Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalArchaeologists explore a rural field in Kansas, and a lost city emerges
By DAVID KELLY
AUG 19, 2018 | 4:00 AM
| ARKANSAS CITY, KAN.
Of all the places to discover a lost city, this pleasing little community seems an unlikely candidate.
There are no vine-covered temples or impenetrable jungles here — just an old-fashioned downtown, a drug store that serves up root beer floats and rambling houses along shady brick lanes.
Yet there’s always been something — something just below the surface.
Locals have long scoured fields and river banks for arrowheads and bits of pottery, amassing huge collections. Then there were those murky tales of a sprawling city on the Great Plains and a chief who drank from a goblet of gold.
More:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-kansas-lost-city-20180819-htmlstory.html
Forgotten Women: The conversation of murdered and missing native women is not one North America want
Forgotten Women: The conversation of murdered and missing native women is not one North America wants to have - but it must
In the fifth in our series on the lives of ordinary women behind extraordinary stories, this month's Forgotten Women examines how terrifyingly deep the international crisis of violence against indigenous women runs
Lucy Anna Gray New York
6 days ago
It is North America’s dark, open secret that native women are far more likely to be raped, and far more likely to be murdered.
No justice. That is the constant cry from friends and families of victims as countless cases are left unresolved and ignored.
Marita Growing Thunder, a 19-year-old murdered and missing indigenous women (MMIW) activist from Montana, has experienced this lack of justice – five times.
In the early 2000s, Marita’s aunt died. Although Yvonne’s death was officially recorded as an overdose, Marita claims her aunt had been beaten. “All her fingernails had been pulled out. She was unrecognisable when we put her in the coffin. Her body was black and blue and swollen.”
More:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/native-american-women-missing-murder-mmiw-inquiry-canada-us-violence-indigenous-a8487976.html
Exclusive: Some Arctic Ground No Longer Freezing--Even in Winter
New data from two Arctic sites suggest some surface layers are no longer freezing. If that continues, greenhouse gases from permafrost could accelerate climate change.
BY CRAIG WELCH
PHOTOGRAPHS BY KATIE ORLINSKY
PUBLISHED AUGUST 20, 2018
CHERSKIY, RUSSIA - Nikita Zimov was teaching students to do ecological fieldwork in northern Siberia when he stumbled on a disturbing clue that the frozen land might be thawing far faster than expected.
Zimov, like his father, Sergey Zimov, has spent years running a research station that tracks climate change in the rapidly warming Russian Far East. So when students probed the ground and took soil samples amid the mossy hummocks and larch forests near his home, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Nikita Zimov suspected something wasn't right.
Sergey Zimov measures permafrost levels with his granddaughters near the Northeast Science Station which
he founded in Cherskiy, Russia, along the Kolyma River. About an hour away is Zimov's large-scale scientific
experiment Pleistocene Park, which he runs with his son, Nikita Zimov. The two believe that by recreating the
ecosystem of the Pleistocene era, which was dominated by grasslands and large mammals, they can slow
permafrost thaw.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KATIE ORLINSKY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
In April he sent a team of workers out with heavy drills to be sure. They bored into the soil a few feet down and found thick, slushy mud. Zimov said that was impossible. Cherskiy, his community of 3,000 along the Kolyma River, is one of the coldest spots on Earth. Even in late spring, ground below the surface should be frozen solid.
Every winter across the Arctic, the top few inches or feet of soil and rich plant matter freezes up before thawing again in summer. Beneath this active layer of ground extending hundreds of feet deeper sits continuously frozen earth called permafrost, which, in places, has stayed frozen for millennia.
More:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/08/news-arctic-permafrost-may-thaw-faster-than-expected/
On edit, sorry I had to add this photo, from the article. Have never seen anything like it:
The Batagaika Crater in the town of Batagay, Russia, is known as the "hell crater" or the "gateway to the underworld.” Over 300 feet deep and more than half a mile long, the depression is one of the largest in the world. Scientists believe it started forming in the 1960s when the permafrost under the area began to thaw after nearby forests were cleared.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KATIE ORLINSKY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Beautiful Portraits of the Standing Rock Sioux
Beautiful Portraits of the Standing Rock Sioux
Over a hundred years ago, Frank Bennett Fiske began photographing members of the Standing Rock Sioux.
