The British #Virgin_Islands is trying to prove its not a tax haven — campaigners aren’t buying it
Transparency and tax campaigners are clashing with officials from the British Virgin Islands (BVI) over a new report claiming the Caribbean islands are not a tax haven.
▻http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/british-virgin-islands-a-tax-haven-or-legitimate-business-hub-2017-6
Brazil’s refugee policy needs a radical overhaul in response to Venezuela’s crisis
Brazil has received 15,000 asylum claims this year, but its national asylum system hasn’t been updated since 1997 when it got 500 applications a year
Hungry Venezuelans Flee in Boats to Escape Economic Collapse
Roymar Bello screamed. She was one of 17 passengers who had climbed onto the overloaded fishing boat with aging motors in July, hoping to escape Venezuela’s economic disaster for a new life on the Caribbean island of Curaçao.
Desperate Venezuelans are streaming across the Amazon Basin by the tens of thousands to reach Brazil. They are concocting elaborate scams to sneak through airports in Caribbean nations that once accepted them freely. When Venezuela opened its border with Colombia for just two days in July, 120,000 people poured across, simply to buy food, officials said. An untold number stayed.
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/americas/hungry-venezuelans-flee-in-boats-to-escape-economic-collapse.html?smid=tw-s
#Curaçao #Antilles #Brésil
Venezuela: la crisi dell’economia insegue chi scappa in Brasile
Ogni giorno 300 profughi lasciano il paese di Maduro in direzione Brasile. Dove però non trovano l’accoglienza sperata. Fuori dal Venezuela, infatti, si registrano situazioni di fame e una «guerra tra poveri». A farne le spese sono spesso bambini, adolescenti e donne. Ecco le ultime notizie dallo stato brasiliano della Roraima
▻https://www.osservatoriodiritti.it/2018/02/12/venezuela-crisi-economia-venezuelani-brasile
CÉSAIRE, Suzanne – GLOBAL SOCIAL THEORY
▻https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinkers/cesaire-suzanne
On parle beaucoup d’Aimé, mais... #Suzanne_Césaire
Suzanne Césaire (1915- 1966) was a theorist affiliated with the négritude movement and with surrealism. She was one of the first theorists to emphasise the potential of the multi-ethnic and multi-natural composition of the Caribbean and called for an experimental cultural appropriation rather than a return to essences or assimilation.
Most of Césaire’s work was published in the Martinican cultural journal Tropiques, which she co-founded along with her husband Aimé and fellow lycée teachers. Published during the fascist Vichy government, the journal established a dialogue with surrealism both as a means of cultural liberation and as a means to obscure political messages for the censors. In her contributions, Suzanne Césaire heavily reappropriated colonial stereotypes such as the ‘cannibal’ and the ‘lazy negro’ as provocations for both coloniser and colonised to re-examine deeply internalised (self)perceptions. This strategy of inversion was even used in a letter of protest against the impending censorship of the journal.
Whistleblower in Record #Magic_Pipe Pollution Case Gets $1 Million Payout – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/whistleblower-gets-1-million-in-largest-ever-magic-pipe-pollution-case
A U.S. District Judge in Miami on Wednesday sentenced Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. (Princess) to pay a $40 million penalty – the largest-ever for crimes involving deliberate vessel pollution – related to illegal dumping overboard of oil contaminated waste and falsification of official logs in order to conceal the discharges.
The judge also ordered that $1 million be awarded to a British engineer, who first reported the illegal discharges to the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), which in turn provided the evidence to the U.S. Coast Guard.
[…]
According to papers filed in court, the Caribbean Princess had been making illegal discharges through bypass equipment since 2005, one year after the ship began operations. The August 2013 discharge approximately 23-miles off the coast of England involved approximately 4,227 gallons within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone. At the same time as the discharge, engineers ran clean seawater through the ship’s monitoring equipment in order to conceal the criminal conduct and create a false digital record for a legitimate discharge.
Et donc, pas de peine de prison pour ceux qui ont couvert ces pratiques en toute connaissance de cause pendant des années…
As set forth in papers filed in court, Princess admitted to the following:
• After suspecting that the authorities had been informed, senior ship engineers dismantled the bypass pipe and instructed crew members to lie.
• Following the MCA’s inquiry, the chief engineer held a sham meeting in the engine control room to pretend to look into the allegations while holding up a sign stating: “LA is listening.” The engineers present understood that anything said might be heard by those at the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles, California, because the engine control room contained a recording device intended to monitor conversations in the event of an incident.
• A perceived motive for the crimes was financial – the chief engineer that ordered the dumping off the coast of England told subordinate engineers that it cost too much to properly offload the waste in port and that the shore-side superintendent who he reported to would not want to pay the expense.
