Volume 1 of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report said approximately 19 Federal Indian boarding schools accounted for more than 500 deaths. The number of recorded deaths is expected to rise as the department continues investigating 

From 1819 to 1969, the federal Indian boarding school system consisted of 408 federal schools across 37 states or then territories, including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii.

“…the federal Indian boarding school system deployed systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies in an attempt to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education, including but not limited to renaming Indian children from Indian to English names; cutting the hair of Indian children; discouraging or preventing the use of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian languages, religions and cultural practices; and organizing Indian and Native Hawaiian children into units to perform military drills…”

The report found boarding school rules were often enforced through “corporal punishment like solitary confinement, flogging, withholding food, whipping, slapping and cuffing.”

Preston S. McBride, an Indian boarding school historian and a Comanche descendent. McBride has found more than 1,000 student deaths at the four former boarding schools he has studied, and estimates the overall number of deaths could be as high as 40,000.

“Basically every school had a cemetery,” he said. “There are deaths at or deaths because of virtually every single boarding school.”

Those deaths were the result of everything from illness to abuse, McBride said, based on his review of historical records. Getting to the true number would take a significant amount of time and research, McBride said. “I think we have a long way to go.”

Hundreds Of Native American Children Died In U.S. Government-run Abusive Schools| Countercurrents

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott in a joint statement with the National Border Patrol Council protested about feeding migrant children in U.S. custody amid a national shortage of infant formula.

Carl Takei, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. commented “Gov. Abbott and NBPC are literally demanding that the government lock babies in cages and then starve them of the sustenance they need to survive,” I just can’t come up with the words to describe how despicable and inhumane this is.” He continued “I’m especially blown away by the explicit contrast this statement sets up between ‘our children’ (who are vulnerable, precious, and deserve survival) vs. the not-our-children who deserve to starve in our baby jails.” 

Texas Gov. Abbott’s Solution to Formula Shortage? Let Migrant Babies Starve (commondreams.org)

A new report out this week from the groups Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup found that plastic recycling rates have actually fallen in the US since the emergence of “advanced recycling” in 2018, from its highest ever point of 9% to less than 6% today, compared with a 66% recycling rate for paper.

“They’re finally kind of admitting that recycling hasn’t worked,” Beyond Plastics president Judith Enck said of groups like ACC and its members that have been lobbying against environmental protections. “And it doesn’t work by design. It’s not like they’re surprised by this. They knew all along it wouldn’t work.”

 A 2020 investigation from NPR and Frontline showed how companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Dow and Dupont were aware of the inefficacy of plastic recycling, yet they still strategized marketing campaigns that told a different story to the public.

In April, California attorney general Rob Bonta launched an investigation into ExxonMobil for its role in exacerbating the global plastic pollution crisis. Bonta says his investigation started with ExxonMobil because they’ve been a leader, in the plastics industry and in the messaging around recycling. A report out last year from the Mindaroo Foundation found that just 100 companies produce 90% of the world’s plastic pollution. It pinpointed ExxonMobil as the top producer in the world of single-use plastic. The International Energy Agency has  predicted that plastic production, which is forecasted to double by 2040, will be the biggest growth market for the oil industry over the next decade.

ExxonMobil said it is “focused on solutions” like building the first “commercial-scale advanced recycling technology” and that “meritless allegations like these distract from the important collaborative work that is under way”. But like regular old recycling, “advanced recycling” has so far shown little to no results.

Also known as pyrolysis or chemical recycling, the process entails using various chemical processes to turn plastic into other materials. The most common approach is warming plastic at very high heat to turn it into a low-grade fossil fuel, which can then be used either as fuel or as a feedstock for more plastic. The technology is still in its infancy, but early studies have found that like earlier versions of plastic recycling, the “ advanced” method is expensive, and that it’s difficult to collect and effectively recycle a wide variety of plastics. It also delivers few environmental benefits, not just because it’s used to create either fuel or more plastic, but also because the process itself is emissions intensive. One study commissioned by plastic manufacturers themselves found that advanced recycling generated more greenhouse gases than either landfilling plastic or burning it.

