Oceana Report: Soft Drink Industry Can Stop Billions Of Plastic Bottles From Polluting The Ocean By Switching To Refillables

Oceana Report: Soft Drink Industry Can Stop Billions Of Plastic Bottles From Polluting The Ocean By Switching To Refillables (jmage via oceana.org)

Oceana, the largest international advocacy organization dedicated solely to ocean conservation, released a report today finding that the beverage industry could decrease marine plastic pollution by 4.5 billion to 7.6 billion bottles each year, a 22% decrease, by increasing the market share of soft drinks and water sold in refillable bottles by just 10% (in place of single-use throwaway PET bottles).

The report, entitled "Just one word: Refillables. How the soft drink industry can reduce marine plastic pollution by billions of bottles each year," also estimates that between 20 billion and 34 billion plastic PET bottles produced and sold by the soft drink or Non-Alcoholic Ready to Drink (NARTD) industry enter the ocean each year.

"Beverage companies are major ocean polluters and are producing billions of plastic bottles every year that end up in the sea essentially forever," said Oceana CEO Andy Sharpless. "They need to take responsibility and make commitments to reduce plastic production and waste."

The report was announced at investor and media briefings held at HSBC USA headquarters in New York. Attendees also heard about HSBC Global Research reports detailing how prominent bottlers in Latin America are leading the trend toward refillables.

"As public awareness of plastic waste in the world's oceans grows, the global beverage industry is grappling with the risk of brand damage and higher regulatory costs from its outsized reliance on disposable plastic bottles. Oceana's report brings much-needed insight into the scale of the environmental problem and an emerging solution in a transition to refillables," said Carlos Laboy, Global Beverage Head and Latin American Food Analyst, HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.

The report notes that studies have found that refillable bottles have a lower carbon footprint than single-use throwaway plastic bottles, citing recent life cycle analysis studies in Germany and Chile. Dr. Henning Wilts of the Wuppertal Institute writes in the report that "looking at the specific case of refillable PET bottles as compared to single-use bottles, (lifecycle) analyses found that refillables save up to 40% of raw materials and 50% of greenhouse gas emissions."

Recycling rates are declining in the U.S., and only 9% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled, Oceana's report notes. In addition, single-use throwaway bottles with recycled content still become pollution in the ocean because the companies don't recover these bottles after selling them. In contrast, 95% to 99% of refillables are returned to beverage companies for re-use.

Studies have found that plastic pollution is dramatically impacting life in the oceans. A recent report found that 90% of all seabird species have ingested plastic, and even zooplankton – the base of the food chain – has been found to be ingesting plastic. Oceana is campaigning around the world to reduce throwaway plastic production and address this problem at its source.

"Just one word: Refillables. How the soft drink industry can reduce marine plastic pollution by billions of bottles each year"

• To access Oceana's full report, please visit oceana.org/Refill.

SOURCE: Oceana

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Bennett Wales & The Relief Releases New Politically Charged Protest Single 'Hey Otto' - Song Grieves Torture and Death of Otto Warmbier by Brutal North Korean Regime [Video Included]

Bennett Wales & The Relief - "Hey Otto" (screengrab)

Bennett Wales & The Relief (BW&TR) announced the release of the first of 10 singles slated for this year. "Hey Otto" is a visceral rock-and-roll lament for the detainment, torture and death of Otto Warmbier, amidst a widely publicized 2016 North Korean media spectacle and cover up. Echoing the best efforts of time-honored protest troubadours like Dylan or Marley, the new single harbingers the release of BW&TR's sophomore collection, "Album II." 

"Otto's story is one that we just had to tell," said BW&TR. "Like most of the country at the time, we were stunned by his treatment at the hands of the vicious, dictatorial regime in North Korea – all for the relatively tiny crime of a simple poster vandalism. He was brutalized by North Korean officials, then sent home in a vegetative coma from which he later died. And to make matters worse for his family, the POTUS sided with the official North Korean cover story. It's the kind of gut-wrenching tale you just can't make up, and exactly the sort of story that needs to be told right now about what's still going on in the world."

"Hey Otto" is one of the featured singles from BW&TR's much anticipated new record title: "Album II." Other songs on the upcoming album include "I Got Bills" and "Wolfstep." The first talks about trying to keep one's head above water in a world that is continually growing more expensive; while "Wolfstep" is a melodic musical howl marking the need to remain steadfastly and aggressively dedicated to one's goals.

