 | By Kevin Gosztola On Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican independence holiday that many immigrants in America will celebrate, it seems that those who come from a culture which participate in this holiday will have to face down fear and bigotry especially in public displays of celebration. This may not be entirely new for Mexican immigrants in the southwest part of the United States, but because of SB1070, the focus on immigrants in this country has taken on a fearful and hostile nature nationwide. Specifically, in Arizona there is a group of National Socialists (or neo-Nazis) who have handed out fliers that rebrand the holiday of Cinco de Mayo "Report an Illegal Day." It asks "recipients [of the flier] to fax or email Congress demanding that the 'border be secured.' It also seeks the aid of local businesses in an effort to verify and turn people in to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement." Another group, the Arizona Citizens Militia, is also rebranding the holiday "Cinco de Ammo" Day. Asking members and people sympathetic to their cause to buy up five boxes of ammo on May 5th, the group seems intent on pushing armed residents to take the law into their own hands. This may seem like fringe activity, but there is reason to believe that the neo-Nazis may have support for their white civil rights/singling out of "Mexican" people in Arizona. A majority may not be participating in militant activity, which whips up support for explicitly targeting people who look Mexican or may be Mexican. But, the majority of the state of Arizona has its citizens fearful of illegal immigration and convinced that illegal immigrants bear some responsibility for the drug cartels and the death of cattle ranchers in the state. http://www.opednews.com/articles/For-Many-It-s-Report-an-by-Kevin-Gosztola-100505-52.html
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Diaspora Jews around the world are realizing the time has come to reject the right's dictate that being pro-Israel means that you need to support the policies of Israeli governments, no matter what they do. The failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the onset of the Second Intifada have in stages swung the pendulum of Israeli politics to the right to the current government that includes Avigdor Lieberman - one of the most anti-democratic ministers Israel has ever had, who is moving Israel ever closer to the brink of total international isolation - and the Shas Party whose main impact is to push construction in East Jerusalem and the settlements. This has been reflected in an amazing distortion in the Jewish voice from the Diaspora, primarily the U.S., in the last decade. Judging from the media presence, you might think that most Jews are right-leaning and support Israel's settlement policy and foot-dragging over ending the occupation. But this has never been true: most Diaspora Jews, including most of American Jewry, is committed to liberalism.  | French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in Geneva on April 20, 2009. | | Photo by: AP | Now the pendulum is swinging back. Diaspora Jews around the world are beginning to realize that the time has come to reject the right's dictate that being pro-Israel means that you need to support the policies of Israeli governments, no matter what they do; that the Jewish right represents a small minority of the Jewish people. Caring about friends and family doesn't mean that we do not criticize them, when we believe that they are harming themselves. In caring for somebody's wellbeing, we are often required to make clear that they are going the wrong way. Hence Liberal Jews in the Diaspora firmly stand by Israel while trenchantly criticizing the occupation and settlements. This week a delegation of J Street representatives visited Israel. They were hosted by President Shimon Peres, and they heard from central Israeli politicians like Labor MK Matan Vilnai and from opposition leader Tzipi Livni that ending the occupation is Israel's most urgent task to safeguard it as the democratic state of the Jewish people. The Netanyahu government's attempt to brand J Street as outside the legitimate Jewish discourse has failed, and finally, after refusing to attend J Street's first convention, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren met them a few weeks ago. The movement initiated by J Street is now joined by the European JCall, which includes leading Jewish intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, and which will present its message to the European Parliament today. Their name is short for the Jewish European Call to Reason. This development is doubly important: first, because it gives a voice to the majority of European Jews, who, while caring for Israel, are liberal in orientation. Second: because its leaders are severely critical of Europe's anti-Israeli left, as shown in Bernard-Henri Levy's Left in Dark Times and Alain Finkielkraut's The Defeat of Reason. http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/strenger-than-fiction-jewish-liberals-from-all-nations-unite-1.287913
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More Airport Magic…. By Gordon Duff  Watching the news on the arrest of the Time Square bomber, or as we will call him, "the Time Square Fizzler," and the flood of political attacks on the president and news reports condemning Pakistan and Islam make it all clear as a bell. The 'highly trained' terrorist, supposedly schooled in explosives and 'secret agent stuff' is another patsy.
