Librarians Condemn Police Conduct in Kansas City Free Speech Arrests
October 7, 2016


by Mark Hand

Libraries often find themselves on the frontlines against government overreach, whether it is opposing local politicians who want to ban books or protecting the privacy and confidentiality of their patrons from police intrusion.

The Kansas City, Mo., Public Library system has dealt with these issues over the years. But now the library finds itself at the center of a new controversy — aggressive policing — a trend increasingly common in the streets but rarely seen inside the walls of libraries.

In May, Kansas City police arrested an audience member attending a public event at a local branch of the city’s library system. The police also arrested an employee of the Kansas City Library who intervened on behalf of the audience member.

The library kept quiet about the May 9 incident for several months, hoping the city would drop the charges against the two people. When the city told the library it was moving forward with the charges, the library began to publicize the incident and how the local police suppressed free speech.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/07/librarians-condemn-police-conduct-in-kansas-city-free-speech-arrests/

Dog tooth found near Stonehenge 'evidence of earliest journey'

8 hours ago

A tooth unearthed near Stonehenge shows dogs were man's best friend even in prehistoric times, it has been claimed.

The tooth, dug up at Blick Mead in Wiltshire, is believed to be evidence of the earliest journey in British history.

It is thought to be from a pet Alsatian-type dog that travelled 250 miles from York with its owner.

Archaeologist David Jacques said it was significant as it was not known people travelled so far 7,000 years ago.

More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-wiltshire-37574881

Apes can guess what others are thinking - just like humans, study finds

Research indicates apes are able to predict one another’s beliefs and suggests that other primates have complex inner lives

Hannah Devlin
@hannahdev
Thursday 6 October 2016 14.00 EDT

Apes have a human-like ability to guess what others are thinking, even in cases when someone holds a mistaken belief, according to research that supports the view that other primates can empathise and have complex inner lives.

The findings, in chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, are the first to clearly demonstrate that apes can predict another’s beliefs – even when they know that presumption is false.

“This cognitive ability is at the heart of so many human social skills,” said Christopher Krupenye of Duke University. “I think our findings start to suggest that maybe apes have a deeper understanding of each other than we previously thought.”

In a fresh take on a classic psychology experiment, the apes were able to correctly anticipate that someone would look for a hidden item in a specific location, even if the apes knew that the item was no longer there.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/06/apes-can-guess-what-others-are-thinking-just-like-humans

Source: Colombia Reports

Colombia’s opposition admits to purposely distorting reality to sink peace process

written by Adriaan Alsema October 6, 2016

Colombia’s conservative opposition leader Alvaro Uribe is furious with his campaign manager after the latter revealed his campaign purposely promoted indignation and ignorance in a campaign that sought to a sink a peace process with leftist FARC guerrillas.

Former Senator Juan Carlos Velez, the campaign manager of Uribe’s Democratic Center party, told newspaper La Republica newspaper that his campaign was successful because it purposely fomented indignation, while purposely avoiding to inform the public about the content of the peace deal the party was opposing.

The strategy worked, albeit only just. The opposition’s ‘No’ vote obtained no more than 55,000 votes while abstention was 63%.

The vote did not just sink the peace process that had already started, it also plunged the country’s in a major political, social and public security crisis.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombias-opposition-admits-purposely-distorting-reality-sink-peace-process/

Tim Kaine, John Negroponte, and the Priest Who Was Thrown From a Helicopter

Jeremy Scahill
Oct. 4 2016, 7:20 p.m.

A story published this week by the Daily Beast about the nine months Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine spent working as a volunteer in a Jesuit community in Honduras in 1980 and 1981 has been making the conservative rounds. The Beast’s tabloid headline is a cheap exercise in red-baiting: “Tim Kaine’s Time with a Marxist Priest.”

That priest, Fr. James Carney, was indeed a revolutionary and, as a practitioner of liberation theology in Latin America during a period marked by populist movements fighting against death squads and murderous regimes backed by the U.S., an avid student of Marxist theory.

After years spent among the poor and oppressed in Latin America, Carney renounced his U.S. citizenship and joined the armed guerrilla struggle against U.S.-backed death squads and governments. He also left the Jesuits because, he explained, the order would not condone his involvement in an armed struggle. Whatever one thinks of that decision, Carney sacrificed his privilege and status to join the people he was ministering to as a priest. In the eyes of the Reagan administration, that made him a terrorist. In the eyes of the peasants and revolutionaries Carney joined in struggle, he was a hero. (For a look at the roots of Jesuits joining indigenous struggle in Latin America, check out the film “The Mission.”)

The scandal that the Beast claims “may cause trouble” for Kaine is that he once met Fr. Carney, 35 years ago. The right-wing group Catholic Vote has done its best Joe McCarthy imitation on the issue. “That Kaine made the effort to seek out and spend time with Carney is troubling,” according to a memo published by the group with the headline “Tim Kaine’s Radical Roots in Honduras.” It claimed that “the Soviets created liberation theology to undermine the Church and advance the Soviet cause against the United States. In Honduras, the phony Marxist-tinged theology was planted to manipulate poor Catholics, instigate terrorism, and stir up a violent revolution in Honduras — then the key ally of the United States opposing Communism in the region.”

