Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalBiden and Brazil's Lula focus on workers' rights while publicly playing down differences
DAVID BILLER, JOSH BOAK and AAMER MADHANI
Updated Wed, September 20, 2023 at 5:47 PM CDT·5 min read
NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, played up their mutual affection for workers’ rights Wednesday as the leaders of the Western Hemisphere’s two largest democracies met in New York, steering clear in public about their differences on Ukraine and other matters.
They announced a new partnership on supporting labor while avoiding openly discussing disagreements such as U.S. policy toward Cuba and Russia’s war in Ukraine, mere hours before Lula’s first-ever bilateral meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart. In remarks to reporters, Biden and Lula were eager to display their shared goals on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
Biden sought to tie the meeting to domestic matters. Long a champion of labor unions, Biden is navigating strikes in the U.S. by autoworkers, screenwriters and actors who are seeking better pay and protections in a changing global economy. He has declined the request by the United Auto Workers leader to join the picket line.
“When the middle does well, everybody does well,” Biden told Lula. “Working-class folks have a chance to move up. And the wealthy still do fine, as long as they pay their taxes.”
Lula said he had never heard an American president speak so highly of workers and described their common cause as a chance to transform ties between the countries.
More:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-brazils-lula-meeting-york-090600851.html
UNESCO recognizes former detention and torture center in Argentina as a World Heritage site
It is estimated that some 5,000 people were detained at the ESMA during the 1976-83 dictatorship, many of whom were tortured and later disappeared without a trace
By Daniel Politi | Associated Press • Published September 20, 2023
The ESMA Museum and Site of Memory stands on the day it was declared an UNESCO World Heritage Site in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023.
Argentina on Tuesday welcomed a decision by a United Nations conference to include a former clandestine detention and torture center as a World Heritage site.
A UNESCO conference in Saudi Arabia agreed to include the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory in the list of sites “considered to be of outstanding value to humanity,” marking a rare instance in which a museum of memory related to recent history is designated to the list.
The former Navy School of Mechanics, known as ESMA, housed the most infamous illegal detention center that operated during Argentina’s last brutal military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 through 1983. It now operates as a museum and a larger site of memory, including offices for government agencies and human rights organizations.
“The Navy School of Mechanics conveyed the absolute worst aspects of state-sponsored terrorism,” Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández said in a video message thanking UNESCO for the designation. “Memory must be kept alive (...) so that no one in Argentina forgets or denies the horrors that were experienced there."
. . .
It is estimated that some 5,000 people were detained at the ESMA during the 1976-83 dictatorship, many of whom were tortured and later disappeared without a trace. It also housed many of the detainees who were later tossed alive from the “death flights” into the ocean or river in one of the most brutal aspects of the dictatorship.
The ESMA also contained a maternity ward, where pregnant detainees, often brought from other illegal detention centers, were housed until they gave birth and their babies later snatched by military officers.
More:
https://www.necn.com/news/national-international/unesco-recognizes-former-detention-and-torture-center-in-argentina-as-a-world-heritage-site/3051841/
Indigenous Peoples Still Face Effects of Mass Bison Slaughter
The economic shock of the mass slaughter of North American bison in the late 1800s still reverberates in Indigenous communities today, a new economic study shows.
September 14, 2023 by Futurity
By Carol Clark-Emory
The slaughter by settlers of European descent is a well-known ecological disaster. An estimated eight million bison roamed the United States in 1870, but just 20 years later fewer than 500 of the iconic animals remained.
The mass slaughter provided a brief economic boon to some newly arriving settlers, hunters, and traders of the Great Plains who sold the hides and bones for industrial uses.
In contrast, Indigenous peoples whose lives depended on the bison suffered a devastating economic shock.
The new research in the Review of Economic Studies quantifies both the immediate and long-term economic impacts of the loss of the bison on Indigenous peoples whose lives depended on the animals.
Changes in the average height of bison-related people is one striking example of the fallout. Adult height across a population is one proxy of wealth and health given that it can be affected by nutrition and disease, particularly early in development.
Bison-reliant Indigenous men stood around six feet tall on average, or about an inch taller than Indigenous men who were not bison-reliant.
“CENTURIES OF HUMAN CAPITAL WERE BUILT AROUND THE USE OF THE BISON, AND WITHIN 10 TO 20 YEARS THIS ECONOMIC UNDERPINNING DISAPPEARED.”
