#argentine

En fait, je vais mettre en commentaire de ce TEDx des suggestions de #vidéo et #films sur l’#économie et l’#économie_alternative que je tire de cette liste :
Films and related materials for teaching #Take_Back_the_Economy (TBTE)
▻http://takebackeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Films-for-teaching-TBTE.pdf
Liste tirée elle-même de ce matériel de cours : ▻http://takebackeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Course-Overview.pdf

Capitalism hits the fan

With breathtaking clarity, renowned University of Massachusetts Economics Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today’s economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself. Wolff traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown. By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Wolff argues convincingly that the proposed government “bailouts,” stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis - in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes. Richly illustrated with motion graphics and charts, this is a superb introduction designed to help ordinary citizens understand, and react to, the unraveling economic crisis.

http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/images/index_11.jpg

Wealth Inequality in America

Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

The Story of Solutions

The Story of Solutions, released in October 2013, explores how we can move our economy in a more sustainable and just direction, starting with orienting ourselves toward a new goal. In the current ‘Game of More’, we’re told to cheer a growing economy – #more roads, more malls, more Stuff! – even though our health indicators are worsening, income inequality is growing and polar icecaps are melting. But what if we changed the point of the game? What if the goal of our economy wasn’t more, but better – better health, better jobs and a better chance to survive on the planet? Shouldn’t that be what winning means?

▻http://storyofstuff.org/movies/the-story-of-solutions

Living without money

Is it possible to feel rich without possessions? Can you live happily without money? In the documentary Living Without Money, we meet the German woman #Heidemarie_Schwermer who made a deliberate choice to live without money 14 years ago.

▻http://livingwithoutmoney.org
#argent

#Happy

From the filmmakers who brought you Long Night’s Journey Into Day, Beyond the Call, and the Oscar nominated Genghis Blues, comes a global journey across countries and continents in a search for humanity’s most elusive emotion.

HAPPY seeks to share the wisdom of traditional cultures and the cutting edge science that is now, for the first time, exploring human happiness. Through powerful interviews, we explore what makes people happy across the world.

▻https://vimeo.com/11335940

#Off_the_Map

Somewhere in the back of nowhere, in an adobe house with no lights or running water, a family lives in what could be called freedom or could be called poverty. We’re not sure if they got there because they were 1960s hippies making a lifestyle experiment or were simply deposited there by indifference to conventional life. They grow vegetables and plunder the city dump and get $320 a month in veterans’ benefits, but they are not in need and are apparently content with their lot.

Now there is a problem. “That was the summer of my father’s depression” the narrator tells us. She is Bo Groden, played in the movie by Valentina de Angelis at about age 12, and heard on the sound track as an adult (Amy Brenneman). “I’m a damn crying machine,” says her dad, Charley (Sam Elliott). He sits at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and his wife and daughter have learned to live their lives around him.

http://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/movie/movie_poster/off-the-map-2005/large_9KRRL4o8XX6cJt9BvEFIdamodgT.jpg

The Paradox of Choice

In this new RSA Animate, Professor Renata Salecl explores the paralysing anxiety and dissatisfaction surrounding limitless choice. Does the freedom to be the architects of our own lives actually hinder rather than help us? Does our preoccupation with choosing and consuming actually obstruct social change?

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bqMY82xzWo

#The_take

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - The Take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. In the wake of Argentina’s dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America’s most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The #Forja auto plant lies dormant until its former employees take action. They’re part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system. But Freddy, the president of the new worker’s co-operative, and Lalo, the political powerhouse from the Movement of Recovered Companies, know that their success is far from secure. Like every workplace occupation, they have to run the gauntlet of courts, cops and politicians who can either give their project legal protection or violently evict them from the factory. The story of the workers’ struggle is set against the dramatic backdrop of a crucial presidential election in Argentina, in which the architect of the economic collapse, Carlos Menem, is the front-runner. His cronies, the former owners, are circling: if he wins, they’ll take back the companies that the movement has worked so hard to revive. Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale. With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada’s most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers’ lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-DSu8RPJt8

#Shift_change

With the long decline in US manufacturing and today’s economic crisis, millions have been thrown out of work, and many are losing their homes. The usual economic solutions are not working, so some citizens and public officials are ready to think outside of the box, to reinvent our failing economy in order to restore long term community stability and a more egalitarian way of life.

There is growing interest in firms that are owned and managed by their workers. Such firms tend to be more profitable and innovative, and more committed to the communities where they are based. Yet the public has little knowledge of their success, and the promise they offer for a better life.

▻http://shiftchange.org/about

Bon, j’avoue ne pas avoir le temps de tout recensé les films qui semblent bien intéressants sur la liste, je continuerai peut-être plus tard dans l’année...

Leveraging U.S. College Scholarships for Syrian Students

The Syrian Youth Empowerment initiative guides high-school students in Syria through the U.S. college application process. Its cofounder #George_Batah explains the importance of Syrians winning scholarships to study in the U.S.

▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/07/11/leveraging-u-s-college-scholarships-for-syrian-students-2
#USA #Etats-Unis

Southern New Hampshire University announces first phase of initiative to expand higher education access to refugees.

