the real world
exposing how greed, corruption, and imperialism impacts the world
and exposes the leaders who benefit
apr 23, 2018
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men
Mahatma Gandhi
articles
*Not welcome in Colombia, indigenous migrants stuck at border after fleeing Venezuela(ARTICLE BELOW)
*World Bank recommends fewer regulations protecting workers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*It finally happened: Goldman Sachs asks 'Is curing patients a sustainable business model?'(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Worker: Fukushima was supposed to have massive seawall
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A New David and an Old Goliath: Africa and the Tobacco Industry
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The African Nation of Djibouti Is Quickly Becoming a Military Outpost for U.S., China, Italy and Others — But Will It Pay Off?(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
Saudis See Chemical, Oil-Refining Bonanza Along U.S. Gulf Coast
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The Coca-Cola Invasion Is Causing Mexico's Slow Death by Junk Food
(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
Not welcome in Colombia, indigenous migrants stuck at border after fleeing Venezuela
Members of the Yukpa group have crossed the border to escape the crisis at home, but unlike other migrants they have been deported twice and have repeatedly clashed with border officials
Dylan Baddour in Cúcuta
the guardian
Mon 23 Apr 2018 03.00 EDT
Late last year, 12-year-old Betania heard talk among her neighbors that there was a city not far away where they could find food.
“My mother said, ‘Betania, go away from here, because we are suffering hunger. Look how your siblings are; they don’t have anything in their bellies,’” she recalled.
So Betania bid farewell to her family, left their remote village in the mountains of western Venezuela and walked 300km (186 miles) to the Colombian border city of Cúcuta.
Camped on the far bank of the Táchira river, she found hundreds of fellow members of the Yukpa indigenous community who had also fled starvation and sickness in Venezuela, where scarcity caused by a spiraling economic collapse has penetrated even rural indigenous communities.
The Yukpa are a tiny handful compared to the hundreds of thousands Venezuelans who have crossed the border in recent years to escape hyperinflation, spiraling crime and a seemingly endless political crisis at home. But unlike the other migrants, this indigenous group has been deported twice.
Both times, they walked back to Colombia, where they set up camp again on the riverbank. Now, they are stuck: unwilling to go back to Venezuela, unwelcome to move forward in Colombia.
“You know why I came here? Because I can’t stay back there without food, without money, without clothes, without anything,” said Anteli Romero, 28, a Yukpa artesan from the mountains outside the city of Machiques. “Now they’re saying that they don’t want the Yukpa here – they’re saying we came here for nothing.”
Around 500 members of the group are camped out by the river, including several dozen pregnant women. Members of the group sleep in the open or in shelters assembled from recycled material. In the evening, a dozen small fires flicker in the woods as those with food cook white rice or corn cakes.
While the masses of other Venezuelan migrants have dispersed into cities across Colombia, the Yukpa’s concentrated presence on the border has irritated local authorities.
Members of the group have repeatedly clashed with Colombian border officials, and even threatened them with bows and arrows.
Relations between Colombia and Venezuela have been tetchy for several years, but in January, authorities on the two countries co-operated to clear the riverbank encampment, and return about 500 Yukpa to their lands outside the city of Machiques.
The Yukpa said they was still no food or medicine there, so they walked back.
In March, authorities in Cúcuta deported the Yukpa again. But many returned, and more keep arriving.
“Back in Venezuela, we sometimes go the entire day without food. That’s why everyone is coming here,” said Arbelei Landino, another Yukpa migrant.
When the current migration crisis erupted two years ago, Colombia initially responded by granting legal residence for working Venezuelans. In February it withdrew those privileges and deployed 3,000 troops to the border.
But the tide of migrants over the open border has proven impossible to stop. Activists say the government must invest in a proper response before the situation becomes unmanageable.
“The government has no idea how to handle this situation,” said Father Francesko Bortignon, who runs a migrant safe house in Cúcuta.
The Yukpa, whose ancestral territories straddle the border and predate both Colombia and Venezuela, have tried to invoke their rights as a bi-national tribe.
In theory, Colombia’s constitution recognizes the right to citizenship to members of such groups and extends special protections to preserve indigenous communities, but Yukpa leaders say the 15,000-member tribe have not received any of those protections.
Colombia’s interior ministry has said it must take a census of the Yukpa to certify their indigenous identity. Until then, they’ll be regarded as Venezuelans living illegally in Cúcuta.
“The attitude of the government is: ‘hide the poor, they look ugly’,” said Andres Berona, legal adviser for the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC). “These actions are motivated by racism against the indigenous people.”
Facing a complicated humanitarian and diplomatic crisis, Colombia authorities – local and national – simply took the easiest option, he said.
The Cúcuta mayor’s office did not respond to requests, but previously told local media that the Yukpa were becoming involved in the smuggling across the border.
Barona with ONIC said the government should give the Yukpa space to live and guarantee them access to food, clean water and latrines while it figures out a plan.
Amid a humanitarian crisis which has already overwhelmed government and international aid, indigenous groups have often been neglected said Deborah Hines, Colombia director of the World Food Program.
“We focus on indigenous communities because they tend to be the most vulnerable people,” she said.
But many in the Yukpa camp said that life by the river was better than back home. At least here, a few coins can buy a bag of rice. In Venezuela, there is no rice to be found.
“We got tired of suffering so much hunger. So we came here,” said Angel Romero, 32. “We hope they will help us.”
“My mother said, ‘Betania, go away from here, because we are suffering hunger. Look how your siblings are; they don’t have anything in their bellies,’” she recalled.
So Betania bid farewell to her family, left their remote village in the mountains of western Venezuela and walked 300km (186 miles) to the Colombian border city of Cúcuta.
Camped on the far bank of the Táchira river, she found hundreds of fellow members of the Yukpa indigenous community who had also fled starvation and sickness in Venezuela, where scarcity caused by a spiraling economic collapse has penetrated even rural indigenous communities.
The Yukpa are a tiny handful compared to the hundreds of thousands Venezuelans who have crossed the border in recent years to escape hyperinflation, spiraling crime and a seemingly endless political crisis at home. But unlike the other migrants, this indigenous group has been deported twice.
Both times, they walked back to Colombia, where they set up camp again on the riverbank. Now, they are stuck: unwilling to go back to Venezuela, unwelcome to move forward in Colombia.
“You know why I came here? Because I can’t stay back there without food, without money, without clothes, without anything,” said Anteli Romero, 28, a Yukpa artesan from the mountains outside the city of Machiques. “Now they’re saying that they don’t want the Yukpa here – they’re saying we came here for nothing.”
Around 500 members of the group are camped out by the river, including several dozen pregnant women. Members of the group sleep in the open or in shelters assembled from recycled material. In the evening, a dozen small fires flicker in the woods as those with food cook white rice or corn cakes.
While the masses of other Venezuelan migrants have dispersed into cities across Colombia, the Yukpa’s concentrated presence on the border has irritated local authorities.
Members of the group have repeatedly clashed with Colombian border officials, and even threatened them with bows and arrows.
Relations between Colombia and Venezuela have been tetchy for several years, but in January, authorities on the two countries co-operated to clear the riverbank encampment, and return about 500 Yukpa to their lands outside the city of Machiques.
The Yukpa said they was still no food or medicine there, so they walked back.
In March, authorities in Cúcuta deported the Yukpa again. But many returned, and more keep arriving.
“Back in Venezuela, we sometimes go the entire day without food. That’s why everyone is coming here,” said Arbelei Landino, another Yukpa migrant.
When the current migration crisis erupted two years ago, Colombia initially responded by granting legal residence for working Venezuelans. In February it withdrew those privileges and deployed 3,000 troops to the border.
But the tide of migrants over the open border has proven impossible to stop. Activists say the government must invest in a proper response before the situation becomes unmanageable.
“The government has no idea how to handle this situation,” said Father Francesko Bortignon, who runs a migrant safe house in Cúcuta.
The Yukpa, whose ancestral territories straddle the border and predate both Colombia and Venezuela, have tried to invoke their rights as a bi-national tribe.
In theory, Colombia’s constitution recognizes the right to citizenship to members of such groups and extends special protections to preserve indigenous communities, but Yukpa leaders say the 15,000-member tribe have not received any of those protections.
Colombia’s interior ministry has said it must take a census of the Yukpa to certify their indigenous identity. Until then, they’ll be regarded as Venezuelans living illegally in Cúcuta.
“The attitude of the government is: ‘hide the poor, they look ugly’,” said Andres Berona, legal adviser for the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC). “These actions are motivated by racism against the indigenous people.”
Facing a complicated humanitarian and diplomatic crisis, Colombia authorities – local and national – simply took the easiest option, he said.
