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Őrizetbe vettek egy 18 éves tanulót a hatóságok a szibériai Tyumeny megyében, aki egy iskola ellen szándékozott fegyveres támadást elkövetni – közölte szerdán az orosz Szövetségi Biztonsági Szolgálat (FSZB) közönségkapcsolati központja.

Az FSZB szerint a gyanúsítottól, aki azt tervezte, hogy a hónap folyamán hajtja végre a támadást, egy vadászpuskát, lőszert, két vadászkést, ammónium-nitrátot, kommunikációs eszközöket és az internetről letöltött bombakészítési útmutatókat foglaltak le. A bűncselekmény elkövetésének szándékát mind az őrizetbe vett tizenéves, mind szemtanúk megerősítették.

Legutóbb múlt csütörtökön, az ugyancsak szibériai Krasznojarszkban fogtak el egy iskolai ámokfutásra készülő, 2006-os születésű fiatalt. Tőle egy lefűrészelt csövű vadászpuskát, lőszert és több saját készítésű csőbombát vettek el. A naplójában megtalálták a jövő héten végrehajtani tervezett támadás tervét.

Nyikolaj Patrusev, az orosz biztonsági tanács titkára április 10-én az Uráli Szövetségi Körzet vezetőivel folytatott videokonferencián kijelentette, hogy a biztonsági szervek egyedül abban a régióban három iskolai ámokfutást akadályoztak meg 2019 folyamán. Beszámolója szerint a kamaszok arra készültek, hogy fegyverrel és saját készítésű bombákkal támadjanak osztálytársaikra és tanáraikra.

“A fiatalkorúak deviáns magatartásához hozzájárul a kábítószer-fogyasztásnak, az öngyilkosságnak és a bűnözői szubkultúrának a közösségi médiában zajló propagálása” – mondta Patrusev.

Mint mondta a fiatalok körében emiatt “fokozott érdeklődés” alakul ki a “schoolshooting” (iskolai lövöldözés) és a “Columbine” iránt. A tisztségviselő, aki korábban volt az orosz Szövetségi Biztonsági Szolgálat igazgatója is, ezzel a Colorado állambeli Columbine (Egyesült Államok) középiskolájában 1999. április 21-én történt ámokfutásra utalt, amikor két tizenéves lőfegyverrel, kézigránátokkal és plasztikbombákkal 13 embert ölt meg, majd öngyilkosságot követett el.

Patrusev arról is szólt, hogy felerősödött az Oroszország elleni “információs agresszió”, amelynek célja a radikális eszmék és a terrorizmus dicsőítése és a társadalom szétszakítása. Elismerte, hogy a vagyoni rétegződés, a korrupció, az igazságtalanság, az életszínvonal-csökkenés és a munkanélküliség növeli az elégedetlenséget a fiatalok körében. Szavai szerint az államnak ezzel kapcsolatban nemcsak a korosztály megvédése a feladata, hanem erkölcsi értékrendjének alakítása is.

Az FSZB március 23-án is egy iskolai ámokfutást megakadályozásáról számolt be. Akkor a szolgálat a távol-keleti Szahalin szigetén vett őrizetbe egy 2002-es és egy 2003-as születésű tanulót, akiket azzal is megvádoltak, hogy terrorizmusra, valamint tömeggyilkosságra és öngyilkosság elkövetésére buzdítottak az interneten. Akkor egy lefűrészelt csövű vadászfegyvert, hozzá való lőszert, egy ipari detonátort, feltételezhetően házi készítésű robbanószerkezeteket, robbanóanyagokat, kommunikációs eszközöket és egy naplót foglaltak le, benne az iskola elleni fegyveres támadás tervével.

Február 26-án a Volga-parti Szaratovban két 2005-ös születésű fiút vettek őrizetbe, akik beismerték, hogy mintegy negyven ember meggyilkolására készültek egy iskolában. Az FSZB szerint mindketten tömeggyilkos ideológiákat propagáló internetes csoportok tagjai voltak.

Egy héttel korábban az FSZB a Krím-félszigeti Kercs városából számolt be két tizenéves őrizetbe vételéről, akik oktatási intézményekben készültek “terrorcselekményeket” elkövetni. A fiúk szélsőséges ideológiáknak és annak a Vlagyiszlav Roszljakovnak a követői voltak, aki 2018 októberében egy kercsi műszaki iskolában 15 tanulót és öt felnőttet lőtt agyon. A támadó, aki a helyszínen öngyilkosságot követett el, 18 éves volt.

