All posts by nedhamson
Contagious Disease Surveillance | Virus Awareness | Ebola Map | HealthMap
“The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread. On Friday, WHO announced the Ebola outbreak — the largest and longest in history — is worrying enough to merit being declared an international health emergency. WHO declared similar emergencies for the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and for polio in May. This agency had convened an expert committee this week to assess the severity of the ongoing epidemic in West Africa. The current outbreak of Ebola began in Guinea in March and has since spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia. There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola and the death rate has been about 50 percent.”
via Contagious Disease Surveillance | Virus Awareness | Ebola Map | HealthMap.
Latin America turns against Israel on Gaza | World | DW.DE | 07.08.2014
Latin America’s own colonial history is a common denominator in the region’s critical attitude toward Israel. At the Mercosur summit last month in Caracas, the presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay urgently demanded an “investigation of all violations of international humanitarian law and crimes in the Gaza Strip, and the identification of those responsible.”
Appeal to Security Council
Following the second bombing of UN quarters in Gaza, Argentina, too, reacted. “Buenos Aires regards the Israeli military attacks on a United Nations school to be a criminal act that must be investigated in order to bring those responsible to court,” a Foreign Ministry statement said on August 3, adding that the Security Council must intervene.
via Latin America turns against Israel on Gaza | World | DW.DE | 07.08.2014.
After taking Sinjar, IS draws Iraqi Kurds into full-scale war – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
The very essence of the terror strategy – unconditional and irrational killing to scare their target for control into running away or joining in.”
“[IS’] most successful tactic has been their propaganda,” Harsin said as he headed toward Makhmour Thursday morning. “They scare people that way; otherwise, they don’t have a large fighting force.”
From O’Connell Street to Instagram
Was once watching television with an ancient photo of my grandmother taken a year before she died in 1914. Nothing good on so I was surfing the TV. Stopped on a documentary on TB in New York City. They were talking about the first modern treatment center built Saranac Lake by a NYC doctor. Edison visited it and took an early film of it. When I heard Saranac Lake I paid closer attention, as the halting camera focused on a woman sitting on the veranda. There sat my grandmother, 80 years ago alive, and she sat next to me in a portrait photo taken in the same dress. Amazing photography along with drawing and painting – the original time machine!
No one is really sure on the numbers, but it was recently estimated that of all the pictures ever taken around the world over the last 200 years, fifty percent of them were shot last year. This is not so surprising when you consider that there are 1.5 billion smart phones in use today each with a digital camera built in. Over 200,000 pictures are uploaded to face book every minute of every day.
Standing on my desk is a silver frame that houses a small black and white grainy photograph that I took of my long departed mother on the beach in Tramore, Ireland nearly 40 years ago. Every day that I look at it the more distant,
the more faded it looks. I took the picture and presumably 11 others on a cheap box brownie camera, although what they were of and where those others are is lost…
View original post 1,017 more words
IRIN Middle East | Gaza diary: Life under Israeli assault | Israel | OPT | Conflict | Security | Urban Risk
{Like London Calling in 1940 – Gaza calling for the 3rd time!}
Many Palestinians are tired and sad. In the rest of the world I am 26 years old, but here in Gaza we have a different measure of time – I am 3 wars old. Too many years of Israeli attacks have worn us down. When I graduated I had options to work in many countries. Instead I returned to Gaza to rebuild the city I know and love. Now we are faced with starting again.
Yet we also share a common spirit of resilience. We have paid a high cost in lives in this conflict. But if that’s the price for long-term changes – breaking the siege and obtaining freedom – it’s one many of us feel we have no choice but to swallow. Otherwise, we would merely be replacing the quick death of an airstrike with the slow death of the blockade.
Haytham Besaiso is a civil engineer who has an MSc from the University of Manchester in the UK
Azerbaijan’s president threatens war with Armenia via Twitter | World | The Guardian
AKA: He thinks no one is looking, so now is his big chance to look tough and lord over Armenians! Enough! Leave Armenians alone!
Azerbaijan’s president has threatened war with Armenia via Twitter, after dozens were killed in clashes over a disputed area of land that both countries lay claim to.
In a lengthy series of tweets, President Ilham Aliyev said several Azeri lives had been lost in clashes over Nagorno-Karabakh, and pledged to restore what he said was his country’s “territorial integrity”.
The two sides began fighting over the mountainous region in the final years of the USSR. Armenian forces took de facto control of Nagorno-Karabakh, where some 90 per cent of the population is ethnic Armenian, but it remains part of Azerbaijan under law.
A Russia-brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994 after six years of fierce fighting, which claimed the lives of an estimated 30,000 people. The dispute has become one of the world’s ‘frozen conflicts’, and dozens are killed in clashes along the highly-militarised ‘line of contact’ each year.
via Azerbaijan’s president threatens war with Armenia via Twitter | World | The Guardian.
Free Palestine
Peace and freedom are the answer
vintage everyday: Bertha Benz driving the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, c. 1886
Woman responsible for worldwide use of automobiles –
Bertha Benz driving the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, c. 1886
Bertha Benz (1849–1944) was the wife and business partner of automobile inventor Karl Benz. In 1888, she was the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance. In doing so, she brought the Benz Patent-Motorwagen worldwide attention and got the company its first sales.
via vintage everyday: Bertha Benz driving the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, c. 1886.
Pro-Palestine supporters urged to ditch Garnier over its support for Israeli army
‘It’s time to ditch Garnier’. That’s the message from Palestinian human rights organisation, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, as it emerged that Garnier has, over the last few days, provided ‘care packages’ of face creams, deodorants, soaps and other cosmetics to female members of the Israeli army.
The company says it has provided the ‘girly’ packages to the women ‘so they can still pamper themselves, even in times of war!’
Sarah Colborne, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: ‘It’s beyond words that, while the Israeli army is raining death and destruction on Palestinian children, men and women in Gaza with its bombs and shells, Garnier is providing face creams and facial soaps to that army’s female soldiers.
via Pro-Palestine supporters urged to ditch Garnier over its support for Israeli army.



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