Man won't face charges for taking gun into airport

Source: Associated Press

Man won't face charges for taking gun into airport
| November 5, 2014 | Updated: November 5, 2014 2:29pm

PHOENIX (AP) — A medical researcher at a renowned neurological hospital accused of pointing a loaded rifle toward a woman and her teenage daughter inside Phoenix's main airport won't face charges.

Records show the Maricopa County Attorney's Office has agreed not to pursue criminal charges against 54-year-old Peter Nathan Steinmetz.

He carried an AR-15 rifle into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on July 25 and says he was just trying to make a political statement.

Steinmetz does research at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. He was placed on administrative leave following his arrest.

Police also questioned Steinmetz last Nov. 13 when he picked up his wife from the airport armed with an assault rifle. He told police he was exercising his right to bear arms and wasn't arrested in that incident.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/No-charges-for-man-who-took-rifle-to-Ariz-airport-5873427.php

The Left’s Unsung Success Story

November 05, 2014
Evo Morales's Big Win

The Left’s Unsung Success Story

by SERGE HALIMI


In times of crisis, a head of state who gets re-elected in the first round, having already served two terms, is a rarity indeed. One such is Evo Morales, whose win, with 61% of the vote, should have received more attention than it did. All the more so since he pulled off this electoral feat in Bolivia — which had five different presidents between 2001 and 2005. His victory follows a 25% reduction in poverty, an 87% real-terms increase in the minimum wage, a lowering of the retirement age (1) and an annual growth rate of over 5% — all since 2006. Given how often we’re told we need to overcome our disenchantment with politics, why hasn’t this good news been more widely reported? Could it be because it stems from progressive reforms implemented by leftwing regimes?

The mainstream media are as reluctant to talk about leftwing Latin American governments’ success stories, they also, to be fair, omit the failures of conservative regimes, including in the security arena. This year, for example, five journalists have been assassinated in Mexico, including Atilano Román Tirado, who was killed while recording a radio programme last month. Tirado had often demanded compensation, on air, on behalf of 800 families who lost their homes through the construction of a new dam. His willingness to get involved carried a deadly risk in a country where abductions, torture and assassinations have become everyday occurrences, especially for those who question the rotten, mafia-infested social order.

On 26 and 27 September, 43 students from the town of Iguala in the state of Guerrero, 130km from Mexico City, held protests against the neoliberal education reforms introduced by President Enrique Peña Nieto. Local police intercepted their bus and took them to an unknown destination. There they were probably handed over to a drug cartel, who were to execute them and conceal their remains in clandestine graves. There have been many discoveries of such graves in Mexico in the past few weeks, some full of burnt, dismembered bodies. Iguala’s mayor and security director have fled and the authorities are now looking for them.

Peña Nieto has won adulation in the business press (2) for opening up the energy sector to the multinationals. France has awarded him the Légion d’Honneur. Will his admirers question him one day over the almost complete impunity that corrupt policemen and elected officials in Mexico enjoy? Perhaps the major western print media, intellectuals, the US, Spain and France are hesitant about what questions to ask the Mexican president. In which case they only have to imagine what would have leapt to mind had the student massacre had taken place in Ecuador, Cuba or Venezuela. Or indeed in Bolivia, where President Morales has just been re-elected.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/05/the-lefts-unsung-success-story/

A Boon for the Women of Ecuador

A Boon for the Women of Ecuador
By RUXANDRA GUIDINOV. 4, 2014


[font size=1]
The share of Cañar's people leaving the country is greater than that of any other district in Ecuador. While the costs of migration can
be high, for women there are many benefits. Credit Bear Guerra
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CAÑAR, Ecuador — For the 60,000 residents of this rural county of green hills and small villages, migration is something of a rite of passage. The share of Cañar’s people leaving the country is greater than that of any other district in Ecuador. More than 70 percent of its households receive remittances every month, and rely on them to cover basic necessities.

The costs can be great, especially on children, who are left behind by their parents or also embark on the perilous treks, sometimes alone. And the economic effects are sometimes perverse: In Cañar, big houses built with money from abroad stand unfinished or abandoned as more residents leave.

