#chicago_

La “geografia” della speculazione che fa il prezzo dei beni agricoli

La guerra tra Ucraina e Russia non incide sul prezzo dei cereali, che dipende piuttosto dalla strategia dei grandi fondi che possiedono le aziende produttrici, controllano le Borse merci di tutto e scommettono sui rialzi

Il prezzo dei cereali e in generale dei beni agricoli non dipende certo dal blocco del Mar Nero, come molto spesso si racconta, e neppure da altre circostanze troppo specifiche. La produzione mondiale di cereali, secondo le stime dell’Agenzia delle Nazioni Unite per l’alimentazione e l’agricoltura (Fao), si avvicina ai tremila milioni di tonnellate, di cui i cereali ucraini rappresentano poco più del 2%. Un’inezia rispetto al totale. Inoltre il grano ucraino si dirige in gran parte verso i Paesi limitrofi che hanno a più riprese minacciato e adottato misure protezionistiche, per evitare la concorrenza nei confronti dei propri grani. Alla luce di ciò i cereali del Mar Nero non sono certo in grado di determinare la fame in Africa né l’aumento dei prezzi.

Considerazioni analoghe sono possibili per la produzione di patate e legumi che è, in media, vicina ai 500 milioni di tonnellate annue; considerata una popolazione mondiale di quasi otto miliardi, ciò significherebbe una disponibilità di 150 grammi per persona al giorno. Aggiungendo ai cereali, alle patate e ai legumi la produzione di tutto ciò che serve per realizzare pasti completi, tra cui sale, zucchero e semi oleaginosi, si arriva a una dotazione alimentare pro-capite di 1,5 chilogrammi al giorno. Appare chiaro allora che i prezzi non salgono perché esiste una condizione di carenza di offerta alimentare globale.

Le difficoltà di approvvigionamento di vaste parti della popolazione del Pianeta dipendono invece da altro: dalla distribuzione profondamente diseguale delle produzioni complessive, dalla natura delle diete adottate, rispetto alle quali la carne sottrae un’enorme quantità di risorse, dalle dinamiche del commercio internazionale e soprattutto dalle modalità di determinazione dei prezzi.

A tale riguardo occorre porsi una domanda ineludibile: da che cosa dipendono le periodiche impennate di prezzo dei generi agricoli che causano poi drammatiche crisi alimentari? Per rispondere a un simile quesito, bisogna in sintesi descrivere proprio come si formano tali prezzi. La loro determinazione avviene nelle grandi Borse merci del Pianeta, in particolare in quelle di Chicago, Parigi e Mumbai. Un primo elemento da tenere ben presente è a chi appartengono queste Borse; non si tratta infatti -a partire dal Chicago mercantile exchange (Cme)- di istituzioni “pubbliche”, ma di realtà private i cui principali azionisti sono i più grandi fondi finanziari globali. Nel caso di Chicago, i pacchetti più rilevanti sono in mano a Vanguard, BlackRock, JP Morgan, State Street Corporation e Capital International Investors.

A questo dato se ne aggiunge un altro fondamentale. Soprattutto nelle Borse di Chicago e di Parigi la stragrande maggioranza degli operatori non è costituita da soggetti che producono e comprano realmente il grano, ma da grandi fondi finanziari e da quelli specializzati nel settore agricolo che, senza aver alcun contratto di compravendita dei beni, scommettono sull’andamento dei prezzi. In altre parole: per ogni contratto reale nelle Borse merci, i fondi finanziari operano centinaia di migliaia di scommesse che sono in grado di determinare poi i prezzi reali. Se le aspettative sono orientate all’aumento dei prezzi, scommettono al rialzo e trascinano così i prezzi a livelli insostenibili per intere popolazioni.

All’origine dell’inflazione alimentare e della fame, si pongono quindi gli strumenti finanziari che sono prodotti dai fondi. Se prendiamo in esame chi sono questi “scommettitori”, troviamo di nuovo gli stessi soggetti (a partire da Vanguard e BlackRock) che sono, come appena ricordato, i “proprietari” delle Borse stesse. In estrema sintesi: pochissimi fondi sono azionisti del luogo dello scambio e sono i principali player di prezzo, pur non avendo nulla a che fare con la produzione e il commercio reali dei beni agricoli scambiati. Tuttavia, la finanziarizzazione di tali, vitali, processi di determinazione dei prezzi di beni essenziali per la sopravvivenza di intere comunità presenta un ulteriore elemento sconcertante.

