Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's Journal25 captivating pictures of Cuba
25 captivating pictures of Cuba
See inside this Caribbean island of vibrant colors, storied buildings, and awe-inspiring wildlife.
1 MINUTE READ
BY KYLEE ZEMPEL
Just 90 miles off the tip of the Florida Keys, Cuba’s 42,426 square miles of land is home to more than 11 million people and an array of wildlife including tropical birds, frogs, and crocodiles. The largest of the Caribbean islands, this lively country boasts vibrant colors, whimsical buildings overflowing with character, and congenial locals. Since Columbus’s Spanish claim in 1492, Cuba has weathered centuries of history written into crumbling walls, generations of family recipes whispered from parent to child, and age-old cultural traditions still practiced to this day.
A single snapshot of Cuba could never encapsulate the diversity of activity and landscape the picturesque island offers. Old American automobiles in the brightest shades of every color zip up and down El Malecón through Havana, splashing water from the salty ocean waves that spill onto the roadway. In Viñales, farmers mount their horses to survey their tranquil tobacco fields. A couple of youngsters in matching uniforms amble home from school over Trinidad's cobblestone streets. A group of senior citizens gathers around a table at their community center for a spirited round of their favorite game, dominoes. [Reserve your spot on a National Geographic expedition to Cuba.]
While perhaps best known for its lively music, superior cigars, and beloved dances like the mambo and rumba, Cuba also showcases its vivacity in the most unexpected places. From hiking through agriculturally cultivated mountainsides and rural tobacco fields, to snorkeling through predatory habitats of crocodiles and sharks, the National Geographic Your Shot community has ventured into every corner of Cuba to capture a remarkable range of unique Caribbean sights.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/your-shot-travel-pictures/photos-of-cuba-caribbean-latin-america/
Opinion: Guatemala Must Not Grant Amnesty To War Criminals
February 11, 20199:16 PM ET
A woman spreads incense over the remains of 172 unidentified people who were discovered buried at what was once a Guatemalan military camp during the civil war in San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, a day before their formal burial at the same site where they were unearthed. A genetic bank of the unidentified is saving DNA samples from the remains for those searching for relatives.
Rodrigo Abd/AP
Guatemala's ongoing political crisis is having a devastating impact on its people, fueling unrest in the streets and increasingly driving asylum-seekers to migrate to the U.S.-Mexico border. Now, with the country's Congress poised to pass a bill that would free war criminals, there's no clearer sign that rule of law in Guatemala is undergoing a slow, ugly collapse that could spur even more migration to the United States.
The proposed legislation, which Guatemala's Congress is expected to debate imminently, would free more than 30 military officials convicted of crimes against humanity and more than a dozen others awaiting trial on such charges. It would also prohibit all future investigations into other cases of grave human rights crimes committed during the country's brutal 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.
Should this amnesty bill pass, not only would it undo decades of work to provide justice to victims of wartime atrocities, it would represent an unequivocal return to the reign of impunity long sought by the powerful, military-backed networks of corruption that the United States has invested significant resources into dismantling.
Guatemala's civil war and resulting genocide was fueled by U.S. Cold War support for regimes that, no matter how brutal against their own populations, were seen as protecting U.S. interests. United Nations investigators found that 200,000 people died, the vast majority at the hands of the Guatemalan army. Four out of every five victims were indigenous. Four hundred indigenous villages were wiped off the face of the earth.
More:
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693492939/opinion-guatemala-must-not-grant-amnesty-to-war-criminals?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=opinion
Freddy Mamani's New Andean Architecture adds colour to Bolivian city
Dan Howarth | 7 February 2019
Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani is aiming to imbue culture, colour and personality into the "monochrome" city of El Alto, through buildings based on ancient local architecture and craft.
The architect has strived to slowly transform El Alto with his colourful architecture, as seen in these photographs – currently on display at Fondation Cartier in Paris.
"In the last 18 years, my practice has been trying to introduce a colour to El Alto," said Mamani, speaking through a translator at The Met's A Year of Architecture in a Day symposium last month. "I have created what I call the New Andean Architecture in El Alto."
