Fresh off a successful military coup deposing leftist President Evo Morales in Bolivia last week, the United States attempted to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela this weekend. The events, however, went barely noticed outside the South American nation, as the attempt proved to be a complete fiasco.
EcoNews BASE - in a troubled world we still plant trees, protect nature and humanity for our common future !
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Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg’s Fake Accounts Ponzi Scheme
From Yves Smith - 23.
Yves here. We edited this important post from a version on Aaron Greenspan’s website. Lambert reordered it to make the likely magnitude of Facebook fake accounts the starting point, which we see as the most damning evidence against Facebook. Most people accept the proposition that Mark Zuckerberg is running a less than trustworthy business that among other things, has no concern for the safekeeping of personal information. But the idea that his business looks like a Ponzi scheme is a new disclosure and merits a hard look.
By Aaron Greenspan, founder of the Think Computer Corporation1
Facebook now has a market capitalization approaching $600 billion, making it nominally one of the most valuable companies on earth. It’s a true business miracle: a company that was out of users in 2012 managed to find a wellspring of nearly infinite and sustained growth that has lasted it, so far, half of the way through 2019.
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Julian Assange: Sweden drops rape investigation
By VF/BBC/TG/DW/JS et al. -19. November 2019
Prosecutors in Sweden have dropped an investigation into a rape allegation made against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange in 2010 - for a third time - after a review of the evidence.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, said: “Sweden has dropped its preliminary investigation into Mr Assange for the third time, after reopening it without any new evidence or information."
Assange, who denies the accusation, has avoided extradition to Sweden for seven years after seeking refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy in London in 2012.
The 48-year-old Australian was evicted in April 2019 from the embassy of Ecuador, under the country's new right-wing president Lenin Moreno, and sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching bail conditions.
He is currently being held in isolation at “Her Majesty’s Prison Service" - the notorious, high-security Belmarsh prison in London - means Queen Elizabeth II. can just release him and safe her own face.
Read more: Sweden drops rape investigation of Julian Assange
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Victory for Brazil aboriginal groups as hotel group cancels plans for luxury resort
By Victoria Waldersee, Anthony Boadle - 19. November 2019
LISBON/BRASILIA (Reuters) - A Brazilian Indigenous group comprising two ethnicities that has been fighting for 15 years to preserve land they use to gather food won a victory on Monday when public pressure made Portuguese hotel group Vila Gale cancel plans to build a 500-room luxury resort on the Bahia coast.
Indigenous group Tupinambá de Olivença, numbering 4,631 people, has been fighting for the land to be designated as a reserve since 2003. Brazil’s indigenous rights agency Funai approved the request in 2009, and Brazil’s second-highest court unanimously voted in favor of the Tupinambá in 2016.
But the Indigenous people still require final sign-off from the Ministry of Justice and the president himself for the protected status of the territory to become official. Despite multiple requests from them, nothing has happened since 2016.
Read more: Indigenous People of Brazil Victory Over Hotel-Group
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Anonymous Hacks China As Chinese Military Moves On Hong Kong, Students Trapped at Polytechnic University
By Aaron Kesel - AcPo - 19. November 2019
Anonymous has hacked into various Chinese websites and databases dumping files from government employee data to corporate data including user names, mobile phone numbers, email addresses, passwords for databases, IP addresses and more. It is all a part of what the collective is calling #OpHongKong and they vow these actions will continue until Hongkongers’ demands are met and Hong Kong is free.
This writer spoke to OpHongKong via email who sent a tip that the decentralized hacktivist collective, Anonymous, has initiated “OpHongKong” no-holds-barred hacks against China for the escalation against Hong Kong protesters, holding students hostage at Polytechnic University; and for what China is doing to Muslim Uighurs in concentration camps, as well as its own people with its Orwellian facial recognition surveillance-state.
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China, USA and the Geopolitics of Lithium
By F. William Engdahl - GR - 19. November 2019
For several years since the global push to develop mass-scale Electric Vehicles, the element Lithium has come intofocus as a strategic metal. Demand is enormous in China, in the EU and in the USA at present, and securing control over lithium supplies is already developing its own geopolitics not unlike that for the control of oil.
China Moves to Secure Sources
For China, which has set major targets to become the world’s largest producer of EVs, developing lithium battery materials is a priority for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period. Though China has its own lithium reserves, recovery is limited, and China has gone to secure lithium mining rights abroad.
