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La versión original de esta entrevista en español puede encontrarse aquí.
The following is an interview with Indigenous political prisoner José Antonio Arreola Jiménez, one of three political prisoners from the P’urhépecha community of Nahuatzen, Michoacán, currently serving seven-year sentences based on trumped-up charges. The interview was conducted in late November by IGD contributor Scott Campbell.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself?
Yes, my name is José Antonio Arreola Jiménez. I’m from the Indigenous community of Nahuatzen, Michoacán. Nahuatzen is an Indigenous community nestled in the heart of the Meseta Purépecha. I have my wife and five children.
Can you share with us some details about Nahuatzen, its struggle, and your role in that struggle?
The struggle in Nahuatzen began in 2015, when the last municipal president was imposed on us by the state government, by [then-governor] Silvano Aureoles Conejo. Then, this Miguel Prado Morales, which is his name, arrived with more than twenty or thirty armed individuals from outside the community, claiming to be his private police, his bodyguard. We, as community members, thought this was bad, because within the town there is no need to bring weapons, we’re not people who fight, we’re not armed people. We’re working people, peaceful people. So that was, more than anything else, the main issue.
Ecuador’s constitutional court has blocked plans to mine copper and gold in Los Cedros, a protected cloud forest, ruling that the plans violate the rights of nature.
“This is a historic victory in favor of nature,” Natalia Greene of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature said in a statement. “This sets a great juridical precedent to continue with other threatened protected forests.”
Ecuador’s national mining company, Enami EP, holds mining rights in two-thirds of the reserve, which is home to 178 threatened or near-threatened species, including the the vulnerable white-headed capuchin, the endangered mantled howler monkey, and the critically endangered brown-headed spider monkey.
“If mining started in Los Cedros, species would go extinct, without a doubt,” said Roo Vandegrift, a biologist at the University of Oregon, told Mongabay.
In 2018, the government of Cotacachi, an Ecuadorian canton that is home to 43 Indigenous communities, challenged the project, winning in a provincial court. Enami appealed to Ecuador’s highest court, which upheld the ruling Monday.
In its decision, the high court said that the government did not provide the “scientific evidence necessary to avoid and mitigate serious and irreversible damage to species and ecosystems, and therefore, to the rights of nature, to the water and a healthy and balanced environment.” The ruling effectively cancels all mining concessions and environmental and water permits.
“Policy frameworks that place humans in context as a part of nature … rather than placing humans as above, or apart from, nature, will be a necessary part of addressing the serious environmental issues that our planet is facing,” Mika Peck, a senior lecturer in biology at the University of Sussex, told The Guardian.
“This ruling is as important to nature as Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man were to our own species.”
The draft defensive budget of the US for the 2020 financial year provides the allocation of $300 million for military aid as the bill states.
The allocated funds will be spent for support and assistance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Moreover, the bill provides the allocation of $4 billion for the European Deterrence Initiative of Russia. It is noted that this paragraph was increased by almost $570 million than the administration of the White House requested at the beginning of the year.
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Besides, $150 million might be allocated for the provision of security in the Baltic region.
The House of Representatives voted for the document on December 7.
U.S. President Joseph Biden should very clearly articulate to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the civilized world will react without hesitation to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said.
“If I can advise President Biden, I would like him to articulate to Mr. Putin that no red lines from the Kremlin side should be here. The red line is here in Ukraine and the civilized world will react without hesitation,” he said in an interview with the CNN.
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“I don’t believe that Russians will win in Ukraine because there will be a really bloody massacre if Russia decides to invade Ukraine, and Russian guys also will come back in the coffins,” he said.
Excerpts from a feature in Canada’s Globe and Mail. Reznikov was until recently minister for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories: to indicate what he was recently installed as defense minister to achieve. Like the nation’s top military commander and the head of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, his predecessor was recently purged to make way for a more aggressive military/national security team.
