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.
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 and Aldous Huxley
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.”
World Bank/Simone D. McCourtie | A person browsing through social media on their laptop computer (content blurred to protect privacy).
Their recommendation comes in the wake of the Pegasus spyware scandal targeting hundreds of journalists, activists and politicians.
(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.
UN Office for Disarmament Affairs | File photo of UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu (centre) meeting young people in Japan at an event focused on the 75th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and the establishment of the UN
#Invisiblemeal is putting hunger around the world in focus
Bangladesh: Sadek and Ibrahim are two boys whose family lost their home in Kutupalong, the world’s biggest refugee camp, to the fire in March. Photo: WFP/Sayed Asif Mahmud
(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.
Young people led millions around the world in marches demanding action on climate change days before the UN Climate Action Summit (23 September 2019). UN Women/Amanda Voisard
Young people are on the frontlines of the struggle to build a better future for all.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the dire need for the kind of transformational change they seek – and young people must be full partners in that effort.
(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.
(UN News)* — Unilateral coercive measures by some governments are denying many people around the world the right to personal development, as well as holding back sustainable national development, four independent UN human rights experts on 11 August 2021 said.
OCHA/Gema Cortes | People in sanction-targeted countries like Venezuela sink into poverty because they cannot get the essential services they need.
(UN News)* — The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) raised concern on 11 August 2021 over a new policy by the United States, using public health orders linked to COVID-19, to expel some asylum-seekers and migrants by flying them to southern Mexico.
UNICEF/César Amador | Asylum seekers, including children, at the Matamoros camp awaiting their US immigration hearings in Mexico.
Calling on the Biden Administration to end the practice, UNHCR said the Government was putting families and individuals who may have urgent protection needs, at risk, by returning them to their country of origin, before needs have been assessed or addressed.
(UN News)* — Israel must safeguard human rights activists in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and within its borders, a UN-appointed expert said on Wednesday [11 August 2021].
UN News | The Palestinian Flag in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, expressed concern over arrests, harassment, criminalization and threats targeting these individuals.
“Arrests and raids on the homes of Palestinian human right defenders form part of a wider crackdown against those defending the human rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” she said.
