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Published by The Non-profit International Press Syndicate Group
with IDN-InDepthNews as the Flagship Agency
Dear Reader,
We are pleased to send you Edition 32 | 2020 of BEYOND BREAKING THE NEWS, a flagship news product, now in the fifth year, meanwhile published every Monday by the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group, with registered offices in Canada, Germany, Japan and Singapore, and correspondents around the world. Previous editions are available on https://newsletter-archive.indepthnews.net. Read. Share. Publish; free of charge but mention us as the source. We would appreciate your Feedback.
Kind regards from the Non-Profit
International Press Syndicate
Viewpoint by Dr Yossef Ben-Meir
The writer is a sociologist and president of the High Atlas Foundation, a U.S.-Moroccan not-for-profit organization dedicated to sustainable development in Morocco.
MARRAKECH (IDN) – Systems devised to organize local community participation in development emerged more than 70 years ago as a means to address poverty by involving people in designing their own initiatives and activities. Today, the people-driven approach to development is widely considered a way to create sustainable projects to advance economic growth, education, and health.
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By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE (IDN) – The landslide victory of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP – Sri Lanka Peoples’ Front) led by the Rajapaksa brothers throws a challenge to so-called “liberals” everywhere whose ideology may not be in sync when a huge portion of the electorate vote for a “strong” government rather than a coalition representing various segments of the community that may not provide political and economic stability at a time of a crisis.
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By Tony Robinson
The writer is Humanist Movement activist, coordinating committee member of Abolition 2000 - Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, author of the book "Coffee with Silo and the quest for meaning in life" and producer of the film "The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons". The article originally appeared on Pressenza, one of our partners.
LONDON (IDN) – In a ceremony hosted by ICAN and chaired by Elayne Whyte Gomez, the Costa Rican diplomat who steered the negotiations of the ground-breaking Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, three more countries announced their ratification: Ireland, Nigeria and the pacific island state of Niue.
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Viewpoint by Marshall Auerback
The writer is a market analyst and commentator. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NEW YORK (IDN) – The media likes to dabble in war game fantasies between the 21st-century great powers China and the U.S., but it’s a distraction from the hybrid economic warfare that is underway—from Trump’s tariff hikes to the shores of the advanced economy.
Here in a nutshell is the problem facing the United States. The country that used to be a world leader in all forms of high tech, especially semiconductor chips, now spends its time re-designing chocolate chips.
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Viewpoint by Vijay Prashad *
This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NORTHAMPTON, Massachusetts (IDN) – Six months ago, on January 30, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Ten days before this, the Chinese government had said—to great alarm—that the coronavirus could be transmitted from human to human. The contagiousness of this virus led the WHO to make the declaration, which came a month after the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention told their counterparts in the United States about the virus.
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Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene
The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine based in Abuja, Nigeria.
ABUJA (IDN) – I’ve been amused by the strenuous efforts to explain exactly what Mamman Daura, President Muhammadu Buhari’s nephew, meant or did not mean when he said that rotating the Presidency was no longer useful.
Daura told the BBC Hausa service on July 28 that Nigeria’s next president should be chosen on merit, not on a “turn-by-turn” arrangement, a sarcastic reference to a political system that prioritizes tribe.
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Recollections by a Nigerian journalist who toured Lebanon two years ago
By Louis Odion
*The writer, Fellow of Nigerian Guild of Editors, is the Senior Technical Assistant on Media to President Muhammadu Buhari.
ABUJA (IDN) – Many wished they were allowed to capture the moment with the camera, but the literary amazon from Borno beheld a different picture in the officially restricted space. She saw politics in the classification of the Jeita Grotto as the "world's 15th wonder" and not within the first 10.
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Viewpoint by Tariq Rauf
The writer is former Head of Nuclear Verification and Security Policy at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, former Alternate Head of the IAEA Delegation to the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty (NPT); Senior Advisor on nuclear disarmament to the Chairs at the 2015 NPT Review Conference and 2014 NPT PrepCom; long time Expert with Canada's NPT delegation until 2000. Personal views are expressed here. The following is an expanded version of comments made at the event, 'The 75th Anniversary of Atomic Bombing and the United Nations In the Time of COVID-19: Where Do We Stand and What Can Be Done for a Nuclear-Free World?', organized by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Hiroshima.
