According to the 2011 census, at least 720,000 of Venezuela’s 28 million inhabitants are indigenous, belonging to some 40 native peoples, and close to half a million live in rural indigenous areas, mainly in border regions.

Although the largest indigenous group (60 percent) is the Wayúu, an Arawak-speaking people who live on the Colombian-Venezuelan Guajira peninsula in the north, most of the native peoples are in the south of the country. Some groups have thousands of members but others only a few hundred, and their languages and ancestral knowledge are at risk of dying out.

The voracious search for gold in southern Venezuela, practiced by thousands of illegal miners under the protection of various armed groups, represents the greatest threat today to the lives of indigenous peoples, their habitat and their cultures, according to their organizations and human rights defenders. 

In this part of the Amazon jungle, “mining, violence, habitat destruction, death from disease and forced migration make up a context that indigenous people are calling a silent genocide,” researcher Aimé Tillet, who has worked in the area for many years, told IPS.

At the other end of the country, along the northwest border with Colombia, indigenous people are fighting for their territories, which has led to clashes and deaths in their attempts to recover ancestral lands, while they are often reduced to destitution.

There are common features of life in border regions that are home to indigenous peoples, such as neglect by the government, which fails to fulfill its duties in health, education, security, provision of food, fuel and transportation, supplies, communications and consultations with native peoples regarding the use of their land and resources.

The government foments mining activity and in 2016 decreed the “Orinoco Mining Arc” on the right bank of the Orinoco river – an area of 111,844 square kilometers, larger than Bulgaria, Cuba or Portugal. In parallel, it established an armed forces company, Camimpeg, to spearhead the mining of gold, diamonds, coltan and other conventional and rare minerals, in which the country is rich.

The local press has reported on the involvement of military and police units in the region in incidents related to mining activity that have sparked protests by indigenous people and human rights activists, ranging from deaths of native people in altercations to massacres in which “unknown groups” have killed dozens of people. Artisanal and illegal mining, in hundreds of deforested areas and along rivers contaminated with mercury used to extract gold from ore, are often controlled by criminal gangs that call themselves “syndicates” and that traffic in gold and supplies, as well as in people who work in the mines, who are often subjected to forced labor.

According to human rights groups, for some years now another danger has been Colombian guerrillas, particularly the National Liberation Army (ELN), which is involved in mining and other illegal activities in the southern state of Amazonas, as well as dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which laid down its arms under a 2016 peace deal. In the Sierra de Perijá mountains, home to three native peoples and part of the northern border between Colombia and Venezuela, the ELN has made inroads into indigenous communities, setting up camps, collecting “vacunas” – taxes or protection payment – from cattle ranchers, overseeing cattle smuggling and recruiting young people as guerrilla fighters.

In the “currutelas” or mining villages, young men and boys work extracting gold-rich sands, while women are employed to cook, sweep, wash and clean the camps, and are exploited sexually.

This situation, seen in the hundreds of mining camps in Amazonas and the southeastern state of Bolívar, which covers some 238,000 square kilometers, is aggravated in the case of indigenous peoples, lawyer Eduardo Trujillo, director of the Andrés Bello Catholic University’s Human Rights Center, which is conducting several studies in the area, told IPS.

“Under the control of armed groups, dynamics of violence are generated, with confrontations and deaths, and conditions of modern-day slavery, where omission translates into acquiescence on the part of the Venezuelan State,” Trujillo added.

In particular, indigenous women recruited to work in the camps “are caught up in a dynamic of violence: their work is not voluntary, sometimes they are not paid, and they are subjected to risks to their health and lives,” he said.

Mining in Venezuela contributes to the figures of the International Labor Organization (ILO), according to which more than 40 million people around the world are victims of modern-day slavery, 152 million are victims of child labor and 25 million are forced laborers.

The environmental organization Provita reports that 380,000 hectares have been deforested south of the Orinoco in the last 20 years, while the area dedicated to mining increased from 18,500 to 55,000 hectares between 2000 and 2020.

