UNITED NATIONS, Sep 20 2022 (IPS)* – When world leaders, numbering over 150, make their annual political pilgrimage to address the General Assembly in the third week of September, the security at the world body is exceptionally tight.
And this year is no exception.
Young climate activists from civil society organizations take part in demonstrations at the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, December 2021. Credit: UN News/Laura Quiñones
After two years of on-again and off-again lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the UN Secretariat is back in full swing – but in a virtual high security war zone.
OPINION: The UK’s new prime minister is a market fundamentalist. The resulting crises could define her premiership.
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Liz Truss replaced Boris Johnson as prime minister earlier this month | PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
16 September 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Liz Truss, the UK’s new prime minister, places a high premium on loyalty. This is why many former members of the cabinet, however experienced, have been relegated to the backbenches. There is, though, one survivor from the Cameron-Clegg coalition era – Truss herself.
Critics warn that people ‘cannot wait for help’ as millions face poverty this winter.
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The hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II / a food bank. | PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
13 September 2022 (openDemocracy)* — The Queen’s funeral will shut down food banks and other cost of living services while the country grapples with its worst poverty crisis in decades.
Critics say millions at risk “cannot wait for help” as the country grinds to a halt for the event, whose cost is expected to run into the millions.
11 Sep 2022 – This week, a number of international and Russian journalists convened in Moscow – with more joining by video link – to discuss the now-infamous Ukrainian Mirotvorets “kill list.” Many of them are included themselves.
While some don’t take it seriously, the horrific car-bombing murder of Darya Dugina on August 20 and the subsequent marking on her Mirotvorets entry as “liquidated” makes it fairly clear the people behind the list do, in fact, want people dead.
Million of women don’t know what a salary is all about.
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At the current rate of progress, it will take up to 286 years to close gaps in legal protection and remove discriminatory laws, Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS
MADRID, Sep 15 2022 (IPS)* – While women in rich societies are paid around 25% less than men for equal jobs, those living in impoverished countries receive by far much lower salaries, if any at all.
13 September 2019 (UN News)* – New data published by the United Nations cultural agency on Friday, reveals that without taking urgent measures, around 12 million young children will never set foot inside a school, with girls facing “the greatest barriers”.
“According to our projections, nine million girls of primary school age will never start school or set foot in a classroom, compared to about three million boys”, said Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
According to updated information on the world’s out-of-school children from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), little or no progress has been seen in more than a decade.
(UN News)* — As the number of weekly reported deaths from COVID-19 plunged to its lowest since March 2020, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday [14 September 2022] that the end of the pandemic is now in sight.
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PAHO/Karina Zambrana | A nurse prepares to administer a COVID-19 vaccination northern Brazil.
“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists during his regular weekly press conference.
The UN health agency’s Director-General explained however, that the world is “not there yet”.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 13 2022 (IPS)* – After a quarter century of economic stagnation, African economic recovery early in the 21st century was under great pressure even before the pandemic, due to new trade arrangements, falling commodity prices and severe environmental stress.
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Elizabeth II dancing with Nkrumah, 1961.
European scramble for Africa Africa’s borders were drawn up by European powers, especially following their ‘Scramble for Africa’ from 1881 ending by World War One. Various culturally, linguistically and religiously different ‘ethnic’ groups were forced together into colonies, to later become post-colonial ‘nations’.
8 Sep 2022 – In an address to the Trondheim World Festival in Norway, John Pilger charts the history of power propaganda and describes how it appropriates journalism in a ‘profound imperialism’ and is likely to entrap us all, if we allow it.
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In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer.
She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 