Think "Mumbai" and the recent trial. All our suspect could say, over and over, knowing he is doomed is that he was 'set up.' With the Pakistan Taliban the biggest security risk for the only Islamic nuclear power, they became extremely attractive to India and Israel some time ago. Noting that India has been given free rein to run intelligence operations on the Pakistani border, they and their good friends in Israel, have flooded the region with "helpers" busy recruiting, training and supporting attacks, primarily on Pakistan. Some time ago, it was warned that these Indian and Israeli trained groups that the US had knowingly allowed, and admitted to, would be used against the United States. Welcome to that world. Last month, while in Pakistan with Jeff Gates and Raja Mujtaba, a number of supposed Germany "contractors" working for, well, we don't know, were seen in Islamabad. They were not hard to identify for some of us and Jeff confronted them about their real nationality. Later, in private discussions with officials, whose identities we were asked to withhold, we confirmed that even Pakistan has a significant presence of Israeli "visitors" who can use their endless alternative identities and contracting relationships to move wherever they want. Pakistan's dependence on American fund to fight terrorism has left them helpless to oppose this openly. With America under the thumb of Israel and Pakistan their biggest target, America's mixed loyalties has led to a very disturbing situation. Imagine having to invite a dangerous criminal into your home because your rich uncle loves him? You now have an idea of the dynamic involved. Watching the arrests and news stories is a wonder, seeing a "no fly list" person move in and out of America freely is amazing. With a Pakistani visa in my passport, signed by their Defense Attache to Washington, I was held up last week from an Air France flight. I need more Israeli friends if I want to get thru airports quicker. Only after Homeland Security was notified, did I get on a plane. This was good. It was efficient. I appreciated the security and everyone was highly effective and doing their jobs. However, were I a "no fly list" terrorist, I could have gotten right thru. However, were I the "crotch bomber" with no passport at all, I would have gotten right thru, right thru security in Israeli run airports. As the news stories drone on, this will become clear. The 'trained terrorist' will be tied to a huge network of idiots and dupes, all working in the region along the Afghani/Pakistan border, an area where India, and their Israeli friends, really do train terrorists who kill hundreds with real bombs in Pakistan. Nobody will ever learn how our friend got thru airports or who helped him. More and more videos from the Pakistan Taliban will come forward, all serving to bring a rain of ruin on them but damning Pakistan and raising sympathy for India and Israel. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/05/05/gordon-duff-time-square-fizzler-israels-crotch-bomber-redeux/
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"Things fall apart," William Butler Yeats wrote. "The center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned." He could have been talking about us, about this past week in America, about what happens when madness, greed and fear combine and conspire to show us what it looks like when the gates of Hell crack open. Two separate incidents took place in two different parts of the country. The least severe of the two was merely an attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square. An alert T-shirt vendor observed a parked SUV with smoke pouring out of it, and raised the alarm. When authorities arrived, they discovered the car was filled with propane tanks, fireworks and fertilizer that were wired to cheap alarm clocks intended to be detonators. Had it gone off, police say, the resulting fireball could have caused considerable death, injury and damage. Fortunately, the attempt was thwarted, but the consequences of what could have been are daunting to consider. The event raised the specter of Bush-era "Red Alert" and the possible declaration of martial law. For the last decade, a pile of laws and executive orders have been passed and signed making it spectacularly easy for the government to suspend the Constitution in the event of terrorist activity. Had that bomb gone off, we could very well have seen troops in the streets, and the end of the rule of law as we have known it. The second event has some people talking, quite literally, about the end of the world. http://www.truthout.org/things-fall-apart59152
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Men position oil boom barriers to contain the ongoing spill from BP's Deepwater Horizon platform. (Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images) Last week, as part of our coverage of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we noted the troubled past of the Minerals Management Service, the agency that regulates offshore oil and gas drilling. On its website, MMS says that it issues civil penalties for serious safety violations [1]. And there have been violations. A study conducted by the Minerals Management Service found that from 2001 to 2007, offshore drilling accidents resulted in 41 deaths and 302 injuries [2], according to The Huffington Post. Anonymous Tipline: If you work for BP or a contractor on a rig in the Gulf, or anywhere else, we'd like to hear from you. Tell us about your work conditions, your management, and your observations of what is happening. We will not publish your identity. Call 917-512-0254, fax documents to 212-514-5250 or e-mail Abrahm.Lustgarten
@propublica.org. In an analysis of civil penalties levied by the regulator, we at ProPublica found that over the past 12 years the average penalty has been $45,000. Currently, MMS can fine oil and gas companies a maximum of $35,000 per violation per day [3] (PDF). The biggest fine an oil company has paid to the agency since 1998 was $810,000, paid in 2001 by Chevron. Overall, the Minerals Management Service has collected $20 million in penalties in those 12 years. That kind of money is unlikely to sting much, considering the profits that major oil companies take in. http://www.propublica.org/ion/blog/item/oil-companies-pay-a-pittance-in-penalties-to-offshore-drilling-regulator
