THE G-20 IN PITTSBURGH
by Tom Over 9-23-09
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On Tuesday, Sept 22, activists from Philadelphia, New York City, Pittsburgh and other cities held a mock funeral procession to demand better policies for addressing the AIDS pandemic, a day ahead of the arrival of delegates for the G-20.
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The approximately 50 participants in the New Orleans-style funeral march drew a mix of interest, irritation, and amusement from onlookers in the business district of downtown Pittsburgh.
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At the head of the funeral march where pallbearers carried a cardboard coffin, a man shouted into a microphone while someone else carried a portable amplifier, “when people with AIDS are under attack, what do we do ?” and marchers shouted in unison, “fight back!”
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Amidst the early afternoon bustle of an weekday, the demonstrators repeated this call-and-answer and similar chants as the funeral march made its way around the perimeter of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, the site of the G-20 Summit later this week.
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Erica Goldberg works with ACT UP Philadelphia. She said global health is not on the agenda of the G-20 Summit.
“One of the things that some of the G-20 nations have promised us is funding for the global fund to fight, TB, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. This is all really important, especially if we want to meet the United Nations’ Millennium goal of eradicating these diseases by 2015. As of right now, this won’t be met. We have to hold our leaders accountable. They are the ones making decisions for the poorer countries,” Goldberg said.
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She commented on the timing of the demonstration. “We wanted this to be the first thing they (the G-20 delegates) see. They’re coming here tomorrow. We’re holding them accountable. This needs to be on the agenda.”
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She said AIDS activists chose Sept 22, two days before the official start of the G-20 Summit, and one day before the arrival of the delegates, so as to not have to compete with other protests. Also, she said the AIDS activists figured there would be less of a chance of conflict with police if they staged their protest earlier in the week.
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“We hope that this will hit the papers tomorrow, that it’s the first thing they see when they walk in, that they have this on their conscience and know we’re not going away,” Goldberg said. She urges people to contact legislators about supporting the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
“President Obama, as much as I love him, went back on his promise to fulfill the funding,” Goldberg said.
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She commented on how drug companies factor into all of this. “ Medication does not need to be this expensive. They can definitely lower their prices. We have big drug interests lobbying to prevent AIDS medication from getting” to developing nations.
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Goldberg said debt cancellation for developing nations is a factor that comes into play.
“When you don’t cancel debts of nations and they have to pay back loans to the IMF and the World Bank, they won’t have the funds necessary for getting AIDS medication, or they might get the medication but can’t pay the health professional because of their debt.
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She said vested interested motivated by huge profits stand in the way of doing a better job of addressing tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. “We have the power, the ability, and the medication.”
World News
While Accra summoned the chargé d'affaires at the Israeli embassy to lodge a formal protest, the Ghanaian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday that the move was based on the principle of reciprocity and the protection of the dignity of its citizens, confirming that both sides had agreed to resolve the tension amicably. That's how you hold Israel accountable when it does abide by the rules of civilized nations.
The Ghanaian Foreign Ministry had previously announced that Ghanaian travelers had been subjected to "deliberate targeting and harsh treatment" at Ben Gurion Airport since Sunday, describing what happened as "inhumane treatment" that warranted a response.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's U.S.-supplied F-16 warplanes and Swedish Gripen jets bombed at least three Cambodian casinos during the past week in a gamble Bangkok hopes will obliterate its enemy's alleged ability to fire armed drones from the border zone complexes and stockpile rockets, mortars, and other weapons.
The big white-walled casinos are easy targets in the green forests and brown scrubland because Cambodia has no effective military air force to defend them.
Cambodia has not fired its anti-aircraft weapons during the war which began in July, perhaps predicting a devastating response from militarily-mightier Thailand.
Cambodia's casinos are some of the biggest and strongest-built buildings along the frontier, constructed with millions of dollars from gamblers' and investors' money.
The well-equipped casino complexes could offer Cambodia's military formidable structures, but it was not possible to independently confirm their dual use.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand seized more than $300 million in a new crackdown against international criminals allegedly laundering money through two banks in Bangkok from online scam centers in neighboring Cambodia and Myanmar, but the top suspects are still at large.
"The individuals involved are all scammers. Three or four who have been arrested are major players," Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul announced on December 3 after a nationwide investigation.
"The seized or frozen assets amount to more than 10 billion baht ($312.5 million)," Mr. Anutin said without naming the arrested people.
They were charged with "conspiracy, running a criminal association, public fraud, and money laundering," a summary of the police report said.
More than a dozen top suspects are still at large including "Yim Leak chairman of BIC Group, a major financial network in Cambodia, who was suspected of bringing criminal proceeds into Thailand for money laundering or business investment," it said.
Cash was allegedly laundered through fake "mule accounts" before reaching two of Thailand's biggest banks.
The so-called Gaza ceasefire was not a genuine cessation of hostility, but a strategic, cynical shift in the Israeli genocide and ongoing campaign of destruction.
