January 25, 2024

Ecuador's reactionary war

By: Dawn Marie Paley
January 24, 2024

Civil rights annulled. Soldiers in the streets, curfews enforced. Armed men in masks patrol neighborhoods. Packets of marijuana and boxes of money laid out and photographed. US State Department officials in formal dress shake hands with their local counterparts.

Ecuador has recently begun to experience a pattern of violence similar to that of Colombia over the last 25 years and Mexico over the last 15.

Government officials claim that those responsible for the violence in Ecuador are men in criminal gangs, now considered “terrorists,” with nicknames like “Cuyuyuyuy” and “El Ravioli.” In this context, we are told, the military is acting to disrupt organized crime and protect citizens.

Some suggest that a crime boss’s second escape from prison was the straw that broke the camel’s back and that it required an immediate military response. This recalls the so-called escapes of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Journalist Anabel Hernández writes that the first time, Guzmán was wheeled out of the front door of the prison in a laundry cart with the cooperation of the guards. In the second instance, he is said to have escaped from a tunnel that the press has never actually seen.

Just as we question official discourse about austerity policies and economic measures that justify extractivism and benefit the one percent, it is important to question the official discourse on violence and, in particular, militarization.

More:
https://newpol.org/ecuadors-reactionary-war/

January 24, 2024

Mexico wins appeal in lawsuit against US gunmakers filed in Boston

MND Staff
January 23, 2024



The Mexican government's lawsuit is the first made by a foreign country against U.S. gun manufacturers and the Foreign Affairs Ministry estimates it could be worth as much as US $10 billion in damages. (Smith & Wesson Inc./Facebook)

A United States appeals court ruled Monday that a US $10 billion lawsuit filed by Mexico against U.S.-based gun manufacturers in 2021 can proceed, annulling a lower court’s dismissal of the case.

The Boston-based United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overturned Judge F. Dennis Saylor’s dismissal of the case against gunmakers including Smith & Wesson, Barrett Firearms, Beretta and Glock.

Mexico filed its lawsuit in August 2021, accusing seven gun manufacturers and one distributor of negligent business practices that have led to illegal arms trafficking and deaths in Mexico, where U.S.-sourced firearms are used in a majority of high-impact crimes.

In dismissing the case in September 2022, Saylor, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, said that U.S. law “unequivocally” prohibits lawsuits that seek to hold gun manufacturers responsible when people use their products for their intended purpose.

More:
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-wins-appeal-in-lawsuit-against-us-gunmakers-filed-in-boston/

January 24, 2024

Animals Can See Colors We Can't--And New Tech Offers Us a Glimpse

JANUARY 23, 2024

5 MIN READ

A colorful new video technique lets scientists see the world like birds and bees

BY LAUREN LEFFER



A butterfly through the eyes of a bird. Credit: “Recording Animal-View Videos of the Natural World Using a Novel Camera System and Software Package,” by Vera Vasas et al., in PLOS Biology, Vol. 22, No. 1. Published online January 23, 2024 (CC BY 4.0)


The rainbow looks different to a human than it does to a honeybee or a zebra finch. That’s because these animals can see colors that we humans simply can’t. Now scientists have developed a new video recording and analysis technique to better understand how the world looks through the eyes of other species. The accurate and relatively inexpensive method, described in a study published on January 23 in PLOS Biology, is already offering biologists surprising discoveries about the lives of different species.

Humans have three types of cone cells in their eyes. This trio of photoreceptors typically detects red, green and blue wavelengths of light, which combine into millions of distinct colors in the spectrum from 380 to 700 nanometers in wavelength—what we call “visible light.” Some animals, though, can see light with even higher frequencies, called ultraviolet, or UV, light. Most birds have this ability, along with honeybees, reptiles and certain bony fish.

But it’s difficult to document the moving world through these animals’ eyes. To capture such a wide range of light, cameras must sacrifice visual detail. Scientists can combine high-resolution photographs from multiple cameras tuned to different wavelengths or properties of light. They can also use spectrophotometry, a method that relies on specialized lab equipment to take many different measurements of a single object. Both of these methods are time-intensive, however, and only work on still images taken in highly controlled conditions. For biologists who study animal behavior, these still photographs aren’t enough. “A lot of times, the change of color is the important or interesting part of a signal,” says lead study author Vera Vasas, a biologist now at the University of Sussex in England.

