Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalUribe lashes out at UK spy agency in post-resignation Twitter rampage
by Mathew Di Salvo July 25, 2018
Colombia’s former president Alvaro Uribe accused British intelligence service MI6 of conspiring against him on Wednesday after he resigned from the Senate over an ongoing witness tampering investigation.
Uribe said on Twitter that wiretaps of him that would prove he influenced witnesses were “made by British agency MI5,” according to “various complaints.” He later corrected himself, saying it was actually MI6.
According to Uribe, the UK government’s foreign intelligence service is friends with outgoing president Juan Manuel Santos and that “foreign authorities are in a ploy” against him.
The claims were part of a barrage of tweets sent out by the ex-president after he resigned from the Senate on Tuesday in an apparent panic reaction to a Supreme Court decision to interrogate him about the alleged witness tampering.
Arguably the most powerful person in Colombia, Uribe — who served as president from 2002-2010 — is currently being investigated for intimidating witnesses in a case which ties him to paramilitary death squads.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/uribe-lashes-out-at-uk-spy-agency-in-post-resignation-twitter-rampage/
How Uribe trial puts Colombia's government in crisis even before taking office
by Adriaan Alsema July 25, 2018
Ivan Duque has not even taken office and his government is already in crisis after the president-elect’s political patron, former President Alvaro Uribe, resigned from Congress.
Uribe resigned from the Senate on Tuesday in an apparent panic reaction to an impending interrogation by the Supreme Court over the intimidation of witnesses who testified against the former head of state.
For years, Uribe has been accused of forming a death squad. Multiple witnesses who have testified against him were either murdered or survived assassination attempts.
The former president’s move leaves Duque — who is only 41 and has no relevant executive experience — without political mentor. The president’s party is left without leader just days after Congress was sworn in.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/uribe-trial-puts-colombias-government-in-crisis-even-before-taking-office/
Scientists detect giant underground aquifer on Mars, raising hope of life on the planet
Radar has found something big under the surface
By Loren Grush@lorengrush Jul 25, 2018, 10:00am EDT
Mars hosts a huge underground aquifer of liquid water, according to a group of scientists who say they have found convincing evidence. The underground lake hasn’t been seen directly, but if it’s real, it’s a discovery that substantially increases the likelihood that the Red Planet might host life.
Researchers detected the possible reservoir with the Mars Express Orbiter, a European spacecraft that’s been orbiting Mars since 2003. While scanning the ice cap at Mars’ south pole, the probe’s radar instrument, called MARSIS, detected a feature about a mile underneath the surface that was about 12.4 miles wide. The structure has a radar signature that matches that of buried liquid water here on Earth, leading the team to conclude that there’s a lake under the glacier. The researchers say they’ve ruled out all other possibilities for what they’re seeing.
For decades now, planetary scientists have tried to find liquid water on Mars; most agree that it likely exists in certain regions. This finding, detailed today in Science, is the first indication that water may exist in pools underneath the Martian surface. That has big implications for the search for alien life on our planetary neighbor: bacteria have been found here on Earth in water under glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. “Pretty much anywhere there is liquid water on Earth, you find something that’s managed to survive in it,” Tanya Harrison, a planetary scientist and director of research for Arizona State University’s Space Technology and Science Initiative who was not involved with this discovery, tells The Verge. An underground reservoir may be the perfect place for Mars microbes to survive as well.
“I’ve run out of ideas on how to explain this in a way that isn’t water,” Roberto Orosei, a researcher at Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics and lead of the team that found the formation, tells The Verge. “We’ve tried to exhaust every possible alternative, and we think we’ve done it.”
More:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17606966/mars-liquid-water-reservoir-underground-habitable-life-radar
Many images of Mars South Pole as seen from Mars Express:
https://tinyurl.com/ya223yq7
Colombia's land thieves going unpunished: land restitution chief
by Stephen Gill July 23, 2018
Colombia must punish those who teamed up with paramilitary death squads to steal land during the country’s armed conflict, according to the outgoing-director of the Land Restitution Unit.
