Australie : Il est physiquement impossible de boycotter Israël !
Une ville australienne, dont le conseil municipal est à gauche, a tenu à faire appliquer un boycott contre Israël… Mais après avoir découvert que des compagnies comme Intel, HP et Motorola opèrent à partir de l’État juif, la ville a choisi de continuer à utiliser les ordinateurs plutôt qu’à boycotter les Juifs d’Israël.
Le Conseil municipal de Marrickville a récemment organisé un débat houleux sur une motion visant à interdire les produits et services israéliens dans le cadre du mouvement d’inspiration hitlérienne « Boycott, Désinvestissement et Sanctions ».
Un journal local explique le problème : « Le conseil municipal a découvert que de très nombreux produits de chez Intel par exemple, sont fabriqués en Israël. Si la ville veut appliquer le boycott, elle risquerait de perdre 4 millions de dollars rien qu’en interdisant Motorola, Intel et HP. »
Le boycott aurait été rejeté, pour des raisons idéologiques, ainsi que pour des raisons pratiques, mais les partisans anti-israéliens ont trouvé un réconfort dans la déclaration formelle du Conseil selon laquelle il est « préoccupée par les droits des hommes palestiniens et demande à Israël de mettre fin à la “gestion” des terres palestiniennes. »
Il aurait également fallu que tous les habitants de cette ville cessent d’utiliser leurs téléphones mobiles dont les répondeurs sont gérés, comme dans 90% des endroits de la planète, par l’israélien Comverse. Ils auraient également dû interdire un très grand nombre de médicaments… Et c’est sans parler des centaines d’inventions créées par des Israéliens. Dire vouloir appliquer le boycott est une chose, le faire en est une autre.
JSSNews
mercredi 27 avril 2011
vendredi 22 avril 2011
mercredi 20 avril 2011
Les 3/4 des Français jugent que l'intégration ne marche pas
Les trois-quarts des Français jugent que les étrangers ne font "pas suffisamment d'efforts pour vivre harmonieusement en France", selon une enquête réalisée par Harris Interactive et publiée mercredi par Le Parisien.
Selon ce sondage, 76% des Français estiment que les étrangers ne font pas assez d'efforts pour s'intégrer, tandis que 54% d'entre eux jugent que la société française fait suffisamment d'efforts pour permettre aux étrangers de s'intégrer.
En même temps, 66% des personnes interrogées pensent que l'intégration des étrangers fonctionne très mal ou plutôt mal.
Selon ce sondage, 76% des Français estiment que les étrangers ne font pas assez d'efforts pour s'intégrer, tandis que 54% d'entre eux jugent que la société française fait suffisamment d'efforts pour permettre aux étrangers de s'intégrer.
En même temps, 66% des personnes interrogées pensent que l'intégration des étrangers fonctionne très mal ou plutôt mal.
mardi 19 avril 2011
Lugares Mais Violentos do Brasil
O ranking da violência nas cidades e Estados do Brasil foi divulgado nesta quinta-feira (24) pelo Ministério da Justiça.
(...) na capital paulista é onde há mais mortes de jovens (de 15 a 24 anos) no trânsito.
as 10 cidades mais violentas do Brasil:
* 1º. Itupiranga – 160,6 homicídios por 100 mil habitantes
* 2º. Simões Filho – 152,6 homicídios por 100 mil
* 3º. Campina Grande do Sul – 125,5 homicídios por 100 mil
* 4º. Marabá – 125 homicídios por 100 mil
* 5º. Pilar – 110,6 homicídios por 100 mil
* 6º. Goianésia do Pará – 109,6 homicídios por 100 mil
* 7º. Serra – 109 homicídios por 100 mil
* 8º. Maceió – 107,1 homicídios por 100 mil
* 9º.Itapissuma – 106,8 homicídios por 100 mil
* 10º. Guairá – 103,6 homicídios por 100 mil
Capitais mais violentas do Brasil
* 1º. Maceió – 107,1 (mortes por 100 mil hab.)
* 2º. Recife – 85,2
* 3º. Vitória – 73,9
* 4º. Salvador – 60,1
* 5º. João Pessoa – 60
* 6º. Curitiba – 56,5
* 7º. Belém – 47
* 8º. Porto Velho – 46,9
* 9º. Porto Alegre – 46,8
* 10º. Goiânia – 44,3
* 11º. São Luis – 43,4
* 12º. Cuiabá – 42,8
* 13º. Macapá – 42,1
* 14º. Belo Horizonte – 41,9
* 15º. Aracajú – 40,8
* 16º. Manaus – 38,4
* 17º. Fortaleza – 35,9
* 18º. Brasília – 34,1
* 19º. Natal – 31,1
* 20º. Rio de Janeiro – 31
* 21º. Rio Branco – 28,9
* 22º. Teresina – 27
* 23º. Campo Grande – 25,6
* 24º. Boa Vista – 24,9
* 25º. Florianópolis – 22,6
* 26º. Palmas – 18,5
* 27º. São Paulo – 14,8 (mortes por 100 mil hab.)
