MADRID, Jul 10 2023 (IPS)* – A quick glance at the current European political map would clearly show how far the extremist ideology has been installed in European countries –those who still wave the French Revolution’s flag of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”
Credit: United Nations
According to the Napoleonic French Revolution’s three pillars, Liberty means freedom for an individual to do what he/she wants to do without harming others’ Liberty. Equality means equal opportunity to all the citizens irrespective of their caste, religion, race, gender.
Fraternity means an environment of brotherhood among the citizens of a nation.
(UN NEWS)* — With over 18,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs) lurking beyond the stratosphere, 2,000 of which are classified as potentially hazardous, the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is using Friday’s International Asteroid Dayto raise awareness across the planet.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA | Asteroid tracks among the stars.
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NEOs are asteroids or comets that come relatively close to the Sun, to about 50 million kilometres from Earth’s orbit. Some of them, ‘potentially hazardous objects’ (PHOs), come even closer – in interstellar terms – with a minimum distance of less than 7.5 million kilometres.
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Measuring more than 140 meters across, the PHOs have the potential to cause regional devastation with possible global consequences.
Europe was the epicenter of World Wars I and II, and now it threatens, with its war in the Ukraine, to kindle World War III.
As usual in history, overt warfare is the fruit of a constant, underlying culture of war. And in the case of Europe, it was the culture of war developed over many centuries to maintain the profits of colonialism.
Dr. David Adams
To understand this, let us first turn to that old critic, Vladimir Lenin.
In his essay War and Revolution of May, 1917, Lenin wrote, “Peace reigned in Europe, but this was because domination over hundreds of millions of people in the colonies by the European nations was sustained only through constant, incessant, interminable wars, which we Europeans do not regard as wars at all, since all too often they resembled, not wars, but brutal massacres, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed peoples.”
(UN NEWS)*— Last year, 27,180 grave violations were committed against children caught up in war – the highest number ever verified by the UN, the Security Council heard on Wednesday [].
(UN NEWS)* — The [United Nations] Secretary-General condemned on Wednesday [] Israel’s recent advancement of plans for over 5,500 housing units in settlements in the occupied West Bank. He also denounced the retroactive regularization of three outposts adjacent to the settlement of Eli.
File UNRWA | Israeli authorities demolished Bedouin homes in the vulnerable community of Abu Nwar, Area C, near East Jerusalem in the West Bank.
A strongly worded statement by the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General reiterates that settlements are a flagrant violation of international law and relevant UN resolutions. Antonio Guterres, it says, urged the Government of Israel to halt and reverse the expansion of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, to immediately and completely cease all settlements activities there and to respect its relevant legal obligations.
The statement refers to the Monday’s advancement of plans for over 5,500 housing units in Israeli settlements in Area C of the occupied West Bank, including the retroactive regularization, under Israeli law, of three settlement outposts adjacent to the settlement of Eli.
On the first day of March 2022, visitors to the New York Times homepage saw a headline across the top
Norman Solomon
their screens in huge capital letters:
ROCKET BARRAGE KILLS CIVILIANS
It was the kind of breaking-news banner headline that could have referred to countless U.S. missile attacks and other military assaults during the previous two decades, telling of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
But those “war on terror” killings did not qualify for huge banner headlines.
What stirred the Times to quickly publish one about civilian deaths was—as reported on the front page of its print edition—“a deadly Russian rocket assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, that raised new alarms about how far the Kremlin was willing to go to subjugate its smaller neighbor.”
(UN News)* — Countries must phase out coal and other fossil fuels to avert climate “catastrophe”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Thursday [] in New York. “We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open”, he said. “It’s time to wake up and step up.”
Mr. Guterres was speaking to journalists at UN Headquarters following a meeting with civil society climate leaders from across the world.
‘Catastrophe’ looms
He said limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible but will require a 45 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.
(UN News)* — In the face of rising hatred worldwide, both on and offline, faith leaders are vital allies in the quest for global peace, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Wednesday [14 June 2023].
The Council met specifically to discuss “the values of human fraternity in promoting and sustaining peace”, building on a 2019 declaration co-authored by Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church, and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Al Sharif, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, Chairman of the Muslim Council of Elders, and also considered the highest authority in Sunni Islamic thought.
“We trusted the government not to screw us,” said Edward Snowden. “But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power.”
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Edward Snowden said in an interview on June 8, 2023 that advances in surveillance technology have made it far easier for government agencies to spy on citizens than it was in 2013, when he first disclosed the broad use of spying by the NSA and other agencies.(Image: Screenshot/Citizenfour)
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 6 2023 (IPS)* – The frighteningly rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have triggered the question: is there a UN role for monitoring and regulating it?
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Citing a report from the Center for AI Safety, the New York Times reported last week that a group of over 350 AI industry leaders warned that artificial intelligence poses a growing new danger to humanity –and should be considered a “societal risk on a par with pandemics and nuclear wars”.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 