Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's Journal'I Know They're Watching Us': Black Lawmakers, Activists Alarmed Over FBI Report
Black activists and lawmakers are concerned a leaked FBI report on 'Black Identity Extremists' targets black communities.
by Chandelis R. Duster and Donna Owens / Nov.09.2017 / 11:56 AM ET
As a new wave of social activism protesting police killings of unarmed black men and women and decrying white supremacy sweeps the country, a leaked FBI report has activists and members of Congress demanding answers.
The 12-page assessment, written in August and titled Black Identity Extremists Likely Motivated to Target Law Enforcement Officers, was posted online by Foreign Policy. Citing attacks on police following the 2014 shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown by a white officer, the assessment notes it is very likely Black Identity Extremist perceptions of police brutality against African-Americans have caused an increase in violence against law enforcement.
In October, the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray seeking answers related to the assessment given the Bureaus troubling history of utilizing its broad investigatory powers to target black citizens.
Its the craziest report because it says that because you identify as black you are threat, which is outlandish and offensive and reminiscent of the FBIs COINTELPRO operation, which targeted Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders, said CBC Chairman Cedric Richmond, in an email to NBC News.
More:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/i-know-they-re-watching-us-black-lawmakers-activists-alarmed-n813221
Mexico baby death trial reveals growing persecution of women who miscarry
Dafne McPherson was convicted of murder after her baby died during childbirth part of a growing trend to criminalise women in conservative parts of the country
David Agren in San Juan del Río@el_reportero
Wednesday 8 November 2017 03.00 EST
The day that Dafne McPhersons life came apart began like any other: she dropped her seven-year-old daughter Lia at school, then started her shift in the childrens clothing section of the Liverpool department store in the central Mexican city of San Juan del Río.
At around 5pm, she felt a sharp abdominal cramp and spoke to the store nurse, who told her nothing was amiss. But shortly afterwards, in the second-floor bathroom, McPherson went into labour. She says she hadnt even realised that she was pregnant.
McPherson is currently serving a 16-year sentence after she was convicted of homicide for the death of her baby in what she says was a miscarriage.
Her case gained national notoriety when court videos surfaced in which the prosecutor described McPhersons alleged actions as something not even a dog would do.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/08/mexico-miscarriage-trial-perscution-women-abortion
Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016196019
Whose Decision Was a Greater Threat to Soldiers Lives: President Bushs or Bowe Bergdahls?
NOVEMBER 7, 2017
by JOHN GRANT
Im admitting I made a horrible mistake.
Bowe Bergdahls testimony in his court martial
Charging a man with murder in Vietnam is like charging someone for speeding at the Indianapolis 500.
From Apocalypse Now
Obviously, to ask who endangered soldiers more, President George W. Bush or Bowe Bergdahl, is a rhetorical question. The real issue is whether a Dishonorable Discharge, a demotion and a fine is enough punishment for Bo Bergdahl. Its clear by now its out-of-bounds (poor etiquette) to suggest our major leaders should be held accountable for bad military decisions that put soldiers in harms way and cost lives. Its a variant of the bumper sticker, Kill one person, its murder; kill 100,000, its foreign policy. Accountability is like gravity; it slips and falls and tends to find the most susceptible person or entity that can be turned into a receptacle for the blame. Naturally, you wave the flag like crazy while guiding the blame downward. Unless, of course, you were Japanese at the height of their failed, imperial thrust into the world; then, you made martial sounds as you sliced your guts open and a loyal factotum lopped your head off. Theres a certain honor in that.
The question of moral and political accountability is a perennial one. Its hard to find anyone in either major party who still holds on to the idea the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq by George W. Bush the war president and the decider was anything but a terrible foreign policy decision. As the younger President Bush put it: I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But Im the decider, and I decide what is best. Those of us who cried out in vain from the beginning that the decision to invade Iraq was wrong and could lead nowhere but to even worse disasters now see it as a decision that unleashed a debacle that keeps on paying dangerous dividends. President Bush ducked under the radar after his part in it was over and started doing what he probably should have done from the beginning: He painted not-so-bad, primitive paintings of veterans, dogs and his toes in the bathtub.