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By Scott Burns Q. How about a column on bad times? What happens to different investments if our country goes bankrupt? Or if terrorists do something really bad in a major city? I am 78 years old and want my investments to be as safe as possible.—J.P., by email from Amarillo, TX A. Most people think the recent bear market was about as close to truly bad times as they want to contemplate. Stocks fell about 50 percent. Lots of debt went bad. Yields on everything secure fell to nearly zero. And it is difficult to sell a house, car, or boat. The current recession beats everything in living memory except for the worst years of the Great Depression. That's pretty terrible. In spite of that, most people still own their homes; most people still have jobs, and retirees still have Social Security and Medicare. People are still eating in restaurants and going to movies. Yes, they aren't eating out as much, and lots of purchases are being deferred. Some deferral is obvious, such as cars. Some is subtle. Recently, an oral surgeon told me that people who would normally have had corrective procedures were electing to defer operations. Of course, it could get worse. The question is whether it is possible to protect yourself from truly bad times. Even the highest quality railroad bonds wouldn't have protected your future in Czarist Russia before Lenin. And the French have good reason to prefer gold over paper money. Extremes, however, are extreme— a portfolio designed for an improbable event may serve you well for a 5 percent probability event, but it will fail miserably the other 95 percent of the time. The world is also filled with mixed signals. The dollar may fall against gold, but it may rise against the Euro. Remember, they've forgotten to have children in Europe. And some European governments are even more profligate than ours is, witness Greece. Not to mention Spain and Italy. The best we can do is prepare on two levels. Level one is to adjust our living to a world of increasing dysfunction. This requires paying off debt and increasing savings. It also requires broad diversification of financial assets. It means being flexible and"at the ready" It means facing every day with your feet planted for action, as though you were a constable serving an arrest warrant on a large, sullen stranger. Level two is to prepare for chaos. This means being prepared with emergency food, water, fuel, and other supplies as though you were going to live through a major disaster like hurricane Katrina. Significantly, the last two years have seen a growing number of books devoted to exactly how to do such preparation, and it can be done with a relatively small"investment" http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/2010/04/28/the-future-as-a-large-sullen-stranger.aspx
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Discover Anne Frank's hiding place in 3D. Wander around the furnished spaces and get to know the stories from Anne Frank's diary.
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Sen. Carl Levin pretty much had Goldman Sach's (GS) Lloyd Blankfein dead in a casket with that now-notorious email from GS's head of sales and trading, Tom Montag, describing one of their billion-dollar investment "products" as "one shitty deal." Levin seemed to delight in crossing the boundary into the realm of the unspeakable, knowing that even the so-called "family" newspapers and cable TV networks would have to report it. And just to make sure nobody missed the point, the senator repeated that phrase at least 20 times before the day was over. It was like the climactic scene in that old Hammer Films classic, "The Horror of Dracula," where Professor Van Helsing moves from coffin to coffin pounding stakes through the hearts of Drac and all his fellow bloodsuckers. It's hardly the climax of our story, though. Ours has barely started. It seems to me, lately, that the crack up we've entered is liable to play out more gruesomely for our privileged elites than the orgy of bloodletting that attended the French Revolution. That historical moment was a sharp transition between old, settled, social relations and the new political realities of imminent industrialization and a rising middle class. The elites in charge of things to that moment, an ossified aristocracy, responded to rising discontent with utter feckless stupidity. To make matters worse, a great many of them were hunkered down in the fantasy-land royal palace of Versailles, enjoying what was for practical purposes a nonstop, mega house party. They must have thought they were safe 12 miles outside Paris. The French Revolution actually got off to a better start than the way for which it is remembered. A progressive opposition put together a new legislature, the National Assembly. They undertook the writing of a constitution. But it all fell apart rather quickly, since the dim-witted king and his cohorts didn't really get into that old changing-times spirit and their lack of cooperation - not to mention their decadence - provoked the more violent factions of the common people to form that kraken of politics, the mob. What a goddamned mess it turned into - a revolving cast of mob masters, each worse than the last, whipping up the crowds to ever more horrible enormities of human vivisection - a political process that had gone hopelessly out of control. Despite the agile precedent of their friend, the new USA, quickly resolving its own rebellion into a functioning government of law, France opted for a bloody cluster fuck - which went on for eight more years. The France of 1789 and the USA of today have a few important elements in common: a striking inability to sort out any national problems, an arrogant, depraved, ruling elite resistant to reform and an intellectual underclass motivated by blind fury. http://www.truthout.org/worse-than-178959114
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by Bill Day - "Cartoon Winner"
in the 2010 RFK Journalism Awards
