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mariacallous · 9 months

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From Taiwan and Finland in January to Croatia and Ghana in December, one of the largest combined electorates in history will vote for new governments in 2024. This should be a cause of celebration and a vindication of the power of the ballot box. Yet this coming year is likely to see one of the starkest erosions of liberal democracy since the end of the Cold War. At their worst, the overall results could end up as a bloodbath or, marginally less bleakly, as a series of setbacks.

At first glance, the stats are impressive. Forty national elections will take place, representing 41 percent of the world’s population and 42 percent of its gross domestic product. Some will be more consequential than others. Some will be more unpredictable than others. (You can strike Russia and Belarus from that list.) One or two may produce uplifting results.

However, in the United States and Europe, the two regions that are the cradles of democracy—or at least, that used to project themselves as such—the year ahead is set to be bracing.

It is no exaggeration to say that the structures established after World War II, and which have underpinned the Western world for eight decades, will be under threat if former U.S. President Donald Trump wins a second term in November. Whereas his first period in the White House might be regarded as a psychodrama, culminating in the paramilitary assault on Congress shortly after his defeat, this time around, his menace will be far more professional and penetrating.

European diplomats in Washington fear a multiplicity of threats—the imposition of blanket tariffs, also known as a trade war; the sacking of thousands of public officials and their replacement with politicized loyalists; and the withdrawal of remaining support for Ukraine and the undermining of NATO. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the return of Trump would be manna from heaven. Expect some form of provocation from the Kremlin in the Baltic states or another state bordering Russia to test the strength of Article 5, the mutual defense clause of the Western alliance.

More broadly, a Trump victory would arguably mark the final dismantling of the credibility of Western liberal democracies. From India to South Africa and from Brazil to Indonesia, countries variously called middle powers, pivot countries, multi-aligned states—or, now less fashionably, the global south—will continue the trend of picking and choosing their alliances, seeing moral equivalence in the competitive bids on offer.

The greatest effect that a Trump return could have would be on Europe, accelerating the onward march of the alt right or far right across the continent. Yet that trend will have gained momentum long before Americans go to the polls. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are looking over their shoulders as the second wave of populism affects the conduct of government.

The wedge issue that is threatening all moderate parties is immigration, just as it did in 2015, when former German Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed in more than 1 million refugees from the Middle East in what is now seen as the first wave of Europe’s immigration crisis. This time around, the arguments propagated by the AfD (the far-right Alternative for Germany party), Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, and similar groups across the continent have permeated the political mainstream.

The past 12 months have seen European Union decision-making constantly undermined by Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary, particularly further support for Ukraine. For the moment, he stands alone, but he is likely to be joined by others, starting with the newly returned Prime Minister Robert Fico in Slovakia. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has struck a tacit deal with Brussels, remaining loyal on supporting Ukraine (against her instincts and previous statements) in return for effectively being given carte blanche in Italy’s domestic politics.

In September, Austria seems almost certain to vote in a coalition of the far right and the conservatives. A country that has (ever since the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1955) prized its neutrality and been keen to ingratiate itself with Moscow has already been uncomfortable giving full-scale support to Kyiv. We can expect that support to soon be scaled back.

One of the few countries with a center-left administration, Portugal, will see it join the pack of the right and far right when snap elections are held in March. The previous incumbent, the Socialist Party’s outgoing Prime Minister Antonio Costa, was forced to quit amid a corruption investigation.

The most explosive moment is likely to occur in June, with the elections to the European Parliament. This reshuffling of the Euro-pack, which happens once every four years, was always seen in the United Kingdom as an opportunity to behave even more frivolously than usual. In 2014, the British electorate, in its inestimable wisdom, put Nigel Farage and his U.K. Independence Party in first place, setting in train a series of events that, two years later, led to the referendum to leave the EU.

Having seen the damage wrought by Brexit, voters in the remaining 27 EU member states are not angling for their countries to go it alone. However, many will use the opportunity to express their antipathy to mainstream politics by opting for a populist alternative. Some might see it as a low-risk option, believing that the European parliament does not count for much.

In so doing, they would be deluding themselves. It is entirely possible that the various forces of the far right could emerge as the single biggest bloc. This might not lead to a change in the composition of the European Commission (the diminished mainstream groupings would still collectively hold a majority), but any such extremist upsurge will change the overall dynamics across Europe.

Far-right parties in charge of governments will see themselves emboldened to pursue ever more radical nativist policies. In countries in where they are junior members of ruling coalitions (such as in Sweden), they will apply further pressure on their more mainstream conservative partners to move in their direction.

Conversely, countries that saw a surprising resurgence of the mainstream in national elections this year are unlikely to see that trend maintained. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s success in staving off the right was achieved only by cutting a deal with Catalan separatists. This led to protests by Spanish nationalists and a situation that is anything but stable.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s victory in Poland was at least as remarkable because the far-right Law and Justice party (PiS) government had used its years in government to try to skew the media and the courts in its direction. Expect PiS gains in June.

The most alarming result of 2023 was the return to prominence, and the verge of power, of Geert Wilders. The Dutch elections provide a how-not-to guide for mainstream politicians. The willingness of the center-right party of the outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte to contemplate a coalition with Wilders’s Party for Freedom emboldened many voters who had assumed their vote would be disregarded.

In Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, the so-called firewall established by the main parties to refuse to govern with the AfD is beginning to fray. Already, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is working with them in small municipalities. Friedrich Merz, the CDU leader, has dropped hints that such an option might not be out of the question at the regional level.

If the AfD gains the largest number of seats in the June European Parliament elections (opinion polls currently put it only marginally behind the CDU and ahead of all three parties in Scholz’s so-called traffic light coalition), then the momentum will change rapidly. It could go on to win three of the states in the former communist east—Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg—next autumn. Germany would enter unchartered territory.