More:
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/04/tim-kaine-john-negroponte-and-the-priest-who-was-thrown-from-a-helicopter/

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September 26, 2003

Priest of the poor

By Tom Fox, NCR publisher

Since he was reported missing in the summer of 1983, the death of Jesuit Fr. James Carney in Honduras has been the subject of intense investigations by his family, by human rights investigators, by Catholic leaders and by the poor people he served in Honduras.

Born in Chicago, Carney had begun work as a Jesuit missionary in the country in 1961. For the next 18 years he worked, slept and ate with the poor rural parishioners with whom he lived. Among them he was known as "Padre Guadalupe." He was 58 at the time of his disappearance.

When members of Carney's family went to Honduras soon after their brother disappeared, they knew that Carney, who had re-entered Honduras that summer as the chaplain to 96 revolutionaries, had put himself in danger. They were prepared to discover that the priest had died in a military action.

Honduras government officials told them they believed that Carney died of exposure while crossing the mountains bordering Nicaragua and Honduras.

However, the family soon heard second- and third-hand accounts that Carney had been captured by the Honduran military. Some said that the priest had been interrogated, tortured and executed by Battalion 316, a CIA-trained Honduran force known to have been responsible for the deaths of dozens of Honduran activists. Still others said that U.S. government officials knew of Carney's capture and had failed to intervene to save his life.

More:
http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/todaystake/tt092603.htm

Did Colombians actually reject the peace deal? Not if you look at the statistics.

By Michael Spagat and Neil Johnson
October 5 at 12:02 PM

The official line is that the “no” vote won the referendum in Colombia. The internationally lauded peace treaty with the FARC guerillas was rejected, and now nobody knows what the country’s fate will be.

But did “no” actually win?

The numbers divide four ways, rather than just two “no” and “yes” answers: 6,431,376 against the treaty, 6,377,482 in favour, 86,243 unmarked ballots and 170,946 nullified ballots.

The referendum process itself was without doubt transparent and fair, and Colombia can be truly proud of it. But there were nonetheless several inevitable sources of statistical error in the counting process that could have swamped the razor-thin victory margin of 53,894. This means that saying “no” definitively won is statistically incorrect.

First, the counting methods. Votes were recorded on pieces of paper and hand-counted in the evening by people who must have been exhausted after working the whole day at polling stations.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/05/did-colombians-actually-reject-the-peace-deal-not-if-you-look-at-the-statistics/

The Short Hard Life of Alfred Olango: From U.S.-backed Persecution to U.S. Police Execution

by Ann Garrison
October 4, 2016


The El Cajon Police shooting of Alfred Olango is one of the most recent police shootings of unarmed Black men to make national and international headlines and inspire Black Lives Matter protests. Olango and his family fled war and persecution by the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a longstanding U.S. ally and military partner who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986.

Much of the press, including The Daily Beast, have reported that Alfred Olango survived the reign of Idi Amin. However, 38-year-old Olango would have been little more than a year old in 1979, when the Tanzania People’s Defense Force and the Uganda National Liberation Army drove Idi Amin from power.

A Ugandan American friend of the Olango family who preferred not to be identified by name confirmed that Alfred Olango’s father had worked for the governments of Milton Obote, then Tito Okello, whom General Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Army overthrew in 1985. The friend also confirmed that the family is from the Acholi people of northern Uganda.

According to federal court records, the Olangos fled to the United States after Museveni, who became president in 1986, threatened to kill the whole family. In a grimly ironic gesture, the Ugandan government ordered its embassy in the U.S. to investigate the killing of one of their citizens.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/04/the-hard-life-of-alfred-olango-from-u-s-backed-persecution-to-u-s-police-execution/

Plan Colombia Vindicated: Colombia Rejects Peace
October 3, 2016
by Roger Harris

The government of Colombia and the FARC insurgents signed peace accords six days ago to much public jubilation. Today the peace accords were put to a public vote. Polls predicted a landslide approval of 60%.

The public airwaves had been saturated with advertisements for “si” to approve the accords. Practically every wall to I passed here on the coast and earlier this week in the capital of Bogota was plastered with “si” posters.

The “no” side appeared absent except for a fringe represented by former president Uribe and his right-wing cohorts. The Catholic Church, the current Santos government, and the entirety of progressive civil society – unions, Indigenous, Afro-descendants, campesinos – were campaigning for “si.” The outcome seemed preordained.

