HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By Johan Galtung*

11 September 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – A world map shows the West is big, from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean-Black Sea-Russian border; but not that big. 

Johan Galtung

However, that is only Europe. Add Anglo-America, USA-Canada, from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans, from the Arctic Ocean to Mexico. The West is huge, enormous.

It covers geographically the Northern Arctic and temperate zones.

It houses religiously the three Christianities, much of Judaism, but not Islam. Muslims and all others count as minorities, here and there.

It is the seat of another major faith, Enlightenment: humanism-liberalism-marxism-nationalism-statism-capitalism-regionalism.

It is the seat of the major IGOs, NGOs and TNCs in the world.

It identifies West as “developed”, and Rest as “developing”.

Human Wrongs Watch

A senior United Nations aid official on 24 August 2017 urged the international community to do whatever is needed to allow citizens to flee from Raqqa, saying that right now, there is “no worse place on earth” than the de facto capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh).

Displaced children and adults are seen after fleeing from ISIL-controlled areas in rural Raqqa, Syria, to Ain Issa, the main staging point for displaced families, some 50 Km north of Raqqa city. Photo: UNICEF/Soulaiman (file)

Human Wrongs Watch

The Central African Republic (CAR) has spiralled into violence and remains one of the worst countries in the world to be a child and “right now there are few eyes looking at them and few hands trying to help,” the United Nations children’s agency on 15 August 2017 said.

In Haute Kotto Prefecture, Central African Republic, IDPs in PK3 are trying to give to the site a life of its own. Some are selling wood or cassava flour and children have already organized their playgrounds. Photo: OCHA/Yaye N. Sene

Human Wrongs Watch

The United Nations Security Council on 2 August 2017 unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons, particularly small arms and light weapons, the “destabilizing accumulation and misuse” of which the 15-member body said “continue to pose threats to international peace and security and cause significant loss of life.”

Human Wrongs Watch

By Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram*

In Russia, the simultaneous increase in the total death rate, deaths due to external causes, and alcohol consumption were all driven by stress. Credit: Pavol Stracansky/IPS

The shock economic reforms in the former Soviet economies after 1991 precipitated this unprecedented increase in mortality, shortening life expectancy, especially among middle-aged males.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Johan Galtung*

Jondal, Norway, 31 July 2017  – TRANSCEND Media Service – Norway is divided very clearly into three parts: the North and the two parts of the South, the West and the East separated by chains of mountains, plateaus (vidder) and emptiness (there is no town between Notodden in the East and Odda in the West).

Johan Galtung

And by language, by unmistakable dialects.

In the East “standard Norwegian”, “bokmål” evolving from Danish after 400 years Copenhagen rule, deeply contested in the 19th century.

In the West Old Norse had left more of an impact and the net outcome was called New Norwegian, “nynorsk“, also partly in the North.

But the basic difference is sing-song in West and North, and flatness in East (“flatnorsk“, neither “jeg” for I, nor “eg“, “je“).

Plus, more important in this connection: geographic orientation.