'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
11 August 2021 (UNEP)* — Nemonte Nenquimo has spent years fending off miners, loggers and oil companies intent on developing the Amazon rainforest.
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The leader of Ecuador’s indigenous Waorani people, she famously fronted a 2019 lawsuit that banned resource extraction on 500,000 acres of her ancestral lands — a court win that gave hope to indigenous communities around the world.
Canada is developing a new image: one of burning churches, toppling statues, and mass graves. There are thousands more unmarked graves, thousands more Indigenous children killed at residential schools, remaining to be unearthed. There can be no denying that this is Canada, and it has to change.
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H.G. Wells
The enormously prolific English writer, Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), who also wrote novels. short stories, history books, biology textbooks, utopias, and so on, has been called “The Shakespeare of Science Fiction”.
John Scales Avery
During his writing career, he made a number of predictions about the future, many of which were astonishingly accurate.
He foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web.
George Orwell’s famous dystopian book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, warned the world of the dangers of totalitarianism. In Orwell’s book, people are terrorized into submission. Orwell had Stalinist Russia in mind when he wrote the book, but sadly, it seems to describe the situation in a large number of countries today.
(UN News)* — A group of UN-appointed experts on 12 August 2021 called for a moratorium on the sale of surveillance technology, warning against the danger of allowing the sector to operate as “a human rights-free zone.”
(UN News)* — With 40 per cent of the global population under 25, the international community has a special responsibility to ensure young people can share their perspectives and concerns about existential threats to current and future generations, UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu on 12 August 2021 said.
(WMO)* — Scientists are observing changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, released on 9 August 2021.
Indigenous Peoples are stewards of natural resources, biodiversity and nutritious native foods. They are key partners in finding solutions to climate change and reshaping our food systems. @FAO/Francesco Farnè
10 August 2021 (FAO)* — Constituting only 6 percent of the world population, Indigenous Peoples are nevertheless vital stewards of the environment.
28 percent of the world’s land surface, including some of the most ecologically intact and biodiverse forest areas, are primarily managed by Indigenous Peoples, families, smallholders and local communities.
These forests are crucial for curbing gas emissions and maintaining biodiversity.
Indigenous foods are also particularly nutritious, and their associated food systems are remarkably climate-resilient and well-adapted to the environment.
(World Food Programme)* — Grab your cooking pot to start cooking a delicious meal. You need:
0lb spaghetti
0 cloves garlic
No cup of olive oil,
No teaspoon red pepper flakes
0 pinch of salt
No chopped fresh parsley.
But wait – where are the ingredients themselves, you ask. Well, this is an #InvisibleMeal.
(United Nations)* — With the world’s population expected to increase by 2 billion people in the next 30 years, it has become recognized by numerous stakeholders that simply producing a larger volume of healthier food more sustainably will not ensure human and planetary wellbeing.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 