'Unseen' News and Views
Libya, 2 FEBRUARY 2024 (IOM)* –– In 2021, Owehidi – a father of three – set out from Bangladesh to Libya, seeking to secure a better income to help his family. He eventually settled in the city of Derna where he worked as a butcher. He was warmly welcomed into the tightly knit and mutually supportive community of Bangladeshi migrant workers.
Gaps in Repayment Program; Wage Theft Still Rampant
(Beirut) – Representatives of two construction companies in Saudi Arabiaannounced recently that migrant workers will get their long overdue unpaid wages, but gaps in the repayment scheme puts the payments at risk, Human Rights Watch said on 29 February 2024.
How can I hold the knowledge of unspeakable horrors happening far away and not explode inside?
D.R. Congo
How can I sit in my modest but comfortable home, refrigerator well stocked, knowing what unbearable suffering is being inflicted on my brothers and sisters in the human family and not run raging through the streets screaming Stop! Stop!?
How can I hold the knowledge of my own so-called government, via named and nameless maleficent megalomaniacs, facilitating unspeakable horrors far away and not take the first flight to my nation’s capital and hurl buckets of blood at the White House?
(UN News)* — If the world is to move away from fossil fuels, we will need to extract far more rare minerals, to power renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and solar plants. However, energy experts point out that mining these minerals can be a dirty process, ravaging the environment, and leading to human rights abuses.
© Ian Maddox | A Tesla car in “autopilot” mode
“Connected vehicles” also raise fears of hacking, and cars being remotely controlled by unscrupulous individuals or organizations.
A good example is the recent movie, Leave the World Behind, which features a scene in which hundreds of electric cars are hacked, causing them to smash into each other on a New York highway.
Nevertheless, the industry is forging ahead with plans to introduce increasing levels of autonomy in the latest car models, and the UN is at the heart of those discussions, which involve governments and the transport industry, aimed at developing international regulations and guidelines governing automated driving.
Killings, Removals, Other Abuses Threaten Rights; Bold Policy Response Needed
© 2024 Brian Stauffer for Human Rights Watch– Imperialism continues to dominate the world. Globalisation is losing to some of its anti-theses, but imperialism still rules, increasingly by law, albeit in changing even contradictory ways.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Hence, we live in challenging times. It is often difficult to see the main challenges we face as there seem to be so many. Also, the new or the unusual gains far more attention than what appears commonplace.
Power and empire
Our histories and cultures are often quite different despite our common, but varied experiences of foreign domination, even rule. Such power involves varied mixes of socioeconomic and political relations, involving governance and even the rule of law.
There are three basic problems with the CIA: its objectives, methods, and unaccountability. Its operational objectives are whatever the CIA or the President of the United States defines to be in the U.S. interest at a given time, irrespective of international law or U.S. law. Its methods are secretive and duplicitous.
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Its unaccountability means that the CIA and president run foreign policy without any public scrutiny. Congress is a doormat, a sideshow.
As a recent CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, said of his time at the CIA: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”
The CIA was established in 1947 as the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS had performed two distinct roles in World War II, intelligence and subversion.
The CIA took over both roles.
Fewer than 1-in-10 children in low-income countries have access to child benefits, leaving them vulnerable to disease, education gaps, poor nutrition, poverty and inequality.
GENEVA / NEW YORK (ILO)* –- Globally, 1.4 billion children, aged under 15, lack any form of social protection, leaving them vulnerable to disease, poor nutrition and poverty, according to new data released on 14 February 2024 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), Save the Children and UNICEF.
– Israel continues to defy its strongest backer the US and its western allies in its quest to control the land from the “River to the Sea”, and in the process ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
Anis Chowdhury
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to push ahead with a ground offensive against Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that an assault on Rafah would be a catastrophe.
He also snubbed the US on the latest hostage release and ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and Egypt. The interim order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take all effective measures to stop “plausible” genocide in Gaza seems irrelevant to Israel.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief admits that Netanyahu “doesn’t listen to anyone”.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 