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We Need A One-World Monitoring System to Watch and Destroy Viruses

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.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 04 August 2020

Photo: Rep. John Lewis, Washington DC, January 31, 2017. Credit: Flickr/Lorie Shaull. CC BY-SA 2.0

Warfare or Community-Building: Which Way Forward?

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.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 04 August 2020

Photo: South African citizens placed under COVID-19 quarantine at The Ranch Resort in Limpopo Province, South Africa. CC BY-ND 2.0, Flickr / GovernmentZA.

South Africa Struggles To Contain Exploding Rate of Coronavirus Infections

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.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 04 August 2020

Bronx Zoo Issues Apology for Displaying African Man In Cage

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.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 03 August 2020

Photo: Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa talks with Nick Swanepol, former president of Commercial Farmers Union after the signing ceremony at State House in Harare, Zimbabwe, on July 29, 2020. (Xinhua/Wanda)

Zimbabwe To Pay White Farmers for Lands Taken Under Mugabe

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.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 03 August 2020

Photo: WHO Headquarters in Geneva, North and West sides. CC BY-SA 3.0

Trump's Withdrawal From WHO: A Cover-Up for His Abject Failure on COVID-19

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.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 02 August 2020

Every Step the EU Takes Toward Financial Unity Sows New Seeds of Its Potential Collapse

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) – Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” is a play featuring two characters waiting for a character, Godot, who never arrives. As such, it is a useful metaphor for the goings-on of the European Union (EU). Observers of the EU’s evolution in the capital of Brussels have witnessed a Godot-like experience of the promised arrival of the long-awaited resolution of the group’s dysfunction and economic malaise that never happens.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 02 August 2020

Photo: Atomic Bombing in Nagasaki and the Urakami Cathedral. Credit: Google Arts&Culture

Japanese and American Catholics Take on the Bomb

By Drew Christiansen

Writer Drew Christiansen, S. J., is Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Human Development at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. He is the co-editor with Carole Sargent of A World Free from Nuclear Weapons: The Vatican Conference on Disarmament (Georgetown University Press, 2020). facebook.com/disarmnowgeorgetown

WASHINGTON, DC. (IDN) -- Nagasaki is the historic centre of Japanese Catholicism. In the 16th century, beginning with the missionary visits of one of the first Jesuits, Francis Xavier, Nagasaki was the focal point of their efforts to bring Christianity to Japan.

: Asia Editor; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 01 August 2020

Photo: A demonstration in El Alto, Bolivia against the 2019 Bolivian coup d'etat. CC BY-SA 4.0

‘We Will Coup Whoever We Want’: Elon Musk and the Overthrow of Democracy in Bolivia

Viewpoint by Vijay Prashad and Alejandro Bejarano *

This article was produced by Globetrotter, project of the Independent Media Institute.

NORTHAMPTON, Massachusetts (IDN) – On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 01 August 2020

Photo: Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne at a joint press conference in Washington on July 29 with her U.S. counterpart Mike Pompeo. Source: The Conversation

Southeast Asia Rejects Confrontation to Tame 'Increasingly Aggressive' China

By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) – Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne during a joint press conference in Washington on July 29 with her U.S. counterpart Mike Pompeo bluntly remarked that although the two countries often hold common positions because they share fundamental values, yet "we don't agree on everything".

She not only refrained from echoing Pompeo's bellicose rhetoric against China regarding its behaviour in the South China Sea, but, was also determined not to be seen as a hapless pawn in America's increasingly tense stand-off with China.