Controlavirus Lockdown A Two-Piece And A Biscuit Apocalypse

nbcdfw |  Doctors at Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth say stress from the coronavirus pandemic may be linked to the six cases of child abuse they saw this week, one resulting in death.

Dr. Jayme Coffman, medical director of the CARE team at Cook Children’s, said all six cases were related to physical abuse. 

They typically consult about eight a month.

“Thursday night, we had one child admitted with unfortunately, life-threatening injuries, which they succumbed to, as well as four other children in the emergency department at the same time who were treated and released,” Coffman said. “It was like, we have to reach out to the community.”

Coffman said all of the children were 6 years old or younger. Though she said they could not say with full certainty the impacts of COVID-19 motivated the abuse, “it’s hard to think that it’s just coincidental”. 

“There’s no way for us to directly link that, but that’s the concern – are these families under more stress related to financial issues, whether it’s lost jobs or concerns for their jobs?” she said. “We also saw similar types of things happen during the recession where, in our trauma department, the most common cause of trauma death in children was motor vehicle collisions. During the recession, that changed to abusive head trauma, and I don’t want to see that again.”

Shellie McMillon, chief program officer at the Alliance For Children, described the spike in cases at Cook Children’s as heartbreaking.

“One thing we know is that educators, our school professionals are the largest group of people who report suspected child abuse and that makes sense. They’re usually with kids a good portion of the day,” McMillon said. “Now that kids are not in school, they’re at home – a lot of times, they don’t have that, what we call a trusted adult, to maybe tell about what’s going on.”

McMillon said one of the crucial things parents or caretakers should keep in mind if they are stressed is to not hesitate to ask for help.

Open Source SARS-CoV2 Responses Around the World: Top Secret Response in America

mintpressnews |  As the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention has been given to the federal government’s decision to classify top-level meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily “behind the scenes” on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion of cases.

The classification of coronavirus planning meetings was first covered by Reuters, which noted that the decision to classify was “an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion.” Reuters further noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had “resisted” the classification order, which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by Robert O’Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of his predecessor John Bolton.

Following this order, HHS officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis by limiting participation and information sharing.

It has since been speculated that the decision was made to prevent potential leaks of information by stifling participation and that aspects of the planned response would cause controversy if made public, especially given that the decision to classify government meetings on coronavirus response negatively impacted HHS’ ability to respond to the crisis.

After the classification decision was made public, a subsequent report in Politico revealed that not only is the National Security Council managing the federal government’s overall response but that they are doing so in close coordination with the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military. It states specifically that “NSC officials have been coordinating behind the scenes with the intelligence and defense communities to gauge the threat and prepare for the possibility that the U.S. government will have to respond to much bigger numbers—and soon.”

Tard Bidnis Moratorium: HandWashing Whooey To Outlawing Large Gatherings

Michigan |  Community Mitigation Strategies Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS)

Interim Recommendations for COVID-19 Community Mitigation Strategies

(PDF Download of this document)

Community Mitigation Strategies - Spanish

Community Mitigation Strategies - Arabic

March 11, 2020

[The most up-to-date guidance on these and other mitigation strategies is available at www.Michigan.gov/coronavirus. This matter is rapidly evolving and MDHHS may provide updated guidance.]

Community mitigation strategies are crucial to slowing the transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Michigan, particularly before a vaccine or treatment becomes available. These strategies provide essential protections to individuals at risk of severe illness and to health care and other critical infrastructure workforces. Preventing a sudden, sharp increase in the number of people infected with COVID-19 will help minimize disruptions to daily life and limit the demand on health care providers and facilities.

These recommended strategies apply at the individual, organizational, and community levels. They apply to businesses, workplaces, schools, community organizations, health care institutions, and individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and health profiles. Everyone has some measure of responsibility to help limit the spread of this disease. Even individuals who are healthy can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 to others.