• Graywater tanks overflowed into the bilges on a routine basis and were pumped back into the graywater system and then improperly discharged overboard when they were required to be treated as oil contaminated bilge waste. The overflows took place when internal floats in the graywater collection tanks got stuck due to large amounts of fat, grease and food particles from the galley that drained into the graywater system. Graywater tanks overflowed at least once a month and, at times, as frequently as once per week. Princess had no written procedures or training for how internal gray water spills were supposed to be cleaned up and the problem remained uncorrected for many years.
Robots, chefs hope to bring invasive lion fish to restaurants near you | Reuters
▻http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-science-robots-lionfish-idUKKBN17M2V6
As it turns out, some of the best cooks in the world think lionfish, a venomous predatory fish which is breeding out of control and destroying marine ecosystems in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, is delicious.
The chefs gathered in Bermuda on Wednesday for a competition dubbed the “Lionfish Throwdown” where they challenged one another to come up with the tastiest solution to the problem of invasive lionfish.
[…]
Angle, who recently founded Robots In Service of the Environment (RSE), a nonprofit organisation set up to protect the oceans, built a machine named the Guardian specifically designed to hunt and capture lionfish.
“We basically drive the Guardian up to the fish, position it between two electrodes, apply a current and stun the fish, knocking the fish out,” said Angle.
“Then there is a motor at the back of the robot which creates a current into the robot and it sucks that fish into the robot.”
Pterois — Wikipédia
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterois
Caractéristiques d’un bon colonisateur
Le poisson lion est un prédateur vorace, piscivore, très abondant et hautement généraliste. Son haut taux de consommation lui confère un caractère de compétiteur robuste au sein du réseau trophique. De plus, les adultes ne possèdent peu ou pas de prédateurs naturels à cause de leurs épines venimeuses. La femelle fraie tous les 4 jours, fréquence équivalente à une fécondité annuelle de 2 millions d’œufs par femelle. De plus, les poissons lions atteignent la maturité sexuelle dès leur première année de vie selon cette même source. Pour ces raisons, la rascasse est dotée d’une très grande capacité colonisatrice dans l’Atlantique Ouest.
Banned at sea: Venezuela’s crude-stained oil tankers | Reuters
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-tankers-insight-idUSKBN17K0CE
In the scorching heat of the Caribbean Sea, workers in scuba suits scrub crude oil by hand from the hull of the Caspian Galaxy, a tanker so filthy it can’t set sail in international waters.
The vessel is among many that are constantly contaminated at two major export terminals where they load crude from Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA. The water here has an oily sheen from leaks in the rusty pipelines under the surface.
That means the tankers have to be cleaned before traveling to many foreign ports, which won’t admit crude-stained ships for fear of environmental damage to their harbors, port facilities or other vessels.
The world’s most dangerous cities | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/03/daily-chart-23
COCAINE is grown primarily in South America, and trafficked to the world’s biggest market, the United States, via Central America and the Caribbean. The land routes originate mainly in Colombia, and pass through the small nations of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala before traversing Mexico. It is little wonder, then, that Latin America remains the world′s most violent region not at war. According to data from the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think-tank, 43 of the 50 most murderous cities in the world last year, and eight of the top ten countries, are in Latin America and the Caribbean. (War zones, where numbers are hard to verify, are excluded.) Conflicts between gangs, corruption and weak public institutions all contribute to the high levels of violence across the region.
The top 10 science images of 2016 | Science | AAAS
▻http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/12/top-10-science-images-2016
Namibian clouds could help solve global warming puzzle
Feasting off the dung of dinosaurs
#bousier !
Y a un solendon aussi
Five centuries after it was likely driven to extinction by the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, a mammal known as the “island murderer” is getting its day in the court of scientific inquiry. Using fossilized DNA, scientists have now traced the evolution of the shrewlike mammal, which comprised at least eight species living throughout the Caribbean before it was outcompeted by black rats that hitched a ride on the ships of Spanish explorers in the early 15th century. Nesophontes, as the genus is known, is thought to be one of the earliest branches of the mammalian tree to survive into the modern era—and a close cousin of the still-living Solenodon (above)—so it has long been of particular interest to scientists. However, tracing its history has been tough. The complex science of extracting fossil DNA is even more difficult in tropical areas, as heat causes DNA strands to break down more quickly. But in a study published today in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, scientists have successfully retrieved the DNA from a 750-year-old N. paramicrus skull found in the Dominican Republic. Analysis shows that the genus split off from Solenodon at least 40 million years ago—30 million years after the ancestral species lived among the dinosaurs. Though they’re not quite Jurassic Park, the islands of the Caribbean have been their own form of living museum in preserving some of the world’s oldest mammals. The case of Nesophontes isn’t closed yet.