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Update 20. Nov. 2019: A four-day siege of Hong Kong's Polytechnic University (PolyU) is nearing an end, although dozens of protesters remain inside. Around 800 to 900 protesters have already left the campus, hundreds of whom were under 18, police said. The campus - which turned into a fiery battleground during the past week - is surrounded by police who are arresting for rioting any adults trying to leave. Some are too scared to leave as a result, leaving them trapped inside. The campus siege has been one of the most dramatic confrontations in the wider protest movement that has paralysed the city for more than five months. Police arrested around 1,100 people in and around PolyU on Tuesday alone, they said at a late night briefing.
The Protest Core at PolyU
By Ali Cheaib - Independent Journalist - 18. November 2019
The corrupt government of hashtag#HongKong decided to storm hashtag#PolytechnicUniversity yesterday (Sunday, Nov 17) which led to violent clashes with the pro-autonomy students who were barricading there. You can clearly see in this video how Hong Kong's licensed killers (cops in doublespeak) are casually shooting protesters with rubber bullets and chemical weapons ( hashtag#teargas).
Protests are now escalating and intensifying across Hong Kong ever since hashtag#CarrieLam (the puppet CEO of Hong Kong and employee of the hashtag#CCP) has made it very clear that her government will NEVER grant the protesters their 5 demands.
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CBS “60 Minutes” On Deep Sea Mining for “Conflict Minerals” and Warnings It May Wreck the Seafloor and Everything Living There
By B.N. Frank - ActPo - 18. November 2019
Metals required to operate common digital, electronic, and wireless devices are often referred to as “Conflict Minerals.” This is because there are known environmental and humanitarian costs associated with mining for them – at least on land.
Those who want to mine for metals on the sea floor refer to it as “harvesting.” Unfortunately, they also want to send gargantuan robots down there to do this. Many environmentalists warn that this is a bad idea. Ya think?
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Another Failed US-Backed Coup Attempt in Venezuela Goes Unnoticed
Despite heavy backing from US officials, the coup attempt fell completely flat as Venezuela’s armed forces failed to defect to Juan Guaidó’s side and few opposition protesters trickled into the streets.
By Alan Macleod - 18.
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RSPO gives commitment to investigate palm oil ‘sustainability con’ allegations
A fortnight ago we revealed how consumers are being conned about the sustainability of palm oil – and now the leading industry certification body which we criticised has pledged to investigate our allegations and, if necessary, act.
By EIA -
From initially dismissing our report Who Watches the Watchmen? 2 and claiming it contained “glaring inaccuracies”, voluntary certification watchdog the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)* has significantly softened its stance.
Read more: Palm Oil ‘Sustainability Con’ now under Investigation
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The Report: America’s Descent Into Torture, Lies, and Denial
Bringing the truth to light took great courage, but it’s not clear exactly what we’ve learned.
By Karl Bode - 15. November 2019
The Report, a VICE-produced film, is out today, Friday
For a brief moment, the vicious attacks of September 11, 2001 brought the country together in an unprecedented moment of unity. But it wouldn’t be long before the government’s illegal response to those attacks—ranging from the creation of a vast new domestic surveillance apparatus to the embrace of torture—would quickly undermine any unifying goodwill.
The CIA’s embrace of extrajudicial rendition and torture would ultimately come to be one of the biggest scandals in American history. And were it not for a man named Daniel J. Jones and a 2014 report detailing the secret program, you may have never even learned about it.
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135 years on: 5 ridiculous results of the 1885 Berlin Conference that Africans have to forever live with
By Nii Ntreh (*) - 15. November 2019
Long before the Berlin Conference of 1884/85, some of the territories on the African continent had already been secured as colonies. For instance, Gold Coast, the place that is today Ghana, had been annexed by the British around the 1860s.
Many historians caution against over-emphasising the significance of Berlin for Africans. Indeed, it is quite common to read among scholars that the conference was a diplomatic tactic Germany took as part of reinventing itself as an imperial power.
Yet, it will be quite odd to downplay what the conference held for Africans and how it has irrevocably shaped the lives of close to two billion people on the continent.
Read more: Facts Africans have to live with after Berlin 1885
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Julian Assange’s judge and her husband’s links to the British military establishment exposed by WikiLeaks
By Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard - DM - 14. November 2019
The husband of Lady Emma Arbuthnot, the Westminster chief magistrate overseeing WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the US, has financial links to the British military establishment, including institutions and individuals exposed by WikiLeaks.
