Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalAstronomers declare no further research required
1 April 2021/
Cosmos
Astronomers around the globe reveal that we’ve learned everything we need to know about the universe.
Credit: Bryan Allen / Getty Images.
Scientists across the world have declared that no further research is required in the field of astronomy, saying that everything about space is now sufficiently understood.
The decision, announced today at the virtual Global Consortium of Astronomy, Astrology and Astrophysics conference, was met with applause but not surprise from the astronomical community.
“The Pluto thing distracted us for a while, but really we’ve been on a trajectory to finishing our research since the early 2000s,” says Professor April Furst, an astrophysicist at the Facility Of Observational Lens’ and Spectrometry in Space (FOOLSs), University of Eastern Australia.
“We think we’ve figured it out at this point. There might be a few more black holes we can discover, but everything else is pretty much mapped. Humanity can now look to the stars, and not wonder about anything.”
The decision comes along with a proposal to convert the world’s biggest telescopes – including the Square Kilometre Array – into theme parks.
More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/astronomers-declare-no-further-research-required/
Honduras drugs: President's brother gets life in prison
Published 16 hours ago
AFP
Tony Hernández was arrested at Miami airport in November 2018
A court in the United States has sentenced the brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández to life in prison for drug trafficking.
Former Congressman Juan Antonio "Tony" Hernández was found guilty in October 2019 of smuggling tonnes of cocaine into the US.
Prosecutors said he had bribed law enforcement officials and was also complicit in at least two murders.
President Juan Orlando Hernández called his brother's sentence "outrageous".
Lawyers for Tony Hernández said they would appeal against the sentence.
Who is Tony Hernández?
The 42-year-old served as a member of Congress for the National Party from 2014 to 2018.
He was arrested in November 2018 in Miami on charges that he had used his connections with the government to smuggle cocaine through Honduras to the US.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56589088
Skull of dinosaur called 'one who causes fear' found in Patagonia
Published17 hours ago
REUTERS
An artist's impression of Llukalkan aliocranianus
Scientists in southern Argentina have found the skull of a large meat-eating dinosaur named "one who causes fear" in the local Mapuche language.
The horned Llukalkan aliocranianus was around 5 metres (16 feet) long and roamed South America 85 million years ago.
Researchers found remains nearby of another carnivorous dinosaur, something they said was highly unusual.
The findings from Patagonia were published on Tuesday.
Like the Tyrannosaurus rex, the Llukalkan dinosaur was two-legged with very short arms, but was medium-sized compared to the giant T. rex.
It also had short horns and tiny fingers. It was estimated to weigh between one and five tonnes, slightly lighter than an adult African elephant.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56590733
Also posted in Science:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/122875252
El Salvador president says missing teen found, daughter of woman killed by police
MAR 31 2021
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said on Wednesday that a missing teenager has been found, identifying her as the daughter of Victoria Salazar, who died in Mexico after a Mexican female police officer was seen in a video kneeling on her back.
The attorney general’s office of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, where Salazar died, said on Tuesday night that an amber alert had been issued for her daughter, 16-year-old Francela Yaritza Salazar Arriaza. Francela was last seen in the Caribbean tourist resort of Tulum, where her mother was killed.
“The oldest daughter of Victoria has been found. She is now in the custody of FGE,” Bukele tweeted, referring to the state attorney general’s office. “She is physically well.”
. . .
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador this week said Salazar, 36, had been subject to “brutal treatment and murdered” after her detention on Saturday by four police officers. An autopsy showed Salazar’s neck had been broken.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence-woman/el-salvador-president-says-missing-teen-found-daughter-of-woman-killed-by-police-idUSKBN2BN3L4
Salvadoran Refugee Victoria Salazar Dead After Police Brutality During Arrest
by Virginia Isaad March 30, 2021
On the same day that opening arguments in the George Floyd trial began, social media was ablaze with calls for justice after another death at the alleged hands of the police. Salvadoran woman Victoria Esperanza Salazar Arriaza was arrested on March 27 in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico after a local shop owner called the authorities due to concerns over her behavior. A policewoman and three male police officers were on the scene and according to El Salvador.com, they used excessive force to detain her on the ground. Video footage shows 36-year-old Victoria crying in pain as they held her down despite her pleas. She reportedly lost consciousness and in the video footage, her limp and handcuffed body can be seen carried onto the back of a police pickup truck. She died in the aftermath. (WARNING: Video contains distressing footage)
https://twitter.com/RIDNoticias/status/1376242685447704578
Quintana Roo State Prosecutor Oscar Montes de Oca told Mexican outlet Milenio that the police officers used “disproportionate” use of force.” She died of “a fracture of part of the upper spinal column produced by the rupture of the first and second vertebra which caused the loss of the victim,” he said.
