All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Google Maps will show Covid-19 outbreaks

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This means you can open Google Maps to see Covid-19 coronavirus outbreaks in your area, which could be helpful if the disease spreads more rapidly in the fall and winter.

Jumblat Calls for Capitalizing on Hariri’s Initiative

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Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on Wednesday called on the political parties to meet ex-PM Saad Hariri’s initiative in a positive manner.

“It is time to seize the opportunity provided by yesterday’s paper and capitalize on it in order to facilitate the government’s formation away from narrow calculations,” Jumblat tweeted.

Beware of Folks Pushing the Idea That COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Will Fail from the Start — VAXOPEDIA

That multiple COVID-19 vaccines might soon be found safe and effective and ready to be distributed to millions of people seems to have rattled more than a few people. That must be why we are starting to see some of these folks pushing the idea that these vaccines trials have already failed, even though they…

Beware of Folks Pushing the Idea That COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Will Fail from the Start — VAXOPEDIA

Egyptian Journalist Lina Attalah Named One of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People — Egyptian Streets

Cairo, Egypt – September 26: Portraits of Lina Attalah September 26, 2017 in Cairo, Egypt. (Photo by David Degner/Getty Reportage) Egyptian journalist and chief editor of the publication Mada Masr, Lina Attalah, was chosen among TIME Magazine’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Attalah, who co-founded Mada Masr and became a…

Egyptian Journalist Lina Attalah Named One of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People — Egyptian Streets

Found: The Wreck of a Ship That Carried Enslaved Maya from Mexico to Cuba

On September 19, 1861, a steamboat caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, two nautical miles from the Yucatán port town of Sisal. There were dozens of confirmed casualties, passengers and crew alike. But the full death toll will likely never be known, because the enslaved Indigenous Maya people held on the ship were never counted in the first place—they were simply listed as cargo.

Archaeologists from Mexico’s Sub-Directorate of Underwater Archaeology (Subdirección de Arqueología Subacuática, or SAS) announced recently that they’d identified the underwater remains of this ship, La Unión. Between 1855 and 1861, the Havana-based vessel brought, on average, 25 to 30 enslaved Maya people from Mexico to Cuba every month. The enslaved persons were then sold upon arrival in Havana.

The shipwreck was first found in 2017, after researchers found an 1861 document in the Yucatán state archive describing the fire and the approximate spot where it occurred. Local fishermen, who had heard about the wreck in oral retellings, also helped guide the researchers toward the search area. In tribute to one of these fishermen, the researchers temporarily named the shipwreck “Adalio,” after his grandfather. While it was clear that the team had something significant on their hands, it took three years of interdisciplinary research to confirm that “Adalio” was, in fact, La Unión. It is now the first ship ever discovered known to have carried enslaved Maya people.

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Helena Barba Meinecke, director of the Yucatán Peninsula division of the SAS, outlined her team’s research process in an email. One key clue that “Adalio” might really be La Unión was that its technological and skeletal components—the propulsion machine, boiler, axles, paddle wheels, and chimney—dated to the first era of steamboat technology (1837–1860), and La Unión began operating in 1855. In addition, the archaeologists found that the ship’s boilers had exploded and that its wood had been damaged by fire. Perhaps most importantly, the location of the wreck matched what was reported in contemporary accounts and documentation. Perhaps the eeriest find, however, was brass cutlery used by first-class passengers on La Unión, who would have been unaware of the enslaved people on board. The cutlery was also branded with the name of the shipping company that owned La Unión.

The enslavement of Mexico’s Indigenous population began during the so-called Caste War of Yucatán, a long-running conflict that lasted from 1847 to 1901. Promised, and then denied, tax relief in exchange for military service—as they saw private estates rise throughout formerly public lands—Maya communities on the Yucatán Peninsula rebelled against Mexico’s European-descended government, and sustained enormous casualties in the process. According to the University of North Carolina, the combination of death and desertion cut the peninsula’s population in half within just a few years, by 1850. In a brutal 1848 decree, Meinecke writes, the Yucatán governor ordered the expulsion of all Maya captured in combat. They would be deported to Cuba, still a Spanish colony at the time, to toil in the island’s sugarcane plantations. It was irrelevant to these officials that Mexico had officially abolished slavery in 1829.

