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New UN deal with data mining firm Palantir raises protection concerns

Spydata OverLord and MyLady of Poverty paired - Josh Harris with Enrica Porcari - Photo Credit: Ben Parker/IRIN

Critics say it could put ‘highly sensitive’ data about millions of food aid recipients at risk

By Ben Parker - IRIN - 5 February 2019

CIA-linked software firm Palantir will help the UN’s World Food Programme analyse its data in a new partnership worth $45 million, both organisations announced Tuesday, drawing immediate flak from privacy and data protection activists.

The California-based contractor, best known for its work in intelligence and immigration enforcement, will provide software and expertise to the UN’s food relief agency over five years to help WFP pool its enormous amounts of data and find cost-saving efficiencies.

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European colonizers killed so many Native Americans that it changed the global climate, researchers say

Mass-murderers invaded from Europe an killed 56 million Indigenous People. the genocide had also a most severe impact on the climate.

By Lauren Kent - 2. February 2019

When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they caused so much death and disease that it changed the global climate, a new study finds.

European settlers killed 56 million Indigenous People over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate. The increase in trees and vegetation across an area the size of France resulted in a massive decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, according to the study.

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Monsanto’s “Malicious Conduct” & “Complete Manipulation of Science” Regarding Roundup® Finally Exposed By Attorney Brent Wisner

Glyphosate plus wetting agent in Monsanto's Roundup form a chemical weapon.

By Catherine J. Frompovich - February 1, 2019

One of the most intrepid GMO science researchers for over twenty years, Jeffrey Smith, of the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), interviewed Attorney Brent Wisner, the genius lead lawyer who apparently overwhelmed the legal system by finally getting Monsanto’s Papers, which documented “malicious conduct by a corporation” and “complete manipulation of science,” according to him during his representation of Mr. Dewayne Johnson in the Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto lawsuit.

Jeffrey Smith and IRT produced a stunning repertoire of short video clips of his interview with Mr. Wisner, which are nothing less than stunning information regarding the fraud, concealment and scientific manipulation corporations use to get CDC/FDA/USDA/EPA approval(s) and / or licenses.

At the link below, you can access these riveting interviews:

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Indigenous languages and cultural diversity in the era of digital media

Meaning and sounds are often derived from the inseparable relationship between people and places.

With just a few words, we might make the world a richer place. Photo by Adam Fossier on Unsplash
By Terence Hay-Edie - UNDP in Asia and the Pacific
 

Like many others, my family name is an amalgam of two or more parts. The joining of two words, two clans, through a simple hyphen, evokes past tales of love and marriage, as well as feuds and blurred identities. Names and words borrowed from other cultures tell a vivid human story. The travel writer V.S. Naipaul attributes the origins of his surname to forebears living in the vicinity of ‘Nepal’ who left the sub-continent and eventually settled in the colorful melting pot that is the Caribbean. People, like names and languages are forever on the move.

As we start 2019, the United Nations is embarking on a series of events to launch the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

The year is expected to celebrate the tremendous wealth of indigenous languages, as well as their changing position in the digital interconnected world of today. A major lesson from indigenous people’s movements is that many place-based concepts cannot easily be translated from one language, or location, to another.

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Africa's corrupted pro-ivory bloc gets stronger, wants to ease restrictions

Again Elephant killings for ivory on the horizon!
By Alok Gupta - CGTN - 31. January 2019
 

‍Several African countries are defying global wildlife conservation efforts and collectively asking for an easing of international ivory trade regulations, triggering fears of large-scale poaching of elephants. 

In a proposal submitted early this month to Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) – a wildlife trade regulator – Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe urged the removal of clauses restricting them from selling their ivory stockpile. They also want to trade live elephants.

Zambia has proposed to downgrade the elephant protection status to pave the way to sell its ivory stockpile. In order to carry out unrestricted international trade of white rhino horns, Eswatini is demanding a set of exemptions.

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Bolsonaro Wants to Plunder the Amazon. Don't Let Him.

Right-wing financed new president of Brazil is key to the international sell-out of the natural ressources of the people of Brazil, who have hardly any defences against this para-military governance.

The Brazilian president's pro-business agenda will be a test of American companies' commitment to the environment.

By Leila Salazar-López The New York Times - January 29, 2019

The rise of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has put the environment and human rights in peril. His promises to open the Amazon for business could result in huge deforestation and the release of vast greenhouse-gas emissions. His threats to slash fundamental environmental and indigenous rights standards that help keep the Amazon standing are a threat to climate stability.

