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Javier E

For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the American market.
  • while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.
  • residency requests had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law meant to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.
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  • Spanish filmmakers, Japanese automotive executives and entrepreneurs from the United States and Latin America arrive practically daily — pursuing dreams, living well and frequently succeeding.
  • “There is this energy here, this feeling that anything can happen,” said Lesley Téllez, a Californian whose three-year-old business running culinary tours served hundreds of clients here last year. “It’s hard to find that in the U.S.”
  • more Americans have been added to the population of Mexico over the past few years than Mexicans have been added to the population of the United States, according to government data in both nations.
  • If the country of 112 million people can harness the energy of foreigners and newly educated Mexicans, become partners with the slew of American firms seeking alternatives to China, and get them to do more than just hire cheap labor, economists and officials say Mexico could finally become a more equal partner for the United States and the first-world country its presidents have promised for decades.
  • “There’s been an opening to the world in every way — culturally, socially and economically.”
  • global trends have been breaking Mexico’s way — or as President Enrique Peña Nieto often puts it, “the stars are aligning” — but there are plenty of obstacles threatening to scuttle Mexico’s moment.
  • The challenge, he said, is making sure that the growing interest in his country benefits all Mexicans, not just newcomers, investors and a privileged few.
  • Mexico has failed to live up to its economic potential before. “They really blew a moment in 1994 when their currency was at rock bottom and they’d just signed Nafta,”
  • The number of Americans legally living and working in Mexico grew to more than 70,000 in 2012 from 60,000 in 2009, a number that does not include many students and retirees, those on tourist visas or the roughly 350,000 American children who have arrived since 2005 with their Mexican parents. For DiscussionWhy did you decide to move to Mexico?Please share your story in the comments below.
  • closer ties with Mexico’s beloved and hated neighbor to the north, through immigration and trade, have made many Mexicans feel less insular. Millions of emigrants send money earned abroad to relatives in Mexico, who then rush out to Costco for more affordable food and electronics.
  • “Europe feels spiritually dead and so does the United States,” Mr. Quemada-Díez said. “You end up wanting something else.”
  • it was not a country that welcomed outsiders; the Constitution even prohibited non-Mexicans from directly owning land within 31 miles of the coast and 62 miles of the nation’s borders.
  • Some of the growth is appearing in border towns where foreign companies and binational families are common. American retirees are showing up in new developments from San Miguel de Allende to other sunny spots around Cancún and Puerto Vallarta. Government figures show that more Canadians are also joining their ranks.
  • More and more American consultants helping businesses move production from China are crisscrossing the region from San Luis Potosí to Guadalajara, where Silicon Valley veterans like Andy Kieffer, the founder of Agave Lab, are developing smartphone applications and financing new start-ups. In Guanajuato, Germans are moving in and car-pooling with Mexicans heading to a new Volkswagen factory that opened a year ago, and sushi can now be found at hotel breakfasts because of all the Japanese executives preparing for a new Honda plant opening nearby.
  • Mr. Pace, bearded and as slim as a Gauloises, said he moved to Mexico in 2011 because college graduates in France were struggling to find work. He has stayed here, he said, because the affordable quality of life beats living in Europe — and because Mexico offers more opportunity for entrepreneurship.
  • Some Mexicans and foreigners say Europeans are given special treatment because they are perceived to be of a higher class, a legacy of colonialism when lighter skin led to greater privileges. But like many other entrepreneurs from foreign lands, Mr. Pace and his partners are both benefiting from and helping to shape how Mexico works. Mr. Rodríguez, the former Interior Ministry official, Cuban by birth, said that foreigners had helped make Mexico City more socially liberal.
  • Many immigrants say Mexico is attractive because it feels disorderly, like a work in progress, with the blueprints of success, hierarchy and legality still being drawn. “Not everyone follows the rules here, so if you really want to make something happen you can make it happen,” said Ms. Téllez, 34, whose food business served more than 500 visitors last year. “No one is going to fault you for not following all the rules.”
  • compared with South Korea, where career options were limited by test scores and universities attended, Mexico allowed for more rapid advancement. As an intern at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency here, he said he learned up close how Samsung and other Korean exporters worked. “Here,” he said, “the doors are more open for all Koreans.” He added that among his friends back home, learning Spanish was now second only to learning English.
  • There were 10 times as many Koreans living in Mexico in 2010 as in 2000.
  • Europe, dying; Mexico, coming to life. The United States, closed and materialistic; Mexico, open and creative. Perceptions are what drive migration worldwide, and in interviews with dozens of new arrivals to Mexico City — including architects, artists and entrepreneurs — it became clear that the country’s attractiveness extended beyond economics.
  • Artists like Marc Vigil, a well-known Spanish television director who moved to Mexico City in October, said that compared with Spain, Mexico was teeming with life and an eagerness to experiment. Like India in relation to England, Mexico has an audience that is larger and younger than the population of its former colonial overlord.
  • “In Spain, everything is a problem,” he said. “Here in Mexico, everything is possible. There is more work and in the attitude here, there is more of a spirit of struggle and creativity.”
  • “We are now more certain about the value of sharing certain things.”
  • He struggled to make sense of Mexico at first. Many foreigners do, complaining that the country is still a place of paradox, delays and promises never fulfilled for reasons never explained — a cultural clash that affects business of all kinds. “In California, there was one layer of subtext,” Mr. Quemada-Díez said. “Here there are 40 layers.”
  • Mexico has allowed dual nationality for more than a decade, and among the growing group of foreigners moving here are also young men and women born in Mexico to foreign parents, or who grew up abroad as the children of Mexicans. A globalized generation, they could live just about anywhere, but they are increasingly choosing Mexico.
  • Domingo Delaroiere, an architect whose father is French and mother is Mexican, said Mexico’s appeal — especially in the capital — was becoming harder to miss. When he came back here last year for a visit, after two and a half years in Paris, he said he was surprised. “Art, culture, fashion, architecture, design — the city was filling up with new spaces, things that are interesting, daring,” he said. He soon decided it was time to move. Compared with Mexico, he said, “Nothing is happening in Paris.”
malonema1

