'Unseen' News and Views
**Locator map of Ethiopia.|UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) | Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons
By Beatrice Fihn*
6 January 2016 (ICAN–International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) – It was with great concern we heard the news that North Korea announced it carried out a successful test of its first hydrogen bomb on 6 January.
Source: ICAN-International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
While the nature and details surrounding the test are still unconfirmed, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation — which has monitoring stations positioned around the world to detect illegitimate testing activities — announced that it detected a seismic event similar to the North Korean test of 2013.
By Kumaran Ira*
7 January 2016 (WSWS)* – On Monday [4 January] , the Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) government of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sent a draft pension reform plan to Greece’s creditors (the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission) in exchange for obtaining €5.7 billion in bailout funds. The bill is reportedly to be submitted to parliament by mid-January and will be voted into law by early February.
**Alexis Tsipras speaking on Subversive Festival 2013 in Zagreb, Croatia. | Author: Robert Crc | Free Art License. | Wikimedia Commons
The cuts mark a new milestone in the attack waged on the working class by the charlatans of Syriza.
7 January 2016 – Over the last 4 months, a record-breaking 115,000 asylum-seekers arrived in Sweden. Among them were 26,000 unaccompanied children and minors, enough to fill 1,000 school classes, Morgan Johannson, Swedish Minister for Justice and Migration, told the Brussels press yesterday (6 January).
Source: EurActiv.com
Johannson spoke at a press conference with Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, Danish Immigration Minister Inger Stoejberg and Ole Schröder, Parliamentary Secretary of State at the German Federal Ministry for the Interior.
Source: RT
Two children were discovered working in an illegal clothing manufacturing facility during a police raid on a workshop in Turkey’s İzmir province.
The raid also uncovered the opportunistic aspect of the blackmarket economy where illegal manufacturing facilities make and then sell low quality equipment designed to save people’s lives.
By Baher Kamal*
5 January 2016 (IPS) – The “big five” – i.e., the most military powerful states on earth (US, UK, France, Russia and China) have just agreed that it would be about time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy.
**United Nations Security Council on the UN Headquarters in New York City | Author: Neptuul | Wikimedia Commons
Before reaching such a conclusion, they waited until over 300,000 innocent civilians were killed; tons of bullets shot; 4,5 million humans lost as refugees or homeless at home; hundreds of field testing of state-of-the-art drones made, and daily US, British, French and Russian bombing carried out.
4 January 2016 – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian territories is resigning due to Israel’s failure to grant him access to the areas he is tasked with monitoring.*
Makarim Wibisono, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. UN Photo/Violaine Martin
“Unfortunately, my efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under the Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way,” Makarim Wibisono said of his resignation,which he submitted to the President of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council today, to become effective as of 31 March.
By John Scales Avery*
5 January 2015
A major global public health crisis may soon be produced by the wholesale use of antibiotics in the food of healthy farm animals. The resistance factors produced by shoveling antibiotics into animal food produces resistance factors (plasmids) which can easily be transferred to human pathogens.
**Domestic sheep and a cow (heifer) pastured together in South Africa | Author: Lollie-Pop from Cape Town, South Africa | Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. | Wikimedia Commons
A related problem is the excessive use of pesticides and artificial fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers in agriculture.
Pharming is not a joke. It is a serious threat.
King Salman bin Abdulaziz
That provocation would appear to be aimed at inflaming sectarian tensions and fomenting conflict in various regional countries – already near flashpoint – in order to further Saudi geopolitical interests.
Central to those interests is, as always, the bitter rivalry with the region’s Shiite powerhouse, Iran.
Following the announcement at the weekend by the Saudi Interior Ministry that Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr had been executed, along with 46 other prisoners, there was predictable outrage from across the region, especially among countries where there is a large Shiite following, such as Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain.
Iran denounced the radical Sunni Saudi rulers as “criminal” and accused them of carrying out an act that is “the depth of imprudence and irresponsibility.”
**Map indicating locations of Iran and Saudi Arabia | Author: Turkish Flame | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 