In the art collectibles world, the pencil is referred to as the “forgers tool”. Forgers prefer using pencil as it’s nearly impossible to date its age and it displays upon pieces without being obtrusive which allows it to go undetected for longer than if the autograph were done in pen, paint, or some other medium
India has the highest amount of children who work of any country in the world. Thousands of children are trafficked into domestic slavery each year in India but due to India’s vast population of 1,300,000,000 (1.3 billion) people, these children go largely unnoticed. In India, every hour, 8 children are trafficked however 5 of these children are never found after having gone missing. Traffickers are paid 5000 – 6000 Indian Rupees ($95.00 – $110.00) per child. Indian society seems to permiss children working and it is deeply ingrained within society as it is viewed as poor children working because their families cannot afford to send them to attend an educational institution. It is viewed as better to work than to do nothing at all. It’s ironic because a buffalo will sell for 200,000 Indian Rupees ($3700.00) but a young girl for 10,000 Indian Rupees ($185.00). The value of a human life does not seem to count for much as prices are set in terms of how much work a person or animal can perform before collapsing. Kailash Satyarthi, a man who has spent his life freeing children from slavery, his organization freeing close to 100,000 children in the last 3 decades as of 2018. Satyarthi who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his efforts to eradicate slavery states. Satyarthi often educates that there is a triangular relationship between poverty, child labor, and illiteracy with each forming a chicken and egg relationship with the other as each factor is a consequence of the other factors. When child labor is permitted, it allows child illiteracy and poverty to continue. Child labor is the largest factor preventing education and literacy for children around the world. This places children at an enormous disadvantage because they cannot become equal partners in the globalized economy. It’s not only the traffickers of organized crime who need to be suppressed. It is also the middle class families in large cities like Delhi who do not consider the consequences before hiring a young person to watch their children, clean their home, and cook their meals. Suppressing both of these ties to slavery will drastically help reduce the number of children who are trafficked each year. Law enforcement has been known to resort to medical examinations to provide an accurate age when documentation is unavailable or thought to be fraudulent. Indian law however clearly states that if a school certificate is used as proof of age, then no medical examination shall commence. This is used by traffickers as leverage to ensure that they’re never culpable for having a person below the age of 18 under their supervision
When Vladimir Putin sent Russian military soldiers into Crimea, Ukraine, he was adamant to ensure they bore no insignia on their uniforms which allowed him to deny the status of the soldiers and their relation to the Russian military
Many North Koreans decide to work abroad but foreign work programs do not work the same way in North Korea as they do in the western world. Workers go abroad to places which will take them, with Russia and China being the primary location to migrate, and then work in industries which require cheap labor, typically in construction or factory work. Workers are forced to pay a mandatory fee to the North Korean state as crippling sanctions by the United Nations has hobbled North Korea’s ability to advance its nuclear program(s). This fee is referred to as “party duty” and is typically $300.00 – $900.00 per month which is why many workers end up giving up and returning home, often in debt. Workers are paid in a form of food stamps as all financial pay goes to the team leaders of the band of workers. These leaders arrange for part of the money to be paid to the worker, part of the money to be kept for themselves, and part of the money to be paid to the North Korean government. Workers have reported earning as little as 7% of their gross income after the immense fees which were imposed upon them. Many workers work during the day at their primary job, and then again during the night with private construction jobs which they acquire most often by bribing their team leader. The night construction jobs pay much better than the state sanctioned jobs because doing so is completely “off the books” meaning that no taxes or fees are imposed allowing workers to keep the entire payment for themselves and their families. These migrant workers are often referred to as “dollar heroes” within North Korean culture and there are approximately 40,000 of these types of workers in Russia alone. At its core, this system is essentially forced labor which is equitable to slavery. The North Korean state is dependent upon this system as many of its legitimate exports are now blocked from world trade making income generation substantially more difficult. The demand for North Korean labor is intense because Chinese laborers now earn enough that their wages are no longer competitive with North Korea. The Chinese government often sets up conventions which function as career fairs, placing perspective employers in touch with those looking for work. These work fairs are established so that North Korean workers can be brought to China to help meet the demand of laborers needed to build new projects, primarily in construction. North Korea has put laws in place so that employers and employees can never directly exchange payment for services rendered. Any employee demanding payment is dismissed and sent back to North Korea. Workers are closely guarded and watched by North Korean managers who report back anything suspicious to the North Korean government. China is North Korea’s most important trading partner and it is estimated that in China alone, North Korean workers earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Before workers are allowed to go abroad, they must pass an ideological examination which is essentially a background check of ones family. Workers are required to have 1 spouse and 1 child in North Korea before migrating for work so that those who go abroad cannot engage in rogue activities. The North Korean government leverages these families left behind to manipulate workers into complying with the harsh system setup abroad, as many are unaware just how bad conditions are until they arrive to their worksite for the first time. The United Nations estimates that North Korean workers earn over $1,000,000,000 ($1 billion) annually for the North Korean state. Reports indicate that there are approximately 150,000 North Korean workers working abroad in total with 100,000 in China, 40,000 in Russia, and the remaining 10,000 working in Africa, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Myanmar, and Poland. The United Nations has predicted that because western sanctions have put such immense pressure upon North Korea and its future financial growth, Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader whose technical title is the “Chairman of the Workers Party”, will be looking to increase the number of workers North Korea sends abroad as well as ratchet up the pressure placed upon these workers to generate even more foreign exchange income. Because of the insatiable drive to fulfill ever lower wages, it seems the rest of the industrialized world is complicit in helping North Korea’s Supreme Leader fulfill his ambition
30,000 people have managed to escape North Korea, most of them ending up in Seoul, South Korea because it acts as the closest analog to home in terms of culture, cuisine, and tradition. Many who have escaped refuse to provide an account to authorities or investigators for fear of retribution towards their families who are still living in North Korea. Seoul is approximately 75 kilometers from the North Korean border so most people fleeing North Korea make Seoul their target even if their final destination is somewhere further abroad (eg. the U.K., Singapore, Spain etc.)