ElSalvador.com reported that the police officers are in custody and will go before a judge in the case of femicide which has a prison sentence of up to 50 years. According to local media, the mother of two daughters, age 15 and 16, moved to Mexico as a refugee in 2018 on a humanitarian visa. She left her hometown of Sonsonate in El Salvador to escape the gang violence and had been working in Tulum, a popular resort town, as a housekeeper in a local hotel. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele urged that the “full force of the law” be applied in Mexico and said that El Salvador will care for her daughters once they are repatriated.
More:
https://hiplatina.com/victoria-salazar-mexico-femicide/
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Mexico police under fire after woman's death in custody
Published1 day ago
Women called for "justice for Victoria" during protests in both Mexico and El Salvador
Outrage has been growing over the death in police custody of a Salvadorean woman in the Mexican resort of Tulum on Saturday as more details of the incident emerged.
A post-mortem examination suggests Victoria Esperanza Salazar's neck was broken after a female officer pinned her to the ground.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said she had been "murdered".
The incident comes amid growing protests against femicides in Mexico.
Who was Victoria Salazar?
The 36-year-old from El Salvador had been in Mexico since at least 2018, when she was granted refugee status for humanitarian reasons.
Her mother says she left her hometown of Sonsonate five years ago to escape the violence which El Salvador's notorious street gangs were spreading.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56576054
White supremacy in Colombia Part 3: 'the negroes multiply by themselves'
by Adriaan Alsema March 30, 2021
Colombia’s ethnic discrimination reached the point that 31% of people who identified themselves as African descendants in 2005 no longer wish to identify themselves as such.
According to statistics agency DANE, some 2.9 million of Colombia’s population identified themselves as black in the 2018 census compared to 4.3 million during the previous one in 2005.
Colombia’s ethnic minorities have disproportionally been the victim of armed conflict and ethnic violence for more than 500 years, but the recent changes do not account for the more the 31% reduction in those who identify as themselves as Afrocolombian.
. . .
Centuries of slavery, persistent ethnic violence, and relentless discrimination appear to be the final straw for a significant portion of black youth.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/white-supremacy-in-colombia-part-3-the-negroes-multiplied-by-themselves/
The role of fascism in Colombia Part 1: the coffee corporatists
by Adriaan Alsema March 29, 2021
No coffee farmer in Colombia is allowed to export coffee without paying the mighty coffee federation, historically one of the main promoters of fascist economics.
Coffee federation Fedecafe was founded in 1927, inspired by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s “corporatism” model, which rejected free market capitalism and the central planning of the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin.
The holy trinity
“Corporatism” was originally invented by the Catholic Church in the late 19th Century to counter capitalism with a neo-feudal economic model that sought to maintain a medieval class system.
Mussolini adopted the idea to create corporations that controlled the different sectors of the economy in coordination with the State and the Catholic Church.
. . .
Exporting Colombia’s corporatism
Under the leadership of Medellin oligarch Arturo Gomez, the coffee federation created the brand “Juan Valdez” in 1960 to promote its coffee in the United States.
Colombia’s coffee growers were starving, but Fedecafe controlled the entire supply chain and was able to publish a number of fancy ads in the New York Times.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/the-role-of-fascism-in-colombia-part-1-the-coffee-corporatists/
Cuba Libre to be COVID-Libre: Five Vaccines and Counting...
MARCH 30, 2021
BY HELEN YAFFE
On 23 March 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a group of Conservative Party backbenchers: ‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.’ Johnson was articulating the dogma that the pursuit of private profit through capitalist free markets leads to efficient outcomes. In reality, however, Britain’s accomplishments in developing the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and in the national vaccination rollout have more to do with state investments than the market mechanism. Government money subsidised the vaccine development at the University of Oxford, and it is the state-funded National Health Service that has carried out the vaccination programme. Johnson did not admit that it is due to capitalism and greed that Britain now has the fifth worst Covid-19 mortality rate in the world with over 126,500 deaths (almost 1,857 per million people in the population) and counting.