Environmental Sustainability Opportunities in Nicaragua - 0 views

  • As both the largest country in Central America and the least populated, Nicaragua has the opportunity to enforce environmental protection laws and conserve a relatively large amount of natural resources
  • In response to a variety of environmental issues, interns, volunteers, and donors work with FSD partner organizations to:
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    This article helps people understand Nicaragua's problems with environmental sustainability
Cecilia Ergueta

The Digital Divide: Closing the Gap between Access and Innovation in Latin America - COHA - 0 views

  • With sustained growth blessing the region, Latin America found itself with an expansive business sector and a demanding public sector, all looking to technology for answers to big social issue
  • Most Latin American nations could be described as straddling the gap of the digital divide in a sustained balancing act.
  • “digital divide” has become shorthand for any gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas with regards to both their opportunities and access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs
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  • the digital divide in Latin America, even in an international context, always has been about more than just access to the Internet, or a computer.
  • a big majority of poorer areas within countries—the periphery of the periphery—continue to live in the dark, some with the equipment (machinery) but not the tools (knowledge) to promote  the same socioeconomic empowerment of their richer counterparts
  • a majority of the targeted populations have not become integrated like their more affluent neighbors
  • a problem of knowledge and sustainable innovation
  • over the last 10 years, the digital divide has been shrinking in terms of accessibility based on the numbers of fixed phone lines, mobile subscribers, and Internet users around the world.
  • Few reports can be found focusing on specific countries within the region, leading most international analysts to base their generalizations based on the experience on similar groups of countries
  • Unprecedented economic growth now gives Latin America the opportunity to address some of its most pressing need
  • opportunities in Latin America for sales growth are considered massive, especially for equipment manufacturers and as well as for telecom services providers
  • government-sponsored programs focus mostly on expanding access
  • computer ownership continues to rise with unprecedented speed, even if Internet access proliferation follows at much reduced speed.
  • policy initiatives have remained access-obsessed without evolving to tackle some of the effects of persistent inequality characteristic of the region
  • Dr. Sanabria successfully managed to implement ICTs to give medical advice to remote, marginalized communities
  • an understanding of how technology penetration works can, with some innovation, breed sustainable and meaningful development
  • the work of Fundación Proyecto Maniapure and other organizations like it are having a more lasting impact in alleviating poverty, health deficits, and inequality, than perhaps some nationally sponsored projects that are bringing more technology to communities, but are not quite putting it to its full possible use.
Javier E

