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Tens of thousands protest military's rule in Egypt

Aya Batrawy
The Associated Press
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:42 UTC
Cairo rally
© The Associated Press/Nasser Nasser
Egyptian protesters attend Friday prayers during a rally in Tahrir square, Cairo, Egypt, Friday, April 20, 2012. Tens of thousands of protesters packed Cairo's downtown Tahrir Square on Friday in the biggest demonstration in months against the ruling military, aimed at stepping up pressure on the generals to hand over power to civilians and bar ex-regime members from running in upcoming presidential elections
Tens of thousands of protesters packed Cairo's downtown Tahrir Square on Friday in the biggest demonstration in months against the ruling military, aimed at stepping up pressure on the generals to hand over power to civilians and bar ex-regime members from running in upcoming presidential elections.

Islamists and liberals turned out together in force for the protest to show the widespread anger at the military over the country's political chaos ahead of the first presidential elections since the fall of Hosni Mubarak more than a year ago. The confusion has raised suspicions the generals ruling since Mubarak's ouster are manipulating the process to preserve their power, ensure the victory of a pro-military candidate and prevent reform.

"Down with military rule," protesters in Tahrir chanted, and banners draped around the sprawling plaza denounced candidates seen as "feloul," or "remnants" from Mubarak's regime.

Liberals and youth groups called for all factions to agree on an antimilitary "revolution" candidate in the presidential vote, but the powerful Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists - who have their own ambitions in the race - refused to sign on.
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Bad Guys

'Never Again' is an Empty Slogan

Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:13 UTC
targetting iran
The United States must resolve that 'never again' is not just an 'empty slogan', said U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday, in a statement marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yet, I am left bewildered, what does president Obama refers to? Is 'never again' a universal message pointing at genocides in general or did he refer to Jewish suffering only? With 1,455,590 dead Iraqis due to an Anglo American criminal war, it seems as if the USA is actually complicit in an actual genocide.

Obama's comments followed Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Holocaust Memorial Day address at Yad Vashem where he stated that Israel's "enemies tried to bury the Jewish future but our future was born again in the land of our forefathers, here we built a base, and a new beginning of freedom, and hope and action."

Netanyahu, as usual, was almost correct. The 'Jewish future' was indeed born again after the holocaust just to introduce total misery, racism, expansionism, oppression, death and carnage to the entire Middle East. The so-called 'Jewish State' has managed, in just a few decades, to locate itself as the primary threat to world peace. With the Jewish State and its lobbies pushing for a war against Iran, there is little room for doubt- Israel is driven by a suicidal inclination in the spirit of Biblical Samson. Yet, being a nuclear super power, Israel's potential self-inflicted tragedy may as well put an end to the world, as we know it.
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Cow

Practical Solutions! Portuguese Tired of Austerity, Government Encourages Return to the Land


RTE News
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:40 UTC
Disillusioned by the unfulfilled promise of the cities and feeling stifled
farm
© RTE
Joana Mendes at her father's farm in Marco de Canaveses, northern Portugal
by tough austerity measures aimed at coping with an economic downturn, some Portuguese are opting out and returning to the land.

Jose Diogo, who spent two years in Lisbon working as a technical advisor at a meat company, was one who fled at the beginning of Portugal's debt crisis in 2009, and has no regrets.

"I lived in Lisbon and decided to go back home to the interior to grab the opportunity of exploring the land my father owned," Mr Diogo said on the porch at his stone farm house, looking out over apple orchards and grazing fields for his 30 cows.

Far from discouraging people like Mr Diogo, the government is trying to get others to follow in his footsteps.
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Smoking

Fascist persecution of smokers is beginning to stink more than a pub's worth of used ashtrays

Steve Doughty
Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:52 UTC
Image

The Government may not like smoking, but - like drinking - it remains perfectly legal. For how much longer though?
There are two ways to damage yourself: the ways which are condoned by the Government and the ways which are not.

These two categories do not necessarily align with the laws of the land, but the law is a flexible instrument these days, enforced only where the authorities concerned choose to enforce it.

So if you want to harm your health by taking illegal drugs, be pleased to go ahead. If heroin is your poison, Whitehall ministries have in recent years established needle exchanges to help you with the required equipment and shooting galleries which have provided junkies with the finest ingredients to feed their habit.

You can claim state sickness benefits on the grounds that you are incapacitated because of your drug addiction, and around 50,000 people do so. This is not merely tolerance of harmful and criminal behaviour, it is rewarding it.

Alcohol is bit trickier, because a lot of voters don't like the way town and city centres have become theme parks for loutishness and violence at the weekends. The chosen response of Coalition ministers is to propose increasing the price of the cheapest alcohol - something that will punish the law-abiding poor but do nothing to curb the riotous Friday-night crowds in the stand-up drinking barns.
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Pharoah

Contemptible: Bahrain Grand Prix to go ahead despite regime forces beating protester to death on eve of race

Paul Weaver & Peter Beaumont
The Guardian
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 06:10 UTC
Image
© Mazen Mahdi/EPA
Bahrain security forces fire teargas at protesters during clashes near the site where the body of Salah Abbas was found.
Formula One race subject to mounting global outcry after discovery of body of protester allegedly abducted from village by military

Bahrain's Formula One grand prix will go ahead despite a growing international outcry about the staging of the race in the Gulf state that intensified on Saturdayfollowing the discovery of the body of a protester allegedly abducted from a village by security forces.

