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#GlobalGoals? The truth about poverty and how to address it
By Rajesh Makwana
It's high time UN agencies and the mainstream media acknowledge the true scale of global poverty and engage in a long overdue public debate on how ambitious and transformative the international development agenda really is.
As the star-studded endorsements and media hype surrounding the all-pervasive Global Goals campaign begins to subside, a very different truth is beginning to emerge about this latest attempt by the international community to end poverty and create an ecologically viable future. Despite the UN’s ambitious claims, all the indications are that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) do not have the potential to “free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want” or “heal and secure our planet”. On the contrary, the ‘new agenda for development’ fails to address the root causes of today’s interconnected global crises, perpetuates a false narrative about poverty reduction, and reinforces an unsustainable economic paradigm that is inherently incapable of reducing the true scale of human deprivation by 2030.
If taken at face value, it may seem irresponsible for anyone to dismiss the broad vision and prime objective of the SDGs to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” – if only because it presents a valuable opportunity to improve intergovernmental cooperation and focus both political and public attention on pressing global issues. As Share The World’s Resources have outlined in a recent report, however, there are many reasons to question not only the targets themselves, but the entire sustainable development initiative and the political-economic context within which it will be implemented.
“Marketplace” Program, from ‘Nonprofit’ NPR, Pumps Fascism
Eric Zuesse
Here’s a pretty blatant example:
On October 7th, U.S. National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) “Marketplace’ show headlined glowingly "How the TPP will drive domestic reform in Asia,” and reported that:
In an interview with Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal, President Obama gave a nod to the idea [that ’trade agreements can also be about changes countries want to make for themselves’]. The TPP, he said, 'will strengthen the hand of reformers inside China.’ … ‘These kind of trade-liberalization efforts are not just drivers of reforms; in a lot of cases they are the actual reforms themselves,' said Nick Consonery, an analyst with with Eurasia Group. … Peter Petri, a professor at Brandeis, said … 'It’s when you use foreign pressure to do the things that you know you have to do but are politically very difficult.’ … Vietnamese officials also said they want to use TPP to push domestic reforms, including limiting support for state-owned enterprises. 'And if they say this is an unmatched opportunity for us to be able to export to the U.S. and Japan and other TPP members, and you got to bite the bullet, it gives them a reason to drive those reforms over domestic opposition,' said Derek Scissors, with the American Enterprise Institute. But Scissors cautioned that we can’t say how much change the TPP might spur until we know more about the terms that were agreed to this week.
Duty to Warn Electroconvulsant Shock Therapy (ECT): Is it Safe or Even Effective?
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
In my practice of holistic mental health care, I encountered a number of unfortunate patients that had had one or more series of electro-convulsant (shock) therapy (ECT) , where a series of sub-lethal electrical shocks are administered directly to one or both hemispheres of the brain.
To be regarded as “therapeutic”, enough electricity in this still very controversial procedure (often utilizing up to 400 volts) has to be given to cause a grand mal seizure, which inevitably results in post-seizure coma. Shock to the brain commonly results in memory loss (both short-term and long-term) and the loss of cognitive abilities (both short-term and long-term). General anesthesia plus intravenous sedatives are also administered in order to eliminate any memory of the otherwise painful procedure and also to relax muscles (thus minimizing muscle damage and the possibility of fractured bones during the often violent seizure). Both drugs are brain-altering and potentially brain-damaging but are routinely given. The cocktail of futile and potentially neurotoxic psychiatric drugs that may even have caused chemical brain damage are typically continued for fear of causing serious withdrawal syndromes if they were to be stopped.
Anti-Russian Propaganda War Rages
by Stephen Lendman
John Pilger calls journalism the first casualty of war - “a weapon of war, a virulent censorship,” by omission and commission.
Free and open societies are jeopardized. Presstitution substitutes for real journalism. News and information are carefully filtered, dissent suppressed in mainstream reporting.
Major media contributors are agents of wealth, power and privilege. Victims are blamed for high crimes of state. Big Lies substitute for honest reporting and analysis. A culture of deceit persists. Russia is public enemy No. one, despite Putin’s forthright efforts for world peace and stability. He’s the leading antidote to Washington’s hegemonic agenda, its endless wars of aggression, its unprecedented lawlessness on a global scale, its recklessness risking possible WW III.
