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by Prof. Michael Hudson
Global Research, April 29, 2009
I can hardly believe the news reports on Iceland’s election on Saturday, April 25. Evidently in an attempt to interest readers in an island few know or have cared much about, the papers tried to attract reader attention by talking about the “left” unseating the “right.” No doubt this political swing is going to continue for many years to come throughout the world. But for Iceland’s voters the issues were more pragmatic. Reckless neoliberal bank privatization is indeed the main problem, but the proposed responses are not inherently left or right as such. At issue is whether voters have become so desperate in the wake of crooks wrecking the financial system that they will seek a more stable currency (the euro) by joining Europe on terms that forfeit control over Iceland’s North Atlantic fishing waters and burden taxpayers with unprecedented public debt to compensate British, Dutch and other European bank depositors and speculators for their losses?
ABS-CBN News Online Beta
Agence France-Presse | 04/28/2009 3:22 PM
JAKARTA – Indonesian Heath Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said Tuesday the deadly swine flu virus could have been man-made, as she urged calm over its spread around the world.
The controversial minister did not elaborate but in the past she has said Western governments could be making and spreading viruses in the developing world to boost pharmaceutical companies’ profits.
[…]
via Indonesian minister says swine flu could be man-made | ABS-CBN News Online Beta.
h/t: CLG
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Mexico City on lockdown to slow swine flu spread
BBC NEWS | Americas | Swine flu virus kills child in US
Ron Paul on the Recent Swine Flu Scare
Washington’s Blog: Industrial Hog Farming Is Just Like Wall Street
Stuff.co.nz
Reuters
30/04/2009
A Spanish judge has started a criminal investigation into suspected torture of detainees in the base at Guantanamo and said he would target both US military personnel and those who issued their orders.
Judge Baltasar Garzon, who once tried to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, said he based his case on testimony in his court by four former Guantanamo detainees who complained of physical and mental abuse at the base in Cuba.
He called Guantanamo a legal “limbo” and as such fell under universal jurisdiction, allowing him to investigate what went on in the base which US President Barack Obama has promised to close.
[…]
Listing possible perpetrators of criminal acts, Garzon said: “members of the US army and military intelligence and all those who put into practice or designed a systematic plan of torture or abuse.”
[…]
Garzon’s criminal investigation comes just weeks after Spain’s most famous judge was forced to give up an attempt to initiate a probe into six former Bush administration officials, including ex-US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, over Guantanamo, after criticism from Spanish legal authorities.
[…]
via Spanish judge starts Guantanamo torture probe | Stuff.co.nz.
h/t: CLG
***
New Evidence of Torture Prison in Poland
By John Goetz and Britta Sandberg
04/27/2009
The current debate in the US on the “special interrogation methods” sanctioned by the Bush administration could soon reach Europe. It has long been clear that the CIA used the Szymany military airbase in Poland for extraordinary renditions. Now there is evidence of a secret prison nearby.
Only a smattering of clouds dotted the sky over Szymany on March 7, 2003, and visibility was good. A light breeze blew from the southeast as a plane approached the small military airfield in northeastern Poland, and the temperature outside was 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit). At around 4:00 p.m., the Gulfstream N379P — known among investigators as the “torture taxi” — touched down on the landing strip.
[…]
h/t: CLG
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Former Bush Officials Can No Longer Travel To Europe + Spain Will NOT Pursue Torture Prosecution
Who Authorized The Torture of Abu Zubaydah? by Andy Worthington
Christopher Hitchens on Torture
Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part Two) by Andy Worthington
Revealing the Secrets in Room 101 By Scott Horton
by Richard C. Cook
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
richardccook.com
April 29, 2009
I met Senator Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings (D-SC) in 1985 in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. I had testified before the Rogers Commission after I leaked documents to the New York Times about NASA’s past knowledge of flaws with the O-ring joints whose failure caused Challenger to blow up. Later I told commission investigators and the press it was political pressure from the Reagan White House that likely caused NASA to overrule the engineers who tried to stop the launch.
Senator Hollings, then senior Democratic member of the Republican-controlled Senate Commerce Committee, thought the same thing. He wanted the Senate to conduct its own investigation, but the Republicans blocked it.
Officials in Mexico City, home to about 20 million people, have declared a state of high alert.
Restaurants have been partially closed, with only takeaway food being allowed to be sold.
Gyms, sports clubs, swimming pools and billiard halls have been suspended as part of the government’s strategy to slow the spread of the virus.
Al Jazeera’s Franc Contreras reports from Mexico.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
see
BBC NEWS | Americas | Swine flu virus kills child in US
Ron Paul on the Recent Swine Flu Scare
Washington’s Blog: Industrial Hog Farming Is Just Like Wall Street
by Rodrigue Tremblay
www.thenewamericanempire.com
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
“An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1933-45)
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.” –Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US president (1901-1909)
“I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world.” – Paul Volcker, former U. S. Fed Chairman
“Prosperity is just around the corner.” – President Herbert Hoover, 1932
“This recession was not caused by a normal downturn in the business cycle. It was caused by a perfect storm of irresponsibility and poor decision-making that stretched from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.” – President Barack Obama, April 14, 2009
On April 29, 2009, President Barack Obama completed his first 100 days in office, a symbolic milestone. In somewhat of a parallel to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who succeeded the beleaguered administration of Herbert Hoover, Barack Obama took over from a most clumsy predecessor, George W. Bush.
Warning
These pictures may contain images depicting the reality and horror of violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
by Jason Miller
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Thomas Paine’s Corner
April 29, 2009
Graphic: Time To Turn The Tables by ~m7
“The moral is that animal model systems not only kill animals, they also kill humans. There is no good factual evidence to show that the use of animals in cancer research has led to the prevention or cure of a single human cancer.”
—Dr. Irwin D.J. Bross, Ph.D., 1982, former head of research design and analysis of the largest cancer research institute in the world, the Sloan-Kettering Institute
Vivisection, the anachronistic practice of condemning nonhuman animals to the sterility, isolation, and confinement of laboratory cages and subjecting them to cutting, poking, sticking, burning, poisoning, and addicting, bears a much closer resemblance to medieval torture than to 21st century scientific research. Fittingly, vivisection’s history is rooted in medieval religious edicts that forbade the dissection of human cadavers.[1] And anthropocentrism is so deeply inculcated into our psyches that despite living in an “enlightened” age, we continue with our collective barbarism based on a church doctrine that held that rotting human corpses were more sacred than living, breathing sentient beings.
Dandelion Salad 