Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalJBS plans to reopen Nebraska beef plant damaged in fire (Brazilian meat producer)
September 13, 2021
2:19 PM CDT
Last Updated 6 hours ago
Business
By Tom Polansek
2 minute read
CHICAGO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - JBS USA on Monday halted production at a Nebraska beef plant that slaughters about 5% of U.S. cattle due to a fire, but said the company expects to resume operations on Tuesday.
The temporary closure highlighted concerns among U.S. lawmakers and ranchers that the United States is vulnerable to supply disruptions because a handful of meatpacking companies dominate the sector and rely on large plants to produce food. read more
The country has suffered a series of beef supply shocks over the past two years as large plants closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a cyberattack that crippled JBS's operations, and another fire that shut a Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N) plant in Kansas for months. read more
The JBS fire in Grand Island, Nebraska, did not impact the plant's "primary production areas," spokesperson Nikki Richardson said. The company, a subsidiary of Brazilian firm JBS SA (JBSS3.SA), expects to resume operations on Tuesday pending an ongoing assessment of the situation, she said.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/business/jbs-plans-reopen-nebraska-beef-plant-damaged-fire-2021-09-13/
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The Brazilian owners, Joseley and Wesley Batista, notorious sleazeball owners of a vast meat producing corporation, reaching across the globe, have been given money originally meant for needy Americans by Donald Trump:
Trump administration showers Brazilian crooks with $62M bailout money meant for struggling U.S. farmers
By CHRIS SOMMERFELDT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAY 16, 2019 AT 4:20 AM
The Trump administration has forked over more than $62 million — taxpayer cash that was supposed to be earmarked for struggling American farmers — to a massive meatpacking company owned by a couple of corrupt Brazilian brothers.
The Department of Agriculture announced a contract in January to purchase $22.3 million worth of pork from plants operated by JBS USA, a Colorado-based subsidiary of Brazil’s JBS SA, which ranks as the largest meatpacker in the world.
The bailout raised eyebrows from industry insiders at the time, as it was sourced from a $12 billion program meant for American farmers harmed by President Trump’s escalating trade war with China and other countries.
But previously undisclosed purchase reports obtained by the Daily News this week reveal the administration has since issued at least two more bailouts to JBS, even as Trump’s own Justice Department began investigating the meatpacker, whose owners are Joesley and Wesley Batista — two wealthy brothers who have confessed to bribing hundreds of top officials in Brazil.
Both brothers have spent time in jail over the sweeping corruption scandal.
Local prosecutors rescinded the Batistas’ plea deals last year after accusing them of withholding evidence. The seedy brothers aren’t allowed to leave Brazil as their complex cases go to court.
More:
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-administration-bailout-farmers-brazilian-criminals-20190516-6rdb3ithvfec7fttem7qrny54y-story.html
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Batista brothers
~ ~ ~
This foreign meat company got U.S. tax money. Now it wants to conquer America.
By Kimberly Kindy
November 7, 2019
This story has been updated.Two men in cowboy hats stood behind President Trump in May as he announced a $16 billion agricultural bailout. Trump said the financial relief from his trade war with China would help American farmers, reinforcing an earlier tweet when the president said the funds would help “great Patriot Farmers.” But not all beneficiaries of the taxpayer-funded program are American farmers or patriots. JBS, a Brazilian company that is the largest meat producer in the world, has received $78 million in government pork contracts funded with the bailout funds — more than any other U.S. pork producer.
JBS’s winning hand in securing a quarter of all of the pork bailout contracts is one example of the power a small number of multinational meat companies now hold in the United States. JBS has become a major player in the United States even as it faces price-fixing and other investigations from the federal government.
. . .
A dozen years ago, JBS did not own a single U.S. meat plant. Today, JBS and three other food companies control about 85 percent of beef production. JBS and Tyson Foods control about 40 percent of the poultry market. And JBS and three other companies control nearly 70 percent of the pork market.
. . .
Such consolidation has been condemned by eight Democratic presidential candidates, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) being the most outspoken. She’s pledged to break up the larger food and meat companies because the companies can use their “economic power to spend unlimited sums of money electing and manipulating politicians” and because they are “leaving family farmers with fewer choices, thinner margins and less independence.”
