Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalKilling the Messengers: Rising Violence Against Journalists and Indigenous Leaders Defending the Ama
OCTOBER 11, 2019
Killing the Messengers: Rising Violence Against Journalists and Indigenous Leaders Defending the Amazon
by GABRIEL LEÃO
In February 2005, the body of 73-year-old Sister Dorothy Stang was found on the side of a remote dirt road 33 miles from Anapu, Pará, in Brazil’s AmazonBasin. Seven bullets pierced her body. The first hit her in the abdomen, then after she fell face down, the killers fired bullets to the back and four to the head.
The masterminds turned out to be Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura and Regivaldo Pereira Galvão, wealthy farmers who opposed the U.S. missionary for creating the first sustainable development program in the Anapu region of the Amazon on lands formerly exploited by large landowners and loggers that had been confiscated by the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA).
The missionary’s death drew world-wide attention to the violence that environmental activists are exposed to around the globe, specifically in the Amazon region. It wasn’t until this year- on April 16, 2019,14 years after the assassination–that Pará’s Civil Police finally arrested Galvão, who was condemned to 30 years in 2010.
On July 30, the British-American NGO Global Witness released its annual report on attacks against land and environmental defenders. The report “Enemies of The State? How governments and business silence defenders” registers 164 defenders killed in 2018, an average of more than three a week, with many more attacked or jailed. The Philippines leads the world with 30 killed, followed by Colombia with 24, India with 23 and, in fourth place, Brazil with 20. The report finds that the majority of the killings happen in the mining industry. Hydropower, agribusiness and logging projects follow close behind. According to the document, “more than half of 2018 murders took place in Latin America, which has consistently ranked as the worst-affected continent since Global Witness began publishing data on killings in 2012”.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/10/11/killing-the-messengers-rising-violence-against-journalists-and-indigenous-leaders-defending-the-amazon/
As a girl.
Plot twist in Colombia's trial of the century: did Uribe babble himself into jail?
by Adriaan Alsema October 10, 2019
Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe lied and violated a gag order imposed after the Supreme Court formalized fraud and bribery charges, the alleged victim of the far-right politician said Wednesday.
According to opposition Senator Ivan Cepeda, Uribe violated his gag order related to the case in a lengthy speech on Tuesday that was “plagued with lies.”
Uribe’s defense attorney, Jaime Granados denied this. The lawyer told RCN Radio that Uribe was “legitimately exercising his right to the defense of his honor.”
. . .
Uribe’s 90-minute blunder?
An hour after the court formalized the criminal charges, Uribe took to social media outlets for an extensive monologue laden with proven lies, distortions of the truth and political propaganda.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/plot-twist-in-colombias-trial-of-the-century-did-uribe-babble-himself-into-jail/
Colombia's government and ruling party go into apparent panic mode over Uribe trial
by Adriaan Alsema October 10, 2019
Colombia’s government and ruling party have entered an apparent state of panic after the Supreme Court formalized fraud and bribery charges against former president Alvaro Uribe.
President Ivan Duque, who referred to his political patron as “honorable” while Uribe was in court, remained quiet on Wednesday, in an apparent attempt to avert an institutional crisis.
Uribe’s far-right Democratic Center (CD) party, however, stepped up its disinformation campaign in what appear to be increasingly chaotic and desperate efforts to rally public support for their leader.
From funny to intimidating
In some cases, this led to hilarious incidents; Uribe’s fixer, mafia lawyer Diego Cadena, told W Radio that he had called himself a “hamstattorney” in a leaked wiretap recording in which he called himself a “gangstattorney.”
Other cases were not funny at all; A journalist received death threats after CD Senators Carlos Mejia and Maria Rosario accused her of promoting anti-Uribe posters that claimed the former president is a murderer.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-government-and-ruling-party-enter-apparent-panic-mode-over-uribe-trial/
'Upside-Down Rivers' of Warm Water Are Carving Antarctica to Pieces
By Brandon Specktor - Senior Writer 5 hours ago
Antarctica's ice shelves are under attack at their most vulnerable points.
On Antarctica's East Getz Ice Shelf, monstrous fractures seem to form in the same places year after year. A new study suggests this reliable breakage may be the effect of underwater "rivers" of hot, buoyant water attacking the ice shelf's most vulnerable points.(Image: © Karen Alley/The College of Wooster and NASA MODIS/MODIS Antarctic Ice Shelf Image Archive at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, CU Boulder.)
