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Benjamin McKeown

The most important thing about the new NAFTA deal is that it exists - 0 views

slate.com/...ta-deal-is-that-it-exists.html

NAFTA HL Globalization free trade

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 01 Oct 18 - No Cached
  • da has agreed to give United States farmers more access to its heavily regulated dairy market—thus assuaging Trump’s single most frequent complaint about Canada’s trade policies. Canada also signed on to stronger intellectual property protections sought by U.S. industries, and increased the dollar limit on the amount of merchandise Canadians can buy across the border before duties kick in (alas, we won’t be hearing about shoe smuggling any longer). However, the Trump administration gave Canada a win by dropping its demand to scrap a dispute-resolution system in which countries can challenge each others’ anti-dumping tariffs outside of each others’ courts. Overall, the changes are more than cosmetic, but perhaps a bit less than Trump promised when he vowed to renegotiate what he’s often called “the worst trade deal in history.” The deal is designed to benefit U.S. auto-workers by requiring that more of each vehicle be produced within North America to qualify for tariff-free treatment, and that a certain percentage of each car be built by employees making $16 an hour. It curtails the use of controversial investor-state dispute settlement panels. The IP protections are a boost—perhaps unfortunately—to copyright-holders and prescription drug companies. But progressive groups are already complaining that the agreement still lacks mechanisms to enforce labor standards in Mexico, among other issues. But more than the details, the most important thing about this deal is that it exists at all. One of the major questions about Trump’s approach to economic policy and globalization was whether he would simply light trade deals on fire, or use his sometimes unhinged rhetoric as a means to obtain some reforms. In the case of NAFTA, we have a solid answer. Whether you like it or not, it’s spelled USMCA. One more thing If you think Slate’s work matters, become a Slate Plus member. You’ll get exclusive members-only content and a suite of great benefits—and you’ll help secure Slate’s future. Join Slate Plus Join Slate Plus Tweet Share Comment Canada Donald Trump Mexico Trade
Benjamin McKeown

Good practice - 3x1 Citizens' Initiative - 0 views

www.ilo.org/...migmain.showPractice

HL culture globalization Mexico remittances civil society 3X1

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 09 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The 3x1 initiative started as the 2x1 programme, which was established in Zacatecas, Mexico in 1993. This initiative aims to expand Home Town Associations' (HTA) community development funds: for every dollar contributed by HTA, the different government levels match this contribution. The 3x1 initiative stared operations in 2002. Projects include support for the church, town beautification, basic assistance in health and education, and constructing and improving public infrastructure. A small number of projects support wealth generation activities. Twenty-seven states in Mexico and 40 HTAs in the United States currently participate in this programme.
  • In, 2002 the 3x1 projects totalled US$ 43.5 million, a quarter coming from HTAs. Zacatecas received over one-third of the allocation, while Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Michoacan also participated significantly. Ten per cent of the projects focused on electrifications and economic infrastructure and over ten per cent focused on social infrastructure. Most of the communities targeted suffer basic development problems and have high emigration rates, and are in need of basic public infrastructure.
  • First, funds tend to flow to non-marginal communities; and, second, most projects funded are not productive. In response, the Mexican government has introduced a quota for marginal communities, and since 2002, to insist on productive investment.
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  • The practice encourages partnership between Mexicans abroad, local community leaders, and state and federal authorities.
Benjamin McKeown

BP's 'gross negligence' caused Gulf oil spill, federal judge rules - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html

BP oil hazards

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 20 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” had caused the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and that the company’s “reckless” behavior made it subject to fines of as much as $4,300 a barrel under the Clean Water Act.
  • Barbier said that drilling rig owner and operator Transocean and oil services giant Halliburton were also “negligent” in the events that led to the blowout of BP’s Macondo well that set fire to Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig, killed 11 workers and triggered the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Barbier apportioned 67 percent of the fault to BP, 30 percent to Transocean and 3 percent to Halliburton.
  • “was aware that its crews lacked training about the proper use of diverters” that should have directed dangerous hydrocarbons away from the rig. He also said that Transocean had not lined up the diverter properly.
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  • Halliburton has vigorously denied that its cement job designed to seal the well shut was a reason for the blowout and the government has not sought to impose Clean Water Act fines on the company. But Barbier said that “the cementing program at Macondo clearly did not prevent the direct or indirect release of fluids from a stratum, through the wellbore, and into offshore waters, and this failure was, in fact, a proximate cause of the incident.”
  • At the same time, the company has increased its drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico. At the end of 2013, the company was operating 10 deepwater rigs there. It has brought several new wells online.
Benjamin McKeown