. . .
With a few large operators, meat contamination can pose a greater threat because their products end up on plates across the nation. Retail giants Costco, Walmart and Sysco all sell JBS products.
For example, in 2018, JBS ordered the largest recall of ground beef in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 12 million pounds of beef contaminated with a virulent strain of salmonella in 30 states sickened 403 people, of whom 117 were hospitalized. Less than 2 percent of the meat was recovered.
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/this-foreign-meat-company-got-us-tax-money-now-it-wants-to-conquer-america/2019/11/04/854836ae-eae5-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html
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Salvador Allende Was Overthrown Because His Government Showed Chile Could Be Transformed
09.12.2021
CHILE
STATE POLICY HISTORY
AN INTERVIEW WITH
TOMÁS MOULIAN
This weekend marks the 48th anniversary of the US-backed coup against Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende. That coup’s history is important, but we can’t forget that Allende’s government also achieved incredible things while in power.
INTERVIEW BY
Mía Dragnic
The first commemorative march for Chile’s Popular Unity government took place on September 11, 1989. Paying homage to the victims of the military dictatorship, it gathered more than five thousand people at Salvador Allende’s then-unmarked tomb in Viña del Mar.
It would also be the final year of Augusto Pinochet’s bloody dictatorship. Before stepping down, Pinochet ominously announced on national radio that even in his absence the “struggle against Marxism must go on.”
Every year since that date, a commemorative march is held in Santiago de Chile. However, in 2005, the route was reversed so that it would begin, rather than end, at the cemetery and head toward its final destination at the Moneda Palace. The message behind the route change was clear: there will always be a place for the Left to mourn its fallen heroes, but its ultimate destiny lies elsewhere.
The Chilean left also seems to be reversing course in recent years, most spectacularly by winning majority representation in the all-important Constitutional Convention, responsible for rewriting the nation’s magna carta.
Amid growing confidence on the Left, many people have also begun to look back with a different attitude on the history of Allende’s Popular Unity government (Unidad Popular, UP) — less as a solemn act of remembrance than an active search for useful political experiences.
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/09/salvador-allende-popular-unity-government-chile-quimantu-industrial-textile-democracy-nationalization-banks-copper
'The Other 9/11': Progressives Remember Allende's Chile
"On this day in 1973, Salvador Allende's democratically elected socialist government was overthrown in a military coup led by the U.S.-backed fascist Augusto Pinochet."
KENNY STANCIL
September 11, 2021
As people reflect on the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, progressives drew attention to another horrifying event less well-known in the U.S. but referred to elsewhere as "the other 9/11": the bombing of Chile's presidential palace on September 11, 1973 by the nation's armed forces during a right-wing coup supported by Washington and other capitalist regimes.
Salvador Allende, Chile's democratically elected socialist president, died during the assault on La Moneda in Santiago, which brought to power Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose brutal military junta imposed neoliberalism through deadly force, torture, and the "disappearance" of thousands of leftists. Despite its awareness of Pinochet's human rights abuses, including his execution of political opponents, the U.S. continued to support the pro-market dictator during his bloody, 17-year-long reign.
. . .
Journalist Alan Macleod pointed out that "Chile would be ruled by a gruesome fascist dictatorship for decades, the scars of which are still very fresh."
"But people in the West," MacLeod argued, "are largely insulated from the realities of empire thanks to a pliant media, which never shows you the effect of the bombs, sanctions, coups, etc."
Progressive International noted that "Allende was elected Chile's first socialist president in 1970 as the candidate of Popular Unity, a socialist-communist coalition. He quickly went to work reorganizing the society he inherited, characterized by poverty and confined by the greed of international corporations."
More:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/11/other-911-progressives-remember-allendes-chile
Also posted in Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016301604
The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed:
The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People
a Country from Corporate Greed: A Conversation with Co-authors Robin Broad and John Cavanagh
September 10, 2021 By Holly Sarkissian
The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed: A Conversation with Co-authors Robin Broad and John Cavanagh
by Friday Podcasts From ECSP and MHI
- Podcast at link -
“Many people have watched fights between communities and big corporations around the world. The corporations usually win so those are the Goliath. The Davids usually lose,” says John Cavanagh, co-author of The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed. In this week’s episode of Friday Podcasts, Cavanagh and co-author Robin Broad recount how local activists mobilized a global coalition of religious leaders, labor unions, and environmental activists to block an international corporation from opening a gold mine that threatened El Salvador’s fragile water supply.
