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  • Must we decolonise #Open_Access? Perspectives from Francophone Africa

    A long read featuring the recent work of Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou and Florence Piron, on how a truly open and inclusive ‘Open Access’ movement must include those at the periphery

    I recently watched the recording of the fantastic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion session at OpenCon, and I was struck by the general theme of how ‘openness’ isn’t necessarily the force for equality that we perhaps think it is, and how issues of power, exploitation, and hierarchy means that it should be understood differently according to the context in which it is applied. In the session, Denisse Albornoz used the expression of ‘situated openness’ to describe how our Northern conception of openness should not be forced on anyone or any group – it needs to be understood first in individual contexts of historical injustices and post-colonial power structures.

    What stood out for me most in this session, however, (because it related most to my work) was Cameroonian Thomas Mboa’s presentation, which talked about the ‘neo-colonial face of open access’. The presentation employed some very striking critical terms such as ‘cognitive injustice’ and ‘epistemic alienation’ to Open Access.

    I’ve always known that the Open Access movement was far from perfect, but at least it’s moving global science publishing in the right direction, right? Can working towards free access and sharing of research really be ‘neo-colonial’ and lead to ‘alienation’ for users of research in the Global South? And if this really is the case, how can we ‘decolonise’ open access?

    Thomas didn’t get much time to expand on some of the themes he presented, so I got in contact to see if he had covered these ideas elsewhere, and fortunately he has, through his participation in ‘Projet SOHA’ . This is a research-action project that’s been working on open science, empowerment and cognitive justice in French-speaking Africa and Haiti from 2015-17. He provided me with links to four publications written in French by himself and his colleagues from the project – Florence Piron (Université Laval, Quebec, Canada), Antonin Benoît Diouf (Senegal), and Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba (Cameroon), and many others.

    These articles are a goldmine of provocative ideas and perspectives on Open Access from the Global South, which should challenge all of us in the English-speaking academic publishing community. Therefore, I decided to share some excerpts and extended quotes from these articles below, in amongst some general comments from my (admittedly limited) experience of working with researchers in the Global South.

    The quotes are taken from the following book and articles, which I recommend reading in full (these are easily translatable using the free tool Google Translate Web, which correctly translated around 95% of the text).

    Chapter 2 – ‘Les injustices cognitives en Afrique subsaharienne : réflexions sur les causes et les moyens de lutte’ – Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou (2016), in Piron, Dibounje Madiba et Regulus 2016 (below)
    Justice cognitive, libre accès et savoirs locaux – Collective book edited by Florence Piron, Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba and Samuel Regulus (2016) (CC-BY) https://scienceetbiencommun.pressbooks.pub/justicecognitive1
    Qui sait ? Le libre accès en Afrique et en Haïti – Florence Piron (2017) (CC-BY) (Soon to be published in English in Forthcoming Open Divide. Critical Studies of Open Access (Herb & Schöpfel ed), Litwinbooks
    Le libre accès vu d’Afrique francophone subsaharienne – Florence Piron, Antonin Benoît Diouf, Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba, Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou, Zoé Aubierge Ouangré, Djossè Roméo Tessy, Hamissou Rhissa Achaffert, Anderson Pierre and Zakari Lire (2017) (CC-BY-NC-SA)
    Une autre science est possible. Récit d’une utopie concrète dans la Francophonie (le projet SOHA) – Revue Possibles, 2016 (CC-BY)

    Piron et al’s (2017) article starts with a stinging critique of those of us in our Northern scholarly publishing community cliques, and our never-ending open access debates over technicalities:

    “… there are many debates in this community, including on the place of open licenses in open access (is an article really in open access if it is not freely reusable in addition to being freely accessible?), on the legitimacy of the fees charged to authors by certain journals choosing open access, on the quality and evaluation of open access journals, on the very format of the journal as the main vehicle for the dissemination of scientific articles or on the type of documents to be included in institutional or thematic open archives (only peer-reviewed articles or any document related to scientific work?).

    Viewed from Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa, these debates may seem very strange, if not incomprehensible. Above all, they appear very localized: they are debates of rich countries, of countries of the North, where basic questions such as the regular payment of a reasonable salary to academics, the existence of public funding for research, access to the web, electricity, well-stocked libraries and comfortable and safe workplaces have long been settled.” Piron et al. (2017)

    … and their critique gets more and more scathing from here for the Open Access movement. OA advocates – tighten your seatbelts – you are not going to find this a comfortable ride.

    “… a conception of open access that is limited to the legal and technical questions of the accessibility of science without thinking about the relationship between center and periphery can become a source of epistemic alienation and neocolonialism in the South”. Piron et al. (2017)

    “Is open access the solution to the documented shortcomings of these African universities and, in doing so, a crucial means of getting scientific research off the ground? I would like to show that this is not the case, and to suggest that open access can instead become a neo-colonial tool by reinforcing the cognitive injustices that prevent African researchers from fully deploying their research capacities in the service of the community and sustainable local development of their country.” Piron (2017)

    Ouch. To understand these concepts of ‘cognitive injustice’ and ‘epistemic alienation’, it helps to understand this ‘world system’ and the power relationship between the centre and the periphery. This is based on Wallerstein’s (1996) model, which Thomas featured in his OpenCon slides:

    “… a world-system whose market unit is the scientific publication circulating between many instances of high economic value, including universities, research centers, science policies, journals and an oligopoly of for-profit scientific publishers (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon, 2015).” Piron et al. (2017)

    “… we believe that science, far from being universal, has been historically globalized. Inspiring us, like Keim (2010) and a few others (Polanco, 1990), from Wallerstein’s (1996) theory, we consider that it constitutes a world-system whose market unit is the scientific publication. Produced mainly in the North, this merchandise obeys standards and practices that are defined by the ‘center’ of the system, namely the main commercial scientific publishers (Larivière, Haustein, & Mongeon, 2015), and their university partners are the US and British universities dominating the so-called world rankings. The semi-periphery is constituted by all the other countries of the North or emerging from the South which revolve around this center, adopting the English language in science and conforming to the model LMD (license, master, doctorate) imposed since the Bologna process to all the universities of the world with the aim of “normalizing” and standardizing the functioning of this world-system. The periphery then refers to all the countries that are excluded from this system, which produce no or very few scientific publications or whose research work is invisible, but to whom the LMD model has also been imposed (Charlier, Croché, & Ndoye 2009, Hountondji 2001)”. Piron et al. (2017)

    So, the continuing bias and global focus towards the powerful ‘center’ of the world-system leads to the epistemic alienation of those on the periphery, manifesting in a ‘spiritual colonisation’:

    “… this attitude that drives us to want to think about local problems with Western perspective is a colonial legacy to which many African citizens hang like a ball.” Mboa (2016).

    So where does Open Access fit in with this world-system?

    “… if open access is to facilitate and accelerate the access of scientists from the South to Northern science without looking into the visibility of knowledge of the South, it helps to redouble their alienation epistemic without contributing to their emancipation. Indeed, by making the work of the center of the world-system of science even more accessible, open access maximizes their impact on the periphery and reinforces their use as a theoretical reference or as a normative model, to the detriment of local epistemologies.” Piron et al. (2017)

    Rethinking Northern perspectives

    This should be an eye-opening analysis for those of us who assumed that access to research knowledge in the North could only be a good thing for the South. Perhaps we need to examine the arrogance behind our narrow worldview, and consider more deeply the power at the heart of such a one-way knowledge exchange. Many of us might find this difficult, as:

    “The idea that open access may have the effects of neocolonialism is incomprehensible to people blind to epistemological diversity, who reduce the proclaimed universalism of Western science to the impoverished model of the standards imposed by the Web of Science model. For these people, the invisibility of a publication in their numerical reference space (located in the center of the world-system) is equivalent to its non-existence. The idea that valid and relevant knowledge can exist in another form and independently of the world-system that fascinates them is unthinkable.” Piron et al. (2017)

    Having spent a little time at scholarly publishing events in the Global North, I can attest that the mindset described above is common. There are kind thoughts (and a few breadcrumbs thrown in the form of grants and fellowships) towards those on the periphery, but it is very much in the mindset of helping those from the Global South ‘catch up’. Our mindset is very much as Piron describes here:

    “If one sticks to the positivist view that “science” is universal – even if its “essence” is symbolized by the American magazine Science – then indeed African science, that is to say in Africa, is late, and we need to help it develop so that it looks more and more like the North”. Piron (2017)

    And whilst in the North we may have a lot of respect for different cultural perspectives, genuine reciprocal exchanges of research knowledge are rare. We are supremely confident that our highly-developed scientific publishing model deserves to be at the centre of our system. This can lead to selective blindness about the rigorousness of our science and our indexed journals, in spite of the steady drip drip drip of reports of biased peer review, data fraud and other ethical violations in ‘high-impact’ Northern journals, exposed in places like retraction watch.

    North/South research collaborations are rarely equitable – southern partners often complain of being used as data-gatherers rather than intellectual equals and partners in research projects, even when the research is being carried out in their own country.

    “These [Northern] partners inevitably guide the problems and the methodological and epistemological choices of African researchers towards the only model they know and value, the one born at the center of the world-system of science – without questioning whether this model is relevant to Africa and its challenges”. Piron et al (2017).

    These issues of inequity in collaborative relationships and publication practices seem inextricably linked, which is not surprising when the ultimate end goal of research is publishing papers in Northern journals, rather than actually solving Southern development challenges.

    “In this context, open access may appear as a neocolonial tool, as it facilitates access by Southern researchers to Northern science without ensuring reciprocity. In doing so, it redoubles the epistemic alienation of these researchers instead of contributing to the emancipation of the knowledge created in the universities of the South by releasing them from their extraversion. Indeed, by making the work produced in the center of the world-system even more accessible, free access maximizes their impact on the periphery and reinforces their use as a theoretical reference or as a normative model, to the detriment of local epistemologies, which generates situations absurd as, for example, the use of a theoretical framework related to wage labor in the Paris region to analyze the work of women in northern Mali” Piron (2017)

    “The resulting consequences are, in particular, the teachers of the Southern countries who quote and read only writers from the North and impose them on their students and the libraries of our universities who do everything to subscribe to Western scholarly journals while they do not deal with our problems. (Mboa Nkoudou, 2016 )”

    This is also a striking example:

    “It is very sad to note that geographers in Ouagadougou are more familiar with European work on the Sahel than those at the Higher Institute of Sahel in Maroua, Cameroon.” Piron (2017)

    The lack of equity in research knowledge exchange and collaboration is also caused by another one-way North to South flow: funding. Research in the South is often dependent on foreign funding. Big Northern donors and funders therefore set the standards and agendas in research, and in how the entire research funding system works. Southern partners rarely get to set the agenda, and researchers rarely get to develop the research questions that guide the research. They have to learn to jump through administrative hoops to become credible in the eyes of the Northern donor (for more information see ‘Who drives research in developing countries?‘).

    Southern institutions are also compelled, via league tables such as the World Unviersity Rankings, to play the same game as institutions in the North. Institutions are ranked against each other according to criteria set in the North, one of which is citations (of course, only citations between journals in the Web of Science or Scopus, which is overwhelmingly Northern). And so to stay ‘competitive’, Southern institutions need their researchers to publish in Northern journals with Northern language and agendas.
    Northern agendas and local innovation

    Whilst it is tempting to think that the issues and criticism described above is mostly a problem for the social sciences and humanities, there are also real issues in the ‘hard’ sciences – perhaps not so much in their epistemological foundations – but in very practical issues of Northern research agendas. For example, Northern research, being based in Europe and the US, is overwhelmingly biased towards white people, in diversity of leadership, diversity of researchers, and most importantly in the whiteness of clinical trial subjects. This is problematic because different ethnic populations have different genetic makeups and differences due to geography, that mean they respond differently to treatments (see here, here and here). Are African and Asian researchers informed of this when they read research from so-called ‘international’ journals?

    Furthermore, these Northern agendas can also mean that research focuses on drugs, equipment and treatments that are simply not suitable for developing country contexts. I was reminded of a discussion comment recently made by a Pakistani surgeon on the Northern bias of systematic reviews:

    “There is a definite bias in this approach as almost all of the guidelines and systematic reviews are based on the research carried out in high income countries and the findings and the recommendations have little relevance to the patients, health care system and many a time serve no purpose to the millions of patients based in low resourced countries. e.g. I routinely used Phenol blocks for spasticity management for my patients which were abandoned two decades ago in the West. Results are great, and the patients can afford this Rs 200 phenol instead of Rs 15,000 Botox vial. But, unfortunately, I am unable to locate a single systematic review on the efficacy of phenol as all published research in the last decade was only on the use of Botox in the management of spasticity.” Farooq Rathore (HIFA mailing list, 2016).

    Similarly, I’ve read research papers from the South that report on innovative approaches to medical treatments and other problems that utilise lower-cost equipment and methodologies (in fact, as is argued here, research in low-resource environments can often be more efficient and innovative, containing many lessons we, in the North, could learn from). This point is also made by Piron et al:

    “… the production of technical and social innovations is rich in Sub-Saharan French-speaking Africa, as evidenced by the high number of articles on this subject in the Sci-Dev magazine, specializing in science for development, or in the ecofin site, an economic information agency turned towards Africa. But these are mostly local innovations that mobilize local resources and often recycled materials to, for example, introduce electricity into a village, better irrigate fields or offer lighting after sunset. The aim of these innovations is to contribute to local development and not to the development of international markets, unlike innovations designed in the North which, while targeting the countries of the South, remain highly marketable – just think of milk powder or GMO seeds. The issue of open access to scientific publications is a very secondary issue for local innovators in such a context”. (Piron et al. 2016)

    These examples of innovation aside, there are many cases where the ‘epistemic alienation’ described above leads to ‘the exclusion or contempt of local knowledge’ (Mboa, 2016), even amongst researchers in the global South.

    “In fact, Western culture abundantly relayed in the media and textbooks is shown to be superior to other cultures. This situation is pushing Africans to multiply their efforts to reach the ideal of life of the “white”. This situation seems to block their ability to think locally, or even to be reactive. Thus, faced with a given situation specific to the African context, many are those who first draw on the resources of Western thinking to propose elements of answers.” Mboa (2016)

    Free and open access as ‘showcasing products’

    The Research4Life (R4L) programme also comes in for criticism from Piron et al. which will come as a shock to Northern publishing people who often use the ‘… but they’ve got Research4Life’ line when faced with evidence of global research inequalities.

