CounterVortex

The Amazon

Brazil carbon emissions rise as Amazon burns

Brazil’s carbon emissions surged last year due to rising deforestation in the Amazon, jeopardizing the country’s commitments under the Paris climate accord, an environmental group warns in a new study. Brazil spewed a total of 2.17 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2019, an increase of 9.6% over 2018, according to the Brazilian Climate Observatory. That coincided with the first year in office for President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right climate-change skeptic who has presided over a sharp increase in forest-clearing and wildfires in the Amazon. (Image via Veganist)

Central America

Villagers abandoned in Eta’s deadly aftermath

Some 150 are dead, with remote indigenous and campesino communities left stricken and without aid, a week after Hurricane Eta tore through Central America. Eta made landfall south of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, as a Category 4 storm. Two güiriseros, or artisanal gold-miners, were among the first killed, as a landslide inundated the mining camp of Tigre Norte in Bonanza municipality of Nicargua’s North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. Far worse was follow in Guatemala, where officials have called off the search for dozens believed to have been buried when a mountainside collapsed, engulfing the hamlet of Queja. Ovidio Choc, mayor of San Cristobal Verapaz municipality, said the site of Queja will probably be declared a cemetery. Elsewhere in Guatemala’s Maya Highlands, villagers have had to mobilize their own rescue and recovery efforts, effectively abandoned by the government. (Map: National Hurricane Center)

Africa

Fracking threat to southern Africa elephant refuge

Reports indicating that a Canadian oil and gas firm is planning to start hydraulic fracturing in one of Africa’s most critical remaining elephant habitats areas along the Namibia-Botswana border is raising alarm among global environmentalists. Vancouver-based Reconnaissance Energy Africa Limited (Recon Africa), announced that it is planning to drill oil and gas wells in the newly proclaimed five-nation Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, which supplies water to the Okavango Delta, the world’s largest inland delta, and shelters Africa’s largest migrating elephant herd. (Photo: WWF)

Africa

Ghana: repression in Western Togoland

Tensions have been growing in Ghana since late September, when militants of the Western Togoland Restoration Front erected armed roadblocks on arteries into the country’s eastern Volta region, and declared the secession of the territory as the independent state of Western Togoland. Security forces shortly cleared the roadblocks. But some 60 members of the Homeland Study Group, a nonviolent civil organization calling for independence for Western Togoland, were immediately arrested in sweeps. They were later ordered released by a judge, but one of the detained reportedly died in police custody. (Photo: ISS Africa)

Africa

Mozambique conflict draws in neighboring countries

Jihadist insurgents variously calling themselves “al-Shabaab” or the “Islamic State Central Africa Province” are fast escalating brutal attacks in Mozambique’s oil-rich Cabo Delgado province, in the north of the country. In twin attacks last week, more than 50 residents were beheaded in Muatide village, where militants turned a football field into an “execution ground,” and several more were beheaded and houses put to the torch in Nanjaba village. Last month, hundreds of insurgents crossed the Ruvuma River into Tanzania, and attacked the border village of Kitaya, beheading 20 residents. Landlocked Zimbabwe, which depends on unimpeded passage through Mozambique for access to the sea, has broached military intervention, and is seeking approval for joint action from the Southern African Development Community (SADC). (Photo via ISS Africa)

North Africa

Algeria: Berbers boycott constitution vote

Amid low turn-out and a boycott in regions of the country, Algerians approved a new constitution pushed by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in a referendum. The referendum took place on the anniversary of the start of Algeria’s war for independence from France in 1954, with the government adopting the slogan “November 1954: Liberation. November 2020: Change.” The preamble to the new charter actually invokes last year’s Hirak or “revolution of smiles” protest movement, and the reform was clearly intended as a response to the movement’s demands. But in the northeastern Kabylie region, heartland of the country’s Amazigh (Berber) people and a bastion of support for the Hirak, demonstrators blocked polling stations to enforce a boycott. In response, election authorities annulled the votes from 63 of the 67 towns in the region. (Map: Kabyle.com)

Africa

Post-electoral repression in Tanzania

Opposition presidential candidate Tundu Lissu was arrested two days after disputed presidential elections in Tanzania. Incumbent John Magufuli won the election by a landslide according to official results following a contest dismissed by the opposition as a “travesty” because of widespread irregularities. Lissu joins a growing list of opposition leaders who have been rounded up since the results came in, as authorities move to head off post-election demonstrations. Lissu’s center-right Chadema party and the left-wing ACT Wazalendo have jointly issued a call for people to take to the streets and demand fresh polls. They accuse Magufuli and his long-ruling Revolutionary Party, or Chama Cha Mapinduzi, of seeking to establish a “one-party system.” (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Europe

