{"id":17495,"date":"2025-12-21T01:09:56","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T09:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17495"},"modified":"2025-12-22T03:48:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T11:48:37","slug":"17495","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17495","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: Human Rights, War, Hunger, Economic Opportunity, Environment, Disease, Population, Personal Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"This<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2025 Year In Pictures<\/em>, The New York Times<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today is the Winter Solstice in the Norhern Hemisphere, Summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Shortest day of light in the north, longest in the south. It’s such a simple but amazing experience. People throughout the world are experiencing the exact opposite from each other, depending on where they are, of the most balanced day of light and dark in the aggregate. It’s a kind a physical contradiction with metaphysical echoes of wholistic aspects of reality and humanity, of the universal nature of everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Year after year, we are drawn to the real and metaphorical meanings of this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps today is a reminder, that with all the chaos on earth, nature always rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The almost imponderable fact, however, is that we could end this rule on earth, by ending nature itself on earth through the destruction of all life and the planet itself. Never has it been more necessary, physically and metaphysically, for us to take action out of responsibility for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not easy to see how to do when powers of greed, corruption and chaos are at their apex, and capacities to cause destruction at their height and increasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We keep swinging in the negative\/positive pendulum it can seem, or in an upward or downward trajectory with an outcome yet to be determined. That’s on us, all of us, each of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our annual tradition, we look at the state of all the above through the Year in Pictures in The New York Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A note first. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the introduction, there is no mention of the most historically shocking shuttering of agency after agency and program after program in place as rockbed policy supported by Republicans and Democrats alike over the eighty years since the end of World War Two. Chief among them, the global structure that supported the hungry and impoverished, victims of wars and disease, which saved hundreds of millions of lives, coordinated by U.S.A.I.D. Generations of progress in ending hunger, disease and poverty were eliminated in a day, with the staggering loss of life of babies to vulnerable adult populations and the destruction of U.S. credibility in the world being measurable immediately. The above is, however, either specifically or indirectly shown in some photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, after mentioning some wars, there is the inexplicable absence of Ukraine, hanging in the balance after four years, with missiles and drones targeting civilians daily–the number one focus in the Times and elsewhere in reporting and commentary throughout 2025 as the the number one lever of a world hanging in the balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet in the photos themselves, the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine, the most consequential war since World War Two involving and impacting the major global powers and threatening larger global conflict itself, is well represented–with all its tragedy and meaning, and with many of the pictures reminding of our own photojournalism of the momentous experience there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sudan was, and should have been noted, as the war costing most in lives and least seen in the media; and Gaza too was mentioned, as it should have been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the other glaring ommission in the introduction was the stunning end of the conflict that before Ukraine cost the most in combining human misery, global chaos in immigration and political reaction and hesitation by nations that could have made a difference: Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A decade ago the introduction to the year in pictures in the Times both chronicled the misery happening (and continued to in subsequent years) and had the impact of prophecy of what was to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The images, however, are there. Our opening image is the photo from the Times which begins the February section: Damascus in the aftermath. After a decade of horrors in Syria and atrocious errors in response (or lack of it) and policies by others, the image haunts as it should, having altered history in human cost and the political landscape of the world today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2025 Year In Pictures<\/a> is astounding as always. The photos defy description, and as always, can only describe themselves through imagery and impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are accompanied by brief informative commentary and moving descriptions of the circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here it is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2025 THE YEAR IN PICTURES<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Reflections of Turbulent Times<\/h2>\n\n\n\n