Daily Archives: January 18, 2020

For years, people of African descent have been discriminated against and barred from jobs, schools, beauty pageants, modeling even from working in the army simply for how they choose to style their hair. Just think about that for a second. If you havent experienced it yourself, imagine losing a job, not being offered a job, or getting kicked out of school for wearing the hair that naturally grows from your scalp? Natural hair and natural hairstyles like locks, twists, or braids in other worse, black hairstyles have been considered unprofessional for years. This is why states like California, New York, and New Jersey have passed hair bans protecting the black community from hair discrimination and it looks like Baltimore might be next.

The city of Baltimore is around 63% African American and yet hair discrimination is still a norm. For many that discrimination looks like being pressured to straighten their hair which often means chemically relaxing in order to conform to more European standards of beauty, which is not only problematic on a number of levels but requires money and maintenance.

We might have made a lot of progress when it comes to embracing natural hair but the discrimination is still very much an issue. Just this past October, an 8-year-old black girl from Jackson, Michigan was forbidden from taking part in her school picture for having extensions in her hair. Lets not forget about the teenage black wrestler from New Jersey who was forced right on the spot by a white referee to either have his dreadlocks cut right there and then or forfeit his match. Gabrielle Union was even reportedly fired from NBC for being too vocal about the work environment but also because her hairstyles were deemed too black.

But like California, New York, and New Jersey, it appears that Baltimore is the next to take action. Baltimores Office of Civil Rights and Wage Enforcement is currently collecting data on the hair-related discrimination complaints the city has been receiving in the past decade.

Once its codified into law, people will be better informed and start adjusting the cultural norms, Director of Baltimores Office of Civil Rights and Wage Enforcement, Darnell Ingram told NBC News. Will it end it full stop? Thatll take some time.

Just last month, lawmakers in Montgomery County passed legislation that prohibits discrimination against natural hairstyles, including braids, locks, Afros, curls, and twists. In fact, discrimination against these hairstyles can be fined up to $5,000 and upwards for violating the law. The bill would also add hair texture and style to the citys hair ban and would apply to everything from schools, workplaces, and even housing.

Black hair discrimination has been going on for centuries and dates back to slavery. Black people have been dealing with discrimination and various forms of microaggressions associated with the color of their skin, their hair and for just being black for as long as theyve been in the Americas and its toxic and harmful on so many levels. I cant wait for the day that the hair ban is passed in every single state in this country! Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness, respect, and basic human decency regardless of the color of their skin, the texture of their hair, or how they choose to wear their hair.

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Baltimore Is the Latest to Look to Ban Hair Discrimination and its Very Necessary - hiplatina.com

Its true, there have been happier new years. We are just two weeks into the new decade and the world has already witnessed climate emergencies in Australia and Indonesia where wildfires and floods have destroyed lives and livelihoods. Weve watched in horror as the threat of conflict between Iran and the United States threatens to engulf the wider region, while mourning the 176 people killed in the Tehran plane crash. And in Kenya, Somalia, Burkina Faso and Nigeria scores of lives have been devastated in terror attacks.

Workers and their communities are on the frontlines of these crises. As we plan for 2020 its important to look at what we have learned from 2019, and to see where we can channel the despair and anger felt in many parts of the world into concrete steps to change the world for the better. Unions have been demanding this change and we are proud of our union members on the frontlines battling for peace, democracy and a new social contract in the face of increasing authoritarianism, corporate power, inequality and the climate crisis.

But even as we face the challenges of the coming year, including new technologies and the future of work, we must celebrate some the victories in which workers and their unions played a pivotal role:

Lula is now free after 580 days in prison. Now we will fight with Brazilian trade unions to clear the name of the former Brazilian president. Indeed, from Fiji to Zimbabwe global solidarity has helped free a number of trade union leaders imprisoned around the world, although many of our comrades, like Erlan Baltabay of the Independent Oil and Energy Workers Union in Kazakhstan, remain behind bars.

Following years of campaigning and ahead of the 2022 World Cup, Qatar will abolish its kafala system of slavery. Migrant workers will no longer be tied to the sponsorship of their employers, and the Gulf state has also announced plans to introduce a minimum wage a first in the region.

The Global Centre for Sports and Human Rights has been established and is working with all stakeholders to work for human and labour rights in all major sporting events.

After years of worker abuse and the ruthless treatment of workers who attempt to organise themselves in the face of dismissals, lock-outs and the threat of deportation for migrant workers, Samsung has publicly declared a commitment to freedom of association.

The historic Convention on the Elimination of Violence and Harassment (C190) was negotiated and adopted at the Centenary Conference of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The world now has a comprehensive new standard to which governments and employers around the world can be held accountable for sexual harassment and violence in the world of work. Now we will focus our efforts on campaigning for its ratification.

The ILO Centenary Declaration on the Future of Work was also negotiated at the ILO Conference in June 2019. if implemented, it will go a long way to securing a New Social Contract with a labour protection floor and social protection for all workers, just transition for climate action and technological changes, a transformative agenda for women and much more. A New Social Contract will be a major ambition for this year in every country and as a basis for multilateralism which puts people and the planet before profit.

The ILO Committee on Application of Standards gave us leverage in some of the countries with the worst violations of rights: the Committee requested Algeria to immediately register independent trade unions and allow them to operate without exposing workers to retaliation. The Philippines was also asked to undertake full investigations into the violence and murders against activists and to punish perpetrators to end impunity in the country. We will continue to pursue social justice in these nations.

Minimum wages have been significantly increased in Nigeria, Ghana, Malaysia, Senegal, Bulgaria and El Salvador, and minimum wages have been established in South Africa with the promise of such in Ethiopia, along with a commitment to a minimum wage directive in Europe.

At the age of 34, Sanna Marin became the worlds youngest serving prime minister after a two-week nationwide strike led by postal workers brought down the government Antti Rinne. Marins coalition government was formed with women at the head of all five parties, and she is already discussing plans to introduce a four-day work week.

The Time for 8 campaign has successfully raised awareness about the importance of holding governments to account for realising the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 8 which focuses on decent work and economic growth.

43 countries have now ratified the ILO Protocol on Forced Labour which aims to eradicate all forms of modern slavery.

And, following the United Nations Secretary-Generals Climate Summit in September, 46 countries have signed up to the Climate Action for Jobs initiative a roadmap to boost climate action with just transition plans, spearheaded by the ILO.

As we look to the next decade, we certainly have our work cut out. We have just 10 years to stabilise the planet for our own survival. We know that the pathway to high ambition is just transition and trade unions can take credit for the broad recognition of this demand. Now the challenge is to make it universal in every sector with the social dialogue structures to make it possible. It is vital that governments raise ambition with national development plans that ensure just transition and rise above corporate interests that will continue to put the planet at risk.

As it has been already emphasised, a New Social Contract is non-negotiable, and the implementation of the ILO Centenary Declaration negotiated last year would go a long way to make this possible. A labour protection floor including just wages for all workers with universal social protection, a transformative agenda for women, just transition and vital public services would help us realise this as a basis for achieving SDG 8. We will hold governments to account for these measures and the promised binding UN treaty on business and human rights.

And we need to see reform of our democracies to ensure that all elected governments are accountable for the rights and the living standards of people as well as protection for the environment that we live in. With so much disaffection and apathy towards politics in all corners of the world, we need to see the birth of a living democracy that engages people beyond the ballot box. And most importantly, governments must put the values of peace and human rights above aggression and threats of war.

And so, the struggle continues. The ITUC thanks you for your courageous efforts in 2019 and stands with you in solidarity as we face the struggles of 2020 together.

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Let's remember our union wins as we gear up in 2020 for the fight of our lives - Equal Times

On winter nights, young Josie Kalipeni could be found assembling puzzles of the Wonders of the World. Kalipeni always had a knack for seeing the bigger picture. With it, she brings an aptitude for finding and connecting disparate parts to make those visions real.

Today, the 38-year-old Malawian immigrant is piecing together an ambitious American ideal thats not yet entered the policy mainstream: universal family care.

Kalipeni is director of policy and federal affairs for Caring Across Generations, a national campaign reimagining the long-term care system thats an offshoot of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Jobs With Justice. Universal care accounts would function like a multipurpose Social Security insurance fund: One pays directly into it over a lifetime ideally, in Kalipenis mind, with the government matching contributions and could draw from it to pay for child care, take time off work to care for ill parents or pay a home health care worker to support a relative with disabilities.

[Caregivers] dont want to have to choose between a paycheck and caring for a loved one.

Josie Kalipeni

Universal family care is designed to address pain points of a sandwich generation under ballooning pressure: those caring for an aging parent, raising their children and working full time. The care burden weighs heavier on working women of color in the U.S., whove been caregivers by cultural tradition and through the infrastructure of slavery, while facing an acute wage gap and less intergenerational wealth. But its a problem that touches all demographics: An estimated 41 million people gave 34 billion hours of unpaid care to adult loved ones in 2017, spending roughly $7,000 on caregiving costs like transportation and home modifications, according to recent AARP research. Family caregivers make it very clear that they dont want to have to choose between a paycheck and caring for a loved one, says Kalipeni. But they must navigate a fragmented safety net of programs, like parental leave or medical leave, depending on what their state or employer offers.

Paid family and medical leave are generating bipartisan support, while proposals deemed more radical like Universal Basic Income or Medicare for All have oxygen on the Democratic campaign trail. In her role, Kalipeni writes draft bills for Congress and state legislatures Hawaii and Washington have already implemented programs while cultivating allies for the cause. Its a steep climb, but Kalipeni is invigorated by the question shes chosen to chase: How would we design long-term care if we were starting from scratch?

Her answers are shaped by life experience. Kalipenis family came to America when she was 8, settling in Illinois. Josie was a natural caretaker as the oldest of six, says her mother, Fattima Kalipeni, who has worked as a domestic worker and nurse. (Kalipenis father worked in academia.) Both parents put in long hours and Josie was accustomed to pulling people together, Fattima says. Her favorite book was about a boy in Malawi who built a car out of scrap metal, and she begged for puzzles at garage sales she always wanted to be a connector.