Riverbanks and headwaters have been especially affected, many in areas theoretically protected as national parks. Tillet stressed that, in addition to the environmental damage they suffer, these are areas of limited resources for subsistence, for which indigenous communities and miners are now competing.

“Because they depend on mining for an income, indigenous people are forced to abandon their traditional activities of planting, fishing and hunting, their diet deteriorates, malnutrition and diseases such as malaria increase, and they are forced to say goodbye to their land, to move and migrate,” said Tillet. The researcher said that health services, which are the responsibility of the State, have practically disappeared, and even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic, while education has collapsed as teachers move away and migrate, with the result that “children who should be in school now work in exploitative conditions in the mines.”

The Yanomami and Ye’kuana organizations said they were victims of selective killings, contamination of water with mercury, contagion from diseases and, in short, “a silent cultural genocide.”

Mining Destroys the Lives of Indigenous People in Venezuela | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

KPMG will pay one of the largest fines in UK audit history, after former staff forged documents and misled the regulator over audits for companies including the collapsed outsourcer Carillion. The FRC is separately investigating KPMG and former Carillion directors over the audit, and preparation of Carillion’s 2016 accounts.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) – which regulates accountants – confirmed the £14.4m settlement at a London tribunal hearing on Thursday, and said KPMG would also face a “severe reprimand” over the “extremely serious” misconduct related to employees’ false representations to the watchdog.

The tribunal upheld allegations by the FRC that KPMG and former staff created false meeting minutes and retroactively edited spreadsheets, before sharing those documents with the FRC.

KPMG’s total fine would have been worth £20m – the largest fine on record, ahead of the £15m fine issued to Deloitte in 2020 over its historic audits of the software company Autonomy – but the figure was reduced to £14.4m to reflect the accounting firm’s willingness to admit guilt.

“The misconduct found in this case is extremely serious,” Ellison told the tribunal. “It cuts at the very heart of the protection of the public interest in the respondents’ regulator, the FRC. It was misconduct deliberately aimed at deceiving AQR inspectors appointed by the FRC.”

The tribunal, which began in January, will consider over the coming weeks the penalties for individual KPMG staff, including one of its partners, Peter Meehan. The FRC recommended on Thursday that the 60-year-old be banned from the accounting and auditing sector for 15 years and face a fine of at least £400,000. The regulator also believes that three other KPMG staff – Alistair Wright, Richard Kitchen, and Adam Bennett – should each be excluded from the sector for 12 years and face a £100,000 fine. Pratik Paw, who was a more junior member of the team at the time of the misconduct, could face a four-year exclusion and a £50,000 fine.

 Tesco’s  chief executive Ken Murphy’s pay package included a £3.21m bonus, while the finance director, Imran Nawaz, earned a £1.24m bonus – taking his total to £5.4m for the year, including a £3.5m “golden hello” relating to bonuses he lost out on in leaving his former employer, Tate & Lyle.

TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said: “A Tesco customer assistant would have to work for 267 years to get what the Tesco boss was paid for just one year. “

Murphy’s and Nawaz’s pay is dwarfed by the total of £10.5m paid out to Tesco’s former finance director Alan Stewart in the past year, including £8.58m from cashing in share awards related to historic performance by the business that matured on his exit on top of £1.95m in pay. Former chief executive Dave Lewis also continues to benefit from his time at Tesco, with £1.89m from a deferred bonus and share award paid out last summer.

Tesco criticised as chief pockets £4.75m amid soaring prices | Tesco | The Guardian

 Volume 1 of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report said approximately 19 Federal Indian boarding schools accounted for more than 500 deaths. The number of recorded deaths is expected to rise as the department continues investigating 

From 1819 to 1969, the federal Indian boarding school system consisted of 408 federal schools across 37 states or then territories, including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii.

