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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Monday, June 14, 2010

14 June - News Picks II

Piknik Lotniczy Kraków 2009Image by bazylek100 via Flickr

A health expert has issued a new warning over the link between cleaning sprays and asthma.
Professional cleaners and health workers who use products in hospitals are particularly vulnerable. How strong a product is, together with how well a room is ventilated, also affects the risk.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100606/thl-cleaning-agents-linked-to-asthma-d831572.html

"Not adding screenwash to windscreen wiper fluid is a previously unidentified risk factor and appears to be strongly associated with community acquired sporadic cases of legionnaires' disease."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20100614/tuk-add-screenwash-or-risk-legionnaires-dba1618.html

Brazil: evaluating anti-poverty program
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/brazil/100610/bolsa-familia

Intensive farming 'massively slowed' global warming
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19042-intensive-farming-massively-slowed-global-warming.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=environment

Where will America's Science, Technology and Engineering Saviors come from?
http://scienceblogs.com/usasciencefestival/2010/06/where_will_americas_science_te.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss
85 percent of people being trained in the advanced physical sciences in the U.S. are here on temporary education visas from abroad. Many of them end up going home and taking all that scientific knowledge with them.

The Military and the Media
http://pulsemedia.org/2010/06/13/the-military-and-the-media
Propaganda is at its most effective when the audience does not know it is being manipulated and one of the best, glitziest examples of that is when propaganda is delivered on the big screen in the guise of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Nader says reinstate Helen Thomas
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5266

The New Face of Power in the Middle East

Erdogan Rising?


http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick06102010.html


Ever since Israeli commandos stormed a ship carrying aid to Gaza killing nine activists, the face of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan – the man who led denunciations of the raid – has been prominent on front pages and television screens across the Middle East.

The bloody fiasco has led to a crucial change in the balance of power in the Middle East, greater than anything seen in the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the Arabs of their most powerful ally.

While Muslim states were always going to praise any leader who confronted Israel, Mr Erdogan's personal role is one that will have lasting significance across the region. With his leadership, Turkey is once more becoming a powerful player in the Middle East to a degree that has not happened since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

Turkey was the driving force behind attempts to denounce the raid at a regional summit that ended yesterday in Istanbul. It received the backing of 21 of the members of an Asian summit but the crucial 22nd member, Israel, blocked any mention of the raid in an end of summit declaration.

Do You Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism?
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/splc.html

BP phone operator: ‘We’re just a diversion to keep them from getting to corporate
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0614/bp-phone-operator-were-diversion-corporate

FAA under pressure to open US skies to drones
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0614/faa-pressure-open-skies-drones


US taxpayers may be paying for child soldiers as young as nine
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0614/taxpayers-paying-child-soldiers-young
"Last year, the American government provided less than half of what it did in 2008 for Somalia aid operations partly because United Nations agencies and private aid groups refused to sign an agreement to police the distribution of aid more closely, contending that it would make deliveries nearly impossible"

Overseas computer workers labor under harsh conditions
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_15260658?source=rss&nclick_check=1

  Uptick in Afghan attacks tests US forces

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/afghanistan/100604/afghanistan-attack-taliban-al-qaeda-kandahar?page=0,0Lutsky says many locals are hedging their bets. He says it’s not unusual for some Afghan families’ to have members who are part of the government, and others who work with the Taliban.

British forces will not remain in Afghanistan for "a day longer than is necessary", the Prime Minister has said.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20100614/tuk-troops-to-come-home-the-moment-it-is-dba1618.html
( Any minute now - snort )


Iran sends aid ships to Gaza 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/14/iran-aid-ships-gaza

One ship left on Sunday and another, carrying food, construction materials and toys, was due to depart later this week, Iranian state radio said. According to the country's ISNA news agency, the shipment is being organised by the Society for the Defence of the Palestinian Nation, which insists it is not connected to the Iranian state. "Until the end of the Gaza blockade, Iran will continue to ship aid," an official from the organisation was quoted as saying by Reuters.


Baghdad Diary: Badges and Security
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blogs/around_the_world/baghdad-diary-badges-and-security-p23676.html
Everyone needs a badge and, in many cases, several. I have five, with a sixth on the way, and possibly a seventh. The badges you have and, more importantly, the ones you don't, determine how easily you can move in and around Baghdad and the country as a whole -- an entire social construct built around the colour of a piece of plastic you wear on a lanyard.

The system is so complicated and difficult to get one's head around that the US military actually had a one-hour briefing for reporters on "badging issues", and many of us simply left more confused than when we arrived.
Iraqi authorities, who are taking over control of security for the International Zone, where many government buildings and embassies are located (popularly known as the Green Zone), are issuing their own badge. For that, they requested my name, as well as the names of my father, my paternal grandfather, and my paternal great-grandfather, as well as that of my mother, my maternal grandfather and my maternal great-grandfather. You know, in case there's another Prashant Sivaji Rao roaming around pretending to be a reporter for AFP in Iraq.
The irony of it all is that when travelling to areas considered slightly more dangerous, I do my best to hide my plethora of badges, as links of any kind to the US military are not always greeted positively. In the worst of cases, Iraqi media staff have been killed for carrying US-issued badges.

Uzbekistan ordered Monday its frontier closed to an exodus of refugees fleeing deadly violence in Kyrgyzstan where government forces were accused of helping gangs slaughter ethnic Uzbeks.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100614/tpl-kyrgyz-refugees-find-borders-shut-as-383fe17.html

Truth Will Out Even With Nuts!
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2010/06/13/truth-will-out-even-with-nuts
ACORN Employees Tell FBI Of Deliberate Election Fraud, According To New Documents
The radical activist group ACORN “works” for the Democratic Party and deliberately promotes election fraud, ACORN employees told FBI investigators, according to an FBI document dump Wednesday.
A report quotes an employee saying, “I don’t like our system. I don’t think we should do voter registration.” The report also notes that employees were “[c]onstantly threatened” and that the staff were “instructed on what to say to FBI.”
Another report indicates an employee told the investigator, that ACORN “[t]old employees not to talk to the FBI.” The FBI is “‘trying to intimidate you.’”
“These documents show the need for a national criminal investigation by the Obama Justice Department into ACORN,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.


Probe shows corruption undermines Indian media
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blogs/around_the_world/probe-shows-corruption-undermines-indian-media-p23644.html
s journalists report stories for cash in a phenomenon known as "paid news"

Is Indonesia using laws to silence critics
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blogs/around_the_world/is-indonesia-using-laws-to-silence-critics-p23639.html
 A new report from Human Rights Watch says Indonesian officials and other powerful people are using the country's criminal libel laws to silence critics and stymie democratic debate.

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