Michiganders have been preparing for COVID-19 for weeks, and all individuals should continue to take the following basic personal-hygiene measures to prevent the spread of the virus:

• wash your hands often with soap and water or use hand sanitizer;
• avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth with unwashed hands;
• cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing or sneezing;
• avoid handshakes;
• avoid contact with sick people who are sick; and
• stay home when you are sick

metrotimes |  Just days after recommending events of more than 100 people be canceled to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered an official ban on all large gatherings.

Executive order 2020-5 prohibits all gatherings of people of 250 people or more starting at 5 p.m. on Friday, March 13, and ending at 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 5. The executive order also closes all K-12 school buildings to students from Monday, March 16, until Sunday, April 5. Child care facilities will remain open.

Violating the ban is a misdemeanor offense.

Boycott Whole Foods. And Stop Using Amazon

Amazon paid $0 in taxes on $11 billion in annual profits. But it asks workers to “donate” their paid leave to others who are sick.

Workers and taxpayers are expected to be generous. Corporate CEOs—even during a pandemic—can be as stingy as they want. https://t.co/xsJLnxgVSa

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 14, 2020

Poor During A Pandemic: Harvard FGLI's A Microcosm

thecrimson |  Most days, Jordan H. Barton ’23 wakes up in his Canaday dorm to a 9:30 a.m. alarm.

On Tuesday, though, he woke up earlier. His phone was ringing as he began receiving a flood of texts informing him Harvard College would require undergraduates to vacate campus by Sunday to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

“To wake up in the morning and receive what can only be called an eviction notice is something that only invalidates what the school’s mission has stated since they’ve been inducted,” Barton said.

Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana wrote to Barton and more than 6,000 other undergraduates on Tuesday morning that campus would not reopen after spring break, which stretches from March 14 to 22.

Within hours, the email sent students scrambling to pack up all their belongings and make plans to vacate. But Barton and others say it hit one group of undergraduates particularly hard: first-generation and low-income students, many of whom depend upon Harvard for food, housing, and stability.

“They've been evicted from their stability, they've been evicted from their homes, they’ve been evicted from their ability to live comfortably and safely,” Barton, who is an FGLI student, said. 

“There's already enough concern, and now they're concerned about being able to get home and have stable housing and food.”

Some students must ship or store their on-campus belongings without financial support from Harvard. Others who planned to stay on campus must now book unexpected flights home and accrue additional costs. And those who rely on term-time employment must confront additional financial concerns as they lose their primary sources of income.

Nicholas T. “Nick” Wyville ’20 called the College’s announcement “outrageous,” adding that he believes it will weigh most heavily on him and his fellow FGLI students.

“Harvard prides itself on having a massive student body that is a large percentage on financial aid,” Wyville said. “I think that they forget that those are the same students who often come from home situations that are uncomfortable.”

Sex, Religion, Money - Jim Bakker's Lil'Pimphand Still In The Game

abcnews |  Two state attorneys general ordered a prominent televangelist to stop peddling an alleged coronavirus elixir on his show. 

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Jim Bakker for misrepresentations about the effectiveness of "Silver Solution" as a treatment for coronavirus. 

Schmitt's lawsuit came a week after the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a cease-and-desist order to Bakker, ordering him to stop promoting the supplement as a COVID-19 treatment.

 During a Feb. 12 episode of the "The Jim Bakker Show," guest Sherrill Sellman claimed the so-called Silver Solution was able to eliminate some strains of coronavirus. 

Asked if the Silver Solution would be effective against COVID-19, specifically, Sellman replied, "Let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it's been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and it has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours." 

According to the World Health Organization, there are no current cures or direct treatments for the novel coronavirus, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there's no known cure for other coronavirus variants that cause SARS and MERS. 

"Your show's segment may mislead consumers as to the effectiveness of the Silver Solution product in protecting against the current outbreak," the the New York cease-and-desist order said. "Any representation on the Jim Bakker Show that its Silver Solution products are effective at combating and/or treating the 2019 novel coronavirus violates New York law."