Located outside of the capital La Paz, about 13,000 feet (4,000 metres) above sea level, El Alto is one of the youngest cities in Bolivia but already its second most populous.
More:
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/02/07/freddy-mamani-new-andean-architecture-bolivia/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dezeen+%28Dezeenfeed%29
Please do yourself a favor and go to Google images and do a search for Freddy Mamani and Bolivia. He has been doing this for years, and after you've seen even one image you really look forward to all the others! What an architect! Totally original.
I couldn't wait for you to look up the buildings. I went and got the URL for Mamani buildings in Bolivia so you could go there faster:
http://tinyurl.com/y3kbfczz
Freddy Mamani!
Venezuela: Democratic Uprising or US Coup?
Venezuela: Democratic Uprising or US Coup?
by Reese Erlich Posted on February 11, 2019
Tens of thousands of angry people march in the streets to protest lack of democracy. Women bang on pots to raise alarm over the economic crisis brought on by a socialist president. The United States denounces the leftist government and promises to help bring democracy to the country.
Venezuela in 2019? No, it was Chile in 1973.
Chileans had elected a Marxist president, Salvador Allende, and the U.S. government was seeking to oust him. Allende’s platform rejected the anti-communist foreign policy of the United States and threatened the profits of US corporations. So, in a time-honored tactic of course, the Nixon Administration claimed Allende was an autocrat allied with the U.S.S.R.
With National Security Council head Henry Kissinger as point man, the United States squeezed Chile economically, sponsored trucker strikes, fomented opposition demonstrations, and ultimately supported the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. The people of Chile would suffer under a brutal dictatorship for the next sixteen years.
Guaidó, until last month, was a virtual unknown. He had never run for national office, and was head of the National Assembly only as part of a rotation system among the opposition parties.
Perhaps the Trump Administration is hoping history will repeat itself, but so far Venezuelans aren’t going for it. Elected President Nicolas Maduro, while politically weakened by recent US maneuvering, still retains a measure of popular support. Unlike the Chilean army, much of the Venezuelan military remains loyal to the government.
. . .
While the US has sanctioned PDVSA, it has also granted waivers allowing Chevron Corporation and two US oil service providers, Halliburton and Schlumberger, to continue operating and making profits in Venezuela. Hmmmm. The US promotion of democracy in Latin America seems, once again, to be attached to corporate interests.
More:
https://original.antiwar.com/reese_erlich/2019/02/10/venezuela-democratic-uprising-or-us-coup/
Say NO to war in Venezuela
Monday, 11 February 2019, 12:54 pm
Press Release: Auckland Peace Action
11 February 2019
Auckland Peace Action is co-organising a New Zealand people’s response to the escalating situation in Venezuela with a Protest for Peace at the US Consulate in Auckland on Tuesday, 12 February from 1pm-3pm.
“We are deeply concerned about any suggestion of US military intervention in Venezuela, and the real possibility of a civil war. US involvement in any shape is going to be bad for the people of Venezuela.”
“Latin Americans know all too well that US involvement is a recipe for a human rights disaster. We have only to learn from history. Since the signing of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the US has dominated and interfered in Central and South American politics for the benefit of US corporations, with deadly results for ordinary people.”
“Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of oil in the world. This is why the US takes such an active interest in Venezuelan politics. It has no interest in the well-being of the people of Venezuela. Like the people of Iraq who continue to suffer from the 2003 illegal US invasion and occupation, the people of Venezuela will suffer tremendous, almost unthinkable hardship from a full scale US war. By the same token, US covert missions by the CIA and Special Forces to overthrow the Venezuelan government are likely to use tried and tested methods including torture and extrajudicial killings, and supplying weapons to paramilitary groups, all of which will have devastating effects for generations. ”
More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1902/S00049/say-no-to-war-in-venezuela.htm
(Do you recall that we've been told by trolls for years and years after Chavez was elected that the US has never been interested in Venezuela's oil because it's very low quality? I certainly do. Didn't believe it then, either.)