But beyond the cautionary tales, Cañar also stands for one of the great overlooked benefits of migration: unprecedented access to education and jobs, freedom of movement and financial independence for women, especially indigenous women, whether they left and returned, or never left.

Emigration from Cañar started in the 1960s, after a drop in the export price of locally produced straw hats pushed local men to move to Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city. Falling oil prices gave way to debt and inflation in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, many peasants had lost both their meager savings and their livelihoods. Over the next 15 years, about half of Cañar’s population, mostly men, went abroad, especially to the United States and Spain, looking for jobs.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/opinion/a-boon-for-the-women-of-ecuador.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

(What ARE the chances the New York Times and the Washington Post would decide to do feature articles on indigenous women of Ecuador at the very same time?)

Guardians of life: The indigenous women fighting oil exploitation in the Amazon

Guardians of life: The indigenous women fighting oil exploitation in the Amazon
Nicole Crowder November 3



On Oct. 12, 2013, a group of nearly 300 women from seven indigenous nationalities marched to Quito, Ecuador, arriving in the capital four days later with their children in their arms, the sharp angles of their faces — young and old — decorated with vegetable ink designs, covered in the same strength and determination with which they began their journey. They were marching to Quito to ask the central government to respect their ancestral lands, to refrain from exploiting the oil that lies beneath his Kawsak Sacha, a living jungle. In November of that same year, a smaller delegation of women peacefully protested during the 11th Oil Licensing Round, an auction of 6 million acres of ancestral indigenous land for oil exploitation. The protests, however, turned sour when oil executive and politicians scolded protesters, and Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa subsequently demanded the closing of the NGO Fundación Pachamama and indicted 10 indigenous leaders on charges of terrorism.

While women have always played an active role in historic marches that marked the struggle for the rights of indigenous peoples in Ecuador, this was the first walk organized and led by women.

Felipe Jacome’s set of photos Amazon: Guardians of Life documents the struggles of indigenous women defending the Ecuadoran Amazon through portraits combined with the powerful written testimonies. The words across each photograph are a self-reflection of the lives of women, their culture, history and traditions, and especially about the reasons for fighting oil drilling on their ancestral lands. The color designs framing each portrait use the same natural dyes found in face paint to expand on the symbols and designs that reflect their personalities, courage and struggle.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2014/11/03/3211/indigenous-women-fighting-oil-amazon/

Colombia’s ombudsman warns for neo-paramilitary expansion

Colombia’s ombudsman warns for neo-paramilitary expansion
Nov 4, 2014 posted by Joel Gillin

Colombia’s Ombudsman announced on Tuesday that paramilitary successor groups are active in approximately 15% of the country’s national territory, spread out over 27 of 32 states.

The presence of these groups has been registered in some 168 municipalities throughout the country, as the Ombudsman tweeted Tuesday.

The criminal organizations are the successor groups of the infamous paramilitary organization known as the United Self-Defense Forces (AUC), which supposedly demobilized from 2003-2006 and was responsible for massive atrocities against civilians.

~snip~
The Ombudsman issued a warning over the rise in child sex exploitation and human trafficking, while also calling on the authorities to strengthen their operations to dismantle the criminal structures.

~snip~
The Ombudsman noted a recent attack from the Urabeños — officially called ” The Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces” — in the southwestern state of Nariño, in which a mother was shot dead in front of her six children, who were then relocated to a different state.

http://colombiareports.co/neo-paramilitaries-present-27-32-colombian-states-ombudsman/

The story of La Cocha lake and Colombia’s ‘Little Switzerland’

The story of La Cocha lake and Colombia’s ‘Little Switzerland’
Nov 2, 2014 posted by Adriaan Alsema









La Cocha, also called Lake Guamez, is not just one Colombia’s largest and most beautiful lakes. It is also one of the Andean water reserves that make up the birthplace of the majestic Amazon river.

Located on the eastern side of the Andes mountain range, La Cocha — cocha means lake in the native quechua language — receives its water from several streams and rivers coming from glaciers located higher up.