SARS-CoV2 Situation Report From Italy

What China Had To Do To Reign In SARS-CoV2

Russia: Handling Bidnis and Holding Coronavirus Down

Meduza |  The number of COVID-19 cases detected per day outside of China has long surpassed the recorded infection rate within Chinese borders. Nonetheless, since 2020 began, Russia has reported only four confirmed cases of the disease. Only one of those cases was found in Moscow, the second-largest city in Europe after Istanbul. Meanwhile, in Italy, France, and Germany, there are currently 3,089, 337, and 444 confirmed cases, respectively. This is despite the fact that the number of passengers who have traveled to those countries from China by air is comparable to the number traveling to Russia. While it’s impossible to say with certainty how this disparity arose, it is possible to offer a few potential explanations. Whether you believe them is up to you.

Hypothesis 1: Russia closed its borders fast enough that almost nobody infected with the virus could get in

The Russian government first increased its control over individuals arriving in the country from China on January 23, 2020, but it did not limit any means of transport until January 31. On that day, Russian officials closed off direct trains from Moscow to Beijing and closed its ground border with China to foot traffic and automobiles.

By then, 9,923 cases of COVID-19 had already been registered worldwide, both in China and in Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Even in Finland, which has a very small interchange of transit passengers with China and a large one with Russia, had registered cases. All this means that at least in theory, the new coronavirus had every opportunity to enter Russia before transportation to and from China was limited. In fact, it did just that: The first two infections recorded in Russia were detected on January 31 in two Chinese citizens traveling as tourists.

SARS-CoV2: A Biological Referendum On Competing Political Cultures and Economies

WaPo | On Friday, the Iranian government finally began to acknowledge what the world already knows: the covid-19 virus has hit that country extremely hard and it’s likely to get much worse.

In a televised news conference, the spokesman for Iran’s coronavirus task force announced that 4,700 cases of the virus have now been confirmed, including more than 1,200 in the previous 24 hours. The official death count stands at 124.

The ways in which key leaders’ responses differ from those of ordinary citizens tell you everything you need to know about the deepening gulf between the Iranian people and their government and how it might contribute to the spread of the disease.

The sudden sense of alarm contrasts starkly with how Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other officials initially downplayed the threat.

In the early stages of the virus story, officials in Tehran were worried about turnout in the Feb. 11 parliamentary elections. They feared that low voter turnout — which, as anticipated, was aggravated by the Iranian military’s shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger jet in January — would further undermine the notion of public support for the system. Authorities prioritized their political concerns over the risk of the virus spreading.

Now, though, the news that an increasing number of ministers and lawmakers have tested positive for the virus — two of whom have already died from it — has shattered what was left, if anything, of the government’s credibility.

“Today, the country is engaged in a biological battle,” Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said. “We will prevail in the fight against this virus, which might be the product of an American biological [attack], which first spread in China and then to the rest of the world.”

Israel's SARS-CoV2 Response Also Worth Microscopic Scrutiny

i24News |  More than 100,000 Israelis have been ordered into self-quarantine so far

Israeli health officials have confirmed that 17 people have been diagnosed with the deadly coronavirus. 

The man being treated for the virus is reportedly from the northern town of Tiberias and was admitted to the hospital Thursday afternoon. 

More than 100,000 Israelis have been ordered into self-quarantine since the outbreak was first reported in early February. 

Meanwhile, Israel has temporarily barred visitors traveling from a growing list of countries including France,  Switzerland, Spain, Germany and Austria.

Jerusalem had previously announced bans on Asian nations such as China, South Korea, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam when spread of the novel coronavirus first began to make headlines in early February.

Amazon Loaded For Bear With Fake Coronavirus Remedies

gizmodo |  It’s no secret that Amazon’s marketplace is overrun with garbage—literal or otherwise—and that the company struggles and often fails to manage its own massive marketplace that lumps legitimately trustworthy brands and products in with third-party sellers. Amazon’s latest challenge appears to be regulating a burgeoning market for products feeding off of flu and coronavirus fears—including products that claim to “kill” them. 