Come detto, nelle Borse, a fronte di tanti fondi finanziari, ci sono pochi produttori. Ma chi sono questi ultimi? Nel caso dei cereali si tratta di quattro grandi società: Archer-Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill e Dreyfus. Le prime due in particolare sono possedute dai grandi fondi, Vanguard, BlackRock e State Street, che sono, appunto, i medesimi operatori finanziari nelle Borse merci di Parigi e Chicago. L’intera dinamica della formazione dei prezzi agricoli, su cui incidono molto poco le retribuzioni del lavoro contadino, strutturalmente molto basse, risulta pertanto nelle mani di colossi finanziari che controllano Borse, scommesse e produzione: un gigantesco monopolio mondiale rispetto al quale ogni altra variabile, persino quella dell’offerta complessiva di beni agricoli, appare decisamente secondaria.

È superfluo dire che con l’inflazione “impazzita” le sole società di produzione dei beni agricoli hanno distribuito oltre 30 miliardi di dollari di dividendi in meno di due anni, destinati in larga parte ai fondi finanziari che le possiedono e che hanno sommato quei miliardi ai profitti giganteschi maturati dalla finanza delle scommesse. La narrazione costruita sulle chiusure del Mar Nero c’entra davvero poco mentre sarebbe utile ricordare quanto sostenuto a più riprese dalla Fao, secondo cui per ogni punto percentuale di aumento dei prezzi dei beni agricoli si generano dieci milioni di nuovi affamati.

▻https://altreconomia.it/la-geografia-della-speculazione-che-fa-il-prezzo-dei-beni-agricoli
#spéculation #alimentation #biens_agricoles #prix #céréales #Ukraine #blé #alimentation #pénurie #viande #commerce_international #bourses #Chicago_mercantile_exchange (#Cme) #fonds_financiers #inflation #famine #faim #Vanguard #BlackRock #financiarisation #Archer-Daniels_Midland #Bunge #Cargill #Dreyfus #prix_agricoles #dividendes #Mer_Noire

The Santiago Boys
▻https://the-santiago-boys.com

https://the-santiago-boys.com/ufiles/original/uid62bec785aebd1-cover-cybersyn-1.png?t=MjAyMi0wNy0wMSAxMDowODozNw==

A wild tale of how Allende’s engineers and a British management consultant dared challenge corporations and spy agencies - and almost won. Written and presented by Evgeny Morozov.

#podcast #Chili #Chicago_boys #cybernétique #Santiago_Boys

In Chicago, a Socialist Teacher Takes on the Entrenched Political Machine
▻https://jacobin.com/2023/02/chicago-11th-ward-alderman-election-ambria-taylor-dsa

Die Probleme der kleinen Leute sind überall die gleichen: Besser Schulen, bezahlbare Wohnungen, funktionierende öffentliche Einrichtungen und Transportmittel und die Beseitigung von Gewalt und Verbrechen. Der Süden von Chicago ist wie eine viel härtere Ausgabe der härtesten Ecken von Berlin Neukölln.

In der Southside ist die Wahlkampagne einer Sozialistin Teil der Bewegung für einen gemeinsamen Kapf der Einwohner um eine Stadtverwaltung ohne die traditionelle Korruption und Vetternwirtschaft. Bis heute wird die Stadt wie der Erbhof einer Bügermeisterdynastie verwaltet. Damit soll jetzt Schluß sein.

24.2.2023 by Caleb Horton - An interview with Ambria Taylor

Chicago’s 11th Ward is the heart of the old “Chicago machine,” one of the largest, longest-running, and most powerful political forces in US history. For most of the twentieth century, the Chicago machine organized the political, economic, and social order of America’s second city. Patronage rewards like plum city jobs were awarded to lieutenants who could best turn out the vote for the Democratic Party, which in turn provided funds, connections, and gifts to the ruling Daley family and their inner circle.

Mayor Richard J. Daley, often called “the last big city boss,” ruled Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976. Daley spearheaded infrastructure and urban renewal projects that physically segregated white and black parts of the city with expressways and housing blocks and drove black displacement from desirable areas. He tangled with Martin Luther King Jr over school and housing desegregation, sicced the cops on antiwar protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and gave “shoot to kill” orders during the uprisings following King’s assassination.

The Chicago machine’s glory days are past, but the legacy of the Daleys lives on. Relatives and friends of Mayor Daley still hold office throughout Chicago, and his nephew, Patrick Daley-Thompson, had a strong hold over City Council as the 11th Ward alderman until July 2022, when he was convicted of tax fraud and lying to federal bank regulators and forced to resign.

