Peru's petrified forest: The struggle to study and preserve one of the world's most remarkable fossi

Peru's petrified forest: The struggle to study and preserve one of the world's most remarkable fossil sites

By Terri Cook


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Located approximately 2,800 meters high on a plateau in the Andes, Peru’s petrified forest is exposed around the rim
of a caldera-like basin. To the east and south of the basin, the Rio Chancay has sliced a deep canyon.
Credit: Jean Schnell.[/font]

Tucked high in the Andes Mountains of northern Peru is a remarkable fossil locality: a 39-million-year-old petrified forest preserved in nearly pristine condition. With its existence unknown to scientists until the early 1990s — and its significance unbeknownst to villagers — this ancient forest hosts the remains of more than 40 types of trees, some still rooted, that flourished in a lowland tropical forest until they were suddenly buried by a volcanic eruption and a series of roiling torrents of mud and debris known as lahars.

These fossils provide an unusually detailed record of neotropical vegetation and climate during the Eocene, a period in Earth’s history when the highest temperatures were about 10 degrees Celsius warmer than today. Such preservation is rare in the New World tropics, as is the close association, anywhere in the rock record, of petrified wood with fossilized leaves.

Since its discovery, scientists and other concerned citizens from Peru to Colorado have been working to study and preserve the spectacular site, now known as El Bosque Petrificado Piedra Chamana, and its unusual and diverse fossils.

Discovering the Flower of the Swamp

Located at approximately 2,800 meters elevation on the Pacific slope of the rugged Andes Mountains, Peru’s petrified forest is exposed around the rim of a basin in which the remote village of Sexi (pronounced like “sexy”; population 450) is nestled amid the grandeur of the Cordillera Occidental of the Andes. The village’s name stems from the native Quechua word “Secci,” meaning “flower of the swamp” — possibly a figurative tribute to the village’s beautiful setting or a reference to a certain plant found in wet areas. To the east and south of the basin, the Rio Chancay has sliced a gorge as deep as the Grand Canyon not far from peaks towering more than 4,000 meters tall.

More:
http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/perus-petrified-forest-struggle-study-and-preserve-one-worlds-most-remarkable-fossil-sites#overlay-context=

Cuba Develops Four Cancer Vaccines, Ignored by the Media

Cuba Develops Four Cancer Vaccines, Ignored by the Media

By Tony Seed

Global Research, July 07, 2014

The fact that Cuba has already developed four cancer vaccines undoubtedly is big news for humanity if you bear in mind that according to the World Health Organization nearly 8 million people die from that disease every year. However, the monopoly media have completely ignored this reality.


In 2012, Cuba patented the first therapeutic vaccine in the world against advanced lung cancer, called CIMAVAX-EGF. In January 2013, the island announced the second cancer vaccine, known as Racotumomab.
Clinical tests, carried out in 86 nations, revealed that though these vaccines do not cure the disease, they do reduce the tumors thus improving the quality and expectancy of life of the patients.

Vaccines developed by Cuba’s Molecular Immunology Centre

The Havana-based Molecular Immunology Center is the creator of these vaccines. The center had already developed the Meningitis-B Vaccine in 1985, one of its kind in the world. Later there came other vaccines, such as the Hepatitis-B and the Dengue. Experts at the entity have been researching for years on a HIV-Aids vaccine as well.

The Cuban agenda against cancer is also joined by Labiofam pharmaceutical enterprise, which develops homeopathic medications against the disease, such as VIDATOX, made from the venom of blue scorpion, native of Cuba.

At present, Cuba exports these products to 26 countries and participates in joint ventures in China, Canada and Spain. This breaks the extended media silence about the advancements of Cuba and other South countries in the field, and the largely voiced stereotype that advanced pharmaceutics is only developed in the developed countries.

More:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/cuba-develops-four-cancer-vaccines-ignored-by-the-media/5390303

Aftermath of a Venezuela-Style Lynching

Aftermath of a Venezuela-Style Lynching
By Arlene Eisen, July 3rd 2014

Almost three months have passed since an enraged right-wing mob brutally beat law student William Muñoz (30), then doused him with gasoline. It was a scene horrifically reminiscent of lynchings that have murdered thousands of Black people in the U.S. But on April 3, 2014, on the campus of the prestigious 300-year old Central University of Venezuela (UCV), a good Samaritan or an ambulance driver rescued Muñoz before the mob could incinerate him. That is where the record of this Venezuelan saga begins to depart from the shameful history of genocidal murders in the U.S.

