SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 5 2022 (IPS)* – The world is sailing into a perfect storm as key leaders seem intent on threatening more war, albeit while proclaiming the noblest of intentions. By doing so, they block international cooperation to create conditions for sustainable peace and shared prosperity for all.
Anis Chowdhury
Monetarist counter-revolution The 1970s saw Milton Friedman disciples’ monetarist counter revolutionblaming stagflation on ostensibly Keynesian economic policies. In 1974, Nixon replacement President Gerald Ford declared inflation “public enemy number one” and US “determination to whip inflation”.
Monetarists wanted tighter monetary policies to fight inflation. Curbing rising prices was deemed urgent, even though it would increase joblessness. They advocated abandoning expansionary fiscal measures for more growth and jobs.
Americans “need to imagine their vote has an impact on policy, an illusion the media encourages them to believe in.”
Ouch!
Peter Isaacson, writing in Fair Observer, seems to be saying . . . oh my God, democracy is a cliché, a big sham. I stand up, put my hand on my heart, pledge allegiance to the flag. This is America, land of the empowered voter.
Then I read about our president’s latest budget proposal, which includes $813 billion for “national defense” — pushing the Pentagon budget’s already record-setting enormity further into outer space — and I feel myself collapse (yet again) into nothingness.
3 April 2022 (UN News)* — Samuel (not his real name) grew up near the Haitian Capital of Port-au-Prince, and has seen his childhood home descend into lawlessness and gang violence. Now a staff member with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in the country, he faces the daily risk of kidnapping, or worse.
“I spent much of my childhood in the south of the capital, in Cité Plus, from the age of 10, until I got married 16 years later. Back then, it was a peaceful neighbourhood, but it has been transformed into a lawless, hellish zone.
Lucknow, India, Apr 4 2022 (IPS)* – Pooja Shukla, 25, a socialist candidate, has lost her maiden elections to the provincial parliament in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India. But Shukla is no loser.
Pooja Shukla may have lost an election, but the 25-year-old activist is determined to ensure the poor are catered for and women are protected. Credit Mehru Jaffer/ IPS
A day after the results were announced on March 10, Shukla was back to a rousing reception in her constituency in North Lucknow to thank her supporters for polling 1,04,527 votes for her.
Those in the Middle East know the kind of destruction seen in Ukraine all too well – the West was the perpetrator.
Joe Biden’s claims of the moral imperative of challenging Russian autocracy are likely to fall on deaf ears | Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/Alamy
2 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine remains in a violent stalemate. Russian forces are pausing their attempts to occupy Kyiv, having withdrawn some of their forces from around the capital, but a major retreat is highly unlikely given Russia is recruiting several thousand mercenaries from Syria.
Millions of people in Afghanistan are experiencing misery and hunger amid decades of conflict, the collapse of the country’s economy, years of drought, and freezing wintertime temperatures.
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Afghanistan, which has endured repeated humanitarian crises, faces its darkest time.
UNHCR and its partners have launched joint response plans to deliver vital humanitarian relief. There are 24 million people inside Afghanistan and 5.7 million Afghans and host communities in five neighbouring countries who need support.
(FAO)* — The economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate variability and extremes, conflict, and the persistence of hunger and malnutrition have shown us that now is the time for us to build more resilient agrifood systems.
If we don’t, agrifood systems will not be able to ensure food availability to all as well as physical and economic access to nutritious foods that make up healthy diets.
So, how can we protect our agrifood systems from shocks and stresses and better ensure nutritious food is available to all? In other words, how can we make our agrifood systems resilient?
— “Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots: fossil fuels and our dependence on them” said Ukrainian climate scientist Svitlana Krakovska as Russia, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers, was invading her country.
(UN News)* — “Arboviruses” might not be something most of us are familiar with, but for almost four billion people, they’re a deadly threat – which is why the UN health agency on Thursday [31 March 2022], launched a plan to prevent them from causing a new pandemic.
The most common arboviruses are in fact some of the world’s most dangerous mosquito-borne illnesses, such as Dengue, Yellow fever, Chikungunya and Zika.
They represent an ever-present and massive health threat in tropical and sub-tropical parts of the planet, although there are in fact a growing number of arboviral outbreaks worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Peter Isaacson
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 