To capture animal vision on video, Vasas and her colleagues developed a portable 3-D-printed enclosure containing a beam splitter that separates light
into UV and the human-visible spectrum. The two streams are captured by two different cameras. One is a standard camera that detects visible-wavelength light, and the other is a modified camera that is sensitive to UV. On its own, the UV-sensitive camera wouldn’t be able to record detailed information on the rest of the light spectrum in a single shot. But paired together, the two cameras can simultaneously record high-quality video that encompasses a wide range of the light spectrum. Then a set of algorithms aligns the two videos and produces versions of the footage that are representative of different animals’ color views, such as those of birds or bees.

More:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/animals-can-see-colors-we-cant-and-new-tech-offers-us-a-glimpse/

January 19, 2024

Cuba's placement on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list has led to damaging consequences

BY MICHAEL GALANT, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 01/05/24 12:00 PM ET

Three years ago this month, as a parting shot mere days before leaving office, Donald Trump placed Cuba on the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list, triggering a range of new sanctions against the island nation. Last month, members of Congress were left “furious” after learning that, despite assurances otherwise, President Biden has not even started the process of reviewing that decision.

Cuba’s SSOT designation was callous and unjustifiable when it was instituted to great dismay by President Trump. It is even more callous and unjustifiable today, as Cuba suffers the worst economic and humanitarian crisis in its contemporary history, largely as a result of U.S. policy.

The U.S. embargo of Cuba has been in place for over 60 years. In that time, its primary effect has been the immiseration of the Cuban people. U.S. sanctions have starved the Cuban economy of over $130 billion; hindered civilian access to essential goods like food, fuel and medicine; exacerbated hunger and poverty; and systematically undermined fundamental human rights. The evidence that broad economic sanctions harm civilians in targeted countries is overwhelming. Indeed, that is arguably the intent.

In 2014, President Obama broke with a half-century of systematic hostility, taking small but meaningful steps to thaw diplomatic relations and provide a measure of relief for the sanctions-starved Cuban economy, including removing the SSOT designation that President Reagan had imposed in the depths of the Cold War. While Trump took a wrecking ball to these fragile advances, many Cubans and Americans alike saw Biden’s election as a chance to return to the path laid by his former running mate.

More:
https://thehill.com/opinion/4390641-cubas-placement-on-the-state-sponsor-of-terrorism-list-has-lead-to-damaging-consequences/

January 19, 2024

Watch Japan attempt to ace its 1st-ever moon landing on Jan. 19 with this free livestream (video)

By Mike Wall
published about 9 hours ago

The nation's SLIM lunar lander will try to touch down at around 10:20 a.m. ET on Friday (Jan. 19).

Japan's robotic SLIM spacecraft will attempt to pull off the nation's first-ever successful moon landing on Friday morning (Jan. 19), and you can watch the action live.

SLIM (short for "Smart Lander for Investigating Moon" ) is scheduled to begin its touchdown operations Friday at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT; midnight on Jan. 20 Japan time), with a soft landing on the moon occurring 20 minutes later, if all goes according to plan.

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or directly via JAXA. Coverage will begin at 9 a.m. EST (1400 GMT; 11 p.m. Japan time).



Artist's illustration of Japan's SLIM lander attempting its lunar touchdown on Jan. 19, 2024. (Image credit: ISAS/JAXA)

SLIM launched atop a Japanese H-2A rocket on Sept. 6 of last year. The moon probe shared that ride with an X-ray space telescope called XRISM, which was deployed into low Earth orbit shortly after launch and recently beamed home its first test photos after a successful checkout period.

More:
https://www.space.com/japan-first-moon-landing-slim-webcast

January 16, 2024

A Working Class Victory on the Horizon in Colombia

JANUARY 16, 2024

BY OMAR OCAMPO

A working-class victory is on the horizon in Colombia.

