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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 03 | 2021. This weekly is the flagship news product of the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group with registered offices in Canada, Germany, Japan and Singapore, and correspondents around the world. Feel free to share and re-publish articles pro bono mentioning the source. Previous editions are available on https://newsletter-archive.indepthnews.net. Your feedback is most welcome.
Kind regards from the Non-Profit
International Press Syndicate
By J Nastranis
NEW YORK (IDN) – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has warmly welcomed President Joe Biden’s "steps to re-enter the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and join the growing coalition of governments, cities, states, businesses and people taking ambitious action to confront the climate crisis". Biden signed an executive order accepting the Paris accord "and every article and clause thereof on behalf of the United States of America" on January 20 after he and Vice President Kamal Harris were sworn in as America's new leaders.
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Viewpoint by Thomas Hajnoczi
The writer is the outgoing Director of Arms Control at the Austrian Foreign Ministry. He negotiated the TPNW*
VIENNA (IDN) – With its entry into force on January 22 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will become binding international law for the growing number of State Parties, for the moment 51 countries. Moreover, it is also having an effect on those states that do not intend to join it.
The nuclear weapon states themselves testify to the TPNW's effectiveness by their campaign against it. They could have ignored it instead of pressuring countries not to sign and ratify.
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Viewpoint by Dushni Weerakoon
The writer is the Executive Director and Head of the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka.
COLOMBO (IDN) — The unprecedented disruptions of COVID-19 are causing a geopolitical reset — and as the global order is redrawn, small emerging market economies like Sri Lanka are vulnerable to the fallout. Sri Lanka straddles vital shipping routes and is at the centre of diplomatic spats between China and the United States, who called on Sri Lanka to make ‘difficult but necessary choices’ over its growing economic and political ties to China.
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Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) – President Joe Biden is more peacenik than war-monger. Compared with all recent previous presidents, apart from Jimmy Carter, he has been a dove. But be warned. When Barack Obama became president he forswore “more dumb wars” yet he got involved in more than any of them did. We had mistakenly believed him because of his vote in the Senate against the Second Iraq War.
Nevertheless, Obama, with Biden’s support, did resist a big push by Congress, the military and most of the media to send troops into Syria and he did try hard to get troops pulled out of Iraq. Biden supported Obama in his decision to negotiate with Iran a deal to put into cold storage its plan to enrich uranium to the point where it could be used to make a nuclear bomb.
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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – A call to action endorsed by over 500 organizations and individuals in South Africa is aiming to unite millions of the nation’s citizens in order to acquire 40 to 80 million doses of vaccine to defeat the coronavirus pandemic.
“The pandemic is wreaking havoc,” organizers proclaimed in a recent letter published in the Mail&Guardian. “Vaccinating a significant part of the population is the only way to defeat the pandemic.”
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By Ronald Joshua
ROME (IDN) – Director-General QU Dongyu of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has declared 2021 a key year to move forward the transformation of agri-food systems, marked by big events, particularly the UN Food Systems Summit in New York, the Pre-Summit in Rome, and FAO’s Youth World Food Forum.
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Viewpoint by Ravi Arvind Palat
The writer is a professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton
NEW YORK (IDN) – Several commentators have underlined the sharp contrast between law enforcement responses to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by mobs unleashed by President Trump on January 6, 2021, and to the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer. Despite two months of warnings that the president was mobilizing his supporters to reverse his election loss, the police and National Guard appeared to be caught off-guard, unlike the massive mobilization of law enforcement agencies against those calling for racial justice.
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By Jaya Ramachandran
PARIS (IDN) – The global health crisis of the COVID 19 came as a dramatic reminder of the importance of Nature for our daily lives and economies: biodiversity is our life insurance. Yet, the damage to ecosystems is unprecedented and will have major consequences on our lifestyles in the decades to come.
According to knowledgeable sources, reversing this trend is a major challenge for the coming decade. This global challenge requires concerted action at all levels (international, national, local) and by all actors (governments, international organizations, businesses, associations, citizens, etc.).
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Viewpoint by Themrise Khan*
KARACHI (IDN) – While preparing to speak at an online discussion on decolonising the aid sector, I searched Google Translate for a corresponding word for 'decolonisation’ in my native language of Urdu. I couldn’t find one. In many other languages, from Arabic to Spanish, only a loanword exists. It’s just one example of how the discussion on decolonisation rarely centres the colonised.
