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
Israel described its clearly deliberate killing of seven humanitarian aid workers on April 1 as a “grave mistake”, a “tragic event” that “happens in war”.
Israel is, obviously, lying. This entire so-called war - actually genocide - in Gaza, has been based on a series of lies, some of which Israel continues to peddle.
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan was sentenced to 10 years in prison last January for leaking state secrets in what seen as a campaign by the military to remove him from power.
He served as Prime Minister of Pakistan from August 2018 until April 2022. He is the founder and former chairman of the political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). He was facing several criminal charges after being removed from power as Pakistan's Prime Minister and escaped several assassination attempts. Mr. Khan, who is the most popular politician in Pakistan, has faced dozens of charges from corruption to sedition since he was ousted after losing a confidence vote in March 2023.
There was a terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This took place in context of long-standing Israeli control of Gaza’s borders and illegal land takeovers in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel’s response has been to use massive bombing and ground forces in Gaza and to increase expansion of settlements in the West Bank. (For historical background, see Rashid Khalidi’s book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.)
Amid the unfolding and devastating war carried out by Israel in Gaza, the Biden administration has continued to support Israel politically and militarily. Though, as of April 4, President Biden is finally warning Netanyahu that the killing of civilians in Gaza must stop. Up to this time, however, Biden and his administration have failed to have Israel allow meaningful-levels of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza or to institute at least a temporary cease fire. Hence, there is rampant hunger, even starvation, over 33,000 Gazans have been killed, over 70,000 wounded, and buildings, hospitals, and communities have been destroyed.
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Israel’s brutal war – some effects
During the last 6 months of Israel's aggression on Gaza, there were almost daily war crimes and horror stories committed by the IOF. That is too hard to keep track of or choose which one to address. Last March, Palestinians and their supporters were horrified and crushed after watching a video footage aired by Al Jazeera last month in which four unarmed Palestinians were seen walking along a dirt road in Khan Younis. The men were tracked and then killed in a serious drone attack, just like in a video game.
This is reminiscent of what happened 10 years ago when four boys from the Bakr family were blown out to pieces by the IOF while playing soccer with their father on Gaza's beach. The four killed cousins were – 11-year-old Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, 9-year-old Ismail Mahmoud Bakr, and Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakariya Ahed Bakr, both aged 10 – Israeli forces shelled the area and the fishing boats belonging to the family during the 2024 war on Gaza, according to (MEM)
Over 9,000 Palestinian women have been killed since the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Washington has expanded into Bangkok's satellite and cyber security, with the U.S. training Thailand's military in "Space Situational Awareness" for the first time during the recently completed Cobra Gold wargames.
China's Huawei meanwhile has partnered with Thailand's National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA), which is responsible for combatting "cyber threats" to this Southeast Asian nation's critical infrastructure and other vulnerable targets.
Cobra Gold is Asia's biggest annual U.S. multinational military exercise and includes training in warfighting skills, weaponry, survival, and other exercises on Thai territory, in the air, and in the Gulf of Thailand.
Almost 10,000 troops, mostly from the U.S. and Thailand, joined forces from about 30 countries on February 27-March 10 to participate.
This year's core war teams included the U.S., Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and Indonesia.
China was allowed to perform Cobra Gold's humanitarian aid missions alongside Australia and India.
When the foreign policy of a country as large and significant as the United States is governed by a case of cognitive dissonance, terrible things happen.
These terrible things are, in fact, already taking place in the Gaza Strip, where well over 100,000 people have been killed, wounded or are missing, and an outright famine is currently ravaging the displaced population.
There have been some interesting developments over the past few days relating to Israel’s demonstrated subjugation of the government at all levels in the United States as well as its domination of the entertainment and news media. Nearly everyone now accepts that the current situation is not due to ordinary Americans actually liking what Israel represents and is instead rather a consequence of the US Israel lobby’s deep pockets and the corruption that can be bought by being willing to spend billions of dollars to support a single highly focused cause. And there is also the tool used frequently to keep potentially troublesome politicians in line, which is the willingness to do whatever is necessary to discredit and marginalize any and all critics of the Jewish state, to include the liberal often bogus claims of the alleged crimes of antisemitism and holocaust-denial to demonize those who are targeted.
Inland southern China could then also use existing north-south roads and rails to enable Chinese overland access, for the first time, to southern Thailand's two planned deep-sea ports on the Andaman and Gulf coasts, opening westward to the Indian Ocean and east to the Pacific.
Thailand describes the Land Bridge plan as a faster, shorter, cheaper route for international shipping compared to the narrow, congested, southern Strait of Malacca wedged between Singapore and Indonesia.
The Land Bridge could also become an alternative route if hostilities erupt in the region and the Malacca Strait is blockaded.
Many of the international ships passing Singapore carry Middle Eastern oil and other products to China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and elsewhere in the Pacific.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Eighteen years after a military coup toppled one of Thailand's most politically powerful leaders, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra walked free on parole, finishing six months in a police hospital and sparking fears he now shares power with his party's pliant prime minister.
"There is only one prime minister under the constitution. That's me," their Pheu Thai party's less popular Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin insisted to reporters hours after Mr. Thaksin was freed on February 18.
Some warn that Mr. Thaksin, 74, is so influential and Machiavellian that this Southeast Asian, Buddhist-majority nation now has "double prime ministers".
"Thai society now knows that Thaksin is the shadow prime minister with real power," Wanwichit Boonprong, a Rangsit University political science lecturer, said in an interview.
Mr. Thaksin's six-month hospital incarceration and parole also sparked complaints.
"Even though he [was] a prisoner, he has received special medical treatment privileges in the police hospital without ever having been in prison for a single day," Mr. Wanwichit said.