'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — Unless access is urgently granted to humanitarian organizations, thousands in the Central Sahel will be “pushed into further destitution”, the UN emergency food relief agency warned on Monday [19 October 2020].
Ahead of Tuesday’s High-Level Ministerial Conference on the Central Sahel in the Danish capital Copenhagen, the World Food Programme (WFP) sounded the alarm that catastrophic levels of hunger could hit parts of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Robert J. Burrowes
At what is arguably the most important time in human history, with Homo Sapiens confronted by an enormous range of violent challenges that threaten our very survival, the only question of any genuine importance is this:
Can we craft and implement a strategy to end the violence, particularly in each and all of its extinction-threatening dimensions, to ensure that humanity has a chance to thrive on planet Earth indefinitely into the future? But few are asking that question.
15 October 2020 (UN Environment)* — Industrialized farming has been a reliable way to produce lots of food, at a relatively low cost. But it’s not the bargain it was once believed to be. Unsustainable agriculture can pollute water, air and soil; is a source of greenhouse gas; and destroys wildlife – an environmental cost equivalent to about US$3 trillion every year.
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UN Photo/Fred Noy / 15 Oct 2020
The use of chemicals and antimicrobials can have adverse health effects and lead to resistant infections. And to top it all off, our production and consumption habits have been linked to the emergence of zoonotic diseases, such as COVID-19.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a projected rise in extreme poverty, a team of scientists says the world can no longer afford to overlook the role of forests and trees in poverty eradication.
– With extreme poverty (living on $1.90 a day) projected to rise for the first time in over 20 years, a new study has concluded that global poverty eradication efforts could be futile in the absence of forests and trees.
(United Nations)* — In a world characterized by an unprecedented level of economic development, technological means and financial resources, that millions of persons are living in extreme poverty is a moral outrage.
Poverty is not solely an economic issue, but rather a multidimensional phenomenon that encompasses a lack of both income and the basic capabilities to live in dignity.
Addressing poverty eradication last week, just ahead of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17, UN chief António Guterres warned that the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are falling “disproportionately on the most vulnerable: people living in poverty, the working poor, women and children, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized groups”.
Twelve-year-old boy in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, sorts through hazardous plastic waste without any protection, working to support his family amidst the coronavirus lockdown. Credit: UNICEF/Parvez Ahmad
FACT SHEET: Lack of hand-washing with soap puts millions at increased risk to COVID-19 and other infectious diseases | Français
NEW YORK, 15 October 2020 (UNICEF)* – Although handwashing with soap is critical in the fight against infectious diseases, including COVID-19, millions of people around the world have no ready access to a place to wash their hands, UNICEF said ahead of Global Handwashing Day.
October 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Everything always the same. Repetition presides over processes, from metabolic ones to the passage of time: day, night, light, dark, birth, death, and old age. Having to make a living, having to feed, to get through life is the biggest contradiction of the process, of the dynamics of life. There is continuity only if there is maintenance. Linking dynamics to statics, movement to inertia, is dialectical. Living without contradiction is as desired as it is impossible.
The US is a hopelessly divided, and dysfunctional country
14 October2020 (Other News)* — Let’s take a look at the American elections which at this moment are important not only for the United States but also for the entire world. The American electoral system is a little known but disastrous system. It is also the most anti-democratic you can imagine.
Roberto Savio
This system is incomprehensible for a modern society but it is untouchable in the United States.
There are 50 states and each state has two senators. California has 39 million inhabitants and two senators. Wyoming has 850,000 inhabitants but also two senators.
Currently there are 47 Democratic senators (therefore 53 are Republicans) who obtained 17 million more votes than the Republicans. So the Republicans have the majority of seats despite having obtained 17 million fewer votes.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 