The Video:

• BW&TR is currently planning an intensive 2020 tour in Virginia and the greater East Coast, with specific date announcements forthcoming. For news on the upcoming tour, album, new singles and other info, follow Bennett Wales & The Relief on social media and Spotify: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify.

About Bennett Wales & The Release:

BW&TR is the unique rock-and-roll creation of a group of five musicians who came together after gaining prominence playing in and around the Tidewater region of Virginia. BW&TR features the musical talents of Mike Fischetti (bass), Caleb Little (keys), Brock Bittner (guitar), Drew Orton (drums) and Bennett Wales (vocals/guitar). Their debut album, "Flood Without Water," personifies their heart-thumping, kick-down-the-door musical approach.

Bennett Wales & The Relief

SOURCE: Bennett Wales & The Relief

The Net-Zero Challenge: Fast-Forward to Decisive Climate Action

The Net-Zero Challenge: Fast-Forward to Decisive Climate Action (image via World Economic Forum)

The World Economic Forum (WEF), in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), recently released a report that examines the current state of climate action by companies and governments and provides insights about the actions that corporations, governments, and civil society can take now, both collectively and individually, to limit global warming. 

The report, which will be presented at the WEF annual meeting in Davos-Klosters, is titled, The Net Zero Challenge, in recognition of the need to move to net-zero emissions globally by 2050.

The year 2020 marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, which committed world leaders to limiting global warming to well below 2°C. However, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise at a rate of 1.5% per annum over the past decade. A reduction of >5% per annum is now needed through 2030 to limit the worst impacts of global warming and net-zero carbon emissions must be reached by 2050.

Business and Investors Should Accelerate Action—in Their Own Interest

All 20-plus CEOs and 14 climate experts who were interviewed for the report highlighted the need to accelerate climate action—both as a moral imperative and as a business opportunity. The analysis, based on the responses of nearly 7,000 companies to the CDP climate questionnaire, shows that not enough is being done by companies today, with only a small minority disclosing their emissions and even fewer setting any kind of emission reduction target.

The Net Zero Challenge examines the ways in which climate action can be seen as a source of competitive advantage for companies—as a means of reducing costs by increasing efficiency, fulfilling the needs of increasingly climate-conscious customers, and attracting the best possible talent. It emphasizes that businesses should be accelerating efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of their operations and that of their supply chains, to manage their climate-related investment risks, and to innovate to refocus their business models for growth in a decarbonized world.

The report shows how investors, too, need to play a pivotal role in triggering and facilitating climate action, as they have an inherent interest to "de-risk" the terminal value of their investments by pushing for more transparency and disclosure and by supporting longer-term corporate decarbonization plans.

Where financial or structural barriers prevent businesses from moving forward, ecosystem initiatives can enable collaboration among industry peers or along value chains to provide risk-sharing mechanisms and help accelerate the speed and scale of change.

"A Paris-compatible pathway implies a significant, sometimes existential, transformation for many companies. Innovation is needed, and many businesses can look for growth in new markets for lower-carbon products and services," said Cornelius Pieper, a BCG partner and coleader of the firm's Center for Climate Action.

A Call for Unilateral Government Action and Individual Leadership

Progress among policymakers has been limited to date. While 121 countries now have an ambition to be carbon-neutral by 2050, they together account for less than 25% of global emissions. None is among the top five emitters, and very few have enacted policies that are robust enough to produce the desired effects.

The report calls for accelerated unilateral policy action from governments to set the context needed for companies to decarbonize, such as by implementing carbon pricing and other sector-specific regulations and incentives.

"The good news is that governments can act unilaterally to reduce emissions, as many countries can benefit economically from carbon abatement investments. What is needed is an ambitious policy context that includes a meaningful carbon price, supported by incentives and other measures," said Patrick Herhold, a BCG partner and coleader of the Center for Climate Action.

The report also stresses that educated voters and consumers are a crucial enabler of the low-carbon transition - better information is needed across all channels about what it will take to achieve net-zero emissions, and communications need to focus on solutions and the benefits of change.

We each have a responsibility to deliver a safer world as leaders in business and in policy, and as parents.

"Climate action is still too often perceived as a cost or a tradeoff with other priorities," said Michel Fredeau, a BCG senior partner and leader of the firm's work in climate and the environment. "It should be viewed as an opportunity for businesses, countries, and individuals to create an advantage in building a better, more sustainable world."

