'Unseen' News and Views
24 April 2019 (Wall Street International)* — Kierkegaard explained the sense of being masked, the use of disguise as something closely linked to the awareness of original sin. The experience of shame, according to him, led to the desire to dress, to hide nakedness. In this sense, for him, the mask was the shame of sin extended to the face itself.
“The Bible, borders and Brexit” will “make Europe great again”, declared Ed Martin to roaring applause. The Republican pundit who co-wrote ‘The Conservative Case for Trump’ was speaking at a global gathering of religious conservatives in Verona this March. Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, was a headline speaker.
15 May 2019 (International Work Group for indigenous Affairs – IGWIA)* — The global rush for natural resources is one of the biggest threats against indigenous peoples’ as they often live in remote areas which are still rich on natural resources. Unfortunately, indigenous peoples are increasingly being criminalised – or even killed – when defending their rights.
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Photo: Putla was 65 years old when she risked everything to stop the invasion of her villages land
In Cambodia, a collective effort and a courageous act by a 75-year-old woman helped the Souy people defend their land against an invading company with ties to the President.
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No, no, no. Nothing to do with what US and Europe’s far-right fanatics now use to vociferate, saying once and again that “migrants come here to destroy our democracy, our civilisation, and our life-style”.
Cargo ship de-ballasting | CSIRO | Permission | Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Rather the complete opposite—this is about a major damage that precisely “our civilisation” and “our life-style’ have been causing: invasive alien species crossing the world chiefly on board of ships, and harming human health, biodiversity and the whole ecosystem.
ROME (FAO)* – Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus on 21 May 2019 called for a complete change in the ways to address the often-related issues of hunger and conflict. He made the appeal at an event at FAO headquarters in Rome highlighting progress made by the FAO-Nobel Peace Laureates Alliance for Food Security and Peace.
21 May 2019 (Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)* — “Sexual violence and other forms of gender-based violence against women and children are horrific symptoms of conflict that should never be accepted or normalised whenever a humanitarian crisis strikes a community.
A woman recovers from rape in a hospital in Goma, DR Congo, in the days following the city’s capture by M23 rebels. Sexual violence has been used by armed parties on all sides of the conflict. Photo: OCHA/Kate Holt
“In too many conflicts, sexual violence is being used as a barbaric weapon and victims of these crimes continue to suffer in silence. We can no longer sit back while mothers around the world are forced to endure violence, are left to tolerate the vile abuse of their children and are forced to live among the men doing them harm.
Geneva, 22 May 2019 (ILO)* – Businesses with genuine gender diversity, particularly at senior level, perform better, including seeing significant profit increases, according to a new report from the Bureau for Employers’ Activities of the International Labour Organization (ILO).
The report, Women in Business and Management: The business case for change , surveyed almost 13,000 enterprises in 70 countries. More than 57 per cent of respondents agreed that gender diversity initiatives improved business outcomes.
In March, I travelled from London to Verona, Italy to join a historic protest for women’s and LGBTIQ rights – while Matteo Salvini, from the far-right Lega party, received a standing ovation at a key summit of ultra-conservative activists.
Despite appearances of random, off-the-cuff decisions, rendered on tweets and without, or even in opposition to, the advice of foreign policy specialists, I am going to posit a rationale behind the warlike actions and pronouncements of Messrs. Trump, Bolton and Pompeo.
William R. Polk
To do so, I will try to put all the scattered and sometimes conflicting pieces together. I begin by acknowledging the issue that has attracted most attention. That is the nuclear danger. While it figures in all the media accounts, I put it aside for two reasons:
First, Iran has no nuclear weapons as every reasonably well-informed person in government and among the general population knows.
To acquire them in the foreseeable future, Iran would have to buy them from an existing nuclear power. Nuclear capable powers have not been known to put their weapons on the market.
‘Great cause of concern’ UN chief tells Security Council, surveying ‘bleak’ state of civilian protection
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 