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The American slave trade remains one of the most horrific periods of American history. Many in the United States classify the Atlantic Slave Trade, the American slavery system, and the Jim Crow laws as reprehensible acts, crimes committed by White Americans and English, and a stain upon the United States, and rightly so. However, these events should also be classified as genocide as they meet the legal criteria for such crimes and also follow a very similar line when looking at other, more internationally recognized forms of genocide.

Like many others across the United States and the world, I tuned into the US election intensely watching the results from the comfort of my laptop. With an array of tabs open, I had various maps open, scouring rural and urban counties in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada awaiting election results. The apparatus of cable news is built for an election. But I also had another live stream that I was watching, Hasanabi’s on Twitch. As Gita Jackson, a journalist at Vice that has extensively covered the rise of political streamers, has written, there is something comforting about Hasanabi’s streams, in the manner that he interacts with the internet.

Fairtrade International has had an enormous contribution in putting ethical consumption on the agenda, becoming an instantly recognisable label of fairness. However, with an increasingly complicated supply chain and intensified globalisation, trade that is fair is becoming harder to ensure, despite a consumer force that is more conscious than ever. So how fair does Fairtrade continue to be?

The Eastern Mediterranean has been the historic crossroads of four regions: Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Except for being the “home” of their multiple and diverse geographic affiliations and varied political identities, it also constitutes a territory of great strategic importance. The fourth part of this series discusses the ongoing Syrian Civil War.