Society is made up of men and women. During the patriarchal period, men were seen as the leading members of a family and had been ordained certain civil rights when it came to being the “provider”. They had autonomy on all matters of income and decision making for the entire household, delegating women to household work and upbringing of children. These were the norms from over a century ago – and precisely why, today, it’s not that easy to shake off.
If one were to assess our entire sector, then research says that women’s issues are either focused on her reproductive role and her body or on her economic role as a worker. But none of them is focused on empowering women.
What does “women’s empowerment” mean? It refers to the process of giving women control over their choices and access to the opportunities and resources that allow them to thrive. While there’s been progress, gender inequality remains a persistent issue in the world. Empowering women politically, socially, economically, educationally, and psychologically helps narrow the gap.
There is no one single way for women to empower themselves. This can be in the form of deciding which career path she wants to take, what college to go to, what shoes to wear, or what words to say; modern feminist movements have lent women the agency of choice, granted finally after decades of being silenced. Women are now fighting to be given equal opportunities in every field, irrespective of gender.
Here are five essays that may convince you why we should all be feminists:
1. Women’s Movements and Feminist Activism (2019) by Amanda Gouws & Azille Coetzee
This editorial from the “Empowering women for gender equity” issue of the journal Agenda explores the issue’s themes. Gouws and Coetzee offer a bigger picture in to the topics within that deal with intersectional feminism and how it comes into play in the modern landscape of social justice. The issue is dedicated to women’s movements and activism primarily in South Africa, but also other African countries. New women’s movements focus on engaging with institutional policies and running campaigns for more female representation in government. Some barriers make activism work harder, such as resistance from men and funding, If you’re interested in the whole issue, this editorial provides a great summary of the main points, so you can decide if you want to read further.
2. The Side Of Female Empowerment We Aren’t Talking About Enough (2017) by Tamara Schwarting
In this era of female empowerment, women are being told they can do anything, but can they? It isn’t because women aren’t capable. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. As this article says, women have “more to do but no more time to do it.” The pressure is overwhelming. Is the image of a woman who can “do it all” unrealistic? What can a modern woman do to manage a high-stakes life? This essay digs into some solutions, which include examining expectations and doing self-checks. Written by CEO of 1628 LTD, a co-working community, Tamara Schwarting wasn’t afraid to dive deep into the nitty-grity of performative justice and shed light on matters that have been overshadowed by the glory of modern feminism.
3. Empowering Women Is Smart Economics (2012) by Ana Revenga and Sudhir Shetty
If you want to know what are the benefits of women’s empowerment, read this. This article presents the argument that closing gender gaps doesn’t only serve women, it’s good for countries as a whole. Gender equality boosts economic productivity, makes institutions more representative, and makes life better for future generations. This piece gives a good overview of the state of the world (the data is a bit old, but things have not changed significantly) and explores policy implications. It’s based on the World Bank’s World Development Report in 2012 on gender equality and development.
4. The Key to Improving Women’s Health in Developing Countries (2019)
Because of gender inequality, women’s health is affected around the world. This essay illuminates the strings of intersectionality that closely parallels themes of capitalism, labor, and feminism. Factors like a lower income than men, more responsibilities at home, and less education impact health. This is most clear in developing countries. How can this be addressed? This essay states that empowerment is the key. When giving authority and control over their own lives, women thrive and contribute more to the world. It’s important that programs seeking to end gender inequality focus on empowerment, and not “rescue.” Treating women like victims is not the answer.
5. 5 Powerful Ways Women Can Empower Other Women (2020) by Pavitra Raja
Originally published during Women’s History Month, this piece explores five initiatives spearheaded by women in the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship community. Created by women for women, these innovations demonstrate what’s possible when women harness their skills and empower each other. The initiatives featured in this article embrace technology, education, training programs, and more.
Conclusion:
There’s no one size fits all when it comes to women empowerment. Women can be empowered in various ways. It can be done through government schemes as well as on an individual basis. At the individual level, we should start respecting women and start giving them opportunities equal to men. We should promote and encourage them to take up jobs, higher education, business activities, etc.
Apart from these schemes, we as individuals can also empower women by abolishing social evils like the dowry system, child marriage. These small steps will change the situation of women in society and make them feel empowered.
To Russia and Ukraine, the crisis is an existential issue. To the US and NATO, it’s a regime-change game. To Europe, it means the demise of stability – in the world economy, lost years (and that’s the benign scenario).
This crisis did not come out of the blue. It was allowed to happen. NATO expansion led to the Ukraine conflict, the new Cold War, energy and commodity crises, nuclear alerts and dented global recovery.
But if the war was unwarranted, why did it happen? And what will follow afterwards?
NATO expansion: “the great blunder”
In his TV address of 24 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced three decades of NATO expansion and the many pledges that were betrayed to Russia. He said that Moscow did not intend to occupy Ukraine but wanted to “demilitarise and de-nazify Ukraine”. When bombs exploded in Ukrainian cities, Putin’s speech was condemned in the West as a paranoid fantasy, even as Facebook reversed its ban on users praising the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit.[1]
As declassified files show, a series of security assurances were given to Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders against NATO expansion at the turn of the 1990s, starting with President George H.W. Bush (whose presidential campaign had leaned on the Ukrainian far right in America)[2] and his chief of CIA, Robert Gates, followed by a cascade of assurances by German, French, British and NATO leaders (Figure 1).[3]
Figure 1: The path to tragedy
Empty pledges … preceded by ties with neo-Nazis
Source: Vice President Bush, President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev in New York City in 1988 (Source: Wikimedia commons)
“To the honorable Yaroslav Stetsko,” signed by (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush” in 1983. In his 1988 campaign, Bush was supported by Eastern Europe’s far-right networks (Source: Wikimedia commons)
What ensued was three decades of NATO expansion, today portrayed as an inevitable sequence of the “end of history”. Yet, it was widely condemned in 1997, by 50 leading US foreign policy experts in an open letter to President Clinton. They feared it would derail the future of US-Russian trust and nuclear arms control – as it did, while denting Eastern Europe’s future. Recently, Michael Mandelbaum, one of the signatories, called NATO expansion “one of the greatest blunders in the history of American foreign policy” (Figure 2).[4]
Figure 2: US foreign policy NATO opposition in 1997
SOURCE: Open letter to President Clinton, 26 June 1997
In April 2008, NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would become parts of the Treaty Organisation, which Russia denounced as an existential threat, drawing its red line. By 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, some leading international relations practitioners charged the US and its European allies with most of the responsibility for the crisis. Today, some military experts blame the US “war lobby” – the Pentagon and the defence contractors – for the crisis escalation.[5]
The NATO expansion boosted the return of the Ukrainian far right, reinforced by a scandalous UN vote. In November, Russia presented a motion against the “glorification of Nazism”. Before Christmas, more than three out of four UN member countries passed the resolution. Despite its wartime devastation and the Holocaust, EU members abstained en masse from the resolution. Worse, Ukraine, the United States, even Canada rejected the motion.
It was an unparalleled insult against the Russians, who lost 27 million lives in the Second World War, ensuring the Allied victory against Hitler. But the UN vote was perfectly aligned with US covert activities since the 1940s.
Expansion of the Ukrainian far right, with clandestine US support
During the Second World War, Ukraine’s far-right forces collaborated with Nazi Germany. Some 1.5 million Holocaust victims came from Ukraine, while 100,000 Poles were slaughted by the same far-right. During the Cold War, they cooperated with the US, which eventually led to “the role of domestic fascist networks in the Republican Party and their effect on US Cold War politics”.[6] These ties date from the heroes of Ukrainian far right Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko (see Figure 1) to US anti-Communist think-tanks today.[7] Nor are these ties history or Putin’s fantasy. Since the 2014 Maidan, Ukraine has enacted new monuments, plaques and renamed streets – including a major Kyiv boulevard leading to Babi Yar, a site of one of the largest wartime Nazi massacres of Jews – nearly every week to “Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators.”[8]
In February 2014, Victoria Nuland, then-assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, played a key role in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukrainian, President Viktor Yanukovych, while selling US mainstream media the pro-democracy tale, “without weighing the likely chaos and consequences”. That legitimised the Ukrainian far right, its massacres of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, while burying the European-guaranteed compromise plan with Yanukovych and early elections. The coup led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol’s strategic naval base – as noted by the highly regarded investigative journalist Robert Parry, who exposed the Iran-Contra debacle in the 1980s.[9]
Hence, the neoliberal “reforms” and the IMF interventions, which almost collapsed the Ukrainian economy and the “deep degree of US involvement in affairs that Washington officially says are Ukraine’s to resolve”.[10]
Since 2014, the Ukrainian stay-behind networks have been dominated by far-right, neo-Nazi and white supremacist paramilitaries, with the commander of the notorious Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletsky, a self-proclaimed “White Führer”.[11] At the time, these groups were tacitly supported by then-vice president Biden, deputy national security advisor Blinken, and Biden’s top security aide Jake Sullivan. Nuland, too, is back in the game. As secretary of state Blinken’s right hand since May 2021, she has pushed for the Biden administration’s elevated anti-Russian sanctions to “punish Putin” and “fuel Russian unrest”.[12] As a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, the US funder of “colour revolutions”, she’s promoting regime change and another collapse of the Russian economy. From Iraq to Afghanistan, they have supported all U.S. post-9/11 wars, which cost $8 trillion to U.S. economy alone.[13]
According to a 2020 West Point counter-insurgency analysis, the “common preoccupation” for both neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the US and Europe “has been the conflict in Ukraine, where a well-established far-right extremist movement and its associated militia have consistently engaged with and welcomed far-right ideologues and fighters from other parts of Europe and North America”.[14] In fall 2021, a US extremist-watch group reported that the Ukrainian far-right group Centauria had made its home in Ukraine’s major Western military training hub, built ties with the Azov movement, and infiltrated the armed forces. The State Department knew the extent of the problem but purposely ignored it (Figure 3).[15]
Figure 3: Expansion of Ukrainian far right with US support since 2014
(a) Flags of NATO, Azov and Hitlerjugend (b) Far Right in the Western military Hub
Members of the Azov Battalion holding the flag of the Azov Battalion, NATO flag and a Nazi Hitler Jugend flag in 2014. (/Wikimedia Commons).