Subjects who display increased alpha wave activity, specifically within the temporal region of the brain when being scanned with electroencephalograph imaging is typically indicative of a person recalling a memory. Subjects who display increased alpha wave activity within the frontal region of the brain when being scanned with that same imaging technology is indicative of a person fabricating or conceptualizing a story. These types of scans may be used in the future within the criminal justice system when determining whether or not a person is telling the truth or fabricating an alternate summary of events
Due to the fact that Facebook is an advertising organization, first and foremost, Facebook’s directors have strived to setup and implement infrastructure which has been specifically designed to keep people logged into Facebook for as long as possible. Facebook has discovered that a single person with fringe or extreme ideologies, can often provoke dozens of others, which in turn leads to even more engagement with more people, therefore generating greater advertising revenue. Offensive and disturbing content is an example of material which Facebook publicly denounces but internally welcomes as it keeps people signed in and conversing. Every second spent on Facebook is another chance to see a new or repeat advertisement. Unless streamed live, videos of child abuse in the U.S. typically go unreported to law enforcement and are rarely removed from Facebook unless requested to do so by an intervening law enforcement agency. Facebook has implemented a corporate policy in which users and moderators can flag content as disturbing so that users under 18 cannot view said content which is designed to be a reasonable intervention to maintaining a degree of control over the way content is shared, but Facebook purposefully allows questionable content because it provoked discussion and sharing between Facebook users. Censorship is purported as the main reason by Facebook as to why content of this nature is justified, but the true reason is most likely directly correlated to advertising revenue as the more the company earns, the higher its internal value becomes and the higher its internal value becomes, the more investors want to invest in it, which feeds back into a feedback loop causing an even higher valuation of the company. Facebook employs full time experts (e.g. psychologists etc.) to continuously moderate and review policies of acceptable terms of use. Facebook uses the accronym “MAD” which stands for “marked as disturbing” to classify content which many rational adults would argue should be removed. Fortunately, one of Facebook’s policies state that “if a parent or guardian views a video of their child in circumstances which they object to, they have the ability to request and/or demand Facebook moderators to remove the content”. Facebook moderators are forced to follow this corporate policy, however this request must come only from a parent or guardian of the child who is actively participating within the video or image in question. Fortunately, high priority issues (e.g. self-harm and suicide etc.) are sent to a specialized queue in which intervention has a turn around time of 24 hours, but all other flagged content which falls outside of this classification has a turn around time of approximately 5 days which is 5x longer than the standard response time for most technology companies 5x longer than the target Facebook has aimed to achieve. Priority queue material is not always removed however, with many cases involving helpful resources (e.g. digital ebooks, audiobooks, and telephone helpline phone numbers etc.) being sent to the content creator and/or person(s) found within the material, with the actual content itself remaining available for users to view. Facebook argues that removing content flagged as an immediate priority would mean that friends, family, and loved ones would not be aware of the issue (e.g. suicide) affecting the person(s) depicted and therefore would not allow for helpful intervention, rationalizing the distribution of content like this as a means of not only starting an open dialog between affected people, but also allowing them to be put in touch with the resource(s) they need. Facebook’s User Agreement states that no user under 13 years of age is permitted to use Facebook’s services however age violations are only investigated if other Facebook users report another user as being underage. Content which is racist or biased against a particular ethnicity is left available for consumption so long as these critics castigate immigration policy, and not any specific person or group. Highly popular Facebook pages are shielded from these removal policies to a degree and are also protected from ordinary content moderators removing content, only having material able to be removed if senior moderators flag it to be placed into a queue so that it can once again be reviewed by even higher ranking Facebook moderators. Surprisingly, some Facebook pages, particularly the high traffic ones tens of thousands or millions of followers, are afforded the same protection status as that of government and news organization Facebook pages
