Updates from July, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • InI 14:03 on July 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Martial Law and the Militarization of Public Health: The Worldwide H1N1 Flu Vaccination Program By Michel Chossudovsky 

    26 July, 2009 — Global Research

    “The flu season is upon us. Which type will we worry about this year, and what kind of shots will we be told to take? Remember the swine flu scare of 1976? That was the year the U.S. government told us all that swine flu could turn out to be a killer that could spread across the nation, and Washington decided that every man, woman and child in the nation should get a shot to prevent a nation-wide outbreak, a pandemic.”  (Mike Wallace, CBS, 60 Minutes, November 4, 1979)

    “The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines — thimerosal — appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children….

    “It’s hard to calculate the damage to our country — and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases — if Third World nations come to believe that America’s most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It’s not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America’s enemies abroad.” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vaccinations: Deadly Immunity, June 2005)

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  • InI 13:43 on July 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Iran: Whose side are you on? By William Bowles 

    coffee-head_small.jpgI have been reading, with much despair and a deal of consternation, the torrent of ‘analysis’ coming out of ‘left’ field about which, if any, side to support in the ongoing struggles in Iran and, at the end of the day, a good deal more is revealed about the ‘left’ in the West than the situation in Iran.

    Typically, the ‘left’ has much ‘advice’ to offer Iran, yet the real issue for us, here in the ‘developed’ world is what are we going to do about our governments. Yet such arrogance is not new, it has its roots in the ideology of racism which unfortunately permeates all of us here in the so-called developed world. We look outward instead of inward, where the issues we really need to confront, reside. Let the Iranian people get on with sorting out their own ruling class, they don’t need us to ‘guide’ them.

    It is imperative to separate the issue of Western involvement in events from the distinctly Iranian issues of class, religion, gender and so forth, that regardless, have their causes (and solutions) in Iran. This is not say that Western involvement/interference doesn’t affect events and end up being part of the process, but then this is precisely the problem we in the West have to confront: How to separate out the effects of our incessant meddling in other countries’ affairs from the indigenous processes? So, whatever happened to analysis, class, economic, social and otherwise?

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  • InI 13:28 on July 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    On the Right of Resistance By Ramzi Kysia 

    27 July, 2009 – http://www.FreeGaza.org

    “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu

    We live in an era defined by its brutality. Our challenge is whether to accept this – or to take the risks necessary to transform our world commons in beloved community.

    A year ago this August, forty-four ordinary people from seventeen different countries sailed to Gaza in two, small wooden boats. We did what the world would not do – we broke through the siege of Gaza. Over the last year the Free Gaza Movement has organized seven more voyages, successfully arriving to Gaza on five separate occasions. Ours remain the only international ships to reach the Gaza Strip in over forty-two years.

    In the Middle-East, the struggle for justice is an uncertain endeavour in the best of times. On all sides human rights workers are beset with difficulties and distress. The Arab states are tyrannies, their peoples subject to secret police, arbitrary arrest, torture, and oppression. Within their societies, the Arab world is equally fractured by ethnic and class tensions, poverty, and political stagnation. From the outside, from the West, the Middle-East faces both open and covert acts of intimidation, intervention, economic destabilization, and even war, invasion, and mass killings.

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  • InI 08:50 on July 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    How Many Leftists Are "United for Iran"? 

    26 July, 2009 — MRZine – Monthly Review

    [I do not normally publish unattributed material but I felt this was worth ‘throwing into the mix’. Since then I have found out that it’s written by Yoshie F., whoever that is. The Ed.]

    “8,000 people at the event in Paris, 4,000 in Stockholm, 3,000 in Amsterdam, more than 2,500 in Washington DC, 2,500 in New York, 2,000 in London. . . ,” says United4Iran.org, the sponsor of the global day of action on 25 July 2009.  The low numbers1 (in marked contrast to the high turnouts of protests against Israel’s recent assault on Gaza) suggest that few non-Iranian leftists bothered to show up.

