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POPSPortrait of Courage: Irena Sendler From the article: "In 1943, she was captured by the Nazis and tortured but refused to tell her captors who her co-conspirators were or where the bottles were buried. She also resisted in other ways. According to Felt, when Sendler worked in the prison laundry, she and her co-workers made holes in the German soldiers' underwear. When the officers discovered what they had done, they lined up all the women and shot every other one. It was just one of many close calls for Sendler."
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POPSLeaked Saudi View. 'Border dispute' Existing UN Resolutions Solution Prince Saud al-Faisal has been the discreet voice of Saudi Arabian diplomacy for more than 30 years, and he spoke with unchallenged authority at the recent meeting of the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, giving what turned out to be a bleak assessment of the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The situation was "dire", he told the assembled dignitaries, including Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair and Ban Ki-moon. "Many dangers loom. It seems we have reached a stage that I can only describe as a morass." Such pessimism is not big news, though Saud's gloomy remarks were made, characteristically, behind closed doors at London's Lancaster House. It is certainly hard to find anyone who harbours much hope that there is a way out of the current impasse. ... Guardian
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POPSSilent Nuala O'Faolain (1940 – 9 May 2008) was an Irish journalist, TV producer, book reviewer, teacher and author. She became internationally well-known for her two volumes of memoir, Are You Somebody? and Almost There , a novel, My Dream of You , and a history with commentary, The Story of Chicago May . The first three were all featured on the New York Times Best Seller list.
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POPSBest on the Net: Italy expose Income of All! Tax evasion is rife in Italy and both Silvio Berlusconi, the incoming PM, and the man he succeeds, Romano Prodi, pledged to tackle tax cheats. Prodi's finance ministry described the move as a bid to shine a light on people's murky tax returns. The tax minister, Vincenzo Visco, was quoted in Italy's Corriere della Sera saying: "It's all about transparency and democracy. I don't see the problem." But the timing of the release of the information has been viewed with scepticism. It was one of the last acts of Prodi's centre-left government before it leaves office next week, sparking accusations the move was motivated by spite. ... Guardian
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POPSNew France Law: Thin Models Illegal!
The bill reflects concerns about pro-anorexic (so-called pro-ana) websites, said to encourage extreme weight loss. But Boyer said the legislation's impact would be wide-ranging. The bill is the latest in a series of measures to be proposed following the 2006 anorexia-linked death of a Brazilian model prompted efforts to tackle eating disorders within the fashion industry. Didier Grumbach, president of the influential French Federation of Couture, said: "Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny. That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France." Marleen S Williams, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Utah, who researches the media's effect on anorexic women, said it was almost impossible to prove that the media causes eating disorders. She said studies showed fewer eating disorders in "cultures that value full-bodied women". But she added that she fears the new French law,
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POPSVanunu Seeks Political Asylum in Norway Mordechai Vanunu, Israel, was a subordinate nuclear technician at what proved to be a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Following his convictions he delivered evidence to a London newspaper, the Sunday Times. Israel’s secret police abducted him to Israel, via Rome, in grave violation of the territorial integrity of both Britain and Italy. He was sentenced as a spy to 18 years in prison. During the first 11 1/2 years he was held in strict isolation.
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POPSNicosia, was the last divided capital in Europe "It's a hugely important move," said the anthropologist and political analyst Yannis Papadakis. "Ledra as a shopping district has always been a main point of contact and exchange, but also an area of great conflict, so psychologically, suddenly being able to walk from one side to the other is going to be a huge boost." This week, for the first time in years, a senior UN official sent to gauge the mood on the island and determine whether the political will exists to relaunch peace talks expressed enthusiasm that a solution could be reached. "There is a very positive tone in Cyprus at the moment and a palpable sense of momentum," said Lynn Pascoe. "The two leaders have set their sights on achieving a fair and lasting solution ." ...Guardian
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POPSHitler's Favourite Bank Rides High! Planned? US Federal Reserve is backing the deal with $30bn of special financing to fund Bear Stearns' less liquid assets. How can they lose? Natural consequence of George's illegal adventutes in Iraq. Is this the neo-cons pay off now for their foresight? Having belatedly sought EU help in the UN for to his impetuosity, is George again going to seek EU aid to bail him out again?! How often must other pay for George's cockups? Maybe its been all part of the neo-con plan from way back to 9/11 and before. Seems pretty straight forward now in hindsight.