The Cúcuta mayor’s office did not respond to requests, but previously told local media that the Yukpa were becoming involved in the smuggling across the border.
Barona with ONIC said the government should give the Yukpa space to live and guarantee them access to food, clean water and latrines while it figures out a plan.
Amid a humanitarian crisis which has already overwhelmed government and international aid, indigenous groups have often been neglected said Deborah Hines, Colombia director of the World Food Program.
“We focus on indigenous communities because they tend to be the most vulnerable people,” she said.
But many in the Yukpa camp said that life by the river was better than back home. At least here, a few coins can buy a bag of rice. In Venezuela, there is no rice to be found.
“We got tired of suffering so much hunger. So we came here,” said Angel Romero, 32. “We hope they will help us.”
slavery promoted worldwide!!!
World Bank recommends fewer regulations protecting workers
Unions alarmed by suggestion that deep structural reforms are required to adjust to changing nature of work
Larry Elliott Economics editor
the guardian
Fri 20 Apr 2018 01.00 EDT
The World Bank is proposing lower minimum wages and greater hiring and firing powers for employers as part of a wide-ranging deregulation of labour markets deemed necessary to prepare countries for the changing nature of work.
A working draft of the bank’s flagship World Development Report – which will urge policy action from governments when it comes out in the autumn – says less “burdensome” regulations are needed so that firms can hire workers at lower cost. The controversial recommendations, which are aimed mainly at developing countries, have alarmed groups representing labour, which say they have so far been frozen out of the Bank’s consultation process.
Peter Bakvis, Washington representative for the International Trade Union Confederation, said the proposals were harmful, retrograde and out of synch with the shared-prosperity agenda put forward by the bank’s president Jim Yong Kim.
He added that the WDR’s vision of the future world of work would see firms relieved of the burden of contributing to social security, have the flexibility to pay wages as low as they wanted, and to fire at will. Unions would have a diminished role in new arrangements for “expanding workers’ voices”.
The paper “almost completely ignores workers’ rights, asymmetric power in the labour market and phenomena such as declining labour share in national income,” Bakvis said.
The International Labour Organisation has also expressed alarm at the proposals, which include the right for employers to opt out of paying minimum wages if they introduce profit-sharing schemes for their workers.
The WDR draft says: “High minimum wages, undue restrictions on hiring and firing, strict contract forms, all make workers more expensive vis-à-vis technology.”
Five years ago, the World Bank’s 2013 World Development Report concluded that labour regulations had little or no impact on employment levels, but the draft for the 2019 WDR says that if workers are expensive to dismiss, fewer will be hired.
“Burdensome regulations also make it more expensive for firms to rearrange their workforce to accommodate changing technologies.”
The report is being prepared amid growing speculation about the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on employment and wages in future decades.
“Rapid changes to the nature of work put a premium on flexibility for firms to adjust their workforce, but also for those workers who benefit from more dynamic labor markets,” the draft says.
Bakvis said the draft “puts forward a policy programme of extensive labour market deregulation, including lower minimum wages, flexible dismissal procedures and UK-style zero-hours contracts. The resulting decline of workers’ incomes would be compensated in part by a basic level of social insurance to be financed largely by regressive consumption taxes.”
The paper says that labour regulations “protect the few who hold formal jobs while leaving out most workers” and the sort of social protection schemes that began with the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the late 19th century were not appropriate because they covered only a third of developing country populations.
Bakvis said the draft did not “examine options for incentivising the formalisation of work, despite the considerable efforts the ILO has made toward that goal and the real progress that has taken place in some developing countries to deliver the benefits of formalisation: legal protection of workers’ rights, including their right to safe workplaces, and access to social security.
“Instead, the WDR takes informality as an inevitable state and, worse, implies that it should even be promoted. Nor does it examine how the undermining of labour market institutions through deliberate corporate strategies such as outsourcing and disguised working relations [for example, classifying Uber drivers as independent contractors] can be countered by providing legal protections for these categories of workers.
“Workers in the platform economy who have engaged in campaigns for recognition of their rights have encountered fierce resistance from their companies.”
Bakvis added that the report insinuated support for companies such as Uber by agreeing that their workers were not employees but were “emerging as a separate labour category”.
A World Bank spokesman said: “To stimulate debate and draw attention to critical issues, the report will present a range of ideas for how governments can create the conditions for workers to benefit from huge shifts in technology, demographics, urbanisation and other factors.
“To end poverty and boost shared prosperity, it’s vital that we consider new initiatives to meet the disruption that will surely come from these structural changes. We encourage and look forward to comments and an evidence-driven discussion on this important topic.”
A working draft of the bank’s flagship World Development Report – which will urge policy action from governments when it comes out in the autumn – says less “burdensome” regulations are needed so that firms can hire workers at lower cost. The controversial recommendations, which are aimed mainly at developing countries, have alarmed groups representing labour, which say they have so far been frozen out of the Bank’s consultation process.
Peter Bakvis, Washington representative for the International Trade Union Confederation, said the proposals were harmful, retrograde and out of synch with the shared-prosperity agenda put forward by the bank’s president Jim Yong Kim.
He added that the WDR’s vision of the future world of work would see firms relieved of the burden of contributing to social security, have the flexibility to pay wages as low as they wanted, and to fire at will. Unions would have a diminished role in new arrangements for “expanding workers’ voices”.
The paper “almost completely ignores workers’ rights, asymmetric power in the labour market and phenomena such as declining labour share in national income,” Bakvis said.
The International Labour Organisation has also expressed alarm at the proposals, which include the right for employers to opt out of paying minimum wages if they introduce profit-sharing schemes for their workers.
The WDR draft says: “High minimum wages, undue restrictions on hiring and firing, strict contract forms, all make workers more expensive vis-à-vis technology.”
Five years ago, the World Bank’s 2013 World Development Report concluded that labour regulations had little or no impact on employment levels, but the draft for the 2019 WDR says that if workers are expensive to dismiss, fewer will be hired.
“Burdensome regulations also make it more expensive for firms to rearrange their workforce to accommodate changing technologies.”
The report is being prepared amid growing speculation about the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on employment and wages in future decades.
“Rapid changes to the nature of work put a premium on flexibility for firms to adjust their workforce, but also for those workers who benefit from more dynamic labor markets,” the draft says.
Bakvis said the draft “puts forward a policy programme of extensive labour market deregulation, including lower minimum wages, flexible dismissal procedures and UK-style zero-hours contracts. The resulting decline of workers’ incomes would be compensated in part by a basic level of social insurance to be financed largely by regressive consumption taxes.”
The paper says that labour regulations “protect the few who hold formal jobs while leaving out most workers” and the sort of social protection schemes that began with the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the late 19th century were not appropriate because they covered only a third of developing country populations.
Bakvis said the draft did not “examine options for incentivising the formalisation of work, despite the considerable efforts the ILO has made toward that goal and the real progress that has taken place in some developing countries to deliver the benefits of formalisation: legal protection of workers’ rights, including their right to safe workplaces, and access to social security.
“Instead, the WDR takes informality as an inevitable state and, worse, implies that it should even be promoted. Nor does it examine how the undermining of labour market institutions through deliberate corporate strategies such as outsourcing and disguised working relations [for example, classifying Uber drivers as independent contractors] can be countered by providing legal protections for these categories of workers.
“Workers in the platform economy who have engaged in campaigns for recognition of their rights have encountered fierce resistance from their companies.”
Bakvis added that the report insinuated support for companies such as Uber by agreeing that their workers were not employees but were “emerging as a separate labour category”.
A World Bank spokesman said: “To stimulate debate and draw attention to critical issues, the report will present a range of ideas for how governments can create the conditions for workers to benefit from huge shifts in technology, demographics, urbanisation and other factors.
“To end poverty and boost shared prosperity, it’s vital that we consider new initiatives to meet the disruption that will surely come from these structural changes. We encourage and look forward to comments and an evidence-driven discussion on this important topic.”
It finally happened: Goldman Sachs asks 'Is curing patients a sustainable business model?'
Walter Einenkel
Daily Kos Staff
Friday April 13, 2018 · 11:28 AM PDT
On April 10 in the year of our Lord, 2018, analysts at Goldman Sachs allegedly released a report titled “The Genome Revolution.” According to numerous news reports, the report delved into a pretty awkward subject--cures.
"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."