Mr. Bolsonaro, however, wouldn't be the only one to blame for devastating the Amazon. Companies that accept his invitation to reap profit from Amazon destruction, and the financial institutions that provide the capital, will also bear great responsibility. And those poised to benefit from Mr. Bolsonaro's reckless policies include American companies and financial institutions.

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- says chief of African-American NGO

Kaddu Sebunya at the site of the world's largest burning of ivory in Kenya in 2016 (Photo: AWF)

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The head of a major African organisation tasked with protecting wildlife has said China's own rapid development model should not be replicated on the continent.

Speaking to EUobserver in an interview last week in Brussels, Kaddu Sebunya, CEO of the Nairobi-based African Wildlife Foundation, said China's model for Africa would be "a catastrophe in terms of environment".

"China is now paying the price, luckily that they have come to that realisation and perhaps not too late and they are fixing things," he said.

Sebunya was referencing coal-polluting plants in China, which Beijing says is now shutting down. He was also referring to renewed efforts by China to restore its protected wetlands.

China and Africa since 2015 have been working on intensifying the production of energy and natural resources throughout the continent. Last year, at a summit the two sides agreed to figure out ways to make it more green.

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U.S.American Killers Slaughter Hibernating Bear And Her Cubs In Horrifying Video

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Warning: Distressing Content

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Protests against Colonialism Day January 26 take center stage all over Australia with the demand to not have to protest again next year. Change for Australia Day is mandatory.

The controversy over "Australia Day" January 26

By Louisa Wright et al. (*) - 26. January 2019

Protests across Australia against 'Invasion Day' holiday

Events to mark the birth of modern Australia in 1788 are being countered by large rallies by indigenous communities. They're demanding that the Australia Day public holiday be changed so it doesn't celebrate colonialism.

Rallies have been held in several Australian cities calling for the country's national day to be abolished because it marks the anniversary of the British arrival at Sydney Cove in 1788.

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Like for humans: "They really do not care about us!"

By Chris Mercer - 25. 01. 2019

Oh dear! Oh dear!
How hope springs eternal....

So much hype developing around the forthcoming CITES conference.

The same hype I saw and warned against when the SA Portfolio Committee of Parliament held the Colloquium on lion farming last year. 

And as I predicted, that initiative is now mired in bureaucracy in the form of a 'high level panel' (!!)

​Better read this before you get too excited. Sorry to rain on other peoples' parade yet again...
​
CITES and Sustainable Use

Imagine that you are sitting in a plenary session of CITES in Kuala Lumpur or some other exotic conference venue for international talk shops. You are one of 5000 people in a vast hall, each with your own special interest and agenda. Next to you is sitting a Japanese piano maker.  He has no interest whatever in the conservation of lions. He is merely there to ensure that he can continue to get his hardwood supplies from Indonesia. It is quite impossible for you to speak or be heard. There are just too many people and to many different and often conflicting agendas.

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Suppressing Dissent

By Charles Hugh Smith - ICH - January 24, 2019

A Cultural Revolution is a movement designed to preserve the political and financial power of a ruling elite by social rather than political or financial means. 

Thus the primary tools of a Cultural Revolution are not redistributing power via elections (politics) or financial reforms; the primary tools are public shaming and denouncements, purges of those in positions of authority, show trials, guilt-by-association, wholesale denouncements of entire classes and widespread accusations of anti-progressive ("counter-revolutionary") tendencies in which guilt is defined by all-or-nothing litmus tests of one's loyalties to the Cultural Revolution's strict ideology.

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- UPDATES from 23. January to 15. February 2019 see below

CASUS BELLI:

Venezuela: USAmerican VP Pence Calls for Overthrow of President Maduro

Venezuela's response to Pence: Yankee Go Home!
By DemocracyNow - Jan 23, 2019
 

The United States is continuing to ratchet up pressure on Venezuela in what appears to be part of a coordinated effort to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence posted a video message online telling Venezuelan opposition leaders and protesters that the U.S. supports their efforts to oust Maduro.

Vice President Mike Pence: “I’m Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States. And on behalf of President Donald Trump and all the American people, let me express the unwavering support of the United States as you, the people of Venezuela, raise your voices in a call for freedom. Nicolás Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power.”

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USA vs Mexico Border Wall Prototypes

Update: 19. Feb. 2019 - 16 US states are now taking prez Trump to court for his Border Wall Charade.

