‘Golden rice is a false miracle. It is a disease of nutritionally empty monocultures offered as a cure for nutritional deficiency. In fact, golden rice, if successful, will be 400% less efficient in providing Vitamin A…’
Vandana Shiva. (photo: The Seeds of Vandana Shiva film)
Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, died on September 9, 2009. Alfred G. Gilman died on December 23, 2015.
Both were Nobel laureates and now both dead. Gilman was a signatory to a recent letter condemning Greenpeace and its opposition to genetic engineering.
How many Nobel laureates does it take to write a letter? Easily ascertained — the dead Gilman and 106 others were enlisted in “supporting GMOs and golden rice”. Correct answer — 107, dead or alive.
ROME, 10 August 2016 (IPS) – Two-thirds of the African continent is already desert or dry-lands. But while this vast extension of the second largest continent on Earth after Asia is “vital” for agriculture and food production, nearly three-fourths of it is estimated to be degraded to varying degrees.
“No one can deny the terrible similarities between those running from the threat of guns and those fleeing creeping desertification, water shortages, floods and hurricanes,” Konrad Osterwalder, the United Nations University. Photo: UNCCD
This shocking diagnosis illustrating the current situation of this continent of over 30 million km², home to 1,2 billion human beings living in 54 countries, comes from the top world body dealing with desertification.
On June 28, 1914, the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, visited Sarajevo, the main town of Bosnia, then an Austrian province.
Three young Serbian inhabitants of Bosnia had decided to assassinate him, in order to achieve the attachment of Bosnia to Serbia. They threw bombs at the car of the archduke. All three failed to harm him.
Later on, one of the assailants, Gavrilo Princip, chanced upon his intended victim again. The archduke’s car had made a wrong turn, the driver tried to reverse, the car stalled, and Princip shot the duke dead.
That was “the shot heard around the world”.
This small incident led to World War I, which led to World War II, with altogether some 100 million dead, to Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust.
Yet, while the names of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler will be remembered for centuries, the name of Gavrilo Princip, the most important person of the 20th century, is already forgotten.
The dates of August 6 and 9, 1945, remind us of the horror of Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the context of the end of the Second World War. That is when the US government caused the USA military to drop two nuclear bombs on those cities, generating the most destructive of terrorist acts ever, and to date.
(Image by World March) | Pressenza
It was a genocidal crime against humanity that must be tried immediately to bring to an end like confrontations. Those who win wars are among other things, those who judge outcomes.
8 August 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service– Does not look good. The key problem is not Brexit, the unlikely victory of older English longing back to the Land of Hope and Glory–not made invisible by a cloak of EU–against nothing less than the City of London using the EU for their purposes.
Johan Galtung
The Leavers are deceiving themselves; they will be more “special relationed” to USA than ever now that USA has lost their “link to the continent”.
And the Remainders will find their ways, more of them will be operating out of Brussels, Luxembourg, Strasbourg and other key points in the EU.
The problem is, “Can Germany lead Europe alone?” (Anna Sauerbrey, INYT 5 Jul 2016). Her conclusion: “Germany may have to take command, after all… being at center stage, it might as well perform”.
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 10 August, 2016 – There is a long history of anti-war and peace activism. Much of this activism has focused on ending a particular war.
Robert J. Burrowes
Some of this activism has been directed at ending a particular aspect of war, such as the use of a type of weapon. Some of it has aimed to prevent a type of war, such as ‘aggressive war’ or nuclear war.
For those activists who regard war as the scourge of human existence, however, ‘the holy grail’ has always been much deeper: to end war.
There is an important reason why those of us in the last category have not, so far, succeeded. In essence, this is because, whatever their merits, the analyses and strategies we have been using have been inadequate.
NEW DELHI, Aug 9 2016 (IPS) – A media frenzy ensued in New Delhi last month when a popular television channel highlighted the horrific living conditions of women inmates in ward number six of Tihar Jail, South Asia’s largest prison.
Beggars are often rounded up by police and thrown into jail without charges being filed against them for years. This adds to the overcrowding in Indian prisons already reeling under a lack of basic facilities. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS
Four children were reportedly killed and three were injured on 7 August in the Nihm District, east of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on 9 August 2016 said in a statement today.
This photo shows Amal who is looking at her destroyed home in Sana’a, Yemen, after it was hit by an airstrike in April 2015. Photo: UNICEF/Ahmed Jahaf
“Children are paying the heaviest price of the conflict in Yemen,” said Julien Harneis, UNICEF representative in Yemen, who added that UNICEF deplored such acts and urged all parties to exercise maximum caution and avoid civilian infrastructure.
He said that since the escalation of the conflict in March 2015, UNICEF was able to verify that 1,121 children had been killed and another 1,650 were injured. “The actual numbers are likely to be much higher,” he added.
“UNICEF urges all parties to the conflict in Yemen to adhere to international humanitarian law and keep children out of harm’s way,” said Harneis.
To mark the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, senior United Nations officials on 9 August called on Governments to improve access to education and ensure that the most vulnerable are not left behind as the journey to achieve the new UN Sustainable Development Goals gets under way.
Indigenous Wayuu children in the village of Pessuapa, Colombia. UN Photo/Gill Fickling
“In some countries, less than 40 per cent of indigenous children attend school full-time. In many others, few indigenous children complete a full high school education,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message on the day.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 