Southern New Hampshire University has received $10 million from anonymous donors to expand its refugee education initiative, which it has piloted in the #Kiziba refugee camp in #Rwanda.

https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/styles/large-copy/public/media/snhu_degrees.jpg?itok=JkGYP_kT

The #Columbia Scholarship Program for Displaced Persons

Columbia University has launched a scholarship program to support individuals who have been displaced as a result of the conflict in Syria. These students will receive full tuition, housing, travel, and living assistance while pursuing their undergraduate degree at Columbia University’s School of General Studies. Applicants must have been displaced by the conflict in Syria, and currently residing in Jordan, Lebanon, or Turkey, or residing under Temporary Protected Status in the US. Students will begin their studies in fall 2018.

▻https://globalcenters.columbia.edu/news/columbia-scholarship-program-displaced-persons-0

Coke, Nestle Near Ownership of World’s Second Largest Aquifer

A concerted push is underway in South America that could see the Guarani Aquifer, one of the world’s largest reserves of fresh water, soon fall into the hands of transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola and Nestle.

▻https://www.mintpressnews.com/coca-cola-nestle-to-privatize-worlds-second-largest-aquifer-in-brazil/238082

#elevage aussi car ce soja est destiné à nourrir les bêtes dont les humains mangent la viande.

#agro-industrie

#paywall (bordel de merde !)

Du calme @sombre :

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Agriculture. Le soja ruine les sols argentins

Environnement
Argentine
Página 12 - Buenos Aires

Publié le 27/03/2017 - 09:23
Dessin d’Alex, paru dans Liberté, Fribourg.

Dans les régions de culture intensive de soja, des inondations à répétition provoquent d’importants dégâts. La faute aux changements climatiques, assurent les autorités. Mais nombre d’experts accusent le modèle agro-industriel.
Nos services

Tout commence par la pluie et les inondations, puis le secteur agricole rejette la faute sur le climat, les pertes économiques atteignent des millions, le gouvernement accorde des aides et promet des travaux. Et ce cycle redémarre dès l’orage suivant. Il se répète périodiquement et, début janvier, il a frappé les provinces de Córdoba, Santa Fe et Buenos Aires [dans le centre du pays].

Pourtant, le fautif “n’est pas le climat, mais le modèle qui régit l’agriculture et l’élevage”, objecte l’ONG argentine de protection de l’environnement Naturaleza de Derechos. D’autres organisations militantes abondent dans ce sens et rappellent que le business agro-industriel fait de l’Argentine le leader mondial du défrichement. Et que des études démontrent les conséquences du changement d’affectation des sols.
À lire aussi Agriculture. Les producteurs de soja disent merci au réchauffement

Ainsi, en une heure, une forêt naturelle absorbe 300 millimètres d’eau, un pâturage traditionnel (consacré au bétail) 100 millimètres et un champ de soja à peine 30 millimètres. C’est ce que détaille un rapport de l’Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (Inta, Institut national des techniques d’agriculture et d’élevage) relayé par le magazine Página 12 en avril 2016, après les inondations dans les zones de Córdoba et de Buenos Aires.

L’un des auteurs, Nicolás Bertram, qui travaille au centre de recherche Marcos Juárez de l’Inta à Córdoba, note que :

les trop-pleins d’eau ne sont pas dus au manque de travaux ni à l’excès de pluies, mais plutôt au développement des activités agricoles depuis les années 1990.”

À lire aussi Salvador. La bête noire des forêts

Nicolás Bertram a cosigné avec un autre universitaire, Sebastián Chiacchiera, une étude intitulée Remontée des nappes dans la région des pampas : augmentation des précipitations ou nouveaux emplois des terres ? Les deux chercheurs ont analysé les pluies depuis les années 1970 à nos jours, ainsi que les changements apportés au modèle de l’agriculture et de l’élevage, marqués par le développement de la culture du soja et l’éviction du bétail, entre autres variables.
“Un tsunami venu du ciel”

Dans les zones étudiées, “la nappe, qui se trouvait à 10 mètres de profondeur, est aujourd’hui à moins de 1 mètre de la surface, souligne Nicolás Bertram. Les sols sont saturés et ne peuvent plus rien absorber. C’est comme si on avait autrefois un grand pot de fleurs où l’on versait un seau d’eau. Maintenant, le pot est dix fois plus petit mais on y jette la même quantité d’eau.”
À lire aussi Environnement. Macabre marée rouge au large des côtes chiliennes

En 2015, lors des inondations dans la province de Córdoba, le gouverneur de l’époque, José Manuel de la Sota, a accusé les intempéries : “C’est un tsunami qui est venu du ciel.” De même, en janvier dernier, les chefs d’entreprise du secteur de l’agroalimentaire et des OGM regroupés au sein d’une association (Aapresid) ont évoqué une “catastrophe climatique et des inondations dues à un orage, qui ont placé le secteur agricole en alerte rouge”.