“They were among the tallest people in the world in the mid-19th century,” says coauthor Maggie Jones, assistant professor of economics at Emory University. “But after the rapid near-extinction of the bison, the height of the people born after the slaughter also rapidly declined.”
Within one generation, the average height of Indigenous peoples most impacted by the slaughter dropped by more than an inch.
“That’s a major drop, but given the magnitude of the economic shock it’s not necessarily surprising,” Jones says.
More:
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/indigenous-peoples-still-face-effects-of-mass-bison-slaughter/
US Army pile of buffalo skulls
- click link for images -
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2A0kqK-JrFQ/U6hvuBEY67I/AAAAAAAAJfg/gNs0Q0I-zPM/s1600/Bison+skulls+pile+to+be+used+for+fertilizer+,+1870+2.jpg
Bones piled beside railroad tracks in order to move them to Canada to be ground up and used for fertilizer.
One of many piles of buffalo skins
Archaeologists Find 1,000-Year-Old Mummy Buried at Top of Huge Pyramid
BY ARISTOS GEORGIOU ON 9/8/23 AT 10:03 AM EDT
A mummy thought to be around 1,000 years old has been discovered in Peru.
Researchers discovered the mummy, which belonged to the pre-Inca Ychsma culture, during excavations at the Huaca Pucllana archaeological site, newspaper Perú 21 reported.
The mummy was buried in a simple, circular grave at the top of the pyramid, which is located in the heart of a residential area in the Peruvian capital of Lima. Huaca Pucllana is a large clay pyramid standing more than 70 feet tall in the city's Miraflores district.
The structure, which features seven staggered platforms, was constructed by the Lima culture that developed on the Peruvian central coast between A.D. 200 and 700.
The site served as an important ceremonial center for these ancient people. Other activities, possibly administrative, may have been carried out at the site, but the evidence suggests that its main purpose was for ritual activities.
. . .
- click for image -
https://tinyurl.com/yr2fyvde
The Huaca Pucllana pyramid in Lima, Peru, features seven staggered platforms.
LUIS ROSENDO/HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES
More:
https://www.newsweek.com/archaeologist-find-1000-year-old-mummy-buried-top-huge-pyramid-1825575
Brazil's president calls U.S. economic embargo on Cuba 'illegal,' condemns terrorist list label
Reuters
Sat, September 16, 2023 at 2:37 PM CDT·2 min read
BRASILIA (Reuters) - On his first trip to Cuba during his third term in office, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called the embargo imposed by the United States on the island "illegal" and denounced the island's inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump included the island nation on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and though the Biden administration has reversed other Trump-era measures, it has so far not removed Cuba from the list.
"Cuba has been an advocate of fairer global governance. And to this day it is the victim of an illegal economic embargo," Lula said in a speech opening the G77 Summit of developing nations in the capital, Havana. "Brazil is against any unilateral coercive measure. We reject Cuba's inclusion on the list of states sponsoring terrorism."
The comments were made just hours before Lula left for New York, where he will attend the United Nations General Assembly and have bilateral talks with Biden.
Earlier, Cuba expressed concerns over the label and Washington’s decades-old Cold War-era economic embargo against the island governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. The 27-member European Union, the country's top trade partner, has also repeatedly rejected trade embargo. Cuba and critics of the economic sanctions say the embargo prevents and hampers access to food, medicine and other critical development supplies.
More:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazils-president-calls-u-economic-193700781.html
Bolsonaro aide tells police he sold luxury watches for ex-president - report
Lt Col Mauro Cid said to admit selling watches from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in Pennsylvania mall and handing cash to Bolsonaro
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Fri 15 Sep 2023 12.45 EDT
Jair Bolsonaro’s former personal secretary has reportedly told police he handed tens of thousands of dollars to his old boss after selling two luxury watches that Brazil’s ex-president had received as official gifts.
Lt Col Mauro Cid, who was Bolsonaro’s aide-de-camp during his 2019-23 presidency, was released from four months’ detention on Saturday after striking a plea deal with police.
That agreement reportedly requires Cid to provide information relating to a series of suspected crimes committed during Bolsonaro’s administration, including an alleged coup plot and a scandal involving the alleged embezzlement of expensive foreign gifts.