The British government, like most neoliberal regimes, refused to take the measures necessary to slow and halt community transmission, it failed early on to provide health care and social care workers with adequate PPE and other resources which could have saved the lives of hundreds of frontline staff who died as a result. It contracted private businesses to carry out essential activities, most with little or no relevant experience, for example, instead of equipping the community-based GP system of the National Health Service to take charge of ‘track and trace’, the government dished out £37 billion to Serco to manage part of the system. In public health terms it has been disastrous; but measured by Boris Johnson’s celebrated standards of capitalism and greed it is has indeed excelled. The greatest beneficiaries of Britain’s response to the pandemic have been the private corporations making huge profits. Around 2,500 Accenture, Deloitte and McKinsey consultants are on an average daily rate of £1,000, with some paid £6,624 a day.
Johnson has now laid out a road map for reopening the economy. As a result, even the most optimistic scenario predicts a third wave between September 2021 and January 2022 resulting in at least 30,000 additional deaths in Britain. These deaths are preventable. But it precisely because the British government is driven by the capitalism and greed that it insists that we have to learn to ‘live with the virus’ so that the business of business can continue.
Contrary to Johnson’s claims, this pandemic has affirmed that public healthcare needs cannot be adequately met under a profit-based system. Indeed, it is the absence of the capitalist profit motive which underlies the outstanding domestic and international response to Covid-19 by socialist Cuba, which now has five vaccines in clinical trials and is set to be among the first nations to vaccinate its entire population.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/30/cuba-libre-to-be-covid-libre-five-vaccines-and-counting/
Stop the Genocide! Garfuna Land Defenders Fight Against State-Sanctioned Violence in Honduras
Post on: March 28, 2021 Marisela Trevin
More than eight months after the kidnapping of four young land defenders from the Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz, in northern Honduras, their whereabouts are still unknown. In a recent statement, the local organization OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras) issued a denunciation saying that the State of Honduras is committing genocide against the Garífuna people, with the aim of achieving their definitive displacement. We discussed this situation with César Benedith, member of OFRANEH, community leader and former president of the Triunfo de la Cruz Community Board.
Image from a protest demanding the safe return of the five disappeared Garífuna community members. "Alive they were taken, alive they return." Photo: OFRANEH
More than eight months after the kidnapping of four young land defenders from the Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz, in northern Honduras, their whereabouts are still unknown. Given the state’s inaction and involvement in concealing the facts of the case, the community decided last February to set up a committee to search for the kidnapped community leaders.
The cases of persecution, torture, and murder in this area have increased dramatically in recent years, in the context of the Garífuna communities’ struggle to defend their lands against the government of Honduras and private companies seeking their displacement to build tourist resorts and exploit their natural resources. In the last month alone, four Garífunas were killed in the communities of Masca and Corozal, including Martín Pandy, the president of the Community Board (patronato) of Corozal.. Two activists were also arrested in Trujillo for defending their land. In a recent statement, the local organization OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras) issued a denunciation saying that the State of Honduras is committing genocide against the Garífuna people, with the aim of achieving their definitive displacement. We discussed this situation with César Benedith, member of OFRANEH, community leader and former president of the Triunfo de la Cruz Community Board.
Can you tell us about the context in which the recent killings and detentions took place in the Garífuna communities?
As Garífuna leaders, we feel that our people are being systematically dispossessed by the government, in conjunction with the businessmen of this country. We are being threatened and criminalized, and the Garífuna leaders of different communities are being killed for the economic interests of these politicians and some businessmen from our region. Since they have control over the justice — or injustice — system in our country, when they can’t kill us, they criminalize us. It’s scary, because many communities are losing their leaders, who have been at the forefront of our struggle to protect our lands.
What are the interests behind this systematic violence against the Garífuna people?
The State wants to take control of the natural resources that belong to the indigenous people of this country. They see our land as a resource that they need to access to keep making money, regardless of whether they have to displace the communities that are living on the seashore. And when we go out and defend our territory, we are criminalized and often killed. A Minister of Tourism of Honduras has even said that his dream is to turn Honduras into another Cancun. So we feel that the State of Honduras views us as an obstacle for that.
More:
https://www.leftvoice.org/stop-the-genocide-garifuna-land-defenders-fight-against-state-sanctioned-violence-in-honduras
Lava Jato Dies, Lula Is Reborn: Behind The Supreme Court Ruling
MARCH 9, 2021
By Brian Mier
On March 8th, Brazilian Supreme Court Minister Edson Fachin dismissed all Lava Jato related charges against former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. The ruling came as a surprise to some, since Fachin has been accused of pro-Lava Jato bias in past rulings, and leaked Telegram messages, published by the Intercept in 2019, shows task-force chief Dalton Dallagnol talking about a 45 minute meeting with the Supreme Court Minister, shouting with glee and bragging to fellow prosecutors, “Fachin is ours!“.
