vintage everyday: The only existing film images of Anne Frank, 1941.
Category Archives: Global Politics
Germans deny signing GOP letter on Iran – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
Reps. Doug Lamborn, R-Col., and Randy Weber, R-Tx., circulated a letter to world leaders last month that they claimed had been signed by four European lawmakers. Since then, two of the alleged supporters, German parliamentarians Johann Wadephul and Roderich Kiesewetter, have informed Al-Monitor that they were not involved.
“This letter never came to the attention of Dr. Wadephul nor Mr. Kiesewetter and therefore has not been signed by them,” a Wadephul spokeswoman told Al-Monitor via email. The parliamentarian followed up with a formal letter stating he had “at no time signed nor agreed to support” the letter.
via Germans deny signing GOP letter on Iran – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.
Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Farkhunda’s Force
Farkhunda, what shall I say
How to tell this endless story
From her eyes of tears
To the boldness in her face
Her injured body
I cry out with her pain
They broke her legs and hands
Yet still she stood
They pulled her silken hair
They razed her beautiful skin
Her face was bloody
They kicked her thin body
With a closed mouth
She begged with her eyes
For the sake of God
I am innocent, innocent
They uncovered her
But she still stood strong
I haven’t done anything wrong
They burned her body, could not mute her voice
They were men
Famous for bravery
Surrounding one woman
They were men
Called themselves manly Muslims
Tortured a helpless woman
Setting fire to a defenseless woman
Calling themselves patrons of Islam
They were men
Mark them forever as traitors
Those savage rioters
In the bodies of men
Farkhunda suffered and died
But her force lives on
By Sitara
EU grants Greece extra cash, Athens pledges reforms | News | DW.DE | 20.03.2015
EU grants Greece extra cash, Athens pledges reforms | News | DW.DE | 20.03.2015.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured above) announced on Friday that the EU would make two billion euros ($2.15 billion) of unused development funds available to Greece’s new government, led by the anti-austerity Syriza party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Juncker stressed that strict conditions were attached to the additional funds.
“This will not be used to fill Greece’s coffers, but to support efforts to create growth and social cohesion in Greece,” said Juncker, adding that one of the main aims of granting the funds was to reduce youth unemployment in the country.
World Health Organisation ‘intentionally delayed declaring Ebola emergency’ | World news | The Guardian
{Even newspapers have short memories. The governments of the impacted countries pushed back hard internally within the UN and in the press to not declare an emergency for fear of losing trade and tourist business. WHO gave in to the pressure and that’s their bad but governments who think of money before people in situations like this one and this one, share much of the blame.}
Dr Sylvie Briand, head of the pandemic and epidemic diseases department at WHO, acknowledged that her agency made wrong decisions, but said postponing the alert made sense at the time because it could have had catastrophic economic consequences. “What I’ve seen in general is that for developing countries, it’s sort of a death warrant you’re signing,” she told AP.
On 10 June, Briand, her boss, Dr Keiji Fukuda, and others sent a memo to WHO chief Dr Margaret Chan, noting that cases might soon pop up in Mali, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau. But the memo went on to say that declaring an international emergency or even convening an emergency committee to discuss the issue “could be seen as a hostile act”.
But others argue that although declaring an international emergency is no guarantee of ending an outbreak, it functions as a kind of a global distress call.
“It’s important because it gives a clear signal that nobody can ignore the epidemic any more,” said Dr Joanne Liu, MSF’s international president.
In a meeting at WHO headquarters on 30 July, Liu said she told Chan: “You have the legitimacy and the authority to label it an emergency … You need to step up to the plate.”
After WHO declared an international emergency on 8 August, Barack Obama sent 3,000 troops to west Africa and promised to build more than a dozen 100-bed field hospitals. Britain and France also pledged to build Ebola clinics, China sent a 59-person lab team, and Cuba sent more than 400 health workers.
Dr Bruce Aylward, WHO’s top Ebola official, maintains however that labelling the Ebola outbreak a global emergency would have been no magic bullet. “What you would expect is the whole world wakes up and goes: ‘Oh my gosh, this is a terrible problem, we have to deploy additional people and send money,’” he said. “Instead what happened is people thought: ‘Oh my goodness, there’s something really dangerous happening there and we need to restrict travel and the movement of people.’”
{Haters in} House Judiciary Committee Signs Off on Comprehensive Mass Deportation Plan : Immigration Impact
Almost no one seems to think that deporting 11 million people is a viable strategy. Policy makers from President Obama to Texas Governor Rick Perry have recognized this. A group estimated the costs as $400 to $600 billion, let alone the human costs. As Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said yesterday, “The country has considered and rejected mass deportation or self-deportation… So how can it make any more sense to imprison all of those people?”
