'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Citing conflict as one of the greatest causes of that fragility, Secretary-General António Guterres told a high-level videoconference on the protection of civilians in armed conflict that the coronavirus is causing “enormous human suffering” and additional stress to vulnerable health systems, economies and communities already been weakened by years of armed conflict.
Afsaneh, a refugee from Iran, holds online Farsi classes for students in Serbia where she now lives.© UNHCR/A.Bergazar
(UN News)* — Humanitarian aid projects to war-torn Yemen are reaching breaking point, and some $870 million is needed to continue giving life-saving assistance to millions of vulnerable people for the next six months, the World Food Programme (WFP), warned on Tuesday [26 May 2020].
IPS– As a spiraling financial crisis threatens to undermine the UN’s day-to-day operations worldwide, a proposal being kicked around, outside the empty corridors of the UN, has triggered the question: will senior officials, including the Secretary-General, the Deputy Secretary-General (DSG), Under-Secretaries-Generals (USGs), including 60 heads of UN agencies, Funds and Programs, and Assistant Secretaries-Generals (ASGs), volunteer to take salary cuts— even as a symbolic gesture?
About 85 other migrants were arrested earlier by the Libyan coastguard, bringing to more than 1,000 the number of people who have attempted the crossing this month.
The IOM’s estimated death toll among migrants who have tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea since 2014 surpassed 20,000. | Photo: AFP
24 May 2020 (Wall Street International)* — One of the most questioning and innovative results of the Illuminism – eighteenth century – was to place man (the individual) as the center of the world. This antithesis to the absolute – God – represented by its supposed signifiers – the Church, the royalty – opened new perspectives for the human, being later developed in a movement, an ideology, a social and legal legacy: the French Revolution. From then on, the motto “freedom, equality, fraternity” became the fundamental summary that guides the trajectory of the Western man.
Charles Gabriel Lemonnier, Salon de Madame Geoffrin | Image from Wall Street International. Thirty-four children were part of the group returning from Burkina Faso this May 1.
Photo: IOM/Monica Chiriac
Boubacar, 65, and his two sons, consider themselves to be excellent farmers, but Niger’s adverse weather and persistent droughts make it difficult to have a stable income from the land. In the off season, Nigeriens like Boubacar look for alternatives to make ends meet, and many choose to work in the goldmines in neighboring Burkina Faso.
“In my village, we don’t really know any profession other than agriculture,” says Boubacar.
About 1,300 people in the Choco have been forced to move due to clashes among armed groups.
Displaced indigenous community Embera Dobida in Catru, Alto Baudo, Choco. May 20, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/@RichiNasa
22 May 2020 (teleSUR)* — Colombia’s social organizations Thursday denounced a massive displacement in El Choco department, amidst a possible COVID outbreak.
“We warn of the forced displacement of 1,300 people in Catru, Choco, due to clashes between illegal armed groups. We demand that attacks against Indigenous communities cease and we urge the authorities to protect the population of the territory,” Colombia’s Peace Process Support Mission to of the Organization of American States (MAPP/OEA) tweeted.
We are being utterly transformed. And the world is being utterly transformed around us.
Robert J. Burrowes,
Ostensibly, this is to tackle a simple virus. In reality, it is to achieve an elite design at staggering cost to humanity and to life generally.
If you have not been carefully following what is taking place, let me highlight some recent developments and what we can do about them.
On 26 March 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) granted Microsoft a world patent. Titled ‘1. WO2020060606 – Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data’, this patent gives Microsoft (that is, Bill Gates) extraordinary power over our lives.
As Professor Vandana Shiva evocatively explains in her latest article, ‘My Earth Journey in defence of Biodiversity, Life and Freedom over 5 decades’, this development is ‘robbing us of our deep humanity’:
