August 28, 2014

Migration outlier: How Nicaragua escaped neighbors' deadly spiral

Migration outlier: How Nicaragua escaped neighbors' deadly spiral
By Ivan Castro
MANAGUA Thu Aug 28, 2014 1:50am EDT


(Reuters) - Victor Toruno was just 12 when he ran away from an abusive father to join a local street gang in Nicaragua, graduating from thief to drug dealer.
After stints in jail and treatment and therapy for drug addiction, he took part in a rehabilitation and training program run by a charity group and now runs a small bakery in Managua where he employs other youths who have escaped gang life.

It is a far cry from the fate of 17-year-old Jorge who lives just 150 miles (240 km) away in neighboring Honduras, surrounded by gang members in a neighborhood where nine people were murdered in three months, including a 22-year-old relative.
Jorge rarely ventures out into the streets and dreams of riding a migration wave north to the United States.

For relative neighbors, they live worlds apart.

~snip~
Crushing poverty and extreme violence - fueled by drug trafficking and police corruption - are behind a mass migration of Central American children to the United States in recent months that has overwhelmed U.S. border resources and driven illegal immigration to the fore in U.S. congressional elections.

But Nicaragua is an odd man out in the region. It is even poorer than Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador -- which account for the vast majority of child migrants -- but it has largely fended off the drug gangs terrorizing those countries and it sends few migrants north.

Nearly 16,000 unaccompanied Honduran minors have been caught trying to sneak into the United States since October, versus just 194 Nicaraguans.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/28/us-usa-immigration-nicaragua-idUSKBN0GS0AM20140828?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=401

August 28, 2014

Paramilitaries threaten to kill freelance photographer

Paramilitaries threaten to kill freelance photographer
Published on Tuesday 26 August 2014.



Juan Pablo Gutiérrez, a freelance photographer and indigenous rights defender with dual French and Colombian nationality, has been the target of death threats for the past two weeks. Unable to return to his home in central Colombia, he is waiting for the authorities to respond to his request for protection.

“You have just a few hours of life left,” said the noted signed by the paramilitary group Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles) that Gutiérrez was handed on 14 August. The threat probably came from the same people who threatened him in September 2011 because of his reports designed to draw the public’s attention to the Nukak, an indigenous group in Colombia’s southeastern Amazonian region.

The Black Eagles are now accusing him of failing to comply with their earlier demands, above all that he should stop working with indigenous peoples and leave Colombia for good.

Gutiérrez works with the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) on documentation projects and photo campaigns about indigenous communities that are under threat. He also works with Amnesty International on photo campaigns in Colombia and France.

More:
http://en.rsf.org/colombia-paramilitaries-threaten-to-kill-26-08-2014,46850.html

August 27, 2014

Colombia kingpin Escobar's hitman freed from jail

Source: Reuters

Colombia kingpin Escobar's hitman freed from jail
2014-08-27 12:45

Bogota - One of Colombia's most feared drug cartel assassins walked free on Tuesday after serving 22 years in jail for scores of murders ordered by notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar during the cocaine trafficking heyday of the 1980s, police said.

Jhon Jairo Velasquez, known by his alias 'Popeye', was released early from the high security Combita prison in central Boyaca after completing about three fifths of his sentence and receiving a reduction for studying and good behaviour. He left the prison heavily guarded by state-provided protection.

Velasquez, aged 52, was Escobar's chief hit man during the bloodiest days of the infamous Medellin Cartel, which shipped billions of dollars of cocaine to the United States and Europe. The prolific assassin, who has admitted to killing hundreds of Escobar's enemies, was on the frontlines of grisly gangland battles for territory and trafficking routes. He was indirectly behind thousands of deaths by killers on Escobar's payroll.

One of Escobar's inner circle, Velasquez was allegedly involved in some of the most famous cartel-related crimes - including the 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan and the bombing of an Avianca commercial flight later that same year that killed all 107 on board.

