NET ZERO - Frankly, Mexico’s volcanos are just not complying with net zero diktats!

Now spewing out more carbon & toxic gas into the atmosphere in a day, than the entire worlds industries will in a year!

Ban them! Let’s show them who’s in charge!

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— Bernie's Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) May 24, 2023

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also proposed establishing a broad international format of talks that could be similar to the G20 to discuss peace in Ukraine | Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he would be ready to mediate talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky, if needed. 💬 "If I can help, I will help. But if the need arises to hold talks with Putin and Zelensky, I will be ready to discuss peace settlement efforts, no problem. What we really need is to bring together a group of people powerful enough to be respected at the negotiating table. And we should engage with both of them," da Silva said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday. ● The politician also proposed establishing a broad international format of talks that could be similar to the G20 to discuss peace in Ukraine. The Brazilian leader said he had already discussed this with Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron and that he intended to raise the issue at negotiations with US President Joe Biden in February and with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in March.

A shockingly bloody day of violence threatened to upend the new coup-borne regime’s grip on power as Peruvians reacted with horror to the deadliest day so far in the political struggle that has rocked the country for over a month. | Thousands of Peruvians took to the streets throughout the country on Tuesday as memorial services were held in the city of Juliaca for the 17 people killed Monday in what victims families’ are calling a “massacre” by the Andean country’s security forces. At least two of the deceased – a boy and a girl – were reportedly children. According to a health ministry official in the Puno region of Peru, another 68 victims suffered injuries in Monday’s violence. ● Videos showing several of the killings circulated widely on social media Monday night, as condemnations rolled in from across the globe. 💬 “In the name of the sacred right to life, of the rights of indigenous peoples recognized by UN and international organizations, in the name of peace and social justice, we demand that the massacre of our brothers in Perú stop,” wrote former Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was labeled ‘persona non grata’ and barred from entering the country just hours beforehand. ● It was by far the deadliest day of the chaos that has wracked Peru since its first working-class indigenous president, Pedro Castillo, was overthrown last month. Castillo has been jailed ever since, following what leaders of countries throughout the region have condemned as a coup d'état.

The Peruvian authorities have taken troops to the streets to suppress protests after the visit of the US ambassador to the Government Palace as Washington pursues profits in the country's mining projects, impeached President Pedro Castillo said on Thursday.

💬 "Compatriots, attention! The visit of the US ambassador to the Government Palace was neither for free nor in favor of the country. At the meeting, the order to take the troops to the streets and massacre my defenseless people was given, and, among other things, to pave the way for the extraction of minerals, such as from Konga, Tai Maria, and other [mines]. Peruvian media will not only keep silent about this but will also easily deny it," Castillo said in a hand-written note published on his Twitter.

On December 7, Peru's parliament impeached former President Pedro Castillo. Prime Minister Dina Boluarte took an oath as the country's new president within two hours of the impeachment vote, vowing to serve out the rest of Castillo's term until July 2026. Castillo, who had tried to dissolve the parliament before the vote, was arrested after the impeachment procedure and the Peruvian prosecutor's office launched a criminal case against him on charges of a coup attempt and crimes against the state. These events have sparked a wave of protests across the country. Demonstrators denounce the post-impeachment government and call for an immediate presidential election and termination of the country's parliament.

Peru authorities confirmed two deaths during ongoing protests demanding fresh elections and the resignation of new President Dina Boluarte, as thousands of demonstrators were reported on streets across the country Sunday. | The latest: Boluarte responded to the calls by announcing in a televised address a proposal for Congress to bring forward the next general elections to April 2024, per AP. 💬 "My duty as president of the republic in the current difficult time is to interpret, read and collect the aspirations, interests and concerns, if not of all, of the vast majority of Peruvians," Boluarte said, according to AP. "So, interpreting in the broadest way the will of the citizens... I have decided to assume the initiative to reach an agreement with the congress of the republic to advance the general elections." Context: The 60-year-old former vice president was sworn in last Wednesday until 2026 — when the presidency of her impeached predecessor, Pedro Castillo, was due to end. The big picture: AP reports police and protesters clashed in Lima as hundreds demonstrated there, with many calling for the release of Castillo, who was arrested on charges of rebellion after he said he was dissolving Congress ahead of his impeachment vote. There have been tense scenes in rural areas that are strongholds of the 53-year-old left-wing former schoolteacher Castillo, who is from a poor Andean mountain district.

Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva clinched victory over his right-wing rival Jair Bolsonaro in a tightly contested second round of the Brazilian election on Sunday. The country’s election authority announced Lula’s narrow win with 50.9% of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 49.1%. 💬 “This isn’t a victory of mine or the Workers’ Party... It’s the victory of a democratic movement that formed above political parties, personal interests and ideologies so that democracy came out victorious,” Lula told a cheering crowd of supporters in Sao Paulo on Sunday night. ● The president-elect acknowledged that following such a tight race a challenge to his future mandate will be “immense,” and stressed that 💬 “it is necessary to rebuild the very soul of this country, recover generosity, solidarity, respect for differences and love for others.” ● Lula, who is set to take office on 1 January 2023, promised to be a president for all 215 million Brazilians, not just those who voted for him. 💬 “There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people – a great nation.” ● Bolsonaro has yet to publicly concede defeat. The incumbent repeatedly warned during his campaign that he would contest the results if he were to lose by a narrow margin, calling into question the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting system. ● After polls closed nationwide at 5pm local time (8pm GMT), initial results showed Bolsonaro ahead. However, just as in the first round, his lead eventually narrowed as more votes from da Silva’s strongholds were counted. In the first round on October 2, da Silva received over 48% of the vote, which was not enough to claim immediate victory. ● Lula da Silva, who represents Brazil’s Workers’ Party, has focused his campaign on overcoming social inequality and alleviating poverty. Among the measures he proposes are raising taxes on the rich, widening the social safety net, and increasing the minimum wage.

As the United Nations positions for yet another military intervention into Haiti, Western media has ignored the massive demonstrations in the island nation against both Acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the possible arrival of new foreign troops.

Thousands have demonstrated in Haitian cities for months, calling for Henry’s resignation after he arbitrarily rejected the transfer of power to a provisional government and decided to stay in power after his mandate expired in February. Those demonstrations have intensified in recent days after Henry appealed to the international community to help him restore order. ● According to the protesters, the new intervention is not aimed at suppressing violent criminal gangs or at alleviating other public health issues, such as a cholera outbreak, but rather to keep in power their hand-picked successor to President Jovenel Moise, who was assassinated last year.

Argentina's police have detained a Brazilian armed man, 35, who was trying to assassinate Argentine Vice President Cristina Kirchner, the TN broadcaster reports. ● The handgun was loaded but did not go off, according to the report.

An assailant aimed a pistol directly at Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's head (RT.com)

Chavez advisor Eva Golinger has previously suggested that Chavez was murdered by the US, though she pinned the hit on Chavez's bodyguard, Leamsy Salazar (who defected to the US after Chavez's death).

💬 «It is enough to know that one man who had for several years been one of his closest aides, who was often alone with him and brought him his food, coffee, and water, is now a protected witness in the United States. Soon Leamsy Salazar’s covert actions and close collaboration with intelligence agencies in Washington will be revealed».

The Murder of Chávez. The CIA and DEA Cover Their Tracks?:💬 «Everything that Washington was trying to achieve during the administration of Hugo Chávez is today being realized in his absence. The cancerous illness from which Chávez suffered was unusually aggressive and suspicious, and every day turns up more evidence that it is possible Chávez was murdered».

Paul Craig Roberts ■ Normalization of relations with Cuba is not the result of a diplomatic breakthrough or a change of heart on the part of Washington. Normalization is a result of US corporations seeking profit opportunities in Cuba, such as developing broadband Internet markets in Cuba. Before the American left and the Cuban government find happiness in the normalization, they should consider that with normalization comes American money and a US Embassy. The American money will take over the Cuban economy. The embassy will be a home for CIA operatives to subvert the Cuban government. The embassy will provide a base from which the US can establish NGOs whose gullible members can be called to street protest at the right time, as in Kiev, and the embassy will make it possible for Washington to groom a new set of political leaders. In short, normalization of relations means regime change in Cuba. Soon Cuba will be another of Washington’s vassal states.

The United States and Cuba have ended decades of cold war hostility by agreeing to normalise diplomatic and travel relations after 18 months of secret talks on prisoner releases brokered by the Vatican. The surprise breakthrough came after a 45-minute phone call between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro on Tuesday finalised the release of Alan Gross, a US government aid contractor held for five years in Cuba, which accused him of being a spy. But as he was dramatically flown back to the US on Wednesday accompanied by three congressmen, it became clear that a far larger deal had been agreed between the two countries, not just to release other prisoners and spies, but to restore ties between the countries that have been frozen since 1967.

Investigation finds USAid recruited musicians ‘to break information blockade’ as part of covert social Project. ● Hip-hop has emerged as the latest covert weapon in the US government’s hapless attempts to unseat Cuba’s communist government. ● Like its previous efforts, including exploding cigars, Cuban Twitter and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, the attempt to co-opt rappers ended in ignominious failure, new documents have shown. ● For more than two years, the American development aid organisation USAid has been secretly trying to infiltrate Cuba’s underground hip-hop movement, according to records obtained by the Associated Press. ● The idea was to use Cuba’s rappers “to break the information blockade” and build a network of young people seeking “social change” to spark a youth movement against the government of President Raul Castro.

Ecuadorian President reportedly announced that his accounts have been a target of cyber attacks that came from the United States. ● According to the president, these attacks were aimed at gaining access to personal data. He noted that the attacks targeted the computers of the people closest to him. The newspaper added that back in October Correa said that "organized networks" carried out several cyber attacks from Colombia trying to extract information from the government. In September, Ecuadorian authorities announced plans to set up a Cyber Defense Command, which is to be established by mid-2015. The $8 million of funding was to be used to recruit staff and provide necessary software and hardware.