IERES report on the infiltration of Western military hubs in Ukraine by the far-right paramilitaries (Sep 2021)
Energy, commodities and global nuclear risks
Since Ukraine’s contribution to the world economy is fractional and Russia represents less than 2 per cent of the global economy, the geopolitical risk of a Ukraine crisis was discounted for years. In reality, those risks have vital energy, commodity and nuclear ramifications.
Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter. After two years of COVID-19 economic and human devastation, the oil market is no longer well equipped for major supply disruptions, due to low inventories and diminished spare capacity. As supply concerns spur oil stockpiling, price increases escalate. Russia is also the world’s largest natural-gas exporter. As the sanctions hit Russia, they will suppress supplies and drive up prices worldwide. Russian gas is vital to US NATO allies Germany (49 per cent of gas supply), Italy (46 per cent), and France (24 per cent). It accounts for 42 per cent of Europe’s gas imports via pipeline alone. Overall, energy makes up two-thirds of Europe’s imports from Russia, even as EU countries already grapple with the spectre of high inflation (Figure 4a).
Figure 4: Major trading partners, 2021
(a) Russia (b) Ukraine
Source: The Observatory of Economic Complexity
Ukraine and Russia also play a major role in the global agricultural market. Together, the two countries account for a quarter of global wheat exports. The crisis is likely to have a lingering adverse impact in the poorest developing economies, particularly in Africa, while emerging economies, particularly in Southeast Asia, will have to cope with increasing energy and commodity prices amid inflation spikes. Predictably, the benchmark gauge for world food prices soared in February, reaching an all-time high. But worse is still ahead.[16]
With rising tensions and open hostilities, crude oil has already hit the highest since 2008 at above $130 per barrel, a 14-year high. The Commodity Index is almost 50% per cent up since the beginning of 2022. Both could climb significantly higher.[17]
Worse, there are heightened global nuclear threats. Recent fears of potential nuclear disasters at the Zaporizhzhia plant and elsewhere in Ukraine are just a glimpse of challenges looming ahead. Some 90 per cent of all nuclear warheads are owned by Russia (5,977) and the US (5,426). Only weeks ago, the symbolic Doomsday Clock, maintained since 1946, was set at just 100 seconds to midnight, for the second year. It was the worst-possible accomplishment at the worst-possible time.
Today, the risks are significantly higher.
Undermining China’s economic development with Ukraine
The Ukrainian crisis was avoidable but a geopolitical trajectory was manoeuvred, at least in part so that peace, stability and development would be pre-empted. Even as tensions have progressively escalated in the past half a decade, trade ties between Ukraine and Russia have steadily increased since President Viktor Yanukovych’s state visit to China in 2013. Four years later, Ukraine, now under President Poroshenko, joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. And in 2019, China overtook Russia as Ukraine’s biggest single trading partner (Figure 4b).
In 2020, Kyiv and Beijing signed a deal to strengthen cooperation in multiple areas, particularly in infrastructure financing and construction.[18] And last year, overall trade boomed to $19 billion, having soared 80 per cent since 2013.[19]
To President Zelensky, the BRI meant an alternative future that would be more peaceful and stable. Or, as he said in his phone conversation with President Xi Jinping, Ukraine might become a “bridge to Europe” for Chinese investments.[20]
In just a year, major Chinese companies started operations in construction (CPCG, CHEC), food (COFCO) and telecommunications (Huawei). Huawei, which the US has struggled to neutralise for a decade, helped Ukraine to develop mobile networks, won the bid to install a 4G network in Kyiv’s subway and was selected in 2020 to improve Ukraine’s cyber-defence and cybersecurity.
Washington has worked for three decades to transform Ukraine into a client state. Hence the penchant for ignoring Russian pleas for diplomacy, the crisis escalation, and the deliberate neglect of Austrian-style options for neutrality in the region.
And when Zelenskyy flirted with the idea of reconciliation with Russia in 2019, the far right torpedoed it quickly.[21] It wanted revenge, which has been shrewdly exploited.
From Prince to Biden: The plan to militarise Ukraine
From 1991 to 2014, the US provided Ukraine with $4 billion in military assistance, even though it is not a NATO member. Over $2.7 billion has been added since then, plus over $1 billion provided by the NATO Trust Fund, which is only a part of the total military investments in Ukraine. To Erik Prince, it was a great business opportunity, Iraq déjà vu.
As the founder of the private US contractor Blackwater (renamed Academy), he had long supplied mercenaries to the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department for covert operations, including torture and assassinations.
In early 2020, as Washington struggled to keep China and economic development out of Ukraine, Prince outlined a “roadmap” for the creation of a “vertically integrated aviation defence consortium” that could bring $10 billion in revenues and investment and compete with “the likes of Boeing and Airbus” (Figure 5).[22]
Figure 5: Iraq déjà vu?
Paul Bremer, leader of the US coalition after the unwarranted $3 trillion 2003 Iraq War, escorted by Blackwater Security guards (Wikicommons)
Time exposé of Erik Prince’s $10 Ukraine plan on 7 July 2021 (screen capture)
Prince also wanted the Motor Sich factory that the Chinese had already acquired.[23] As the Trump administration was busy suppressing China’s presence in Ukraine, Prince promoted himself as the “American option” with support from his mighty Republican family dynasty, and his sister Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education secretary.
But the plans fell apart when Prince’s Ukrainian partners fell under criminal investigation for alleged efforts to sway the 2020 presidential election (the investigation also involved President Biden’s son and his stakes in Ukraine).
Instead of a private entity, the Biden administration seems to favour the idea of another major US military base, right at the Kremlin’s backdoor, as a platform for operations. As a common enemy, Russia could “make America united again”. Hence, Biden’s new approvals for $350 million of military arms to Ukraine, the largest such package in US history.[24]
It was neither philanthropy nor a free lunch, but a sale in exchange for money. NATO refused to participate directly in the fighting. Pentagon took its provision. Defence contractors rejoiced their big win. Ukrainians were free – free to die.
Political reverberations in Washington and Kremlin
As long as most Americans approved of Biden’s performance, the White House had touted mainly diplomatic measures in Ukraine. But as most Americans turned against Biden, a dramatic change ensued. Hence, the hawkish push, and eventually threats and warnings about “imminent Russian invasion”, which the Kremlin slammed as “provocations”.[25] Nonetheless, the hawkish stance has not reversed Biden’s ratings, which have been plunging since summer 2021 (Figure 6).
Figure 6: The crisis escalation: Presidential ratings in the US and Russia
(a) Biden’s sagging ratings
(b) Putin’s rising ratings
Source: (a) Screen capture of Biden ratings, Fivethirtyeight. (b) Putin’s approval ratings, Levada Center (Russia); Difference Group Ltd., 3 March 2022
There’s worse ahead, starting with Republican senators’ public demand to have Putin assassinated and a bipartisan bill to ban Russian oil, which could dent the Biden administration’s attempt to avoid a backlash in oil markets that could severely harm the US economy, as Goldman Sachs recently suggested.[26] With impending elections, political populism may drive global prospects toward a stagflation recession.
In the West, the international media offers daily feeds of Russian protests against “Putin wars”. In reality, after Putin managed to stabilise the Russian economy, his approval rating soared to 80 per cent. When the far right threatened eastern Ukraine in 2014, the same recurred. And despite great tensions, his ratings exceeded 70 per cent prior to the crisis. Russians debate politics passionately, but they haven’t forgotten the post-Soviet economic devastation, which the West’s reforms made a lot worse.
Oligarch monies, regime change
In fall 2019, Zelenskyy won the elections as a populist who positioned himself as an anti-establishment, anti-corruption figure against his predecessor Poroshenko; and one that would finally end Ukraine’s prolonged conflict with Russia.
But Zelenskyy’s landslide did not fit the plans of the oligarchs, who hated his efforts to undercut their economic dominance; or the US State Department under Pompeo and then Blinken, who had other goals for Ukraine; or the far-right paramilitaries who’d been preparing for mobilisation since 2014; or Ukraine’s parliament, which opposed his efforts at greater centralisation. To many of them, he was replaceable.
