In 1931, the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation invited Albert Einstein to enter correspondence with a prominent person of his own choosing on a subject of importance to society.
The Institute planned to publish a collection of such dialogues.
Einstein accepted at once, and decided to write to Sigmund Freud to ask his opinion about how humanity could free itself from the curse of war. Here are some quotations from Einstein’s letter, translated from the original German:
“Dear Professor Freud,
“Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?
“It is common knowledge that, with the advance of modern science, this issue has come to mean a matter of life and death for civilization as we know it; nevertheless, for all the zeal displayed, every attempt at its solution has ended in a lamentable breakdown.
(UN NEWS)*— After years of steady decline, cholera is making a devastating comeback and targeting the world’s most vulnerable communities, UN health experts warned on Friday [].
In a new alert, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that more countries now face outbreaks, increasing numbers of cases are being reported and the outcome for patients is worse than 10 years ago.
‘Killing the poor in front of us’
“The pandemic is killing the poor right in front of us,” said Jérôme Pfaffmann Zambruni, Head of UNICEF’s Public Health Emergency unit.
Echoing the bleak outlook, WHO data indicates that by May last year, 15 countries had reported cases, but by mid-May this year “we already have 24 countries reporting and we anticipate more with the seasonal shift in cholera cases,” said Henry Gray, WHO’s Incident Manager for the global cholera response.
ROME, May 18 2023 (IPS)* – Once the money-making businesses have turned Asia and Africa into their low-cost factories, to produce and market at higher prices their clothes and footwear, they further obtain more profits by selling to these two continents around 90% of all their used clothes and textiles waste.
“As reuse and recycling capacities in Europe are limited, a large share of used textiles collected in the EU is traded and exported to Africa and Asia, and their fate is highly uncertain,” says the European Environmental Agency. Credit: Shutterstock.
Not only: such a business alleviates the harsh environmental impacts of the lucrative clothing and fashion industry, and the cost of recycling and eliminating the leftovers of these products.
(UN NEWS)* — Amid a massive increase in the number of people in Sudan impacted by more than a month of heavy fighting, the UN on Wednesday [] said that it needed a record near $3 billion to deliver life-saving aid to them.
In addition to a revised request from the UN aid coordination office OCHA for $2.56 billion to fund its Humanitarian Response Plan – targeting some 18 million people in Sudan – the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that it required $472 million to assist those forced to flee across the country’s borders.
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The revised joint humanitarian response plan updates the response strategy launched for Sudan in December 2022 and reflects the “fundamental and widespread needs” within the country, according to OCHA.
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“Today 25 million people, more than half the population of Sudan, need humanitarian aid and protection,” said Ramesh Rajasingham, Head and Representative of OCHA in Geneva.
BULAWAYO, May 18 2023 (IPS)* – Meat from wild animals is relished across Africa and widely traded, but scientists are warning that eating bush meat is a potential health risk, especially in the wake of pandemics like COVID-19.
Freshly slaughtered bush meat is being consumed even though it may have health risks.
A study at the border settlements of Kenya and Tanzania has found that while people have been aware of the risks associated with eating bushmeat, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak, they don’t worry about hunting and eating wild animals that could transmit diseases.
PANAMA CITY (UNHCR)* – UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly T. Clements on 17 May 2023 appealed urgently for more support for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, which host most of the 20 million forcibly displaced people in the Americas.
“While the increase in the number of people approaching the United States border has attracted a lot of attention, it is important to remember that most forcibly displaced people stay in Latin America,” said Clements.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe | Tom Andrews, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, briefs reporters at UN Headquarters.
The report states that some “UN Member States are enabling this trade” through a combination of outright complicity, lax enforcement of existing bans, and easily circumvented sanctions, according to a news release from the UN rights office OHCHR.Access to advanced weaponry “Despite overwhelming evidence of the Myanmar military’s atrocity crimes against the people of Myanmar, the generals continue to have access to advanced weapons systems, spare parts for fighter jets, raw materials and manufacturing equipment for domestic weapons production,” said UN Special Rapporteur, Tom Andrews.
As they did over a century ago ahead of World War I, the Merchants of Death thrive behind a veil of duplicity and slick media campaigns.
Munition workers painting shells at the National Shell Filling Factory No.6, Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, UK in 1917. This was one of the largest shell factories in the country, circa 1917. (Photo by Horace Nicholls/ Imperial War Museums via Getty Images)
8 May 2023 – The senseless slaughter of World War I began with the murder of a single man, a Crown Prince of a European empire whose name no one was particularly familiar with at the time. Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria was the presumptive heir to the Austrian-Hungarian empire in June of 1914.
His assassin was a young Bosnian Serb student and the murder of the Crown Prince set off a cataclysmic series of events resulting in the deaths of over 20 million people, half of whom were civilians. An additional 20 million people were wounded.
From the morgues of Cairo to the cells of Guantanamo, I’ve seen a lot of anguish and cruelty in my human rights work over the years. But often more than blood spilled, it’s the lives stunted, solely because of a person’s identity, that hits the hardest.
Unless donors meet the gap, 60 per cent of the people the agency assists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will no longer be receiving food assistance in June, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced, adding that by August, the agency will be forced to completely suspend operations in the West Bank and Gaza.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Samer Abdeljaber, WFP Representative and Country Director in Palestine.
“We have no option but to stretch the limited resources we have to ensure that the needs of the most vulnerable families are met. They will go hungry without food assistance.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 