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Latest Developments, January 11

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Françafrique lives
91 days after declaring France’s neocolonial relationship with Africa dead, French President François Hollande announced that his country was taking military action in former colony Mali:

“At stake today is the very existence of our ally Mali, the security of its population and that of French citizens. There are 6,000 of them in Mali.
I have, therefore, in the name of France, answered the plea for help from Mali’s president, which has the support of the nations of West Africa. As a result, the French armed forces gave their support this afternoon to Malian units for the fight against these terrorist elements.
This operation will last as long as necessary.” [Translated from the French.]

Deep roots
350.org co-founder Bill McKibben discusses the global significance of the indigenous protest movement that began in Canada last year under the banner #IdleNoMore:

“[First Nations] are, legally and morally, all that stand in the way of Canada’s total exploitation of its vast energy and mineral resources, including the tar sands, the world’s second largest pool of carbon. NASA’s James Hansen has explained that burning that bitumen on top of everything else we’re combusting will mean it’s ‘game over for the climate.’ Which means, in turn, that Canada’s First Nations are in some sense standing guard over the planet.
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Corporations and governments have often discounted the power of native communities — because they were poor and scattered in distant places, they could be ignored or bought off. But in fact their lands contain much of the continent’s hydrocarbon wealth — and, happily, much of its wind, solar and geo-thermal resources, as well. The choices that Native people make over the next few years will be crucial to the planet’s future — and #IdleNoMore is an awfully good sign that the people who have spent the longest in this place are now rising artfully and forcefully to its defense.”

Importing cholera
Foreign Policy has published an account, drawn from former Associated Press correspondent Jonathan Katz’s new book, of his investigation into how the UN turned Haiti’s biggest river into an “artery of disease”:

“In two years, more than 7,800 Haitians have died of cholera. One in five people in a nation of roughly 10 million has fallen seriously ill with the disease, while the unusually virulent strain has spread across the Caribbean, into South America, and the United States.
The United Nations has made grandiose, if seemingly empty, promises to fight and eradicate the disease, but refuses to consider its own accountability in starting the epidemic. Aid workers and donor governments have lost a critical opportunity — to demonstrate that they took Haitian lives and welfare as seriously as their own.”

Funding abuses
The Guardian reports that the UK plans to give millions to Ethiopian “special police” accused of human rights violations, including summary executions, in the country’s restive Ogaden region:

“The Guardian has seen an internal Department for International Development document forming part of a tender to train security forces in the Somali region of Ogaden, which lies within Ethiopia, as part of a five-year £13m–15m ‘peace-building’ programme.
The document notes the ‘reputational risks of working alongside actors frequently cited in human rights violation allegations’. DfID insists that the training will be managed by NGOs and private companies with the goal of improving security, professionalism and accountability of the force, but Human Rights Watch has documented countless allegations of human rights abuses.”

Mining maze
Bloomberg reports on the difficult road to compensation faced by thousands of South African ex-miners suffering from silicosis:

“ ‘Whether we are able to bring Anglo American and other parent companies to the table or not will have a significant impact on the size of any final award or settlement,’ [the plaintiff’s lawyer Richard] Spoor said by phone yesterday. ‘The question of the parent company liability is a very difficult area of law because of the principle of limited liability.’
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Mergers, acquisitions and delistings over the years have left former workers with nowhere to go to seek compensation, Spoor said. Gold Fields Ltd. was created in 1998 by combining the assets of Gencor and Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd. AngloGold was formed when Anglo American’s South African business bought out minority shareholders of its gold units in 1997.
Anglo American ceded control of AngloGold in April 2004 when the gold miner bought Ghana’s Ashanti Goldfields Ltd., creating AngloGold Ashanti.
Gold companies including AngloGold deny liability.”

Tax-shy telcos
The BBC reports that Indian tax officials have raided a facility belonging to Finnish phone giant Nokia:

“According to some media reports, officials said they were looking to recover tax payments totalling as much as 30bn Indian rupees ($545m; £340m).
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The raid on Nokia comes just days after Indian tax officials asked the UK’s Vodafone to pay more than $2bn in back taxes.”