Carnival’s Princess Cruises to Pay Record $40 Million Over Illegal Dumping, Cover Up – gCaptain
▻https://gcaptain.com/carnivals-princess-cruise-lines-to-pay-record-40-million-over-illegal-dump
Carnival Corporation’s Princess Cruise Lines has agreed to plead guilty to seven felony charges stemming from illegal oil dumping at sea and intentional acts to cover it up, the U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday.
Princess will pay a $40 million penalty – the largest-ever criminal penalty involving deliberate vessel pollution.
The charges are tied to the Caribbean Princess cruise ship which visited various U.S. ports in Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, U.S. Virgin Islands and Virginia.
The U.S. investigation was launched after information was provided to the U.S. Coast Guard by the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) indicating that a newly hired engineer on the Caribbean Princess reported that a so-called “magic pipe” had been used on Aug. 23, 2013, to illegally discharge oily waste off the coast of England.
According to the Justice Dept., after the incident the #whistleblower quit when the ship reached Southampton, England. The chief engineer and senior first engineer ordered a cover-up, including removal of the magic pipe and directing subordinates to lie. But the MCA shared evidence with the U.S. Coast Guard, including before and after photos of the bypass used to make the discharge and showing its disappearance. The U.S. Coast Guard conducted an examination of the cruise ship upon its arrival in New York City on Sept. 14, 2013, during which certain crew members continued to lie in accordance with orders they had received from Princess employees.
[…]
In addition to the use of a #magic_pipe, the U.S. investigation uncovered two other illegal practices which were found to have taken place on the Caribbean Princess as well as four other Princess ships – Star Princess, Grand Princess, Coral Princess and Golden Princess.
One practice was to open a salt water valve when bilge waste was being processed by the oily water separator and oil content monitor in order to prevent the oil content monitor from otherwise alarming and stopping the overboard discharge. This was done routinely on the Caribbean Princess in 2012 and 2013, the Justice Dept. said. The second practice involved discharges of oily bilge water originating from the overflow of graywater tanks into the machinery space bilges. This waste was pumped back into the graywater system rather than being processed as oily bilge waste. Neither of these practices were accurately recorded in the oil record book as required by law. All of the bypassing took place through the graywater system which was discharged when the ship was more than four nautical miles from land.
Princess, headquartered in Santa Clarita, California, is a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest cruise company. As part of the plea agreement, cruise ships from eight Carnival brands (Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line N.V., Seabourn Cruise Line Ltd. and AIDA Cruises) will be under a court supervised Environmental Compliance Program (ECP) for five years.
How American History Erases Mass Killings Against Native Americans - Counter Current News
▻http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/10/this-nations-forgotten-mass-native-americans
When the media speaks of a mass killing in the United States as being the worst in our history but forget about other historical mass killings is a part to erase Native American genocide.
Ever since Columbus reached the indigenous people of the Caribbean in 1492, an era of colonization and exploitation of the indigenous inhabitants for economic purposes.
Contained in the journals of Columbus’ and his men are atrocities far beyond the comprehension of humans. These so-called civilized people chopped up the bodies of Natives people and fed them to their hunting dogs, Kidnapped and sold pre-teen girls in the sex trade, enslavement and seeing if one could slice through a Native with one stroke.
#états-unis #massacres #nations_premières #peuples_autochtones #indiens
HIV’s Patient Zero exonerated : Nature
▻http://www.nature.com/news/hiv-s-patient-zero-exonerated-1.20877
But an analysis of HIV using decades-old blood serum samples exonerates the French Canadian [Gaétan Dugas], who died in 1984. The paper, published on 26 October in Nature, shows that the virus had been circulating in North America since at least 1970, and that the disease arrived on the continent through the Caribbean from Africa.
Richard McKay, a historian at the University of Cambridge, UK, and study co-author, says that scientists have always questioned the idea of a single #Patient_Zero, because some evidence suggested that the virus entered North America several times.
(...) When scientists examined those genetic sequences in detail, they found them to be similar to HIV strains present in the Caribbean, particularly Haiti, in the early 1970s. However, the strains were different from one another, suggesting the virus had already
pour les lecteurs de And The Band Played On…
Why Caribbean History Matters · Global Voices
▻https://globalvoices.org/2016/10/17/why-caribbean-history-matters
https://globalvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/1024px-1732_Herman_Moll_Map_of_the_West_Indies_and_Caribbean_-_Geographicus_-_WestIndies-moll-1732-800x450.jpg 
https://globalvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/boys_sans_souci-768x1024.jpg 
Over the years, I have had dozens of conversations on the question of whether Caribbean history “really matters” and for whom it matters. I’ve heard the region’s history dismissed due to the relative size of Caribbean societies, historians’ supposedly excessive preoccupation with slavery, and a questioning of what lessons can be learned from such allegedly dysfunctional societies.
