'Unseen' News and Views
Observing the World Meteorological Day, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 23 March 2016 warned that extreme weather events are becoming “the new normal” and bold climate action is needed to “face the future now.”
Martin Delingon’s bathes near his house on July 13, 2014, that was among those in the Philippines crushed by this ship that was swept ashore by typhoon Haiyan’s storm surge. Photo: Dominic Chavez/World Bank | Source: UN News Centre
23 March, 2016 (RT)* – The West has brought terrorists attacks on their own people by supporting for decades Islamist terrorists trying to achieve geostrategic objectives, said the editor of Politics First Marcus Papadopoulos, commenting on the Brussels blasts.
**Digital advertisement in Brussels. It reads, in French, “Stay where you are, avoid all movement, prioritize communications by SMS or social networks”. | Author: Miguel Discart on Flickr : https://www.flickr.com/people/miguel_discart_vrac/
“The roots of these terrorist attacks are Western foreign policy. For the last 30 years or so America in particular, but also Britain and France have been working with Islamist terrorists to try and achieve geostrategic objectives. And this is what happens when you get into bed with repugnant dangerous extremist people – it comes back to haunt you,” he told RT.
Washington, DC, 22 March 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service – Nobody knows. But under US presidentialism presidents matter; close to a dictatorship for one administration.
Johan Galtung
That is where democracy–for, by if not of the delegates, it seems–enters; with a painstaking nomination process, like nothing in the rest of the world. And then the elections in November, after party conventions in July.
There are three parties in the USA: Democrats, Republicans; and Democrats in the South, loyal to the party leadership DNC and vice versa, Southern Baptist conservative, traditionally for blacks, women, working class, minorities (Southern Republicans are white Anglo men). Very different from Yankee democrats up in the North producing Bernie.
So we get a South-North gradient Hillary-Bernie, with exceptions. However, there is also an age gradient for both genders even if more for men: the older the more Hillary, the younger the more Bernie.
If, likely, Hillary is nominated, Bernie will leave an imprint on US politics and many states in the North, and more so as time passes. But socialism, age and vague foreign policy rule him out as president.
21 March 2016
It is disturbing to see how little effect the earth’s present critical climate emergency has on the behaviour of politicians and the mass media. Recent data show that the earth is heating much faster than expected, and that this is most pronounced in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
**Rapidly thawing Arctic permafrost and coastal erosion on the Beaufort Sea, Arctic Ocean, near Point Lonely, AK. Photo Taken in August, 2013 | Author: Awing88 | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons
Rome, 19 March 2015
The recent German elections went as predicted. A new right wing, xenophobe party, Alternative for Germany, AFD, has emerged with force, and will sit in national Parliament in 2017. This development is unprecedented in German politics since the end of World War II, and it is widely viewed as part of a general trend – the rise of populist and xenophobe forces all over Europe.
Roberto Savio
The European elections of 2004 rang the first warning bell.
The euro crisis and social instability saw the beginning of a surge to the right.
Since then, every national election has seen a shift in the internal balance.
Historical examples of civics and tolerance in the Nordic countries, such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark, has changed direction. The Swedish Democrats, a party rooted in the neo Nazi movement, has forced the country to change its famous policy of open door to refugees.
The Danish Popular Party last summer emerged as the second choice. In Finland, the True Finns became the third force in 2015, and are now in the governmental coalition.
– When the only female candidate failed in her attempt to become UN Secretary-General back in late 2006, an Asian diplomat weighed in with an upgraded Biblical quote: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle”, he said, “than for a woman to become the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”
**Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the only female candidate failed in her attempt to become UN Secretary-General back in late 2006 | NATO photos
But as an unrelated New Yorker cartoon jokingly pronounced: “We (may still) need either bigger needles or smaller camels.”
That female candidate, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, never made it to the 38th floor of the UN Secretariat, the office of the UN chief.
19 March 2016
SO IS Hezbollah a terrorist organization?
Of course not.
So why has the Arab League decided that they are?
Uri Avnery
Because most of the league’s member states are Sunni Muslims, while Hezbollah is a Shiite organization supporting Shiite Iran and Alawite (quasi-Shiite) Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
So were Israel’s Arab parties right when they condemned the league’s resolution?
Right, yes. Wise, no.
LET’S START with Hezbollah. Surprisingly enough, it is in a way an Israeli creation.
Lebanon is an artificial state. For centuries, it was considered a part of Syria.
Because of its mountainous terrain, it was an ideal place for small persecuted sects, which could defend themselves there. Among them is the Maronite Christian community, called after a monk by the name of Maron.
Añelo, a Patagonian town in southwest Argentina that experienced explosive growth because it is next to the country’s biggest shale oil and gas field, is now starting to feel the impact on the development of these resources due to the plunge in international oil prices. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS
The UN on 18 March 2016 appointed Red, the leader of the “Angry Birds” mobile game characters, as an envoy to inspire climate action toward a sustainable and happier future for all.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with Red from the ‘Angry Birds’ who was appointed Honorary Ambassador for International Day of Happiness. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
16 March 2016, (Oxfam)* – Banks in France are relying heavily on tax havens to increase their profits, according to a study based on new data that for the first time allows a proper analysis of the role that tax havens play in European business.
**Paris business district of La Défense (cities of Puteaux, Courbevoie and Nanterre) as seen from the tour Défense 2000. | Author: Dimitri Destugues | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons
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