Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's Journal3 massacres in 12 days: Rural violence escalates in Brazilian Amazon
by Sue Branford and Thais Borges on 8 April 2019
Violence in the Brazilian countryside is on the rise. In the last two weeks, Amazonia has seen an alarming increase in targeted killings, with three massacres and at least nine deaths. The Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) defines a massacre as a killing involving three or more people.
The most recent killings took place on 3 April in a landless peasant workers’ camp near the hamlet of Vila de Mocotó in the Altamira municipal district, in southwest Pará state, near the Belo Monte mega-dam. This is not far from Anapu, where Sister Dorothy Stang, an American nun who worked with Amazon landless peasant communities, was murdered in 2005.
The squatters were campaigning for the area to be turned into an officially authorized agrarian land reform settlement. According to unconfirmed reports, military police were attempting to evict the settlers at the behest of a man claiming to own the land. The police were reportedly acting without a judicial order. The action ended with one confirmed death, a member of the military police, Valdenilson Rodrigues da Silva. Some witnesses say there were three other victims, all landless workers.
These killings occurred just four days after four people are believed to have been killed in Seringal São Domingos, in Ponta do Abunã, a remote area in the Lábrea municipal district near the intersection of the borders of the states of Acre, Amazonas and Rondônia, about 150 kilometres (93 miles) upstream from the Jirau hydroelectric dam. Landless movement squatters, likely traumatized by the violence, remain too afraid to speak openly, but it is believed that many other people remain missing.
More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/3-massacres-in-12-days-rural-violence-escalates-in-brazilian-amazon/
Uribe introduces "massacre with social criteria"
by Adriaan Alsema April 8, 2019
The political patron of Colombia’s President Ivan Duque, former President Alvaro Uribe, on Sunday suggested that authorities have the right to instigate a “massacre with social criteria.”
The Tweet was part of a series in which the senator expressed his disapproval over a compromise made between the government and Native Colombians in the southwest after weeks of violence.
Ahead of the deal, native Colombian spokesperson Jose Pete said that if the police use force to clear the Pan-American highway that was blocked during the protests, this could result “in the worst massacre of Colombia.”
Uribe responded that “if authority, serenely, firmly and with social criteria instigate a massacre this is because on the other side there is violence and terror aside protest.”
More:
https://colombiareports.com/uribe-introduces-massacre-with-social-criteria/
Brazil's Bolsonaro plans to axe environmental panel that protects Amazon rainforest
President wants to replace expert independent body with small group of political appointees
Mauricio Savarese,
Conrad Duncan
2 hours ago
Jair Bolsonaro’s administration is considering axing an independent panel for Brazil’s environmental policy in a move that activists warn could lead to increased deforestation, documents have revealed.
Brazil’s president proposed creating a “government council” of political appointees to replace the National Council of the Environment (known as Conama), which has almost 100 members, including representatives of independent environmental and business groups.
Conama helps protect the 60 per cent of the Amazon rainforest that is in Brazil, which scientists see as crucial for efforts to slow global warming.
. . .
As a congressman and candidate, Mr Bolsonaro often questioned the reality of climate change and cast environmental groups as foreign-influenced meddlers restraining Brazil’s economic growth by holding back mining and agriculture.
More:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bolsonaro-brazil-deforestation-amazon-rainforest-a8860311.html
The grim history that Brazil's president wants to celebrate
By Ishaan Tharoor
March 27, 2019
One of the many things President Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have in common is a supposed devotion to their countries’ militaries. For Trump — who, unlike many leading politicians of his generation, never served in U.S. wars overseas — his proclaimed love for the troops is all part of the showy jingoism that defines his nationalist politics. He’s more keen on triumphal parades at home than long wars abroad.
But for Bolsonaro, a former army captain, it’s a bit more serious. This week, it emerged that the Brazilian president had ordered the country’s Defense Ministry to “carry out appropriate commemorations related to March 31, 1964.” That’s no ordinary directive. Bolsonaro, who throughout his political career has spoken nostalgically of the era of Brazil’s military dictatorship, wants to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the coup that brought it into power.
