Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalArchaeologists discover Aztec ball court in heart of Mexico City
Wed Jun 7, 2017 | 10:11pm EDT
By David Alire Garcia | MEXICO CITY
The remains of a major Aztec temple and a ceremonial ball court have been discovered in downtown Mexico City, shedding new light on the sacred spaces of the metropolis that Spanish conquerors overran five centuries ago, archaeologists said on Wednesday.
The discoveries were made on a nondescript side street just behind the city's colonial-era Roman Catholic cathedral off the main Zocalo plaza on the grounds of a 1950s-era hotel.
The underground excavations reveal a section of what was the foundation of a massive, circular-shaped temple dedicated to the Aztec wind god Ehecatl and a smaller part of a ritual ball court, confirming accounts of the first Spanish chroniclers to visit the Aztec imperial capital, Tenochtitlan.
"Due to finds like these, we can show actual locations, the positioning and dimensions of each one of the structures first described in the chronicles," said Diego Prieto, head of Mexico's main anthropology and history institute.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-archaeology-aztec-idUSKBN18Z05J?rpc=401&
MEXICO PROTECTS ANCIENT TEMPLE WHILE HOTEL IS BUILT ABOVE
Jun 7, 6:33 PM EDT
AP Photo
A temple to the Aztec wind god Ehecatl lays unearthed
within the property of a hotel in Mexico City, Wednesday,
June 7, 2017. Plans to expand the hotel have been put
on hold after archaeologists unearthed a 1400's temple
to the Aztec wind god Ehecatl and a ceremonial ball
court under the property. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Plans to expand a hotel in Mexico City are on hold after archaeologists unearthed a 1400s-era temple to the Aztec wind god Ehecatl and a ceremonial ball court under the property.
The find could spark nightmares for any squeamish hotel guests: The carefully severed neck bones of 32 people were found in a ceremonial pit next to the ball court.
Archaeologist Eduardo Matos announced the find Wednesday from excavations conducted in 2009-2016.
The hotel owns the property and will be allowed to build above the ruins, using pilings carefully placed so the Aztec structures aren't disturbed. The round temple and the stair-like ball court will remain open below to the public.
Players were frequently sacrificed at the end of the ceremonial ball game.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_MEXICO_ARCHAEOLOGY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-06-07-18-33-55
(Short article, no more at link.)
ARGENTINA DICTATORSHIP CHILDREN SORRY FOR FATHERS' CRIMES
Source: Associated Press
Jun 7, 5:37 PM EDT
BY ALMUDENA CALATRAVA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Seven women walked timidly through the streets of Argentina's capital holding a banner that identified them as the children of human rights criminals.
"Disobedient Stories," read the banner, "Sons and Daughters of Genocide In Favor of Memory, Truth and Justice."
The women who had once discussed their fathers' role in the nation's past horrors only privately recently started a group called "Disobedient Stories" to publicly recount tales of growing up with military men who they say committed abuses during Argentina's so-called "dirty war" against leftist dissidents.
They include Laura Delgadillo, whose father, Jorge Luis Delgadillo, died without being convicted. Delgadillo accuses her dad of being part of the state-sponsored repression when he worked for the intelligence service of Buenos Aires province.
Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_ARGENTINA_DICTATORSHIP_CHILDREN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-06-07-17-37-53
Thirty-six years later, the trial of the El Mozote massacres could change El Salvador's history
LUCIANA TÉLLEZ CHÁVEZ 7 June 2017
The reopening of El Mozote case brings a historic opportunity for truth and justice; the State and the public prosecution must rise to the challenge. Español
Memorial of massacre site at El Mozote, Morazan, El Salvador. Public Domain.
In September 2016, after 35 years of relentless struggle, human rights defenders in El Salvador seized a new hope for truth and justice with the reopening of the El Mozote case by the Second Court of San Francisco de Gotera. The judicial investigation had been closed in 1993, shortly after the General Amnesty Law was approved by the national parliament. It was not until last year, in July 2016, that the Constitutional Court in El Salvador declared the General Amnesty Law unconstitutional, opening the door for pursuing justice for war crimes committed in the country. El Mozote is the first case to be reopened involving crimes against humanity committed during the Salvadoran civil war (1979 - 1992).
The civil war in El Salvador pitted the military government against a leftist insurgency for more than 12 years, and resulted in an estimated 75,000 dead and 8,000 disappeared. The brutal massacre in El Mozote is widely considered the worst atrocity committed during the war. On 10, 11 and 12 December 1981, the Salvadorian Army attacked a number of villages in the northeast of the country. Soldiers detained all the inhabitants, tortured and raped hundreds, and murdered between 900 and 1,200 civilians, mostly women and children. The case is emblematic of the brutal attacks the civilian population faced at the hands of the military during the war.