Having passed the lake, the water does not flow to the nearby Pacific Ocean, but travels through the Guamez and Putumayo rivers into the Amazon, after which it heads to the Atlantic, more than 1,500 miles east of La Cocha.

Because of its importance to the water supply of the Amazon, the lungs of the world, La Cocha was declared a Wetland of International Importance in the year 2,000.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/southwest-colombias-la-cocha-lake-photos/

Day of the Dead - in pictures

Day of the Dead - in pictures

Observer photographer Antonio Olmos takes a selection of images of Mexicans visiting their dead relatives, lighting candles, decorating their graves and generally dressing up for the Day of the Dead celebrations in San Andrés Mixquic and Mexico City for the Sony RX100 III Celebrate The Streets series

Monday 3 November 2014 09.04 EST



A couple dressed as skeletons visiting Mixquic cemetery during Day of the Dead celebrations



Large dressed skeletons greet visitors when arriving in San Andrés Mixquic



Papier-mâché skulls in front of the Bellas Artes building, Mexico City



A child’s grave traditionally decorated in cookies and candy

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/nov/03/day-of-the-dead-in-pictures

The Corporate Assault on Latin American Democracy

November 03, 2014

The Latest Phase

The Corporate Assault on Latin American Democracy

by JUSTIN DOOLITTLE


Latin America has always been notoriously fertile ground for predatory corporations. For decades, aided by Western-backed governments that were as friendly to them as they were brutal to their own citizens, corporate behemoths made it their mission to suck the region dry – sometimes quite literally. The story of neoliberal plunder in that part of the world, as well as the popular backlash to it among Latin Americans, is hardly a new one. In recent years, though, the ever-aggressive corporate war on Latin American societies has entered a new phase, one in which major battles are being decided on the fourth floor of the World Bank headquarters in Washington, by an obscure and increasingly powerful institution known as the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.

The first thing you need to know about the ICSID is that it has the authority to make binding decisions that affect entire populations. Most of the time, such decisions are made by small tribunals, typically consisting of just a few people. This secretive institution is part of the ICSID Convention, a multilateral treaty that went into effect in October of 1966, to which 150 countries are currently party. The ICSID Convention “sought to remove major impediments to the free international flows of private investment posed by non-commercial risks and the absence of specialized international methods for investment dispute settlement.” If that sentence creeps you out, well, it should.

The structural and bureaucratic details of the ICSID are boring and involve a lot of corporate-speak. But basically, the ICSID establishes and oversees ostensibly independent tribunals responsible for arbitrating major disputes between private entities and governments. So, for example, when Country X tells Corporation Y that, after further consideration, it wants to change policy and forbid oil drilling in an environmentally vulnerable region, this is where Corporation Y goes to complain. A tribunal is formed and a judgment is eventually made. Both sides in any dispute must agree to the terms laid out, it should be noted, and they each have input in selecting the arbitrators. Nevertheless, with the ICSID’s influence growing along with its caseload, we should consider the wisdom of having these decisions, which often hold major ramifications for both short and long-term environmental health, made via a process from which local residents – the people actually affected by said decisions – are so drastically disconnected.

In recent years, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia have withdrawn from the ICSID Convention, all for similar reasons. These governments cling to the quaint notion that their societies’ resources ought to belong to the people who live there, and they view the ICSID as a way to grease the skids for the continued pillaging of said resources (which is usually accompanied, of course, by environmental degradation). Bolivia withdrew from the ICSID in 2007; in 2009, Ecuador followed suit. Venezuela finalized its withdrawal from the ICSID in 2012 as the Chavez administration was dealing with a number of disputes surrounding its nationalization policies in the 2000s. All of these governments cited concerns about sovereignty and the ICSID’s persistent bias toward corporations and capital (these concerns reflect popular sentiment throughout Latin America). They’ve proposed an alternative system, involving tribunals based in South America, as opposed to Washington, D.C. In any case, a withdrawal from the ICSID is not a shield from claims by private interests, and states like Venezuela and Ecuador are still staring at billions of dollars in potential compensatory payments stemming from a number of cases over the last decade. States cannot simply ignore these judgments, as it would be viewed like a sovereign default, with all the economic risk that entails.