    While a number of leftists have made impassioned pleas for solidarity with Iran’s Green Movement, (throwing themselves into an obligatory intra-left battle royal that has, alas, eclipsed any battle against the illegitimate authority of unelected clerics in Iran), most leftists still appear to find it — how shall we put it? — on balance inadvisable to join such protests against the Iranian government as United4Iran’s, devoid as they are of an anti-imperialist point of unity emphasizing “Hands Off Iran” as much as — nay more than — criticisms of the Iranian government.

    It should be also noted that international leftists were evidently unmoved by an offer of free “Free Iran” t-shirts courtesy of American Apparel.  We find that most meritorious.  Let it never be said that international leftists fail to valiantly resist hipster capitalism.

    By the way, it has also come to our attention that a notorious unrepentant Marxist and self-appointed scourge of “flunkies for Ahmadinejad” apparently refused to attend any of the United for Iran protests, curtly dismissing the whole Dutch-linked2 enterprise as “Darfur-like crapola.”

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  • InI 08:19 on July 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Venezuela: Class Struggle Heats up over Battle for Workers’ Control By Federico Fuentes 

    26 July, 2009Green Left Weekly

    Caracas – On July 22, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez again declared his complete support for the proposal by industrial workers for a new model of production based on workers’ control.

    This push from Chavez, part of the socialist revolution, aims at transforming Venezuela’s basic industry. However, it faces resistance from within the state bureaucracy and the revolutionary movement.

    Presenting his government’s “Plan Socialist Guayana 2009-2019″, Chavez said the state-owned companies in basic industry have to be transformed into “socialist companies”.

    The plan was the result of several weeks of intense discussion among revolutionary workers from the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG). The CVG includes 15 state-owned companies in the industrial Guayana region involved in steel, iron ore, mineral and aluminium production.

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  • InI 08:06 on July 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Venezuela: Rumor may herald things to come given mighty interests in our troubled region! By Jutta Schmitt 

    26 July, 2009 — VHeadline

    University of Los Andes (ULA) senior lecturer in political sciences, Jutta Schmitt writes: Two days ago, on July 24 (Bolívar’s birthday and national holiday in Venezuela) a cellphone text message circulated nationwide that reached me in the afternoon hours and that read: “Desmontaron plan conspirativo de la fuerza aerea contra el proceso revolucionario. Detenido ex jefe de la DIM. ¡Alerta! ¡Ruédalo!” (translation: Conspiracy plan of the air force against the revolutionary process dismantled. Ex chief of Military Intelligence arrested. Alert. Pass it on.)

    (See, BREAKING NEWS: Venezuela is beset this weekend by rumors of a possible conspiracy or coup)

    When asking the person I got it from for the original source of this message, she said she had received it earlier that day from her sister, who, in turn, got it from somebody in Caracas. As one has to be extremely careful with this kind of messages we checked back with a common friend and government insider in Caracas, who has a sound, critical attitude towards what is going on in the administration but who nevertheless keeps fighting to eradicate the vices and bad practices.

    • Our friend discarded the message as a rumor with the intent to emotionally weaken grassroots Chavistas and said that, usually, if a conspiracy has actually come to be dismantled, names would appear.

    With regard to the specific moment this kind of message appears, I would say it’s “embedded” in the re-inforcement of a general campaign to weaken leftist-reformist governments in the region and to break the chain of events that point to an alternative shaping of the politico-economic landscape.

    I am thinking of the implications of ALBA, specifically the launching of its own monetary system with a common currency, the Sucre, which — apart from being a powerful message to the North — is a remarkable intent to give a concrete response to the international financial crisis.

    Also, I am thinking of the issue of the re-thinking of intellectual and industrial property rights within the ALBA framework in order to break the criminal monopoly of the big pharmaceutical giants, under the premise that public health is not only a human right but a matter of “national” (or regional) security, which has the big pharmaceutical companies screaming and who have reportedly backed the recent coup in Honduras.