Bonta says he’d love to see advanced recycling work, but right now it’s just “words on paper”. A 2021 Reuters investigation found several examples of failed advanced recycling programs, noting that out of 30 projects operating around the world, all were either still operating on a modest scale or had shut down, and more than half were years behind schedule on previously announced commercial plans. A report from the Natural Resources Defense Council published in March noted that even when it “works” advanced recycling is not an environmentally friendly solution.

The American Chemistry Council, or ACC, a trade group for the chemical industry, has been pushing advanced recycling since China shut its borders to used plastic in 2018. The group has also been lobbying state governments to exempt their recycling process from various environmental regulations – 18 states have laws on the books that either side-step certain government oversight or designate advanced recycling facilities as eligible for subsidies. It’s part of a strategy former Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy called “getting ahead of government intervention”.

Exxon doubles down on ‘advanced recycling’ claims that yield few results | Plastics | The Guardian

 The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered multiple crises on  several fronts: the deaths of thousands of civilians, over 6 million refugees fleeing the country,  the destruction of heavily populated cities, the rise in military spending in Europe, energy shortages within the EU, a projected decline in development assistance to the world’s poorer nations; the demolition of schools and health-care facilities — and now the threat of hunger and starvation worldwide.

David Beasley, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), said last week: “Right now, Ukraine’s grain silos are full,” while “44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation…“The bullets and bombs in Ukraine could take the global hunger crisis to levels beyond anything we’ve seen before.”

Population-wise, that amounts to the entirety of Argentina.

WFP’s analysis has found that 276 million people worldwide were already facing acute hunger at the start of 2022. That number is expected to rise by 44 million people if the conflict in Ukraine continues, with the steepest rises in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ukraine had about 14 million tons in storage and available for export. But Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea ports has brought shipments to a standstill. More grain is stranded on ships unable to move because of the conflict.

Beasley warned, “… hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies. We’re running out of time and the cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine. I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where it’s desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine”.

Yields of staple crops were already down in many parts of the world because of the impacts of the climate crisis and other conflicts.

Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank, told IPS that Russia’s war against Ukraine and their war crimes will have consequences that will last for decades. 

“The war will only exacerbate the many crises the world is now facing—the biodiversity loss crisis, the health crisis, and the climate crisis. And because Ukraine and Russia provided so much food—and cooking oils and fertilizer—to other parts of the world, including the Global South, there will be a massive hunger crisis,” she warned.

Daniel Bradlow, Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, told IPS the war in Ukraine will have a devastating impact in Africa because many African countries import food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine.

Therefore, the war will lead to increase in food and fertilizer prices as well as shortages of food and fertilizer. The impact of the war will come on top of extreme weather events– droughts, floods– in various parts of the continent that will also have adverse impacts on food prices and supplies.

“Thus. it is likely that there will be increases in the number of people going hungry across the continent which will have tragic impacts on the development and wellbeing of children”.

Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam’s Policy Advisor on Food, Agriculture and Land, told IPS global hunger is soaring with the war in Ukraine seeing food prices skyrocket.

“This is catastrophic for people living in countries highly dependent on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. Countries like Yemen and Syria in the Middle East and Somalia and South Sudan in Africa where we are seeing people pushed beyond the brink of hunger,” she said.

The reason is a broken global food system, one that is unable to withstand crises and one that is built on inequality. Many poorer countries are unable – and are too often made unable – to produce enough food to feed their people. They must rely on food imports. This dependency is dangerous, she added.

“Countries should refrain from using food export bans. They just do more harm. Countries should ensure that food can move quickly from one country to another”.

“We need a food system that works for everybody. One that can stand against shocks such as rapid food inflation and one that is built on local small-scale family farming” she declared.

Russian Invasion Blamed for 44 Million People Marching Towards Hunger & Starvation | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 The UK currently use 17.5m hectares of farmland. Simon Fairlie, updating the earlier work of the ecologist Kenneth Mellanby finds that while a diet containing a moderate amount (less than we currently consume) of meat, dairy and eggs would require the use of 11m hectares of land (4m of which would be arable), a vegan diet would demand a total of just 3m. Not only do humans need no pasture, but we use grains and pulses more efficiently when we eat them ourselves.