De son côté, Horacio Brignone, un militant qui participe à la campagne Paren de Fumigar [“Stop aux pesticides”] dans la région de Santa Fe, reproche aux autorités d’avoir pour seuls interlocuteurs les responsables du secteur agricole : “Le gouvernement accorde des subventions à ceux-là mêmes qui sont responsables des inondations. Tous autant qu’ils sont, ils pensent retenir l’eau avec des aides, des exportations et la ‘production’. Ils font la même chose à chaque fois en espérant obtenir des résultats différents.”
L’Argentine, parmi les 10 pays qui déboisent le plus

Dans un communiqué, le Centre de protection de la nature [Cepronat, une ONG née en 1977, qui édite une revue écologiste], qui participe à la campagne Paren de Fumigar, dénonce : “Le modèle biotechnologique agricole aggrave les inondations. Les OGM, les pesticides et l’ensemencement direct ont provoqué la remontée des nappes phréatiques. La monoculture du soja et les produits chimiques qui y sont associés entraînent l’imperméabilisation des sols. Par conséquent, l’eau ne pénètre pas dans la terre et n’est pas absorbée. Elle se répand et inonde, tout simplement.”

Carlos Manessi, du Cepronat, reproche aux entreprises et à la sphère politique de n’invoquer que le changement climatique ou le phénomène El Niño.
À lire aussi Brésil. Revivre un an après la pire catastrophe écologique du pays

L’Organisation des Nations unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture (FAO) a classé l’Argentine parmi les 10 pays qui ont le plus déboisé depuis le début des années 1990 – 7,6 millions d’hectares, soit une moyenne de 300 000 hectares par an. “Tous les ans, nous sommes témoins de grandes inondations, affirme Hernán Giardini, de Greenpeace. Ce n’est ni le hasard ni un phénomène naturel.” Il développe :

C’est dû à l’absence de politique environnementale nationale pour protéger nos forêts et zones humides contre les incendies, contre le défrichement lié à la progression du soja, l’élevage intensif et la promotion immobilière.”

La localité de Chabás, dans le sud de la province de Santa Fe, est l’une des plus touchées par les inondations. Les habitants ont dressé un barrage sur la RN 33 pour exiger des travaux d’infrastructure, des canaux et des pompes pour drainer l’eau. “Chabás est au milieu d’une mer de soja. L’eau a commencé à venir des champs sans qu’il pleuve au village. En deux heures, 70 % des rues étaient noyées” souligne un riverain, Miguel Fabrro.

Córdoba est l’une des provinces qui subit le plus de crues. “Quelle coïncidence”, fait observer Darío Avila, avocat spécialiste du droit de l’environnement et membre de l’Assemblée permanente des droits de l’homme : “Ce ne sont que des zones où domine l’agriculture industrielle, au cœur de la culture du soja.” Pendant ce temps, le gouvernement de la province de Córdoba prépare une loi pour défricher de nouvelles régions et poursuivre le développement du complexe agro-industriel.
Darío Aranda
Lire l’article original
Alerte sur l’Amazonie

En vingt-cinq ans, “la production de soja a dévoré les forêts vierges et la savane du Mato Grosso à une allure stupéfiante”, écrit le site Mongabay spécialisé dans l’information sur l’environnement.

Le Mato Grosso, un État amazonien de plus de 900 000 km2 situé à l’ouest du Brésil, est l’une des zones de la planète les plus riches en biodiversité. Il est aussi l’une des régions du pays les plus exposées aux appétits agro-industriels, et notamment à la production de soja, indique Mongabay.

Entre 1991 et 2016, les surfaces consacrées au soja dans cet État sont passées de 1,2 à 9,4 millions d’hectares. Un moratoire a pourtant été signé en 2006 (Amazon Soya Moratorium) par l’industrie agroalimentaire brésilienne, les ONG et le gouvernement. Les signataires s’engagent à ne pas acheter de soja provenant de forêts amazoniennes défrichées.

Malgré tout, le jeu des réformes agraires ainsi que le rachat de terres aux indigènes par des propriétaires terriens parviennent à accroître les surfaces dédiées à cette légumineuse.

Dans cette région, les pratiques illégales et la corruption demeurent. Le gouvernement de Michel Temer fait aussi peser une menace sur les forêts du Mato Grosso, estime Mongabay. Le ministre de l’Agriculture – et ancien gouverneur du Mato Grosso –, Blairo Maggi, est surnommé “le roi du soja” : il dirige le plus important groupe de soja au monde, Amaggi. Et le Brésil ambitionne de prendre le leadership mondial de la production de cet oléagineux.

–----

Página 12
Buenos Aires
La quotidienne
20 000 exemplaires
espagnol
www.pagina12.com.ar/
Lancé en 1987, Página 12 est devenu dans les années 1990 le quotidien de gauche le plus important de Buenos Aires. Avec son fondateur Jorge Lanata, il était très critique à l’égard du gouvernement du péroniste Carlos Menem, qui, entre 1989 et 1998, a privatisé une très grande partie des entreprises publiques argentines.
A l’époque percutant et bien informé, il prenait position pour les droits de l’homme, s’attaquait à la corruption et dénonçait l’impunité en ressortant les affaires de l’époque des dictatures.
Son esprit critique et son indépendance ont disparu avec l’arrivée au pouvoir des Kirchner (Néstor Kirchner de 2003 à 2007 puis Cristina de 2007 à 2015). Pour ses détracteurs, Página 12 était ainsi devenu un “communiqué de presse” du gouvernement.
Avec l’arrivée au pouvoir du président de droite Mauricio Macri en décembre 2015, le statut de la presse argentine a changé. L’une des premières décisions prises par M.Macri a été de limoger par décret les présidents des institutions de régulation des médias audiovisuels et de télécommunications, qui avaient été nommés par Cristina Kirchner. Il a également modifier la loi sur les médias datée de 2009, que le nouveau pouvoir jugeait trop favorable aux médias kirchneristes.