BP's 'gross negligence' caused Gulf oil spill, federal judge rules - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html

BP response hazards

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 09 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • A federal judge in New Orleans on Thursday ruled that BP’s “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” had caused the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and that the company’s “reckless” behavior made it subject to fines of as much as $4,300 a barrel under the Clean Water Act.
  • The ruling by District Court Judge Carl Barbier means that the government can impose penalties nearly four times as large as it could if BP were not found guilty of gross negligence.
  • arbier said that drilling rig owner and operator Transocean and oil services giant Halliburton were also “negligent” in the events that led to the blowout of BP’s Macondo well that set fire to Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig, killed 11 workers and triggered the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Barbier apportioned 67 percent of the fault to BP, 30 percent to Transocean and 3 percent to Halliburton.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Halliburton has vigorously denied that its cement job designed to seal the well shut was a reason for the blowout and the government has not sought to impose Clean Water Act fines on the company.
  • At the same time, the company has increased its drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico. At the end of 2013, the company was operating 10 deepwater rigs there. It has brought several new wells online.
Benjamin McKeown

The U.S. Immigration Debate - Council on Foreign Relations - 0 views

www.cfr.org/...p11149

HL magration response anti-globalization

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • President Barack Obama's immigration policies have drawn ire from immigration advocates and opponents alike. Though he pledged to tackle comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office, Obama did not make the issue a priority until his second term. His administration has deported more than two million undocumented immigrants, more than former President George W. Bush did in his two terms, though some of this reflects the rise in border arrests of migrants from countries other than Mexico,
  • Obama has tried to grant a reprieve to as many as five million undocumented immigrants in the United States
  • the majority of Americans support various elements that would comprise comprehensive immigration reform, including creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (88 percent), requiring employers to check immigration status of workers (84 percent), tightening border security (83 percent), and expanding short-term visas for skilled workers (76 percent).
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Many tech-industry leaders have become prominent supporters of immigration reform,
  • They argue that if skilled workers—many of whom are educated in U.S. universities—are not permitted to work in the United States, some tech companies may be forced to move their operations offshore.
  • early one third of undocumented immigrants in the United States are the parents of U.S.-born children, according to the Pew Research Center.
  • "[The United States' undocumented immigrant] population is not growing—it's more settled,"
  • Increasingly, people who are coming are Central Americans fleeing violence and seeking asylum—not Mexicans seeking work—and that's a very different policy problem. But I don’t think Congress has caught up with that. The debate and the approaches still reflect the world of a decade ago."
  • Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential elections and many Republican strategists said that their party would need to strike a more conciliatory tone on migration following the party's loss that year.
  • Comprehensive immigration reform refers to proposed legislation that would change U.S. immigration laws to address demand for high-skilled and low-skilled labor, legalize most undocumented immigrants already in the country, and toughen border and interior enforcement.
  • Immigration Innovation Act: A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate in January 2015 that would nearly double the number of visas for temporary high-skilled workers, from 65,000 to 115,000, and eliminate annual per-country limits for employment-based green cards. Start-Up Act: A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate in January 2015 (three prior versions had been introduced) that proposed creating an entrepreneurs’ visa for immigrants and a STEM visa for U.S.-educated workers with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, and eliminating per-country caps on employment-based immigration visas. Secure Our Borders First Act: A Republican bill that threatens penalties against senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials whose departments fail to intercept a targeted number of crossings. The proposal would allow the Border Patrol to operate on all federal lands, provide funding for the National Guard to participate in securing the border, and authorize expanded use of surveillance drones along the border.
  • Obama's immigration announcement emphasized his administration's efforts to secure the U.S. border, and in FY 2014, nearly twenty thousand U.S. Border Patrol agents (PDF) operated along the southwestern border—the largest deployment in U.S. history.
Benjamin McKeown