Holding the wealth of America [and] at the same time holding the deep poverty of Malawi caused and causes a constant rustle in me, Kalipeni says. She watched as relatives in both countries faced similar challenges to sustain their families, find employment and create dignified lives. The University of Illinois graduate wasted no time getting into rooms where she could unpack these questions: Kalipeni supported hard-to-adopt youth in the foster care system during her first internship, organized for an Illinois health care campaign and worked for the D.C.-based advocacy organization, Families USA. After the Affordable Care Acts Medicaid expansion started to roll out across the country, she sought the next burgeoning care issue.

And she watches her work spill over into her own future. Fattima cares for Kalipenis father in his declining health, but when she fell ill, the six siblings scrambled to patch together a care schedule. And ever since a surgery left Kalipeni bedridden for three months, she has worried about who will care for her as she ages, as a single woman without children.

She isnt alone in these worries. Family caregivers must sacrifice their jobs, their time or both trade-offs that people universally experience but are socialized to internalize on their own with shame, says Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of the advocacy organization Family Values @ Work. The reality is that this is a systemic failure, not a personal failure, Chun-Hoon says. And we can solve for this.

Its easy to envision a political constituency given high voter turnout among women of color and baby boomers, but a large new government benefit would face opposition from Republicans and has not gotten attention amid the fierce debate over Medicare for All in the Democratic presidential primary. The states offer possible test cases, but logistical questions linger.Hawaii gives family caregivers working at least 30 hours a week outside the home up to $70 per day in benefits through revenue in the states general fund. A payroll tax funds Washingtons Long-Term Care Trust Act, which will provide a lifetime benefit of $36,500 adjusted for inflation. Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan are exploring different public and private plans, while a group in California might pursue a ballot initiative.

Were having the conversations in Congress now to really socialize this idea, says Kalipeni. Something that would have taken 20 years to have credibility has a much more truncated [timeline].

And she thinks her charge suitsthis dynamic political moment:People are excited about big ideas.

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Universal Family Care: Behind the Latest 'For All' Designed to Rethink Aging - OZY

Labour rights violations in ASEAN are among the negative effects of an increase in production due to the United States (US)-China trade war which has resulted in a shift of some production from China to this part of the world. While the region is embarking on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, numerous industries in ASEAN still rely on labour-intensive factories. Unable or unwilling to invest in technological advances that would automate production and ease workloads, many factories across Southeast Asia are filled with migrant workers who have appeared in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Featuring more prominently in the headlines though is the US-China trade war which has seen the US and China impose tariffs on each others goods worth US$360 billion in 2018, slowing global growth and creating uncertainty in markets worldwide.

China is officially looking to move away from low-level manufacturing towards innovation and consumption, and while the worlds second largest economy will retain much of its manufacturing footprint in the coming years, brands will continue to diversify their supply chains and seek sourcing and production in new (cheaper) markets.

Shifting production

Supply chain auditing firm QIMA conducted a year end survey of more than 100 businesses across the globe last year. They found as many as three-quarter of them had already started sourcing suppliers in new countries as a result of tariff increases many citing ASEAN countries as alternative markets. Most companies already sourced ASEAN countries in the textile and apparel industry, but rising tariffs have accelerated this process as the uncertainty is making ASEAN a more attractive destination.

However, ASEAN is also an attractive destination for migrant workers - the influx has led to a wide range of labour rights violations being documented with numerous stories of overworked workers being underpaid and mistreated. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), among the most common labour rights violations include unsafe workplaces, excessive working hours, lack of overtime pay, wage theft and lack of freedom of association.

Speaking exclusively to The ASEAN Post, QIMAs CEO and founder Sbastien Breteau said that there has been an increase in workers rights violations in ASEAN countries that have seen shifts in production from China.

In many of the countries that employ migrant labour, such as Malaysia and Thailand, an uptick in instances of modern slavery that coincides with the sourcing shift has been observed, said Breteau. Generally speaking, most of the factories in ASEAN countries score lower in ethical compliance than those in China and have suffered more cases of critical non-compliance. As the number of audits being performed increases in the region, the issue is being amplified, he added.

It is important to note that ethical compliance issues were prevalent in ASEAN even before the shift and many of the recent high-profile modern slavery cases such as in Top Glove (Malaysia) and Bangkok Rubber (Thailand) were identified before the trade war. Breteau noted that factory compliance remains an issue across markets. Vietnam and Indonesia, for example, saw their average factory scores deteriorate by -5.1 percent and -3.2 percent year-on-year, respectively according to QIMAs Q1 2019 data.

With key consumer markets such as the US, UK, Australia and the Netherlands proactively passing legislation which holds companies accountable for cases of modern slavery within their supply chain, ASEAN will have to adjust accordingly to ensure their industries maintain ethical production standards and eliminate labour rights violations.

While the increase in Western buyers switching to new sourcing countries will have a positive impact on workers rights in the long term, in the short term, the shift does have some negative implications as rapid growth often does.

If you look back at China 20 years ago in regard to workers rights, you saw similar issues to what you are seeing in ASEAN. Thanks to the pressure to meet global trade requirements, working conditions in China have improved dramatically and we expect to see similar improvement in ASEAN countries over time, said Breteau.

Related articles:

Can Industry 4.0 revolutionise manufacturing?

Trump, Xi agree to temporary trade war truce

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Labour rights abuse on the rise - The ASEAN Post

New Jersey mom of two Amanda was looking for a child care solution when she settled on hiring an au pair. An Italian-American who studied abroad in Italy, Amanda selected a woman from Milan as her first au pair in hopes of introducing Italian culture to her children.

Amanda says it was a great decision. Her au pair arrived with limited English skills but quickly picked up the language through daily interactions and immersion in an English-speaking culture. She watched Amandas kids, driving them to and from school, and performed light housekeeping tasks. After 12 months with her, Amanda says she feels like the Milanese woman will be part of their family forever.

Au pairs can seem like an elegant solution to the thorny problem of child care and often times they are. The cost of an au pair is relatively low: the minimum stipend is just under $200 a week, a bargain compared to the high cost of a full-time nanny or even most major metro area daycares. An au pair in America lives with the family, meaning theyre available in the off-hours when parents need the help most. Families hosting au pairs are encouraged to include them in activities. Its defined as a cultural exchange, not a job, so it seems less like childcare and more like having a cousin on an extended visit from overseas helping out with your kids.

But as with everything that seems too good to be true, issues can arise with au pairs. News reports and nonprofit investigations that quote au pairs comparing their treatment to slavery drain a lot of warmth and fuzziness out of the job description. In 2013, Bernie Sanders denounced the au pair program as a scam. Following a 2014 class action lawsuit from au pairs alleging wage theft, the Washington Post reported on an au pair whose host family forced her to work more than 60 hours a week. A 2017 Politico investigation found that host families refused to buy their au pairs staple foods like bread and that au pairs complaints routinely disappeared into a bureaucratic black hole. Shortchanged, a 2018 report authored by American Universitys International Human Rights Law Clinic and immigration and labor rights groups, found that structural deficiencies in the au pair program foster labor rights abuses.

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Most recently, in December 2019, a federal court ruled that Massachusetts labor laws protect au pairs. With the states $11 hourly minimum wage, host families had to pay about $17,000 more a year than before. Many opted to withdraw from the program.

Au pair supporters call the criticism overblown, saying it unfairly tarnishes a beneficial program. But civil rights advocates say the system can make even well-meaning families unwitting exploiters of vulnerable workers.

I tried to be clear that theyre here to do a job but also going to be part of our family and enjoy life and I want you to find that balance, Amanda says. Were very humane with au pairs. Other moms asked me if I paid our au pair to do more hours than the 45. I said absolutely not. Thats not part of the program. Thats not how it works.

The United States au pair program was founded in 1986 as a cultural exchange program intended to promote diplomacy and friendly international relations. Because au pairs are classified as cultural exchanges, they fall under the State Departments J-1 Visa program. While the program issues hundreds of thousands of visas to temporary foreign workers each year, it only has 30 employees far too few, critics say, to oversee the 18,000 people who travel to America each year to work as au pairs. Despite the general familiarity of the concept, the au pair programs relatively small in scale: the number of au pairs in America never exceed 20,000 and is largely clustered in New York, California, New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts.

Author and consultant Celia Harquail ran the blog and online resource Au Pair Mom for more than 10 years until stepping away from in October, 2019. Through the site, she connected with au pair host families and potential host families from across the country.

I say as a person who had 11 over the course of my kids childhood, having an Au pair can be really fun and joyful, she says.

Harquail says its gratifying to see au pairs learn about America through cultural immersion. We had these young adult women coming into our family with great enthusiasm about being in the United States and great excitement about learning English, she says.

According to State Dept. regulations, au pairs have to be between 18 and 26 years old. au pair placement agencies like Cultural Care have recruiting centers across the globe trying to entice people who are interested in new countries and new cultures. Harquil said that while theyre away from their families and countries of origins, au pairs often find comfort in their connection to their host families.

Generally, theres a lot of enthusiasm around making a connection with your kids as a big sister or a cousin and feeling part of your family, she says, adding that the family connection can make exploring a new country seem less daunting.

Amanda likens choosing an au pair from her service to using a car search or dating website. You can choose whatever criteria you want, she says. You say, I want this country, I want this language or I want someone thats this age, then you do all sorts of searches and search criteria and then you narrow down the field and you say, these few sound good.

When her au pair started, Amandas kids were in school full-time. As Amanda and her husband were both working in jobs requiring regular travel, the flexibility offered by a live-in au pair was invaluable.

Just having an adult there in my house is very helpful, she says. But theres also the flexibility in terms of hours. For the first three years, we had a nanny who would come to the house each day, but then she had to leave and I had to rush home at a certain time.

Still, the program comes with its fair share of scrutiny. In early 2019, a federal court ordered 15 au pair agencies to pay $65 million to 100,000 former au pairs in a class action suit brought on by about a dozen former au pairs accusing agencies of colluding to suppress wages and prevent them from seeking better working conditions.

