OPINION

Photo: The Port of Beirut eleven days after the disaster. The French amphibious assault ship Tonnerre is the large ship on the right, which arrived in the port on 13 August to provide food, construction materials, medical supplies, and personnel. CC BY-SA 4.0

People Are Leading Beirut's Recovery in the Absence of the State

Viewpoint by Aseel Naamani and Ruth Simpson*

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.

BEIRUT (IDN) – Recent events in Lebanon tell a story of interwoven crises, culminating in the explosion in Beirut on August 4. To overcome the crisis in the long-term, recovery efforts must be participatory and take a bottom-up approach, based on communities’ needs, while protecting shared spaces and cultural heritage.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 13 September 2020

Photo: Degraded – but not deforested. Credit: CIFOR/flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Forest Degradation Is Outpacing Full Deforestation in the Amazon

Viewpoint by Tommaso Jucker*

BRISTOL, United Kingdom (IDN) – Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased abruptly in the past two years, after having been on a downward trajectory for more than a decade. With the country’s president Jair Bolsonaro notoriously enthusiastic about expanding into the rainforest, new deforestation data regularly makes global headlines.

But what fewer people realise is that even forests that have not been cleared, or fully “deforested”, are rarely untouched. Indeed, just 20 percent of the world’s tropical forests are classified as intact. The rest have been impacted by logging, mining, fires, or by the expansion of roads or other human activities. And all this can happen undetected by the satellites that monitor deforestation.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 12 September 2020

Photo: Remnants of an old shipwreck on the outer reef of Mauritius where the MV Wakashio would run aground two years later. Robert Blasiak, Author provided.

An Increasingly Crowded Ocean Calls for a New Role for Transnational Corporations

Viewpoint by Robert Blasiak*

STOCKHOLM (IDN) – The MV Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef in Mauritius in late July 2020, leaking 1,000 tonnes of oil into the crystal blue waters of a lagoon, threatening mangrove, seagrass and mudflat habitats. Since then, dozens of dead dolphins and porpoises have washed ashore. Anger has grown and sadness has deepened.

But this is a different story – it starts two years ago in the same place in Mauritius, and I am walking down a muddy path in a mangrove forest. A guide is telling me about how the community has removed invasive species, cleaned up waste and planted mangroves.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 12 September 2020

Photo: Kyle Rittenhouse (left, with backwards cap) walks along Sheridan Road in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, with another armed civilian. Adam Rogan/The Journal Times via AP.

Many Police Can Hardly Be Distinguished from Armed Vigilantes

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) – Police in America, whose mottos claim to “protect and serve” us, have been openly declaring allegiance with the forces of white supremacy. It is no coincidence that this has become a hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 11 September 2020

Photo: Prime Minister Boris Johnson making a statement at the coronavirus press conference on September 9.

Breaking the Law over Brexit: How the UK is Playing Dirty in EU Talks

Viewpoint by Simon Sweeney*

YORK, United Kingdom (IDN) – The UK government seems to be doubling down on threats to leave the European Union without a deal unless the EU gives in on issues of state aid and fisheries. These two concerns are as important in Brussels as they seem to be in London.

In the latest attempt to ramp up the drama as the deadline to reach an agreement nears, the UK has said it plans to revisit the withdrawal agreement it has already signed with the EU on the terms of departure. This will include changing the plan agreed with the EU in December 2019 on how trade will move between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 10 September 2020

Photo: One of the protests against President Trump in 2017. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Mass Direct Action Might Be the Only Way to Stop Trump from Stealing the Election

Viewpoint by George Lakey *

This article was originally published on Waging Nonviolence and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

PHILADELPHIA (IDN) – The warning drums for a contested election are beating louder and louder. At a recent campaign stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Trump once again laid the groundwork for not stepping down by saying, “The only way [the Democrats] are going to win is by a rigged election.”

The concern for what Trump might do in the absence of a landslide Biden victory has even led one bi-partisan group of experienced legal and political minds to run a “war-game” type experiment called the Transition Integrity Project.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 09 September 2020

Photo: Fires like this one in the city of Ventura, California, are likely to be more common, say University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) climate scientists. Credit: Ryan Cullom/Ventura County Fire Department.

Why The November U.S. Election Is Critical

Viewpoint by John Scales Avery *

COPENHAGEN (IDN) – Why did Prof. Noam Chomsky call the US Republican Party “The most dangerous organization in the history of the world”? He did so because the party is characterized by climate change denial and by support for giant fossil fuel corporations. According to the 2018 IPCC Report, the world has only a very short time left in which to stop the extraction and use of fossil fuels. If we collectively fail to do this within a decade or so, feedback loops may be initiated which will make human efforts to avoid catastrophic climate change useless. Much of the world could become uninhabitable, and a very large-scale mass extinction could be initiated.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 09 September 2020

Collage of the mass grave at the Killing Field of Choeung Ek with the leader of the Killing Fields on the left. Source: Wikimedia.

Death of The Leader Of "The Killing Fields" Raises Questions

Will there be more genocides that the world will ignore until it is too late?

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – One of the cruellest men ever to have lived died on September 2 in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Kaing Guek Eav, popularly known as “Duch”, was 77 and had been convicted of mass torture by the UN/Cambodian war crimes court. He was the only one of the five defendants to admit his crimes. In July 2010 in a trial I witnessed first-hand he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

According to Seth Mydans, the New York Times’s correspondent in Cambodia at the time of the rule of Pol Pot who founded the guerrilla movement, the Khmer Rouge, “he was a schoolteacher before the Khmer Rouge came to power. He took his revolutionary name from a children’s book about an obedient schoolboy named Duch. ‘I wanted to be a well-disciplined boy who respected the teachers and did good deeds’, he told the court.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 08 September 2020

Photo: The name "United Nations", coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt was first used in the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged their Governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers. Source: UN

Will the United Nations Survive To See Its 100th Birthday?

Viewpoints by Franz Baumann, Fmr. UN Assistant Secretary-General, United Nations and Christopher Ankersen, Global Affairs, New York University.

NEW YORK (IDN) – "Adlai Stevenson, President Kennedy’s Ambassador to the United Nations, rebutted UN critics by recounting Adam's marriage proposal to Eve. When she hesitated, Adam asked 'is there somebody else?' Stevenson concluded that much good had been done, also some harm, but there was nothing else. That was then," recalls Dr Franz Baumann, and adds: "What about now?"

The following is the first of two rounds of Dr Baumann's stimulating exchange with Dr Chris Ankersen posted on PAIRAGRAPH – A Hub of discourse between pairs of notable individuals. The second round will be launched in the next days also on the link: https://pairagraph.com/dialogue/f47ba870e06d4df2b0cccef483592d82.

: UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 08 September 2020

Photo credit: Flickr/Paul Stein.CC BY-SA 2.0

History Gives Us Reason for Hope That Inequality Can Be Beaten

Viewpoint by Ben Phillips*

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.

LONDON (IDN) – 2020 isn’t just the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s also the year when protest has gone viral. Covid-19 has both supercharged our inequalities and shone a sharper light on them, exposing the reality that the status quo cannot hold. It has opened up a moment of opportunity, and young people are showing how we can seize that moment by building up a movement.