(UN News)* — Thirty years after the siege of Sarajevo, the UN team in Bosnia and Herzegovina reiterated the importance on Wednesday [6 April 2022] of pursuing justice and reparation for victims, survivors and their family members.
UNDP/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin | People walk through the streets of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (file photo).
The siege began after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence in the wake of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.
Bosnian Serbs largely opposed independence, while the other two large ethnic groups, Muslim Bosniaks and Croats, favoured the split from Belgrade.
UK government ministers want the British Empire’s benefits taught in schools. Don’t let them ignore the death and destruction it inflicted
Gurminder Bhambra as a child with her grandfather, Mohan Singh | Gurminder Bhambra
1 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Recent weeks have seen a variety of UK government ministers – from Oliver Dowden to Kemi Badenoch to, most recently, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi – both extol the benefits of British Empire and urge the teaching of those benefits.
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This follows on from the government’s response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which set out the need for a new model curriculum for history which would advise schools on how best to teach these issues.
“No war has the honesty of confessing, ‘I kill to steal.’”
(Image by Rafael Edwards)
4 Apr 2022 – Wars always invoke noble motives. They kill in the name of peace. In the name of God. In the name of civilization. In the name of progress. In the name of democracy…
And just in case, if so many lies are not enough… the mass media are ready to invent imaginary enemies to justify the conversion of the world into a great madhouse and an immense slaughterhouse.
In King Lear, Shakespeare had written that “…in this world, the mad lead the blind…”. And… four centuries afterward, the masters of the world are madmen in love with death.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 5 2022 (IPS)* – The world is sailing into a perfect storm as key leaders seem intent on threatening more war, albeit while proclaiming the noblest of intentions. By doing so, they block international cooperation to create conditions for sustainable peace and shared prosperity for all.
Anis Chowdhury
Monetarist counter-revolution The 1970s saw Milton Friedman disciples’ monetarist counter revolutionblaming stagflation on ostensibly Keynesian economic policies. In 1974, Nixon replacement President Gerald Ford declared inflation “public enemy number one” and US “determination to whip inflation”.
Monetarists wanted tighter monetary policies to fight inflation. Curbing rising prices was deemed urgent, even though it would increase joblessness. They advocated abandoning expansionary fiscal measures for more growth and jobs.
Americans “need to imagine their vote has an impact on policy, an illusion the media encourages them to believe in.”
Ouch!
Peter Isaacson, writing in Fair Observer, seems to be saying . . . oh my God, democracy is a cliché, a big sham. I stand up, put my hand on my heart, pledge allegiance to the flag. This is America, land of the empowered voter.
Then I read about our president’s latest budget proposal, which includes $813 billion for “national defense” — pushing the Pentagon budget’s already record-setting enormity further into outer space — and I feel myself collapse (yet again) into nothingness.
Those in the Middle East know the kind of destruction seen in Ukraine all too well – the West was the perpetrator.
Joe Biden’s claims of the moral imperative of challenging Russian autocracy are likely to fall on deaf ears | Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/Alamy
2 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine remains in a violent stalemate. Russian forces are pausing their attempts to occupy Kyiv, having withdrawn some of their forces from around the capital, but a major retreat is highly unlikely given Russia is recruiting several thousand mercenaries from Syria.
Millions of people in Afghanistan are experiencing misery and hunger amid decades of conflict, the collapse of the country’s economy, years of drought, and freezing wintertime temperatures.
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Afghanistan, which has endured repeated humanitarian crises, faces its darkest time.
UNHCR and its partners have launched joint response plans to deliver vital humanitarian relief. There are 24 million people inside Afghanistan and 5.7 million Afghans and host communities in five neighbouring countries who need support.
— “Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots: fossil fuels and our dependence on them” said Ukrainian climate scientist Svitlana Krakovska as Russia, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers, was invading her country.
A bill that will limit discussions teachers and businesses can have about race
The Florida Republican-dominated State Legislature most recently passed a bill applied to K-12 public schools | Image fromWall Street International.
26 March 2022 (Wall Street International)* — The Florida Republican-dominated State Legislature most recently passed a bill that will limit discussions teachers and businesses can have about race.
The Western economic war on Russia over Ukraine is having a spillover effect on the forgotten war in Yemen. The ghastly blockade and bombardment of Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is now entering its eighth year.
World Food Programme food distribution in Raymah, Yemen. (Photo: Julian Harneis/CC BY-SA 2.0)
22 Mar 2022 – The United Nations’ goal was to raise more than $4.2 billion for the people of war-torn Yemen by March 15. But when that deadline rolled around, just $1.3 billion had come in.
Peter Isaacson
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 