Shortly before his release, Bolsonaro’s former right-hand man reportedly gave a statement to federal investigators in Brasília in which he admitted selling a diamond-set Rolex and a Patek Philippe wristwatch on behalf of the ex-president. The watches, which were sold in a Pennsylvania mall, were gifts from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/bolsonaro-aide-tells-police-he-sold-luxury-foreign-gifts-for-ex-president-report
50 years ago: Henry Kissinger and the death of democracy in Chile
(This article was shared by a terrific journalist who found it a couple of days ago.)Kissinger is still alive and should be held accountable for his war crimes
ROBERT REICH
SEP 10, 2023
As Chile marks the 50th anniversary tomorrow of the coup that brought strongman Augusto Pinochet to power for almost 17 years — toppling Chile’s democratically elected socialist government and resulting in the murders and “disappearances” of thousands of Pinochet’s political opponents — it’s important to recall the central role played by Richard Nixon and Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, in this atrocity.
Kissinger — now 100 years old, and who in my humble opinion should be considered a war criminal — urged Nixon to overthrow Chile’s democratically elected government of Salvador Allende because Allende’s “‘model’ effect can be insidious,” according to declassified documents posted by the U.S. National Security Archive.
On September 12, 1970, eight days after Allende’s election, Kissinger initiated discussion on the telephone with CIA Director Richard Helms about a preemptive coup in Chile. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger declared. “I am with you,” Helms responded. Three days later, Nixon, in a 15-minute meeting that included Kissinger, ordered the CIA to “make the [Chilean] economy scream,” and named Kissinger as the supervisor of the covert efforts to keep Allende from being inaugurated.
Kissinger ignored a recommendation from his top deputy on the NSC, Viron Vaky, who strongly advised against covert action to undermine Allende. On September 14, 1970, Vaky wrote a memo to Kissinger arguing that coup plotting would lead to “widespread violence and even insurrection.” He also argued that such a policy was immoral: “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets .… If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us, e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this.”
After U.S. covert operations, which led to the assassination of Chilean Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces General Rene Schneider, failed to stop Allende’s inauguration on November 4, 1970, Kissinger lobbied President Nixon to reject the State Department’s recommendation that the U.S. seek a modus vivendi with Allende. While Schneider was dying in the Military Hospital in Santiago on October 22, 1970, Kissinger told Nixon that the Chilean military turned out to be “a pretty incompetent bunch.” Nixon replied: “They are out of practice,” according to documents released in early August by the U.S. National Security Archive.
More:
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/today-50-years-ago-henry-kissinger
Bicentennial Understanding Replaces Merida Initiative for Security Agreement Between US & Mexico
By Socalj 10/08/2021 07:54:00 PM
"Socalj" for Borderland Beat
Arms, fentanyl, migrants, financial intelligence and the dismantling of criminal networks are part of the agreement between Mexico and the United States.
The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador redirected its security policy to abandon the Mérida Initiative, which sought a frontal fight against drug cartels, but even with the replacement of that agreement through the Bicentennial Understanding, it must change its strategy to attack insecurity and violence with a more complex approach.
Marcelo Ebrard, Secretary of Foreign Relations, has argued that the Bicentennial Understanding contemplates more actions than just arresting drug lords, due to components in public health or financial networks. However, the specialist in United States-Mexico security relations, Raúl Benítez Manaus, commented in an interview that the agreement is an update of the Merida Initiative.
“The plan has nothing new, it is to reaffirm things that the two governments have already been saying and doing. What is new is the reaffirmation of the political will of the two parties. "This helps a lot to the economic stability of the country because the government is reaffirming its commitment to the United States because companies are always afraid that the president is making half-Bolivarian decisions," the sociologist and researcher at the National University commented in an interview. Autonomous of Mexico (UNAM).
Bicentennial Understanding
As two nations with an enduring relationship based on sovereignty, mutual respect, and the extraordinary bond of family and friendship, Mexico and the United States must and want to face security challenges together. Both countries have suffered the effects of substance addiction, firearm violence, illegal drugs, weapons, human trafficking, and smuggling, as well as organized crime in our communities. To face the complex threats of the 21st century, it is necessary to work in a coordinated manner, with a regional vision and a modern approach to public health and development as part of a comprehensive cooperation strategy between our countries. With full respect for our sovereignties.