Faisant une grande place à l’actualité culturelle (littérature, cinéma…), Página 12 propose le week-end des suppléments avant-gardistes. Célèbre pour ses unes délirantes qui, par des montages astucieux, mettent en scène des hommes politiques, il cherche à toucher essentiellement le jeune public.

Le site, fondé en 1997, donne théoriquement accès à la majeure partie des papiers de l’édition du jour et permet une recherche dans les éditions antérieures.

merci @reka #déforestation #sols

Excusez-moi pour ce mouvement d’humeur mais je trouve frustrant de se heurter au « mur du paiement » quand on veut lire un article intéressant. Merci @reka pour cette mise en ligne.
Une question que je me pose : risque-t-on des ennuis quand on divulgue le contenu d’un article payant ? Met-on également @seenthis en porte-à-faux par rapport aux dispositions légales sur le #copyright ?

Tout à fait @sombre Personnellement quand on met en ligne un article soumis au « mur de paye » (Médiapart, Courrier international...) et donc réservé aux abonnés je ne partage pas et je remercie ceux et celles qui les mettent à la disposition de tous.

@sombre en fait je sais pas. Je le fais spontanément de temps en temps quand la communauté en a besoin. Si on m’écrit sur des bases juridiques pour m’expliquer qu’il ne faut plus le faire, on verra à ce moment là comment réagir.

Le Diplo a foutu toute ma collection cartographique sous paywall, alors que lorsque nous l’avions conçu, c’était clairement pour la mettre à disposition du public gratuitement. Je trouve simplement révoltant qu’ils aient pris cette décision (mais ces gens sont tellement obtus) et de m’attache maintenant à tout republier ailleurs pour que l’accès à ces archives soient de nouveau gratuite.

Super ! Un sincère grand bravo @reka

The New Coyote Trail : Refugees Head West to Bypass Fortress Europe

Europe’s closing borders and the death toll in the Mediterranean are forcing asylum seekers to look further afield. An investigation into the migration routes out of Latin America into the U.S. and Canada finds Africans, Afghans and Iraqis enduring great risks.

▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/12/19/the-new-coyote-trail-refugees-head-west-to-bypass-fortress-europe
#réfugiés_afghans #réfugiés_irakiens #Canada #Equateur

From Cameroon to US-Mexico border: ’We saw corpses along the way’

Kombo Yannick is one of the many African asylum seekers who are braving the longer Latin America route to the US.

https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/6/16/03396dfa69794539976cf199c23b8259_18.jpg

More Migrants From Far-Flung Lands Crossing US-Mexico Border

The young man traversed Andean mountains, plains and cities in buses, took a harrowing boat ride in which five fellow migrants drowned, walked through thick jungle for days, and finally reached the U.S.-Mexico border.

Then Abdoulaye Camara, from the poor West African country of Mauritania, asked U.S. officials for asylum.

Camara’s arduous journey highlights how immigration to the United States through its southern border is evolving. Instead of being almost exclusively people from Latin America, the stream of migrants crossing the Mexican border these days includes many who come from the other side of the world.

Almost 3,000 citizens of India were apprehended entering the U.S. from Mexico last year. In 2007, only 76 were. The number of Nepalese rose from just four in 2007 to 647 last year. More people from Africa are also seeking to get into the United States, with hundreds having reached Mexican towns across the border from Texas in recent weeks, according to local news reports from both sides of the border.

Camara’s journey began more than a year ago in the small town of Toulel, in southern Mauritania. He left Mauritania, where slavery is illegal but still practiced, “because it’s a country that doesn’t know human rights,” he said.

Camara was one of 124 migrants who ended up in a federal prison in Oregon after being detained in the U.S. near the border with Mexico in May, the result of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy.

He was released October 3, after he had passed his “credible fear” exam, the first step on obtaining asylum, and members of the community near the prison donated money for his bond. He was assisted by lawyers working pro bono.

“My heart is so gracious, and I am so happy. I really thank my lawyers who got me out of that detention,” Camara said in French as he rode in a car away from the prison.

Camara’s journey was epic, yet more people are making similar treks to reach the United States. It took him from his village on the edge of the Sahara desert to Morocco by plane and then a flight to Brazil. He stayed there 15 months, picking apples in orchards and saving his earnings as best he could. Finally he felt he had enough to make it to the United States.

All that lay between him and the U.S. border was 6,000 miles (9,700 kilometers).

“It was very, very difficult,” said Camara, 30. “I climbed mountains, I crossed rivers. I crossed many rivers, the sea.”

