially released on Monday and explains the informal and secretive "back channel" means that Havana and Washington have used to speak to each other despite their hostilities.
Based largely on declassified documents, the book created a stir with its revelation that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered contingency plans for a military strike in order to "smash Castro" in response to former President Fidel Castro sending Cuban troops to Angola in 1975.
The authors are in Havana for a dual presentation of their work and a similar book by Cuban authors Elier Ramirez and Esteban Morales, also released on Monday, that is based on previously unreleased Cuban documents.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/13/cuba-usa-idUSL2N0S80WZ20141013?rpc=401
Are Covert Ops Compatible With Democracy?
October 14, 2014
Global Subversion Begets a Question for Ed Snowden
Are Covert Ops Compatible With Democracy?
by BILL BLUNDEN
It’s part of the public record that the NSA has engaged in an industry-wide campaign to weaken cryptographic protocols and insert back doors into hi-tech products sold by U.S. companies. We also know that NSA officials have privately congratulated each other in successfully undermining privacy and security across the Internet. Hence it’s only logical to assume that the NSA’s numerous subversion programs extend into foreign “commercial entities”. Thanks to documents recently disclosed by the Intercept we have unambiguous confirmation.
Hi-tech subversion underscores the fact that the whole tired debate regarding cryptographic keys held in escrow for so-called lawful interception (what the Washington Post called “secret golden keys”) only serves to distract the public from programs aimed at wielding covert back doors. In other words, by reviving the zombie idea of an explicit back door the editorial board at the Washington Post is conveniently ignoring all of the clandestine techniques that already exist to sidestep encryption. In a nutshell: zero-day bugs and malware often trump strong crypto.
On an aside it’s interesting to observe the citadel of free thinkers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation continue to promote cryptographic tools as a privacy tonic with a faith that’s almost religious while conspicuously neglecting other important aspects of operational security. The EFF cheerfully provides a litany of alleged success stories. Never mind all of the instances in which the users of said cryptographic tools were compromised, even users who specialized in computer security.
Infiltrating the Media
The NSA’s campaign to undermine software and hardware is mirrored by parallel efforts in other domains. Specifically, the Church Committee and Pike Committee investigations of the 1970s unearthed secret programs like Operation Mockingbird which were conducted to infiltrate the media and develop an apparatus, a Mighty Wurlitzer of sorts, that allowed government spies to quietly influence public perception. The findings of congressional investigators have been substantiated by writers like Deborah Davis and Carl Bernstein.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/14/are-covert-ops-compatible-with-democracy/
10 Facts About Being Homeless in the USA
October 14, 2014
As the Crisis Deepens, the Government is Doing Less to Help
10 Facts About Being Homeless in the USA
by BILL QUIGLEY
Three True Stories
Renee Delisle was one of over 3500 homeless people in Santa Cruz when she found out she was pregnant. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported she was turned away from a shelter because they did not have space for her. While other homeless people slept in cars or under culverts, Renee ended up living in an abandoned elevator shaft until her water broke.
Jerome Murdough, 56, a homeless former Marine, was arrested for trespass in New York because he was found sleeping in a public housing stairwell on a cold night. The New York Times reported that one week later, Jerome died of hypothermia in a jail cell heated to over 100 degrees.
Paula Corb and her two daughters lost their home and have lived in their minivan for four years. They did laundry in a church annex, went to the bathroom at gas stations, and did their studies under street lamps, according to America Tonight.
Fact One. Over half a million people are homeless
On any given night, there are over 600,000 homeless people in the US according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Most people are either spending the night in homeless shelters or in some sort of short term transitional housing. Slightly more than a third are living in cars, under bridges or in some other way living unsheltered.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/14/10-facts-about-being-homeless-in-the-usa/
The Yellow Book: Inside El Salvador’s Military Blacklist
October 14, 2014
The Yellow Book
Inside El Salvador’s Military Blacklist
by EVELYN GALINDO-DOUCETTE
The Yellow Book (Libro amarillo) is a 270 page document from 1987 that the National Security Archive in Washington DC made public on September 28th, 2014. The Yellow Book includes 1,975 photographs that the Salvadoran Armed Forces and the State Department of Intelligence of El Salvador used to catalogue people as “terrorists” and “enemies” of the state. The Yellow Book is the only military document that has been made public to this day.
At first glance the document seems to reiterate many of the cases that were made public through the work of the Truth Commission in El Salvador in the early 1990s. However, upon closer inspection, important clues begin to emerge about the nature of military surveillance of Salvadoran citizens and how disappearances and deaths were covered up. For example, in the document, names are encoded with letters and the codes matched with photographs that strip citizens of the very identities that stitched them into Salvadoran society. In the first few pages the book lays out a system for referencing “terrorist delinquents” so that names would not be spoken by radio or telephone. In effect, this code facilitated the process of making detainees disappear without a trace. The pictures themselves provide further clues about state surveillance; some photographs look as though they were part of the state ID card photographs and yet other photographs show individuals in much more haggard condition. Were these photographs taken during a given moment of detainment? Yet other photographs look as though they were taken during moments shared between friends or families. Were these photographs stolen from people’s homes during raids? There are other photographs that seem to have been taken without the person knowing that they were being photographed. These types of photographs suggest the work of a secret police that was trailing marked individuals. Additionally, the fact that the book was a photo-album to be photocopied means that it was likely a work in progress. As photographs were obtained they were added and information could shift and change without displacing the logic of the entire text.
The code also reveals the nature of state surveillance of Salvadoran citizens in the 1980s. The document identifies Salvadorans as leaders of militant groups, militants, and union organizers and specifies which particular group or political party the person is associated with. Salvadoran state authorities also recorded additional information about individuals such as pseudonyms and noted any trips abroad to Nicaragua, Cuba, Russia or China. Dozens of individuals are marked as “collaborators,” which leads the viewer to wonder about the torture mechanisms that broke the will of militants. The fact that there were so many collaborators muddies the public memory of a clearly divided left and right. What was the nature of the collaboration? Does “collaboration” mean naming people during torture sessions or does it imply a much deeper involvement as in the Chilean cases of Luz Arce and Alejandra Merino? Does the title of “collaborator” mean that the individual survived their involvement with the Salvadoran Armed Forces? Other individuals are listed as “pardoned” and this category of individuals also leaves many questions.
On the cover page just above the title of the book, a penned note serves as a prologue: “That this may be used. Make photocopies of the photographs and print them in bulletins, so that their enemies will be known.” This is part of a secondary “code” at work in the document in which some photographs are starred in pen and other names are crossed out. The stars mark names that are well known today including El Salvador’s current President Salvador Sánchez Cerén.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/14/inside-el-salvadors-military-blacklist/
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