Should the United States Build a Fence on Its Southern Border? - 0 views

www.usnews.com/...a-fence-on-its-southern-border

migration HL response anti-globalization

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 18 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. border with Mexico spans almost 2,000 miles from California to Texas, and illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and other security breaches along the border have been issues of growing concern for decades. After 9/11, the call to secure America’s borders increased, and the idea of expanding physical layers of security along the Mexican border began to gain serious traction in the minds of lawmakers.
  • Signed into law by George W. Bush, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 mandated the construction of almost 700 miles of barrier fences along the Mexican border
  • The act also appropriated the expansion of checkpoints, vehicle barriers, and technological systems designed to monitor the expanse of boundary.
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  • detractors cite prohibitive construction costs, unmanageable terrain, and harmful environmental concerns as arguments against the fence.
Benjamin McKeown

[Letter From the Sea of Cortez] | Emptying the World's Aquarium, by Erik Vance | Harper... - 0 views

harpers.org/...7

fisheries overfishing Environment

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 16 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • What he has realized is that to save the aquarium of the world, you have to help the fishermen help themselves.
  • “It’s cabrilla.” Cabrilla is a cheap seabass sold in tacos on Mexico City streets that I wolf down on my way to the subway.
  • It sells for sixteen cents a pound and is piled into trucks, eventually to be chopped into indistinguishable bits, mixed with lemon juice to hide the stink, and labeled fish.
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  • Puerto Adolfo López Mateos is a town on the Pacific Coast similar to Kino. But the López Mateos fisherman didn’t toss this fish from the net to the beach and then to a truck. It was caught by hook and line, placed in ice water, and processed by the fisherman’s wife in an air-conditioned plant. The fisherman earns many times as much money as Kino fishermen, doesn’t have bycatch, and the fish makes for an amazing meal. Peckham says that when he first showed the fish to this restaurant, they refused to believe it was cabrilla. He’s become a cheerleader for something he calls “value rescue”; that is, if the fishermen can cut out some of the middlemen, care for and market their fish better, and make more money per fish, they can be better stewards of their coastline.
  • ProMar
Benjamin McKeown

Assessing impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...130710122004.htm

BP hazards

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Approximately 1,100 linear miles of coastal wetland were affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.In areas where roots survived the impact, little to no long-term impairment is expected
  • where the oil destroyed vegetation and root systems, sediment erosion c
  • nverted the marshland to open water.Since storm mitigation is directly related to the total area of wetlands, the change in area is the most practical measurement of change in ecosystem services.The service can be valued in monetary terms by estimating the cost of storm damage that would be incurred in the absence of the wetlands.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • ishery closures decreased commercial production by 20 percent,
  • Productivity of the fish populations could be impacted by the spill's toxic effects on reproduction and development, which may take years or decades to determine.
  • Dolphins provide scientific, cultural, and recreational services in the Gulf of Mexic
  • 817 bottlenose dolphin deaths were documented, compared with about 100 per year between 2002 and 2009
  • The deep sea is the largest yet least well-understood region of the Gulf,
Benjamin McKeown

