The Free

How Indigenous Peoples are resisting COVID-19 in South America

Farmers from the Brazilian Reforma Agraria Popular distributed about six tons of food to indigenous peoples during the pandemic. Photo credit: Vinícius Braga/Fotos Publicas (CC BY 3.0) How indigenous peoples resist COVID-19 in South America

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In Latin America, indigenous people are at higher risk of COVID-19 infection due to lack of data and historical political neglect, according to indigenous communities and human rights organizations.

Malnutrition, anemia, and obesity rates are high and resources to build nearby hospitals are low. In Bolivia, for example, the Bolivian Center for Legal Studies and Social Research (CEJIS for its initials in Spanish) also warned about the risk of the “ethnocide” of indigenous groups in the context of COVID-19. Similar concerns have spread throughout the continent.

This map outlines all indigenous territories in the South American Amazon and highlights communities featured in this story. The shapes were created by Global Voices based on a database compiled by Amazonia Socioambiental, filtered using QGIS and edited on Photoshop and Illustrator.

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Boris Johnson offers British Army immunity for multiple War Crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan

@Writes_Sweeney23 Sep, 2020 17:47 at .rt.com/ photos added

Boris Johnson wants to make British Armed Forces untouchable by offering them immunity for war crimes

A controversial bill is passing through the House of Commons which will make it virtually impossible to prosecute soldiers but, at the same time, will strip away their own legal rights and health benefits.

–The government knows what it’s doing, this is the first step in refashioning the armed forces into a rabble-rousing pack of jackals with Union Jacks tattooed on their arms. It’s also a free pass to allow Boris and his cabal of advisers to enter into conflicts with limited blowback domestically.–

It’s avoided a great deal of attention, mainly due to the EU face-off and, of course, the resumption of Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. Ministers must be praising their luck as the bill is an unthinkable betrayal of what Britain stands for.

The first part insulates soldiers from alleged offences while on duty. It does this via a ‘triple lock’ of a five-year statute of limitations, a presumption against prosecution, and the requirement of explicit consent from the attorney general.

UK troops to be shielded from torture prosecution

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The Great UK Ruling Class Robbery: Rotten to their Stinking Core

14th September 2020

The UK’s economic and political life revolves around corruption.

Rotten to the Core – by George Monbiot

Sept 2020. Illustrations added

Fear, shame, embarrassment: these brakes no longer apply. The government has discovered that it can bluster through any scandal. No minister need resign. No one need apologise. No one need explain.

As public outrage grows over the billions of pounds of coronavirus contracts issued by the government without competition, it seems determined only to award more of them.

Never mind that the consulting company Deloitte, whose personnel circulate in and out of government, has been strongly criticised for the disastrous system it devised to supply protective equipment to the NHS. It has now been granted a massive new contract to test the population for Covid-19.

Never mind that untendered contracts with firms that had no previous experience in supplying medical equipment have left us with vast piles of substandard PPE that can’t be used.

Never mind that, Byline Times has reported, one of these contracts has cost taxpayers £800 for every medical gown it has delivered.

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Let’s Lockdown the Cars. Let’s take back the city… English /Spanish

by Ecologistas en Acción translation TheFreeOnline

Ecologistas en Acción displays a banner to present its#ConfinemElsCotxes #RecuperemLaCiutat” campaign that has started in Valencia coinciding with the European Mobility Week (SEM) to claim the abusive use of the car in our

daily trips.

The campaign calls for a Crash Plan for the conversion of the road to give priority to pedestrians, bicycles and public transport. The organization warns that it will continue to pressure and plan possible actions in the streets until it does not.
They ask the administrations that the lack of control protects the health of the people, guaranteeing the safety distances and the maximum levels of contamination established by the WHO.
The campaign has been launched with a video on LEZs and the unfurling of a banner to claim car-free day.
#RecuperemLaCiutat

Pollution kills 30,000 people every year in the Spanish State

On the occasion of the European Mobility Week, dedicated to emission-free mobility, Ecologistas en Acción launched the campaign Let’s confine cars, let’s recover our space, in the city of Valencia, with which it demands to prioritize active mobility and public transport over car.

The first part of the campaign focuses on the Low Emission Zones (LEZ/or ZBE) proposal and consists of seven infographics and a video. This material explains what these traffic restriction areas consist of, what their benefits are and how they should be designed to be efficient.

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