Earth's frozen places are losing ground fast. In Antarctica, melted ice spills into the ocean at rate of about 155 billion tons (140 billion metric tons) per year — an amount so confoundingly huge that it's easier just to call it "chilling" and "unprecedented," as a recent U.N. report did. Those numbers will only increase as humans continue polluting the air with record amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
On the frontlines of this warm-weather siege are the world's ice shelves. Perched all around the edges of Antarctica and Greenland, ice shelves help stem the tide of melting glaciers by growing outward over the ocean like thick balconies of frost. Nearly 600,000 square miles (1.5 million square kilometers) of ice shelves surround Antarctica alone, through which 80% of the continent's melting ice passes. However, a new study suggests, those dams of ice may have a fatal flaw in the face of Earth's increasingly warming oceans.
In a study published yesterday (Oct. 9) in the journal Science Advances, researchers used satellite imagery to look at Antarctica's shear margins — fragile areas near the edges of ice shelves where huge cracks tend to spread — and found a troubling pattern. Certain cracks seemed to emerge in the same spots year after year, often stretching clear across the tips of their ice shelves and carving huge chunks into the sea. These cracks were often accompanied by long, sagging troughs and large holes in the ice — suggesting that some natural force under the shelves is causing the same regions to buckle and break every year.
According to Karen Alley, lead author of the new study, it appears that vast currents of warm, buoyant water are carving "upside-down rivers" into the bottoms of the ice shelves, nibbling away at their already weak edges.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/antarctica-ice-shelf-upside-down-rivers.html?utm_source=notification
Chile's stolen children: 'I was tricked into handing over my baby'
By Jane Chambers
Temuco, Chile
26 September 2019
Thousands of Chilean children were stolen from their mothers during the military rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet and sent abroad for adoption. A government investigation is looking into how the babies were taken.
Sara Jineo is still extremely upset about what happened when she took her four-day-old baby boy, Camilo, to the hospital in Temuco, southern Chile, in 1988.
"They tricked me," she says. "They made me go to the hospital and said they were going to do a blood test on my baby."
But the woman who took Camilo out of her arms never brought him back. "I looked all over the hospital and when I went outside and asked a policeman for help, he looked at me, laughed, and said I was mad," she says.
Sara, who still lives outside Temuco, has been looking for her son for the last 30 years. She is convinced he was taken abroad. She says a local taxi driver told her about a woman taking a crying baby to the local airport on the same day Camilo disappeared. The child was apparently wrapped in the same distinctive baby blanket she had used.
Her situation is not unique. Sara is part of a generation of mothers and children trying to find each other after being involuntarily separated during Gen Augusto Pinochet's military rule from 1973 to 1990.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48929112
The State of Colombia vs Alvaro Uribe Day 15: the prime suspect
by Adriaan Alsema October 8, 2019
On the 15th day of Colombia’s trial of the century, the Supreme court will hear former President Alvaro Uribe over the alleged fraud and bribery practices to cover up his alleged paramilitary ties.
Uribe’s day in court is historic. Never before has a former president appeared before the Supreme Court to respond to criminal charges.
The suspect | Alvaro Uribe
Uribe comes from a notorious family from Antioquia that rose to prominence intimate ties to the now-defunct Medellin Cartel of late drug lord and Congressman Pablo Escobar.
The former president’s father has been accused by journalists and American intelligence agencies of being a drug trafficker and a good friend of Fabio Ochoa, the patriarch of the Ochoa crime family. An unconfirmed photo indicates he was also close to cartel founder “El Mexicano.”
More:
https://colombiareports.com/the-state-of-colombia-vs-alvaro-uribe-day-15-the-prime-suspect/
The State of Colombia vs Alvaro Uribe Day 15: the prime suspect
by Adriaan Alsema October 8, 2019
On the 15th day of Colombia’s trial of the century, the Supreme court will hear former President Alvaro Uribe over the alleged fraud and bribery practices to cover up his alleged paramilitary ties.
Uribe’s day in court is historic. Never before has a former president appeared before the Supreme Court to respond to criminal charges.
The suspect | Alvaro Uribe
Uribe comes from a notorious family from Antioquia that rose to prominence intimate ties to the now-defunct Medellin Cartel of late drug lord and Congressman Pablo Escobar.