Harquail, however, questions the suits findings, saying the cases central narrative doesnt accurately represent the au pair system.

There are always going to be people who abuse the system and take advantage of people, she says. But the idea that there are 17,000 families in the United States that are withholding food or not giving au pairs private bedrooms or not giving them time off or making them work 50 or 60 hours a week is to me almost absurd. Are there some people who do that? Im sure there are. Are they the norm? Absolutely not.

Harquail says the case elides the bad behavior that au pairs can engage in.

And what you dont hear about the au pairs who take the family car without permission and drive across state lines to go visit some guy that they met on Tinder, she says. You dont hear about the au pair who leaves in the middle of the night and then you go clean out her room and her closets full of Jagermeister bottles. And what you dont hear about is the au pair who leaves the kid in daycare and simply disappears.

Harquail adds: So I personally felt that the lawsuit was very ginned up and very, very unrepresentative of the program and how it works for au pairs or for host parents.

David Seligman, director of Towards Justice, a nonprofit Colorado-based law firm that represented the au pairs in the settlement, believes his clients experience was more the rule than the exception. The lawsuit began in 2014 when an au pair approached Towards Justice with complaints about her employer.

We investigated the issue and ended up determining that this really wasnt just about sort of this sort of one off mistreatment, but about broader systemic problems with the industry, Seligman says.

Seligman says the problems were driven principally by the sponsor agencies that place prospective au pairs with host families. Fifteen for-profit companies are designated as sponsor agencies by the State Dept. The sponsor agencies typically charge families for connecting them with au pairs and also collect a recruitment fee ranging from $500 to $3,000 from the au pairs.

The lawsuit accused the sponsor companies of working together to fix wages for au pairs they recruited. Host families are required to pay au pairs a minimum weekly stipend of $195.75 but, Seligman says, the stipend was often mischaracterized as a maximum.

au pairs can ask to be placed with different families but Seligman says the agencies make it difficult to be reassigned. As a result, theyre deprived of one of the most important tools that workers have to protect themselves in the labor market: the threat to find work elsewhere. And once you take that away, like you really like workers become, become quite vulnerable, Seligman says.

In several news stories, au pairs say agencies misled them about the responsibilities theyd have in their American jobs. They arrive believing theyre cultural ambassadors whod be able to travel and explore America and are shocked at the childcare expectations.

Sharon, a mother of two from Connecticut, hosted two au pairs and was disappointed by what she saw as a disconnection between the job what the agencies told families and prospective au pairs about the job. Both of her au pairs were frustrated that her central Connecticut town was much further from New York City than they expected.

I imagine that the girls who are placed in cities do the recruiting and tell tales of wild weekends of fun, she says.

Seligman says that many families inadvertently skirt laws regarding au pairs after being misled by au pair agencies. Historically, they have been deceived into assuming that the stipend for au pair was actually the maximum allowable wage and that there wasnt a free market in which au pairs could shop for better wages or treatment, Seligman said.

Seligman says the collusion between the sponsor agencies led many host families to unwittingly short their au pairs wages.

There are many stories of families who are seriously mistreating au pairs, but there are also families who are acting in good faith and are doing what their sponsor agencies tell them to do and think that theyre complying with the law and that theyre treating their au pair well, Seligman says.

The nature of the system, per Seligman, often obscures the employer-employee relationship between families and au pairs. I think that some families are led to believe that this isnt really isnt a work program, that this is merely a cultural exchange and that this person becomes a member of your family, he says.

Its crucial for families to understand the agreement. For Seligman, the confusion over whether an au pair is an employee or temporary family member creates a dangerous situation for both families and the au pairs.

I think the one key point is to recognize that this is a work program and that youre bringing someone into your home to work for you to be your employee, as a childcare worker, he says. And just like any other employee, these workers are allowed to negotiate for higher wages or for better treatment.

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Au Pairs: The Pros and Cons of Hiring One For Your Family - Fatherly

I'll cut right to the chase: Our food system in this country is brokenfor many, many reasons.

For starters, it is built on government subsidies on five crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice. These monocrops provide an abundance of the wrong type of calories (sugar, starch, and refined oils) and form the building blocks of ultraprocessed foods that contribute to chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, dementia, cancer, depression, sexual dysfunction, and more. Foods like these are responsible for an estimated 11 million deaths a year around the world.

The present food system doesn't just pollute our bodies. It pollutes our land, water, and air with pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and contributes massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions every step of the way. Glyphosate, anyone? Or how about a burger raised on antibiotics, hormones, and chicken poop? No thanks.

Food is also a social injustice issue. Many of the over 20 million food and farmworkers in the U.S. are peopleof color who struggle to make a living wage while performing dangerous work. They're subject to harsh working and living conditions and exposed to toxic agricultural chemicals but lack adequate health care. In extreme cases, they can face modern forms of slavery, sexual harassment, and abuse.

While these are complex issues that won't be solved overnight, I believe that a healthier, cleaner, smarter food system starts at the end of your fork. All you have to do is make a few simple conscious decisions about what you put on it.

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5 Ways To Help Fix The Food System Every Time You Grocery Shop - mindbodygreen.com

Throughout the United States, resisters pushed back on a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Some states made their point by holding out until the 2000s to establish a holiday signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

Other local governments found creative ways to minimize King by generalizing the holiday, so as not to name him, or creating a dual holiday, so the honor wouldnt be his exclusively.

Texas eventually got around to it, but it also has a Confederate Heroes Day that this year falls one day before MLKs.

San Antonio leaders wisely chose a different path, and San Antonio activists, ever resourceful, have overcompensated for the sins of others.

So, on Monday the city will put on one of the largest MLK marches in the country. Its the highlight of more than 1,000 events from Jan. 10-26 that are part of DreamWeek. Each day offers experiences that nudge us out of our comfort zones.

An event tonight will showcase a talk on wage equity thats listed as a demand, Pay Her What Shes Worth. The discussion is from 7 to 9 p.m. at the YWCA Olga Madrid Center on the West Side. Another event features a discussion of Kings legacy of resistance and what we can do when laws and law enforcement practices stifle protest. Its from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Travis Park Church downtown. Both events are free.

National holidays, when theyre relevant, give us a multitude of teaching moments and opportunities to cross self-imposed borders and meet people unlike us. Thats Kings legacy, too.

But the Student Leadership Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio gets the prize for its Civil Rights and Social Justice Experience, a bus tour of civil rights landmarks in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

At its most powerful, the tour drew a line from slavery to mass incarceration. Now in its ninth year, the tour ended by challenging a group of 45 students to connect what they learned on the trip to their leadership aspirations.

It was no coincidence the tour paid homage to the journeys of young Freedom Riders who in the 1960s boarded buses to Southern states, sat at whites-only lunch counters and faced violence from police and white mobs.

The bus got back Saturday. On Sunday, two of the students 21-year-old juniors Sydney Brown and Christopher Garcia met me at a coffee shop near the UTSA campus to digest their experiences.

It was Browns second trip and her first as a facilitator and part of the faculty. The return visit brought new experiences, especially at the Equal Justice Institute in Montgomery, Ala.

The institute has been much in the news thanks to a new movie, Just Mercy, that tells the story of its founder, Bryan Stevenson, and his work on mass incarceration. The group saw the movie there on opening day in an auditorium that was all their own.

Its also where the group visited one of the nations most compelling new monuments, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, dedicated to the victims of white supremacy. The memorial features 800 massive steel blocks that are suspended from the ceiling, each etched with the name of a county in which African Americans were lynched, and if known, the names of the victims.

Brown was moved by an exhibit at the Equal Justice Initiatives Legacy Museum, where people can pick up phones and hear the original testimony of the initiatives clients. She met Kuntrell Jackson there. At 14, he received a life sentence for a murder he didnt commit. The initiative won his release.

Garcia, a history major who wants to teach high school social studies, sought out the trip because he wanted to learn more about civil rights than what can be found in books.

He was struck by an exhibit of segregated classrooms and a sign that that read, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Mexicans from 1939 El Paso. He stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., where marchers were beat up in whats known as Bloody Sunday.

Garcia took dozens of photos to document his experience. But at the 18th-century Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, he stopped clicking. The silence startled him.

A guide showed them various sites, including rusty cells used first for slave auctions and later to hold convicts and a memorial to slaves who participated in an 1811 revolt. Many of the slaves who were caught were executed and beheaded. The memorial depicts rows of decapitated ceramic heads mounted on steel rods burrowed into the ground.

There, Garcia stopped taking pictures, partly out of respect. It was also awe because what was meant as a warning to slaves didnt end the rebellions. For the future teacher, its a lesson that will stay with him for future lectures and future MLK Days.

Elaine Ayala is a columnist covering San Antonio and Bexar County. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eayala@express-news.net | Twitter: @ElaineAyala

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Ayala: San Antonio overcompensates for the sins of others with its MLK events - San Antonio Express-News

Home > Stories > Pop-up brothels and drug dealing modern slavery on the up in Cumbria

Date: Thursday 16th January 2020

MODERN slavery and human trafficking are on the rise in Cumbria, according to a report by Cumbria police.

The county received 170 intelligence reports last year alone, up on 2018s figures of 113 though there are fears the scale of the crisis has been under-reported.

Victims across Cumbria have been trafficked for sexual exploitation, forced to work or to embark on a life of crime, with the majority of those targeted being young people.

A report revealed that the only type of exploitation yet to be seen in the county is organ harvesting.

Sandra Radcliffe, modern slavery and human trafficking co-ordinator, said some girls are forced to work as prostitutes by their boyfriends, fiancs and even husbands.

The police are investigating several pop-up brothels in the county, with hotel staff among those reporting girls working in rooms on their premises.

Additional concerns have also been raised about forced sexual exploitation and possible underage girls being used.

The report reveals that victims can be coerced into working through the use of violence and psychological intimidation.

Gang-masters are known to be keeping hold of victims identity papers, sometimes threatening to report foreign workers to the immigration authorities in a bid to control them.

