March 16, 2019

Netherlands, U.S. agree on use of Curacao as possible aid hub for Venezuela

Source: Reuters

MARCH 15, 2019 / 3:57 PM / UPDATED 8 HOURS AGO
2 MIN READ

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Netherlands and the United States reached an agreement on Friday to use facilities on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao for possible distribution of aid to nearby Venezuela, Curacao’s prime minister said.

The island will only be used for civilian operations to deliver aid, such as food and medicines, to Venezuela if the Venezuelan government explicitly allows it, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said last month.

Curacao Prime Minister Eugene Ruggenaath said on Twitter the United States and the Netherlands signed an agreement detailing the access and use of facilities in Curacao as a humanitarian hub for aid to Venezuela.

Read more: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-venezuela-usa-netherlands/netherlands-u-s-agree-on-use-of-curacao-as-possible-aid-hub-for-venezuela-idUKKCN1QW2TH?rpc=401&

March 16, 2019

Will Trump go for Bolivia next?

KEN LIVINGSTONEFRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2019
Will Trump go for Bolivia next?

With Evo Morales campaigning for re-election in Bolivia later this year, the left must raise awareness of the threat of growing US hostility, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

THE TRUMP administration is ramping up pressure on Bolivia, where Evo Morales is standing for re-election as president in 2019, along with current Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera as his running mate.

To give just one example, Trump recently called on multilateral development banks and the IMF not to fund loans to Bolivia until it fully complies (in US eyes) with the international Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. President Morales has denounced these drastic measures as “intimidation” and “blackmail,” while Garcia Linera argued the moves did not recognise the government’s efforts to curb both trafficking and child labour, with the latter having reduced dramatically under Morales’s presidency.

Trump’s administration has regularly attacked Morales, continuing the US’s hostility to him even before he was first elected.

. . .

The language used by the US government against Bolivia increasingly echoes the way the Trump administration has talked about both Venezuela and Nicaragua, where its objective is “regime change.”

More:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/will-trump-go-bolivia-next

March 14, 2019

A year after murder of trailblazing Rio politician, two shocking arrests, and a legacy of change

STEPHANIE NOLEN LATIN AMERICA BUREAU CHIEF
PUBLISHED 43 MINUTES AGO

SERGIO MORAES/REUTERS

Vigils and demonstrations to remember Marielle Franco, the Rio city councillor brutally murdered a year ago, are planned across Brazil for March 14 − many of them to be led by a new generation of female Afro-Brazilian politicians whose emergence in the past year may be Ms. Franco’s greatest legacy.

On Tuesday, with just two days to go before the anniversary, Rio state prosecutors charged two former police officers with killing Ms. Franco and her driver in a drive-by shooting that stunned Brazilians. But even as they announced the arrests of the two men, investigators conceded they were “no closer” to answering the larger question of who ordered the assassination of Ms. Franco, a rising star of Brazil’s political left.

. . .

In the intervening year, Ms. Franco has become a symbol of resistance and political change; graffiti images of her face are all over the country, along with the phrase “Marielle Presente” − Marielle is here − the slogan she used in her campaign to tell voters from traditionally marginalized communities that she was listening and would work for them.

The two men charged in her killing, Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Vieira de Queiroz, are former police officers. The two are allegedly part of the shadowy network of ex-law-enforcement officers, known as militia, that controls large parts of Rio, and have close ties to some in the right-wing political establishment. On city council, Ms. Franco pushed for an investigation into militia activity and their connection with the police force.

More:
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-a-year-after-murder-of-trailblazing-rio-politician-two-shocking/

March 13, 2019

Native Leaders Tell Congress How Trump Trampled 'Spiritually Occupied Landscape' to Carve Up Nationa

Published on
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
by Common Dreams

Native Leaders Tell Congress How Trump Trampled 'Spiritually Occupied Landscape' to Carve Up National Monuments

"It is my firm belief that this was a pre-destined outcome and everything since has been to justify that outcome."

by Julia Conley, staff writer



Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument's boundaries were reduced by about 47 percent after the Interior Department's review last year. (Photo: Bureau of Land Managment/Flickr/cc)



House Democrats, indigenous tribal leaders, and public land protection advocates all rebuked the Trump administration's downsizing of two national monuments Wednesday, arguing that President Donald Trump and former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke acted illegally by conducting what at least one critic called a "sham" review process.