Read more: http://www.news24.com/World/News/Colombia-kingpin-Escobars-hitman-freed-from-jail-20140827

August 27, 2014

Uribe’s Democratic Center party ‘was organized to commit crimes’: Colombia Congressman

Uribe’s Democratic Center party ‘was organized to commit crimes’: Colombia Congressman
Aug 27, 2014 posted by Tim Hinchliffe

A congressman from Colombia’s Conservative Party (Partido Conservador) has called for the legal disbandment of former President Alvaro Uribe’s political party following recent events surrounding the ex-president’s alleged involvement in a hacking scandal.

Congressman Arturo Yepes declared that Uribe’s Democratic Center (Centro Democratico) party was organized with the intent to commit crimes, and that the National Electoral Council (CNE) should take legal action to dismantle the party.

“The best thing that can happen to the country is the precedent this country feels that it will not organize a political cause to commit crimes against democracy, against peace and against the rule of law,” said Yepes.

The congressman’s statement comes on the heels of allegations made by accused hacker Andres Sepulveda, who claims to have spied on ongoing peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group, the country’s largest, at the behest of the Democratic Center.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/uribes-democratic-center-party-organized-commit-crimes-colombia-congressman/

August 27, 2014

Debt, Vaccines and Food as a Weapon: When International Aid is Used for Population Control

Debt, Vaccines and Food as a Weapon: When International Aid is Used for Population Control
By Aaron Dykes on August 26, 2014

No strings attached? Yeah, right. Here’s a rundown of some of the major ways that international loans are used to control entire populations.

Those seeking dominance wield control in modern society largely through the manipulation of finance and economics. Power over entire countries comes not only through the debts themselves, but through the conditionalities tied to the financial agreement, as is done regularly by the IMF, World Bank and other aid programs. Notoriously, many locales – free in name – have been brought under the yoke of international domination, altering the shape of its development and its population.

Here’s a look at how the dangerous agendas tied to these loans have been used to takeover regions around the world for the benefits of the ruling global corporations....

One overt example comes from John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, who claims that he was as an international agent of influence, to convinced leaders of developing nations to accept enormous development loans from institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, USAID and others. These loans then gave leverage that effectively forced leaders to capitulate to political pressure and outside meddling. According to Perkins, these economic hitmen use “extortion, sex and murder” as well as the manipulation of documents, elections or official data to tilt the outcome desired by the lenders.

GMO FOOD AID

• In 2002, several needy nations in southern Africa – including Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique – controversially rejected food aid, despite being in the middle of a famine, because it was comprised of genetically modified crop staples. Leaders in these countries questioned the safety of biotech foods, expressed suspicions about hidden risks as well as contamination. The diplomatic row stirred emotions, with one supposedly anonymous USAID official telling the Africans “beggars can’t be choosers.” But should even the poorest nations be forced to accept food they consider tainted?

• In U.S. occupied Iraq, an agricultural program was instituted under Paul Bremer’s 100 Orders that essentially forced farmer’s to use registered seeds controlled by biotech. It mandated a policy of Plant Variety Protection (PVP) that clearly favored corporate giants like Syngenta and Monsanto, while making it difficult or impossible to use heirloom seeds traditionally saved by farmers since the early days of the Fertile Crescent – threatening the biodiversity and heritage of the region’s rich agricultural history.

~snip~
ECONOMIC SHOCK THERAPY

• Shock therapy was implemented on various economies through Latin America, Russia and Eastern Europe under the banner of neo-liberalization, where sudden shifts to a market economy caused severe disruption and destabilization in the lives of the poorest.

According to Naomi Kline, author of The Shock Doctrine, the hallmarks of economic Shock Therapy were implemented under warped, hyper-capitalism where transitioning markets were effectively pirate-ized (rather than privatized). Actions included “structurally adjusted mass-privatizations, government deregulation, unrestricted free market access for foreign corporations, and deep cuts in social spending with repressive laws, harsh crackdowns and torture.”

Her colleague, Nobel Prize winner in economics, Joseph Stiglitz, who has held top positions at the World Bank, said: “There was another kind of shock therapy, which was a dramatic change in society, changing from a socialist economy, a communist economy, into a market economy by overnight privatizing, liberalizing, changing the rules of the game overnight rather than the gradual approach of changing one thing after another.”

“You had asset stripping. You had the undermining of the basic social fabric of society. You didn’t have growth; you had decline. You had increase in poverty rather than the fruits that capitalism was supposed to bring.”

