22 November 2023 — In the Central Mediterranean Sea, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is witnessing appalling levels of human suffering. MSF has been running search and rescue (SAR) activities since 2015 as a direct response to European Union (EU) policies of disengagement and non-assistance along this stretch of the sea.
— While global attention is focused on Israel and Gaza, Israeli authorities are tightening their repression in the West Bank and Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians are surging.
That repression was already at a peak before the October 7 Hamas-led attack that killed some 1200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel, but it has gotten much worse since.
(IOM)* Torkham, Spin Boldak, 21 November 2023 – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and humanitarian partners are delivering a range of critical aid at border crossing points between Pakistan and Afghanistan in response to the hundreds of thousands of forcibly returned Afghans.
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IOM staff distribute assistance cards to Afghans returning through the Spin Boldak border crossing. Photo: IOM 2023/M.Osman Azizi
Nearly 375,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in the past two months primarily through the Torkham and Spin Boldak border crossings, according to IOM’s latest figures.
A Ugandan woman who has a physical disability is learning how to fight for her and other women’s rights after suffering a life “full of pain”, thanks to a UN-supported programme.
UN Women | Angela Muhindo in Kasese, western Uganda.
“My life has been full of pain,” she said, surveying the green landscape where she spent her childhood in Kasese, in Uganda’s western region. “In my community, women have less power, but if you are disabled, you are even more vulnerable to exploitation.”
Ms. Muhindo, who has had a physical disability since childhood, said she has faced violence and exclusion throughout her life.
When oppressed people get organized, the US gets angry. It’s been punishing the people of Cuba since 1962.
Cuban journalist Liz Oliva Fernandez
15 Nov 2023 – On November 2, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for a resolution calling on the US to lift the trade embargo against Cuba that President John Kennedy imposed in 1962. The US and Israel were the only two nations to vote no, with Ukraine abstaining. Total dependence creates total compliance.
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control records complex specifics of sanctions on Cuba. There are so many that they amount to a virtual blockade.
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2023 (IPS)* – Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, once made the distinction between “friendly” right-wing authoritarian regimes (which were mostly U.S. and Western allies) and “unfriendly” left-wing totalitarian dictatorships (which the U.S. abhorred).
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Among the “dictators” the U.S. shunned in the 1970s and 80s were Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Myanmar’s General Than Shwe, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Libya’s Mummar al-Qaddafi, Syria’s Hafez al-Assad and North Korea’s Kim IL-Sung.
At the same time, successive U.S. administrations cozied up to a rash of right-wing authoritarian regimes and family-run fiefdoms, mostly in South-East Asia, Latin America and particularly the Middle East.
Geneva, 15 November 2023 (WMO)* — The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record last year and there is no end in sight to the rising trend, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Global averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas, in 2022 were a full 50% above the pre-industrial era for the first time. They continued to grow in 2023.
The rate of growth in CO2 concentrations was slightly lower than the previous year and the average for the decade, according to WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.
15 November 2023 (UNHCR)* — The climate crisis and human displacement are increasingly interconnected. Not only did climate-related disasters trigger more than half of new reported displacements in 2022, but nearly 60 per cent of refugees and internally displaced people now live in countries that are among the most vulnerable to climate change. Also available in: Español
Our understanding of these links is growing, but the ways in which our rapidly changing climate is forcing people to move and making life harder for those already displaced are complex and evolving. This has allowed myths and disinformation to abound.
Here are five of the most common myths associated with the climate crisis and displacement, followed by what we know.
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 2023 (IPS)* – As one of America’s closest allies, Israel has remained heavily dependent on the US —politically, economically, and militarily—since its creation in 1948.
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II : a Fifth Generation Stealth Fighter aircraft- (Wikipedia)
US arms supplies, mostly provided gratis, are channeled via US Foreign Military Financing (FMF), Military Assistance Program (MAP) and Excess Defense Articles (EDA).
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the US has provided more foreign assistance to Israel since World War II than to any other country.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 