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EPA staffers say they were forced to ignore scientific data and lacked crucial information needed to fully protect the public.  Environmental Protection Agency staffers have been forced to ignore relevant science, have lacked key monitoring data on human health and environmental impacts, and have worked without crucial information needed to protect the public, according to the preliminary findings of a scientific advisory board. The Committee on Science Integration for Decision Making is still working on its investigation, but has quietly posted draft summaries on the agency's Web site of 73 interviews with 450 EPA employees -- an unusual bottom-up examination that could bring sweeping changes to the 40-year-old federal agency. Some staffers traced the problems in the agency to the Bush administration, while others said the obstacles are longstanding and continue to this day. EPA has an enormous mandate -- protecting air, water, land and human health from environmental pollutants. While some staffers gave the agency high marks, the interviews overall portray an organization that has been hobbled by political pressure to avoid damaging industry; has lacked sufficient scientists in regional offices; has been slow to act against known hazards, and has had a tendency to let products with harmful pollutants enter the marketplace and the environment without first ensuring their safety. The review of the EPA followed accusations by a former agency official that President George W. Bush had pressured agency employees to water down concerns of global climate change, a Government Accountability Office report criticizing the agency's toxic chemical review process, and stern recommendations by the National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.alternet.org/story/146680/
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The bulk of the president's czars are exempt from oversight By Alan Caruba How many of these names do you recognize? Adolfo Carrion, Aneesh Chopra, Ear; Devamey, Kenneth Feinberg, Carol Browner, Ed Montgomery, Todd Stern, Cass Sunstein, Ron Bloom, and John Brennan. If none of them ring a bell, it is because they and others are all part of a shadow government of some thirty "czars"; advisers to President Obama who did not submit to the Senate confirmation process and are exempt from Congressional oversight. Article 2, Section 2, U.S. Constitution, an excerpt: He (the President) shall have power, by and with the advice and Consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not herein provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or the heads of departments." The Constitution creates two types of positions in the executive branch: principal officers and inferior officers. The first of these are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The latter are not subject to this process. The Obama administration began with a series of nominations that were found to be tax cheats and forced to withdraw before Senate confirmation. One of them, Van Jones, put in charge of "green jobs" was forced to resign when it became known that he was a self-identified communist. Carol Browner, responsible for environmental and energy issues, was on the board of the Commission for a Sustainable Society, the action arm of the Socialist International. In the case of "special envoys" George Mitchell, Richard Holbrooke, and Dennis Ross, they all engage in ambassadorial duties, representing the nation to foreign entities and are responsible only to the president. Key elements of the nation's foreign policy, particularly as regards the Middle East, remain hidden from the public, except in terms of the president's public pronouncements. All of the president's cabinet secretaries in charge of various departments and agencies of the government are vested with administrative powers and all must be confirmed by the Senate. By virtue of the Administrative Procedure Act, these offices must hold public hearings and maintain records when decisions are made, thus creating a paper trail. All of these offices must have separate lines in Congress's annual appropriations bills. The bulk of the president's czars are exempt from such oversight. They advise and answer directly to the president and a number of them exercise control over the decisions made by cabinet secretaries and agency directors, most of whom have been reduced to a role of carrying out their decisions, their agenda. The U.S. government is being run out of the White House by a cohort of czars/advisers who do not answer to the American people and operate in the dark. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/22590
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The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter
by Alison Benjamin  Honey bees are vital insect pollinators, responsible for the healthy development of many of the world's major food crops. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty Images Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter. The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers. The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS). The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy. Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives. US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory. A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse
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| By Rob Kall 
image from Moveon.org ad calling for stop to all new offshore drilling
The admin was warned but it had a political agenda and a government infrastructure still primarily made up of Bush appointees who earned their jobs by blocking regulations
 When the Obama administration was developing its new policy on offshore drilling, it was warned by NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) officials that the risks were being underestimated, Dan Froomkin of the Huffingtonpost reports, NOAA is the nation's lead ocean resource agency, and the warnings came in its response to a draft of the Obama Administration's offshore oil drilling plans. The comments were Web-published in October by the whistle-blowing group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). NOAA also wrote that the administration's "analysis of the risk and impacts of accidental spills and chronic impacts are understated and generally not supported or referenced, using vague terms and phrases such as 'no substantive degradation is expected' and 'some marine mammals could be harmed.'" The NOAA report challenged the administrations claims that leaks had been rare in recent years.