These dire predictions could end up being overblown. Mainstream parties in several countries may defy the doom merchants and emerge less badly than forecast. Given recent trends, however, optimism is thin on the ground.

There is one election, however, due to take place in the latter part of 2024 that could produce not just a centrist outcome, but one with a strong majority in its parliament. Britain, the country that left the heart of Europe, the island that until recently was run by a clown, could emerge as the lodestar for modern social democracy. The irony would be lost on no one.

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shadycomputerpolice · 8 months

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The Role of Seperatism in Female Liberation

Yes, seperatism will not end patriarchy. I have never seen any seperatist make that claim so I wonder why anti-seperatists like to point that out like their lives depend on it. Also, no singular act, outside of killing all males, can achieve that.

And yes, seperatism is often an individual action. Just like anti-beauty: not shaving, not wearing make up and heels, etc but we still understand that those acts of resistance, even though individual, have value and contribute positively to women and girls' wellbeing.

What seperatism does claim is that it protects women and girls' wellbeing by denying males access to them.

As seen in the images above, for [misogynistic] crimes to happen, all three elements: opportunity, desire and ability must be present and removing just one of them prevents crime. The images above apply to all crimes but since we are talking about female seperatism we can tailor it down to Gender Based Violence (GBV).

Seperatism is about preventing GBV by removing opportunity for harm. Individual seperatists can achieve personal safety in their homes while seperatist communities can achieve community wide safety. So when you claim seperatism is useless you are basically saying crime prevention efforts that focus on denying potential criminals the opportunity to commit crimes is useless. If that is your claim then you have to provide evidence of that.

Seperatists recognise that women cannot influence the ability and desire of males to harm females because behavioural change is self motivated so they focus on what they have control over which is the opportunity for harm.

Now are males, like all predators, going to seek new ways to gain opportunities to harm females, yes of course they are. Outside of GBV, criminals are always changing their strategies especially when their previous strategy becomes well known and people stop falling for it. Using cyber crime as an example because I am Nigerian (LOL), when people stopped falling for the destitute African Prince method, they changed to other methods like romance scams and blackmail. Criminals/Predators are always to seek new ways to catch their victims/prey which is the why the victims/prey must always be alert and aware of the criminals/predators methods so that they can protect themselves.

So yes, as long as men exist, they will be no feminist utopia where women and girls can exist without the threat of violence. We will always need to be on guard and strive to protect ourselves from them no matter the method they use.

Seperatism cannot save all women and girls in the world just like how crime prevention efforts in Ghana cannot save me in Nigeria and I shouldn't even be expecting it to because geography, language barrier, national laws, etc. What can be done is we adapt the methods used in Ghana to our local context and apply it to see results.

Seperatism is an elective individual and geographical community level action that has the potential to save all women and girls but nobody is kidnap unwilling people and hold them hostage.

And I know, someone is going to scream " VICTIM BLAMING" and to that I say, I don't care about being labelled a victim blamer. However, if you have another viable method for keeping women and girls safe, kindly put forward your idea so it can be evaluated. Please note if you suggest "educating men and boys", I will block you because I don't have the patience for that level of stupidity and delusion.

Sidenote:

I always wondered why allegedly smart women will "but child brides in Afghanistan" as a counter to female seperatism. The wins of feminism activism will always be limited by geography. There is no feminist activism that will impact the lives of ALL women and girls. An individual's or organisation's target population will be limited by geography and unfortunately by resources. You can't help everybody applies in feminism too.

Imagine if someone said that about abortion rights in the US. "Fighting for abortion in America doesn't help child brides in Afghanistan". Most people can see how ridiculous and frankly insulting it is to bring up that issue.

#radical feminism #female seperatism #seperatism discourse

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darkmaga-retard · 1 month

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The world has erupted in conflict as a direct result of the economy turning down. We are seeing it across the globe, from Bangladesh, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria to name a few. There is peace when everyone is fat and happy but that is no longer the case in the majority of the world amid the cost of living crisis. Some places have been hit far worse than others. The Nigerian naira lost 230% of its value in the past year and is utterly worthless. Inflation reached 34.19% in June 2024, the highest level since March 1996. Food inflation alone is up 40.87%. The cost of living crisis has caused the people to take to the streets to engage in what the media has deemed “the hunger protests.”

The World Bank valued Nigeria’s GDP at $362.81 billion in 2023 and expects it to surpass $386.4 billion by 2025. GDP advanced 2.98% YoY during Q1, primarily driven by the services sector, which contributed over 58% to the aggregate. Nigeria is an oil-rich nation and Africa’s largest oil producer.

Yet, overt corruption prevents the people from benefiting. Corruption has long been a problem in Nigeria. Most recently, Parliament attempted to impeach Siminalayi Fubara last October after serving only five months in office in favor of his predecessor, Nyesom Wike. Fast forward to the entire Parliament building burning down, followed by the resignation of 27 lawmakers who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressives Congress. Fubara’s proposed 2024 budget led to nine cabinet members and five elected officials resigning. Government then split in half – one supporting Fubara and the other supporting Wike. Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu overstepped by dropping all cases pending against Fubara. And basically, they have accomplished nothing but continued spending and were already knee-deep in the mess past governments have created. About 90% of the nation’s revenue goes toward repaying its debts. They have no real economic plan it place. Then leave it to government to cripple its own ability to earn. Last May, Tinubu implemented a slew of regulations and economic reforms that included ending energy subsidies and devaluing the naira.

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living-n-theastraldigital · 6 months

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March 30th, 2024 Afropolitan Fashion Show!!!!!!

Reflections:

Just finished something I’ve been working on this show for almost half of a year and to see something I’ve put so much time into come into fruition and be done is a lot energetically. It was so amazing. I feel so blessed to have worked with such amazing people who were so collaborative and open and receptive and passionate and welcoming!