So, in October 2021, like manna from heaven, files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) indicated that Zelenskyy and his partners established a network of offshore companies back in 2012. What made the Pandora Papers politically embarrassing was that his offshore firms had received an alleged $41 million between 2012 and 2016 from firms belonging to Igor Kolomoisky, a billionaire whose TV channel screened Zelenskyy’s popular shows.[27]
Kolomoisky has been a major funder of Azov since 2014, while bankrolling private militias, such as the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, to protect his economic interests. It’s a symbiotic threesome. Reportedly, “Zelenskyy has ceded to neo-Nazi forces and now depends on them as front-line fighters”, while the far right has shrewdly used his Jewish heritage to refute allegations of Nazi influence in Ukraine.[28] Other oligarchs sponsor their respective private militias.
The ICIJ does important work, but the timing of the disclosures is intriguing and some of the major sponsors of the Consortium itself are also key architects of “colour revolutions” (e.g., Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation).
Ever since the end of the Cold War, Ukraine has struggled for democracy. Of the myriad threats facing Ukraine since 2014, the return of the oligarchs has been prominent, even if their economic dominance has diminished. A solid democracy will “require the growth of stronger state institutions”.[29] Yet, that is not the goal of those that seek to turn Ukraine into a fully fledged client state.
Despite repeated efforts to capture the parliament, the far-right groups enjoy only fringe (less than 2.5 per cent of the vote) support in Ukraine.[30] Hence their reliance on extra-parliamentary measures and oligarchs. In the US, firms working for Ukrainian interests “inundated congressional offices, think tanks, and journalists in 2021″. To put the Ukraine lobby’s campaign into perspective, “the Saudi lobby – known for being one of the largest foreign lobbies in DC – reported 2,834 contacts, barely a quarter of what Ukraine’s agents have done.”[31]
Lobbying requires money, which is the oligarchs’ speciality. They want to sustain their supremacy in the kind of Ukraine the US prefers. Besides, Ukraine holds the second-biggest known gas reserves in Europe, right after only Norway and largely untapped.[32] A poor but resource-rich economy is an attractive target for regime change. Perhaps hence, too, the likely use of the neo-Nazi paramilitaries as stay-behind forces for “sabotage in a multipolar world”. In the postwar era, the CIA backed such Ukrainian insurgents for similar purposes, with disastrous results.[33]
Ordinary Ukrainians want peace and development. But that’s not what they’re getting.
Ukraine’s decades of plunging living standards and millions of refugees
Ukraine has the highest number of politicians named in the Pandora Papers. Poor economies that are resource-rich, with fragile institutions, oligarchs, and extremist paramilitaries are highly vulnerable to corruption, particularly when they are targeted as “client states” by major powers. And those powers use weak institutions and corruption for their agendas. Ukraine is a prime example.
Between 1991 and 2021, the US military assistance, coupled with that by the UK and NATO, amounts to some $10 billion or more. But, as Iraq and Afghanistan evidence, military aid and economic aid, whether it is disguised for military purposes or not, seldom boosts consumer welfare – quite the reverse. In 2014, Ukrainian military spending was about 3 per cent of GDP, increasing to 6 per cent in 2022, corresponding to more than $11 billion. In brief, Ukrainian military expenditures have doubled since the 2014 regime ploy. Meanwhile, its economic growth has tanked. After the implosion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian per capita incomes were almost on a par with Poland. Today, they are more than 60 per cent behind the Poles (Figure 7a).
Figure 7: Ukraine’s economic growth and military expenditures, 1990-2021
Source: Data from SIPRI, IMF; Difference Group, 5 March 2022
Ukraine’s population of 44 million people has been declining since the 1990s, because of a high emigration rate and high death rates, coupled with a low birth rate.[34] And by 8 March, some 2 million Ukrainians were estimated to have left their country in the fastest exodus of people since 1945.[35] Millions more could follow. Before the crisis, Ukrainian per capita incomes were barely ahead of Libya, which Western intrusions have turned into a failed state. Now worse is ahead.
From the unwarranted war to elevated economic and geopolitical risks
The Russia-Ukraine War has already resulted in more than 11,000 casualties, while some 2 million people have been displaced and these figures will increase. In a matter of days, that prompted a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and unprecedented economic sanctions, including the Russian central bank’s $643 billion of forex reserves, which aim to collapse Russia’s $1.7 trillion economy; the 11th largest in the world – despite the prewar pledge by the White House to use only targeted sanctions that would not hurt Russian people.
To put these things in context: In the past two decades, the U.S. has waged half a dozen post-9/11 wars (some under false pretense), with and without its allies, which have caused at least 1 million deaths and 38 million displaced. Yet, all efforts to prosecute the US have been derailed by the White House. Nor have there been any major economic sanctions against the U.S. (Figure 8).
Figure 8: U.S. Post-9/11 Wars and the Russia-Ukraine War
* U.S. Post-9/11 Wars from Sept. 2001 to Sept. 2021; Russia-Ukraine War (Febr. 24 to March 8, 2022
Sources: Costs of War (Watson Institute); UN.
The ongoing crisis was avoidable and unwarranted. Worse, in the past, world leaders sought to end wars. Now wars are seen as business opportunities. The consequent economic sanctions are grossly disproportionate and, coupled with Biden’s ban of oil and gas imports to U.S., they will dramatically penalize the ailing global economy.
Elevated economic and geopolitical risks
In the dire international landscape, global recovery has remained elusive since 2017, due to the US and the pandemic depression.[36] In a matter of weeks, global economic risks will accelerate as the Fed will begin rate hikes and, in due time, shrink its balance sheet (even if the pace and scope will be slower and lower than initially anticipated).
The hoped-for global recovery is now history, while the risk of stagflationary recession has increased. Moreover, the Ukraine-related geopolitical tremors, which could turn into broader existential threats if nuclear threats escalate further, have only begun.
Three scenarios remain after the hostilities diminish.
The trap scenario. In the 1980s, President Carter’s security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski incited the Soviet Union into Afghanistan to weaken the Kremlin. Some believe Ukraine is the trap scenario déjà vu. While Russia may win the war in Ukraine, it can’t avoid another collapse of its economy. Ukraine will have a liberal future. America’s unipolar hegemony will prevail. A new generation of pro-Western oligarchs will loot Russian assets, again. The West will gain over time.
The trap in the trap scenario. President Putin knows Biden’s traps. He will “de-nazify and demilitarise” Ukraine. Sanctions will crumble over time, but not before more debt-taking by the US, which will result in a new debt crisis, and the weakening of the EU, whose leaders will be more flexible after the war. The new Ukraine will thrive in Russia’s near abroad. Global recovery will ensue in a more multipolar world economy.
The mutually assured trap scenario. Despite the planned trap scenarios in Washington and Kremlin, the geopolitical reverberations will turn the hybrid proxy war into a direct confrontation with fatal geopolitical contagion, or generate accidental conflicts which trigger exaggerated military responses. Rounds of sanctions and counter-sanctions will penalise the Russian and US economies and thus overall global prospects. A split Ukraine will emerge as a failed state. The US dollar as a major reserve currency will be shaken. The world economy will be neither unipolar nor multipolar, but devastated.
The real trajectory will be none of the three, but a combination of each. It is not that difficult to start a war; an exit from the war is a different story. Unwarranted wars among nuclear powers, proxy conflicts or not, will only drive humanity – all of us – ever closer to the abyss.
Dr Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognised strategist of the multipolar world and the founder of the Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/
NOTES
[1] “Facebook Allows Praise of Neo-Nazi Ukrainian battalion if it fights Russian invasion.” The Intercept, 25 February 2022.
[2] Bellant, Russ. 1989. Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. 3rd ed. Boston, 1991.
[3] In 2017, the declassified assurances were posted online by the Washington-based National Security Archive. See Savranskaya, Svetlana and Blanton, Tom. 2017. “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard.” Briefing Book #: 613. NATIONAL Security Archive, 12 December
[4] “Opposition to NATO Expansion.” Arms Control Association, 26 June. 297.
[5] Chotiner, Isaac. 2022. “Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine.” The New Yorker, 1 March 1; see also Mate, Aaron. 2022. “US war lobby fuels conflict in Russia, Ukraine, and Syria: ex-Pentagon advisor.” The Grayzone, 6 January.
[6] Bellant 1989, op. cit; and “Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret.” An Interview with Russ Bellant. The Nation, 28 March 2014.
[7] On Bandera, Stetsko and their organizations and U..anti-Communist think-tanks, see Grzegorz, Rossolinski. 2014. Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Stuttgart; Snyder, Timothy. 2001. To Resolve the Ukrainian Question Once and For All: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947. Working Paper, Yale; “Far-right exploitation of genocides” in Steinbock, Dan. 2021. “Playing Genocide Politics: The Zenz-Xinjiang Case.” The European Financial Review, 11 June
[8] Golinkin, Lev. 2022. “The Nazi Monument Project: How many monuments honor fascists, Nazis and murderers of Jews? You’ll be shocked.” The Forward, January. 26.
[9] Parry, Robert. 2015. “The Mess That Nuland Made.” The Consortium News, 13 July.