    • One of the first things the coupsters in Honduras did was to consider its immediate withdrawal from ALBA, which points exactly to where the reason for the coup lies.

    In any case, and what I’m trying to say here is: that there is, of course, a big picture that provides the context for analysing the whens and whys of rumors of the kind above mentioned.

    A rumor is not only such, but may, indeed, announce things to come given the mighty interests involved in our troubled region.

    With all the problems, vices and malpractices existent in the current administration I still consider President Chavez as the very centerpiece for change in Venezuela and Latin America, and all those who are tirelessly working to make it happen, against all odds.

    Jutta Schmitt

    jutta@franzlee.org
    http://www.vheadline.com/spanish
    http://www.vheadline.com/espanol
    http://www.vheadline.com/español
    Our editorial statement reads:

    VHeadline.com Venezuela is a wholly independent e-publication promoting democracy in its fullest expression and the inalienable right of all Venezuelans to self-determination and the pursuit of sovereign independence without interference. We seek to shed light on nefarious practices and the corruption which for decades has strangled this South American nation’s development and progress. Our declared editorial bias is most definitely pro-Constitutional, pro-Democracy and pro-VENEZUELA.

    — Roy S. Carson, Editor/Publisher Editor@VHeadline.com

    telephone USA: Houston TX: 713-893-1433

     
  • InI 06:55 on July 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Khalid Amayreh – The Kaddumi Bombshell – Arafat Assassinated? 

    25 July, 2009 — Palestine Think Tank

    arafat.jpgAccusations of conspiracy to murder continue to reverberate across the Palestinian arena, threatening to break the Fatah movement in two, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank

    Farouk Kaddumi’s recent bombshell accusations that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his aide, former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan, had connived with Israel to murder late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continue to reverberate throughout the Palestinian arena.

    The allegations made by the second highest-ranking leader of the Fatah organisation during an impromptu press conference in Amman last week, have overshadowed the Hamas-Fatah rift and even the standoff over Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank. The increasingly ugly showdown between Fatah’s two divergent camps is already polarising the group at all levels, including the grassroots level, with activists pointing fingers of accusation at either Kaddumi or Abbas.

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  • InI 06:29 on July 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    US Escalates War Plans In Latin America By By Rick Rozoff 

    23 July, 2009 — Global ResearchStop NATO

    US Military: After Iraq, Latin America

    On June 29 US President Barack Obama hosted his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe at the White House and weeks later it was announced that the Pentagon plans to deploy troops to five air and naval bases in Colombia, the largest recipient of American military assistance in Latin America and the third largest in the world, having received over $5 billion from the Pentagon since the launching of Plan Colombia nine years ago.

    Six months before the Obama-Uribe meeting outgoing US President George W. Bush bestowed the US’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, on Uribe as well as on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

    A press account of the time expressed both shock and indignation at the White House’s honoring of Uribe in writing that “Despite extra-judicial killings, paramilitaries and murdered unionists, Colombia’s President Uribe has won the US’s highest honor for human rights.” [1]

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  • InI 19:24 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Evo Morales: United States took part in the coup d’état in Honduras 

    23 July, 2009 — Bolivia Rising

    La Paz, Jul 23. ABN.- United States took part in the coup d’état carried out against the President of Honduras, Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales, because they did not do anything to prevent it and they are doing nothing to make possible his return as Head of State, said this Thursday the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales.

    In a press conference with local journalists and foreign correspondents, Morales said that he was convinced that ‘Barack Obama and the imperialism that still have its tentacles in that Administration to carry out hegemonic and anti-democratic actions in the world are not the same.’

    He said that there are evidences of the U.S participation because of the omission at the events happening in Honduras.

    ‘The international community is following closely this issue and the putschists should take into account that keeping that unconstitutionality in the Central American country is only damaging its people,’ he emphasized.

