'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
– A sign outside a laundry in New York city had a frivolously flippant slogan: “We launder dirty clothes, not dirty money.”
Credit: UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
And a 2019 movie titled “Laundromat,” based on a book ‘Secrecy World’ by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jake Bernstein, exposed the byzantine world of money laundering.
That’s the insidiously darker side of the world’s financial system – with millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains finding safety in offshore banks– a crime perpetrated on a global scale, says a High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI).
“The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy,” wrote Douglas Valentine in his important book, The CIA As Organized Crime.
Edward Curtin
This is true. The corporate mainstream media are stenographers for the national security state’s ongoing psychological operations aimed at the American people, just as they have done the same for an international audience.
We have long been subjected to this “information warfare,” whose purpose is to win the hearts and minds of the American people and pacify them into victims of their own complicity, just as it was practiced long ago by the CIA in Vietnam and by The New York Times, CBS, etc. on the American people then and over the years as the American warfare state waged endless wars, coups, false flag operations, and assassinations at home and abroad.
Another way of putting this is to say for all practical purposes when it comes to matters that bear on important foreign and domestic matters, the CIA and the corporate mainstream media cannot be distinguished.
UN Environment Assembly concludes with an urgent call for action to solve planetary emergencies
Nairobi, 24 February 2021 (UNEP)* –Ministers of environment and other leaders from more than 150 nations on 23 February 2021 concluded a two-day online meeting of the Fifth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) in which the Assembly warned that the world risks new pandemics if we don’t change how we safeguard nature.
The Green Gigaton Challenge backed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners, catalyses public and private funds to combat deforestation, with the goal to cut annual emissions by 1 gigaton by 2025.
24 February 2021 (UNEP)* — As environmental leaders and change makers meet virtually for the Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in February 2021, the issue of deforestation has been central to their discussions.
The principle of inclusive education, in this case, opening education up to all refugee children and their inclusion into national education systems can also lead to better services for local communities in host countries.
Rapid growth of digital economy calls for coherent policy response. The growth of digital labour platforms is presenting opportunities and challenges for workers and businesses and a need for international policy dialogue.
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GENEVA, 24 February 2021 (ILO)* – Digital labour platforms have increased five-fold worldwide in the last decade according to the ILO’s latest World Employment and Social Outlook 2021 report.
– Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador quietly rocked the agribusiness world with his New Year’s Eve decree to phase out use of the herbicide glyphosate and the cultivation of genetically modified corn. His administration sent an even stronger aftershock two weeks later, clarifying that the government would also phase out GM corn imports in three years and the ban would include not just corn for human consumption but yellow corn destined primarily for livestock. Under NAFTA, the United States has seen a 400% increase in corn exports to Mexico, the vast majority genetically modified yellow dent corn.
GENEVA, (OHCHR)* – UN experts* on 23 February 2021said the US Administration’s review of how to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre should also address ongoing violations of human rights being committed against the 40 remaining detainees, including torture and other ill- treatment.
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“We welcome the goal of closing the detention facility, consistent with our previous calls to end impunity for the human rights and humanitarian law violations committed during the ‘war on terror’. As the 20thanniversary of 9/11 looms, we urge a transparent, comprehensive, and accountability-focused review of the operation and legacy of the prison and the military commissions,” the experts said.
US President Joe Biden announced this month that his Administration would study how it could shut down Guantanamo, as was first promised by former president Barack Obama.