One particularly memorable encounter took place at a fund-raising event for Haiti. Swirling his cocktail, a surgeon asked if I could explain the “erratic behavior” of the Haitians who greeted him when his US medical team arrived at a temporary field hospital after the 2010 earthquake. Much of the Haitian staff, he remarked, “suddenly disappeared,” leaving the American doctors to fend for themselves. When I suggested that the Haitian staff had probably departed because they had been on duty around the clock for days before his team’s arrival, the doctor seemed not to hear me: “I think they resented us because they believe we are somehow responsible for slavery. But slavery ended in Haiti two centuries ago. Is there really anyone in Haiti today who can remember slavery?” To his obvious amazement, I replied, “Yes, actually, you would be hard pressed to find someone in Haiti who doesn’t remember slavery.”
Timeline: The Criminalisation of Asylum - OpenLearn - Open University
▻http://www.open.edu/openlearn/people-politics-law/politics-policy-people/timeline-the-criminalisation-asylum#1
The Criminalisation of Asylum
Are more people illegally entering Britain, or have more laws made it difficult to enter legally? This timeline looks at the illegalisation of asylum seeking and the consequences it can have on people seeking sanctuary.
Aliens Act Established
1905
Aliens Act established as first piece of immigration legislation in Britain. Control at borders becomes the responsibility of the Home Secretary. Details (such as names and nationality) are collected by the captain and given to the state. The act includes powers to detain and deport, and immigrants must prove they are self-sufficient. It was, in some senses, a way to deter and control poor immigrants and Jews fleeing pogroms.
Aliens Restriction Act
1914
Aliens Restriction Act 1914 is developed at beginning of First World War and allowed the Secretary of State emerge powers to deny entry and control foreign residents (rather than just those entering at the border). Followed just after the War with Aliens Restriction Amendment Act 1919 to increase police powers and introduce a form of ID card to monitor migrants.
Leon Trotsky refused asylum in Britain
1929
The Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, is refused asylum in Britain. A form of ‘discretionary control’ continues into the 1930s (meaning the Home Office decides case by case rather than responding to persecuted groups) and further restrictions are placed on primary immigration.
Immigration anxieties rising
1933
As persecution against Jews in Germany increases, more leave in search of refuge. On 5th April, Home Secretary John Gilmour raises the question of refugees to the Cabinet for the first time, particularly concerns about destitute refugees arriving in Britain. Anxieties that it would set a precedent for allowing entry to other refugees lead to the United Kingdom delaying the 1933 League Convention concerning the International Status of Refugees.
The demonization of Jewish refugees
1938
The Daily Mail prints a heading stating ‘German Jews pouring into this country’ after a magistrate judge declares, ‘The way stateless Jews are pouring in from every port in this country is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to its fullest’. The Second World War, and consequently the Jewish Holocaust, would unfold the following year.
Jewish refugees flee to Britain
1939
By 1939 more than 3000 Jewish refugees had fled to Britain. Echoing earlier fears of an employment crisis and with growing anxieties around impending war, the British government continue attempts to repatriate them to Germany.
Empire Windrush arrives
1948
The loss of life in the aftermath of the Second World War (1939-1945) left significant gaps in the British workforce. To ensure post-war reconstruction, Caribbean workers from British colonies were encouraged to move to England as a form of managed economic migration. The first ship, Empire Windrush, arrives with 492 workers.
#uk
La mécanique de la #visualisation est à mon avis très mauvaise... j’ai renoncé à la regarder.
Mais le contenu est bon...
#criminalisation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #histoire #timeline #illégal #illégalisation #terminologie #mots #vocabulaire #lois #UK #Angleterre
BP tanker carrying U.S. crude discharged at Curacao after 100-day wait | Reuters
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bp-pdvsa-crude-idUSKCN11W2K4
A tanker carrying over 1 million barrels of U.S. light crude finished discharging on Monday after a 100-day wait related to payment delays from Venezuela’s state-run PDVSA to oil major BP Plc, according to Thomson Reuters vessel tracking data.
PDVSA in March awarded BP a tender to import up to 8.2 million barrels of U.S. crude for the second quarter, but long payment delays have since April created bottlenecks to discharge about a dozen cargoes, boosting the costs for the oil.
The Suezmax tanker Sonangol Cabinda, which arrived at the Caribbean island of Curacao in mid-June from the U.S. port of Beaumont in Texas, was finally authorized to enter PDVSA’s Bullen Bay terminal on Sept. 23, the data showed.
