27 September 2021 (Wall Street International)* — Adam Smith (1723-1790) maintained that individual self-interest can and should be the principle guiding our economic behavior.
He told the readers of his book The Wealth of Nations, that, as if guided by an invisible hand, individual self-interest leads to the general good. To put is in fewer words, Smith maintained that greed is good.
The Royal Family’s archaic-seeming rules and customs obscure its deep connections with modern global corporate power
The British royal family is often dismissed as an archaic institution | newsphoto / Alamy Stock Photo
26 September 2021 (openDemocracy)* — On 12 October 2018, Princess Eugenie married Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle, in a ceremony funded in part by the Sovereign Grant, the British government’s annual payment to the monarchy. At my local gym that day, I overheard two people discussing the day’s events.
It’s up to us to change our habits to make not wasting food a way of life. PHOTO:Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash
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28 September 2021 (United Nations)* — Reducing food losses and waste is essential in a world where the number of people affected by hunger has been slowly on the rise since 2014, and tons and tons of edible food are lost and/or wasted every day.
Globally, around 14 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail, while an estimated 17 percent of total global food production is wasted (11 percent in households, 5 percent in the food service and 2 percent in retail).
In terms of climate change, the damage will be reduced taking into account that nowadays, food loss and waste is responsible for about 7% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and nearly 30% of the world’s agricultural land is currently occupied to produce food that is ultimately never consumed, just to name a few examples.
These are the names of but a few of the military exercises carried out by the U.S. Africa Command forces (AFRICOM) on the African continent in recent years.
The exercises have occurred across the expanse of the continent – east, west, north, and south – as well as on the surrounding seas and oceans.
And the exercises have included participation from Europe, and from almost every African country.
(Wall Street International)* — President Barack Obama sits in front of the American flag: “We are entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time,” he warns.
Although he is using familiar expressions and hand gestures, there is something strange about the video. Obama’s face looks weird, and his voice sounds flat and forced.
U.S. wars in foreign nations always come home. The latest example is “Gorgon Stare,” wide angle surveillance planes, used in Iraq and Afghanistan, that have now been brought home to an urban area near you. “Gorgon Stare” is named for the three Gorgons in Greek mythology, snakeheaded sisters whose stare could turn a person to stone.
(UN News)* — A sharp increase in the deaths and disappearances of migrants at sea heading to Spain’s Canary Islands, along the West African coast, is a cause for “extreme concern” the UN’s migration agency, IOM, said on Friday [24 September 2021].
IOM/Peter Schatzer | Conflict and poverty continue to compel people to undertake extremely perilous journeys at sea.
By the end of last month, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants Project recorded 785 people, including 177 women and 50 children, who had died or disappeared this year.
23 September 2021 (UN News)* — Every day, hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry. Three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Two billion are overweight or obese and yet 462 million, are underweight. Nearly a third of all food that is produced, is lost or wasted.
FAO/Luis Tato | Women vendors sell fresh vegetables at a market in Limuru, Kenya.
These are just some of the problems and contradictions laid bare by the UN Secretary-General on Thursday [23 September 2021] at the opening of the landmark UN Food Systems Summit, that is bringing together farmers and fishers, youth, Indigenous Peoples, Heads of State, governments and many more, in an effort to transform the sector and get the world back on track to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
WFP racing against clock to provide most vulnerable with life-saving food – but funding is short
Two droughts in the space of three years have hit Afghanistan hard. Photo: WFP/Arete
(WFP)* — As the harsh Afghan winter looms closer, recent surveys conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) have revealed that only five percent of families have enough to eat every day, while half reported they had run out of food altogether at least once in the past two weeks.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 