[10] Gearan, Anne. 2014. “In the recording of U.S diplomat, blunt talk on Ukraine”. The Washington Post, 6 February.
[11] “Ukraine’s National Militia: ‘We’re not neo-Nazis, we just want to make our country better’.” The Guardian, 13 March 18.
[12] Since May 2021, Nuland has served as under-secretary of state for political affairs for secretary of state Blinken. On her role, see Wong, Edward and Crowley, Michael. 2022. “With Sanctions, U.S and Europe Aim to Punish Putin and Fuel Russian Unrest.” The New York Times, 4 March.
[13] Costs of War project by the Watson Institute, Brown University.
[14] Lister, Tim. 2020. “The Nexus Between Far-Right Extremists in the United States and Ukraine.” CTC Sentinel, April, pp. 30-43.
[15] Ibid; “Neo-Nazis Not Top of Mind for Senate Democrats Pushing Weapons for Ukraine.” The Intercept, 19 February 22.
[16] “FAO Food Price Index rises to record high in February.” Food and Agriculture Organization, UN, 4 March 2022.
[21] As the West Point report puts it, “these groups have bitterly opposed any suggestion of compromise with Russia over Donbas through the Normandy negotiating process… and oppose concessions floated by President Volodymyr Zelensky.” See Lister 2020, op. cit.
[22] Shuster, Simon. 2021. “Exclusive: Documents Reveal Erik Prince’s $10 Billion Plan to Make Weapons and Create a Private Army in Ukraine.” TIME, 7 July.
[23] “Chinese firm’s stake in Ukraine military aircraft engine maker ‘frozen'”. South China Morning Post, 16 September 2017 China’s Beijing Skyrizon Aviation bought a 41% er cent holding in Motor Sich. The Chinese planned to invest $250 million in the Ukrainian plants until American pressure killed the deal.
[24] Remarks of President Joe Biden – State of the Union Address as Prepared for Delivery. The White House Briefing Room, 1 March 22.
[25] “Biden, Putin Discuss Ukraine as Kremlin Slams ‘Provocations’.” AFP, 12 February 21.
[26] “Bipartisan bill banning Russian oil sets up clash with White House.” Politico, 3 MarchMa022; “Sen. Lindsey Graham’s apparent call for Putin to be assassinated draws backlash.” NPR, 4 March 22; The Russia Risk. Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, February, p.13.
[27] “Political and business links to Pandora Papers roil parliaments, anti-corruption and tax authorities as global fallout swells.” Pandora Papers Impact, ICIJ, 12 October 21. See also “Revealed: ‘anti-oligarch’ Ukrainian president’s off shore connections.” The Guardian, 3 October 21.
[28] Rubinstein, Alex and Blumenthal, Max. 2022. “How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia.” The Grayzone, 4 March.
[29] Minakov, Mikhail. 2016. A Decisive Turn? Risks for Ukrainian Democracy After the Euromaidan. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 3 February
[30] “Ukraine’s CEC announces official results of parliamentary elections,” UNIAN, 3 August 19.
[31] According to an analysis of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), filings for a forthcoming report from the Quincy Institute. See Freeman, Ben. 2022. “Ukrainian Lobbyists Mounted Unprecedented Campaign on U.S lawmakers in 2021.” The Intercept, 11 February
[32] Amelin, Anatoliy et al. 2020. “The Forgotten Potential of Ukraine’s Energy Reserves.” Harvard International Review, 10 October
[33] Meegan Daniel. 2020. Breaking Other People’s Toys: Sabotage in a Multipolar World. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey California, December. Rogg, Jeff. 2022. “The CIA has backed Ukrainian insurgents before. Let’s learn from those mistakes.” Los Angeles Times, 25 February
[35] Data from the UNHCR. See also Global Trends in Forced Displacement – 2020, UNHCR, 21 June 21.
[36] Steinbock, D. 2017. The Great Shift: The Shift of Globalization from the Transatlantic Axis to China and Emerging Asia. China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies Vol. 03, No. 02, pp. 193-226; and Steinbock, D. 2018. U.S-China Trade War and Its Global Impacts. China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies, Vol. 04, No. 04, pp. 515-54.
Technology is revolutionizing the operations strategies of construction teams around the world. The last couple of years have seen a rise in the popularity of digital transformation in construction, and for good reason. Digital solutions are helping construction companies reduce costs, improve safety, and work with unparalleled efficiency.
The benefits of technology are even creating a more collaborative work environment while allowing more freedom for many team members. Digital solutions are transforming the way that construction teams operate, work, and communicate. Here’s how.
Operational Efficiency
With the industry’s persistent staffing shortage, construction companies need to make the most of every employee they have by working as efficiently as possible. Digital solutions are the key to making this happen. In the past, construction has remained among the least digitized fields in the world. However, this is changing in the face of new challenges and benefits brought about by advancements in technology. Nowadays, civil engineers and architects are increasingly relying on a variety of specialized tools and software to enhance their work processes and deliver more accurate results. Among these tools are moment of inertia calculators, truss calculators, and energy modelling applications, which have significantly improved the design, analysis, and execution of construction projects. By incorporating these advanced digital resources, construction professionals can ensure that their projects are structurally sound, energy-efficient, and in compliance with modern building standards.
For example, choosing to digitize the office and move from paper documents to digital will allow employees to work more productively on the job. A secretary can locate any file they need with a few simple clicks. Payroll and employee time tracking are much more manageable and can even be automated.
In the field, a variety of digital solutions, such as AI, virtual reality, drones, and digitization, can help site workers do their jobs more efficiently. A subcontractor can easily pull up any digital equipment manual they need from a tablet. Maintenance is easier and more cost-effective with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors on equipment and machinery.
Increased Financial Savings
An estimated 80% of construction projects go over budget every year. Financial constraints in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic are making it less acceptable for construction projects to exceed their budgets. Construction companies need a solution that will reduce costs without sacrificing work quality. Digital solutions are the key.
One of the largest areas where technology is helping construction companies operate more affordably is fleet maintenance and management. It’s no secret that construction equipment is expensive, whether it is owned or rented. Maintenance costs can pile up quickly, especially when something has a major breakdown. Digital solutions are helping construction companies prevent such costly repairs and operate their fleets more effectively.
For example, fleet management software is helping teams monitor equipment performance, save on fuel, and improve operator handling. All of these benefits help reduce costs by keeping construction teams closely connected with the gear they work with.
With fewer breakdowns, efficient routes, and optimized fuel consumption, equipment maintenance costs can drop significantly with the help of digital solutions like this. Even simple digitization measures like a paperless office will save thousands of dollars in the long term.
Better Safety Standards
Health and safety is top of mind in the construction industry, considering its ranking as one of the riskier fields for worker safety. Fortunately, digital solutions are improving site safety on countless projects, making a difference in risk management and employee safety tracking.
One of the best benefits of digital safety solutions is their sheer versatility. There is immense room for customization in construction safety technology, so individual construction teams can create a unique system that works for them.
For example, AI can be used to analyze a site for things like fall hazards quickly and in greater detail than a traditional risk assessment. AI can also be used to monitor site security feeds around the clock, keeping workers and project resources safe from theft or damage even when no one is on-site. Individual safety devices are becoming more popular as well.
There are numerous wearable construction safety devices available today, from a smartwatch that detects falls to smart work vests that detect environmental hazards. These devices help ensure that each individual employee is staying safe and make it easy for them to alert others in the event of an emergency.
Unlocked Opportunities For Collaboration
Digital solutions unlock a whole new level of connectivity and communication between construction team members, whether in the office or the field. Finding ways to use technology to improve collaboration is a great place to start for construction teams that are new to digitization.
Many teams have already been using digital solutions for things like video conferencing ever since the COVID-19 pandemic kept in-person meetings to a minimum. Even after work stoppages due to the pandemic subsided, construction teams are finding that digital solutions like this allow them to stay more connected with one another.
For example, a team of planners, designers, and stakeholders can have a meeting from completely different locations. A project manager can give a tour of the site without anyone else having to take the time and money to travel. Designers can share drawings and BIM projects with one another quickly and easily through the cloud.
This level of collaboration and unrivaled digital tools has made BIM software incredibly popular within the industry recently. Even something as simple as digital communication channels can help improve collaboration between the office and field teams.
Digitizing Construction for the Future
The construction industry is facing numerous challenges today, but digital solutions are quickly proving themselves the key to moving the industry forward. Digitization is changing operations for the better for countless construction teams, keeping them safer and allowing them to work smarter.
With incredible potential for collaboration and total control of budget optimization, teams all over the world are realizing the benefits technology has to offer. Digital solutions are moving the construction industry into an era where the building process is connected, collaborative, and cutting-edge.
Evelyn Long is a construction writer and the founder of Renovated. Her work on construction training and management has been featured by the Building Performance Association, Training Journal and other industry publications.
The term training module can mean anything from a simple PowerPoint presentation to an actual textbook; there is no standard or official definition, making it hard to define what should go into one and what shouldn’t.
However, if you’re interested in creating your training module or have already started and want to know if it’s on the right track, there are some key things you should consider including in your design and creation process that will help ensure the result is efficient and effective.
What is a Training Module used for?
