'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency, as Max Blumenthal points out in his insightful book “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump,” was made possible not only by massive social inequality and concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of the oligarchic elites but by the national security state’s disastrous and prolonged military interventions overseas.
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
16 April 2019 – Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, made an impassioned plea for the planet at the European Parliament on Tuesday (16 April), urging MEPs to “start panicking about climate change” rather than “waste time arguing about Brexit”. | Deutsch 
COPENHAGEN, 16 April 2019 (International Work Group for indigenous Affairs – IGWIA)* — On 24 April 2019, at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, the International Work Group for indigenous Affairs – IGWIA will release The Indigenous World 2019, an extensive, one-of-a-kind yearbook presenting a comprehensive, global overview of the developments indigenous peoples experience.
Image from IWGIA.
The book documents an increasing trend towards the harassment and criminalisation of indigenous peoples and communities.
It also highlights the rising tensions between states and indigenous peoples, shrinking civil society space, loss of land rights and lack of access to justice for indigenous peoples to enjoy their rights.
“Indigenous peoples make up 5% of the world’s population, yet they represent 15% of the world’s poorest, and in 2017, half of the approximately 400 environmental and human rights defenders were killed.
London, 16 April 2019 (IOM)* – Ten thousand people separated by conflict and persecution have been reunited with their families in the United Kingdom under a British Red Cross (BRC) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) family reunification programme.
Khaled is reunited with his son at the airport under the IOM-British Red Cross Family Reunification programme. Photo: British Red Cross
Doctors, journalists, students and farmers are among more than 60,000 Nicaraguans who have fled the country in fear of their lives since anti-Government demonstrations began last April, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said on Tuesday [16 April 2019].
— The World Bank’s Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, launched in 2013, has sought agricultural reforms favouring the corporate sector. EBA was initially established to support the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, initiated by the G8 to promote private agricultural development in Africa.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
The New Alliance has been touted as “a new model of partnership” for agricultural transformation in Africa.
The Bank has used the EBA to address the land issue in developing countries, particularly in Africa.
The effort is strongly supported by the US and UK governments as well as the Gates Foundation, all strong proponents of corporate agriculture.
Emulating the influential annual World Bank Doing Business report, the EBA scores countries on the ease of doing business in agriculture.
Chelsea Manning is, I understand, in solitary confinement, after her recent refusal to testify to a grand jury. Julian Assange has for years been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London and for the past year has been prevented access to the internet and nearly all visitations, in what amounts to ‘near total isolation‘.
Dr. Emanuel E. Garcia
I will not address what I believe to be the horrifically gross injustices of incarceration here, but will instead direct my focus on that extra twist of the knife.
It is not enough to have deprived these two individuals of their liberties. No: the all-powerful State must also inflict a torture upon them while they are incarcerated.
To say that insult has piled onto injury would itself be insulting because it is far more: it is heinous, despicable, cruel and totally unwarranted.
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 15 April 2019 — On 11 April 2019, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by UK police and arrested for breaching a bail condition. See ‘Arrest update – SW1’.
Demonstration in support of Assange in front of Sydney Town Hall, 10 December 2010 | – Own work | CC BY-SA 3.0
Noting a 300 per cent surge in the number of measles cases during the first three months of this year, compared to the same period last year, two UN agency heads declared on Monday [15 April 2019] that we now stand “in the middle of a global measles crisis”.
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