'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
6 July 2020 (UN Environment)* — A new report by UNEP and The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) considers the root causes of the emergence and spread of COVID-19 and other zoonoses. Zoonoses are diseases that originate in animals and are transferred to humans.
.
The report offers a set of practical recommendations that can help policymakers prevent and respond to future disease outbreaks.
3 July 2020 (openDemocracy)* — Widely regarded as the first film made in Black Africa, Borom Sarret (The Wagoner) by Ousmane Sembène provides an immediate glimpse of post-colonial reality. Made in 1963 on Sembène’s return from the Gorkii Studios in Moscow, it portrays one day in the life of a cart driver in Dakar, Senegal. Its formal minimalism enables Borom Sarret to reveal several layers of complexity.
Environmental stories out of Russia have been in the news lately. First, there was one of the largest diesel spills in the Russian Arctic’s history. Then, there is the shocking heating of the Arctic which can be directly connected to climate change, which is driven by the burning of fossil fuels, like diesel. Now — once again, as is happening with increasing fury every year — there are wildfires raging across Siberia, another effect of climate change.
Well, here’s a story that ties all these things together:
3 July 2020 (RT)* — The remote worker of the future has been revealed. She’s called Susan and she’s not a pretty sight – a warning that we shouldn’t be seduced by the benefits of ‘WFH.’
© DirectlyApply
If you’re working from home, stop now. Quit your job immediately, get out of the house and sign up as a barista or tree surgeon or literally any job that you can’t do from your domicile. Because I’ve seen the future of home-working: it’s hideous and it’s called Susan.
Susan, bless her miserable imagined existence, is the ‘remote worker in 25 years,’ according to American ‘job discovery platform’ DirectlyApply. And she is not a healthy-looking specimen.
How did it get done? You might call it an act of God.
The events last December were convened by the Peruvian program of the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI) an international alliance launched in 2017 to mobilize religious leaders to defend rainforests, through collaboration with indigenous communities, local groups, and advocates for rainforest protection.
The world has been worried about pandemic diseases for many years. Before COVID-19, attention was focused on influenza viruses as the most likely cause. A recent paper reminds us that the threat from flu remains very real. It reports that a swine flu virus is circulating in China that has the potential for pandemic spread in humans. This sounds highly alarming, but just how worried should we be?
Main symptoms of swine flu in humans | Public Domain
There are millions of cases of flu each year, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. These are caused by “seasonal” or type B influenza viruses.
There are also other types of flu viruses that are harboured by animals, notably the type A viruses of birds.
Thankfully, most of these infect humans poorly. But as they are different from the seasonal viruses, humans have no or little existing immunity to them.
“The time for manufacturing of weapons of war has passed as a viable industry for our nation, despite the way some of our political leadership clings to economies of the past.”
— Lisa Savage, U.S. Senate candidate in Maine
Fincantieri Marine Group
On 25 June 2020 President Trump’s re-election efforts took him to the “battleground” state of Wisconsin, where he toured the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard. He railed against the Democrats as a scarier enemy than Russia or China.
He also celebrated Wisconsin’s win over domestic enemies like the state of Maine in securing a key shipbuilding project.
3 July 2020 (WMO)* — Climate change impacts are affecting water availability and are exacerbating the damages floods and drought cause worldwide. Climate related water action is a key for bringing us back on track to deliver Sustainable Development Goal 6, to ensure access to water and sanitation for all and to sustain a healthy environment.
WMO hosted a virtual diplomatic briefing on 2 July on plans for a Water and Climate Coalition aimed at building momentum on water and climate action through implementing concrete activities at the national, regional and global levels.
If climate change directly affected white Westerners, action would have come quicker.
1 July 2020 (openDemocracy)* — We have known about climate change for decades. As early as 1992 the threat was sufficiently obvious, and the science sufficiently clear, to justify a UN treaty on the topic. Yet we’ve only even begun to get our act together in the last five or so years. Why?
*
