20/04/2017
By Vithal Rajan*
17 Apr 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – When a dastardly crime is committed, criminal investigation procedures demand there should be a primary focus on who has the motive, and then on who has the opportunity to commit the crime. Responsible agencies are not expected to jump to conclusions.
Vithal Rajan
So, it was surprising that at an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday, April 5th, Nikki Hayes, American ambassador to the UN, held up photos of children dying of sarin gas poisoning in Idlib, a rebel-held stronghold in north Syria, and blamed Syrian President Assad for bombing them to their agonizing death on Tuesday, April 4th morning.
However, Kim Wan-Soo, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, could only say ‘the means of delivery of the alleged attack cannot be definitively confirmed, at this stage.’
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW] was also still in the process of gathering and analyzing data and could confirm nothing. Nikki Hayes was not deterred.
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Posted in Asia, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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18/04/2017
Vendor Raulises Ramírez is up early to sell the typical coconut cones which he made the previous day, alongside the La Farola highway into the eastern Cuban city of Baracoa. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
“These will maybe be the last ones… the cones will disappear, because the hurricane brought down all the coconut palms in Baracoa,” the 52-year-old private entrepreneur told IPS. He makes a living in Cuba’s oldest city selling this traditional sweet made of coconut, honey, fruits and spices, wrapped in the fibrous cone-shaped palm leaf.
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Posted in Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, The Peoples |
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18/04/2017
17 April 2017 – Historically, the people in the Madan Mak and Loncy areas of the Lascahobas Commune have always had serious problems with access to safe drinking water.
Residents fill their containers at a water capture and distribution project point in a town an hour outside of Port au Prince, Haiti. Photo: Logan Abassi/MINUSTAH
Situated in a mountainous region of Haiti’s Central Plateau, a few hundred kilometres from the capital Port-au-Prince, the two communities – up to just a few weeks ago – were among the 42 per cent of the country’s population still without access to safe drinking water in 2017.
When the cholera epidemic hit the Plateau Central, the need for safe potable water became crucial to eliminate the transmission of the disease.
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18/04/2017
17 April 2017 – Noting that nearly half a million people have fled Mosul since the start of military operations to retake the city from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh) terrorists, a senior United Nations humanitarian official in Iraq warned that the scale of the displacement has stretched relief efforts to their “operational limits”.
In Mosul, Iraq, aging family members are pushed for hours through frontline fighting between the army and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh), to reach safety. Photo: IRIN/Tom Westcott
“Our worst case scenario when the fighting started was that up to one million civilians may flee Mosul. Already, more than 493,000 people have left, leaving almost everything behind,” Lise Grande, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, said in a news release issued by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
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18/04/2017
By Johan Galtung*
17 April 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – From Trump’s USA was not resurrection, but death. 59 Tomahawk missiles for Syria, the “mother of all bombs” for Afghanistan; Muslim states. Both attacks were based on lies: the old lie that 9/11 had its origin in Afghanistan, the new lie that Assad deliberately had used sarin[i].
Johan Galtung
The counter-narrative–that USA had provided the gas and used the accident as pretext for an attack–may stand. Let us see if USA-NATO accept an investigation; with a clean conscience, they would.
The USA back to normal?
With Trump surrounded by generals ready for killing and billionaires ready for exploiting? “Greatness” after some “populism” and America First protectionism?
With “NATO no longer obsolete”–to Stoltenberg’s delight–and China no longer manipulating currency rates–to China’s? Not quite. Trump makes a difference.
With Trump, there is now a perfect match between Trump narcissism (I know/am better) and paranoia (countless twits against critics) and US narcissism (exceptionalism) and paranoia (“us vs them”).
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18/04/2017
Wall Street International* – When one thinks of Vikings it generally involves an image of hulking, bearded men attacking farmsteads and villages, raping, plundering and being a general nuisance to the populace. They wear horned helmets, have large rounded shields and wield swords or axes which they swing at people in a mad berserker rage, while believing that if they die in battle they will enter Valhalla.
Unfortunately a lot of what is considered general knowledge about Vikings has been heavily influenced by popular culture over the last couple of centuries. Be it Wagner’s epic operas, Marvel comic books’ rendition of Norse gods or even sports team logos and mascots.
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17/04/2017
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Woman and child outside a Gonder church with crosses marked in ash on their foreheads. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
Meanwhile, traffic flows across the same bridge spanning the Blue Nile that six months ago was crossed by a huge but peaceful protest march.
But only a mile farther the march ended in the shooting of unarmed protesters by security forces, leaving Bahir Dar stunned for months.
Events last August in the prominent Amhara cities of Bahir Dar (the region’s capital) and Gonder (the former historical seat of Ethiopian rule) signalled the spreading of the original Oromo protests to Ethiopia’s second most populace region.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Climate Crisis, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, The Peoples, War Lords |
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17/04/2017
Women in Ganyiel, Unity state, South Sudan, collecting bags of food. The situation in Ganyiel is dire, with thousands of people having fled to the area from famine-stricken Leer and Mayendit counties. Photo: OCHA/Gemma Connell
“The crises in these four countries are protracted and complex – and the impacts will be felt for years,” said Stephen O’Brien, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, warning that the numbers are staggering as millions in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and north-east Nigeria are slipping deeper into crisis.
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17/04/2017
Against the backdrop of almost two billion people around the world relying on sources of drinking-water contaminated with faeces, the UN has called on countries to “radically” increase investments in water and sanitation infrastructure not only to protect their populations from deadly diseases but also to ensure that they are able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Water, along with pollutants and contaminating agents, flows into a canal in Maputo, Mozambique. (File) Photo: John Hogg / World Bank | Source: UN News Centre
“Contaminated drinking-water is estimated to cause more than 500,000 diarrhoeal deaths each year and is a major factor in several neglected tropical diseases, including intestinal worms, schistosomiasis, and trachoma,” on 13 April 2017 said Maria Neira, the Director of Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the UN World Health Organization (WHO).*
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15/04/2017
By Uri Avery*
15/04/2017
CUI BONO – “who benefits” – is the first question an experienced detective asks when investigating a crime
Uri Avnery
Since I was a detective myself for a short time in my youth, I know the meaning. Often, the first and obvious suspicion is false. You ask yourself “cui bono”, and another suspect, who you did not think about, appears.
For two weeks now, this question has been troubling my mind. It does not leave me.
In Syria, a terrible war crime has been committed. The civilian population in a rebel-held town called Idlib was hit with poison gas. Dozens of civilians, including children, died a miserable death.
Who could do such a thing? The answer was obvious: that terrible dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Who else?
And so, within a few minutes (literally) the New York Times and a host of excellent newspapers throughout the West proclaimed without hesitation: Assad did it!
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 