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POPSGender Cliches TRUE: German Scientists In Germany, Austria and Switzerland girls continue to be pressured into defining themselves based on the role of the "good mother." In contrast, society views women who are successful in their careers with suspicion. That also explains the relatively low number of women in leadership positions in these countries, according to Henning Sass of Aachen's university clinic. 65% of students are female in the first years of medical studies, while at the upper ranks of the medical profession, only 5% of the professors, chief and senior physicians are women.
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POPSEU Confirms POW TORTURE at Gitmo "Deghayes and Banna arrived back in Britain with a third British resident, Abdennour Samuer. Banna, from north-west London, was arrested in the Gambia in 2002 after he did not accept an MI5 request to become an informant. Irene Nembhard, a lawyer for the men, said it was time for them to be allowed to rebuild their lives." ...Guardian
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POPSAmnesty: Sexual Abuse of Schoolgirls "In the US, 83% of girls in public schools aged between 12 and 16 said they had experienced some form of sexual harassment. In Latin America, sexual harassment in schools was found to be widespread. Girls living in war torn countries were particularly vulnerable to kidnapping and sexual violence, the report found. A Unesco study published last year found that 40% of the 77 million school-age children not attending school lived in areas affected by conflict." ...Guardian
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POPSMales: "Your fired!". Girls on TOP?! "When they introduced the 40% quota, the government had expected a widespread rebellion, but by the final deadline for compliance - February 22 this year - only a handful of companies had failed to meet it. Most ASA boards have acquired between two and four new women in the past several months. It is not exactly an army on the march, but it is a step in the right direction and has allowed Norway to buck an international trend; in Britain, women fill only 14.5% of non-executive board positions and one in four of the FTSE 100 boards still has no women at all. ..Guardian
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POPSCIA Rendition Victim RAPED Twice: Account "He describes how he was twice RAPED. He mentions, almost casually, the hearing loss in his left ear from the beatings, and how he still wakes up at night screaming, takes tranquillizers, finds it hard to concentrate, and has unspecified "problems with my wife at home." He is, in short, a broken man. ,,,MotherJones He's now living in Egypt, where he was tortured. Some terrorist!
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POPSU.S. Foreign Policy Hurting American Students' Chances Of Getting Laid Abroad "First, pretend you're Canadian whenever you can," Hapbrook said. "But make sure you're not around actual Canadians, because they'll know you're lying and cock-block you. Second, if there are any anti-American protests going on, take care to avoid women carrying signs. Third, focus your itinerary on countries like Ireland and Japan that are still relatively friendly to Americans." "You may want to write off France altogether," Hapbrook added "This affects all of us," Higgs said. "The government has to acknowledge the needs of young Americans. Too many U.S. citizens in foreign lands are spending sleepless, lonely nights jerking off in increasingly filthy sleeping bags. It sucks."
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POPSFalse Flags you may know about? Should we learn from what we now know of these incidents from our recent past and what we now know to be the truth, that we should not trust what our governments about what appears to be the situation. We only seem to have achieved to give away the rights that our citizen gained. For what? Increased security? What increased security and at what cost in money and loss of liberties? The security fascist who were the bottom of the labour chain, now control our every move. The lunatics are running the asylum! No wonder the citizens were never more afraid!
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POPSETHNO-NATIONALISM: Clash of Peoples Jerry Muller is professor of history at the Catholic University of America. his most recent book is "The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought." This article is drawn from an essay in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs.
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POPSRUBBISH! Don't Read. More LIES. Apocalyptic Crap. "Washington is still negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic over the proposed "third site" - after Alaska and California - for the system. The plan is for 10 interceptor missiles to be based in Poland and a long-range "X-band" radar similar to that at Fylingdales to be based in the Czech Republic. US officials today described Russian objections to the plan as "geopolitical" which in the long run would amount to "much ado about nothing". There remains widespread scepticism in Nato about Washington's claims regarding the need and capability of a missile defence system and the intentions of the Iranians, alliance officials admitted today. There is concern in particular about who would control and decide the firing of anti-missile interceptors situated in Europe. The issue will be on the agenda of the NATO summit in Bucharest in early April. ...Guardian
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POPSEU Wraps Bush-Rendition-Bad-Boys "Yesterday's revelations confirm that the European parliament has a moral duty to continue its inquiry," Fava told Reuters in Rome. "We still don't know everything that we have the right to know about this issue." Last February the EU approved Fava's report accusing European governments and services of accepting and concealing secret US flights of terrorism suspects. Italy has one of the best documented cases of what prosecutors believe was CIA rendition. 26 Americans - nearly all believed to be CIA agents - are being tried in absentia in Milan on charges of kidnapping a terrorism suspect in 2003 and secretly flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
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