Coming only a few months into his term, the order may mark Bolsonaro’s most nakedly ideological move yet. And it arrives a week after he was feted in the White House, where Trump hailed the “many views” he shared with his Brazilian counterpart, a fellow hard-line nationalist. Trump stressed that, because of his personal bond with Bolsonaro, ties between their two countries “have never been closer than they are right now.” Bolsonaro, in turn, neatly articulated the sweep of right-wing beliefs linking the two administrations.
“Brazil and the United States are tied by the guarantee of liberty, respect for the traditional family, the fear of God our creator, against gender identity, political correctness and fake news,” he said.
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/03/27/grim-history-that-brazils-president-wants-celebrate/
US Takes Illegal, Dangerous Actions Toward Regime Change in Venezuela
US Takes Illegal, Dangerous Actions Toward Regime Change in Venezuela
Pro-government supporters march during a rally on April 6, 2019, in Caracas, Venezuela.
EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI / GETTY IMAGES
BY
Marjorie Cohn, Truthout
PUBLISHED
April 7, 2019
The United States is taking illegal and dangerous actions to execute regime change in Venezuela. In January, Juan Guaidó declared himself “interim president,” in a strategy orchestrated by the United States to seize power from President Nicolás Maduro.
. . .
This strategy is detailed in a 75-page regime change manual prepared by the U.S. Global Development Lab, a branch of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The manual advocates the creation of rapid expeditionary development teams to partner with the CIA and U.S. Special Forces to conduct “a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations [in] in extremis conditions.”
Some of these actions will, in all likelihood, involve combat operations. A USAID official said, “Anybody who doesn’t think we need to be working in combat elements or working with SF [special forces] groups is just naïve.”
. . .
Guaidó is funded by USAID’s sister organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is notorious for meddling in other countries and putting a good face on the CIA’s dirty business, as the late journalist William Blum explained.
More:
https://truthout.org/articles/us-takes-illegal-dangerous-actions-toward-regime-change-in-venezuela/
Found a full length version of the same photo:
This Photo of Harriet Tubman Was Lost for Close to a Century
BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN
MARCH 6, 2018
More than a century after Harriet Tubman died in March of 1913, the Library of Congress announced on Tuesday that it has conserved and digitized a previously unrecorded portrait of the “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, the secret network that helped fugitive slaves in the South get to freedom in the North.
Catalogers believe that the photograph was taken between 1867 and 1869, when she lived in Auburn, N.Y., where Tubman — who had herself escaped from bondage in 1849 — took care of fugitive slaves in their old age.
. . .
The fact that she’s seated in a parlor chair sporting a lace collar and elegant bodice reflects a deliberate way she carried herself at the time. As TIME has previously reported, she often donned lace and fine clothes, believing that if she dressed respectably, then people would treat African Americans with respect. She particularly prized a lace shawl that Queen Victoria had given her in 1897.
This new portrait of Tubman was part of an album of 48 rare photographs previously owned by Emily Howland, a Quaker schoolteacher and abolitionist who lived 20 minutes south from Tubman in Sherwood, N.Y. Howland died in 1929.
More:
http://time.com/5186893/harriet-tubman-photo/
A Previously Unknown Portrait of a Young Harriet Tubman Goes on View
“I was stunned,” says director Lonnie Bunch; historic Emily Howland photo album contains dozens of other abolitionists and leaders who took an active role
The Emily Howland photo album containing the portrait of Tubman, (above: detail, ca. 1868) was unveiled this week at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. (NMAAHC, Library of Congress)
By Allison Keyes
smithsonian.com
March 26, 2019
The power exuded by a previously unknown portrait of Harriet Tubman is tangible. The escaped slave, who repeatedly returned to the South risking her life to bring hundreds of enslaved people North to freedom, stares defiantly into the camera. Her eyes are clear, piercing and focused. Her tightly waved hair is pulled back neatly from her face. But it is her expression—full of her strength, power and suffering—that stops viewers in their tracks.
“Suddenly, there was a picture of Harriet Tubman as a young woman, and as soon as I saw it I was stunned,” says a grinning Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He’s talking about a portrait of Tubman contained in an 1860s-era photography album belonging to abolitionist Emily Howland.
“All of us had only seen images of her at the end of her life. She seemed frail. She seemed bent over, and it was hard to reconcile the images of Moses (one of Tubman’s nicknames) leading people to freedom,” Bunch explains. “But then when you see this picture of her, probably in her early 40s, taken about 1868 or 1869 . . . there’s a stylishness about her. And you would have never had me say to somebody ‘Harriet Tubman is stylish.’”
