Reporting the underreported about the plan of action for People, Planet and Prosperity, and efforts to make the promise of the SDGs a reality.
A project of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate Group with IDN as the Flagship Agency in partnership with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Controversy is dogging the latest project of the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon, as it prepares to set up its African headquarters in Cape Town, South Africa.
Amazon would be the anchor tenant of the River Club—a nine-story business and residential complex with a hotel, gym, restaurants, conferencing, schools and event space.
![[IDN-InDepthNews – 17 May 2021] * The author, a senior journalist based in New Delhi, is Editorial Consultant-WION TV and Senior Editorial Consultant of IDN. Photo: Crematoriums in India overwhelmed. Source: USA Today.](/images/covid-ravaged_india.jpg)
By Shastri Ramachandaran*
NEW DELHI (IDN) — The tsunami of Covid-19 infections and deaths in India continues unabated as people and governments at the Centre and states continue to battle the shortage of hospital beds, medicines, ventilators and much else that is required to overcome this crisis. The horrifying deaths and the plight of the dying have also created a climate of fear with people not knowing when it may strike, where and whom in what form; and, how they would cope if they or their near and dear ones are stricken. (P07) HINDI | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | TURKISH
By Caroline Mwanga
NEW YORK | SANTO DOMINGO (IDN) — The three-day Virtual Thematic Sessions of the Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week 2021 (LACCW2021), which wrapped up on May 14, hosted by the Government of the Dominican Republic, are reported to have provided important momentum for a successful UN Climate Change Conference COP26 from November 1 to November 12 in Glasgow. (P06) GERMAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | SPANISH
Viewpoint by Simone Galimberti
The writer is Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development, and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
KATHMANDU, Nepal (IDN) — A life insurance policy for humanity, this is how Audrey Azoulay, the UNESCO Director-General defined the scope of all efforts focused on addressing climate change and the persistent degradation of our biodiversity.
Viewpoint by Daryl G. Kimball
The writer is the executive director of Arms Control Association and publisher of Arms Control Today since 2001. The following is the text of Mr Kimball's Foreword to 2021 Joint Media Project Report of the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group with IDN as flagship agency in partnership with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.
WASHINGTON, DC (IDN) — An informed and mobilized public is essential to human survival in the nuclear age—and effective and independent journalism is essential to revealing the hard truths, the consequences, and the choices that nuclear weapons pose for all of us.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — For a while, Africa appeared to be losing the fight to build manufacturing capacity for the production of COVID-19 vaccines as big pharma and rich countries questioned African capacity to make its own vaccines.
Some international companies regard African self-sufficiency as a long-term risk to their business, some fear a loss of influence.
By J W Jackie
RENO, Nevada, USA (IDN) — The latest International Renewable Energy Agency IRENA analysis reveals that by 2050, variable renewables like wind and solar PV will dominate the global total power supply. The insights from IRENA’s World Energy Transitions Outlook were released on March 16-17, 2021, at the Berlin Energy Transitions Dialogue.
With 163 Members, IRENA plays a leading role in the energy transformation as a centre of excellence for knowledge and innovation, a global voice for renewables, a network hub and a source of advice and support for countries. (P05) ARABIC | HINDI | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF
Viewpoint by Kaveh Zahedi *
A defining feature of the post-COVID world will be the digital transformation of the world, though it might also widen gaps in economic and social development within and between countries. The digital transformation has gone hand in hand with the rise of digital technologies, writes Kaveh Zahedi, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). (P04) INDONESIAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | THAI
![Conquering Poverty in America Is Possible Viewpoint by Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Adam Smith who in 1776 wrote “The Wealth of Nations”, the Bible of capitalism, which has become the standard economics text for over two centuries, was quick to single out monopolistic tendencies as the most important tool in undermining the virtues of capitalism. It kept the poor poor. The laws that give these capitalists their freedom to exploit the marketplace, so-called rent-seeking, “may be said to be all written in blood”. At the moment, Amazon is in the firing line for practicing such practices. Indeed, a majority of Silicon Valley companies rent-seek. Big pharma companies, like Pfizer, which is expecting this year 25% profits on its corona virus vaccine are another. Rent-seeking is a major cause of wage stagnation among working-class Americans and has much to do with the “deaths of despair”, argue Anne Case and Angus Deaton in their recent, well-reviewed, book, “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism”. Poverty in the US is worsening, they write. Suicide rates among middle aged, white, Americans is on the up—in particular among those without a bachelor’s degree. (However, suicide rates among blacks are lower than among whites in this group; black mortality rates have declined.) Drug overdoses from too freely available opioids have risen extraordinarily fast among working class whites. Alcoholism, always a problem with this group, has increased rapidly. This group has also been hit by pandemic-caused unemployment—the relief mandated by the Trump Administration was too on and off to do what should have been done. We know that President Donald Trump practiced the wizardry of co-opting poor whites. Trump in effect told poor whites that although they might not have much at least they were white. As Martin Luther King observed, the poorer white men “ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him no matter how badly off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man”. White working-class men have seen their purchasing power fall. Between 1979 and 2017 they lost 13% of their purchasing