Author: jhnashtongmailcom

 

Fires that have devastated a Brazilian tropical wetlands region famed for its wildlife were started by humans and exacerbated by its worst drought in nearly 50 years, according to Brazilian authorities, firefighters and environmentalist groups.

Images of cremated snakes, tapirs cooked to death, and jaguars with bandaged, burnt paws in the Pantanal region in Brazil’s centre-west have horrified Brazilians at a time when fires are also razing forests in the Amazon. A dark cloud of soot from fires is heading towards São Paulo.

 

Source: Brazilian wetlands fires started by humans and worsened by drought | Brazil | The Guardian

Brazil’s former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, barred from elected office due to corruption convictions, said he is open to backing any candidate who can beat far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections.

Source: Exclusive: Brazil’s Lula says he will back anyone who can take on Bolsonaro | Reuters

Systemic racism is both a theoretical concept and a reality. As a theory, it is premised on the research-supported claim that the United States was founded as a racist society, that racism is thus embedded in all social institutions, structures, and social relations within our society. Rooted in a racist foundation, systemic racism today is composed of intersecting, overlapping, and codependent racist institutions, policies, practices, ideas, and behaviors that give an unjust amount of resources, rights, and power to white people while denying them to people of color.

Dr. Nicki Lisa Cole, Thoughtco.com

 

Source: Organized Black Militias Are Forming Everywhere Because America Won’t Stop Oppressing And Killing Black People

The Vietnamese American community now finds itself at a crossroads, weighing whether to confront racism head-on or remain quiet and complicit in a system that perpetuates it. Yet the issue of racism—and anti-Blackness in particular—raises questions unique to the refugee experience. As Vietnamese Americans, how can our conversations about race be framed in terms of Black and white when we ourselves—our histories, our bodies, and our struggles—don’t exist within this binary?

 

Source: Why ‘Black Lives Matter’ Is So Divisive for Houston’s Vietnamese American Community – Texas Monthly

Namibian President Hage Geingob has rejected Germany’s offer to compensate the southern African nation for colonial-era mass killings. Geingob said in a statement on Tuesday that Berlin’s offer of $11.7 million was “not acceptable.”

During the colonial era between 1904 and 1908 the German Empire killed as many as 80,000 Herero and Nama people in response to an anti-colonial resistance, per the US Holocaust Museum. Other estimates put the number of African people killed at over 100,000.

 

Source: ‘Not Acceptable’: Namibia Rejects Germany’s $11.7M Offer to Atone for Colonial-Era Genocide of Tens of Thousands of African People

Hmmm, A Muslim, A Christian, and an atheist meet God… In a video created by an atheist.

Interesting…

Interview with indigenous chief Alvaro Tukano on the situation of indigenous peoples in Brazil and Covid-19

Álvaro Fernandes Sampaio Tukano is the chief of the 260,000 hectares Balaio Indian Reservation of the Tukano people on the upper Rio Negro in the state of Amazonas, Brazil. For decades, the 67-year-old defends the rights of the indigenous peoples, their territories and traditions.

 

Source: We Don’t Want Alms or Glass Beads, But Respect, Says Brazilian Indigenous Leader – brazzil

Health authorities in Cuba are using low doses of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to effectively treat COVID-19 patients in the early stages of the disease.

“We do use hydroxychloroquine in the framework of the protocol for management of coronavirus patients,” Dr. Augustin Lage Davila, advisor to the president of BioCubaFarma and former director of the Centre for Molecular Immunology in Havana, told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.

 

Source: Cuba: Early hydroxychloroquine potent against COVID-19