[Fonte: O Estado de S.Paulo]
Read more: http://www.curiosando.com.br/mais-violentas-brasil/
(...) na capital paulista é onde há mais mortes de jovens (de 15 a 24 anos) no trânsito.
as 10 cidades mais violentas do Brasil:
* 1º. Itupiranga – 160,6 homicídios por 100 mil habitantes
* 2º. Simões Filho – 152,6 homicídios por 100 mil
* 3º. Campina Grande do Sul – 125,5 homicídios por 100 mil
* 4º. Marabá – 125 homicídios por 100 mil
* 5º. Pilar – 110,6 homicídios por 100 mil
* 6º. Goianésia do Pará – 109,6 homicídios por 100 mil
* 7º. Serra – 109 homicídios por 100 mil
* 8º. Maceió – 107,1 homicídios por 100 mil
* 9º.Itapissuma – 106,8 homicídios por 100 mil
* 10º. Guairá – 103,6 homicídios por 100 mil
Capitais mais violentas do Brasil
* 1º. Maceió – 107,1 (mortes por 100 mil hab.)
* 2º. Recife – 85,2
* 3º. Vitória – 73,9
* 4º. Salvador – 60,1
* 5º. João Pessoa – 60
* 6º. Curitiba – 56,5
* 7º. Belém – 47
* 8º. Porto Velho – 46,9
* 9º. Porto Alegre – 46,8
* 10º. Goiânia – 44,3
* 11º. São Luis – 43,4
* 12º. Cuiabá – 42,8
* 13º. Macapá – 42,1
* 14º. Belo Horizonte – 41,9
* 15º. Aracajú – 40,8
* 16º. Manaus – 38,4
* 17º. Fortaleza – 35,9
* 18º. Brasília – 34,1
* 19º. Natal – 31,1
* 20º. Rio de Janeiro – 31
* 21º. Rio Branco – 28,9
* 22º. Teresina – 27
* 23º. Campo Grande – 25,6
* 24º. Boa Vista – 24,9
* 25º. Florianópolis – 22,6
* 26º. Palmas – 18,5
* 27º. São Paulo – 14,8 (mortes por 100 mil hab.)
[Fonte: O Estado de S.Paulo]
Read more: http://www.curiosando.com.br/mais-violentas-brasil/
dimanche 10 avril 2011
Europeans seek new lives in old colonies
Associated Press
LISBON, Portugal – Spain and Portugal have for decades lured poor immigrants from their former colonies. Now, in a historic role reversal, these one-time empire builders are seeing legions of frustrated young people head to old dominions in quest of a better life.
Europe's ruinous debt crisis and job-sapping economic miseries are reshaping migration trends, with a generation of home-grown talent grabbing at the chance of economic rewards on continents once treated with disdain.
Portuguese are packing their bags for booming Angola and Mozambique in Africa, and for emerging economic powerhouse Brazil, where there is a shortage of engineers to prepare the country for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Spaniards are being drawn to their former colonies in Latin America.
While analysts say the true scale of the new migration is still hard to determine because official statistics lag behind trends, anecdotal evidence and fragmentary data point to what's going on.
Portugal's Emigration Observatory says the number of Portuguese registered at consulates in Brazil jumped from 678,822 in 2009 to 705,615 the following year. In Angola, the number went from almost 57,000 in 2008 to just over 74,500 in 2009. The number of Mozambican residence permits granted to Portuguese in 2010, meanwhile, was up almost 13 percent on the previous year, to nearly 12,000.
Spanish electoral registers show around 30,000 Spaniards moved to Argentina between June 2009 and November 2010 — an 11 percent increase over that period. Some 6,400 went to Chile — a jump of 24 percent in the same timeframe — and 6,800 headed for Uruguay, an increase of 16 percent.
In Spain, where one in five are out of work, opportunities in Latin America have become a magnet for those whose career hopes are thwarted by a grinding recession.
"The emerging markets are where it's happening, that's where the jobs are," says Jorge Borges, a 35-year-old Portuguese civil engineer.
Disheartened by bleak career prospects in Portugal, whose crippling debt crisis pushed it this week to seek a bailout like Greece and Ireland, Borges crossed the border five years ago and tapped into Spain's building boom.
