May 8, 2017

Argentina Releases Dictatorship Doctor Who Helped Steal Babies

Social organizations hold a sign that reads "Not forget, not forgive, not reconciliation, a thousand years of prison" in a recent march in Buenos Aires.



Social organizations hold a sign that reads "Not forget, not forgive, not reconciliation, a
thousand years of prison" in a recent march in Buenos Aires. | Photo: AFP

Published 7 May 2017 (13 hours 18 minutes ago)

The dictatorship-era doctor completed two-thirds of his sentence for aiding the military regime in stealing hundreds of babies.

Argentine social organizations have criticized a court decision to release from prison a former doctor who delivered babies of pregnant women detained in torture centers during the dictatorship and aided the military in taking away hundreds of newsborns as part of a campaign of illegally apprehending children of political dissidents, detainees and other victims of the regime.

. . .

Under Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship, the forced disappearance of some 30,000 victims and kidnapping of hundreds of babies was part of a concerted U.S.-backed campaign that sought to stamp out resistance to the military government in what has been called a “genocide” against political dissidents. A generation of hundreds of missing children grew up in wealthy military and regime-linked families without knowing their true identities.

Bianco was part of the sinister military practice of abducting babies as a doctor at the Campo de Mayo military hospital, which operated from 1976 to 1978 during the dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla. The hospital had two special rooms with barred windows where the military kept many pregnant women apprehended for their opposition to the regime.

More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Releases-Dictatorship-Doctor-Who-Helped-Steal-Babies--20170507-0008.html

May 7, 2017

Brazils Landless Workers Sell Organic Get Out Temer Beer

Brazil’s Landless Workers Sell Organic ‘Get Out Temer’ Beer




"Get Out Temer" beer. | Photo: Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes

Published 5 May 2017


The MST has sold bottles of its organic “Get Out Temer” beer in droves at the ongoing Second National Agrarian Reform Fair in São Paulo.


Brazil’s Landless Workers' Movement, MST, has sold over a hundred bottles of its organic “Get Out Temer” beer within 24 hours at the ongoing Second National Agrarian Reform Fair in São Paulo, Brasil de Fato reported.

Created shortly after former president Dilma Rousseff's ouster, which many Brazilians regard as a parliamentary coup, “Get Out Temer” serves as a symbol of resistance to right-wing President Michel Temer’s administration. The beer is made from water, malt and hops.

Produced by an artisanal brewery located in Maria Lara, an MST encampment in the state of Parana, the malt beer takes 20 days to be ready for consumption. Transgenic ingredients found in most Brazilian beers are not included in “Get Out Temer.”

More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazils-Landless-Workers-Sell-Organic-Get-Out-Temer-Beer-20170505-0017.html

May 5, 2017

Amazon attack: Gamela tribe shot, stabbed and mutilated

2 May 2017


Human rights groups in Brazil have called on the government to increase protection for indigenous people after a tribe was attacked.

Members of the Gamela tribe suffered gunshot wounds, stabbings and amputations in a land rights dispute in the Amazon state of Maranhao.

Reports say the attackers were farmers and landowners.

There has been a rise in such assaults across Brazil, with the perpetrators rarely caught.

More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39784618

It's time for humane, not evil intervention all over the world. This shouldn't continue year after year.

May 5, 2017

Colombia military blackmailing Santos: former US ambassador

Source: Colombia Reports


written by Adriaan Alsema May 4, 2017


Colombia’s military lobby organization ACORE is “blackmailing” President Juan Manuel Santos so generals involved in war crimes be exempt from justice, according to a United States former ambassador.

In a recent interview with newspaper El Espectador, retired career diplomat Myles Frechette additionally accused the generals of the 1995 assassination of Conservative Party leader Alvaro Gomez to cover up a coup plot.

Myles Frechette (Image credit: El Especiador)
Frechette. 81, served in Colombia between 1994 and 1997 under former President Bill Clinton and is despised by many for all the right reasons.