Although the Daley family has lost direct control over the 11th Ward, their presence is still felt in the neighborhood of Bridgeport. While racial segregation is not explicitly enforced, the neighborhood still has a reputation among many older black residents as a “no-go zone,” and throughout the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, white gangs roamed the streets with weapons questioning anyone who looked “out of place” — a callback to the racist mob violence perpetrated by the Hamburg Athletic Club, of which a teenage Daley was a member a whole century prior.

So what is Ambria Taylor, a socialist public school teacher, doing running for office in the backyard of this entrenched political fiefdom? Jacobin contributor Caleb Horton sat down with Taylor to discuss why she chose to run at this time and in this place, and how she is building a movement that can overturn the power of one of the nation’s most notorious political dynasties.

Taylor launched her campaign in October 2021, when Daley-Thompson was still in office. After a few months of campaigning, the 11th Ward began to undergo major changes. First Daley-Thompson was arrested and then convicted of fraud, and then the ten-year ward remap took place, removing parts of the old 11th Ward and adding parts of Chinatown and McKinley Park.

In just a few short months, Taylor was facing a newly-appointed incumbent, a new map, and six other candidates for alderman. Taylor is the only progressive in the race.

Caleb Horton

Why did you decide to run for office?

Ambria Taylor

Growing up, I experienced poverty and homelessness in rural Illinois. I moved to Chicago when I was seventeen to escape that. I slept on my brother’s floor, shared an air mattress with my mom.

Chicago saved my life in a lot of ways. Urban areas have public transportation, they have dense development where you can walk to get what you need, where you can get to a job without a car. Public goods help people survive.

Experiencing all that defined me. It’s why I’m so committed to protecting public goods like affordable public transportation and affordable housing. It’s why I’m a socialist. It’s why I got my master’s degree and became a teacher.

I had a chance to grow up and live a decent life thanks to the strong public goods and services available in Chicago, but unfortunately that’s all been under attack due to neoliberalism, the hollowing out of the public sphere, and the assaults on unions.

That’s why I’m running. We deserve a city that works for everyone like it worked for me. We deserve a city that, in the richest country in the history of the world, provides for the people who live here and make it run. And here in Chicago we have been building the movement for the city we deserve through making the ward office a space for people who are marginalized to build power.

Caleb Horton

What do you want to do when you’re in office?

Ambria Taylor

In Chicago the local ward office has a lot of local power. The alderman is kind of like a mini-mayor of their district. They have power to make proposals for spending taxpayer money, and they each get a budget of discretionary funds of about $1.5 million annually for ward projects.

Aldermen have influence in the committee that oversees Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts. On TIFs, we gave $5 million in taxpayer money to Pepsi and $1.5 million to Vienna Beef.

We shouldn’t be taking money away from our schools to fund giveaways to megacorporations, period. But if we’re going to have TIFs, residents should have democratic input into how those funds are spent. We have dozens of empty storefronts in what should be our commercial hubs — why not fund small businesses providing needed services and quality of life to residents?

My dream is to, for one thing, involve the public in development decisions. But most of all, I want to ensure that money goes to things that benefit residents. Things they can see and experience, like cleaning alleys or tree trimming or sidewalk maintenance. In this ward, there’s a history of “the deal is made, and then they have a public meeting about it.” I want things to be the other way around.

I’m excited for the potential of what we could do here if there’s a ward office that’s open and collaborative and is genuinely trying to do things that benefit the most vulnerable.

Caleb Horton

Could you talk a little bit about the ward’s political history, and why it has been such an “insiders’ club” of decision makers?

Ambria Taylor

We are on the Near South Side of Chicago. This ward now includes Bridgeport, Chinatown, and parts of a few neighborhoods called Canaryville, Armor Square, and McKinley Park.

The Daley family is from this area. The home that’s been in the family for generations is here. The family has been powerful here for a really long time. They were also involved in various clubs and associations, like the Hamburg Athletic Club that took part in the racist white riots in 1919.

The 11th Ward is well known for being an enclave of extremely aggressive anti-black racism. In the 1990s there was a young black boy who dared cross over here from Bronzeville to put air in his bicycle tires from a place that had free air, and he was put into a coma by teenage boys.

One of those boys was well connected to the Mafia here. Potential witnesses for the trial who knew this boy and were present when it happened weren’t willing to come forward. This happened in the 1990s. Think about how old the fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-year-old boys would be now. Many people who are influential now were alive during that time and were wrapped up in that culture. This was considered a sundown town, and to some people still is.