    “… while pretending to charitably provide university libraries in the Global South with free access to pre-defined packages of paid journals from the North, this program, set up by for-profit scientific publishers, maintains the dependence of these libraries, limits their understanding of the true network of open access publications and, above all, improves the market for the products sold by these publishers.” Piron et al (2017)

    “… this program encourages the continued reliance of these libraries on an external program, designed in the North and showcasing Northern products, while it may disappear as soon as this philanthropic desire is exhausted or as soon as trading partners will not find any more benefits.”

    Whilst I still think R4L is a great initiative (I know many researchers in the Global South who are very appreciative of the programme), it’s difficult to disagree with the conclusion that:

    ‘… this program mainly improves the opportunities of Northern publishers without contributing to the sustainable empowerment of university libraries in the South … this charity seems very hypocritical, let alone arbitrary, since it can stop at any time.” Piron (2017)

    Of course, the same could be said of Article Processing Charge (APC) waivers for developing country authors. Waivers are currently offered by the majority of journals from the big publishers (provided according to the same HINARI list of countries provided by Research4Life), although sometimes you have to dig deep into the terms and conditions pages to find them. Waivers are good for publishers to showcase their corporate social responsibility and provide diversity of authorship. However, they are unsustainable – this charity is unlikely to last forever, especially as they rely on the pool of Southern authors being relatively limited. It should also be noted that developing countries with the most active, growing researcher communities such as Nigeria, South Africa and India do not qualify for either R4L access or APC waivers.

    Speaking of APCs, something I observe regularly amongst Southern researchers is a confusion over the ‘Gold’ OA author-pays model, and this too is noted:

    “In northern countries, many researchers, especially in STEM (Björk and Solomon, 2012) [ 7 ], believe (wrongly) that open access now means “publication fees charged to authors” … this commercial innovation appears to be paying off, as these costs appear to be natural to researchers.” Piron (2017)

    This also appears to be paying off in the Global South – authors seem resigned to pay some kind of charge to publish, and it is common to have to point out to authors that over two-thirds of OA journals and 99% of subscription journals do not charge to publish (although, the rise of ‘predatory’ journals may have magnified this misunderstanding that pay-to-publish is the norm).

    It may be tempting to think of these inequalities as an unfortunate historical accident, and that our attempts to help the Global South ‘catch up’ are just a little clumsy and patronising. However, Piron argues that this is no mere accident, but the result of colonial exploitation that still resonates in existing power structures today:

    “Open access is then easily seen as a means of catching up, at least filling gaps in libraries and often outdated teaching […] Africa is considered as lagging behind the modern world, which would explain its underdevelopment, to summarize this sadly hegemonic conception of north-south relations. By charity, Northern countries then feel obliged to help, which feeds the entire industry surrounding development aid [….] this model of delay, violently imposed by the West on the rest of the world through colonization, has been used to justify the economic and cognitive exploitation (Connell, 2014) of colonized continents without which modernity could not have prospered.” Piron (2017)

    To build the path or take the path?

    Of course, the authors do admit that access to Northern research has a role to play in the Global South, provided the access is situated in local contexts:

    “… African science should be an African knowledge, rooted in African contexts, that uses African epistemologies to answer African questions, while also using other knowledge from all over the world, including Western ones, if they are relevant locally.” Piron (2017)

    However, the practical reality of Open Access for Southern researchers is often overstated. There is a crucial distinction between making content ‘open’ and providing the means to access that content. As Piron et al. 2017 say:

    “To put a publication in open access: is it, to build the path (technical or legal) that leads to it, or is it to make it possible for people to take this path? This distinction is crucial to understand the difference in meaning of open access between the center and the periphery of the world-system of science, although only an awareness of the conditions of scientific research in the Southern countries makes it possible to visualize it, to perceive it.”

    This crucial difference between availability and accessibility has also been explained by Anne Powell on Scholarly Kitchen. There are many complex barriers to ‘free’ and ‘open’ content actually being accessed and used. The most obvious of these barriers is internet connectivity, but librarian training, language and digital literacy also feature significantly:

    “Finding relevant open access articles on the web requires digital skills that, as we have seen, are rare among Haitian and African students for whom the web sometimes comes via Facebook … Remember that it is almost always when they arrive at university that these students first touch a computer. The catching up is fast, but many reflexes acquired since the primary school in the countries of the North must be developed before even being able to imagine that there are open access scientific texts on the web to make up for the lack of documents in the libraries. In the words of the Haitian student Anderson Pierre, “a large part of the students do not know the existence of these resources or do not have the digital skills to access and exploit them in order to advance their research project”. Piron (2017)

    Barriers to local knowledge exchange

    Unfortunately, this is made even more difficult by resistance and misunderstanding of the internet and digital tools from senior leadership in Africa:

    “Social representations of the web, science and copyright also come into play, especially among older academics, a phenomenon that undermines the appropriation of digital technologies at the basis of open access in universities.” Piron et al. (2017)

    “To this idea that knowledge resides only in printed books is added a representation of the web which also has an impact on the local resistance to open access: our fieldwork has allowed us to understand that, for many African senior academics, the web is incompatible with science because it contains only documents or sites that are of low quality, frivolous or entertaining. These people infer that science in open access on the web is of lower quality than printed science and are very surprised when they learn that most of the journals of the world-system of science exist only in dematerialized format. … Unfortunately, these resistances slow down the digitization and the web dissemination of African scientific works, perpetuating these absurd situations where the researchers of the same field in neighboring universities do not know what each other is doing”. Piron et al. (2017)

    This complaint about in-country communication from researchers in the South can be common, but there are signs that open access can make a difference – as an example, in Sri Lanka, I’ve spoken to researchers who say that communicating research findings within the country has always been a problem, but the online portal Sri Lanka Journals Online (currently 77 open access Sri Lankan journals) has started to improve this situation. This project was many years in the making, and has involved training journal editors and librarians in loading online content and improving editorial practices for open access. The same, of course, could be said for African Journals Online, which has potential to facilitate sharing on a larger scale.

    Arguably, some forms of institutional resistance to openness in the Global South have a neocolonial influence – universities have largely borrowed and even intensified the Northern ‘publish or perish’ mantra which focuses the academic rewards system almost entirely on journal publications, often in northern-indexed journals, rather than on impact on real world development.

    “The system of higher education and research in force in many African countries remains a remnant of colonization, perpetuated by the reproduction, year after year, of the same ideals and principles. This reproduction is assured not by the old colonizers but by our own political leaders who are perpetuating a system structured according to a classical partitioning that slows down any possible communication between researchers within the country or with the outside world, even worse between the university and the immediate environment. For the ruling class, the changes taking place in the world and the society’s needs seem to have no direct link to the university.” Mboa (2016)

    Mboa calls this partitioning between researchers and outsiders as “a tight border between society and science”:

    “African researchers are so attached to the ideal of neutrality of science and concern of its ‘purity’ that they consider contacts with ordinary citizens as ‘risks’ or threats and that they prefer to evolve in their ‘ivory tower’. On the other hand, ordinary citizens feel so diminished compared to researchers that to talk to them about their eventual involvement in research is a taboo subject …” Mboa (2016)

    Uncolonising openness

    So what is the answer to all these problems? Is it in building the skills of researchers and institutions or a complete change of philosophy?

    “The colonial origin of African science (Mvé-Ondo, 2005) is certainly no stranger to this present subjugation of African science to northern research projects, nor to its tendency to imitate Western science without effort. Contextualization, particularly in the quasi-colonial structuring of sub-Saharan African universities (Fredua-Kwarteng, 2015) and in maintaining the use of a colonial language in university education. Considering this institutionalized epistemic alienation as yet another cognitive injustice, Mvé-Ondo wonders “how to move from a westernization of science to a truly shared science” (p.49) and calls for “epistemological mutation”, “rebirth”, modernizing “African science at the crossroads of local knowledge and northern science – perhaps echoing the call of Fanon (1962/2002) for a “new thinking” in the Third World countries, detached from European model, decolonized.” Piron et al. (2017)

    For this to happen, open access must be about more than just access – but something much more holistic and equitable:

    “Can decentralized, decolonised open access then contribute to creating more cognitive justice in global scientific production? Our answer is clear: yes, provided that it is not limited to the question of access for scientific and non-scientific readers to scientific publications. It must include the concern for origin, creation, local publishing and the desire to ensure equity between the accessibility of the publications of the center of the world system and that of knowledge from the periphery. It thus proposes to replace the normative universalism of globalized science with an inclusive universalism, open to the ecology of knowledges and capable of building an authentic knowledge commons (Gruson-Daniel, 2015; Le Crosnier, 2015), hospitable for the knowledge of the North and the South”. Piron et al. (2017)

    Mboa sees the solution to this multifaceted problem in ‘open science’:

    “[Cognitive injustice comes via] … endogenous causes (citizens and African leaders) and by exogenous causes (capitalism, colonization, the West). The knowledge of these causes allowed me to propose ways to prevent our downfall. Among these means, I convened open science as a tool available to our leaders and citizens for advancing cognitive justice. For although the causes are endogenous and exogenous, I believe that a wound heals from the inside outwards.” Mboa (2016).

    Mboa explains how open science approaches can overcome some of these problems in this book chapter, but here he provides a short summary of the advantages of open science for African research:

    “It’s a science that rejects the ivory tower and the separation between scientists and the rest of the population of the country. In short, it’s a science released from control by a universal capitalist standard, by hierarchical authority and by pre-established scientific classes. From this perspective, open science offers the following advantages:

    it brings science closer to society;
    it promotes fair and sustainable development;
    it allows the expression of minority and / or marginalized groups, as well as their knowledge;
    it promotes original, local and useful research in the country;
    it facilitates access to a variety of scientific and technical information;
    it is abundant, recent and up to date;
    it develops digital skills;
    it facilitates collaborative work;
    it gives a better visibility to research work.

    By aiming to benefit from these advantages, researchers and African students fight cognitive injustice. For this, open access science relies on open access, free licenses, free computing, and citizen science.” Mboa (2016).

    But in order for open science to succeed, digital literacy must be rapidly improved to empower students and researchers in the South:

    “Promoting inclusive access therefore requires engaging at the same time in a decolonial critique of the relationship between the center and the periphery and urging universities in the South to develop the digital literacy of their student or teacher members.” Piron et al. (2017)

    It also requires improving production of scientific works (‘grey’ literature, as well as peer-reviewed papers) in the South for a two-way North/South conversation:

    “Then, we propose to rethink the usual definition of open access to add the mandate to enhance the visibility of scientific work produced in universities in the South and thus contribute to greater cognitive justice in global scientific production.” Piron (2017)

    And providing open access needs to be understood in context:

    “… if we integrate the concern for the enhancement of the knowledge produced in the periphery and the awareness of all that hinders the creation of this knowledge, then open access can become a tool of cognitive justice at the service of the construction of an inclusive universalism peculiar to a just open science.” Piron, Diouf, Madiba (2017)

    In summary then, we need to rethink the way that the global North seeks to support the South – a realignment of this relationship from mere access to empowerment through sustainable capacity building:

    “Africa’s scientific development aid, if it is needed, should therefore be oriented much less towards immediate access to Northern publications and more to local development of tools and the strengthening of the digital skills of academics and librarians. These tools and skills would enable them not only to take advantage of open access databases, but also to digitize and put open access local scientific works in open archives, journals or research centers.” Piron (2017)

    So what next?

    Even if you disagree with many the above ideas, I hope that this has provided many of you with some food for thought. Open Access must surely be about more than just knowledge flow from North to South (or, for that matter the academy to the public, or well-funded researchers to poorly funded researchers). Those on the periphery must also be given a significant voice and a place at the table. For this to happen, many researchers (and their equivalents outside academia) need training and support in digital skills; some institutional barriers also need to be removed or overcome; and of course a few cherished, long-held ideas must be seriously challenged.

    “These injustices denote anything that diminishes the capacity of academics in these countries to deploy the full potential of their intellectual talents, their knowledge and their capacity for scientific research to serve their country’s sustainable local development”. Piron et al., (2016).

    What do you think…?

    http://journalologik.uk/?p=149
    #édition_scientifique #OA #open_access #Afrique #Afrique_francophone #décolonisation #post-colonialisme

  • Paris streets, squares named in honour of LGBT+ figures

    Fifty years after New York City’s Stonewall riots laid the foundation for modern gay rights, Paris is carrying on that legacy by naming an array of streets and squares after historically important LGBT+ figures.

    New to the city map are Stonewall Riot and Harvey Milk squares – the first in recognition of the famous rebellion against Manhattan police in 1969; the latter in honour of the American civil rights leader and first openly gay politician to be elected in California.

    Other squares, gardens and passageways pay tribute to the likes of Irish gay rights activist Mark Ashton, French transsexual politician and poet Ovida-Delect and bisexual American writer and filmmaker Susan Sontag.

    There’s also a commemorative plaque in honour of Gilbert Baker, the man who invented the rainbow flag. Add to that Pierre Seel Street, named for the openly gay Holocaust survivor, and Place Renée Vivien, in honour of the British poet known for her Sapphic verse and party days during the Belle Epoque.

    Increasing LGBT+ visibility

    The new unveilings bring to more than 40 the number of people immortalised through plaques erected around the city – with most of them smattered about the vibrant 4th arrondissement, home to Paris’s unofficial gay district.

    These sorts of gestures are an important way of increasingly the visibility of the gay community and cementing its place in history, says Fabien Jannic-Cherbonnel, a journalist with the French LGBT+ news site Komitid.

    “France is very keen on talking about its history and the great men who shaped the country – and these plaques show people that women and LGBT+ figures are a part of that history, and they also helped to make this country what it is today,” he says.

    Paris playing catch-up

    While other European cities such as Amsterdam and Berlin are perhaps a little further ahead in celebrating the LGBT+ legacy, with their so-called “homomonuments” drawing in tourists, Paris is steadily playing catch-up – so much so the Town Hall has dared to label it the “flagship city of inclusion and diversity”.

    The street-naming gesture comes just ahead of this weekend’s pride march. Like many cities across the world, Paris cranks up the colour in June to celebrate gay pride – and this Saturday the capital will look like the rainbow city that mayor Anne Hidalgo has been striving to deliver.

    Tempering the pride party, however, is last month’s report by the French not-for-profit organisation SOS Homophobie, which noted a 15 percent rise in the number of homophobic attacks reported in 2018, compared with the previous year.

    While the NGO described 2018 as a “black year”, Jannic-Cherbonnel says the numbers aren’t necessarily evidence that homophobic assaults are on the rise.