The Seventh Committee of the House of Representatives voted to approve 16 of the 98 articles of the landmark Labor Reform bill right before the start of winter recess. The bill will now advance to a second round of legislative debates that will resume next month.

This is great news for the workers movement: Labor reform represents one of the three flagship policy proposals of the Petro-Márquez administration that seeks to equitably transform society. The bill will not only restore the labor rights that were rescinded a little over twenty years ago by a far-right government — it will go a step further and expand these rights.

The road to reform thus far has not been easy. Since the bill was first introduced last March, it predictably encountered fierce opposition from the business community and its political representatives. Those corporate stakeholders argued that the bill distributes benefits to an already privileged class of formalized and unionized workers.

But as researcher Santiago Garcés Correa highlighted in an article for the magazine 100 Días, such depictions do not accurately portray the lived experiences of the Colombian working-class. Petro’s labor reform platform is a reflection of workers’ daily grievances and struggles.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/16/a-working-class-victory-on-the-horizon-in-colombia/

January 14, 2024

Massive trove of ancient artifacts, skeletons found in Brazil

January 13, 2024 01:11 P.M

Workers were just starting construction on a new apartment complex in northeastern Brazil when they began finding human bones and pottery shards, their edges worn smooth by time. Soon, excavations at the site in the coastal city of Sao Luis had uncovered thousands of artifacts left by ancient peoples up to 9,000 years ago -- a treasure trove archaeologists say could rewrite the history of human settlement in Brazil.

The lead archaeologist on the dig, Wellington Lage, says he had no idea what he was getting into when Brazilian construction giant MRV hired his company, W Lage Arqueologia, in 2019 to carry out an impact study at the site -- part of the routine procedure of preparing to build an apartment building. Covered in tropical vegetation and bordered by the urban sprawl of Sao Luis, the capital of Maranhao state, the six-hectare (15-acre) plot was known as Rosane's Farm, for the daughter of a late local landholder.

Researching the site, Lage learned intriguing vestiges had been found in the area since the 1970s, including part of a human jawbone in 1991. His team soon found much more: a flood of stone tools, ceramic shards, decorated shells and bones. In four years of digging, they have unearthed 43 human skeletons and more than 100,000 artifacts, according to Brazil's Institute for National Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN), which announced the discovery this week, calling it "grandiose." Researchers now plan to catalogue the artifacts, analyze them in detail, put them on display and publish their findings. "We've been working four years now, and we've barely scratched the surface," said Lage, a 70-year-old Sao Paulo native whose wife and two children are also archaeologists.

Rewriting history

The preliminary findings are already grabbing attention in the scientific community. Lage says his team -- which grew to 27 people in all, including archaeologists, chemists, a historian and a documentary filmmaker -- has found four distinct eras of occupation at the site. The top layer was left by the Tupinamba people, who inhabited the region when European colonizers founded Sao Luis in 1612.

Then comes a layer of artifacts typical of Amazon rainforest peoples, followed by a "sambaqui": a mound of pottery, shells and bones used by some Indigenous groups to build their homes or bury their dead. Beneath that, around two meters (6.5 feet) below the surface, lies another layer, left by a group that made rudimentary ceramics and lived around 8,000 to 9,000 years ago, based on the depth of the find.

More:
https://kuwaittimes.com/article/10037/lifestyle/massive-trove-of-ancient-artifacts-skeletons-found-in-brazil/

January 12, 2024

Half a century later, the military junta still haunts Chile

Published: January 11, 2024 4:37pm EST

Chileans recently voted to reject a proposed new constitution which critics said was even more authoritarian and conservative than the 1980 dictatorship-era constitution it sought to replace.

Most notably, the rejected changes sought to strengthen property rights and uphold free-market principles. Roughly 56 per cent of voters rejected the new constitution while around 44 per cent were in favour. Debates about the constitution highlight the political challenges that have plagued Chile since the violent days of the military junta.

Hosted in Santiago, the 2023 Pan and Parapan American Games, were seen as an opportunity to signal a new Chile. For Toronto-born Olympian Melissa Humaña-Paredes, daughter of Chilean political refugees, entering the Estadio Nacional (National Stadium) as a flag-bearer for the Canadian team, conjured up simultaneous feelings of pride, and the images of the atrocities from 50 years ago.

