Ministers’ use of exclusive clubs – like the ‘incredibly expensive’ one Truss held a taxpayer-funded lunch at – is a throwback to an earlier Toryism
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In Boris Johnson’s government, private clubs play an increasingly important role in political life | SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Live News
15 January 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Downing Street may be out of bounds for Boris Johnson to throw any new parties, but he still has other partying options. He was recently pictured at one of London’s most exclusive private members’ clubs, Oswald’s – which is owned by a Conservative Party donor.
MADRID, Jan 14 2022 (IPS)* – While absolutely ready to kill, with the biggest military powers spending in 2020 nearly two trillion US dollars on weapons, the world is shockingly unprepared to save the lives of millions of unarmed, innocent civilian victims of wars… and other man-made catastrophes.
Credit: Albert Gonzalez Farran / UNAMID
The military spending data come from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which also reports that global nuclear arsenals grow as states continue to modernise, thus sharply increasing the dangers of an unimaginable number of victims of the most devastating death machinery.
(UN News)* — The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) called on Friday [14 January 2022] for concerted international action to end armed conflict in Africa’s central Sahel region, which has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee their homes in the last decade.
Speaking to journalists in Geneva, the agency’s spokesperson, Boris Cheshirkov, informed that internal displacement has increased tenfold since 2013, going from 217,000 to a staggering 2.1 million by late last year.
The number of refugees in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger now stands at 410,000, and the majority comes from Mali, where major civil conflict erupted in 2012, leading to a failed coup and an on-going extremist insurgency.
(UN News)* — A new bill being debated by lawmakers in the United Kingdom increases the risk of discrimination and “serious human rights violations” and breaches the country’s obligations under international law, five independent UN human rights experts on 14 January 2022 said.
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UNICEF/Geai | A boy walks through a migrant camp in Calais, northern France, hoping to enter the United Kingdom. (file)
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If adopted, the Nationality and Borders Bill would “seriously undermine the protection of the human rights of trafficked persons, including children; increase risks of exploitation faced by all migrants and asylum seekers; and lead to serious human rights violations”, Siobhán Mullally, the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, said in a statement.
Nairobi, Kenya, Jan 14 2022 (IPS)* – Distress calls from vulnerable Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia experiencing mistreatment and torture at the hands of their employers went from 88 in 2019/2020 to 1,025 just one year later.
Trafficked, kept prisoner in Saudi Arabia Wanjiku Njoki was lucky to escape unharmed. She has since found work serving tea for a government parastatal. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
And this fear is all too familiar for 28-year-old Wanjiku Njoki. The young woman’s whose search for greener pastures in the Gulf landed her in the hands of a physically, mentally, and verbally abusive employer.
MADRID, Jan 12 2022 (IPS)*– The panorama is bleak: hunger in the Arab region continues to rise, with more than 90% increase since 2000, while indebtedness is growing, and the economic recovery is tenuous and uneven.
Tents and makeshift shelters at an IDP camp in Yemen. Credit: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi
The 2021 Near East and North Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition shows that the number of hungry people in the region reached 69 million people in 2020, “triggered by protracted crises, social unrests and exposure to multiple shocks and stresses such as conflicts, poverty, inequality, climate change, scarce natural resources and the economic repercussions associated with the recent COVID-19 pandemic.”
(UN News)* — As the death toll from the recent unrest in Kazakhstan mounts to 164, the UN Office for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday [11 January 2022] requested “prompt, independent, impartial investigations” into the killings, and whether “unnecessary and disproportionate use of force was made by security forces”.
Close to 10,000 people are now estimated to be held in detention following the riots.
“We understand that the Ministry of Interior has announced that some 9,900 people are in detention as of the 11th of January. Now, this is clearly a huge number,” said OHCHR spokesperson Liz Throssell, briefing reporters at the United Nations in Geneva (UNOG).
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Jan 12 2022 (IPS)* – The most violent protests of the past 30 years have erupted across Kazakhstan — exposing decades of inequality, injustice, and corruption. The protests of an unprecedented scale have rocked cities across Kazakhstan for days, as the population grew increasingly dissatisfied with the country’s leadership.
View of downtown Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan. Credit: World Bank/Shynar Jetpissova
The government initially tried a carrot-and-stick approach to the unrest, but later was pushed to call a state of emergency and ultimately to request military help from former Soviet allies.
10 January 2022 (NRC)* — The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) are alarmed by the detention of more than 600 migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in front of the former Community Day Centre in Tripoli early this morning.
Propaganda is most impactful when people don’t think it’s propaganda, and most decisive when it’s censorship you never knew happened. When we imagine that the U.S. military only occasionally and slightly influences U.S. movies, we are extremely badly deceived.
The actual impact is on thousands of movies made, and thousands of others never made. And television shows of every variety.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 