    “This is a reflection of the number of calls that SOS received – which means that people are talking about it,” he says. “They know when something is wrong and when something happens they will report it.

    “I’m not convinced there’s a huge increase in homophobia in French society, especially in Paris, but we are talking more about it – which is good because this is all about visibility, which in turn helps to fight homophobia.”


    http://en.rfi.fr/france/20190626-paris-streets-squares-named-honour-lgbt-figures?ref=tw
    #LGBT #homosexualité #Paris #France #toponymie #noms_de_rue #Harvey_Milk

  • Beyond the Hype of Lab-Grown Diamonds
    https://earther.gizmodo.com/beyond-the-hype-of-lab-grown-diamonds-1834890351

    Billions of years ago when the world was still young, treasure began forming deep underground. As the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates plunged down into the upper mantle, bits of carbon, some likely hailing from long-dead life forms were melted and compressed into rigid lattices. Over millions of years, those lattices grew into the most durable, dazzling gems the planet had ever cooked up. And every so often, for reasons scientists still don’t fully understand, an eruption would send a stash of these stones rocketing to the surface inside a bubbly magma known as kimberlite.

    There, the diamonds would remain, nestled in the kimberlite volcanoes that delivered them from their fiery home, until humans evolved, learned of their existence, and began to dig them up.

    The epic origin of Earth’s diamonds has helped fuel a powerful marketing mythology around them: that they are objects of otherworldly strength and beauty; fitting symbols of eternal love. But while “diamonds are forever” may be the catchiest advertising slogan ever to bear some geologic truth, the supply of these stones in the Earth’s crust, in places we can readily reach them, is far from everlasting. And the scars we’ve inflicted on the land and ourselves in order to mine diamonds has cast a shadow that still lingers over the industry.

    Some diamond seekers, however, say we don’t need to scour the Earth any longer, because science now offers an alternative: diamonds grown in labs. These gems aren’t simulants or synthetic substitutes; they are optically, chemically, and physically identical to their Earth-mined counterparts. They’re also cheaper, and in theory, limitless. The arrival of lab-grown diamonds has rocked the jewelry world to its core and prompted fierce pushback from diamond miners. Claims abound on both sides.

    Growers often say that their diamonds are sustainable and ethical; miners and their industry allies counter that only gems plucked from the Earth can be considered “real” or “precious.” Some of these assertions are subjective, others are supported only by sparse, self-reported, or industry-backed data. But that’s not stopping everyone from making them.

    This is a fight over image, and when it comes to diamonds, image is everything.
    A variety of cut, polished Ada Diamonds created in a lab, including smaller melee stones and large center stones. 22.94 carats total. (2.60 ct. pear, 2.01 ct. asscher, 2.23 ct. cushion, 3.01 ct. radiant, 1.74 ct. princess, 2.11 ct. emerald, 3.11 ct. heart, 3.00 ct. oval, 3.13 ct. round.)
    Image: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    Same, but different

    The dream of lab-grown diamond dates back over a century. In 1911, science fiction author H.G. Wells described what would essentially become one of the key methods for making diamond—recreating the conditions inside Earth’s mantle on its surface—in his short story The Diamond Maker. As the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) notes, there were a handful of dubious attempts to create diamonds in labs in the late 19th and early 20th century, but the first commercial diamond production wouldn’t emerge until the mid-1950s, when scientists with General Electric worked out a method for creating small, brown stones. Others, including De Beers, soon developed their own methods for synthesizing the gems, and use of the lab-created diamond in industrial applications, from cutting tools to high power electronics, took off.

    According to the GIA’s James Shigley, the first experimental production of gem-quality diamond occurred in 1970. Yet by the early 2000s, gem-quality stones were still small, and often tinted yellow with impurities. It was only in the last five or so years that methods for growing diamonds advanced to the point that producers began churning out large, colorless stones consistently. That’s when the jewelry sector began to take a real interest.

    Today, that sector is taking off. The International Grown Diamond Association (IGDA), a trade group formed in 2016 by a dozen lab diamond growers and sellers, now has about 50 members, according to IGDA secretary general Dick Garard. When the IGDA first formed, lab-grown diamonds were estimated to represent about 1 percent of a $14 billion rough diamond market. This year, industry analyst Paul Zimnisky estimates they account for 2-3 percent of the market.

    He expects that share will only continue to grow as factories in China that already produce millions of carats a year for industrial purposes start to see an opportunity in jewelry.
    “I have a real problem with people claiming one is ethical and another is not.”

    “This year some [factories] will come up from 100,000 gem-quality diamonds to one to two million,” Zimnisky said. “They already have the infrastructure and equipment in place” and are in the process of upgrading it. (About 150 million carats of diamonds were mined last year, according to a global analysis of the industry conducted by Bain & Company.)

    Production ramp-up aside, 2018 saw some other major developments across the industry. In the summer, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reversed decades of guidance when it expanded the definition of a diamond to include those created in labs and dropped ‘synthetic’ as a recommended descriptor for lab-grown stones. The decision came on the heels of the world’s top diamond producer, De Beers, announcing the launch of its own lab-grown diamond line, Lightbox, after having once vowed never to sell man-made stones as jewelry.

    “I would say shock,” Lightbox Chief Marketing Officer Sally Morrison told Earther when asked how the jewelry world responded to the company’s launch.

    While the majority of lab-grown diamonds on the market today are what’s known as melee (less than 0.18 carats), the tech for producing the biggest, most dazzling diamonds continues to improve. In 2016, lab-grown diamond company MiaDonna announced its partners had grown a 6.28 carat gem-quality diamond, claimed to be the largest created in the U.S. to that point. In 2017, a lab in Augsburg University, Germany that grows diamonds for industrial and scientific research applications produced what is thought to be the largest lab-grown diamond ever—a 155 carat behemoth that stretches nearly 4 inches across. Not gem quality, perhaps, but still impressive.

    “If you compare it with the Queen’s diamond, hers is four times heavier, it’s clearer” physicist Matthias Schreck, who leads the group that grew that beast of a jewel, told me. “But in area, our diamond is bigger. We were very proud of this.”

    Diamonds can be created in one of two ways: Similar to how they form inside the Earth, or similar to how scientists speculate they might form in outer space.

    The older, Earth-inspired method is known as “high temperature high pressure” (HPHT), and that’s exactly what it sounds like. A carbon source, like graphite, is placed in a giant, mechanical press where, in the presence of a catalyst, it’s subjected to temperatures of around 1,600 degrees Celsius and pressures of 5-6 Gigapascals in order to form diamond. (If you’re curious what that sort of pressure feels like, the GIA describes it as similar to the force exerted if you tried to balance a commercial jet on your fingertip.)

    The newer method, called chemical vapor deposition (CVD), is more akin to how diamonds might form in interstellar gas clouds (for which we have indirect, spectroscopic evidence, according to Shigley). A hydrocarbon gas, like methane, is pumped into a low-pressure reactor vessel alongside hydrogen. While maintaining near-vacuum conditions, the gases are heated very hot—typically 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Celsius, according to Lightbox CEO Steve Coe—causing carbon atoms to break free of their molecular bonds. Under the right conditions, those liberated bits of carbon will settle out onto a substrate—typically a flat, square plate of a synthetic diamond produced with the HPHT method—forming layer upon layer of diamond.

    “It’s like snow falling on a table on your back porch,” Jason Payne, the founder and CEO of lab-grown diamond jewelry company Ada Diamonds, told me.

    Scientists have been forging gem-quality diamonds with HPHT for longer, but today, CVD has become the method of choice for those selling larger bridal stones. That’s in part because it’s easier to control impurities and make diamonds with very high clarity, according to Coe. Still, each method has its advantages—Payne said that HPHT is faster and the diamonds typically have better color (which is to say, less of it)—and some companies, like Ada, purchase stones grown in both ways.

    However they’re made, lab-grown diamonds have the same exceptional hardness, stiffness, and thermal conductivity as their Earth-mined counterparts. Cut, they can dazzle with the same brilliance and fire—a technical term to describe how well the diamond scatters light like a prism. The GIA even grades them according to the same 4Cs—cut, clarity, color, and carat—that gemologists use to assess diamonds formed in the Earth, although it uses a slightly different terminology to report the color and clarity grades for lab-grown stones.

    They’re so similar, in fact, that lab-grown diamond entering the larger diamond supply without any disclosures has become a major concern across the jewelry industry, particularly when it comes to melee stones from Asia. It’s something major retailers are now investing thousands of dollars in sophisticated detection equipment to suss out by searching for minute differences in, say, their crystal shape or for impurities like nitrogen (much less common in lab-grown diamond, according to Shigley).

    Those differences may be a lifeline for retailers hoping to weed out lab-grown diamonds, but for companies focused on them, they can become another selling point. The lack of nitrogen in diamonds produced with the CVD method, for instance, gives them an exceptional chemical purity that allows them to be classified as type IIa; a rare and coveted breed that accounts for just 2 percent of those found in nature. Meanwhile, the ability to control everything about the growth process allows companies like Lightbox to adjust the formula and produce incredibly rare blue and pink diamonds as part of their standard product line. (In fact, these colored gemstones have made up over half of the company’s sales since launch, according to Coe.)

    And while lab-grown diamonds boast the same sparkle as their Earthly counterparts, they do so at a significant discount. Zimnisky said that today, your typical one carat, medium quality diamond grown in a lab will sell for about $3,600, compared with $6,100 for its Earth-mined counterpart—a discount of about 40 percent. Two years ago, that discount was only 18 percent. And while the price drop has “slightly tapered off” as Zimnisky put it, he expects it will fall further thanks in part to the aforementioned ramp up in Chinese production, as well as technological improvements. (The market is also shifting in response to Lightbox, which De Beers is using to position lab-grown diamonds as mass produced items for fashion jewelry, and which is selling its stones, ungraded, at the controversial low price of $800 per carat—a discount of nearly 90 percent.)

    Zimnisky said that if the price falls too fast, it could devalue lab-grown diamonds in the eyes of consumers. But for now, at least, paying less seems to be a selling point. A 2018 consumer research survey by MVI Marketing found that most of those polled would choose a larger lab-grown diamond over a smaller mined diamond of the same price.

    “The thing [consumers] seem most compelled by is the ability to trade up in size and quality at the same price,” Garard of IGDA said.

    Still, for buyers and sellers alike, price is only part of the story. Many in the lab-grown diamond world market their product as an ethical or eco-friendly alternative to mined diamonds.

    But those sales pitches aren’t without controversy.
    A variety of lab-grown diamond products arrayed on a desk at Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan. The stone in the upper left gets its blue color from boron. Diamonds tinted yellow (top center) usually get their color from small amounts of nitrogen.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    Dazzling promises

    As Anna-Mieke Anderson tells it, she didn’t enter the diamond world to become a corporate tycoon. She did it to try and fix a mistake.

    In 1999, Anderson purchased herself a diamond. Some years later, in 2005, her father asked her where it came from. Nonplussed, she told him it came from the jewelry store. But that wasn’t what he was asking: He wanted to know where it really came from.

    “I actually had no idea,” Anderson told Earther. “That led me to do a mountain of research.”

    That research eventually led Anderson to conclude that she had likely bought a diamond mined under horrific conditions. She couldn’t be sure, because the certificate of purchase included no place of origin. But around the time of her purchase, civil wars funded by diamond mining were raging across Angola, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia, fueling “widespread devastation” as Global Witness put it in 2006. At the height of the diamond wars in the late ‘90s, the watchdog group estimates that as many as 15 percent of diamonds entering the market were conflict diamonds. Even those that weren’t actively fueling a war were often being mined in dirty, hazardous conditions; sometimes by children.

    “I couldn’t believe I’d bought into this,” Anderson said.

    To try and set things right, Anderson began sponsoring a boy living in a Liberian community impacted by the blood diamond trade. The experience was so eye-opening, she says, that she eventually felt compelled to sponsor more children. Selling conflict-free jewelry seemed like a fitting way to raise money to do so, but after a great deal more research, Anderson decided she couldn’t in good faith consider any diamond pulled from the Earth to be truly conflict-free in either the humanitarian or environmental sense. While diamond miners were, by the early 2000s, getting their gems certified “conflict free” according to the UN-backed Kimberley Process, the certification scheme’s definition of a conflict diamond—one sold by rebel groups to finance armed conflicts against governments—felt far too narrow.

    “That [conflict definition] eliminates anything to do with the environment, or eliminates a child mining it, or someone who was a slave, or beaten, or raped,” Anderson said.

    And so she started looking into science, and in 2007, launching MiaDonna as one of the world’s first lab-grown diamond jewelry companies. The business has been activism-oriented from the get-go, with at least five percent of its annual earnings—and more than 20 percent for the last three years—going into The Greener Diamond, Anderson’s charity foundation which has funded a wide range of projects, from training former child soldiers in Sierra Leone to grow food to sponsoring kids orphaned by the West African Ebola outbreak.

    MiaDonna isn’t the only company that positions itself as an ethical alternative to the traditional diamond industry. Brilliant Earth, which sells what it says are carefully-sourced mined and lab-created diamonds, also donates a small portion of its profits to supporting mining communities. Other lab-grown diamond companies market themselves as “ethical,” “conflict-free,” or “world positive.” Payne of Ada Diamonds sees, in lab-grown diamonds, not just shiny baubles, but a potential to improve medicine, clean up pollution, and advance society in countless other ways—and he thinks the growing interest in lab-grown diamond jewelry will help propel us toward that future.

    Others, however, say black-and-white characterizations when it comes to social impact of mined diamonds versus lab-grown stones are unfair. “I have a real problem with people claiming one is ethical and another is not,” Estelle Levin-Nally, founder and CEO of Levin Sources, which advocates for better governance in the mining sector, told Earther. “I think it’s always about your politics. And ethics are subjective.”

    Saleem Ali, an environmental researcher at the University of Delaware who serves on the board of the Diamonds and Development Initiative, agrees. He says the mining industry has, on the whole, worked hard to turn itself around since the height of the diamond wars and that governance is “much better today” than it used to be. Human rights watchdog Global Witness also says that “significant progress” has been made to curb the conflict diamond trade, although as Alice Harle, Senior Campaigner with Global Witness told Earther via email, diamonds do still fuel conflict, particularly in the Central African Republic and Zimbabwe.