US-Israel in Mexico: Murdered Students and the Failed State

Brazilian police killed more than 11,000 people between 2009 and 2013 for an average of six killings a day, a public safety NGO said Tuesday. ● The study by the Sao Paulo-based Brazilian Forum on Public Safety said police nationwide killed 11,197 people over the past five years, while law enforcement agents in the United States killed 11,090 people over the past 30 years. "The empirical evidence shows that Brazilian police make abusive use of lethal force to respond to crime and violence," the report said. There were 416 people killed last year in Rio de Janeiro state, giving it the highest per-capita rate for 2013. The study also said 50,806 people were killed in all homicides last year, about one person every 10 minutes. Nearly 70 per cent of the homicide victims were black and more than half were ages 15 to 29, it said. In addition to using excessive force, Brazilian police frequently execute suspects, said Bruno Paes Manso of the University of Sao Paulo's Center for the Study on Violence. He called it "a practice rarely investigated."

The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly for the 23rd time to condemn the decades-long U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, with many nations praising the island state for its response in fighting the deadly Ebola virus that is ravaging West Africa. ● In the 193-nation assembly, 188 countries voted for the nonbinding resolution, titled "Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba." As in previous years, the only countries that voted against the declaration were the United States and an ally, Israel. The Pacific island nations Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. The voting result was identical to last year's.

There is much that we are unaware of, and little do we know of our own ignorance. I read Hawking’s second work, “The Universe in a Nutshell,” written, according to him, in a more comprehensible language for those unfamiliar with the topic, and I highlighted many of the ideas which most interested me. Throughout its evolution mankind has never had, nor ever could have had, a clear idea of its own existence, because it simply did not exist, it simply evolved at the same rate as everything else that existed. This is a reality which is not intended to antagonize or offend anyone. Everyday we can learn something new. Help others and wherever possible, help ourselves.

Yesterday I listed to a speech by the new Secretary General of NATO, the former Prime Minister of Norway, who assumed the position on October 1, only six days ago. How much hate in his face! What an incredible effort to promote a war of extermination against the Russian Federation! Who are more extreme than the Islamic State fanatics themselves? What religion do they practice? After this, will it be possible to enjoy eternal life at the right hand of the Lord?

Jean-Claude Duvalier, the self-proclaimed “president for life” of Haiti whose corrupt and brutal regime sparked a popular uprising that sent him into a 25-year exile, died today of a heart attack, his attorney said. ● Reynold George said the 63-year-old ex-leader died at his home. He was 63. Duvalier, looking somewhat frail, made a surprise return to Haiti in 2011, allowing victims of his regime to pursue legal claims against him and prompting some old allies to rally around him. Neither side gained much support, and the once-feared dictator known as “Baby Doc” spent his late years in relative obscurity in the leafy hills above the Haitian capital. Duvalier was the son of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, a medical doctor-turned-dictator who promoted “Noirisme”, a movement that sought to highlight Haiti’s African roots over its European ones while uniting the black majority against a mulatto elite in a country divided by class and colour.

Nearly 40 years ago, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger mapped out secret contingency plans to launch airstrikes against Havana and “smash Cuba,” newly disclosed government documents show. ● Mr. Kissinger was so irked by Cuba’s military incursion into Angola that in 1976 he convened a top-secret group of senior officials to work out possible retaliatory measures in case Cuba deployed forces to other African nations, according to documents declassified by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library at the request of the National Security Archive, a research group. The officials outlined plans to strike ports and military installations in Cuba and to send Marine battalions to the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay to “clobber” the Cubans, as Mr. Kissinger put it, according to the records. Mr. Kissinger, the documents show, worried that the United States would look weak if it did not stand up to a country of just eight million people.

New York Daily News: "I think we are going to have to smash Castro"
Cuban News Agency: Former US State Secretary Henry Kissinger Planned to Attack Cuba in 1976

Ryan Devereaux ■ Freshly-released CIA documents show how the largest newspapers in the country helped the agency contain a groundbreaking exposé of cocaine trafficking by its Contra proxy forces.

Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism. The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation’s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webb’s reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head. These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He’s portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the “Dark Alliance” saga — information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.

The chief hitman of Colombia’s most infamous drug lord, Pablo Escobar, was released from prison Wednesday after 22 years behind bars. Jhon Jairo Velasquez, alias “Popeye,” was set free after serving only three-fifths of his original sentence, for reasons of “good behavior,” according to Colombia’s W Radio. By his own admission, Popeye participated in over 300 murders; however, he has been implicated in coordinating over 3,000 assassinations, including of Colombian police, politicians, and journalists.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin apologized Monday (Aug 12) to his Brazilian counterpart for a remark by a foreign ministry spokesman calling the Latin American powerhouse a "diplomatic dwarf." ● The comment in July was made by spokesman Yigal Palmor after Brazil criticized Israel's military campaign in Gaza as excessive and recalled its envoy in Tel Aviv. In a phone call Monday, Rivlin assured Brazil President Dilma Rousseff that Palmor's comments "do not correspond to the sentiments of the population" of Israel, Rousseff's office said in a statement. Rousseff had criticised Palmor's remarks, saying "Words, including the spokesman's, sometimes create a very bad climate. In this case, we have to be very careful."