Accra, May 10 2022 (IPS)* – “It feels like yesterday when I was deceived by one man who claimed to be a travelling agent. He promised me a work opportunity and a good salary,” says 25-year-old Cissy, as she prefers to be called. “As a young lady coming from an average family who really needed help, I fell for his lies.”
Caught in a web of deceit, a human trafficking survivor from Ghana tells her story. Credit: Getty Images
Cissy says although she was a bit sceptical about the offer and afraid of her destination country, the so-called travel agent convinced her that she had nothing to worry about.
We have a serious debt problem, but solutions such as the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” are not the future we want. It’s time to think outside the box for some new solutions.
Ellen Brown
In ancient Mesopotamia, it was called a Jubilee. When debts at interest grew too high to be repaid, the slate was wiped clean. Debts were forgiven, the debtors’ prisons were opened, and the serfs returned to work their plots of land.
This could be done because the king was the representative of the gods who were said to own the land, and thus was the creditor to whom the debts were owed. The same policy was advocated in the Book of Leviticus, though it is unclear to what extent this biblical Jubilee was implemented.
That sort of across-the-board debt forgiveness can’t be done today because most of the creditors are private lenders. Banks, landlords and pension fund investors would go bankrupt if their contractual rights to repayment were simply wiped out. But we do have a serious debt problem, and it is largely structural.
Governments have delegated the power to create money to private banks, which create most of the circulating money supply as debt at interest.
WASHINGTON DC, May 11 2022 (IPS)* – Sri Lanka is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis. Faced with a shortage of foreign exchange and defaulting on its foreign debt repayment, the country is unable to pay for its food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities.
World Bank, Washington DC. | The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively.
(UN News)* — Alcohol is increasingly being marketed across borders, with young people and heavy drinkers particularly targeted, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a new report on Tuesday [10 May 2022] that calls for more effective regulation.
The study outlines how the digital revolution in marketing and promotion is being used to advertise alcohol across national borders, and in many cases regardless of social, economic, or cultural environments.
Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont) describes himself as a democratic socialist. When asked to explain in more detail what he means by this, he says that he believes that the United States would benefit from having a social system more like those found in the Scandinavian countries.
The Danish Political and Social System
John Scales Avery
I have lived and worked in Denmark for the last half century, teaching at the University of Copenhagen until my retirement, and I am married to a Danish wife.
This gives me some knowledge of the way that the social system works in Denmark, and I will try to describe it for you.
Denmark has a market economy, with private corporations, but it also has cooperatives, owned by the users. The main thing that distinguishes Denmark from a country like the United States is the very high and steeply progressive rate of taxation. Because rich people are taxed so extremely heavily, it is difficult for anyone to become very rich.
10 May 2022 (FAO)* — They are in the lotion that keeps our skin smooth or the herbal tea we sip on Sunday afternoons. They are waiting to be drizzled on salads or tucked into the daily food supplements we take. Wild plants are scattered throughout our everyday existence offering us with food, oxygen and medicine.
(UN News)* — The 15th session of the Conference of Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), kicked-off on Monday [9 May 2022], in the Ivorian “economic” capital.
UNDP Lao PDR/Tock Soulasen Phomm | Often, vulnerable communities are situated in areas of poor or marginal soils, which increases the pressure for expansion of agricultural lands.
Against the backdrop of a UNCCD warning that up to 40 per cent of all ice-free land has already degraded, threatening dire consequences for climate, biodiversity, and livelihoods, world leaders are meeting in Abidjan under the theme of “Land, Life. Legacy: From scarcity to prosperity”.
“We are faced with a crucial choice,” Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told the participants.
Geneva, 9 May 2022 (WMO)* – There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
People require humanitarian assistance, livelihood support, jobs, and long-term investment to help solve the crisis.
WFP/Arete/Andrew Quilty
KABUL, (WFP)* – 19.7 million people, almost half of Afghanistan’s population, are facing acute hunger according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis conducted in January and February 2022 by Food Security and Agriculture Cluster partners, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and many NGOs.
With few ways to earn income on the border, many young men turn to the dangerous but well-paid work of people smuggling.
Graffiti on the US-Mexico border wall | Mike Hardiman/Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved
Advisory: this story contains depictions of violence.
5 May 2022 (openDemocracy)* — I have worked doing a lot of things. I’ve installed internet cables and electricity. Done construction work and sold clothing downtown. One time I even helped tear down a hill with one of those huge machines that you use to make holes.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 