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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 33 | 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 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) – It is understandably tempting to drop all the blame for America’s catastrophic response to COVID-19 on the big desk in the Oval Office. But there’s more to the story than epic incompetence, grift and delusion at the highest levels of government. The stark divide in the level of health care from testing to treatment is divided by wealth and the legacy of systemic racism.
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News briefs compiled by Suresh Jaura*
TORONTO | NEW DELHI (IDN) – The focus of media outlets on South Asia in the month of July has been on the perspectives of peace and human security in a region marked by skirmishes between India and the emerging global power China as well as nuclear rivals India and Pakistan and India and smaller neighbours. On the one hand, the 'Kashmir issue', COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. pull out of Afghanistan are casting a dark shadow over the region. On the other, Myanmar's decisions to launch a satellite and artificial intelligence appear to be promise a light at the end of the tunnel.
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Viewpoint by Vijay Prashad *
This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NORTHAMPTON, Massachusetts (IDN) – Jhuliana Rodrigues works as a nurse technician at the Hospital São Vicente in Jundiaí, Brazil. “It is very difficult,” she says of her job these days. Brazil has just passed 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, with 3 million Brazilians infected with the virus. “We meet colleagues and feel a heavy energy, a lot of pressure, a block,” Rodrigues says. She is the vice president of Sinsaúde Campinas, a trade union of health workers.
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Viewpoint by Martin Paleček*
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
Hradec Králové, Czech Republic (IDN) – The concept of culture as a ‘driver of societies’ that has become the lucky charm of nationalists has its origins in the oeuvres of some prominent academics.
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Viewpoint by Sonali Kolhatkar
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.
LOS ANGELES (IDN) – Joe Biden’s pick of Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his running mate for the 2020 Democratic presidential ticket has generated strong responses. While many Democrats are elated at the idea of seeing a brown-skinned woman of Indian and Jamaican heritage in such a position, progressives are debating one another about Harris’ mixed record on bread-and-butter issues such as criminal justice reform, foreign policy, and health care.
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Viewpoint by Luz Marina Bernal*
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
BOGOTA (IDN) – I am Luz Marina Bernal. I live in Soacha, a municipality neighbouring Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, which is the main destination for displaced people from the rest of the country.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown have made things very difficult for me as I work on the ground with people and communities, but I live alone.
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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW (IDN) – Instead of concentrating on developing its newly-established strategy for Africa, Russia has locked horns with United States over its funding for educational programmes, media and NGOs.
Russia has also accused foreign players of adopting neocolonial tendencies and approaches in dealing with Africa, according to analytical reviews and observations by diplomats, policy experts and researchers.
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Viewpoint by Sharanya Kanikkannan
The writer is Legal and Policy Adviser at AIDS-Free World and its Code Blue Campaign.
NEW YORK (IDN) – Like so many Indian girls, I learned at an early age that light skin was feminine, precious, and desirable.
Pink tubes of Fair & Lovely cream—a product that comprises 40 percent of the skin lightening market in India—were a staple of my childhood, tucked away in dressing table drawers in every home and displayed on the shelves of every corner store. Looking back, I wonder why so many adults failed to imagine a world where girls were more than a “pantone” shade on a plastic tube.
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Viewpoint by Dr Palitha Kohona
This is the second of a two-part article by Dr Palitha Kohona, Former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, Former Chair of the UNGA Sixth Committee and the Former Co-Chair of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on BBNJ. Click here for Part One.
COLOMBO (IDN) – The way UN’s constitution (The Charter) is formulated ensures that its powers are strictly constrained. At the same time the rights and privileges of those who won the Second World War are well and truly entrenched in a blatantly undemocratic manner in the Charter, causing much disenchantment in a world where the political, economic and social power centres have shifted significantly.
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Viewpoint by Dr Palitha Kohona
This is the first of a two-part article by Dr Palitha Kohona, Former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, Former Chair of the UNGA Sixth Committee and the Former Co-Chair of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on BBNJ.