Training modules are commonly used to help employees learn how to do their jobs better and more efficiently or learn how to do new jobs that they have been hired to do. Whatever the case may be, you must take time to create a practical training module that will help your employees learn the information you want them to know.
Before you start creating the actual module, you should consider what should be included in it and how it should be presented and what type of information should be included.
Your training module should be able to teach your customers the information they need to know about your product or service, whether it’s how to use it or how to set it up. If you want it to be effective and helpful for your customer, it should contain these elements, so make sure you consider them as you write your module.
How to develop the best training module, step by step
A well-designed training module will answer each of your reader’s questions before they even think to ask. It’ll take them through every phase of whatever project you’re training them for, and it will include tips, tricks, and relevant real-world examples.
It will be logical, easy to follow, and—yes—it will work. In other words: You can win over your new audience by designing an exceptional training module that takes their pain points into account from start to finish.
Whether you’re creating tutorials or other multimedia resources, keep these core elements in mind as you plan out what to say and how to say it:
Define The Problem
First, begin with a clear statement of what your training module is about. What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? Who will be involved, and what kind of deliverables are expected from them?
You don’t need to focus on why you want to solve it—get clear on what needs solving. For example, We want our customer service team to handle inbound calls more effectively and efficiently by automating as much of their phone workflow as possible.
Then describe who should attend (anyone who works for or interacts with customer support), when (during business hours), where (location and facilities requirements), how long (2-3 days), what’s included (lunch/coffee/breakfast and snacks), etc. The purpose here is just to lay out expectations.
Create An Outline
Now that you know what type of solution you want to create, start creating an outline that explains in detail each step required for attendees to reach success. The purpose here isn’t necessarily structure or logic but rather just getting all ideas out so they can be refined later–you can refactor them here at any time before launch.
Ensure it answers all questions asked earlier: Write down everything you feel needs addressing and ask yourself if they were answered above. If not, go back and rework until they are.
Write a SMART Objective
When creating training, it’s important to have specific and measurable objectives in mind. Why? Because if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? And if your objectives aren’t specific enough, your chances of success drop—and so does employee engagement.
Think about what exactly you want people to do after they complete training. Then break that down into smaller chunks: make those objectives SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound).
This way, everyone has clear goals they can use as their roadmap throughout their learning experience. Being specific with your objectives also ensures employees focus on only one or two things at once instead of juggling five or six.
That way, you avoid fatigue and improve retention rates for content learned; but most importantly, you ensure employees stay engaged because they understand how all their hard work relates to big picture company goals.
Create the Right Type of Training Module
It’s crucial to understand your training audience’s needs, aspirations, and job descriptions. You can only create modules that will provide them with what they need most by identifying these. If you’re creating internal training modules for your business, it’s important to consider: What do your staff want to learn about? Which of their skill sets is lacking? And how does that fit into their job descriptions?
By thinking through all these factors, you’ll be able to create tailor-made training materials designed for your team. Plus, don’t forget that video is an excellent medium for communicating quickly—especially when compared to long blocks of text!
Collect Feedback and Revise
Once you’ve developed your training module, you’ll want to give it to several different people and ask them to provide honest feedback. For example, do they understand what you are saying? Do they feel that it is applicable in their role or department?
How could you better explain or teach what is needed? If they had one piece of advice, what would it be? Most importantly, do they feel empowered after reading your material? Use these responses to make revisions based on constructive criticism.
Your goal should be for others to walk away with a new skill or renewed confidence to perform at their highest level. To ensure that you have done just that, keep working at it until you receive consistently positive feedback. When no further revisions can be made, then your work is complete—but don’t forget about keeping up with updates throughout your company as well!
Stay Up-to-date
Keeping training modules up-to-date and thorough is essential to avoid confusion in today’s complex world. Staying organized will help you to get things done more quickly and efficiently. It also makes it easy for people new to your company or organization to navigate through training materials when they start their jobs. For tips on keeping training updated, stay tuned for our next tip sheet on Staying Organized as an Employee. Happy training!
In October of 2021, Boston’s most vulnerable residents began receiving notices to vacate a tent encampment at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard (also known as ‘Mass and Cass’). The mainstream local media covered the story from different angles, though similarly at different times, including coverage of Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s executive order which called for the clean-up of the encampment citing public health and public safety concerns. Janey’s executive order was issued on October 19, 2021. On the same day, a new temporary court was set up at the Suffolk County jail for those failing to comply with the executive order.
In the following weeks, clean-up efforts ensued, tents were taken down, and personal belongings, such as shopping carts, sofas, and other household items were tossed. Subsequently, on November 4, 2021, the mainstream media reported that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) seeking injunctive relief, and actual and punitive damages for the destruction of personal property as a part of the displacement process. On November 5, 2021, Mayor-Elect Michelle Wu, who was voted in by Boston on November 2, 2021—during the clean-up effort—told news sources that she would make changes to the handling of the encampment and that she believed that “no one should be arrested while waiting for treatment.”
Wu, who took office on November 16, 2021, stated that she is “working to quickly hire a ‘Mass and Cass’ chief to oversee efforts in the neighborhood.” On November 17, 2021, the SJC denied the ACLU’s request to stop the municipal government’s clean-up and clear-out efforts. It’s unclear where things stand presently, but the SJC has denied relief to those living in the encampment and at risk for incarceration or further institutionalization under the original executive order.
Media Coverage of the Encampment’s Removal
During October 2021, local news media sources covered the story of the homeless encampment in Boston mainly from the perspective of justifying why the clean-up was necessary with regard to public health. Headlines such as these ran: “Boston begins clearing homeless camp, citing opioid crisis,” and “Camps near ‘Methadone Mile’ given Monday deadline to leave.” The media focused on Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s efforts to clean up the public space by removing tents and belongings of those who resided there. News articles referred to notices posted by Janey on tents and in the area, and flyers which were distributed stating that “[d]ue to health, environmental and sanitary concerns … the City of Boston will conduct a clean-up of this public space … warning tent-dwellers all property left at that time would be thrown out by city workers.” During this cycle of news, photographs of the homeless encampment appeared showing tents with notices taped on them, some looking colorful, yet dilapidated, with personal belongings strewn about in the street or in shopping carts. Some news outlets mentioned that Janey’s notice provided assurances for those who were being displaced, but the details regarding the execution of her plan were not specified. The plan simply provided that “[n]o unsheltered individual will be required to remove their tent unless shelter, housing, or treatment is available.”
News reports which followed just one week later told another story. Outlets during this next week focused on Janey’s creation of special courts for arrests at Mass and Cass. The Boston Globe stated that a “new court for people arrested in the vicinity of a sprawling homeless encampment in Boston began hearing cases Monday … three men [were] detained … just steps from the makeshift proceeding.” The same report went on to describe a dire situation for these three people who were living in the encampment stating: “All three men were brought in on warrants ranging from drug possession, to larceny, to breaking and entering. They were led one by one in handcuffs and marched from police vehicles in the street past protesters who held signs and chanted, ‘Healthcare, housing, stop the sweeps!’” These follow-up news reports had a different tone and attitude than previous ones. What was initially depicted as a public health crisis posed by those who were living in the encampment was subsequently described by the media as a humanitarian crisis, citing rogue efforts by the local government to criminalize homelessness.
At least one media source acknowledged that the shelter option was not a viable one, even though it was touted by Janey and media sources at the outset of the clean-up as an alternative to encampment. Another news source claimed that criminal justice advocates said exaggerated concerns regarding public health were pretextual and being used to arrest and detain people. Referring to the Boston Globe, NBC News declared that the city needs to hold court in a jail facility because the homeless people living in the camps are medically compromised.
Media Coverage of Legal Challenges
Subsequently, media outlets began to report yet another development: the ACLU had stepped in and wanted to stop Boston’s plan to remove the Mass and Cass encampments. However, despite the ACLU’s efforts, many of the tents in the encampment had already been removed. The ACLU filed suit with the SJC on November 5,2021 seeking injunctive relief and monetary damages on behalf of those being displaced. The complaint alleges that it violates the Constitution and disability discrimination laws for the city to threaten criminal sanctions for those failing to comply with the clean-up. Second, it alleges that by removing people and destroying their personal property, the city violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the guarantee of due process.
On November 17, 2021, almost three weeks from the time Janey initiated the clean-up, the SJC denied the ACLU’s request to stop the removal of the tents. One media source summarized the status of the situation, stating: “The city has been giving homeless people an eviction notice[s] of 48 hours and providing bins for people to put their belongings in if they are forced from tents, citing concerns over substance abuse, fires, motor vehicle accidents, sexual assaults, robberies, and homicides.” After the judge’s ruling denying temporary injunctive relief, there was a consensus among media outlets that the rollout of Janey’s plan missed the mark and that more needed to be done to avoid incarceration of those living in and around the area of Mass and Cass.
Media Coverage of Government Officials
Boston’s new Mayor, Michelle Wu, who was voted in on November 2, 2021 (the same day as the eviction deadline for the homeless encampment), spoke in response and promised to pause the dismantling of the encampment until the court proceedings ended, but it is unclear what would happen after the ruling was made. The local media sources covering the developments failed to sufficiently address and question why neither Janey, the governor, nor Mayor Wu had anticipated these challenges prior to issuing the Executive order. Further, the media’s coverage never reconciled claims later made by public officials expressing an intent to avoid incarceration or institutionalization of those in the encampment with their blatant earlier efforts to establish a make-shift special court at a local jail.