This would enable more than 14m hectares of the land now used for farming to be set aside for nature. 

Alternatively, on a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200 million people.

While animal manure might return carbon to the soil, in other respects, contrary to the claims of some practitioners, it is not a great soil additive. One paper reports that the leakage of nitrogen from organic farms using animal manure is 37% worse than the leakage from conventional farming using artificial fertiliser. The problem is timing. While artificial fertiliser often releases its nutrients too quickly, manure releases its nutrients too slowly. If the crop is not to starve, the dung needs to be spread long before the maximum growth spurt. Even then, the plants are unlikely to receive all the nutrients they need to reach their full potential. Nitrogen from manure leaks both before and after crops are able to mop it up.

 An analysis by Yadvinder Malhi suggests that between 10 and 50 sq km of land is needed to support one hunter-gatherer, while 10 sq km of modern, productive farming can feed 4,000 people. 

Global food production has been comfortably beating population growth for 60 years. In 1961, there were 2,200 kcals a day available for every person on Earth. By 2011, this had risen to almost 2,900. Crop production as a whole has risen much higher: to an astonishing total of 5,400 kcal per person per day. But almost half these calories are lost, mainly through feeding the food to farm animals, but also through using it for other purposes (such as biofuels) and through waste. Even so, in principle, there is more than enough for everyone, if it were affordable and well distributed. So how come chronic hunger has been rising globally since 2015? It’s the result of a lethal combination of inequality and systemic instability in global food distribution.

George Monbiot: ‘On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200 million people’ | Books | The Guardian

 The world’s most valuable company is the giant Saudi Aramco, as soaring commodity prices swell profits at energy companies. Aramco, whose market capitalisation has climbed by a quarter this year to hit $2.43tn, stoked by the surge in oil prices since the Ukraine war began. Aramco is seeing bumper revenues and earnings, having doubled its profits last year. Aramco has a particularly low cost of production, as much of its oil is in easy-to-tap fields onshore or in shallow waters. That boosts profitability at the company, which is still 95% owned by the Saudi government.

Apple has lost its crown and was eclipsed on Wednesday night amid the ongoing rout on Wall Street. Shares in Apple, which had become the world’s first $3tn company in early January, sank another 5% on Wednesday, knocking its value down to $2.37tn (£1.94tn) – an 18% drop this year.

Saudi Aramco overtakes Apple as world’s most valuable company | Aramco | The Guardian

 Russia

Number of people arrested so far for participating in antiwar protests = 15,442 (including 100 indicted on criminal charges)

Number of people subjected to administrative penalties for ‘discrediting the armed forces’ = 993

Three people arrested for damaging giant letters Z, erected as war symbols

Molotov cocktails thrown at military recruitment centers in four towns and at a police bus in Moscow (used to detain protestors) 

Antiwar posters hung in Tver city center after surveillance cameras turned off 

Transparency poster hung from bridge in Perm with the old anarchist slogan: Peace to the Cottages, War on the Palaces (see illustration)

20—40% of contract soldiers who have returned from Ukraine refuse to go back

Women in Caucasus blocked a road, demanding that the authorities inform them of the fate of sons, brothers and husbands sent to fight in Ukraine  

Ukraine

Many men who went abroad temporarily to earn money and send it home are defying a new law requiring them to return to Ukraine within 15 days or face up to 10 years in prison. Many intend to bring out their families, renounce Ukrainian citizenship and settle permanently in other countries. 

In Khust in the west Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia, women are protesting outside the town’s military recruitment center. On April 30 about 50 women broke windows to get into the building. They accepted recruitment of their male relatives to ‘territorial defense’ units on the understanding that these were local units, but are angry that they have now been sent to fight in the Donbass, without even the necessary equipment. 

Source: https://aitrus.info/node/5963, May 11 via Ukraine war: resistance continues – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)

Potential tipping points – where gradual decline suddenly becomes catastrophic – include loss of wildlife, fisheries collapse and dead, polluted rivers, the watchdog said.  The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP)is a new official body set up after Brexit to hold the government to account. Its first report says ministers have shown ambition but that action is too slow.