Then the overleveraged Spanish economy also collapsed, and Borges recently lost his job. Now he wants to move on again, but Europe's wretched economies are not an option — and his online job hunt is targeting vacancies in Brazil and Angola, distant Portuguese-speaking countries.
"The first chance I get, I'm going overseas," Borges said from Zaragoza, Spain, where he is awaiting the call to go abroad.
Brazil in particular is a magnet. The Latin American giant is recruiting foreign civil engineers and architects to meet demand for major public works projects, including more than $200 billion — close to Portugal's annual GDP — in energy infrastructure. Brazil's economy grew 7.5 percent in 2010, the highest growth rate since 1986, and is expected to expand by more than 5 percent a year through 2014.
"The big drive is to Brazil," Carlos Matias Ramos, president of Portugal's national association of engineers, says of recent emigration among his members. He adds: "They're mostly young people."
Spain is struggling to overcome nearly two years of recession triggered by the collapse of a real estate bubble. In Portugal, a decade of scrawny growth drove unemployment to a record 11.2 percent last year and left it saddled with monumental debts.
Ireland and Greece, other debt-stressed countries that took bailouts last year, as well as more robust France and Italy, also report they are bleeding talent as young globe-trotters take flight.
"The first to leave (in a crisis) are always the ones with the most marketable skills," says Demetrios Papademetriou, the president of the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. who also chairs the World Economic Forum's migration task force.
Smart, creative and dynamic graduates provide vital fuel to stoke national economies, and the flight of this generation is "one of the most consequential byproducts of the (European) crisis," according to Papademetriou.
He says he has warned Europe's political leaders that the brain drain demands just as much attention as fiscal measures devised to reduce the crushing national debt at the heart of the continent's current troubles.
"They are losing the people who can get them either out of the crisis long-term or who will be needed to start and fuel the recovery," Papademetriou said in a telephone interview.
Spanish architect Xavier Casas may be one of those people. He gave up his business in Barcelona a year ago after work dried up and moved with his Argentine wife Luciana to Rafaela, a town 530 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.
"We're working flat out now," the 31-year-old said, adding that he encountered a continent that "is really thriving."
Marta Lopez-Tappero, a migration expert at the Adecco international recruitment agency in Madrid, says Latin America has become a modern day El Dorado for Spaniards.
Lopez-Tappero profiles the typical Spaniard looking for a job in Latin America: male, aged 25-35, and highly qualified, especially in engineering, architecture or information technology.
In a rare public comment on Spain's economic difficulties, King Juan Carlos chose to highlight the graduates' predicament in a recent ceremony where he handed out scholarships for foreign study programs.
"I sincerely hope and wish that when your time comes to return home there are more jobs for you and that you can stay here because we really need you at the moment in Spain," the monarch told the assembled students.
Portugal's low-voltage economy can't absorb the best-educated generation in its history.
More than 60,000 graduates are idle in their prime. Many more are in low-pay, dead-end jobs.
A recent song by pop group Deolinda set young people's grievances to music and went viral online as it struck a chord with a generation. The song, called "What a fool I am," lists their gripes, including being stuck at home with their parents despite investing years to polish their CVs.
One group of twenty-something graduates turned the music into a battle cry. Through a Facebook page they organized national protest marches last month, and more than 100,000 turned out in a dozen Portuguese cities.
"Not taking advantage of our generation ... is national suicide," says 25-year-old Alexandre Carvalho, one of the organizers.
Carvalho and his co-organizers want to pursue careers in Portugal but, he says, "it's hard to stay. We'll probably end up going abroad."
Many Portuguese despair of their country of 10.6 million people, long one of the continent's poorest, ever attaining average European standards of income. The past decade has delivered anemic economic growth of less than 1 percent a year. And an EU survey in February found that only 5 percent of Portuguese expect their standard of living to improve over the next 12 months.
Alvaro Santos Pereira, a researcher at Canada's Simon Fraser University, estimates that between 1998 and 2008 some 700,000 Portuguese left their country. Many headed to two of the world's top 10 fastest-growing countries — Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique.
Margarida Marques, a sociology lecturer at Lisbon's New University who studies post-colonial migration trends, says Angola, which produces 20 percent of the world's diamonds and is using billions in oil revenue to rebuild after an almost three-decade civil war following the departure of Portugal's colonial administration, is also sucking in skilled Portuguese labor.
Marques shares the story of a former student who several years ago set up a recruitment agency that takes Portuguese to the southwest African country.
"He's rich now," she says. "There's a lot of demand."
Bernardo Marques, a 32-year-old electrical engineer, moved to the Angolan capital Luanda a year ago, lured by a monthly salary four times what he was making in Portugal.