Why was the special court necessary if there was no intent to criminalize the victims being displaced by Janey’s Executive order? The local media outlets almost unanimously failed to cover many of the “why” questions in their reporting of the government’s position from the start.
Assessment of Overall Media Coverage
The media’s coverage of the Boston homeless encampment situation presents many conflicting values and principles. Those working in media face deadlines and limits on their time, and on the resources available to investigate, develop, and produce a story. News agents must consider running stories which will inform and interest an audience while also considering the need to generate revenue from advertisers. Additionally, stories reporting on issues that are of public concern are of higher news value and hold more currency, however, it’s not always possible to cover every angle because of the scarcity of space and time. Thus, deciding which angle to cover and at which time should be subject to enormous ethical scrutiny, as the selection process potentially narrows the lens through which the audience will construct reality. In the case of the homelessness crisis, local media sources almost uniformly covered the story using different angles at different times, begging the question of whether the media ethically reported the events or whether it’s selection of related content and timing of its release drove a particular narrative.
Although the homelessness crisis and clean-up could have been told in many ways, at the outset, media outlets mainly focused heavily on the sensational aspects of it, citing the problem of drugs, addiction, sexual assaults, and the spread of disease within the vicinity of the encampment. News media providing detailed information about an emergency executive order to remove tents on Mass and Cass should have further sought to balance the subjects’ privacy rights with the public’s ‘need to know’ principle and the freedom of the press under the First Amendment.
Despite efforts of conscientious journalists to be objective and accurate, news reports are often unintentionally distorted, and thus flawed beliefs can provide the basis for public opinions. In turn, public opinion guides the formation of potentially flawed public policy which might have steep costs for society. Did the news media fall short of its responsibilities in this case, and if so, how did it impact public opinion? Was it ethically justifiable to select the most tantalizing aspects of the homeless encampment clean-up story and publish photos of the tents and personal belongings of those living in the encampment? Are news agencies morally liable for omissions of pertinent information which could have changed how a vulnerable population was treated if that information had been shared in a timely manner? Is it ever justifiable for news agencies to serve an agenda of the government despite the appearance of a conflict of interest which erodes public trust?
The Moral Agents of Media Coverage
The moral agents in this case are the editors of the news agencies. The news editors of local news agencies covered the story, including the more enticing aspects of it, such as drug abuse, crimes, arrests, violence, and disease, all which likely had the greatest appeal to the largest audiences. Because the public enjoys these themes in media content, news agents might have felt compelled to lower their ethical and moral standards to meet their audience’s desire for entertainment. Further, the media operates within a competitive business environment in the United States, and therefore, media practitioners must be cognizant of what content will drive profits.
Freedom of the press and the public’s right to know afford practitioners great latitude in making choices regarding content. With the protection of the First Amendment, there is little hope of preventing a creeping cycle of sensationalism, not to mention desensitization to certain issues among news consumers. Moreover, the public has the right to know the truth even if it offends moral sensibilities. Indeed, people’s right to know even the more gruesome or scandalous aspects of stories arguably remains a legitimate reason for media practitioners to publish and distribute content that disregards privacy rights, is morally offensive, and/or harms subjects or others.
The moral agents in the present case would have weighed all these factors quite heavily against the need to balance truth, accuracy, fairness, and the right of privacy of those featured in their reports. Also, the pictures used arguably depict the situation more accurately than words alone, which might have been deemed yet another reason to use them.
However, the news agency editors in the local media did not behave fairly when they did not tell the entirety of the story, which should have explained why so many had lost their former homes in Boston, and also should have highlighted the perspectives of the homeless subjects. Closer scrutiny of the selection of the perspectives shared and the timing of the content should have been given to avoid the harm that ensued to subjects.
Additionally, the moral agents did not act fairly when they published and disseminated the most sensational aspects of the story, and they did not behave justly when they shared personal information including pictures of tents and the personal belongings of those in the encampment. The pictures arguably added a level of entertainment, but was it necessary to inflict additional harm on an already vulnerable population to drive profits? The story could have been told without these attributes and there were alternative ways to pique interest in the story. Certainly, running headlines about drugs and addiction might have been the easiest and most profitable route, but in this instance, perhaps other attributes of those living on the streets could have been spotlighted, such as their courage, perseverance, resilience, and adaptability.
Moral Liability in Media Coverage
As to whether news agencies should be morally liable for omissions of pertinent information and whether it is ethically justifiable for news agencies to serve an agenda of the government, one must consider other competing values. Among these are values such as journalistic integrity, independence, harm to subjects and others, the appearances of conflicts of interest, erosion of public trust, as well as harmony and the greater good. In this instance, the media practitioners responsible for the homeless encampment clean-up story failed to provide proper context and omitted information early on which could have led to greater social activism by those in the community who wished to prevent the government’s abrupt ultimatum to those living at Mass and Cass.
With an election looming, the news media had an obligation to clarify information which they received from public officials to better inform the public about the candidates and their views about the encampment clean-up. As watchdogs, the news media should have demanded answers from public officials and sought to reconcile conflicting messages from Acting Mayor Janey and others. Instead, the news agents regurgitated these conflicting messages by government officials. There was pertinent information which was known but not reported until after the clean-up began and after Michelle Wu was elected to be the new mayor of Boston. Wu, who had been consistent with Janey on her plans for the encampment prior to the election, softened her approach afterwards, but did not take issue with the SJC denial of the ACLU’s request to enjoin the clean-up efforts. This arguably led to an appearance of a conflict of interest because the press, whose role it is to monitor the government for examples of overreach, plausibly aided the government in its effort to remove those living in the homeless encampment without any real push back until it was too late.
The questionable reporting of the events, the change in tone, the failure to ask tough questions of public officials and seek additional content, as well as the shift from a public health crisis to a humanitarian one within just a few weeks raises questions about journalistic integrity and independence. The harm to the subjects and the harm to the institutions which the news agents represent should have been deemed more important in order to avoid undermining public trust in the media.
External Factors
To be fair, there are significant external factors to consider, as well. The most obvious external factor in this case would be the imminent election for the mayor of Boston. The news editors, as moral agents, might have arguably deviated from general precedent of how local media would usually cover a homelessness crisis in the past because there was more at stake with an upcoming election. Perhaps, the typical watchdog role of the local media regarding human rights issues and social responsibility was subordinated to the goal of election integrity and voter turnout.
It’s long been accepted that mass media impacts public opinion and in turn, public opinion impacts public policy and elections. That being the case, it behooves editors to scrutinize more carefully what is at stake and who is harmed by their decisions, and to accurately convey such by being as transparent and as accountable as possible. The lack of any clear instruction in law, codes of conduct, or guidelines was another external factor which could have contributed to how the homeless encampment story was initially depicted by the local Boston media.
Another external factor might be the dissatisfaction in nearby communities of those impacted negatively by the encampment. Perhaps there was pressure on editors to report the clean-up efforts as highly necessary in the beginning to appease community members who were also consumers of the news and financial donors of the local news agencies, candidates for Boston mayor, and others in political arena. Did pressure from the local non-encampment community—where more members might vote—steer a narrative in the media leading to distortions of the truth? If so, then it is possible that ulterior motives, even bad intent, existed in the media’s early portrayal of events.
Conclusion
As moral agents, news editors may have initially appeared motivated by genuine concerns about addiction, crime, and unsanitary conditions. In contrast, they arguably later appeared more influenced by politics when they released information about Acting Mayor Janey’s make-shift court at a jail which went unexamined in any meaningful way as the tents in the encampment were being tossed. Perhaps it was the media’s duty to the general public surrounding the encampment which prevailed and fostered reports that negatively depicted the encampments and those living in it. What is clear is that the local media did not press public officials for answers to some of the most obvious questions regarding a special court for those who failed to comply with Janey’s ultimatum.
The media did cover the ACLU’s effort to stop the removal of the tents, but initially there was little, if any, effort to highlight the foreseeable and pertinent legal and ethical issues with respect to it. Also, the media’s coverage of the homeless and their feelings about the clean-up was not as in-depth as one would have expected given that the media has a social responsibility to expose government overreach and dubious dealings with its citizens. Criminalization further subjects an already vulnerable population to greater difficulty finding shelter, brings them into more frequent contact with law enforcement, and potentially results in incarceration and an increased risk of violence perpetrated during arrests. Moreover, deference should be given to innocent subjects of any story. Government efforts to rid cities of homeless tents and spaces where homeless people can sit or sleep, and the media’s coverage of such, together send a disturbing message to the public that the homeless are not innocent victims, which is a distortion of the truth in many cases. The duty owed by the media to these subjects should have weighed heavily in favor of their protection at all costs, first, as innocents, and second, as being the more at-risk group when compared to other societal groups to which a duty was owed.
As to the photos, the private lives of citizens should not be exposed in a public way unless the benefit to doing so would outweigh any invasion of privacy. The photos of the encampment depicted personal belongings and were of an intrusive nature, but arguably, the public’s need to know trumped other considerations. Perhaps in order to shape public opinion about the encampment and justify the clean-up, it was preferable for news editors to capture the gravity of the circumstances through photos, which often convey a richer picture than simple words.