Under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet which ruled Chile from 1970 to 1990, many sport stadiums, especially the Estadio Nacional, were used as open-air prisons, where many Chileans were tortured and killed.

More:
https://theconversation.com/half-a-century-later-the-military-junta-still-haunts-chile-219790

January 11, 2024

Ancient cities discovered in the Amazon are the largest yet found

A mysterious civilisation built a network of cities and roads in the Amazon between 3000 and 1500 years ago, and then disappeared

By Michael Le Page

11 January 2024



Lidar scans of the Upano valley in Ecuador showing raised platforms

Stephen Rostain

Aerial surveys have revealed the largest pre-colonial cities in the Amazon yet discovered, linked by an extensive network of roads.

“The settlements are much bigger than others in the Amazon,” says Stéphen Rostain at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. “They are comparable with Maya sites.”

What’s more, at between 3000 and 1500 years old, these cities are also older than other pre-Columbian ones discovered in the Amazon. Why the people who built them disappeared isn’t clear.

It is often assumed that the Amazon rainforest was largely untouched by humans before the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus reached the Americas in the 15th century. In fact, the first Europeans reported seeing many farms and towns in the region.

These reports, long dismissed, have in recent decades been backed up by discoveries of ancient earthworks and extensive dark soils created by farmers. One estimate puts the pre-Columbian population of the Amazon as high as 8 million.

More:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2411924-ancient-cities-discovered-in-the-amazon-are-the-largest-yet-found/

Also, just posted in Anthropology:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/122910563

January 10, 2024

'In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl' by Merilee Grindle review

In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Zelia Nuttall & the Search for Mexico’s Ancient Civilizations by Merilee Grindle depicts a woman ahead of her time, yet very much a product of it.

Matthew Restall | Published in History Today Volume 74 Issue 1 January 2024

‘If Mexicans will make stupid laws and try to prevent archaeology in the North from growing, then these rules will be broken’, wrote the American archaeologist Alfred Tozzer from the Yucatán Peninsula in 1904. ‘It is almost a duty to take everything one can from the country.’ Such were the attitudes of the European and North American pioneers of archaeology and anthropology. Their era was the age of empire – empires emanating from Europe – and they easily reconciled their dedication to the study of ancient societies with the conviction that such societies were innately inferior to their own. As Merilee Grindle puts it, this was a time when ‘elites asserted their rights to take possession of the past’.

It was also ‘a time when Zelia Nuttall was famous’, something which is no longer true. Born in 1857, Nuttall was a native Californian whose father was Irish and grandmother Mexican. She played crucial roles in the dawning development of anthropology, specifically the study of ancient Mexican cultures such as that of the Aztecs. She wrote well over 100 papers and articles during the final two decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th. The British Library’s Codex Nuttall, an ancient Mexican manuscript, is named after her. Before 1903 she was based in San Francisco but travelled extensively and lived in various European cities. After that, until her death in 1933, she lived in Coyoacán, just outside Mexico City, aside from seven years when the Mexican Revolution forced her into temporary exile in England and San Francisco.

Grindle does not allow discursions into Nuttall’s scholarly interests to slow down the strong narrative pace of her book. It reminded me of William Boyd’s novels: we follow from birth to death a flawed but ultimately heroic central protagonist. Specialised knowledge of a particular profession provides captivating details as our protagonist navigates the events and personalities of world history, in this case the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893), the Great San Francisco Earthquake (1906) and the Mexican Revolution (1910-17).

Grindle is not herself a specialist in the Aztecs, Mayas or similar topics, so there are occasional factual or interpretive missteps. But they are too minor to mar either the book’s narrative momentum or her deft handling of early anthropology’s colonialist collecting practices, racist rationales and sexist exclusionism. Those thorny themes are always present, but never overstated. As a result, Grindle successfully delivers Nuttall to us as a flawed heroine.

More:
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/shadow-quetzalcoatl-merilee-grindle-review

(My bolding.)