In an email obtained by CNBC, Amazon has been contacting third-party merchants about products that make extraordinary and unapproved claims relating to coronavirus, as a strain that originated in Wuhan, China continues to spread globally. In that email, Amazon informs a seller that the company removed from its store an item “identified as a face mask or related product that makes unapproved medical marketing claims regarding coronavirus or the flu.”

The email cites federal regulations on products making unapproved medical claims in their marketing and further states that its own rules bar “the listing or sale of products that are marketed as unapproved or unregistered medical devices.” According to CNBC, users have also posted about receiving these warnings in seller groups on Facebook. 

Disturbingly, CNBC also found multiple live listings for disinfectants that were still up on Amazon’s marketplace as of this writing, several of which claimed the item “kills coronavirus.” Moreover, Gizmodo found that simply searching “kills coronavirus” or “kill coronavirus” turns up numerous products with these claims in their titles, so they’re not exactly needles in a haystack.

Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the seller notice, its ongoing response to the products, and items that remained on its site at the time of publication.

Charles Lieber: Betcha Han Elite's Also Bust Down "Two Eggrolls and a Tsingtao"

NationalReview |  U.S. government agencies including the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health dole out more than $150 billion in research grants each year. University scientists rely on that money to fund their labs. Because grants can make or break a career, professors spend an inordinate amount of time navigating the funding labyrinth. A 2007 study found that researchers spend 42 percent of their time writing grant proposals and ensuring compliance with the conditions of the grants they receive. Stringent regulations on everything from affirmative action to animal welfare place a needless burden on scientists, reducing their productivity. Since any given proposal has a 20 percent chance of being approved, researchers devote 170 days to proposal-writing for every grant they’re awarded.

In addition to the administrative burden, American funding programs push researchers toward low-risk, low-reward studies. Since papers are evaluated by the number of citations they generate, professors tend to focus on questions that guarantee a meaningful result, rather than taking risks on novel research that might fail. Though the latter is more likely to deliver high gains in the long run, delayed recognition of breakthrough research means that scientists in new fields may have to wait years before they see results, which reduces their ability to attract funding in the interim. A 2016 paper found that “funding decisions which rely on traditional bibliometric indicators . . . may be biased against ‘high risk/high gain’ novel research.” As a result, American scientists tinker at the margins of existing research but rarely attempt breakthroughs. This partially explains the general slowdown of scientific progress over the past few decades.

Enter China. In 2008, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) announced the Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), which was designed to recruit 2,000 high-quality foreign professionals within five to ten years. By 2017, the program had lured 7,000 foreigners — more than triple its target. As part of a broad push to achieve global technological supremacy, China has committed 15 percent of its GDP — equivalent to $2.1 trillion in 2019 — to human-capital development.

 The TTP doesn’t require grant applications or regulatory compliance, either. Faced with a choice between a Byzantine funding apparatus at home and instant cash from China, more than 3,000 university researchers have opted for the latter. In return for that money, the CCP requires its researchers to turn over intellectual property to which they have access, as well as to sign agreements preventing them from disclosing the results of work conducted under Chinese patronage. Some scientists have concluded that those stipulations are worthwhile. And in a perverse sense, it is true that the Chinese system provides a great deal of academic freedom: no applications, no progress reports, no environmental standards. In a few cases, TTP-linked academics have even opened “shadow labs” in China that conduct research identical to what they are doing domestically. The effect is a wholesale transfer of American intellectual capital and property to our largest geostrategic foe.

Thank GAWD Swami Chakrapani Maharaj Doing His Part to Ease Human Population Pressures

theweek |  Cow dung, cow urine and yagya to combat coronavirus says Hindutva group chief. Chakrapani is propagating the use of loban for the killing of ‘negative bacteria’.