As the mayoral election in Boston grew closer, the homeless encampment at Mass and Cass suddenly became an urgent public health crisis, though the details explaining the timing of why were left out by the media. Some questioned the emergency nature of the order to remove the encampment, which had already existed for a while and throughout the duration of COVID pandemic. Only after the clean-up commenced and after some were arrested did the tone of media reports soften, and the humanitarian issues surrounding the criminalization of those who were displaced receive significant media attention.
The Boston mayoral election occurred on November 2, 2021, the same day which served as the deadline for all tents to be removed. That left those living in the area seriously distraught about finding housing and at risk for being arrested and incarcerated. The humanitarian issues and the risks for criminalizing homelessness should have been covered at the outset and prior to the mayoral election so candidates could have been vetted about these issues. The media outlets had access to Janey’s roll-out plan for the clean-up and knew it involved a special court for those who were noncompliant with her executive order. When news editors acting as moral agents behave in ways which compromise their credibility and create appearances of a conflict of interest, this damages their reputation and the reputation of the media generally, who is supposed to act independently from government and serve the public interest.
Celeste Hedequist is a lawyer and advocate in Massachusetts. As a self-motivated individual, and someone who values education, Celeste holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology from Boston College, a Master’s of Public Health in Environmental Sciences from Columbia, and a Juris Doctor from the Boston University School of Law. She combines her passion for law, advocacy, and the environment to assist in opportunities for locally and abroad.
Alongside her professional achievements, Celeste is also an avid traveler and has ventured across the United States and various parts of the globe with her husband and children. Her travel blog recounts her family’s experiences with the different people and cultures they have encountered on their visits.
The mining industry has long had to deal with sustainability issues and compliance with the “green” agenda for environmental stewardship.
Thanks to the ESG criteria, many mining companies have been able to improve and balance processes to balance the benefits to the planet, better manage their relationships with employees, suppliers and communities where they operate, as well as the way they lead the company.
ESG criteria have also gained relevance thanks to investors, who increasingly prefer to invest in companies that involve environmental, social and governance issues. Socially responsible investors put ethics before financial returns, which leads them to consider and prioritize ESG aspects in their investment decisions.
ESG is undoubtedly a key factor in the acceleration of investment flows.
One of the companies that have outperformed other companies in the same sector in their efforts and investment to comply with the requirements in this area has been Trillium Gold Mines (TSXV:TGM). According to the company “Modern exploration and mining require modern approaches”. The company has focused its efforts on fostering sustainability values at the core of its operations, which has attracted the attention of investors.
Trillium Gold’s ESG strategy is based on the following criteria:
Safety & Company Culture
Health, safety, and wellbeing
Equal opportunities
Skills training
In 2020, the COVID-19 crisis accelerated changes in corporate behaviour by focusing on governance and social aspects rather than environmental ones. This is due to the need to prioritize and guarantee public health.
However, strategies to take care of the environmental aspect are not being left aside. ESG-focused funds are rapidly increasing globally and investors are increasingly valuing sustainability strategies and are more and more oriented to invest in companies with a more favourable and regulated ESG environment.
In fact, during 2020, the ESG fund universe grew by more than 100% with total ESG assets estimated at $7.2 trillion versus $3 trillion in 2019. Although the U.S. saw the largest increase in adoption, sustainable assets are mostly coming from Europe, hence the relevance of Canadian companies such as Trillium Gold standing out in ESG aspects.
Trillium Gold Mines has always had a strong presence in the Canadian gold mining sector and has demonstrated with great effort a great fervor for compliance and resolution to social, environmental and governmental issues.
Health, safety, welfare, equal opportunity, vocational training, and environmental awareness top Trillium Gold’s list of business priorities as its projects in Ontario’s Red Lake mining district move forward.
The company recently acquired land in the Birch-Uchi greenstone belt, which includes about 17,000 contiguoushectares between the Confederation North andSouth properties. This acquisition, together with its ESG plan, has made Trillium Gold’s district scale land assemblage among Canada’s leading gold mining plays.
With this, it is clear how Trillium Gold is positioned for the future. Its ESG commitment and strategy is imperative to the mining industry as a whole and to the sector’s best practices.
At a time when billions are being invested in ESG funds, it is imperative that other companies continue to adopt and improve in this area because as ESG practices become stronger, more and more investors are monitoring their performance and execution.
2021 was a positive year for ESG, sustainability professionals finally saw that their field is getting more attention at the executive level. This means that standards will become more rigorous every day, especially for the mining industry.
Bitcoin whales are Bitcoin investors that hold large amounts of Bitcoin or Bitcoin equivalents. This term may be used to describe exchanges, corporations, or individuals holding very large amounts of Bitcoin. Generally, Bitcoin whales are viewed with suspicion by the Bitcoin community because they are thought to manipulate the price of Bitcoin in order to their benefit. Browse bitcoinera.app/ if you want to get complete information about bitcoin trading.
One possible reason for this is that trade volume reported on some exchanges is not accurate – it may have been accumulated by a single person, corporation, or even exchange in an effort to control the market.
Utilisation of Bots
Bitcoin whales have also been known to utilise bots in order to affect prices, particularly when it comes time for them to dump their coins onto the market. Although there currently seems to be no way for anyone else to see Bitcoin whales’ Bitcoin wallet addresses, some Bitcoin exchanges may allow you to view Bitcoin whale transactions on their respective blockchains.
In spite of these concerns, Bitcoin whales are generally believed to be performing a vital service in accumulating Bitcoin and stabilising market prices during downturns. Their existence demonstrates the decentralised power of Bitcoin itself – although they do control vast amounts of Bitcoin, there is no way for them to actually spend or utilise those coins without first converting them into fiat currency via an exchange.
There is a Bitcoin whale in the Bitcoin sea. The Bitcoin whales are very important to Bitcoin because they help with stability and growth.
Facts About Bitcoin Whales
Listed below are some facts about one of those Bitcoin whales:
1. Bitcoin as an Investment (Bitcoin as something you purchase to sell or trade at a later date for profit) – Bitcoin has value because it’s accepted as payment by many companies and individuals, creates liquidity, and serves as a store of value. It also provides owners with the opportunity to produce more bitcoin by “mining” them through running complex mathematical algorithms on their computers (see Mining explanation).
2. Trading Bitcoin (buying and selling Bitcoins for fiat currency such as USD) – Bitcoins can be bought and sold on exchanges with US Dollars and other currencies. Bitcoin prices will fluctuate based on supply and demand; an increase in Bitcoin demand will cause the Bitcoin prices to go up, while a decrease in Bitcoin demand will cause Bitcoin’s price to go down.
3. Spending Bitcoin (almost like cash) – Bitcoin can be used to purchase items electronically, but it is not yet widely used for these purposes. The liquidity of Bitcoin varies depending on the willingness of people to transact using the currency.
4. Sending or accepting Bitcoin (peer-to-peer transactions or payments) -Any individual who has Bitcoins can send them over the blockchain to anyone else with a Bitcoin address by paying an extremely small transaction fee. Bitcoin wallets keep a secret piece of data called a private key or seed, which is used to sign transactions, providing mathematical proof that they have come from the owner of the wallet.
5. Bitcoin Mining (additional Bitcoin can be created in this process) – Bitcoin miners run hardware for the sole purpose of mining Bitcoin. Miners can profit if the price of Bitcoin goes up, but they also risk losing money if Bitcoin prices drop too low.
6. Bitcoin Whale Information: The biggest Bitcoin whale in all of blockchain history is named “Hosho”. This Bitcoin whale holds over 1 million Bitcoins! That’s worth about $550 Million Dollars at today’s Bitcoin price (December 2017). Bitcoin whales like Hosho are helpful because they will buy Bitcoin at times when the Bitcoin market is falling, which helps Bitcoin regain some stability. If Bitcoin miners sell all of their Bitcoin at once, Bitcoin will become unstable and its value could drop quickly.
Conclusion
The Bitcoin Whale definition is someone that holds a substantial amount of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Whales are often seen as the big players. Bitcoin Whales are looked up to for advice, guidance, and opinions on Bitcoin. Bitcoin Whales could change the market with their trades, but it is important to remember that Bitcoin Whales can be both right and wrong in their predictions and opinions about Bitcoin.
Bitcoins are a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. They are produced by people, who use software that solves mathematical problems to create them. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public dispersed ledger called a blockchain. Bitcoin is unique in that there are a finite number of them: 21 million.
Bitcoins can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. As of February 2015, over 100,000 merchants and vendors accepted bitcoin as payment. Bitcoins can also be traded on decentralised markets. Visit bitcoinloophole.io/ for further information.
How to obtain bitcoins?
There are several ways you can get bitcoins:
Purchase bitcoins at a bitcoin exchange
Purchase bitcoins at a bitcoin exchange. There are many exchanges available, such as Coinbase and Gemini. Choose the one that is most convenient for you.
Once you have purchased bitcoins, they will be stored in a digital wallet on your computer or phone. You can then use your bitcoins to purchase goods or services online.
