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
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Constitutional Court suspended Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha from office on August 24, immediately replacing him with his deputy, while judges decide when Mr. Prayuth's prime ministry should end after he seized power in a 2014 coup and won a 2019 election.
The new Acting Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon, 77, was expected to continue Mr. Prayuth's domestic policies and announce no major changes in international relations.
Mr. Prawit was a former army chief and is an influential political manipulator among conservatives.
He was senior among six deputy prime ministers, and had participated in Mr. Prayuth's coup.
It was not known when the Constitutional Court would issue a final and binding ruling on the opposition's petition which seeks to oust Mr. Prayuth and stage fresh elections.
Mr. Prayuth's opponents say his term as prime minister legally expired on August 24 -- eight years after his August 24, 2014 military coup which toppled an elected civilian government when Mr. Prayuth was army chief.
That junta had named Mr. Prayuth unelected prime minister in 2014 when he retired as army chief.
The ‘West’ is not just a term, but also a concept that acquires new meanings with time. To its advocates, it can be analogous to civilization and benevolent power; to its detractors, mostly in the 'East' and 'South', it is associated with colonialism, unhinged violence, and underserved wealth.
The current, seismic shifts in world affairs, however - namely, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the budding conflict in the Strait of Taiwan - compels us to re-examine the 'West', not only as a historical concept, but also as a current and future idea.
For years, Palestinians, as well as Israelis, have labored to redraw the battle lines. The three-day Israeli war on Gaza, starting on August 5, clearly manifested this reality.
Throughout its military operation, Israel has repeatedly underscored the point that the war was targeting the Islamic Jihad Movement only, not Hamas or anyone else.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Vietnam arrested foreign ministry, tourism, air, medical, and manufacturing officials and expelled them from the ruling Communist Party, amid multi-million dollar corruption scandals which are testing Hanoi's reliability in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and Centers for Disease Control.
Corrupt officials allegedly pocketed $240 million by suckering frightened Vietnamese into paying inflated fees for government-arranged COVID-19 repatriation flights from abroad and cumbersome permits.
They also allegedly price-fixed emergency pandemic health care and equipment.
"The anti-corruption campaign is causing increasing uncertainty and anxiety among the [Vietnamese Communist Party] rank and file," the Australian Defense Force Academy's New South Wales University professor emeritus Carlyle Thayer said in an interview.
"Steering committees for each of Vietnam’s 68 administrative units are expected to be more proactive in rooting out economic corruption.
"This raises the possibility of factional in-fighting at the national and local level," said Australia-based Mr. Thayer who returned from Vietnam two weeks ago.
In a blog entry, reflecting on the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia on July 7-8, the High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, seems to have accepted the painful truth that the West is losing what he termed “the global battle of narratives”.
“The global battle of narratives is in full swing and, for now, we are not winning,” Borrell admitted. The solution: “As the EU, we have to engage further to refute Russian lies and war propaganda,” the EU’s top diplomat added.
The collapse of the short-lived Israeli government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid validates the argument that the political crisis in Israel was not entirely instigated and sustained by former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even if a purportedly centrist or even leftist prime minister finds himself at the helm of the government, outcomes will not change when the Knesset—in fact, most of the country—is governed by a militaristic, chauvinistic, and colonial mindset.
Bennett's coalition government consisted of eight parties, welding together arguably one of the oddest coalitions in the tumultuous history of Israeli politics. The mishmash cabinet included far right and right groups like Yamina, Yisrael Beiteinu and New Hope, along with centrist Yesh Atid and Blue and White, leftist Meretz and even an Arab party, the United Arab List (Ra'am). The coalition also had representatives from the Labor Party, once the dominant Israeli political camp, now almost completely irrelevant.
The G7 summit in Elmau, Germany, June 26-28, and the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, two days later, were practically useless in terms of providing actual solutions to ongoing global crises – the war in Ukraine, the looming famines, climate change and more. But the two events were important, nonetheless, as they provide a stark example of the impotence of the West, amid the rapidly changing global dynamics.
The Israeli government had then justified its siege as the only way to protect Israel from Palestinian “terrorism and rocket attacks”. This remains the official Israeli line until this day. Not many Israelis - certainly not in government, media or even ordinary people - would argue that Israel today is safer than it was prior to June 2007.
The distance between Ukraine and Mali is measured in thousands of kilometers. But the geopolitical distance is much closer to the point that it appears as if the ongoing conflicts in both countries are the direct outcomes of the same geopolitical currents and transformation underway around the world.
The Malian government is now accusing French troops of perpetuating a massacre in the West African country. Consequently, on April 23, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared its support for Malian efforts, pushing for an international investigation into French abuses and massacres in Mali. “We hope that those responsible will be identified and justly punished,” the Ministry said.