“…the federal Indian boarding school system deployed systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies in an attempt to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education, including but not limited to renaming Indian children from Indian to English names; cutting the hair of Indian children; discouraging or preventing the use of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian languages, religions and cultural practices; and organizing Indian and Native Hawaiian children into units to perform military drills…”

The report found boarding school rules were often enforced through “corporal punishment like solitary confinement, flogging, withholding food, whipping, slapping and cuffing.”

Preston S. McBride, an Indian boarding school historian and a Comanche descendent. McBride has found more than 1,000 student deaths at the four former boarding schools he has studied, and estimates the overall number of deaths could be as high as 40,000.

“Basically every school had a cemetery,” he said. “There are deaths at or deaths because of virtually every single boarding school.”

Those deaths were the result of everything from illness to abuse, McBride said, based on his review of historical records. Getting to the true number would take a significant amount of time and research, McBride said. “I think we have a long way to go.”

Hundreds Of Native American Children Died In U.S. Government-run Abusive Schools| Countercurrents

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott in a joint statement with the National Border Patrol Council protested about feeding migrant children in U.S. custody amid a national shortage of infant formula.

Carl Takei, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. commented “Gov. Abbott and NBPC are literally demanding that the government lock babies in cages and then starve them of the sustenance they need to survive,” I just can’t come up with the words to describe how despicable and inhumane this is.” He continued “I’m especially blown away by the explicit contrast this statement sets up between ‘our children’ (who are vulnerable, precious, and deserve survival) vs. the not-our-children who deserve to starve in our baby jails.” 

Texas Gov. Abbott’s Solution to Formula Shortage? Let Migrant Babies Starve (commondreams.org)

A new report out this week from the groups Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup found that plastic recycling rates have actually fallen in the US since the emergence of “advanced recycling” in 2018, from its highest ever point of 9% to less than 6% today, compared with a 66% recycling rate for paper.

“They’re finally kind of admitting that recycling hasn’t worked,” Beyond Plastics president Judith Enck said of groups like ACC and its members that have been lobbying against environmental protections. “And it doesn’t work by design. It’s not like they’re surprised by this. They knew all along it wouldn’t work.”

 A 2020 investigation from NPR and Frontline showed how companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Dow and Dupont were aware of the inefficacy of plastic recycling, yet they still strategized marketing campaigns that told a different story to the public.

In April, California attorney general Rob Bonta launched an investigation into ExxonMobil for its role in exacerbating the global plastic pollution crisis. Bonta says his investigation started with ExxonMobil because they’ve been a leader, in the plastics industry and in the messaging around recycling. A report out last year from the Mindaroo Foundation found that just 100 companies produce 90% of the world’s plastic pollution. It pinpointed ExxonMobil as the top producer in the world of single-use plastic. The International Energy Agency has  predicted that plastic production, which is forecasted to double by 2040, will be the biggest growth market for the oil industry over the next decade.

ExxonMobil said it is “focused on solutions” like building the first “commercial-scale advanced recycling technology” and that “meritless allegations like these distract from the important collaborative work that is under way”. But like regular old recycling, “advanced recycling” has so far shown little to no results.

Also known as pyrolysis or chemical recycling, the process entails using various chemical processes to turn plastic into other materials. The most common approach is warming plastic at very high heat to turn it into a low-grade fossil fuel, which can then be used either as fuel or as a feedstock for more plastic. The technology is still in its infancy, but early studies have found that like earlier versions of plastic recycling, the “ advanced” method is expensive, and that it’s difficult to collect and effectively recycle a wide variety of plastics. It also delivers few environmental benefits, not just because it’s used to create either fuel or more plastic, but also because the process itself is emissions intensive. One study commissioned by plastic manufacturers themselves found that advanced recycling generated more greenhouse gases than either landfilling plastic or burning it.