Videotapes provide only a partial and clouded view of the event. On a Thursday afternoon, a group of some 200 anti-government demonstrators had attempted to march through the UCV campus to the Attorney General’s office. Police intercepted them at the gates of the university and tear gas forced them to retreat back into the campus. The percentage of the hundred-odd masked demonstrators who were actually students is one of the many issues of contention. Enraged and frustrated by their encounter with the police, some 60 of them surrounded and severely beat William Muñoz and doused him with gasoline. They claimed he was a Chavista and perhaps a government “spy”. Muñoz lost consciousness, sustained two fractured rips, a broken nose, a skull fracture, concussion and numerous contusions. They also beat social work student, Wenderly Conde, who had attempted to aid Muñoz. It is unclear whether Muñoz was rescued by a good Samaritan or the arrival of an ambulance, which was also doused in gasoline.

Within days of the attack, President Maduro labeled it “the worst lynching we have seen,” publically embraced a battered Muñoz and vowed to put an end to such terrorism. For a couple of weeks, a steady stream of videos, written accounts and commentaries from Chavista and anti-government viewpoints competed, each with their version of “the truth”. Who is William Muñoz – a Chavista “spy” out to disrupt an anti-government march or a law student at the UCV who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was racism involved? What triggered the violence? What leaders were responsible? Who will be held accountable for the crime?

On June 2, 2014, Muñoz appeared before the first session of an investigatory hearing of the Permanent Commission on Interior Policy of the National Assembly. On June 12, Cecilia Garcia Arocha, the right wing rector of UCV, was forced to testify before the same Commission. Modesto Ruiz, Deputy from the state of Miranda and Afrodescendant author of the Bolivarian Law against Racial Discrimination, heads the Commission. He has vowed to end impunity for terrorists. He implied that the ex-director of UCV Security and the Rector Arocha had responsibility for the attack.

More:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10771

Cuba-United States – Something Is Moving

Cuba-United States – Something Is Moving
By Ignacio Ramonet

In this column, Ignacio Ramonet, director of Le Monde Diplomatique in Spanish, analyses U.S.-Cuba relations.

PARIS, Jul 7 2014 (IPS) - In ‘Hard Choices’, her new book about her experiences as Secretary of State during U.S. President Barack Obama’s first term (2008-2012), Hillary Clinton writes something of prime importance about Cuba – she says that late in her term in office she urged Obama to reconsider the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

“It wasn’t achieving its goals, and it was holding back our broader agenda across Latin America.”

For the first time a U.S. presidential hopeful has publicly stated that the blockade imposed by Washington on the Caribbean island – for over fifty years! – is “not achieving its goals”.

In other words, the embargo has not subdued this small country in spite of the amount of unjust suffering it has caused for its population.

The essence of Hillary Clinton’s declaration is two-fold: first, it breaks the taboo on saying out loud what everyone in Washington has known for some time: that the blockade is useless.

And second, and more importantly, her statement comes at the moment when her campaign is being launched for the Democratic Party nomination to the White House; that is, she is not afraid that her affirmation – in opposition to all of Washington policies towards Cuba over the past half century – could be a handicap in the electoral battle she faces up until the elections of November 8, 2016.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/07/cuba-united-states-something-is-moving/

Aché Sue Paraguay’s Government over Historic Genocide (US-supported throughout, of course.)

Aché Sue Paraguay’s Government over Historic Genocide
by Survival International / July 3rd, 2014

The survivors of a South American tribe which was decimated during the 1950s and 60s are taking Paraguay’s government to court over the genocide they suffered.

The case of the hunter-gatherer Aché tribe, who roamed the hilly forests of eastern Paraguay until being brutally forced out, became notorious in the 1970s.

As the agricultural expansion into eastern Paraguay gathered pace from the 1950s, the Aché found themselves forced to defend their land from an ever-increasing colonist population. These colonists soon started to mount raiding parties to kill the male Aché: women and children were usually captured and sold as slaves.

One of the most notorious hunters of the Aché was Manuel Jesús Pereira, a local landowner. He was an employee of Paraguay’s Native Affairs Department, and his farm was turned into an Aché “reservation”, to which captured Aché were transported. Beatings and rape were common. Countless others died of respiratory diseases. The Director of the Native Affairs Department was a frequent visitor, and also sold Aché slaves himself.