The Net Zero Challenge concludes with actions that companies, governments, investors, and individuals can take to start reducing emissions in 2020.

The Net-Zero Challenge: Fast-Forward to Decisive Climate Action 

• A copy of the report can be downloaded here..

SOURCE: Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

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Burning Planet: Climate Fires and Political Flame Wars Rage [Video Included]

Social instability - as seen in Hong Kong SAR - is one of the top-10 risks as identified by business leaders (image via World Economic Forum)

Economic and political polarization will rise this year, as collaboration between world leaders, businesses and policy-makers is needed more than ever to stop severe threats to our climate, environment, public health and technology systems. This points to a clear need for a multistakeholder approach to mitigating risk at a time when the world cannot wait for the fog of geopolitical disorder to lift. These are the findings of the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2020, published today. 

The report forecasts a year of increased domestic and international divisions and economic slowdown. Geopolitical turbulence is propelling us towards an "unsettled" unilateral world of great power rivalries at a time when business and government leaders must focus urgently on working together to tackle shared risks.

Over 750 global experts and decision-makers were asked to rank their biggest concerns in terms of likelihood and impact and 78% said they expect "economic confrontations" and "domestic political polarization" to rise in 2020.

This would prove catastrophic, particularly for addressing urgent challenges like the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and record species decline. The report, produced in partnership with Marsh & McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, points to a need for policy-makers to match targets for protecting the Earth with ones for boosting economies – and for companies to avoid the risks of potentially disastrous future losses by adjusting to science-based targets.

For the first time in the survey's 10-year outlook, the top five global risks in terms of likelihood are all environmental. The report sounds the alarm on:

1. Extreme weather events with major damage to property, infrastructure and loss of human life.
2. Failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation by governments and businesses.
3. Human-made environmental damage and disasters, including environmental crime, such as oil spills, and radioactive contamination.
4. Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse (terrestrial or marine) with irreversible consequences for the environment, resulting in severely depleted resources for humankind as well as industries.
5. Major natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and geomagnetic storms.

It adds that unless stakeholders adapt to "today's epochal power-shift" and geopolitical turbulence – while still preparing for the future – time will run out to address some of the most pressing economic, environmental and technological challenges. This signals where action by business and policy-makers is most needed.

Burning Planet: Climate Fires and Political Flame Wars Rage (screengrab)

"The political landscape is polarized, sea levels are rising and climate fires are burning. This is the year when world leaders must work with all sectors of society to repair and reinvigorate our systems of cooperation, not just for short-term benefit but for tackling our deep-rooted risks," said Borge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum.

The Global Risks Report is part of the Global Risks Initiative which brings stakeholders together to develop sustainable, integrated solutions to the world's most pressing challenges.

Systems-level thinking is required to confront looming geopolitical and environmental risks, and threats that may otherwise fall under the radar. This year's report focuses explicitly on impacts from rising inequality, gaps in technology governance, and health systems under pressure.

John Drzik, Chairman of Marsh & McLennan Insights, said: "There is mounting pressure on companies from investors, regulators, customers, and employees to demonstrate their resilience to rising climate volatility. Scientific advances mean that climate risks can now be modeled with greater accuracy and incorporated into risk management and business plans. High profile events, like recent wildfires in Australia and California, are adding pressure on companies to take action on climate risk at a time when they also face greater geopolitical and cyber risk challenges."

To younger generations, the state of the planet is even more alarming. The report highlights how risks are seen by those born after 1980. They ranked environmental risks higher than other respondents, in the short- and long- terms. Almost 90% of these respondents believe "extreme heat waves", "destruction of ecosystems" and "health impacted by pollution" will be aggravated in 2020; compared to 77%, 76% and 67% respectively for other generations. They also believe that the impact from environmental risks by 2030 will be more catastrophic and more likely.

Burning Planet: Climate Fires and Political Flame Wars Rage (screengrab)

Human activity has already caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants – which underpin our food and health systems. Peter Giger, Group Chief Risk Officer, Zurich Insurance Group warned of the urgent need to adapt faster to avoid the worst and irreversible impacts of climate change and to do more to protect the planet's biodiversity:

"Biologically diverse ecosystems capture vast amounts of carbon and provide massive economic benefits that are estimated at $33 trillion per year – the equivalent to the GDP of the US and China combined. It's critical that companies and policy-makers move faster to transition to a low carbon economy and more sustainable business models. We are already seeing companies destroyed by failing to align their strategies to shifts in policy and customer preferences. Transition risks are real, and everyone must play their part to mitigate them. It's not just an economic imperative, it is simply the right thing to do," he said.