“We had no choice but to begin the book with the horrifying realization that murder can be the cost of protecting the environment in many countries around the world,” said Broad. In 2009, three months before Cavanagh’s organization, Institute for Policy Studies, was preparing to present its prestigious annual Human Rights Award to a group of El Salvadoran water defenders, they received news that one of the awardees, teacher and cultural worker, Marcelo Rivera, had been assassinated, his tortured body left at the bottom of a deep dry well.
The Water Defenders tells the story of ordinary people coming together across national and political boundaries to resist powerful corporate interests.
In the early 2000s, mineral prices were on the rise and the Pacific Rim mining company sought to set up new mining operations to tap into El Salvador’s gold reserves, promising new jobs and one percent of their profits to the local government. While assurances of prosperity and profit by the mining company initially sounded inviting to Marcelo and the local community, “they visited a big mine in Honduras, and there they saw the horrible environmental damage that comes from the fact that gold is mined on a large scale, using cyanide to separate the gold from the rock [which is] highly toxic and very hard to contain,” says Cavanagh. In Honduras, cyanide-laced water flowed through the rivers, killing fish and causing skin diseases. The water defenders decided “that short term financial rewards for the few would be way offset by the environmental harms to the broader community,” says Cavanagh.
To expand their coalition of support and raise awareness of the dangers of mining, “they did some of the most creative education and organizing that we’ve ever seen,” says Cavanagh. Marcelo organized with humor, leading marches of laughter where people wore clown noses and involved local community radio stations who performed skits on water. The water defenders expanded their coalition to the global level, creating a network of “international allies” and appealing to the two million Salvadoran diaspora in the United States, and environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the Global International Trade Union Confederation, says Cavanagh.
More:
https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2021/09/water-defenders-ordinary-people-saved-country-corporate-greed-conversation-co-authors-robin-broad-john-cavanagh/
So glad the Salvadoran people found a way to protect what should be considered sacred land. Best wishes to them forever.
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Don't forget the heroic life of Berta Cáceres, indigenous water defender who was assassinated in Honduras for her effort to save a river from corporate murderous greed. Her Wikipedia:
Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈbeɾta isaˈ?el ˈkaseɾes ˈfloɾes]; 4 March 1971[1] – 2 March 2016)[2] (Lenca) was a Honduran environmental activist, indigenous leader,[3] and co-founder and coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).[4][5][6] She won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, for "a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam" at the Río Gualcarque.[7][8]
She was assassinated in her home by armed intruders, after years of threats against her life.[9] A former soldier with the US-trained special forces units of the Honduran military asserted that Caceres' name was on their hitlist months before her assassination. As of February 2017, three of the eight arrested people were linked to the US-trained elite military troops: two had been trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA, the former School of the Americas (SOA), renamed WHINSEC, linked to thousands of murders and human rights violations in Latin America by its graduates. In November 2017, a team of international legal experts released a report finding "willful negligence by financial institutions." For example, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), the Netherlands Development Finance Institution (FMO) and the Finnfund pursued a strategy with shareholders, executives, managers, and employees of DESA, private security companies working for DESA, public officials and State security agencies "to control, neutralize and eliminate any opposition".
Twelve environmental activists were killed in Honduras in 2014, according to research by Global Witness, making it the most dangerous country in the world, relative to its size, for activists protecting forests and rivers.[10] Berta Cáceres' murder was followed by those of two more activists within the same month.
In July 2021, David Castillo, manager of DESA, was found guilty as the intellectual author of her murder.[11]
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berta_C%C3%A1ceres
Bolsonaro Supporters Try to Invade Ministry of Health after Threatening TV Crew
Group forces entry through the ministry's glass doors and windows and chased press teams
Sep.9.2021 12:39PM
A group of supporters of Jair Bolsonaro tried to invade the headquarters of the Ministry of Health in Brasília, this Wednesday morning (8). The event took place the day after the pro-government and coup-supporting demonstrations promoted by the president on the September 7th holiday.
