UK government ministers want the British Empire’s benefits taught in schools. Don’t let them ignore the death and destruction it inflicted
Gurminder Bhambra as a child with her grandfather, Mohan Singh | Gurminder Bhambra
1 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Recent weeks have seen a variety of UK government ministers – from Oliver Dowden to Kemi Badenoch to, most recently, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi – both extol the benefits of British Empire and urge the teaching of those benefits.
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This follows on from the government’s response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which set out the need for a new model curriculum for history which would advise schools on how best to teach these issues.
“No war has the honesty of confessing, ‘I kill to steal.’”
(Image by Rafael Edwards)
4 Apr 2022 – Wars always invoke noble motives. They kill in the name of peace. In the name of God. In the name of civilization. In the name of progress. In the name of democracy…
And just in case, if so many lies are not enough… the mass media are ready to invent imaginary enemies to justify the conversion of the world into a great madhouse and an immense slaughterhouse.
In King Lear, Shakespeare had written that “…in this world, the mad lead the blind…”. And… four centuries afterward, the masters of the world are madmen in love with death.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 5 2022 (IPS)* – The world is sailing into a perfect storm as key leaders seem intent on threatening more war, albeit while proclaiming the noblest of intentions. By doing so, they block international cooperation to create conditions for sustainable peace and shared prosperity for all.
Anis Chowdhury
Monetarist counter-revolution The 1970s saw Milton Friedman disciples’ monetarist counter revolutionblaming stagflation on ostensibly Keynesian economic policies. In 1974, Nixon replacement President Gerald Ford declared inflation “public enemy number one” and US “determination to whip inflation”.
Monetarists wanted tighter monetary policies to fight inflation. Curbing rising prices was deemed urgent, even though it would increase joblessness. They advocated abandoning expansionary fiscal measures for more growth and jobs.
Americans “need to imagine their vote has an impact on policy, an illusion the media encourages them to believe in.”
Ouch!
Peter Isaacson, writing in Fair Observer, seems to be saying . . . oh my God, democracy is a cliché, a big sham. I stand up, put my hand on my heart, pledge allegiance to the flag. This is America, land of the empowered voter.
Then I read about our president’s latest budget proposal, which includes $813 billion for “national defense” — pushing the Pentagon budget’s already record-setting enormity further into outer space — and I feel myself collapse (yet again) into nothingness.
Those in the Middle East know the kind of destruction seen in Ukraine all too well – the West was the perpetrator.
Joe Biden’s claims of the moral imperative of challenging Russian autocracy are likely to fall on deaf ears | Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/Alamy
2 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine remains in a violent stalemate. Russian forces are pausing their attempts to occupy Kyiv, having withdrawn some of their forces from around the capital, but a major retreat is highly unlikely given Russia is recruiting several thousand mercenaries from Syria.
(FAO)* — The economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate variability and extremes, conflict, and the persistence of hunger and malnutrition have shown us that now is the time for us to build more resilient agrifood systems.
If we don’t, agrifood systems will not be able to ensure food availability to all as well as physical and economic access to nutritious foods that make up healthy diets.
So, how can we protect our agrifood systems from shocks and stresses and better ensure nutritious food is available to all? In other words, how can we make our agrifood systems resilient?
— “Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots: fossil fuels and our dependence on them” said Ukrainian climate scientist Svitlana Krakovska as Russia, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers, was invading her country.
(UN News)* — “Arboviruses” might not be something most of us are familiar with, but for almost four billion people, they’re a deadly threat – which is why the UN health agency on Thursday [31 March 2022], launched a plan to prevent them from causing a new pandemic.
The most common arboviruses are in fact some of the world’s most dangerous mosquito-borne illnesses, such as Dengue, Yellow fever, Chikungunya and Zika.
They represent an ever-present and massive health threat in tropical and sub-tropical parts of the planet, although there are in fact a growing number of arboviral outbreaks worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
A bill that will limit discussions teachers and businesses can have about race
The Florida Republican-dominated State Legislature most recently passed a bill applied to K-12 public schools | Image fromWall Street International.
26 March 2022 (Wall Street International)* — The Florida Republican-dominated State Legislature most recently passed a bill that will limit discussions teachers and businesses can have about race.
MADRID, Mar 29 2022 (IPS)* – While several politicians -and media– have been viewing the ongoing armed conflict in South Sudan as a “civil war” between rival ethnic groups, so nothing to worry about, there are some key facts that should be considered for the sake of having a wider, more accurate panorama. One of them is that this country is rich in oil.
Widespread sexual violence against women and girls in conflict is being fueled by systemic impunity, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan reports. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS
Peter Isaacson
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 