Update: 16. Feb. 2019 - Trump signed the spending bill and will face constitutional court cases with regards to his plan to draw the money for his "Great" Wall from other sources (e.g. the military) by executive orders based on the National Emergency he wants to declare. His insane plan already faces now lawsuits from a Nature Reserve and three landowners in Texas.

After Trump's National Emergency Declaration, Legal Scholar Says, Initiate Impeachment 'Immediately'

New Mexico Says No to 'Trump's Border Charade, Fear-Mongering'
California Rejects Trump's 'Political Theater', Announces Pull Out of National Guard

Donald Trump's emergency ruse is a wake-up call

Hurd says 1,000 Texas farmers could have land seized to build Trump's border wall

Update 14. Feb. 2019: Trump will sign the bipartisan spending bill to avert another government shutdown, but will call a state of emergency to then push his subject of obsession.- the wall - with executive orders. 

The $5.7 Billion Hole in Shutdown Coverage

The arbitrary, fanciful and contradictory nature of Trump’s border wall demand goes unexamined - USA will violate the international treaty CMS
 
Update: Calculate the Nonsense for yourself: https://www.omnicalculator.com/construction/trump
 
by Reed Richardson (*) - FAIR - January 23, 2019

In the standoff between the Democratic House and President Donald Trump over the latter’s demand for border wall funding, the corporate press has done a passable job highlighting the unpopularity of Trump’s border policy, as well as exploring the vast real-world impact of the shutdown. There have been notable low points in the coverage as well, from tabloid-style outrage-baiting  (FAIR.org, 1/7/19) to overwrought falsely balanced factchecking (FAIR.org, 1/10/19).

But there’s also been a major blindspot in reporting on the shutdown, and it involves the very thing at the center of the entire debate: Trump’s proposed border wall expansion.

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The Brazilian photographer and the 20-year reforestation project of over 2.7 million trees

20 years of renaturation work - Image source: Instituto Terra

The mammoth project has planted saplings of more than 290 species of trees, and seen the return of many species of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and insects.

By Fino - Sustainable Planet - Instituto Terra - 23.01.2019
The project serves as a beacon to awaken awareness of the need to restore and conserve forest land.

This project is the result of an ambitious initiative taken in the late 1990s by renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado. Confronting environmental devastation in and around a former cattle ranch bought from Salgado’s family near the town of Aimorés, in Brazil’s state of Minas Gerais, they decided to return the property to its natural state of subtropical rainforest. The ongoing results are truly amazing.

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Killings Of Guatemala's Indigenous Activists Raise Specter Of Human Rights Crisis

Mayan indigenous people protest against the government of Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales on the day he gives an address to Congress in Guatemala City, Monday. - Santiago Billy/AP
By Maria Martin - NPR -
 

For three days last week, thousands of Guatemalans blocked roads and major highways to protest the Central American country's slide toward a constitutional crisis. The protest organizers included groups that have long demanded justice: indigenous communities and campesinos, as rural and farm workers are called.

Indigenous citizens, many dressed in colorful traditional clothing, came out partly to protest the Guatemalan president's recent expulsion of a United Nations-backed commission investigating corruption in the country. Since 2007, the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, known by its Spanish initials CICIG and funded by the U.N., the United States and the European Union, has worked with Guatemalan justice agencies to target corrupt officials.

In the highly unequal society that is Guatemala, many Maya believe any strengthening of the justice system will protect indigenous rights granted under the country's constitution and peace accords.

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Unist’ot’en and the limits of reconciliation in Canada


Supporters of the Unist'ot'en camp and Wet'suwet'en walk along a bridge over the Wedzin kwa River leading towards the main camp outside Houston, B.C., on Jan. 9, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

By and

RCMP units armed with assault rifles and tactical gear recently moved to enforce a temporary court injunction issued by the British Columbia Supreme Court against members of the Wet'suwet'en Nation.

Since 2010, members of the Nation’s Unist'ot'en clan have constructed and operated the Unist'ot'en gated checkpoint and action camp located on the Morice River Bridge in northern B.C. The RCMP raids took place at a second checkpoint located on a logging road west of the Unist'ot'en camp operated by the Gidumdt'en clan.

The Unist'ot'en camp and the Gidumdt'en checkpoint have been built to block the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on the Wet'suwet'en Nation’s traditional territories.

However, the reoccupation is much more than a blockade.

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  10. ALERT: Canadian First Nation under Assault by Armed Forces
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