Poland: mass uprising for reproductive rights

Warsaw and other Polish cities have seen mass protests since the country’s Constitutional Tribunal issued a ruling that will virtually end legal abortion. Tens of thousands of protesters—the majority of them women—have taken to the streets of cities and towns across the country, in defiance of pandemic restrictions harshly limiting the size of gatherings. Their anger has been directed against the ruling conservative Law & Justice Party (PiS) and the Catholic church, which are seen as being behind the decision. Protesters have disrupted services and sprayed graffiti on the walls of Warsaw churches. Clashes broke out in a number of cities between the demonstrators and far-right groups ostensibly organized to defend churches. Two women were also injured when a car drove through a group of protesters who were blocking a road in Warsaw. (Photo: Notes from Poland)

The Andes

Colombia: indigenous ‘minga’ marches on Bogotá

Some 10,000 participated in a cross-country march and motorcade through Colombia’s southern Andes, dubbed the “Minga for Life, Territory, Democracy and Peace,” culminating in a mass demonstration in Bogotá. Called by Nasa and Guambiano indigenous leaders in the southern department of Cauca, the Minga (a traditional Andean word for “collective labor”) was joined by Afro-Colombian and mestizo campesino communities in its 10-day trek to the capital. Chief among the marchers’ grievances is the ongoing wave of assassinations of social leaders by illegal armed groups operating on indigenous lands. They charge that their communities have been betrayed by President Iván Duque’s failure to fully implement terms of the peace accords with the demobilized FARC guerillas. (Photo: Colombia Reports)

Southern Cone

Chileans vote to draft new constitution

Exactly one year after a mass demonstration brought more than a million people to the streets of Santiago to demand fundamental change amid a mass uprising, Chileans voted to scrap the Pinochet-era constitution. An overwhelming 80% voted for the drafting of a new constitution in the two-question referendum, with a similar proportion voting in favor of the new charter being drawn up by a body to be 100% elected by a popular vote rather than one made up by 50% of members of Congress. President Sebastian Piñera signed a law last year calling for the referendum in response to the protest movement then sweeping the country. (Photo: OHCHR via Noticias ONU)

Watching the Shadows

Targeted disinformation neutralizes US left

Progressives in the United States show little awareness of the disinformation specially targeting them. Denialism about Russian interference in the US elections is now translating into denialism about how dangerous the Trump presidency is. In 2016, we saw Russian-promoted “left” sites and writers post memes and articles that trashed Hillary Clinton, equated Clinton and Trump, or even portrayed Clinton as the worse choice. They dominated “Leftbook” social media and helped depress the progressive vote—a decisive factor in Trump’s win. We are seeing a replay now. Biden and Harris are denounced far more than Trump on some “left” sites, while Trump’s incipient fascism is downplayed. This influence has also been felt in the appalling lack of protest against Trump. Through his round-ups of undocumented immigrants, his abandonment of climate and arms control treaties, the impeachment, progressives failed to fill the streets—until the Black Lives Matter uprising, bringing a new and different leadership to the fore. In a presentation for Women’s March Minnesota, longtime activist Terry Burke examines how the US left is in danger of being manipulated and neutralized by a sophisticated online propaganda campaign, facilitated by the Kremlin and its media arms and corporate enablers like Facebook. (Image: TerryBurke)

Africa

Ivory Coast: violence mounts ahead of election

Ivory Coast has seen a wave of communal violence ahead of presidential elections, amid a civil disobedience campaign called by the opposition. In the coastal town of Dabou, some 50 kilometers west of the economic capital Abidjan, several have been killed and scores arrested over the past week. In the inland town of Bongouanou, the home of opposition candidate Pascal Affi N’Guessan was burned down during clashes. In nearby Kotobi, the the gendarmerie headquarters was ransacked. The violence has taken on an ethnic cast, with members of the local Agni group in the country’s east-central and coastal zones pitted against Dioula people from northern Ivory Coast, who back current President Alassane Ouattara. The opposition rejects Ouattara’s quest for a third term as unconstitutional. (Photo: CIA)