A februárban elfogott két kercsi gyanúsított lakóhelyén roncsoló elemekkel megtöltött, házi készítésű robbanószerkezeteket és előállításukra alkalmas anyagokat foglaltak le. Az FSZB szerint a pokolgépek hatását háziállatokon próbálták ki. A szolgálat közölte akkor, hogy az egyik gyanúsítottal 2018 novemberében “megelőző beszélgetést” folytattak le, miután a közösségi médiában a Roszljakov ámokfutását helyeslő kijelentéseket posztolt. Ez azonban hatástalan maradt, mert a fiú belépett egy internetes neonáci csoportba, amelynek előzőleg Roszljakov is tagja volt.

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Grüsse aus dem ewigen Eis: Forscher in der Arktis und Antarktis haben sich am international koordinierten Online-Grossprotest für mehr Klimaschutz beteiligt. In beiden Polargebieten forderten die Wissenschaftler am Freitag #FightEveryCrisis.

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Agricultural markets or mandis have few buyers due to the coronavirus lockdown across India. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Apr 24 2020 (IPS)

Heartbreaking images of Indian farmers standing amidst swathes of rotting vegetables, fruits and grain have been flooding newspapers and TV screens lately. Crashing prices and transport bottlenecks due to the 40-day coronavirus lockdown in India, on till May 3, have driven some to set their unsold produce ablaze.   

As a nationwide lockdown has confined a record 1.3 billion Indians to their homes since Mar. 24, one of the hardest hit communities has been that of Indian farmers.

Crops set ablaze and farmer suicides

“We take our produce to the mandi (market) but there are hardly any buyers these days. I was forced to sell four quintals of chilli at Rs 10 per kg as against a normal price of Rs 40. But I was desperate to clinch the deal, else the transportation cost of bringing all that produce back would have broken my back,” Lekhi Ram, a smallholder farmer from Khairpur village of west Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, told IPS over the phone.

Unable to harvest his crop in time, Ram’s neighbour, also a smallholder, set his fields on fire. Unexpected rain and hailstones last week decimated whatever little was left. “The leftover vegetables were fed to the sheep and goats,” said Ram. 

March and April mark the peak harvesting season in India when crops like wheat, chickpea, barley, flax seed, pea, potato, mustard plant, cotton and millet are reaped and sold. But the current pandemic means this cannot happen.

“We were hoping to reap a rich harvest of rabi (spring) crops due to a good spell of rains. But God clearly had other plans,” Balbir Singh Rajewal, President of the Bharatiya Kisan Union in Punjab, a representative organisation for small farmers that protects their interests, told IPS. “Urban demand has been minimal during the lockdown. Even online grocery stores, whose orders we normally can’t cope with, have stopped calling.”

Farmer suicides have been reported from some villages.

• A farmer in the southern Indian state of Karnataka committed suicide last week after being unable to sell his harvest because of the lockdown.
• Rambhavan Shukla, another farmer from Jari village in Uttar Pradesh killed himself by hanging himself from a tree over non-availability of labourers for harvesting his wheat crop.  

Nearly 700 million people of the country’s 1.3 billion rely directly or indirectly on an agriculture-derived livelihood.

• Agriculture and allied sectors sector contribute 16.5 percent to the country’s $2.6 trillion GDP, according to the Indian government’s Economic Survey 2019-20.
• As per International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) statistics, the share of agriculture in India’s total workforce was 43.9 percent in 2018. 
• The ILO warned last week that about 400 million workers engaged by the informal economy, which accounts for a staggering 90 percent of the country’s total workforce, risk falling deeper into poverty during the ongoing crisis.

Farmers unions ask government to do more

A report released by the World Bank stated that the pandemic will reinforce inequality in South Asia, urging governments to ramp up action to protect their people, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, including through temporary work programmes.

According to Jagdish Singh, President, Bhartiya Kisan Union, Madhya Pradesh, a representative body of 0.3 million farmers, bureaucratic apathy has hurt farmers most.

“We didn’t get any combined harvesters from Punjab due to transport restrictions due to which we weren’t able to harvest our grain on time. Lack of farm labour and bad weather last week only made things worse.”

Singh rues the state government made no efforts to operate local mandis to enable farmers to sell whatever grain they were able to harvest.

“Through our own efforts, we’ve been running a mandi in the town of Satna [Madhya Pradesh] to sell pulses, mustard and wheat while observing social distancing norms. This helped many families to get some money for sustenance. There are many districts across Madhya Pradesh where there are no corona cases. Why isn’t the government operating markets there?”

Grain farmers with larger land holdings are experiencing greater struggles under the combined effects of low demand and acute paucity of migrant farm labour. This has severely interrupted agricultural patterns especially harvesting activities in the northwest northern breadbasket states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana where wheat and pulses are grown, said Rajewal.

Food stocks may help weather the storm…

In southern Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, for farmers who cultivate cash crops like cotton, onion and bananas, transportation has proved to be an issue.

According to Pravin Paithankar, president of the Maharashtra Heavy Vehicle and Inter-State Container Operators’ Association, as urban areas are reporting more coronavirus cases than rural ones, truck drivers and container operators are preferring to stay in their villages.