COLOMBO (IDN) – As the United Nations enters its 75th year, faded photographs stare down at corridors emptied by Covid 19 and ageless memorabilia faintly glisten in the semi darkness. Almost a sad reflection of the lofty dreams and aspirations of its founders not fully realised.
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Viewpoint by Vijay Prashad and Érika Ortega Sanoja *
This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NORTHAMPTON, Massachusetts (IDN) – On August 4, 2020, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on Venezuela. Appearing before the committee was U.S. State Department Special Representative Elliott Abrams. Abrams, who has had a long—and controversial—career in the formation of U.S. foreign policy, was assaulted by almost all the members of the Senate committee. The senators, almost without exception, suggested that Abrams had been—since 2019—responsible for a failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro.
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By Jacqueline Skalski-Fouts
VIRGINIA, USA (IDN) – Since early June, an estimated 15 to 26 million people across the United States have participated in protests against the death of George Floyd and the persistence of systematic racism in America, making it one of the largest movements in the country’s history.
Recent trends have shown that support for the Black Lives Matter movement—now more than 67%— has doubled since 2016, and the majority of Americans favour working directly with Black Americans to solve local issues.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – An Indian Ocean island nation, beloved for its sandy beaches, pristine lagoons and reefs, its tropical climate and its multi-ethnic population, has become another world treasure soiled by the relentless trade in oil, shipped by tankers, unsafe at any speed.
The ship that ran aground off the shores of Mauritius began spilling oil into the country’s famed blue lagoons this week, setting off an environmental crisis in a tiny island nation that relies on its waters for fishing, food and tourism.
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Viewpoint by Sonali Kolhatkar
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.
LOS ANGELES (IDN) – When President Donald Trump was challenged by Axios national political correspondent Jonathan Swan to respond to the fact that, “a thousand Americans are dying a day” due to COVID-19, the president responded as though the grim tally was perfectly acceptable, saying, “They are dying, that’s true. And it is what it is.”
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Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Seventy-five years ago the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and on Nagasaki on August 9 was premeditated mass murder.
President Harry Truman had a workable alternative to using the atom bomb – to cooperate with Stalin, as Roosevelt and Churchill had done on the Western front, in the Soviet advance on Japan, rather than making it a race for control.
Indeed, it was the Soviet advance that convinced Japan to surrender.** Although unaware of each other’s thinking both Truman and the Japanese leadership shared a common cause – they both wanted to pre-empt the possibility of the Soviet Union occupying parts of Japan before the U.S. had got its boots on Japanese ground. Truman did not want to be compelled to concede Soviet participation in the government of post-surrender, occupied, Japan.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Death sentences are rare in northern Nigeria where Sharia law is implemented alongside secular law in most states.
But the recent sentence of a 22-year-old singer to die by hanging has revived an emotional debate in the West African nation. An upper Sharia court in the Hausawa Filin Hockey area of Kano state ruled on August 10 that Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, 22, should die by hanging for the crime of blasphemy for a song he circulated via WhatsApp in March.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Citizen activists in two West African countries, Ivory Coast and Guinea, are rallying their troops on social media to defend the constitutional limit of two terms which current office-holding presidents seem determined to defy.
In Abidjan, the Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, police have been firing teargas to disperse opponents of President Alassane Ouattara, who says he was asked to run for a third term of five years by the ruling party after the sudden demise of his hand-picked successor Amadou Gon Coulibaly from a heart attack in July.
The constitution limits presidents to two five-year terms.
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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW (IDN) – Russia not only supported African countries in liberating themselves from the yoke of colonialism and attaining political independence but also facilitated in the UN General Assembly adopting in 1960 the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. It's a landmark document which states that all people have a right to self-determination and proclaimed that colonialism should be brought to a speedy and unconditional end.
Russia has now embarked on fighting “neo-colonialism” which it considers a fortified barrier on its way to regain Soviet-era multifaceted influence in Africa.
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