KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Jul 14 2020 (IPS)* – The recent explosion of private finance has nursed the hope, dream or illusion that it can be mobilized for the public good, e.g., to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, associated with Agenda 2030. However, such hopes ignore how changes in financial investing have deeply transformed corporations, national economies and prospects for the world economy and social progress.
Private finance boom
Private capital has exploded with financial deregulation from the late 20th century.
Global finance increased 53% from 2000 to 2010, reaching some US$600 trillion (ten times annual world output), and was projected to reach US$900 trillion by the end of this year.
Any serious study of the relevant scholarly literature reveals at least four possible paths to imminent human extinction, that is, human extinction within five years: nuclear war, the climate catastrophe, the deployment of 5G, and biodiversity collapse.
Robert Burrowes
Moreover, as I have documented previously, under cover of the non-existent ‘virus’ labeled COVID-19, the global elite is conducting a coup against humanity.
A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official on 13 July 2020 called for the question of school re-openings to be included as part of comprehensive, data-driven COVID-19 public health strategies, and not a politically-driven decision-making process. *
Responding to questions from reporters at the regular WHO press briefing in Geneva, Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said “we can’t play Whack-a-mole. We need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time”.
(UN News)* — In much of the world, “hunger remains deeply entrenched and is rising”, the UN chief said on 13 July 2020, launching this year’s major UN food security update, highlighting that over the past five years, tens of millions of people have joined the ranks of the chronically undernourished.
FAO/Nozim Kalandarov | Women farmers harvest grains in Gisar, Tajikstan.
10 July 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Attempting to prevent police racism and violence is a worthy and overdue reform. However, to adequately address racism, we need to take a step back and understand the ‘me’ generations. Then perhaps we may begin to move away from the me-culture towards a we-culture.
A Green-Brown-Black New Deal could be the first step to help America heal | Image from Wall Street International.
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We might even consider completing the French revolution, giving equality and fraternity the same priority as individual freedom (Prilleltensky 2020). We may find our lost morality and build community (Brooks 2020). Let us try to understand how the me generations evolved over the last 60 years.
A new movement of time rebels is challenging the myopia of conventional politics.
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Flickr/Dominic Alves. CC BY 2.0.
12 July 2020 (openDemocracy)* — Democracy has a blind spot so enormous that almost nobody notices it – myself included. In the decade I spent as a political scientist researching democratic governance, it simply never occurred to me that we systematically disenfranchise future generations in the same way that women and slaves have been disenfranchised in the past. Yet that is the reality.
The new Greek asylum system is designed to deport people rather than offer them safety and protection, warned the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) and Oxfam on 1 July 2020. This means that people who have fled violence and persecution have little chance of a fair asylum procedure, and even families with children are regularly detained in inhumane conditions.
By the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi*
GENEVA – UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is concerned about planned changes to the asylum system in the United States. We are worried that the proposed “Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal, Credible Fear and Reasonable Fear Review”, currently being circulated for public comment, mark a departure from humanitarian policies and practices long championed by the United States and rooted in international law. | Español | Français | عربي
Philippo Grandi
The United States has for decades been a global leader in the field of refugee protection, on which the lives and freedom of many depend – providing access to asylum on its territory, resettlement places for extremely vulnerable refugees hosted elsewhere, and as the largest humanitarian donor to refugee programmes around the world.
However, the changes contained in the pending regulation, combined with separate restrictions enacted in recent years, would mean that many people fleeing persecution would be unable to request, or obtain, protection in the United States.
KESERWAN, Lebanon , Jul 10 2020 (IPS)* – They were promised the world but ended up in a Lebanese household. This is the story of many domestic workers in Lebanon. With a 70-year-old sponsor system still in place, domestic workers are tied to their employers with little or no basic rights. The ‘Kafala’ system is the major problem behind what we have been seeing in Beirut in the last months.
Outside of the Ethiopian embassy in Beirut, June 2020. Credit: This is Lebanon
12 July 2020 (UN News)* — In the wake of the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis, tax systems should be reformed, and tax avoidance and evasion reduced, to ensure an economic recovery in which everyone pays their share, says the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
OCHA/Gemma Cortes | Dioximar Guevara lives with her five children in San Felix, a slum of Puerto Ordaz, the main city in Bolívar, Venezuela, where poverty runs deep.
Taxes pay for many of the things that are fundamental to functioning societies across the world, such as schools, health care, and social services. Money raised through taxation is crucial to ensuring that these services are maintained during the COVID-19 crisis. But, when businesses shut down, and millions lose their jobs, as has happened during the current crisis, tax revenue plummets.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 