According to a member of the ministry who followed the riots, the protesters surrounded and attacked a man who criticized the movement and, as a result, attacked press teams. The journalists and the man sought shelter in the ministry building.
Images released by the Metrópoles portal show the group advancing on the ministry's door and windows. Workers hastily barred the entrance to prevent invasion.
The Ministry of Health, in a statement, confirmed the attempted invasion of the Ministry's headquarters. "The building's security quickly contained the situation. It should be clarified that there were no injuries."
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2021/09/bolsonaro-supporters-try-to-invade-ministry-of-health-after-threatening-tv-crew.shtml?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsen
(Short article, no more at link.)
Brazil suspends beef exports to China after discovery of mad cow disease
ABC Rural / By Warwick Long and Tom Major
Posted 3h ago3 hours ago, updated 1h ago
Brazil has suspended beef exports to China following the discovery of two separate cases of 'atypical' Bovine Spongy Encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease in the country.
Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, confirmed the two cases of the disease in abattoirs in Brazil in two separate states of the country, Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso.
The discovery of mad cow disease is a blow to Brazil and will restrict beef movements around the world.
"It will make the supply of beef around the world very tight as we come into the strongest period of demand for the year globally," meat industry analyst Simon Quilty said.
More:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-09-06/brazil-suspends-beef-exports-to-china-after-discovery-of-mad-cow/100436264
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Brazil's twin thugs, owner of the world's largest meat producing company, the Batista Brothers:
New Brazilian Class Action Targets Corrupt JBS in the Name of Democracy
January 14, 2020 OCM Staff
The people of Brazil have taken a stand for justice against corrupt meatpacker JBS and its principal owners, the Batista brothers, by filing legal action in the Brazilian court. A discovery application has also been approved which seeks documents located in the U.S. for use in the legal proceeding in Brazil.
This class action lawsuit, filed on December 20, 2019, comes on the heels of a recent action brought by Brazilian prosecutors evidencing similar claims.
The litigation lays out the undisputed evidence that through bribing over 1,800 Brazilian politicians, the Batista brothers were able to take over U.S. Swift Food, U.S. Smithfield beef group, and Pilgrim’s Pride, launching their takeover of the U.S. meat processing industry and becoming the world’s leading meat processor.
The lawsuit demands the Batista brothers, JBS SA, J&F Investimentos, the Batista family’s holding company, restore to the public nearly a billion U.S. dollars of the Batista family’s ill-gotten gain.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials have forked over yet another $10.8 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to the shady foreign firm. JBS has now received a whopping $100 million+ in taxpayer cash meant for struggling American farmers.
More:
https://competitivemarkets.com/new-brazilian-class-action-targets-corrupt-jbs-in-the-name-of-democracy/
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Trump administration showers Brazilian crooks with $62M bailout money meant for struggling U.S. farmers
By CHRIS SOMMERFELDT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAY 16, 2019 AT 4:20 AM
Joesley and Wesley Batista, owners of Brazil-based meat-packing company JBS SA, are pictured in separate file photos. (AFP/Getty Images)
The Trump administration has forked over more than $62 million — taxpayer cash that was supposed to be earmarked for struggling American farmers — to a massive meatpacking company owned by a couple of corrupt Brazilian brothers.
The Department of Agriculture announced a contract in January to purchase $22.3 million worth of pork from plants operated by JBS USA, a Colorado-based subsidiary of Brazil’s JBS SA, which ranks as the largest meatpacker in the world.
The bailout raised eyebrows from industry insiders at the time, as it was sourced from a $12 billion program meant for American farmers harmed by President Trump’s escalating trade war with China and other countries.
But previously undisclosed purchase reports obtained by the Daily News this week reveal the administration has since issued at least two more bailouts to JBS, even as Trump’s own Justice Department began investigating the meatpacker, whose owners are Joesley and Wesley Batista — two wealthy brothers who have confessed to bribing hundreds of top officials in Brazil.
Both brothers have spent time in jail over the sweeping corruption scandal.