    Most industry observers seems to agree that the Kimberley Process is outdated and inadequate, and that more work is needed to stamp out other abuses, including child labor and forced labor, in the artisanal and small-scale diamond mining sector. Today, large-scale mining operations don’t tend to see these kinds of problems, according to Julianne Kippenberg, associate director for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch, but she notes that there may be other community impacts surrounding land rights and forced resettlement.

    The flip side, Ali and Levin-Nally say, is that well-regulated mining operations can be an important source of economic development and livelihood. Ali cites Botswana and Russia as prime examples of places where large-scale mining operations have become “major contributors to the economy.” Dmitry Amelkin, head of strategic projects and analytics for Russian diamond mining giant Alrosa, echoed that sentiment in an email to Earther, noting that diamonds transformed Botswana “from one of the poorest [countries] in the world to a middle-income country” with revenues from mining representing almost a third of its GDP.

    In May, a report commissioned by the Diamond Producers Association (DPA), a trade organization representing the world’s largest diamond mining companies, estimated that worldwide, its members generate nearly $4 billion in direct revenue for employees and contractors, along with another $6.8 billion in benefits via “local procurement of goods and services.” DPA CEO Jean-Marc Lieberherr said this was a story diamond miners need to do a better job telling.

    “The industry has undergone such changes since the Blood Diamond movie,” he said, referring to the blockbuster 2006 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio that drew global attention to the problem of conflict diamonds. “And yet people’s’ perceptions haven’t evolved. I think the main reason is we have not had a voice, we haven’t communicated.”

    But conflict and human rights abuses aren’t the only issues that have plagued the diamond industry. There’s also the lasting environmental impact of the mining itself. In the case of large-scale commercial mines, this typically entails using heavy machinery and explosives to bore deep into those kimberlite tubes in search of precious stones.

    Some, like Maya Koplyova, a geologist at the University of British Columbia who studies diamonds and the rocks they’re found in, see this as far better than many other forms of mining. “The environmental footprint is the fThere’s also the question of just how representative the report’s energy consumption estimates for lab-grown diamonds are. While he wouldn’t offer a specific number, Coe said that De Beers’ Group diamond manufacturer Element Six—arguably the most advanced laboratory-grown diamond company in the world—has “substantially lower” per carat energy requirements than the headline figures found inside the new report. When asked why this was not included, Rick Lord, ESG analyst at Trucost, the S&P global group that conducted the analysis, said it chose to focus on energy estimates in the public record, but that after private consultation with Element Six it did not believe their data would “materially alter” the emissions estimates in the study.

    Finally, it’s important to consider the source of the carbon emissions. While the new report states that about 40 percent of the emissions associated with mining a diamond come from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and equipment, emissions associated with growing a diamond come mainly from electric power. Today, about 68 percent of lab-grown diamonds hail from China, Singapore, and India combined according to Zimnisky, where the power is drawn from largely fossil fuel-powered grids. But there is, at least, an opportunity to switch to renewables and drive that carbon footprint way down.
    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption.”

    And some companies do seem to be trying to do that. Anderson of MiaDonna says the company only sources its diamonds from facilities in the U.S., and that it’s increasingly trying to work with producers that use renewable energy. Lab-grown diamond company Diamond Foundry grows its stones inside plasma reactors running “as hot as the outer layer of the sun,” per its website, and while it wouldn’t offer any specific numbers, that presumably uses more energy than your typical operation running at lower temperatures. However, company spokesperson Ye-Hui Goldenson said its Washington State ‘megacarat factory’ was cited near a well-maintained hydropower source so that the diamonds could be produced with renewable energy. The company offsets other fossil fuel-driven parts of its operation by purchasing carbon credits.

    Lightbox’s diamonds currently come from Element Six’s UK-based facilities. The company is, however, building a $94-million facility near Portland, Oregon, that’s expected to come online by 2020. Coe said he estimates about 45 percent of its power will come from renewable sources.

    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption,” Coe said. “That’s something we’re focused on in Lightbox.”

    In spite of that, Lightbox is somewhat notable among lab-grown diamond jewelry brands in that, in the words of Morrison, it is “not claiming this to be an eco-friendly product.”

    “While it is true that we don’t dig holes in the ground, the energy consumption is not insignificant,” Morrison told Earther. “And I think we felt very uncomfortable promoting on that.”
    Various diamonds created in a lab, as seen at the Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    The real real

    The fight over how lab-grown diamonds can and should market themselves is still heating up.

    On March 26, the FTC sent letters to eight lab-grown and diamond simulant companies warning them against making unsubstantiated assertions about the environmental benefits of their products—its first real enforcement action after updating its jewelry guides last year. The letters, first obtained by JCK news director Rob Bates under a Freedom of Information Act request, also warned companies that their advertising could falsely imply the products are mined diamonds, illustrating that, even though the agency now says a lab-grown diamond is a diamond, the specific origin remains critically important. A letter to Diamond Foundry, for instance, notes that the company has at times advertised its stones as “above-ground real” without the qualification of “laboratory-made.” It’s easy to see how a consumer might miss the implication.

    But in a sense, that’s what all of this is: A fight over what’s real.
    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in. They are a type of diamond.”

    Another letter, sent to FTC attorney Reenah Kim by the nonprofit trade organization Jewelers Vigilance Committee on April 2, makes it clear that many in the industry still believe that’s a term that should be reserved exclusively for gems formed inside the Earth. The letter, obtained by Earther under FOIA, urges the agency to continue restricting the use of the terms “real,” “genuine,” “natural,” “precious,” and “semi-precious” to Earth-mined diamonds and gemstones. Even the use of such terms in conjunction with “laboratory grown,” the letter argues, “will create even more confusion in an already confused and evolving marketplace.”

    JVC President Tiffany Stevens told Earther that the letter was a response to a footnote in an explanatory document about the FTC’s recent jewelry guide changes, which suggested the agency was considering removing a clause about real, precious, natural and genuine only being acceptable modifiers for gems mined from the Earth.

    “We felt that given the current commercial environment, that we didn’t think it was a good time to take that next step,” Stevens told Earther. As Stevens put it, the changes the FTC recently made, including expanding the definition of diamond and tweaking the descriptors companies can use to label laboratory-grown diamonds as such, have already been “wildly misinterpreted” by some lab-grown diamond sellers that are no longer making the “necessary disclosures.”

    Asked whether the JVC thinks lab-grown diamonds are, in fact, real diamonds, Stevens demurred.

    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in,” she said. “They are a type of diamond.”

    Change is afoot in the diamond world. Mined diamond production may have already peaked, according to the 2018 Bain & Company report. Lab diamonds are here to stay, although where they’re going isn’t entirely clear. Zimnisky expects that in a few years—as Lightbox’s new facility comes online and mass production of lab diamonds continues to ramp up overseas—the price industry-wide will fall to about 80 percent less than a mined diamond. At that point, he wonders whether lab-grown diamonds will start to lose their sparkle.

    Payne isn’t too worried about a price slide, which he says is happening across the diamond industry and which he expects will be “linear, not exponential” on the lab-grown side. He points out that lab-grown diamond market is still limited by supply, and that the largest lab-grown gems remain quite rare. Payne and Zimnisky both see the lab-grown diamond market bifurcating into cheaper, mass-produced gems and premium-quality stones sold by those that can maintain a strong brand. A sense that they’re selling something authentic and, well, real.

    “So much has to do with consumer psychology,” Zimnisky said.

    Some will only ever see diamonds as authentic if they formed inside the Earth. They’re drawn, as Kathryn Money, vice president of strategy and merchandising at Brilliant Earth put it, to “the history and romanticism” of diamonds; to a feeling that’s sparked by holding a piece of our ancient world. To an essence more than a function.

    Others, like Anderson, see lab-grown diamonds as the natural (to use a loaded word) evolution of diamond. “We’re actually running out of [mined] diamonds,” she said. “There is an end in sight.” Payne agreed, describing what he sees as a “looming death spiral” for diamond mining.

    Mined diamonds will never go away. We’ve been digging them up since antiquity, and they never seem to lose their sparkle. But most major mines are being exhausted. And with technology making it easier to grow diamonds just as they are getting more difficult to extract from the Earth, the lab-grown diamond industry’s grandstanding about its future doesn’t feel entirely unreasonable.

    There’s a reason why, as Payne said, “the mining industry as a whole is still quite scared of this product.” ootprint of digging the hole in the ground and crushing [the rock],” Koplyova said, noting that there’s no need to add strong acids or heavy metals like arsenic (used in gold mining) to liberate the gems.

    Still, those holes can be enormous. The Mir Mine, a now-abandoned open pit mine in Eastern Siberia, is so large—reportedly stretching 3,900 feet across and 1,700 feet deep—that the Russian government has declared it a no-fly zone owing to the pit’s ability to create dangerous air currents. It’s visible from space.

    While companies will often rehabilitate other land to offset the impact of mines, kimberlite mining itself typically leaves “a permanent dent in the earth’s surface,” as a 2014 report by market research company Frost & Sullivan put it.

    “It’s a huge impact as far as I’m concerned,” said Kevin Krajick, senior editor for science news at Columbia University’s Earth Institute who wrote a book on the discovery of diamonds in far northern Canada. Krajick noted that in remote mines, like those of the far north, it’s not just the physical hole to consider, but all the development required to reach a previously-untouched area, including roads and airstrips, roaring jets and diesel-powered trucks.

    Diamonds grown in factories clearly have a smaller physical footprint. According to the Frost & Sullivan report, they also use less water and create less waste. It’s for these reasons that Ali thinks diamond mining “will never be able to compete” with lab-grown diamonds from an environmental perspective.

    “The mining industry should not even by trying to do that,” he said.

    Of course, this is capitalism, so try to compete is exactly what the DPA is now doing. That same recent report that touted the mining industry’s economic benefits also asserts that mined diamonds have a carbon footprint three times lower than that of lab-grown diamonds, on average. The numbers behind that conclusion, however, don’t tell the full story.

    Growing diamonds does take considerable energy. The exact amount can vary greatly, however, depending on the specific nature of the growth process. These are details manufacturers are typically loathe to disclose, but Payne of Ada Diamonds says he estimates the most efficient players in the game today use about 250 kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity per cut, polished carat of diamond; roughly what a U.S. household consumes in 9 days. Other estimates run higher. Citing unnamed sources, industry publication JCK Online reported that a modern HPHT run can use up to 700 kWh per carat, while CVD production can clock in north of 1,000 kWh per carat.

    Pulling these and several other public-record estimates, along with information on where in the world today’s lab diamonds are being grown and the energy mix powering the producer nations’ electric grids, the DPA-commissioned study estimated that your typical lab-grown diamond results in some 511 kg of carbon emissions per cut, polished carat. Using information provided by mining companies on fuel and electricity consumption, along with other greenhouse gas sources on the mine site, it found that the average mined carat was responsible for just 160 kg of carbon emissions.

    One limitation here is that the carbon footprint estimate for mining focused only on diamond production, not the years of work entailed in developing a mine. As Ali noted, developing a mine can take a lot of energy, particularly for those sited in remote locales where equipment needs to be hauled long distances by trucks or aircraft.

    There’s also the question of just how representative the report’s energy consumption estimates for lab-grown diamonds are. While he wouldn’t offer a specific number, Coe said that De Beers’ Group diamond manufacturer Element Six—arguably the most advanced laboratory-grown diamond company in the world—has “substantially lower” per carat energy requirements than the headline figures found inside the new report. When asked why this was not included, Rick Lord, ESG analyst at Trucost, the S&P global group that conducted the analysis, said it chose to focus on energy estimates in the public record, but that after private consultation with Element Six it did not believe their data would “materially alter” the emissions estimates in the study.

    Finally, it’s important to consider the source of the carbon emissions. While the new report states that about 40 percent of the emissions associated with mining a diamond come from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and equipment, emissions associated with growing a diamond come mainly from electric power. Today, about 68 percent of lab-grown diamonds hail from China, Singapore, and India combined according to Zimnisky, where the power is drawn from largely fossil fuel-powered grids. But there is, at least, an opportunity to switch to renewables and drive that carbon footprint way down.
    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption.”

    And some companies do seem to be trying to do that. Anderson of MiaDonna says the company only sources its diamonds from facilities in the U.S., and that it’s increasingly trying to work with producers that use renewable energy. Lab-grown diamond company Diamond Foundry grows its stones inside plasma reactors running “as hot as the outer layer of the sun,” per its website, and while it wouldn’t offer any specific numbers, that presumably uses more energy than your typical operation running at lower temperatures. However, company spokesperson Ye-Hui Goldenson said its Washington State ‘megacarat factory’ was cited near a well-maintained hydropower source so that the diamonds could be produced with renewable energy. The company offsets other fossil fuel-driven parts of its operation by purchasing carbon credits.

    Lightbox’s diamonds currently come from Element Six’s UK-based facilities. The company is, however, building a $94-million facility near Portland, Oregon, that’s expected to come online by 2020. Coe said he estimates about 45 percent of its power will come from renewable sources.

    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption,” Coe said. “That’s something we’re focused on in Lightbox.”

    In spite of that, Lightbox is somewhat notable among lab-grown diamond jewelry brands in that, in the words of Morrison, it is “not claiming this to be an eco-friendly product.”

    “While it is true that we don’t dig holes in the ground, the energy consumption is not insignificant,” Morrison told Earther. “And I think we felt very uncomfortable promoting on that.”
    Various diamonds created in a lab, as seen at the Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    The real real

    The fight over how lab-grown diamonds can and should market themselves is still heating up.

    On March 26, the FTC sent letters to eight lab-grown and diamond simulant companies warning them against making unsubstantiated assertions about the environmental benefits of their products—its first real enforcement action after updating its jewelry guides last year. The letters, first obtained by JCK news director Rob Bates under a Freedom of Information Act request, also warned companies that their advertising could falsely imply the products are mined diamonds, illustrating that, even though the agency now says a lab-grown diamond is a diamond, the specific origin remains critically important. A letter to Diamond Foundry, for instance, notes that the company has at times advertised its stones as “above-ground real” without the qualification of “laboratory-made.” It’s easy to see how a consumer might miss the implication.

    But in a sense, that’s what all of this is: A fight over what’s real.
    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in. They are a type of diamond.”

    Another letter, sent to FTC attorney Reenah Kim by the nonprofit trade organization Jewelers Vigilance Committee on April 2, makes it clear that many in the industry still believe that’s a term that should be reserved exclusively for gems formed inside the Earth. The letter, obtained by Earther under FOIA, urges the agency to continue restricting the use of the terms “real,” “genuine,” “natural,” “precious,” and “semi-precious” to Earth-mined diamonds and gemstones. Even the use of such terms in conjunction with “laboratory grown,” the letter argues, “will create even more confusion in an already confused and evolving marketplace.”