“A Taste of Africa” to me in a reflection of my own diasporic identity. I have ancestry results that say that I am from Cameroon, Congo, Mali, Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria. I don’t trust the racist technology that calculates these things but being African American I feel a need to have faith in it. I think about my 9% Senegalese ancestors, and my 13% Malian ancestors and my 12% Cameroonian and Congolese ancestors and hope that they were happy. I think about my my 21% Nigerian ancestors who must be recent in my bloodline because it is the most I am from any country. It’s a rumor in my family that my fathers real dad was a Nigerian immigrant. He was adopted and could never reach his parents. He is mixed race and when he was in his 30s he found his white mom but she refused to talk to him. I wonder what tribe I am from.

Doing this show has allowed me to think about my Africaness in a different context. I was afraid to co creative direct this fashion show because the event is specially for African students and not for diasporic identities. The black spaces on campus are culturally specific and there few spaces for Black Americans. I’ve never minded it though because growing up in California, I felt like an emphasis was placed on Black American identity and I feel generally an emphasis is placed on Black Americans culturally in mainstream media, for better or for worse. I didn’t want to take up space as an African American doing this show, but I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to work creatively if I couldn’t connect the theme to my own experience.

Now I am at a different place when it comes to understanding myself as a Black American and as an African. The two are not separate for me anymore, but they don’t mean the same thing either. I feel sooooo blessed to be African, soooooo blessed!!!!! Praise Jah!!!!! I feel soooo blessed to have an African American experience!! I thank god for it every day.

The biggest lie African Americans are told is that we don’t have culture. We may not have a country that is ours but we have a worldwide nation. We may not have a language that is ours but we have a worldwide understanding. The essence of African people is sacred. No one on earth holds the same grounded ness as we do. We are earths first children and she has given us soil and soul. Forever grateful.

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moonlbabe2 · 1 year

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Interview: Cho Guesung'I want to transfer in the summer... The offer is not in the state of coming'. Cho Guesung showed a strong will to transfer.

The South Korean national football team (ranked 27th in the FIFA ranking), led by coach Jürgen Klinsmann, will participate in the A-match evaluation match in June for the 'Hana Bank Invitational National Football Team Friendly Game'. Cleansmann will face Peru (No. 21 in the FIFA rankings) at the Busan Asian Stadium at 8 p.m. on the 16th. In the second round, which will be held at the Daejeon World Cup Stadium at 8 p.m. on the 20th, there will be a clash with El Salvador (No. 75th in the FIFA Rankings).

Coach Klinsmann called up the squad on the 12th ahead of the game. On the third day of training, Jo Kyu-sung, who was interviewed ahead of the morning training, said, "My condition has improved a lot and I've scored a goal. I'm feeling so good. Whether you play or not, of course it would be good to participate, but I'm in good condition, so I want to continue to score a goal. The striker has to prove with a goal. I was very sluggish in the beginning, but I've been feeling better recently and I'm also putting a goal. I've been feeling a lot," he said, saying that he's been feeling more confident recently.

Cho Kyu-sung received the spotlight last year. Ranked as the K-League top scorer in the 2021 season. Cho Kyu-sung became an upgraded striker by raising physical and soccer sense at Kimcheon, and was discharged from the field in September last year and established himself as a key striker in Hyundai in Jeonbuk. Cho Kyu-sung scored 17 goals in K-League 1 (Gimcheon + Jeonbuk) to win the top scorer, and led the team to win the championship by scoring multiple goals against FC Seoul in the FA Cup final.

Jo Gyu-sung's performance didn't stop here. Cho Kyu-sung heads to Qatar, making his name on the 2022 FIFA Qatar World Cup finalist. In his first match against Uruguay, he made his debut as a substitute. In the Ghana match, he surprised Korea as well as the whole world by scoring multiple goals.

As a result, there was a possibility of entering Europe last winter. The Celtic (Scotland), including the Minetz (Germany) and Minnesota (USA), were actively seeking to recruit. However, from Jeonbuk's point of view, it is difficult to give up the core striker in the team. From Jo Kyu-sung's point of view, challenging the European stage in the winter was like gambling. In the end, Cho Gyu-sung's choice was 'to stay first'.

Remained on the team with the goal of a summer transfer. But the bad news overlapped early this season. Cho Kyu-sung missed the game for about two months due to a thigh injury early in the season. During that period, Jeonbuk's manager was sacked, and the ranking plummeted. From the point of view of Cho Kyu-sung, who returned from the injury, he had no choice but to feel anxious.

This psychology appeared in the stadium. Jo Kyu-sung had a hard time getting better after his return. The body was heavy, and the advantages were not exerted. It also avoided contact with the media to the extent that it refused to be interviewed by Mixtzon. Fortunately, Cho Kyu-sung has recently found confidence. He found laughter by scoring the opening goal in the 'Hyundai Derby' against Ulsan Hyundai, and pulled himself up by scoring multiple goals against Gangwon FC last weekend.

I joined the national team in the process of regaining my condition. Jo Kyu-sung said, "I didn't hit a lot of shooting in the sluggish days. There were 1 or 2 in one game. Now I have a chance to hit 4 or 5 times. The team is also trying to help a lot and focusing on the play, so there are a lot of good chances. In the World Cup, I was confident and confident, and I scored a goal. Even now, my body has gone up and my confidence has gone up, so it's not much different," he explained his physical condition.

We plan to continue to push forward the transfer once again this coming summer by raising the form. Cho Kyu-sung said, "The transfer market has not yet opened. Of course, I want to transfer in the summer. I'm preparing for the transfer in the summer. The definitive team has not been decided. The exact offer is not yet here. If we prepare step by step, we expect good news," he said.