    Morales added that Honduras people’s demand have passed from the restitution of the democratic process to the summoning of a Constituent Assembly, aimed at deepening the transforming processes to benefit the people.

    Bolivia’s President urged the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) to declare themselves about the violations to the press of freedom happening in Honduras, where diverse radio stations and TV channels have been closed by the putschists.

    ‘When they denounced wrongly that the freedom of press was being violated in Bolivia, the IAPA Director Board came to the country to realize that was not true, but when there are in Honduras flagrant violations to that right, they remain quiet and do nothing,’ he said.

    The Head of State also made reference of the steps that has started to make the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) to make that the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean can count on an instrument for the integration and economic development based on the spirit of complementarity and not competitiveness, as it happens on the Free Trade Treaty promoted unilaterally by United States.

    ‘The ALBA has defeated the proposal of the Free Trade Area of the Americas proposed by United States. The Trade Treaty for the Peoples will do the same with the United States’ Free Trade Treaty,’ Morales said.

    Likewise, he commented that the next Presidential Summit of the Alba to take place in Bolivia in September will probably change its scheduled date, because it coincides with the meeting of the United Nations meeting, to which most of the presidents will attend.

    Morales stated that there commissions already working to draft agreements to be signed by the residents of El Chapare, where the ALBA meeting will take place, on economy, politics, and the role of the Armed Forces on the security and development of the country.

    In addition, the President of Bolivia said that he will propose a project to create a National Security School with a doctrine of defending people’s and not others’ interests, as it is the case of the School of the Americas of United States, where the military were trained to carry out coups against democracies.

    Finally, Morales stated that the Bolivian Armed Forces have moved into a new stage of full identification with their people and their development; for that reason, the army participate and make decisions on diverse State projects.

    Posted by Bolivia Rising on Sunday, July 26, 2009

     
  • InI 15:51 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    BREAKING NEWS: Venezuela is beset this weekend by rumors of a possible conspiracy or coup 

    26 July, 2009 — VHeadline

    VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes:  Venezuela is beset this weekend by rumors of a possible conspiracy or coup which have NOT yet been commented upon by official sources although they have been denied by the pro-government website Aporrea.org and state-owned Venezolana de Television (VTV) commentator Mario Silva.

    • • In an email to VHeadline from US-Venezuelan lawyer Eva Golinger, she says the prevailing rumors of a conspiracy or coup d’etat are “Ridiculous! There are no blackouts or problems with internet connections or phones!” and offers as evidence the fact that she has web access from her San Bernadino (Caracas) home.  Eva adds: “There is no coup … everything here is under control. In Honduras there is a coup and we are quite worried about it!” She insists “…we Chavistas and socialists are existent!”

    Nevertheless, reports filed with great difficulty from elsewhere in Caracas and across Venezuela speak worryingly of repeated electricity blackouts and disastrous telephone connections with internet connections often reduced to 2-3 Kps as grassroots Venezuelans strive to find out who is in charge of their destinies on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis.  Quite frankly, many thousands of Venezuelans do NOT know what to believe.

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  • InI 10:57 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Decline of Manufacturing and Machine Tools, and the Future of American Industry and the Working Class By Dan La Botz 

    The U.S. economy continued in a deep recession and hopes for a rapid recovery faded as new national unemployment figures of 9.5 percent were announced early this month.  If one includes discouraged workers and the underemployed (those with part-time jobs who would like full-time work) in the calculations, then the figure soars to 16.5 percent.  The Federal Reserve on July 15 projected an approaching jobless recovery with unemployment continuing to rise to 9.8 or even 10.1 percent this year.1 Why has the economy not recovered more rapidly as many economists, pundits, and politicians predicted it would?