Bonta says he’d love to see advanced recycling work, but right now it’s just “words on paper”. A 2021 Reuters investigation found several examples of failed advanced recycling programs, noting that out of 30 projects operating around the world, all were either still operating on a modest scale or had shut down, and more than half were years behind schedule on previously announced commercial plans. A report from the Natural Resources Defense Council published in March noted that even when it “works” advanced recycling is not an environmentally friendly solution.

The American Chemistry Council, or ACC, a trade group for the chemical industry, has been pushing advanced recycling since China shut its borders to used plastic in 2018. The group has also been lobbying state governments to exempt their recycling process from various environmental regulations – 18 states have laws on the books that either side-step certain government oversight or designate advanced recycling facilities as eligible for subsidies. It’s part of a strategy former Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy called “getting ahead of government intervention”.

Exxon doubles down on ‘advanced recycling’ claims that yield few results | Plastics | The Guardian

 The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered multiple crises on  several fronts: the deaths of thousands of civilians, over 6 million refugees fleeing the country,  the destruction of heavily populated cities, the rise in military spending in Europe, energy shortages within the EU, a projected decline in development assistance to the world’s poorer nations; the demolition of schools and health-care facilities — and now the threat of hunger and starvation worldwide.

David Beasley, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), said last week: “Right now, Ukraine’s grain silos are full,” while “44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation…“The bullets and bombs in Ukraine could take the global hunger crisis to levels beyond anything we’ve seen before.”

Population-wise, that amounts to the entirety of Argentina.

WFP’s analysis has found that 276 million people worldwide were already facing acute hunger at the start of 2022. That number is expected to rise by 44 million people if the conflict in Ukraine continues, with the steepest rises in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ukraine had about 14 million tons in storage and available for export. But Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea ports has brought shipments to a standstill. More grain is stranded on ships unable to move because of the conflict.

Beasley warned, “… hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies. We’re running out of time and the cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine. I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where it’s desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine”.

Yields of staple crops were already down in many parts of the world because of the impacts of the climate crisis and other conflicts.

Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank, told IPS that Russia’s war against Ukraine and their war crimes will have consequences that will last for decades. 

“The war will only exacerbate the many crises the world is now facing—the biodiversity loss crisis, the health crisis, and the climate crisis. And because Ukraine and Russia provided so much food—and cooking oils and fertilizer—to other parts of the world, including the Global South, there will be a massive hunger crisis,” she warned.

Daniel Bradlow, Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, told IPS the war in Ukraine will have a devastating impact in Africa because many African countries import food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine.

Therefore, the war will lead to increase in food and fertilizer prices as well as shortages of food and fertilizer. The impact of the war will come on top of extreme weather events– droughts, floods– in various parts of the continent that will also have adverse impacts on food prices and supplies.

“Thus. it is likely that there will be increases in the number of people going hungry across the continent which will have tragic impacts on the development and wellbeing of children”.

Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam’s Policy Advisor on Food, Agriculture and Land, told IPS global hunger is soaring with the war in Ukraine seeing food prices skyrocket.

“This is catastrophic for people living in countries highly dependent on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. Countries like Yemen and Syria in the Middle East and Somalia and South Sudan in Africa where we are seeing people pushed beyond the brink of hunger,” she said.

The reason is a broken global food system, one that is unable to withstand crises and one that is built on inequality. Many poorer countries are unable – and are too often made unable – to produce enough food to feed their people. They must rely on food imports. This dependency is dangerous, she added.

“Countries should refrain from using food export bans. They just do more harm. Countries should ensure that food can move quickly from one country to another”.

“We need a food system that works for everybody. One that can stand against shocks such as rapid food inflation and one that is built on local small-scale family farming” she declared.

Russian Invasion Blamed for 44 Million People Marching Towards Hunger & Starvation | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 The UK currently use 17.5m hectares of farmland. Simon Fairlie, updating the earlier work of the ecologist Kenneth Mellanby finds that while a diet containing a moderate amount (less than we currently consume) of meat, dairy and eggs would require the use of 11m hectares of land (4m of which would be arable), a vegan diet would demand a total of just 3m. Not only do humans need no pasture, but we use grains and pulses more efficiently when we eat them ourselves.