    JVC President Tiffany Stevens told Earther that the letter was a response to a footnote in an explanatory document about the FTC’s recent jewelry guide changes, which suggested the agency was considering removing a clause about real, precious, natural and genuine only being acceptable modifiers for gems mined from the Earth.

    “We felt that given the current commercial environment, that we didn’t think it was a good time to take that next step,” Stevens told Earther. As Stevens put it, the changes the FTC recently made, including expanding the definition of diamond and tweaking the descriptors companies can use to label laboratory-grown diamonds as such, have already been “wildly misinterpreted” by some lab-grown diamond sellers that are no longer making the “necessary disclosures.”

    Asked whether the JVC thinks lab-grown diamonds are, in fact, real diamonds, Stevens demurred.

    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in,” she said. “They are a type of diamond.”

    Change is afoot in the diamond world. Mined diamond production may have already peaked, according to the 2018 Bain & Company report. Lab diamonds are here to stay, although where they’re going isn’t entirely clear. Zimnisky expects that in a few years—as Lightbox’s new facility comes online and mass production of lab diamonds continues to ramp up overseas—the price industry-wide will fall to about 80 percent less than a mined diamond. At that point, he wonders whether lab-grown diamonds will start to lose their sparkle.

    Payne isn’t too worried about a price slide, which he says is happening across the diamond industry and which he expects will be “linear, not exponential” on the lab-grown side. He points out that lab-grown diamond market is still limited by supply, and that the largest lab-grown gems remain quite rare. Payne and Zimnisky both see the lab-grown diamond market bifurcating into cheaper, mass-produced gems and premium-quality stones sold by those that can maintain a strong brand. A sense that they’re selling something authentic and, well, real.

    “So much has to do with consumer psychology,” Zimnisky said.

    Some will only ever see diamonds as authentic if they formed inside the Earth. They’re drawn, as Kathryn Money, vice president of strategy and merchandising at Brilliant Earth put it, to “the history and romanticism” of diamonds; to a feeling that’s sparked by holding a piece of our ancient world. To an essence more than a function.

    Others, like Anderson, see lab-grown diamonds as the natural (to use a loaded word) evolution of diamond. “We’re actually running out of [mined] diamonds,” she said. “There is an end in sight.” Payne agreed, describing what he sees as a “looming death spiral” for diamond mining.

    Mined diamonds will never go away. We’ve been digging them up since antiquity, and they never seem to lose their sparkle. But most major mines are being exhausted. And with technology making it easier to grow diamonds just as they are getting more difficult to extract from the Earth, the lab-grown diamond industry’s grandstanding about its future doesn’t feel entirely unreasonable.

    There’s a reason why, as Payne said, “the mining industry as a whole is still quite scared of this product.”

    #dimants #Afrique #technologie #capitalisme

  • Renaud Epstein & station urbaner kulturen

    (Feben Amara, Jochen Becker, Christian Hanussek, Eva Hertzsch, Adam Page) with Oliver Pohlisch and Birgit Schlieps

    One day, one ZUP, one postcard (2014-…), 2018

    Wallpaper / Display cabinet
    Collection station urbaner kulturen, Berlin-Hellersdorf

    The sociologist Renaud Epstein’s project has first and foremost been an online format since its initiation in 2014: he posts a new postcard of large housing estates (Zones à Urbaniser par Priorité / ZUP) on his Twitter account every day. From a time when France dreamed of being modern and urban and believed in its architectural utopias, the ZUP postcards evoke at best a golden era, at worst a contemporary delusion.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/vte4ejv9wsumzyh/ARLES%202019-PRESS%20KIT-kl.pdf?dl=0

    The Berlin collective station urbaner kulturen, based in the last big housing estate built in the GDR, has extracted sections from Epstein’s Twitter timeline in order to materialize the interaction between internet users and images. Their project «Going out of Circles / Kreise ziehen» presents a wider series of exhibitions that aims to create connections between the housing estates on the periphery of urban and economic centers, around Berlin and beyond.

    A display case with original postcards next to the Twitter wallpaper emphasises the different readings of formats of communication.

    Postcards – News from a Dream World
    Musée départemental Arles Antique

    1 July - 25 August / 10 - 18

    Exhibition curators: Magali Nachtergael and Anne Reverseau

    Eric Baudart & Thu-Van Tran (1972 et 1979), Fredi Casco (1967), Moyra Davey (1958), documentation céline duval (1974), Renaud Epstein & station urbane kulturen (1971 et créé en 2014), Jean Geiser (1848-1923), Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige (1969), Roc Herms (1978), Susan Hiller (1940-2019), John Hinde (1916-1997), Katia Kameli (1973), Aglaia Konrad (1960), Valérie Mréjen (1969), Martin Parr (1952), Mathieu Pernot (1970), Brenda Lou Schaub (1993), Stephen Shore (1947), John Stezaker (1948), Oriol Vilanova (1980), William Wegman (1943)

    The postcard is the ultimate circulating picture, constantly subject to a sense of déjà-vu. Throughout the twentieth century, it went hand in hand with the bottling of the visible world, the rise of image globalization and mass tourism. Collectors, hoarders, retouchers and iconographers seize existing pictures to give them a new meaning, clarify their status or context.

    By comparing this artistic vision with the making of postcards, this exhibition questions what they show and tell of the world, like a visual anthropology. What did they convey throughout the twentieth century, during their hour of glory? What vision of the world did they plant in the minds of their recipients, who got them from relatives and friends?

    Both a symbol of our private and collective imagination, the postcard represents an illusion, always close to hand. It shows us a dream world in which can project ourselves, as in a desirable fiction story.

    www.rencontres-arles.com/en/expositions/view/779/cartes-postales

    https://archiv.ngbk.de/projekte/station-urbaner-kulturen-hellersdorf-seit-2014
    https://www.ngbk.de/en/program/initiative-urbane-kulturen

    #renaud_epstein #cartes_postales

  • Le massacre des limules ! – RefracTerre
    https://refracterre.news/2019/02/04/le-massacre-des-limules

    La limule un petit arthropode, vieux de 450 millions d’années, risque aujourd’hui l’extinction à cause des groupes pharmaceutiques qui exploitent son sang bleu, contenant des cellules aux caractéristiques bien particulières.

    La limule a survécu à quatre extinctions massives et pourtant aujourd’hui elle est surexploitée par l’Homme qui a fait de son sang bleu un véritable produit convoité par le monde entier. En raison de son utilisation pharmaceutique, plus de 430 000 limules sont aujourd’hui tuées chaque année sans pour autant faire la « une » des journaux.

    Ce petit arthropode, aussi vieux qu’un fossile vient d’être placé sur la liste des animaux vulnérables de l’Union Internationale pour la Conservation de la Nature (UICN). La raison de son exploitation : un sang bleu contenant des cellules qui réagissent au contact de bactéries et qui permettent alors de détecter une contamination de matériel chirurgical, de dialyse ou autres médicaments. Un sang si rare que la demande a explosé pour en faire l’un des produits les plus chers du monde, vendu à plus de 10 000 euros le litre.

    Aujourd’hui l’industrie pharmaceutique tue des limules en masse.
    Une espèce dont la population s’apprête à diminuer de 30% selon les scientifiques. La branche asiatique de la limule risque d’ailleurs de s’éteindre en premier, car en Asie l’animal y est aussi consommé après sa ponction, tandis qu’aux Etats-unis elle est parfois relâchée. Ce geste est souvent inutile puisque très peu d’entre elles survivent suite à l’intervention.

    Mais son sang n’est pas sa seule faiblesse :
    Leur propre sang n’est pas la seule menace qui pèse sur les limules. Elles doivent également faire face à une diminution des plages disponibles pour pondre leurs œufs ainsi qu’à la prolifération d’algues toxiques…

    Un triste sort qui se profile pour cette espèce qui avait pourtant réussi à vivre en paix jusque-là et ce pendant des millions d’années.

    #nos_ennemis_les_bêtes #big_pharma

  • Blog • #Mioveni, le monde de #Dacia-#Renault

    Un beau #livre sur un monde qui n’est pas toujours forcément beau, c’est ainsi que l’on pourrait présenter, si on voulait faire vite, l’album d’#Anne_Leroy et #Julia_Beurq sur Mioveni, la petite ville roumaine dont quelque 14 000 habitants sur les 32 000 recensés (enfants et retraités compris) sont salariés dans l’usine où l’on fabrique les fameuses #Logan et autres #Duster [1].

    Si on devait classer ce livre dans les rayons d’une librairie, ce serait plutôt parmi les « beaux livres » en raison de la qualité exceptionnelle de ses photos et de la présentation soignée de l’ensemble. Mais un doute ne manquera pas de s’insinuer : qu’ont-ils de si beau ce site industriel, les immeubles type HLM qui l’entourent et leurs habitants qui se prêtent au jeu proposé par la photographe en se laissant captés par sa camera ? La difficulté à apporter une réponse tranchée à une telle question annonce en quelque sorte l’intérêt particulier que présente cet album. En effet, nous sommes ici loin des clichés en noir et/ou blanc si fréquents s’agissant de la Roumanie de l’après-Ceauşescu et des mutations en cours dans ce pays.

    A voir et revoir ces photos d’Anne Leroy, à lire et relire les pages qui les accompagnent de Julia Beurq, la gêne occasionnée par l’impression de kitsch qui se dégage du décor ambiant désuet, des lieux publics qui rappellent l’atmosphère des films est-européens des années 1970 ou encore des poses figées adoptées par les hommes et les femmes confrontés à la caméra est vite chassée par le regard tendre posé par la photographe qui nous réconcilie en quelque sorte avec tout un monde qui vit à sa façon, selon ses règles, en fonction de sa propre histoire et qui doit faire face à des contraintes dont on réalise par ailleurs difficilement la pesanteur… Saisi dans son humanité, ce monde se révèle non seulement attachant mais beau aussi, à sa façon. Il occupe une position intermédiaire entre un passé communiste qui n’est pas prêt à s’effacer et le modèle capitaliste occidental qu’il est désormais appelé à suivre. A vrai dire, les deux s’entremêlent, même si le premier semble l’emporter. On s’en rend compte à travers les images de certaines scènes du restaurant municipal de la ville aux grandes tables et aux regards tristes des convives ou encore aux chaises couvertes de housses blanches décorées à l’occasion des fêtes. Seule touche occidentale, si l’on veut, et encore en net décalage dans le temps, la statue d’Elvis, « en blanc et bleu délavé qui se dresse face à une discothèque poussiéreuse » (p. 58) dans laquelle se produit un ancien ouvrier de l’usine devenu une célébrité locale en interprétant les tubes du « King ».

    “Un cordon ombilical relie Mioveni à Dacia. Si l’usine ferme, Mioveni disparaît.”

    Les propos des personnes interrogées nous apprennent en revanche à quel point elles vivent bien dans leur temps. Il y a nettement moins de commentaires nostalgiques pour l’époque du « răposatul » (le « défunt », c’est ainsi qu’on appelle fréquemment Ceauşescu) que dans le reste du pays, et pour cause : grâce à la reprise de Dacia par Renault en 1999, la ville-usine de Mioveni a survécu à l’abandon des fleurons de l’industrie roumaine bradés lors de la privatisation sauvage qui avait frappé de plein fouet tant d’autres cités mono-industrielles. Les rares ouvriers qui ont accepté de parler, alors que leurs conjointes et les retraités ont été plus coopératifs, ne se plaignent pas de leur sort comme tant de leurs compatriotes, souvent plus mal lotis. Cătălin, qui travaille au pressage, se dit par exemple « chanceux d’avoir un emploi stable et un salaire plus que correct comparé à la moyenne roumaine ». Pourtant les pressions ne manquent pas. « On nous demande d’aller toujours plus vite », raconte-t-il. En effet, relève Julia Beurq, à l’entrée de chaque section, des panneaux indiquent le nombre de pièces produites par minute, la moyenne d’âge des employés, la proportion d’hommes et de femmes, le pourcentage des robots, etc. (p. 30). La photo de l’« employé du mois » y figure aussi en sorte que les méthodes capitalistes modernes de gestion ne sauraient choquer outre-mesure ceux qui se rappellent encore de l’organisation socialiste du travail d’antan. Le droit de grève est assuré et, si les ouvriers prêts à courir le risque d’en faire usage sont peu nombreux, tous se souviennent de la « grande grève » de 2008 qui après dix-neuf jours a fait plier « les Français ». Le chantage à la délocalisation reste dissuasif : « Un cordon ombilical relie Mioveni à Dacia. Si l’usine ferme, Mioveni disparaît », fait remarquer le responsable du Syndicat automobile Dacia.
    Un monde tiraillé entre un passé révolu et un avenir incertain

    La photo reprise sur la quatrième de couverture représente en premier plan un champ en friche puis, en second plan, les nouveaux bâtiments de l’usine au pied desquels on aperçoit les Dacia fraîchement sorties des ateliers. Entre les deux, on aperçoit d’énormes conduits de gaz rouillés en plein air comme il y en a encore tant à l’Est. Nous avons là un aperçu du « mélange des genres » omniprésent en Roumanie : l’usine flambant neuf, les vieilles installations héritées du passé et la nature qui a repris ses droits à force d’être oubliée pendant la longue transition… Enfin, pour compléter le tableau, signalons la photo du berger faisant paître ses moutons au bord de la route reliant Mioveni à Piteşti (p. 39) qui suggère l’état actuel des campagnes roumaines, tandis que celle des bâtiments désaffectés de l’ancienne usine automobile ARO de Câmpulung, ville située non loin de Mioveni (p. 33), est nettement plus représentative pour l’état actuel de l’industrie roumaine que les photos prises dans les ateliers de l’usine reconstruite et mise aux normes par Renault (p. 24 et 25).