Banning fake vaccines
The Center for Global Development’s Charles Kenny calls on the US government to declare it will never again use public health interventions to gather intelligence, as it famously did in Pakistan where there has been a recent spate of violence against vaccine providers:

“Such a declaration has been proposed in a letter sent to President Obama this Monday signed by the deans of America’s top public health schools.  I suggest this could be modeled on –and inserted into– Executive Order 12333 which mandates that ‘No element of the Intelligence Community shall sponsor, contract for, or conduct research on human subjects except in accordance with guidelines issued by the Department of Health and Human Services,’ and bans engagement in or conspiracy towards assassination and actions intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media.”

Diluting responsibility
The Guardian reports that “opaque supply chains” are part of the reason that Bangladesh’s booming garment industry keeps experiencing deadly factory blazes, the latest of which claimed 111 lives:

“Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity, says a convoluted and opaque supply chain is largely to blame for the lack of compliance with international labour standards. ‘Often the factory that gets the order is fully compliant,’ she says. ‘But multiple subcontracts make a mockery of so-called ethical sourcing. When an accident happens, the buyers can simply deny responsibility.’
After the Tazreen blaze, retailers said they had not authorised production at the factory. Walmart and Sears said in separate statements that suppliers had subcontracted production without informing them.”

Latest Developments, December 21

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Warpath
The Globe and Mail reports on concerns that foreign military intervention in Mali, which has just received unanimous backing from the UN Security Council, could have “unintended consequences”:

“The rebel takeover of the north has already forced nearly 500,000 people to flee their homes or become refugees in neighbouring countries, and a new confidential UN report has warned that another 400,000 people could be pushed out of their homes if there is military intervention in the north.
‘No clear plan exists to ensure that a military intervention would not exacerbate the already disastrous humanitarian situation,’ said Alexandra Gheciu, a University of Ottawa professor who specializes in international security.
Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has warned that the military intervention would have a high humanitarian cost that has been largely ignored so far.”

No way back
Think Africa Press’s James Wan takes issue with a European court ruling that Chagos Islanders, who were evicted from their homeland by the British to make way for a military base, relinquished their right to return 30 years ago when a group of them accepted $6 million in compensation:

“Firstly, the argument does not hold for the several hundreds of islanders deported to the Seychelles rather than Mauritius where the compensation was paid. ‘We were completely excluded from compensation’, Bernadette Dugasse told Think Africa Press earlier this year. ‘Chagossians from Seychelles were not even given half a penny, not even a teaspoonful of land.’ The full ruling barely acknowledges this.
Secondly, the suggestion that the exiled Chagossians could have pursued the matter in the courts had they ‘preferred’ is dubious at best. According to Mark Lattimer, executive director of Minority Rights Group, ‘it is frankly ridiculous to expect that a people from the Indian Ocean, some of who were illiterate, and who have been thrown into abject poverty, to have the means and the wherewithal to pursue the British government in the English court’.
In fact, even the notion that Chagossians who did get compensation renounced their right to return rests on shaky ground. Putting aside the fact that the compensation was derisory, it is notable that the documents were in English, which most Chagossians did not speak, and that many were illiterate and had to sign with thumbprints. Although the UK government claims that lawyers were present to explain the documents, many islanders have long insisted they had no idea they were signing away their right to return, and that had they known they would never have accepted the compensation.”

First Nations rising
The Dominion’s Martin Lukacs writes that the Idle No More protests currently taking place in Canada have the potential to “reset aboriginal-state relations”:

“Billions have indeed been spent – not on fixing housing, building schools or ending the country’s two-tiered child aid services, but on a legal war against aboriginal communities. Every year, the government pours more than $100m into court battles to curtail aboriginal rights – and that figure alone went to defeating a single lawsuit launched by two Alberta First Nations trying to recover oil royalties essentially stolen by bureaucrats.
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Parliament will soon debate a bill that would break up reserves – still, mostly, collectively held – into individual private property that can be purchased by non-native speculators. The undeclared agenda of government policy is the same as it was a century ago: a grab for resource-rich lands, and the assimilation of aboriginal nations.”

Death to capital punishment
Amnesty International reports on the latest UN General Assembly vote on the death penalty, in which 111 states voted for abolition:

“New votes in favour included Central African Republic, Chad, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Tunisia. As a further positive sign, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia moved from opposition to abstention. Regrettably, Bahrain, Dominica and Oman changed their abstention to a vote against the resolution, while Maldives, Namibia and Sri Lanka went from a vote in favour to an abstention.”