It isn’t “good business,” to be absolutely frank. We all know it isn’t. There are entire fringe worlds of conspiracy that continue to exist based on this one single kernel of truth. Why is this news now? Because science and medicine are getting very close to big and meaningful breakthroughs on diseases and maladies that were once only somewhat treatable with very expensive routines of medications. Gene therapy breakthroughs have been a big part of this, with the FDA approving promising gene therapy trials, and even more exciting results coming in from around the world. But as CNBC reports, solving serious problems for the public doesn’t mean you get to keep buying mega-yachts. Goldman Sachs analyst Salveen Richter has some bad news for our current “free market” system:
Richter cited Gilead Sciences' treatments for hepatitis C, which achieved cure rates of more than 90 percent. The company's U.S. sales for these hepatitis C treatments peaked at $12.5 billion in 2015, but have been falling ever since. Goldman estimates the U.S. sales for these treatments will be less than $4 billion this year, according to a table in the report.
"GILD is a case in point, where the success of its hepatitis C franchise has gradually exhausted the available pool of treatable patients," the analyst wrote. "In the case of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, curing existing patients also decreases the number of carriers able to transmit the virus to new patients, thus the incident pool also declines … Where an incident pool remains stable (eg, in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise."
The fact of the matter is that private industry spends a lot of money on scientific research because it’s extraordinarily profitable. But, governments spend money on scientific research as well, and some political parties believe that one of the many things our government should help to do, besides funding the arts and education, is to foster scientific research and innovation. Our current Republican-led government does not believe in that, having already laid out massive cuts to scientific research. They believe that private interests can innovate the best way possible to the best outcomes for the most people.
Most of us know that there is a better chance of Santa Claus showing up at our home and flying us to the moon than private industry doing what’s right for the world over what’s right for the bottom line of private industry.
"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."
It isn’t “good business,” to be absolutely frank. We all know it isn’t. There are entire fringe worlds of conspiracy that continue to exist based on this one single kernel of truth. Why is this news now? Because science and medicine are getting very close to big and meaningful breakthroughs on diseases and maladies that were once only somewhat treatable with very expensive routines of medications. Gene therapy breakthroughs have been a big part of this, with the FDA approving promising gene therapy trials, and even more exciting results coming in from around the world. But as CNBC reports, solving serious problems for the public doesn’t mean you get to keep buying mega-yachts. Goldman Sachs analyst Salveen Richter has some bad news for our current “free market” system:
Richter cited Gilead Sciences' treatments for hepatitis C, which achieved cure rates of more than 90 percent. The company's U.S. sales for these hepatitis C treatments peaked at $12.5 billion in 2015, but have been falling ever since. Goldman estimates the U.S. sales for these treatments will be less than $4 billion this year, according to a table in the report.
"GILD is a case in point, where the success of its hepatitis C franchise has gradually exhausted the available pool of treatable patients," the analyst wrote. "In the case of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, curing existing patients also decreases the number of carriers able to transmit the virus to new patients, thus the incident pool also declines … Where an incident pool remains stable (eg, in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise."
The fact of the matter is that private industry spends a lot of money on scientific research because it’s extraordinarily profitable. But, governments spend money on scientific research as well, and some political parties believe that one of the many things our government should help to do, besides funding the arts and education, is to foster scientific research and innovation. Our current Republican-led government does not believe in that, having already laid out massive cuts to scientific research. They believe that private interests can innovate the best way possible to the best outcomes for the most people.
Most of us know that there is a better chance of Santa Claus showing up at our home and flying us to the moon than private industry doing what’s right for the world over what’s right for the bottom line of private industry.
Worker: Fukushima was supposed to have massive seawall
Newsweek - raw story
14 APR 2018 AT 09:56 ET
A worker for the plant involved the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster said in a Japanese court Wednesday that his former boss was warned that a massive tsunami could strike the site, but delayed measures to build a protective wall to prevent it.
An unnamed employee of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) that owns the ruined Fukushima Daiichi or No.1, Nuclear Power Plant testified during a trial this week that a 2008 safety test showed an earthquake could cause a tsunami as high as 52 feet capable of pounding the coastal facility, according to The Asahi Shimbun. The company was initially set to build a seawall, but the employee told the court that former TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto suddenly dismissed the idea.
The potentially catastrophic scenario was brought up again during a meeting on March 7, 2011, compelling shocked regulators to again recommend a wall to shield the facility, The Japan Times reported. But it was too late already: A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami struck only four days later on March 11, 2011, leaving up to 18,500 people dead or missing and destroying the facility.
Three out of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima No.1 plant suffered devastating meltdowns. Muto, along with former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and former TEPCO Vice President Ichiro Takekuro were indicted in February 2016 and are facing trial for suspected professional negligence resulting in death or injury after the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl incident in 1986.
The multi-billion dollar effort to recover the site is far past schedule and over budget, but the TEPCO has claimed some recent successes. Six years after the disaster, the melted nuclear fuel was finally founded at the bottom of the partially submerged reactors. The site was so radioactive, even the robots previously sent it could not traverse the deadly core.
Efforts to retrieve the fuel, however, have been hampered as the $324 million ice wall that penetrated 100 feet into the earth failed to stop groundwater from leaking into the site, as Reuters reported last month. In fact, the amount of groundwater seeping into the facility may have increased since the highly-anticipated ice wall was installed last August, amounting to the latest setback in a cleanup process already beset by seemingly endless complications and miscalculations.
Removing this water adds to an already growing storage crisis on the site. TEPCO deliberately added water to cool off the plant's damaged reactors. After coming in contact with the plant, the coolant water and groundwater became tainted with a substance known as tritium, a byproduct of the nuclear process notoriously difficult to filter out of water. TEPCO has accumulated over 1 million tons of this tritium-laced water in 650 giant tanks, according to The Japan Times, and is urging the government to let the company begin dumping it into the ocean.
Some locals have protested this, however. While tritium was a natural byproduct of the nuclear process that experts have described as harmless in smaller doses and was dumped into oceans worldwide, Fukushima activists and fishermen have argued that dumping tritium, even in small quantities, would further hurt the reputation of the region, still synonymous with nuclear disaster. Nearby China and South Korea are among the nations that still restrict the import of certain products from Japan.
Lingering concerns about radiation have also reportedly kept many of the 160,000 residents that fled Fukushima from returning. Life, nevertheless, has begun to return to some parts of the crisis-stricken prefecture. The town of Okuma announced Wednesday that some citizens would be allowed to stay overnight starting next week for the first time since the March 2011 disaster, Japanese daily The Mainichi Shimbun said.
An unnamed employee of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) that owns the ruined Fukushima Daiichi or No.1, Nuclear Power Plant testified during a trial this week that a 2008 safety test showed an earthquake could cause a tsunami as high as 52 feet capable of pounding the coastal facility, according to The Asahi Shimbun. The company was initially set to build a seawall, but the employee told the court that former TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto suddenly dismissed the idea.
The potentially catastrophic scenario was brought up again during a meeting on March 7, 2011, compelling shocked regulators to again recommend a wall to shield the facility, The Japan Times reported. But it was too late already: A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami struck only four days later on March 11, 2011, leaving up to 18,500 people dead or missing and destroying the facility.
Three out of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima No.1 plant suffered devastating meltdowns. Muto, along with former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and former TEPCO Vice President Ichiro Takekuro were indicted in February 2016 and are facing trial for suspected professional negligence resulting in death or injury after the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl incident in 1986.
The multi-billion dollar effort to recover the site is far past schedule and over budget, but the TEPCO has claimed some recent successes. Six years after the disaster, the melted nuclear fuel was finally founded at the bottom of the partially submerged reactors. The site was so radioactive, even the robots previously sent it could not traverse the deadly core.
Efforts to retrieve the fuel, however, have been hampered as the $324 million ice wall that penetrated 100 feet into the earth failed to stop groundwater from leaking into the site, as Reuters reported last month. In fact, the amount of groundwater seeping into the facility may have increased since the highly-anticipated ice wall was installed last August, amounting to the latest setback in a cleanup process already beset by seemingly endless complications and miscalculations.
Removing this water adds to an already growing storage crisis on the site. TEPCO deliberately added water to cool off the plant's damaged reactors. After coming in contact with the plant, the coolant water and groundwater became tainted with a substance known as tritium, a byproduct of the nuclear process notoriously difficult to filter out of water. TEPCO has accumulated over 1 million tons of this tritium-laced water in 650 giant tanks, according to The Japan Times, and is urging the government to let the company begin dumping it into the ocean.
Some locals have protested this, however. While tritium was a natural byproduct of the nuclear process that experts have described as harmless in smaller doses and was dumped into oceans worldwide, Fukushima activists and fishermen have argued that dumping tritium, even in small quantities, would further hurt the reputation of the region, still synonymous with nuclear disaster. Nearby China and South Korea are among the nations that still restrict the import of certain products from Japan.
