'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
(Brussels) – The top governing body of the European Union Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) should urgently establish an independent inquiry into allegations of its involvement in unlawful operations to stop migrants from reaching the European Union (EU), Human Rights Watch said on 9 November 2020.
8 November 2020 (UN News)* — Some 13 million people in the central Sahel region of north Africa require urgent humanitarian assistance, due to violence, insecurity and extreme weather events. Behind these stark figures lie personal stories of tragedy, resilience and hope.
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Each year, 06 November marks the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. We report on one of the biggest challenges facing UNEP and its partners – the post-war clean-up of Iraq.
REUTERS/Ammar Awad / 09 Nov 2020
9 November 2020 (UNEP)* — Vast jet-black plumes of smoke curling upwards into the sky, blocking out the sun. Crude oil flowing through the streets. These were some of the environmental footprints left by ISIL/Da’esh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in northern and western Iraq.
Oil wells and mineral stockpiles were torched, particularly during the Mosul offensive in the spring of 2016. Water barrages were blown up. So thick were the clouds of smoke that for the inhabitants day became night.
Robert J. Burrowes
In his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World Carl Sagan lamented as follows:
I have a foreboding of [a] time when… awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down… is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media… but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance…. The plain lesson is that study and learning – not just of science, but of anything – are avoidable, even undesirable.