Local prosecutors rescinded the Batistas’ plea deals last year after accusing them of withholding evidence. The seedy brothers aren’t allowed to leave Brazil as their complex cases go to court.
More:
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-administration-bailout-farmers-brazilian-criminals-20190516-6rdb3ithvfec7fttem7qrny54y-story.html
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This foreign meat company got U.S. tax money. Now it wants to conquer America.
President Trump delivers remarks in support of farmers and ranchers at the White House in May. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
By Kimberly Kindy
November 7, 2019
This story has been updated.Two men in cowboy hats stood behind President Trump in May as he announced a $16 billion agricultural bailout. Trump said the financial relief from his trade war with China would help American farmers, reinforcing an earlier tweet when the president said the funds would help “great Patriot Farmers.”
But not all beneficiaries of the taxpayer-funded program are American farmers or patriots. JBS, a Brazilian company that is the largest meat producer in the world, has received $78 million in government pork contracts funded with the bailout funds — more than any other U.S. pork producer.
JBS’s winning hand in securing a quarter of all of the pork bailout contracts is one example of the power a small number of multinational meat companies now hold in the United States. JBS has become a major player in the United States even as it faces price-fixing and other investigations from the federal government.
The company’s explosive growth through acquisitions over the past decade has been a dominant factor in the consolidation of the meat industry by multinational companies.
A dozen years ago, JBS did not own a single U.S. meat plant. Today, JBS and three other food companies control about 85 percent of beef production. JBS and Tyson Foods control about 40 percent of the poultry market. And JBS and three other companies control nearly 70 percent of the pork market.
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/this-foreign-meat-company-got-us-tax-money-now-it-wants-to-conquer-america/2019/11/04/854836ae-eae5-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html
In Peru, the Knives Are Already Out for Pedro Castillo
BY
ADRIÁN LERNER MATTEO STIGLICH
Pedro Castillo passed his first hurdle as president of Peru recently when he won congressional approval for his left-wing cabinet. To keep his momentum and defeat the right-wing opposition, he now needs to build his popular support in the streets.
Peruvian president Pedro Castillo delivers a speech during a ceremony on July 29 at Pampa de la Quinua, Ayacucho, where the last battle against the Spanish royalists was won in 1824. (ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP via Getty Images)
The man with the longest name in the room, Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso de Todos los Santos de Borbón y Grecia, could be forgiven if he did not care too much for Pedro Castillo’s maiden presidential speech. The inauguration of Peru’s new president took place on July 28, 2021, marking the two hundredth anniversary of the country’s proclamation of independence from Spain. King Philip VI of Spain — the man with the long name — looked on glumly as a peasant, rural schoolteacher, community patrol member, and union leader from one of Peru’s poorest provinces assumed the highest office in the country that had once been the crown jewel of the Spanish Empire.
Wearing his trademark straw hat and a liqui liqui — the traditional northern Andes outfit that has become a staple among Pink Tide heads of state — Castillo took an unconventional approach to the swearing-in speech. Rather than focusing on the drama surrounding his electoral triumph over far-right candidate and notoriously sore loser Keiko Fujimori, Castillo offered a history lesson.
After greeting his fellow heads of state and “His Majesty the King of Spain,” Castillo spoke on behalf his “brothers of Indigenous ancestry in pre-Hispanic Peru, my Quechua, Aymara, and Amazonian brothers, the Afro-Peruvians and the many communities of immigrant ancestry, as well as the dispossessed minorities in the countryside and in the cities. Today, we all say: kashkaniracmi. We still exist.” He spoke of lands inhabited by “cultures and civilizations” that “for four and a half millennia solved their problems and lived in harmony with what nature offered them,” only to be interrupted by “the men from Castile,” who “established the castes and differences that persist to this day.”
The speech then traced three centuries of colonial exploitation, resource extraction, and a repressive “racial regime” that “subordinated the majority of the Indigenous inhabitants of this rich country.” Independence and the subsequent 200 years of republican rule hardly improved the lives of the Indigenous majority. That history, Castillo continued, is changing: “This time, a government of the people has arrived to govern with the people and for the people, to build from the bottom up. It is the first time that our country will be governed by a peasant, a person that belongs, like many Peruvians, to the sectors that have been oppressed for so many centuries.”