The former president’s father has been accused by journalists and American intelligence agencies of being a drug trafficker and a good friend of Fabio Ochoa, the patriarch of the Ochoa crime family. An unconfirmed photo indicates he was also close to cartel founder “El Mexicano.”
More:
https://colombiareports.com/the-state-of-colombia-vs-alvaro-uribe-day-15-the-prime-suspect/
Rio Police Arrest Four People Connected to Murder of Marielle Franco
Operation also arrested suspects linked to retired PM sergeant Ronnie Lessa
Oct.4.2019 1:54PM
Ana Luiza Albuquerque
RIO DE JANEIRO
The Rio de Janeiro Civil Police arrested four people on Thursday morning in an operation related to the death of Councilwoman Marielle Franco (PSOL) and driver Anderson Gomes in March 2018.
Among those arrested is Elaine de Figueiredo Lessa, wife of retired PM sergeant Ronnie Lessa, accused of being the murderer of the councilwoman and driver, and her brother Bruno Figueiredo.
Also arrested were Márcio Montavano, Márcio Gordo, and Josinaldo Freitas, Djaca.
The group detained on Thursday is accused of concealing weapons used by the gang, including possibly the submachine gun HK MP5 that was allegedly used to kill Marielle and Anderson. The weapon used in the crime has not yet been found.
According to the complaint filed by the Public Prosecution Service, they got rid of the retired military policeman's belongings, such as large weapons, the day after Lessa's arrest in March this year. At least six long weapons and accessories are thought to have been thrown into the sea.
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2019/10/rio-police-arrest-four-people-connected-to-murder-of-marielle-franco.shtml
Overexposure to pesticides is a likely cause for neurological symptoms in Cuba-based diplomats
Reviewed by James Ives, M.Psych. (Editor)Oct 4 2019
A new interdisciplinary study on the "Havana Syndrome" led by Dr. Alon Friedman M.D. of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel and Dalhousie University Brain Repair Center in Nova Scotia, Canada, points to overexposure to pesticides as a likely cause for neurological symptoms among Canadian diplomats residing in Havana, Cuba in 2016.
This is the first study of its kind focused on Canadian diplomats.
The "Havana Syndrome" was the name given to the symptoms initially believed to be acoustic attacks on U.S. and Canadian embassy staff, first reported in Cuba. Beginning in August 2017, reports surfaced that American and Canadian diplomatic personnel in Cuba had suffered a variety of health problems including headaches and loss of balance, as well as sleep, concentration, and memory difficulties.
To ensure Dr. Friedman and his team's findings are properly interpreted and understood, Dr. Friedman elected to discuss his research in advance of peer-reviewed publication with the Canadian Broadcasting Service which obtained a draft report to the Canadian government, leaked by an unknown source.
The research will be presented at Breaking the Barriers of Brain Science Symposium in New York on Sunday, October 27. A copy of the paper is posted at http://www.medRxiv.org.
More:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20191004/Overexposure-to-pesticides-is-a-likely-cause-for-neurological-symptoms-in-Cuba-based-diplomats.aspx
Fidel done it.
Seized hoard of Nazi artefacts to go on display at Argentina Holocaust museum
Memorabilia to feature at Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum
Objects include bust of Hitler and a Nazi Ouija board
Reuters in Buenos Aires
Thu 3 Oct 2019 16.16 EDT
Busts of Adolf Hitler, a Ouija board inscribed with Nazi symbols and other relics from a hoard found in a collector’s secret hiding place will go on display at the Holocaust Museum in Argentina, where many high-ranking Nazis fled after the end of the second world war.
The artefacts, which will go on display in December, include a statue of a Germanic eagle standing on a base bearing a swastika, an hourglass that belonged to a member of Hitler’s feared SS, and games to indoctrinate children in Nazism. “These elements will show part of that terrible story that was the Nazi genocide,” Marcelo Mindlin, president of the museum in Buenos Aires, said in an interview at a news conference where the objects were on display.
Argentina is home to Latin America’s largest Jewish population. The museum, which opened in 2001, is the only Holocaust museum in Latin America, according to museum officials. It will have a grand reopening at the beginning of December after a renovation to add exhibits to its original collection of photos and other Nazi propaganda.
“The great surprise of these objects was that they could not have belonged to anyone but someone in the Nazi hierarchy,” Mindlin added. The artefacts were examined by Argentinian and German experts, who confirmed they came from the Nazi regime.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/03/nazi-artefacts-hoard-argentina-holocaust-museum
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