This situation was denounced by several anthropologists in Paraguay, many of whom were deported, or lost their jobs, as a result. It was brought to international attention by German anthropologist Mark Münzel. His 1973 report Genocide in Paraguay, published by the Danish organization IWGIA, documented many of the atrocities committed against the Aché.

Survival International publicized Münzel’s account, and sponsored an investigation by leading international lawyer Professor Richard Arens, who found the situation as bad as others had reported. Many other international organizations, academics and activists denounced the atrocities and called for Paraguay’s government to be held to account, which curbed some of the worst excesses.

More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/07/ache-sue-paraguays-government-over-historic-genocide/

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(This image of the man with feathers attached to his chest indicates he is observing a tradition among the Ache people in ritual admission they are close to dying. It is a tradition revealed in one of the mentioned papers added below, which are only readable at their links.)[/center]
Thumbnail definition of the US-supported fascist dictator Alfredo Stroessner who devastated the Ache citizens:

ALFREDO STROESSNER

President of Paraguay

Alfredo Stroessner seized power in Paraguay in 1954. European correspondents who visited Paraguay during his rule used the term the "poor man's Nazi regime" to describe the Paraguayan government. Of German descent, Stroessner was a great admirer of Nazism, and this showed not only in the refuge he offered to many Nazi war criminals, such as Joseph Mengele, but also in his ruthless methods.

From the Nazis the Paraguayan military learned the art of genocide. The native Ache Indians were in the way of progress, progress represented by American and European corporations who planned to exploit the nation's forests, mines, and grazing lands. The Indians were hunted down, parents killed, and children sold into slavery. Survivors were herded into reservations headed by American fundamentalist missionaries, some of whom had participated in the hunts.

Between 1962 and 1975, Paraguay received $146 million in U.S. aid. Paraguayan officials seemingly wanted more, however, for in 1971, high ranking members of the regime were implicated in the Marseilles drug ring, with Paraguay their transfer point for shipments from France to the US. In the 1980s, America finally condemned Paraguayan civil rights abuses and drug trafficking. Stroessner still looked as if he'd be dictator for life, but in 1988 one of his closest generals, Andres Rodriguez, a known drug dealer, took over after a coup. Rodriguez promised to restore democracy, and President Bush called the 1989 elections a democratic opening, but opponents declared them a massive fraud. Rodriguez's Colorado party won 74% of the vote. Stroessner took refuge in Brasilia, Brazil. He still lives there, in comfort.

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/jsa_0037-9174_1978_num_65_1_2165_t1_0263_0000_2

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Paraguay: indigenous Aché people charge genocide

Submitted by WW4 Report on Wed, 04/09/2014 - 20:41 Southern Cone

The Aché indigenous people of Paraguay on April 8 brought suit in a court in Argentina demanding reparations for "genocide" carried out under the late Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner. The Aché are being represented by Spanish jurist Baltasar Garzón, and chose to bring the case in Argentina under the doctrine of "universal jurisdiction" for crimes against humanity, asserting that justice is not possible in Paraguay's own courts. "We still feel enormous pain in our hearts and minds," said Aché leader Ceferino Kreigi Duarte in a press conference announcing the suit. "For this reason we today demand the Paraguayan state must answer for all this damage, not only to our community but to all the peoples of Paraguay who were victims of the dictatorship." Under Stroessner's 1954-1989 rule, the Aché people, who live in the riverine forests of Paraguay's east, saw their population diminish by 60% due to forced relocations, seizures of their traditional lands, and abduction of the young to serve as virtual slaves in domestic labor. Most of the population plunge took place during five years in the early 1970s. (AP via Excélsior, Mexico; EFE via Radio Caracol, Colombia, April 8)

http://ww4report.com/node/13135

More:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110828940d

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I'd like to mention it is a real mystery that Alberto Stroessner ruled over Paraguay personally for over 35 years, and we NEVER heard a peep about it, even though he harbored Dr. Mengele, and arch-villain monster who experimented in fiendish ways upon the prisoners of Auschwitz during World War II.

Deeply strange.

Unknown culture discovered in Peru

Unknown culture discovered in Peru
Article created on Friday, July 4, 2014

Archaeologists from the University of Wrocław working in the Atacama Desert in Peru have discovered more than 150 burials belonging to a previously unknown culture.