Transnational organized crime has claimed too many lives in our countries. For this reason, both countries recognize that we have a responsibility to work together to achieve our shared goals of security and peace. We need to address violence, dismantle transnational criminal organizations, and focus on prevention, in order to create the conditions for a culture of peace, while working hand in hand to address the root causes of crime. We heed the lessons of past efforts and we adapt to new threats. Our vision of security cooperation must expand to protect all of our people, especially the most vulnerable. In addition, We will be emphatic in serving communities that need support to change the conditions that allow crime to take hold. With this framework of cooperation on security matters between Mexico and the United States, we are committed to granting maximum respect for human rights, without tolerance for corruption. We will maintain a holistic view of security and rely on new methods and tools to address this challenge.
More:
https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/10/bicentennial-understanding-replaces.html
Confronting a tyrant in Chile
by Judy Jackson
September 11, 2023
On September 11, 1973 Augusto Pinochet’s regime overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Judy Jackson reflects on what it was like to cover the dying days of the Pinochet regime.
Augusto Pinochet. Credit: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile / Wikimedia Commons
September, 1988, Santiago, Chile. It’s the middle of the night when I arrive in Santiago. I retrieve my checked bag and find the lock has been forced open. A video camera and some papers have been stolen. But I’m here to cover a plebiscite, the first democratic vote in a brutal dictatorship in 18 years, so it’s not wise to make a fuss. Especially since they hated a documentary that I made here for the CBC in 1976.
In the morning I go to get press accreditation. I give the army press officer my new British passport. He takes it to another room and, after a long time, he returns.
“You also have a Canadian passport,” he says. I guess they’ve flagged me for that film.
“What Price Profit?” showed how, on September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet bombed La Moneda and overthrew the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende.
Canada remained silent when Pinochet’s secret police detained 10,000 in the National Stadium and tortured and killed over 3,000 more. Some were dropped, still alive, into the sea from helicopters and “disappeared” – a new word in the lexicon of terror. And how the Dictator then offered his entire country as a laboratory to controversial economist American Milton Friedman, to test his then untried theories of free market capitalism.
So the social gains of Allende’s Popular Unity Coalition were undone, in order to create “free markets” and feed international transnationals with a steady flow of cheap copper, fruit and fish. A small oligarchy have become extremely rich, but most Chileans are the laboratory rats. Union leaders have been arrested, strikes banned; unemployment has soared, and many have been forced to flee. (I couldn’t know back then that ‘neoliberalism’ would echo down the decades and become the globalised super capitalism of today, as described so brilliantly by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine.)
More:
https://rabble.ca/politics/world-politics/confronting-a-tyrant-in-chile/
"Criminal labels and orange jumpsuits": Experts on how Trump weaponizes his own fears
"The ineffectiveness of Trump's bombastic and revengeful rhetoric has been repeatedly demonstrated"
By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 11, 2023 6:00AM (EDT)
Donald Trump is escalating his threats of fascist violence. During a recent interview, Trump told Glenn Beck that he is going to put President Joe Biden and his other "enemies" in prison if he takes back control of the White House. Last Sunday, Trump announced on his Truth Social disinformation platform that he is going to treat Biden and the other Democrats and his "enemies" like they do in a "banana republic." In so-called banana republics, enemies of the regime are put in prison, tortured and murdered.
Trump means what he says.
It is true that Donald Trump is a pathological liar. But he has been remarkably honest and transparent in his desires and plans to become America's first dictator and unleash a reign of revenge and tyranny. The coup attempt on Jan. 6 was just a trial run for a much larger and successful attempt to end multiracial pluralistic democracy here in America.
In an attempt to make sense of what comes next with Trump's escalating threats of fascist violence and bloodshed, the country's ongoing democracy crisis, and why the news media continues to ignore and normalize the clear and present dangers, I recently asked a range of experts for their thoughts and insights.
Their answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Dr. Lance Dodes is a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.
Trump's latest threats to place opponents in jail, including President Biden, fit with the limitless nature of psychopaths. Lacking a conscience or morality to limit his sadism, and believing in his worth above all others, leads Trump to think he has the right to destroy anyone who does not submit to him. Without the innate capacity for empathy toward others and a sense of right and wrong, Trump is an extreme outlier in human psychology. His success is possible by his ability to convince large numbers of people, with the help of his party and some in the media, that he is not what he is.
More:
https://www.salon.com/2023/09/11/criminal-labels-and-orange-jumpsuits-experts-on-how-weaponizes-his-own-fears/