After last month’s Supreme Court ruling, that all 6 terabytes of Telegram conversations obtained by hacker Walter Delgatti in the so called “Operation Spoofing” were admissible as evidence in the Triplex apartment case against Lula, something had to be done to stop the bleeding. As Delgatti said in a recent interview, Dalton Dallagnol never erased any of his chats. For 5 years, he had been sharing audio messages from Sergio Moro and other important political figures with fellow prosecutors, and Delgatti recorded all of them. Furthermore, as earth shattering as the Intercept revelations were, Delgatti had only shared 57 gigabytes of information with them, and he says they refused an offer for more and only released a small portion of what he had shared. As soon as the defense lawyers began filing for new motions of dismissal along with press releases containing relevant sections of newly revealed Telegram conversations, continuing the cases against Lula became politically unsustainable.
Lula’s defense team filed its first motion of dismissal for illegal collaboration with US government authorities in February, 2018, months before the Intercept began publishing excerpts from the Telegram leaks. It was based on a July 2017 speech by US Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco bragging about how informal communications with Lava Jato officials helped streamline the investigation against Lula. Informal communications between public prosecutors and foreign government officials violates Brazilian sovereignty laws.
It’s second motion for dismissal based on illegal collaboration with US officials was filed the week after the Supreme Court ruled on the admissibility of Delgatti’s hacked telegram conversations. One of the justifications was a comment made on the day of Lula’s imprisonment by Lava Jato task-force chief Dalton Dallagnol, that it was a “gift from the CIA.”
More:
https://www.brasilwire.com/lava-jato-dies-lula-is-reborn-behind-the-supreme-court-ruling/
Argentina's Military Coup of 1976: What the U.S. Knew
Published: Mar 23, 2021
Briefing Book #751
Edited by Carlos Osorio
U.S. had ample forewarning of coup plotting, documents show
Officials maintained channel of communications with plotters
Ford Administration knew Argentine military planned to commit human rights violations
U.S. Ambassador aborted pre-coup visit by a former CIA deputy director
Washington, D.C., March 23, 2021 - On the eve of the 45th anniversary of the military coup in Argentina, the National Security Archive is today posting declassified documents revealing what the U.S. government knew, and when it knew it, in the weeks preceding the March 24, 1976, overthrow of Isabel Peron’s government. The documents provide evidence of multiple contacts between the coup plotters and U.S. officials. “[Admiral] Massera sought opportunity to speak privately with me,” U.S. Ambassador to Argentina Robert Hill reported in a cable sent one week before the putsch after meeting with a leading coup plotter. “[H]e said that it was no secret that military might have to step into political vacuum very soon.”
The documents posted today record the U.S. government knowledge of the plotters, their preparations for the coup, and their potential plans for what State Department officials described as “military rule for an extended duration and of unprecedented severity.” They show that the U.S. “discreetly” advised the military more than a month before the actual coup that Washington would recognize the new regime.
In the first substantive report to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on a “Possible Coup in Argentina,” in mid-February 1976, Assistant Secretary of State William Rogers flagged the likelihood of human rights violations after a military takeover. “We would expect [the military government] to be friendly toward the United States,” he apprised Kissinger. “However, in stepping up the fight against the guerrillas, an Argentine military government would be almost certain to engage in human rights violations such as to engender international criticism. This could lead to U.S. public and Congressional pressures which would complicate our relations with the new regime.” Anticipating problems with the United States over the repression against subversion they would implement, the Argentine “military planning group” approached officials in their own foreign ministry to advise “as to how the future military govt can avoid or minimize the sort of problems the Chilean and Uruguayan govts were having with the U.S. over [the] human rights issue.”
Perhaps to discuss that very issue, the documents show that the Argentine military sought to meet with Kissinger in advance of the coup—an idea discouraged by Ambassador Hill. On February 13, 1976, Hill met with an Argentine-born U.S. businessman named “Mr. Carnicero” who informed him that “several high-ranking military officers have asked him to arrange a meeting between an appropriate military representative and Secretary Kissinger” so that they could explain why they needed to take power and seek assurances of prompt recognition. The ambassador rejected that idea on the grounds that “Such a meeting, should it become public knowledge, could be misinterpreted to the detriment of the officers themselves as well as of Secretary Kissinger.” In a revealing passage, Hill reminded the emissary that “the embassy has discreetly and through third parties already indicated to the military that the USG will recognize a new government in Argentina….”
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2021-03-23/argentinas-military-coup-what-us-knew?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=9fcb5efb-937e-4c13-9e3a-90897fe629e7
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