The find, dating to between the 4th-7th century CE, indicates that the northern part of the Atacama Desert had been inhabited by a farming community before the expansion of the Tiwanaku civilisation into the region.

Tambo project

The team from the Institute of Archaeology has carried out research in the area since 2008 as part of the Tambo Project along with researchers from Peru and Colombia.

The cemetery was discovered in the Tambo river delta, in the northern part of the Atacama Desert. “These graves had been dug in the sand without any stone structures, and for this reason they were so difficult to locate that they have not fallen prey to robbers” – said Prof. Józef Szykulski, leader of the research project.

Desert conditions also preserved the contents of the graves. “These burials are of a virtually unknown people, who inhabited the area before the expansion of the Tiwanaku civilisation. Items found in individual graves indicate that the people already had a clear social division” – said Prof. Szykulski.

More:
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/07/2014/unknown-culture-discovered-in-peru

Democrats' Florida push calls for US shift on Cuba

Source: Associated Press

Democrats' Florida push calls for US shift on Cuba
By MICHAEL J. MISHAK - Associated Press (AP)
Posted July 5, 2014 at 5:59 a.m., updated July 5, 2014 at 8:47 a.m.

MIAMI (AP) — When Charlie Crist went to Miami's Little Havana recently, the Democratic candidate for governor stood before a crowd and said what few politicians have in decades of scrounging for votes in the Cuban-American neighborhood: End the trade embargo against Cuba.

"If you really care about people on the island, we need to get rid of the embargo and let freedom reign," he said, shouting above a small band of protesters who responded with chants of "Shame on you!"

Crist's supporters cheered louder.

It was a scene inconceivable just a few years ago, when politicians were careful about what they said on the issue, for fear of alienating Cuban-American voters, many of whom fled Fidel Castro's Cuba in the 1960s.

But Democrats now sense an opening with newer Cuban arrivals and second-generation Cuban-Americans who favor resuming diplomatic relations with the communist island.



Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2014/jul/05/democrats-courting-floridas-changing-cuban/#axzz36c09LsS7

Dirty Wars and Football

Weekend Edition July 4-6, 2014
Dirty Wars and Football

The Ghost of General Videla

by BINOY KAMPMARK

I think the 1978 World Cup is one of the deep wounds of Argentine society.

– Norberto Liwski, former political prisoner, ESPN, Jun 9, 2014


As the elimination phase of the Football World Cup unfolds in Brazil, the political slant on such events is hard to resist. Sporting events on such a scale are political promotions and projections. Brazil’s own government was thrilled about obtaining the tournament, so much so that it ran up the bills, raised the cost of transportation, and imposed a series of near draconian measures for population control.

The return of the World Cup to South America has a wafting smell of regret and denial to it. When it was staged in 1978 in Argentina, the country was being bled and controlled by the military junta of General Jorge Rafael Videla. All in the name of order; all in the name of pride.

The local boys did not disappoint the general. The remarkable Mario Kempes, along with the mercurial midfielder Osvaldo Ardiles and such figures as Ricardo Villa, won the tournament. The football could at stages be beautiful; Kempes, a gangly creature of beauty who proved lethal with his golden boot; Ardiles controlling play with mesmerising potency.

For all their efforts, they could not help but be marionettes of the military junta, the playthings of a brutal regime which expended an exorbitant amount on hosting the tournament. The amount, by one estimate, was eighteen times more than that of West Germany in 1974. Nothing would be spared.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/04/the-ghost-of-general-videla/

While The World Watched

While The World Watched

At the same time Argentina hosted the 1978 World Cup, the nation's dictators were waging their "Dirty War" of repression, kidnappings and torture. As the tournament again draws near, ghastly memories are flooding back.