Investment dangers
Paint Our World’s Priya Virmani is not convinced that the arrival in India of global supermarket chains will help the country’s farmers:

“Yet if the intervention of big supermarket chains lifts farmers, why do American and European farmers need to be heavily subsidised? Predatory pricing – the precedent set by the biggest supermarkets – threatens smaller retailers as monopolistic practices take place.
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More [foreign direct investment] brings with it the promise of improving India’s growth figures. But these indicate the overall temperature of an economy and not the temperature of its disparate parts. When the temperature of India’s bottom of the pyramid, at around 800 million people, is at an opposite end of the spectrum to that of the other much more opulent India then growth in itself cannot be considered an indication of the health of the majority.”

Lump of coal
The Guardian reports that protesters dumped coal outside the London offices of GCM Resources over its plans to develop a massive open-pit mine in Bangladesh:

“An official complaint to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has been made by the World Development Movement and the International Accountability Project, saying the company would forcibly evict up to 130,000 people if the project went ahead. The complaint mentions a UN report from earlier this year warning that ‘access to safe drinking water for some 220,000 people is at stake’.
The company claims the mine will displace 40,000 people but create 17,000 jobs.”

Miner changes
Bloomberg reports that South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has decided against nationalizing mines, but is considering a number of other ways to increase the country’s benefits from mining:

“The party is considering a ‘resource rent’ tax or higher royalties to extract more revenue from the industry, said Enoch Godongwana, head of the ANC’s economic transformation committee.
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The ANC agreed today to classify certain minerals as strategic, which the government wants to manage through measures including targeted export controls in order to ensure security of supply, Godongwana said. Iron ore, coal, copper, copper, zinc and nickel are amongst minerals being considered for classification, according to the ANC’s document.”

Death traps
EarthPeople’s Anna Clark argues that the US has outsourced much of the injustice it has eliminated from its own economic system:

“Due to the relentless pursuit of low-cost labour and the lack of accountability inherent in a global supply chain, companies will have to learn to work with labour rights groups to mandate and track compliance.
Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, for example, agreed to work with watchdog groups to introduce new fire safety standards at their supplier factories. Gap Inc, which operates the Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime and Athleta brands, instead decided to go it alone with its own corporate-controlled programme.
With limited oversight by worker organisations and no transparency, such measures are not good enough to protect vulnerable workers.”

Latest Developments, December 7

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African pivot
The Wall Street Journal reports the Obama administration is considering asking congress for authorization to “pursue extremist groups” in Africa:

“The move, according to administration and congressional officials, would be aimed at allowing U.S. military operations in Mali, Nigeria, Libya and possibly other countries where militants have loose or nonexistent ties to al Qaeda’s Pakistan headquarters. Depending on the request, congressional authorization could cover the use of armed drones and special operations teams across a region larger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, the officials said.”

Safety second
Bloomberg reports that Walmart last year dismissed as too expensive safety improvements at garment factories in Bangladesh, where more than 700 textile workers have died since 2005:

“At the April 2011 meeting in Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, retailers discussed a contractually enforceable memorandum that would require them to pay Bangladesh factories prices high enough to cover costs of safety improvements. Sridevi Kalavakolanu, a Wal-Mart director of ethical sourcing, told attendees the company wouldn’t share the cost, according to Ineke Zeldenrust, international coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign, who attended the gathering. Kalavakolanu and her counterpart at Gap reiterated their position in a report folded into the meeting minutes, obtained by Bloomberg News.
‘Specifically to the issue of any corrections on electrical and fire safety, we are talking about 4,500 factories, and in most cases very extensive and costly modifications would need to be undertaken to some factories,’ they said in the document. ‘It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.’ ”

Drug shortage
Reuters reports that international sanctions against Iran may be precipitating a healthcare crisis:

“Government hospitals and pharmacies report a widespread lack of drugs to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis, blood disorders and other serious conditions. Iranian media highlighted the shortages earlier this month through the case of a teenager who died of hemophilia after his family failed to find his medicine.
Both the United States and the European Union say their embargoes do not target trade in humanitarian goods. But cutting off Iran’s banking system from the outside world has touched every sector of the economy, resulting in spiraling food prices, a plunging Iranian rial, deepening unemployment and now, hitting health care, analysts and traders say.”

