'Unseen' News and Views
The industrial agriculture paradigm, which sees the world as a machine, and not as a self-organized living system, has created devastation on the planet, while contributing significantly to the issue of climate change.
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Navdanya International’s latest graphic report, ‘Regeneration is Life‘, presented at Cop 28 in Dubai, analyzes the actual causes at the root of climate change and highlights the true regenerative solutions against the false solutions proposed by polluters.
(UN News)* — This year’s surprising spike in dengue infections globally represents a potentially high public health threat, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday [22 December 2023].
© UNDP/Gwenn Dubourthoumieu | Bed nets protect against mosquitoes that carry diseases like malaria and dengue fever.
The warning came as WHO reported more than five million dengue infections and 5,000 deaths from the disease worldwide this year.
– The World Bank insists commercial finance is necessary for achieving economic recovery and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but does little to ensure profit-hungry commercial finance serves the public interest.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
By failing to address pressing challenges within their purview, the second-ever Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings on the African continent, in Marrakech in October 2023, set the developing world even further back.
The International Monetary and Financial Committee, which oversees the International Monetary Fund (IMF), could not agree, by consensus, on the usual end-of-meeting ministerial communique for ‘geopolitical’ reasons. The Development Committee, which governs the World Bank Group, fared little better.
A family cooks a meal in a temporary accommodation in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Credit: WFP
In new estimates released on December 21, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global partnership that includes the World Health Organization (WHO), said Gaza is facing “catastrophic levels of food insecurity,” with the risk of famine “increasing each day.”
An unprecedented 93% of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger, with insufficient food, and high levels of malnutrition.
(UN News)* — There are no functioning hospitals in the north of Gaza and injured patients who need surgery and cannot be moved are “waiting to die”, the UN health agency said on Thursday [], in a plea for a ceasefire to allow more aid into the shattered enclave.
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The latest grave assessment from the World Health Organization (WHO) came after UN teams reached Al Ahli Arab hospital and Al Shifa hospital on Wednesday, amid reports of intensifying ground operations by Israeli Defense Forces and continuing airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, in response to Hamas’s 7 October terror attacks on southern Israel.
Frequently articulated expressions derive from the Greek terms logos and eros, but who has heard of thumos? Why are the root words of logical reasoning and erotic love so familiar while one that drives us to principled action is virtually unknown?
Marilyn Langlois
In her introductory remarks to the first annual David Ray Griffin lecture on 3 December, 2023, writer and researcher Elizabeth Woodworth highlighted the concept of thumos, which she defined as the inability to tolerate injustice without taking action.
She ascribed the term to the late David Ray Griffin, one of the premier intellectuals and courageous truth seekers of our time, whose death a year ago went wholly ignored by major media.
She suggested that those who exert imperial control would prefer we not pay too much attention to thumos or those who exhibit it.
(UN News)* — As the UN Security Council was slated to meet for a third consecutive day on Wednesday [] in a new push for consensus to pause the fighting in Gaza, the head of the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF warned that without safe water, “many more children” will soon die from disease.
“Access to sufficient amounts of clean water is a matter of life and death…children in Gaza have barely a drop to drink,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
“Children and their families are having to use water from unsafe sources that are highly salinated or polluted. Without safe water, many more children will die from deprivation and disease in the coming days.”
People in Rafah city in the Gaza Strip flee a missile attack. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
The United Nations and the international community have remained helpless– with UN resolutions having no impact– while American pleas for restrained aerial bombings continue to be ignored by the Israelis in an act of defiance.
By Bill Frelick, Director, Refugee and Migrant Rights Division | Human Rights Watch*
Lawmakers Demand Mandatory Detention in Return for Aid Support
The Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, New Mexico, US, September 29, 2022. © 2023 Andres Leighton/AP Photo
The Biden administration is reportedly considering accepting mandatory detention of asylum seekers, one of the demands of Republican Party lawmakers to “secure the border” in exchange for passing the administration’s supplemental aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, and US border enforcement.
The US Immigration and Nationality Act already makes detention mandatory for asylum seekers in expedited removal who are awaiting credible fear of persecution interviews.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 