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/09/peruvian-politics-pedro-castillo-peru-libre-party-cabinet-inauguration-congress-legislature-appointments
SHREWD WATER USE HELPED SOUTH AMERICA'S FIRST EMPIRE THRIVE. SO WHY DID A DROUGHT DESTROY IT?
“Conquest by hydraulic superiority” helped Wari state expand
16 APR 2020 BY LIZZIE WADE
When Wari colonists arrived in the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru some 1400 years ago, people already living there were likely nervous. The Wari state, with its capital city of Huari high in the Andes near what is now Ayacucho, Peru, had been expanding its reach. The Wari takeover was violent in places; the invaders sacrificed local people and displayed their heads as trophies.
But this time the Wari colonists did something unexpected. Rather than trying to seize the fertile valley floor, where people already lived, the newcomers occupied high, dry land that no one else had figured out how to use. They constructed their government and religious buildings on top of a high mesa, now called Cerro Baúl, and erected canals and aqueducts that carried water much farther than any previously attempted in the valley. They carved mountain slopes into agricultural terraces, which efficiently trapped and distributed water from rain and snowmelt to plots of maize, quinoa, and peppery berries called molle. People from several other regions moved to the new farms and towns, forming a powerful labor force that helped maintain the sprawling water infrastructure.
Remote Cerro Baúl is home to some of the best preserved Wari canals and terraces, but the remains of their sophisticated water infrastructure have been found in both the Wari heartland and in several of the state's many colonies, including around the Wari center of Pikillacta near present-day Cuzco and in the Huamachuco region, more than 700 kilometers to the north of Huari. Such innovative hydraulic engineering enabled Wari—which some scholars argue was South America's first empire—to expand and thrive for some 400 years despite an often dry, drought-prone climate, recent studies suggest. (Archaeologists refer to this state as "Wari," not "the Wari," similar to the names of modern nations like Peru or France.) Wari colonists and those who joined their community were able to "settle empty zones and make them productive," says Donna Nash, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Archaeologist Patrick Ryan Williams of the Field Museum calls the Wari strategy "conquest by hydraulic superiority."
Those studying the Wari state's rise and fall, however, confront a puzzle. Its end, about 1000 years ago, appears to have coincided with a severe drought. Across history, the pattern might seem familiar; other ancient civilizations, including the Classic Maya and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, appear to have collapsed in a time of drought. But how could drought have doomed Wari, a society that had been built on learning to take maximum advantage of limited water, and had seemingly even expanded through previous dry spells? To find an answer, researchers are trying to reconstruct two intricate, fragmented narratives—the human and the environmental—and weave them together. The history of climate "in the Andes is extremely complicated," says Benjamin Vining, an environmental archaeologist at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. "And the only thing more complicated is human behavior."
More:
https://www.science.org/content/article/shrewd-water-use-helped-south-america-s-first-empire-thrive-so-why-did-drought-destroy
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Wikiwand from Wikipedia
Cerro Baúl (Spanish: Cerro "hill", Spanish: Baúl "trunk" (i.e. a place to store treasured items)) is an ancient political outpost and ceremonial center settlement in Peru established by the pre-Incan empire called the Wari. Cerro Baúl is a terraced mountain, 2000 feet above its surroundings, with a settlement on the cliff tops themselves and in the immediate surroundings. Among other finds are the remnants of a brewery and large buildings that may have been used for ceremonial feasting. There is evidence of damage that has been interpreted as a careful and deliberate destruction, by the city's own people, of several buildings prior to the mesa's being vacated.
