July 10, 2017

Archaeologists Find a Secret Tunnel Hidden Beneath Mexico's Pyramid of The Moon

This way to the underworld.
DAVID NIELD 8 JUL 2017


It's amazing what the best computer scanning technology can do these days – like revealing a hidden passageway beneath the Pyramid of the Moon near the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Mexico.

The straight tunnel sits about 10 metres (33 feet) underground and is thought to represent a pathway to the underworld, giving us new insight into the culture and rituals of the Teotihuacan people.

Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (NIAH) in Mexico used an imaging technique called electrical resistivity tomography to find the secret tunnel, which can map underground structures (and the gaps inside them) based on how they resist an electrical current.

"The discovery would confirm that the inhabitants of Teotihuacan followed the same pattern in their large-scale temples, and that their function would be to emulate the underworld," one of the archaeologists, Veronica Ortega, told the Associated Press.

More:
http://www.sciencealert.com/archaeologists-find-a-secret-tunnel-hidden-beneath-mexico-s-pyramid-of-the-moon

July 9, 2017

Bolivia Will Air Satellite Educational TV Channel

La Paz, Jul 5 (Prensa Latina) The Bolivian Space Agency (ABE) will put into operation a television channel to promote educational programs in the field of satellite technologies.

Director of ABE, Ivan Zambrana, explained that initially the Agency created a space to spread contents referring to operations and services offered by Bolivian satellite Tupac Katari (TKSAT-1).

The entity works in a project to have programming in technology and thus incentivate sientific research in the sector of education in order to motivate youths to study careers of engineering and pure sciences to contrtibute to the development of this sector in the country, said Zambrana.

Bolivia joined the nations of the region that have their own satellite, among them Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, by putting in orbit on December 20, 2013 the Tupac Katari.

More:
http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=15137&SEO=bolivia-will-air-satellite-educational-tv-channel

July 9, 2017

Ecuador Shows Investment Works

Ecuador Shows Investment Works
JUL Sunday 9TH 2017

RAFAEL CORREA recently ended his time as president of Ecuador; his 10 years as leader have been marked by some outstanding achievements, which should be noted internationally by all progressives.

In a break from the neoliberal policies of the past, in the last decade Ecuador invested massively in free healthcare and free university education.

Programmes were developed to reduce poverty and measures were taken to combat tax evasion, reduce capital flight and protect the environment from plundering by multinational corporations.

The media was democratised, with new TV and radio stations giving a voice to previously oppressed groups and minorities.

More:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-0d05-Ecuador-shows-investment-works

July 7, 2017

Violence against Indigenous peoples destroys our common home

Blogpost by Rex Weyler - 7 July, 2017 at 10:40

In May this year, two brothers, Vázquez and Agustín Torres, were murdered near Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico. They were Wixárika (Huichol) leaders, working to preserve their land from incursion by cattle ranchers and drug cartels. This tragedy of greed and corruption serves as an alarm bell for activists attempting to preserve our natural world.

Blogpost by Rex Weyler - 7 July, 2017 at 10:40

In May this year, two brothers, Vázquez and Agustín Torres, were murdered near Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico. They were Wixárika (Huichol) leaders, working to preserve their land from incursion by cattle ranchers and drug cartels. This tragedy of greed and corruption serves as an alarm bell for activists attempting to preserve our natural world.

The worldwide crisis on Indigenous land is as urgent as climate change or biodiversity loss. Approximately 400 million Indigenous peoples, with 5,000 distinct cultures, represent most of the world’s cultural diversity. Their land is threatened by mining and logging companies, ranchers and farmers, oil exploration, and now by the drug cartels too.

In spite of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, few nations actually recognise the land rights of Indigenous peoples. Their land is lost to resource extraction without legally mandated prior informed consent. Since Indigenous lands contain vast biological diversity, these communities are fighting not only to preserve their cultures but also to preserve what is left of Earth's wild ecosystems.

Political capital in Mexico

Miguel Vázquez Torres, commissioner of Wixárika public lands, and Agustín, an attorney in the land claim battle, were members of the Indigenous San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán community. They led a campaign to recover 10,000 hectares, a meagre 4% of Wixárika ancestral lands. They had invited ranchers to engage in peaceful dialogue and had asked the Mexican government to provide security to avoid violence while resisting the cartels.

More:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/indigenous-activists-violence-mexico/blog/59792/

July 2, 2017

The Deadly Results of a D.E.A.-Backed Raid in Honduras

By ANNIE BIRD and ALEXANDER MAIN
JULY 2, 2017





WASHINGTON — It was a dark, moonless night. A small passenger boat had nearly reached the end of its six-hour journey upriver when helicopters appeared overhead and another boat came into view. Shots were fired, hitting several passengers. As terrified men, women and children leapt into the water, they were fired on again by a machine-gunner perched in a helicopter. Four people were killed, two of them women, another a 14-year-old boy. Several more were injured.

It could have been another tragic scene of carnage from Syria, South Sudan or some other war-torn place. But this grisly incident occurred in the otherwise peaceful Miskito indigenous community of Ahuas, Honduras, during a May 2012 counternarcotics mission involving agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, a United States-vetted Honduran police unit and machine-gun-equipped State Department helicopters.

The D.E.A. and Honduran police said that the passenger boat carried drug traffickers who fired first. Local residents told a different story, of a water taxi carrying unarmed travelers with no links to drug trafficking.

Weeks later we traveled to Ahuas and worked with local human rights defenders to piece together the boat passengers’ accounts. A grieving mother described how her teenage son was shot dead before her eyes. A nurse told us about her deceased pregnant sister and her struggle to care for her orphaned niece and nephew.

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/02/opinion/-dea-honduras-drugs.html