Lingering concerns about radiation have also reportedly kept many of the 160,000 residents that fled Fukushima from returning. Life, nevertheless, has begun to return to some parts of the crisis-stricken prefecture. The town of Okuma announced Wednesday that some citizens would be allowed to stay overnight starting next week for the first time since the March 2011 disaster, Japanese daily The Mainichi Shimbun said.
A New David and an Old Goliath: Africa and the Tobacco Industry
Thursday, April 12, 2018
By Adjoa Agyeiwaa, Truthout | News Analysis
A farmer looks for her bales and compares prices during the official opening of the tobacco selling season in Harare on March 21, 2018, at the Tobacco Sales Floors. (Photo: Jekesai Njikizana / AFP / Getty Images)
Even as Donald Trump floats a plan to respond to the US's opioid epidemic by putting drug dealers to death, Americans often ignore another threat to their collective well-being: tobacco. This may be because Americans perceive the war against Big Tobacco as won, despite the fact that smoking kills more people in the United States than opioids.
In some ways, ignoring the threats from tobacco is understandable. Smoking rates in the US and other Western countries have steadily fallen. The historic court cases of the 1990s tied the industry's hands and aired its dirty laundry.
If Americans and Europeans think the tobacco giants have been slain, however, they are sorely mistaken. Far from accepting defeat, Western tobacco companies like British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) have instead set their sights on Africa to protect their profit margins. Tough tobacco regulation in their home markets has led them to export their deadly business to the Global South.
These companies stop at nothing to target vulnerable populations on the continent, bribing corrupt government officials and attacking anti-smoking activists, while threatening African governments. They exploit poverty, pushing the narrative that tobacco cultivation will bring prosperity to cash-strapped regions, and luring African farmers with the tantalizing opportunity to be paid in cash at the end of the season.
Tobacco growers also receive an additional incentive: Big Tobacco supplies seeds, fertilizer and pesticides at the season's onset. Farmers unaffiliated with the tobacco titans, meanwhile, are forced to buy supplies with savings or borrowed money without any guarantee their crops will be purchased. Faced with these hardships, growing tobacco becomes the obvious choice.
These tactics have proven effective: African countries south of the Sahara saw smoking rates rise 52 percent from 1980 to 2016. As the World Health Organization's (WHO) director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus remarked a few weeks ago, Africa has become "ground zero for the war on tobacco."
Tedros was speaking at the World Conference on Tobacco or Health (WCTOH), a recent meeting of global health experts in Cape Town, South Africa. The conference put the spotlight on Big Tobacco's strategies to hook Africa's young and vulnerable on its products. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also took part at the WCTOH, where he committed $20 million to exposing tobacco industry tactics in low- and middle-income countries.
Illicit tobacco trade is a serious problem. Tobacco is the world's most widely smuggled legal substance. This proliferation of contraband cigarettes often occurs with the active participation of the tobacco industry.
This massive racket comes with severe costs, both financially and in terms of public health. Africa loses an estimated $12 billion annually as cigarette manufacturers and purveyors evade taxes. Illicit products attract young people, keep smokers hooked and undermine tobacco-control policies with their low prices. According to the WHO, raising excise taxes on tobacco is the single most effective tool for reducing tobacco use, but only if that tobacco goes through legal channels.
Governments worldwide are waking up and cracking down. The WHO's Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, a treaty under the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, aims to eliminate the illicit tobacco trade via an international fabric of import, export and manufacturing licensing, and an effective track-and-trace system. The protocol could be a powerful tool, but after five years, it still needs to be ratified by five more countries to become binding international law.
Fortunately, national governments have started taking action. Big Tobacco has consistently underestimated developing countries' willingness to embrace innovative solutions against smoking. Kenya in particular offers a model to emulate in the fight against illicit tobacco, having introduced in 2012 one of the few track-and-trace models actually capable of tracking local production and exacting the necessary tax per cigarette. Kenya's highly successful Excisable Goods Management System (EGMS) is one of the most advanced tracking systems in the world. Before Kenya introduced EGMS, up to 32.6 percent of its cigarettes were illegal.
The EGMS features electronic digital stamps and photosensitive readers along production lines. At any point in distribution, an authorized field officer can hold inspections and arrest offenders on the spot. All distributors and retailers are criminally liable to ensure excise tax is paid, and all manufacturers and importers must be licensed. The system has dramatically hindered the country's illicit market, and inspired a marked uptick in tax compliance. Smoking rates among Kenyan men fell by 1.1 percent between 2012 and 2015, and among Kenyan women by 0.2 percent. The system is the first of its kind in Africa, and one of only a few such schemes in the world.
The EGMS has proven so lucrative that the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is trying to extend the duty sticker system to non-alcoholic beverages, such as juice and mineral water, up to 70 percent of which are counterfeit. Unsurprisingly, the sugar industry pushed back hard and helped convince a judge to quash the new taxes in March. Despite that setback, the EGMS's success in cutting down on cigarette smuggling shows that Africa can implement its own cutting-edge schemes effectively.
Americans and Europeans could take a lesson from this. The EU is still haggling over the details of its own regional track-and-trace system, with many European bureaucrats willing to let tobacco industry-linked companies run their system. Both BAT and PMI are still looking to poor Americans as a growth market, targeting them as "an exciting opportunity for long-term growth" in the same way they do poor Africans. While Bloomberg is bringing the lessons of the global anti-tobacco fight to Africa, he should also take Kenya's lessons back home.
In some ways, ignoring the threats from tobacco is understandable. Smoking rates in the US and other Western countries have steadily fallen. The historic court cases of the 1990s tied the industry's hands and aired its dirty laundry.
If Americans and Europeans think the tobacco giants have been slain, however, they are sorely mistaken. Far from accepting defeat, Western tobacco companies like British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) have instead set their sights on Africa to protect their profit margins. Tough tobacco regulation in their home markets has led them to export their deadly business to the Global South.
These companies stop at nothing to target vulnerable populations on the continent, bribing corrupt government officials and attacking anti-smoking activists, while threatening African governments. They exploit poverty, pushing the narrative that tobacco cultivation will bring prosperity to cash-strapped regions, and luring African farmers with the tantalizing opportunity to be paid in cash at the end of the season.
Tobacco growers also receive an additional incentive: Big Tobacco supplies seeds, fertilizer and pesticides at the season's onset. Farmers unaffiliated with the tobacco titans, meanwhile, are forced to buy supplies with savings or borrowed money without any guarantee their crops will be purchased. Faced with these hardships, growing tobacco becomes the obvious choice.
These tactics have proven effective: African countries south of the Sahara saw smoking rates rise 52 percent from 1980 to 2016. As the World Health Organization's (WHO) director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus remarked a few weeks ago, Africa has become "ground zero for the war on tobacco."
Tedros was speaking at the World Conference on Tobacco or Health (WCTOH), a recent meeting of global health experts in Cape Town, South Africa. The conference put the spotlight on Big Tobacco's strategies to hook Africa's young and vulnerable on its products. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also took part at the WCTOH, where he committed $20 million to exposing tobacco industry tactics in low- and middle-income countries.
Illicit tobacco trade is a serious problem. Tobacco is the world's most widely smuggled legal substance. This proliferation of contraband cigarettes often occurs with the active participation of the tobacco industry.
This massive racket comes with severe costs, both financially and in terms of public health. Africa loses an estimated $12 billion annually as cigarette manufacturers and purveyors evade taxes. Illicit products attract young people, keep smokers hooked and undermine tobacco-control policies with their low prices. According to the WHO, raising excise taxes on tobacco is the single most effective tool for reducing tobacco use, but only if that tobacco goes through legal channels.
Governments worldwide are waking up and cracking down. The WHO's Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, a treaty under the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, aims to eliminate the illicit tobacco trade via an international fabric of import, export and manufacturing licensing, and an effective track-and-trace system. The protocol could be a powerful tool, but after five years, it still needs to be ratified by five more countries to become binding international law.
Fortunately, national governments have started taking action. Big Tobacco has consistently underestimated developing countries' willingness to embrace innovative solutions against smoking. Kenya in particular offers a model to emulate in the fight against illicit tobacco, having introduced in 2012 one of the few track-and-trace models actually capable of tracking local production and exacting the necessary tax per cigarette. Kenya's highly successful Excisable Goods Management System (EGMS) is one of the most advanced tracking systems in the world. Before Kenya introduced EGMS, up to 32.6 percent of its cigarettes were illegal.
The EGMS features electronic digital stamps and photosensitive readers along production lines. At any point in distribution, an authorized field officer can hold inspections and arrest offenders on the spot. All distributors and retailers are criminally liable to ensure excise tax is paid, and all manufacturers and importers must be licensed. The system has dramatically hindered the country's illicit market, and inspired a marked uptick in tax compliance. Smoking rates among Kenyan men fell by 1.1 percent between 2012 and 2015, and among Kenyan women by 0.2 percent. The system is the first of its kind in Africa, and one of only a few such schemes in the world.