    The economy remains stagnant in large measure because during the last several decades the process of globalization has restructured American manufacturing industries in ways that have reduced their weight and significance in the economy and society.  Investment in manufacturing in the United States has declined, while investment abroad has grown.  The industrial worker core (factory workers) had been declining for some time, a result of both new technology and offshoring, and now the decline has become precipitous.2

    The statistics tell the story.  In 1960 out of a total non-farm workforce of 54,274,000, there were 15,687,000 manufacturing workers representing 29 percent of the total.  By 2009 out of a total of 134,333,000 non-farm workers, there were only 12,640,000 manufacturing, representing just 9 percent of the total.  That is, industrial workers fell in the last fifty years from almost one-third of all workers to less than 10 percent.3

    Now this long-term trend has been accentuated and punctuated by an economic crisis that marks the end not only of the recent period of expansion, but perhaps the end of an era of U.S. predominance in the world market, with dramatic implications for unions and workers.

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  • InI 10:21 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    "Me Detain Zelaya? What Are You Saying!" By Honduras Coup 2009 

    Today in passing, a Honduran colleague told me that the latest news was that the national police were on strike because they had not been paid and that, when the de facto regime’s designate to run the Treasury, Gabriela Nuñez, said she would get them back pay, they said they would refuse to accept it.

    The story is less important as a statement of fact, although AFP reports today confirm that at least some of the National Police joined the national strike today demanding extra pay for the work created by the coup (!), and Telesur reportedly interviewed a “police official” who said the police would stay in their stations, and not carry out orders to detain Zelaya.

    Rather, I offer the story — complete with the second half about rejecting payment from the de facto regime, for which I have no independent support — as evidence of the hopes Hondurans waiting for some turning point in their quest for restoration of the constitutional government are placing in the police or military changing sides.

    How widespread police participation in the national strike might have been is an open question.  The pro-coup Honduran paper La Tribuna said the strike was limited to a single station, accounting for 200 officers.  AFP reported mixed findings:

    In the streets of Tegucigalpa, police were not observed, while many public buildings remained guarded by military officers.  Nonetheless, in the traffic stops installed on the route toward the Nicaraguan border there were police working together with soldiers, as confirmed by journalists of the AFP.

    But the most interesting report in this vein comes from La Vanguardia of Spain and provides the title for this post.  Here, for the non-Spanish speakers, is a translation of the direct quotes from police interviewed by reporter Joaquim Ibarz in the border town of Los Manos:

    Alejandro Diaz, chief inspector of police: “Ha, ha, ha” . . . “Me detain him? Ha, ha, ha. What are you saying!”

    Lieutenant Colonel Juan Ramón Gavilán Soto, in charge of the military outpost: “We don’t have orders to detain him, nor are we here for that.  We should only guard security and avoid disturbances.”

    What might such isolated reports tell us about the actual situation on the ground?  It is hard to know how they will translate into action once President Zelaya passes the border.  But the consensus among the Central Americans here in Costa Rica has been that it will take the police and military deciding not to support the de facto regime for there to be any chance of restoration of the legitimate government.


    This article was first published by the Honduras Coup 2009 blog on 23 July 2009; it is reproduced here for educational purposes.


     
  • InI 10:08 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Branding “Free Iran” 

    By the way, do you know that you can get free “Free Iran” t-shirts, “donated by American Apparel, a company that supports liberty and open minded thinking by people worldwide”?

    Supporting all Iranian People and their freedom

    T-shirts were donated by American Apparel, a company that supports liberty and open minded thinking by people worldwide.

    Free Iran

    Pick up your FREE shirt on July 25th in Los Angeles

    For rally locations please visit http://www.united4iran.org

    Distributing locations in Los Angeles

    American Apparel – Westwood Village
    1060 Westwood Blvd. LA, CA 90024

    Phantom Galleries LA/ EVFA
    5412 Wilshire Blvd LA, CA 90036

    Monday – Friday 12 PM – 6 PM

    Saturday 12 PM – 5 PM

    Levantine Cultural Center
    5998 W. Pico Blvd. LA, CA 90035

    Craft and Folk Art Museum
    5814 Wilshire Blvd. LA, CA 90036

    Online orders: http://www.sociarts.com
    *All T-shirts are for free. Standard shipping and handling charges apply.