In Honduras, Deaths Make U.S. Rethink Drug War - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Fearful that Central America was becoming overrun by organized crime, perhaps worse than in the worst parts of Mexico, the State Department, the D.E.A. and the Pentagon rushed ahead this year with a muscular antidrug program with several Latin American nations, hoping to protect Honduras and use it as a chokepoint to cut off the flow of drugs heading north.
  • the antidrug cooperation, often promoted as a model of international teamwork, into a case study of what can go wrong when the tactics of war are used to fight a crime problem that goes well beyond drugs.
  • “You can’t cure the whole body by just treating the arm,” said Edmundo Orellana, Honduras’s former defense minister and attorney general. “You have to heal the whole thing.”
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  • A sweeping new plan for Honduras, focused more on judicial reform and institution-building, is now being jointly developed by Honduras and the United States. But State Department officials must first reassure Congress that the deaths have been investigated and that new safeguards, like limits on the role of American forces, will be put in place.
  • the new plan, according to a recent draft shown to The New York Times, is more aspirational than anything aimed at combating drugs and impunity in Mexico, or Colombia before that. It includes not just boats and helicopters, but also broad restructuring: several new investigative entities, an expanded vetting program for the police, more power for prosecutors, and a network of safe houses for witnesses.
  • The country’s homicide rate is among the highest in the world, and corruption has chewed through government from top to bottom.
  • The foreign minister, Mr. Corrales, a hulk of a man with a loud laugh and a degree in engineering, said he visited Washington in early 2011 with a request for help in four areas: investigation, impunity, organized crime and corruption.
  • Members of the Honduran police teams told government investigators that they took their orders from the D.E.A. Americans officials said that the FAST teams, deploying tactics honed in Afghanistan, did not feel confident in the Hondurans’ abilities to take the lead.
  • there were no detailed rules governing American participation in law enforcement operations. Honduran officials also described cases in which the rules of engagement for the D.E.A. and the police were vague and ad hoc.
  • the killing — along with the soaring homicide rate and the increased trafficking — sounded alarms in Washington: “It raised for us the specter of Honduras becoming another northern Mexico.”
  • Representative Howard L. Berman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to Mrs. Clinton, “Unfortunately, this is not the first time the United States has come perilously close to an overmilitarized strategy toward a country too small and institutionally weak for its citizens to challenge the policy.”
  • Mr. Brownfield, the assistant secretary, said it was impossible to “offer a zero risk program for interdicting drugs in Central America.” He noted that the shootings during interdiction raids happened in the middle of the night, in remote locations that were hard for investigators to reach. Despite these challenges, he said that investigations were conducted and that he was “basically satisfied” that he knew what had happened.
  • From the moment the Honduran pilot departed in his aging Tucano turboprop, just before midnight, he was in radio contact with Colombian authorities, who regularly receive radar intelligence from the American military’s Southern Command.
  • Mr. Corrales, the foreign minister, and some American officials have concluded that the downed planes amounted to misapplied military justice, urged on by societal anger and the broader weaknesses of Honduras’s institutions.
  • Creating a stronger system is at the core of what some officials are now calling Anvil II. A draft of the plan provided by Mr. Corrales shows a major shift toward shoring up judicial institutions with new entities focused on organized and financial crime.
  • The D.E.A.’s role will also probably change. A
  • “It’s a tragedy; there is no confidence in the state,” she said, wearing black in her university office. The old game of cocaine cat-and-mouse tends to look like a quicker fix, she said, with its obvious targets and clear victories measured in tons seized.
  • “This moment presents us with an opportunity for institutional reform,” Dr. Castellanos said. But that will depend on whether the new effort goes after more than just drugs and uproots the criminal networks that have already burrowed into Honduran society.
oliviaodon

