ROME, May 4 2023 (IPS)* – Some days ago in Rome, the Italian taxi driver switched on the radio during a longish ride through the usual traffic jam. Music, gossip, and the hourly news bulletin. All of a sudden, the man strongly hit the steering wheel. “They are stupid, those bastards…,” he shouted.
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Africa is the continent that has contributed the least (just 2 to 3%) to the causes of the current climate emergencies while bearing the brunt of 82% of the devastating consequences. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
“These useless politicians speak every now and then about the need for solidarity with Africa…, blah, blah, blah,” he added. “But the solution is easy, very easy, even the most stupid can see it.”
According to the taxi driver, “the solution is that the government sends to Africa our retired engineers, agronomists, university professors… to teach Africans how to farm.”
The man was so furious that you would not dare to comment that African farmers already know how to farm… far more than many foreign academicians.
CAIRO, May 4 2023 (IPS)* – On the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, Saber Nasr, a young Egyptian man of 20, developed a fever.
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Ahmed Saber with two of his children. His son, Sabre Nasr, died when he was unable to access medical attention due to the conflict in Khartoum, Sudan.
Saber, who left Egypt for Sudan to pursue his dream of becoming a dentist after his high school grades prevented him from enrolling at an Egyptian university, was unable to find medical attention even though his temperature reached a dangerous 40 degrees Celcius.
One of his friends, Ahmed, attempted to seek assistance from the nearby hospitals in Khartoum, but all of them were locked.
Nasr’s father followed up on the phone, helplessly asking Ahmed to continue helping his son.
Ahmed couldn’t find transport, so he carried his friend for three kilometers to seek medical attention.
(UN News)* — Disinformation, hate speech and deadly attacks against journalists are threatening freedom of the press worldwide, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday [], calling for greater solidarity with the people who bring us the news.
UN Photo/Mark Garten | File photo of UN Secretary-General António Guterres (on screen) holding a virtual press conference.
The appeal comes in his message ahead of World Press Freedom Day, celebrated annually on 3 May, in line with a 1993 UN General Assembly resolution. The focus this year is on the connection between press freedom and overall human rights.
A global problem
“Freedom of the press is the foundation of democracy and justice. It gives all of us the facts we need to shape opinions and speak truth to power. But in every corner of the world, freedom of the press is under attack,” Mr. Guterres said.
UNITED NATIONS, May 1 2023 (IPS)* – The United Nations has consistently been a vociferous advocate of freedom of the press – and, most importantly, the right of journalists to report without fear of reprisals.
Credit: UNESCO Attribution 3.0 IGO
But regrettably, the UN is also one of most opaque institutions where transparency is never the norm.
The present world that we are all part of, shows imperialism or domination of large parts of the world by some imperial power such as USA, China, Britain.
In fact, Britain used to pride itself at the end of WWII by the statement that ‘the sun never sets on the British empire’ since Britain had colonised several countries north and south, east and west — from North America to Australia to New Zealand.
India was one of its proudest, biggest colonies among these regions. Britain had entered India for trade purposes, by the agency known as ‘East India Company’, but gradually metamorphosed into a colonial power.
This happened not only in India (which was under British rule for two centuries), but in several other regions from North America to South Africa, Singapore, New Zealand, and so on.
It is completely obvious that the United States, or more specifically, the Biden Administration, is behind the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The technical difficulty of planting the explosives under deep water is such that only a developed country would have the needed resources.
Russia can be ruled out because they have no motive. If the Russians had wanted to stop the flow of gas, they could just have turned it off by shutting the valves. Germany also has no motive. The United States has a motive: to cut off from Russia a source of income.
Recently Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh described in great detail how the United States sabotaged the two pipelines. The decision to do so must have been made by President Biden.
MADRID, Apr 25 2023 (IPS)* – Apologies to those Western politicians and media who continue to say that Ukraine’s brutal proxy war stands behind whatever catastrophes, disasters or crises occur in the Planet.
Is this accurate?
Rhine River, Cologne,,Germany, 10.08.2022. Credit: Shutterstock.
Scientific evidence confirms that, much earlier than that war, Europe, like many other regions, was already walking closer to the edge of extreme weather consequences.
Europe’s worst drought in 500 years?
“The drought episode that affected Europe in 2022 could well be the worst in 500 years,” reports Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme which “looks at our planet and its environment to benefit all European citizens and offers information services.”
MADRID, Apr 19 2023 (IPS)* –– As many as 45 African countries –out of the Continent’s 54 nations–, all of them grouped in what is known as Sub-Saharan Africa, have now been further squeezed to their bones, as funding shrinks to lowest ever levels, and as a portion of the so-called aid goes back to the pockets of rich donor countries.
See what happens.
The IMF has made some encouraging improvements in paying attention to social protection, health, and education, but it needs to do much more to avoid, in its own words, “repeating past mistakes”, says new report. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS
Donald Trump Is Currently Being Charged with 34 Felonies
John Scales Avery
11 Apr 2023 – The State of New York, under the leadership of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr., has arrested the former president, finger-printed him, and charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, in violation of Penal Law §175.
Trump’s Major Crimes
The crimes for which he is currently being prosecuted are relatively minor compared with his major crimes. Here is a list of what I consider to be his greatest crimes:
He claimed that climate change was “a hoax”, withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, and sabotaged the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to control greenhouse gas emissions.
Although he was aware of the serious nature of COVID-19, he claimed that it was no more dangerous than the flu in order for business to continue as usual. In this way he was responsible for hundreds of thousands of excess deaths in the United States.
He encouraged his followers to attack the United States Capitol on January 6, 2020, in order to overthrow the results of the presidential election in which he was defeated.
5 April 2023 (UNEP)*— Every year, the world loses enough forest trees to fill Portugal. Much of that deforestation happens on Indigenous lands and often without their prior and informed consent. But these communities are demanding change and fighting to protect their ancestral lands.
Getty Images
Indigenous groups are doing this by demonstrating effective conservation, patrolling forests, and at times, even taking governments and developers to court with the ultimate goal of protecting fast-disappearing forests.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 