“They won’t be back until May-June,” Paithankar told IPS.

Immediately after the nationwide lockdown was announced, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman declared a 1.7 trillion Rupee (about $22 billion) package, mostly to protect vulnerable sections (including farmers) from any adverse impacts of the pandemic.

However, with most Indian farm households being small and marginal farmers, and a significant part of the population being landless farm labourers, this amount is woefully inadequate, according to Rajewal.   

• Of the total agricultural workforce in India, 45.1 percent are cultivators (farmers with land or self-employed in agriculture) and the rest, 54.9 percent, are agricultural labour (or landless), as per the Pocket Book of Agricultural Statistics of 2017.

The current crisis will also have a domino effect on agricultural output during the kharif (winter) season as good quality seeds, fertilisers and other inputs are not available, a senior official of Uttar Pradesh’s food, civil supplies and consumer affairs department who did not wish to be named told IPS. 

Given how the unfolding crisis has hit the farming community, the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, an umbrella organisation of over 250 farmer unions across the country, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to procure the entire wheat produced in the country to protect farmers.

Despite the turbulence within the rural economy, however, there’s optimism that India’s food security won’t suffer. The country maintains substantive buffer stocks of wheat and rice and its granaries are overflowing with nearly 60 million tons of food grain, according to the Food Corporation of India.

However, keeping supply chains functioning seamlessly will be vital for future food security, warn experts, for which farmers must have continued access to markets. Indian Institute of Technology (Gandhinagar) scientists who analysed 150 years of drought data have highlighted in a report that 2 to 3 million deaths in the Bengal famine of 1943 were due to food supply disruptions—not lack of food availability.

According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), among other middle income countries India has an above-average score of 65.5 out of 100 when it comes to sustainable agriculture.

…and what about post-COVID-19?

Meanwhile, experts say in the post-COVID-19 scenario existing food and agriculture policies must be repurposed to factor in pandemics. In an essay, Containing COVID-19 impacts on Indian agriculture, Dr. Arabinda Kumar Padhee and Dr. Peter Carberry argue that development of export-supportive infrastructure and logistics would need investments and support of the private sector to boost farmers’ income in the long run.

The duo also suggest that India, being trade-surplus on commodities like rice, meat, milk products, tea, honey, horticultural products, should seize the opportunities by exporting such products with a stable agri-exports policy. India’s agricultural exports were valued at $38 billion in 2018-19 and can rise up further with conducive policies.

“The Government of India has now increased its focus on nutrition (besides food)- security and raising farmers’ income rather than enhancing farm productivity. Changing consumer behaviour with suitable programs and incentives is already in the agenda.

“For all these to happen, the existing landscape of policy incentives that favour the two big staples of wheat and rice has to change. Designing agricultural policies, post-COVID-19 scenario, must include these imperatives for a food systems transformation in India,” wrote the experts.

 

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The post COVID-19: India’s Harvests also Locked Down appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

As a nationwide lockdown has confined a record 1.3 billion Indians to their homes since Mar. 24, one of the hardest hit communities has been that of Indian farmers.

The post COVID-19: India’s Harvests also Locked Down appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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VIENNA / KYIV, 24 April 2020 – Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will address the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC) on Wednesday, 29 April 2020, marking the official opening of Ukraine’s FSC Chairmanship. The meeting, which will take place remotely on the Zoom platform, is the first in the FSC’s history to be held completely online.

Media representatives are invited to watch his opening address to representatives of the OSCE participating States, in which he will present Ukraine’s priorities and objectives for its Chairmanship, which will extend up until the end of the Summer recess.

The address will commence at 10:00 am on Wednesday, 29 April on the Zoom platform. Media representatives wishing to watch should register on the OSCE Events Registration platform (https://events.osce.org/efsc-meetings/registration/Site/Register), by no later than 12:00 noon, Monday, 27 April 2020.

Please note that space is limited, and media registrations will be confirmed on a first-come, first-served basis. You will receive a link to the Zoom meeting before Wednesday’s FSC meeting if your registration is successful.

A transcript and press release of the Foreign Minister’s address to the FSC will be made available later on Wednesday.

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By Savio Carvalho
LONDON, Apr 24 2020 (IPS)

In our current COVID 19 context of suffering and fear, that may sound like a strange and spooky quote. But let’s be clear: what we have achieved so far in the present is not – and shouldn’t be – indicative of what we can achieve in the future.

And, as Arundhati Roy reminds us, crisis moments can be portals to a different world.

There is enough scientific evidence to show that we have been living on borrowed time. We have not only inflicted unrestrained damages to the planet but also crossed planetary boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed.

