08/02/2017
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7 2017 (IPS) – The United States and most Western donors have traditionally exercised their financial clout to threaten developing nations who refuse to fall in line on critical UN voting either in the Security Council, the General Assembly or the Human Rights Council.
Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
The unwritten rule, exercised off and on, warns: if you don’t play ball with us, we will penalize you by reducing or cutting off aid.
When Yemen, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, voted against a US-sponsored resolution to militarily oust Iraq from Kuwait back in 1990, the US blowback will remain forever in the UN’s institutional memory.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Climate Crisis, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc. |
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07/02/2017
By Dr. Gary Steven Corseri*
6 February 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – Because of its unbelievable size, this tree has never been photographed in its entirety, until now. National Geographic photographers have worked along with scientists to try and create the first photo that shows the President in all its glory.
And, when a sapling, did it hear
whispered legends on the wind–
of Hammurabi, Akhnaton, Babylon
and Ilium?
Those men climbing now are bugs.
Though they have their lives,
their daily grind for daily bread,
what’s 70 years in this Sequoia’s life,
secluded here in the soil of its elements?
And 500—nay, 5000–years from now,
when we’re long gone to ruins
and runes of memories
(on some computer chips, perchance!)
will living roots reach down to living earth,
will soaring branches still
filter light below?
Or will the whirling orb whirl lifeless
in the Cosmic Sea
where suns are gathering, even now,
like shining dew on silvery webs
to ripen and renew?
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc. |
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07/02/2017
By Johan Galtung*
6 February 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – Two important words enriching each other. “Nonviolent” easily becomes bla-bla, and “economy” is too general. But, does “nonviolent” make a difference for the better to the economy? And vice versa, can “economy” make “nonviolent” more positive, beyond resistance to evil?
Johan Galtung
Let us start with “economy”, here conceived of as a cycle with three poles: Nature, Production, Consumption.
And three processes: Extraction from Nature, Distribution from Production to Consumption, and Pollution from Production-Consumption back to Nature.
The cycle flow is in that order: Nature → Production → Consumption → Nature.
A simple summary of the economy: humans extract resources from nature, produce-process for (end) consumption, and sends what they cannot consume back to nature (but economists, like book-keepers, left out the Nature part). And we want it all to be nonviolent!
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Posted in Climate Crisis |
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07/02/2017
The scale of violence against the Rohingya community in Myanmar’s Rakhine state documented in a recent United Nations human rights report is a level of dehumanization and cruelty that is “revolting and unacceptable,” the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide on 6 February 2017 said, underlining the Government’s responsibility to ensure that populations are protected.
Residents of the Thet Kae Pyin camp for displaced people in Sittwe, Rakhine State, Myanmar. (file) Photo: OCHA/P.Peron
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Posted in Asia, Market Lords, War Lords |
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06/02/2017
Female genital mutilation denies women and girls their dignity and causes needless pain and suffering, with consequences that endure for a lifetime and can even be fatal, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said, stressing that the UN Sustainable Development Agenda promises an end to this practice by 2030.
Women from Samburu, Kenya, gather for a public discussions where they publicly say no to female genital mutilation. Photo: UNICEF/Samuel Leadismo
“On this Day of Zero Tolerance, let us build on positive momentum and commit to intensifying global action against this heinous human rights violation for the sake of all affected women and girls, their communities and our common future,” the Secretary-General on 6 February 2017 said in a message on the International Day.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Climate Crisis, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East |
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06/02/2017
By Uri Avnery*
04/02/2017
THE MOST incisive analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I have ever read was written by the Jewish-Polish-British historian Isaac Deutscher. It consists of a single image.
Uri Avnery
A man lives on the upper floor of a building, which catches fire. To save his life, he jumps out of a window and lands on a passerby in the street below. The victim is grievously injured, and between the two starts an intractable conflict.
Of course, no metaphor is completely perfect. The Zionists did not choose Palestine by chance, the choice was based on our religion. The founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, initially preferred Argentina.
Still, the picture is basically valid, at least until 1967. From then on, the settlers continued to jump across the Green Line, with no fire in sight.
THERE IS nothing holy about the Green Line. It is no different from any other border line around the world, whatever its color.
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Posted in Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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05/02/2017
Protesters gather outside the Lahore Press Club in the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province on July 12, 2016 to demand justice for victims of sexual violence. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS
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05/02/2017
By IPS World Desk
ROME, Feb 5 2017 (IPS) – Wheat rust, a family of fungal diseases that can cause crop losses of up to 100 per cent in untreated susceptible wheat, is making further advances in Europe, Africa and Asia, according to two new studies produced by scientists in collaboration with the United Nations.
Photo: FAO/Fazil Dusunceli
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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05/02/2017
As Europe Union leaders gathered on 3 February 2017 in Malta to discuss new measures on migration, including increased cooperation with Libya, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UN rights experts underlined the need to ensure that children are protected and that migrants should not be pushed back to places where their safety is at risk.
A boy, who is an unaccompanied minor, looks across the beach in Trabia, Italy. Photo: UNICEF/Ashley Gilbertson VII
Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 