Things are changing rapidly. People move to the suburbs, new people move in, things change over time. There still is a vocal conservative contingent here, but this is also a place where Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary two times. Because of where we stand at this moment amid all those contradictions, we have the chance to make monumental change.

There’s always been dissatisfaction with the machine, but we’ve started to cohere that dissatisfaction and the latent progressive energy into an organized base. We’ve brought together a base of people around progressive issues that many have said couldn’t exist here. We’re proving them wrong and proving the narrative about this part of the city wrong.

As socialists, narratives are often used against us. It’s that narrative of what’s possible. The “Oh, we love Bernie, but he could never win. . . .” We say that a better world is possible. And what we’re seeing on the doors is that people are very excited to see a democratic socialist on the ballot. As far as I know, I’m the only person in the city running for office who has “socialist” on their literature. That’s big whether or not we win.

Caleb Horton

In what ways is this a movement campaign?

Ambria Taylor

We launched this campaign very early. We launched in October 2021 with an election at the end of February 2023. We did this because we needed time to organize.

We started by holding community meetings for months. We brought communities together to articulate their desires for the city — like for streets and sanitation, public safety, the environment — and made those our platform planks.

We engaged people with what they want to see happen in the ward: “How do you want an alderman to be working toward making those things happen? Let’s talk about how the city council works. Let’s talk about how the ward office operates and what budget it has.”

Our residents have an appetite to get into the nitty-gritty about what an alderman can actually do to make progress on the things they want to see in this community and for Chicago. They want to take ownership over their own affairs.

This is what political education can look like in the context of an aldermanic race. The people ask questions, articulate their needs, and we try to put that through the lens of what we can do as an aldermanic office and as organized communities.

One thing we’ve found impactful is coming together for creative events. For instance, we had a huge block party with the owner and staff of a business called Haus of Melanin. This is a black-owned beauty bar that was vandalized twice in the months after they started up. A hair salon for black people? You can see why that might piss racists off.

So we stepped in and built a relationship with them. We threw this huge block party, bringing a bunch of people together to say, “We’re going to celebrate that there are going to be black people in this neighborhood. There are going to be black-owned businesses that cater to black people.” And a lot of people came out in this neighborhood to say, “We support this business, we love that it’s here, and nobody is going to scare our neighbors away.”

The business owner had talked about leaving. She had stylists leave because of the vandalism that happened. Haus of Melanin might have been chased out if the community didn’t turn out to say that these racists don’t represent us and we’re not going to take it. All of that is what a movement campaign looks like.

Caleb Horton

This is the city’s first Asian-majority ward, and the current alderperson is the city’s first Chinese American alderperson. Some people have said that this is an office that should go to an Asian American or a Chinese American person — that you as a white person shouldn’t be running for this office. How do you respond to that?

Ambria Taylor

We do remaps based on the census every ten years or so, and there was a big push to remap the 11th Ward to include Chinatown. Before the remap, the 11th Ward was 40 percent Asian, mostly Chinese. I think the biggest thing this remap did is unite a center politically that is already mapped culturally.

The incumbent I’m running against was appointed by an unpopular mayor and is backed by the Daley family. Her father worked for Mayor Richard M. Daley. Richard M. Daley and John Daley sent out a letter backing our current alderman.

It’s really exciting for this Asian-majority ward to have the opportunity to elect a representative they trust will fight for their interests.

My team has worked hard to do everything on the campaign the way we plan to run our ward office. We have made the campaign a space to build power for people who are marginalized. We have a huge campaign team that includes canvassers who speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taishanese. Just today we used all three languages while we were at the doors.

We make sure that people who are multilingual are present at our community meetings. Also every single piece of lit we’ve printed has been translated into three languages: English, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish.

This election is not just about the candidate as a representative, but about electing someone who is going to focus on issues that matter to the people of this ward. This is bigger than one person, and we have been able to build a lot of meaningful connections.

For example, we’ve made deep connections with Chinese-language newspapers, and that relationship is going to go a long way. We’ve had Chinese-language newspapers commenting on union rallies I was going to, my Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) endorsement, and so on, and we want to continue to nurture that relationship.

Caleb Horton

How has your experience as a Chicago Public Schools teacher influenced your politics?

Ambria Taylor

Teaching in Chicago Public Schools was really hard. I kind of expected that, but you have to live it for it to truly sink in.

