'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
South Sudanese children, Nyamach Lul, who is 16, (left) and 13-year-old Nyakoang (right) outside their house at Jewi refugee camp in Ethiopia. © UNHCR/Eduardo Soteras Jalil
7 August 2020 (FAO)* — Huamani Cardenas lives in Lima, but is originally from Conayca, a rural town of roughly 1 300 people in the central highlands of Peru. When he received a delivery of fresh food from his hometown, he was thrilled. “I sincerely thank the authorities of Conayca for thinking of us,” he wrote in a social media group for young Conaycans living in Lima.
Glaciers on Canada’s Ellesmere Island. April, 2014. | Photo: Twitter/ @arctic_today
UN Women statement on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples – 9 August 2020
PWC Executive Director Maanda Ngoitiko during a tour in 2019, to assess how the trained women and girls were promoting use of biogas in Ngorongoro. Photo: UN Women/ Tsitsi Matope
By UN Women* – Being born an indigenous girl can be a life sentence of poverty, exclusion and discrimination, largely rooted in the historical marginalization of indigenous communities and aggravated by overlapping circumstances such as race, ethnicity, disability and location.
(United Nations)* — There are an estimated 476 million indigenous peoples in the world living across 90 countries. They make up less than 5 per cent of the world’s population, but account for 15 per cent of the poorest. They speak an overwhelming majority of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages and represent 5,000 different cultures.
Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment. They have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live.
The Bogotá Ministry of Health have sent a Muisca nurse to Suba, in the north of Bogotá, Colombia, to check on the local Muisca indigenous population. Worldwide, over 50% of indigenous adults over age 35 have type 2 diabetes. At the same time, tuberculosis continues to disproportionately affect indigenous peoples due to poverty. These and other deseases make them even more vulnerable in times of COVID-19. Photo: PAHO/Karen González Abril.
(UN)* — While the exact origins of COVID-19 have not yet been confirmed, the link between environmental damage and pandemics is well known to leading research organizations. But there is yet another group of experts, who have been worrying about the threat of a pandemic even before COVID-19: indigenous peoples.
7 August 2020 (UN News)* — The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to ensure the world’s indigenous people have control over their own communities, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has affirmed.
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Michelle Bachelet described the pandemic as “a critical threat” to indigenous communities everywhere, at a time when many are also struggling against man-made environmental damage and economic depredation.
But the same concentration of people also makes cities the places where the battle for a green recovery from COVID-19 – which is essential to reduce future pandemic risks and fight climate change – can be won.
(Wall Street International)* — Throughout my career I have always thought that offensive security is awesome. That’s why I personally liked the term hacker, gray hat, black hat, etc. a lot because it highlights a lot of aspects in one single term. This is not necessarily an opinion everybody shares.
Being prepared and ready to engage in offensive security with the highest possible gurus, expertise, passion and dedication are the main things to achieve success in it, along with a breaker mentality to dig out the most hidden detail in a system.
The members of the group are doing so well they are looking to expand and establish an official bank account. ©FAO/Andreea Campeanu
The American empire is crashing. What will it be like. Let us look at recent precedents.
The last empire to crash was the Soviet empire 30 years ago. At the time it was led by Mikhail Gorbachev, a man of peace and harmony, its population was not seriously divided or heavily armed, and the army stayed in their barracks.
As a result, there was very little physical violence when the empire collapsed, although in the ensuing years there was great economic suffering because of the devaluation of the ruble (by a factor of almost 10,000) and in subsequent years, there were armed conflicts with the Ukraine and Georgia.
In the end, the oligarchs (Russian mafia, etc.) and the secret police (Putin had been head of the KGB) consolidated their power.
4 August 2020 (UN News)* — All 187 countries that are members of the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) have now ratified a convention to protect children from the worst forms of child labour, including slavery, prostitution and trafficking.
1 August 2020 (UN News)* — World Breastfeeding Week got underway on Saturday, with the UN urging communities everywhere to “support breastfeeding for a healthier planet”. Health agency (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) issued a joint call for governments to protect and promote women’s access to skilled breastfeeding counselling – a critical component of breastfeeding support.
The UN has long advocated the benefits of breastfeeding, which delivers health, nutritional and emotional benefits to both children and mothers. It also helps foster a sustainable food system.
Sudanese asylum-seeker Mahamoud, 33, photographed near the Zeitoun shelter in Zarsis, Tunisia, in December 2019. He used smugglers to enter Libya, where he was captured by militias and sold several times. © UNHCR/John Wessels
1 August 2020 (UN News)* — Expressing “appreciation for WHO and partners’ COVID-19 pandemic response efforts”, the emergency committee convened by the UN health agency’s chief, made it clear that there is not yet an end in sight to the public health crisis that has so far infected more than 17 million and killed over 650,000 people.