Description of site
The summit of Cerro Baúl is located in the Moquegua Valley. Both Cerro Baúl and the adjacent Cerro Mejia were under Wari control. The Wari had introduced the agricultural technology of terracing the mountainside and digging long canals across the land. A 6.2 mile canal was built from the Torata River through the El Paso Divide between Cerro Baúl and Cerro Mejia, where it split to irrigate the terraces that flanked both hills.[1] Also along the terraced slopes we find the homes of the majority of the center's citizens.[2] At the top of the mountain we find the public and elite living spaces. There are two D-shaped temples, in the Wari style, on the eastern and middle sections of the site. Also along the eastern side are one-story domiciles similar to the ones along the terraces. These are considered to be the artisan residence area by archaeologists. The central sector seems to be the ceremonial core, while the western sector comprises the two story dwellings of the elite.[3] Sprinkled throughout this city we find the most common architectural form used by the Wari civilization, which is an enclosed plaza flanked by impressive stone halls. The halls included residences of governors and wealthy citizens, government offices, and beer houses for state-held parties.
example of terracing
Asociación Contisuyo
Asociación Contisuyo (in Quechua: Kunti Suyu), literally translated to Association "Bias West or West Region", is an assemblage of Peruvian and American scholars with interests in the mapping and excavation of Cerro Baúl. Founded in 1981 directors Robert Pritzker and Dr. Michael Moseley, then of The Field Museum of Natural History combined their resources with the Southern Peru Copper Corporation to further their research at Cerro Baúl.[4] Prior to the first excavations it was believed that the Wari civilization had obtained the area subsequent to Tiwanaku control; however, it is now known from archaeological artifacts found in the area, such as kero (a ceremonial cup), in the hybrid styles of both Wari and Tiwanaku, that they had occupied the areas at the same time. It is believed that the two cultures employed the close space rather peacefully, as there is no evidence of warfare and evidence of shared culture and styles from about A.D. 600 to 1020. The scholars, armed with the annals of a Spanish chronicler and two seasons of excavations, were able to find evidence that supported the Inca siege and capture of the Wari political outpost.
Wari political outpost and ceremonial center
The Wari (Spanish: Huari) culture of Peru in the Middle Horizon period (400 AD-1000 AD) was one of several Andean cultures before the rise of the Inca that can be termed "empires." They were not just city states, but actually exerted their influence over neighboring groups (or subjugated them). The Wari area of influence lay in what is now the central highlands of Peru and their area of influence overlapped that of another culture, the Tiwanaku. The Wari made their bold thrust into the Tiwanaku area of control by seizing both Cerro Baúl and the adjacent Cerro Mejia. By terracing and irrigating the areas for the sustainment of the city's populace, they managed to make the Tiwanaku at least partially dependent on their society[1] as the water streaming from the mountain rainstorms had to pass by a Wari canal before it reached Tiwanaku fields. The relationship, however, seemed to be some positive interaction between the two peoples as seen in the Tiwanaku-style drinking vessel used in ceremonies that was among the Wari's most sacred ceremonial offerings found at the site.
With the demise of the Wari and Tiwanaku civilizations, the people of the Chiribaya culture lived in the area until they were conquered or colonized by the Inca.
More:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cerro_Ba%C3%BAl
Colombia court refuses to try general accused in 104 murders
BY MANUEL RUEDA• ASSOCIATED PRESS • AUGUST 31, 2021
Former Colombian army Gen. Mario Montoya arrives for a hearing in Bogota, Colombia, on Oct. 17, 2018. Bogota’s Superior Tribunal ruled Monday, August 30, 2021, that Montoya is not under the jurisdiction of ordinary courts because he is cooperating with a special tribunal created by the 2016 peace deal between the government and the now disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. (Fernando Vergara/AP)
Mario Montoya had appeared at a court hearing last week, where he was going to be charged with murder by the Attorney General's Office. But Bogota's Superior Tribunal stopped prosecutors from pressing charges while they considered the case.
The court ruled Monday that Montoya is not under the jurisdiction of ordinary courts because he is cooperating with a special tribunal created by the 2016 peace deal between the government and the now disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The ruling will be appealed by relatives of civilians killed by soldiers under Montoya's command, who are hoping that the case sets a powerful precedent.
. . .
According to the peace tribunal, at least 6,402 civilians were murdered by the Colombian army and presented as "false positives" between 2002 and 2008, when the killings were first revealed by journalists. In all, an estimated 262,000 people died as a result of the five-decade conflict.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/americas/2021-08-31/colombia-court-refuses-try-general-accused-104-murders-2731996.html
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Montoya has had an inordinate amount of power and influence for years. Dreadful person.
Montoya speaking, Uribe listening.