“We’re asking the government to recognise that tipping points are fast approaching in some areas. Because if it doesn’t, it’s going to be so much harder,” said Dame Glenys Stacey, the OEP chair. “When you get to very limited numbers of wildlife species, the effort involved in turning that around is immense and takes an awful long time.”

Simon Brockington, the OEP’s chief insights officer, said: “A tipping point arises at the point where a very slow and persistent decline suddenly becomes catastrophic. We’re seeing long-term declines in biodiversity and we’re calling on the government to address those. The serial setting of catch quotas above catch limits over time can lead to fish stock crash and we’ve seen many examples of that.” He also highlighted seabed trawling, which he said “destroys the integrity of the ecosystem”, and the pollution of farmland and rivers with fertilisers and livestock manure. “For tipping points, it would be those I would highlight,” he said.

Natalie Prosser, the watchdog’s chief executive, said the UK was one of the most biodiversity-depleted countries in the world, and air pollution caused tens of thousands of deaths a year. “Changes in climate are affecting the environment and biodiversity. We are heading towards a major tipping point.”  She said the government had missed many environmental targets, and funding for monitoring the environment had fallen in the last 10 years.

Richard Benwell, the head of Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of 65 nature and conservation charities, said: “It has been 10 years since the government promised to pass on the environment in better condition – 10 years in which biodiversity has continued to decline. The OEP poses a simple challenge: that overarching ambition must now be rooted in ambitious targets and an urgent delivery strategy.”

Joan Edwards, of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “For all the initial promise of the 25-year environment plan, the government has been seriously dragging its feet. Targets for reversing nature’s decline are so unambitious that in 20 years’ time we could have even less wildlife than we have now. The steps outlined by the OEP provide a framework for government to deliver on its promises, but we need much greater political willpower.”

For months, international NGOs and UN agencies have been warning that the unprecedented outpouring of funding and compassion for Ukraine is diverting attention from some of the world’s other humanitarian crises.

 Only just two out of 10 people in Britain are aware that the worst drought in 40 years is taking place and threatening famine. According to polling commissioned by Christian Aid, while 91% of the British public is aware of Vladimir Putin’s war, only 23% know about the worsening humanitarian crisis in east Africa.

As the war in Ukraine rages, the combined effect of three failed rainy seasons has pushed parts of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia to the brink, killing livestock, forcing people to leave their homes and increasing levels of child malnutrition. The Russian invasion has exacerbated the situation, pushing up the price of staples such as wheat and sunflower oil, as well as fuel.

Patrick Watt, CEO of Christian Aid, said the findings were “deeply concerning”.

“Across the Horn of Africa, up to 20 million people are facing hunger. Droughts have become increasingly severe and frequent, and so this is not a surprise. However, the war in Ukraine has turned a bad situation into a dire crisis. With rocketing food and energy costs around the globe, we are seeing people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing a crisis like no other,” said Watt. “While we cannot thank the public enough for their response to humanitarian needs in Ukraine, the fact that so few people in Britain are aware of the crisis in the Horn of Africa is deeply concerning. “We must sound the alarm and give hope to people in need in the region. The cost of living crisis is global and demands urgent action from the government and the development sector,” Watt said.

In Somalia, about 6 million people, 40% of the population, are suffering extreme levels of hunger, and the World Food Programme warned last month there was “a very real risk of famine” if the drought continued and assistance wasn’t received.

In Kenya, the number of people in need of food assistance has risen more than fourfold in less than two years, WFP said. In southern and south-eastern Ethiopia an estimated 7.2 million people wake up hungry every day, it added.

Hunger crisis grips Horn of Africa – but 80% of Britons unaware, poll shows | Global development | The Guardian

Ever wondered how billionaires accumulate their wealth? Elon Musk pushes his workers ‘s at Tesla’s massive Shanghai ‘Giga-factory’ to the limit to meet production targets amid an ongoing pandemic lockdown. 

 Musk called upon American workers to emulate his Chinese factory workers. Chinese and American labor norms have clashed in recent years, as bosses pit workers against each other.