The administration acted in the interest of pro-fossil fuel lawmakers, the oil and gas industry, and other monument opponents when they conducted a hasty review of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in 2017, critics argued.

The House Natural Resources Committee invited several witnesses to testify at a hearing entitled "Forgotten Voices," including three representatives from native tribes which had vocally opposed President Donald Trump's decision to shrink the two monuments by about two million acres in 2017, citing their sacred connection to the lands.

"To Hopi people, the Bears Ears National Monument is a spiritually occupied landscape," said Clark Tenakhongva, vice chairman of the Hopi tribe, at the hearing. "This land is a testament of Hopi stewardship through thousands of years, manifested by the 'footprints' of ancient villages, sacred springs, migration routes, pilgrimage trails, [and] artifacts."

Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), one of two Native American women who made history when they were elected to Congress last year, expressed solidarity with the Hopi and other tribes.

"I can say the bones of my ancestors are buried in Bears Ears," Haaland said. "It's easy to get emotional about tribal land when your ancestors have lived there for generations and it's only because of them that you're able to sit here today...I appreciate local tribes for coming so far to explain why this land is important."

https://twitter.com/Wilderness/status/1105870806058442752

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

More:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/13/native-leaders-tell-congress-how-trump-trampled-spiritually-occupied-landscape-carve

March 13, 2019

Appeals court hears case on adoptions of Native Americans

Source: Associated Press


Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Updated 11:54 am CDT, Wednesday, March 13, 2019



Photo: Mike Simons, AP
IMAGE 1 OF 4
FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2013, file photo, Veronica, 3, a child at the center of an international adoption dispute at the time, smiles in a bathroom of the Cherokee Nation Jack Brown Center in Tahlequah, Okla. A federal law that gives preference to Native American families in child welfare proceedings involving Native children is facing a significant legal challenge. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the law didn’t apply in a South Carolina case involving Veronica because her Cherokee father was absent from part of her life. (Mike Simons/Tulsa World via AP, File)


NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court in New Orleans is hearing arguments Wednesday on a 1978 law giving preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings involving Native American children.

A federal district judge in Texas last year struck down the Indian Child Welfare Act in a victory for opponents, including adoptive parents, who say it is racially motivated and unconstitutionally discriminatory.

Backers of the law, including numerous tribes and the federal government, say that if the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds that decision, many Native American children will be lost to their families and tribes.

"Plaintiffs talk a good game about the 'best interests' of Indian children, paternalistically contending that they know better than Indian families and tribes what is best for their children," attorneys for four Indian groups supporting the law said in briefs filed ahead of Wednesday morning's arguments before a three-judge 5th Circuit panel: Judges Jacques L. Wiener Jr., James L. Dennis and Priscilla Owen.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Appeals-court-hears-case-of-on-adoptions-of-13684225.php

March 13, 2019

How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution

How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution
The extravagant splendor of the animal kingdom can’t be explained by natural selection alone — so how did it come to be?



By Ferris Jabr
Jan. 9, 2019

808
A male flame bowerbird is a creature of incandescent beauty. The hue of his plumage transitions seamlessly from molten red to sunshine yellow. But that radiance is not enough to attract a mate. When males of most bowerbird species are ready to begin courting, they set about building the structure for which they are named: an assemblage of twigs shaped into a spire, corridor or hut. They decorate their bowers with scores of colorful objects, like flowers, berries, snail shells or, if they are near an urban area, bottle caps and plastic cutlery. Some bowerbirds even arrange the items in their collection from smallest to largest, forming a walkway that makes themselves and their trinkets all the more striking to a female — an optical illusion known as forced perspective that humans did not perfect until the 15th century.