ICT at COP21: Enormous Potential to Mitigate Emissions - 0 views

  • ICTs—including the Internet, mobile phones, geographic information systems (GIS), satellite imaging, remote sensing, and data analytics—could reduce yearly global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) 20% by 2030, thus holding them at their 2015 level.
  • ICTs are also critical for climate change adaptation, providing vital tools for all phases of the disaster risk management cycle. Although the opportunities for ICTs to support the climate change agenda are enormous, much work remains in order to realize them. Governments of developing countries must be further encouraged to include ICTs in their national climate change policies.
  • By 2030, ICTs could eliminate the equivalent of 12.1 billion tons of CO2 per year in five sectors—transport (30% of the total reduction), manufacturing (22%), agriculture and food (17%), buildings (16%), and energy (15%).
nick_gauthier

Human Rights Opportunities in Nicaragua - 0 views

  • combines the efforts of community-based organizations, volunteers, interns, and donors to
  • Educate women on basic human rights and how to assert these rights
  • Support the rights of children against mistreatment, abandonment, molestation, abuse, drug dependence, and child labor through various education programs
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  • Provide legal and psychological support for victims
  • Support the lobby of government and legislative authorities about issues and solutions regarding violence against women.
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    FSD (foundation for sustainable development) is a non-profit that addresses human rights issues throughout Nicaragua. The issues it endeavors to address are educating women on basic human rights, supporting the rights of children against mistreatment, and supporting the lobby of government and legislative authorities about issues and solutions regarding violence against women.
malonema1

Environmental Sustainability Issues in Nicaragua - 0 views

  • As both the largest country in Central America and the least populated, Nicaragua has the opportunity to enforce environmental protection laws and conserve a relatively large amount of natural resources. However, a variety of forces are driving deforestation and rapidly increasing pollution.
  • Known as the "Land of Lakes and Volcanoes," and reveling in its status in Central America as the country with the most fresh water, Nicaragua has very little safe drinking water. Those who cannot afford to purchase water are extremely vulnerable to a variety of health issues.
  • Export agriculture in Central America has long been a booming business for U.S. corporations. Yet pesticides employed at fruit and cotton plantations and other export crops throughout the last 40 years contributed to health problems for entire generations.
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  • Around 75 percent of Nicaraguan forests have already been transformed into crop and pasture land, and at least 50 percent of that deforestation has occurred since 1950. Yet there is still hope for preservation.
  • Due to policy shifts, 85 percent of the land that formed part of the reserve on the San Cristobal-Casitas volcano now belongs to one private owner
  • overnment control of the remaining 15 percent is all but nonexistent. Landless peasants, large coffee growers, and cattle ranches are slowly settling into these public lands such as San Cristobal, and the government is failing to stop it
  • When the Chamorro government created the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve in 1991, the territory encompassed 1.8 million acres—7 percent of Nicaragua's land, including a rich section of rainforest. However, they neglected to inform the Mayangna and Miskito indigenous peoples who lived there that the land was now federally protected (and hence, off limits from their traditional uses of fishing, hunting, and crop raising)
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    This article talks about the land rights in Nicaragua and the lack of protection for forests.
horowitzza

Witness for Peace : Informal Economies: Reflections from a recent delegation ... - 0 views

  • In Nicaragua, I came to understand the reasons that poor people, sometimes accompanied by their children, sold newspapers, snacks, and washed windshields while standing in the swirl of traffic
  • observed the many ways that poor Nicaraguans struggled to support their families.
  • Clearly in both India and Nicaragua there are not enough job opportunities with fair wages, and poor people are unable to provide for their families by working in the formal economy
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  • my experiences in Nicaragua changed my perspective. I hope to continue my travels in the developing world, and I want some of those travels to be with Witness for Peace
nick_gauthier

