Sylvana Simons’ party will stand in the 2021 Dutch general election. ‘We’re activating people who’ve never felt politicians speaking to them.’ #12DaysofResistance
Sylvana Simons attends a demonstration against racism and discrimination in Amsterdam, Netherlands in March 2019. | SOPA Images/SIPA USA/PA Images.
1 January 2021 (openDemocracy)* — “The Dutch have perfected their facade. They are the definition of ‘facade!’” Sylvana Simons tells me, laughing, on a video call from her home in the Netherlands. “Things look great from the outside. We have told ourselves that we’re tolerant and we’re understanding and we’re progressive, and the rest of the world is so backwards.”
Now is a time to emphasize what we should always do anyway, namely: align across sectors for the common good.
The unbounded idea includes sharing surplus, moving resources from where they are not needed to where they are needed, following the ancient principle Pope Francis is now repeating in one form or another almost every day: our property belongs not only to us but also to those we can help with our surplus.
It is about peace by peaceful means; education, ethics, and practical applications; more than about playing hardball with people who choose to live by a different philosophy.
In this editorial I refer especially to the United States, where the future of democracy now hangs in the balance. Surely similar considerations apply at least to some extent elsewhere.
Recently the University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew and others have been meticulously documenting how widespread, well-organized, and well-armed anti-democratic movements are.
31 December 2020 (Wall Street International)* — While the Coronavirus has rightly taken much of our attention, a fundamental geopolitical realignment has been taking shape in the world, and it will become clearer in 2021. The realignment is the start of a Second Cold War, which hopefully will not become a ‘hot’ war.
The new Cold War will be between China and the West, but it will be quite different from the one with the Soviet Union. The world has changed significantly since 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
On July 4, 2020, the U.S. Navy dispatched an unprecedented two aircraft carriers and four other warships to the South China Sea for naval manoeuvres in waters claimed by China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo subsequently broke with the official U.S. policy of neutrality in territorial conflicts in the South China Sea and declared that China’s claims to most of the Sea were “completely unlawful,” though many of the disputed territories had been part of China prior to being taken over by Japan in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War.[1]
(UN News)* — Five independent UN experts condemned United States President Donald Trump’s pardoning of private security contractors, convicted in 2015 for war crimes in Iraq, on Wednesday [30 December 2020].
UNAMI | Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
The four Blackwater Worldwide contractors were prosecuted and found guilty of multiple criminal acts committed during a 2007 massacre at Nisour Square in Baghdad, which left 14 unarmed civilians dead and at least 17 wounded.
“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” said Jelena Aparac, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries.
(openDemocracy)* — Nikolai Sukhanov is used to flags of convenience. The flags of many nations flutter from the stern of ships on the docks and quays of Nakhodka in Russia’s far east. Owners often register their vessels thousands of miles from home, in countries with far looser regulations and restrictions than their own.
30 December 2020 (UN News)* — Powerful digital tools using artificial intelligence (AI) software are helping in the fight against COVID-19, and have the potential to improve the world in many other ways. However, as AI seeps into more areas of daily life, it’s becoming clear that its misuse can lead to serious harm, leading the UN to call for strong, international regulation of the technology.
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ITU T | The UN is drawing up international rules governing the use of AI
The phrase “artificial intelligence” can conjure up images of machines that are able to think, and act, just like humans, independent of any oversight from actual, flesh and blood people. Movies versions of AI tend to feature super-intelligent machines attempting to overthrow humanity and conquer the world.
“Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.” — Kenneth E. Boulding (1910-1993)
Why Are Economists Addicted to Growth?
John Scales Avery
Economists (with a few notable exceptions) have long behaved as though growth were synonymous with economic health.
If the gross national product of a country increases steadily by 4 percent per year, most economists express approval and say that the economy is healthy. If the economy could be made to grow still faster (they maintain), it would be still healthier. If the growth rate should fall, economic illness would be diagnosed.
However, it is obvious that on a finite Earth, neither population growth nor economic growth can continue indefinitely.
28 December 2020 (UN News)* — An increase in violence against women in India during the global COVID-19 outbreak has been described by the United Nations as a “shadow pandemic”.
UNDP | UN officials say that gender-based violence is a “shadow pandemic,” hidden beneath COVID-19.
Many women, who have been forced to stay at home due to lockdown measures, have been cut off from support services and have suffered at the hands of abusive partners.
In Assam, in tea-growing country in the northeast of India, women are now getting help from groups supported by the UN.
Read More e here about how women are empowering themselves to confront gender-based violence.
28 December 2020 (UN News)* — United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners have called on authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to act urgently to help hundreds of migrants, stranded and without shelter, amid freezing winter temperatures.
IOM 2020/Ervin Causevic | A migrant at what remains of the Lipa Emergency Tent Camp in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, after it was destroyed in a fire.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 