    La profusion d’icônes qui ornent ce qui est présenté comme le bureau du maire de la ville (p. 66) mais aussi les scènes de recueillement lors de la célébration de la saint Nicolas (p. 61 62, 63, 64 et 65) montrent le poids considérable de l’Église orthodoxe ou plutôt d’une certaine religiosité populaire en Roumanie, y compris dans une ville assez prospère comme Mioveni. Tiraillé entre un passé révolu et un avenir incertain, le monde roumain tel qu’il apparaît dans le livre de Julia Beurq et Anne Leroy semble y trouver l’apaisement et la convivialité que le monde moderne auquel il a accès ne semble pas à même de lui fournir. S’il assure à nombre de Roumains une capacité d’endurance étonnante à bien des égards, cet encrage dans la « tradition » est aussi le signe de leur fragilité.

    https://www.courrierdesbalkans.fr/Mioveni-le-monde-de-Dacia-Renault
    #industrie_automobile #Roumanie #photographie
    ping @albertocampiphoto @philippe_de_jonckheere

  • Suspecté d’agressions sexuelles, l’ambassadeur du Vatican à Paris confronté à ses accusateurs
    https://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2019/06/07/suspecte-d-agressions-sexuelles-l-ambassadeur-du-vatican-a-paris-confronte-a

    Il est arrivé en col romain dans les locaux parisiens de la police judiciaire, jetant à peine un regard au capitaine de police, et aucun aux hommes, d’âges différents, qui ont défilé à côté de lui. A cinq reprises au moins, le nonce apostolique à Paris, Mgr Luigi Ventura, type italien du Nord, français impeccable malgré son fort accent italien, a été convoqué en mai avec au moins cinq personnes qui l’accusent d’« agressions sexuelles ». Les enquêteurs ont souhaité confronter leurs versions avec celle de l’ambassadeur du pape à Paris. L’archevêque nie les accusations portées contre lui par une dizaine de plaignants, qui ne se sont pas tous constitués parties civiles.

    Protégé par l’immunité diplomatique, qui soustrait les diplomates à la compétence des juridictions de leur Etat de résidence, l’ecclésiastique était en droit de refuser ces confrontations. Il ne l’a pas souhaité. Mais, aujourd’hui, tout le monde se demande combien de temps le Saint-Siège pourra maintenir en poste Mgr Ventura. Le pape François, à qui revient la décision, peut-il attendre pour le rappeler que Mgr Ventura atteigne les 75 ans, en décembre, âge auquel les nonces doivent tous présenter leur démission au chef de l’Eglise catholique ?
    Article réservé à nos abonnés Lire aussi L’« ambassadeur » du pape en France, Luigi Ventura, visé par une enquête pour « agressions sexuelles »

    Parmi les personnes confrontées à l’ecclésiastique, Benjamin G., 39 ans. En janvier 2018, lors des vœux de la maire de Paris aux ambassadeurs et autorités religieuses, il était alors le community manager d’Anne Hidalgo. Il se trouvait « à deux mètres de la maire », téléphone levé en l’air pour prendre des photos. C’est alors qu’un homme en « tenue d’ecclésiastique » lui met « sa main gauche sur l’épaule », et avec sa main droite lui « attrape les fesses ». « Ce qui m’a le plus troublé, c’est qu’il me souriait », a confié M. G. aux enquêteurs.
    « Geste chaleureux ou bienveillant »

    Attablé à côté de lui, le 22 mai dernier, le nonce a persisté à nier. Selon Me Jade Dousselin, avocate de Benjamin G., le nonce « indique, dans un premier temps, qu’il ne se rappelle plus des faits et, dans un second temps, que mon client a mal interprété un geste chaleureux ou bienveillant ». Contacté par Le Monde, l’avocat de Mgr Ventura, Me Bertrand Ollivier, n’a pas donné suite.

    #catholicisme #culture_du_viol #violophilie

  • Une brève histoire du périphérique

    La maire de #Paris, Anne Hidalgo, s’est déclarée favorable ce mardi à l’abaissement de la vitesse à 50 km/h sur le #périphérique, ainsi qu’à des mesures préconisées par un rapport d’une mission d’information et d’évaluation. Retour sur l’histoire du #périph', qui n’a pas encore fêté ses 50 ans.

    https://www.franceculture.fr/histoire/une-breve-histoire-du-peripherique

    #histoire #enceinte_de_Thiers #Zone #urbanisme #Transport #pollution

  • La vérité sanglante du goulag syrien
    Anne Barnard, The New-York Times, le 11 mai 2019
    https://blogs.mediapart.fr/saintupery/blog/010619/la-verite-sanglante-du-goulag-syrien

    Pendant sept ans, les journalistes du New York Times ont interviewé des dizaines de survivants des prisons syriennes et de parents des détenus et des disparus. Ils ont analysé les documents officiels du régime et examiné des centaines de pages de témoignages judiciaires ou provenant d’autres sources. Un portrait glaçant de la thanatocratie de Bashar al-Assad et de son univers de terreur.

    Traduction de :

    Inside Syria’s Secret Torture Prisons : How Bashar al-Assad Crushed Dissent
    Anne Barnard, The New-York Times, le 11 mai 2019
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/world/middleeast/syria-torture-prisons.html

    #Syrie #Prisons #Torture #Bachar_el-Assad

  • Le numéro 1, un très beau numéro de la revue
    #Nunatak , Revue d’histoires, cultures et #luttes des #montagnes...

    Sommaire :

    Une sensation d’étouffement/Aux frontières de l’Iran et de l’Irak/Pâturages et Uniformes/La Banda Baudissard/
    À ceux qui ne sont responsables de rien/Des plantes dans l’illégalité/Conga no va !/Mundatur culpa labore

    La revue est disponible en pdf en ligne (https://revuenunatak.noblogs.org/numeros), voici l’adresse URL pour télécharger le numéro 1 :
    https://revuenunatak.noblogs.org/files/2017/03/Nunatak1HiverPrintemps2017.pdf

    Je mettrai ci-dessous des mots-clés et citations des articles...

    –—

    métaliste des numéros recensés sur seenthis :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/926433

  • How New York could respond to the taxi medallion lending crisis | CSNY
    https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/infrastructure/how-new-york-could-respond-to-taxi-medallion-lending-crisis.html

    Experts and lawmakers weigh in on easing the pain of burdened medallion owners and preventing predatory lending in the future.
    By ANNIE MCDONOUGH
    MAY 22, 2019

    After a two-part New York Times investigation into predatory lending practices for taxi medallions delineated how industry leaders and government agencies participated in, encouraged or ignored risky lending, calls for action sprang forth – sometimes from the very same officials or agencies that had been asleep at the switch.

    Various deceptive or exploitative lending practices contributed to the rise and precipitous fall of taxi medallions in New York City. Medallions worth $200,000 in 2002 rose to more than $1 million in 2014, before crashing to less than $200,000. The bubble was inflated by loans made without down payments, requirements that loans had to be paid back in three years or extended with inflated interest rates, and interest-only loans that required borrowers to forfeit legal rights and give up much of their income. Borrowers – typically low-income, immigrant drivers – were left in the lurch when the bubble burst, an event that the taxi industry has long blamed primarily on the rise of app-based ride hail services like Uber and Lyft. While the rise of app-based ride hail did contribute to the now-ailing taxi industry, the revelations in the Times show government officials – including the Taxi and Limousine Commission which acted as a “cheerleader” for medallion sales – ignored the warning signs.

    Since Sunday, when the first Times story was published, New York Attorney General Letitia James has announced an inquiry into the business and lending practices that “may have created” the crisis, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a joint probe by the TLC, Department of Finance and Department of Consumer Affairs into the brokers who helped arrange the loans, Sen. Chuck Schumer called for an investigation into the credit unions involved in the lending, and members of the New York City Council and state Legislature, and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, have called for hearings and legislation to resolve the issue.

    The various proposals raised thus far are unlikely to fully address the damage caused to many medallion owners, some experts say. The Times investigation found that since 2016, more than 950 taxi drivers have filed for bankruptcy, with thousands more still suffering under the crippling loans. This is combined with a string of taxi and other professional drivers who have committed suicide in the past year and a half.

    Some of the solutions offered have focused on preventing the kind of reckless lending practices exhibited for taxi medallions. Stringer called on state lawmakers to close a loophole that allows lenders to classify their loans as business deals – as opposed to consumer loans, which have more protections for borrowers. A bill introduced last week by state Sen. Jessica Ramos would also establish a program to assist medallion owners who are unable to obtain financing, refinancing or restructuring of an existing loan through a loan loss reserve. State Sen. James Sanders and Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski, who chair the state Legislature’s committees on banks, declined to comment.

    But classifying loans for medallions as consumer loans might not be appropriate, said Bruce Schaller, a transportation expert and former deputy commissioner at the New York City Department of Transportation. “I think the difficult question with the individual drivers is that they are in business, they are planning to make money off of their increase in medallion prices. Should they have the same protections as someone who is taking out a mortgage on a house, who is presumed to be very vulnerable?” he asked. “That may well be the case, but (drivers) are also in a business in a way that the prospective homeowner isn’t.”

    The TLC told the Times that it is the responsibility of bank examiners to control lending practices, while the state Department of Financial Services said that it supervised some of the banks involved, but often deferred to federal inspectors. “The TLC is gravely concerned that unsound lending practices have hurt taxi drivers and has raised these concerns publicly,” Acting Commissioner Bill Heinzen said in an emailed statement. “Banks and credit unions are regulated by federal agencies that have substantial oversight powers that the TLC does not have. The TLC has taken steps within our regulatory power to help owners and drivers by easing regulatory burdens and working with City Council to limit the number of for-hire vehicles on the road. We have pushed banks to restructure loan balances and payment amounts to reflect actual trip revenue.”

    Seth Stein, a spokesman for de Blasio, also mentioned interest in preventing risky lending practices. “We are deeply concerned about predatory lending in the medallion business,” Stein wrote in an email. “While TLC has no direct regulatory oversight over lenders – that is squarely under the purview of federal regulators – we continue to look for every means of helping owners and drivers make ends meet. We’ve discontinued medallion sales, secured a cap on app-based for-hire-vehicles, and we strongly urge federal regulators to do more as well.”

    But remedies at the federal level may not be realistic, according to David King, a professor of urban planning at Arizona State University, with a speciality in transportation and land use planning. “There doesn’t seem to be any appetite for what would be reasonable lending standards. Reasonable standards that would include verifiable collateral or values that were based on something other than made-up dollar amounts,” King said, adding that he doesn’t see those changes being made under the current administration. “The housing bubble of 11 years ago, I think that was a sufficiently national concern that has inspired some movement from Washington. Whereas I think something like an asset bubble in New York, just like an asset bubble in one region, isn’t going to be enough to spur federal legislation.”

    Schaller said that while lending regulation fixes could be beneficial for preventing this kind of crisis in other industries, there’s action that can be taken now by the city to alleviate some pain. “The real question is, if the city now decides that they were part of the fraud, then they should refund the money,” he said. “It’s one thing to close a loophole, it’s another thing to decide that you need to make restitution.”

    City Councilman Mark Levine, who has been working on legislation along those lines for nearly a year, agreed that the city needs to take responsibility. “There has been a lot of attention to the whole industry of lenders and brokers who push these loans on the drivers in ways that were not transparent and really deceived them, and may very well constitute some sort of legal fraud,” he said. “But the city itself also bears responsibility for this, because we were selling medallions with the goal of bringing in revenue to the city and we were promoting them and pumping them up in ways that I think masks the true risks that drivers were taking on. And, most egregiously, we had a round of sales in 2014 when it was abundantly clear that we were headed for a price drop, because by that point app-based competitors had emerged and there were other challenges.”

    Levine’s vision for immediately helping those drivers still suffering under unsustainable loans would involve the city acquiring the loans from lenders who either cannot or will not be flexible with borrowers, and then forgiving the debts. Though the bill hasn’t been introduced yet, the idea is to partially finance the buy-back by placing a surcharge on app-based ride-hail companies like Uber and Lyft. Levine’s office is still working on confirming that the City Council would have the authority to levy that kind of surcharge. If it doesn’t, they would encourage that action be taken in Albany.

    But, as the Times’ investigation into the issue has revealed, much of the damage to drivers and medallion owners has already been done – including to the hundreds of medallion owners who have declared bankruptcy. “If someone paid $800,000 for a medallion loan and paid part of that off, and has had their house repossessed, now Mark Levine is saying, ‘well, we’ll just refund whatever’s left dangling out there,’” Schaller said. “If I were on the losing end of that bargain, I’d say I want my $800,000 back.”

    The idea of a buy-back, Levine admitted, is not a perfect solution, but it’s one he said can help the thousands of medallion owners stuck right now. “It would not address that kind of horrible, horrible hardship,” he said, referring to those owners who have forfeited assets and sustained other losses.

    If there’s any upside to the stories relayed in the Times about medallion owners financially devastated by bad loans and the failing taxi industry, it may be that it’s a call to action – even if it’s coming too late for some. “It’s had a dramatic impact on the interest in the Council about finding solutions,” Levine said of the heavy punch packed by the Times’ investigation. “It gives new impetus to this effort, which is good, because it’s complicated, and it’s going to require a political push to make it happen. The revelations in this article made that more likely.”

    Annie McDonough is a tech and policy reporter at City & State.

    #USA #New_York #Taxi #Betrug #Ausbeutung

  • Paris : le périphérique s’invite dans la campagne des municipales
    https://www.latribune.fr/regions/ile-de-france/paris-le-peripherique-s-invite-dans-la-campagne-des-municipales-818552.htm


    400.000 personnes habitent dans un rayon de 150 mètres autour du périphérique et sont exposées quotidiennement à un bruit et à des niveaux de dioxyde d’azote et de particules fines supérieurs aux plafonds recommandés.
    Crédits : Photo AFP

    Anne Hidalgo vient de recevoir ce 28 mai 2019 le rapport de la mission d’information et d’évaluation du Conseil de Paris sur le devenir du périphérique parisien. Selon son rapporteur (UDI) Eric Azière, la maire (PS) de Paris devrait en suivre les principales préconisations : une gouvernance partagée, une voie réservée au covoiturage et une vitesse abaissée à 50 km/h. Dans le même temps, Gaspard Gantzer, candidat à la succession d’Anne Hidalgo, propose purement et simplement de supprimer l’infrastructure routière.