The lack of accountability at the top is especially acute right now when nuclear war looms over us vis-a-vis North Korea. Not only does the current commander-in-chief not accept accountability the buck no longer stops in the Oval Office hes a master in the cultural realm he flourishes in at finding and flogging scapegoats. His base will let him get away with, as he famously put it, shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. In Bergdahls case, he wanted the man executed. If he had his way, it would be something produced by Faye Dunaways character in the film Network: The Execution Hour.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/07/whose-decision-was-a-greater-threat-to-soldiers-lives-president-bushs-or-bowe-bergdahls/
Using Fear to Strike at Cuban Tourism
NOVEMBER 6, 2017
by MANUEL E. YEPE
The mysterious case of the alleged acoustic attacks against US diplomatic personnel in Cuba turns out to have been a media maneuver aimed at damaging tourism in terms of as part of the blockade against the island.
One of Cubas greatest attractions for foreign tourism is the guarantee of security offered by the island to visitors from any part of the world. Another is the high level of public health in Cuba, one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere with health indicators comparable to those of the most developed nations.
In addition to the exceptional conditions with which the island has been endowed by nature, the popular revolution of 1959 has incorporated the dsocial conditions of peace and harmony that the visitor appreciates from the first moment of their stay in Cuba.
More than half a century of possessive paranoia, aggravated by the economic, commercial and financial blockade, have not been able to counteract the enormous achievements of socialism, even if they have postponed or limited many revolutionary economic and social advances in the country.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/06/using-fear-to-strike-at-cuban-tourism/
Hydroelectric dams threaten Brazils mysterious Pantanal one of the worlds great wetlands
November 6, 2017 9.11am EST
The Pantanal in central South America may not be as globally famous as the Amazon rainforest, but it has the continents highest concentration of wildlife. Now, however, the regions endangered plants and animals, along with its still undiscovered secrets, may be wiped out in return for cheap hydroelectricity.
The Pantanal is the worlds largest tropical wetland and covers an area slightly larger than England. It lies mostly on a huge floodplain at the foot of Brazils southwestern highlands, but a fraction also spills over into Bolivia and Paraguay. In the wet season, from October to April, water washes down from those highlands bringing with it nutrients and fish and leaving most of the region underwater. When the rains finish, and the ground dries up, the landscape changes once again.
Seasonal variation on such a massive scale means the Pantanal contains a diverse range of plants and animals that have adapted to thrive in standing water or waterlogged soil. The region is home to more than 1,000 bird species and 300 mammals including the jaguar, capybara, giant otter and tapir.
Pantanal jaguars are the largest in the world. Hans Wagemaker / shutterstock
Yet the Pantanal is now threatened by Brazils thirst for hydroelectricity. We are part of a group of researchers investigating the state of Mato Grosso, where the rush to build dams is particularly apparent. Mato Grosso holds the upper reaches of the Pantanal, but is probably more famous for the Amazon rainforest in the north of the state and the enormous fazendas (large farms) on its fringes which produce soya, beef and cotton.
More:
https://theconversation.com/hydroelectric-dams-threaten-brazils-mysterious-pantanal-one-of-the-worlds-great-wetlands-86588
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7ShFwt9t-cM/T_fedz7jJpI/AAAAAAAAEgQ/EcYSeSdpu3I/s1600/Brazil+-+Pantanal+Conservation+Area.jpg
More images:
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Messier's List: Hubble Telescope's Stunning Views of Deep-Sky Objects
By Christine Lunsford, Space.com Contributor | October 20, 2017 01:20pm ET
- click for image -
https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA3MS8wNzQvb3JpZ2luYWwvTWVzc2llci1PYmplY3QtMDAxLmpwZw==
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The Dumbbell Nebula
Credit: NASA/ESA; Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped views of 93 deep-sky objects from French astronomer Charles Messier's famous list. Here are some of the most spectacular.