Froomkin cites PEER whistleblower group head, Jeff Ruch, that as in many other regulatory agencies, Obama political appointees in the Interior Department's notoriously troubled Minerals Management Service (MMS) have not taken enough steps to reverse the anti-environmental and anti-science policies of the Bush years. "For the most part, the Obama team is still the Bush team," Ruch told HuffPost, noting that beyond a thin layer of political appointees, offices like MMS are run by managers who were "promoted during the Bush years -- In many instances, promoted for basically violating the law. And from what we can tell, their conduct hasn't changed." Futhermore, Ruch said, Obama "sees environmental issues as a political bargaining chip." Indeed, Obama's decision to increase offshore drilling was widely seen as a way of getting some Republican support for the administration's climate change bill. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-Admin-Warned-by-NOAA-by-Rob-Kall-100504-678.html
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Over 100,000 march to protest racist Arizona "immigration" law; diverse crowd shows broad support against law LOS ANGELES - May 1, 2010 The air was electrified by a presence not felt since the Gran Marcha of 2006. At least 100,000 people marched through Downtown in solidarity with Arizona's victims of a new law that legalizes racial profiling. It is a law that has been denounced by President Obama, DHS Head Janet Nopalitano, the Mayor of Phoenix, the Sheriff of Pima County (Arizona), and even some Republicans who see it as draconian legislation. Many of the protest signs carried bold statements calling the Arizona law "racist" and "Nazi"-like. There was a sense of urgency in their voices, demanding to "Boycott Arizona" and overturn Arizona's SB 1070 law on the grounds that it was racially discriminatory and unconstitutional. Unlike other marches where several other "niche issues" are brought into the march, this May Day march was focused like a laser: Arizona's new state law is a modern-day version of legalized White Supremacy, smacking of the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany and Apartheid "Pass Laws" in South Africa. As usual, the march began at Olympic and Broadway and continued north about a dozen blocks, ending near City Hall. The crowd surged with optimism as music played and ralliers chanted to Boycott Arizona and pressure President Obama to take swift action against Arizona's legalized Apartheid. It should also be mentioned that Los Angeles Police Department had a very light footprint at the march, with only a few officers monitoring from the sidelines. And just as well: the march was peaceful, upbeat, and a proud statement of civic resistance to "legal" fascism. http://la.indymedia.org/news/2010/05/237924.php
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| This year's World Press Freedom Day, marked on May 3 every year, bears particular pertinence after the highest monthly death toll for journalists in five years. According to the official site supporters worldwide of media freedom "celebrate the fundamental principles of press and media freedom that are articulated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." The day was officially designated by the United Nations General Assembly and is hosted by UNESCO, this year in Brisbane, Australia, a list of the speakers here. This year's theme is freedom of information, which is after all, one of the founding principles of journalism. The spectrum of a journalist's role, working conditions and function in society is vast, pertaining to the level of freedom and development in the country they operate in. But, also dependent upon the chosen role of said journalist. Some hacks risk death and violence in the effort to bring the public information, to empower them with the truth and grant them the opportunity to question and make informed decisions. Those journalists should be honoured today, 17 of them died last month, according to the Newspaper Publishers' Association, that link includes more detailed info on April's killings. The International News Safety Institute has recorded in total some 1,500 violent deaths in the past 14 years. Amnesty International recently took the step to issue its own plea to the Honduran government, after a spate of journalist killings; six in eight weeks during March and April. "Targeting journalists in this way suffocates freedom of expression, denies the Honduran population access to information, and of course also violates journalists' right to life," said Esther Major, Amnesty International's Central America Researcher. Reporters without borders have issued their own report, a list of the top " forty predators of press freedom." |
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![[NASA image of Oil slick in Gulf of Mexico seen from MODIS on Aqua Satellite. April 25, 2010]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s3K-FaO83Z-vVi3HFrpmgNCcLa1gjIP0pe00qA53Tn80W-9XIMK260-LoVg7ZkjCf3HpAOLhYDQ_yhu3RwDdxKi3NUaEuulmIA9rubSOejWydJoe6rKn0kD8hAc2jCeTZkITe21h1Ripo=s0-d "oil-slick-spreads.jpg")
As families mourn the 11 workers thrown overboard in the worst oil rig disaster in decades and as the resulting spill continues to spread through the Gulf of Mexico, new questions are being raised about the training of the drill operators and about the oil company's commitment to safety.