According to the opposition party Wefaq, the body of 36-year-old Salah Abbas Habib Musa, a father of five, was found on a rooftop in the Shia village of Shakhoura the day before the race.

With dozens of armoured personnel carriers guarding the main route to the circuit, the decision by F1 and the Sunni minority royal family to push ahead with the event - partly to help convince the world of Bahrain's return to normality - appeared to be degenerating into a human rights and PR catastrophe.

Comment: To understand the mentality of the organizers of Formula One races, see also:

Tyrants of Formula One racing: Hitler supporter billionaire Bernie Ecclestone and Fascist Scion Max Mosley

Formula One's fascism fetish should not surprise anyone

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Red Flag

French law prohibits premature publication of exit poll results: If breached, election could be annulled


France24
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 05:47 UTC
Image

Has Sarko got one last trick up his sleeve on polling day?
A row over the publication of exit polls is threatening to mar the run up to the French presidential elections.

With less than 24 hours before France goes to the polls in the first round of voting, authorities have issued threats of legal action against anyone who intends to flout a ban on the publication of exit polls.

In France, exit polls - which are taken as an accurate reflection of the election result - are available shortly after 6pm when voting stations close in small towns and villages across the country.

But under current rules, French media are barred from publishing the surveys or even partial results until 8pm, the time when voting stations in big cities like Paris and Marseille officially shut.

If there is a widespread breach of the ban, France could even face the possibility of the elections being annulled as candidates have the right to call for a revote if they feel electors have been unduly swayed by the leaks.
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Bomb

Chemical Plant Blast Kills 1, Injures 17 People in Japan


RIA Novosti
Sun, 22 Apr 2012 04:11 UTC
An explosion at a chemical plant in western Japan on Sunday killed one worker and injured 17, including nearby residents, NHK TV channel reported.

The blast occurred at Mitsui Chemicals' Iwakuni-Ohtake facility in the Yamaguchi prefecture.

The explosion hit the adhesive plant shortly after 2 a.m. local time. A 22-year-old worker was killed and 11 others were injured.

The blast broke windows of about 270 buildings, including nearby houses. The hands and heads of six people were cut by broken glass.
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Ambulance

Amsterdam Train Crash Leaves Dozens Injured

Cass Jones
The Observer, UK
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:17 UTC
Dutch Train Crash
© Evert Elzinga/EPA
Dutch rescue workers at the scene of the train crash in Amsterdam.
More than 100 passengers have been injured after two trains collided head-on in Amsterdam. Of those hurt, at least 56 suffered severe injuries and 13 were in a critical condition, according to a police spokesman.

The crash, involving an inter-city train and a local stopping service, happened near Sloterdijk, to the west of the capital, at around 4.30pm.

A police spokesman, Ed Kraszewski, told Amsterdam's AT5 news station that the spaciousness of the carriages on one of the trains may have contributed to injuries.

"We assume many people were thrown around the train by the crash - against walls, seats and other people," he said.

He added that some of the victims had broken bones and neck injuries.

One of the trains was serving the cities of Den Helder and Nijmegen. The other ran between Amsterdam and Uitgeest, a railway official said.
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Bomb

Gulf fisheries' survival at risk two years after BP oil disaster

Dahr Jamail
Al Jazeera
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:21 UTC
Nearly two years after BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen and scientists say things are getting worse.


Hundreds of thousands of people living along the US Gulf Coast have hung their economic lives on lawsuits against BP.

Fishermen, in particular, are seeing their way of life threatened with extinction - both from lack of an adequate legal settlement and collapsing fisheries.

One of these people, Greg Perez, an oyster fisherman in the village of Yscloskey, Louisiana, has seen a 75 per cent decrease in the amount of oysters he has been able to catch.

"Since the spill, business has been bad," he said. "Sales and productivity are down, our state oyster grounds are gone, and we are investing personal money to rebuild oyster reefs, but so far it's not working."

Perez, like so many Gulf Coast commercial fisherman, has been fishing all his life. He said those who fish for crab and shrimp are "in trouble too", and he is suing BP for property damage for destroying his oyster reefs, as well as for his business' loss of income.

People like Perez make it possible for Louisiana to provide 40 percent of all the seafood caught in the continental US.

But Louisiana's seafood industry, valued at about $2.3bn, is now fighting for its life.
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Che Guevara

People Power! 120,000 Czechs stage huge anti-austerity, anti-government rally in Prague


BBC News
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:24 UTC
protest
© Reuters
Protesters demanded the immediate resignation of the coalition government
Anti-government demonstrators in the Czech Republic have staged what they describe as the biggest rally since the fall of communism in 1989.

They say 120,000 people packed the capital Prague, protesting against austerity measures and corruption. Police put the numbers at 90,000.

Echoing 1989, people jangled their keys - a signal to the centre-right coalition cabinet to lock up and leave.

The government has recently been rocked by splits and defections.
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