Low-skilled, low-wage jobs such as food-processing and packaging, construction, tarmacking and paving and cleaning services are among the areas where forced labour has been uncovered.

Warning signs include workers crammed into a small house, lack of clothing and safety equipment and total dependence on an employer for accommodation, transport and banking.

Examples of forced criminality common in the UK include cannabis cultivation, drug dealing, benefit fraud, theft, begging, and the selling of counterfeit goods.

Victims are often afraid to go to the authorities for fear that they will end up in trouble or even in prison.

Other examples have included children recruited into criminal gangs to shoplift to order.

A major issue cited in the report is human trafficking linked to County Lines, where vulnerable people are forced to travel around the UK and deal drugs on behalf of organised crime groups.

Most victims tend to be boys aged between 15 and 17 but the report reveals that it is likely that the issue has been under-reported.

Victims can be offered a place within government-funded safe houses and given support, legal advice and practical help.

And those with concerns are urged to get in touch with the police on 101 or by completing the online report form. If it is an emergency they should dial 999.

Reports can also be made anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or at http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org, or to the Modern Slavery Helpline on 08000 121 700.

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Pop-up brothels and drug dealing modern slavery on the up in Cumbria - The Cumberland & Westmorland Herald

Image Source: Griffiths, Samuel, editor of The London Iron Trade Exchange

Preamble

In Capital, Marx defined two ways of creating a surplus from exploiting the labor of others. The first is the extraction of absolute surplus value. Extracting absolute surplus value means profiting from the labor of others by making them work longer or harder or getting more of them to work. This economic model comes up against predictable limits: people die from overwork, you cant get enough of them, they cost too much to keep healthy, and so on. The second way of creating a profit is to make improvements to the organisation of their tasks, and to introduce machinery to enable labor time to be more productive. This second way is called the extraction of relative surplus value and it is the prime motor of capital-ism. The profits available from this second way of doing things are dependent not upon absolutes like the number of workers or the availability of a resource but upon the entrepreneurs ability to innovate production, supply and distribution methods so that profits go up relative to other factors that remain constant or that might even be reduced. New methods or machinery, for example and as we all know, may mean less workers are needed.

By-the-way, I am annoyingly hyphenating the word capitalism throughout this piece in order to stress the fact that having capital means one intentionally builds funds for making future investments in industry. Capital is not just money under the bed, it is profit that is specifically to be used to go back into the further production of wealth.

History as a Good Soldier

There is a single-frame cartoon I saw on the Internet a while ago which depicts a middle-aged couple in a bedroom in a medieval setting. One of them is looking out at the glorious sun rising over the hills and exclaims to the other, Thank goodness! Look dear! At last the Reformation has arrived!

This cartoon which I find hilarious, but that could just be me says everything I have ever wanted to say about the tendency we have to view the past as if it is always waiting for the future. This is a narrative of history that academics call teleological meaning that the present is the purpose of the history leading to it. But even though they have a term for it many academics lazily go along with the idea that history is something like a conscious spirit in society struggling for a higher good. It is no coincidence that this idea was expressed in the midst of Europes technological irruption by the philosopher Hegel, who argued that the absolute rational final goal of the world is the transcendent synthesis of the plan of divine Providence with reason. We are, it seems, locked into the progressivist notion that history, despite being a bumpy ride (Hegel suggested that it could be even regarded as a slaughtering block of sacrifices for the future), is a narrative that ultimately shows how humans are becoming more intelligent. True there are the grumpy folk who pine on myopically about the past of their youth being better than now, unaware that their parents also complained, and their parents before them but generally most of us would still agree that todays society is the peak of progress so far, only to be eclipsed by the next big technological shift. (Well, a lot of us suspect that instead of a future of flying cars we are now fast-tracked to ecological Armageddon, but thats for another piece.)

The Reformation joke is premised on the fact that we tend to think of people in the past as just waiting for things to get better. In the same vein, we have the common idea that people who lived in caves must have been simply desperate for improvements to their lives between being chased by sabre-toothed tigers. Something key to these interpretations of the past is that humans then are thought of as just like us now, as if we were suddenly transported back 100,000 years.

There are four problems with this view. The first is that if we think that uncivilised humans struggled to survive, then how come they did so for at least 200,000 years before the rise of the first States?

The second problem is that if it was so hard for humans to survive without civilisation then how do other animals survive now? Is life for them really a daily unrelenting struggle? Maybe we might argue that they do not have the consciousness that would tell them that their lives are brutish and short but then how did conscious humans cope with 200,000 years of the knowledge that their lives were terrible, and how do present day uncivilised tribes cope? These people must have been constantly beset by depression and suicide! Of course, they werent. And the only reason tribespeoples and Indigenous peoples of today suffer from depression and suicide is because they have been dragged into civilisation and have had everything they once had taken away. As mile Durkheim noted in 1893, one of the gifts of modern civilisation is the suicide of sadness.

The third problem with this notion is that it mixes in unsavoury depictions of the past such as in the Middle Ages in Europe, and the beginnings of Industrialisation as if it was always like this. In his book, Better Angels, Steven Pinker, for example, snobbishly objects to the Middle Ages in Europe on the grounds that habits of refinement, self-control, and consideration that are second nature to us had to be acquired, and that people then, were, in a word, gross. How we all lol-ed at that clever quip during the university cocktail party. Although we can look back on aspects of the hardships of civilisations and be thankful that we dont have to endure particular rigours now, should we paint the whole of the past in that way?

The fourth problem is that by looking at the past like this we are forced to logically conclude that all previous societies were a little misguided about things, or simply a bit stupid. The flip side of such a self-congratulatory view of our towering present-day wisdom is a dangerously pejorative judgement of those uncontacted tribes who live without civilisation. Think Bolsanaro.

The Mistake of Civilisation

Instead of viewing the story of humanity as a continuous narrative with progress as the underlying motor I would argue that there are two world-significant physical events that happened in the past that are crucial to understanding present-day human society. These events were both misfortunes, as tienne de La Botie wrote in 1553 of the first one. The first was the emergence of hierarchy and exploitation that is expressed in the formation of a State or civilisation an environment where people submit to voluntary servitude, as La Botie observed. The second was the emergence of capital-ism as the globally dominant economic form. It is this second one that I want to elaborate on.

We all probably have a vague idea of what capital-ism is: private or State ownership of the means of production, wage labor, money economy, alienation, consumer society, supply and demand, and so on. But capital-ism did not always exist, something specific brought it into existence, and we can sense that capital-ism is different to all previous economic forms because of the remarkable phenomenon of the Industrial Revolution. Suddenly three hundred years ago the scene was set for going from handloom to power-loom weaving, to trains, cars, to splitting atoms, to computers, and smart phones.

The Industrial Revolution was NOT the natural culmination of five thousand years of the rise and fall of civilisations since Mesopotamia, it was NOT the result of a growing intelligence in humanity that enabled individuals to master what we call science and technology, it was the coming together of the weaving industry, dominated by work-ethic oriented Protestants; gold from the Americas; and the Atlantic Slave Trade.

But the key factor was the new profit-making strategy developed by the weaving entrepreneurs. These merchants set up efficient supply and distribution networks around the core productive unit of the woollen weaver who worked at home, and crucially they ensured their weavers had efficient handlooms to enable higher productivity. The gold and the slavery, and the Protestantism, only helped support the new economic method and ensure that it had the space and time to spread to other ventures and become universally successful. The new economic method was the extraction of relative surplus value, as Marx termed it. The method fitted in perfectly with the emergent work ethic of the Protestant movement in Europe and the gold and the slavery buoyed up the new environment until it was fully established. But it was the extraction of relative surplus value in a word, capital-ism that ultimately and essentially triggered the Industrial Revolution.

Jairus Banaji in his book, Theory as History, which examines agrarian societies prior to their being fully capital-ist, particularly in 19th century India, argues, as does Marx, that whether workers are slaves or peasants or hired labour is not the issue for defining a capital-ist enterprise it is the fact that profits are used to generate even greater profits by investing in improved production methods, and that money is not left idle.

Mining Humanity

In capital-ism people became a special type of resource in an enterprise one that can be eternally adapted to work at different rhythms, in new situations, with new machinery and processes this happened because entrepreneurs realised that humans were adaptable and could learn new skills. The historian EP Thompson has written extensively, by the way, on worker resistance to the new forms of labor, and how these resistances were broken down by factory discipline. By the time the European working class emerged from the 19th century, even though many dreamed of a better world, they had all absorbed the work ethic promoted by the ruling classes. Slaves and newly colonized peoples who had perhaps been warriors and suchlike in their previous lives often simply died from the incessant work they were forced to do.

So, what about the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath? The social organization and astonishing technology we see in the world around us is less the invention of bright people who have been well-educated and more the product of the imperative to increase relative surplus value, the particularly capital-ist way of increasing profits. The appearance of the steam engine owes more to the strategy of acquiring relative surplus value than it does to the acclaimed genius of James Watt. The consequences of the emergence of the systematic acquisition of relative surplus value were increased monetary wealth for a whole class who, crucially, knew that to stay rich they had to keep innovating and investing. The emergence of the science we have today was not the culmination of eons of human ingenuity it was the result of this same particular method of pursuing wealth, as it still is.

It was only during the great watershed of the sixteenth century, as Banaji writes, that it became apparent that capital-ist production had become the dominant economic mode in western Europe. It is only in a fully capital-ist mode of production that the whole of society is geared towards, as well as determined by, the raising of the relative productivity of each worker. This is the motive for technological innovation. It is why today, when capital-ism has become part of our very DNA, we witness a proliferation of James Watts.

So, the enormous technological achievements during and after the Industrial Revolution are not some magical culmination of human history they are the specific result of a society that emerged by organising itself on the principle of being able to extract an infinite sum of profit from the ever-adaptable resource of the human being.

References.

Anderson, S. 2009, The Two Lives of Narcisse Pelletier, in Pelletier: The Forgotten Castaway of Cape York, Stephanie Anderson (ed. and trans.), Melbourne Books, Australia.

