Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalCourt confirms Colombia's ex-president is a suspected criminal (again)
by Adriaan Alsema November 11, 2021
Colombia’s Constitutional Court rejected the request by former President Alvaro Uribe to revoke his indictment on fraud and bribery charges.
The decision is a major blow for Uribe, who has been trying to get rid of the criminal charges that since August last year when the Supreme Court formally accused the ex-president.
The alleged victims of Uribe’s fraud and bribery practices celebrated the decision as they want the former president in prison for trying to get them in prison through witness tampering.
The criminal proceedings against Uribe are the bloodiest in recent history as many witnesses who could testify about the alleged ties of the former president’s family to a designated terrorist organization were assassinated.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/court-confirms-colombias-ex-president-is-a-suspected-criminal-again/
'I will never get my eyes back': the Chilean woman blinded by police who is running for senate
John Bartlett in Santiago
Tue 9 Nov 2021 05.00 EST
Fabiola Campillai was shot in the face by a teargas canister as she walked to work in 2019 amid nationwide protests against social inequality. Now she is running for office as an independent
Rights and freedom is supported by
Humanity United
Tue 9 Nov 2021 05.00 EST
On a November evening two years ago, Fabiola Campillai stepped out into the fading sunshine to head for her night shift at a food processing plant.
For weeks, Chile had been racked by a wave of mass protests against social inequality, but there were few signs of demonstrators in Cinco Pinos, the quiet neighbourhood on the outskirts of Santiago where Campillai lives.
“There weren’t any protests that evening. A man crossed the street in front of me to buy bread,” Campillai remembers. “And that was the last thing I ever saw.”
Patricio Maturana, an officer in Chile’s Carabineros police force, fired a teargas canister at Campillai from just 50 metres away, hitting her square in the face. A study estimated that the metal cylinder would have reached temperatures of up to 200C at the moment of impact.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/nov/09/fabiola-campillai-chile-blinded-by-police-senate-candidate
Fabiola Campillai, with husband.
Patricio Maturana, the cop who blinded Fabiola Campillai.
'We can't live in a world without the Amazon': scientist
Issued on: 09/11/2021 - 05:14
Modified: 09/11/2021 - 05:12
2 min
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Erika Berenguer, an Amazon ecologist at Oxford and Lancaster universities, is one of the most prominent scientists studying how the rainforest functions when humans throw it off balance.
AFP asked the 38-year-old Brazilian to break down the latest research on the Amazon and what it means for us all.
There are lots of headlines on the destruction of the Amazon. What does the science say?
"The results are truly horrifying. They are in line with discussions about the 'tipping point' (at which the rainforest would die off and turn from carbon absorber to carbon emitter).
"One study found that in the southeast of the Amazon in the dry season, the temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees Celsius (over the past 40 years). That is truly apocalyptic.
"I don't think even academics were prepared for that. The Paris deal is trying to limit the world to 1.5 degrees; 2.5 in the Amazon is huge.
"And in the northeast Amazon, we've seen a decrease of 34 percent in precipitation in peak dry season (from August to October).
"The implication of all this is that if you have a hotter and dryer climate, fires are just going to escape more into the forest. So it gets into this feedback loop, this vicious cycle of horror."
More:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211109-we-can-t-live-in-a-world-without-the-amazon-scientist
The stench of death
On Canada's Highway of Tears.
By Brandi Morin
Published On 8 Nov 2021
In this six-part series, Al Jazeera tells the stories of some of the Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered along an infamous stretch of highway in British Columbia, Canada.
Warning: The following article contains content that may be disturbing to some readers.
British Columbia, Canada - Mike Balczer pensively traces the rim of a white coffee cup on a frigid February morning. He takes a ponderous breath and looks up. His hair is covered by a black and white bandana and a cap. His trademark attire - black leather and black and white flannel - bear the markings that distinguish him as a nomad - a Crazy Indian Brotherhood nomad.
