'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — The COVID-19 pandemic has upended a world embroiled in chaos, unleashing catastrophic health, social and economic consequences along with irreparable harm to humanity, according to UN-backed report published on Monday [14 September 2020].
JFK, 9/11 and the American Left
On November 23, 1963, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Fidel Castro gave a talk on Cuban radio and television.[1] He pulled together, as well as he could in the amount of time available to him, the evidence he had gathered from news media and other sources, and he reflected on this evidence.
Refugees Now Sleeping on the Streets Need Protection and Assistance
Moria camp on Lesbos island following a fire that started on the evening of September 8, 2020, destroying most of the camp and leaving 12,000 asylum seekers and refugees without shelter. © 2020 Private
13 Sepetmber 2020 (Human Rights Watch)* — Fires that consumed Europe’s largest refugee camp, Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos earlier this week have left nearly 13,000 men, women, and children without shelter or access to basic services.
On 16 August 1819, an estimated 60,000 pro-democracy and anti-poverty activists were peacefully protesting the utterly corrupt nature of the Parliament in Westminster and demanding the reform of parliamentary representation (which afforded less than 2% of people the right to vote).
Robert J. Burrowes
The gathering took place in St Peter’s Field, Manchester in England.
The protest was precipitated by the acute economic slump, including chronic unemployment and harvest failure, following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars as well as by enforcement of the Corn Laws which kept the price of bread high, by blocking (or imposing tariffs on) the import of cheap grains, at the expense of ordinary people.
We suffer through today’s a difficult, complicated and partially obfuscated time | Image from Wall Street International. 12 September 2020 (Wall Street International)* — It is hard to know where things began when we are already in the middle of it all. This is especially so as we suffer through today’s difficult, complicated and partially obfuscated time. Perhaps the beginning occurred in 1865 when the American Civil War was officially declared ended, but continued to seethe in less organized ways.
World leaders have been urged to stay home in the first “virtual” UN General Assembly sessions in the 75-year history of the United Nations. The annual high-level sessions, with mostly pre-recorded video speeches, begin September 22. The UN says there will be “no marvelling at seemingly endless presidential motorcades on First Avenue and no “standing-room only” moments in the gilded General Assembly Hall, as the Organization’s busiest time of the year is reimagined in the time of COVID-19. Credit: Anton Uspensky, UN News10 September 2020 (UN Environment)* — They say a picture is worth a thousand words, a map could be worth a million. To understand the complex interactions between nature and human society, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has teamed up with MapX – an online platform for managing geospatial data on natural resources.
Glacial lakes in Bhutan. Photo: NASA 2016
“Nature’s value is often invisible in the economic choices we make,” said Salman Hussain, Head of Ecosystem Services Economics at UNEP.
“As a result, we have been drawing down our natural capital without accounting for the costs of nature’s ability to provide humanity with essential services.”
With a narrative label that tells its backstory, Jumla bean sales are up, and business is looking bright for Lalita and her family. ©Organic World and Fair Future Pvt. Ltd.COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, 10 September 2020 (UNFPA)* — The 25th of August marked a tragic anniversary: three years since the mass influx of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh from neighbouring Myanmar.
Today, there are around 1 million Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh. Nearly 90 per cent of them are living in a network of 30-plus camps in Cox’s Bazar District, where crowding and sanitation conditions leave them vulnerable to the COVID-9 pandemic.
But close collaboration between humanitarian partners – including UNFPA – and the Government of Bangladesh has managed to limit the spread of the coronavirus within the camps.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 