Banaji, J. 2011, Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation, Haymarket Books, Chicago.

Botie, . de La, 2008 [1553], The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Harry Kurz (trans.), Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn.

Durkheim, E. 1997 [1893], The Division of Labour in Society, W. D. Halls (trans.), The Free Press, New York.

Hegel, G. W. F. 2011, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Ruben Alvaredo (trans.), Wordbridge Publishing, Aalten.

Mandel, E. 1976, Introduction, in Capital, A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, Ben Fowkes (trans.), Penguin Books, London

Marx, K. 1976, Capital, A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, Ben Fowkes (trans.), Penguin Books, London

Pinker, S. 2012, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and its Causes, Penguin Books, New York.

Survival International, survivalinternational.org

Thompson, E. P. 1967, Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism, in Past and Present, No. 38. (Dec., 1967), pp. 56-97.

Weber, M. 2003 [1904-5/1920], The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Talcot Parsons (trans.), Dover Publications, New York.

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The Wonders of Modern Life Briefly Explained: An Anthropology of the Industrial Revolution - CounterPunch

There is a significant body of evidence that human extinction is now imminent; that is, it will occur within the next few years and possibly this year: 2020. There is also a significant body of evidence that human extinction is now inevitable; that is, it cannot be prevented no matter what we do.

There are at least four distinct paths to imminent (that is, within five years) human extinction: nuclear war (possibly started regionally), biodiversity collapse (already well advanced and teetering on the brink), the deployment of 5G (commenced recently) and the climate catastrophe. Needless to say, each of these four paths might unfold in a variety of ways.

In addition, it should be noted, there are other possible paths to extinction in the near term, particularly when considered in conjunction with the four threats just mentioned. These include the cascading impacts triggered by destruction of the Amazon rainforest (which is now imminent) particularly given its critical role in the global hydrological cycle, the rapidly spreading radioactive contamination of Earth, and geoengineering for military purposes (which has been going on for decades and continues).

Far worse, however, is the path to extinction that looms before us when we consider the impact of all seven of these paths in combination with the vast range of other threats noted below.

These interrelated threats have generated a shocking series of points of no return (tipping points) that we have already crossed, the mutually reinforcing set of negative feedback loops that we have already triggered (and which we will continue to trigger) which cannot be reversed in the short-term, as well as the ongoing synergistic impact of the various extinction drivers (such as ongoing extinctions because dependent species have lost their resource species) we have set in motion and which cannot be halted irrespective of any remedial action we might take. Hence, taking into account all of the above factors, the prospects of averting human extinction are now remote, at best.

Why has this happened?

Because long-standing dysfunctional human behavior, which we have not even begun to recognize as the fundamental driver of this extinction crisis, let alone address, has now trapped us between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, we are trapped by our grotesquely dysfunctional parenting and education models that mass produce individuals who are terrified, self-hating and powerless (leaving them submissively obedient while unable to seek out and consider the evidence for themselves and take powerful action in response) and who, as a result of being terrorized during childhood, are now addicted to chronic over-consumption to suppress their awareness of their deep (and unconscious) emotional pain. See Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War and Do We Want School or Education? with more detailed evidence in Why Violence? and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice.

On the other hand, also as an outcome of our dysfunctional parenting and education models (as well as the political and economic systems these generate), we keep reproducing and remain trapped by the global elite, and its compliant international organizations (such as the United Nations), national governments and corporations, including its corporate media. This global elite is utterly insane (and, hence, devoid of such qualities as conscience, empathy, compassion and love) and intent on exploiting our desire to suppress awareness of our emotional pain by over-consuming in order to feed their insatiable desire for profit, power and privilege no matter the cost to humanity and Earths biosphere. See The Global Elite is Insane Revisited.

Hence, this article does two things.

First, in the hope of generating greater consideration of these two issues imminence and inevitability of human extinction I have presented in straightforward language and point form, a reasonable summary of the nature and extent of our predicament (which clearly indicates that we are on track for human extinction between now January 2020 and 2025), as well as citing the relevant scientific and/or other evidence that explains each problem in more detail.

And second, the article outlines a powerful series of actions and strategies that individuals, as well as community groups, neighborhoods and action groups, can take as part of a global effort to fight to avert human extinction even if, as mentioned above, it is now inevitable. See, for example, Extinction Foretold, Extinction Ignored in which the McPherson Paradox, which explains one key reason why we are doomed to extinction, is explained.

The obvious question, which you might well ask me, is this: If the overwhelming evidence that human extinction is now imminent and inevitable is incontrovertible, why are you suggesting that we fight to avert human extinction? And my answer is simply this: Because, as I have done for several decades, I am committed to trying to do this one key thing that feels worth doing. Moreover, I am also hopeful that a miracle or two might just occur if we humans commit ourselves fully to the effort. I am only too well aware that anything less than a full effort, as outlined below, will certainly fail. And we will virtually certainly fail anyway. But I would rather try, than give up. And you?

So, in noting the points below, each of which identifies one key way (or a set of related key ways) in which the Earth and its inhabitants were subjected to greater violence in 2019, it is painful to reflect that, as forecast this time last year and based on a clear understanding of the primary driver of human behavior fear that is generating this multifaceted crisis, 2019 was another year of vital opportunities lost when so much is at stake.

Because, in essence, whether psychologically, socially, politically, militarily, economically, financially, ecologically or in other ways, in 2019 humanity took more giant strides backwards while passing up endless opportunities to make a positive difference in our world.

Moreover, to highlight the dramatic nature of our failure, by the end of 2019, a substantial number of countries and regions of the world notably including the Amazon basin, Australia, several countries in Central Africa, many European countries, Indonesia, Siberia and North America had each experienced (and/or were still experiencing) a huge series of wildfires (or fires that were deliberately lit), many of them out of wildfire season and breaking records for their unprecedented destructive impact, demonstrating that the Earth is literally burning up. For just an overview, see NASAs Fire Information for Resource Management System.

But this very visible symptom of our crisis masks a vast quantity of evidence, in many domains, that is virtually unknown but far more damaging.

One acknowledgment of this crisis in Earths biosphere was the fact that the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists remains poised at just two minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been to doomsday (and equal to 1953 when the Soviet Union first exploded a thermonuclear weapon matching the U.S. capacity and raising the spectre of nuclear war). See It is now two minutes to midnight.

This status reflects the perilous state of our world, particularly given the renewed threat of nuclear war and the ongoing climate catastrophe. It didnt even mention the massive and unrelenting assault on the biosphere (apart from the climate) and the rapidly accelerating biodiversity crisis nor, of course, the ongoing monumental atrocities against fellow human beings.

So let me identify, very briefly, some of the more crucial backward steps humanity took during 2019 and, far too easily, unfortunately, forecast what will happen in 2020.

1. The global elite, using key elite fora such as the Group of 30, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the World Economic Forum, and despite much rhetoric to the contrary, continued to plan, generate and exacerbate the many ongoing wars, deepening exploitation within the global economy, climate and environmental destruction, and the killing and exploitation of fellow human beings in a multitude of contexts, in pursuit of greater elite profit, power and privilege. See, for example, Who Is Really in Control of US Foreign Policy?, Giants: The Global Power Elite and The Global Elite is Insane Revisited.

2. International organizations (such as the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and national governments and corporations used military forces, legal systems, police forces and prison systems see The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent around the world to serve the global elite by defending its interests against the bulk of the human population, including those individuals and organizations courageous enough to challenge elite profit, power and privilege who are being killed in record numbers. (See more in point 35 below.)

3. $US1.8 trillion was officially spent worldwide on military weapons to kill fellow human beings and other lifeforms, and to destroy the biosphere. This is the highest official (because the figures are taken from open sources) annual military expenditure ever recorded and the second consecutive year in which an increase occurred. Apart from military spending, weapons transfers worldwide remained high and both the USA and Russia were on a path of strategic nuclear renewal. See SIPRI Yearbook 2019: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security; Summary.

However, as noted last year, so out-of-control is this spending that the United States government has now spent $US21trillion on its military in the past 20 years for which it cannot even account! Thats right, $US1trillion each year above the official U.S. national budget for killing is lost. See Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported, Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us? and The Pentagon Cant Account for $21 Trillion (Thats Not a Typo).

There has been no progress reported in accounting for this lost expenditure during the past year.

4. Under the direction of the global elite (as explained above), the United States government and its NATO allies continued their perpetual war across the planet wreaking devastation on many countries and regions, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. See, for example, Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield and Understanding NATO, Ending War.

As a result, whether in the US-sponsored and supplied Saudi Arabian war against Yemen which the UNHCR characterizes as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world see The Cost of Feeding Yemen as War Rages On the result of the U.S. use of depleted uranium on top of its other extraordinary military destruction of Iraq over the past 29 years see Depleted Uranium and Radioactive Contamination in Iraq: An Overview or the complete dismemberment of Libya as a result of NATOs bombing of that country and the subsequent assassination of its leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 see Endless War and Chaos in Libya the United States and its NATO allies have continued their efforts to destroy entire countries (also including Afghanistan, among others), at staggering cost to their populations and environments, not because these countries posed a threat to security anywhere but in order to maintain geopolitical control and to facilitate the theft of their resources (mainly oil) at great profit to the global elite. See, for example, Hillary Emails Reveal NATO Killed Gaddafi to Stop Libyan Creation of Gold-Backed Currency.

Moreover, of course, the perpetually-profitable perpetual war, by definition, has no end. But it still isnt quite acceptable to say, too publicly and loudly, that The global elite has again used the United States military and its NATO allies to destroy Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/ (or, as is now the case, to attack Iran) to make a profit so what can be passed off as an excuse must be manufactured and promulgated by the compliant corporate media. And, with a gullibly terrified human population disinclined to question authority, this isnt a problem. The same unconvincing formula invariably works each time. For a fuller and insightful explanation of this point, see Edward Curtins article The war hoax redux.