Messier 27, discovered by Messier himself, was the first found planetary nebula. Also known as the Dumbbell Nebula, this mass of gas is an aging star's farewell performance, a colorful display of its outer layers being cast off.
More:
https://www.space.com/38518-hubble-messier-photos.html?utm_source=notification
This Monster Planet With a Tiny Star Poses a Planetary Formation Puzzle
How did it get so big!?
MICHELLE STARR 1 NOV 2017
Astronomers have found something they thought was impossible: a gas giant roughly the size of Jupiter orbiting a white dwarf half the mass and size of the Sun.
The planet, called NGTS-1b, is a record breaker - the largest planet compared to its star ever found, at a ratio that scientists weren't even sure was possible. This discovery could pose a challenge to our current theories about planetary formation.
"The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us - such massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars," said lead researcher Daniel Bayliss of the University of Warwick.
"This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form.
More:
http://www.sciencealert.com/monster-planet-tiny-star-poses-puzzle-planetary-formation
Trump Administration to Defend Cuba Embargo at UN, Reversing Obama
Source: Associated Press
October 31, 2017 5:49 PM
Associated Press
The Trump administration will defend America's decades-old economic embargo on Cuba in a United Nations vote this week, the State Department said Tuesday, in a reversal from the Obama administration that reflects deteriorating U.S.-Cuban relations.
Every year the U.N. votes to condemn the embargo, and for years the U.S. predictably voted "no." But last year, under President Barack Obama, the U.S. abstained for the first time, as Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro moved forward with the historic warming of relations.
A "no" vote Wednesday from U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley will return the United States to a place of extreme isolation within the global community over its policy toward Cuba, potentially undermining the Trump administration's broader goals for engagement with Latin America. The U.S. embargo on Cuba is almost universally opposed throughout the world.
. . .
The yearly vote condemning the U.S. embargo has reliably passed overwhelmingly. Voting "no" means the U.S. will once again be pitted against almost every other nation.
Read more: https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-administration-defend-cuba-embargo-un-reverse-obama-stance/4094439.html
Canada seeks to compensate indigenous taken from families
Rob Gillies, Associated Press
Updated 5:54 pm, Monday, October 30, 2017
TORONTO (AP) Colleen Cardinal often wondered why her parents turned bright red in the sun but she grew dark along with her sisters. The puzzle was solved when she was a young teen, and the woman she had thought of as her mother disclosed that she had been picked out of a catalog of native children available for adoption.
Cardinal was one of thousands of indigenous children taken from their birth families from the 1960s to mid-1980s and sent to live with white families, who officials at the time insisted could give them better care. Many lost touch with their original culture and language.
It echoes the history of residential schools in Canada. Some 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were taken from their families over much of the last century and put in government schools, where they were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.
The government has since apologized and offered compensation for the victims of residential schools, and now it's paying compensation for what is known as the "Sixties Scoop" in which children were essentially scooped up from reservations and their native families. But many say the settlement is too little, too late.
More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Canada-seeks-to-compensate-indigenous-taken-from-12316196.php
Canada indigenous women were coerced into sterilisations, lawsuit says
Two women file class action suit after Saskatoon authorities admit several others have made claims of undergoing process without proper consent
Ashifa Kassam
@ashifa_k
Friday 27 October 2017 05.00 EDT
Two indigenous women in Canada have filed a class action lawsuit over allegations that they were coerced into undergoing sterilisation at a Saskatchewan hospital. The suit was launched after health authorities in the province admitted that several women had come forward with similar claims.
The legal challenge, which still needs to be certified by a judge, centres on the idea of proper and informed consent and whether this was obtained before the womenwere sterilised.
One of the complainants alleges that she explicitly refused to have her fallopian tubes tied when staff suggested the procedure after the birth of her son in 2001. Despite her objections, she was taken to the operating room in a wheelchair, still weak from delivery, and the procedure was carried out, she said.
The second woman alleges that a doctor suggested tubal ligation as she was being wheeled into the operation theatre for an emergency caesarean section and had already been given an epidural to counter the deep pain she was in.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/27/canada-indigenous-women-sterilisation-lawsuit
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