Like many emigrants around the world, he's ready to sacrifice a few years away from home to save a nest egg that will allow him to buy a house and set up his own company when he returns.
For that, he's willing to put up with African hardships — the stench of open sewers, the potholed roads, the extortionate prices for shabby apartments, and being confronted daily by evidence of what he calls "shocking" poverty.
Being far from home is bearable, he says, because there are so many other Portuguese there, gathering at Luanda's new shopping malls and upscale restaurants.
"In some places it's like being in Portugal," he says.
LISBON, Portugal – Spain and Portugal have for decades lured poor immigrants from their former colonies. Now, in a historic role reversal, these one-time empire builders are seeing legions of frustrated young people head to old dominions in quest of a better life.
Europe's ruinous debt crisis and job-sapping economic miseries are reshaping migration trends, with a generation of home-grown talent grabbing at the chance of economic rewards on continents once treated with disdain.
Portuguese are packing their bags for booming Angola and Mozambique in Africa, and for emerging economic powerhouse Brazil, where there is a shortage of engineers to prepare the country for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Spaniards are being drawn to their former colonies in Latin America.
While analysts say the true scale of the new migration is still hard to determine because official statistics lag behind trends, anecdotal evidence and fragmentary data point to what's going on.
Portugal's Emigration Observatory says the number of Portuguese registered at consulates in Brazil jumped from 678,822 in 2009 to 705,615 the following year. In Angola, the number went from almost 57,000 in 2008 to just over 74,500 in 2009. The number of Mozambican residence permits granted to Portuguese in 2010, meanwhile, was up almost 13 percent on the previous year, to nearly 12,000.
Spanish electoral registers show around 30,000 Spaniards moved to Argentina between June 2009 and November 2010 — an 11 percent increase over that period. Some 6,400 went to Chile — a jump of 24 percent in the same timeframe — and 6,800 headed for Uruguay, an increase of 16 percent.
In Spain, where one in five are out of work, opportunities in Latin America have become a magnet for those whose career hopes are thwarted by a grinding recession.
"The emerging markets are where it's happening, that's where the jobs are," says Jorge Borges, a 35-year-old Portuguese civil engineer.
Disheartened by bleak career prospects in Portugal, whose crippling debt crisis pushed it this week to seek a bailout like Greece and Ireland, Borges crossed the border five years ago and tapped into Spain's building boom.
Then the overleveraged Spanish economy also collapsed, and Borges recently lost his job. Now he wants to move on again, but Europe's wretched economies are not an option — and his online job hunt is targeting vacancies in Brazil and Angola, distant Portuguese-speaking countries.
"The first chance I get, I'm going overseas," Borges said from Zaragoza, Spain, where he is awaiting the call to go abroad.
Brazil in particular is a magnet. The Latin American giant is recruiting foreign civil engineers and architects to meet demand for major public works projects, including more than $200 billion — close to Portugal's annual GDP — in energy infrastructure. Brazil's economy grew 7.5 percent in 2010, the highest growth rate since 1986, and is expected to expand by more than 5 percent a year through 2014.
"The big drive is to Brazil," Carlos Matias Ramos, president of Portugal's national association of engineers, says of recent emigration among his members. He adds: "They're mostly young people."
Spain is struggling to overcome nearly two years of recession triggered by the collapse of a real estate bubble. In Portugal, a decade of scrawny growth drove unemployment to a record 11.2 percent last year and left it saddled with monumental debts.
Ireland and Greece, other debt-stressed countries that took bailouts last year, as well as more robust France and Italy, also report they are bleeding talent as young globe-trotters take flight.
"The first to leave (in a crisis) are always the ones with the most marketable skills," says Demetrios Papademetriou, the president of the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. who also chairs the World Economic Forum's migration task force.
Smart, creative and dynamic graduates provide vital fuel to stoke national economies, and the flight of this generation is "one of the most consequential byproducts of the (European) crisis," according to Papademetriou.
He says he has warned Europe's political leaders that the brain drain demands just as much attention as fiscal measures devised to reduce the crushing national debt at the heart of the continent's current troubles.
"They are losing the people who can get them either out of the crisis long-term or who will be needed to start and fuel the recovery," Papademetriou said in a telephone interview.
Spanish architect Xavier Casas may be one of those people. He gave up his business in Barcelona a year ago after work dried up and moved with his Argentine wife Luciana to Rafaela, a town 530 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.
"We're working flat out now," the 31-year-old said, adding that he encountered a continent that "is really thriving."