Yet even this remarkable exhibition is not sufficient to satisfy a female flame bowerbird. Should a female show initial interest, the male must react immediately. Staring at the female, his pupils swelling and shrinking like a heartbeat, he begins a dance best described as psychotically sultry. He bobs, flutters, puffs his chest. He crouches low and rises slowly, brandishing one wing in front of his head like a magician’s cape. Suddenly his whole body convulses like a windup alarm clock. If the female approves, she will copulate with him for two or three seconds. They will never meet again.

The bowerbird defies traditional assumptions about animal behavior. Here is a creature that spends hours meticulously curating a cabinet of wonder, grouping his treasures by color and likeness. Here is a creature that single-beakedly builds something far more sophisticated than many celebrated examples of animal toolmaking; the stripped twigs that chimpanzees use to fish termites from their mounds pale in comparison. The bowerbird’s bower, as at least one scientist has argued, is nothing less than art. When you consider every element of his courtship — the costumes, dance and sculpture — it evokes a concept beloved by the German composer Richard Wagner: Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, one that blends many different forms and stimulates all the senses.

This extravagance is also an affront to the rules of natural selection. Adaptations are meant to be useful — that’s the whole point — and the most successful creatures should be the ones best adapted to their particular environments. So what is the evolutionary justification for the bowerbird’s ostentatious display? Not only do the bowerbird’s colorful feathers and elaborate constructions lack obvious value outside courtship, but they also hinder his survival and general well-being, draining precious calories and making him much more noticeable to predators.



More:
http://tinyurl.com/yytk8p9l

March 12, 2019

To help Venezuela, the U.S. must use diplomacy, not a military coup

03/11/2019, 05:00pm
To help Venezuela, the U.S. must use diplomacy, not a military coup

By Jesse Jackson

The United States is pushing for an overthrow of the government of Venezuela. The Trump administration has denounced Nicolas Maduro as a “dictator,” dismissing the 2018 election, which the opposition boycotted. Instead of a good neighbor policy or a policy of non-intervention, the Trump administration has set out intentionally to overthrow the regime.

Long before Trump, the United States was a bitter opponent of the Hugo Chavez regime. The fact that Chavez was wildly popular and freely elected made no difference. He represented a revolution that embraced Fidel Castro’s Cuba and implemented plans to redistribute wealth and empower the poor. In 2002, when the Venezuelan military moved to overthrow Chavez, an official in the Bush administration reportedly met with the coup leaders. The coup attempt was frustrated, however, when Venezuelans rose up in mass against the plotters.

Now with Chavez gone, the current president Nicolas Maduro unpopular, the economy a mess — in significant degree because the price of oil is near record lows — the Trump administration is apparently orchestrating another attempt.

OPINION
It has continued to ratchet up pressure. It has imposed brutal sanctions on Venezuela, making a bad situation far worse, all the while blaming the government for the misery. Trump has openly threatened a “military option” for Venezuela. His bellicose national security adviser, John Bolton, boasted that “The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — has finally met its match.”

More:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/venezuela-trump-administration-coup-president-maduro/

March 10, 2019

U.S. Gears Up for War on Venezuela

MARCH 8, 2019

by JEFF MACKLER

. . .

U.S. economic warfare

While Guaidó’s hoped-for triumphant re-entry into Venezuela as the nation’s savior proved to be farce, the real war waged by the U.S. against Venezuela remains deadly serious. The sanctions and related economic measures imposed by the U.S. against oil-rich Venezuela have been draconian, if not unprecedented. These include instructions to all U.S. banking institutions to seize hundreds of billions of dollars in Venezuelan accounts and transfer the funds into accounts payable to puppet president Guaidó.

