While elite control over human societies started to gather pace with the Neolithic revolution 12,000 years ago, it was rapidly accelerated with the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years later.
Robert J. Burrowes
Since that time, ‘ordinary’ human beings like you and me have fought an unending sequence of battles to defend ourselves against these ongoing efforts by elites to kill or control us and capture the bulk of Earth’s resources for their own use.
We have had to fight off elites in a vast range of contexts: Pharaohs and Emperors politically, the Popes and other Vatican officials religiously, the City of London Corporation and other financial elites economically, monarchs and political elites nationally, and now a Global Elite that exercises enormous control technologically, economically, politically, militarily and otherwise over the entire world. For a fuller explanation of this point, see ‘Why Activists Fail’.
CARACAS, May 12 2022 (IPS)* – The voracious search for gold in southern Venezuela, practiced by thousands of illegal miners under the protection of various armed groups, represents the greatest threat today to the lives of indigenous peoples, their habitat and their cultures, according to their organizations and human rights defenders. | En español
(UN News)* — Investigations must be held into the actions of the Israeli security forces, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Saturday [14 May 2022], calling for accountability and an end to impunity.
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Maisa Abu Ghazaleh | The funeral of Shirin Abu Akleh in Jerusalem
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Her appeal comes in the wake of the killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, who was fatally shot on Wednesday while covering an Israeli raid in Jenin, West Bank.
The veteran Palestinian-American journalist was buried in East Jerusalem on Friday and huge crowds turned out for her funeral.
The High Commissioner issued a statement saying she was following “with deep distress” the events in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
MADRID, May 13 2022 (IPS)* – Please do not say you were not aware that the world produces enough food to feed all human beings on Earth, while nearly double the combined European Union’s population go to bed hungry… every single night.
Every year, 570 million tons of food are wasted at the household level people. Global food waste accounts for 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS
South Africa and other countries that have abstained from voting against Russia at the United Nations General Assembly in response to the war in Ukraine face intense international criticism. In South Africa, the domestic criticism has been extraordinarily shrill, and often clearly racialized.
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It is frequently assumed that abstention means that South Africa is in support of the Russian invasion, and this is either due to corrupt relations between Russian and South African elites, or nostalgia for support given to the anti-apartheid struggle by the Soviet Union, or both.
Nairobi, May 13 2022 (IPS)* – Children washing clothes in rivers, begging on the streets, hawking, walking for kilometres in search of water and firewood, their tiny hands competing with older, experienced hands to pick coffee or tea, or as child soldiers are familiar sights in Africa and Asia.
A child beneficiary holding a drawing portraying domestic violence, at the Centre for Youth Empowerment and Civic Education, Lilongwe, Malawi which partnered with the ILO/IPEC to support the national action plan aimed at combating child labour. Credit: Marcel Crozet/ILO
(UN NEWS)* — Humanity is “at a crossroads” when it comes to managing drought and accelerating ways of slowing it down must happen “urgently, using every tool we can”, said the head of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on Thursday [12 May 2022], calling for a global commitment to support drought preparedness and resilience.
Through its newly published Drought in Numbers report, released in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, during the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15), UNCCD’s compendium of drought-related information and data is helping inform negotiations for the final outcomes of the conference when it closes on 20 May.
(UN News)* — The top UN official in the Middle East has urged Israel to halt all settlement activity following the latest approval given to new construction in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, announced on Thursday [12 May 2022].
UN News | The Palestinian Flag in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
“I condemn today’s decision by Israeli authorities to advance plans for over 4,000 housing units in settlements in the occupied West Bank,” Tor Wennesland, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said in a statement.
Israel’s Higher Planning Council, which approved the move, also retroactively legalized two outposts: Mitzpeh Dani and Givat Oz VeGaon, according to media reports.
Pope Francis has suggested to Italian daily Corriere Della Sera that the “barking of NATO at the door of Russia” provoked the military operation in Ukraine and alluded that countries should not supply Ukraine with more arms. Specifically, the Pope said that Russia has “an anger that I don’t know whether it was provoked but was perhaps facilitated” by NATO’s unrelenting expansion towards the Eurasian Giant.
– This year didn’t start well. In January, off the coast of Thailand, thousands of litres of oil leaked into the sea from an underwater pipeline courtesy of Chevron’s subsidiary. The resulting spill blackened waters and beaches, killing local wildlife and threatening the livelihoods of communities reliant on the sea.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 