But Bunch, a historian with expertise in the 19th century, then looked a little deeper at the portrait of this woman Americans think they know so well. Not only did she escape slavery and conduct hundreds of others to freedom along the Underground Railroad, she served as a spy, a nurse and a cook for Union Forces during the Civil War. She also helped free more than 700 African-Americans during an 1863 raid in South Carolina, which earned her another nickname: General Tubman. Bunch says the photograph celebrates all of those facets of Tubman’s life.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/previously-unknown-portrait-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-young-woman-goes-view-180971796/#QbTxEJr9kSKm8Akm.99
A 'seiche' wave can outpace a tsunami and both can be triggered by meteorites and earthquakes
The Conversation By Craig O'Neill
Posted 32 minutes ago
PHOTO: Waves can be generated in lakes and other bodies of water when seismic energy travels through land. (News Video)
A catastrophic event occurred on Earth 66 million years ago. A huge meteorite struck our planet in what is now Mexico, triggering mass extinctions of the dinosaurs and most other living creatures.
A new paper shows the first recorded victims of this impact were fish and other marine animals, stranded by a wave that left them high and dry in an ancient river in North Dakota, at a site called Tanis.
For scientists unpacking the evidence around the event, a full picture of the cataclysm has involved looking into the details of planetary surface physics during giant impacts.
But beyond the first layer of fascinating results — little glass impact beads stuck in the gills of fish, for example — one really interesting aspect of this work is around how water behaves when it's exposed to extreme forces.
More:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-04/a-seiche-wave-can-outpace-a-tsunami-meteorite-earthquake/10970306
Uruguay leader sacks top military officials over 'cover-up'
7 hours ago
AFP
Uruguay's defence minister, Jorge Menéndez, is among those sacked
Uruguay's defence minister, his deputy and the army chief have been sacked for allegedly covering up human rights abuses committed during military rule.
President Tabaré Vázquez dismissed the three for failing to pass on information about the disappearance of a left-wing rebel in 1973.
. . .
The move came just two days after Uruguayan newspaper El Observador revealed details of the testimony given to a military tribunal last year by José Gavazzo, a key player in the repression carried out against dissidents during Uruguay's military rule from 1973 to 1985.
Gavazzo, who is serving a prison sentence for torture, murders and disappearances carried out during his time with the Office for the Co-ordination of Anti-Subversive Operations, said he had thrown the body of left-wing rebel Roberto Gomensoro into the Río Negro.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47785718
Roberto Gomensoro and Josè Nino Gavazzo
Once again, a tremendous human being murdered by a total @$$###e.
Scholar Kathleen Belew on New Zealand, Donald Trump and the rise of "white power"
Scholar Kathleen Belew on New Zealand, Donald Trump and the rise of "white power"
Author of new book on "white power movement" says the recent outbreak of violence was a long-planned strategy
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
APRIL 2, 2019 12:00PM (UTC)
The overt white supremacy of the white power movement does not remain isolated to that subculture. This hate metastasizes and infects "mainstream" conservative political discourse, leaders and the general public. There are many such examples.
The extreme hostility to nonwhite immigrants espoused by the broader white power movement has been massaged and repackaged into the policy positions of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
On a near daily basis Fox News host Tucker Carlson summons talking points and narratives from white supremacist and other right-wing hate sites and spoon-feeds that poison to his eager audience. Derrick Black, a former white supremacist and the son of a Ku Klux Klan leader, told CNN last Saturday: "It’s really, really alarming that my family watches Tucker Carlson’s show once and then watches it on the replay because they feel that he is making the white nationalist talking points better than they have, and they’re trying to get some tips on how to advance it."
Should we see white supremacy as a cultural, social and political problem rather than just the pathology of the relatively small white power movement? What does the white power movement want, in practical terms, and what are its activists and foot soldiers willing to do to achieve their goals? Can we explain the New Zealand terror attacks as part of a decades-long plan by the white power movement in America and around the world? How did white hate groups pioneer the use of the early internet and social media to radicalize, recruit and coordinate the actions of their members?
More:
https://www.salon.com/2019/04/02/scholar-kathleen-belew-on-new-zealand-donald-trump-and-the-rise-of-white-power/
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