The details of this have been well documented. Here it is sufficient to report that the full force of the U.S. leading capitalist banking elites, from the Bank of America to the J.P. Morgan Chase financial behemoths, have joined in stealing funds generated from the sale of Venezuelan oil in the U.S. and around the world. Add to this the U.S.-pressured decision of the British ruling class to sequester Venezuelan gold deposited in British banks to the tune of $1.3 billion, and the severing of Venezuelan access to the world’s lending institutions, and you have nothing less than a U.S.-led war against the Venezuelan people.

Indeed, a U.S. Army document published in September 2008 by Wikileaks demonstrates that the U.S. government sees economic aggression as a key component of its warfare strategy.

On Feb. 25, Vice President Pence demanded that all Latin American countries “freeze the assets of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.” Pence, according to the Feb. 25 New York Times, “also warned some countries in the region that have conspicuously sought to remain neutral in the crisis convulsing Venezuela that they cannot remain so, singling out Mexico and Uruguay.” The endlessly pontificating and threatening Pence declared, “We believe there can be no bystanders. No one on the sidelines of this, particularly in our hemisphere.”

Despite Guaidó’s abject failure at the border, the U.S. persists in demanding that its allies accept Venezuela’s being effectively expelled from the world economy. Insisting on the present legitimacy of the historic U.S. imperial credo embodied in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, Trump’s partisan warmakers proclaim that Venezuela is today situated in the U.S. “backyard” and, therefore, barred from exercising its sovereign rights as a nation.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/08/u-s-gears-up-for-war-on-venezuela/

March 9, 2019

Presstitutes Turn Blind Eye to UN Report on Venezuela Washington and the Convict Appointed to Overth

Washington and the Convict Appointed to Overthrow Venezuela Continue the Lies

by Paul Craig Roberts / March 8th, 2019

Don’t you think something is fishy when the presstitutes orchestrate a fake news “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela, but totally ignore the real humanitarian crises in Yemen and Gaza?

Don’t you think something is really very rotten when the expert, Alfred Mauricer de Zayas, sent by the UN to Venezuela to evaluate the situation finds no interest by any Western media or any Western government in his report?

Don’t you think it is a bit much for Washington to steal $21 billion of Venezuela’s money, impose sanctions in an effort to destabilize the country and to drive the Venezuelan government to its knees, blame Venezuelan socialism (essentially nationalization of the oil company) for bringing “starvation to the people,” and offer a measly $21 million in “humanitarian aid.”

As the United States is completely devoid of any print or TV media, it falls upon internet media such as this website to perform the missing function of honest journalism.

More:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/03/presstitutes-turn-blind-eye-to-un-report-on-venezuela/

March 7, 2019

Stone Age Cave Symbols May All Be Part of a Single Prehistoric Proto-Writing System

posted by Jason Kottke Mar 04, 2019

While studying some of the oldest art in the world found in caves and engraved on animal bones or shells, paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger has found evidence of a proto-writing system that perhaps developed in Africa and then spread throughout the world.



The research also reveals that modern humans were using two-thirds of these signs when they first settled in Europe, which creates another intriguing possibility. “This does not look like the start-up phase of a brand-new invention,” von Petzinger writes in her recently published book, The First Signs: Unlocking the mysteries of the world’s oldest symbols (Simon and Schuster). In other words, when modern humans first started moving into Europe from Africa, they must have brought a mental dictionary of symbols with them.

That fits well with the discovery of a 70,000-year-old block of ochre etched with cross-hatching in Blombos cave in South Africa. And when von Petzinger looked through archaeology papers for mentions or illustrations of symbols in cave art outside Europe, she found that many of her 32 signs were used around the world. There is even tantalising evidence that an earlier human, Homo erectus, deliberately etched a zigzag on a shell on Java some 500,000 years ago. “The ability of humans to produce a system of signs is clearly not something that starts 40,000 years ago. This capacity goes back at least 100,000 years,” says Francesco d’Errico from the University of Bordeaux, France.

More:
https://kottke.org/19/03/stone-age-cave-symbols-may-all-be-part-of-a-single-prehistoric-proto-writing-system