    DISCLAIMER: The T-shirt campaign and all its affiliates do not support any political groups.

    Cf. Jim Straub, “Who’s Your Daddy?  Dov Charney Serves Up Paternalism with a Creepy Smile at American Apparel HQ” (Clamor 38, Fall 2006).

     
  • InI 09:44 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Iran: Riding the "Green Wave" at the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and Beyond by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson 

    25 July, 2009 — MRZine – Monthly Review

    There are many problems with the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s “Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis,” issued by the CPD on July 7, and widely circulated since then.1

    The CPD adopted this format, it tells us, because “some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need for solidarity with the anti-Ahmadinejad movement,” and the CPD believes “those questions need to be squarely addressed.”

    We believe, on the contrary, that the CPD’s 13 questions-and-answers do little to clarify issues related to Iran’s June 12 presidential election and its tumultuous aftermath, and even less to help leftists and “American progressives” decide how they should respond to them.

    As we try to show below, when stripped of its didactic format, this Q&A amounts to little more than an emotional plea to its target audience to surrender what remains of their leftist instincts (long under siege in the States, and shrinking rapidly), and join its authors2 for a ride on the “green wave” of yet another color-coded campaign that fits well with one of their government’s longest-running programs of destabilization and regime change.  We believe that any “confusion” felt by the left and “American progressives” towards these events is a confusion that has been sown by our would-be instructors.3

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  • InI 07:27 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Global Research Selected Articles 17-25 July, 2009, Swine Flu, Global Power and the Economy 

    24 July, 2009 — Global Research

    Swine Flu, Global Power and the Economy Selected Articles

    GLOBAL RESEARCH CHALLENGE

    The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
    Book by Michel Chossudovsky
    – 2009-07-29

    Award Winning Movie: “SUPERPOWER”:
    Order Now from Global Research
    – by Barbara-Anne Steegmuller – 2009-07-27

    Torture: The Risks of a Partial Prosecution
    – by David Swanson – 2009-07-24

    “Breaking the Silence:” Testimonies of Israeli Soldiers
    – by Stephen Lendman – 2009-07-24

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  • InI 07:22 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    World Prepares to Dump the Dollar Robert Morley 

    21 July, 2009 — theTrumpet.com

    American economists think the world can’t afford to let go of the dollar’s reserve currency status. The world is about to teach them differently.

    What do China, India, Brazil, Russia, France and Germany have in common? These countries most often can’t agree on anything. But they are united in one strange—and ominous—way. They blame the United States for wrecking the global economy. And they think the dollar is the wrecking ball.

    One rock-solid, foundational belief underpins almost all economic theory in America: faith in the dollar’s unassailable status as the world’s reserve currency. Foreigners hold so many dollars that they can’t afford to stop buying them, the theory goes. Therefore the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is sound. But the dollar is now coming under a concentrated attack. Are American economists about to get schooled?

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  • InI 06:49 on July 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Real News Network – Biden pushes Bush NATO policy 

    Bio
    Eric Margolis is a journalist born in New York City and holding degrees from Georgetown the University of Geneva, and New York University. During the Vietnam War he served as a US Army infantryman. Margolis is the author of War at the Top of the World –- The Struggle for Afghanistan and Asia is a syndicated columnist and broadcaster whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The International Herald Tribune, Mainichi Shimbun and US Naval Institute Proceedings. Margolis is an expert of military affairs, a former instructor in strategy and tactics in the US Army, and a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan. Eric Margolis’ books have been published in the US, Canada, Britain, and India. He often appears and contributes to national and international news items for outlets such as CNN, ABC,CBC and Voice of America to the Wall Street Journal and Maninichi-Tokyo. He broadcasts regularly on foreign affairs for Canadian TV (TV Ontario and CBC), radio, and has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, and PBS


     
  • InI 08:21 on July 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    GazaFriends: Free Gaza needs your help to send more boats to Gaza 

    24 July, 2009 — http://www.freegaza.org/

    We need your help to prepare the next mission to Gaza

    Dear friends,
    As part of our Summer of Hope campaign, the Free Gaza Movement was planning to make 3 boat voyages to Gaza this summer, one in June, one in July and one in August. On our July and August voyages we had planned to take into Gaza all of the books that you have sent us as part of our Right to Read campaign (see below for update).