After a year of student teaching, I started my first lead teaching position in the 2019–2020 year. A month and a half later, we went on strike for almost two weeks. We came back to the classroom, and just as I was trying to get back into the swing of things, COVID hit.

I became a remote teacher of middle schoolers, and things were really difficult. We had to eventually juggle hybrid learning and lack of staff. I became the union delegate for our school and experienced horrible retaliation from my principal. But through that, I learned to organize people in my building around workplace issues even if they had different politics than me.

I saw how the workplace can unite us — it gives you something to convene around, and it’s hard to have anything interfere with that because your reality is informing it all. Public education is in a lot of trouble, and I firsthand experienced these schools unraveling at the seams.

The city allocates money to bullshit while lead paint flakes off the walls and our buildings fall apart. As teachers, we face the struggle of trying to get through the day while kids are being put in the auditorium a few classes at a time because there is not enough staff to supervise them.

That influenced me because a huge part of my campaign as a socialist is to fight against neoliberalism, austerity, and private interests’ attempt to narrow what the public sector does by choking these various public services and then saying, “It doesn’t work!”

What is happening with Chicago Public Schools is happening everywhere — at the Chicago Public Library, in our transit system. My dream is being part of a movement that will help save our public sector.

Caleb Horton

The Chicago political machine faced an unsuccessful challenger in the 11th Ward four years ago. What makes your campaign different?

Ambria Taylor

There have been other challengers to the machine politicians in the 11th Ward. Usually it’s a person who has a few volunteers, and they raise less than $5,000. We’ve been able to raise over $90,000, and we have had over a hundred people volunteer for us. That’s something that challengers haven’t been able to muster up, and understandably so — it’s not an easy thing to do.

The people of the ward want to support this kind of effort, and despite their modest fundraising, we’ve seen previous small campaigns still give the machine a run for its money. We had a guy take Patrick Daley to a runoff election, and he raised less than $5,000. What that shows is that a strong campaign stands a chance, and we’ve made a strong effort here.

Caleb Horton

What are the biggest issues facing the 11th Ward?

Ambria Taylor

Environmental issues are huge here. Our air quality is eight to nine times worse than northern parts of the city. Our city is very segregated. The further north you get the whiter it gets, and you will notice that the South Side has way worse air quality and way more heavy — or “dirty” — industry that pollutes our air and our soil.

We used to have a Department of Environment that ticketed polluters that were breaking the rules and causing toxic contamination. That department is gone now, and the ticketing has gone down. When ticketing does happen, it happens on the North Side.

So there is a lot we can do here, like reestablishing the Department of Environment and working with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to make sure that the polluters in this area are being held to the standards they should be held to; also, when it comes to developments, saying, “No, I will not support new dirty industry coming to this region which is already severely overburdened.”

Caleb Horton

Public safety has come up a lot this election. What do you believe the 11th Ward could be doing about this?

Ambria Taylor

Public safety has become a major talking point this year. That’s not to say that everything is safe and everything is fine: we have carjackings, shootings, and assaults. People experiencing violence is unacceptable.

However, a lot of people have given in to saying, “I’m the alderman and I love the police.” What that does is absolve our leadership of any responsibility. We’ve had police officers responding to forty thousand mental health calls a year. There’s been a big movement in Chicago to shift things like mental health and domestic violence calls to other city workers instead of the police.

What we’ve seen is poverty and austerity are on the rise, and when you have high poverty, you have high crime. We need resources for young people, better social services, housing, and mental health care. A lot of people who we’ve canvassed agree that police are not enough and we need to address violence holistically.

Caleb Horton

What about affordable housing? Where do you stand on that?

Ambria Taylor

Here in the 11th Ward, there has been a push for affordable housing, but it’s really hit or miss as far as enforcement goes. Also, when it comes to affordability, we need to be stricter on how we define it. Right now, developments can say there are affordable units in a building even if they are not truly affordable and are just a little cheaper than other units in the building.

We want affordable housing, and we want to hold developers’ feet to the fire as far as prices go. Having a resident-led ward gives us the opportunity to ask developers, “What do you plan to charge for the units?” and get them to commit to something truly affordable for people to live in.

We must also expand public housing. Chicago has lots of money for it, yet we’re selling land that belongs to the housing authority off to private interests. That needs to stop. I’m interested in partnering with residents who live in public housing to make sure it improves and expands.

I also support just cause for evictions and lifting the ban on rent control in Illinois. We have a ban on passing rent control — we can’t even introduce a bill on it. I very much support the effort to overturn that.