Media row over image of barricaded bridge blocking aid from Venezuela
STEVE SWEENEY
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2019
Media row over image of barricaded bridge blocking aid from Venezuela
INTERNATIONAL media organisations have been accused of regurgitating propaganda for the US-led imperialist coup attempt in Venezuela as the US tries to take control of the country’s vast oil reserves.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed last week that Venezuela had blocked humanitarian aid by barricading a bridge linking the country to neighbouring Colombia.
. . .
The photograph was used by mainstream media organisations, including the BBC, CNN and the Independent, as evidence of President Nicolas Maduro’s refusal to “reopen” the bridge to allow aid to reach starving Venezuelans.
However, the Tienditas International Bridge which was completed in 2016, has never in fact been opened, partly due to a serious deterioration in relations between Venezuela and Colombia in 2015.
More:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/media-row-over-image-barricaded-bridge-blocking-aid-venezuela
(Saw this bridge earlier today, could see immediately it's unfinished. Noticed it immediately, and hadn't seen this article, yet. Amazing.)
Ecuadorean Gov't Probes Tortoise Trafficking From Galapagos
Ecuadorean Gov't Probes Tortoise Trafficking From Galapagos
Rescued and repatriated giant tortoises from the Galapagos Islands in quarantine at the Galapagos Airforce Base. Feb. 4, 2019 | Photo: @Ambiente_Ec
Published 5 February 2019
The 26 endangered tortoises from the Galapagos National Park were returned last June after being located in Peru. An investigation of trafficking rare fauna is still open.
Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment released a statement Monday updating the condition of the 26 Galapagos Island tortoises repatriated from Peru last June after they had been sold and trafficked into the neighboring country.
The Minister of Environment Marcelo Mata Guerrero visited the quarantine center on the Galapagos Islands National Park. Park director Jorge Carrion told Guerrero during the minister’s visit that of the 26 tortoises under observation, 18 pertain to the Isabela Island species and eight from San Cristobal.
The reptiles were seized during a road stop in April 2017 in Peru. At that time 29 of the endangered animals were found wrapped up in a cardboard box. Two had died in transit and one more died of natural causes later while in Peruvian custody.
. . .
The Galapagos Park has eleven known species of giant tortoises that live throughout the various islands of the archipelago located about 1,000km off of Ecuador’s coast.
More:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ecuadorean-Govt-Probes-Tortoise-Trafficking-From-Galapagos-20190205-0010.html
Fighting Machismo in Latin America: The Formula to Combat Femicides
By Mariela Jara
"Beware: machismo kills", reads a sign in one of the demonstrations against femicides and all kinds of violence against women, a number of which were held in Lima and other Latin American cities in 2018. But growing public outrage did nothing to prevent 11 murders of women in Peru in January alone because of their gender. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS
LIMA, Feb 4 2019 (IPS) - Peru began the year with 11 femicides in January, despite progress made in laws and statutes and mass demonstrations against gender-based violence. This situation is also seen in other Latin American countries, raising the need to delve deeper into the causes of the phenomenon.
Gladys Acosta, one of the 23 members of the Committee of Experts that monitors compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), expressed concern about the mediatisation of violence against women and the role this plays in fomenting it.
“The news is broadcast as if it were a show, without explaining things. Violent images are shown and you would think that this could curb the phenomenon by exposing such a destructive attitude, but this is not the case. That makes me think that many people see the aggressor as a patriarchal hero,” the Peruvian lawyer said in an interview with IPS.
In certain mentalities, she argued, “that translates as: how brave he is, I’d like to do that, but I can’t.”
“There is a very strong deterioration of values, and disrespect for the integrity of women, for their bodies, for who we are,” said Acosta, who has been an activist for years in the defence of women’s rights in the region, and who now mainly lives in New York.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/02/fighting-machismo-latin-america-formula-combat-femicides/
Ricardo Hausmann Is Taking Milton Friedman's Lessons to Venezuela
Published on
Friday, February 08, 2019
by Common Dreams
Will the legacy of putting neoliberal academic theories over the people win again?
by Tanya Rawal-Jindia
For a few years now, there has been a tendency to compare Donald Trump to Richard Nixon, but the more urgent comparison in the face of the Venezuelan crisis is one between two well-pedigreed economists: Milton Friedman and Ricardo Hausmann.