Unfair shares
Reuters also reports on a study that found that nearly 20 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa’s black majority “directly owns” less than 10 percent of the country’s main stock market:

“Despite the ruling African National Congress’ drive for ‘black economic empowerment’, under which firms are set black ownership and other targets, millions of blacks remain trapped in poverty and excluded from the formal economy.
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‘If you look at the demographics of this country, what would be normal is that no less than 50 percent of the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange) should be owned by black people,’ ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said.”

Europe beyond aid
The Center for Global Development’s Owen Barder writes that Europeans may “more than pull their weight in aid to developing countries” but that does not mean they shine at development cooperation:

“So if European countries are serious about development – and not just giving aid – then we must also consider how European policies on trade, investment, migration, environment, technology and security all affect the developing world.
Improvements in any of these policies could have much more impact on poverty and prosperity in poor countries than any increase in the quantity or quality of aid we are likely to make.  Taken together, they are far more important than aid for creating the conditions for development. Yet they get relatively little attention in development circles.”

Legal first
The Jakarta Globe reports that an Indonesian anti-corruption court has made a Japanese businessman the country’s “first foreign graft convict”:

“[Shiokawa] Toshio, the president director of Onamba Indonesia, was proven guilty of bribing Imas Dianasari, an ad hoc judge with the Bandung Industrial Relations Court, over a labor dispute case involving the electrical wire manufacturer.
The court ruled in favor of the company and allowed it to discontinue the employment of workers who had joined a labor strike, shortly before Onamba’s human resources manager Odi Juanda gave Imas the Rp 200 million [US $20,800] bribes.”

Conflicting rights
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has released a report on a case of industrial pollution in Peru that “illustrates the conflict between international human rights law and investors’ protection”:

“People from La Oroya have brought a case against the State of Peru for failing to protect their right to health, before the Inter-American Commission. Parents of children with high blood lead levels have attempted to get redress in the US, where the parent company is located through a class action. In an attempt to stop the proceedings before the US Court of Missouri, at the end of 2010, the Renco Group launched an international artbitration claiming its rigths as a foreign investors, guaranteed by the Free-Trade Agreement between Peru and the United States, had been violated by Peru, and asking for at least 800 million USD as compensation.”

Congo’s riches
Bloomberg offers a portrait of Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler whose investments in the DR Congo have left him with a hand in nearly a tenth of the world’s cobalt production, as well as “a roster of critics”:

“His Gibraltar-registered Fleurette Properties Ltd. owns stakes in various Congolese mines through at least 60 holding companies in offshore tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands.
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‘Dan Gertler is essentially looting Congo at the expense of its people,’ says Jean Pierre Muteba, the head of a group of nongovernmental organizations that monitor the mining sector in Katanga province, where most of Congo’s copper is located.
‘He has political connections, so state companies sell him mines for low prices and he sells them on for huge profits. That’s how he’s become a billionaire.’
In the eight months preceding November 2011 elections, in which [Joseph] Kabila won a second five-year term, companies affiliated with Gertler bought shares in five mining ventures from three state-owned firms, according to minutes of board meetings, company filings and documents published later. The state companies didn’t announce the sales.”

Latest Developments, November 28

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Beyond aid
The Center for Global Development’s Owen Barder argues that over the past decade, “there has been very little overall progress in the policies of rich countries which affect prospects in poor countries”:

“But people from developing countries are clear that development policy today must mean more than giving aid. With growing economic success, they want to benefit more from the resources and services which they supply to the world. They do not want aid as compensation for global trade rules which are stacked against them: they want the rules changed. They do not want merely to be compensated for the damage done to the environment by industrialised countries; they want the destruction of our shared planet to stop.
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Aid agencies and campaigners make a powerful case for increases in aid, and for improving its quality. But many have neglected the other issues which developing countries are increasingly demanding must be addressed and which are likely to be at least as important. This paralysis in the face of a changing agenda should come as no surprise. All aid agencies have to spend their budget wisely and avoid waste (or worse). But working to improve the policies on fisheries, patents or tax is always discretionary, however important it might be. Nobody in the government department responsible for these policies will complain if the development ministry leaves them alone. The people who stand to lose are in developing countries: and they have no voice and no vote when these priorities are set.”