At some point, Congress will have to deal with the realities that we can’t and shouldn’t deport 11 million people, and that criminalizing undocumented immigrants will not make us safer. Hopefully that time will come sooner rather than later.
via House Judiciary Committee Signs Off on Comprehensive Mass Deportation Plan : Immigration Impact.
Shell’s Battle for Seattle | Earthjustice
The Port’s entry into the lease with Foss Maritime to open Terminal 5 to Shell’s Arctic drilling convoy was made in February without public proceedings or an environmental review. Not only did the rental agreement violate the Port of Seattle’s long-range plans and its shoreline permit, which designate Terminal 5 as a cargo terminal, but it broke state law and the port’s own rules.
That’s where Earthjustice comes in.
Earthjustice is representing Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, the Sierra Club, Washington Environmental Council and Seattle Audubon Society in a legal fight to vacate the lease. The groups and local residents have pressed the port to rescind the lease and to invest in sustainable jobs that reflect the community’s values and air prospective terminal lessees in public.
Netanyahu vows wave of Jerusalem settler homes if elected | Maan News Agency
Creepiest sucking up to right-wing radicals seen yet! Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday that if reelected he will build thousands of settler homes in East Jerusalem to prevent future concessions to the Palestinians.
Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s general election on a whistle-stop tour of Har Homa, a contentious settlement neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem, Netanyahu vowed he would never allow the Palestinians to establish a capital in the city’s eastern sector.
“I won’t let that happen. My friends and I in Likud will preserve the unity of Jerusalem,” he said of his ruling right-wing party, vowing to prevent any future division of the city by building thousands of new settler homes.
via Netanyahu vows wave of Jerusalem settler homes if elected | Maan News Agency.
US Neo-Cons – no war against Iran, how about Brazil? Not! You have spilled enough blood for your profits! Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment | World news | The Guardian
“Brazil does not want and will not be a new Venezuela,” read one. “Nation + Liberty = PT (Workers Party) Out!” declared another.
There was a range of voices. While one flag extolled “Peace and Love”, a sizeable contingent of the crowd expressed support for a return to the military dictatorship that ran the country between 1964 and 1985
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“Army, Navy and Air Force. Please save us once again of (sic) communism” read one banner in English. Among those holding it was computer graphic designer Marlon Aymes who said military force was the only way to unseat the Workers Party.
“They are in power for 16 years. That is like a dictatorship,” he said. “In 1964 the military of Brazil took a stand against a president who was close to the Kremlin. Today, the PT is in a group that wants a Bolivarian socialist model across Latin America. Common people are protesting and calling for impeachment, but congress is too corrupt to approve that so we need military intervention.”
via Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment | World news | The Guardian.
With Plan to Walk Across DMZ, Women Aim for Peace in Korea – NYTimes.com
Suzy Kim, a professor of Korean history at Rutgers University who is another main organizer, said the group had yet to hear anything from the South Korean government side. South Korean officials declined to comment on the proposal Wednesday.
The group’s intent is to walk across the DMZ, from North to South, on May 24, International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament.
Ms. Kim credited the original idea to Ms. Ahn, who founded a group called Women De-Militarize the Zone a few years ago. “She had been thinking of how neglected the women’s role had been” in attempting to solve the Korean impasse, Ms. Kim said.
Ms. Ahn’s website, WomenCrossDMZ.org, said the planned walk was meant as a “symbolic act of peace.”
Thirty female peace activists from around the world are the core group of walkers. They include Ms. Steinem’s fellow honorary co-chairwoman, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a 1976 Nobel Peace laureate from Northern Ireland, who helped organize enormous peace demonstrations, mostly of women, that crossed sectarian lines and helped end the bloodshed there.
Another organizer, Leymah Gbowee, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work in leading a women’s peace movement that brought an end to civil war in Liberia in 2003 and led to the eventual exile, and successful war-crimes prosecution, of President Charles G. Taylor.
Ms. Kim acknowledged that the currently high level of North-South hostility, coupled with the North’s regular denunciations of the United States, the South’s principal ally, was “not a climate to achieve an agreement” to replace the armistice.
“On the other hand, the kind of deadlock we’re in makes it all the more important and necessary in not being O.K. with the status quo,” she said.
via With Plan to Walk Across DMZ, Women Aim for Peace in Korea – NYTimes.com.


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