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By Radwan Jakeem
NEW YORK (IDN) – "Our world has reached a heart-wrenching milestone: #COVID19 has now claimed two million lives. Sadly, the impact of the pandemic has been made worse by the absence of global coordination. In the memory of those two million souls, the world must act with far greater solidarity," tweeted UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
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Viewpoint by Albena Azmanova and Marshall Auerback *
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NEW YORK | BRUSSELS (IDN) – While the majority of Americans deplored the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, it was troubling to see a YouGov poll indicating that 1 in 5 voters approved of the assault. Their attitudes were buttressed by a significant number of House and Senate Republicans who have egged on the matter by continuing to call into question the legitimacy of last November’s election result. This is a sign that the rot in the American political system goes deep.
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By J C Suresh
WASHINGRTON, D.C. (IDN) – The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has announced that changing Middle East situation means changes for Israel. In another press release it said, partnerships are key to Space Force delivering warfighting capabilities.
In the first release on January 15 it said: in a sign of the changing political environment in the Middle East, the United States military will move Israel from the U.S. European Command's area of responsibility to that of the U.S. Central Command. The move, it said, is part of unified command plan changes.
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By Yossef Ben-Meir, President, High Atlas Foundation
MARRAKECH (IDN) – On World Religion Day, January 17, the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) celebrates its interfaith fruit tree nurseries, which are built on land lent in-kind by the Moroccan Jewish community and are enhancing livelihoods for Muslim farming families around Morocco. These nurseries champion the notion that Morocco’s multicultural past and present, and the preservation of it, should necessarily advance the sustainable development of the country by providing a tangible and vital pathway for the social and economic benefit of generations of Moroccans to come, said HAF in a media release.
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Viewpoint by Sam Fowles*
LONDON (IDN) – The UK has left the EU and plunged into a third lockdown (the latter some two weeks after doing so was recommended by the government’s medical advisers), while, in the US, right-wing terrorists stormed the Capitol.
Strangely, all three provoked responses along the lines of “Boris Johnson is a liberal”. For Robert Tombs, writing in The Telegraph, the chief benefit of Brexit is a “reinvigorated democracy”. For Robert Peston, Johnson’s repeated ignoring of scientific advice is due to “a political philosophy… that he will not restrict our liberties unless there is an overwhelming reason to do so.” For James Forsyth in The Times, "Johnson is not Trump's Transatlantic twin".
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Viewpoint by Lee Bebout*
TEMPE, Arizona (IDN) – Despite failed lawsuits, recounts and formal confirmation that President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump and his supporters continue to maintain that the election was rigged and that he and the American people are victims of massive voter fraud.
This politicisation of victimhood is nothing new to the Trump presidency.
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Compiled by EEPA
BRUSSELS (IDN) – Asena TV shows images of four to six explosions outside the municipality offices in the centre of Addis Ababa, which were followed with a few shots.
New Eritrean troops have entered Mekelle, roaming the city along with many intelligence agents.
Tigray news reports that Al Shebaab fighters are entering western regions of Ethiopia and may even be controlling parts of the Somali region of Ethiopia.
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Viewpoint by Kudzai Chimhangwa*
HARARE (IDN) – Edwin Moyo takes a stroll through his maize field, smiling as the lush green leaves of his crop brush against each other in response to the breeze. Busy amid the serenity of his two-hectare farm in the west of Zimbabwe, his patient tending looks likely to pay off, as the rainy season did not disappoint. The thick maize cobs spread out across the field are now the envy of his neighbours.
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By Jaya Ramachandran
ROME (IDN) – Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the international edition of the World Social Forum (WSF) will take place virtually this year from January 23 to 31, marking the 20th anniversary of an extraordinary global gathering. The forthcoming WSF will be the longest ever held since the first World Social Forum in 2001 in Porto Alegre, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
This event will enable global and local political responses to the serious and urgent challenges in times of the profound crises of capitalism.
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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) – US President Donald Trump may have lost re-election but he would be escorted out of the White House on January 19 night with a special prize: Africa’s worst friend in modern times.
Not that it matters one way or the other to Trump. We can only hope that after four years of spite, insults and hostilities, he might yet, in a fleeting moment of sanity, ask himself whether going out of his way to annoy or denigrate the continent was worth all the trouble.
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