Marta Lopez-Tappero, a migration expert at the Adecco international recruitment agency in Madrid, says Latin America has become a modern day El Dorado for Spaniards.
Lopez-Tappero profiles the typical Spaniard looking for a job in Latin America: male, aged 25-35, and highly qualified, especially in engineering, architecture or information technology.
In a rare public comment on Spain's economic difficulties, King Juan Carlos chose to highlight the graduates' predicament in a recent ceremony where he handed out scholarships for foreign study programs.
"I sincerely hope and wish that when your time comes to return home there are more jobs for you and that you can stay here because we really need you at the moment in Spain," the monarch told the assembled students.
Portugal's low-voltage economy can't absorb the best-educated generation in its history.
More than 60,000 graduates are idle in their prime. Many more are in low-pay, dead-end jobs.
A recent song by pop group Deolinda set young people's grievances to music and went viral online as it struck a chord with a generation. The song, called "What a fool I am," lists their gripes, including being stuck at home with their parents despite investing years to polish their CVs.
One group of twenty-something graduates turned the music into a battle cry. Through a Facebook page they organized national protest marches last month, and more than 100,000 turned out in a dozen Portuguese cities.
"Not taking advantage of our generation ... is national suicide," says 25-year-old Alexandre Carvalho, one of the organizers.
Carvalho and his co-organizers want to pursue careers in Portugal but, he says, "it's hard to stay. We'll probably end up going abroad."
Many Portuguese despair of their country of 10.6 million people, long one of the continent's poorest, ever attaining average European standards of income. The past decade has delivered anemic economic growth of less than 1 percent a year. And an EU survey in February found that only 5 percent of Portuguese expect their standard of living to improve over the next 12 months.
Alvaro Santos Pereira, a researcher at Canada's Simon Fraser University, estimates that between 1998 and 2008 some 700,000 Portuguese left their country. Many headed to two of the world's top 10 fastest-growing countries — Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique.
Margarida Marques, a sociology lecturer at Lisbon's New University who studies post-colonial migration trends, says Angola, which produces 20 percent of the world's diamonds and is using billions in oil revenue to rebuild after an almost three-decade civil war following the departure of Portugal's colonial administration, is also sucking in skilled Portuguese labor.
Marques shares the story of a former student who several years ago set up a recruitment agency that takes Portuguese to the southwest African country.
"He's rich now," she says. "There's a lot of demand."
Bernardo Marques, a 32-year-old electrical engineer, moved to the Angolan capital Luanda a year ago, lured by a monthly salary four times what he was making in Portugal.
Like many emigrants around the world, he's ready to sacrifice a few years away from home to save a nest egg that will allow him to buy a house and set up his own company when he returns.
For that, he's willing to put up with African hardships — the stench of open sewers, the potholed roads, the extortionate prices for shabby apartments, and being confronted daily by evidence of what he calls "shocking" poverty.
Being far from home is bearable, he says, because there are so many other Portuguese there, gathering at Luanda's new shopping malls and upscale restaurants.
"In some places it's like being in Portugal," he says.
jeudi 7 avril 2011
Le crime a fait aux banques une offre qu'elles ne pouvaient pas refuser
Le Monde
Embarras aux Nations unies
C'est ce qu'on appelle un pavé dans la mare. En décembre 2009, le directeur général de l'Office des Nations unies à Vienne, Antonio Maria Costa, qui est aussi, depuis 2002, le chef de l'Office des Nations unies contre la drogue et le crime organisé (ONUDC), accorde un entretien retentissant à The Observer. Le message : au plus fort de la crise financière, en 2008, l'argent d'activités criminelles, principalement le trafic de stupéfiants, a sauvé bien des banques prises à la gorge par le manque de liquidités. Selon lui, 352 milliards de dollars des profits de la drogue ont ainsi été intégrés dans le système, car c'était souvent, en ce moment de panique, "le seul investissement en capitaux liquides".
En d'autres termes, le crime a fait aux banques une offre qu'elles ne pouvaient pas refuser, selon la formule du Parrain. Pressé de questions, M. Costa a refusé d'identifier les banques ou les pays bénéficiaires de cette proposition immorale. Mais il tient ses informations "de services de renseignement et de magistrats" spécialisés dans la lutte contre le crime, qui ont attiré son attention sur ces transferts massifs, au cours de 2008. Transferts mis au jour en Grande-Bretagne, en Suisse, en Italie et aux Etats-Unis, selon The Observer. Les banques britanniques se sont aussitôt récriées. Pareil langage, insolite de la part d'un haut diplomate de l'ONU, suscite l'intérêt médiatique. Economiste formé à Moscou et Berkeley, M. Costa n'a pas la réputation d'être un grand imaginatif. A cette époque, l'Italien brigue un troisième mandat à Vienne : a-t-il franchi une ligne rouge dans l'espoir de faire pencher l'administration Obama en sa faveur ? Son chef, Ban Ki-moon, lui préfère en tout cas le Russe Youri Fedotov, pour des raisons qui ont sans doute beaucoup à voir avec les équilibres internes dans la galaxie onusienne.
