MADRID, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)* – Gone are those times when catastrophes were measured in terms of human suffering. Now, with an exception: Ukrainians victims of the Russian invasion, everything is calculated in just money.
Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. Credit: Clae
Following such a solid trend, major financial, business-oriented institutions, like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, are now devoted to calculating if and how big the recession will be, ergo, how much money could be won or lost due, of course, to the Ukrainian proxy war.
They, likewise the establishment’s politicians and media, just talk about inflation, stagflation, economic (read financial) slowdown and commerce.
The first Cold War played out between the East and the Western Occident and the East lost with the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
Both built – more or less faithfully – on Western mechanical thinking, one on Marx and other socialist/communist philosophers, the other on twisting moral philosopher Adam Smith into a God’s hand individualist utility market prophet and pair him with various types of liberal, parliamentary democracy thinking.
The Soviet and East European system had come to the end of its history, but what about the twin Occidental brother, the US-EU system? The latter had not only survived or ”won,” it had also forced the Soviet Union to spend an unsustainable proportion of its resources on the military.
And now the Second West is destined to follow suit.
Women from Brazil’s indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable to gender-based violence, but UN-backed initiatives, and a change in the law, are encouraging them to seek protection.
UNFPA Brazil/Isabela Martel | Lutana Ribeiro is the only female chief of Parque das Tribos, an indigenous neighbourhood in Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state.
In Parque das Tribos, an indigenous neighbourhood in Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state, violence against women is not uncommon.
“As a leader, I have experienced many things,” says Lutana Ribeiro, a member of the Kokama ethnic group, and the only female chief in Parque das Tribos, which is home to around 4,500 people. “Women knock on my door asking for help.”
Sparsely populated and relatively isolated in terms of air, road and sea access, the state of Amazonas faces particular challenges in access to public services, including for sexual and reproductive health support and gender-based violence response.
MADRID, Jan 20 2023 (IPS)* – As if the 100 billion dollars that the United States has so far provided to Ukraine in both weapons and aid were not enough, the US has now started to install in Europe its brand new, more destructive nuclear warheads.
War damage in Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast. Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine
The US 100 billion dollars are to be added to all the weapons and aid that 40 Washington’s ‘allies’ –Europe in particular– have been sending to Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022.
The US spending on the Ukrainian war in less than a year amounts to the desperately needed funding that the United Nations require to partially alleviate some of the horrifying suffering of over one billion human beings over two long years.
Geneva, 17 January 2022 (IOM)* – The number of migrants irregularly crossing into Panama after embarking on the perilous Darien Gap route reached a record in 2022, nearly doubling the figures of the previous year. According to the Panamanian government, nearly 250,000 people crossed into the country compared to some 133,000 in 2021.
People who embark on this route are exposed to the dangers of the jungle, the weather and the terrain, as well as people smugglers and organized crime. Photo: IOM
“The stories we have heard from those who have crossed the Darien Gap attest to the horrors of this journey,” said Giuseppe Loprete, Chief of Mission at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Panama. “Many have lost their lives or gone missing, while others come out of it with significant health issues, both physical and mental, to which we and our partners are responding.”
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 13 2023 (IPS)* – The current notion of a “moderate Republican” is an oxymoron that helps to move the country rightward. Last week, every one of the GOP’s so-called “moderates” voted to install House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who won with the avid support of Donald Trump and got over the finish line by catering to such fascistic colleagues as Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert.
US President Joseph R. Biden addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s seventy-seventh session in September 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak
Recent news reports by many outlets — including the Washington Post, USA Today, The Hill, Bloomberg, CNN, NBC, Reuters, HuffPost and countless others — have popularized the idea of “moderate Republicans” in the House. The New York Times reported on “centrist Republicans.” But those “moderates” and “centrists” are actively supporting neofascist leadership.
GENEVA, 12 January 2023 (WMO)* – The past eight years were the warmest on record globally, fueled by ever-rising greenhouse gas concentrations and accumulated heat, according to six leading international temperature datasets consolidated by the World Meteorological Organization.
The average global temperature in 2022 was about 1.15 [1.02 to 1.27] °C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels. 2022 is the 8th consecutive year (2015-2022) that annual global temperatures have reached at least 1°C above pre-industrial levels, according to all datasets compiled by WMO.
(London) – The United Kingdom government repeatedly sought to damage and undermine human rights protections in 2022, Human Rights Watch said today [12 January 2023] in its World Report 2023. “In 2022, we saw the most significant assault on human rights protections in the UK in decades,” said Yasmine Ahmed, UK director at Human Rights Watch.
(UN News)* — Recent Biden Administration border policy reforms “risk undermining the basic foundations of international human rights and refugee law”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said on Wednesday
Taking aim at the expected rise in so-called “expedited removals” from the United States, Mr. Türk also criticised the intention to use the COVID pandemic-related Title 42 public health order even more than today.
Fast-track expulsion
The move will permit the “fast-track expulsion to Mexico” of 30,000 Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans each month, the UN rights chief maintained.
SYDNEY, Jan 2 2023 (IPS)* – 2022 has been a year of great uncertainty when it seemed the world perilously reached the brink of self-destruction – be it human-induced climate change or military conflict. Welcoming 2022, we had enough reasons to be optimistic; but it was another ‘year of living dangerously’ – Tahun vivere pericoloso in the words of Soekarno, or an annus horribilis in the words of the late Queen Elizabeth.
Anis Chowdhury
No end to Covid-19 The joy of the COVID vaccine discovery quickly vanished as the ‘vaccine apartheid‘ blatantly prioritised lives in rich nations, especially of the wealthy, over the ‘wretched of the earth’, and corporate profit triumphed over people’s lives.
Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci’s sober warning of a more dangerous COVID variant emerging this winter may come to be true as China, the country of 1.4 billion, struggles to deal with the surge in cases since it has largely abandoned its unpopular ‘zero COVID’ policy.
New cold war turns into proxy war Whereas the global pandemic required extraordinary global unity, unfortunately, a ‘new cold war’ quickly turned into a ‘hot war’, bringing the world to the verge of a devastating nuclear war for the first time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 