A completely home-grown cure for the coronavirus is being propagated by a Hindutva group which has garnered attention of late.

The cure— propagated by Chakrapani Maharaj, national president of the Akhil Bharti Hindu Mahasabha calls for a ban on beef sale throughout the country with immediate effect. “All slaughter-houses must be immediately shut down and in fact, meat of all kind should be avoided”, he said.

The other components of the ‘cure’ consist of the burning of gum resin (loban) set on cow dung. The gum resin must come from the Indian bdellium tree (common names include gugal, gugul, or Mukul myrrh).

"The ensuing smoke from this process should be spread through every room of one’s home with chants of 'Om Namah Shivay', the Gayatri Mantra or the Mahamritunjaya chant," he added.

Loban is known for its medical fumigation properties. However, Chakrapani is propagating its use for the killing of ‘negative bacteria’. “Its fragrance will ensure positive energy in homes”, he said.

He further adds that instead of lighting incense sticks at homes, Hindus must convert to lighting loban. In addition, the must conduct havan (offering of prayers in front of a fire) regularly.

“I am already performing havans for the well being of the country. This will save the entire world”, he told THE WEEK.

Why Doesn't America Protect Its Children From Predators?

rutherford |  “Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”—John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

There can only be one winner emerging from this year’s Super Bowl LIV showdown between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, but the biggest losers will be the hundreds of young girls and boys—some as young as 9 years old—who will be bought and sold for sex during the course of the big game.

It’s common to refer to this evil practice, which has become the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns as child sex trafficking, but what we’re really talking about is rape.

Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.

It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators, either.

According to a USA Today investigative report, “boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).”

Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry.

In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day.

On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period.

It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.

Child rape has become Big Business in America.

This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.

Han Ruling Elite Stuck Between N-1 and N+1 Hardplace - WEE PHUK YU!!!

Quartz |   In the past several weeks, a biting joke has been widely shared on Chinese social media: The new coronavirus is patriotic, so it goes, because it infected only one of China’s 33 provinces and municipalities before venturing outside of the mainland.

Then, people this week woke up to official announcements of a shocking surge of confirmed new infections, and of the virus’s spread to more than a dozen provinces and municipalities. As of Thursday, there are more than 550 confirmed cases, 17 people have died and Wuhan, where the outbreak started, is on lockdown.

Beyond mainland China, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the US and Hong Kong have confirmed cases, and more countries could report cases as China’s biggest travel season gets underway: Chinese Lunar New Year.

People are panicking. When a new disease is discovered, it’s undeniably hard to identify and inform the public about it quickly. Yet China is making the problem harder to solve, even though it should have learned from the SARS outbreak in 2003, when the government admitted to underreporting cases in the initial stages. Nearly 800 people died in that epidemic, which saw desperate people emptying shops for Chinese herbal medicines and vinegar that would turn out to be ineffective.

That frenzy was driven by the lack of accurate information and rumors because of a vacuum in top-down communication. The idea of wei wen, or maintaining stability in China’s political system made “conceal as many as possible and keep it at the local level” a natural immediate response to a crisis like this. That approach to information might work on other kinds of issues, but not when it comes to a potential epidemic. Trying to control information in that case becomes a kind of shackle in the face of something that can progress and change swiftly beyond one’s control.

Of course, there is one thing that’s different than 17 years ago: WeChat. A tool connecting more than a billion users in China should be one the government can use to help keep the public up-to-date, and to debunk false information. Yet it too has become a hotbed for both rumors and information suppression amid China’s broader regime of online censorship honed over the past decade. Already, a focus of social media discussion about the current virus crisis has been on how hard it’s been to get correct information, and whether officials were slow to respond in the early stages, at least in Wuhan. While some international public health experts have commended China’s information sharing as superior to 2003 in the face of a quickly evolving situation, others have expressed doubt that the country is being as transparent as it should be.