OAS: Save Human Rights Body | Human Rights Watch - 0 views

  • Member countries of the Organization of American
  • Member countries of the Organization of American
  • Member countries of the Organization of American
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  • Member countries of the Organization of American
  • States (OAS) should promptly ensure that the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights receives enough financial support to fulfill its mandate, Human Rights Watch said today. The commission, a key defender of human rights in the Americas, faces a financial crisis that threatens justice and protection to victims of abuses across the continent.
  • If OAS member countries don’t address this financial crisis, it will cast serious doubts on their commitment to human rights, and raise suspicions that they want to do away with the commission’s scrutiny.”
  • Such standards relate, amongst others, to the incompatibility of amnesties for serious human rights violations with human rights law, the scope of criminal military jurisdiction, access to public information, the rights of LGBT people, and gender-based violence.
  • OAS member states fail to promptly address this financial crisis, the risks for activists, human rights defenders, and others are likely to increase, Human Rights Watch said.
  • dozens of human rights organizations bring complaints of abuses before the commission and have the opportunity to call government authorities to account on their rights record in what is the most important human rights forum in the Americas
  • However, the OAS has yet to live up to its commitment and the commission continues to rely on voluntary donations, which account for around half of its budget. Such donations – especially from non-OAS member states – steeply decreased in 2015 and 2016, fostering this financial crisis.
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    This article is a plea for money to fund the IACHR which relies 50% on volunteers and donations, when in fact it needs money from OAS member states and the OAS to fully support itself and advocate sufficiently for Human Rights.
anonymous

Weston: $2 million not earmarked for PM's wife - 0 views

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    The nations is able to deal with the conflict of gender inequality by providing women with opportunity in the business world
Javier E

The Prospect of Peace in Colombia - The New York Times - 1 views

  • If a final accord is signed within six months, as the negotiators have pledged, Colombia would offer an example of hard-won peacemaking at a time when so many other conflicts, which are spawning the largest wave of refugees since World War II, seem intractable.
  • As of last year, the three-way fight among guerrilla factions, government forces and right-wing paramilitary bands that often acted as proxies for the state, had killed more than 220,000 people and displaced an estimated 5.7 million. At the peak of the conflict, in 2000, kidnappings for ransom surpassed 3,000 a year.
  • The talks have forced Colombians to take stock of a painful past and face uncomfortable truths. Dozens of victims traveled to Havana to speak about abuses they endured at the hands of guerrilla leaders. Some implicated government forces in brutal acts. When I met some young FARC members in Havana last year during a reporting trip, I came to see them in a new light as they described taking up arms as a desperate choice they were forced to make to survive.
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  • The special war tribunals the government intends to establish to start adjudicating crimes will be dismissed as kangaroo courts by those who would have favored a military defeat of the FARC. I would argue, though, that this path will give Colombians an opportunity to start building a fairer society, one in which merit and talent matter more than last name and pedigree.
Javier E

Caribbean Nations to Seek Reparations, Putting Price on Damage of Slavery - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Spurred by a sense of injustice that has lingered for two centuries, the countries plan to compile an inventory of the lasting damage they believe they suffered and then demand an apology and reparations from the former colonial powers of Britain, France and the Netherlands.
  • “Our constant search and struggle for development resources is linked directly to the historical inability of our nations to accumulate wealth from the efforts of our peoples during slavery and colonialism,” said Baldwin Spencer, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, in July this year. Reparations, he said, must be directed toward repairing the damage inflicted by slavery and racism.
  • “What happened in the Caribbean and West Africa was so egregious we feel that bringing a case in the I.C.J. would have a decent chance of success,” Mr. Day said. “The fact that you were subjugating a whole class of people in a massively discriminatory way has no parallel,” he added.
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  • Some Caribbean nations have already begun assessing the lasting damage they suffered, ranging from stunted educational and economic opportunities to dietary and health problems, Mr. Day said.
Javier E