The reporting center, STOP AAPI HATE, received more than 2,373 self-reported incidents of racism, hate speech, discrimination, and physical attacks against Asians and Asian Americans from March to July 2020.
31 July 2020 (Wall Street International)* — The US Postal Service is in trouble: according to an article by Prof. Philip F. Rubio, entitled “Save the Postal Service”, published in Atlantic Monthly on April 24, 2020, “The USPS has said that it needs $89 billion in assistance, including $25 billion in grants.”
Republicans realize that they will lose if the 2020 election is fair | Image from Wall Street International. Republicans realize that they will lose if the 2020 election is fair
Donald Trump’s disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the pandemic’s terrible economic effects, have made Republicans unpopular; and this is reflected in recent polls. It seems extremely likely that if large numbers of voters participate in the November election, the Democrats will win.
31 July 2020 (openDemocracy)* — One of Donald Trump’s main election pledges back in 2016 was to ‘bring our boys home’. Alongside this came criticism of Germany and other NATO states for not paying their way on military spending. He has followed up on both themes this week, by starting to reduce the US presence in Germany, albeit shifting some to Poland and leaving all the mechanisms of a rapid return in place, so that the extent of the ‘back home’ is far from what it appears.
– The Covid-19 pandemic seems to have spared children from the direct health effects of the virus but the crisis has affected their social and economic rights directly and indirectly beyond what we could have foreseen. And there’s no doubt that children who come from more vulnerable backgrounds will feel the long-term impact of the pandemic and the measures taken to prevent its spread the hardest.
Batara slum in a Dhaka suburb. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
Social and economic rights are crucial to ensure the fulfilment of basic rights like sustenance, housing, food, education, health, employment and freedom from discrimination.
In an extensive interview with the UN communications chief, Melissa Fleming, Ms. Bárcena expressed concern at the disproportionate impact that the pandemic is having on indigenous people in the region, in terms of both the health risks they face; shared her fear that the wisdom and knowledge held by these communities is disappearing; and her dismay at rising inequality and poverty, following a period in which progress has been made on both fronts.
(UN News)* — The World Food Programme (WFP) is urgently seeking more international support to prevent millions of Zimbabweans plunging deeper into hunger. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated an already severe hunger crisis in Zimbabwe, UN humanitarians warned on 30 July 2020.
“These are the people who work in different sectors – identifying, supporting, counselling and seeking justice for victims of trafficking, and challenging the impunity of the traffickers,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message on the Day, which is observed annually each 30 July.
It’s hard to know exactly where the Trump Administration found the inspiration for its newest set of draconian asylum rules. Might it have been a National Geographic special where a giant anaconda encircles its prey, squeezes it to death, and then swallows it whole? Or perhaps a late-night, B-grade horror film in which some evil mastermind drowns his victims by slowly filling a sealed room with water?
Families wait by the side of the road after fleeing attacks in Burkina Faso. The number of displaced people increased to over half a million last year, and the country is on the brink of a hunger crisis. Photo: Tom Peyre-Costa/NRC.
– Recent world reports confirm that the goals set by the international community to end poverty and hunger, and create a more balanced, sustainable and fair world by 2030, are currently in danger. If effective and rapid global action is not taken, the goals will not be met and the results in just 10 years may be very negative for all of us. |
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A group of women of Central Africa receives training in production diversification and improvement to expand the food security of their communities. Credit: FAO
Eritrean refugee Samrawit* braids her friend’s hair at the UNHCR Emergency Transit Centre in Gashora, Rwanda. © UNHCR/Alissa Everett
29 July 2020 (UNHCR)* — The 20-year-old Eritrean refugee’s current surroundings are peaceful and relaxed – a far cry from the horrors she endured while in captivity in the hands of smugglers in Libya, where she was tortured, beaten and raped for almost two years.
29 July 2020 (UN News)* — Lead poisoning is affecting children on a “massive and previously unknown scale”, according to a ground-breaking new study launched by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and international non-profit organization focused on pollution issues, Pure Earth.
Wikimedia Commons/Steve Wilson
Semji, like several other villages in central Bhutan’s Trongsa District, has a tiger problem. Since 2016, tigers have killed more than 600 cattle, including 137 this year.
29 July 2020 (United Nations)* — Our world faces many challenges, crises and forces of division — such as poverty, violence, and human rights abuses — among many others — that undermine peace, security, development and social harmony among the world’s peoples.
To confront those crises and challenges, their root causes must be addressed by promoting and defending a shared spirit of human solidarity that takes many forms — the simplest of which is friendship.
– COVID19 is devastating on older persons. The numbers are staggering, more than 80 percent of the fatalities due to coronavirus in the US and East Asia occurred among adults aged 65 and over. In Europe and Australia, the figures are even higher, 94 and 97 per cent of the deaths were persons aged 60 and over.
