MADRID, Aug 8 2022 (IPS)* – Nothing –or too little– has changed since Hollywood started producing its spectacular western movies. Rough men, ranchers, mercenary killers, saloons, cowboys, guns, gold fever, the ‘good sheriff’… and the ‘bad indians”. Those movies were anything but fiction–they were real history.
Add to this mix, the deeply-rooted, widely dominating culture of the so-called “white supremacy.”
The female guardians of Venezuela’s Imataca Forest Reserve | An FAO-GEF project, which also aims to increase gender equality in the forestry sector, has continued supporting the Kariña women in actively leading the development of their territories and the conservation of the area’s biodiversity. Credit: FAO
(Washington, DC) – Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis cannot be effectively addressed unless the United States and other governments ease restrictions on the country’s banking sector to facilitate legitimate economic activity and humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch said on 4 Augusto 2022.
Biden must release Afghanistan’s foreign reserves to alleviate suffering, argues Ecuador’s ex-central bank director.
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It’s virtually impossible for Afghanistan’s central bank to fulfill its basic functions without access to its international reserves, argues Andrés Arauz | Ali Khara / Reuters / Alamy Stock Photo
MADRID, Aug 3 2022 (IPS)* – Human beings have proved to be capable of producing innumerable practical inventions while much too often making the worst use of them. Take the case, per example, of how criminal groups heavily rely on digital platforms to trap and enslave their victims also for extracting and selling their organs.
Venezuelan migrant Manuela Molina (not her real name) was promised a decent job in Trinidad, but minutes after her arrival she was forced into a van and taken to a secret location. Credit: IOM Port of Spai
Yes, technology now dominates most of human activities and, surprisingly enough, it is now presented as the perfect life-saving solution for the smallest and poorest households worldwide. Simply, it has replaced the precious human knowledge, which has been acquired over thousands of years.
In April 1965, U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) explained why he was escalating US involvement in Vietnam. With an Orwellian touch, LBJ titled the speech “Peace without Conquest”as he announced the beginning of US air attacks on Vietnam. He explained that,
“We must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny and only in such a world will our own freedom be secure… we have made a national pledge to help South Vietnam defend its independence and I intend to keep that promise. To dishonor that pledge, to abandon the small and brave nation to its enemies and the terror must follow would be an unforgivable wrong.”
Johnson further explained,
“We are also there to strengthen world order… To leave Vietnam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an American commitment and in the value of America’s words.”
(UN News)* — Two of the largest reservoirs in the United States are at dangerously low levels due to the climate crisis and overconsumption of water, which could affect water and electricity supply for millions in six western states and Mexico, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned on 2 August 2022.
UN News/Elizabeth Scaffidi | Lake Powell was created in 1964 by the construction of Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, United States.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell are currently at their lowest levels ever and are at risk of reaching “dead pool status”, meaning that the water in the dams would be so low it could no longer flow downstream and power hydroelectric power stations.
(UN News)* — The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday [2 August 2022] that the Greater Horn of Africa is experiencing one of the worst hunger crises of the last 70 years.
More than 37 million people are facing acute hunger, with approximately seven million children under the age of five acutely malnourished in the region.
While finding food and safe water is the absolute priority, WHO said that ensuring a strong health emergency response is needed to avert preventable disease and deaths.
Frontex Aerial Surveillance Facilitates Return to Abuse in Libya.
Reconstruction of the July 30, 2021, interception facilitated by Frontex drone. In addition to the track of the Frontex drone, the map shows the track of Seabird (a Sea-Watch airplane) that witnessed the interception. It also shows the NGO vessel Sea Watch 3 in the vicinity. There is no vessel tracking data for the Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat Ras Jadir or the intercepted vessel. Map courtesy of Border Forensics.
1 August 2022 (Human Rights Watch)*— “We didn’t know it was the Libyans until the boat got close enough and we could see the flag. At that point we started to scream and cry. One man tried to jump into the sea and we had to stop him. We fought off as much as we could to not be taken back, but we couldn’t do anything about it,” Dawit told us.
Establishment journalists and politicians are despairingly asking: Why did we fail in our well-meaning efforts to help the Afghan people? What were our mistakes?
Wrong questions as they ignore the first mistake: creating the Taliban.
William T. Hathaway
The USA’s attempts to dominate Afghanistan and its resources began 40 years ago when Jimmy Carter in one of his last acts as president approved a CIA plan to overthrow the Afghan government.
That government was no more dictatorial than others in the region, and it was implementing most of the humanitarian programs the USA later claimed it wanted to do: Women had equal rights and access to education, the country had freedom of religion and a well-functioning healthcare system.
The rural infrastructure was being improved, and the standard of living was increasing. But the government was communist, and that meant it had to go, no matter how many people had to die.
In 2019, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio accused France of using currency arrangements to “exploit” its former African colonies, “impoverishing Africa” and causing refugees to “leave and then die in the sea or arrive on our coasts”.
Anis Chowdhury
Neo-colonial CFA
As France ratified the Bretton Woods Agreement on 26 December 1945, it established the Colonies Françaises d’Afrique (CFA) franc zone, enabling France to update pre-war colonial monetary arrangements.
The ostensible intent of the ‘Franc of the French Colonies of Africa’ (FCFA) was to cushion France’s colonies from the drastic French franc (FF) devaluation required to peg its value to the US dollar, as agreed at Bretton Woods.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 