Kelly Caminero
08.18.18 9:11 PM ET
- click for images -
https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/d_placeholder_euli9k/dpr_0.6666666865348816/c_limit,h_636/fl_lossy,q_auto/180814-Caminero-Standing-Rock-hero_duruqc
Frank Bennett Fiske, a North Dakota native, began to photograph members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in his studio at Fort Yates, North Dakota over a hundred years ago. Fiske photographed a various women and men Native Americans who were his friends and neighbors, and had lived on this reservation for more than 20 years. The Standing Rocks Portraits depict a selection of these stunning portraits that were taken with a large studio camera on glass plate negatives and have rarely been viewed in public until now.
More at link:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/beautiful-portraits-of-the-standing-rock-sioux/1
How Guatemala is sliding into chaos in the fight for land and water
John Vidal in Camotán
Sun 19 Aug 2018 04.00 EDT
At 9am on 9 May, Luis Arturo Marroquín walked out of a shop in the main square of the small town of San Luis Jilotepéque in central Guatemala. Eyewitnesses say a black Toyota Hilux pick-up then drove up and, in full view of passersby, two men wearing hoods shot Marroquín repeatedly in the back.
The vehicle sped off but was identified and, within hours, police had stopped and reportedly questioned the men and found the weapons. But since then, no arrests have been made or charges levelled and the investigation has stalled.
Marroquín was a Q’eqchi’ Mayan, and a leader of Codeca, a group of indigenous farmers now gaining political ground by defending people from evictions, land grabs and pollution resulting from mines, hydro dams, logging, and huge palm oil and sugar cane developments.
He is one of 18 human rights and indigenous “defenders” to have been murdered so far this year in a wave of rural violence. Of these, 13 were involved in land conflicts and nine were Codeca leaders. Two were journalists investigating disputes and of the seven people killed in the month following Marroquín’s death, one died in a church, another was rammed by a truck and a third was murdered while doing the shopping. Others were stabbed or hacked to death. Few people have been arrested, let alone convicted.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/19/guatemala-fight-for-land-water-defenders-lmining-loging-eviction
Uganda police arrest US citizen after viral video shows attack on hotel workers
Source: The Hill
BY JUSTIN WISE - 08/18/18 07:20 PM EDT
Police in Uganda said they arrested a U.S. citizen this week after reviewing video that appeared to show him physically attacking hotel employees.
The official account for the Uganda Police Force wrote on Twitter Friday that they had arrested Jimmy Taylor after reviewing footage of the incident, which occurred at the Grand Imperial Hotel in Kampala, Uganda.
Taylor was detained at the Central Police Station in Kampala and is being charged with assault, police wrote on their official Twitter account.
"Thank you for your vigilance and sending us a video of an incident that happened at Grand Imperial Hotel. We have arrested the suspect, Jimmy Taylor, an American citizen," the Uganda Police Force Twitter account wrote. "He was detained at the Central Police Station, Kampala on charges of assault. #CommunityPolicing"
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/402498-us-citizen-arrested-in-uganda-after-attacking-hotel-workers-in
Mattis pledges closer defense cooperation with Argentina
Source: Associated Press
Robert Burns, Ap National Security Writer
Updated 11:32 am CDT, Wednesday, August 15, 2018
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday pledged closer defense cooperation with Argentina.
Standing beside his Argentinian counterpart, Oscar Aguad, Mattis said the military partnership can be strengthened. He alluded to the help the U.S. Navy provided Argentina last November when one of its submarines went missing with 44 sailors aboard.
Mattis's visit is the first to Argentina by an American secretary of defense since Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2005.
Mattis and Aguad announced no specific agreements, but both said they hope for better relations between their two countries.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Mattis-pledges-closer-defense-cooperation-with-13157987.php
New York Times:
America’s Role in Argentina’s Dirty War
By The Editorial Board
March 17, 2016
A few months after a military junta overthrew President Isabel Perón of Argentina in 1976, the country’s new foreign minister, Adm. Cesar Guzzetti, told Henry Kissinger, America’s secretary of state, that the military was aggressively cracking down on “the terrorists.”
Mr. Kissinger responded, “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly,” an apparent warning that a new American Congress might cut off aid if it thought the Argentine government was engaging in systemic human rights abuses.
The American ambassador in Buenos Aires soon reported to Washington that the Argentine government had interpreted Mr. Kissinger’s words as a “green light” to continue its brutal tactics against leftist guerrillas, political dissidents and suspected socialists.
Just how much the American government knew about Argentina’s repressive “Dirty War,” which lasted from 1976 to 1983 — and the extent to which it condoned the abuses — has remained shrouded in secrecy.
