8 January 2021 (UN News)* — People worldwide have overwhelmingly highlighted their faith in multilateralism to address global challenges, the results of a year-long survey by the United Nations has shown.
The UN75 initiative was launched by Secretary-General António Guterres, in January last year, to understand the global public’s hopes and fears for the future, as well as their expectations and ideas for international cooperation, and for the UN in particular.
More than 1.5 million people from 195 countries took part in the campaign through surveys and dialogues. “The UN75 global consultation showed that 97 per cent of respondents support international cooperation to tackle global challenges,” Mr. Guterres said on the results.
7 January 2021 (openDemocracy)* — Filipino healthcare workers have found themselves thrust to the frontlines of the pandemic to care for the most vulnerable across the globe. The Philippines is one of the world’s leading labour-sending countries, facilitating the migration of an estimated 2.2 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) during the period April to September 2019.
The far-right-wing president insisted on the use of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria antidote that has no proven effectiveness against the new coronavirus.
A health worker prepares to administer a dose of Chinese CoronaVac vaccine, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dec. 20, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @mlnangalama
7 January 2021 (teleSUR)* — Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro suspended the purchase of syringes destined for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign “due to a price increase.
“The syringes’ cost increased absurdly. The Ministry of Health suspended the purchase until their value returns to normal,” Bolsonaro said.
During a broadcast message, the far-right-wing president minimized the pandemic’s impact on the country and the need for syringe use.
7 January 2021 (Wall Street International)* — By mid-February 2021, American deaths from Covid-19 may well surpass the country’s 405,400 deaths during the Second World War.
By around mid-May, more Americans will have died from Covid-19 than during the Civil War, which killed 655,000, and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, when 675,000 are estimated to have perished.
Meanwhile,” the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the already dire humanitarian and socio-economic situation” Secretary-General António Guterres said at a meeting online last November, marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Patients arrive at a health centre in Gaza. Credit: UNRWA
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 7 2021 (IPS)* – If the coronavirus is not deemed a biological weapon, is the heavily-publicized Covid-19 vaccine in danger of being weaponized when over 159,000 Palestinians who have tested positive in Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are being denied treatment during a deadly pandemic?
The London-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) says Israel’s vaccine roll-out plan excludes the nearly 5 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli military occupation.
‘Lockdown’ was declared by Collins Dictionary as the Word of the Year for 2020.
Looking back, the world will remember 2020 as the year that disrupted our present-day lives: most of us were locked up for months and doing everything from home, unable to see and be with friends and loved ones, when everyone wore masks, scrubbed our hands with soap or alcohol, and practiced social distancing. Many felt worried and anxious about the uncertainties that came with lockdown living.
But amidst a raging pandemic, humanity was not spared from a much bigger threat. While some were feeling safe and secure in their homes, thousands of people were fighting for their survival against a raging climate.
6 January 2021 (WMO)* — The record-breaking 2020 Antarctic ozone hole finally closed at the end of December after an exceptional season due to naturally occurring meteorological conditions and the continued presence of ozone depleting substances in the atmosphere.
Oh, Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz. My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends. So, oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz. Janis Joplin, 1970
James Dean accident.
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jan 6 2021 (IPS)* – COVID-19 has made several of us aware of the frailty of our bodies, the certainty of death and how valuable health, companionship and compassion are. Such insights are not uncommon in poor societies where a person’s main and perhaps only asset is her/his body and what s/he is able to do with her/his hands.
However, wealthy and privileged people are surrounded by, dependent on, and even integrated with an ever more sophisticated technology, which increasingly, for better or worse, is separating us from what human existence has been for thousands of years.
Once technology has made its entry into the human sphere; from fire and wheels, to printing presses, trains, radio, aircraft, TV, the Intranet, sophisticated weaponry and … cars, everyone’s life, even unprivileged ones, has changed to an extent that it is difficult to fathom. For example, cars were invented as an effective and comfortable means of transport, but they soon became so much more.
5 January 2021 (Wall Street International)* — Here are some quotations from a December 2, 2020 article by Justin Rowlatt entitled Humans waging suicidal war on nature – UN chief Antonio Guterres:
Humanity is waging what he describes as a suicidal war on the natural world.
Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury, he told a BBC special event on the environment.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 