power while national income per head grew by 85%. The corona virus pandemic has accelerated this decline in wages. Moreover, wage decline has been joined with job decline- from better jobs to worse jobs. Other rich countries—in Europe, neighbouring Canada, Australia and elsewhere—have not seen an epidemic of deaths of despair nor a long-term stagnation of wages, although they were badly hit for a few years by the Great Recession of 2008, triggered by US bank failure, for which the bankers suffered personally hardly at all while lower income mortgage holders lost everything. Globalization and technological change, often named the culprits by pundits and academics, do not seem to have had such a bad impact. This suggests that in the US other factors are at work. The main trigger of poverty and despair is the health care system. Second is the move, more than anywhere else in the Western world, of market and political power away from labour towards capital—the Amazon workers’ ongoing fight to unionize and Uber’s attempt to refuse contracts (recently declared illegal by the UK Supreme Court) to its drivers are two indications of this. Other rent-seekers are doctors, pharmaceutical companies, banks, real estate businesses, car dealers and hedge fund managers. All these have pushed legislatures to give them tax breaks and special deals and regulations. None of these operate in a true free market as described by Adam Smith and most of his economist successors. Reducing rent-seeking would probably do more good than increasing taxes on the rich. The problems with the health industry go far beyond the opioid scandal. The US spends huge sums of money for some of the worst health outcomes in the Western world. “A cancer at the heart of the economy”, Case and Deaton call it. Robin Hood robbed the rich to aid the poor. In the US it is the other way round. One bit of good news is the reported improvements among black people. Black lives do matter and since the onset of Martin Luther King’s civil rights protests time has been increasingly kind to black people. Black mortality rates have fallen rapidly. The percentage of blacks with a bachelor’s degree has risen. Black incomes among its working class have not improved as much as they should but non-material advances are plain to see. Discrimination has diminished. Voting power has increased—indeed the black vote in South Carolina assured Joe Biden that he would be the Democrats’ presidential candidate. The gate to becoming middle class has opened. Health has improved. Intermarriage has become acceptable. (Gallup refers to this as “one of the largest shifts of public opinion in Gallup history”.) The number of black politicians has risen very fast. Black people have held important positions, often enough the top positions, in the White House, the cabinet, the government agencies, the military, the police, the civil service, multinational companies, schools, universities, broadcasters and newspapers. (Yesterday the Los Angeles Times appointed a black journalist as its editor in chief.) When Barack Obama became president it looked like a big divide had been crossed. This, presumably, is why the suicide rate among poor blacks is much less than among poor whites and why the resentment of poor whites that Trump drew on increased. As poor whites see it, they live on a downhill slope. For blacks there is the benign feeling of progress. Of course the pandemic has shaken things up for everybody but doubtless once it has ended the US will return to where it was two years’ ago. Enter Joe Biden, stage left. He has promised to correct these grave malfunctions in American society. Indeed, his multitude of planned reforms are already underway—from tax rises for the rich to universal kindergarten provision for all. Nevertheless, for him to change norms that are deeply embedded in American society will be extraordinarily difficult. There is an inbuilt wall of resistance, from banks to hospital insurance companies. Free market capitalism was high jacked by special interests a long time ago and those interests are entrenched in the body politic. It is imperative that they be dug out. For this Biden needs to win over poorer whites, many of whom voted against their own economic interest and went for Trump. Biden has to persuade poor whites that he is on the side of all the poor, and that he stands for their economic progress. If successful, that will ensure him a Congress that gives him a future majority and ensures a Democratic victory at the next presidential election. As for the blacks, he needs to hold on to their support, keeping their upward trend going, not least in non-material things—improved education, health care, unemployment and social benefits, the housing of the homeless and encouragement to rebuild trade unions. Biden must lift all boats among the working class. It is an immense challenge. But it is possible. * About the author: The writer was for 17 years a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune, now the New York Times. He has also written many dozens of columns for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. He is the European who has appeared most on the opinion pages of these papers. Visit his website: www.jonathanpowerjournalist.com [IDN-InDepthNews — 04 May 2021] Photo: Tents of the homeless in San Francisco, California, May 2020. CC BY 2.0](/images/Memorial_Day_2020_San_Francisco.jpg)
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Adam Smith who in 1776 wrote “The Wealth of Nations”, the Bible of capitalism, which has become the standard economics text for over two centuries, was quick to single out monopolistic tendencies as the most important tool in undermining the virtues of capitalism. It kept the poor poor. The laws that give these capitalists their freedom to exploit the marketplace, so-called rent-seeking, “may be said to be all written in blood”. At the moment, Amazon is in the firing line for practicing such practices. Indeed, a majority of Silicon Valley companies rent-seek. Big pharma companies, like Pfizer, which is expecting this year 25% profits on its corona virus vaccine are another.
A special feature by Kalinga Seneviratne* to mark UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day.
SYDNEY (IDN) — In recent months, there has been alarming one-sided reporting in the so-called mainstream media—both internationally and nationally—that sounds more like public relations handouts from the big pharmaceutical companies from the West. This 'vaccine consent' journalism and the labelling of anyone questioning the safety or ethics of the vaccine roll out as "conspiracy theorists" is slowly but surely killing the "watchdog" role of journalism.