PDVSA had a pending payment of $57.26 million for the cargo, which loaded in early June and became the 10th shipment of U.S. crude sent by BP to PDVSA as part of the tender, according to internal data seen by Reuters.
BP said it would not comment on commercial operations. PDVSA did not respond to requests for comment.
While pending invoices to suppliers pile up, many providers are asking PDVSA to be pre-pay before authorizing tankers to discharge. Other companies have agreed to receive Venezuelan crude or refined products in exchange.
Another three vessels carrying U.S. light crude sold by BP to PDVSA are still waiting to discharge around Curacao. The Aframax tankers Valfoglia, British Cormorant and Whistler Spirit arrived in the Caribbean from late August to early September, according to the data.
PDVSA said in an internal document in August that it had a budget shortfall of $152 million for these crude imports.
L’effondrement de l’industrie pétrolière au Venezuela vu par le NY Times
How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela ? It’s Buying U.S. Oil - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/world/americas/venezuela-oil-economy.html
Venezuela’s petroleum industry, whose vast revenues once fueled the country’s Socialist-inspired revolution, underwriting everything from housing to education, is spiraling into disarray.
#Africa : Why Western Economists Get It Wrong
▻http://africasacountry.com/2016/09/africa-why-western-economists-get-it-wrong
Development #economics as a field of study was formally launched in the 1950s by the Afro-Caribbean economist Arthur Lewis who, out of necessity, wanted to understand how his own country, Saint Lucia, could transform from an agro-based economy into a modern industrial state (later, in 1979, Lewis was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics […]
Mothballing the World’s Fanciest Oil Rigs Is a Massive Gamble - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-19/at-500-million-a-pop-it-s-an-oil-gamble-that-has-no-precedent
In a far corner of the Caribbean Sea, one of those idyllic spots touched most days by little more than a fisherman chasing blue marlin, billions of dollars worth of the world’s finest oil equipment bobs quietly in the water.
They are high-tech, deepwater drillships — big, hulking things with giant rigs that tower high above the deck. They’re packed tight in a cluster, nine of them in all. The engines are off. The 20-ton anchors are down. The crews are gone. For months now, they’ve been parked here, 12 miles off the coast of Trinidad & Tobago, waiting for the global oil market to recover.
The ships are owned by a company called Transocean Ltd., the biggest offshore-rig operator in the world. And while the decision to idle a chunk of its fleet would seem logical enough given the collapse in oil drilling activity, Transocean is in truth taking an enormous, and unprecedented, risk. No one, it turns out, had ever shut off these ships before. In the two decades since the newest models hit the market, there never had really been a need to. And no one can tell you, with any certainty or precision, what will happen when they flip the switch back on.
[…]
Nearly half of the world’s available floating rigs are out of work today, and most observers expect that number will climb further. Not only are the drillship operators’ customers — the likes of ConocoPhillips and Total SA — slashing spending in high-cost offshore areas and canceling work contracts early, but new rigs that were ordered in recent years keep rolling out of shipyards. Bloomberg Intelligence estimates as much as $56 billion worth of offshore rigs, capable of drilling in everything from shallow water to oceans more than two miles deep, are still under construction.
Cholera in Haiti: A True-Crime Medical Thriller | The Tyee
▻http://thetyee.ca/Culture/2016/06/22/Cholera-In-Haiti
[Dr. Renaud Piarroux, a French epidemiologist] was startled to find UN agencies like the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) — and the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — uninterested in finding the source of the outbreak.
(...) this was baffling. The American and UN authorities seemed to be committed to an “environmental” origin for cholera in the Caribbean Sea. (...) the UN and U.S. agencies even brought in a team of investigators who had built their careers on the theory of environmental cholera.
(...) just before leaving Haiti, Piarroux received a secret document: a report by the MSPP, made in the very early days of the outbreak. With remarkable speed, the ministry had sent a team to the Artibonite River and identified the source as the Nepali camp. They’d been denied entry to the camp, but local residents provided plenty of details.
So within days of the outbreak the Haitians had known its source — and so had CDC and PAHO. Why hadn’t they said so, and why had Préval dismissed the idea of finding it?
(...) Haiti was (and is) ruled by a coalition of UN and U.S. agencies plus a chaotic mass of non-governmental organizations. The government in Port-au-Prince was (and is) far from sovereign. Préval had understood his situation, and had sent Piarroux the ministry report anonymously, to help him tell the world what he himself could not.
(...) alarmingly for any serious public health expert, a lot of public health experts went along with the scam. While thousands of Haitians were dying in puddles of their own vomit and diarrhea, the experts did their considerable best to lie to the world about why those people were dying.