Caleb Horton

What are your plans for this progressive base that you’re building?

Ambria Taylor

From here on out, if I’m the next alderman, we will continue to organize through the ward office and institute participatory budgeting and resident-led zoning and development boards. We will make serious changes to how the ward office is engaging with the people who live here.

And if we don’t win, we have movement institutions: we have the 11th Ward Independent Political Organization, we have DSA. We need to make sure we’re actually organizing people into groups where we can continue to grow what we’re doing. I’m really interested in where we are going to take this.
–-----
Filed Under
#United_States #Politics #Cities #racism #democratic_socialists_of_america #Chicago_City_Council

A Live Chat with Ambria Taylor, 11th Ward Alderperson Candidate!
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9VYjSzwN_Q

6 Candidates Are Challenging Ald. Nicole Lee In 11th Ward Race
▻https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/01/11/six-candidates-are-challenging-ald-nicole-lee-in-the-11th-ward

https://lede-admin.blockclubchicago.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/01/11thWardRace.jpg

Two teachers, a veteran police officer, a firefighter and an attorney are among the challengers looking to unseat Lee, who was appointed to the City Council seat in 2022.

Ambria Taylor | Chicago News | WTTW
▻https://news.wttw.com/elections/voters-guide/2023/Ambria-Taylor

Chicago DSA Endorses Ambria Taylor and Warren Williams
▻https://midwestsocialist.com/2023/01/11/chicago-dsa-endorses-ambria-taylor-and-warren-williams-post-petiti

#USA #Chicago #southside #Rassismus #Armut #Gewalt #Korruption #Sicherheit #Politik #Organizing

L’eau devient un produit financier en Californie | Les Echos
▻https://www.lesechos.fr/finance-marches/marches-financiers/leau-devient-un-produit-financier-en-californie-1255502

La Bourse de Chicago et le Nasdaq vont lancer des contrats à terme sur l’eau de Californie. Ces instruments financiers permettront de se couvrir contre la volatilité des prix de cette ressource naturelle sous tension dans l’Etat américain.

Après avoir fait fortune en anticipant l’effondrement du marché immobilier américain, Michael Burry a concentré ses investissements sur une matière première : l’eau. L’investisseur rendu célèbre par le livre de Micheal Lewis « Le casse du siècle » et le film « The Big Short » expliquait en 2010 avoir investi dans des exploitations agricoles disposant de réserves hydriques sur place.

En 2020, Wall Street lui donne une nouvelle fois raison : les opérateurs de Bourse, le Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) et le Nasdaq s’apprêtent à lancer d’ici à la fin de l’année des contrats à terme sur l’eau californienne. Une grande première pour cette ressource naturelle, devenue une matière première et un actif au même titre que le blé, le cuivre ou le pétrole.

Je voulais en savoir un peu plus sur Junior Wells qui fait la couverture du dernier Soul Bag

http://www.soulbag.fr/img/covers/soulbag_233_avg.jpg

Cerise sur le gâteau la « cigar box » est disponible sur #bandcamp avec pas moins de 66 morceaux, la grande classe quoi !

Vingt ans après sa mort, la musique de #Junior_Wells est un peu oubliée, d’autant qu’une partie de sa discographie – les années Blues Rock, en particulier – n’est que difficilement accessible sur #disque et est absente des services de musique en ligne. Raison de plus pour saluer l’initiative de Cleopatra Records qui proposera à la fin du mois d’août un luxueux coffret de 6 CD partagés entre une sélection de faces studios de ses débuts aux années 1970, avec des classiques comme Messin’ with the kid ou Little by little, et trois disques d’enregistrements en public inédits, datant des années 1980 et 1990, qui viennent compléter les albums posthumes publiés par Delmark. Le tout est emballé dans un coffret en bois façon “cigar box” et accompagné d’un livret illustré de 48 pages… et d’un indispensable mini-harmonica ! Peut-être bien le cadeau de Noël idéal des fans de #blues.

▻http://www.soulbag.fr/news/index/type/news/id/4243
▻https://juniorwells.bandcamp.com/track/mystery-train

https://img.discogs.com/P2a71ANuO204rvjOXfPxzB2IM64=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9490624-1481481484-9155.jpeg.jpg

#Moose_Jaw_tunnels reveal dark tales of Canada’s past

One of the strangest stories in 20th-century Canadian history is coming to light thanks to excavations under the streets of Moose Jaw.

For more than 75 years, city officials denied rumours of a network of tunnels located under this sleepy city, once one of the wildest frontier towns in the Canadian West.