Advertising and Global Culture | Cultural Survival - 0 views

www.culturalsurvival.org/...advertising-and-global-culture

culture HL TNC

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 26 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • of
  • Author Janus Noreen No one can travel to Africa, Asia, or Latin America and not be struck by the Western elements of urban life. The symbols of transnational culture - automobiles, advertising, supermarkets, shopping centers, hotels, fast food chains, credit cards, and Hollywood movies - give the, feeling of being at home. Behind these tangible symbols are a corresponding set of values and attitudes about time, consumption, work relations, etc. Some believe global culture has resulted from gradual spontaneous processes that depended solely on technological innovations - increased international trade, global mass communications, jet travel. Recent studies show that the processes are anything but spontaneous; that they are the result of tremendous investments of time, energy and money by transnational corporations. This "transnational culture" is a direct outcome of the internationalization of production and accumulation promoted through standardized development models and cultural forms.
  • The common theme of transnational culture is consumption. Advertising expresses this ideology of consumption in its most synthetic and visual form.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Advertisers rely on few themes: happiness, youth, success, status, luxury, fashion, and beauty. In advertising, social contradictions and class differences are masked and workplace conflicts are not shown. Advertising campaigns suggest that solutions to human problems are to be found in individual consumption, presented as an ideal outlet for mass energies...a socially acceptable form of action and participation which can be used to defuse potential political unrest. "Consumer democracy" is held out to the poor around the world as a substitute for political democracy.
  • Transnational advertising is one of the major reasons both for the spread of transnational culture and the breakdown of traditional cultures.
  • Transnational culture strives to eliminate local cultural variations. Barnett and Muller discuss the social impact of this process:
  • What are the long range social effects of advertising on people who earn less than $200 a year? (Peasants, domestic workers, and laborers) learn of the outside world through the images and slogans of advertising. One message that comes through clearly is that happiness, achievement, and being white have something to do with one another
  • In mestizo countries (sic) such as Mexico and Venezuela where most of the population still bear strong traces of their Indian origin, billboards depicting the good life for sale invariably feature blond, blue-eyed American-looking men and women. One effect of such "white is beautiful" advertising is to reinforce feelings of inferiority which are the essence of a politically immobilizing colonial mentality...The subtle message of the global advertiser in poor countries is "Neither you nor what you create are worth very much, we will sell you a civilization (emphasis added).
  • Transnational firms and global advertising agencies are clearly aware of the role of advertising in the creation of a new consumer culture in Third World countries
  • Television antennas are gradually taking the plac
  • tom-tom drums across the vast stretches of Africa. Catchy jingles are replacing tribal calls in the Andes of Latin America. Spic-and-span supermarkets stand, on the grounds where colorful wares of an Oriental Bazaar were once spread throughout Asia. Across vast continents hundreds of millions of people are awakening to the beat of modern times.
  • Increasingly advertising campaigns are aimed at the vast numbers of poor in Third World countries
  • As one U.S. advertising executive observes about the Mexican consumer market, even poor families, when living together and pooling their incomes, can add up to a household income of more than $10,000 per year
  • The use of television to spread transnational culture is especially effective with illiterates
  • By consuming Coca-Cola, Nestle products, Marlboro, Maggi, Colgate or Revlon, Ivorians are not only fulfilling unnecessary needs but also progressively relinquishing their authentic world outlook in favor of the transnational way of life.
  • In trying to be as white as possible, that is to say, in becoming ashamed of their traditional being, the Ivorians are at the same time relinquishing one of the most powerful weapons at their disposal for safeguarding their dignity as human beings: their racial identify. And advertising is not neutral in such a state of affairs.
  • Yet, the advertising of Coca-Cola and Heinekens portrays drinking as an individual act rather than a collective one.
  • Santoro concluded that these stereotypes held by children were largely the same ones to be found in typical Venezuelan television and advertising contents.
  • These results, while very tentative, suggest that the impact of transnational culture is greater among the poor - the very people who cannot afford to buy the lifestyle it represents. The poor are more likely to associate consumption with happiness and feel that industrialized products are better than the locally made ones. But at the same time they are painfully aware that only the rich have access to the lifestyle portrayed.
  • Virtually every child showed an acute awareness of the different access to these products by class.
  • Again, poor children more often answered that Nescafe is coffee, and Tang is orange juice
  • poorer children were significantly more likely to associate the luxury possessions with happiness than the rich children.
  • What political impact does the spread of transnational culture have on the poor for whom luxury lifestyles are not possible? How do they deal with the daily contradictions that this awareness implies? How much will they accept and how much will they reject? How can they maintain their own identities in the face of transnational culture
  • Benjamin McKeown on 26 Feb 19
     
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