Camara learned Portuguese in Brazil and could understand a lot of Spanish, which is similar, but not speak it very well. He rode buses through Brazil, Peru and Colombia. Then he and others on the migrant trail faced the most serious obstacle: the Darien Gap, a 60-mile (97-kilometer) stretch of roadless jungle straddling the border of Colombia and Panama.

But first, he and other travelers who gathered in the town of Turbo, Colombia, had to cross the Gulf of Uraba, a long and wide inlet from the Caribbean Sea. Turbo, on its southeast shore, has become a major point on the migrant trail, where travelers can resupply and where human smugglers offer boat rides.

Camara and about 75 other people boarded a launch for Capurgana, a village next to the Panamanian border on the other end of the gulf.

While the slow-moving boat was far from shore, the seas got very rough.

“There was a wave that came and tipped over the canoe,” Camara said. “Five people fell into the water, and they couldn’t swim.”

They all drowned, he said. The survivors pushed on.

Finally arriving in Capurgana after spending two nights on the boat, the migrants split into smaller groups to cross the infamous Darien Gap, a wild place that has tested the most seasoned of travelers. The thick jungle hides swamps that can swallow a man. Lost travelers have died, and been devoured, boots and all, by packs of wild boars, or have been found, half out of their minds.

Camara’s group consisted of 37 people, including women — two of them pregnant, one from Cameroon and one from Congo — and children.

“We walked seven days and climbed up into the mountains, into the forest,” Camara said. “When it was night, we slept on the ground. We just kept walking and sleeping, walking and sleeping. It was hard.”

One man, who was around 26 and from the African nation of Guinea, died, perhaps from exhaustion combined with thirst, Camara said.

By the sixth day, all the drinks the group had brought with them were gone. They drank water from a river. They came across a Panamanian man and his wife, who sold them some bananas for $5, Camara said.

Once he got out of the jungle, Camara went to Panamanian immigration officials who gave him travel documents enabling him to go on to Costa Rica, which he reached by bus. In Costa Rica, he repeated that process in hopes of going on to Nicaragua. But he heard authorities there were not so accommodating, so he and about 100 other migrants took a boat around Nicaragua, traveling at night along its Pacific coast.

“All we could see were the lights of Nicaragua,” he said. Then it was over land again, in cars, buses and sometimes on foot, across Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, all the way to the U.S. border at Tijuana. He was just about out of money and spent the night in a migrant shelter.

On May 20, he crossed into San Ysidro, south of San Diego.

“I said, `I came, I came. I’m from Africa. I want help,”’ he said.

He is going to stay with a brother in Philadelphia while he pursues his asylum request.

https://gdb.voanews.com/1895CDBF-4CDC-456E-96D4-06C986294E27_cx0_cy2_cw77_w1080_h608_s.jpg

▻https://www.voanews.com/amp/more-migrants-far-flung-lands-crossing-us-mexico-border/4651770.html?__twitter_impression=true
#parcours_migratoire #nouvelle_Méditerranée

For African migrants trying, and dying, to reach north America, the Darién Gap is the “new Mediterranean”

https://www.equaltimes.org/local/adapt-img/1440/10x/local/cache-gd2/47/7ec0b9cc1d8166c74f83120c25ffd1.jpg?1575869456#.jpg

By the time Basame Lonje made it out of the jungle, he was beyond exhausted. The 35-year-old from Cameroon had gone four days out of seven without food, surviving each day on a single biscuit. He drank from rivers flowing with debris and death, carrying the corpses of an unknown number of people who have perished in the Darién Gap, a remote stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the most dangerous in the world. “I barely survived,” Basame says. “People had sores on the soles of their feet and they had nobody to carry them. They were left there. Do you know what it means to walk for days?”

As a result of tough migration policies in traditional destination countries in Europe, Basame is one of thousands of so-called‘extracontinental migrants’ taking the desperate decision to try and traverse the American continent in the hope of seeking asylum in the United States or Canada. In previous times this route was used almost exclusively by central American migrants. More recently it has seen a surge in migrants from African countries like Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Mauritania, Nigeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso, as well as people from Asian and Middle Eastern countries such as India, Pakistan, Syria and Nepal. Mexico authorities apprehended around 3,000 Africans and some 12,000 extracontinental migrants in total in 2018, according to the Migrant Policy Unit of Mexico’s Interior Ministry. Most are escaping a mix of conflict, political repression and crumbling economies.

They fly to visa-friendly countries such as Ecuador, Brazil and Guyana, before navigating their way up north to Mexico, sometimes with the help of smugglers, other times with the aid of social media posts of those who have gone before them. They spend thousands of dollars on flights and bus tickets for journeys that can take months.

Basame was a teacher back in Cameroon but says he fled the bloody conflict that has been raging in parts of his country since 2016 after he was abducted by armed groups fighting for the secession of the English-speaking parts of the country. His crime? Daring to hold classes.