• The Global Risks Report 2020 has been developed with the invaluable support of the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Advisory Board. It also benefits from ongoing collaboration with its Strategic Partners Marsh & McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group and its academic advisers at the Oxford Martin School (University of Oxford), the National University of Singapore and the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center (University of Pennsylvania).

Annex

Respondents were asked to assess: (1) the likelihood of a global risk occurring over the course of the next 10 years, and (2) the severity of its impact at a global level if it were to occur.

These are the top 5 risks by likelihood over the next 10 years:

1. Extreme weather events (e.g. floods, storms, etc.)
2. Failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation
3. Major natural disasters (e.g. earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, geomagnetic storms)
4. Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
5. Human-made environmental damage and disasters

These are the top 5 risks by severity of impact over the next 10 years:

1. Failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation
2. Weapons of mass destruction
3. Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
4. Extreme weather events (e.g. floods, storms, etc.)
5. Water crises

Global risks are not isolated, and so respondents were asked to assess the interconnections between pairs of global risks.

These are the top most strongly connected global risks:

1. Extreme weather events + failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation
2. Large-scale cyberattacks + breakdown of critical information infrastructure and networks
3. High structural unemployment or underemployment + adverse consequences of technological advances
4. Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse + failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation
5. Food crises + extreme weather events

Short-term risks: percentage of respondents who think a risk will increase in 2020:

1. Economic confrontations = 78.5%
2. Domestic political polarization = 78.4%
3. Extreme heat waves = 77.1%
4. Destruction of natural resource ecosystems = 76.2%
5. Cyberattacks: infrastructure = 76.1%

The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world, is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas

SOURCE: Marsh

Deepfakes: Informed Digital Citizens Are The Best Defence Against Online Manipulation

Facebook announced Jan. 6 it will remove videos edited to mislead in ways that ‘aren’t apparent to an average person,’ and are the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning. Here, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a hearing at the U.S. House Financial Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) 

 More than a decade ago, Internet analyst and new media scholar Clay Shirky said: “The only real way to end spam is to shut down e-mail communication.” Will shutting down the Internet be the only way to end deepfake propaganda in 2020? 

Today, anyone can create their own fake news and also break it. Online propaganda is more misleading and manipulative than ever.

Deepfakes, a specific form of disinformation that uses machine-learning algorithms to create audio and video of real people saying and doing things they never said or did, are moving quickly toward being indistinguishable from reality.

Detecting disinformation powered by unethical uses of digital media, big data and artificial intelligence, and their spread through social media, is of the utmost urgency.

Countries must educate and equip their citizens. Educators also face real challenges in helping youth develop eagle eyes for deepfakes. If young people lack confidence in finding and evaluating reliable public information, their motivation for participating in or relying on our democratic structures will be increasingly at risk.

Undermining democracy

It is now possible to generate a video of a person speaking and making ordinary expressions from just a few or even a single image of this person’s face. Face swap apps such as FaceApp and lip-sync apps such as Dubsmash are examples of accessible user-friendly basic deepfake tools that people can use without any programming or coding background.

While the use of this technology may enrapture or stun viewers for its expert depictions in entertainment and gaming industries, the sinister face of deepfakes is a serious threat to both people’s security and democracy.

Deepfakes’ potential to be used as a weapon is alarmingly increasing and many harms can be anticipated based on people’s ability to create explicit content without others’ consent.

It’s expected that people will use deepfakes to cyberbully, destroy reputations, blackmail, spread hate speech, incite violence, disrupt democratic processes, spread disinformation to targeted audiences and to commit cybercrime and frauds.

Danielle Citron, professor at Boston University School of Law, discusses how deepfakes undermine truth and threaten democracy.

Deepfake detection

Key players have ventured into finding a response to deepfake threats.

Facebook announced Jan. 6 it “will strengthen its policy toward misleading manipulated videos that have been identified as deepfakes.” The company says it will remove manipulated media that’s been “edited or synthesized — beyond adjustments for clarity or quality — in ways that aren’t apparent to an average person” and if the media is “the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning that merges, replaces or superimposes content onto a video, making it appear to be authentic.”