Aujourd'hui encore, le coup d'éclat de leur ancien chef embarrasse visiblement les fonctionnaires de l'ONUDC, où l'on se garde "de confirmer ou d'infirmer" les éléments avancés dans The Observer. En interne, M. Costa n'a jamais donné ses sources, et s'il a bénéficié de renseignements confidentiels, ceux-ci n'ont jamais été communiqués à ses services, "ni officiellement ni officieusement", précise, au Monde, le chef de la communication à l'ONUDC, Alun Jones. L'Office, qui tiendra prochainement sa réunion annuelle sur le crime organisé, travaille sur la base de rapports fournis par les pays membres, vérifiés par ses experts ou parfois par des missions sur le terrain. Elle prépare, pour l'automne 2011, une étude spécifique sur l'argent de la drogue, la première sur ce thème sensible. Car l'argent sale est recyclé dans toutes les activités légales : finances, immobilier, industrie du luxe, commerce des métaux, etc. Selon les estimations du Fonds monétaire international (FMI), il représenterait jusqu'à 5 % du PIB mondial, soit 3 000 milliards de dollars (2 100 milliards d'euros). Au Mexique, on parle avec ironie du "cartel du Potomac" (la rivière qui traverse Washington) pour souligner la complicité des lobbies politiques et économiques avec le crime organisé, notamment les réseaux mexicains, que les autorités veulent pourtant combattre.
L'expansion globale du crime organisé est un puissant moteur de la mondialisation, comme l'a montré l'écrivain italien Roberto Saviano( Gomorra, Gallimard 2007). Ou encore le journaliste britannique Misha Glenny, dans McMafia. Au coeur de la criminalité internationale (Denoël, 2009). La Mafia, y montre-t-il, a été, dans la Russie des années 1990, "l'accoucheuse du capitalisme", les ex-généraux du KGB se plaçant sans vergogne au service de ces nouveaux princes.
Embarras aux Nations unies
C'est ce qu'on appelle un pavé dans la mare. En décembre 2009, le directeur général de l'Office des Nations unies à Vienne, Antonio Maria Costa, qui est aussi, depuis 2002, le chef de l'Office des Nations unies contre la drogue et le crime organisé (ONUDC), accorde un entretien retentissant à The Observer. Le message : au plus fort de la crise financière, en 2008, l'argent d'activités criminelles, principalement le trafic de stupéfiants, a sauvé bien des banques prises à la gorge par le manque de liquidités. Selon lui, 352 milliards de dollars des profits de la drogue ont ainsi été intégrés dans le système, car c'était souvent, en ce moment de panique, "le seul investissement en capitaux liquides".
En d'autres termes, le crime a fait aux banques une offre qu'elles ne pouvaient pas refuser, selon la formule du Parrain. Pressé de questions, M. Costa a refusé d'identifier les banques ou les pays bénéficiaires de cette proposition immorale. Mais il tient ses informations "de services de renseignement et de magistrats" spécialisés dans la lutte contre le crime, qui ont attiré son attention sur ces transferts massifs, au cours de 2008. Transferts mis au jour en Grande-Bretagne, en Suisse, en Italie et aux Etats-Unis, selon The Observer. Les banques britanniques se sont aussitôt récriées. Pareil langage, insolite de la part d'un haut diplomate de l'ONU, suscite l'intérêt médiatique. Economiste formé à Moscou et Berkeley, M. Costa n'a pas la réputation d'être un grand imaginatif. A cette époque, l'Italien brigue un troisième mandat à Vienne : a-t-il franchi une ligne rouge dans l'espoir de faire pencher l'administration Obama en sa faveur ? Son chef, Ban Ki-moon, lui préfère en tout cas le Russe Youri Fedotov, pour des raisons qui ont sans doute beaucoup à voir avec les équilibres internes dans la galaxie onusienne.
