Leh valley from air © Ashish Kothari
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14/03/2020
UN Human Rights Chief: Racism and Xenophobia Are ‘Contagious Killers’ Too
Human Wrongs Watch
(UN News)* — The coronavirus outbreak may have forced millions around the world already into “social distancing”, keeping a metre apart to prevent its spread, but it will not stop them from uniting to combat racism, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights declared in Geneva on Friday [13 March 2020].
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Michelle Bachelet was addressing the Human Rights Council as members met to debate progress since the launch of the International Decade for People of African Descent in 2014.
13/03/2020
USA and France Dramatically Increase Major Arms Exports; Saudi Arabia Is Largest Arms Importer – SIPRI
Human Wrongs Watch
By the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)*
(Stockholm, 9 March 2020) International transfers of major arms during the five-year period 2015–19 increased by 5.5 per cent compared with 2010–14. According to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the largest exporters of arms during the past five years were the United States, Russia, France, Germany and China. The new data shows that the flow of arms to the Middle East has increased, with Saudi Arabia clearly being the world’s largest importer.
13/03/2020
Global Light Pollution Is Affecting Ecosystems – What Can We Do?
Human Wrongs Watch
13 March 2020 (UN Environment)* — For hundreds of millions of years, the web of life on land has been dependent on, and determined by, day and night, light and dark. Photosynthesis, the process by which plants grow, depends on light and dark. And all animals depend on plants for their survival.
Light pollution Photo by Lamiot, Wikimedia Commons
13/03/2020
Traditional Farming System in Brazil Added to Global Agricultural Heritage List
Human Wrongs Watch
Farmers known as Sempre-vivas flower gatherers from Espinhaço Mountain Range won recognition for their crucial role in enhancing biodiversity and preserving traditional knowledge
12/03/2020
Five Things You Should Know Now about the COVID-19 Pandemic
Human Wrongs Watch
(UN News)* — On Wednesday 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded the status of the COVID-19 outbreak from epidemic to pandemic.
12/03/2020
Stock Market Bubble No Basis for Shared Prosperity
Human Wrongs Watch
– The US is currently still in a stock market bubble which, if history is any guide, is likely to end, perhaps soon due to Covid19. President Trump would, of course, like to sustain it to strengthen his November re-election prospects.
Meanwhile, US business investment has declined for many years. As shares of GDP, corporate profits or even market capitalization, such investment has been in decline for at least four decades. Clearly, ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies have failed to decades-long trend.
Financialization ‘unreal’
Although focused on the US, William Lazonick’s seminal 2014 Harvard Business Review article, Profits without Prosperity, and Lazonick and Shin’s new book, Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the US Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored offer invaluable insights into investment trends with implications for much of the world.
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12/03/2020
‘2020 Will Be Pivotal for Climate Action If the World Is to Control Ever Worsening Impacts of Climate Change Before It Is Too Late’ – State of the Climate Report
11 March 2020 (WMO)* — The year 2020 will be pivotal for climate action if the world is to control ever worsening impacts and indicators of climate change before it is too late, according to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as he launched WMO’s Statement on the State of the Global Climate.
12/03/2020
Linked Dangers
Human Wrongs Watch
By John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service*
Contrasting Rates of Change
John Scales Avery
Cultural evolution depends on the non-genetic storage, transmission, diffusion and utilization of information.
The development of human speech, the invention of writing, the development of paper and printing, and finally, in modern times, computers and the Internet: all these have been crucial steps in society’s explosive accumulation of information and knowledge.
Human cultural evolution proceeds at a constantly-accelerating speed, so great in fact that it threatens to shake society to pieces.
The strong contrast between the slow rate of genetic change and the lightning-like, constantly accelerating rate of cultural change means that we face the serious problems of today with an emotional nature that has changed little since our ancestors lived in small tribes, competing for territory on the grasslands of Africa.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 