Now part of the network has been restored and is open to tourists. Promoted as The Tunnels of Little Chicago, the underground maze has become the city’s most popular tourist attraction, with more than 100,000 visitors to date.

Local researchers have interviewed many of the city’s senior citizens to get at the long-hidden truth.

“All of the accounts agreed on the main points,” said Penny Eberle, who has been closely involved in the restoration project.

Eberle says work on the tunnels began in about 1908 after several Chinese railway workers were savagely beaten at the CPR railyards by whites who believed the Chinese were taking their jobs.

This was the time when Western Canada was gripped by hysteria about the “yellow peril,” and Ottawa imposed its infamous head tax on Chinese would-be immigrants.

Terrified and unable to pay the head tax, the Chinese workers literally went underground, digging secret tunnels where they could hide until the situation improved.

Evidence suggests the tunnels were used for many years. The railway workers managed to bring women to live with them and even raised children in rat-infested darkness.

Access to the tunnels was gained from the basements of buildings owned by legal Chinese immigrants. The underground residents would do work for above-ground laundries and restaurants and would obtain food and other supplies in payment.

Because the tunnels were built adjacent to heated basements, they were livable in winter.

The tunnels acquired a whole new purpose in the 1920s, when the United States and much of Canada embarked on Prohibition.

As a major CPR terminus linked to the United States by the Soo Line, Moose Jaw was ideally situated to become a bootlegging hub. The city’s remote location also made it a good place to escape U.S. police.

Moose Jaw became something of a gangsters’ resort, with regular visitors from the Chicago mob.

“They came to lay in the sun,” says Laurence (Moon) Mullin, an 89-year-old Moose Jaw resident, who worked as a messenger in the tunnels as an 11-year-old boy.

It didn’t hurt that the entire local police force, including Chief Walter Johnson, was in cahoots with the bootleggers. Local historians say Johnson ran Moose Jaw like a personal fiefdom for 20 years, and even the mayor dared not interfere.

Mullin liked the bootleggers who frequently paid five cents rather than four, the official price, for the newspapers he sold on a downtown corner.

The tunnels were used for gambling, prostitution and warehousing illegal booze. Mullin says one tunnel went right under the CPR station and opened into a shed in the rail yards. It was possible to load and unload rail cars without any risk of being seen by unfriendly eyes.

Mullin says that Chief Johnson would occasionally stop by his newspaper stand. As Johnson paid his nickel he would whisper into Mullin’s ear: “There’s going to be a big storm tonight.”

Mullin knew what those words meant: an imminent raid by Allen Hawkes of the Saskatchewan Liquor Commission, who did not share Johnson’s tolerant attitudes.

The boy would rush to a hidden door under the Exchange Cafe, give a secret knock, run down a tunnel to a second door, and knock again. There he would be admitted to a room full of gamblers.

“The smoke was so thick you could have cut it with a sharp knife and brought it out in squares,” he says, chuckling. “But everyone seemed quite comfortable.”

Some say the bootleggers strong-armed the Chinese to take over the tunnels, but Mullin denies this. He says the Chinese and bootleggers worked together.

There are anecdotes about Al Capone himself. Moose Jaw resident Nancy Gray has written that her late father Bill Beamish, a barber, was called to the tunnels several times to cut Capone’s hair.

Mullin says he never saw Capone but did meet Diamond Jim Brady, whom he describes as Capone’s right-hand man.

He says Brady was always impeccably dressed in a grey suit and liked to show off the gun he wore under his armpit; the diamonds embedded in his front teeth sparkled when he smiled.

Mullin says he and the other messenger boys got 20 cents for every errand. The gangsters didn’t allow them to touch booze but taught them how to play poker.

“The best teachers I had in this world were those men that weren’t supposed to be any good.”

The boys held Brady in special awe: “He’d always tell us to stay on the straight and narrow. He had eyes just like a reptile and when he looked at you he almost paralysed you. I think he was absolutely fearless.”

Mullin says some rotgut whisky was made in Saskatchewan but all the good stuff came from the Bronfman distillery in Montreal.

As recently as the 1970s local officials denied the existence of the tunnels, but the denials became difficult to maintain when part of Main Street collapsed, leaving an unsuspecting motorist planted in a deep hole.