The Crazy Indian Brotherhood started in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 2007 and now has chapters throughout Canada and to the south as far as California and Oklahoma. It resembles a motorcycle gang, but Mike says the tough image is just for appearances. “We protect women and children around here. We patrol the streets looking out for the vulnerable.” And the uniform helps to intimidate the town’s drug dealers, he adds. But it is not only the local drug dealers who are on Mike’s mind. He is on the prowl - looking for a killer, or possibly killers, in Smithers.
The small town in northwestern British Columbia has a population of just over 5,300 people. It is home to the remnants of settler frontiers and Indigenous nations in a valley between towering snow-capped mountains, curtained by rows of lodgepole pine, spruce, sub-alpine balsam fir, aspen, birch and cottonwood trees.
Although a confessed wanderer, Mike has called Smithers home on and off for the past 20 years. He is a member of the Wit’Dat Nation (Lake Babine Nation) about a two-hour drive east and as a hereditary chief is part of a traditional governance system responsible for decision-making and cultural practices. When he became a leader his elders gave him the name “Person of Many”.
More:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2021/11/8/the-stench-of-death-life-along-canadas-highway-of-tears
In Honduras Land Battles, Paramilitaries Infiltrate Local Groups -- Then Kill Their Leaders
A man rides a bicycle past a lot of felled African palm trees in Los Laureles, Honduras, on July 22, 2021.
VIOLENT INFILTRATION
Jared Olson
November 6 2021, 6:00 a.m.
DANIEL GARCÍA FIRST received the text message, which showed the muzzle of an AK-47 above a blurry road, at 7:30 p.m. “You’re alive because God is great and powerful,” the sender wrote, “but I don’t think you’ll have the same luck this week. I’ll see you soon, love.”
García knew the message was serious. Rumor had it he’d been placed on a kill list of five land rights activists in Honduras. The first of the five, his friend Juan Manuel Moncada, had been assassinated just four days earlier.
At around 10 o’clock that night, the presumed messengers made good on their threat: Four or five men with balaclavas, bulletproof vests, and AK-47s rolled up on motorcycles and surrounded García’s property, where they proceeded to chat and smoke cigarettes while looking over the barbed wire fence into his adobe-walled house. García lay inside, paralyzed with fear.
He said they looked like soldiers. But they weren’t. They were paramilitaries who, in a resurgent campaign of violence and aggression that began this summer, have been targeting a land rights cooperative trying to protect land it retook from a corporate palm oil giant.
“When you see a soldier show up in front of your house,” García said of the July encounter, “you realize they aren’t a soldier, they’re there to murder you.”
More:
https://theintercept.com/2021/11/06/honduras-paramilitaries-land-rights/
Brazil is Leading the Way
NOVEMBER 5, 2021
BY CESAR CHELALA
The accusation against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for “crimes against humanity” on public health grounds is unusual both at the national and international level. Because many of the crimes for which he is accused regarding the COVID-19 pandemic mimic the actions and policies of Donald Trump, they could be the basis for similar actions against the former U.S. president.
“Crimes against humanity” is a well-established entity under international law that includes acts that are purposefully committed as part of a widespread or systematic policy directed against civilians. These crimes can be actions carried out in times of war or peace. The charges of mass homicide and genocide against Bolsonaro are based on his policies leading to the decimation of indigenous groups in the Amazon due to of his refusal to adequately protect them.
The Brazilian Congressional panel, leading the accusation, asserts that Bolsonaro intentionally let the coronavirus pandemic rip through the country, resulting in over 600,000 Brazilians deaths. This is second only to over 700,000 deaths in the U.S. In Brazil, the congressional panel recommended charges against 77 other people, including three of president Bolsonaro’s sons and several current and former Brazilian government officials.
According to public health experts, both in Brazil and in the U.S. most of those deaths were preventable. Despite considerable evidence that the virus was already propagating at great speed in several countries, Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Trump went to great lengths to minimize the threat of the virus from the beginning.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/05/brazil-is-leading-the-way/
Festival de Barriletes Gigantes or Day of the Dead Kite Festival 2021
Giant flamboyant hand-made kites embody the millennia-old tradition of communicating with the dead
Last updated: November 2, 2021
©
Rolando Estrada
The first days of November are marked with the most colourful and delicious festivities observed in Guatemala. The residents of Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez gather around the main cemetery of the country to honour the dead through flowing giant kites made of paper, cloth patches, and bamboo frames. Similar displays can be observed in Comalapa.