Brazil's European Dream - 0 views

  • The news that Brazil has overtaken Britain to become the world's sixth largest economic power is being touted as a sign that that the longtime "country of the future" has finally arrived.
  • In the past 20 years, Brazil has become well known for turning crisis situations into geopolitical opportunities, becoming a leading voice in international forums devoted to AIDS, poverty, and even the environment. And now, it is doing it again with a challenge that Brazilians understand all too well: a debt crisis.
  • The IMF contributions stem from Rousseff's intention to maintain a tradition that began under her predecessor, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of using foreign assistance as a means to strengthen Brazil's international reputation and influence. Yet another example is Brazil's annual contributions to the World Bank, which have averaged $253 million from 2004 to 2009. Brazil was the first nation to contribute -- $ 55 million -- to the World Bank's Haitian Reconstruction Fund. From 2003-2007, Brazil also gave approximately $340 million to fund the U.N.'s operations. Lula also increased Brazil's contribution to the U.N.'s World Food Program from $ 1 million in 2009 to $ 27 million in 2011.
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  • in 1998, it was the Brazilian government, under President Fernando H. Cardoso, that was running to the IMF for assistance. Brazil was trying to recover from a capital flight of roughly $30 billion dollars, triggered by a lack of foreign investor confidence due to exorbitant debt and recession. To help quell investor speculation that Brazil would default (like Russia did months earlier), the IMF provided a bailout package of $41 billion on the condition that Cardoso prune government expenditures by 20 percent and reform the pension system.
  • in 2001, after a steep decline in foreign investment, currency depreciation, and a debt crisis in neighboring Argentina, Brazil essentially begged the IMF to help avoid a default on its external debt. This time the government received $15 billion in exchange for reducing federal expenditures and maintaining a primary budget surplus of approximately 3.75 percent through 2005.
  • Rousseff also wants an expanded role for Brazil within the IMF, along with the other BRICS, mainly through increased quota shares and voting rights. She has joined her colleagues from China, India, Russia, and South Africa in emphasizing that the IMF needs to recognize the importance of the world's largest emerging economies
  • Rousseff's European strategy is a smart move. By providing financial support in time of need, Brazil can strengthen its partnership and economic relationship with several European countries, as well as with the IMF. And by lending a hand, Rousseff may be able to garner more European support as she strives to boost Brazil's influence within the U.N. system and the IMF. Through these calculated endeavors, Rousseff can signal that Brazil isn't just arriving on the international scene, it's here to stay.
Javier E

Mexico Faces Growing Gap Between Political Class and Calls for Change - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “What has been proposed as solutions are like treating cancer with an aspirin,” said Juan Pardinas, a political analyst at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a research group based here. “There is a kind of deafness on their part without recognizing the huge opportunity to change things in Mexico as a result of this crisis.”
  • “It is a historic breach here,” said Mauricio Merino, an analyst at CIDE, a Mexico City policy institute, and one of 80 intellectuals and representatives of watchdog groups who called on political leaders this week to jettison the proposal for a single special prosecutor and instead create an independent body to fight corruption at the highest levels. “The political class has the power, and they are trying to keep it.”
  • “The federal government has shown a very limited and inappropriate capability to react, and it hasn’t found a rhetoric and narrative that fits this moment of crisis,” he said. “It will be very hard for him to find it, since every discovery and confirmation of the students’ death only fuels the movement and empowers people to mobilize.”
Javier E

Brazil's Red-Scare Nostalgia - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • According to a recent poll by Datafolha, more Brazilians identify with right-wing ideas, like looser gun restrictions, than they did last year. Although 58 percent of Brazilians believe that poverty relates to a lack of opportunities, 37 percent insist that laziness is the main cause of it. This was a major point of debate during the election: One side argued for meritocracy and less government aid; the other, for more public spending to reduce inequality.
  • Corruption is not what the right wing fears most. Just as in the ’60s, the Brazilian middle and upper classes are intensely afraid of the Communist threat.
  • The truth is that Ms. Rousseff’s Workers Party has been in power for more than 11 years and has so far failed to establish even a hint of the dreaded dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary: The once radical party has come to look increasingly centrist, adopting many of the practices of its neoliberal rivals. It has employed orthodox economic policies in order to maintain market stability; it hasn’t nationalized any assets but rather favored the privatization of ports, highways and airports; and Ms. Rousseff’s new ministers include an ally of agribusiness and nemesis of environmentalists, Katia Abreu, as agriculture minister, and a fiscally conservative banker, Joaquim Levy, as finance minister. This year, the profits of Brazilian private banks increased 26.9 percent. According to the “Top 1,000 World Banks” survey, Brazil is ranked seventh in banking profits.
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  • In spite of that, lots of people keep on fearing the Communist boogeymen and are ready to take action on this matter, either through street rallies, pleas to the army, petitions to the United States or even by moving out of the country. “Brazilian people are feeling hopeless,” said an actor at an event a while ago. “Every day I see people wanting to move to Miami.”
krystalxu

