'Unseen' News and Views
(Beirut) – Governments should immediately support a salvage operation to prevent a supertanker moored off Yemen’s coast from spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Red Sea, 20 human rights and humanitarian groups said in a joint statement released today [18 July 2022]
Yemen – Rod Waddington / flickr.
As President Joe Biden embarks on his trip to the Middle East, those of us back home must acknowledge the suffering the United States has caused in places like Yemen.
11 Jul 2022 – President Joe Biden’s foreign policy advisors are applauding themselves for devising a “sensitive” itinerary as he plans to embark on a trip to the Middle East on July 13.
Tasks for the Future
John Scales Avery
In the future, we will be faced with many important challenges and tasks. We need a new economic system, a new society, a new social contract, a new way of life.
Here are the great tasks that history has given to our generation: We must achieve a steady-state economic system. We must restore democracy.
We must decrease economic inequality. We must break the power of corporate greed. We must leave fossil fuels in the ground. We must stabilize and ultimately reduce the global population.
We must eliminate the institution of war.
And finally, we must develop a more mature ethical system to match our new technology We must achieve a steady-state economic system.
UN Photo/Pernaca Sudhakaran
Just three days ahead of this year’s Nelson Mandela International Day (18 July), a group of independent United Nations human rights experts condemned reports of escalating violence targeting foreign nationals in South Africa.
New recommendations released by the three agencies offer solutions and alternatives to the continued practice of detaining asylum-seeking, refugee and migrant children across Europe
(UN News)* — Official data published by UN agencies on Friday [15 July 2022] shows the largest sustained decline in childhood vaccination rates in approximately 30 years, with 25 million infants missing out on lifesaving shots.
The figures released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund UNICEF, show the percentage of children who received three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) – a marker for immunization coverage within and across countries – fell five points between 2019 and 2021, to 81 per cent.
Teenage girls harvest tomatoes on a farm in the state of Sinaloa, in northern Mexico. Credit: Courtesy of Instituto Sinaloense para la Educación de los Adultos (Sinaloa Institute for Adult Education)
For example, of all domestic workers worldwide -overwhelmingly women- up to 94% lack access to the full range of protections, covering medical care, sickness, unemployment, old age, employment injury, family, maternity, invalidity and survivors’ benefits.
Jan Oberg
Let’s look at NATO’s reaction to Russia’s ill-considered and international law-violating military action in Ukraine.
From a conflict-analytical point of view, it is reasonable to say that Russia is responsible for the war but that NATO with it reckless expansion against all promises given to Russia and a series of expert warnings is responsible for the underlying conflict.
It can safely be concluded that the Western/NATO response has moved beyond the proportionality principle, beyond rationality and a realistic image of the world and its own role in it:
NATO leaders express limitless hatred of everything Russia; historically hard and time-unlimited economic sanctions have been imposed – using the illegal method of collective punishment; weapons for an estimated US$ 60-100 billion will be pumped into Ukraine to defeat Russia there.
NATO has added US$ 350 billion in military expenditures since the US-instigated regime change in Kiev in 2014 and, since then, prepared Ukraine for a role in NATO. The 2% goals is now a floor, not a ceiling.
(UN News)* — In addition to tackling COVID and the monkeypox outbreak, the UN health agency has also been keeping a close eye on the puzzling spread of hepatitis in previously healthy children, which has left dozens needing lifesaving liver transplants.
According to a new update on Wednesday [13 July 2022] from the World Health Organization (WHO), 35 countries in five regions of the world have now reported more than 1,010 probable cases of unexplained severe acute hepatitis, or liver inflammation, in youngsters, since the outbreak was first detected on 5 April.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 