This tradition is believed to be over 3,000 years old, since long ago indigenous people regarded kites as tools to communicate with ancestors that had passed away. The construction of such kites takes 40 days. The vibrant kites explain why the festival is the most colourful, but foodies must be already impatient concerning the word "delicious"—for you the festival presents the only occasion all year to sample the iconic Guatemalan dish Fiambre made of around 50 ingredients. Certain regions of the country have their own elements of celebration. For example, Todos Santos Cuchumatán is renowned for wild horse races and its wide variety of spirits consumed during the festival.
https://rove.me/to/guatemala/festival-de-barriletes-gigantes-or-day-of-the-dead-kite-festival
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Dogs Have Co-Evolved With Humans Like No Other Species
The human-dog relationship precedes the agricultural revolution. Here's what we know about how it began — with wolves — and the evolving complexity of our loving connection to canines.
By Richard Pallardy
Nov 3, 2021 10:00 AM
The connection between human and dog runs deep. Early signs of domestication date back to 33,000 years ago and unambiguously domesticated dogs are common in the archaeological record beginning 15,000 years ago. The pairing makes for a striking case in coevolution — no other species has been so thoroughly integrated into human society. Dogs are our sentinels and shepherds, hunting partners and cancer detectors. And more importantly, to those of us who have had dogs in our lives, they are our dearest friends.
Though in many ways we take their presence for granted, the story of this unprecedented interspecies alliance is complex. In recent decades, we have brought the full force of the scientific method to bear on the origins of our beloved companions. Insights from disciplines as diverse as psychology and archaeology, genetics and biology have filled out the pencil sketch of our shared history brushstroke by brushstroke, resulting in a portrait both surprising and familiar.
The Tenderness of Wolves
Until relatively recently, the tale of how dogs and humans came to be so intimately acquainted took the form of a parable: Early hunter-gatherers adopted wild wolf pups, abducting them from their dens or perhaps fostering them after killing their parents. Raised by humans and selectively bred over generations for docility and tractability, these lupine changelings morphed into something close to the canines we know today. Like most just-so stories, this appealing etiology has disintegrated under scrutiny.
For one, modern studies of wild wolf pups raised in captivity demonstrate that this would have almost certainly been impractical — the hardscrabble lifestyle of early humans was tough enough. Regardless of how much attention, training and affection are lavished on captive-raised wolf puppies, they remain wolves. They don’t take to training well and are in constant contest with their trainers for dominance.
More:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/dogs-have-co-evolved-with-humans-like-no-other-species?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiscoverSpace+%28Discover+Space%29
The U.S. Has an Unhealthy Obsession With Cuba
NOVEMBER 2, 2021
BY ROSA ELIZALDE
The piggy bank was rattled again. In September 2021, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) gave $6,669,000 in grants for projects aimed at “regime change” in Cuba, a euphemism to avoid saying “direct intervention by a foreign power.” The United States’ current Democratic administration has especially favored the International Republican Institute (IRI) with a bipartisan generosity that Donald Trump never had. Other groups in Miami, Washington and Madrid that have also received generous amounts have been among those calling for an invasion of the island. These groups paint an apocalyptic panorama in Havana to secure greater funding next year.
Public funding for the anti-Castro industry in the United States seems inexhaustible. In the last year, at least 54 organizations have benefitedfrom the State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID programs for Cuba. In the last 20 years, this agency has given Creative Associates International, a CIA front, more than $1.8 billion for espionage, propaganda and the recruitment of agents of “change” including on the island. One of its best-known projects, the so-called “Cuban Twitter” or ZunZuneo, resulted in a superb failure that unveiled a plot of corruption and flagrant violations of U.S. law. ZunZuneo cost the USAID director his job, but Creative Associates International continues to operate, only now undercover.