New migration regulations have rolled out swiftly and unpredictably since Trump took office in January 2017. Military troops were deployed to the border in October 2018, when some 7,000 people from central America fleeing gang violence and poverty approached on foot. In January 2019, the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), known as ‘Remain in Mexico’ went into effect: as a result, asylees that arrive in the US via Mexico are now sent back to wait while their cases are processed, instead of being released on parole in the US as prescribed by US law. Rights organisations point out that sending asylum seekers back to Mexico, where they often face deportation, is a violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

This February, Trump declared a state of emergency and accessed emergency funds to begin construction of a physical wall between the US and Mexico. He has also pursued agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras under which all migrants who pass through these countries must first seek refuge and be rejected in them before placing claims in the US. The agreement disregards the fact that not only do these countries lack the capacity to process large-scale asylum claims but that many people are fleeing violence and poverty from these same countries.

Cumulatively, these policies have seen thousands of people waiting in shelters in US-Mexico border towns like Tijuana and Matamoros where conditions are deteriorating. A ‘metering’ system sees US customs officials attend to about three people daily. Mexico’s northern towns are also notorious for violence, and migrants are vulnerable to exploitation by drug cartels and human traffickers.
Externalising borders

In July 2019, Mexico signed an agreement with the US after President Trump threatened to impose trade sanctions if migration flows were not brought to a minimum. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed to deploy 6,000 troops from the newly-formed National Guard to police its borders, adopting the US border militarisation strategy and sealing Mexico’s fate as President Trump’s outer wall.

Since then, Mexican immigration officials have stopped issuing exit permits to extracontinental migrants arriving at the southern border, trapping many like Basame in a country they have no desire to stay in. With fewer people able to reach the US, Mexico – a transit country – is becoming an unintentional final destination. Although Mexico has refused to sign a third safe country agreement with the US, it has been forced to field over 60,000 asylum claims – double the number received last year. It has been estimated that 60 per cent of these applications are made in Tapachula.

With no work permit, and even if he had one, with few opportunities available to him as an African migrant and a non-Spanish speaker, Basame is clear about his options: “Mexico can’t give me that.”

But Mexico’s immigration agency has denied his application for a visitor’s visa that would help him move north. Officials are only issuing permanent residency cards, a document that he fears will affect his asylum claim in the US.

By 09.00, hundreds of men and women from over two dozen countries were waiting in the blistering sun. Their voices were a cacophony of languages – Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Tigrinya and Haitian Creole – clashing with the wails of hot, hungry children hanging from their parents. Migrants of Asian origin are mostly absent from these daily crowds: since Mexico deported 310 Indian migrants in an “unprecedented” move this October, they have been keeping a low profile for fear of suffering a similar fate.

An immigration officer appeared behind the gate, looked at the crowd and shook his head in frustration. A fight broke out when the gates opened as people rushed to get in. Despite his punctuality, Basame was not seen that day.
“My friends died there”

Narrating his long, treacherous journey from Cameroon to Mexico, Basame tells Equal Times that after fleeing the captivity of armed rebels this March, he headed to Nigeria before deciding to try to reach the safety of the US. He wanted better opportunities than Nigeria could offer and feared the rebels could easily reach him there. First, he took a flight to Ecuador, then by bus he moved through Colombia. In the north-western town of Capurgana on the Colombian-Panamanian border, he met fellow Cameroonian migrants, as well as Haitians and Cubans. As they prepared to enter the Darién, villagers living at the mouth of the jungle warned them: “If you start this journey, you must finish it, otherwise it is bad news,” alluding to the dangers of the wild animals, poisonous insects and armed kidnappers marauding inside the impenetrable rainforest that breaks up the Pan-American Highway.

Basame spent seven days in the dense thickness of the Darién, battling the rain and cold, moving from morning until nightfall with nothing but a bag of clothes and some snacks. “You do not stop in the Darién. You keep moving,” he says. He walked with a group of other migrants. Many didn’t make it out of the jungle due to exhaustion. Others were swept away in the fast-moving rivers. “My friends died there,” Basame remembers soberly. One of his worst memories is of walking past the corpse of a dead baby left in a backpack.

Basame is one of the lucky ones. After reaching Panama, exhausted and starving, he regained his strength before moving up through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. After crossing the Suchiate River into Mexico by raft, he arrived in Tapachula in July. He spent a week at an immigration detention centre there before he was given an exit permit to leave the country.

It wasn’t until he got pulled from a bus to Tijuana by the National Guard that he realised that he could not legally leave Tapachula unless he was heading south, back to Guatemala. The US-Mexico deal took effect on 10 July and he was amongst the first people stranded by Mexico’s new regulations. Basame’s permit would force him back through the jungle of death he had barely survived.
Death and disease in Mexico

Judeline Romelus sits with her friends in Tapachula’s main square watching as they braid the hair of her 10-year-old daughter, Mariska. Nearby, Ghanaian and Guinean flags announce African food at restaurants, alongside Mexican and Honduran colours. Haitians and Africans give locals a trim in makeshift barbershops.

But the general atmosphere of warmth masks the apprehension many locals feel. Despite being in one of the country’s poorest regions, Tapachula has tried to bear the weight of its new migrant population but some people are concerned that government agencies and NGOs are focusing their attention on these new arrivals when the needs of the locals are also many.

