16/08/2022
A Vast River of Money
John Scales Avery
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the world spent 2.113 trillion US dollars on armaments in 2021.
Of this almost incomprehensible amount of money, the United States spent almost half the total, $801 billion.
Perhaps one reason for the disproportionately large US arms spending is that in the United States, the arms industry has been privatized, which is not the case in China or Russia. In the US, selling weapons and death is a business. It is a business, on which capitalist investors can make enormous profits, selling weapons and selling war.
Selling Weapons and War Abroad
The United States is by far the largest exporter of weapons in the world. The US sells weapons through NATO. It also sells weapons to dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, and these same weapons have produced a humanitarian catastrophes such as starvation in Yemen. Small arms exported to Africa deepen and prolong local conflicts. Continue reading →
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12/08/2022
MADRID, Aug 12 2022 (IPS)* – While often too quickly attributing -quasi exclusively- the world unprecedented hunger tragedy to the current proxy war in Ukraine, other major causes remain hidden in plain sight.
Food and energy prices have increased to their highest levels in decades. And 62 new food billionaires have been created. Credit: Bigstock.
Like the legend of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the modern ones are a mix of combined causes: inequality; speculation; indebtedness, and the crushing impacts of climate emergency. Continue reading →
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12/08/2022
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What the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has once again laid bare is just how fragile globalised food systems are. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
The data, released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on 5 August, adds the FAO Food Price Indexaveraged 140.9 points in July, down 8.6% from June, “marking the fourth consecutive monthly decline since hitting all-time highs earlier in the year.”
Continue reading →
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12/08/2022
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A Liberian execution squad fires a volley of shots, killing cabinet ministers of Liberia. April 1980. Credit: Website Rare Historical Photos
Perhaps one of the secure “safe havens”—and a popular “political retirement home”– is Saudi Arabia, a traditionally authoritarian regime, which has provided sanctuary for leaders from Uganda, Tunisia, Pakistan, Yemen and Qatar.
A cartoon in a British newspaper summed it up when it jokingly depicted the “ARRIVALS” terminal in a Saudi airport with a fast-checkout line for visitors– supermarket-style—with a sign that read: “FOR OUSTED WORLD LEADERS ONLY” Continue reading →
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12/08/2022
In a submission to the United Nations in advance of its review of US compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Human Rights Watch and our partners laid out three key areas in which racial discrimination thrives in the US and perpetuates health inequities, with particularly devastating impacts on Black women.
Continue reading →
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11/08/2022
(UN News)* — The UN trade and development body, UNCTAD, has called for action to curb cryptocurrencies in developing nations, in three policy briefs published on Wednesday [10 August 2022].
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Unsplash/Kanchanara | Digital coin crypto currency.
Although private digital currencies have rewarded some individuals and institutions, they are an unstable financial asset that can bring social risks and costs, the agency warned.
UNCTAD said their benefits to some are overshadowed by the threats they pose to financial stability, domestic resource mobilization, and the security of monetary systems.
Cryptocurrencies are an alternative form of payment. Transactions are done digitally through encrypted technology known as blockchain.
Continue reading →
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11/08/2022
10 August 2022 (UN News)* — Dozens of people are said to be missing after a boat of migrants and refugees sank in the Aegean Sea on Wednesday off the Greek island of Karpathos, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
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© UNICEF/Ashley Gilbertson | Volunteers help refugees arriving on the island of Lesbos, in the North Aegean region of Greece. (file)
“Very sad news from the Aegean: Dozens of people are missing after a boat sank off the island of Rhodes this morning (Wednesday),”
UNHCR’s office in Greece said in a tweet.
News media reported that the vessel sank at dawn after setting sail from southern Türkiye yesterday, heading for Italy.
“A major search and rescue operation is underway,” said UNHCR.
Continue reading →
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11/08/2022
By Simona Beltrami*
On International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, World Food Programme agronomist Deborah Suc tells Simona Beltrami she’s lost her shyness for sticking up for others – and the environment.
‘The consequences of climate change are hitting us really hard,’ says Deborah Suc who works for WFP in her native Indigenous community in Guatemala. Photo: WFP/Nelson Pacheco
8 August 2022 (WFP)* — As record hunger sweeps the globe, Indigenous peoples’ communities – who’ve been marginalized and left behind throughout history – remain disproportionately affected by food insecurity and malnutrition.
Continue reading →
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10/08/2022
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View of a bridge in severe disrepair on the BR-319 highway, in the heart of the Amazon, which the Brazilian government plans to repave along the 405-kilometer central section, out of a total of 885 kilometers, because it has deteriorated to the point that is impassable for much of the year. Those who venture along it take three times the normal amount of time to drive the entire length, with the risk of seriously damaging their vehicles. CREDIT: Tarmo Tamming/Flickr
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Posted in Climate Crisis, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Migrants and Refugees, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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10/08/2022
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3 Aug 2022 – “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.”
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So said Pope Francis last week, at a powwow in Alberta, at the start of his “apology tour” across Canada — for the participation of the Catholic Church in the multi-century horror of Native American “residential schools” on this continent, which more accurately might be called concentration camps for 6-year-olds.
This papal mega-apology, while cheered by some, has been widely criticized as little more than a wimpy shoulder-shrug — sorry about that — for a governmental, church-complicit policy, lasting well into the 20th century, of snatching indigenous children from their families and squeezing their culture, if not their life, out of them.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 