Receive bitcoins as payment for goods or services
If you are a merchant, you can receive bitcoins as payment for goods or services you provide. To do this, you will need to create a bitcoin wallet on your computer or phone. You can then accept payments in bitcoins from customers.
Mine bitcoins
You can also mine bitcoins by participating in a bitcoin mining pool. A bitcoin mining pool is a group of miners who work together to solve a block and share the rewards. To join a mining pool, you will need to create a bitcoin wallet on your computer or phone. You can then join a mining pool and start mining bitcoins.
Bitcoins are a digital currency that can be used to purchase goods or services online. They are decentralised, meaning they are not controlled by any government or financial institution. This makes them a popular choice for people who want to avoid censorship and surveillance.
Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that use cryptography to secure their transactions and to control the creation of new units. Bitcoin is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, and its value has been increasing rapidly in recent years.
How to store bitcoins?
Bitcoins can be stored in a bitcoin wallet, which functions as your personal bank account. There are several types of wallets, including software and hardware wallets. Software wallets are installed on your computer and allow you to spend bitcoins from your computer. Hardware wallets are physical devices that store your bitcoins offline.
Bitcoin is still a new technology and has a limited number of exchanges, merchants, and users. As such, it is subject to volatile changes in value. In order to protect yourself from volatility, it is recommended that you only use a small percentage of your total bitcoin holdings to buy goods or services. It is also recommended that you store any bitcoins you plan to keep for a long period of time in a hardware wallet.
Why use bitcoins?
Bitcoins offer several advantages over traditional currency:
Decentralised – Bitcoin is decentralised, meaning it is not subject to government or financial institution control. This makes it more secure and less prone to inflation.
Portable – Bitcoins can be carried on a USB drive or transmitted electronically.
Anonymous – Transactions made with bitcoins are anonymous, as they are not linked to any personal information.
Fast – Bitcoin transactions are processed quickly, allowing you to receive your goods or services immediately.
Cheap – Transaction fees for bitcoin transactions are much lower than those for traditional currency transactions.
Conclusion
Bitcoins are a decentralised digital currency that can be used to purchase goods and services online. While they are not currently accepted by many merchants, bitcoins can be exchanged for cash or other cryptocurrencies on a number of exchanges.
To own bitcoins, you first need to create a bitcoin wallet. This is a digital account where your bitcoins will be stored. There are a number of different wallets to choose from, but we recommend using either Coinbase or Blockchain.
Once you have created a wallet, you can buy bitcoins by transferring money from your bank account to the wallet. You can then use the bitcoins to purchase items online or exchange them for other cryptocurrencies.
Be sure to keep your bitcoin wallet safe and secure by creating a strong password.
This is what Bitcoin looked like in late 2010. Bitcoin’s invention by Satoshi Nakamoto ushered in a new beginning for the world of decentralised transactions. It was created with an admirable vision, but it wasn’t without its flaws. There are many platforms like this trading app that are helping many successful bitcoin traders to do safe bitcoin trading.
The Bitcoin white paper – which outlined all of Bitcoin’s technical specifications and measures for accountability – stated that there would only ever be 21 million bitcoins in circulation [Informative statement to establish Bitcoin cap] and that there wouldn’t be any more generated after 2040.
But while Satoshi Nakamoto had a lot of respect from within the community, not everyone praised him. In an interesting BitcoinTalk forum post in 2010, one commenter with the username “MysteryMiner” said, “We are all Satoshi.”
Bitcoin’s Value
Recently, Bitcoin’s value has soared high above $5,000. With Bitcoin now worth so much money – and the Bitcoin community still in its relative infancy – people are left asking themselves: What happens when all 21 million bitcoins have been mined?
While Bitcoin is decentralised, it does require some specialised computer equipment to do Bitcoin mining. Without miners confirming transactions by checking them against the public ledger of past transactions known as the blockchain, Bitcoin doesn’t function properly. The blockchain records show whether or not there is double-spending (when someone tries to spend the same Bitcoin more than once) or any kind of fraudulent activity on Bitcoin’s network.
And that’s where Bitcoin miners come in, to ensure there is no double-spending and Bitcoin transactions are properly authenticated. They do this by putting Bitcoin transactions into blocks, then continuously attempting to seal off the block with a cryptographic puzzle based on what’s known as proof-of-work. The first miner to solve each of these puzzles gets some newly created Bitcoins as a reward (this process is known as Bitcoin mining).
Every time someone successfully creates a hash, they get 25 new bitcoins – but this will happen less frequently over time because of how difficult it becomes to create hashes for each transaction on the blockchain
The proof-of-work process is the only way in which new bitcoins are created, and miners compete against each other to solve each block’s cryptographic puzzle first. While this doesn’t take much work to do, it gets increasingly difficult over time as more miners try to get in on the action. This ensures that no one individual or group can take control of the blockchain (unless they have greater than half of all mining power).
But what happens when all 21 million bitcoins are generated? Right now there are about 16.4 million bitcoins generated at present, but after 21 million bitcoins have been mined, who will generate the cryptocurrency?
Well, Bitcoin transactions are set to become increasingly less attractive for miners. Bitcoin mining is designed so that the more miners there are on the Bitcoin network, the harder it becomes to mine bitcoins. That’s because Bitcoin’s algorithm makes mining more difficult as more computers are added to Bitcoin’s decentralised network. This ensures that Bitcoin remains a security system even if not all of its users can be trusted.
At present, miners receive 25 bitcoins per block they mine, but that amount will fall by half sometime in 2020. This could make continuing Bitcoin mining very difficult unless bitcoin prices rise considerably in response.
So what will happen when all 21 million bitcoins have been mined? Some believe this could mark the end of traditional fiat currencies like dollars and euros. Bitcoin has already disrupted other marketplaces, including online payments, gold, and silver, so it makes sense that it could replace other currencies in the future.
If Bitcoin can be used to buy everyday items like groceries or gas, what happens when there are no bitcoins left to mine?
This is why Bitcoin’s algorithm was designed with a finite limit of 21 million bitcoins. Of course, those who believe Bitcoin will still hold purchasing power after all 21 million bitcoins have been mined will see this as an added bonus instead of a problem!
However, Bitcoin’s blockchain was also created to ensure that no single individual could control the Bitcoin network. Since Bitcoin is decentralised, it won’t be affected by what happens after all 21 million bitcoins are mined.
We’ll just have to wait and see what happens when Bitcoin mining comes to an end in 2140.
In the wake of global events, there are certain strategies to be carried out to strengthen the brand as well as market trends. In order to deal with the current situation in such a way that it interferes in a minor way in the business.
The immediate economic ramifications from the invasion will be significantly lesser than the sudden economic shutdowns stemming from the coronavirus in 2020. Companies will be keeping an eye on the developments in Europe, and with that in mind, here are some of the industry trends they can expect to see this year.
It is necessary to specify, that the global data economy is projected to grow to $103 billion by the year 2027 – we already see some businesses being built entirely on the back of big data. Take nstand.com, for example, a company that, from a database of over 19,000 stand builders worldwide, provides clients who want exhibition stands with five tailored proposals.
1. Big Data
Big data is a segment that is growing at a remarkable rate, more than double what was projected back in 2018. 59% of organizations worldwide use big data analytics in some way, according to a 2020 Micro Strategy report.
Given the expected profit gains, at least a 9% increase over five years, this is a trend that companies will find increasingly perilous to ignore.
2. The boom in e-commerce
The pandemic changed the way people acquire goods and services. E-marketer predicts that 22% of worldwide retail sales will be made online by 2023.
Shopify’s future of E-commerce report indicates that as retailers were forced to shut down during the height of the pandemic, e-commerce global sales rose to 16.4%. That growth represents a 10-year growth in just three months and is an all-time high.
E-commerce’s trend is only upwards, mainly because of the convenience it offers consumers.
3. Remote workers
Because of the lockdown, many workers could suddenly no longer travel to the office and had to work from home. Though hesitant at first, both companies and employees are undergoing a paradigm shift as they realize the benefits of working from home.
Employees do not need constant supervision to be productive. On the contrary, many studies have shown that when workers can manage their own time (instead of a 9-5 day), they are more productive and therefore more profitable.
An Upwork study predicts that 22% of the American workforce (36.2 million) will be remote workers by 2025.
4. The move to sustainability
Strangely enough, climate change has been moved to the forefront of consumers minds. Sustainability is part of most companies dialogue nowadays.
Innovations and start-up companies are popping up in green sectors such as renewable energy, agriculture, water, waste reduction, and other non-renewable resources.
Big companies are also investing more in new greener technologies. For example, we will continue to see carmakers race to bring more viable electric vehicles to the market.
Consumer demand and government regulations will see more companies go green.
Conclusion
In summary, we will see how the online world is increasing and entering the business environment, so we need to know how to operate in the internet marketplace. Digital acceleration is the way of the future, and as supply chains normalize, we can expect growth and innovation to increase in this sector. This includes the move to greener, more sustainable processes.
By Terence Tse
CFOs are evolving into AI-driven transformation orchestrators, balancing finance, technology, and strategy while upskilling teams, managing risks, and driving measurable business value.
A key insight from this year’s AI for CFOs event, organized...
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