'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — Now entering its third year, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to hold back some 405 million school children wordlwide from a full return to the classroom, according to a new report released on Wednesday [29 March 2022] by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
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26 Mar 2022 – According to a 2019 Rand report titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”, the US goal is to undermine Russia just as it did the Soviet Union in the cold war.
Rick Sterling
Rather than “trying to stay ahead” or trying to improve the US domestically or in international relations, the emphasis is on efforts and actions to undermine the designated adversary Russia.
Rand is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military.
The report lists anti-Russia measures divided into the following areas: economic, geopolitical, ideological/informational, and military. They are assessed according to the perceived risks, benefits and “likelihood of success”.
– The spectre of ‘stagflation’ threatens the world once again. This time, the risk is the direct consequence of political provocations and war, and not simply due to inexorable economic forces.
Stagflation?
Stagflation is a composite word implying inflation with stagnation. Stagnation refers to weak, ‘near zero’ growth, inevitably worsening unemployment. Inflation refers to price increases – not high prices, as often implied.
Anis Chowdhury
The term ‘stagflation’ was supposedly first used in 1965 by Iain Macleod, then UK Conservative Party economic spokesperson.
He later became Chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, in 1970 for little over a month, the shortest tenure in modern times.
(UN News)* — The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General on Monday [28 March 2022 ] called on countries in Asia and the Pacific to speed up the shift from fossil fuels to new, low-carbon development models, in a just and inclusive way.
Standing in front of his makeshift home in a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in southern Somalia’s Luuq district, Ahmad Hassan Yarrow looks out towards what remains of the Juba River and shakes his head forlornly.
“Of all the droughts I have experienced in my 70 years, I have not seen anything as severe as this,” he says as he contemplates the scenery before him.
(UN News)* — Many of Libya’s migrant detention centres remain places of terrible and systematic abuse, that may amount to crimes against humanity, top rights investigators said on Monday [28 March 2022].
On the sidelines of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, head of the Fact-Finding Mission on Libya, Mohamed Auajjar, told journalists that investigators had uncovered further evidence of serious rights violations, which they first made public last October.
The Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union and China just agreed to design the mechanism for an independent financial and monetary system that would bypass dollar transactions.
Russia says half its gold assets were frozen – is this for real or a slick play by Moscow? Photo Credit: The Cradle
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15 Mar 2022 – It was a long time coming, but finally some key lineaments of the multipolar world’s new foundations are being revealed.
(UN News)* — Around three per cent of Costa Rica’s population is now made up of Nicaraguan refugees and asylum seekers, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday [25 March 2022].
(UN News)* — A deepening crackdown on civil society in Libya, has prompted the concern of the UN human rights office, which noted on Friday [25 March 2022] that arbitrary arrests and a campaign of social media vilification are having “a seriously chilling effect on human rights defenders, humanitarian workers, and other civil society actors.”
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 