    « En finir avec le boulevard périphérique source de pollutions multiples, véritable barrière urbaine et faire émerger à moyen terme un espace de liaison, de respiration plus vert, renaturé, doté de nouveaux usages urbains. » C’est ce que recommande la mission d’information et d’évaluation du Conseil de Paris dans son rapport « Le périphérique : quelles perspectives de changement ? » remis ce mardi 28 mai 2019 à Anne Hidalgo. Selon toute vraisemblance, la maire (PS) de la Ville devrait en reprendre les principales conclusions.
    […]
    Premier « impératif » identifié par la mission : le combat contre la pollution atmosphérique et sonore. Près de 400.000 personnes habitant dans un rayon de 150 mètres autour du périphérique sont exposées quotidiennement à un bruit supérieur à 60 décibels, avec des pics à 80-85 décibels, et à des niveaux d’alerte de dioxyde d’azote et de particules fines. « Cela représente plus d’un tiers de la pollution du trafic parisien ! Ce n’est plus un boulevard de 35 kilomètres inauguré en 1973, mais un fleuve de pollution », résume Eric Azière.
    […]
    3 ans de concertation, 15 ans de travaux
    [Gaspard Gantzer,] candidat à la mairie de Paris veut en effet « récupérer la surface disponible » pour « en faire des espaces verts et des logements ». Pour parvenir à ses fins, il s’est fixé dix-huit ans, soit trois mandats municipaux. Les trois premières années seraient celles de la concertation « mètre par mètre » avant un référendum en 2023 auprès des grand-parisiens dans les 131 communes que comporte la métropole du Grand Paris (MGP). Les quinze années suivantes seraient celles des « travaux phasés » pour « offrir des alternatives » au million d’automobilistes qui emprunte quotidiennement le périphérique.

  • Chronique d’un dimanche « télévisuel » :

    Européennes : Collard / Cohn-Bendit, le clash qui cache la forêt - Télévision - Télérama.fr
    https://www.telerama.fr/television/europeennes-collard-cohn-bendit,-le-clash-qui-cache-la-foret,n6270103.php

    Une participation “massive”, le RN en majesté, Bernard Tapie en expert européen, Daniel Cohn-Bendit en “grand témoin”… Récit d’une soirée électorale riche en élucubrations — pardon, en émotions.

    « Tremblement de terre », analyse Laurence Ferrari sitôt les résultats des européennes tombés sur CNews. « Tremblement de terre », juge Anne-Sophie Lapix clôturant la soirée électorale de France 2. « C’est un tremblement de terre », renchérit Alain Marschall sur BFMTV… Oups, pardon, je me suis trompé, cette dernière citation date du 6 décembre 2015, jour d’élections régionales. Il faut s’y faire : à chaque scrutin où le FN (puis le RN) arrive en tête, c’est un « tremblement de terre ». Tout avait pourtant bien commencé.

    #télévision #mise_en_scène
    #propagande #fabrique_du_consentement

  • Mossoul après la guerre, RTS

    https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/histoire-vivante/video/mossoul-apres-la-guerre?id=10446386

    Les combattants de l’Etat Islamique ont été chassés de Mossoul le 9 juillet 2017 par les forces irakiennes. Ils ont contrôlé la deuxième ville du pays durant 3 ans. Comment reconstruire aujourd’hui cette cité totalement dévastée par des mois de combats ? Entre laxisme des autorités irakiennes et hésitations de la communauté internationale, le défi est énorme et crucial pour rebâtir un vivre-ensemble.

    Histoire Vivante s’est entretenu avec la réalisatrice Anne Poiret toute la semaine :

    https://www.rts.ch/play/radio/emission/histoire-vivante?id=1950967

    (5 épisodes de 30mn)

  • Instant Canopé - Les émotions à l’école - Réseau Canopé
    https://www.reseau-canope.fr/service/instant-canope-les-emotions-a-lecole.html

    Comment tenir compte des émotions pour enseigner et pour apprendre ?
    La joie, la surprise, la colère, la peur, le dégoût, la tristesse… Ces émotions s’expriment à travers notre corps par nos rires, nos pleurs, ou simplement notre regard, nos gestes… et peuvent parfois nous déborder. Les émotions ne sont donc pas réductibles à la seule question individuelle, à une « intériorité » qui serait détachée du réel et du social. Reste qu’il est bien difficile de saisir avec justesse les ressorts collectifs des réactions à l’origine de telle ou telle situation, et d’agir sur les acteurs impliqués. Le nouveau numéro de Diversité propose de faire le point sur la place et le rôle des émotions en éducation.

    avec Imane AGHA, référente nationale et chargée d’études « prévention et lutte contre le harcèlement » au sein de la Dgesco, ministère de l’Education nationale et de la jeunesse

    Grégoire BORST, professeur de psychologie du développement et de neurosciences cognitives de l’éducation à l’université Paris Descartes, directeur du Laboratoire de psychologie du développement et de l’éducation de l’enfant – LaPsyDÉ au CNRS

    Anne CORDIER, maîtresse de conférences en Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication, ÉSPÉ – Université de Rouen Normandie, UMR 6590 ESO – Espaces et Sociétés

    Gérôme TRUC, sociologue, chargé de recherche au CNRS, auteur de Sidérations : Une sociologie des attentats aux PUF en 2016

    Rencontre animée par :
    Régis GUYON, directeur territorial adjoint Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes et rédacteur en chef de la revue Diversité, Réseau Canopé

    #émotion #conférence #citoyenneté

  • Son nom Francis Lalanne prête à rire et l’alliance jaune (la révolte par le vote) le soutien.
    Quelques drôles de noms sur cette liste :
    11. LE HÉRISSÉ Philippe
    23. BRACQUEMART Franck
    28. ILNICKA BOUCHER Julita
    30. BELLAZAAR Zakia
    61. LANGLUMÉ Didier
    67. ROGNON Olivier
    73. PROFFIT Alphonse
    78. ABSOLU Annie
    #gilets_jaunes

  • Franciliens et Franciliennes ceci est un avis de sortie obligatoire. Ce soir, à 20H30 au théâtre de L’Echangeur, Printemps le spectacle-concert de Sylvaine Hélary, Antonin Rayon, Thomas Gouband, Julien Boudart, Arthur Grand, Anne Palomeres, et Alexis Forestier.

    Les bailles sont là : http://www.lechangeur.org/event/printemps-de-lechangeur-2-week-end-3-24-26-mai

    #sortie_obligatoire

    http://www.desordre.net/photographie/numerique/divers/videos/20190524_printemps.mp4

  • Motion de soutien à notre consœur Anna Salabi | Ordre des avocats de Paris
    http://www.avocatparis.org/mon-metier-davocat/publications-du-conseil/soutien-anna-salabi

    Le Conseil de l’Ordre condamne l’agression d’une avocate au sein du Tribunal de Paris. Ça suffit !

    L’expulsion par la force d’un avocat en cours d’audience est intolérable.

    Le 16 mai 2019, au Tribunal d’instance de Paris, une avocate, Madame Anna Salabi, a été évacuée de force de l’audience par six policiers, à la demande du magistrat, alors qu’elle était en ligne avec les membres du Conseil de l’Ordre de permanence, pour les saisir d’un incident qu’elle rencontrait.

    Le Conseil de l’Ordre des avocats de Paris, révolté, condamne cette agression. L’usage de la force contre un avocat est inacceptable. Il rappelle que l’article 434-8 du Code pénal réprime tout acte d’intimidation commis envers un avocat dans l’exercice de ses fonctions.

    Le Conseil de l’Ordre assure notre consœur de son entier soutien, et s’associera à toute procédure engagée devant le Conseil supérieur de la Magistrature, comme devant les juridictions répressives.

    Il rappelle que tout différend entre un avocat et un magistrat doit être réglé en présence du Bâtonnier, dans la dignité et l’esprit de dialogue qui caractérisent leurs actions quotidiennes.

    ____
    Avocate expulsée par des policiers en pleine audience : que s’est-il passé ?
    https://www.lci.fr/justice/a-la-loupe-avocate-expulsee-par-des-policiers-en-pleine-audience-que-s-est-il-pa

    ____
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/240519/avocats-et-magistrats-enterrent-provisoirement-la-hache-de-guerre

    Deux heures de discussions franches et directes ont été nécessaires, jeudi 23 mai, pour arriver à un compromis et rédiger un communiqué commun. Les représentants des 29 000 avocats parisiens, d’un côté, le président du tribunal de grande instance de la capitale et son staff, de l’autre. Après un rassemblement silencieux d’une centaine de robes noires dans l’atrium du nouveau tribunal des Batignolles, à 13 heures, la bâtonnière Marie-Aimée Peyron, le vice-bâtonnier Basile Ader et celle qui lui succédera l’an prochain, Nathalie Roret, ont été reçus (le rendez-vous était déjà fixé) et ont exposé leurs griefs au président, Jean-Michel Hayat, et à la première vice-présidente chargée du tribunal d’instance, Sophie Degouys.

    Premier sujet de fâcherie : l’expulsion manu militari d’une avocate en robe, Anna Salabi, lors d’une audience du tribunal d’instance, le 16 mai – une affaire sans précédent, révélée le lendemain par Mediapart. Choquée, l’avocate avait reçu deux jours d’ITT. Une forte mobilisation s’est rapidement déclenchée chez les avocats, à Paris et au-delà, contre ce qui est vécu comme une voie de fait, une agression et un abus de pouvoir inadmissibles.

    Me Salabi et ses confrères, le 23 mai au tribunal de Paris. © M.D. Me Salabi et ses confrères, le 23 mai au tribunal de Paris. © M.D.

    Jeudi matin, la présidence du tribunal affichait encore son soutien à la magistrate ayant pris la décision de faire appel à la police pour faire sortir l’avocate, qui se serait montrée « véhémente », aurait tenu des propos « dénués de toute mesure et de respect dû à la fonction », et aurait empêché physiquement l’audience de se poursuivre, après que son dossier eut été renvoyé.

    Me Salabi et ses défenseurs assurent, au contraire, que la magistrate se serait montrée « partiale », ne l’aurait pas laissée s’exprimer, décidant soudainement de renvoyer l’affaire, avant de faire appel à la force publique pour l’expulser de la salle d’audience, l’avocate étant traînée au sol alors qu’elle cherchait à joindre un représentant de son ordre pour le faire venir comme médiateur.

    Le communiqué commun du président Hayat et de la bâtonnière Peyron, diffusé jeudi en fin d’après-midi (on peut le lire sous l’onglet Prolonger), ne fait pas état des circonstances de l’incident, mais indique clairement qu’il y a eu une faute de la magistrate. « Le président entend rappeler à chacun que tout incident d’audience doit conduire à saisir sur-le-champ le délégué du bâtonnier à la permanence de l’ordre, en suspendant, si nécessaire, le cours de l’audience. En aucun cas, il ne peut être recouru au concours des forces de l’ordre, à l’égard d’un avocat, dans l’exercice de sa mission », lit-on.

    Le rassemblement des avocats, jeudi 23 mai dans l’atrium du tribunal. © M.D. Le rassemblement des avocats, jeudi 23 mai dans l’atrium du tribunal. © M.D.

    Pour calmer le jeu, des « assises consacrées à la relation avocats, magistrats et personnels de justice » seront en outre organisées prochainement, ajoute le communiqué. C’est que les sujets de dispute se sont accumulés, ces derniers temps. Une perquisition de juges d’instruction financiers parisiens, à 6 heures du matin au domicile d’une jeune collaboratrice, tremblante de peur, d’un cabinets d’avocats, a ainsi provoqué récemment un incident très vif avec le représentant du bâtonnier, qui a trouvé la scène inutilement humiliante.

    Les perquisitions dans les cabinets d’avocats ne sont pas le seul sujet de friction. Le déménagement au nouveau tribunal des Batignolles, voici un an, a cristallisé de nombreuses tensions avec les magistrats, parfois inhérentes à leurs missions respectives. Les avocats se plaignent, entre autres choses, de ne pas pouvoir circuler partout à cause des sas et des badges magnétiques, de rester souvent bloqués entre deux portes, de ne plus pouvoir accéder aussi facilement qu’avant aux cabinets des juges d’instruction, et d’être en fait relégués au rang d’acteurs subalternes dans un lieu de justice conçu avant tout pour les magistrats. Plusieurs avocats le confient, l’affaire Salabi est venue à point nommé pour crever l’abcès.

    Si le calme est revenu, l’affaire ne restera pas sans suite. Anna Salabi et son avocat, Vincent Ollivier, ont saisi le Défenseur des droits mercredi 22 mai d’une demande d’enquête, pour des faits qu’ils qualifient d’« abus de pouvoir » de la part de la magistrate et des policiers qui sont intervenus le 16 mai. Ils devraient également saisir le Conseil supérieur de la magistrature (CSM), en charge des questions touchant à l’éthique et la déontologie des magistrats. Une plainte pénale pour « violences volontaires » est également envisagée. Christiane Féral-Schuhl, la présidente du Conseil national des barreaux (CNB), a pour sa part annoncé le 18 mai qu’elle saisissait la ministre de la justice de cette affaire.

  • Migrants : comment les #territoires ont pris le relais de l’Etat

    L’accueil de migrants, la #prise_en_charge de demandeurs d’asile et l’#intégration des réfugiés sont des #compétences_régaliennes de l’Etat. Cependant, par manque de moyens ou par choix politique, celui-ci s’avère défaillant. Les élus locaux prennent le relais. Les édiles ne peuvent rester inactifs face à l’arrivée de migrants sur leur territoire et à la formation de #campements sauvages dans l’#espace_public. Ils développent et financent des actions pour l’accueil de migrants dont une majorité relève du #droit_d’asile. Les élus sont aussi sollicités pour s’investir dans l’intégration des réfugiés. Ils bénéficient ainsi d’une contractualisation et de moyens de l’Etat. La #Stratégie_nationale_pour_l’accueil_et_l’intégration_des_personnes_réfugiées repose, entre autres, sur eux.

    https://www.lagazettedescommunes.com/dossiers/migrants-comment-les-territoires-ont-pris-le-relais-de-letat
    #villes #migrations #asile #réfugiés #accueil #Etat #compétence #responsabilité #défaillance #POPSU

  • [vidéo] Ventes d’armes : “Plus ils ferment de portes, plus ils créent des fantasmes”
    https://www.arretsurimages.net/emissions/arret-sur-images/ventes-darmes-plus-ils-ferment-de-portes-plus-ils-creent-des-fantasm

    Enquêter sur les ventes d’armes avec des mots, avec des cartes, avec des images : c’est le sujet de notre émission d’aujourd’hui, avec trois invités : la journaliste Anne Poiret, réalisatrice du documentaire “Mon pays fabrique des armes” et auteure du livre “Mon pays vend des armes” ; le journaliste Geoffrey Livolsi, co-fondateur du média Disclose qui a enquêté sur l’implication d’armes françaises dans la guerre au Yemen ; et enfin Jean-Dominique Merchet, journaliste spécialisé dans les questions de défense depuis 25 ans, actuellement à L’Opinion. Durée : 1h. Source : Arrêt sur images

  • Une action pour dénoncer « le chaos environnemental et humain produit par Bayer-Monsanto »
    par Sophie Chapelle 22 mai 2019 - Basta !
    https://www.bastamag.net/Une-action-pour-denoncer-le-chaos-environnemental-et-humain-produit-par-Ba
    https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/arton7343.jpg?1558512653

    Des militants ont envahi ce 22 mai, à 8h, le hall d’entrée du siège de Bayer-Monsanto en Ile-de-France pour dénoncer les ravages causés par les produits de cette firme, comme le Roundup et son ingrédient actif, le glyphosate. Des paysans et des activistes déguisés en abeilles ont réalisé un « die-in » – forme de protestation dans laquelle les participants s’allongent sur le sol, simulant la mort. « Avec cette action, nous avons voulu mettre en scène le chaos environnemental et humain produit par Bayer-Monsanto », explique Annick Coupé de l’association Attac France. « Il s’agit de mettre en lumière les dégâts faits par leur choix de production toxique sur les paysans, les citoyens dans leur ensemble, la biodiversité et l’environnement. »

    #Bayer-Monsanto

  • Development and migration : POLICIES AND OUTCOMES IN THE NETHERLANDS


    https://www.cordaid.org/nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/Development-and-Migration-2019.pdf

    #Pays-Bas #développement #migrations #réfugiés #asile #aide_au_développement #rapport #migrations #économie #travail #welfare #remittances #discriminations #welfare_state #marginalisation #réfugiés #asile #brain-drain #fuite_de_cerveaux #armes #commerce_d'armes #SDG #SDGs

    Particularité de ce rapport : il regarde la contribution des migrations à la fois au développement des pays d’origine des migrants résidents aux Pays-Bas et au développement des Pays-Bas par la présence de migrants...