 

How Memes got Weaponized: (Why You Can't Have Anything Nice Anymore)

technologyreview | Memes come off as a joke, but some people are starting to see them as the serious threat they are. In October 2016, a friend of mine learned that one of his wedding photos had made its way into a post on a right-wing message board. The picture had been doctored to look like an ad for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and appeared to endorse the idea of drafting women into the military. A mutual friend of ours found the image first and sent him a message: “Ummm, I saw this on Reddit, did you make this?”

This was the first my friend had heard of it. He hadn’t agreed to the use of his image, which was apparently taken from his online wedding album. But he also felt there was nothing he could do to stop it.

So rather than poke the trolls by complaining, he ignored it and went on with his life. Most of his friends had a laugh at the fake ad, but I saw a huge problem. As a researcher of media manipulation and disinformation, I understood right away that my friend had become cannon fodder in a “meme war”—the use of slogans, images, and video on social media for political purposes, often employing disinformation and half-truths.

While today we tend to think of memes as funny images online, Richard Dawkins coined the term back in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene, where he described how culture is transmitted through generations. In his definition, memes are “units of culture” spread through the diffusion of ideas. Memes are particularly salient online because the internet crystallizes them as artifacts of communication and accelerates their distribution through subcultures.

Importantly, as memes are shared they shed the context of their creation, along with their authorship. Unmoored from the trappings of an author’s reputation or intention, they become the collective property of the culture. As such, memes take on a life of their own, and no one has to answer for transgressive or hateful ideas.

 

Po Folk Create Their Own Aesthetic

medium |  Walking into a beauty supply store in the hood is like walking into a parallel universe. Cheap bright lipsticks grab your eye immediately. Hair hangs from the ceiling. There is an abundance of dyes, cheap gold jewelry, and every hair accessory known to man. It is a familiar home to Black and Brown women struggling to make themselves beautiful in a world that pays them no mind. If you look past the owners — who are often not of the community and who follow patrons around as if they are going to steal something — and past the lasting effects of colonization, buried in the ingredients of the skin lightening creams on the third shelf of the skin care aisle, it is almost perfect. Almost.

But while it may not be perfect, it is home.

It has the kind of magic that is a byproduct of most hood creations. You tried to destroy us, but [bitch] we’re here. Mining the grime at the bottom of the barrel and turning it into gold.

It is in our strut.

It is in our fashions.

And our fashions, specifically femme fashions, have existed as a subversion of the politics of poverty that says poor people can’t have nice things. Our fashions are loud, making up for the years they tried to take our voices. How fitting that people who are told they are worth nothing adorn themselves like royalty?

This is the genesis of what has come to be known as the “baddie aesthetic” of Instagram and Tumblr. People don’t want to talk about how white and racially ambiguous girls on social media are profiting off of the style of the women from my hood, the mamas who were donning five-inch acrylic nails with three gold rings on every finger long before it was cool, but I do.

Okay you don’t see us as beautiful, you won’t make anything for us; we’ll create our own world, our own beautiful, our own aesthetic.

I grew up being taught that the visible markers of Black style, of deep deep hood Blackness, were unsophisticated and should be looked down upon. Don’t wear bamboo earrings, that’s ghetto. Don’t wear 15 bangles on each wrist, thats ghetto. Don’t mix patterns, that’s ghetto. Even something as innovative as a digital name belt, something so futuristic(!), was something to shy away from. It didn’t matter that these looks belonged to the people of my community, who were sweet and kind to me, the goal was not to be a “ghetto girl.”

Meanwhile, Profit-Seeking Bankster Parasites Busy Eyeballing What Sustainably Remains....,

eurasiareview |  Indigenous Peoples have ownership, use and management rights over at least a quarter of the world’s land surface according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The 38 million square kilometers (14.6 million square miles) are spread across 87 countries or politically distinct areas and overlap with about 40 percent of all terrestrial protected areas.

