DAYLESFORD, Australia, 21 March, 2018 — In 2014 I wrote an article titled ‘The Global Elite is Insane’. I want to elaborate what I explained in the earlier article so that people have a clearer sense of what we are up against in our struggle to create a world of peace, justice and ecological sustainability.
**Political cartoon from October 1884, showing wealthy plutocrats feasting at a table while a poor family begs beneath | Author: Walt McDougall (1858–1938) Valerian Gribayedoff (1858–1908) | Wikimedia Commons: “This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.”
Half of All Fruit and Vegetables Discarded for Their ‘Look’
21 March 2018 (Wall Street International)* — Many of us are seriously worried about the environment, following the bad news about its steady degradation and talking about it with our families, colleagues and friends. And many are willing to do something to help but feel powerless.
Look: there is an easy, very easy way how to prevent the further deterioration of the environment and help combat climate change. As easy as buying and eating “ugly” fruit and vegetables, just to start with.
As an initial matter, it must be said that while the UN had authorized a NATO fly-zone over Libya to protect civilians – all civilians, by the way – there was never authorization for the full-scale invasion which was carried out and which quickly became aimed at regime change. Therefore, the NATO operation which actually took place was illegal.
20 March 2018, Rome/Brasilia – Global water use has increased by a factor of six over the past century, twice the rate of population growth, and its scarcity is now a looming human challenge due to a host of factors ranging from climate change and pollution to lack of capacity and infrastructure.
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Workers in Yemen build a water storage unit in a FAO-supported project.
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In a video message for the 8th World Water Forum in Brasilia, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said that two-thirds of the global population lives under conditions of severe water scarcity for at least part of the year.
20 March 2018 (Wall Street International)*— Neurosis is not characteristic of the human condition, it is a relational datum, that is, it stems from the attitudes that the human being or the individual establishes with himself, with the other, the others, and the world – his/her relational contexts.
Believing that neurosis – perceptual distortion or difficulty of adaptation – is part of the individual is psychoanalytic determinism; it is the idea that innate and unconscious traumas and biological characteristics determine our activities.
The humanitarian crisis and the resulting suffering will only worsen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) if persistent violence is not brought under control and there is no political transition, the top United Nations relief official on 19 March 2018 warned.
UN Photo/Manuel Elias | In a briefing, Mark Lowcock, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, shows the Security Council pictures from his recent mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Holding up a picture of a mother who lost two of her children, as well as her husband when their village in restive eastern DRC was attacked and burned down by armed militia in January, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock – who undertook a mission the country last week – explained:
16 March 2018 – TRANSCEND Media Service — 50 years ago today, on March 16,1968, a company of green, battle-untested US Army combat soldiers from the Americal Division, swept into the un-defended Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, rounded up the 500+ unarmed women, children, babies and old men, and efficiently executed almost all of them in cold blood, Nazi-style. No weapons or Viet Cong soldiers were found in the village. The entire killing operation took only 4 hours.
The United Nations in Syria is appealing urgently for help to ease the catastrophic situation for tens for thousands of people impacted by fighting in Eastern Ghouta, outside Damascus, and the northern town of Afrin.
UNICEF/Sanadiki | On 15 March 2018 in Beit Sawa, eastern Ghouta. families walk towards Hamourieh where an evacuation exit from Eastern Ghouta has been opened.
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Having seen first-hand the desperate conditions of people from east Ghouta and Afrin, who are tired, hungry, traumatized and afraid, we need to provide them with urgent aid,” Ali Al-Za’tari, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria, on 19 March 2018 said.
With five billion people at risk of having difficulty accessing adequate water by 2050, finding nature-based solutions, such as China’s rainwater recycling, India’s forest regeneration and Ukraine’s artificial wetlands, is becoming increasingly important, according to a United Nations report released on 19 March 2018 at the world’s largest water-related event in Brazil.
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Fardin Waezi/UNAMA | The Laghman River, one of Afghanistan’s many waterways, is essential to agriculture and other development in this largely rural eastern province.
19 Mar 2018 – TRANSCEND Media Service— I would like to announce the publication of a new book entitled The Devil’s Dynamo. It is a collection of articles and book chapters that I have written about the way in which military-industrial complexes throughout the world drive and perpetuate the institution of war.
John Scales Avery
A considerable amount of new material has also been added.
The book can be freely downloaded and circulated from this link.
Why call a book about military-industrial complexes “The Devil’s Dynamo”?
A military-industrial complex involves a circular flow of money. The money flows like the electrical current in a dynamo, driving a diabolical machine.
Money from immensely rich corporate oligarchs buys the votes of politicians and the propaganda of the mainstream media.