Over the past century, as a civilisation, we have focused on un-sustained growth, power and profits, and in the bargain, we have meandered from our values, our humanity and our inner longing for peace and harmony.

We have heard it said multiple times, that we are living in an “unprecedented” situation. The same was said for the world wars and the 9/11 attack. What is unprecedented can either become the new normal or an opportunity to change and create something new.

And in the situation of COVID 19 which has infiltrated and impacted the entire planet, the world must now put aside their differences and come together to work towards the one unified goal of finding medicines and a vaccine – and giving access to them to all.

And we must do more than that. We must build a new world order. We are not at war with the virus. But we are in a situation as global and as groundbreaking as the two world wars. And there are lessons we can learn.

World War I led to fundamental changes in politics, economics and society. Aside from the gravely high human costs, the war resulted in new territories, where boundaries and political maps were redrawn, especially in Europe.

The war destroyed empires, created new nation-states and encouraged independence movements. The power of autocracy and the upper class was diminished, if not destroyed. It wasn’t all positive change, for sure. But fundamental change it was.

World War II also resulted in significant changes, and some called 1945 “the year zero”. The war led to the creation of the United Nations, thereby resulting in increased collaboration and peaceful cooperation amongst nations.

Another collaborative achievement that came out of WWII was the Bretton Woods Conference, a gathering of over 700 delegates from 44 allied nations who agreed to create institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to enhance international economic cooperation.

Again, those institutions were not perfect (and in recent decades these institutions became avenues in which the developed world imposed cruel economic conditionalities on poorer countries). But they were new institutions born out of the zeitgeist and values of their time.

The COVID 19 crisis is not a world war, but just like the wars, it has led to a collective, global shock, a shock that is now urging humankind to live a life based on values and principles which work for people and the planet.

During this time when we have closely experienced the unimaginable, we have gained renewed respect and admiration for our front line essential workers, a greater appreciation for human kindness towards self and the community, as well as a deeper appreciation for nature – birds and fish are returning to areas they have abandoned; cities are seeing a drastic drop in air pollution and nitrogen levels; there is less dependence on fossil fuel; the destructive capitalistic economic model of extract and grow at any price is literally on its knees.

Yet, despite growing global social movements fueled by the people and citizens – such as Fridays for Future, the Fight Inequality Alliance or urban movements for change worldwide – our world leaders have sadly and continuously let us down.

But these are all the more reasons why this is the time to push the reset button – also for multilateralism and global institutions! This is the time to create something different, based on our human values of peace, dignity, and harmony with nature while respecting planetary boundaries.

Taking a leaf from the pages of history, now is the right time for the people and citizens to call for a world order that reflects these intrinsic human values. Now is the time to give birth to a new world order based on the principles of solidarity that COVID 19 have surfaced as key values for all of us all over the world.

As the United Nations marked 24th April as the International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace, this is the perfect moment to get the ball rolling, and work in close collaboration and coordination for a global call to action. Such global call will lay the foundations for the creation of the new world order.

Citizens must push their leaders to show real statesmanship by working together, and be bold and forge a new path, no matter how difficult it may be. This new governance for people and our planet must be based on human values and not profits.

We need global governance that puts equality, peace, dignity, democracy, and sustainable economics all at its very core. Public good should triumph over private profits.

This pathway would involve tackling climate change, developing a green and just economy via a just transition, ensuring food sovereignty, as well as investing to promote small localised agriculture, localised green energy production, and sustainable transport and cities.

Financial assistance, incentives, technical support and grants should be provided to emerging economies whilst at the same time incentivising developed economies to make the necessary shifts towards this new path for people and the planet. Corporations need to be fully accountable to people and planet, and trade needs to serve the public good.

The new world order can start with new institutions – like after the last two wars. Or it can be a re-founding of the United Nations. What is key is that we need global institutions with teeth. We need for health care, social protection and the environment global governance at least as powerful as the World Trade Organization is on trade.

We need global institution(s) that have the ability to hold governments and corporations to account if they fail to deliver on global agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the Paris Agreement, able to provide financial support and incentives to not breach 1.5 degrees of warming threshold and ensure protection and restoration of biodiversity on land, forest and oceans.

A clean, sustainable and green economic system should be a centrifugal force of the new world order – not captured by corporate greed or entangled by complex bureaucratic procedures – and move at a lightening speed for the planet and its people.

Let the last day of this pandemic be the first day of the beginning of a new world many have been dreaming of. Because as illustrated in The Alchemist, when we really, really want something, the universe will conspire to help us achieve it.

The time to hit the reset button is NOW.

 

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The post Why the International Day of Multilateralism Must Start a New World Order appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Savio Carvalho is a Global Campaign Leader at Greenpeace International. Twitter: @savioconnects

 
And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it
                                                                                                               ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

The post Why the International Day of Multilateralism Must Start a New World Order appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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