ESPN The Magazine & ESPNFC.com

by Wright Thompson
PHOTOGRAPH BY IMAGO/ACTIONPLUS

06/09/14



INSIDE A BUENOS AIRES restaurant named El Cuartito, sky-blue paint covers the walls, along with photographs and banners from important athletes and teams. In the center of the largest wall is a shrine to Diego Maradona, the star of the 1986 World Cup. That title is so important that Maradona, a recovering drug addict, still basks comfortably in a nation's warming love and goodwill. People celebrate the '86 title with vivid street art murals, and with photos and signed jerseys and posters in nearly every place of business, including El Cuartito. The restaurant celebrates civic heroes, which is why one particular omission is jarring. Argentina has won two World Cups, the famous one in 1986 and the other just eight years before, in 1978, when Argentina played host. That team is barely honored at all inside El Cuartito. In the back corner of the main room, as far away from the door as you can get, hang two team photos. That's it. Combined, they're smaller than the Michael Jordan poster on a nearby wall. This is not an isolated oversight. During a 30th anniversary celebration of the '78 team, an event that also served as a memorial for victims of the former military dictatorship's violence, the triple-decked Estadio Monumental looked barren, wide swaths of empty seats swallowing groups of people. Spinetta, one of the most famous Argentine rock stars, played for free after the ceremony and they still couldn't draw a crowd. Nineteen of the 22 players didn't show. It seems odd to an outsider, a soccer-mad nation trying to erase one of its greatest teams, but in Argentina, the scrubbing makes sense. The nation has the highest number of psychologists per capita in the world: This is a country drowning in toxic secrets, including the one about a World Cup it needs to forget.
__________________

THE GUARDS SWITCHED the radio to the 1978 World Cup final, tinny speakers blasting full volume: Argentina vs. Netherlands. Political prisoners twisted and fidgeted in the shadows. Norberto Liwski, one of them, struggled to get comfortable. The cells measured 6 feet by 5 feet, each of them holding a half dozen thin, sick people, many of whom wouldn't live through the week. The air stank. Men and women slumped, shoulder to shoulder, stewing in their own urine and feces. Infection ravaged their wounds. They ate rotten meat. The prisoners in the cells were Argentine citizens, tortured by Argentine guards, kidnapped and hidden in secret Argentine jails, imprisoned by a powerful and cruel dictatorship, which managed every detail of this soccer tournament. History would reveal the World Cup to be the apogee of both its power and cruelty.

The national team presented a deep moral conflict. The prisoners argued among themselves, whispering, since guards punished any communication with savage beatings. Some prisoners wanted Argentina to win. They'd cheered for the blue-and-white all their lives. Others, like Liwski, felt rage and sorrow hearing the dictators use the team as another weapon in the war on their own people.

A strong bond had united the prisoners, all of them kidnapped for their political views, held secretly without trial. But now the World Cup divided them. Tension filled Liwski's tiny cell. The game ended, Argentina the winner by a score of 3-1. The guards switched off the radio. For hours, Norberto Liwski heard the laughter and singing of the fans on the street outside. The walls of his cell transformed their joy into his horror. It was June 25, 1978.
____________

IN THE SHADOW of another World Cup, a faint uneasiness settles on the city streets. Nothing about the trip to Norberto Liwski's bland office prepares someone for his story about torture and how, even three decades after his release from prison, it leaves a society troubled and raw. He talks about death in a city so defined by its life. The wide boulevards of Buenos Aires open up like the avenues of Paris, and the architecture evokes the grandeur of a forgotten century. On every corner, glowing cafes swirl with urban life. Fancy cocktail drinkers crowd underground speakeasy bars, hidden beneath flower shops and behind bodega phone booths, the newest trend in a city obsessed with secrets. Soccer plays on nearly every television: It's that time again in Argentina. Four years have passed and the country vibrates with World Cup madness. Maybe this is the year for that elusive third title. In his office, where he runs a human rights foundation, Liwski shudders. The excitement over the coming tournament, the first in South America since 1978, makes him remember being strapped to a metal table with an electrified metal rod stuck up his ass.

More:
http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11036214/while-world-watched-world-cup-brings-back-memories-argentina-dirty-war

2 convicted in Dirty War death of Argentine bishop

Source: Associated Press

2 convicted in Dirty War death of Argentine bishop
| July 4, 2014 | Updated: July 4, 2014 3:46pm

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Two former senior military officers were sentenced to life in prison Friday for one of the emblematic crimes of the country's long dictatorship: the death of Roman Catholic Bishop Enrique Angelelli

The court in the northern city of La Rioja imposed life sentences on former army chief Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 86, and former Vice-Commodore Luis Fernando Estrella, 82.

Details of the ruling are to be released in September.

Angelelli was one of the most left-leaning bishops in a generally conservative religious establishment when he died in an automobile crash in August 1976, shortly after the military seized power and began a Dirty War crackdown on suspected leftists.

For decades, officials insisted the death was accidental.

The case was reopened in 2010 when a former priest who had been riding with the bishop, Arturo Pinto, said that their car had been forced off the road.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/2-convicted-in-Dirty-War-death-of-Argentine-bishop-5600457.php