'But what about the railways ...?' ​​The myth of Britain's gifts to India | W... - 0 views

  • the British took what they could for 200 years, but didn’t they also leave behind a great deal of lasting benefit?
  • Indeed, the British like to point out that the very idea of “India” as one entity (now three, but one during the British Raj), instead of multiple warring principalities and statelets, is the incontestable contribution of British imperial rule.
  • The idea of India is as old as the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, which describe “Bharatvarsha” as the land between the Himalayas and the seas.
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  • Indian Muslims, whether Pathans from the north-west or Tamils from the south, were all seen by Arabs as “Hindis”
  • there is little doubt that some Indian ruler, emulating his forerunners, would have done so.
  • the dismantling of existing political institutions, the fomenting of communal division and systematic political discrimination with a view to maintaining British domination.
  • Later, in 1857, the sight of Hindu and Muslim soldiers rebelling together,
  • As early as 1859, the then British governor of Bombay, Lord Elphinstone, advised London that “Divide et impera was the old Roman maxim, and it should be ours”.
  • The effort to understand ethnic, religious, sectarian and caste differences among Britain’s subjects inevitably became an exercise in defining, dividing and perpetuating these differences.
  • As late as 1920, under the Montagu-Chelmsford “reforms”, Indian representatives on the councils – elected by a franchise so restricted and selective that only one in 250 Indians had the right to vote
  • many other kinds of social strife were labelled as religious due to the colonists’ orientalist assumption that religion was the fundamental division in Indian society.
  • the creation and perpetuation of Hindu–Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of British imperial policy
  • The British ran government, tax collection, and administered what passed for justice.
  • Indians were excluded from all of these functions.
  • entire new communities were created by people who had not consciously thought of themselves as particularly different from others around them.
  • Democracy, in other words, had to be prised from the reluctant grasp of the British by Indian nationalists.
  • British law had to be imposed upon an older and more complex civilisation with its own legal culture
  • only three cases can be found of Englishmen executed for murdering Indians, while the murders of thousands more at British hands went unpunished.
  • In his notorious 1835 Minute on Education, Lord Macaulay articulated the classic reason for teaching English, but only to a small minority of Indians
  • The language was taught to a few to serve as intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled
  • But the facts are even more damning.
  • the third-class compartments, with their wooden benches and total absence of amenities, into which Indians were herded, attracted horrified comment even at the time
  • their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives.
  • today rely extensively on Indian technical expertise, provided to them by Rites, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways.
  • The process of colonial rule in India meant economic exploitation and ruin to millions, the destruction of thriving industries, the systematic denial of opportunities to compete, the elimination of indigenous institutions of governance, the transformation of lifestyles and patterns of living that had flourished since time immemorial, and the obliteration of the most precious possessions of the colonised, their identities and their self-respect.
  • In the 17th and 18th centuries, British shopkeepers tried to pass off shoddy English-made textiles as Indian in order to charge higher prices for them.
  • there is no earthly reason why this could not again have been the case, if its resources had not been drained away by the British.
  • Today Indians cannot live without the railways;
  • As I’ve often argued, you don’t need to seek revenge upon history. History is its own revenge.
mikecoons