#Haiti: Exporting coffee while protecting biodiversity | UNDP in Latin America and the Caribbean
▻http://www.latinamerica.undp.org/content/rblac/en/home/ourwork/sustainable-development/successstories/haiti---le-cafe--s-exporte-tout-en-protegeant-la-biodiversite.htm
Francisque Dubois, also known as "Papa café” among the people of Dondon, in northern Haiti, is one of two founding members of the coffee cooperative COOPACVOD, established in 1976 by 34 producers. Today the cooperative has 680 members and produces an organic coffee sold in Europe and North America.
“With bio certification, a pound of coffee sells for 3.5 US dollars. Before, our pound of coffee was selling for less than two US dollars. With this added value, the producers understand that they have to be more rigorous and professional in cultivating their coffee,” explains Francisque.
Located about 390 meters above sea level and protected from hurricanes and storms, the Dondon region has suitable weather conditions for coffee production. Given that the coffee must be grown in the shade, tree cutting is not the norm in the commune. During heavy rain, the water first hits the tree canopy before reaching the leaves of the coffee plants, which protects the soil from erosion.
With the support of UNDP’s micro-financing programme (MFP), funded in the amount of US$50,000 by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the cooperative was able to set up two ‘decentralized’ nurseries and strengthen its central nursery. These three nurseries have produced 200,000 coffee plants and 12,000 shade trees.
Mature seedlings are distributed to cooperative members who plant them following the practices necessary to produce an exportable organic coffee. With the support of the cooperative, farmers have access to more profitable markets and can sell their produce at competitive prices.
#café #bio #label #exportation
Indigenous groups pressured to give up lands for doubtful Nicaragua Canal
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/06/indigenous-groups-pressured-to-give-up-lands-for-doubtful-nicaragua-c
The only people watching over Nicaragua Canal land use negotiations between Nicaragua’s government and indigenous leaders have been masked policemen, according to indigenous reports. No international observers have been present.
The meetings, which the Nicaraguan government sprang on surprised community leaders several times over the past few months, are aimed at securing consent to use indigenous territory for the planned US $50 billion 175-mile trans-oceanic canal that would bisect Nicaragua. Community leaders say that the government has not allowed them legal council in the meetings, violating international regulations.
“They keep saying that we don’t need a legal advisor,” Allen Claire-Duncan, the leader of the Monkey Point Kriol community, told Mongabay. “Many people do not know how to read or write, and if the [government negotiators] come to the community they will speak in terms that the people don’t understand. [The government does] not want to do these meetings the right way.”
Claire-Duncan is the leader of one of nine indigenous and Afro-Caribbean communities in Nicaragua’s East. While officials from Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Group (HKND), the Chinese company building the canal, say only 25 indigenous households will be relocated for the canal’s construction, indigenous groups disagree. They say that the planned route will displace the entire communities of Bangkukuk Taik, Monkey Point and Wiringay, while most other local communities will be indirectly affected by canal support projects. Bangkukuk Taik is the last place where the Rama indigenous language is still spoken. Officials estimate that between 30,000 and 120,000 people will be displaced in total by the canal.
#Canal_du_Nicaragua #peuples_autochtones #déplacement #terres
Hikers on Caribbean island of Montserrat find ancient stone carvings | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/03/montserrat-petroglyphs-ancient-stone-carvings-hikers?CMP=twt_gu
Hikers out for a stroll on the Caribbean island of Montserrat have discovered ancient stone carvings that archaeologists believe could offer valuable insight into the island’s pre-colonial history.
The petroglyphs – which appear to depict geometric designs as well as beings of some kind – were carved into the side of a mossy boulder in the densely forested hills in the island’s north.
Petroglyphs left behind by the Caribbean’s indigenous peoples have been found throughout the region but until now had never been seen on Montserrat or nearby Antigua.
Learning from El Niño as La Niña Odds Rise
▻http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/04/28/learning-from-el-nino-as-la-nina-odds-rise
Although #El_Niño is weakening, its ramifications continue to be felt around the world. Drought and resulting food insecurity is one of the major implications for southeast Asia, eastern and southern Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Sixty million are in need of emergency relief today, according to the United Nations.
One of the most hard-hit areas has been Ethiopia, where at least ten million people need emergency food assistance, according to the World Food Programme (see figure). In addition to malnutrition and other ill effects of food insecurity, El Niño also has a myriad of other health impacts that will last through at least the end of 2016, including disease outbreaks and disruption of health services.