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/opinion/americas-role-in-argentinas-dirty-war.html
~ ~ ~
Obama sorry for U.S. policies during Argentina's 'dirty war'
Kamilia Lahrichi and Oren Dorell, USA TODAY
Published 11:56 a.m. ET March 24, 2016 | Updated 10:42 p.m. ET March 24, 2016
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and his counterpart from Argentina Mauricio Macri,
right, make a floral tribute to the victims of the military dictatorship at Parque de la
Memoria in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 24, 2016, during the tour of the wall, next
to the Rio de la Plata.
(Photo: DAVID FERNANDEZ, EPA)
U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires during the administration of then-President Jimmy Carter to document human rights abuses and identify the disappeared. Such men did so despite threats to themselves and their families, Obama said.
The new records will be added to a trove of more than 4,000 documents already declassified compiled by U.S. diplomats and used in Argentina to prosecute those accused in the abuses, Obama said.
. . .
Documents from the administration of President Gerald Ford, who was in office during the 1976 coup, show that top U.S. officials knew of the impending coup and did little to stop it.
. . .
On Feb. 28, 1976, less than a month before the coup, Hill wrote the State Department again with the good news that few Argentine politicians believed the United States was actively fomenting a coup. "Our stock with democratic civilian forces therefore remains high, but at same time our bridges to military are open," Hill wrote.
More:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/03/24/obama-speaks-us-role-argentinas-dirty-war/82206754/
Extremist group threatens to 'exterminate' opposition to Colombia's new government
by Adriaan Alsema August 12, 2018
Right-wing extremist group the Aguilas Negras are threatening to kill anyone who opposes Colombia’s new president, Ivan Duque.
In the latest death threat and manifesto by the group’s “Southwestern Bloc,” the extremists said that it considered all political parties that do not make up the governing coalition a “military target.”
Also threatened in the letter were victims organizations, labor unions, politicians and social leaders.
Threatened political parties:
More:
https://colombiareports.com/extremist-group-threatens-to-exterminate-all-opposition-to-colombias-new-government/
We know trolls everywhere would support this threat, but it is evil, as everyone knows, regardless.
Former Colombia intelligence chief ordered legendary comedian's assassination
Source: Colombia Reports
by Mathew Di Salvo August 14, 2018
A former top official of Colombia’s now-defunct state intelligence agency ordered the killing one of Colombia’s most beloved comedians, a court ruled Tuesday.
Just one day after the 19th anniversary of activist and funnyman Jaime Garzon’s death, former vice-director of Colombia’s intelligence agency DAS, Jose Miguel Narvaez, was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
Possible state involvement is also being considered, with an army colonel with alleged links to paramilitaries being investigated for the murder, reports El Tiempo.
Narvaez was already in prison for his involvement in the spying on Colombia’s Supreme Court in 2008 when the DAS was reporting directly to former President Alvaro Uribe, whose cousin was on trial for ties to death squads at the time.
Read more: https://colombiareports.com/top-intelligence-official-convicted-for-killing-colombias-most-popular-comedian/
Earlier Wikipedia, Jaime Garzón, the murdered comedian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Garz%C3%B3n
Jaime Garzón, wrapping himself in the flag.
Jaime Garzón memorial
Another Jaime Garzón memorial
A Jaime Garzón parade
Jaime Garzón, partially wrapped in the flag.
Jaime Garzón's car, after assassination.
Repression Intensifies in Argentina After President Empowers the Military
Repression Intensifies in Argentina After President Empowers the Military
BY
Liz Mason-Deese Truthout
PUBLISHED
August 13, 2018
Weeks after Argentina signed a deal for a new $50 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and only days after hosting G20 leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentine President Mauricio Macri issued a decree July 23 that would allow the country’s armed forces to intervene in questions of domestic security.
The decree violates laws passed after the country’s last military dictatorship – an authoritarian military junta that took power in a coup in 1976 and used force and repression to silence all opposition – ended in 1983, which limited the role of the armed forces, and points to a disturbing trend of militarization and repression under the right-wing government. The decision sparked immediate outrage from human rights organizations and social movements who have since organized massive protests around the country.
In his statement, President Macri referred to issues of “national security,” drug-trafficking and protecting the national border to justify giving the military expanded powers. He also stated a more general need for the armed forces to “modernize” in response to 21st century threats, including “internal threats.” These statements have worried many human rights organizations who fear a return to the type of repression experienced under the dictatorship – when armed forces were likewise allowed to intervene in domestic issues.
More:
https://truthout.org/articles/repression-intensifies-in-argentina-after-president-empowers-military/
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