Palestinians launched a COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Tuesday, with health workers receiving the first shots after the delivery of doses from Israel.
Monthly Archives: February 2021
WHO team in Wuhan says discussions open, meetings frank

World Health Organization investigators looking for clues into the origin of the coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan say the Chinese side has provided a high level of cooperation but caution against expecting immediate results from the visit
Aung San Suu Kyi Charged And Held as Doctors Mount Civil Disobedience Drive Against Myanmar Army Coup
Myanmar should be free, not dragged down by military…
Deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been remanded in custody on obscure import law charges, her party’s spokesman said Wednesday as citizens and health workers stepped up a campaign against Monday’s military takeover in the multi-ethnic nation of 54 million people.
The 75-year-old leader will be held until at least Feb. 15 on charges relating to the alleged import and ownership of illegal walkie-talkies, Kyi Toe, a spokesperson for her National League for Democracy, said on his Facebook page. President Win Myint was charged with violating natural disaster management laws.
“According to reliable information, a 14 day arrest warrant was issued against Daw Aung San Su Kyi under the Import and Export Law,” he wrote.
In another sign of tightening controls since the junta took control on Monday, a spokesperson for Facebook said late Wednesday that access to the social media site is “currently disrupted for some people.”
“We urge authorities to restore connectivity so that people in Myanmar can communicate with their families and friends and access important information,” said the spokesperson.
On Tuesday the army unveiled an 11-member “State Administration Council” headed by coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who took charge of legislative, administrative, and judiciary powers early Monday, hours before Myanmar’s newly elected parliament was to open.
After a yearlong state of emergency and re-examination of voter lists the army claims produced fraud in the November 8 vote, new elections will be held, the junta leader said.
In response to a call Tuesday by the NLD to release all the detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint, and to respect the 2020 election results, authorities in the Naypyidaw gave some 400 elected MPs 24 hours to vacate their government housing, several lawmakers said.
“This morning at 10 am they asked to leave within 24 hours,” said Aung Kyi Nyunt, an upper house MP.
“Previously they allowed us to go within 48 hours, then it was 24 hours. In fact, it’s giving us pressure,” he said.
Win Myint, who was detained in the coup, will be moved from the Presidential Residence to another house, while deposed NLD ministers and deputy ministers have to move out from their official residences within three days, party spokesman Kyi Toe wrote on Facebook.
Aung San Suu Kyi was not asked to move out their residence in Naypyidaw, Kyi Toe said.
Across Myanmar, citizens have begun a nightly ritual banging of pots and pans and beeping car horns to register opposition to the coup.
Seventeen groups, including the University Student Alumni group, launched the campaign on social media on Tuesday, as anger at the coup set in.
“The public does not accept the coup. It was against all existing laws. It was just an act of bullying using arms,” said a former student who wished remain anonymous for safety reasons.
“So we are driving out this coup as if we were driving evil spirits from a village. We are sending the message that this evil act has to be gone,” the student told RFA.
Pot-banging sessions erupted in large cities including Mandalay, Yangon, Magway, Monywa, Sagaing and Taunggyi.
“We started hitting metal pots and utensils from one household to another, from one block to another—it spread very fast. In our quarter, almost the entire quarter was participating. We will be doing it because we cannot accept the new regime,” said a local resident in Magway.
Monday’s coup has also inspired a civil disobedience movement and work stoppages among government staff, mainly in health care.
“Surgeons and nurses have already taken civil disobedience (walkouts). We cannot do operations without them,” said an orthopedic surgeon in Mandalay.
“Physicians also are not coming to the hospital, so it will be difficult for the rest to treat patients,” the doctor added. “We have to leave them, feeling great sorrow, but because we want to fight military dictators – we cannot avoid it.”
A Civil Disobedience Movement on Facebook has linked up more than 70 hospitals in some 30 townships with specialists, doctors, nurses, dental surgeons, pharmacists and other health workers.
The medical work stoppage comes as Myanmar is grappling with the coronavirus epidemic.
“There are more than 10,000 patients in the hospitals–about 1100 in Yangon and Mandalay, 300 to 400 in Mon, Magwe and Arawaddy divisions,” said Dr. Khin Khin Gyi, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases.
“Doctors have been doing their best to manage.”
In a movement to resist the coup spreading in to Yangon, Mandalay, and the regions or state of Tanninthyi, Chin, and Rakhine, doctors and health workers are wearing red ribbons saying “The NLD is our only government”.
“Although I want to join the civil disobedience movement, I‘ve chosen the red ribbon campaign because of my emergency patients.” said Moe Thida Linn, a doctor at a Mandalay hospital.
Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by San San Tin, Maung Maung Nyo, and Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English Paul Eckert.
French labs to start producing Moderna, Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines
A French lab will start producing Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine in March, while another will begin making the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech in April, Industry Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said Wednesday.
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Myanmar blocks access to Facebook as international pressure on junta grows
you can run but you cannot hide your shame and sham government…
Myanmar’s junta blocked Facebook and other messaging services in the name of ensuring stability on Thursday as they consolidate power following a coup and the detention of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
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Unintended Consequences – Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective
The best and the brightest had put their heads together, deciding that what we needed in the age of deforestation and ozone-shrinkage was the fastest-growing, strongest, tallest, most oxygen-rich tree ever, and they were going to make it. They’d succeeded.
Sentience had been an unintended side effect.
It had been on the news as the greatest discovery of our…
Source: Unintended Consequences – Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective
Wine
Wine, wine, wine, wine, wine, wine!
– how many more times I am going to scream wine
before I realise that all the bodies,
which never met were meant to meet
and all the bodies who met were meant to fall.
Wine, wine, wine, wine and wine again
I scream
as my heart flies away for another dimension
being now replaced by that mechanical pocket watch
hanging down my throat, reaching my chest
tic-toc, tic-toc!
my heart will go on
and wine will pour down my mouth
A dark red vomit – vomit of wine, vomit of life and death
because everything I knew was sure
and because I knew, I ended up alone
I just knew too much
The pocket clock keeps ticking until someone finds my body
white as it is and lifeless
with a particular beauty of all the contrasts gathered together
dark, black hair, white, pale…
View original post 68 more words
Marauders

If we live believing that the only path to wealth and aggrandizement is by the dispossession of those who lack the accoutrement of the military then it would be pure folly to think of ourselves as evolved humans. We become the walking dead when we feed off of the carcass of members of the human family including sentient beings. We reap what we sow.
© Norma Bobb-Semple 2020
Mother
Paragon of love
Spreading wings of altruism
Bulwark parasol
Against all impediments
She withers to let you bloom
P.S. A tanka is an unrhymed Japanese poetry style of writing having a total of 31 syllables (5 lines each having 5-7-5-7-7 syllables)
© Samreen Asad 2021
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How one of the world’s wettest major cities ran out of water

The ancient south Indian port city of Chennai has become a case study in what can go wrong when industrialization, urbanization and extreme weather converge.
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