Q’eswachaka, the last Inca bridge that keeps communities together

Photo courtesy of Rutahsa Adventures www.rutahsa.com – published with permission by Leonard G. on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 1.0). (GV) – During the Inca empire, also known as Tawantinsuyo, ancient Peruvians developed a broad network of roads and bridges so the extensive territory could communicate. Of all the bridges that existed back then, the only one that remains today is the Q’eswachaka or Queshuachaca (literally, “rope bridge” in the Quechua language), which spans a narrow pass over the Apurímac River in the province of Canas, located in the southern region of Cusco. Ultimo puente…

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These Trump Staffers Left Their Financial Disclosure Forms Blank

United States (ProPublica) – Before accepting a position at the U.S. Department of the Interior last October, Benjamin Cassidy championed gun rights for nearly seven years as a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, collecting a peak annual salary of $288,333 for his work on Capitol Hill. The public wouldn’t know that by looking at Cassidy’s government financial disclosure report. The form, which he filed soon after taking a job as senior deputy director of the office of intergovernmental and external affairs, doesn’t list his old job at the NRA — or…

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US Turning Its Back on Human Rights

The US cited for its decision the council’s perceived bias toward Israel and a lack of institutional credibility. But the departure symbolizes a retreat from leadership on human rights abroad as human rights conditions at home have come under sharp criticism. The decision came just days after the UN high commissioner for human rights denounced the US practice of forcibly separating children from their migrant and asylum seeker parents at the US border. The US has also sought to increase the number of immigrants detained by requesting additional funding to…

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How to Survive a Flash Flood

(SurvivalSullivan) – Flash flooding is one of the most dangerous natural disasters you can find yourself in the midst of, because they are generally without warning and they happen, literally, in a flash. Every year there are occurrences and major ones cause death and destruction. In 2013, 5,000 people in Uttarakhand, India were killed, and in the same year 3,000 Sardinians were left homeless. One of the worst in United States history occurred in 1889 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, when a dam broke and killed 2,200. Watch this news report about…

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Reports Detail UK Tolerance for Post-9/11 Torture

(Sputnik) – The cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee of the British House of Commons has issued two reports conceding that the country’s intelligence agencies were complicit in the abduction, detention and torture of terrorism suspects to far greater degree than has previously been known. The reports dealt with the decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Panel members led by former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve pored over more than 40,000 declassified documents and received the testimony of both former detainees and employees of MI5 in the course of its investigation. In a press release accompanying the reports’ publication, the committee members claimed…

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`We Are Only Following the Law’ Doesn’t Explain Immigration Policy During Nazi Era or Now

United States (Conversation) – Holocaust historians’ first impulse is to reject comparisons between those dark decades and our present. We don’t want to be perceived as abusing history for political purposes, or engaging in overly emotional analyses. But then comes a moment when it’s not possible to avoid parallels. For me, that moment came two weeks ago. I study the American response to the Holocaust. I was preparing to deliver a conference paper on U.S. officials’ false claim that the nation’s inflexible immigration laws gave them no choice but to…

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A Proposal: Cut the Court

(Garrison) – Well, here we go again. On June 27, US Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, effective July 31. Cue crisis, as defined by President John F. Kennedy’s inaccurate characterization of the Chinese analog: “Two characters, one representing danger and the other, opportunity.” Democrats and Republicans have, for 30 years, alternated between anticipation and fear, depending on which party was in position to choose Kennedy’s successor. As a “swing vote” — reliably tied to neither party’s policy agenda — since the day he donned the robe in…

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Immigrant Children Shelter Mapping Project – Is There a Shelter Near You?

United States (ProPublica) – ProPublica found and mapped 97 facilities holding immigrant children, including shelters and foster care centers. As of June 26, 2,047 children remain separated from the parents who crossed the border with them. In addition to these children, these shelters were already home to an additional 8,886 children who crossed the border unaccompanied by older relatives before the “zero tolerance” policy was announced. The facilities include Casa Padre, a shelter based in a large former Walmart building in Brownsville, Texas, that is housing 1,450 children; a newly constructed tent city near the…

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The False Choice Between Family Separation and Detention

(HRW) – As US President Donald Trump ended his appalling mass family separation policy on the US southern border, he claimed a false choice: the US government either needs to separate families that cross the US border or detain them together. But family detention is not the best or only alternative to family separation – other approaches exist that are both just and fair. They are also much cheaper than detention. A problem the US faces is the high rates of no-shows at immigration court for  asylum seekers released without…

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Big Brands: the Missing Voice in the Fight to End Gender-Based Violence at Work

(OpenDemocracy) – In the last week of May and first week of June 2018, trade unions, governments, and employers convened at the International Labor Organization’s 107th Session of the International Labour Conference in Geneva to negotiate an international standard on gender-based violence. The ILO Tripartite Committee ultimately decided to move forward towards trying to adopt a convention and recommendation at the close of negotiations in 2019.  However, the position of employers at the negotiating table remained ambivalent and the voice of multinational brands was missing. Despite research by the ILO and others showing…

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