20/08/2015
19 August 2015 – Just back from Yemen and “shocked” by what he saw there, the top United Nations humanitarian official told the Security Council today that the scale of human suffering is nearly incomprehensible, and that unless stakeholders get the parties to stop the fighting and return to the negotiating table, soon “there will be nothing left to fight for.”
UN Under-Secretary-General for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Stephen O’Brien (centre) with local authorities and media on 9 August 2015 in front of the Governorate of Amran, Yemen, that got destroyed in an airstrike. Photo: OCHA/Philippe Kropf
“The civilian population is bearing the brunt of the conflict – a shocking four out of five Yemenis require humanitarian assistance and nearly 1.5 million people are internally displaced. More than 1,000 children have been killed or injured and the number of young people recruited or used as fighters is increasing,” Under-Secretary-General for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Stephen O’Brien, said to the 15 members-body.
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20/08/2015
19 August 2015 (RT)* – Shadowy pockets of the financial sector, NGOs and charities are increasingly vulnerable to “terrorist financing abuse” as lone actors seek to unleash domestic terror attacks, a British analyst says.
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**A view point of the city Kobanê, in Syrian Kurdistan, during the bombardment of ISIL targets by US-led forces, The photo has been taken from Turkish-Syrian border (Suruç) | Photo: M. Akhavan / Persian Dutch Network | PersianDutchNetwork | Wikimedia Commons
Tom Keatinge, director at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Center for Financial Crime and Security Studies, argues the West’s strategy for disrupting terrorist financing is short-sighted.
In a piece of analysis published on Monday [17 August], the ex-City of London banker said the world’s most pressing “terrorist finance risk” lies closer to home than Western counter-terror policy acknowledges.
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20/08/2015
By Dr Ravi P Bhatia*
20 August 2015 – TRANSCEND Media Service – The world has already lost hundreds of languages and the trend continues unabated. It is estimated that there are about 6500 spoken languages today of which approximately 5000 will become extinct by the end of the 21st century.
**”The Tower of Babel” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Oil on board, 1563. Humans have speculated about the origins of language throughout history. The Biblical myth of the Tower of Babel is one such account; other cultures have different stories of how language arose | public domain | Wikimedia Commons
These vulnerable languages are mainly spoken by the indigenous people living in several remote parts of the world in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Due to the economic and social challenges these people face, their languages are being lost.
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20/08/2015
19 August 2015, ASEAN Secretariat News* – The latest data from ASEAN Statistics revealed that ASEAN economies remained resilient in 2014 amidst uncertainty in the global economic environment. The real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 4.6 percent to reach US$ 2.57 trillion.
Source: ASEAN
The sustained growth in GDP led to an increase in the GDP per capita from US$ 3,908 in 2013 to US$ 4,130 in 2014. The services sector continued to be the biggest contributor to growth at 50.1 percent of the region’s total GDP in 2014.
In the case of ASEAN6 (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand), all countries except Malaysia have experienced a slowdown in their growth, leading to a decrease in the averaged GDP growth from 5.1 percent in 2013 to 4.3 percent in 2014.
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19/08/2015
By John Scales Avery*
20 August 2015
Optimum population in the long-term future
What is the optimum population of the world? It is certainly not the maximum number that can be squeezed onto the globe by eradicating every species of plant and animal that cannot be eaten. The optimum global population is one that can be supported in comfort, equality and dignity – and with respect for the environment.
In 1848 (when there were just over one billion people in the world), John Stuart Mill described the optimal global population in the following words:
“The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages of cooperation and social intercourse, has, in the most populous countries, been attained. A population may be too crowded, although all be amply supplied with food and raiment…”
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19/08/2015
18 August 2015 (RT)* – Israel has resumed a the construction of a controversial “separation” wall in the Cremisan valley, inhabited mostly by Palestinian Christians. The move is opposed by Palestinians who consider it a pretext for settlement expansion.
**”Gas the Arabs” painted on the gate outside a Palestinian home in Hebron by Israeli settlers. It is signed “JDL” (Jewish Defence League) | Author: Magne Hagesæter | Wikimedia Commons
In spite of an April court ruling against any activity of the kind, the works on constructing the wall in the Cremisan valley, located near Bethlehem, started on Monday [17 August]. The construction is a section of a wall Israel started building in 2002 citing security concerns.
To clear and dig the ground for a wire fence and a cement wall, olive trees have already been rooted out with bulldozers.
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19/08/2015
Senior United Nations officials on 18 August 2015 called for an immediate freeze on demolitions in the West Bank, after dozens of structures were demolished yesterday by Israeli authorities in Palestinian Bedouin refugee communities, near East Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities demolished this residential structure in the Palestinian community of Al Jiftlik Abu Al Ajaj in Area C of the Occupied West Bank in April 2015. Photo: OCHA (file)
“A total of 22 structures were demolished in four communities, displacing 78 Palestinians, including 49 children, the vast majority of whom are Palestine refugees,” said a joint statement issued today by the Coordinator for Humanitarian and UN Development Activities for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Robert Piper, and the Director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Operations in the West Bank, Felipe Sanchez.
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19/08/2015
The United Nations relief arm launched a call for millions of people around the world to drastically change their social media feeds and share captivating tale of humanitarian heroism ahead of this year’s World Humanitarian Day.
World Humanitarian Day 19 August 2015
“We’re calling on the young and digitally-connected to help us push out these compelling stories and give a voice to the voiceless,” said Stephen O’Brien, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in a press release issued on 13 August 2015.
“Young people often ask me what they can do to help and I believe we have a shared responsibility to raise awareness and help to inspire humanity on these global issues.”
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19/08/2015
On the eve of World Humanitarian Day, marked on 19 August, the United Nations drew attention to the 100 million people affected by natural disasters, conflict, hunger and disease, whose needs are far outstripping the capacity to help them, but he is also reminding the international community that “each one of us can make a difference” and “create a more humane world.”
A UNICEF worker speaks to a child seeking temporary shelter at a vacant field next to Nepal’s army headquarters in Kathmandu following Nepal’s massive earthquake. Photo: UNICEF/NYHQ2015-1007/Nybo
“On this Day we also celebrate our common humanity,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a message on the Day, which is marked annually on 19 August.
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18/08/2015
By Johan Galtung*
18 August 2015 – TRANSCEND Media Service – The game is dirty and has lasted 70 years. It came with the idea of development as imitating, but not catching up, with the West, for all states, including the deluge of states due to decolonization.
“*The Industrial Workers of the World poster “Pyramid of Capitalist System” (1911) by IWW | Wikimedia Commons.
The formula for big profit is simple: give credit to a country poor enough not to be able to pay it off quickly, yet not so poor that it cannot go on servicing the loan for years.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 