Antigua and Barbuda | Country report | Freedom in the World | 2013 - 0 views

  • The government of Antigua and Barbuda took steps in 2012 to reform the country’s financial regulatory environment in the aftermath of the discovery of a $7 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, which had exposed deep ties between foreign businesses and the government
  • Antigua and Barbuda, a member of the Commonwealth, gained its independence from Britain in 1981.
  • In the 2004 elections, the opposition United Progressive Party (UPP), led by Baldwin Spencer, defeated Prime Minister Lester Bird and the ruling Antigua Labour Party (ALP), ending the Bird political dynasty that had governed the country since 1976.
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  • Fallout from the collapse of the Stanford Financial Group’s companies, which had been one of the main providers of jobs in the country, as well as the global economic downturn and the consequent decline in tourism, continued to impact Antigua and Barbuda’s economy in 2012.
  • Antigua and Barbuda is an electoral democracy. The 1981 constitution establishes a parliamentary system, with a governor general representing the British monarch as ceremonial head of state.
  • Parliament is composed of the 17-seat House of Representatives (16 seats for Antigua, 1 for Barbuda), to which members are elected for five-year terms, and an appointed 17-seat Senate.
  • Antigua and Barbuda generally respects freedom of the press. However, defamation remains a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison, and politicians often file libel suits against opposing party members.
  • The government owns one of three radio stations and the public television station. There are no restrictions on access to the internet.
  • The government generally respects religious and academic freedoms.
  • Crime continues to be a problem in Antigua and Barbuda, and the government has responded with increased community policing, the reintroduction of roadblocks, and stiffer fines for firearms violations. The United Nations Development Programme’s 2012 Caribbean Human Development Report reported that Antigua and Barbuda suffers from a high rate of property crimes, such as robberies, with a lower violent crime rate. The country’s prison is overcrowded and conditions are very poor.
  • The 2005 Equal Opportunity Act bars discrimination on the basis of race, gender, class, political affinity, or place of origin. However, societal discrimination and violence against women remain problems.
  • Women hold only 10 percent of the elected seats of the House of Representatives. Male and female same-sex sexual activity also remains criminalized under a 1995 law, and there have been cases of excessive force and discrimination of people based on sexual orientation at the hands of the police. Antigua and Barbuda serves as both a destination and transit country for the trafficking of men, women, and children for the purposes of forced labor and prostitution.
  • Antigua and Barbuda’s political rights rating improved from 3 to 2 due to a decline in corrupt foreign business influence over the government.
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    This article is a general description of the issues faced by Antigua and Barbuda, particularly political issues. This article also talks about the 7 billion dollar Ponzi scheme from 2012 that showed how foreign business and Antigua's government interacted. This article also talked about the elections, and in my opinion the government and its elections seemed fair. This article was helpful to my study of Antigua and Barbuda because it give me an overview of the countries government, and economy.
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    Political ratings have gone down in A&B.
mikecoons

The state of democracy in Latin America | Latin America and the Caribbean | Internation... - 0 views

  • Both globally and in the Latin American region we are witnessing a sea change, accompanied by opportunities but also by new challenges and threats for the quality of democracy.
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    This article is about the situations of democracy in Latin America. Antigua and Barbuda is facing many of these challenges, including dissatisfaction with political leaders.
luckangeloja

Antigua behind the brochures: gangsters' paradise? | The Independent - 0 views

  • Gun crime and gang violence are on a sharp rise among Antigua's young, linked to a global trade in guns and marijuana, crack and other cocaine, a traffic that has put the island and its neighbours at a vital crossroads between the narcotics producers of South America and the eager consumers of the US and Europe. These drugs seep into the population, payment in kind for dealers, or simply an impossible lure at prices that are a fraction of the street prices in the developed world, sometimes as low as US$1 (50p) for a rock of crack cocaine.
  • Eric Clapton, the guitarist, was so shocked by the effects that crack and other drugs were having on the population that he set up the Crossroads rehab centre in Antigua in 1998.
  • Kim Martin, the admissions director at Crossroads, says: "Crack cocaine is the number-one substance of abuse for our Antiguan clients, followed by alcohol. It was the influx of crack that caused members of the community to approach Clapton in the first place and it is still very visible, particularly in some parts of the island, which is leading to crime."
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  • Only a few blocks up the hill and the shops and banks give way to more dishevelled buildings, run-down stores selling only a handful of items, homes with crumbling front steps. There is no shortage of opportunity to find drugs, as twenty-something men make their friendly approach to tourists.
  • Antigua's police appear hopelessly out of their depth. The police station on the high street in St John's is crumbling. The new commissioner, brought in from Canada with other former Mounties, has put his energies into solving the lack of funds and infrastructure within the organisation.
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    This article was actually based off an incident that a couple had while they were staying in Antigua for vacation. Although their incident had nothing to do with drugs, the article eventually shifted to this topic. It discussed how the cheap cost of drugs is a huge reason for the overuse of them. Members from the rehab center "Crossroads" discussed how drugs have really been seeping through the community. The police are also struggling to control the outburst of drugs.
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