The news follows Facebook’s “deepfake challenge,” which aims to design new tools that detect manipulated media content. The challenge is supported by Microsoft, a consortium on artificial intelligence and a US$10-million fund.

In late October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified at a U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington about the company’s cryptocurrency plans, where Zuckerberg faced questions about what the company is doing to prevent deepfakes.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense is working on using specific types of algorithms to assess the integrity of digital visual media.

Some researchers discuss the use of convolutional neural networks — a set of algorithms that loosely replicates the human brain, designed to analyse visual imagery and recognize patterns — to detect the inconsistencies across the multiple frames in deepfakes. Others propose algorithms to detect completely generated faces.

Hani Farid, an expert in digital forensics and one of the leading authorities on detecting fake photos, and his student Shruti Agarwal at University of California, Berkeley are developing a software that uses the subtle characteristics of how a person speaks to distinguish this person from the fake version.

Farid is also collaborating very closely with deepfake pioneer Hao Li to confront the problem of “increasingly seamless off-the-shelf deception.”

YouTube nation

What if we wake up tomorrow to a deepfake of Greta Thunberg, Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year, accusing a specific organization to be the major catalyst of climate change? Would any youth be skeptical of the information?

We are living in a digital era when many people expect every answer to be found through a Google search, a YouTube or a Vimeo video or a TED talk. Nearly 100 per cent of Canadian youth between 15 to 24 years old use the internet on a daily basis. Most follow news and current affairs through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

In 2017, 90 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 24 were active YouTube users.

According to Statista, a company that provides market and consumer data, “as of May 2019, more than 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute,” equating to “approximately 30,000 hours of newly uploaded content per hour.” The company reports that between 2014 and 2019 “the number of video content hours uploaded every 60 seconds grew by around 40 percent.”

Many of today’s 18- to 24-year-old social media users recognize the agendas and algorithms behind the posts that pop up on their walls. In my PhD thesis research, I explored how 42 participants in this age group understood refugees in a contexts where ideas about refugees were deeply influenced by social media propaganda, fake news and disinformation. I found that many craved to become influencers and disrupt public commentary and media-generated messages in ways that resonate with advocacy or activist campaigns today led by youth.

The deepfake phenomenon is a new critical challenge they, and all participants in our democracies, now face.

Education for resilience

In Canada, Journalists for Human Rights announced a new program, funded by Heritage Canada, to train journalists and to enhance “citizen preparedness against online manipulation and misinformation.”

Educators can play a key role in fostering youth agency to detect deepfakes and reduce their influence. One challenge is ensuring youth learn critical media literacy skills while they continue to explore valuable resources online and build their capacities and knowledge to participate in democratic structures.

Following steps I have identified in the “Get Ready to Act Against Social Media Propaganda” model — beginning with explaining stances on a controversial issue targeted through social media propaganda — educators can help youth discuss how they perceive and recognize deepfakes. They can explore the content’s origins, who it’s targeting, the reaction it’s trying to achieve and who’s behind it.

They can also discuss youth’s role and responsibility to respond and stand up to disinformation and potential digital strategies to pursue in this process. A well-equipped generation of digital citizens could be our best bet.>

About Today's Contributor:

Nadia Naffi, Assistant Professor, Educational Technology, Holds the Chair in Educational Leadership in the Sustainable Transformation of Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts, Université Laval

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

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Reggae Artist, Safira Mono Targeted by VooDoo Community for Her Latest Single "Tunback Blow" [Video Included]

Tunback Blow - Artwork

Reggae artiste Safira Mono is getting a lot of flak from several individuals in various countries including Jamaica, Haiti and Ghana following the release of her recent single "Tunback Blow," produced by James Lord.

The single tackles the taboo topic of obeah, a system of spiritual and healing practices developed among enslaved West Africans in the West Indies. She hones in on a particular practice of the 'tunback blow' which is a means of deflecting evil sorcery onto the perpetrators of the original act.

"Obeah is real if we believe it to be so. Our minds are more powerful than we may have been led to believe. Therefore, if a person possesses an evil intent, the mind is powerful enough to manifest that evil into reality. I wrote and recorded 'Tunback Blow' based on life experiences. If we put out negative energy, we should also expect a negative return," she said.

The song was released recently and ignited a fierce online debate about the practice with some accusing Safira Mono of promoting sorcery and slackness.