US exceptionalism
The Hill reports that US President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill that will exempt US airlines from EU carbon fees:

“The White House had been under pressure from environmental groups to veto the bill. Those advocates want Obama to address climate change more forcefully in his second term, and said the emissions bill provided an opportunity to chart a new course.
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‘However, there is a silver lining here — the administration has appointed high level representatives to pursue a global solution for aviation and climate,’ [the World Wildlife Fund’s Keya] Chatterjee said. ‘The White House now must endorse a global, market-based measure to rein in carbon pollution from aviation. If they do, we are optimistic that the U.S. can work with [International Civil Aviation Organization] to develop a package of policies that will reduce our share of global emissions.’ ”

Right to development
350.org’s Bill McKibben, the Environmental Rights Action’s Nnimmo Bassey and Focus on the Global South’s Pablo Solon call the COP 18 climate talks currently underway in Doha “the time to act for the future of humanity and Nature”:

“Rich countries who have poured most of the carbon into the atmosphere (especially the planet’s sole superpower) need to take the lead in emission reductions and the emerging economies have also to make commitments to reduce the exploitation of oil, coal and gas. The right to development should be understood as the obligation of the states to guarantee the basic needs of the population to enjoy a fulfilled and happy life, and not as a free ticket for a consumer and extractivist society that doesn’t take into account the limits of the planet and the wellbeing of all humans.”

Killer fashion
Al Jazeera provides a roundup of the global clothing lines who were customers of the Bangladeshi garment factory where a fire killed “at least 110 people” over the weekend:

“Survivors and witnesses told AFP that workers, most of them women, tried to escape the burning factory, which supplied clothes to international brands including Walmart, European chain C&A and the Hong Kong-based Li & Fung company.
Order books and clothing found at the site show the company was also making clothing for Disney Pixar, Sears and other Western brands.
The Associated Press news agency reports that blue and off-white shorts from ENYCE, the label now owned by Hip Hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, were piled and stacked in cartons on the floor.”

Pipeline colonialism
A First Nations group in Canada’s westernmost province has issued a letter to “the illegitimate colonial governments of Canada and British Columbia, and to all parties involved in the proposed Pacific Trails Pipeline project” warning against attempts to bring a natural gas pipeline through their territory:

“Under Wet’suwet’en law, the people of these lands have an inalienable right to their traditional territories, and the right to defend it. Even by Canadian law, the Supreme Court Dalgamuukw case decision explicitly recognizes the authority of hereditary chiefs, not elected Indian Act bands or councils. As such, any further unauthorized incursion into traditional Wet’suwet’en territory will be considered an act of colonialism, and an act of aggression towards our sovereignty.”

Tackling offshoring
Global Witness’s Rosie Sharpe argues that the opacity of the global financial system is a major contributor to the perpetuation of poverty:

“Why don’t Congolese citizens know who bought the rights to six of their country’s best copper and cobalt mines? Because they were bought by anonymous firms registered in the British Virgin Islands. And, what’s more, these companies bought them at a snip – in some cases just a 20th of their estimated value – and then sold some of them on for much, much more. Someone pocketed a fortune, but hidden company ownership means neither we, nor Congolese citizens, can know who.
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If we want to make poverty history, we have to make corruption history. And if we want to make corruption history, we have to make anonymous companies history. Global Witness has been calling for the names of the true, beneficial owners of companies and other corporate vehicles to be made public. Nominee directors and shareholders should have to declare themselves as such and say who they’re working for.”

Minimum tax
Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett makes the case for a minimum tax on America’s wealthiest people:

“I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that. A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultrarich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours. Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy.”

Latest Developments, November 27

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Fatal negligence
The New York Times reports that critics are partly blaming international clothing brands for over 100 deaths in a Bangladeshi garment factory fire:

“Activists say that global clothing brands like Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap and those sold by Walmart need to take responsibility for the working conditions in Bangladeshi factories that produce their clothes.
‘These brands have known for years that many of the factories they choose to work with are death traps,’ Ineke Zeldenrust, the international coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign, said in a statement. ‘Their failure to take action amounts to criminal negligence.’ ”

Double standard
Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs argues that international oil companies should face “the same standards for environmental cleanup” whether a spill occurs in a rich or poor country:

“In the colonial era, it was the official purpose of imperial power to extract wealth from the administered territories. In the post-colonial period, the methods are better disguised. When oil companies misbehave in Nigeria or elsewhere, they are protected by the power of their home countries. Don’t mess with the companies, they are told by the United States and Europe. Indeed, one of the largest bribes (a reputed $180 million) paid in recent times in Nigeria was by Halliburton, a company tightly intertwined with US political power. (Dick Cheney went from being Halliburton’s CEO to the US vice presidency.)
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The world’s governments have recently agreed to move to a new framework for sustainable development, declaring their intention to adopt Sustainable Development Goals at the Rio+20 Summit in June. The SDGs offer a critical opportunity for the world to set clear, compelling standards for government and corporate behavior.”