Starting on October 10, the first day of the announced ceasefire, Israel transitioned tactics: moving from indiscriminate aerial bombardment to the calculated, engineered demolishing of homes and vital infrastructure. Satellite images, corroborated by almost hourly media and ground reports, confirmed this methodical change.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A coding flaw in China's artificial intelligence application DeepSeek allows it to reveal subversive details about Beijing's extensive censorship, "hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras," human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, and other contradictions to the Chinese Communist Party.
DeepSeek's AI R-1 artificial intelligence app also warned any Chinese trying to "Make China Great Again" would be charged with sedition.
"DeepSeek is well-suited for use cases such as unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous surface vessels, and forward fire-control nodes where limited power and communications bandwidth have historically restricted AI use," the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation reported on Oct. 27, analyzing "DeepSeek's use in China's military and public security systems."
China's "public security literature also frames DeepSeek as a tool for intelligence-led governance."
Chinese "official discourse further elevates DeepSeek as critical to a 'new-type public security combat power'," Jamestown said.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven emirates that tightly controls speech and where political parties are illegal. The tiny Gulf state is home to 10 million people of whom just 10 percent are Emirati citizens. The UAE has recently made international new when it deported a Palestinian telecom engineer, identified as S.M., after living in the UAE for 20 years, following a casual comment during a celebration at a government agency in Abu Dhabi in which he refused to drink Pepsi, saying: "Boycott."
According to informed sources quoted by Sunna Files, the Palestinian engineer was summoned to a security agency in Abu Dhabi just two days after the incident and informed that he had to leave the country within days. This forced him to liquidate his business and withdraw his children from their schools before leaving for Jordan with a temporary passport.
UAE's repressive measures against free speech supersede those of Israel and US
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Hundreds of swarming, angry Asian Giant Hornets, the world's largest, stung to death a vacationing American father and teenage son while they were jungle ziplining, reports from northern Laos said.
Daniel Owen, a 47-year-old headmaster of an international school, and his son Cooper, 15, suffered extremely painful deaths on Oct. 15 after they were rushed to a hospital, reportedly conscious, in nearby Luang Prabang.
"It was very, very painful. A lot of stings, more than one hundred, over the whole body," said Dr. Phanomsay Phakan.
"I have never seen a death [from hornet stings] and I have been working more than 20 years," the doctor said, according to the Times of London on November 4.
It was unclear why news of their deaths was not earlier reported, but all media is controlled by the Communist government in tiny, impoverished, landlocked Laos which is surrounded by China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
The tragedy occurred after the father, son, and a zipline guide climbed up to a tree-mounted platform and harnessed themselves to a long, slightly downward vertical steel zipline.
In case you have never heard the name "Valetina Gomez" before, she is a 26 y/o Columbian immigrant and a right-wing extremist Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Missouri who faced a resounding defeat in the primary election last year. One day after her brother's support for her campaign, he was fired from the office of New Jersey mayor.
She came to public attention when she burnt a copy of the Qur'an during her election campaign to attract media attention and generate votes. But the self-confessed “biggest bitch in America” uses the verbal equivalent of "shock and awe" against Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, and gay people to make a name for himself.
Here are some samples of her recent obnoxious remarks:
* She recently burned a copy of the Qur'an.
* Muslims should never be able to hold public office in the US.
* Muslims want to kill every Jew, Christian, and Hindu.
* She cheers the slaughter of innocent children in Gaza.
* She is banned on Instagram, Facebook, and Wikipedia due to her incendiary remarks and call for violence.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Less than two months after President Donald Trump convinced U.S.-backed Thailand and China-assisted Cambodia to sign a peace agreement stopping their deadly border war, the two Buddhist-majority neighbors have exchanged hostile rocket and gunfire for the first time.
"If President Trump can help persuade Cambodia to comply with these [peace agreement] terms, that would be welcome, it would ensure Thailand faces no further encroachments," Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Wednesday (Oct. 8).
On Monday (Oct. 6), the border feud spread from the battlefield to the economy when Cambodia's de facto leader Senate President Hun Sen told his countrymen to boycott Thailand's goods and currency, use Cambodian currency or U.S. dollars, or else "you may face heavy losses."
Mr. Hun Sen ended his X post saying: "I would like to attach a video in which a Thai national displayed my photo to shoot at, in order to win prizes."
The video showed a uniformed man shooting at a carnival contest's targets, all of which displayed Mr. Hun Sen's face, life-sized, already shot in the forehead by other players.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- President Donald Trump is miffed that the U.S. is aced-out by China in processing rare earths which are especially prized for making strategic-use magnets.
Those magnets are critical to create high-tech weaponry and equipment used by military and aerospace industries, including for U.S. warplanes.
China hopes to strengthen its near-monopoly over the world's military-grade processed dysprosium, terbium, and other rare earth elements by securing rebel-held mines in Southeast Asia's war-torn Myanmar while boosting support for its coup-installed military dictatorship.
"China intelligently went in and they sort of took a monopoly of the world’s magnets," Mr. Trump told reporters on August 25 while discussing tariffs.
"Nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, ‘let’s all do magnets.’
"It'll take us probably a year to have them. We’re heavy into the world of magnets now, only from a national security standpoint."