Under Nixon’s reign, Milton Friedman was the “intellectual” who started to gain excessive power. Friedman was a trained economist, earning a doctorate at Columbia University, with teaching and research stints at the Universities of Chicago and Stanford.
And under Trump, we have another trained economist: Ricardo Hausmann. He received his doctorate from Cornell University and is the director for the Center of International Development at Harvard University.
For years now, Ricardo Hausmann has been suggesting that the solution for Venezuela’s socialist “crisis” is a U.S. invasion or “intervention.”
What we are seeing in Venezuela is not a sudden rise in the people demanding new leadership by Juan Guiadó, a man they just heard of in late January 2019. Rather, this “crisis”—a word that reinforces the illusion of an abrupt disaster—is a careful and hyper-theorized plan that was concocted in the office of a Harvard University professor. A year ago, Hausmann posted on his own blog a solution that asks the National Assembly to impeach Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. His expert suggestion is that “the Assembly could constitutionally appoint a new government, which in turn could request military assistance from a coalition of the willing, including Latin American, North American, and European countries.”
Direct violations of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter aside, Hausmann openly compares his plan to the U.S. “liberating” Panama in 1989. Do Americans really want to be asked for reparations in 20 years for Venezuela? Currently, the United States is facing such demands for Panamanians with support from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Thousands of lives were lost in Panama, countless lives ruined. And Hausmann is asking the United States to repeat this devastation.
Last year was not the first time Hausmann openly spoke of destabilizing Venezuela. In 2014, after Hausmann advocated for Venezuela to default on its loans, the economist was called out by President Maduro for attempting to destabilize Venezuela. It was at this time that Hausmann was given the nickname “academic hitman” by Maduro, who planned to bring legal action against the Harvard professor for speaking on behalf of the agencies that were supporting his well-funded and pro-International Monetary Fund (IMF) research.
Hausmann has been referred to as the informal mentor to Juan Guiadó. Indirect might be a better word to describe the mentorship, as there is a middleman between Hausmann and Guiadó: Leopoldo López, the leader of Popular Will. It is through Hausmann’s mentorship of López (who brought Guiadó under his wing and “plotted” his rise to lead the coup) that Hausmann’s plans are now coming to action. And, as with Milton Friedman in his time, the relationship between López and Hausmann gives us further insight into the use of academic capital to assert its will and, in turn, gain power.
In 2014, when Maduro arrested López for inciting violence in Caracas, Hausmann got Harvard University to rally behind the anti-socialist agitator and give him an honorary degree from the prestigious institution.
It is this ongoing attempt to bring Venezuela to its knees through the strategic use of highbrow higher education and the formal education of economists that conjures up memories of Friedman’s role with Chile. Friedman was able to successfully implement a neoliberal system in Chile by way of Chilean economist Sergio de Castro—whom Friedman trained in a way that Hausmann’s training of López echoes.
More:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/02/08/ricardo-hausmann-taking-milton-friedmans-lessons-venezuela
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Huge rallies in Brazil demand freedom for Lula
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019
Congresswomen and men hold Free Lula placards at the opening session of Brazil's parliament last week
A HUGE demonstration demanding freedom for jailed former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was called by the Workers Party (PT) in Recife today.
The demo in the capital of his home state Pernambuco came after rallies yesterday in Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre and Cuiaba.
It follows the imposition of another jail sentence on Lula by Judge Gabriela Hardt on Wednesday, when she gave him 12 years and 11 months behind bars on a charge of granting Petrobras contracts to two construction companies that did up a farmhouse for him.
Lula says the charge is politically motivated, there is no evidence to back it up and the farmhouse in question never belonged to him.
Lula is already serving a 12-year sentence for a corruption conviction condemned internationally as baseless and which rests solely on the testimony of a single convict who received a reduced sentence for incriminating the ex-president.
More:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/huge-rallies-brazil-demand-freedom-lula
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