Millions of dollars in USAID funding still flowing to Honduras | | the narcosphere

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The taxpayer-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation has continued to move millions of dollars into Honduras since the June 28 coup d'état, but it is not alone, Narco News has now confirmed.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is slated to provide Honduras with nearly $47 million in funding in fiscal 2009, which ends Sept. 30, 2009. Nearly all of that money (some $43 million) is scheduled to be delivered as previously planned to Honduras — which is now under the leadership of a putsch regime that President Obama has already described as “not legal.”


Millions of dollars in USAID funding still flowing to Honduras | | the narcosphere

Noam Chomsky in Venezuela: 'A better world is being created'

U.S. author, dissident intellectual, and Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Noam Chomsky met for the first time with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas and analyzed hemispheric politics during a nationally televised forum on Monday.

Noam Chomsky in Venezuela: 'A better world is being created' | rabble.ca

The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina

A chilling account of the actions of the military, including blackwater operations, in the days following Katrina. . A must read.

There was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath.

—By James Ridgeway

The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina | Mother Jones

The U.S. Invades and Occupies Pakistan

We are watching it happen in the streets. The recurring nightmare has become a grim, new reality for the people of Pakistan. After watching the horrors of the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and neighboring Afhanistan for 8 years, the "war on terror" has finally arrived in The Land of the Pure. Obama is fulfilling his campaign promise to Pakistan. The sudden arrival of U.S. marines, U.S. military Hummers, the hired killers of Blackwater, houses barricaded for U.S. personnel in Islamabad and the construction of the world's largest U.S. "Embassy" are terrorizing this nation of 180 million people. The U.S. slaughter and destruction in Iraq and neighboring Afghanistan for the last 8 years warn them of what may lie in store for them, their families, their land.


The U.S. Invades and Occupies Pakistan | Pakistan |Axisoflogic.com

Facebook agrees to address Privacy Commissioner’s concerns

Privacy Commissioner of Canada satisfied that proposed changes to the social networking site’s privacy practices and policies would bring Facebook into compliance with Canadian law.

OTTAWA, August 27, 2009 — Facebook has agreed to add significant new privacy safeguards and make other changes in response to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s recent investigation into the popular social networking site’s privacy policies and practices.

News Release: Facebook agrees to address Privacy Commissioner’s concerns - August 27, 2009

World Science Festival 2009

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale on Vimeo

AFRICOM: The Pentagon's First Direct Military Intervention In Africa

The U.S. has intensified military involvement in Africa over the past seven years with such projects as the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI), launched by the State Department but which deployed US Army Special Forces with the Special Operations Command Europe to Mali and Mauritania among other locations. U.S. military personnel are still engaged in the counterinsurgency wars in Mali and Niger against Tuareg rebels.

The Pan Sahel Initiative was succeeded by the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) in late 2004 which has American military personnel assigned to eleven African nations: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.


FRICOM: The Pentagon's First Direct Military Intervention In Africa

United Kingdom: Half of GPs refuse swine flu vaccine over testing fears

Up to half of family doctors do not want to be vaccinated against swine flu.

GPs will be first in the line for the jabs when they become available but many will decline, even though they will be offering the vaccine to their patients.

More than two thirds of those who will turn the jab down believe it has not been tested enough. Most also believe the flu has turned out to be so mild in the vast majority of cases that the vaccine is not needed.

United Kingdom: Half of GPs refuse swine flu vaccine over testing fears: "."

"Smoking is the leading cause of statistics"

Fletcher Knobel

PMO Iqaluit gaffe draws smiles, frowns

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The Canadian Press

An unfortunate blunder by the Prime Minister’s Office has residents of Nunavut alternately chuckling and cringing.
A news release sent out Monday outlined Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s itinerary as he began a five-day tour of the North.
The release repeatedly spelled the capital of Nunavut as Iqualuit — rather than Iqaluit.
The extra “u” makes a world of difference in the Inuktitut language.
Iqaluit, properly spelled, means “many fish.”
Spelled with an extra “u,” the Nunavut language commissioner’s office says the word translates as a derogatory reference to “people with unwiped bums.”
Bloggers from Iqaluit were quickly online ridiculing the gaffe — some light-hearted, some angry.
Iqaluit was named capital of Nunavut when the territory was created in 1999.
A news release today from the PMO spells Iqaluit correctly."

SPP Deactivated

OTTAWA, Aug. 14 /CNW Telbec/ - Opponents of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) are celebrating a preliminary victory in reaction to the announcement on the official U.S. government SPP website that the pact "is no longer an active initiative" says the Council of Canadians. Two years after the controversial SPP summit in Montebello - where police agents provocateurs were exposed trying to subvert the peaceful protest there - opponents of the SPP have succeeded in making the initiative politically poisonous for governments to support.


SPP Deactivated | Mostly Water

Why Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is so great.

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an appreciation by Fred Kaplin

Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, which was released 50 years ago today, is a nearly unique thing in music or any other creative realm: a huge hit—the best-selling jazz album of all time—and the spearhead of an artistic revolution. Everyone, even people who say they don't like jazz, likes Kind of Blue.


Why Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is so great. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine

The Destruction of a Civilization

James Petras. Axis of Logic

'The US imperial conquest of Iraq is built on the destruction of a modern secular republic. The cultural desert that remains (a Biblical ‘howling wilderness’ soaked in the blood of Iraq’s precious scholars) is controlled by mega-swindlers, mercenary thugs posing as ‘Iraqi officers’, tribal and ethnic cultural illiterates and medieval... » read this article"

Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?

by John Perkins via Global Research

In writing my new book Hoodwinked (Random House, Nov 2009 publication date), I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.

Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras's minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.

Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?

Amnesty International Withdraws from Leonard Cohen's Israel Concert Fund

New York, NY, August 18 – Amnesty International has announced today that it will abstain from any involvement in the Leonard Cohen concert in Tel Aviv and will not be party to any fund that benefits from the concert's proceeds. A number of media accounts had reported that Amnesty International was to manage or otherwise partner in a fund created from the proceeds of Cohen’s concert in Israel that would be used to benefit Israeli and Palestinian groups. Amnesty International’s announcement today followed an international outcry over the human rights organization’s reported involvement in the Leonard Cohen concert fund, and an earlier international call for Cohen to boycott apartheid Israel.

Amnesty International Withdraws from Leonard Cohen's Israel Concert Fund :: www.uruknet.info