Colombian Vice President Juan Manuel Santos, George W., Alvaro Uribe,
General Montoya
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WIKILEAKS: CABLE REVIVES HORROR OF COLOMBIA’S “FALSE POSITIVES” CARNAGE
Rewarding body count, during wartime or not, is a recipe for mass murder.
By Michael Busch | March 2, 2011
When Major General Mario Montoya Uribe was appointed commander of the Colombian army in March of 2006, the US embassy in Bogota was largely unaware of his background and bona fides. The American ambassador to Colombia at the time, William Wood, reported in a cable WikiLeaked on Friday, that relatively little was known about Montoya aside from his many decorations as a career military man, his close personal relationship with then-president Alvaro Uribe, and persistent but as yet unsubstantiated rumors that the commander was corrupt and tied to conservative paramilitary forces throughout the country.
Little was Wood aware that Montoya’s corruption and paramilitary ties would prove to be the least of his offenses. By the time he was relieved of his command eighteen months later, Montoya was widely perceived to be a driving force behind the breathtakingly horrific dealings of military personnel in the fight against drug- and guerilla-related internal disturbances.
As I reported in 2009 when UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution Philip Alston arrived in Bogota to investigate the so-called “false positives” case, over one thousand members of the Colombian armed forces were ultimately implicated in the murders of countless innocent civilians. The details are appalling. In many cases, victims were recruited from poor neighborhoods and villages throughout the country, promised work opportunities elsewhere, then drugged and sold to military agents who arranged for their executions. The bodies were then dressed up in army fatigues, planted with weapons purchased on the black market, and claimed as successfully eliminated guerrilla combatants by military personnel.
The evidence of false positive extrajudicial killings suggests their systemic nature, a conclusion corroborated by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which noted that
What is apparently new about the recent cases is that they have been motivated primarily by internal military incentive structures, rather than political motives…They were killed so that army units and their commanders could demonstrate “results” to their superiors, and thereby win both financial rewards and promotions. In this war, progress has long been measured by the number of “enemy combatants” immobilized, preferably killed, and career prospects often depend on demonstrating such “results”…Investigations have revealed an extensive web of recruiter networks penetrating poor neighborhoods across the country, operating in a shadowy underworld in collusion with army contract agents. …For dispatching these apparent “positives”…the assassins could count on receiving benefits such as paid holidays, special courses abroad, promotions and pay raises.
While the leaked cable suggests that the embassy was unaware of Montoya’s connection to these abuses, the phenomenon of false positives was hardly unknown to American intelligence officers and Colombian officials, which had been tracking these developments for at least fifteen years—this according to recently released documents obtained by the National Security Archive. And though the incidence of extrajudicial killings increased during Uribe’s term in office, few accuse Uribe himself of any firsthand knowledge concerning these cases.
Which makes the second cable from Bogota that came to light the same day so interesting. In November 2008, right after Montoya resigned his post amidst a story of accusations and investigations, recently arrived Ambassador William Brownfield banged out a report noting that
Montoya stepped down less than a week after President Uribe’s dismissal of 27 military officers–including two division and three brigade commanders–for their roles in the disappearance and subsequent murders of young men from Soacha and Antioquia. Montoya had been the subject of multiple human rights complaints during his tenure, including alleged abuses committed in Medellin’s poorer neighborhoods during Operation Orion, collusion with paramilitaries, and demanding “body count” as a measure of operational success.
Colombian press reported statements by Senator Patrick Leahy calling Montoya’s departure a “long overdue and positive step.” Leahy said Montoya “shares responsibility for widespread and systematic abuses by the Colombian military.” Montoya’s recent military successes include the rescue of hostages in Operation Jaque. Some believed he would be a likely successor to Armed Forces Commander General Freddy Padilla de Leon.
According to the cable, instead of sending a message that Montoya’s human rights abuses would not be tolerated by his administration, Uribe appointed the commander’s protégé—himself no darling of the human rights community—to the post.
More:
https://fpif.org/wikileaks_cable_revives_horror_of_colombias_false_positives_carnage/
For any trolls lurking who might see this article, the Senator who seriously disliked Montoya was a DEMOCRAT. Right-wing Americans love people like Montoya. Montoya is a war criminal, of course.
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