Like many people who have struggled to understand why human beings are driving the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history, which now threatens imminent human extinction as well, over many decades I have explored the research and efforts of a great many activists and scholars to secure this understanding.
Robert J. Burrowes,
However, with many competing ideas from the fields of politics, economics, sociology and psychology, among others, this understanding has proved elusive.
Nevertheless, I have reached an understanding that I find compelling: Human beings are driving the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history because of the disintegrated nature of the human mind.
While the expression ‘mental disintegration’ has been used in a number of contexts previously, for the purpose of my discussion in this article I am going to redefine it, explain how it originates, describe several ways in which it manifests behaviorally and the profoundly dysfunctional outcomes this generates, and suggest what we can do about it.
At a time when Muslims globally are observing the holy month of Ramadan, more than half the population in Gaza depends on the international community for food aid, the director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on Monday [13 May 2019], citing a “near ten-fold increase” in need.*
ECHO/Fadwa Baroud | More than half the population of Gaza depends on food aid from the international community. (file 2010)
According to UNRWA, it must secure an additional $60 million by June to continue providing food to more than one million Palestine refugees in Gaza, including some 620,000 “abject poor” who cannot cover their basic food needs and are surviving on $1.6 per day.
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The funds are also needed to cover the severely challenged 390,000 “absolute poor”, who survive on about $3.5 per day.
13 May 2019 (UNRWA)* — At a time when Muslims around the world are observing the holy month of Ramadan, often characterized by the festive nature of its Iftars, in Gaza, more than half the population depends on food aid from the international community.
Donald Trump is the duly elected President of the USA — elected by the American People according to well-defined electoral procedures. It is currently irrelevant whether those procedures are in any way in question. They have yet to be revised — if that is feasible and desired by the American People.
The Swedish prosecutor’s office said it would shortly request Assange be detained in his absence on probable cause for an allegation of rape and that it would issue a European arrest warrant – the process under which his extradition would be sought.
Swedish Vice Chief Prosecutor Persson announces decision about preliminary investigation against WikiLeaks founder Assange in Stockholm | Photo: Reuters | Poto from teleSUR.
13 May 2019 (teleSUR)* — Sweden’s state prosecutor said on Monday she would reopen an investigation into a rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and seek his extradition from Britain.
Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson told a news conference she would continue and conclude a preliminary investigation that was dropped in 2017 without charges being brought as Assange had taken refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
10 May 2019 (openDemocracy)* — In a land of former vast pastures, where green still stands for northern secession from a shrivelled up south, Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini – an erstwhile separatist and now a nationalist – is the most effective communicator we’ve seen in a long time.
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His weapons of mass distraction are deadly. His every tweet – one shot one kill. You’d call him a chameleon if he weren’t actually dangerous.
Geneva, 10 May 2019 (Norwegian Refugee Council)* — A record 41.3 million people are displaced inside their own countries because of conflict and violence, according to a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
Displaced families receive household items in North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photo: Norwegian Refugee Council/Martin Lukongo.
The number of people living in internal displacement worldwide as of the end of 2018 is the highest it has ever been, according to the Global Report on Internal Displacement, launched today at the United Nations in Geneva.
This is an increase of more than a million since the end of 2017 and two-thirds more than the global number of refugees.
Routes traditionally used to escort trafficking victims out of Africa have shifted to others in Nigeria, Algeria and Turkey
Researchers said police efforts to link illicit financial transactions to smuggling humans across Africa are still in their early stages. | Photo: Reuters | Photo from teleSUR.
10 May 2019 (teleSUR)* — Human traffickers in east and north Africa are re-strategizing their business models to avoid detection, a new report from the Research and Evidence Facility (a European Union affiliate) said Friday [10 May 2019].
According to the study, routes which traditionally were used to escort trafficking victims out of Africa have shifted to others in Nigeria, Algeria and Turkey.
10 May 2019 — A seeming paradise, life on the Pacific islands is threatened by climate change and extreme weather, frustrated by remoteness and a lack of educational and economic opportunities. Secretary-General António Guterres begins a visit to the region this weekend, where he will speak to people living on some of the islands and see for himself how the UN is helping to mitigate some of the biggest issues.
UNDP Samoa | Children in a Samoan village gathered at a safe location during a disaster drill.
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Simona Marinescu is the UN Resident Coordinator for the 28 islands that make up Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 