Safira Mono

Although obeah remains a popular practice among those of African ancestry, it is still frowned upon by society, and widely practiced in secrecy. In fact, obeah has been outlawed in Jamaica since 1760 after Tacky's Rebellion.

Variations of obeah are practiced in the Bahamas and in several Caribbean nations. Obeah was decriminalised in Anguilla in 1980, Barbados in 1998, Trinidad and Tobago in 2000, and St Lucia in 2004. In Guyana, the government recently announced its intention to remove the crime of obeah from the criminal code.

Last year, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck advocated that a new law to protect vulnerable people from being fleeced by those who exploit their beliefs, and suggested that there were moves afoot to repeal the 1898 Obeah Act. Chuck's remarks in Parliament ignited a firestorm of abuse on social media, and he clarified his comments, denying that the government wanted to make the practice of obeah legal.

"It is evident that Jamaica is not ready for talks about what to do with obeah, we have a complicated relationship with our African ancestry and heritage. But the government needs to understand that criminalising people's belief systems is unconstitutional and could be challenged in court," Safira Mono said.

Even at the height of the lucrative Christmas season, the annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, the practice is ramped up because of the high financial stakes involved.

"Obeah is practised all over Jamaica, is like it decriminalised already, dem more brave and open with it downtown and in some rural towns, especially commercial areas because of the intense competition to make sales. Trust me, if someone promises say dem ah go obeah yu, dem will dweet in front of your face, dem no 'fraid," Safira Mono said.

The Video:

SOURCE: Safira Mono

Tempest in a Teapot: 5 Cybersecurity Storms Brewing [Infographic]

Top Cybersecurity Threats of 2020

Blockchain, 5G data networks, Amazon Echo's. Is there anything that technology doesn't control in our daily lives? As the number of new platforms and enhanced capabilities surges, so too does the risk of attacks. 

This new "digital industrial revolution" turned the global economy into a treasure trove of personal data ripe for the hackers' picking. Recently, the U.S. has experienced cyberattacks that target healthcare companies, social media platforms, and even political organizations. According to IBM, cybercrime has become 'the greatest threat to every profession, every industry, every company in the world." The most frustrating part? The hacker's tactics are constantly evolving and adapting.

With all of this in mind, the editorial staff at FitSmallBusiness evaluated the 5 most dangerous cybersecurity threats to watch for in 2020. The digital business publication assessed a wide range of research and data - and considered the following industries: government, healthcare, telecom, and social media. In this way, they were able to determine which sectors are most vulnerable to hackers.

[While the list can be found below, the full report is available here.]

The Greatest Cybersecurity Threats Targeting Your Business in 2020:

1. Corrupting Government
2. Exposing Healthcare
3. Breaching Social
4. Targeting New Tech
5. Hacking Your Home

The Infographic:

Cybersecurity Threats for 2020

"With this study, we wanted to be as people-focused as possible," says Michael De Medeiros, Special Projects Editor, FitSmallBusiness. "Cybercriminal tactics evolve with the technology that they target. It's imperative for individuals and small business owners, alike, to be wary of what's changing and how to stay ahead of the curve."

SOURCE: FitSmallBusiness.com

Knights Templar: Still Loved By Conspiracy Theorists 900 Years On

Conny Skogberg via Shutterstock 

On Christmas Day, 1119, the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II persuaded a group of French knights led by Hugh de Payne II to save their souls by protecting pilgrims travelling the Holy Land. And so the Order of the Knights Templar was formed.

This revolutionary order of knights lived as monks and took vows of poverty and chastity, but these were monks with a difference – they would take up arms as knights to protect the civilians using the dangerous roads of the newly conquered Kingdom of Jerusalem. From these humble beginnings, the order would grow to become one of the premier Christian military forces of the Crusades.

Over the next 900 years, these warrior monks would become associated with the Holy Grail, the Freemasons and the occult. But are any of these associations true, or are they just baseless myth?

The Crusades ended in 1291 after the Christian capital of Acre fell to the Mameluke forces of Egypt and the Templars found themselves redundant. Despite their wealth and European holdings, their reason for existence had been to wage war in defence of the Holy Land.

But the French king Philip IV was in debt to the Templar order and, with the Holy land lost, he capitalised on their vulnerability and had the Templars arrested in France on Friday October 13, 1307 in a dawn raid on their Paris Temple and residences. In 1312, the order was abolished by papal decree and in 1314 the last grand-master, Jacque de Molay, was burned at the stake in Paris with three other Templars. With the order destroyed, any surviving former members joined other orders or monasteries. 