Cho Gyu-sung also explained that he does his best in the present and the situation in the immediate future. Asked if he has any greed for the upcoming Asian Football Confederation (AFC) 2023 Qatar Asian Cup, Jo Kyu-sung said, "I'm not going to the Asian Cup. The motto is to live hard every day. I'm trying to do my best to gather every time. I think if you work hard even if you go back to your team, you'll get a chance."

http://www.interfootball.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=608027

#조규성 #cho gue sung #interview #football #south korea nt #gue sung cho #cho gue sung imagines #cho gue sung fluff #fc #jeonbuk #jeonbuk hyundai motors #230614 #!!! <3

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landmineboyfriend · 1 year

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OKAY continuing

cws: description of death, pregnancy mention

the first born was cold with sunken cheeks. he didnt cry, but he was clearly alive. many dropped dead for the first time in the past 7 years

the second born had a bulging stomach and greying skin, but she didnt cry either. corpses instantly began the decaying process, getting mushier and mushier within minutes

third born didnt cry either. she was born abnormally thin and long, seemingly nutriebt deficit. her arms were blackened. animals begin to feast on the nearby corpses and plants begin to grow in what seemed to be an instant

fourth born was skeletal. no flesh, no nerves, no eyes, anything. he moved and squirmed like any newborn child. bones spread and bury themselves into the earth

the fifth born was a normal, healthy infant. it couldve been plucked straight from any nursery, crying with healthy, flushed cheeks. they were a result of consuming the stomach of lothile, where rebirth occured

okay so here, the cult of lothile (in funger gods havr their own cults yadda yadda u get it) raises each child as they would royalty, but completely cut off from the rest of the world.

the children, once it was their time to die (they live normal human lifespans. dying is necessary for them if anything), it would have to be in a very specific order or else it would mess up the death cycle:

someone gets chosen/volunteers to safely carry the next life of the 5 children (can be different people and different regions, just as long as they've pledged allegiance to lothile)

skeletal one dies first

chosen one HAS to be confirmed pregnant in the next 2 weeks

new skeletal child is born

third dies, follows the same rule, fourth dies, follows the same rule etc etc

fifth dies last as their existence is the one who encourages the recycling of their souls AND corporeal bodies

all of this is the reason why they are generally cut off from the rest of society. they HAVE to die in a specific pattern and outside the cult, they are at a huge risk of dying before their designated times.

when theyre reborn, they can vary in appearance and ethnicity (even nationality). they can be in like, the funger equivalent of indonesia or ghana or slovakia or...literally anywhere. it depends whoever the chosen one(s) is/are.

sometimes the children are raised together, sometimes theyre not. sometimes theyre really close, sometimes not.

(stopping here for now but i got more)

interesting ....

#i like how you did a whole lot of like. building (?) thats so cool

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iamelli · 1 year

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Alia Ali

I have followed Alia Ali on Instagram for years. Her constructed portraits are visually sublime, and her installations are magnificent.

The Yemeni-Bosnian-American photographer uses textiles to discuss colonial histories and challenge racial and gendered biases. For Ali, textiles hold multiple histories. She predominantly uses wax prints that have their origins in India, China and Java. These fabrics, as well as other objects, ideas and humans, were extensively traded along Dutch trade routes to Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and Namibia, though production mainly occurs in the Netherlands. In addition to the ubiquitous use of fabric, the textiles represent where commerce, culture, and politics collide.

Every item on the model is carefully constructed, both from cultural references and from Ali’s imagination. Each sitter is dressed in a well-constructed costume of various nations.

They all wear headdresses, and while the face is also covered in every image, there is something very feminine about them. Each pose communicates an inner strength and power, and it feels as though the model is looking directly at the viewer, though it’s impossible to know.

I am particularly drawn to the kaleidoscopic combinations of colour and fabric patterns in the image, on the frame and, occasionally, on the wall behind. I love how Ali uses the material to extend the image beyond its usual borders and elevates a framed photo into an art object.

Visually and conceptually, there are some similarities between our practices. Ali obscures culture, race, and gender to unveil our assumptions about identity. I also obscure the model, but it’s not about unveiling assumptions; it’s more about recognising the similarities beneath our skin. Maybe that’s the same thing? Colour is important to both our practices, and even though we use it in entirely different ways, the result is a celebration of the diversity of humanity.

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oh-yes-i-did-not · 1 year

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You know, I was talking about singing competitions with a friend from Ghana. She has a strong singing background, first from the christian missionary church singing gospel and then, going abroad, she just loved it so much she continued.

And we got to talking about singing competitions. Since she is a very good singer with a lot of technical strong points. And she said, watching Finnish Voice or Idol was weird because so many people had the charisma, the stage presence.

But not the voice. That American singers train specifically on controlling their voice and the technical aspects, on performing it perfectly. Which is why most pop divas are from US, with Celine Dion being the best held national secret of being Canadian and representing Switzerland in Eurovision. But that’s beside the point.

So then, I remembered that when the jury results won this ESC for Sweden, and stole the victory from not Finland, but Estonia! Fuxking Estonia! And don’t get me wrong, I’m a diehard Käärijä stan but Estonia’s vocals! And then also Australia, Spain, Portugal, any country with a unique song with strong vocals. That maybe the jury is not right. They judge on the technical aspects that the common folks don’t know about but maybe that is not right.

But then I learned that the national juries are mostly made of pop music and dance experts. And Eurovision today is far more than pop music and dance. In fact, the deeper I went, the more I learned that as the national juries are now made of experts on ONLY popular music and dance.

Eurovision is pop, it’s edm, it’s folk, it’s rock, it’s metal, it’s industrial, it’s opera, it’s classical, it’s all sorts of genres. And the fact that the national juries don’t reflect this is atrocious.

And the inevitable conclusion is that if US was ever invited to the contest, they would win. And keep winning. Because of technique and all the things that a professional jury as it is now in Eurovision appreciates and (as some said) is forced to vote on would trump even the national vote.