Shorty after the General Amnesty Law was declared unconstitutional in July 2016, human rights defenders, survivors and victims' family members filed a request to reopen the case. Eighteen high-ranking military officials (three of them deceased) were charged, including former minister of defense, General Jose Guillermo Garcia, former joint Chief of Staff of the armed forces, Rafael Flores Lima, and former commander of the 3rd infantry brigade, Colonel Jaime Flores Grijalva. They are accused of crimes ranging from murder, aggravated rape, forced disappearances, acts of terrorism, robbery and aggravated damage under the 1973 Criminal Code, which was in force at the time.
“We have the strong advantage that, over the past 36 years, human rights defenders and organisations have undertaken arduous work to gather scientific evidence and document what happened over those three days.” said Alejandro Lening Díaz Gómez, member of human rights organisation Tutela Legal “Dra. María Julia Hernández”, complainant at the trial. The investigations and perseverance of victims and organisations such as Tutela Legal del Arzobispado and Tutela Legal “Dra. María Julia Hernández” resulted in national and international organisations like the Truth Commission in El Salvador, the international experts at the Argentine Forensics Team (EAAF) and the InterAmerican Commission and Court of Human Rights issuing reports and rulings on the evidence of the responsibility of the State in this and other indiscriminate attacks against civilians. “It has been demonstrated that the military carried out a planned, massive, systematic operation. The scale of the offensive was such that it wouldn't have been possible without the involvement of the different army corps. That is why the highest ranking officials are accused of these crimes against humanity”, explains Díaz Gómez.
More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/luciana-t-llez-ch-vez/thirty-six-years-later-trial-of-el-mozote-massacres-could-ch
Mexico state election heads to court amid alleged intimidation and vote-buying Morena party refuses
Mexico state election heads to court amid alleged intimidation and vote-buying
Morena party refuses to accept initial results after Alfredo del Mazo Maza, cousin of president Enrique Peña Nieto, declared winner
Nina Lakhani in Mexico City
Monday 5 June 2017 13.34 EDT
A hotly contested state election in Mexico is heading to court after the president’s cousin was declared the victor amid widespread allegations of voter intimidation, vote buying and misuse of public resources.
Alfredo del Mazo Maza, the candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), was declared the winner after early results in the state of Mexico gave him a two-point lead over Delfina Gómez of the leftwing National Regeneration party (Morena).
But with the vote so close, Morena – led by the populist firebrand Andres Manuel López Obrador – is refusing to accept the initial results. The full count will not be completed before 7 June, after which Morena will almost certainly seek that the election be annulled.
The PRI has governed the state (known as Edomex) for almost 90 years, and the vote was seen as a key indicator for next year’s presidential election.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/05/mexico-state-election-court-alfredo-del-mazo-maza-delfina-gomez
Solar Tents Improve Nutrition in Highlands Villages in Bolivia
By Franz Chávez
PHUYUWASI, Bolivia, Jun 7 2017 (IPS) - In this remote highlands valley community in central Bolivia, a group of Quechua indigenous women have learned how to combat the intense frosts and the shortage of water in solar tents, and to use what they grow to prepare nutritious new meals for their families.
In Phuyuwasi, in the central department of Cochabamba, in a landscape dominated by vegetation resistant to low temperatures, Maribel Vallejos told IPS how the project involving family gardens in greenhouses has changed her life and those of other women in the community.
“I used to buy vegetables for 100 Bolivian pesos (about 12 dollars), but now I save that money,” said Vallejos, the only participant in the project who speaks Spanish as well as their mother tongue, Quechua.
This village ino Pocona, one of the 46 municipalities of the department of Cochabamba, is benefiting from a programme run by the Ministry of Rural and Land Development, with the support of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and other U.N. agencies.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/06/solar-tents-improve-nutrition-in-highlands-villages-in-bolivia/
Can ocean science bring Cuba and the United States together?
June 6, 2017 by Jorge Alberto Angulo-Valdes, The Conversation
U.S. Navy diver off the coast of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Credit: MC2 Kori Melvin, U.S. Navy/Wikipedia
Cuba is the ecological crown jewel of the Caribbean. It harbors thousands of the region's endemic species and about half of its coastal ecosystems. It is rare to find comparable ecosystems or such rich biodiversity anywhere in the Caribbean, and perhaps in the Western Hemisphere.
Cuba also is inextricably linked to its neighbor countries, especially the United States. These two nations have been adversaries for over 60 years, but their common backyard is an ocean filled with limited shared resources.
Since December 2014, when then-President Barack Obama ordered the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba, both governments have taken steps to improve cooperation. They include agreements to work together to protect some of the Caribbean's most important coral reefs and marine sanctuaries. Now, however, the Trump administration reportedly is planning to slow or halt at least some U.S. engagement with Cuba.