Aujourd'hui encore, le coup d'éclat de leur ancien chef embarrasse visiblement les fonctionnaires de l'ONUDC, où l'on se garde "de confirmer ou d'infirmer" les éléments avancés dans The Observer. En interne, M. Costa n'a jamais donné ses sources, et s'il a bénéficié de renseignements confidentiels, ceux-ci n'ont jamais été communiqués à ses services, "ni officiellement ni officieusement", précise, au Monde, le chef de la communication à l'ONUDC, Alun Jones. L'Office, qui tiendra prochainement sa réunion annuelle sur le crime organisé, travaille sur la base de rapports fournis par les pays membres, vérifiés par ses experts ou parfois par des missions sur le terrain. Elle prépare, pour l'automne 2011, une étude spécifique sur l'argent de la drogue, la première sur ce thème sensible. Car l'argent sale est recyclé dans toutes les activités légales : finances, immobilier, industrie du luxe, commerce des métaux, etc. Selon les estimations du Fonds monétaire international (FMI), il représenterait jusqu'à 5 % du PIB mondial, soit 3 000 milliards de dollars (2 100 milliards d'euros). Au Mexique, on parle avec ironie du "cartel du Potomac" (la rivière qui traverse Washington) pour souligner la complicité des lobbies politiques et économiques avec le crime organisé, notamment les réseaux mexicains, que les autorités veulent pourtant combattre.
L'expansion globale du crime organisé est un puissant moteur de la mondialisation, comme l'a montré l'écrivain italien Roberto Saviano( Gomorra, Gallimard 2007). Ou encore le journaliste britannique Misha Glenny, dans McMafia. Au coeur de la criminalité internationale (Denoël, 2009). La Mafia, y montre-t-il, a été, dans la Russie des années 1990, "l'accoucheuse du capitalisme", les ex-généraux du KGB se plaçant sans vergogne au service de ces nouveaux princes.
dimanche 3 avril 2011
If you're named Darcy, you're likely to be one of the privileged rich
Ideas of social mobility under challenge as study shows descendants of 19th-century wealthy have kept their class advantages
The Observer
We may like to think the stark divisions of Dickensian Britain are long gone. But, according to a study into social progress over the past millennium, little has changed since the 19th century.
Research shows that the descendants of people who in 1858 had "rich" surnames such as Mandeville, Percy and Darcy, indicating they were descended from the French nobility, are still substantially wealthier in 2011 than those with traditionally "poor" or artisanal surnames.
Drawing on data culled from official records that go back as far as the Domesday Book as well as university admissions and probate archives, Gregory Clark, a professor of economics at the University of California, has tracked what became of people whose surnames indicated their ancestors had come from either the aristocratic or artisanal classes.
By studying the probate records of those with "rich" and "poor" surnames every decade since the 1850s, he found that the extreme differences in accumulated wealth narrowed over time.
But the value of the estates left by those belonging to the "rich" surname group, immortalised in the character of Fitzwilliam Darcy, the estate-owning hero in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, were above the national average by at least 10%, a statistically significant figure.
In addition, today the holders of "rich" surnames live three years longer than average, life expectancy being a strong indicator of socio-economic status.
The findings, described by Clark as sending a "clear, powerful, shock to our casual intuitions", undermine the commonly held belief that important societal developments such as the creation of the welfare state helped to level modern society's playing field. "The huge social resources spent on publicly provided education and health have seemingly created no gains in the rate of social mobility," he said.
Clark's controversial research, which is to be presented at the Economic History Society's annual conference today, also suggests that widely-held perceptions about medieval England may have to be revised. Clark believes that the apparent social fluidity of the period contrasts starkly with that of industrial England.
"Over the last 150 years, the rate of social mobility revealed by surnames is slower than most social scientists have estimated – and is possibly slower than in the middle ages," Clark said.
"The modern meritocracy is no better at achieving social mobility than the medieval oligarchy." Clark notes that many surnames in the medieval period indicated the bearer's occupation such as mason, carpenter or baker. Those bearing the surname "Smith", for example, were chiefly descended from the simple village blacksmiths that emerged in the middle of the 14th century.
Strikingly, by 1450 the share of "Smiths" at Oxford University, the entry for those wishing to rise to the highest positions in the church and therefore a key indicator of social achievement, was equal to their proportion across the general population.
And by 1650 there were as many "Smiths" in the top 1% of wealth holders as in the general population, suggesting they had been completely assimilated into the elite. Clark contrasted their progress with that of the nobility who arrived in England after the Norman Conquest and were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Families such as the Darcys drew their names from the Normandy towns and villages from where they originally came.
His research suggests that by the 13th century these surnames were on average eight times as common at Oxford university as in the general population. However, by the early 15th century such names were only twice as common at the university as in the general population, suggesting many wealthy families were unable to sustain their privileged position during the period.
The Observer
We may like to think the stark divisions of Dickensian Britain are long gone. But, according to a study into social progress over the past millennium, little has changed since the 19th century.