The EGMS has proven so lucrative that the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is trying to extend the duty sticker system to non-alcoholic beverages, such as juice and mineral water, up to 70 percent of which are counterfeit. Unsurprisingly, the sugar industry pushed back hard and helped convince a judge to quash the new taxes in March. Despite that setback, the EGMS's success in cutting down on cigarette smuggling shows that Africa can implement its own cutting-edge schemes effectively.
Americans and Europeans could take a lesson from this. The EU is still haggling over the details of its own regional track-and-trace system, with many European bureaucrats willing to let tobacco industry-linked companies run their system. Both BAT and PMI are still looking to poor Americans as a growth market, targeting them as "an exciting opportunity for long-term growth" in the same way they do poor Africans. While Bloomberg is bringing the lessons of the global anti-tobacco fight to Africa, he should also take Kenya's lessons back home.
The African Nation of Djibouti Is Quickly Becoming a Military Outpost for U.S., China, Italy and Others — But Will It Pay Off?
By Associated Press - atlanta black star
April 9, 2018
DJIBOUTI (AP) — Two fighter jets took off and roared over the Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport, a sprawling complex in this tiny African nation that is quickly becoming a strategic military and shipping outpost for the world.
Not far away, a massive U.S. flag waved over transport planes parked in front of America’s only permanent military base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier, home to about 4,000 personnel.
Djibouti, an arid Horn of Africa nation with less than 1 million inhabitants, also has become a military outpost for China, France, Italy and Japan, with that nation’s first overseas base since World War II. Other powers including Saudi Arabia have expressed interest in the key location across the Bab el-Mandeb strait from the Arabian Peninsula and on one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors.
On the chaotic streets of what has been called the “Singapore of Africa,” the jostling between the United States and China for influence is plainly seen.
Before his firing by President Donald Trump, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a point of stopping in Djibouti on his Africa visit last month and noting its importance in the fight against the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group in neighboring Somalia and the Islamic State group in the region at large. The U.S. carries out drone missions in Somalia and Yemen from Djibouti, but the military paused air operations last week after a jet crashed and a helicopter was damaged during a landing.
China’s first overseas military base, which was manned last year, is just a few miles from the U.S. one. The head of the U.S. Africa Command, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, earlier this year predicted that “there will be more.”
China’s economic interest is strong as well, with Djibouti borrowing up to $957 million from the Export-Import Bank of China to finance several projects in recent years, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. The Chinese built a new electrified rail line that links the capital of neighboring Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and one of its strongest economies, with Djibouti as the nation aims to become a global shipping power.
“We sit on two of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. We are servicing the wider region, including some of the world’s fastest-growing economies,” the chairman of the Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority, Aboubaker Omar Hadi, said in an interview during a recent visit by The Associated Press.
He called Djibouti, a largely Muslim nation, a model of stability in an otherwise volatile region. It is also one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, with the World Bank projecting 7 percent growth this year.
The country made headlines earlier this year when it seized control of a container terminal run by the Dubai-based DP World, one of the world’s largest port operators, in a long-running legal dispute. If China takes over the terminal’s operations, the effects on supplying the U.S. military base could be “significant,” the U.S. Africa Command chief has warned.
That will not happen, Hadi’s office said: “Djibouti has no plan to give Doraleh Container Port to China.” It is now managed by a fully state-owned company controlled by the ports authority, it added.
Djibouti is currently investing $15 billion in local infrastructure projects that connect the region to global trade routes, including the expansion of ports, improved road and rail links and new airports, according to official figures provided to AP.
The country’s ports now have a total handling capacity of 18 million tons per year, officials said, and the new Doraleh Multipurpose Port, a $590 million joint project between the ports authority and China Merchants Port Holdings opened in May last year, is already working at full capacity. It is a separate entity from the Doraleh Container Port.
Now officials are pursuing a new project called the Djibouti International Free Trade Zone, expected to be the largest of its kind in Africa.
“Once complete it will span an area of 4,800 hectares (11,860 acres), following a total investment of more than $3.5 billion,” the ports authority chairman said. The first phase is expected to be complete by the end of the year.
Officials hope the ambitious infrastructure projects will not only raise Djibouti’s global image but also help it pay off significant debts.
During Tillerson’s visit, Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf acknowledged that Djibouti’s debt totals roughly 84 percent of its GDP, most of it to China. “The burden of debt is there, we are aware of it,” he said. “But let me tell you that it is so far manageable.”
One sign of investor confidence is whether China’s commercial banks begin lending to Djibouti as well, said Jyhjong Hwang, senior research assistant at the China-Africa Research Initiative.
Djibouti’s officials anticipate that the demand for their ports will grow as more African nations expand their economies. They also dismissed concerns about a recent deal by DP World, Ethiopia and Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Somaliland to develop and manage the Port of Berbera there, seen by some as another reason for Djibouti’s seizure of the container terminal from DP World.
“Competition will make the region more attractive. East Africa’s economies are growing fast, and there is a clear demand for Djibouti’s infrastructure to support this growth,” the ports authority chairman said.
Djibouti’s residents said local business is booming as a result of the growing international military and shipping interest, despite the country’s unemployment rate of nearly 40 percent, and construction sites and new roads dotted the city. Economic growth has attracted entrepreneurs from India, Yemen, Gulf nations and elsewhere.
“Our company provides a fleet of cars for the army bases and we are really benefiting from it,” said Nour Omar, one of Djibouti’s best-known businessmen and general manager of local import and distribution business BSH Holding. “We aim to expand our services following their demand.”
Not far away, a massive U.S. flag waved over transport planes parked in front of America’s only permanent military base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier, home to about 4,000 personnel.
Djibouti, an arid Horn of Africa nation with less than 1 million inhabitants, also has become a military outpost for China, France, Italy and Japan, with that nation’s first overseas base since World War II. Other powers including Saudi Arabia have expressed interest in the key location across the Bab el-Mandeb strait from the Arabian Peninsula and on one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors.
On the chaotic streets of what has been called the “Singapore of Africa,” the jostling between the United States and China for influence is plainly seen.
Before his firing by President Donald Trump, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a point of stopping in Djibouti on his Africa visit last month and noting its importance in the fight against the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group in neighboring Somalia and the Islamic State group in the region at large. The U.S. carries out drone missions in Somalia and Yemen from Djibouti, but the military paused air operations last week after a jet crashed and a helicopter was damaged during a landing.
China’s first overseas military base, which was manned last year, is just a few miles from the U.S. one. The head of the U.S. Africa Command, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, earlier this year predicted that “there will be more.”
China’s economic interest is strong as well, with Djibouti borrowing up to $957 million from the Export-Import Bank of China to finance several projects in recent years, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. The Chinese built a new electrified rail line that links the capital of neighboring Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and one of its strongest economies, with Djibouti as the nation aims to become a global shipping power.
“We sit on two of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. We are servicing the wider region, including some of the world’s fastest-growing economies,” the chairman of the Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority, Aboubaker Omar Hadi, said in an interview during a recent visit by The Associated Press.
He called Djibouti, a largely Muslim nation, a model of stability in an otherwise volatile region. It is also one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, with the World Bank projecting 7 percent growth this year.
The country made headlines earlier this year when it seized control of a container terminal run by the Dubai-based DP World, one of the world’s largest port operators, in a long-running legal dispute. If China takes over the terminal’s operations, the effects on supplying the U.S. military base could be “significant,” the U.S. Africa Command chief has warned.
That will not happen, Hadi’s office said: “Djibouti has no plan to give Doraleh Container Port to China.” It is now managed by a fully state-owned company controlled by the ports authority, it added.
Djibouti is currently investing $15 billion in local infrastructure projects that connect the region to global trade routes, including the expansion of ports, improved road and rail links and new airports, according to official figures provided to AP.
The country’s ports now have a total handling capacity of 18 million tons per year, officials said, and the new Doraleh Multipurpose Port, a $590 million joint project between the ports authority and China Merchants Port Holdings opened in May last year, is already working at full capacity. It is a separate entity from the Doraleh Container Port.
Now officials are pursuing a new project called the Djibouti International Free Trade Zone, expected to be the largest of its kind in Africa.
“Once complete it will span an area of 4,800 hectares (11,860 acres), following a total investment of more than $3.5 billion,” the ports authority chairman said. The first phase is expected to be complete by the end of the year.
Officials hope the ambitious infrastructure projects will not only raise Djibouti’s global image but also help it pay off significant debts.