• For Argentina, in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was hyper-inflationary debt, exacerbated by sharply increased rates by the Federal Reserve, at a time when wage drops led to government revenue drops and subsequent debt shortfalls. This was all complicated by IMF loans and their associated agenda.

More:
http://truthstreammedia.com/top-10-cases-where-international-aid-was-used-for-population-control/

August 26, 2014

Reclaiming Life from Streets of Death

Aug 23, 2014

Reclaiming Life from Streets of Death

FSN News: On a recent afternoon, dozens of pretty white handkerchiefs fluttered in the breeze from the fence of the Benito Juarez Monument in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Embroidered in beautiful blue, green and red letters, the words spelled out very ugly messages:

October 13, 2013 Juarez, Chihuahua
A man known as Lucky was executed in Lomas de Poleo…

Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua
October 4, 2010

Eileen Armendariz
6 years old
Murdered during a robbery
She was a student of Canutillo School, where she was going with her sister..

And on and on the handkerchiefs went. The display was the work of Bordeamos Por la Paz, or We Stitch for Peace, an international movement of people who meticulously sew socially relevant messages for public viewing. In Mexico, the movement’s goal is “to preserve the memory” of victims of “homicides, femicides and forced disappearance,” said local activist Hazel Davalos. Every second Sunday, activists exhibit the handkerchiefs at the Benito Juarez Monument, she added.

Davalos’ colleague, Madga Rojero, elaborated on Bordeamos Por la Paz’s goal. “It is to construct a memory,” she said. “Every dead or disappeared person has a right to be on a handkerchief. It’s a silent protest. It’s an act of love.”

The handkerchiefs selected for display at the monument document the fates of Mexicans, some named and some anonymous, who fell victim to violence during the last few years. They were cops, gang-bangers, hamburger sellers, students fathers, sons, daughters and mothers. Many of the cases are from 2010- an especially violent year among many- and most happened in Ciudad Juarez or elsewhere in the state of Chihuahua.

A few other samples:

Jimenez, Chihuahua
October 16, 2010
2 people decapitated…

Urique, Chihuahua
October 4, 2010
6 men murdered with firearms..2 are minors

January 30, 2010
Victims of Villas de Salvarcar (Ciudad Juarez)
Jaime Rosales Cisneros, 42-contractor-saw hit men blocking off the street and ran toward the party where his son was but was shot in the back.

“He died shot in the back but managed to save his son.”

Rojero considers the handkerchiefs a small contribution in the reconstruction of a shattered social fabric, and a tool for teaching future generations not to repeat the mistakes of previous ones. “Every little grain of sand makes a difference,” she told Frontera NorteSur. “I can’t allow my heart to stop.”

More:
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2014/08/reclaiming-life-from-streets-of-death.html

August 26, 2014

Colombia army officers and ex-policeman jailed for arms trafficking, linked to false positive colone

Colombia army officers and ex-policeman jailed for arms trafficking, linked to false positive colonel
Aug 26, 2014 posted by Craig Corbett

Four non-commissioned Army officers, a soldier, an ex-policeman and a civilian were sentenced to seven years in prison on Monday for selling arms to guerrilla groups.

All seven of the accused pled guilty in a Medellin court for their involvement in an arms trafficking ring led by disgraced former Colonel Robinson Javier Gonzalez, currently serving a reduced sentence for the murders of over 70 civilians in a “false positives”scandal, according to Colombian newspaper El Espectador.

A court in Medellin accepted guilty pleas in exchange for reduced sentences from army sergeants Juan Pablo Laguna Medina, Carlos Fernando Borda Garzon, Alexander Sanchez Puerta, and Gerardo Marquez Guerrero; soldier Silva Rincon; and ex-policeman Nestor Wilson Pinto.