#esc #jury vote #national vote

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vytelis · 8 hours

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NLA Results

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dailyanarchistposts · 1 day

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Mega Schemes

Huge hydraulic schemes are made possible by advanced modern civil engineering techniques. They require vast international contracts that are only possible at the level of central governments, international free floating capital and supranational government organisations. The financiers borrow money and lend it at commercial rates, so they favour largescale engineering projects that promise increasing production for export markets at the expense of local subsistence economies, with disastrous social and environmental effects. Cash crops destroy settled communities and cause pollution of soil and water. For instance, Ethiopia’s Third Five-Year Plan brought 60% of cultivated land in the fertile Awash Valley under cotton, evicting Afar pastoralists onto fragile uplands which accelerated deforestation and contributed to the country’s ecological crisis and famine. There’s a vicious circle at work. Development needs money. Loans can only be repaid through cash crops that earn foreign currency. These need lots more water than subsistence farming. Large hydraulic schemes to provide this water are development. Development needs money. And so it goes.

Large-scale projects everywhere are the consequence and justification for authoritarian government: one of America’s great dam-building organisations is the US Army Corps of Engineering. Stalin’s secret police supervised the construction of dams and canals. Soldiers such as Nasser of Egypt and Gadafi of Libya and military regimes in South America have been prominent in promoting such projects. Nasser built the Anwar High dam in 1971. The long-term consequences have been to stop the annual flow of silt onto delta land, requiring a growing use of expensive chemical fertilisers, and increased vulnerability to erosion from the Mediterranean. Formerly the annual flooding washed away the build-up of natural salts; now they increase the salt content of irrigated land. The buildup of silt behind the dam is reducing its electricity generating capacity; the lake is also responsible for the dramatic increase in water-borne diseases. Nationalism leads to hydraulic projects without thought to what happens downstream in other countries. The 1992 floods of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Barak system killed 10,000 people. 500m people live in the region, nearly 10% of the world’s population, and they are constantly at risk from water exploitation and mismanagement. Technological imperialism has replaced the empire building of the past: large-scale hydro projects are exported to countries despite many inter-related problems – deforestation, intensive land use and disputes and so on. Large-scale water engineering projects foment international disputes and have become economic bargaining counters, for example the Pergau dam in Malaysia. The British Government agreed to spend £234m on it in 1989 in exchange for a £1.3bn arms deal. In 1994 the High Court ruled that the aid decision was unlawful but these kinds of corrupt deals continue.

In Sri Lanka the disruption caused by the Mahawelli dams and plantation projects resulted in the forcible eviction of 1 million people and helped maintain the insurgency of the Tamil Tigers that resulted in thousands of deaths as they fought government forces from the late 1980s onwards. In 1993 the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq were threatened by Saddam Hussein’s plans to drain the area – the most heavily populated part of the region. Many of the 100,000 inhabitants fled after being warned that any opposition risked death. Selincourt estimated that 3 million people would lose their homes, livelihoods, land and cultural identity by giant dam projects in the 1990s. The Kedung Ombo dam (Indonesia) displaced 25,000; the Akasombo dam (Ghana) 80,000; Caborra Bassa (South Africa) 25,000. Three dams in Laos alone will have displaced 142,000 people. The proposed Xiao Langdi dam in China would displace 140,000; the Three Gorges project 1.1 million people. Only war inflicts a similar level of human and environmental destruction, yet large dam projects have a chronic record in delivering water and power, or eliminating flooding in downstream valleys.

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mariacallous · 2 years

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The dramatic collapse of FTX and the recent arrest of crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried continue to send shockwaves around the world, including among many nonprofits and charities. My organization, 1Day Africa, received money from FTX’s charitable arm, the Future Fund. I am struggling with what to do next.

The grant was awarded to support vaccine equity and pandemic preparedness advocacy work in Africa. 1Day Africa aimed to use the money to push for a pandemic insurance fund, an international fund that would receive annual contributions to be used to purchase vaccines for all people during the next pandemic—especially for those in poor countries who have struggled to acquire COVID-19 vaccines.

Five African nations proposed a vote on the idea in 2021 and 2022, but nothing came to the floor of the World Health Organization’s World Health Assembly (WHA). Liberia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Gambia all submitted national requests to the WHA for inclusion of a supplementary item to its agenda. This was done according to WHO’s rules, even though we did not get the proposal on the agenda. There was, and there is, a great need to have other executive board members of the WHA endorse and submit the proposal. Clearly, more advocacy work is needed. This is a long-neglected issue, one I lived through myself as a Zambian. I was elated that there was finally financial support that could help turn the tide.

Much has rightly been written about the suffering that FTX’s fraud caused, and I feel for those who lost their personal funds and savings. But there is another group that will suffer as a result of this fraud as well: vulnerable and poor people worldwide who were lined up to benefit from the projects that FTX funded.

This includes many projects Future Fund supported that were meant to uplift the welfare of others, improve quality of life (especially in poor countries), and save lives. There was money set to help eliminate lead exposure for children worldwide, to help gifted children in poor regions of India excel, and to help develop a wide array of new vaccines, which may never materialize or may be left in legal limbo. For the organizations that did receive promised funding before FTX’s bankruptcy, there has been talk of clawbacks of grant money, but only time will tell.

Even though the clawbacks are also being targeted at nonprofits and charities, there was no logical way for them to know that the money was dirty. At a distance, everything looked solid—Bankman-Fried was a billionaire who was, until the scandal hit, promoted by the mainstream financial press as a genius. Organizations, especially those operating in developing countries, cannot be expected to do due diligence that the media doesn’t do. Furthermore, the panic and anguish that organizations like mine are experiencing must be understood from the point of the grant-application process. Grant applications involve a considerable amount of time and effort, which makes replacing grants within a grant cycle very difficult—without any guarantee of success.