It involves fairly specialized knowledge, and therefore it’s rarely discussed in popular political discourse, but a broader paradigm shift has taken place in this arena in recent years, one that, shockingly enough, favors the rights of transnational corporations. As a recent McClatchy piece on a high-profile dispute between Oceana Gold Corp. and the government of El Salvador put it, “international investment laws are empowering corporations to act against foreign governments that curtail their future profits, “ and the ICSID is the vehicle these corporations are using to ensure that these profits are not threatened.

The widespread suspicion that this game is essentially rigged in favor of powerful private interests is not entirely unfounded. Here is Robert Bisso, the director of Social Watch, an international network of citizens’ organizations, in a speech to the U.N. in May:

… over two thousand bilateral and regional trade and investment agreements signed in the last few decades have created new rights for transnational corporations, including rights that humans don’t have: corporations have acquired the right to settle anywhere they want and bring with them any personnel they decide they need, they are allowed to repatriate profits without restrictions and even to litigate against governments in demand of profits lost because of democratically decided policies, not through local courts but via international arbitration panels shaped to defend business interests and where human rights do not necessarily prevail. ICSID, the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, hosted by the World Bank, is an untransparent tribunal that displaces national judiciary and in a way creates its own law by way of ignoring human rights standards and environmental norms, even when they have been ratified as international treaties.

Uribe’s eerie allies: Neo-Nazis and ranchers

Uribe’s eerie allies: Neo-Nazis and ranchers
Nov 3, 2014 posted by Joel Gillin



In his attempts to recover lost political power, former president Alvaro Uribe has been making alliances with the some of the most extreme elements in Colombian politics. While the times of Uribe as a mainstream politician seem long gone, the former president still has formidable support among a large chunk of primarily conservative Colombians.

His newly formed party, the Democratic Center, received 15% of votes for the senate in March, and Uribe’s hand-picked presidential candidate, Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, nearly beat President Juan Manuel Santos in presidential elections in June. But Uribe’s control over Colombia’s mainstream politics has diminished and the former president has been forced to seek alliances outside of many of the traditional political power centers.

Among those political groups who back the former president politically is a fascistic youth movement with connections to neo-Nazis.

Uribe has also strengthened ties with ranchers infamous for their proximity with the now-defunct right-wing paramilitary organization AUC, as well as criminal elements within the security and intelligence institutions.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/neo-nazis-ranchers-uribes-allies-extreme-right/

Ecuador’s children sick from Colombia crop fumigation: NGO

Ecuador’s children sick from Colombia crop fumigation: NGO
Nov 3, 2014 posted by Victoria McKenzie

Colombia may have violated its agreement with Ecuador to forgo aerial fumigation near its border, according to a report by the Ecuadorean Interagency Committee Against Fumigation, or CIF.

The NGO charged with monitoring environmental conditions along the Colombian border reported that it received several complaints of illness last week, including a community of schoolchildren in San Martin, who have complained of headaches.

~snip~
In 2008, the Ecuadorian government filed a lawsuit against Colombia to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2008 after the herbicide drifted across the border onto Ecuadorian territory. Ecuador based their complaint on the grounds that “the spraying caused serious damage to people, crops, to animals and to the natural environment.”

In September 2013, the Colombian government acknowledged Ecuador’s complaints and the two sides reach a settlement of $15 million compensation for the damages.

US continues to support aerial fumigation

Colombia is estimated to supply around 90% of the cocaine that makes it to the United States. With the support from multi-billion dollar US aid packages for the war on drugs, Colombia has been practicing aerial crop fumigation for 20 years.

According to Daniel Mejia, the current president of the Colombian government’s special advisory commission on drug policy, the United States government continues to advocate aerial fumigation of coca fields despite clear human rights problems and proof that this eradication method costs exponentially more than attacking drug traffickers.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/ecuador-children-sick-colombias-crop-fumigation-ngo/