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Viewpoint by Sergio Duarte
The author is Ambassador, President of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.
NEW YORK (IDN) –Seventy-five years ago, on August 6, 1945, a nuclear attack razed the city of Hiroshima. Three days later, Nakgasaki suffered identical fate. More than 200,000 men, women and children suddenly lost their lives, and many others perished from the effects of radiation during the next decades. Some survivors, known as hibakusha in Japan, whose average age is 82, still struggle to make their bitter experience known to the remainder of humanity, under the motto "no one should suffer what we have suffered".
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By Jutta Wolf
BERLIN | LONDON (IDN) – A group of eminent world leaders, comprising The Elders, has called on the heads of states of five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council to use the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki "as a moment to reflect on the lives lost and begin substantive steps towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons".
The atomic bombing of the two cities on August 6 and 9, 1945 led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, laying bare the true horror of nuclear weapons. Today, over 13,000 nuclear warheads are in existence.
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Viewpoint by Marina Martinez*
This article was originally published on WagingNonviolence and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
NEW YORK (IDN) – Nuclear weapons have been posing a threat to humanity for 75 years – ever since the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
These days, our focus is understandably on the COVID-19 virus and the threat it poses to human life. But as we commemorate the anniversary of these bombings, it is important to acknowledge that unlike the coronavirus, nuclear weapons can only be remediated with prevention. Millions of people could be killed if a single nuclear bomb were detonated over a large city, and the added threats of radiation and retaliation could endanger all life on Earth.
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Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Almost forgotten in the story about the Coronavirus is the story of AIDS. The drive to deal with it, the search to find medicine to cure it, and the self-discipline by homosexuals only began in 1981, when the disease was discovered, and its causes understood.
It was a stroke of luck that AIDS was discovered so quickly. Another five or ten years could have easily passed before it was detected. Then it would have rampaged through societies all over the world.
Long before AIDS became known, the human immunodeficiency virus HIV was at work. Scientists do not know exactly for how long, but it was probably around for decades. With better warnings and more time, we could have got a grip on the virus before it travelled around the globe.
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Viewpoint by Michael Edwards*
This article was originally published on openDemocracy. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IDN-InDepth News
NEW YORK (IDN) – "Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.”
I cried my eyes out reading the final words of the great John Lewis that were published in the New York Times the day after he died, their quiet magnificence landing a powerful punch to my solar plexus. If you haven’t read them, please do.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – South Africa, with a population of about 58 million, has the fifth-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. It has become the country with the highest number of infections on the continent.
Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize announced 10,107 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the country’s cumulative total to 503,290, including 8,153 deaths.
South Africa’s Gauteng province — which includes Johannesburg, the country’s largest city, and Pretoria, the capital — is the country’s epicenter with more than 35% of its confirmed cases.
Health experts say the country could reach the peak of its outbreak in late August or early September.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – 'Black Lives Matter' can take credit for the scores of apologies from around the world for racist statues, discriminatory corporate policies and now from the Bronx Zoo for its cruel and racist display of an African man in a cage in 1906.
“In the name of equality, transparency, and accountability, we must confront our organization’s historic role in promoting racial injustice as we advance our mission to save wildlife and wild places,” officials with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said a statement released to the press on July 29.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – "The compensation of land is a settled issue, and we are not revisiting it." Those were the words of government spokesman Nick Mangwana defending a $3.5 billion agreement to compensate white farmers whose properties were confiscated by the Mugabe regime to be redistributed to the majority Black population left landless by British colonial policies.
According to the agreement just signed at President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s State House offices in Harare, white farmers would be compensated only for infrastructure on the farms and not the land itself, as per the national constitution.
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Viewpoint by Prabir Purkayastha
The writer is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement. This article was produced in partnership by Newsclick and Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NEW DELHI (IDN) – Microbes do not recognize borders. We are all safe only when everybody is safe. In a pandemic, to attack the only body we have for global cooperation endangers everyone. That is why the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) is dangerous not only for the United States, but for all of the world.
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