According to the investigation by Colombia’s National Organized Crime Unit, under direction from Gonzalez the criminal group sold long-distance weapons and explosives to Guerrilla groups Farc, bloque Martires de Cordoba de las autodefensas Gaitanistas, and the so-called Clan Usaga from 2010 until their arrest this year.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/army-officers-ex-policeman-linked-falsepositive-colonel-jailed/

August 25, 2014

China And Afghanistan’s Minerals: Archaeologists Still Scrambling To Save Mes Aynak

China And Afghanistan’s Minerals: Archaeologists Still Scrambling To Save Mes Aynak

By Kathleen Caulderwood@katcaulder[email protected]
on August 25 2014 4:56 PM


[font size=1]
A Buddha statue discovered at the Mes Aynak archaeological site in the eastern province of Logar, in Afghanistan. The ancient city sits on top of one of
the world’s largest known copper deposits, which is currently on lease to a state-owned Chinese mining company. Brent Huffman [/font]

Over a decade ago, the world was outraged when the Taliban destroyed two massive Buddha statues in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan valley in a vendetta against all Islamic art. Today, an even larger and older collection of artifacts is under threat, but this time the conflict has more to do with economics than religion.

Mes Aynak is a 9,800-acre archaeological site in Afghanistan’s Logar Province. It was once a major city on the ancient Silk road, and is home to structures dating back more than 2,600 years. Archaeologists say it’s a cultural goldmine, but others are more concerned with what lies beneath it -- 5.5 million metric tons of high-grade copper ore.

Six years ago, China’s largest mining company signed a $3 billion agreement with the Afghan government for rights to the site, a move cheered for its potential to boost jobs and the country’s struggling economy. But the decision left archaeologists scrambling to recover what cultural heritage they could before work on the mine began. Even though the company has delayed its project for other reasons, tight budgets and a lack of assistance from the Afghan government means the ancient city is far from safe.

“It was very clear since the beginning that the provisional schedule for mining was overly optimistic,” said Philippe Marquis, an archaeologist at the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA) which started working at Mes Aynak a year after the deal was inked.

More:
http://www.ibtimes.com/china-afghanistans-minerals-archaeologists-still-scrambling-save-mes-aynak-1668808

August 25, 2014

Veteran journalist of over 40 years assassinated in Cali, Colombia

Veteran journalist of over 40 years assassinated in Cali, Colombia
Aug 25, 2014 posted by Tim Hinchliffe

With a career in journalism that spanned over 40 years, Luis Eduardo Cardozo was killed in his home in western Colombia.

Cardozo was pronounced dead Sunday night at a Cali clinic after receiving a blow to the head that fractured his skull.

A 22-year-old man was arrested and is currently being processed for carrying out the attack, according to Colombia’s El Pais newspaper.

~snip~

Cardozo’s death comes two weeks after the fatal shooting of another Colombian journalist, Carlos Cervantes, who was gunned down while picking up his son from school in the northwestern state of Antioquia.

http://colombiareports.co/veteran-journalist-40-years-assassinated-cali-colombia/

August 25, 2014

Colombia ‘peace talks hacker’ blows whistle, implicates military and Uribe in spy scandal

Colombia ‘peace talks hacker’ blows whistle, implicates military and Uribe in spy scandal
Aug 25, 2014 posted by Adriaan Alsema

Colombia’s military, its intelligence agency under former President Alvaro Uribe, and the family of former presidential candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga were all directly involved with illegal spying on the ongoing peace talks, the alleged spy said in an interview on Sunday.

Computer engineer Andres Sepulveda was arrested in May, weeks before the elections, and accused of illegally spying on the peace talks that are held between the government and rebel group FARC in Cuba.

In an interview with weekly Semana, Sepulveda admitted to the spying and clarified he worked closely with “Andromeda,” a covert spying operation run by members of Military Intelligence that was discovered and apparently shut down by prosecutors in February.

Military commanders sold information

“Andromeda had everything. What we did with Andromeda was buy information favorable to the objectives of the Oscar Ivan Zuluaga campaign and follow up on the instructions” to counter the peace talks.

Uribe, the president of Colombia between 2002 and 2010, “had been leading” this campaign opposing the peace talks “using different pawns,” said Sepulveda.

The former president had been supported by members within the military loyal to the former commander in chief, and who opposed efforts by current President Juan Manuel Santos to negotiate peace with the country’s largest and longest-living rebel group.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/colombia-peace-talks-hacker-blows-whistle-implicates-military-uribe-spy-scandal/