While the Land Restitution Unit continues to make progress, already having returned some 300,000 of land that that were stolen during the armed conflict to the rightful owner, Ricardo Sabogal insists that what is lacking is criminal prosecution of those responsible.
. . .
With the temporary legalization of paramilitary groups in 1994, approximately 8 million hectares, an area the size of Costa Rica, have been stolen and sold, leaving millions of small farmers displaced and without land to return to.
The phenomenon has been so enormous, it has become one of the significant reasons why more than half of the country’s national territory is private property of, according to the UN, only 1% of the population.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombia-must-punish-those-guilty-of-land-theft-land-restitution-chief/
Colombia hired assassins and spies to 'protect' threatened persons: report
by Stephen Gill July 23, 2018
Colombia’s National Protection Unit (UNP) has been infiltrated by organized crime and is spying on the people they are supposed to protect, according to local media.
Among the ranks of the UNP is a suspected hitman and kidnapper who has been in charge of the security detail for public officials, congressmen, a land claimant and a trade unionist, the likes of whom have been targeted in a recent wave of violence, news website La Nueva Prensa reported Monday.
The agency and other government bodies were discredited in the beginning of this century after claims they had been infiltrated by paramilitary organization AUC, which carried out most of the killings of people receiving extra state protection.
This time, the special unit has reportedly been infiltrated by a Medellin-based death squad with some members of the UNP accused of sexual harassment and rape, drug trafficking and spying on the very people they are supposed to protest.
. . .
The revelations are alarming as more than 311 social leaders have been assassinated by death squads and assassins since 2016 in a systematic campaign reminiscent of the extermination of the left-wing Patriotic Union party in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Far-right group Aguilas Negras recently vowed to “exterminate” all Colombia’s human rights defenders and social leaders, calling them “guerrillas in disguise.”
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombia-hired-assassins-and-spies-to-protect-threatened-persons-report/
Nostalgic for Brazil's dictatorship, Bolsonaro sets sites on presidency
Nostalgic for Brazil's dictatorship, Bolsonaro sets sites on presidency
BY LOUIS GENOT (AFP) 9 HOURS AGO IN POLITICS
Angry Brazilians long for a return to order, and former army officer Jair Bolsonaro, a fan of the dictatorship that stretched from the 1960s to the 1980s, hopes to ride that wave into the presidency.
Often labeled a Brazilian Donald Trump, Bolsonaro, 63, made his candidacy official Sunday at a convention in Rio of his Social Liberal Party, telling some 3,000 enthusiastic supporters, "My candidacy is a mission. If I am here it is because I believe in you, and if you are here it is because you believe in Brazil."
. . .
But like Trump, Bolsonaro actually seems to enjoy offending his critics in a campaign that seeks to tear up the rules book.
Opponents say Bolsonaro is a far-right agitator whose insults against gays and women, and his praise for the torturers of the 1964-85 dictatorship, have only deepened Brazil's already sharp political divides.
. . .
In 2014 in the lower house of Congress he told a leftist member, Maria do Rosario, that she "didn't deserve" to be raped, because of her looks.
During the controversial 2016 impeachment of leftist president Dilma Rousseff, who had suffered torture under the dictatorship, Bolsonaro praised one of the most notorious figures of that repression.
More:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/nostalgic-for-brazil-s-dictatorship-bolsonaro-looks-to-presidency/article/527678
Violent Coup Fails In Nicaragua, US Continues Regime Change Efforts - OpEd
July 22, 2018 Kevin Zeese
By Kevin Zeese
The violent coup in Nicaragua has failed. This does not mean the United States and oligarchs are giving up, but this phase of their effort to remove the government did not succeed. The coup exposed the alliances who are working with the United States to put in place a neoliberal government that is controlled by the United States and serves the interests of the wealthy. People celebrated the failure of the coup but realize work needs to be done to protect the gains of the Sandinista revolution.
The people of Nicaragua showed their support for the democratically-elected government of Daniel Ortega with a massive outpouring in Managua in a celebration of the 39th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. In addition to the mass protest in Managua, various cities had their own, in some cases very sizeable ones.