He was the first to report on the execution of civilians by the military and has been called “that shitty gringo” by Liberal Party Senator Horacio Serpa, who lost his US visa after leading former President Ernesto Samper’s drug-funded 1994 election campaign.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-military-blackmailing-santos-former-us-ambassador/

May 4, 2017

Southwest Colombia tribe expels National Police for drug dealing

written by Adriaan Alsema
May 3, 2017


An indigenous tribe from southwest Colombia on Wednesday expelled the National Police from its territory, claiming cops were using the police station to sell drugs to local youth.

The people from the indigenous reserve of Purace, Cauca, decided to evict the state authority after a meeting between the indigenous locals, their formal Guard and the Reserve Authority.

. . .

The police’s drug dealing was a bad influence on the community’s youth, the indigenous said and took place less than a half year after the community expelled the local military unit on charges the soldiers had assassinated a former governor.



Colombia’s indigenous reserves are partly autonomous and have their own justice system based on the individual nation’s ancestral customs.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/southwest-colombia-tribe-expels-national-police-drug-dealing/

May 3, 2017

Evo Morales Confident in Recovering Bolivian Access to Pacific

La Paz, May 2 (Prensa Latina) President Evo Morales is considering today that the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will favor Bolivia in its claim to recover the sovereign access to the sea, snatched by Chile in 1879.

Morales hopes that the judges demand that Santiago complies with the commitments made some years ago in order to resolve the centennial maritime dispute, caused by the Chilean invasion of Antofagasta.

'With a ruling in favor of La Paz, Bolivian heroes and martyrs could say that their fight to get the access to the Pacific back has been worth it' the president told Correo del Alba magazine.

Bolivia filed its lawsuit at the ICJ in 2013 with the objective that the highest judicial body of the United Nations compel Chile to negotiate a access to the sea for the Andean-Amazonian nation.

La Paz delivered a document on March with evidence and annexes on the country's rights to regain access to the sea.

Following this process, the ICJ will set deadlines for oral hearings, and then it will issue the ruling.

http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=12385&SEO=evo-morales-confident-in-recovering-bolivian-access-to-pacific

(Short article, no more at link.)

May 1, 2017

Peru's plans to cut air quality rules would smooth sale of top polluter

Proposals to raise legal limits of sulfur dioxide by more than 12 times linked directly to sale of US-owned smelter in the Andes

David Hill
Monday 1 May 2017 15.25 EDT



Children wearing masks play near the poly-metal
smelter in La Oroya, owned by the US company
Doe Run, in Peru’s central Andes. This photo was
taken in 2000. Photograph: STR/Dante Piaggio


It’s a fairly common tactic in Peru to issue a significant or potentially controversial decision or resolution when you hope no one is paying attention. 24, 26 or 31 December, for example. The Environment Ministry (MINAM) recently adopted that ploy by releasing, just before the Easter week holiday, proposals to dramatically roll back certain air quality standards across the country.

The draft National Environmental Quality Standards for Air propose maintaining the maximum legal limits for nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulphide, lead and benzene, but doubling the limit for some particulate matter. Most startling, they propose increasing the limit of sulfur dioxide by more than 12 times.

MINAM effectively claims that Peru is the global leader in sulfur dioxide limits because it is the “only country in the world” which meets World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations. That limit is 20 micrograms per cubic metre over a 24 hour averaging period, compared with 210 in Australia, 250 in Chile and Colombia, 288 in Mexico, 300 in Canada and 365 in Brazil, according to the ministry. Elsewhere in the world - although these are not acknowledged by MINAM - the limit is 150 in China, 125 in the EU, 131 in South Korea and 80 in India.

The current proposal is to raise Peru’s limit to 250. One justification is that “no clearly defined link exists” between sulfur dioxide and negative impacts on human health, MINAM claims, according to its interpretation of research by the WHO, the US’s Environmental Protection Agency and Health Canada, among others.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2017/may/01/perus-plans-cut-air-quality-rules-smooth-sale-major-polluter

[center]

At night, company dumps its liquid waste into the river flowing in front of the buildings.[/center]
Inside Ira Rennert's dirtiest businesses
Epic pollution at his La Oroya refinery in Peru have put the reclusive billionaire and his business practices in the spotlight.
Aaron Elstein By Aaron Elstein



http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20111127/FINANCE/311279990/inside-ira-rennerts-dirtiest-businesses