Even beyond the legal considerations, we are now left to grapple with the question of whether spending tainted money, even for humanitarian ends, is justifiable. Does justice demand it be set aside? Does it matter if the money would be returned to institutional investors with billions of dollars or individuals who lost their savings?

As a person who lived in a house without electricity growing up—a person who walked about three miles one way to get to school in first grade at my primary school, crossing rivers and navigating through bushes—I have come to fervently appreciate the impact made by grants in uplifting and saving lives in poor countries. There is abundant, justifiable outrage toward FTX and Bankman-Fried, but the outrage must be informed by the plight of the secondary victims as well, for whom plans were made and money disbursed, and for whom nothing will be done.

The tragedy of FTX’s collapse for nonprofits and charities is an inevitable result of the fact that global governance fails to justly distribute resources and address inequalities. I was delighted to read about how the Open Philanthropy movement sees the situation in the light of the people who continue to need help. They have indicated that grantees impacted by the FTX collapse can apply for grants even though the focus of the grants is primarily on longtermist work.

Meanwhile in Africa, hundreds of thousands of lives are lost to HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and diarrheal diseases every year. To me, these are victims not only of this one scandal, but also of the continual neglect by many who are in a position to help. Getting assistance is not an entitlement, but if we aspire to a common humanity, then the plight of everyone must be in frame.

The state of things—where the survival of hundreds of thousands of people has to depend on individual philanthropists while governments abdicate and look the other way—must change. But we are still left with a system in which a handful of individuals can have massive sway over global public good. Their generosity should be lauded, but it’s an unstable system. At the very least, we must ask: Why are there relatively few willing to operate on the scale of Bill Gates or Open Philosophy’s Dustin Moskovitz? The FTX fiasco should remind us of the fragility of a system built on the generosity of the rich.

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sa7abnews · 2 months

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How Chinese Fishing Vessels Dominate Domestic Waters Across the Globe

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/01/how-chinese-fishing-vessels-dominate-domestic-waters-across-the-globe/

How Chinese Fishing Vessels Dominate Domestic Waters Across the Globe

On March 14, 2016, in the squid grounds off the coast of Patagonia, a rusty Chinese vessel named the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was fishing illegally, several miles inside Argentine waters. Spotted by an Argentine coast-guard patrol and ordered over the radio to halt, the specially-designed squid-fishing ship, known as a “jigger,” fled the scene. The Argentinians gave chase and fired warning shots. The Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 then tried to ram the coast-guard cutter, prompting it to open fire directly on the jigger, which soon sank. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Although the violent encounter at sea that day was unusual, the incursion into Argentine waters by a Chinese squid jigger was not. Owned by a state-run behemoth called the China National Fisheries Company, or CNFC, the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was one of several hundred Chinese jiggers that makes annual visits to the high-seas portion of the fishing grounds that lie beyond Argentina’s territory; many of these jiggers then turn off their locational transponders and cross secretly into Argentine waters. Since 2010, the Argentine navy has chased at least 11 Chinese squid vessels out of Argentine waters for suspected illegal fishing, according to the government.

In 2017, a year after the illegal incursion and sinking of the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10, Argentina’s Federal Fishing Council issued a little-noticed announcement: it was granting fishing licenses to two foreign vessels that would allow them to operate within Argentine waters. Both would sail under the Argentine flag through a local front company, but their true “beneficial” owner was the CNFC. (The CNFC did not respond to requests for comment.)

The move by local authorities may have been a contradiction, but it is an increasingly common one in Argentina—and elsewhere around the world. Over the past three decades, China has gained supremacy over global fishing by dominating the high seas with more than 6,000 distant-water ships, a fleet that is more than triple the size of the next largest national fleet. When it came to targeting other countries’ waters, Chinese fishing ships typically sat “on the outside,” parking in international waters along sea borders, then running incursions across the line into domestic waters. But in recent years, from South America to Africa to the far Pacific, China has increasingly taken a “softer” approach, gaining control from the inside by paying to “flag-in” their ships so they can fish in domestic waters. Subtler than simply entering foreign coastal areas to fish illegally, the tactic is less likely to result in political clashes, bad press, or sunken vessels.

While many nations have laws that require vessels fishing in their waters to be locally owned—with the aim of keeping profits in the country and making it easier to enforce fishing regulations—China has found ways around them. Chinese companies partner with locals, or even sell or lease their ships to them, but retain control over decisions and profits. Or they buy their way into local waters with “access agreements.”

Chinese companies now control at least 62 industrial squid-fishing vessels that fly the Argentine flag, which constitutes most of the country’s squid fleet. Many of these companies have been tied to a variety of crimes, including dumping fish at sea, turning off their transponders, and engaging in tax evasion and fraud. Trade records show that much of what is caught by these vessels is sent back to China, but some of the seafood is also exported to countries including the United States, Canada, Italy, and Spain. China now operates almost 250 of these flagged-in vessels globally, including ones that operate off the coasts of Micronesia, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, and Iran.

A four-year investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project into the global seafood supply chain—which entailed reporting at sea on several ships, including to the waters of Argentina, the Falkland Islands, near Korea and the Galapagos Islands—has for the first time revealed the true size of this hidden fleet, along with the extent of the fleet’s illegal behavior, concentration in certain foreign waters, and the amount of seafood from these ships that winds up in European and American markets.

“Most national fisheries require vessels to be owned locally to keep profits within the country and make it easier to enforce fishing regulations,” said Duncan Copeland, the former executive director of Trygg Mat Tracking, a non-profit research organization specializing in maritime crime. “Flagging-in undermines those aims.”

China has not hidden how this approach factors into larger ambitions. In an academic paper published in 2023, Chinese fishery officials and representatives from Zhejiang Ocean Family explained how they have relied extensively on Chinese companies, for example, to penetrate Argentina’s territorial waters through “leasing and transfer methods,” and how this is part of a global policy.