“There is just a lot of super talented hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing,” the billionaire said. “They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3am oil, they won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”

Eli Friedman, a China labor expert and associate professor of international and comparative labor at Cornell University’s ILR School, said Musk’s remark should be understood in the “broader context of American corporations taking advantage not just of the low cost of labor in China, but the flexibility”. For bosses like Musk, “that’s the comparative advantage: the fact that you have hundreds of thousands of workers that you can literally wake up in the middle of the night and put them on the production line,” Friedman said. “It’s tapping into a kind of Orientalist narrative about these kind of robotic Chinese workers who, [Musk] says in a sort of valorized way, that this is a good thing,” the researcher added.

In April, Tesla restricted its Shanghai workers from leaving the factory under a so-called “closed-loop” system originally developed by Chinese authorities to contain Beijing Olympics participants. While locked inside, the workers were reportedly made to work 12-hour shifts, six days in a row, and to sleep on factory floors. 

Labor rights and safety violations have been reported at Tesla’s Shanghai factory since it opened in 2018, with some workers making as little as $1,500 a month in what an investigation by local journalists called the “Giga-sweatshop.”

Even in the United States, Musk is well known for his disregard for labor norms and work-life balance: the tech billionaire infamously declared “nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”. He has bragged about making Tesla’s US employees work 100-hour weeks, while claiming to have worked 120-hour weeks himself. 

Musk’s practices are on par with China’s extreme work culture, nicknamed “996”, in which workers are expected to work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. The practice has been the source of protests in recent years and has been characterized as a form of modern slavery. 

China’s gruelling culture of extreme hours has been celebrated by tech billionaires in the country, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma, who has called the “996” system a “huge blessing”, and rival company JD.com’s Richard Liu, who has called workers who work fewer hours “slackers”.

Officially, Chinese labor law mandates a 40-hour work week, with employees allowed up to 36 hours of overtime a month – which would come out to just over a 48-hour work week. But that’s not what happens in practice. 

“There’s no pretence anywhere that that’s enforced,” said Friedman. “Excessive overtime is kind of a built-in feature of the whole model of industrial development in China. Very long hours and compulsory overtime, while not legal, are also completely the norm. And this is done regularly in consultation with local governments who are also tasked with enforcing the labor law.” 

Employees in China are often asked to sign a “striver’s pledge” which waives their right to overtime pay and paid time off. And while many corporations in China have unions, the unions are funded by the employer, which makes them essentially powerless to negotiate against management, Friedman noted.

 The Wall Street Journal revealed that some of the US-based employees at Chinese-owned TikTok were expected to pull back-to-back all-nighters and spend as many as 85 hours a week in meetings to keep up with their Chinese colleagues. The 2019 Netflix documentary “American Factory” described the conflicts that arose after a Chinese billionaire, Cao Dewang, opened a factory in an abandoned General Motors plant in Ohio. “American workers are not efficient, and output is low,” Cao complained at one point in the film. “I can’t manage them.”

The grim backdrop to Musk’s comments is that “American workers are in a very subjugated position as well, unfortunately”, said Friedman. “The not-at-all subtle threat is that these Chinese workers are a threat to you white American workers. If you don’t meet that standard, then your jobs are on the line.”

However, in recent years, a growing movement of Chinese workers has stood up to oppose overwork, with some activists using tools like GitHub to compile lists of Chinese companies accused of violating labor laws. Anger over the country’s extreme work culture intensified last January after a 22-year-old worker for Shanghai-based e-commerce firm Pinduoduo collapsed and died after leaving work at 1.30am, after a run of brutally long shifts. Incidents like these helped drive a trend among young Chinese social media users early last year promoting “tang ping”, or “lying flat” as a passive protest against work, which has since been restricted on the Chinese internet. Later in the year, China’s top court ruled that forced and excessive overtime was illegal, but the ruling has not been well enforced. Work stoppages, often unofficial “wildcat” strikes, continue to occur regularly in China.

Elon Musk praises Chinese workers for ‘burning the 3am oil’ – here’s what that really looks like | Elon Musk | The Guardian