Like Basame, Judeline and Mariska are stranded. Judeline applied for a humanitarian visa so that she can travel north with her daughter, but she must wait for her appointment in February 2020. The 28-year-old mother packed her bags and left Haiti three months ago. Economic stagnation and recent political unrest have caused many to flee the small Caribbean nation. “There are no opportunities in Haiti and I cannot work,” she says, even with a diploma. Judeline says she is looking for a better life in the US where friends are waiting for them in Florida. She relies on their monthly remittances of US$50 to pay for the small room the mother and daughter share.

The unsanitary living conditions in overcrowded shelters such as these have caused a spike in health problems. “Women are presenting diseases related to sexual and reproductive health,” says Claudia León, regional head at Jesuits Refugee Service, a humanitarian non-profit providing legal and psychosocial assistance to refugees. Many were assaulted in the Darién. “The situation is critical. They have no clean water to wash with and those who are pregnant are at risk.”

Migrants of all nationalities are suffering from invisible illnesses too. A spokesperson for the medical humanitarian NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says it is dealing with many cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and trauma. Poor living conditions coupled with the memories of the treacherous journey to Mexico and the general uncertainty is causing some to self-harm. “We are in an emergency,” says León. “I have seen people outside the immigration centre hurting themselves because they are in such extreme conditions.”

The desperation to get to the US has led to the exploration of dangerous alternative routes. A boat smuggling Cameroonian migrants capsized off the coast of Mexico in October, killing one man. “We knew him,” one migrant tells Equal Times at the restaurant where the deceased once frequented. But even as they recall his tragic passing, another man says that he is also considering taking the same route to the US.
“The new Mediterranean”

All across the world, tough policies on migration are forcing the most vulnerable migrants and refugees to go underground and seek the services of smuggling gangs and human traffickers. Like the US, Europe has enforced stringent measures to stem migration flows. An increase in anti-immigrant sentiments from far-right, populist governments in the US and Europe in particular sees leaders like Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orban routinely employ rhetoric that fuels racist anxieties and emphasises the building of walls to prevent a ‘migrant invasion’.

In 2016, Turkey signed an agreement with the European Union and a bilateral agreement with Greece to keep some three million refugees fleeing the Syrian war from crossing the Aegean Sea into Greece. The agreement saw the European Union send back anyone who crossed without documents after 20 March 2016.

A similar agreement between Italy and Libya in 2017 was extended this November. Italy is training and funding the Libyan Coast Guard to stop African and Middle Eastern migrants on the Mediterranean and return them to Libya, a country at war.
Interception numbers have dropped from 181,000 in 2016 to only 8,000 this year, according to UNHCR. Thousands are held in detention centres run by armed factions battling for control since the Arab uprisings of 2011. African migrants have been enslaved, tortured and sold. They have also been caught in the crossfire of the battle for Tripoli. In July, a bomb fell on one detention centre, killing 44 people.

The number of asylum claims in Mexico keeps rising and is expected reach 80,000 by the end of the year. Although most Africans initially refused to seek asylum in Mexico, more people are applying, particularly from Cameroon. The number of asylum claims from Africa is currently around 500.

The influx of migrants and refugees has split Mexico politically, with many accusing President Obrador of yielding to President Trump and rescinding on human rights promises he made when he campaigned last year.

Human rights organisations condemn the US and Mexico’s strategies. “Those seeking safety want the same thing any of us would want if we were in their shoes,” says Isa Sanusi, of Amnesty International in Nigeria. “Mexico and the US must ensure that these migrants from Africa and other parts of the world are not denied the rights guaranteed to them by international law.”

For now, Basame is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if he had the money, it would be too dangerous for him to go home, and yet he currently has no way out of Mexico. As he struggles to stay afloat, his hopes are fading fast. “I’m running out of cash and I’m running out of patience. I’m sick and I don’t have anywhere to live,” he says. “How will I survive?”

▻https://www.equaltimes.org/for-migrants-trying-and-dying-to?lang=en

Es cosa suya: entanglements of border externalization and African transit migration in northern #Costa_Rica

Starting from the idea that border externalization – understood as the spatial and institutional stretching of borders – is enmeshed with the highly contextual humanitarian and securitarian dynamics of migrant trajectories, this article addresses the reach of border externalization tentacles in Costa Rica. Although Costa Rica does not formally engage in border externalization agreements, it is located in a region characterized by transit migration and transnational securitization pressures. Moreover, externalization efforts across the Atlantic have contributed to a relatively new presence of so-called extra-continental migrants. Given these circumstances, we aim to interrogate the ways in which border externalization plays a role in Costa Rica’s discourses, policies and practices of migration management. We do so by analysing a migrant reception centre in the northern Costa Rica border region, and by focusing on African transit migration. Our analysis is based on exploratory field research at the centre as well as on long-term migration research in Central America. Building on these empirical explorations and the theoretical notions of mobility regimes, transit and arterial borders, the article finds that Costa Rica’s identity as a ‘humanitarian transit country’ – as enacted in the migrant reception centre – both reproduces and challenges border externalization. While moving towards increased securitization of migration and an internalization of its border, Costa Rica also distinguishes itself from neighbouring countries by emphasizing the care it extends to African migrants, in practice enabling these migrants to move further north. Based on these findings, the article argues for a deeper appreciation of the role of local-regional histories, perceptions, rivalries, linkages and strategies of migration management. This allows for a better grip of the scope and shape of border externalization across a diversity of migration landscapes.

