WHO caves: Allows smallpox stockpiling for three more years
By Rady Ananda
Once again, the World Health Assembly failed to set a deadline for the destruction of smallpox samples, delaying discussion for another three years. Though it still affirms the need for live sample destruction, the two-day “contentious debate” (repeated for the last 25 years) ended on May 24 in a victory for bioweapons development in the U.S. and Russia.
“The retention of the existing stocks of smallpox virus are not required” to maintain and bolster current vaccine supplies, argues Dr. D. A. Henderson in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science. Through current technology, smallpox vaccines can be developed from the known genome. Live viruses are simply no longer needed.
The claimed need to protect against smallpox appears to be a ruse for the development of its use as a bioweapon. Given the history of its use in Native American genocide, the United States should be specifically banned from possessing the live virus. But, this is the same country that’s radiating with impunity the Middle East with depleted uranium.
PermalinkAmid bloody repression, Zelayas returns to Honduras
By Rady Ananda
Since Obama's first coup on June 28, 2009, when Honduras President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped and flown to a U.S. military base in Palmerola before being spirited out of the country in his pajamas, Honduras has endured lethal repression under the US-installed dictator, Porfirio Lobo. But today, May 28, 2011, Zelaya returned.
(Image: Porfirio Lobo and Manuel Zelaya shake hands on May 23, 2011)
On May 23rd, Colombia president Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuela president Hugo Chavez brokered a deal that allowed Zelaya to return so that Honduras will be readmitted to the Organisation of American States, thus gaining access to international "aid" funds.
‘America’s’ Fascist Paradigm & the Myth of Democracy
Larry Pinkney
“Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country [America], for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria.”-Howard Zinn
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”-Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]
A woefully uninformed and/or a perniciously misinformed populace will, in the distorted name of ‘patriotism,’ repeatedly commit the most horrendous atrocities. Such people do not recognize the precariousness of their own existence, the fleeting nature of their own humanity, or the preciousness of Mother Earth and the rest of the global human family. Such people provide fertile soil for fascism to take root and grow. This is the stark reality for an enormous amount of the population of the United States of America, who has been psychologically, institutionally, and systemically trained to be ahistorical and to cling to systemic mythology rather than reality, no matter how obvious such reality might be.
Can the UN be Trusted to Grant Long Overdue Statehood to Palestinians?
Stuart Littlewood
Hamas don’t think so… Do you?
One of Hamas's top men, Mahmoud al-Zahar, says he doesn't trust the United Nations to hand statehood to the Palestinians.
Dr al-Zahar notes http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?fromval=2&cid=23&frid=23&seccatid=23&eid=13883 that Bush promised an independent state and Obama can’t even stop the illegal settlement-building. There has been a long list of disappointments with the international community.
Asked whether Hamas was willing to accept the existence of the Zionist entity, al-Zahar replied: "The question is whether Israel is ready to accept the Palestinian state..."
It is interesting to see Dr al-Zahar speaking up more. A founder of Hamas and a member of its 'politburo', he is listed as the government's foreign minister and was the Resistance movement’s first press officer back in 1987.
He’s regarded as a hard-liner. But who wouldn't be if he'd suffered as cruelly at the hands of the Israeli regime as this man. Al-Zahar was expelled in 1992 (along with Ismail Haniyeh) to South Lebanon and subsequently targeted for assassination. In 2003 an Israeli F-16 bombed his home killing his eldest son and seriously injuring his wife. In 2007 another Israeli air-strike killed his youngest son.
Wisconsin Judge Strikes Down Anti-Union Law
by Stephen Lendman
Since taking office on January 3, Republican Governor Scott Walker waged war on public workers and their unions, aiming to restrict collective bargaining rights to wage negotiations before ending them altogether.
He also demanded draconian health insurance and pension contribution increases, doubling them for state employees during hard times when they're already strapped to make ends meet. Doing so called for pay cuts ranging from 8 - 20% ahead of more planned reductions coming.
So why are they so awesomely beautiful?
Raymond Ponzini
Most men wish they had a beautiful woman to share life with, and when I say beautiful I’m not referring to the women of Hollywood. The majority of men have never seen a Colombian woman and don’t know much about them. Colombia has been wracked by revolution and unrest for the past 63 years, and only has a population of 45 million people, as compared to America’s 308 million.
One will question everything about the American media's standard of beauty after seeing the women of Colombia. That isn’t to say that American women aren't also beautiful, but there is something about the Colombian woman, a kind of extreme primal beauty, and many Colombian women retain their beautiful appearance well into their fifties.
More Myth than Massacre at Srebrenica
by Stephen Lendman
Headlines explaining former Serbian General Ratko Mladic's May 27 arrest allege his 1995 responsibility for massacring 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. True or false is at issue. More on that below.
Meanwhile, inflammatory accounts already convicted him by accusation, including New York Times writers Dan Bilefsky and Doreen Carvajal headlining, "Serbia Says Jailed Mladic Will Face War Crimes Trial," saying:
Arresting him "signal(ed) Serbia's intention of finally escaping the isolation it brought on itself during the Balkan wars," ones Western media, including The Times, consistently misreported on throughout the 1990s, culminating in NATO's 1999 war of aggression, falsely called humanitarian intervention.
How Progressives Can Take Back America
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Many 'progressives' who voted for Obama expected a 'savior'. There are none! The best strategy left to disappointed progressives is to take back the party many believe abandoned them. I was among those who believed Clinton should have taken a stronger stand in defense of liberal and/or progressive values. I despised 'triangulation'.
My biggest disappointment was Janet Reno's attack on the Branch-Davidians in Waco, an unlawful attack violating federal and state laws --most egregiously --the presumption of innocence and every due process clause known to exist anywhere at any time to include our own 14th Amendment
Is the Arab Spring spreading to US Congressional staffs?
Franklin Lamb, Beirut
Millions of American voters were offended this week by the vulgar display on Capitol Hill which witnessed the annual rite of nearly 2/3’s of Members on Congress stumbling over one another at the annual AIPAC Conference in order to ingratiate themselves with their hosts and to protect their sinecures.
Equally nauseating to many was what some on Capitol Hill are calling “Congressional Black Tuesday” when they assert Congress cheapened its status in American and foreign eyes and fouled itself by taking the role of undignified cheerleaders for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during his appearance before a joint session of Congress, an invitation normally reserved for august occasions and accomplished personages.
Cleaning up City Squares in Democratic Spain
By Pablo Ouziel
On Friday the 27th of May, five days after an overwhelming victory by centre-right political parties in the local and regional elections across Spain, the country woke up to the bitter reality of how nonviolent movements calling for economic democracy, political justice and peace are going to be dealt with by the country’s police forces in this new era of right-wing political dominance.
Just twenty-four hours after Spain’s largest telecom company, Telefonica, announced a new round of layoffs affecting 8500 people, 25% of the work force, and as the G8 is meeting in Deauville, France, to discuss amongst other things the discontent sweeping across Europe, the Catalan police force – the Mossos d’Esquadra – following orders from the Town Hall’s new Catalan Nationalist Party (CiU) government, surrounded the nonviolent citizens camped at the Plaza Cataluña in Barcelona’s city centre. Armed with full riot gear, batons and machine-guns with rubber bullets, the police kettled in the protestors, making it impossible for them to leave or others to enter.
XML Feeds