Of course, Iran has long been in the crosshairs of the global elite because of its prodigious (and thus hugely profitable) oil reserves as well as the clear inclination of its leaders (both before and after the US-installed Shah) to make decisions in the interests of Iranians, including foreign policy decisions such as those related to defense and the role of nuclear weapons. Thus, the global elite ensured that the U.S. Congress, via removal by the Senate of a provision explicitly not authorizing the Pentagon to wage war against Iran or assassinate its officials see America Escalates its Democratic Oil War in the Near East in the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, effectively encouraged President Trumps recent assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, Irans head of the foreign arm the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), Irans elite military force and the key figure in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East, in clear contempt of international law. See Trumps assassination of Soleimani: Five things to know, With Suleimani Assassination, Trump Is Doing the Bidding of Washingtons Most Vile Cabal, Why U.S. assassinated General Qassem Soleimani and U.S. killing of Irans Qassem Soleimani an act of war.

This assassination, of course, raises a heightened possibility of war essentially, from the elite perspective, to achieve regime change and capture control of Irans oil in one or more guises possibly involving, as explained by Professor Michel Chossudovsky, the use of tactical nuclear weapons, acts of political destabilization, confiscation of financial assets, extensive economic sanctions, electromagnetic and climatic warfare, environmental modification techniques, cyberwarfare as well as chemical and biological warfare. See A Major Conventional War Against Iran Is an Impossibility. Crisis within the U.S. Command Structure and America, An Empire on its Last Leg: To be Kicked Out from the Middle East?

Hence, much will depend on the Iranian response to the insanity of those attacking it, which will unfold as this article is being published. For further thoughtful analyses of this crisis, see War With Iran, Iran vs. U.S. The Murder of General Qassem Suleimani and On the Brink of War?

5. Not content with the devastating impact of the military violence it is inflicting already, during 2019 the global elite continued to plan how to cause more destruction in future. Key initiatives included ongoing work to employ advances in autonomous systems and artificial intelligence technologies that will undermine nuclear deterrence and increase the likelihood of nuclear escalation see A Stable Nuclear Future? The Impact of Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence and the decision in the United States to create a Space Force, a sixth branch of the U.S. military forces, just two manifestations of this. See The Very Bad Space Force Deal and U.S. Making Outer Space the Next Battle Zone Karl Grossman.

In its turn, the Russian government has developed and just deployed a hypersonic weapon that travels at Mach 27 and which makes the U.S. missile defense installations in Europe obsolete. See Avangard changes everything: What Russias hypersonic warhead deployment means for the global arms race.

But other initiatives receiving renewed attention hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons onboard orbiting battle platforms with onboard nuclear reactors or super plutonium systems providing the power for the weapons also enhance the threat that Modern society would go dark in the words of Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Why? Because any war in space would be the one and only. By destroying satellites in space massive amounts of space debris would be created that would cause a cascading effect and even the billion-dollar International Space Station would likely be broken into tiny bits. So much space junk would be created that wed never be able to get a rocket off the planet again because of the minefield of debris orbiting the Earth at 15,000 mph. See Trump Signs Measure Enabling Establishment of a U.S. Space Force.

Of course, technological advances in weaponry reflect retrograde steps in policy with the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) which includes 20 B-2 stealth bombers, 76 B-52 bombers and 450 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles together capable of delivering thousands of nuclear warheads along with the U.S. Navys submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles, are now capable of extinguishing essentially all life on Earth within a matter of hours. See The Air Forces Global Strike Command Is Preparing For A Delivery Of New Nuclear Weapons.

6. Following the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002 and after withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal) and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (which limited the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear weapons) in 2018, the U.S. government further and unilaterally signaled its intention to dismantle the little that remained of attempts during the Cold War and since that time to contain the threat of nuclear war by further acting in violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 see Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies and U..S Weaponizing Space in Bid to Launch Arms Race as explained in the point above, and demonstrating its disinterest in extending New START: the sole remaining restraint on U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals that caps deployed offensive strategic nuclear weapons to no more than 1,550 each. See Russia says its already too late to replace new START treaty and Global Zero Urges Trump to Accept Putins Offer on Nuclear Treaty.

If you are in any doubt regarding the devastating consequences of nuclear war, you will find Professor Steven Starrs thoughts see Nuclear Darkness, Global Climate Change and Nuclear Famine: The Deadly Consequences of Nuclear War illuminating. In addition, the description by Lynn Eden in City on Fire (based on her book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation) is compelling.

7. Another substantial proportion of global private financial wealth conservatively estimated by the Tax Justice Network in 2010 to already total between $US21 and $US32 trillion has been invested virtually tax-free through the worlds still-expanding black hole of more than 80 offshore tax havens (such as the City of London Corporation, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Nauru, St. Kitts, Antigua, Tortola, Switzerland, the Channel Islands, Monaco, Cyprus, Gibraltar and Liechtenstein). This is just financial wealth. Additionally, a large share of the real estate, yachts, racehorses, gold bricks and many other assets that count as non-financial wealth are also owned via offshore structures that make it impossible to identify their owners. See Tax Justice Network.

Tax havens are locations around the world where wealthy individuals, criminals and terrorists, as well as governments and government agencies (such as the CIA), banks, corporations, hedge funds, international organizations (such as the Vatican) and crime syndicates (such as the Mafia), can stash their money so that they can avoid laws, regulation and oversight and, very often, evade tax. See Elite Banking at Your Expense: How Secretive Tax Havens are Used to Steal Your Money.

Controlled by the global elite, Wall Street and other major banks manage this monstrous diversion of wealth under Government protection. Their business is fraud and grand theft. Tax haven locations offer more than tax avoidance. Almost anything goes on. It includes bribery, illegal gambling, money laundering, human and sex trafficking, arms dealing, toxic waste dumping, conflict diamonds and endangered species trafficking, bootlegged software, and endless other lawless practices. See Trillions Stashed in Offshore Tax Havens.

8. The worlds major corporations continued to inflict enormous ongoing violence (in a myriad of ways) in their pursuit of endless profit at the expense of living beings (human and otherwise) and Earths biosphere by producing and marketing a wide range of life-destroying products ranging from nuclear weapons and nuclear power to fossil fuels, junk food, pharmaceutical drugs (including health-destroying and sometimes life-destroying vaccinations: see, for example, Vaxxed-Unvaxxed The Science), synthetic poisons and genetically mutilated organisms (GMOs).

These corporations include the following: weapons manufacturers, major banks and their industry groups like the International Monetary Conference, asset management firms, investment companies, financial services companies, fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) corporations, technology corporations, media corporations, major marketing and public relations corporations, agrochemical (pesticides, seeds, fertilizers) giants, pharmaceutical corporations (with their handmaidens in the medical and psychiatric industries: see Defeating the Violence in Our Food and Medicine and Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry), biotechnology (genetic mutilation) corporations, mining corporations, nuclear power corporations, food multinationals and water corporations. You can see a list of the major corporations in this article: The Global Elite is Insane Revisited.

9. More than two billion people continued to live under occupation, dictatorship or threat of genocidal assault often with the global elite sponsoring an oppressive national government or simply a local elite that exercises power irrespective of the government in office. See, for example, 500 Years is Long Enough! Human Depravity in the Congo.

10. 36,500,000 human beings (mainly in Africa, Asia and Central/South America) were starved to death in 2019.

Are we serious about ending these totally unnecessary deaths? Not even remotely, as thoughtfully explained by Professor George Kent in his article Are We Serious About Ending Hunger?

As Professor Kent notes: currently, around the world, around 800 million people suffer from hunger and that global efforts to end hunger have not been serious: There has been no substantial commitment of resources, no management group to control the process, no realistic timeline, and no means for mid-course corrections on the way to the goal. There [have been] no contracts with agencies that would work toward achievement of the goal. hoping for the end of hunger wont work. Hope is not a strategy. Moreover, The UN system offers little more than vague aspirations.

11. 18,250,000 children were killed by adults in wars, by starving them to death, by denying them clean drinking water, and in a large variety of other ways.

12. 8,000,000 children were trafficked into sexual slavery; executed in sacrificial killings after being kidnapped; bred to be sold as a cash crop for sexual violation, to produce child pornography (kiddie porn) and snuff movies (in which children are killed during the filming); ritually tortured and murdered as well as raped by dogs trained for the purpose. See Humanitys Dirty Little Secret: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children.

13. Hundreds of thousands of individuals were kidnapped or tricked into slavery, which now denies 46,000,000 human beings (more than at any time in human history) the right to live the life of their choice, condemning many individuals especially women and children to lives of sexual slavery, forced labor or as child soldiers. Needless to say, the global elite continues to expand this highly profitable business while its compliant governments do no more than mouth an occasional objection to the practice while doing nothing effective to actually end it, as was patently evident following disclosures about high-profile public figures during the year. See The Global Slavery Index. For one recent account of the life of a modern slave, see My Familys Slave. And for an account of the involvement of public figures in sex slavery, see Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein: what you need to know and the other articles listed at the end of this one.

14. Well over 100,000 people (particularly Falun Gong practitioners) in China, where an extensive state-controlled program is conducted, were subjected to forced organ removal for the trade-in human organs. See Bloody Harvest and The Slaughter.

15. 15,768,000 people were displaced by war, persecution or famine. There are now 70,800,000 people, more that half of whom are children and approximately 10,000,000 of whom are stateless, who have been forcibly displaced worldwide and remain precariously unsettled, usually in adverse circumstances. One person in the world is forcibly displaced every two seconds. See Figures at a Glance.

16. Millions of people were made homeless in their own country as a result of war, persecution, natural disasters (many of which, including hurricanes/cyclones and wildfires, were actually generated by dysfunctional human behavior rather than nature), internal conflict, poverty or as a result of elite-driven national economic policies. The last time a global survey was attempted by the United Nations back in 2005 an estimated 100 million people were homeless worldwide. In addition, as many as 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing (living in slums, for example). See Global Homelessness Statistics.