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/image003.jpg 
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/elnino-lanina-teleconnections-450x637.jpg #climat #agriculture #alimentation #El_Niño #El_Niña #cartographie
Rapport de l’UNICEF sur les conséquences de l’actuel El Niño
▻http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/BRIEFING_NOTE_El_Nino_EN.PDF
Community Fights to Protect Cherished Mangrove in Cancun, Mexico · Global Voices
▻https://globalvoices.org/2016/04/17/community-fights-to-protect-cherished-mangrove-in-cancun-mexico
Across the bay from the glittery hotel district, Cancun residents often enjoy some cool respite on the city’s breezy malecón, Latin America’s name for a seafront promenade. On a typical evening, people can be found jogging, playing, dog walking, or just taking in the fresh Caribbean trade winds. Until January 16, a dense mangrove forest led up to Cancun’s malecón, separating the peaceful walkway from the bustling city. But at 2 a.m. on that Sunday, bulldozers moved in and tore the mangrove trees away, destroying a much-needed green space for residents and demolishing the habitat of thousands of creatures.
The residents of Cancun reacted, and moved to protect and restore what was left of the mangrove forest. Leveraging social media, notably Facebook pages Salvemos Manglar Tajamar (Let’s Save Tajamar Mangrove) and Guardianes del Manglar Cancún (Mangrove Guardians of Cancun), as well as Twitter, calls to action have been rapidly answered by the community, leading to connections with Greenpeace and the international network to save mangrove forests worldwide.
Every day and night since January 16, the Guardianes del Manglar stand vigil under a blue and white tent, next to a painted tarp depicting a large mangrove tree embracing the earth with its extensive root system. The Tajamar Mangrove had been home to many animals, including the enormous crocodiles that delight residents, and figure prominently in historical Maya cosmology.
...
The destruction was carried out under the supervision of Mexico’s National Fund for Tourism Development, FONATUR, with federal police on hand to protect the operation.
#mangrove #espace_vert #biodiversité #destruction #tourisme #développement
Five myths about tax havens
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-tax-havens/2016/04/15/76d001d2-0255-11e6-b823-707c79ce3504_story.html
Par Nicholas Shaxson
3. Besides Switzerland, most tax havens are small tropical
islands.
“Offshore tax haven” probably summons to mind tiny palm-fringed countries in the Caribbean — “sunny places for shady people,” as Britain’s former secretary of business, Vince Cable, put it. But this notion is slowly giving way to a more accurate — and more alarming — picture.
Among the world’s biggest tax havens is the United States, which hosts vast sums of foreign wealth under conditions of strong secrecy. States including Delaware and Nevada allow shell companies whose owners are not identified, providing cover for foreign cash. And while most havens have signed on to a strong global transparency scheme for sharing banking information (called the Common Reporting Standard) that will take effect in 2017, the United States isn’t playing ball, meaning it will continue to serve as a haven for secretive foreign money. [▻http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/Tax/us-tax-notes-parillo-081715.pdf]
Britain is perhaps even worse. It runs a network of some of the world’s largest havens, from the Cayman Islands to Bermuda to Jersey. These places, the last remnants of the British Empire, are partly independent (and yes, some are quite sunny). But their legislation is approved in London, Queen Elizabeth II appoints their governors and her head graces their stamps and banknotes. A Financial Secrecy Index ranking the world’s biggest tax havens by secrecy and scale — a project I’ve been involved in — puts the United States in third place, after Switzerland and Hong Kong. If Britain were lumped in with its offshore network, though, it would rank first.
#Etats-Unis #Grande-Bretagne #Suisse #paradis_fiscaux #évasion_fiscale
It’s official: #Zika causes fetal defects - POLITICO
▻http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/politico-pulse/2016/04/its-official-zika-causes-fetal-defects-early-aco-participants-captured-mor
A CDC study published in the New England Journal of Medicine definitely links the Zika virus with microcephaly and a range of other serious brain defects in infants, confirming what has been suspected for months.
— Tom Frieden: “There is no longer any doubt” that the virus is leading to an outbreak of brain problems in infants across South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The CDC director added that “never before in history has there been a situation where a bite from a mosquito could result in a devastating malformation.”
— What’s still unclear: CDC pointed out that it’s still learning when during pregnancy the virus poses the greatest risk to the fetus, what other types of birth defects Zika causes, and what percentage of Zika-infected women give birth to affected children.
article accessible
Zika Virus and Birth Defects — Reviewing the Evidence for Causality — NEJM
▻http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1604338
SUMMARY
The Zika virus has spread rapidly in the Americas since its first identification in Brazil in early 2015. Prenatal Zika virus infection has been linked to adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes, most notably microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies. To determine whether Zika virus infection during pregnancy causes these adverse outcomes, we evaluated available data using criteria that have been proposed for the assessment of potential teratogens. On the basis of this review, we conclude that a causal relationship exists between prenatal Zika virus infection and microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies. Evidence that was used to support this causal relationship included Zika virus infection at times during prenatal development that were consistent with the defects observed; a specific, rare phenotype involving microcephaly and associated brain anomalies in fetuses or infants with presumed or confirmed congenital Zika virus infection; and data that strongly support biologic plausibility, including the identification of Zika virus in the brain tissue of affected fetuses and infants. Given the recognition of this causal relationship, we need to intensify our efforts toward the prevention of adverse outcomes caused by congenital Zika virus infection. However, many questions that are critical to our prevention efforts remain, including the spectrum of defects caused by prenatal Zika virus infection, the degree of relative and absolute risks of adverse outcomes among fetuses whose mothers were infected at different times during pregnancy, and factors that might affect a woman’s risk of adverse pregnancy or birth outcomes. Addressing these questions will improve our ability to reduce the burden of the effects of Zika virus infection during pregnancy.