After 2014
The New York Times also reports on the potential number of foreign troops that will remain in Afghanistan following NATO’s “handover” of the country to local authorities:

“Final decisions on the size of the American and NATO presence after 2014 and its precise configuration have not been made by the United States or its allies. But one option calls for about 10,000 American and several thousand non-American NATO troops.
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A major challenge is that Afghanistan will not have an effective air force before 2017, if then. American officials said that NATO airpower would remain in Afghanistan after 2014 but will likely only be used on behalf of NATO and American troops and perhaps Afghan units that are accompanied by NATO advisers.”

Probe promised
The Tanzania Daily News reports that the country’s government has vowed to investigate allegations of serious human rights abuses being committed in areas surrounding mines:

“ ‘We have come across serious allegation that investors are harassing and even killing residents allegedly entering mining sites without permission. If the allegations are confirmed we will take action regardless of the status of an investor,’ [Energy and Minerals Deputy Minister Stephen Masele] said.
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He was responding to complaints by residents who said the relationship between mining investors and local residents particularly in Geita was not good calling for the government to intervene before it was too late.”

Debt colonies
Cambridge University’s Ha-Joon Chang argues that indebted countries such as Greece and Argentina should have the right to declare bankruptcy the way corporations do:

“[Greek opposition leader Alexis] Tsipras was asking why most burdens of adjustment for bad loans have to fall on the debtor country and, within them, mostly on its weaker members. And he is right. As they say, it takes two to tango, so those who condemn Greece for imprudent borrowing should also condemn the imprudent lenders that made it possible.
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Meanwhile, the absence of rules equivalent to the protection of wage claims in corporate bankruptcy law means that claims by weaker stakeholders – pensions, unemployment insurance, income supports – are the first to go. This creates social unrest, which then threatens recovery by discouraging investment.”

Destructive conferences
In a Q&A with Inter Press Service, the University of KwaZulu Natal’s Patrick Bond argues that international climate summits, such as the UN’s COP 18 which has just kicked off in Doha, simply legitimize the unsustainable behaviour of rich countries:

“It is beyond doubt now that any progress at the multilateral level will require two things: first, a further crash of the emissions trading experiment, so as to finally end the fiction that a market run by international bankers can solve a problem of planet-threatening pollution caused by unregulated markets; and second, a banning of delegations from Washington – the U.S. government and Bretton Woods Institutions – since that’s the city most influenced by climate denialists. Hence every move from the U.S. State Department amounts to sabotage.”

Brain drain numbers
The Financial Times looks at the findings in a new UN report, which explores the pros and cons of highly skilled people emigrating from the world’s poorest countries:

“[Least Developed Countries] not surprisingly suffer the highest rates of ‘brain drain’ in the world, at 18.4 per cent of the population – far above the 10 per cent rate for other developing countries, according to [the UN Conference on Trade and Development]. Six of the 48 LDCs have greater numbers of highly-skilled nationals living abroad than at home.
The total of university-educated ‘LDC emigrants’ stood at 1.3m in 2000 – up 58 per cent from 1990 – and by mid-2011 was estimated to have exceeded 2m, the report said. At these kind of levels, ‘the adverse effects on LDCs can outweigh the benefits from remittances – that is, the billions of dollars that these workers send home to their families every year,’ it says.”

EU subsidies
The Guardian’s George Monbiot attacks the EU’s €50bn-per-year farm subsidies on economic, social and environmental grounds:

“A European rule insists that to receive their main payment farmers must prevent ‘the encroachment of unwanted vegetation on agricultural land’. In other words, they must stop trees and bushes from growing. They don’t have to grow crops or keep animals on the land to get their money, but they do have to keep it mown. All over Europe essential wildlife habitats are destroyed – often on agriculturally worthless land – simply to expand the area eligible for subsidies.”