News of Note
Harry Belafonte was kissing up to Hugo Chavez bigtime this weekend. Last year Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Chavez. Both these positions seem a little extreme to me. I would prefer it if our attitude were somewhere in the middle.
India is taking steps to protect some of their natural remedies and traditional medicine against bio-piracy. Good for them. Big drug companies and multinational corporations get enough preferential treatment as it is. Let the people keep what belongs to the people.
Mizgin at http://rastibini.blogspot.com has some powerful good reading about bird flu in Turkey. For example, how can poor Turks or Kurds be expected to cooperate in the fight against bird flu when they think their birds are being killed in order to drive up the price of lamb? Talk about understanding a foreign culture, spend some time with Mizgin. It’s interesting stuff. (By the way, bird flu has reached Istanbul now, in birds, not humans. That's not really big news though. Birds have tested positive for H5N1 in Romania, Russia, and Croatia prior to this. But this morning there are five new human bird flu cases. Oh well . . .)
Also in Turkey, the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 is being released from prison. I suppose that if John Paul can forgive him, then the rest of us can too.
Isn't it interesting how Turkey is the focus of so much news lately?
Tags: bird flu, avian flu, pandemic, H5N1, flu, influenza, politics, medicine, Turkey,
Harry Belafonte was kissing up to Hugo Chavez bigtime this weekend. Last year Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Chavez. Both these positions seem a little extreme to me. I would prefer it if our attitude were somewhere in the middle.
India is taking steps to protect some of their natural remedies and traditional medicine against bio-piracy. Good for them. Big drug companies and multinational corporations get enough preferential treatment as it is. Let the people keep what belongs to the people.
Mizgin at http://rastibini.blogspot.com has some powerful good reading about bird flu in Turkey. For example, how can poor Turks or Kurds be expected to cooperate in the fight against bird flu when they think their birds are being killed in order to drive up the price of lamb? Talk about understanding a foreign culture, spend some time with Mizgin. It’s interesting stuff. (By the way, bird flu has reached Istanbul now, in birds, not humans. That's not really big news though. Birds have tested positive for H5N1 in Romania, Russia, and Croatia prior to this. But this morning there are five new human bird flu cases. Oh well . . .)
Also in Turkey, the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 is being released from prison. I suppose that if John Paul can forgive him, then the rest of us can too.
Isn't it interesting how Turkey is the focus of so much news lately?
Tags: bird flu, avian flu, pandemic, H5N1, flu, influenza, politics, medicine, Turkey,
posted by Ed Bremson, MFA @ 8:15 AM
3 Comments:
At 12:47 PM,
Unknown said…
“Harry Belafonte was kissing up to Hugo Chavez bigtime this weekend. Last year Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Chavez. Both these positions seem a little extreme to me. I would prefer it if our attitude were somewhere in the middle.”
Yes, I was reading up on this. But people rarely swing to the middle for some reason. Maybe it’s because the pendulum hates to stand still.
At 2:24 PM,
Carl said…
Hugo Chavez has offered to sell cheap heating oil to the poor of the Bronx.
Imagine. A Venezuelan president more concerned with Americans' well-being than even their own mayor...
At 10:08 PM,
Mizgîn said…
Thanks, Ed. The price of lamb is a serious one because everyone tries to buy lambs for the holiday which begins on the 10th (tomorrow) and runs through the 13th of January, this year.
It is Kurban Bayramı, the Feast of the Sacrifice. People buy lambs and then sacrifice them for a feast. It's one of the most important Muslim holidays in the year.
Bianet has published some concerns about the sacrifice here:
http://www.bianet.org/2006/01/01_eng/news73139.htm
Of course, this whole bird flu thing is probably going to take something away from the holiday this year.
Anyway, there is a logical reason for fear of rising lamb prices.
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