An outbreak of a mysterious virus has not deterred millions of people in China from packing into crowded trains as they head home for the Lunar New Year.

Read here: http://u.afp.com/3ZXy

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A mysterious SARS-like virus has killed a third person, spread around China and reached South Korea, authorities said Monday, fuelling fears of a major outbreak as millions begin travelling for the Lunar New Year in humanity's biggest migration.

UPDATE SIX DEATHS SO FAR

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A mysterious SARS-like virus is spreading around China, fuelling fears of a major outbreak.

The new coronavirus strain was first discovered in Wuhan. The central city, with 11 million inhabitants, serves as a major transport hub, including during the annual Lunar New Year holiday which begins later this week and sees hundreds of millions of Chinese people travel across the country to visit family.

Full story: http://u.afp.com/3ZWL

Serena Williams voiced concern over pollution from bushfire smoke at the Australian Open, saying that lung problems in the past could make her more vulnerable.

Read here: http://u.afp.com/3ZBT

One of five sick and starving lions held at a park in Khartoum, Sudan, has died.

A campaign under the hashtag #SudanAnimalRescue calling for help to save the lions is growing.

Full story: http://u.afp.com/3Z6p

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Sudanese citizens and activists have launched a social media campaign to save five lions from starvation at the Al-Qureshi park in an upscale district of the capital Khartoum.

"I was shaken when I saw these lions at the park... their bones are protruding from the skin," wrote Osman Salih on Facebook as he launched an online campaign under the slogan #Sudananimalrescue

African lions are classified as a "vulnerable" species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Their population dropped 43% between 1993 and 2014, with only around 20,000 alive today.

Full storyt: http://u.afp.com/3Zmh

  

A malnourished lioness sits in her cage at the Al-Qureshi park in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on January 19, 2020. Sudanese citizens and activists have launched a social media campaign to save five lions from starvation after complaints that they were not receiving their daily quota of meat. ASHRAF SHAZLY

A movement to save a group of malnourished and mistreated lions in Sudan has gone global. The hashtag #sudananimalrescue began trending over the weekend after photos emerged showing the lions at Khartoum's Al-Qureshi Park.

Activist Osman Salih posted images of the big cats on Saturday, writing in a Facebook post that "seeing these animals caged and be treated this way made my blood boil."

Some of the lions were mere skin and bones, while others appeared to have untreated conditions such as wounds on their faces. One lion is believed to have died on Monday, according to Salih

"I regret to inform you that the sick female lion has died," Salih said in a post. "The other female is getting better and the male is OK."

An official confirmed the news of the lion's death to AFP. Park officials blamed Sudan's economic crisis for the lions' poor treatment and say they have gone weeks without the proper amount of food and medication. Some lions are believed to have lost more than two-thirds of their body weight.

A group of activists came to the park on Saturday after seeing Salih's social media post. Salih suggests bringing food directly to the lions rather than donating to Al-Qureshi.

According to the World Wildlife Foundation, African lions are a vulnerable species, with just 23,000 remaining. Their numbers have plummeted 40% over the last three generations, WWF claims.

Protest-themed Lunar New Year fairs spring up across Hong Kong to raise money and morale for the city's pro-democracy movement.

Full story: http://u.afp.com/3Z6z

The Devil Is A Woman

Say I have heard that before....I came across this linked to my post on Satan. Lucifer is a woman, or perhaps a divine androgen according to Albert Pike.

IS Satan Really a Woman?
Stunning new evidence says the Prince of Darkness may be a Princess
By Mike Foster

Bonn, Germany-Is Satan really a woman? That intriguing question was
posed at a recent theological conference here-and surprisingly, more
than a dozen TOP BIBLICAL SCHOLARS who were gathered together at the
international event agreed that the Evil One is indeed FEMALE!
“Lucifer has many characteristics usually considered feminine and is
usually depicted consistently in the Scriptures as a manipulative,
sensual, and alluring,” says Rev.Werner Priebe, a leading Lutheran
minister from Hamburg whose lecture entitled "The Devil is a Woman”
sparked the discussion.

“What’s more, eyewitness evidence drawn from encounters with the
Devil over the centuries clearly indicates that the so-called Prince
of Darkness is in fact a princess.”

The Old Testament never explicitly identifies Satan as a male...
“As shocking as this may sound, the so-called war in heaven between
G-d and Lucifer may have simply been the start of the battle of the
sexes.”

Most of our images come from Hollywood movies…
But Rev.Priebe says the image is all wrong and offers several pieces
of evidence for hid theory:

1. The OT NEVER specifies Lucifer’s gender.”In Genesis, the Devil is
referred to as the serpent and in Job, as Satan.The terms “he” and
“him” are not used,”notes the minister.

2. In recently completed translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Satan
is repeatedly called”SHE”, and the “Temptress.”This proves that the
early Jews and Christians understood that Lucifer was a FEMALE,”
says the Rev.Priebe.”The confusion must have developed in latter
centuries."

The Mass Strike

I have often called for the General Strike, today I must say that this has failed because of its specificity to a particular class action rather than a mass action. Thus in light of the mass protests currently occurring both in the Middle East and in Europe we need the call for the Mass Strike, of all citizens, not just a General Strike of the employed.

Class Consciousness in the Mass Consumer Culture of Advanced Capitalist society see itself as the Middle Class not working class.

The mass strike is the first natural, impulsive form of every great revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the more highly developed the antagonism is between capital and labour, the more effective and decisive must mass strikes become. The chief form of previous bourgeois revolutions, the fight at the barricades, the open conflict with the armed power of the state, is in the revolution today only the culminating point, only a moment on the process of the proletarian mass struggle. And therewith in the new form of the revolution there is reached that civilising and mitigating of the class struggle which was prophesied by the opportunists of German social democracy – the Bernsteins, Davids, etc. It is true that these men saw the desired civilising and mitigating of the class struggle in the light of petty bourgeois democratic illusions – they believed that the class struggle would shrink to an exclusively parliamentary contest and that street fighting would simply be done away with. History has found the solution in a deeper and finer fashion: in the advent of revolutionary mass strikes, which, of course, in no way replaces brutal street fights or renders them unnecessary, but which reduces them to a moment in the long period of political struggle, and which at the same time unites with the revolutionary period and enormous cultural work in the most exact sense of the words: the material and intellectual elevation of the whole working class through the “civilising” of the barbaric forms of capitalist exploitation.