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Indeed, one illegal tactic put to use during the Caste War was the deployment of enganchadores. Sent with fraudulent documents into Maya communities ravaged by the violence, these kidnappers led people to believe that they would be settled on uninhabited Cuban land and live as farmers—though their true destination was a life of slavery. As late as October 30, 1860, La Unión was actually caught at sea carrying 29 enslaved Maya, including children as young as seven years old. Even this, however, failed to stop the trade. It wasn’t until the fire of September 1861, four months after President Benio Juárez issued a decree against further kidnappings, that the government crackdown became sufficient to prevent the deportations, even if the violence would continue in Mexico for decades to come.

Like other researchers of slavery, Meinecke points out a major gap in the otherwise rich historical record: In most cases, the identities of those who were enslaved remain unknown. At the same time, she writes, Maya descendants have been identified in various locales throughout Cuba, including Havana, Camagüey, and Pinar del Río, to name a few places. Meinecke is hopeful that continued engagement with these descendants, and the recording of their oral histories, might one day reveal just who their ancestors were.

Bobcat Fire Chars Southern California – (my growing up back yard)

Bobcat Fire Chars Southern California

Source: Bobcat Fire Chars Southern California

The Bobcat fire has left its mark on the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired this image of the burn scar while the fire was still raging in Angeles National Forest on September 21, 2020. The false-color image combines shortwave infrared, near-infrared, and green light (OLI bands 7-5-2) to show active fires (bright red), scarred land that has been consumed by the fire (darker red), intact vegetation (green), and cities and infrastructure (gray).

LeBron James Responds to LA County Sheriff: ‘

Source: LeBron James Responds to LA County Sheriff: ‘

He began by dismissing Villanueva’s challenge, saying he had “zero comment,” then set a few things straight.

“I’ve never in my 35 years ever condoned violence. Never have. But I also know what’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong,” James told reporters. “I grew up in the inner city in a Black community in what we call the hood or the ghetto. […] I’ve seen a lot of accounts firsthand of a lot of Black people being racially profiled because of our color. And I’ve seen it throughout my whole life.

“And I’m not saying that all cops are bad […] But when you see the videos that’s going on and you can see all over the—not only my hometown but all over America—you continue to see the acts of violence toward my kind, I can’t do nothing but to speak about it and see the common denominator.

“But not one time have I ever said, ‘Let’s act violent toward cops.’ I just said that what’s going on in our community is not OK, and we fear for that, and we fear for our lives. It’s something that we go on every single day as a Black man and a Black woman and a Black kid, a Black girl. We fear. We fear that moment when we’re pulled over.”

King James ain’t tell not one lie.

He’s also not foolish enough to fall for Villanueva’s trap.

Like I said before: if the LA County Sheriff’s office made it a point to consistently treat Black people like human beings, we’d be a lot more apt to help bring this shooter to justice. This man expects the public to entrust him with our safety, but he might want to clean up his own raggedy-ass house first before he attempts to come for anyone.

Especially someone as astute as King James.

How indigenous peoples resist COVID-19 in South America · Global Voices

Source: How indigenous peoples resist COVID-19 in South America · Global Voices

The pandemic reached Brazilian indigenous communities in the midst of a battle to maintain basic rights. On August 18, dozens of Amazonian indigenous leaders denounced the social inequalities in their region by blocking a strategic road for transporting grains to the state of Mato Grosso. Armed with bows and arrows, the Kayapo Mekranoti settled on the BR-163 highway near the city of Novo Progresso, in northern Brazil, about 80km from the village where the Kayapo people live, for ten days.

The Kayapo sent a letter during the blockage to the Fundação Nacional do Índio (Funai), the government agency responsible for implementing policies concerning indigenous peoples in Brazil. In it, they claimed that they were being forced out from their lands and had little to no access to basic preventive measures against COVID-19.