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
The visit by newly-elected Tunisian President Kais Saied to France on June 22 was intended to discuss bilateral relations, trade, etc. But it was also a missed opportunity, where Tunisia could have formally demanded an apology from France for the decades of French colonialism, which has shattered the social and political fabric of this North African Arab nation since the late 19th century.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Black Lives Matter (BLM) call to action has
come to this Buddhist-majority society which is grappling with
discrimination against dark-skinned Thais, while some foreign black
people say they personally suffer racism here but not as brutally as
in the US and elsewhere.
In Bangkok, "I've been denied entry to bars, asked to pay at
restaurants before even getting the food, denied service in shops,"
Zipporah Gene said in an interview.
"I am British but of Nigerian and Egyptian heritage. My previous
hometowns include London, Cairo, and Kingston, Jamaica," said Ms. Gene
who has worked in Thailand for about a decade in media-related jobs.
Thais often call her 'kohn pew dam' which translates as 'person with
black skin.'
"While it’s not necessarily derogatory, it focuses on my skin color --
a lot -- which I‘ve always found quite weird.
"I could always tell when it was derogatory because some people would
scream it at my face, they’d have a hostile tone, or just spit after
they’d say it. It’s been a while since I’ve had that."
BANGKOK, Thailand -- When the CIA's most macabre paramilitary officer
Tony "Poe" Poshepny demanded and received the hacked-off ears and
heads of communists in Laos during the Vietnam War, no one predicted
he would become an exhibit in a new museum in Bangkok's red-light
zone.
The Patpong Museum, on Patpong Road, also describes why U.S.
intelligence and military officers, airlines, IBM, and others rented
buildings alongside sleazy bars packed with prostitutes, especially
during the Vietnam War which ended in 1975.
"In 1957, we have the American Chamber of Commerce here. We have the
U.S. Information Service Library here. We have Shell Oil here. Pan Am,
TWA," the museum's founder and curator Michael Messner said in an
interview.
The CIA's clandestine Air America secretly flew troops, casualties,
refugees, ammunition, rice and other supplies in Laos and elsewhere
and staffed an office here until 1972.
On display is a 1963 letter with an Air America logo from 3 Patpong
Road informing a pilot's parents that he vanished in Laos when
communists shot down his plane.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Southeast Asia is resisting the harsh U.S.-China
blame game over COVID-19, preferring to maintain financial links with
both, but Beijing appears to enjoy a better image among the region's
hearts and minds.
"Southeast Asian countries are standing on the sidelines of the
Washington-Beijing COVID-19 quarrel, not taking sides with one or the
other," Paul Chambers, an international affairs lecturer at Naresuan
University in northern Thailand, said in an interview.
"Given that China is the region's leading trading partner and provider
of new foreign investment, and China came out of the coronavirus
pandemic earlier than the U.S., Beijing has an edge over the
Washington right now.
"The continuing COVID-19 problems in the U.S. shows Southeast Asians
that the U.S. political system is not a good model for dealing with
the virus," Mr. Chambers said.
Southeast Asian countries often try to balance relations with the U.S.
and China to avoid endangering extensively interconnected business,
military and other links.
Here’s what should happen now, judging by what I see on social and other media.
The U.S. Military and the National Guard and other war-making outfits should clear out of the streets of the United States, get on some airplanes, and head off to properly murder lots of men, women, and children very far away. It’s simply inappropriate to kill people in this enlightened land where we’ve figured out that lives all matter.
War making should not be based on lies about protesters being violent or black people being savages or Trump needing his religion fix. Wars should be based, as established by long tradition, on lies about foreign governments and terrorists and fossil fuels and babies in incubators and WMDs and phantom missiles and chemical attacks and impending massacres.
The war on Vietnam plays an infinitely larger role in history in the common understanding of a typical U.S. citizen than does what the U.S. government did to Indonesia in 1965-1966. But if you read The Jakarta Method, the new book by Vincent Bevins, you will have to wonder what moral basis there can possibly be for that fact.