Panama Papers: a massive document leak reveals a global web of corruption and tax avoidance
▻http://www.vox.com/2016/4/3/11356326/panama-papers
Even as the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nations have engaged in increasingly complex and intensive efforts at international cooperation to smooth the wheels of global commerce, they have willfully chosen to allow the wealthiest members of Western society to shield their financial assets from taxation (and in many cases divorce or bankruptcy settlement) by taking advantage of shell companies and tax havens.
If Panama or the Cayman Islands were acting to undermine the integrity of the global pharmaceutical patent system, the United States would stop them. But the political elite of powerful Western nations have not acted to stop relatively puny Caribbean nations from undermining the integrity of the global tax system — largely because Western economic elites don’t want them to.
[…]
But even though various criminal money-laundering schemes are the sexiest possible use of shell companies, the day-to-day tax dodging is what really pays the bills. As a manager of offshore bank accounts told me years ago, “People think of banking secrecy as all about terrorists and drug smugglers, but the truth is there are a lot of rich people who don’t want to pay taxes.” And the system persists because there are a lot of politicians in the West who don’t particularly want to make them.
[…]
Incorporating your hedge fund in a country with no corporate income tax even though all your fund’s employees and investors live in the United States is perfectly legal. So is, in most cases, setting up a Panamanian shell company to own and manage most of your family’s fortune.
Signalé par Glenn Greenwald: A Key Similarity Between Snowden Leak and Panama Papers: Scandal Is What’s Been Legalized
▻https://theintercept.com/2016/04/04/a-key-similarity-between-snowden-leak-and-panamapapers-scandal-is-what
Proving that certain behavior is “legal” does not prove that it is ethical or just. That’s because corrupted political systems, by definition, often protect and legalize exactly the behavior that is most unjust. Vital journalism does not only expose law breaking. It also highlights how corrupted political and legal systems can be co-opted by the most powerful in order to legally sanction atrocious and destructive behavior that serves their interests, typically with little or no public awareness that it’s been done.
Ou comme le disait si joliment Jean de Maillard (ancien magistrat spécialisé dans la criminalité financière) à propos de certains formes de spéculations « aux marges immédiatement extérieures de la légalité » et quand ça chauffe, ils n’ont pas très loin à marcher pour revenir - temporrairement - dans les marges immédiatement intérieures", c’est à dire « dans les clous ».
J’aimerais que Greenwald aille plus loin et rejoigne notre ami @marclaime, dont l’une des thèses (audacieuse quoique parfaitement étayée) est que tous ces aspects illégaux ou simplement immoraux (dont Le Canard enchaîné se fait une spécialité) sont, de toute façon, « du vol de sac à main » par rapport au pillage systématique, légal et parfaitement revendiqué (voire : valorisé par nos médias) organisé par nos gouvernements depuis 40 ans que se développe le néolibéralisme.
La fraude fiscale, certes. Qui représente bien plus que la fraude sociale. Certes. Mais qu’est-ce que tout cela représente finalement par rapport aux destructions des infrastructures publiques, aux coupes budgétaires qui transfèrent une foule de « services » au privé (école, santé, assurance, services collectifs, retraites, transports, infrastructures…), et aux truculents transferts de richesse des « partenariats public-privé » (une des spécialités de Marc sur le dossier de l’eau).
@Nidal, sans cette immense fraude fiscale, il y aurait beaucoup moins
de destructions des infrastructures publiques
et beaucoup moins
de coupes budgétaires qui transfèrent une foule de « services » au privé
.
C’est cette immense fraude fiscale, particulièrement celle des multinationales (qui donnent aux fisc en moyenne 2 à 3% de leurs bénéfices alors qu’elles devraient en donner 33%), qui crée le déficit budgétaire récurrent de l’état et qui créé in fine la « dette publique » au nom de laquelle l’Union Européenne nous réclame des politiques d’austérité.
Non, la dette n’est que l’argument du moment. Auparavant on en a eu d’autres (l’inflation, la crise pétrolière, la compétitivité, etc.). Les modes se sont succédées.