Execution of Jacques de Molay in Paris, March 1314. Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica - ms. Chigiano L VIII 296 - Biblioteca Vaticana

Despite the arrests and charges of heresy being laid against the order, a document known as the Chinon Parchment was found in 2001 in the Vatican’s archives which documents that the Templars were, in fact, exonerated by the Catholic Church in 1312. But, despite clearing them of heresy, Pope Clement ordered that they be disbanded. 

Appropriation of a legend

The suppression of the Templars meant that there was nobody to safeguard their legacy. Since then, the order has been appropriated by other organisations – most notably as ancestors to the Masonic order in the 18th century and, more recently, by right-wing extremist groups such as the Knights Templar-UK and mass-murdering terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

The Knights Templar’s association with Freemasonry is not so much a myth as it was a marketing campaign by 18th-century Freemasons to appeal to the aristocracy. Historian Frank Sanello explained in his 2003 book, The Knights Templars: God’s Warriors, the Devil’s Bankers, that initially it was Andrew Ramsey, a senior French Freemason of the era, who first made the link between the Freemasons and the Crusader knights.

But he originally claimed the Freemasons were descended from the crusading Order of the Knight Hospitaller. Of course, the Hospitallers were still operational, unlike the Knight Templar, so Ramsey quickly changed his claim to the Templars being the Freemasons’ crusading ancestry.

The Knights Templar had actually been mythologised in popular culture as early as the 13th century in the Grail epic Parzival by German knight and poet Wolfram von Eschenbach. In this Grail epic, the Knights Templar were included in the story as the guardians of the Grail. After the order’s sudden fall, these warrior monks became associated with conspiracies and the occult.

For some, a mystery still surrounds the fate of the Templar fortune (which was in reality seized by Phillip IV, with the majority of their property redistributed to the Hospitallers) and the Templar confessions (extracted under torture) to worshipping an idol dubbed Baphomet. The link between the Templars and the occult would resurface again in the 16th century in Henry Agrippa’s book De Occulta Philosophia.

Modern-day myth

Modern fiction continues to draw upon the widespread mysteries and fanciful theories. These mythical associations are key themes for many popular works of fiction, such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in which the Templars guard the Grail. The Templar myth has also found its way into the digital gaming format in the globally successful Assassin’s Creed franchise, in which the player must assassinate a villainous Templar.

Nine centuries after they were formed, the Templars remain the most iconic and infamous order of knights from the Crusades. The Templar legacy has grown beyond their medieval military role and the name has become synonymous with the occult, conspiracies, the Holy Grail and the Freemasons. But these are all false narratives – fantastical, but misleading.

The real legacy of the Templars remains with the Portuguese Order of Knights, Ordem dos Cavaleiros de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo (Order of the Knights of Jesus Christ). This order was created by King Diniz in 1319 with Papal permission due to the prominent role the Templars played in establishing the kingdom of Portugal. The new knighthood even moved into the Templars’ former headquarters at Tomar.

For historian Micheal Haag, this new order “was the Templars under another name” – but it pledged obedience to the king of Portugal and not the Pope like their Templar predecessors.

And so the essence of the Templar’s successors still exists today as a Portuguese order of merit for outstanding service – and the Templar myth continues to provide a rich source of inspiration for artistic endeavours.

About Today's Contributor:

Patrick Masters, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Portsmouth

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

How A Canadian Superhero Brought Queer Representation To Marvel Comics

Northstar’s marriage was prominently displayed on the cover of ‘Astonishing X-Men #51.’ (Marvel)

 Marvel Comics is frequently referred to as “the house of ideas,” yet the idea of a queer superhero did not fully arrive at Marvel until the 1990s. Despite Marvel’s reputation as a campus phenomenon and as a hotbed for liberal — even subversive — discourse, Stan Lee’s comics publishing juggernaut would not feature a canonically gay character until some 30 years after the debut of The Fantastic Four. 

There’s a reason for that.

The 1954 Comics Code Authority — a censorship bureau that policed comics content — explicitly banned “sex perversion or any inference to same,” which comics scholar Hilary Chute notes is “a clear reference to homosexuality.” The Marvel Universe as we know it began in 1961, with the launch of Fantastic Four #1. Thus, Marvel Comics was, from the outset, actually prohibited from depicting gay characters.

