{"id":394610,"date":"2019-01-30T06:45:12","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T05:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/george-orwells-message-in-a-bottle-2\/"},"modified":"2019-01-30T06:45:12","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T05:45:12","slug":"george-orwells-message-in-a-bottle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/george-orwells-message-in-a-bottle-2\/","title":{"rendered":"George Orwell\u2019s Message in a Bottle"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>Last June the United States became the only nation to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which a Trump official called a \u201ccesspool of political bias.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Just one day earlier, the U.N. Human Rights office had called Trump\u2019s detention of children at the Mexican border \u201cunconscionable.\u201d\u00a0 Three days later, when the U.N. rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights delivered a scalding report on the United States, Trump\u2019s envoy to the United Nations assailed that report as \u201cbiased,\u201d \u201cpolitically motivated,\u201d and \u201cpatently ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since then, the world has been treated to the spectacle of refugees, many of them children \u2013 some still in diapers \u2013 sprayed with tear gas by U.S. border agents.<\/p>\n<p>George Orwell would not have been surprised.\u00a0 It is a little known fact that Orwell, renowned for <em>Animal Farm <\/em>and <em>Nineteen Eighty-Four,\u00a0<\/em>defended the human rights of children and detainees with force and insistence. \u00a0Indeed, his views strikingly anticipate U.N. views as expressed by Philip Alston \u2013 the author of the report blasted by Trump\u2019s outgoing ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley.<\/p>\n<p>What Orwell said on this subject over 60 years ago closely resembles the views that so infuriate Trump today. \u00a0And a new archival discovery shows that, besides speaking up for children, Orwell took practical steps to build a new human rights movement that placed the needs of children front and center.<\/p>\n<p>I learned the latter fact from a text I call&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2019\/01\/29\/george-orwells-message-in-a-bottle-2\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last June the United States became the only nation to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which a Trump official called a \u201ccesspool of political bias.\u201d Just one day earlier, the U.N. Human Rights office had called Trump\u2019s detention of children at the Mexican border \u201cunconscionable.\u201d\u00a0 Three days later, when the U.N. rapporteur [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-394610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}