'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
28 MAR 2017 – Wall Street International – Donald Trump once opined: ‘In Japan, they bow. I love it. Only thing I love about Japan’. In his presentation of a well-known fact as if it were a novelty and his enthusiasm for gestures of obedience, here Trump could be said to be making a characteristic statement.
Shinzō Abe and Donald Trump | Photo reproduced from Wall Street International
A baby is screened for malnutrition at the UNICEF-supported Al-Jomhouri Hospital in Sa’ada, Yemen. Photo: UNICEF/Ma’ad Al-Zekri
For all intents and purposes Yemen has been decimated by a military onslaught of gargantuan proportion – one of the poorest nations on the planet versus an alliance of several superpowers.
Western capitals have bought themselves several dark chapters in the history books … how they will be remembered, and one may hope judged, will very much depend on how they proceed moving forward.
25 March 2017
WHAT IS the difference between a “corporation” and an “authority?
Uri Avnery
You don’t know? Join the 8.5 million Israelis who don’t know either.
It’s a national riddle. The whole country is absorbed by it. The Prime Minister announces that he will “go to the very end” to achieve his end. Which end? I don’t know. I am not sure that he knows. Nobody I know knows.
The Prime Minister threatens the worst. If he does not get his way – whatever it is – he will do something absolutely awful: announce new elections. Let the people decide whether they want the authority or the corporation. Whatever they are.
WHAT IS it all about? One thing is certain: it concerns the public media.
Binyamin Netanyahu wants to have them under his control. Completely. Totally. Radio. Television. The social media. The lot.
Seems it is not so easy to get a firm grip on them.
29 March 2017 – Hundreds of measles cases have been reported in Europe – where the disease was believed to be nearing elimination – leading the United Nations health agency to urge families to vaccinate their children and for national authorities to take urgent measures to stop transmission at the borders.
At least 500 cases were diagnosed since this January, the majority in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Switzerland and Ukraine.
In African and Middle Eastern countries facing famine, unsafe water is as dangerous for severely malnourished children as lack of food, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on 29 March 2017 warned, noting that nearly 27 million people are at risk in northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.
A young girl collects water for use at their home in Bakassi IDP camp, in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state in north-east Nigeria. Photo:UNICEF/Abubakar
“Unsafe water can cause malnutrition or make it worse, no matter how much food a malnourished child eats, he or she will not get better if the water they are drinking is not safe,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes.
The governments of Australia, Canada, the UK and the US need to close glaring legal loopholes to prevent the corrupt elite from laundering the proceeds of grand corruption in their local real estate markets, a major anti-corruption watchdog urges.
“Caution Bribe Coming Through.” March in Washington, DC, April 13, 2013, by Represent.Us. Credit: Djembayz. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The Berlin-based Transparency International (TI), a global anti-corruption movement working in over 100 countries, on March 29 issued a new report, Doors Wide Open: Corruption and Real Estate in Key Markets, in which it identifies the 10 main problems related to real estate and money laundering in those four countries and makes recommendations on how to address them.
Millions of children are on the brink of starvation in the worst humanitarian crisis in decades, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on 28 March warned, urgently calling for nearly $255 million to respond to immediate needs in northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.
UNICEF Nutrition Officer Judy Jurua Michael (centre) weighs 13-month-old Alakaii during a malnutrition screening at Gabat Center, a UNICEF-supported Outpatient Therapeutic Programme in Aweil, South Sudan, Monday 13 March 2017. Photo: UNICEF/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin
– The sight of one of the most infamous borders on earth – roughly 1,000 kilometers of porous metal fence dividing lives, hopes and dreams between the USA and Mexico, is undoubtedly overwhelming, but not in the way we expected it to be.
The US/Mexico Border is becoming more dangerous. Credit: Hans Maximo Musielik/Amnesty International
While it has been one of the most talked about issues since last year’s USA election campaign, the stretch of land that separates the USA and Mexico now lies eerily quiet.
An Egyptian farmer feeding cows fresh fodder. Credit: FAO
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According to the FAO Regional Overview of Food Insecurity in the Near East and North Africa, issued on March 27, the deterioration is largely driven by the spreading and intensity of conflicts and protracted crises.
L’Alfàs del Pi, Spain, 27 March 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – Female emancipation, patriarchic family decline and femicide are with us, the femicide according to UN[i] particularly in Guatemala, Mexico and Australia-Canada-South Africa-USA. And here in Spain women are also killed by (ex)husbands and (ex)lovers: 44 by “their” men in 2016, 60 in 2015[ii], first two months of 2017 maybe 17[iii]. Why?
Johan Galtung
The couple is a mini-society; killing is a civil war. Spain had a big civil war in 1936-1939; Franco’s goal was to recover normal Spain.
Could Spanish femicide be to recover the normal Spanish family? By men to the right politically, so numerous that the killing will continue? A hypothesis. A pessimistic prognosis.
Watch Colombia, a product of Spain still in the hands of the “real powers”, also killing women.
But was there ever something like the “normal Spanish family”?
Yes. In a feudal society based on land ownership and its military protection and expansion, the families of landowners and officers would be “normal”; as also the families of landworkers and soldiers.