    –—

    ajouté à la métaliste sur le lien entre #économie (et surtout l’#Etat_providence) et la #migration... des arguments pour détruire l’#idée_reçue : « Les migrants profitent (voire : viennent POUR profiter) du système social des pays européens »... :

    https://seenthis.net/messages/971875

    ping @_kg_ @karine4

    • La migration contribue au développement

      Tant pour le développement de la #Belgique que celui du pays d’origine des migrants, la migration a des effets positifs. Telle est la leçon principale du dernier rapport de Caritas International, réalisé en partenariat avec deux chercheurs universitaires. Rien que pour vous, nous en avons extrait ses conclusions principales et recommandations politiques.

      Encore un rapport ? Oui ! Car nous pensons que le débat et le discours public belge en matière de migration et de développement doit être plus équilibré et fondé sur des données fiables. Par cette publication, nous souhaitons reconnaître, et faire connaître, la contribution vitale des migrants au développement et au bien-être de nos sociétés.

      Une contribution diversifiée

      La littérature s’accorde : la migration contribue au développement économique tant du pays de résidence des migrants que de celui d’origine. Les effets principaux sont les suivants :

      Plus de biens et services disponibles sur le marché belge ;
      Une source importante de main d’œuvre – un apport d’autant plus important pour les secteurs en pénurie et dans un contexte de vieillissement de la population ;
      Des effets positifs pour les finances publiques – 0,8% du PIB belge ;
      Plus d’échanges bilatéraux entre la Belgique et les pays d’origine ;
      Des transferts de fonds pour les pays d’origine – quelque 4,16 milliards d’euros ont été transférés par des migrants depuis la Belgique en 2017.

      La contribution sociale des migrants est également fondamentale, puisque la migration permet aux idées de circuler. Ainsi par exemple, de nombreux transferts financiers servent à financer l’éducation – et particulièrement celle des filles – dans les pays d’origine. La migration promeut ainsi l’égalité des genres.

      Au niveau politique, la migration a une influence profonde sur la sphère politique belge, comme en témoigne la présence d’immigrés d’origine italienne, mais également l’influence grandissante d’immigrés de première génération et de leurs descendants d’origine turque, marocaine et congolaise.

      La migration participe enfin à façonner l’identité culturelle de la Belgique. De multiples artistes et sportifs aux horizons divers – tels que le chanteur Stromae ou certains joueurs des Diables Rouges pour ne citer qu’eux – exercent une influence durable sur la scène publique belge.
      Une contribution malgré les obstacles

      Les résultats du rapport illustrent l’urgence de répondre aux obstacles conséquents qui empêchent la migration – et les migrants eux-mêmes – de contribuer pleinement au développement de la Belgique.

      Le premier obstacle renvoie à l’absence de voies légales et sûres tant pour les migrants désirant travailler, étudier ou vivre en famille que pour les personnes qui pourraient bénéficier d’un statut (protection subsidiaire ou réfugié). Cela explique pourquoi certaines personnes n’ont d’autre choix que d’emprunter des routes informelles, qui coûtent la vie à certains et affectent les autres. « Ce n’est qu’en respectant la dignité des personnes migrantes – durant tout leur parcours migratoire – qu’elles pourront s’épanouir et faire partie intégrante de la société » explique Elise Kervyn, chargée de plaidoyer.

      Certains migrants ne voient également pas leurs besoins fondamentaux remplis. En raison de certaines politiques et pratiques, il est plus difficile pour les migrants que les natifs de vivre en famille, d’avoir un logement de qualité et abordable et un travail où leurs droits sont respectés autant que ceux des natifs. Les causes sont diverses : obstacles administratifs, absence de réseaux, discriminations sur base ethnique, etc.
      Une ligne de conduite à adopter

      Avant que la migration ne voie son potentiel valorisé, les migrants doivent jouir de conditions de vie dignes. Cette nécessité ne répond pas uniquement à un impératif d’ordre moral. Les personnes contraintes de lutter quotidiennement pour satisfaire leurs besoins fondamentaux ne peuvent guère, au-delà, valoriser leurs compétences et connaissances et en faire bénéficier la société. Nos recommandations répondent à ces préoccupations majeures et à l’objectif de construire une société plus juste et plus solidaire. En voici les principales :

      Élargir les voies d’entrée sûres et légales
      Garantir un accueil de qualité aux demandeurs et bénéficiaires de protection internationale
      Protéger les droits fondamentaux de tous les migrants
      Concevoir et mettre en œuvre des politiques visant une meilleure insertion des migrants
      Lutter contre la discrimination et la xénophobie
      Soutenir la contribution des migrants envers les pays d’origine

      Une place pour toutes et tous

      Ce rapport insiste donc sur les besoins et la dépendance de la Belgique vis-à-vis de la migration. Caritas International est toutefois convaincue que la solidarité que nous devons manifester aux personnes migrantes ne doit en aucun cas être tributaire de leur niveau de contribution. Nous croyons en effet que tous et toutes, des personnes hautement qualifiées aux moins qualifiées, peuvent être des acteurs de développement si la société leur donne les moyens et la chance d’y parvenir.

      https://www.caritasinternational.be/fr/urgence-et-developpement/la-migration-contribue-au-developpement

      Pour télécharger le rapport sur la Belgique :


      https://www.caritasinternational.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Rapport_Penser_Maison_Commune.pdf?x34636

    • Et pour l’#Allemagne...
      Gemeinsam Heimat sein

      Studie zum Zusammenhang zwischen Migration und Entwicklung am Beispiel Deutschlands hier herunterladen.
      Migration und Entwicklung sind zwei Begriffe, die populärer nicht sein könnten. Dass es eine Beziehung zwischen den beiden Prozessen gibt, ist inzwischen ein gängiges Thema in der Diskussion unter Forschern, Politikern und Praktikern. Dennoch ist es recht schwierig nachzuvollziehen, wie sie sich gegenseitig beeinflussen.

      Dem Landes-Caritasverband Bayern ist es, im Rahmen des EU-Projekts MIND, gelungen einen wissenschaftlichen Beitrag zu dieser Thematik zu leisten. Gemeinsam mit Dr. Annett Fleischer, Caritas Europa und Global Migration Policy Associates, ist die Publikation „Das gemeinsame Zuhause“ in der Edition Common Home für Deutschland entstanden. Anhand der Quellen und durch eine Vielzahl an Interviews mit Praktikerinnen und Praktikern aus diesen Bereichen, will die Studie eine Grundlage schaffen, um das öffentliche Verständnis für den Zusammenhang zwischen universeller nachhaltiger Entwicklung und Migration in Deutschland und in ausgewählten Entwicklungsländern zu verbessern. Des Weiteren werden deutsche Beiträge zur Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und das verstärkte Engagement von Regierungsbehörden aller Ebenen, zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen (CSOs), Einzelpersonen und anderen Akteuren bei der Bewältigung von Ursachen und Faktoren der Migration erläutert. Und schließlich rückt sie Migranten und Flüchtlinge als wichtige Entwicklungsakteure in den Vordergrund. Dabei geht es nicht nur um Zahlen, Daten und Fakten, sondern auch welche Hürden, Chancen und Möglichkeiten sich Migranten in Deutschland stellen müssen. Die Publikation schließt mit Empfehlungen, um Themen mit Migrationsbezug zukünftig erfolgreich zu gestalten:

      Diskriminierung und Fremdenfeindlichkeit verhindern!

      Gewährleistung des Schutzes aller Migranten und Flüchtlinge durch die Menschenrechte.

      Anwendung und Durchsetzung des Arbeitsrechts, der Normen für menschenwürdige Arbeit sowie des Arbeits- und Gesundheitsschutzes für alle Migranten.

      Ersetzung des negativen Diskurses durch eine zutreffende und positive Erzählung über Migration.

      Ausbau sicherer und legaler Wege der Migration.

      Verstärktes Engagement der Städte und lokalen Akteure bei der Integration.

      Stärkung und Ermöglichung der Teilnahme von Migranten und Flüchtlingen in der lokalen Gemeinschaft und Städten sowie am politischen Dialog.

      Bewältigung der Fluchtursachen.

      Verbesserung der Datenerhebung und Wissensbestände zur Stärkung des Zusammenhangs zwischen Migration und Entwicklung.

      Stärkung des deutschen Engagements für die regionale, nationale und ganzheitliche menschliche Entwicklung im Ausland.

      Neben der deutschen Veröffentlichung werden auch die MIND Partnerländer (Österreich, Belgien, Bulgarien, Tschechien, Italien, Holland, Portugal, Slowakei Slowenien und Schweden) eine Publikation in der Edition Common Home veröffentlichen. Das Gelingen dieses Projekts ist ein gutes Beispiel für europäische Zusammenarbeit. Im Rahmen des MIND-Projekts hoffen wir, dass wir durch die europäischen Publikationen und den verschiedenen landesspezifischen Facetten wichtige Akzente zu den zukunftsweisenden Themen Migration und Entwicklung setzen können.


      https://www.caritas-bayern.de/beitraege/common-home-2019/1443490

      Pour télécharger le rapport en anglais :
      https://www.caritas-bayern.de/cms/contents/caritas-bayern.de/medien/dokumente/building-the-common/building_the_common_home_englisch.pdf?d=a

    • Interlinks between migration and development

      The EU and its Member States have reshaped their external policies, including development cooperation, to place more focus on migration-related issues. Widely used in this context, political rhetoric on ’addressing root causes of migration’ has been questioned by academics as creating unrealistic expectations. Indeed, a positive correlation between migration and narrowly understood economic development persists until countries reach middle-income country level. However,several key drivers of migration are related to discrepancies in levels of human development. Demographic pressures, youth unemployment, job opportunities in the country of destination, the growth of migrant networks and the desire to reunite families, all play roles in migration. A complex interaction between aid and migration also exists, which is far from a simple one-way causality. In general, poverty alleviation, the primary objective of development aid, tends to enhance rather than deter the realisation of the aspiration to migrate, in the short- and medium-term, by increasinghousehold incomes. A more global approach to cooperation with third countries, such as the EU’s already well-established assistance focusing on good governance, infrastructure, rural development and strengthening resilience, as well as going beyond development assistance to include trade and investment, appears promising in terms of deterring migration. On the other hand, studies confirm that international migration is an important path for development: remittances constitute a tool forpoverty reduction, while diaspora skills and networks provide resources for economic and social progress. Nevertheless, EU policy integrating development aid as an instrument for curbing irregular migration is criticised by development stakeholders as undermining aid effectiveness, principles, and risks diverting aid from the most needy and indirectly prompting human rights violations. To avoid such outcomes, a contextual analysis must be the basis for identifying genuine synergies to be reinforced between development and migration management.

      http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/630351/EPRS_BRI(2019)630351_EN.pdf
      #migration-development_nexus

    • What is home ?

      MIND ist ein Projekt, das von der Europäischen Kommission für drei Jahre finanziert wird. Es wird umgesetzt von zwölf Caritas-Organisationen in elf EU-Mitgliedsstaaten, nämlich Österreich, Bayern, Bulgarien, in der Tschechischen Republik, den Niederlanden, Belgien, Italien, Portugal, der Slowakei, Slowenien und Schweden. Außerdem wirkt Caritas Europa als Dachorganisation mit. Wir möchten gemeinsam mit unseren Partnern mehr Aufmerksamkeit auf Prozesse in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und das Wissen um nachhaltige Entwicklung lenken. Die europaweite Webseite ist unter https://www.whatishome.eu zu finden.


      https://www.caritas.at/aktuell/kampagne/mind

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuKPn0lFwBY

      #home #chez_soi #maison

  • Droit de suite
    Ventes d’armes françaises : où est la limite ?
    Diffusée le 16/05/2019
    http://www.lcp.fr/emissions/droit-de-suite/292598-ventes-darmes-francaises-ou-est-la-limite

    La France est le troisième vendeur d’armes au monde. Mais ne faut-il pas davantage éviter de les mettre entre toutes les mains ? Tout d’abord, notre documentaire, « Mon pays fabrique des armes » Une remarquable enquête journalistique qui démontre combien il est complexe, dans notre pays, d’obtenir de la transparence lorsqu’il s’agit de ventes d’armes, et, malgré quelques gardes fous, combien il s’avère difficile, aussi, de contrôler efficacement l’utilisation de ces armes par les dirigeants étrangers qui les achètent. Nos invités : Anne Poiret, réalisatrice du documentaire ; Jean Guisnel, journaliste spécialiste des questions militaires ; Jacques Maire, député « La République en Marche » des Hauts-de-Seine ; Aymeric Elluin, chargé de plaidoyer armes à Amnesty International France

    https://seenthis.net/messages/731927

    #marchands_de_canons #vented'armes