Canada, the United States and Britain should jointly and swiftly provide military support to Ukraine in its standoff with Russia, Ukraine’s defence minister said…warning that steps to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading were necessary now because “it will be too late after.”
Oleksii Reznikov said he detected a split within the NATO military alliance over how far to go in supporting Ukraine. Canada, the U.S., and Britain…
Every time the workers’ struggle in Cádiz resorts to the barricades, … as happened a few days ago with the Metal proletariat, the oldest of the place immediately remember the Astilleros struggles of 1977 and how from the rooftops of the houses of the popular neighborhoods Tables, chairs, flowerpots,… and even household appliances were thrown at the riot control. But that was not news.
Already in December 1868, during the Cádiz Commune, the town harassed the government troops by throwing all kinds of objects from the rooftops. This can be seen in the detail of the engraving of the struggles in the barricades of the San Juan neighborhood (Cádiz), with the cathedral and the church of Santiago in the background1. Cádiz has 3,000 years of history, and almost as many of workers’ and revolutionary struggle (exaggerating, of course …).
It may seem almost a sacrilege to compare what happened in Cádiz on December 5, 6 and 7, 1868 with the mythical Paris Commune from March to May 1871, but only the brevity of those events and the enormous lack of information can hide their revolutionary characteristics that marked an entire era. Historiography has been in charge of underlining the enormous casualties of the army and the people, the numerous barricades (up to 185 without counting others of lesser importance!)
At least 17 people suspected of having the Omicron variant of coronavirus after a ‘super spreader’ Christmas party in Oslo were fully vaccinated, city health officials have said.
On Friday, it was confirmed 13 people in Norway had tested positive for the variant in the wake of a corporate Christmas party in Oslo last week.
He added that most the infected had mild symptoms and that the party organisers had broken no rules.
A city health official told the AFP news agency that 60 people of the 100-plus guests had tested positive.
“Health authorities have confirmed a further 12 cases of Omicron in Oslo after an outbreak,” the city of Oslo said in a statement.
“So far 13 Omicron cases have been confirmed after sequencing. More cases are expected.”
Officials have warned the number of Omicron-confirmed cases could increase.
“All of them had been vaccinated, none of them had symptoms and they had all done self-tests” before attending the dinner,” Tine Ravlo told AFP.
The Omicron outbreak at the party was the biggest outside of South Africa, with more than 60 people possibly infected, officials have said.
Preben Aavitsland, a senior physician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said: “This party has been a super spreader event….
Viruses mutate, often to evade or escape vaccines. Which means vaccines are often ineffective against the variant. Are vaccines going to be developed and mandated for each variant? From Kit Knightly at off-guardian.org:
Yesterday, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, held a press conference where she talked at length about her “concerns” over the EU’s low vaccination rate, and how best to “fix” it.
When asked about making vaccines mandatory, she said:
It is understandable and appropriate to lead this discussion now – how we can encourage and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union. This needs discussion, this needs a common approach, but I think it’s a discussion that has to be led.”
Adding:
Two or three years ago, I would have never thought to witness what we see right now, that we have this horrible pandemic, we have the life-saving vaccines but they are not being used adequately everywhere. And thus this is an enormous health cost,”
Of course, the idea that the EU nations are going to “debate” mandatory vaccinations is a joke, they are more likely to enforce them no matter what.
But any real, rational debate was over as soon as the EU and the vaccine manufacturers both admitted that the vaccines do not work.
The EU has already hinted that their vaccination passes (which, ironically enough, they appear to have been planning for “two or three years” despite von der Leyen claiming they never saw the pandemic coming), will expire in nine months.
Why will they expire?
Because the “protection” allegedly conferred by the vaccine wears off..
Omicron Covid cases soared to 246 after a further 86 Covid variant cases were identified in the UK, according to the latest figures available.” The data released last week about the percentage of citizens “vaccinated” against Covid19 (but taking up hospital beds with, um, Covid19) was surreal, but the Government toughed it out….and of course, Labour shrank from pointing out the obvious.”