The American researcher Tracey Eaton, who for years has followed the route of these funds, commented in a recent interview that many of the financing programs for “regime change” in Cuba are so stealthy that we will probably never know who all the recipients are or what the total amount is, and judging by the known millions, the subsidy must reach an even greater figure. According to letters from the State Department and USAID that Eaton has received, “democracy-building” strategies are considered “trade secrets” and are exempt from disclosure under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
The United States goes berserk at the alleged hint of Russian, Chinese or Islamic intrusion into local politics and online platforms. However, it does not hesitate for a minute to rudely intervene in Cuba, as exposed by the digital daily MintPress News, which documented how private Facebook groups instigated the July 11 riots in several Cuban cities. “The involvement of foreign nationals in the domestic affairs of Cuba is on a level that can scarcely be conceived of in the United States,” says the publication, adding: “the people who sparked the July 11 protests in Cuba are planning similar actions for October and November.”
The United States is a military superpower whose plans for political subversion are a shame and a scandal, and there is no indication that Washington will now achieve what it has failed to do in 60 years. In fact, the U.S. government’s obsession with Cuba is two centuries old, as Louis A. Pérez, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has shown in a brilliant essay entitled “Cuba as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.”
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/02/the-u-s-has-an-unhealthy-obsession-with-cuba/
Rightwing Chilean newspaper accused of 'apology for Nazism' over Goring article
Germany embassy condemns El Mercurio for Sunday piece and says ‘no room to justify or minimise his horrific role’
John Bartlett in Santiago
Mon 25 Oct 2021 12.53 EDT
Chile’s main conservative daily newspaper has been accused of publishing “an apology for Nazism” after running an illustrated article commemorating the life of the German war criminal Hermann Göring.
After El Mercurio published the article on Sunday, the German embassy in Santiago expressed its concern, highlighting Göring’s many crimes.
. . .
El Mercurio is the modern incarnation of Chile’s oldest newspaper, founded in the port city of Valparaíso in 1827.
It received CIA funding during the socialist government of Salvador Allende (1970-73) to undermine the president’s economic reforms. The newspaper supported the 1973 coup which deposed Allende and ushered in General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, and published consistently in favour of the military government until the return to democracy in 1990.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/25/chile-newspaper-el-mercurio-hermann-goring
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Documenting U.S. Role in Democracy’s Fall and Dictator’s Rise in Chile
A phone in the exhibition “Secrets of State: The Declassified History of the Chilean Dictatorship” at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile. Visitors can pick up the receiver to hear a recreation of a conversation between former President Richard M. Nixon and his national security Adviser, Henry Kissinger.Credit...Tomas Munita for The New York Times
By Pascale Bonnefoy
Oct. 14, 2017
SANTIAGO, Chile — An old rotary phone rings insistently.
Visitors at a new exhibition at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights here in Santiago who pick up the receiver hear two men complain bitterly about the liberal news media “bleating” over the military coup that had toppled Salvador Allende, the Socialist president of Chile, five days earlier.
. . .“Our hand doesn’t show on this one, though,” one says.
“We didn’t do it,” the other responds. “I mean, we helped them.”
. . .
Nearby, copies of the front pages of dozens of newspapers from the Pinochet era hang from a panel simulating a kiosk. They were all published by the conservative media empire El Mercurio, which received at least $2 million from the C.I.A. The records in the exhibition also profile Pinochet, trace intelligence gathering on brutal state-sponsored repression and detail how the Reagan government abandoned Pinochet to his fate in 1988, fearing a further radicalization of the opposition.
“These documents have helped us rewrite Chile’s contemporary history,” said Francisco Estévez, director of the museum. “This exhibit is a victory in the fight against negationism, the efforts to deny and relativize what happened during our dictatorship.”
. . .
“To see on a piece of paper, for example, the president of the United States ordering the C.I.A. to preemptively overthrow a democratically elected president in Chile is stunning,” Mr. Kornbluh said. “The importance of having these documents in the museum is for the new generations of Chileans to actually see them.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/world/americas/chile-coup-cia-museum.html
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