'Unseen' News and Views
(Greenpeace International)* — We know that oil companies hid knowledge of global heating for decades, but the captains of petroleum also schemed to turn the ecological crisis into a profit centre. The industry devised a plan to swindle money from the public purse by pretending to address the climate issue while using subsidies to increase oil production. If one had no moral compass, one might say their scam was a stroke of genius.
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From unimaginable habitat loss to heartbreaking species extinctions, it shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us that our biodiversity – the variety of life in the world – continues to suffer from human greed, exploitation, encroachment, and neglect – putting short-term profit above all else. All life on this planet interacts and interconnects. All life relies on the biodiversity that surrounds it to thrive and survive.
This article shows how media uses computer modeling and “virtual crime scenes” to assign blame for some extremely important international events.
Protesters at a Managua roadblock, 30 May 2018. SITU Research
In these examples from Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria, many people died in complex circumstances. The deaths at the “Mother’s March” in Managua, Nicaragua precipitated an attempted coup. The Maidan Massacre in Kyiv led to an actual coup. The claims of a chemical attack in Douma led to the US, France and the UK bombing Syria.
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UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed concern over the fall in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), at a meeting of the UN Chief Executives Board, which brought together the heads of 30 UN agencies, to discuss ways of alleviating the crises holding back economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and boost implementation of the SDGs. May 2022. Credit: UN News/Abdelmonem Makki
“The world’s richest countries are providing healthier environments for children within their borders, yet are disproportionately contributing to the destruction of the global environment”. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
Over-consumption in the world’s richest countries is destroying children’s environments globally, explains UNICEF (the UN Children Fund) in its report Innocenti Report Card 17: Places and Spaces.
Anxiety about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the Russian border is one of the causes of the current war in Ukraine.
Vijay Prashad
But this is not the only attempt at expansion by NATO, a treaty organization created in 1949 by the United States to project its military and political power over Europe.
In 2001, NATO conducted an “out of area” military operation in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years, and in 2011, NATO—at the urging of France—bombed Libya and overthrew its government.
NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Libya were the prelude to discussions of a “Global NATO,” a project to use the NATO military alliance beyond its own charter obligations from the South China Sea to the Caribbean Sea.
NATO’s war in Libya was its first major military operation in Africa, but it was not the first European military footprint on the continent.
After centuries of European colonial wars in Africa, new states emerged in the aftermath of World War II to assert their sovereignty. Many of these states—from Ghana to Tanzania—refused to allow the European military forces to reenter the continent, which is why these European powers had to resort to assassinations and military coups to anoint pro-Western governments in the region.
Just a couple of space-loving billionaires! | Twin up by openDemocracy via Britta Pedersen/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa-pool/dpa/Alamy and Geopix/Alamy. All rights reserved
“Biodiversity is life. Biodiversity weaves the web of life. It is not corporate ‘intellectual property’. It is not a financial asset of those whose greed drives biodiversity extinction and loss.”
— Dr Vandana Shiva
To celebrate World Biodiversity Day, Navdanya International presents Biodiversity Is Health.
We break down how all levels of biodiversity have a direct and tangible tie to human health.
– So busy as they are with strengthening military alliances and devoting billions of taxpayers’ money to double their war budgets and subsidise fossil fuels, European Governments seem not to care about the reiterated alerts that their continent faces a serious risk: the reduced availability -and the more polluted– drinking water.
It is estimated that more than one third of the European Union will be under “high water stress” by the 2070. Credit: Bigstock
Two specialised bodies –the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and the European branch of the World Health Organization (WHO)– have warned that plans to make water access possible in the face of climate pressures “are absent” in the pan-European region.
– A class war is being waged in the name of fighting inflation. All too many central bankers are raising interest rates at the expense of working people’s families, supposedly to check price increases.
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Workers’ share of national income, 1970-2015
Forced to cope with rising credit costs, people are spending less, thus slowing the economy. But it does not have to be so. There are much less onerous alternative approaches to tackle inflation and other contemporary economic ills.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 