I am a Cuban marine biologist and have had the opportunity to be part of U.S. academia and facilitate scientific partnerships between the two countries. Scientists on both sides are very interested in working together, and I believe that we owe it to nature and people on both sides to keep this door open.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-ocean-science-cuba-states.html#jCp
Operation Car Wash: Is this the biggest corruption scandal in history?
What began as an investigation into money laundering quickly turned into something much greater, uncovering a vast and intricate web of political and corporate racketeering. By Jonathan Watts
On 14 January 2015, police agent Newton Ishii was waiting in Rio de Janeiro’s Galeão airport to meet the midnight flight from London. His mission was simple. A former executive of Brazil’s national oil company, Petrobras, was on the plane. Ishii was to arrest him as soon as he set foot in Brazil and take him for questioning by detectives.
No big deal, the veteran cop thought as he ticked off the hours in the shabby Terminal One lounge. This was just one of many anti-bribery operations he had worked on. Usually they made a few headlines, then faded away, leaving the perpetrators to carry on as if nothing had happened. There was a popular expression for this: acabou em pizza (to end up with pizza), which suggested that there was no political row that could not be settled over a meal and a few beers.
When the plane finally landed, Ishii’s target was easy to identify among the passengers in the arrivals hall. Nestor Cerveró has a strikingly asymmetrical face, with his left eye set lower than the right. “He couldn’t believe it. He said I had made a mistake,” Ishii recalled later. “I told him I was just doing my job and that he could take up his complaints with the judge.”
Cerveró called his brother and a lawyer. He expected to be free before morning. Ishii, too, had few illusions that his suspect would be locked up for long. Decades on the force had taught him how quickly the rich and powerful could wriggle off the hook. There was little reason to think this case would be any different.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/01/brazil-operation-car-wash-is-this-the-biggest-corruption-scandal-in-history
Chained Together in Hell: Bush and Noriega
JUNE 2, 2017
by JAMES MCENTEER
Manuel Noriega, former president of Panama, died in prison this week at 83 after decades in custody. What exactly was his crime? He was a monster who turned on his enabler: George Herbert Walker Bush. Though Bush, 92, is not yet technically dead, he and Noriega will soon be chained together in Hell for all eternity.
George H.W. Bush was born not merely into wealth and privilege but into the elite financial fraternity that built the modern American national security state. His father, Prescott, along with Allen and John Foster Dulles, invested heavily in Nazi Germany, before and after the rise of Hitler. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. government seized the Union Banking Corporation for harboring millions in Nazi money. Prescott Bush was one of the bank’s six directors. Other companies Prescott was involved with also had their assets seized by the government.
But Prescott skated away, later becoming a U.S. Senator from Connecticut and a frequent golfing partner of President Eisenhower. The Dulles brothers suffered no adverse consequences from their profitable Nazi collusion either. John Foster, who served on the board of I.G. Farben, the builder of Auschwitz, became Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. Allen, who transacted billions of dollars of business with Nazi Germany in Switzerland, later headed up the CIA.
Like his father before him and his son after him, George Herbert Walker Bush went from prep school into Skull and Bones at Yale, ground zero for CIA recruitment. Armed with a sense of entitlement, immunity, and family money, Bush started Zapata Petroleum, later Zapata Offshore, which drilled wells off Cuba and Kuwait. Zapata’s lack of profitability led some Bush chroniclers to speculate that Zapata may have operated as an “intelligence front.” J. Edgar Hoover’s 1963 memo referring to “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency” seems to confirm his early intelligence role, though Bush and the CIA denied it.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/02/chained-together-in-hell-bush-and-noriega/
Colombia police generals car stolen, first by transvestites at brothel, then by paramilitaries
written by Adriaan Alsema June 4, 2017
The alleged identity of the robbers of a Colombian police general’s car went from two transvestites at a gay brothel to “armed men” within hours.
Caracol Radio reported Friday that the car of the National Police’s Human Resources director, General Jose Vicente Segura, was stolen by two transvestites at a brothel “without his bodyguards noticing.”
For obvious reasons the news went viral; transvestites don’t rob police generals’ cars at brothels on a daily basis in Colombia, especially not when the bodyguards of the Human Resources director are supposedly keeping an eye on his car.
To make the news even more embarrassing for National Police director Jorge Hernando Nieto, the general in charge of police officers’ security is the same general who was implicated in an a police-run prostitution ring for which Nieto’s predecessor is currently investigated.
To make the news even more embarrassing for National Police director Jorge Hernando Nieto, the general in charge of police officers’ security is the same general who was implicated in an a police-run prostitution ring for which Nieto’s predecessor is currently investigated.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombia-police-generals-car-stolen-first-transvestites-gay-brothel-paramilitaries/
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