The results of the study provides strong evidence that recognizing the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their traditional lands and waters is not only an ethical obligation it is essential to meeting local and global conservation goals. The authors say that more collaborative partnerships between Indigenous Peoples and governments would yield significant benefits for conservation of ecologically valuable landscapes, ecosystems, and genetic diversity for future generations.

“Understanding the extent of lands over which Indigenous Peoples retain traditional connection is critical for several conservation and climate agreements,” said Professor Stephen Garnett from Charles Darwin University in Australia who led the international consortium that developed the maps. “Not until we pulled together the best available published information on Indigenous lands did we really appreciate the extraordinary scale of Indigenous Peoples’ ongoing influence,” he said.

There are at least 370 million people who define themselves as Indigenous, are descended from populations who inhabited a country before the time of conquest or colonization, and who retain at least some of their own social, economic, cultural and political practices. The proportion of countries with indigenous people is highest in Africa and lowest in Europe-West Asia.

Optimizing the Human Supply Chain

nakedcapitalism |  No, though this is about as good — and as neoliberal — as it gets (even though the phrase “human supply chain” is not used). I don’t agree that “The key to any market correctly operating is information.” For one thing, “correctly” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. For another, the key to the way markets operate is not information, but power. I mean, does Prepscius really believe that “reputational enhancement…, risk mitigation[,] and workforce retention” pose “significant business value” when put beside profit?

All of which brings me to the single, solitary on-point source I was able to find: Fordham’s Jennifer Gordon’s “Regulating the Human Supply Chain,” 446 Iowa Law Review, Vol. 102:445-503 (pdf)[5]. I highly recommend that anybody who has read this far give Gordon a look. From the abstract:

In 2015, the number of migrant workers entering the United States on visas was nearly double that of undocumented arrivals—almost the inverse of just 10 years earlier. Yet notice of this dramatic shift, and examination of its implications for U.S. law and the regulation of employment in particular, has been absent from legal scholarship.

This Article fills that gap, arguing that employers’ recruitment of would-be migrants from other countries, unlike their use of undocumented workers already in the United States, creates
a transnational network of labor intermediaries—the “human supply chain”—whose operation undermines the rule of law in the workplace, benefitting U.S. companies by reducing labor costs while creating distributional harms for U.S. workers, and placing temporary migrant workers in situations of severe subordination. It identifies the human supply chain as a key structure of the global economy, a close analog to the more familiar product supply chains through which U.S. companies manufacture products abroad. The Article highlights a stark governance deficit with regard to human supply chains, analyzing the causes and harmful effects of an effectively unregulated world market for human labor.

That’s the stuff to give the troops! And here is a worked example, from page 472 et seq. I apologize for the length, but it’s lovely because all of the links in the chain are displayed:

B. WHERE HUMAN AND PRODUCT SUPPLY CHAINS MEET: AN EXAMPLE
B. WHERE HUMAN AND PRODUCT SUPPLY CHAINS MEET: AN EXAMPLE
Apple Fresh is a (fictitious) apple cider maker in Washington State…. Like all employers, Apple Fresh is responsible for ensuring that its employees’ wages, benefits, and working conditions comport with legal and contractual minimums. It must also pay social-security premiums on its employees’ behalf and cover their unemployment and workers’ compensation insurance. … As part of its effort to meet those demands, Apple Fresh decides to outsource its apple pressing to one of several food processors in the market, Presser Inc., which can produce the cider more cheaply and efficiently. Once it signs a contract with Presser, Apple Fresh is released from responsibility for the social insurance and many of the working conditions of the workers who press its apples, because it is no longer their employer. Presser now bears those obligations. …
In year two of the contract, Presser decides to try to decrease turnover and increase its profit margin by using temporary migrant workers to staff its plant. Its owner had been contacted not long before by the U.S. agent of a labor-recruitment firm in Mexico City…

Oooh, lookie. Rent-seeking intermediaries!