During the war on Vietnam a tiny fraction of the casualties were members of the U.S. military. During the overthrow of Indonesia, zero percent of the casualties were members of the U.S. military. The war on Vietnam may have killed some 3.8 million people, not counting those who would die later from environmental poisoning or war-induced suicide, and not counting Laos or Cambodia. The overthrow of Indonesia may have killed some 1 million people. But let’s look a bit further.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- An uncontrolled virus killed at least 543 horses
and many are being buried in mass graves, amid suspicion that imported
zebras brought the disease which is ravaging Thailand's international
multi-million-dollar racing and horse show industry.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animals and Plant Health
Inspection Service declared on March 30 a 60-day quarantine on all
horses imported from Thailand to stop the insect-borne African Horse
Sickness (AHS) virus spreading to America.
The only quarantine facility in the U.S. for horses suspected of
carrying AHS is located at the New York Animal Import Center, in Rock
Tavern, New York. The U.S. also prohibited imports of horse semen and
embryos from Thailand.
The World Organization for Animal Health, based in Paris, cancelled
Thailand's status as an "AHS-Free Country" on March 27 after the first
42 horses died.
The outbreak, which does not make humans ill, began on February 24 and
rapidly spread among horse breeding, riding, training, and rental
businesses in two central provinces.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- More Americans have died from COVID-19 than were
killed during 16 years of the Vietnam War, a grim milestone coinciding
with Hanoi officially reporting zero deaths from the coronavirus.
"Fighting the epidemic is like fighting against the enemy," the
Communist Party of Vietnam declared.
As of April 29, at least 58,365 Americans have died from the virus,
according to Johns Hopkins University, CNN reported.
At least 58,220 Americans were killed in the region-wide Vietnam War,
starting with two American advisors in 1959 and ending in 1975 when
U.S. forces retreated in defeat.
For both nations' COVID-19 tolls to be proportionately equal,
America's 58,365 deaths among its 329 million population would be
matched if 17,166 died among Vietnam's 97 million citizens.
Vietnam recorded zero coronavirus deaths as of April 28, the
government's National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and
Control said. Another 270 cases proved positive.
Vietnam's real toll could be higher, but may still be among the
healthiest rates in the world.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A vicious, hilarious, political war has erupted
on the Internet between Thailand's satirical dissidents and China's
outraged nationalists, prompting the Chinese embassy in Bangkok to
complain, apparently in vain.
"The recent online noises only reflect bias and ignorance of its
maker(s), which does not in any way represent the standing stance of
the Thai government nor the mainstream public opinion of the Thai
People," a Chinese embassy spokesperson insisted on its official
Facebook page.
"The scheme by some particular people, to manipulate the issue for the
purpose of inflaming and sabotaging the friendship between the Chinese
and Thai people, will not succeed," the embassy's 372-word statement
on April 14 said in English, Thai and Chinese.
The Internet battle also attracted activists in Hong Kong, Taiwan and
elsewhere, mostly cheering Thailand's mischievous jokes, insults,
political stabs, and pop art memes against China.
"Perhaps we can build a new kind of pan-Asian solidarity that opposes
BANGKOK, Thailand -- For the first time in Thailand, a rapidly
spreading "cruel" and "devastating" virus has killed least 186 horses
by attacking the animals' lungs, causing fever and death within hours.
Thailand's security forces on April 13 guarded checkpoints on highways
to stop horses being transported across the country, and quarantine
animals infected with the African Horse Sickness (AHS) virus.
"Effective immediately, and until further notice, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture's Animals and Plant Health Inspection Service's
Veterinary Services is placing restrictions on the importation of
equine from Thailand, based on the diagnosis of African Horse Sickness
in multiple equine species of different ages and sexes," the U.S.
department announced on March 31.
A 60-day quarantine was required. The New York Animal Import Center,
located in Rock Tavern, New York, is the only quarantine location
accepting horses from AHS countries.
"Any semen or embryos from countries affected with African Horse
Sickness is prohibited," the department said on its website.