It can also be revealed that Lady Arbuthnot has received gifts and hospitality in relation to her husband, including from a military and cybersecurity company exposed by WikiLeaks. These activities indicate that the chief magistrate’s activities cannot be considered as entirely separate from her husband’s.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, a former defence minister, is a paid chair of the advisory board of military corporation Thales Group, and was until earlier this year an adviser to arms company Babcock International. Both companies have major contracts with the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD).
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The ritual murders of albinos in parts of Africa: 6 things you need to know about the cultural beliefs
By Nii Ntreh | Staff Writer - 14. November 2019
One of the most under-discussed subjects on the African continent is the persecution that is tailored towards people living with albinism (PWA).
The news of the dangers albinos face may often be reported yet the whys associated with the murders of people with a simple congenital disorder are postponed due to fear of challenging cultural beliefs.
This is rather unfortunate since the UN has identified the problem as having international dimensions.
Indeed, it is the refusal to challenge the cultures and the supposedly harmless jokes about albinos that aid the murders. In order to do these things therefore, there is a need to educate ourselves on some little known facts on the ritual killings of albinos.
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Prologue: What was coming had been foreseen already when this year vast tracts of pristine forests were burned down on the bequest of rich landowners in a copy-cat move to what happened under right-wing "Nero" Bolsonaro in Brazil. The handwriting is clear. Indigenous peoples and their territories will come now under a full-fronted assault, if the tide can not be turned back. The military was bought and the police was paid to assist in the right-wing blow to the face of the first Indigenous president of the American continent. Jeanine Añez must be held accountable for the ecocide and genocide in the making. - See also UPDATES below.
Jeanine Añez Proclaimed Herself “Interim President” in an Almost Empty Bolivian Parliament
Opposition Senator Jeanine Áñez declared herself president of Bolivia on Tuesday night, despite not complying with the constitutional requirements, as Parliament did not achieve a quorum because the deputies of MAS (mayority) were not in attendance due to lack of guarantees for their security. The senator proclaimed herself president with only a minimum presence of deputies, all from the opposition, and violating articles 161, 169 and 410 of the Constitution.
“I immediately assume the presidency of the State and I undertake all necessary measures to pacify the country,” said Áñez, who is the second vice president of the Senate of Bolivia and the right-wing Social Democratic Movement party.
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Tradition and taboo keep Guinea-Bissau’s forests standing
By Ricci Shryock - 12 November 2019
- Guinea-Bissau is home to countless sacred forests, where cutting down a tree is strictly prohibited by the community.
- Efforts are also underway to develop community forests in communities that don’t recognize the concept of sacred forests, and imbue them with a similar understanding and reverence for the environment.
- Despite these efforts, the country experienced a spate of illegal logging following a coup in 2012, prompting a logging ban to be imposed in 2015.
- With the ban expiring in March 2020 and elections taking place this November, it’s unclear whether or how the government’s stance on the issue will change.
COBIANA, Guinea Bissau – He remembers the first time he heard the voice of Mama Djombo.
Albino Moreira Mendes was sleeping in his bed in Cobiana, a small town in rural northern Guinea-Bissau, when the messages, which he can only describe as coded noises, came to him. They told him how to perform a ceremony in Cobiana’s sacred forest, and that it was his turn take charge of the forest, to become what is known as the baloberu.
“Without the forest, a man like me … I am nothing,” says Mendes, who since that night 10 years ago has been the interlocutor between Mama Djombo, the spirit or iran of the sacred forest in Cobiana, and anyone who wishes to speak to it.
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Prologue: The theft of natural resources from West-Papua is deeply embedded in Indonesia's economy and has greedy multinational corporations like the Anglo-American turned into voracious monsters on whose behalf Indigenous peoples, who are the rightful owners of the land and its resources, are subdued to genocide, mass-murder and atrocities since decades, while the international community looks the other way.
West Papua Revolt Update: Weeks 10 & 11
By Brian Brunton - 12 November 2019
Things are firming for change in Papua New Guinea at community level over West Papua. And there has been a political reshuffle that has brought a tougher foreign minister into cabinet. Indonesia is holding the ground it chooses; its full-spectrum low-intensity warfare: social media in Papua New Guinea is full of paid Indonesian advertisements, and trolls, indicating Indonesia vulnerability in/on West Papua.
The events were:
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