This would enable more than 14m hectares of the land now used for farming to be set aside for nature. 

Alternatively, on a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200 million people.

While animal manure might return carbon to the soil, in other respects, contrary to the claims of some practitioners, it is not a great soil additive. One paper reports that the leakage of nitrogen from organic farms using animal manure is 37% worse than the leakage from conventional farming using artificial fertiliser. The problem is timing. While artificial fertiliser often releases its nutrients too quickly, manure releases its nutrients too slowly. If the crop is not to starve, the dung needs to be spread long before the maximum growth spurt. Even then, the plants are unlikely to receive all the nutrients they need to reach their full potential. Nitrogen from manure leaks both before and after crops are able to mop it up.

 An analysis by Yadvinder Malhi suggests that between 10 and 50 sq km of land is needed to support one hunter-gatherer, while 10 sq km of modern, productive farming can feed 4,000 people. 

Global food production has been comfortably beating population growth for 60 years. In 1961, there were 2,200 kcals a day available for every person on Earth. By 2011, this had risen to almost 2,900. Crop production as a whole has risen much higher: to an astonishing total of 5,400 kcal per person per day. But almost half these calories are lost, mainly through feeding the food to farm animals, but also through using it for other purposes (such as biofuels) and through waste. Even so, in principle, there is more than enough for everyone, if it were affordable and well distributed. So how come chronic hunger has been rising globally since 2015? It’s the result of a lethal combination of inequality and systemic instability in global food distribution.

George Monbiot: ‘On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200 million people’ | Books | The Guardian

 The world’s most valuable company is the giant Saudi Aramco, as soaring commodity prices swell profits at energy companies. Aramco, whose market capitalisation has climbed by a quarter this year to hit $2.43tn, stoked by the surge in oil prices since the Ukraine war began. Aramco is seeing bumper revenues and earnings, having doubled its profits last year. Aramco has a particularly low cost of production, as much of its oil is in easy-to-tap fields onshore or in shallow waters. That boosts profitability at the company, which is still 95% owned by the Saudi government.

Apple has lost its crown and was eclipsed on Wednesday night amid the ongoing rout on Wall Street. Shares in Apple, which had become the world’s first $3tn company in early January, sank another 5% on Wednesday, knocking its value down to $2.37tn (£1.94tn) – an 18% drop this year.

Saudi Aramco overtakes Apple as world’s most valuable company | Aramco | The Guardian

 Russia

Number of people arrested so far for participating in antiwar protests = 15,442 (including 100 indicted on criminal charges)

Number of people subjected to administrative penalties for ‘discrediting the armed forces’ = 993

Three people arrested for damaging giant letters Z, erected as war symbols

Molotov cocktails thrown at military recruitment centers in four towns and at a police bus in Moscow (used to detain protestors) 

Antiwar posters hung in Tver city center after surveillance cameras turned off 

Transparency poster hung from bridge in Perm with the old anarchist slogan: Peace to the Cottages, War on the Palaces (see illustration)

20—40% of contract soldiers who have returned from Ukraine refuse to go back

Women in Caucasus blocked a road, demanding that the authorities inform them of the fate of sons, brothers and husbands sent to fight in Ukraine  

Ukraine

Many men who went abroad temporarily to earn money and send it home are defying a new law requiring them to return to Ukraine within 15 days or face up to 10 years in prison. Many intend to bring out their families, renounce Ukrainian citizenship and settle permanently in other countries. 

In Khust in the west Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia, women are protesting outside the town’s military recruitment center. On April 30 about 50 women broke windows to get into the building. They accepted recruitment of their male relatives to ‘territorial defense’ units on the understanding that these were local units, but are angry that they have now been sent to fight in the Donbass, without even the necessary equipment. 

Source: https://aitrus.info/node/5963, May 11 via Ukraine war: resistance continues – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)