'Unseen' News and Views
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Now that the so-called P5+1group (US, UK, France, Russia and China, plus Germany) few months ago concluded an agreement with Iran to prevent the risk of an eventual military nuclear programme in exchange of lifting massive Western sanctions, a new wave of nuclear hysteria seems to be in the air.
By Uri Avnery*
27 February 2016
HE APPEARED out of nowhere. Literally.
Uri Avnery
The Israeli Police needed a new commander. The last one had come to the end of his term of office, several senior officers had been accused of molesting their female subordinates, one had committed suicide after being accused of corruption. So somebody from outside was indicated
When Binyamin Netanyahu announced his choice, everybody was amazed. Roni Alsheikh? Where the hell did he come from?
He does not look like a policeman, except for his mustache. He never had the slightest connection with police work. He was, actually, the secret deputy chief of the Shin Bet – the internal secret service.
Malicious tongues whispered that there was a simple reason for this strange appointment: the Shin Bet chief was about to move on. Netanyahu did not want Alsheikh to succeed him. So he sent him to command the police instead.
By Johan Galtung*
29 February 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service – “Mathematics” comes from Greek mathema knowledge, science and mathesis learning, understanding-Leibniz’ mathesis universals. Deep knowledge?
Johan Galtung
Mathematics started with numbers (arithmetic) and shapes (geometry).* The concepts were related by “self-evident truths”, axioms, mirroring, inspired by empirical reality, counting, observing.
And took on its own life: from primary concepts to new concepts by definition, from axioms to theorems by deduction.
An abstract reality with one law: No Contradictions: a theorem and its negation cannot both be true, nor a theorem be both true and false. Forbidden, Streng verboten, Interdit. Many key mathematicians were German and French. Deductive cultures?
From the other side of the world came the daoist axiom that life is contradictory, yin/yang, with forces and counter-forces acting upon each other ad inf.
Can mathematics only mirror dead nature? Does it through mirroring reduce life to contradiction-free, dead, matter? And what can we possibly learn from mathematics for peace, and how?
Migrants from countries across Asia and the Pacific play a key role by helping to drive economic growth in their countries of destination while also supporting families in their countries of origin, but the benefits of migration remain under-acknowledged, a new United Nations report has found.
A scene at the Sukarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta. Thousands of women leave their homes in Indonesia to work as domestic workers each year. Photo: IRIN/David Swanson
Launching the report on 29 February 2016 at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand, Hongjoo Hahm, Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), emphasized that the scale of migration is only likely to increase in Asia and the Pacific, but that the outcome of the trend is in the hands of the region’s countries.
“Business-as-usual risks heightening inequality, holding back advances in productivity, and facilitating human rights abuses,” said Hahm.
The promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is that well-managed migration and mobility will benefit migrants and their families as well as countries of origin and destination, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General on 29 February 2016 said, urging Member States to work together to “make sure this promise becomes a reality.”
A young child, amongst other Afghan refugees, waits for a permission to cross the border to Serbia from Tabanovce in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Photo: UNICEF/UN010676/Georgiev
“I cannot recall a time when the issue of mass displacement, refugees and migratory movements was as high on the agenda of the international community as it is today,” Eliasson told the 2016 International Dialogue on Migration, a two-day event organized at Headquarters by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and focused on the 2030 Agenda and its landmark Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Women and girls need to be at the core of disaster risk reduction, given that they often bear the brunt of climate change and hazards such as storms and floods, United Nations experts tasked with monitoring implementation of a landmark UN convention on ending discrimination against women on 29 February 2016 heard.
In Yogyakarta, Indonesia, women at a community meeting discuss the reconstruction of their village in the wake of the 2006 tsunami and earthquake. Photo: World Bank/Nugroho Nurdikiawan Sunjoyo
In a special session on the gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction and climate change, convened in Geneva by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Robert Glasser, head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), underscored that the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction – a 15-year international blueprint adopted last March in Japan with the aim of saving lives and curbing the economic impact of natural and man-made hazards – puts the issue of gender squarely in the spotlight.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 