Experts said the decision by the Argentine government to flag in Chinese-owned vessels after the sinking of the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 confused them, given Argentine regulations that not only forbid foreign-owned ships from flying Argentina’s flag or fishing in its waters, but also prohibit the granting of fishing licenses to ship operators with records of illegal fishing in Argentine waters. Eduardo Pucci, a former Argentine fisheries minister, called it “a total contradiction.”

The trend is especially pronounced in Africa, where Chinese companies operate flagged-in ships in the national waters of at least nine countries on the continent—among them, notably, Ghana, where more than 135 Chinese fishing ships flying the Ghanaian flag are fishing in national waters, even though foreign investment in fishing is technically illegal. Nonetheless, up to 95 percent of Ghana’s industrial trawling fleet has some element of Chinese control, according to a 2018 report by the Environmental Justice Foundation, an advocacy group, the most recent available figures.

China has also replaced fishing vessels from the European Union, right on its doorstep, in the waters of Morocco. In the recent past, dozens of vessels, most of them from Spain, fished with the permission of the Moroccan government inside the African country’s exclusive economic zone. The agreement lapsed, however, in 2023 and China now operates at least six flagged-in vessels in Moroccan waters. China has also established a growing presence across the Pacific Ocean. Chinese ships comb the waters of Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia, having flagged-in or signed access agreements with those countries, according to a report released in 2022 by the Congressional Research Service in the U.S.

“Chinese fleets are active in waters far from China’s shores,” the report warned, “and the growth in their harvests threatens to worsen the already dire depletion in global fisheries.”

As global demand for seafood has doubled since the 1960s, the appetite for fish has outpaced what can be sustainably caught. Now, more than a third of the world’s stocks have been overfished, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations ( FAO). To feed the demand, the proliferation of foreign industrial fishing ships, especially from China, risks depleting domestic fish stocks of countries in the global south while also jeopardizing local livelihoods and compromising food security by exporting an essential source of protein. Western consumers, particularly in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, are beneficiaries of this cheap and seemingly abundant seafood caught or processed by China.

“Illegal fishing and abusive fishing takes away from communities that survive on the same fish,” says Dyhia Belhabib, a principal investigator at Ecotrust Canada, a charity focused on environmental activism. “This means that their current and future economic prospects from this very valuable resource are being destroyed and their food resources depleted.”

But ocean sustainability and food security are by no means the only concerns tied to the growth of China’s control of global seafood and penetration into foreign near-shore waters. Labor abuses and other crimes are a widespread problem with Chinese fishing ships.

In the past six years, more than 50 ships flagged to a dozen different countries but controlled by Chinese companies have engaged in crimes such as illegal fishing, forced labor, and unauthorized transhipment, or transfers of catch at sea to carrier ships that transfer it back to shore, according to the investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project. In one instance, a fisheries observer from Ghana went missing while working on the vessel. Four of the vessels showed a pattern of repeatedly turning off their automated tracking systems for longer than a day at a time while out on the Pacific, often at the edge of an exclusive economic zone. Vessels “going dark” is a risk factor for illegal fishing and transshipment, marine researchers say, because it makes it harder for law enforcement to comprehensively track a vessel’s movement or see if it may have engaged with other ships at sea.

For most of the past decade, one dead body has been dropped off every other month on average in the port of Montevideo, Uruguay, mostly from Chinese squid ships, according to the Outlaw Ocean Project’s research. Some of the workers on these ships have died from beriberi, an easily avoidable and reversible form of malnutrition caused by a B1 vitamin deficiency that experts say is a warning sign of criminal neglect, typically caused on ships by eating too much white rice or instant noodles, which lack the vitamin. At least 24 workers on 14 Chinese fishing ships suffered symptoms associated with beriberi between 2013 and 2021, according to the investigation. Of those, at least 15 died. The investigation also reported dozens of cases of forced labor, wage theft, violence, the confiscation of passports and deprivation of medical care.

Many of these crimes have taken place on the high seas, beyond any country’s territorial jurisdiction. But increasingly, Chinese-owned vessels are fishing in the local waters of nations where policing is sporadic at best, as governments lack the finances, the coast-guard vessels, or the political will to board and spot-check the ships.

In January 2019, as part of the four-year investigation, a team of reporters from The Outlaw Ocean Project boarded a Chilean fishing ship in Punta Arenas, Chile, where the crew recounted recently watching a Chinese captain on a nearby squid ship punching and slapping deckhands. Later that year, the same team of journalists was reporting at sea off the coast of the West African nation of Gambia, where they boarded a Chinese ship called the Victory 205. There they found six African crew members sleeping on sea-soaked foam mattresses in a cramped and dangerously hot crawl space above the engine room of the ship, which was soon detained by local authorities for these labor and other violations. (Owners of the Victory 205 did not respond to a request for comment.)

In February 2022, the Outlaw Ocean Project reporters boarded a Chinese squid jigger on the high seas near the Falkland Islands, where an 18-year-old Chinese deckhand nervously begged to be rescued, explaining that his and the rest of the workers’ passports had been confiscated. “Can you take us to the embassy in Argentina?” he asked. Roughly four months later, the reporting team climbed onto another Chinese fishing ship in international waters near the Galapagos Islands to document living conditions. As if in suspended animation, the crew of 30 men wore thousand-yard stares. Their teeth were yellowed from smoking, their skin ashen, and their hands spongy from handling fresh squid. The walls and floors were covered in a slippery ooze of squid ink. The deckhands said they worked 15-hour days, 6 days per week. Mostly, they stood shin deep in squid, monitoring the reels to ensure they did not jam, and tossing their catch into overflowing baskets for later sorting. Below deck, a cook stirred instant noodles and bits of squid in a rice cooker. He said the vessel had run out of vegetables and fruit—a common cause at sea of fatal malnutrition.

