'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — In an era of “nuclear blackmail”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday [26 September 2022] urged countries to step back from the threat of potential global catastrophe and recommit to peace.
“Nuclear weapons are the most destructive power ever created. They offer no security — just carnage and chaos. Their elimination would be the greatest gift we could bestow on future generations,” he said.
Nuclear Test. Credit: United Nations
This seems to be the dominating thinking of the five permanent members of the so-called Security Council, who, according to their own definition, hold the “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
“The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression,” they say, while calling upon parties to a dispute to settle it “by peaceful means.”
Nevertheless, they self-attribute the strange right to launch wars. “In some cases, the Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorise the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Ten of the world’s worst climate hotspots have suffered a 123 percent rise in acute hunger over just the past six years, according to a new report from Oxfam. Credit: FAO
If instead, you are among the 550 million plus Africans who suffer moderate hunger (40 percent of the continent’s total population of 1.300 plus) or severe hunger (some 300 million or 24 percent of all Africans), your answer would be that you will likely –or surely– go to bed hungry… also today.
A nation that for a long time prided itself of being a beacon of tolerance and openness will now experience a historical transformation. The Sweden Democratswas once founded by Nazi sympathisers and for decades shunned by mainstream politicians.
(UN News)* — Rising insecurity, including the proliferation of terrorist and other non-State armed groups, coupled with political instability, is creating a crisis in the Sahel that poses a “global threat”, the UN chief warned Thursday’s [22 September 2022] high level meeting on the vast African region, which took place behind closed doors at UN Headquarters in New York.
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(UN News)* — Ethiopia’s people are once again “mired…in the intractable and deadly consequences” of conflict between Government troops and forces loyal to Tigrayan separatist fighters, who are all likely responsible for war crimes, top rights investigators said on Thursday [22 September 2022].
(UN News)* — The number of people facing life-threatening levels of hunger worldwide without immediate humanitarian aid, is expected to rise steeply in coming weeks, the UN said on Wednesday [21 September 2022] in a new alert about looming famine in the Horn of Africa and beyond.
In Somalia, “hundreds of thousands are already facing starvation today with staggering levels of malnutrition expected among children under five,” warned the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
(UN News)* — Since the Myanmar military launched its “disastrous” coup last year, UN-appointed independent human rights expert Tom Andrews said on Wednesday [21 September 2022] that conditions have worsened, “by any measure”.
“With each report I have warned that unless UN Member States change course in the way they collectively respond to this crisis, the people of Myanmar will suffer even further,” he told the Human Rights Council in Geneva, saying that conditions have “gone from bad to worse, to horrific for untold numbers of innocent people in Myanmar”.
Mr. Andrews presented a grim assessment of 1.3 million displaced people; 28,000 destroyed homes; villages burned to the ground; more than 13,000 children killed as the death toll for innocent people rises significantly; a looming food crisis; and 130,000 Rohingya in de facto internment camps while others suffer deprivation and discrimination rooted in their lack of citizenship.
Between 2010 and 2020 the number of state-based armed conflicts roughly doubled (to 56), as did the number of conflict deaths, finds new report. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
Such studies are promptly submitted to politicians, both directly and through hundreds of summits, conferences, forums and meetings.
Are they just unable to read and understand these texts?
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing.”
— Charles Bukowski.
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17 Sep 2022 – A jet airliner opens up and sends its passengers falling to earth. You’d expect them to scream, to cry, to cling to each other in fear, to prepare for the end, to pray, to think about their loved ones, but they don’t. Instead, they turn on each other and start fighting.“
I hate you! I hate you!” they scream while flailing their fists at each other on their way down. Some try to strangle each other to death. Some try to steal from each other.
Some try to climb on top of others so that the other will die a fraction of a second sooner. Others cling to their possessions yelling “You’ll never take what’s mine!” and kick at anyone who comes too close.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 