    Due to Israel’s hijacking of our boat, the Spirit of Humanity last month, we have had to change our plans. No, we are not backing down. Now, more than ever, we believe it’s critical to continue these missions, and demonstrate the power of the international civilian community to stand up to cruelty, human rights abuses, and oppression. If we let Israel’s attack on our last mission stop us, we will be giving in to the violence that is perpetrated 100-fold against the occupied Palestinian people. The risks that we take by getting on these boats are nothing compared to the existential threats that Palestinians face every day of their lives. But to make this next voyage happen, we need your help urgently! We need to raise a substantial sum of money and engage in considerable outreach over the next few weeks in order to be able to send the next mission before the weather changes and the Mediterranean Sea starts becoming unpredictable.

    Please share this with friends and family and decide on one or more ways you can get involved. We will not be able to do this without you.

    Suggestions for things that you can do:

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  • InI 15:44 on July 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo By Norman Solomon 

    “I want to cover everybody,” President Obama said at his news conference Wednesday night. “Now, the truth is that unless you have a — what’s called a single-payer system, in which everybody’s automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual. . .”

    The same conventional wisdom keeping single payer off Washington’s table has been spinning for various “reform” plans with such accelerated RPMs that at this point the nation’s “healthcare debate” is suffering from a severe case of vertigo.

    “The overwhelming majority of Americans want healthcare, but millions of them can’t afford it,” Obama told the assembled journalists. “So the plan that has been — that I’ve put forward and that — what we’re seeing in Congress would cover, the estimates are, at least 97 to 98 percent of Americans. There might still be people left out there who, even though there’s an individual mandate, even though they are required to purchase health insurance, might still not get it, or despite a lot of subsidies, are still in such dire straits that it’s still hard for them to afford it. And we may end up giving them some sort of hardship exemption.”

    That may sound good. But it’s in the service of an agenda for “healthcare reform” that’s seriously flawed.


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  • InI 15:18 on July 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Real News Network – Zelaya just one of millions 

    23 July, 2009 — Honduran coup

    They didn’t overthrow Zelaya when he raised the minimum wage, de facto president Roberto Micheletti even voted with Zelaya in approving the Chavez-sponsored ALBA initiative, but the day he went to ask the people to get involved the military kidnapped and expelled him. Canadian gold miners, US military bases, and the Honduran oligarchy all have something to fear at this time, but it isn’t necessarily the return of Manuel Zelaya. A look at the time-line of the coup shows a pretty conclusive picture of the specter of participatory democracy as the catalyst to the Honduran coup.

    Bios
    Jari Dixon Herrera is a district attorney with the Honduran Attorney Generals office, and the Vice President of the Association of Honduran Government Attorneys (Asocación de Fiscales de Honduras). In 2008, he gained national fame for coordinating a hunger strike by lawyers who work for the Attorney Generals office, to protest widespread corruption inside the legal system.
    Marvin Ponce is a member of Honduras’ National Congress, representing the Democratic Union party (UD). He has been a vocal leader of the anti-coup resistance and was selected to speak on behalf of a coalition of organizations in Washington.
    Grahame Russell is the Co-Director of Rights Action. A non-governmental organization based in Canada and Guatemala, Rights Action seeks to promote community development along with environmental and human rights through the direct funding of community organizations in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Southern Mexico. It also plays a key role maintaining interested parties informed about the situation on the ground in the communities it partners with. Russell has been logging steady updates about the situation in Honduras on the Rights Action homepage at http://www.rightsaction.org.


     
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