During Tillerson’s visit, Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf acknowledged that Djibouti’s debt totals roughly 84 percent of its GDP, most of it to China. “The burden of debt is there, we are aware of it,” he said. “But let me tell you that it is so far manageable.”
One sign of investor confidence is whether China’s commercial banks begin lending to Djibouti as well, said Jyhjong Hwang, senior research assistant at the China-Africa Research Initiative.
Djibouti’s officials anticipate that the demand for their ports will grow as more African nations expand their economies. They also dismissed concerns about a recent deal by DP World, Ethiopia and Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Somaliland to develop and manage the Port of Berbera there, seen by some as another reason for Djibouti’s seizure of the container terminal from DP World.
“Competition will make the region more attractive. East Africa’s economies are growing fast, and there is a clear demand for Djibouti’s infrastructure to support this growth,” the ports authority chairman said.
Djibouti’s residents said local business is booming as a result of the growing international military and shipping interest, despite the country’s unemployment rate of nearly 40 percent, and construction sites and new roads dotted the city. Economic growth has attracted entrepreneurs from India, Yemen, Gulf nations and elsewhere.
“Our company provides a fleet of cars for the army bases and we are really benefiting from it,” said Nour Omar, one of Djibouti’s best-known businessmen and general manager of local import and distribution business BSH Holding. “We aim to expand our services following their demand.”
Saudis See Chemical, Oil-Refining Bonanza Along U.S. Gulf Coast
bloomberg
on April 8, 2018, 10:25 AM PDT
Saudi Arabia signaled its intent to expand chemical production along the U.S. Gulf Coast and potentially double the size of North America’s biggest oil refinery.
The kingdom’s state-owned crude producer is joining with U.K. oilfield-services firm TechnipFMC Plc to assess the potential for producing ethylene, a key component in plastics, Saudi Aramco’s Motiva Enterprises LLC unit said in a statement Saturday. A second accord with Honeywell International Inc. could lead to the construction of a new manufacturing complex in the heart of the U.S. petrochemicals industry.
In a separate presentation at a lavish reception for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Houston, Motiva said it’s considering doubling the size of its refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The announcement comes less than a year after Aramco paid $2.2 billion to Royal Dutch Shell Plc to gain sole control of the Port Arthur plant and some other Motiva assets the two companies controlled as part of a joint venture.
The investment is estimated between $8 billion and $10 billion, but no formal decision on the chemical projects is expected until 2019, Motiva said in the statement. Still, the kingdom has already hired longtime Dow Chemical Chief Executive Officer Andrew N. Liveris to act as an adviser after he departs the DowDuPont Inc. unit on July 1, said Saudi Basic Industries Corp. CEO Yousef al Benyan in an interview in Texas.
Vision 2030
“These agreements signal our plans for expansion into petrochemicals,” Motiva CEO Brian Coffman said in the statement. “We are excited to work more closely with these leaders in the industry to further assess our opportunities for investment.”
Bin Salman, heir to the throne of the world’s largest oil exporter, is wrapping up a three-week tour of the U.S. to promote his effort to open up the Saudi economy through his “Vision 2030” plan.
Saudi Basic, the Middle East’s dominant chemical maker, said on Saturday that it wants to build a Houston headquarters for its Western Hemisphere operations as the company capitalizes on the surge in cheap natural gas supplies from North American shale fields.
In a late March stop in New York, the prince signed a memorandum of understanding with Softbank Group Corp. to build at $200 billion solar power development.
Moving Downstream
Investments in the U.S. were announced as Aramco plans an initial public offering for as soon as the second half of this year. Proceeds from the share sale should be used to expand the company’s footprint in refining and petrochemicals, rather than in oil exploration and production, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in a March 26 Bloomberg television interview in New York.
Nasser also said Aramco is looking at a two- to three-fold expansion of its petrochemicals business from a “huge” global capacity, now that the Sadara joint venture with Dow Chemical is complete. Total SA, the French energy major, and Aramco are due to sign a non-binding agreement on April 10 to develop the petrochemical site at their refinery in Al-Jubail, a person familiar with the matter said April 6.
TechnipFMC declined comment. A voicemail left with Honeywell outside of normal business hours wasn’t immediately returned.
The kingdom’s state-owned crude producer is joining with U.K. oilfield-services firm TechnipFMC Plc to assess the potential for producing ethylene, a key component in plastics, Saudi Aramco’s Motiva Enterprises LLC unit said in a statement Saturday. A second accord with Honeywell International Inc. could lead to the construction of a new manufacturing complex in the heart of the U.S. petrochemicals industry.
In a separate presentation at a lavish reception for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Houston, Motiva said it’s considering doubling the size of its refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The announcement comes less than a year after Aramco paid $2.2 billion to Royal Dutch Shell Plc to gain sole control of the Port Arthur plant and some other Motiva assets the two companies controlled as part of a joint venture.
The investment is estimated between $8 billion and $10 billion, but no formal decision on the chemical projects is expected until 2019, Motiva said in the statement. Still, the kingdom has already hired longtime Dow Chemical Chief Executive Officer Andrew N. Liveris to act as an adviser after he departs the DowDuPont Inc. unit on July 1, said Saudi Basic Industries Corp. CEO Yousef al Benyan in an interview in Texas.
Vision 2030
“These agreements signal our plans for expansion into petrochemicals,” Motiva CEO Brian Coffman said in the statement. “We are excited to work more closely with these leaders in the industry to further assess our opportunities for investment.”
Bin Salman, heir to the throne of the world’s largest oil exporter, is wrapping up a three-week tour of the U.S. to promote his effort to open up the Saudi economy through his “Vision 2030” plan.
Saudi Basic, the Middle East’s dominant chemical maker, said on Saturday that it wants to build a Houston headquarters for its Western Hemisphere operations as the company capitalizes on the surge in cheap natural gas supplies from North American shale fields.
In a late March stop in New York, the prince signed a memorandum of understanding with Softbank Group Corp. to build at $200 billion solar power development.
Moving Downstream
Investments in the U.S. were announced as Aramco plans an initial public offering for as soon as the second half of this year. Proceeds from the share sale should be used to expand the company’s footprint in refining and petrochemicals, rather than in oil exploration and production, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in a March 26 Bloomberg television interview in New York.
Nasser also said Aramco is looking at a two- to three-fold expansion of its petrochemicals business from a “huge” global capacity, now that the Sadara joint venture with Dow Chemical is complete. Total SA, the French energy major, and Aramco are due to sign a non-binding agreement on April 10 to develop the petrochemical site at their refinery in Al-Jubail, a person familiar with the matter said April 6.
TechnipFMC declined comment. A voicemail left with Honeywell outside of normal business hours wasn’t immediately returned.
coca cola: spreading their garbage!!!!
The Coca-Cola Invasion Is Causing Mexico's Slow Death by Junk Food
Mexico's traditional diet of beans and corn has been replaced with pizza and hamburgers.
By Tamara Pearson / AlterNet
April 3, 2018, 1:30 PM GMT
A new Coca-Cola-run shop opens roughly every eight hours in Mexico. But despite this full-scale corporate takeover of Mexico's cities, towns and diet, most people believe the severe obesity and diabetes problems here are down to local culture and individual choices. They would be wrong.
A block and a half from where I live there's an Oxxo, a corner store owned by Coca-Cola that stocks chips, biscuits, soft drinks, nachos, cigarettes, beer, bottled water and sweets. There are two more Oxxos two and four blocks to the west, and another one a few blocks to the south. With predictable stock, bill-paying facilities and open 24 hours, even the most health-conscious and anti-consumerist people go to an Oxxo a few days a week.
The Coca-Cola colonization
Oxxos have grown from 300 shops in Mexico in 1990 to nearly 16,000, and FEMSA (Coca-Cola) claims it serves 10 million people a day. Ironically, in addition to its chain of retail service stations, and its real estate division which aids the block-by-block colonization, FEMSA also has a health division which includes four pharmacy chains, acquired in 2013 and 2015. The Oxxos stock their own brands, including Heineken beer (minority owner) and Santa Clara milk. Together with the 400,000 other corner shops around the country—which also stock Coca-Cola and focus exclusively on junk food—the Oxxos are a saturation strategy that makes no-nutritious fake-food the easiest product or service to obtain.
Reinforcing that is the growth in chain restaurants at twice that of independent ones, and the massive informal workforce that buy junk food at wholesale prices and sell it outside stations, at bus stops and on buses, throughout the streets, at schools, in plazas and parks, and outside hospitals. Many of the street food vendors get supplies like cheese, mayonnaise and ground beef from Walmart's Sam's Club.
