The Free

UN chief’s ‘List of Shame’ adds Russia, omits Israel, says Human Rights Watch

from thefreeonline on 4th July 2023 by Wafa.Ps in Français עברית العربية

Palestinian children killed by Israeli army gunfire.

NEW YORK, Wednesday, June 28, 2023 (WAFA) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has added Russia’s military forces to his annual “list of shame” of parties to armed conflict who commit grave violations against children.

Unfortunately, he again omitted Israel, which belongs on the list.

This sends a mixed message about the UN’s willingness to hold powerful governments accountable, said Jo Becker, Human Rights Watch Advocacy Director, Children’s Rights Division.

Child casualties at the morgue in Rafah in…GAZA, PALESTINE –

Ignoring 975 Palestinian child casualties by racist Israeli forces in 2022 has added to the view spreading worldwide that the UN is now, like the WTO, the IMF, the World bank, etc, another ‘captured’ organisation of the US .

The inclusion of Russia, despite its longheld pro-children policies, is widely derided outside the West as endorsing the blatantly political charging of Putin by the ICC, for a Russian effort to protect children from the chaos and slaughter of the Ukraine war.

Palestine: 800 Children Detained during the Past Month – Palestine …

“Globally, violations against children occurred on a shocking scale in 2022. The UN verified over 24,000 instances in which armed forces or groups killed or injured children, subjected them to sexual violence, abduction, or recruitment as soldiers, or attacked schools and hospitals. Over half the violations took place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel/Palestine, Somalia, Syria, and Ukraine,” she wrote.

“Israel’s continued omission from the list of shame does a grave disservice to Palestinian children. The secretary general’s report found Israeli forces responsible for 975 child casualties and 110 attacks on schools and hospitals in 2022. The UN has attributed over 6,700 Palestinian child casualties to Israeli forces from 2015-2020.

While the secretary-general has never included Israel in his list, he has included other forces or groups responsible for far fewer violations,” said Becker, adding that “the secretary-general’s continued unwillingness to hold Israeli forces accountable for massive violations puts many children at risk.”

Palestinian family mourns eight relatives killed in attack as Israeli …

The Advocacy Director stressed that Guterres should hold all governments to account for their violations, regardless of their influence.

“The stigma attached to the secretary-general’s ‘list of shame’ is considerable. Israel and other countries have resorted to aggressive lobbying and, in some cases, even UN blackmail, to stay off the list of the worst violators. The only credible way off is to sign and implement a concrete action plan with the UN to end violations. The secretary-general needs to hold all governments to account for their violations, no matter how powerful.”

Opposing Child Detainees in Occupied Palestine Territories

The report by the Advocacy Director publicizing Israeli crimes is a welcome move, though likely to be ignored, along with dozens of UN resolutions vetoed by the USA.

Human Rights Watch, despite it often great work, is a western funded organization which concentrates on the crimes of poor and developing States.

HRW itself has a long history of problems criticizing Israel. Indeed its founder and longtime President, Robert L. Bernstein, resigned in 2009 over the inclusion of reports on Israeli military crimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Bernstein

M.K.

World’s coldest village sets new HIGH temperature record

from thefreeonline 0n 4 Jul, 2023 Russia/Censored

It was 32 degrees Celsius (89.6F) on Monday in Oymyakon in Russia’s Far East, local media reported

FILE PHOTO of winter in Oymyakon, Russia © Sputnik / Sputnik

A new high temperature record has been set in the village of Oymyakon in Russia’s Far East, known internationally as the world’s coldest permanently inhabited settlement. Wildfires have occurred in the region as a result of a recent heatwave.

Temperatures in the village, which is located in the remote Yakutia region or Sakha Republic, reached 32 degrees Celsius (89.6F) on Monday, according to local media, surpassing the previous record of 30.5 degrees Celsius set on the same day in 1949.

The head of the Sakha Republic, Aisen Nikolaev, declared a state of emergency in the region on Monday as massive wildfires spread over the weekend. On his Telegram channel, Nikolaev noted that the Oymyakon district was among the worst affected.

“More than 828 million people faced hunger in 2021,” Turk claimed, “And climate change is projected to place up to 80 million more people at risk of hunger by the middle of this century.”e added: “Our environment is burning. It’s melting. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying” and that these factors will combine to lead humanity towards a “dystopian future” unless urgent and immediate action is taken by environmental policymakers.

Oymyakon is among the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere, having recorded a low temperature of -67.7 degrees Celsius (-89.9F) in 1933. However, an unverified record was set seven years earlier, when a low of -71.2 degrees Celsius was reported.

Despite the extreme weather conditions, Oymyakon has a permanent population of around 500 people.

Climate change poses a particularly acute threat to Yakutia, as much of its infrastructure is built on permafrost. Experts warn that thawing could lead to major social and economic ramifications in the region.

Deep Sea Monsters To Kill Us All With Their Tridents – equaling 134,400 Hiroshimas –

from thefreeonline on July 4, 2023 by Edward Curtin at Off-Guardian

‘What all of us need to Deny or Avoid because its Implications are So Monstrous’.

Sometimes you wake up from a dream to realize it is telling you to pay close attention to the depth of its message, especially when it is linked to what you have been thinking about for days.

I will spare you additional details or an interpretation, except to say that my daytime thoughts concerned the media spectacle surrounding the Titan submersible that imploded two miles down in the ocean’s cellar while trying to give its passengers a view of the wreck of the Titanic, the “unsinkable” ship nicknamed “the Millionaire’s Special.” The ship that no one could sink except an ice cube in the drink that swallowed it.

‘Power, money, and technology are the ruling deities today‘

Cellar dreams are well-known as the place where we as individuals and societies can face the flickering shadows that we refuse to face in conscious life.

I have just come up from a dream in which I went down to the cellar of the house I grew up in because the basement light was on and the back cellar door had been opened by a mysterious man who stood outside.

Carl Jung called it “the shadow.”

Such shadows, when unacknowledged and repressed, have a tendency to autonomously surface and erupt, not only leading to personal self-destruction but that of whole societies.

History is replete with examples. My dream’s mysterious stranger had lit my way through some dark thoughts and opened the door to a possible escape.

He got me thinking about what all of us tend to want to deny or avoid because its implications are so monstrous.

The obsession with the alleged marvels of technology together with naming them after ancient Greek and Roman gods are fixations of elite technologues who have lost what Spengler called “living inner religiousness” but wish to show they know the classical names even though they miss the meaning of these myths.

Such myths tell the stories of things that never happened but always are.

Appropriating the ancient names without irony – such as naming a boat Titanic or a submersible Titan – unveils the hubristic ignorance of people who have never descended to the underworld to learn its lessons.

Relinquishing their sense of god-like power doesn’t occur to them, nor does the shadow side of their Faustian dreams.