. . .
Regarding students, there were already student protests around university elections, and these were redirected by the violent coup effort and supported by a small minority of students from private universities, the April 19th Movement. Some of these students had been brought to the US by the Freedom House, which has long ties to the CIA and met with far-right interventionist members of the US Congress, including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Sen. Ted Cruz.
These groups acted in opposition to the bulk of Nicaraguan society and showed their true colors. This includes:
- Being tied to and subservient to the US government.
- Being led by oligarchs and big business interests that are out of power and cannot win elections.
- Using violence as a strategy of creating chaos and trapping the government into responding with violence to restore order.
- Spreading false propaganda through oligarch-controlled media, often funded by NED, as well as highly-manipulated social media echoed by western media, especially The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post and cable TV news outlets.
More:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/22072018-violent-coup-fails-in-nicaragua-us-continues-regime-change-efforts-oped/
'They should be put in prison': battling Brazil's huge alumina plant
Jonathan Watts
Sat 21 Jul 2018 01.12 EDT
. . .
A warning voice on the telephone, a home intrusion, a punch in the face, a pistol barrel prodded against the ear.
The intimidation of Maria do Socorro Silva has come in many forms since she began defending her Amazonian home against the world’s biggest alumina refinery and its local government backers.
As a leader of forest dwellers – indigenous, quilombo and riverine communities – Socorro ought to be terrified. Her home is in Pará, the deadliest state for land activists in Brazil, the most murderous country in the world. Two associates and friends have been killed since December.
But there is fury rather than fear in the eyes of the diminutive, powerful woman as she speaks of the industrial plant that threatens her quilombo, a community established in the forest by African slaves who broke their chains.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/21/land-grab-corruption-pollution-amazon-rainforest-brazil-maria-do-soccoro-silva
'This is a last hold-out': Son of a murdered farmer in Colombia
Jonathan Watts
Sat 21 Jul 2018 01.14 EDT
The bullet-proof 4x4 is speeding through the countryside of western Colombia with two armed bodyguards, reggaeton is blasting out from the speakers, banana trees flit past the reinforced windows and the protected passenger – a threatened, recently bereaved 18-year-old campesino (poor farmer) – is explaining from bitter personal experience why he thinks Netflix’s Narcos TV series is trash.
“It glorifies killers,” says Ramón Bedoya. “Drug dealers and paramilitaries. These are the type of people who murdered my dad.”
The young man speaks with a maturity far beyond his years, perhaps because he has been forced to grow-up fast in the seven months since his father – a leader of the opposition to palm oil plantations – was assassinated by a gang linked to agribusiness and narco-traffickers.
Hernán Bedoya was shot 15 times on 5 December while he was riding his horse to the vet in Pedeguita y Mancilla, Chocó. It was broad daylight when the two gunmen rode up by motorcycle and carried out the hit, but no witnesses dared to come forward.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/21/colombia-land-grab-son-murdered-farmer-defy-paramilitaries
A hitman could come and kill me': the fight for indigenous land rights in Mexico
Jonathan Watts
Sat 21 Jul 2018 01.14 EDT
Not all land defenders fight in remote forests and coastlands. Some take the battle to the centres of power: to courtrooms, parliament buildings and corporate headquarters. The veneer of urban civility may be glossier here, but the struggle is no less dangerous. In some cases, it can be worse.
Isela Gonzalez has been threatened more times than she can remember by university-educated men in suits, whose business interests – in logging, mining, agriculture and narcotics – are challenged by her work as director of Alianza Sierra Madre to protect indigenous land rights in Mexico’s western Sierra Madre.
The warnings have been muttered on steps outside legal hearings, whispered on the phone, or via conversations she has been deliberately allowed to overhear. They are not idle.
The nurse-turned-activist has seen dozens of her fellow campaigners murdered in recent years. Armed guards have been deployed by the state to provide her with 24-hour protection, panic-buttons have been installed in her office, locks have been upgraded in her home, and she and her staff have received crisis training.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/21/nowhere-is-safe-for-mexicos-land-defenders-as-violence-grows
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