▻https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-019-0131-9

New contested borderlands: Senegalese migrants en route to Argentina

This article sheds novel, light on how Senegalese men and women adapt to European border governance by finding new ways to ‘look for life’ (chercher la vie) in Latin America, as an alternative to the perilous clandestine routes to Europe. The article follows how Senegalese migrants’ mobility to Argentina has evolved over the last two decades. It particularly focuses on the migrants’ journey to Argentina and explores the migrants’ accounts of their experiences en route and compares them to how different intersecting state-driven national and supranational migration policies become entangled in their mobility. By analytically focusing on the changing migration infrastructure and the different forms of friction the migrants encounter and respond to while moving, the article shows how the risk and uncertainty along the journey increasingly mirror the struggles which African migrants face at EU–African borderlands, and thus how similar features of global mobility regimes seem to be reproduced along this new route from West Africa to Latin America. In this way the politics and hierarchies of mobility are brought to the fore. Yet the article also points to how migrants find new openings and ways to contest the hindrances that aims to stop them as they move through these newly traversed borderlands.

▻https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-018-0109-z
#migrants_sénégalais #Argentine #Sénégal

#Argentine #femmes

Le très très gros problème à ça, c’est qu’on met de côté le fait que dans la région plein d’autres partis pas du tout islamistes ont des racines à chercher de ce côté de l’influence fasciste du début du XXe siècle (italien ou allemand). On trouve des influences directes chez les Chrétiens du Liban, chez des laïcs syro-libanais, chez des autocrates égyptiens, une grosse partie du sionisme, etc. etc.

@nidal Tu as sans doute raison pour l’Arabie et le Levant.

Ce qui m’intéresse c’est l’origines et la phénoménologie actuelle de l’idéologie nazie en Allemagne.

J’ai l’impression que cet assemblage d’idées farfelues et meurtrières décrit comme un mouvement circulaire à travers l’histoire et la géographie.

L’idéologie nazie est mise au monde dans des traités antisémites au début du dixneuvième siècle dans les bas fonds des petits états féodaux allemands, elle se glisse comme un passager clandestin dans les discours de l’empereur Guillaume II. quand il revendique sa place au soleil face aux colonialistes francais et britanniques, enfin elle trouve son apogée dans les publications et actes des nazis entre ’33 et ’45 .

De 1968 à 1989 elle passe à travers une phase d’hibernation avant de reprendre surface sous des formes plus ou moins violentes et meurtrières qui comprennent les positions xénophobes de chrétien-démocrates bavarois, le terrorisme NSU, les mouvements de type Pegida et la conquête du parti conservateur bourgeois AfD par l’extrême droite .

En ce moment nous nous trouvons face à l’insertion de ce parti au fortes composantes nazies dans le système parlementaire et nous somme témoins des résultats meurtriers de « l’engament international » allemand proclamé par le pasteur-président Gauck qui réussit á se faire passer comme antifasciste parce qu’il a collaboré avec la CIA contre le fascisme rouge.

Vu d’une perspective allemande il est indispensable de s’intéresser à la continuité obscurcie de la transmission des idées et traditions nazies. Il est impressionnant de voir à quel point les idéologies repressives et réactionnaires se ressemblent et se fécondent mutuellement. On comprend alors comment il est possible que l’héritage de nos ancêtres nous tombe sur les pieds, que le fascisme et le nazisme existent toujours et que terrorisme dont on prétent qu’il a ses origines dans un fanatisme oriental est en réalité une coproduction internationale à laquelle l’Allemagne capitaliste continue d’apporter du capital, des idées et des armes.

L’histoire de Johann von Leers et de ses relations avec Mohammed Amin al-Husseini est révélatrice pour le fait que le venin nazi existe partout et qu’il faut le combattre partout.

Je vois ton point, parce que nous aussi sommes parfois confrontés avec un petit groupe qui a résussi à infiltrer la gauche et se réclame comme tel alors qu’il défend des positions impérialistes pro-US et pro -Israel . Je parle des Antideutsche qui pourrissent systématiquement toute discussion en traitant d’antisémite chacun qui ne partage pas leur défense sans condition d’Israel et de son gouvernement en place.

Je profite de l’occasion pour re-publier l’invitation à une rencontre avec Harri Grünberg qui parlera de l’influence des Antideutsche. La soirée promet des discussions intéressantes.

Die Linke Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Mitgliederversammlung, Thema : EINFLUSS DER ANTIDEUTSCHEN
▻http://www.dielinke-steglitz-zehlendorf.de/politik/termine/detail/zurueck/termine-18/artikel/mitgliederversammlung-zehlendorf-3

Montag, 7. November 2016, 18.30 Uhr, im „Mittelhof" (Bibliothek), Königstr. 42-43 in Zehlendorf-Mitte

Mitgliederversammlung Zehlendorf
Thema: EINFLUSS DER ANTIDEUTSCHEN
Referent: Harri Grünberg, Mitglied des Parteivorstandes Die Linke und Mitglied der internationalen Kommission beim Parteivorstand