The need for aid in the occupied Palestinian territory has increased, following a year that has seen a “serious deterioration in the humanitarian situation,” said Jamie McGoldrick, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the region, in a statement on 17 December 2018.
UNRWA/Taghrid Mohammad | Palestinian refugee residing at UNRWA ciollective shelter at Khan Dunoun Camp, Syria (2015).
McGoldrick’s comments were released as part of the 2019 Humanitarian Response Plan for the occupied Palestinian territory, which calls for $350 million to assist 1.4 million people, the maximum number of people that the UN can, he said, realistically reach in the current “non-conducive political and resource climate.”
An anti-globalist wave is breaking out around the world. This is perhaps one of the most regressive and absurd things in the world today. There was certain anti-globalism, fruit of the protectionism of several countries, but it was not a threat to the general and irreversible process of globalization.
Leonardo Boff
That wave was adopted for his political platform by Donald J. Trump who, according to Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, is one of most stupid Presidents in North American history.
The same can be said of our recently elected President, the former captain Bolsonaro and his secretaries of State and of Education, deniers of this phenomenon, which only prejudiced and uninformed persons cannot see.
Why is this a senseless blunder? Because it contravenes the logic of an uncontrollable historical process. We have reached a new phase in the history of the Earth and Humanity.
So let’s see: thousands of years ago, human beings, who arose in Africa, (all of us are Africans) began to disperse throughout the vast world, beginning with Eurasia and ending in Oceania.
The crisis of the left around the world has opened up a vacuum for extreme right movements to gain traction and threaten our democracies. How does Boaventura de Sousa Santos make sense of this in Brazil?Español
Neofascism is on the rise around the world. Image from Pink Floyd concert. Wikimedia Commons.
17 December 2018 (openDemocracy)* — The crisis of the left around the world has opened up a vacuum for extreme right movements to gain traction and threaten our democracies.
Today we are faced with multiple interrelated crises, for example the threat of catastrophic climate change or equally catastrophic thermonuclear war, and the threat of widespread famine. These threats to human existence and to the biosphere demand a prompt and rational response; but because of institutional and cultural inertia, we are failing to take the steps that are necessary to avoid disaster.
John Scales Avery
Only Immediate Climate Action Can Save the Future
Immediate action to halt the extraction of fossil fuels and greatly reduce the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses is needed to save the long-term future of human civilization and the biosphere.
At the opening ceremony of United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Katowice, Poland, Sir David Attenborough said “Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change.
I was pleased and encouraged to learn about your initiative of convening the unprecedented Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth.
In the present troubled times when many hardly gained achievements of humanity on its road towards peace and security as well as in promoting the social progress are threatened, while the immediate future of the world looks troublesome and uncertain, it is important that all the human beings raise their voice of concern and alert.
The far-right president-elect uploaded a video criticizing “strict” environmental regulations that are obstructing development in Brazil.
Brazil’s President-elect Jair Bolsonaro reacts next to Rosa Weber, the President of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) before receiving a confirmation of his victory in the recent presidential election in Brasilia, Brazil December 10, 2018. | Photo: Reuters | Photo fromteleSur.
15 December 2018 (teleSur)* — Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president-elect, announced he will lift environmental restrictions to allow logging and other economic ventures in the Amazon, posing a serious threat for Latin America’s colossal rainforest and indigenous communities living in it.
The current environmental policies implemented by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) will be changed by Bolsonaro once he takes office on Jan. 1, for considering them “too strict” in protected areas.
Years ago, the Colombian armed conflict left them with nothing. Today, displaced neighbours in Las Delicias are hosting more than 150 Venezuelans. | Español | Français | عربي
14 December 2018 (UNHCR)* – When Graciela Sánchez first arrived in Las Delicias looking for safety, she only carried her two children and a small bundle of clothes with her. The armed conflict in Caquetá, western Colombia, took everything she had.
14 December 2018 – The terms ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ have been used interchangeably to describe the millions of people worldwide that are either fleeing conflict or seeking better living conditions. As the United Nations sets out to secure global compacts to better protect them, it’s critical to understand the differences between the two.
A new international agreement to forge a stronger, fairer response to large refugee movements known as the Global Compact on Refugees is expected to be endorsed by members of the UN General Assembly on Monday, 17 December to provide greater support for those fleeing their homelands, and for the countries that take them in, which are often among the poorest in the world.
Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Italian Nobel laureate honoured for her work in neurobiology, once gave a splendid conference with the title “The imperfect brain”. There she explained that man has a brain that is not used completely, while the reverse is true for the cockroach.
**Global temperature anomalies for 2015 compared to the 1951–1980 baseline. 2015 was the warmest year in the NASA/NOAAtemperature record, which starts in 1880. It has since been superseded by 2016 (NASA/NOAA; 20 January 2016).[
In the growing fog that envelops the planet and its inhabitants, looking at things from the point of view of a cockroach would probably give us a new perspective.
Also because the cockroach survived the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, it is 300 million years old, and it is distributed around the planet in over 4,000 species. All things that give it a great advantage over man.
Widespread and systematic sexual violence across South Sudan, just a few months after the country’s top two politicians signed a renewed commitment to peace, was at the top of the UN Commission on Human Rights in the country’s agenda on 14 December 2018, as members ended their first fact-finding mission.
OCHA/Jacob Zocherman | Mother and daughter in Unity State, South Sudan.
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The three-person team investigating rights violations in the world’s youngest country, which has been mired in bloody civil conflict since 2013, arrived on the ground shortly after more than 150 women and girls were reportedly sexually assaulted in the northern town of Bentiu.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 