So how do you a write a queer character at a time when comics are expressly forbidden from featuring queer characters?

In a word: delicately.

The slow coming out

It wasn’t until 1992 — three years after a major revision to the Comics Code officially opened the door to depictions of LGBTQ+ characters — that Marvel had their first openly gay superhero. In Alpha Flight #106 written by Scott Lobdel, the character Northstar (alias Olympic ski champion Jean-Paul Beaubier) declared: “I am gay.”

Even then this move was met with outrage by Marvel’s corporate leadership, Marvel Comics historian Sean Howe explained in his book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

Twenty years later, Northstar would also feature in Marvel’s first same-sex marriage, an event that was prominently depicted on the cover of Astonishing X-Men #51.

Astonishing X-Men #51. Written by Margaret Liu and illustrated by Dustin Weaver, published June 20, 2012. (Marvel)

A hotbed for queer subtext

Northstar had debuted way back in 1983 as part of the all-Canadian, government-sponsored superhero team, Alpha Flight. The team first appeared in the pages of X-Men, brought to life by Canadian artist and writer John Byrne and iconic X-Men writer Chris Claremont.

At the time, X-Men comics were already a hotbed for queer subtext. Comics scholar Ramzi Fawaz notes that Claremont’s X-Men “articulated mutation to the radical critiques of identity promulgated by the cultures of women’s and gay liberation.”

Another comics scholar, Scott Bukatman, puts it more simply and says: “mutant bodies are explicitly analogized to … gay bodies” in Claremont’s X-Men. It is no surprise then, that Marvel’s first gay superhero should emerge from this series.

Marvel’s first gay superhero emerged from the X-Men series. (Marvel)

Byrne described the impetus of Northstar’s sexuality:

“There needs to be gays in comics because there are gays in real life. No other reason …. The population of the fictional world should represent the real world. That’s why I created Northstar — I felt the Marvel Universe needed a gay superhero (even if I would never be allowed to say it in so many words in the comics themselves), and I felt that I should create one, rather than retrofitting an existing character.”

Validation through storytelling

Northstar’s sexuality first surfaces in Alpha Flight #7 (1983) when he meets up with “an old friend” named Raymonde who is strongly hinted to be a former lover. In the story, written by Byrne, Raymonde comments on Northstar’s good looks. He also references the secretive nature of his relationship with Jean-Paul: “Then you have not really told your sister all about me, after all, Jean-Paul? I thought that would have been odd.”

From Alpha Flight #7 (Marvel)

When Raymonde is later murdered, Northstar snaps with blind rage. The narrative caption tells us: “And Raymonde had led him out of that dark fear, into the bright clear light of self-acceptance.” 

In 1983, the narrative of a former lover being murdered and thus spurring the superhero to action and emotional eruption was already a comics cliché. But staging that through a same-sex couple establishes a sort of subtextual validation of Northstar’s relationship as something more than the Comics Code Authority “sex perversion” label.

Two years later, in the 1985 limited series X-Men and Alpha Flight, Northstar’s sexuality is once again woven into a key story, this time written by Claremont. After having his consciousness briefly absorbed by the X-Man Rogue, Northstar becomes furious that she now knows his “secrets.”

In a misguided attempt to help Northstar, Rogue then asks him to dance at a very public reception. When Northstar’s own teammates make fun of the incongruity of Northstar dancing at a ball with a woman, Rogue thinks “None of y’all understand him the way ah do.”

In the face of this ridicule, a stoic Jean-Paul takes Rogue up on the dance. She remarks “You don’t have to,” to which he replies, “Yes, Rogue. I do.”

From X-Men and Alpha Flight #1 (Marvel)

Northstar

On the literal level, Northstar is being ridiculed for his general disinterest in heterosexual romance. But Claremont is crafting a story of a man who struggles with his closeted sexuality in the face of social pressures.

It’s a sympathetic portrayal of the character that helps to normalize the concept of a gay superhero, even if Marvel couldn’t identify him that way at the time.

Whether through delicate subtext or comics covering wedding events, Northstar holds a uniquely prominent and, at times, poignant position in the history of LGBTQ+ superheroes.

As we come to understand the importance of diverse representation within the superhero genre, this is a character that needs to be known, discussed and hopefully appreciated.

About Today's Contributor:

J. Andrew Deman, Professor, University of Waterloo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.