Yet when the polls opened today, the usual long lines were absent. Turnout was low, allowing an upset victory for “no.”
The right-wing had been threatening activists – many had already been assassinated – to disrupt the peace process. Hence our delegation of North Americans to accompany targeted Colombian activists to provide them some protection by raising their international visibility. The Alliance for Global Justice along with the National Lawyers Guild came to Colombia at the invitation of FENSUAGRO, an agrarian workers federation, Marcha Patriotica, a large progressive coalition, and Lazos de Dignidad, a human rights organization.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/03/plan-colombia-vindicated-colombia-rejects-peace/

The Dakota Access Pipeline: Another Epic Clash Between America’s Military-Corporate Powers and the Great Sioux Nation
October 4, 2016
by Jerome Irwin

As the eve of the 2016 US presidential election draws nearer, and the world inches ever-closer to the edge of their seats, wondering who the winner will be to lay claim to the world’s most powerful seat for committing acts of good or evil, there is yet another David & Goliath story unfolding. It’s yet one more spin on the same old story that has been told in America for eons; a story that pits ‘The People’, who seek to do good for the planet, against ‘The Powerful’ who desire to pursue the same pathways of evil that continues to destroy the people and earth alike. This time the ‘David’ in this epic clash is the Standing Rock Sioux & The Great Sioux Nation, and the ‘Goliath’ is America’s Military forces in the guise of North Dakota’s Department of Homeland Security, its National Guard troops and a host of law enforcement agencies. The other ‘Goliath’ is Energy Transfer Partners and a host of Wall Street speculators, investors and worldwide banking interests who, collectively, could be likened to General Custer and his 7th Cavalry regiment of another time and place in Sioux Territory.

To fully understand what the conflict between the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access Pipeline represents in the bigger scheme of things one has to know something about the history of the Sioux people and their relationship to America’s military-corporate powers. This latest epic invasion in the 21st century of the Great Sioux Nation’s territory in North Dakota isn’t anything new under the sun. It’s but the latest episode in a centuries-old saga of American military and corporate might operating in tandem, hand-in-glove, to constantly dispossess the Sioux and other Native American Nations of their homelands and all its natural, cultural and sacred resources.

Starting in the early 19th century there were the incursions into Sioux territory by American fur companies that sought to strip from the land, as much as they could, all its precious fur-bearing animals for Wall Street’s profiteers in the East; ever since, the homelands of the Sioux has been a non-stop scene of one epic clash after another between those who want to preserve the land and its natural resources and those who want to rape and pillage it.

This epic clash started in earnest in the mid-19th century with the westward movement of immigrants and refugees from the East. What started as a trickle quickly turned into a horde-like swarm of locusts. This epic struggle continued on with the building of wagon roads and railroads by one corporate enterprise after another across Sioux lands.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/04/the-dakota-access-pipeline-another-epic-clash-between-americas-military-corporate-powers-and-the-great-sioux-nation/

The Empire Strikes Back
Posted on Oct 2, 2016
By Chris Hedges

A decade ago left-wing governments, defying Washington and global corporations, took power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. It seemed as if the tide in Latin America was turning. The interference by Washington and exploitation by international corporations might finally be defeated. Latin American governments, headed by charismatic leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won huge electoral victories. They instituted socialist reforms that benefited the poor and the working class. They refused to be puppets of the United States. They took control of their nations’ own resources and destinies. They mounted the first successful revolt against neoliberalism and corporate domination. It was a revolt many in the United States hoped to emulate here.

But the movements and governments in Latin America have fallen prey to the dark forces of U.S. imperialism and the wrath of corporate power. The tricks long practiced by Washington and its corporate allies have returned—the black propaganda; the manipulation of the media; the bribery and corruption of politicians, generals, police, labor leaders and journalists; the legislative coups d’état; the economic strangulation; the discrediting of democratically elected leaders; the criminalization of the left; and the use of death squads to silence and disappear those fighting on behalf of the poor. It is an old, dirty game.

President Correa, who earned enmity from Washington for granting political asylum to Julian Assange four years ago and for closing the United States’ Manta military air base in 2009, warned recently that a new version of Operation Condor is underway in Latin America. Operation Condor, which operated in the 1970s and ’80s, saw thousands of labor union organizers, community leaders, students, activists, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, journalists and artists tortured, assassinated and disappeared. The intelligence chiefs from right-wing regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and, later, Brazil had overseen the campaigns of terror. They received funds from the United States and logistical support and training from the Central Intelligence Agency. Press freedom, union organizing, all forms of artistic dissent and political opposition were abolished. In a coordinated effort these regimes brutally dismembered radical and leftist movements across Latin America. In Argentina alone 30,000 people disappeared.

Latin America looks set to be plunged once again into a period of dictatorial control and naked corporate exploitation. The governments of Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, which is on the brink of collapse, have had to fight off right-wing coup attempts and are enduring economic sabotage. The Brazilian Senate impeached the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff. Argentina’s new right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, bankrolled by U.S. hedge funds, promptly repaid his benefactors by handing $4.65 billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by billionaire Paul Singer. The payout to hedge funds that had bought Argentine debt for pennies on the dollar meant that Singer’s firm made $2.4 billion, an amount that was 10 to 15 times the original investment. The previous Argentine government, under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had refused to pay the debt acquired by the hedge funds and acidly referred to them as “vulture funds.”

More:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_empire_strikes_back_20161002