17. Highlighting the unheralded biodiversity crisis on Earth, as a result of habitat destruction and degradation as well as a multitude of other threats, 73,000 species of life (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles and microbes) on Earth were driven to extinction with the worldwide loss of many of these species and certainly including insects, birds, animals and fish now at catastrophic levels. Tragically, many additional species are now trapped in a feedback loop which will inevitably precipitate their extinction as well because of the way in which co-extinctions, localized extinctions and extinction cascades work once initiated and as has already occurred in almost all ecosystem contexts. See the (so far) five-part series Our Vanishing World. Have you seen a flock of birds of any size recently? A butterfly?

18. Separately from global species extinctions, Earth continued to experience a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a biological annihilation to highlight the current magnitude of Earths ongoing sixth major extinction event. Moreover, local population extinctions are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earths sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume. See Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines and Our Vanishing World: Wildlife.

19. Wildlife trafficking, worth up to $20 billion in 2019, is pushing many endangered species to the brink of extinction. Illegal wildlife products include jewelry, traditional medicine, clothing, furniture, and souvenirs, as well as some exotic pets, most of which are sold to unaware/unconcerned consumers in the West although China is heavily implicated too. See, for example, Stop Wildlife Trafficking.

20. 16,000,000 acres of pristine rainforest were cut or burnt down for purposes such as the following: acquiring timbers used in construction, clearing land to establish cattle farms so that many people can eat cheap hamburgers, clearing land to establish palm oil plantations so that many people can eat processed (including junk) foods based on this oil, clearing land to establish palm oil and soybean plantations so that some people can delude themselves that they are using a green biofuel in their car (when, in fact, these fuels generate a far greater carbon footprint than fossil fuels), mining (much of it illegal) for a variety of minerals (such as gold, silver, copper, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds), and logging to produce woodchips so that some people can buy cheap paper, including cheap toilet paper. One outcome of this destruction is that 40,000 tropical tree species are now threatened with extinction. See Our Vanishing World: Rainforests, Measuring the Daily Destruction of the Worlds Rainforests, Estimating the global conservation status of more than 15,000 Amazonian tree species and Half of Amazon Tree Species Face Extinction.

Another outcome is that the precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we. How long do we have? The tipping point is here, it is now. Professor Thomas E. Lovejoy and his fellow researcher Carlos Nobre elaborate this point: Bluntly put, the Amazon not only cannot withstand further deforestation but also now requires rebuilding as the underpinning base of the hydrological cycle if the Amazon is to continue to serve as a flywheel of continental climate for the planet and an essential part of the global carbon cycle. See Amazon Tipping Point: Last Chance for Action.

21. Vast quantities of soil were washed away as we destroyed the rainforests, and enormous quantities of both inorganic constituents (such as heavy metals like cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc) and organic pollutants (particularly synthetic chemicals in the form of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) were dumped into the soil as well, thus reducing its nutrients and killing the microbes and earthworms within it. We also contaminated enormous quantities of soil with radioactive waste. See Soil-net, Glyphosate effects on soil rhizosphere-associated bacterial communities and Disposing of Nuclear Waste is a Challenge for Humanity.

To briefly elaborate the evidence in relation to earthworms: Given recent reports of critical declines of microbes, plants, insects and other invertebrates, birds and other vertebrates, the situation pertaining to neglected earthworms was evaluated in an extensive investigation recently undertaken by Robert J. Blakemore. His research demonstrated an 83.3 percent decline in earthworms in agrichemical farms that is, those that use pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers compared with farms utilizing organic methods. Why? Because it is impossible to replace or artificially engineer the myriad beneficial processes and services freely provided by earthworms which includes extensive burrows in pastures enriched with soil organic matter that allow ingress of air & water and provide living space for other soil organisms. Moreover, given that ecological services overall have been given a median value of US$135 trillion per year, which is almost double the global economic GDP of around $75 trillion see Changes in the global value of ecosystem services and Valuing nature and the hidden costs of biodiversity loss Blakemore reaches an obvious conclusion: Persistence with failing chemical agriculture makes neither ecological nor economic sense. See Critical Decline of Earthworms from Organic Origins under Intensive, Humic SOM-Depleting Agriculture.

Given that this multifaceted destruction of the soil fundamentally threatens the global grain supply, when the ability to grow, store and distribute grains at scale is a defining element of civilization, as Professor Guy McPherson eloquently explains it: A significant decline in grain harvest will surely drive this version of civilization to the abyss and beyond. See Seven Distinct Paths to Loss of Habitat for Humans.

22. Despite an extensive and ongoing coverup by the Japanese government and nuclear corporations, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), vast amounts of radioactive waste were dumped into the biosphere from the TEPCO nuclear power plant at Fukushima in Japan including by discharge into the Pacific Ocean killing an incalculable number of fish and other marine organisms and indefinitely contaminating expanding areas of that ocean. See Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation, 2019 Annual Report Fukushima 8th Anniversary, Eight years after triple nuclear meltdown, Fukushima No. 1s water woes show no signs of ebbing and Fukushimas Three Nuclear Meltdowns Are Under Control Thats a Lie.

But the challenges to be overcome in safely handling and, ultimately, safely storing the radiation hazards (such as the three melted nuclear reactors and the spent fuel rods) and the radioactive waste from the Fukushima disaster are monumental, as touched on in this article outlining the 40-year plan that the Japanese government hopes will delude us into believing will deal with the many components of this perpetual radioactive nightmare. See Japan revises Fukushima cleanup plan, delays key steps.

In addition, one critical legacy of the U.S. militarys 67 secretive and lethal nuclear weapons tests on the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 is the eternally radioactive garbage left behind and now leaking into the Pacific Ocean. See The Pentagons Disastrous Radioactive Waste Dump in the Drowning Marshall Islands is Leaking into the Pacific Ocean.

Is other nuclear waste safely stored? Of course not! See, for example, NRC admits San Onofre Holtec nuclear waste canisters are all damaged, USAs Hanford nuclear site could suffer the same fate as Russias Mayak or worse and, for a more comprehensive report, The World Nuclear Waste Report 2019: Focus Europe.

Of course, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in 1986 continues to inflict extensive damage on the biosphere which you can learn more about from the research by Professor Kate Brown, author of Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future Chernobyl Radiation Cover-Ups & Deadly Truth, UN and Western countries covered up the facts on the huge health toll of Chernobyl radiation and Unreported Deaths, Child Cancer & Radioactive Meat: The Untold Story of Chernobyl as well as the investigatory work of Alison Katz of Independent WHO: Chernobyl Health Cover-Up, Lies by UN/WHO Exposed.

23. Human use of fossil fuels to power aircraft, shipping and vehicles as well as for industrial production and to generate electricity (among other purposes) released 10 billion metric tons (10 gigatons) of carbon dioxide into Earths biosphere, a 0.6% increase over 2018, with Chinas monstrous CO2 emissions for 2019 totaling 2.6% greater than the previous year. See Global Carbon Budget 2019.

As one measure of their contempt for the utterly inadequate goals of the Paris climate agreement, and with government approval, over 400 of the 746 companies on the Global Coal Exit List are still planning to expand their coal operations. If built, these projects in 60 countries would add over 579 GW to the global coal plant fleet, an increase of almost 29%. See Companies Driving the Worlds Coal Expansion Revealed: NGOs Release New Global Coal Exit List for Finance Industry and Proposed Coal Plants by Country.

24. 72 billion land animals (mainly chickens, ducks, pigs, rabbits, geese, turkeys, sheep, goats and beef cattle) were killed for food. In addition, between 37 and 120 billion fish were killed on commercial farms with another 2.7 trillion fish caught and killed in the wild. See How Many Animals Are Killed for Food Every Day?

Apart from that, more than 100 million animals were killed for laboratory purposes in the United States alone and there were other animal deaths in shelters, zoos and in blood sports. See How Many Animals Are Killed Each Year?

In addition, according to Humane Society International, about 100 million animals (particularly mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and rabbits) were bred and slaughtered in fur farms geared to supplying the fashion industry. In addition to farming, millions of wild animals were trapped and killed for fur, as were hundreds of thousands of seals. See How Many Animals are Killed Each Year?

25. Farming of animals for human consumption released 7.1 gigatons of CO2-equivalent into Earths atmosphere; this represented 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. About 44% of livestock emissions were in the form of methane (which was 44% of anthropogenic CH4 emissions), 29% as Nitrous Oxide (which was 53% of anthropogenic N2O emissions) and 27% as Carbon Dioxide (which was 5% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions). See GHG Emissions by Livestock.

26. Human use of fossil fuels and farming of animals released more than 3.2 million metric tons of (CO2 equivalent) nitrous oxide (N2O) into Earths atmosphere. See Nitrous oxide emissions.

27. Despite largely successful efforts by the elite-controlled IPCC to delude people into believing that the global mean temperature has increased by only 1.0 degree celsius, in fact, since the pre-industrial era (prior to 1750) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have already caused the global temperature to rise by about 1.73 degrees celsius. See How much warmer is it now?

Among a lengthy list of adverse outcomes, this has caused the melting of Arctic permafrost and undersea methane ice clathrates resulting in an incalculable quantity of methane being uncontrollably released into the atmosphere, including during 2019, with the quantity being released getting ever closer to exploding. See Anomalies of methane in the atmosphere over the East Siberian shelf: Is there any sign of methane leakage from shallow shelf hydrates?, 7,000 underground gas bubbles poised to explode in Arctic, Release of Arctic Methane May Be Apocalyptic, Study Warns and Understanding the Permafrost-Hydrate System and Associated Methane Releases in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

In fact, the methane threat is already so extreme that the forecast El Nio event for 2020 could be the catalyst to trigger huge methane releases from the Arctic Ocean precipitating human extinction this year. See Very early warning signal for El Nio in 2020 with a 4 in 5 likelihood and Extinction in 2020?

28. Glaciers and mountain ice fields whether located in Greenland or other regions of the far north, the Himalaya, at the Equator, in southern latitudes or Antarctica are all melting at unprecedented and accelerating rates, losing billions of tonnes of ice in 2019. For a discussion of the details and the implications of this, see Our Vanishing World: Glaciers.