Israeli Fascist Brutality
by Stephen Lendman
Let’s not mince words. Israel is a fascist police state, masquerading as a democracy. How when state terror is official policy, when soldiers, police and Zionist zealots brutalize and murder Palestinians unaccountably, when institutionalized apartheid exceeds the worst of South Africa’s regime.
Palestine is a free-fire zone, unsafe to live in for Arabs. Israeli security forces rampage with impunity, licensed to kill at their discretion, taking full advantage, rewarded for shocking brutality. In the last five days alone, three Palestinian youths were gunned down in cold blood, two aged 13. Another 500 were injured, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS).
Obama Approved Israeli West Bank Violence
by Stephen Lendman
Ongoing Israeli instigated violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (along with intermittent Gaza bombings and cross-border incursions) is part of its longstanding ethnic cleansing policy. The objective: maximum Jews and minimum Arabs, remaining ones confined to isolated ghettoized bantustans on worthless scrubland.
Nothing this extreme would be happening without US approval. Make no mistake. Washington fully supports it - daily attacks on defenseless Palestinians, reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht, extreme viciousness, terrorizing an entire population, committing cold-blooded murder and mayhem. What began in late July with settlers killing three Dawabsha family members by immolation, followed by violent Israeli rampaging through the Al-Aqsa Mosque shifted to intensified state terror throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, turning the entire territory into a battleground while Mahmoud Abbas and other PA officials do nothing to help defenseless Palestinians they’re sworn to serve and protect. Their inaction reflects complicity, collaboration with Israeli viciousness.
NATO to Deploy More Troops Near Russia’s Borders
by Stephen Lendman
America dominates NATO, calling the shots, pressuring or bullying other members to go along. They serve US interests, an agenda threatening world peace.
Meeting in Brussels on October 8, NATO defense ministers announced “further steps to enhance collective” security at a time no threats exists - except invented ones used as pretexts to increase military spending and wage aggressive wars.
The Atlantic Alliance is a US-dominated instrument for endless conflicts, a tool for mass slaughter and destruction, a threat to humanity’s survival. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced plans to boost NATO’s rapid reaction force strength, more troops to be deployed near Russia’s borders.
Russia and Syria on the Offensive Against ISIS
by Stephen Lendman
Russian air power together with Syrian ground forces constitute a potential death blow to Washington’s anti-Assad campaign - for the first time challenging it effectively, why US officials are flummoxed about what to do next.
Counterattacking with propaganda won’t work - a worthless exercise doing nothing to constrain Putin’s righteous mission, displaying Russia’s formidable military might at the same time.
On the one hand, Putin wants terrorism defeated and Syrians alone deciding who’ll lead them. On the other, he wants ISIS and other terrorist threats prevented from spreading, especially to Russia’s homeland, a scheme no doubt Washington intends, targeting China and Iran as well.
European Publishers Pretend that Obama Is Right and Putin Is Wrong
Eric Zuesse
A typical example is Christophe Leclercq’s Euractiv website, news for Europeans. (Leclercq “was EU Commission official with DG Competition (coordinator for Information Society). Before that, he was a management consultant with McKinsey.”)
On Thursday October 8th, his euractiv bannered, “NATO says will defend Turkey against Russian airspace violations” — a headline that suggests perhaps World War III will be sparked by Russia’s military campaign against the Sunni extremists in Syria, and that Russia had therefore better stop it right now. This article opened: “NATO said today (8 October) it was prepared to send troops to Turkey to defend its ally after violations of Turkish airspace by Russian jets bombing Syria, and Britain scolded Moscow for escalating a civil war that has already killed 250,000 people” (as if all of those 250,000 were killed by Assad’s forces instead of by the ones that America/NATO is backing).
Russia v. America on Syria
by Stephen Lendman
What a difference a few days made! The Middle East dynamic changed dramatically. Russia’s intervention against ISIS in Syria has Obama officials scrambling for what to do next. The “empire” took a stunning body blow. It’s just the beginning.
The administration’s phony war on ISIS is increasingly transparent. Now in its 9th day, Russian air power accomplished what Washington never attempted, waging REAL war on all terrorist elements in Syria, destroying their weapons, munitions and facilities, even their will to fight with thousands fleeing for safe havens, supplemented by Syrian ground forces battling them more effectively than ever, regaining lost territory.
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