MADRID, Jun 6 2022 (IPS)* – Now it comes to another ‘crime’ being stealthy committed as a consequence of the unrelenting business obsession for making more and more money.
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Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing takes advantage of corrupt administrations and exploits weak management regimes, in particular those of developing countries lacking the capacity and resources for effective monitoring, control, and surveillance. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS
It is about the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, a practice that threatens marine biodiversity, livelihoods, exacerbates poverty, and augments food insecurity.
Humanitarian and peace-loving people take seriously the oft repeated vows of “never again” to atrocities committed leading up to and during WWII.
The lack of widespread outcry was thus disheartening when the US Congress uncritically approved unprecedented amounts–$54 billion since March–of military aid to Ukraine, dangerously escalating hostilities in a country with a troubling track record of condoning Nazism and ruthless persecution of its sizable Russian speaking population.
I define Nazism as an authoritarian ideology exerting tight control over a chosen population, deemed inherently superior, while dehumanizing and condoning the exclusion, abuse and extermination of people belonging to undesirable groups.
It facilitates extreme concentration of wealth and power by keeping working people divided, rewarding loyalty in useful players among the chosen and blaming any social ills on the undesirables.
MADRID, Jun 3 2022 (IPS)* – In a previous article, IPS reported on some of UNICEF’s key findings about the harsh impacts on the world’s children –and the whole Planet Earth– of the excessive consumption by mostly rich countries.
If everyone were to consume resources at the rate at which people in the United States, Canada and Luxembourg do, at least five Earths would be needed. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
One of these is that if everyone were to consume resources at the rate at which people in the United States, Canada and Luxembourg do, at least five Earths would be needed.
MADRID, Jun 2 2022 (IPS)* – As an introduction to this year’s World Environment Day on 5 June, this report deals with how the excesses of the world’s population, mostly in the wealthiest countries, are causing so much harm to Planet Earth.
The world population is already using the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to maintain the current way of life. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
For this purpose, the following account of some of the major facts and figures that the world’s largest multinational body–the United Nations Organisation– has been successively providing, should be enough to complete the picture.
(Greenpeace International)* — We know that oil companies hid knowledge of global heating for decades, but the captains of petroleum also schemed to turn the ecological crisis into a profit centre. The industry devised a plan to swindle money from the public purse by pretending to address the climate issue while using subsidies to increase oil production. If one had no moral compass, one might say their scam was a stroke of genius.
1 June 2022 (UNEP)* — The creation this month of a new marine reserve in Ecuador will secure a biological corridor for endangered species, including sea turtles, manta rays, whales and sharks.
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Photo: Ocean Image Bank/Martin Colognoli
The 60,000-square-kilometer reserve forms part of the East Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor that stretches from Ecuador to Costa Rica, and will protect marine life from the threats of industrial fishing and climate change.
From unimaginable habitat loss to heartbreaking species extinctions, it shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us that our biodiversity – the variety of life in the world – continues to suffer from human greed, exploitation, encroachment, and neglect – putting short-term profit above all else. All life on this planet interacts and interconnects. All life relies on the biodiversity that surrounds it to thrive and survive.
This article shows how media uses computer modeling and “virtual crime scenes” to assign blame for some extremely important international events.
Protesters at a Managua roadblock, 30 May 2018. SITU Research
In these examples from Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria, many people died in complex circumstances. The deaths at the “Mother’s March” in Managua, Nicaragua precipitated an attempted coup. The Maidan Massacre in Kyiv led to an actual coup. The claims of a chemical attack in Douma led to the US, France and the UK bombing Syria.
UNITED NATIONS, May 30 2022 (IPS)* – The four-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has triggered a hefty increase in military spending among Western nations and a rise in humanitarian and military assistance to the beleaguered country, is now threatening to undermine the flow of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the world’s poorer nations.
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UN Secretary-General António Guterresexpressed concern over the fall in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), at a meeting of the UN Chief Executives Board, which brought together the heads of 30 UN agencies, to discuss ways of alleviating the crises holding back economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and boost implementation of the SDGs. May 2022. Credit: UN News/Abdelmonem Makki
MADRID, May 30 2022 (IPS)*– The excesses committed by rich people can be deadly–and in fact they are. Be it about food, energy or overall waste, such excesses have been depleting the world’s natural resources and pushing both current and future generations towards the edge of a predictable abyss.
“The world’s richest countries are providing healthier environments for children within their borders, yet are disproportionately contributing to the destruction of the global environment”. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 