29. The ongoing destruction of Earths oceans continued unabated and accelerated in key areas.

An incalculable amount of agricultural poisons, fossil fuels and other wastes was discharged into the ocean, adversely impacting life at all ocean depths see Staggering level of toxic chemicals found in creatures at the bottom of the sea, scientists say and generating ocean dead zones: regions that have too little oxygen to support marine organisms. See Our Planet Is Exploding With Marine Dead Zones.

In addition, however, another problem that has been getting insufficient attention is the result of the expanding impacts of the rapidly increasing levels of ocean acidification, ocean warming, ocean carbon flows and ocean plastics. Taken in isolation each of these changes clearly has negative consequences for the ocean. All these shifts taken together, however, result in a rapid and serious decline in ocean health and this, in turn, adversely impacts all species dependent on the ocean including fish, mammals and seabirds. Moreover, on top of these problems is the issue of oxygen availability given that oxygen in the air or water is of paramount importance to most living organisms. As the recently released report Ocean deoxygenation: Everyones problem. Causes, impacts, consequences and solutions describes in some detail, oxygen levels are currently declining across the ocean, not just in dead zones.

And to elaborate the plastics problem briefly: at least 8 million metric tons of plastic, of which 236,000 tons were microplastics, was discharged into the ocean. So severe is the problem that there are now five massive patches of plastic in the oceans around the world covering large swaths of the ocean; the plastic patch between California and Hawaii is the size of the state of Texas. See Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean and Plastics in the Ocean.

30. Earths fresh water and ground water was further depleted and contaminated.

The depletion is a primary outcome of the ongoing deforestation of the planet and is manifesting in several ways including as localized droughts, which are becoming increasingly common as a number of cities and regions around the world can attest. According to the World Resources Institute, half of the surface water in some countries mainly in Central Asia and the Middle East was depleted between 1984 and 2015, with agriculture using an average of 70% of the water. 36 countries are extremely water-stressed and water is now a major factor in conflict in at least 45 countries. See 7 Graphics Explain the State of the Worlds Water.

Separately from depletion, freshwater was contaminated by bacteria, viruses and household chemicals from faulty septic systems; hazardous wastes from abandoned and uncontrolled hazardous waste sites (of which there are over 20,000 in the USA alone); leaks from landfill items such as car battery acid, paint and household cleaners; the pesticides, herbicides and other poisons used on farms and home gardens; radioactive waste from nuclear tests (some of it stored in glaciers that are now melting); and the chemical contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in search of shale gas, for which about 750 chemicals and components, some extremely toxic and carcinogenic like lead and benzene, have been used. See Groundwater contamination, Groundwater drunk by BILLIONS of people may be contaminated by radioactive material spread across the world by nuclear testing in the 1950s and Fracking chemicals.

31. The longstanding covert military use of geoengineering spraying tens of millions of tons of highly toxic metals (including aluminium, barium and strontium) and toxic coal fly ash nanoparticulates (containing arsenic, chromium, thallium, chlorine, bromine, fluorine, iodine, mercury and radioactive elements) into the atmosphere from jet aircraft to weaponize the atmosphere and weather in order to enhance elite control of human populations, continued unchecked. Geoengineering is systematically destroying Earths ozone layer which blocks the deadly portion of solar radiation, UV-C and most UV-B, from reaching Earths surface as well as adversely altering Earths weather patterns and polluting its air, water and soil at incredible cost to the health and well-being of living organisms and the biosphere. See Geoengineering Watch, including Engineered Climate Cataclysm: Hurricane Harvey.

For a discussion of the military implications of geoengineering, see The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: Owning the Weather for Military Use.

And for discussions of the research, and implications of it, by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt and Dr. Stephenie Seneff (Senior Research Scientist at MIT), which considers damage to the biosphere and human health caused by the geoengineering release of a synthesized compound of nanonized aluminium and the poison glyphosate that creates a supertoxin that is generating a crisis of neurological diseases, see World-Renowned Doctor Addresses Climate Engineering Dangers, Dr Stephenie Seneff, Autism Explained: Synergistic Poisoning from Aluminum and Glyphosate and Extinction is Stalking Humanity: The Threats to Human Survival Accumulate.

32. The incredibly destructive 5G technology, which a vast number of scientists (currently totaling more than 188,000 individuals and organizations from 203 nations and territories: see International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space) are warning will have catastrophic consequences for life on Earth, is now being rapidly introduced without informed public consultation and despite ongoing protests around the world.

The following articles and videos will give you a solid understanding of key issues from the viewpoint of human and planetary well-being. See 5G Satellites: A Threat to all Life, 5G Danger: 13 Reasons 5G Wireless Technology Will Be a Catastrophe for Humanity, 5G Technology is Coming Linked to Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimers, and Death, 20,000 Satellites for 5G to be Launched Sending Focused Beams of Intense Microwave Radiation Over Entire Earth, Will 5G Cell Phone Technology Lead To Dramatic Population Reduction As Large Numbers Of Men Become Sterile?, The 5G Revolution: Millions of Human Guinea Pigs in Big Telecoms Global Experiment and 5G Apocalypse The Extinction Event.

33. As one outcome of our dysfunctional parenting model and political systems, fascism continued to rise around the world. See The Psychology of Fascism.

34. Despite the belief that we have the right to privacy, privacy (in any sense of the word) was ongoingly eroded in 2019 and is now effectively non-existent, particularly thanks to Alphabet (owner of Google). Taken together, Uber, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Tinder, Apple, Lyft, Foursquare, Airbnb, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter, Angry Birds have turned our computers and phones into bugs that are plugged in to a vast corporate-owned surveillance network. Where we go, what we do, what we talk about, who we talk to, and who we see everything is recorded and, at some point, leveraged for value. Moreover, given Googles integrated relationship with the U.S. government, the U.S. military, the CIA, and major U.S. weapons manufacturers, there isnt really anything you can do that isnt known by those who want to know it. In essence, Google is a powerful global corporation with its own political agenda and a mission to maximise profits for shareholders and it partly achieves this by expanding the surveillance programs of the national security state at the direction of the global elite. But Google isnt alone and it isnt just happening in the USA. See Everybodys Watching You: The Intercepts 2019 Technology Coverage, Googles Earth: How the Tech Giant Is Helping the State Spy on Us, the articles by John W. Whitehead on Surveillance and the documentary The Modern Surveillance State.

35. The right to free speech, accurate information and conscience-based nonviolent activism was ongoingly eroded in 2019 as efforts, by governments and corporations particularly, to control speech, information and political action accelerated. Whether this took the form of censorship, restrictions on access or violent acts directed against those whose views or actions were seen as dangerous or wrong, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch and other organizations documented an endless series of setbacks for free speech and political activity in a wide variety of countries around the world with individuals and journalists imprisoned for telling the truth, nonviolent activists assaulted and killed, critics silenced by defamation laws or disappearance, and the closure of newspapers, television stations and the internet to prevent rapid promulgation of information, among other infringements. See, for example, Free Speech, The supply chain of violence, Environmental activist murders double in 15 years and Enemies of the State? How governments and businesses silence land and environmental defenders.

36. Believing that we know better than evolution, and following the birth in 2018 of the first gene-edited babies in China see Why we are not ready for genetically designed babies and Chinas Golem Babies: There is Another Agenda in 2019, further human gene-editing was done as well as gene-editing experiments intended to explore possibilities for more complex gene-editing of humans. Why? According to the authors of one report: To extend the frontier of genome editing and enable the radical redesign of mammalian genomes (emphasis added). This experiment allowed for the simultaneous editing of >10,000 loci in human cells. See Enabling large-scale genome editing by reducing DNA nicking.

Needless to say, at least some responsible scientists are well aware of the possibly horrific consequences of this technology in the hands of those without ethics and are calling for a moratorium of at least five years on heritable human gene editing to allow time to engage in proactive, rather than reactive, discussions about the future of such technology. Of course, despite the calls for caution, some researchers are forging ahead. See NIH Director on Human Gene Editing: We Must Never Allow Our Technology to Eclipse Our Humanity.

37. Incalculable amounts of waste of every conceivable kind including antibiotic waste, military waste, nuclear waste, nanowaste and genetically engineered organisms, including gene drives (or mutagenic chain reactions) were released into Earths biosphere, with an endless series of adverse consequences for life. See Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?

Not content to dump our junk on Earth, an incalculable amount of junk was also dumped in Space which already contains 100 trillion items of orbiting junk. See Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe? and Space Junk: Tracking & Removing Orbital Debris.

38. Ongoing visible, invisible and utterly invisible violence against children see Why Violence? and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice ensured that more people will grow up accepting (and quite powerless to challenge) our dysfunctional and violent world, as described above.

39. The global elites corporate media, schooling and film/television industries continued to distract vast numbers of people from reality with an endless barrage of propaganda respectively labeled, depending on the context, news, education and entertainment ensuring that most people remain oblivious to our predicament, devoid of the capacities to investigate, comprehend and analyze this predicament as well as their own role in it, and to respond to this predicament powerfully. See, for example, Medias Deafening Silence on Latest from WikiLeaks about the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fake Douma Report Blaming Syria, Do We Want School or Education? and The Most Important Free Press Stories of 2019.

40. Finally, as a direct outcome of these last two points but most tragically of all, virtually all of the individuals who self-identify as activists continued to waste their time begging the global elite (or their agents) to fix one or other of our crises starkly illustrated by those thousands of climate activists who traveled to Madrid, mostly using fossil fuels, and then complained when the outcome was, predictably, pitiful: see the powerless civil society Statement on COP25 despite the overwhelming evidence that the global elite will not take action to fix any of these crises. See Why Activists Fail. And, for more detail in two key contexts, see The Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why? and The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War.

Moreover, even if it was inclined, the elite is now powerless to avert extinction given that, if we are to have any chance given the advanced nature of the crisis and the incredibly short timeframe, we must plan intelligently to mobilize a substantial proportion of the human population in a strategically-focused effort. Nothing else can work.

Highlights of 2019

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Human extinction now imminent and inevitable? A report on the state of planet earth - NationofChange