'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
While election year politics dominates the news, the control of both major U.S. political parties by the fossil fuel industry and the military-industrial complex makes the policies they agree on more dangerous than their disagreements.
DNC delegates unfurl banner during Biden’s speech at the DNC. Photo credit: Esam Boraey
()* — Leaders from landlocked developing countries, (LLDCs) will gather in Gaborone, Botswana, this December to tackle challenges, explore solutions, and build alliances for a more equitable and prosperous future.
(UN News)* — Conflict in Myanmar between the military junta and opposition forces is increasingly brutal, with both sides likely responsible for international crimes including summary executions, top independent rights investigators said on Tuesday [].
In a call to regional bloc ASEAN to help end the violence and support efforts to bring perpetrators to justice, the head of the Human Rights Council-appointed probe into the Myanmar emergency Nicholas Koumjian described an increasingly “desperate” junta whose devastating military tactics were being matched by opposition fighters acting with total impunity.
“Aerial bombings have increased very substantially in this last year,” Mr. Koumjian told journalists in Geneva.
“To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”
— Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh
Voters in the U.S.A. live in fantasy and probably always will. No matter how obvious it is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democracy, the ardent pipe dreams of a new face in the White House go to their heads every four years. It can only be explained by a combination of intellectual ignorance, the acceptance of propaganda, and the embrace of illusions.
Kazakhstan tightens laws to combat trafficking of newborns
()* — Babies are being sold for up to $4,500 in Kazakhstan, but the government is cracking down on traffickers with a new law adopted earlier this month.
(UN News)* — In a bid to prevent a polio epidemic in Gaza, UN humanitarians on Tuesday [] repeated continuing international calls for a ceasefire to allow a mass vaccination campaign to get underway.
Almost 10 months of war and intense Israeli bombardment have shattered healthcare in Gaza and disrupted routine inoculation rounds for youngsters, leaving them exposed to a range of preventable diseases including polio, which the UN World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed had been identified last month in several sewage samples taken from Gaza.
Members of the indigenous guard of the native community of Puerto Nuevo, of the Amazonian Kakataibo people, located in the central-eastern jungle of Peru. Credit: Courtesy of Marcelo Odicio
Muhannad Hadi, Deputy UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, and Antonia De Meo, Deputy Commissioner-General of the UN agency assisting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, briefed the Security Council on the dire situation.
4 July 2024 — The crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR) has been overlooked for years. A landlocked country in the heart of central west Africa, CAR continues to pay the price of a long-standing conflict, and one in five Central Africans remains displaced.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 