THE WORLD

Photo: Downing Street said in February 2020, its adviser Andrew Sabisky had resigned, following criticism of alleged past remarks on pregnancies, eugenics and race. Credit: BBC.

The Need to Address That British Eugenics Scandal

Viewpoint by Justin Podur*

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

TORONTO (IDN) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been known to have an interest in eugenics, but despite the persistence of support for this discredited idea over the years, eugenics is a scientific and moral failure.

In February, an adviser to Johnson resigned when some old racist posts he wrote in 2014 emerged. The contractor, Andrew Sabisky, called himself a “superforecaster” by trade and trafficked in theories of race and intelligence. Footage resurfaced of Boris Johnson talking about genetic inequality and IQ in 2013.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 16 September 2020

Photo: Russian dissident politician Alexei Navalny landed at Berlin Tegel airport after being airlifted from a hospital in Omsk, Russia. He is being treated for suspected poisoning at Berlin's Charite hospital. Source: Deutsche Welle.

The Mystery of The Poisoning of Alexei Navalny

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Take the strange case of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident, who many think nearly died from a poisoning ordered by the Kremlin.

After sifting through the conflicting evidence, I was suddenly struck by a couple of sentences in a novel I’m reading right now, “The End of the Affair”, written by Graham Greene, widely considered to be one of the great writers of twentieth-century English literature.

“Does truth lie at some point in the pendulum’s swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one could believe the truth is there.”

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 15 September 2020

Photos (L to R): Manish Uprety F.R.A.S. and Ritesh Tandon. Credit: The authors.

California Needs Low Taxation to Boost Innovation

Viewpoint by Manish Uprety F.R.A.S. and Ritesh Tandon

Manish Uprety F.R.A.S. is an ex-diplomat and Ritesh Tandon is the Republican Party candidate for the US Congress from California’s 17th District. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of IDN-InDepth News.

CALIFORNIA (IDN) – President Donald Trump is nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for the recent Peace Deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. In fact, his pursuit for peace as an official US policy found manifestation earlier in his efforts not to lead US into any war, and to bring reconciliation to North and South Korea.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 15 September 2020

Photo: Iranian women wearing masks to protect themselves from coronavirus walk at the Grand Bazaar in Tehran on February 20, 2020. Credit: © 2020 WANA/Nazanin Tabatabaee via Reuters

Iran's #MeToo Movement Challenges Patriarchy and Western Stereotypes

Viewpoint by Sara Tafakori*

BEIRUT (IDN) – It has been called an Iranian #MeToo movement, and it is. Thousands of women in Iran – and some men – are going online to speak about the sexual assault and harassment they experienced. What is crucially important, at what promises to be a historic turning point in Iranian women’s struggle for their rights, is to set the movement clearly in its proper local and global context, rather than locating it in terms of the familiar binaries of East and West, as much of the coverage in the coming weeks and months will do.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 15 September 2020

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo meets with Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 18, 2020. [State Department Photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain]

U.S. Effort to Block Ethiopian Dam Recalls Legacy of British Colonialism

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Based on guidance from President Trump, the State Department is suspending $130 million in security-related aid to Ethiopia over a nearly-completed dam that would lift Ethiopia from poverty and end the shadow of British colonialism that favoured Egypt.

Programs on the chopping block include security assistance, counterterrorism and military education and training, anti-human trafficking programs, and broader development assistance funding, congressional aides said. The cuts would not impact U.S. funding for emergency humanitarian relief, food assistance, or health programs aimed at addressing COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS, they said.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 14 September 2020

Photo: inland Northwest National Wildlife Refuge Fire Management staff conducted a fifty-acre prescribed fire at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge earlier this spring. Credit: Ken Meinhart, USFWS. Public Domain.

Indigenous Techniques Could Help Fight Out-Of-Control Wildfires in California

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) – In more than 20 years of living in Southern California, I have never been in a potential fire evacuation zone—until now. The entire state is seemingly on fire with a record-breaking 2 million acres already burned this year alone, with months to go before the end of fire season. The situation is so dire that the state’s fire officials are warning they “simply do not have enough resources to fully fight and contain every fire.”

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 14 September 2020

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: Bhikkhuh Sanghasena, a leading Buddhist monk based in the state capital Leh, led a procession of local spiritual leaders across the town centre. The spiritual leaders included not only Buddhists, but also Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs.

Ladakh Buddhist Monk Leads A Campaign for Peaceful Resolution of Border Conflict

By Kalinga Seneviratne

This article is the 43rd in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Features and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate. Click here for previous reports.

SINGAPORE (IDN) – When India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers' meeting in Moscow on September 10, Wang noted that it was "normal for India and China to have differences as two neighbouring major countries".

: Kalinga Seneviratne; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 12 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.