Research shows that the descendants of people who in 1858 had "rich" surnames such as Mandeville, Percy and Darcy, indicating they were descended from the French nobility, are still substantially wealthier in 2011 than those with traditionally "poor" or artisanal surnames.
Drawing on data culled from official records that go back as far as the Domesday Book as well as university admissions and probate archives, Gregory Clark, a professor of economics at the University of California, has tracked what became of people whose surnames indicated their ancestors had come from either the aristocratic or artisanal classes.
By studying the probate records of those with "rich" and "poor" surnames every decade since the 1850s, he found that the extreme differences in accumulated wealth narrowed over time.
But the value of the estates left by those belonging to the "rich" surname group, immortalised in the character of Fitzwilliam Darcy, the estate-owning hero in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, were above the national average by at least 10%, a statistically significant figure.
In addition, today the holders of "rich" surnames live three years longer than average, life expectancy being a strong indicator of socio-economic status.
The findings, described by Clark as sending a "clear, powerful, shock to our casual intuitions", undermine the commonly held belief that important societal developments such as the creation of the welfare state helped to level modern society's playing field. "The huge social resources spent on publicly provided education and health have seemingly created no gains in the rate of social mobility," he said.
Clark's controversial research, which is to be presented at the Economic History Society's annual conference today, also suggests that widely-held perceptions about medieval England may have to be revised. Clark believes that the apparent social fluidity of the period contrasts starkly with that of industrial England.
"Over the last 150 years, the rate of social mobility revealed by surnames is slower than most social scientists have estimated – and is possibly slower than in the middle ages," Clark said.
"The modern meritocracy is no better at achieving social mobility than the medieval oligarchy." Clark notes that many surnames in the medieval period indicated the bearer's occupation such as mason, carpenter or baker. Those bearing the surname "Smith", for example, were chiefly descended from the simple village blacksmiths that emerged in the middle of the 14th century.
Strikingly, by 1450 the share of "Smiths" at Oxford University, the entry for those wishing to rise to the highest positions in the church and therefore a key indicator of social achievement, was equal to their proportion across the general population.
And by 1650 there were as many "Smiths" in the top 1% of wealth holders as in the general population, suggesting they had been completely assimilated into the elite. Clark contrasted their progress with that of the nobility who arrived in England after the Norman Conquest and were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Families such as the Darcys drew their names from the Normandy towns and villages from where they originally came.
His research suggests that by the 13th century these surnames were on average eight times as common at Oxford university as in the general population. However, by the early 15th century such names were only twice as common at the university as in the general population, suggesting many wealthy families were unable to sustain their privileged position during the period.
vendredi 1 avril 2011
USA: Maybe we're not as diverse as we think we are.
More than forty years after the civil rights movement, research shows that America remains fairly segregated, despite attempts to racially integrate. A recent study breaks down cities where ethnically separate neighborhoods have a tendency to prevail, and the results may — or may not — be a surprise.
John Paul DeWitt of CensusScope.org and the University of Michigan collaborated to pull together the data, and have a list of the top 10 most segregated cities in America. Despite what you may think, they're not all in the South either.
In fact, the most segregated cities in the States mainly come from the North. Even major metropolitan cities make the cut, with Los Angeles coming in at number 10. New York, known for its people from different walks of life, comes in shockingly high at number two.
But which city takes the cake? It's Milwaukee, where 90 percent of African-Americans live in the inner city. Read Salon's article to see what other urban areas made it onto the list.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/31/where-are-the-top-10-most-segregated-cities/#ixzz1IHy91WeX
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People don't realize that diversity isn't the same as integration. Blacks and whites in New York, where I live, are as segregated today as in 1910 [based on a sociologists' segregation index that measures how much contact people of differing races have with one another.]
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929729,00.html#ixzz1II34Gt6Q
John Paul DeWitt of CensusScope.org and the University of Michigan collaborated to pull together the data, and have a list of the top 10 most segregated cities in America. Despite what you may think, they're not all in the South either.
In fact, the most segregated cities in the States mainly come from the North. Even major metropolitan cities make the cut, with Los Angeles coming in at number 10. New York, known for its people from different walks of life, comes in shockingly high at number two.
But which city takes the cake? It's Milwaukee, where 90 percent of African-Americans live in the inner city. Read Salon's article to see what other urban areas made it onto the list.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/31/where-are-the-top-10-most-segregated-cities/#ixzz1IHy91WeX
--------
People don't realize that diversity isn't the same as integration. Blacks and whites in New York, where I live, are as segregated today as in 1910 [based on a sociologists' segregation index that measures how much contact people of differing races have with one another.]
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929729,00.html#ixzz1II34Gt6Q
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