grand_theft_capitalism_malita: Pro-Palestinians protest outside Israeli film festival in Paris http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3860403,00.html

Pro-Palestinian activists began protesting outside of the Israeli film festival being held in Paris. Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat decided to participate in the festival's opening ceremony despite the French security guards' suggestion to cancel the event

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grand_theft_capitalism_malita: Jewish housing plan illegal, ill-timed -France http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE6291R7.htm

Israeli plans to build 1,600 Jewish homes in the occupied West Bank are illegal and their announcement ill-timed just after Palestinian-Israeli agreement on indirect peace talks, France's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

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Ractopamine: Banned in 160 Countries… Yet U.S. FDA Regards it as Safe? http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Nutrition/banned_in_160_nations_0603100716.html

A livestock drug banned in 160 nations and responsible for hyperactivity, muscle breakdown and 10 percent mortality in pigs has been approved by the FDA.The beta agonist ractopamine, a repartitioning agent that increases protein synthesis, was recruited for livestock use when researchers found the drug, used in asthma, made mice more muscular.Ractopamine is started as the animal nears slaughter.

How does a drug marked, “Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask” become “safe” in human food? With no washout period?The drug is banned in Europe, Taiwan and China, and more than 1,700 people have been “poisoned” from eating pigs fed the drug since 1998, but ractopamine is used in 45 percent of U.S. pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle.

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Adolfo Facussé to Honduras: Don't Demonize Mining http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2010/03/adolfo-facusse-to-honduras-dont.html

The target of this thinly veiled piece of propaganda is a proposal Ponce-- congress member of the UD party-- made early in February. An article published on February 12 in Tiempo reports on the facts of the newly proposed law, which regulates, but does not end, mining. The key change to former practice that it would introduce would be the prohibition of open-pit mining like that in the Valle de Siria:The project proposes the prohibition of open air mining in all the [Honduran] territory as well as the use of cyanide and any other chemical substance that might be manipulated in the processes of recovery and concentration of minerals and metals. Ponce's proposal also calls for review of existing concessions for environmental impact, including the potential to close those found to be damaging the environment. It is worth recalling that one of the outcomes of last year's coup was a dramatic acceleration in the pace of approvals of petitions for environmental licenses by SERNA, the Secretariat of Natural Resources and Climate. The issue was and remains financial interests that lead some members of Honduran society to promote economic activities shown to be damaging to the common good and the people in general because of the benefits that would accrue to a small group.

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Colombia's politicians: Dynasties, paramilitaries and celebrities http://colombiareports.com/opinion/cantonese-arepas/8614-re-electing-a-para-congress-or-a-quasi-congress.html

The upcoming parliamentary elections will result in the election of a Congress with little to no legitimacy. A sizable number of votes will go to neo-paramilitary candidates, while a small proportion will be divided between the dynastic politicians, the quasi-politicians and the honest politicians.. This report triggered unprecedented investigations - and prison sentences of 40 years in some cases - into 35% of Congress. As most of these glorious patriots belonged to pro-government political parties, a congressman labeled the episode “the para-Uribista scandal.”

Most of the neo-paramilitary politicians are running in the recently established political party PIN (Partido de Integracion Nacional) because another shady political party AND (Alianza Democratica Nacional) was closed down by the authorities due to flagrant irregularities. The PIN was created from the ashes of various parties which saw most of their members jailed due to the para-politics scandal. According to newsweekly Semana, the PIN party has about a million votes which may be considered "tied." That would translate into ten to fourteen Senators (out of 102) and twenty Representatives (out of 166).

comment-this is the united states main ally and the 3rd largests recipient of foreign aid....

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NGO: 80 Congress candidates linked to paramilitaries http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/8626-non-profit-80-parapoliticos-running-for-congress.html

At least 80 out of the 2,539 candidates running for Colombian Congress have links to paramilitary groups, a non-governmental organization reported Wednesday.The Electoral Observation Commission (MOE), a Colombian NGO, says that these 80 candidates either have direct ties to paramilitaries or have family members facing charges for colluding with the now-demobilized group the AUC.

These "parapoliticians" running for the House of Representatives and the Senate are particularly concentrated in the Valle del Cauca, Casanare, Magdalena and Bolivar departments, according to MOE. Many are candidates from the PIN (Partido de Integracion Nacional) party, the report says.PIN has previously faced similar accusations of paramilitary links in Colombian media.

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10,000 Turn Out In DC To Attack Insurance Co. Profits; Network News Ignores Them ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNiD0G8y9zA 

On March 9th in Washington, DC, a citizens' posse - thousands strong - descended on the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where the insurance companies were meeting to plot to KILL health reform. They came to arrest the insurance companies, and that's what they did.

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New York City's Assassination Connection http://www.observer.com/2010/wall-street/new-york-citys-assassination-connection

Papers from Des Moines to London were reporting that his New York–based firm, Payoneer—which offers prepaid cards, mostly as a way for employers to compensate foreign workers without checks and wire transfers—had been linked to this year’s cinematically brash Hamas assassination in Dubai. In the open view of security cameras, wearing vaudeville-level wigs and mustaches, a group of at least 27 agents plotted the death of the Palestinian militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was drugged and smothered with a pillow in his hotel room on Jan 19.

Dubai police said that the suspects used more than a dozen Payoneer debit cards for planes and hotels. Its chief declared he was “99 percent” certain that the assassins were from Mossad, Israel’s spy agency. Payoneer says it is cooperating with authorities.The chronicle of the assassins has unfolded thrillingly, like something out of le Carré: One reportedly slipped into the United States the day after al-Mabhouh was found, another is said to have entered on Valentine’s Day. But the story of Payoneer and its founder, a warm man despite a Special Forces background, is even pulpier.