This fake-food colonization is bolstered by aggressive marketing strategies where products are packaged with pictures of colorful natural foods, though little real food is left in them, and absurdly, U.S. brands are associated with high quality. A McDonald’s burger costs around double the price of a street vendor's burger, and brands like Snickers cost double that of the local equivalent.
Though in 2014 the Mexican government banned junk food advertising during children's television shows at certain times, there is still an intense campaign aimed at getting children addicted early—on the internet, radios, and in newspapers and billboards, with mascots a common technique to develop a child's emotional connection to a food, and half of all advertising offering a gift or linking to a website where kids can play games with the personalities and products.
At the end of last year, multinationals participated in a forum called Mercakids in Mexico, where they analyzed how to better reach children. Participants included Kidzania, a company that uses games to plant brands in the minds of kids, and Bonafont, which has a line of kids' drinks that are full of sugar and artificial coloring.
The U.S. and multinationals are dumping their junk food in Mexico
This Coca-Cola and mass-junk food distribution was facilitated by NAFTA, an agreement that came into effect in 1994. It allows the U.S. to send its junk food here, while the U.S. imports tomatoes, chilies, cucumbers, limes, avocados, mangoes, and more from Mexico. In the 1990s, NAFTA meant that Mexican family farms couldn't compete with the U.S. agricultural giants, and five million Mexican farmers were displaced into the cities. It was a forced conversion of sorts, where U.S. fast food restaurants and corporations that specialize in selling cheap poison in pretty packets were given even more room to take Mexican resources and run the show. U.S. investment into Mexican food companies also escalated from US$2.3 billion before NAFTA to $10.2 billion in 2012.
Mexico also became Walmart World: from Walmart-owned and -run pharmacies and food distributors, to its smaller Aurrera supermarkets and its sprawled drab department stores, Walmart is now Mexico's largest food retailer. Its billion-dollar purchase of Cifra in 1997, under NAFTA's foreign investment guidelines, was a major part of converting Mexico's distinctive streets into mall-land and its diet into mall-diet.
The transnationals don't understand that Mexico is corn
Before the era of a bacon-wrapped hot dog and Coca-Cola for breakfast, there was corn.
“Corn is Nanj jm'e, which means mother provider,” Andres Martinez Garcia tells me. He is a Mazatec artist and art restorer who grew up in the community of San Andres Hidalgo, in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca, where 82.5 percent of the population speak an indigenous language, and only 3 percent of the buildings have internet.
“Our ancestors learned to domesticate corn around 8,000-12,000 years ago. Experimenting, they found they could use its leaves and kernels to make all sorts of things and food. The process of growing and using corn taught us to organize, and corn was also the start of science, for us—observation and theories. Without corn we wouldn't have developed as we did, we wouldn't be who we are. So for us, it means history, identity, life, science, culture, and organization. It is a way of life, and a way of coordinating with the land and the gods,” Martinez said.
For many indigenous Mexicans especially, corn is like a flag. It's a “living identity.… We are no one without it,” Martinez explained.
Unfortunately, that wasn't taken into account when NAFTA was signed, nor are any transnationals concerned about what Mexico's indigenous people need, or about their land that they are taking for themselves.
“Now, our corn comes from overseas. Most of it is transgenic. That's the impact of these transnationals: you buy from them, and they give you their worst food. They don't respect the rights of life and they don't care that there's a ritual behind the corn. They just want a product that makes them more powerful, gives them money,” Martinez said.
From a diet of corn, beans and zucchini to a forced dependence on rubbish
Today, Mexicans come fourth in the world for the amount of highly processed food they eat per person, at 212 kilos per year. According to Kantar WorldPanel, Mexican families or households spent 30 percent of their expenses on junk food in 2014, with the lower and middle classes spending the highest proportion. This sort of diet is a recent change, and not part of Mexican culture, as many people assume.
“Before the Spanish invasion, the food we produced was healthy, organic and natural, and planted according to the climate, the time of year. The food system was part of a long ritual. Food wasn't about stuff that came in packets. It—and the planting and harvesting—was a structure that life was organized around. Food wasn't just something to satisfy you, it was a mental state,” Martinez said.
The Mexican indigenous food pyramid—known as the “sacred trinity”--revolved around three key foods: corn, beans and chili. Now, Martinez's indigenous community consumes soft drinks, candy and other junk food, he says, as that is what is sold there. “We used to eat healthy food like beans, herbs, corn, and meat… but now people ask for pizza and hamburgers. If you serve them a plate of beans, they throw it out.”
Even in urban areas, the food Mexicans consume isn't so much their choice or culture, but rather it is the result of the lack of variety provided by the transnationals and of exploitative work conditions. Mexicans work very long days, six to seven days a week. My neighbors, for example, sell clothes in the street from 9am to 8pm, seven days a week. These sorts of conditions make it hard to find the time to cook, and a low income means people seek high-carb and sugary foods that make them feel full and that are quick to consume and easy to buy.
People are converted to a corporate U.S. diet early. Children are going to school with just soft drink for breakfast, believing it will give them energy for the day. In one study, 59 percent of primary school kids in selected rural and indigenous communities were consuming soft drinks at least three times a day, with coffee as their next most common drink, and the traditional and more nutritious atole only coming in fourth. The coffee is usually instant Nescafe, rather than from locally grown coffee beans. Most schools sell fried food and sweets, but provide no or few healthy food options, and soft drinks have become part of the family in these communities. Coca-Cola is the preferred drink, to the point where offering a guest a Pepsi is almost insulting.
Researchers found it was the corner stores in the communities making the difference, as they have shifted from selling fruit and vegetables to junk food over the last decade, with most of these stores also covered in Coca-Cola advertising and merchandise. In schools, such advertising is prohibited, but Coca-Cola finds ways to “sponsor” sports courts, decorating them in its brand's colors, and in one example school, the unsubtle text “hydrate after exercising.”
The great profits from selling junk food to the poor
Mexico is facing a serious health crisis, with diabetes claiming 80,000 lives a year. That is largely a result of a greedy industry making money out of selling junk food to the poor. There are four transnationals in Mexico that hog 95.9 percent of the soft drink market and 89.4 percent of the sweet and salty snacks market. FEMSA (Coca-Cola) and Alsea dominate the food service industry, with Alsea managing and operating restaurants like Domino's, Starbucks, Burger King, Chili's, and the Cheesecake Factory. In 2017, Alsea's revenue was MXN 43 billion (US$2.3 billion).
These industries don't just determine what food we have access to; they are also instrumental in determining Mexico's health policies. At least half of the members of the Oment—the Mexican Observatory of Non-transmittable Diseases, which is meant to be the organization overseeing and promoting policy to combat Mexico's obesity and diabetes problems—have a connection to, or are financed by the food and drink industries.
“Capitalism has decided for us. They tell us what we're going to eat. They don't care if our food is healthy, they are invading us with their food… what they do interferes with our territory, our way of life, our way of thinking. They don't respect what we've had and done for thousands of years,” Martinez said.
The junk food invasion has contaminated Mexico's culture and identity
The consequences of an imposed junk food diet go beyond diabetes.
“These foods are… extremely tasty, sometimes almost addictive. They imitate (real) food, and they are erroneously seen as healthy… they are publicized and sold aggressively, and they are culturally, socially and economically destructive,” says the World Health Organization.
In Mexico, U.S. companies and other industry giants are displacing indigenous and Mexican culture while pretending to consume it within the U.S., and spurring racism toward Mexicans and Mexican immigrants. Even the children in the study of rural and indigenous communities were clear. They told researchers that the junk food invasion causes contamination through the media, “contaminates our land, the water, our culture, our delicious traditional food.”
It brings transnational abuse and market domination that benefits only the rich and affects the poorest people.
“Capitalists see NAFTA as a space for satisfying their desires, not their needs, and for extending their power. They don't care what indigenous people think, or about our autonomy. They don't respect our way of life, or care about where we get our water from or what we use the land for. These companies are dedicated to displacing us,” Martinez concluded.
A block and a half from where I live there's an Oxxo, a corner store owned by Coca-Cola that stocks chips, biscuits, soft drinks, nachos, cigarettes, beer, bottled water and sweets. There are two more Oxxos two and four blocks to the west, and another one a few blocks to the south. With predictable stock, bill-paying facilities and open 24 hours, even the most health-conscious and anti-consumerist people go to an Oxxo a few days a week.
The Coca-Cola colonization
Oxxos have grown from 300 shops in Mexico in 1990 to nearly 16,000, and FEMSA (Coca-Cola) claims it serves 10 million people a day. Ironically, in addition to its chain of retail service stations, and its real estate division which aids the block-by-block colonization, FEMSA also has a health division which includes four pharmacy chains, acquired in 2013 and 2015. The Oxxos stock their own brands, including Heineken beer (minority owner) and Santa Clara milk. Together with the 400,000 other corner shops around the country—which also stock Coca-Cola and focus exclusively on junk food—the Oxxos are a saturation strategy that makes no-nutritious fake-food the easiest product or service to obtain.
