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By Loraine Rickard-Martin*, Passblue
NEW YORK (IDN) – At the $79.4 billion United Nations pension fund, continuing tensions came to a head this month when the UN participant representatives to the pension board — elected representatives of 85,000 active UN staff members — wrote on December 2 to the General Assembly body that oversees the fund about their concerns on a range of issues regarding the fund’s administration and governance.
![Photo: Effigy of Dominic Cummings as Boris Johnson's puppet-master at the People’s Vote march, in October 2019. [Scale proportionality adjusted] Credit: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.](/images/Demonic_Cummings_sculpture.jpg)
Viewpoint by Matthew Flinders and David Blunkett*
SHEFFIELD (IDN) – If crises bring with them new opportunities to think afresh, then the combined impact of Brexit and COVID has been to focus attention on the capacity and structure of the British state. This rethinking is increasingly framed in terms of smart government. Dominic Cummings, the British prime minister’s now departing chief adviser, has been at the centre of a drive to “harness the power of data and technology” at every turn. Technology has a role to play in modern government, but what Cummings seems intent on fashioning appears something closer to a populist technocracy based on a belief in algorithmic governance.
Viewpoint by Tonny Raymond Kirabira and Leila Choukroune*
PORTSMOUTH, United Kingdom (IDN) – Thirty-four years ago, northern Uganda was plunged into a two-decade-long civil war between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony and the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF).
Numerous children were victims of abduction, sexual violence, forced labour and soldiering. More specifically, children born of war continue to be the invisible victim of sexual violence. Non-governmental organisations estimate that over 66,000 children and youths were abducted by the LRA to serve as soldiers or sex slaves.
Viewpoint by Rhona Smith*
NEWCASTLE (IDN) – If you are simply going on the number of political trials in Cambodia at the moment, the country would seem to be politically unstable – a hotbed of unrest.
Hundreds of people are on trial for incitement, conspiracy, and violence endangering the nation. But the prime minister, Hun Sen, who has been in power since 1985, regularly insists that his tenure has been characterised by peace, stability and development – despite internal and external threats. He is the world’s longest-serving head of government.
Viewpoint by Chandra Muzaffar
This article is being reproduced from the Website of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) presided over by Dr Chandra Muzaffar.
KUALA LUMPUR (IDN) – Amidst the gloom generated by the twin health and economic crises, the birth of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a ray of light auguring hope.
More than a million lives have been lost worldwide as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, there is massive unemployment and entire societies have been devastated.
By Mark Leon Goldberg, UN Dispatch
NEW YORK (IDN) – Linda Thomas-Greenfield will be nominated by President-elect Joe Biden to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is a veteran diplomat who most recently served as Assistant-Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Obama administration. Prior to that she served as the US Ambassador to Liberia during a critical time in that country’s transition to democracy.
Viewpoint by Prabir Purkayastha*
NEW DELHI (IDN) – The Nobel Prize in physics for 2020 has been shared by Roger Penrose, the mathematical physicist, for his work on the theoretical basis of black holes, and astronomers Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, who led independent teams, for verifying the existence of such a black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Penrose showed that the consequence of Einstein’s general theory of relativity is the formation of black holes, not only in collapsing stars but also in certain dense regions of space.
Viewpoint by Avi Gil
The writer is a former diplomat, who served under Shimon Peres for almost 30 years in various capacities. Ambassador Gil has been closely involved in Israel's policy-making and peace efforts, including the negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords. This article is being republished from The Blogs in the Times of Israel.
JERUSALEM (IDN) – Trump’s defeat marks the end of the Israeli right’s four-year celebration. At the global level, Trump has significantly intensified the erosion of the liberal world order. In a world where human rights are underrated, the on-going Israeli occupation provokes less condemnation, and the Palestinian plight has been pushed off the agenda.
By Raphael Ahren
The writer is the diplomatic correspondent at The Times of Israel, which published it on November 7, 2020.
JERUSALEM (IDN) – Joe Biden, the newly elected 46th president of the United States, is a true friend of the Jewish state, friends and even political adversaries of the emerging president-elect agree.
“He has a deep feeling for Israel,” said Michael Oren, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the US when Biden was vice president. Oren opposed almost all of the Middle East policies championed by Biden and his boss, Barack Obama, especially on Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian question. Still, he annually attended Biden’s Rosh Hashanah party, and asserts that the former Delaware senator is genuinely concerned about Israel’s well-being.
By Manlio Dinucci
This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto. It is being republished from Global Research. Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
MONTREAL (IDN) – It was not Covid-19, therefore the news went almost unnoticed: Japan will release over a million tons of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. The catastrophic incident in Fukushima was triggered by the Tsunami that struck the north-eastern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, submerging the power plant and causing the core of three nuclear reactors to melt.
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