Credit: United Nations
To ask whether the United States, the world’s dominant military power, is ‘a failing state’ should cause worldwide anxiety. Such a state, analogous to a wounded animal, is a global menace of unprecedented proportions in the nuclear age.
Richard Falk
Its political leadership is exhibiting a reckless tendency of combining incompetence with extremism. It is also crucial to ascertain at what point a failing state should be written off as ‘a failed state’ for which there is no longer a clear path to redemption.
The November elections will send a strong signal as to whether the United States is failing or has failed.
Even raising these issues suggests how far the United States has fallen during the Trump years, despite already being in sharp decline internationally ever since the Vietnam War, and continuing, despite a few redemptive moves (now renounced), during the Obama presidency. Continue reading
29 July 2020 (UN News)* — Human trafficking is a problem in Malawi, with teenage boys forced to work as farm labourers, and young women to sexual exploitation in nightclubs or bars. The UN is supporting the Malawian governments to end the practice and protect vulnerable people.
Working on the frontline to end human trafficking
Honouring first responders helping to end human trafficking: law enforcement officers, social workers, healthcare professionals, NGO staff and others working to protect the vulnerable. Photo: UNODC
28 July 2020 (United Nations)* — This year, we will focus on the first responders to human trafficking. These are the people who work in different sectors – identifying, supporting, counselling and seeking justice for victims of trafficking, and challenging the impunity of the traffickers.
The Power to Make and Enforce Laws Acting on Individuals
John Scales Avery
The history of the Federal Constitution of the United States is an interesting one. It was preceded by the Articles of Confederation, which were written by the Second Continental Congress between 1776 and 1777, but it soon became clear that Confederation was too weak a form of union for a collection of states.
George Mason, one of the drafters of the Federal Constitution, believed that “such a government was necessary as could directly operate on individuals, and would punish those only whose guilt required it’”, while another drafter, James Madison, wrote that the more he reflected on the use of force, the more he doubted “the practicality, the justice and the efficacy of it when applied to people collectively, and not individually.”
Finally, Alexander Hamilton, in his Federalist Papers, discussed the Articles of Confederation with the following words: Continue reading
– The Ogiek community, indigenous peoples from Kenya’s Chepkitale National Reserve, are in the process of implementing a modern tool to inform and guide the conservation and management of the natural forest. The community has inhabited this area for many generations, long before Kenya was a republic. Through this process, they hope to get the government to formally recognise their customary tenure in line with the Community Land Act.
GENEVA, 28 July, 2020 (WMO)* – The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and international science partners are hosting a virtual global symposium from 4 to 6 August to review the relationship between weather, climate and environmental factors and the spread of COVID-19.
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The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread globally, within a wide range of climates and seasonal and environmental settings.
There is no COVID-19 virus. It does not exist. If you ask any doctor or scientist in the world to show you a scientifically-verified proof that it does exist, they will not be able to show you one.
Robert J. Burrowes,
Given that it has not been scientifically established that the COVID-19 virus exists, it is therefore clear that everything being done supposedly in the effort to tackle the ‘virus’ is being done for another purpose and COVID-19 is being used to conceal this fact.
However, with the elite-driven narrative being endlessly promoted by the World Health Organisation, governments, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, along with the corporate media, the truth is being obliterated.
And the reason for this is obvious: Any serious consideration of the underlying evidence, as I have documented previously, clearly indicates that the global elite is conducting a coup against humanity and using the fear it generates around COVID-19 to distract people from paying attention to what is happening in the background.
UNHCR calls for all arbitrary detainees to be released due to COVID-19. © UNHCR/Kitty McKinsey
KATHMANDU/NEW YORK/ DHAKA (UNICEF)* – Weeks of torrential monsoon rains, widespread flooding and deadly landslides in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal have affected millions of children and families, UNICEF on 24 July 2020 said. Over 4 million children are currently estimated to be impacted and in urgent need of life-saving support, with many millions more at risk.
UNICEF is teaming up with the Marley family, Tuff Gong International and Amplified Music to reimagine the iconic song One Love – bringing people together to help children and their families recover from the impacts of COVID-19 and build a better world.
The municipality of Corumbá, located on the border between the state of Mato Grosso do Sul and Bolivia, is the most damaged. | Photo: AFP
(UN News)* — Girls and boys in northeast Nigeria are continuing to endure brutal abuse at the hands of Boko Haram, and are also being deeply affected by military operations taking place to counter the terrorist group, despite noteworthy efforts, according the UN chief’s latest report on children and armed conflict.
One year has passed since the world was shocked by the images of the fires blazing across the Amazon in Brazil. But since then, the forest hasn’t stopped burning —and 2020 could be even more devastating for the rainforest and the Indigenous Peoples who call it home.
Temperatures in Siberia have been more than 5°C above average from January to June, and in June up to 10°C above average.
A temperature of 38°C was recorded in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk on 20 June. Temperatures in parts of Siberia the week beginning 19 July again topped 30°C.
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