Reinforcing that is the growth in chain restaurants at twice that of independent ones, and the massive informal workforce that buy junk food at wholesale prices and sell it outside stations, at bus stops and on buses, throughout the streets, at schools, in plazas and parks, and outside hospitals. Many of the street food vendors get supplies like cheese, mayonnaise and ground beef from Walmart's Sam's Club.
This fake-food colonization is bolstered by aggressive marketing strategies where products are packaged with pictures of colorful natural foods, though little real food is left in them, and absurdly, U.S. brands are associated with high quality. A McDonald’s burger costs around double the price of a street vendor's burger, and brands like Snickers cost double that of the local equivalent.
Though in 2014 the Mexican government banned junk food advertising during children's television shows at certain times, there is still an intense campaign aimed at getting children addicted early—on the internet, radios, and in newspapers and billboards, with mascots a common technique to develop a child's emotional connection to a food, and half of all advertising offering a gift or linking to a website where kids can play games with the personalities and products.
At the end of last year, multinationals participated in a forum called Mercakids in Mexico, where they analyzed how to better reach children. Participants included Kidzania, a company that uses games to plant brands in the minds of kids, and Bonafont, which has a line of kids' drinks that are full of sugar and artificial coloring.
The U.S. and multinationals are dumping their junk food in Mexico
This Coca-Cola and mass-junk food distribution was facilitated by NAFTA, an agreement that came into effect in 1994. It allows the U.S. to send its junk food here, while the U.S. imports tomatoes, chilies, cucumbers, limes, avocados, mangoes, and more from Mexico. In the 1990s, NAFTA meant that Mexican family farms couldn't compete with the U.S. agricultural giants, and five million Mexican farmers were displaced into the cities. It was a forced conversion of sorts, where U.S. fast food restaurants and corporations that specialize in selling cheap poison in pretty packets were given even more room to take Mexican resources and run the show. U.S. investment into Mexican food companies also escalated from US$2.3 billion before NAFTA to $10.2 billion in 2012.
Mexico also became Walmart World: from Walmart-owned and -run pharmacies and food distributors, to its smaller Aurrera supermarkets and its sprawled drab department stores, Walmart is now Mexico's largest food retailer. Its billion-dollar purchase of Cifra in 1997, under NAFTA's foreign investment guidelines, was a major part of converting Mexico's distinctive streets into mall-land and its diet into mall-diet.
The transnationals don't understand that Mexico is corn
Before the era of a bacon-wrapped hot dog and Coca-Cola for breakfast, there was corn.
“Corn is Nanj jm'e, which means mother provider,” Andres Martinez Garcia tells me. He is a Mazatec artist and art restorer who grew up in the community of San Andres Hidalgo, in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca, where 82.5 percent of the population speak an indigenous language, and only 3 percent of the buildings have internet.
“Our ancestors learned to domesticate corn around 8,000-12,000 years ago. Experimenting, they found they could use its leaves and kernels to make all sorts of things and food. The process of growing and using corn taught us to organize, and corn was also the start of science, for us—observation and theories. Without corn we wouldn't have developed as we did, we wouldn't be who we are. So for us, it means history, identity, life, science, culture, and organization. It is a way of life, and a way of coordinating with the land and the gods,” Martinez said.
For many indigenous Mexicans especially, corn is like a flag. It's a “living identity.… We are no one without it,” Martinez explained.
Unfortunately, that wasn't taken into account when NAFTA was signed, nor are any transnationals concerned about what Mexico's indigenous people need, or about their land that they are taking for themselves.
“Now, our corn comes from overseas. Most of it is transgenic. That's the impact of these transnationals: you buy from them, and they give you their worst food. They don't respect the rights of life and they don't care that there's a ritual behind the corn. They just want a product that makes them more powerful, gives them money,” Martinez said.
From a diet of corn, beans and zucchini to a forced dependence on rubbish
Today, Mexicans come fourth in the world for the amount of highly processed food they eat per person, at 212 kilos per year. According to Kantar WorldPanel, Mexican families or households spent 30 percent of their expenses on junk food in 2014, with the lower and middle classes spending the highest proportion. This sort of diet is a recent change, and not part of Mexican culture, as many people assume.
“Before the Spanish invasion, the food we produced was healthy, organic and natural, and planted according to the climate, the time of year. The food system was part of a long ritual. Food wasn't about stuff that came in packets. It—and the planting and harvesting—was a structure that life was organized around. Food wasn't just something to satisfy you, it was a mental state,” Martinez said.
The Mexican indigenous food pyramid—known as the “sacred trinity”--revolved around three key foods: corn, beans and chili. Now, Martinez's indigenous community consumes soft drinks, candy and other junk food, he says, as that is what is sold there. “We used to eat healthy food like beans, herbs, corn, and meat… but now people ask for pizza and hamburgers. If you serve them a plate of beans, they throw it out.”
Even in urban areas, the food Mexicans consume isn't so much their choice or culture, but rather it is the result of the lack of variety provided by the transnationals and of exploitative work conditions. Mexicans work very long days, six to seven days a week. My neighbors, for example, sell clothes in the street from 9am to 8pm, seven days a week. These sorts of conditions make it hard to find the time to cook, and a low income means people seek high-carb and sugary foods that make them feel full and that are quick to consume and easy to buy.
People are converted to a corporate U.S. diet early. Children are going to school with just soft drink for breakfast, believing it will give them energy for the day. In one study, 59 percent of primary school kids in selected rural and indigenous communities were consuming soft drinks at least three times a day, with coffee as their next most common drink, and the traditional and more nutritious atole only coming in fourth. The coffee is usually instant Nescafe, rather than from locally grown coffee beans. Most schools sell fried food and sweets, but provide no or few healthy food options, and soft drinks have become part of the family in these communities. Coca-Cola is the preferred drink, to the point where offering a guest a Pepsi is almost insulting.
Researchers found it was the corner stores in the communities making the difference, as they have shifted from selling fruit and vegetables to junk food over the last decade, with most of these stores also covered in Coca-Cola advertising and merchandise. In schools, such advertising is prohibited, but Coca-Cola finds ways to “sponsor” sports courts, decorating them in its brand's colors, and in one example school, the unsubtle text “hydrate after exercising.”
The great profits from selling junk food to the poor
Mexico is facing a serious health crisis, with diabetes claiming 80,000 lives a year. That is largely a result of a greedy industry making money out of selling junk food to the poor. There are four transnationals in Mexico that hog 95.9 percent of the soft drink market and 89.4 percent of the sweet and salty snacks market. FEMSA (Coca-Cola) and Alsea dominate the food service industry, with Alsea managing and operating restaurants like Domino's, Starbucks, Burger King, Chili's, and the Cheesecake Factory. In 2017, Alsea's revenue was MXN 43 billion (US$2.3 billion).
These industries don't just determine what food we have access to; they are also instrumental in determining Mexico's health policies. At least half of the members of the Oment—the Mexican Observatory of Non-transmittable Diseases, which is meant to be the organization overseeing and promoting policy to combat Mexico's obesity and diabetes problems—have a connection to, or are financed by the food and drink industries.
“Capitalism has decided for us. They tell us what we're going to eat. They don't care if our food is healthy, they are invading us with their food… what they do interferes with our territory, our way of life, our way of thinking. They don't respect what we've had and done for thousands of years,” Martinez said.
The junk food invasion has contaminated Mexico's culture and identity
The consequences of an imposed junk food diet go beyond diabetes.
“These foods are… extremely tasty, sometimes almost addictive. They imitate (real) food, and they are erroneously seen as healthy… they are publicized and sold aggressively, and they are culturally, socially and economically destructive,” says the World Health Organization.
In Mexico, U.S. companies and other industry giants are displacing indigenous and Mexican culture while pretending to consume it within the U.S., and spurring racism toward Mexicans and Mexican immigrants. Even the children in the study of rural and indigenous communities were clear. They told researchers that the junk food invasion causes contamination through the media, “contaminates our land, the water, our culture, our delicious traditional food.”
It brings transnational abuse and market domination that benefits only the rich and affects the poorest people.
“Capitalists see NAFTA as a space for satisfying their desires, not their needs, and for extending their power. They don't care what indigenous people think, or about our autonomy. They don't respect our way of life, or care about where we get our water from or what we use the land for. These companies are dedicated to displacing us,” Martinez concluded.
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