“I always said some day a truck is going to break through, and it did,” Mullin says. Guided tours of the tunnels begin daily at the Souvenir Shop, 108 Main St. N. in downtown Moose Jaw. Tours last 45 minutes and cost $7 for adults. Senior, student and child rates, as well as group rates, also offered. Wheelchair access not available. Information: (306) 693-5261

▻https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/moose-jaw-tunnels-reveal-dark-tales-of-canadas-past/article4158935
#migrations #chinois #Canada #souterrain #sous-terre #histoire #tunnels #tourisme #dark_tourism

#Grenoble figurera parmi les 30 prochains quartiers de reconquête républicaine...

https://i.imgur.com/gcS9msA.jpg

Quelqu’un peut me dire pourquoi ils parlent de #quartiers ?
Grenoble n’est pas une #ville ? Mah !

via @isskein

Matt Stoller on Twitter: “The eternal #Chicago_School question: If a tree falls in the forest and you can’t measure a quantifiable dollar harm to individuals, does it make a sound?”
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/985937162163044353

Evil (Is Going On)
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_(Howlin'_Wolf_song)
▻http://www.willie-dixon.com/home.html
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aJ6stj6U0M

Les « #schengen_boys » et le nouvel #ordre_sécuritaire

Le fonctionnement de la #sécurité nationale est calqué sur le modèle européen. C’est ce que démontre une étude qui plonge pour la première fois au cœur de cet univers traditionnellement secret

▻https://www.unige.ch/campus/campus128/recherche2
#Europe #sécurité #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Schengen #Chicago_Boys #Suisse #armée #diplomatie #gardes-frontière #police_fédérale #terrorisme #migrations #SEM #Services_de_renseignement

García Linera explicó la actual política económica en Bolivia a estudiante de la EMI - Vicepresidencia del Estado
▻http://www.vicepresidencia.gob.bo/Garcia-Linera-explico-la-actual?var_hasard=348411293545384af1424

Après les #Chicago_boys, les Chuquiago boys...

▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuquiago

À part ça, article intéressant parce qu’il détaille le plan de gouvernement bolivien pour les 5 ans à venir.

#bolivie #garcia_linera #révolution

Emprunter gratuitement du wifi à la bibliothèque pour s’en servir à la maison sera bientôt possible
▻http://www.archimag.com/bibliotheque-edition/2014/06/26/bibliotheque-pret-hotspot-wifi-gratuit-maison

A Harlem, près de neuf personnes sur dix n’ont pas de quoi s’offrir d’accès à internet. Au total, plus de 100 millions d’Américains seraient coupés du web, faute de moyens. Un tiers de la population des Etats-Unis voit donc passer le train de la révolution numérique sans pouvoir monter à son bord. Afin de ne pas les laisser sur le quai, la New York Public Library et la Chicago Public Library viennent de recevoir le prix de la Fondation Knight. Celui-ci récompense les projets visant à renforcer la liberté d’expression et l’innovation par le biais d’internet. Leur idée ? Proposer le prêt de plusieurs milliers de hotspots wifi portatifs et gratuits aux ménages dans le besoin. Et ce pour une durée de trois semaines voire même d’un (...)

#actubiblio_c

Riccardo Muti Leads Chicago Symphony Orchestra On Verdi’s 200th Birthday | Italy Magazine
▻http://www.italymagazine.com/news/riccardo-muti-leads-chicago-symphony-orchestra-verdis-200th-birthday

▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDhk3u_txEk

Italian conductor and music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti will lead the combined forces of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Chorus in a one-night-only performance of the Verdi Requiem at Chicago’s Symphony Center on Thursday to celebrate the bicentennial of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth - 10 october 2013.
The concert has been sold out for months, but the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) has decided to make it available for free to people around the world. Muti’s performance will in fact be transmitted via live Internet streaming, the first time the CSO has done so, on its website, www.cso.org/verdi, and on its Facebook page.
The Verdi Requiem will be streamed live at 7:30 p.m. CDT (-5 GMT), with a pre-concert show beginning at 7:15 p.m. CDT.

#Riccardo_Muti
#Chicago_Symphony_Orchestra
#Verdi
#200th_Birthday

Verdi’s 200th Birthday

Chicago : le parrain du datajournalisme ? | Mael Inizan
►http://owni.fr/2011/06/20/chicago-le-parrain-du-datajournalisme

Des premiers #hackers-journalistes à la News Application Team du Chicago Tribune, le sociologue Sylvain Parasie revient sur l’essor du datajournalisme dans la ville d’Al Capone.

#Cultures_numériques #Journalisme #Adrian_Holovaty #bases_de_données #chicago #Chicago_Tribune #data #datajournalism #EveryBlock #washington_post