In June 2023, the same reporters were contacted by Uruguayan authorities seeking help after a local woman stumbled across a message in a bottle, washed ashore, apparently thrown from a Chinese squidder. “I am a crew member of the ship Lu Qing Yuan Yu 765 and I was locked up by the company,” the message said. “When you see this paper, please help me call the police! Help, help.” When contacted for comment, the ship’s owner Qingdao Songhai Fishery said that Uruguayan police had looked into the matter and concluded that the message “was completely fabricated by individual crew members.”

Jorge Frias, the president of the Argentine fishing captains’ union, explains that on Argentine-flagged ships, the Chinese call the shots. The captains are Argentinians, but “fishing masters,” who are Chinese, decide where to go and when, he says.

The case of Manuel Quiquinte is illustrative. In the Spring of 2021, Quiquinte, an Argentinian crew member on a squid jigger called the Xin Shi Ji 89, contracted Covid while at sea. Owned by the Chinese, the ship was flagged to Argentina and jigging in Argentinian waters. Its crew was a mix of Argentinian and Chinese workers. Several days after Quiquinte fell ill, the Argentine captain called the Chinese owners to ask if the ship could go to shore in Argentina to get medical care. According to court testimony from another crew member, the company officials said no, and to keep fishing. Quiquinte died on the ship shortly thereafter, in May.

When contacted by the Outlaw Ocean Project about the death, the vessel’s parent company Zhejiang Ocean Family said that the crew member had tested negative for COVID-19 prior to working on board but had indeed contracted the illness on the vessel and died after his condition deteriorated rapidly. Ocean Family said the vessel belonged to a local Argentine company which Ocean Family has invested in (and which it did not identify), and it was this local company which handled the situation.

To help create jobs, make money and feed its growing middle class, the Chinese government heavily supports its fishing industry with billions of dollars in subsidies for things like fuel, ship building, or engine purchases. The Chinese fishing companies flagging into poorer countries’ waters are also eligible for these subsidies. “The reason why the Chinese subsidize these fleets could be not only for the fish,” said Fernando Rivera, chairman of the Argentine Fishing Industry Chamber. “It has a very important geopolitical aspect.”

As U.S. and European fishing fleets and navies have shrunk, so too has Western development funding and market investment in Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific. This has created a void that China is filling as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s global development program. Between 2000 and 2020, China’s trade with Latin America and the Caribbean grew from $12 billion to $315 billion, according to the World Economic Forum. China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, two major state-owned Chinese banks, provided $137 billion in loans to Latin American governments between 2005 and 2020. In exchange, China has at times received exclusive access to a wide range of resources, from oil fields to lithium mines.

The maritime domain is an important front in China’s growth plans, which include exerting power not just over the high seas and contested waters like those in the South China Sea, but also consolidating control over shipping, fishing in foreign coastal waters, and ports abroad. Chinese companies now operate dozens of overseas processing plants and cold-storage facilities, and terminals in more than 90 foreign fishing or shipping ports abroad, according to research by Kardon.

Though most of these business ventures go unnoticed, some of them have sparked controversy. Starting in 2007, China extended more than a billion dollars worth of loans to Sri Lanka as part of a plan for a Chinese state-owned company named the China Ocean Shipping Company Group to build a port and an airport. The deal was made based on the promise that the project would generate more than enough revenue for Sri Lanka to pay back these loans. By 2017, however, the port and airport had not recouped the debt, and Sri Lanka had no way to pay back the loan. China struck a new deal extending credit further. The deal gave China majority control over the port and the surrounding area for 99 years.

In 2018, a Chinese company named Shandong Baoma purchased a 70 acre plot of land in Montevideo, Uruguay, to build a “megaport” consisting of two half-mile-long docks, a tax-exempt “free-trade zone,” a new ice factory, a ship-repair warehouse, a fuel depot, and dorms for staff. The plan was eventually canceled after local protests, but the Uruguayan government later announced that it would build the port itself, with foreign investment, and China’s ambassador in Uruguay, Wang Gang, expressed interest in managing the project.

More recently, in May 2021, Sierra Leone signed an agreement with China to build a new fishing harbor and fishmeal processing factory on a beach near a national park. In response, local organizations pushed for more transparency around the deal, which they said would harm the area’s biodiversity, according to a 2023 report by The Stimson Center.

In Argentina, China has made or promised billions of dollars in currency swaps and investments, providing a crucial lifeline amid skyrocketing domestic inflation and growing hesitancy from international investors. For Beijing, this money has bought political influence. After the Argentine coast guard sank the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 in 2016, all 29 crew members were rescued from the water, and all but four of them were immediately taken back to China. The captain and three others were rescued by the coast guard, brought to shore, charged with a range of crimes, and put under house arrest.

The judge handling the case initially justified the charges filed. The Chinese officers had placed “both the life and property of the Chinese vessel itself and the personnel and ship of the Argentine Prefecture at risk,” he said. But China’s foreign ministry soon pushed back. Three days later, Argentina’s foreign minister told reporters that the charges had “provoked a reaction of great concern from the Chinese government” and that she had reassured China that Argentina would follow local and international laws. Several weeks later, in April, the Argentine judiciary also fell in line, releasing the captain and the three other sailors without penalty to be flown back to China. By May, Argentina’s foreign minister was on a plane to Beijing to meet with the Chinese foreign minister.

The scourge of illegal fishing and overfishing did not originate with China, of course. Western industrial fleets dominated the world’s oceans for much of the 20th century, fishing unsustainably in ways that have helped cause the current crisis, explained Daniel Pauly, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia.

China’s expansionist methods are also not historically unique. The U.S. has a long and infamous record of intervening abroad when foreign leaders begin erecting highly protectionist laws. In the past several decades, the tactic of “flagging in” has also been used by American and Icelandic fishing companies. More recently, as China has increased its control over global fishing, the U.S. and European nations have jumped at the opportunity to focus international attention on China’s misdeeds.

Still, China has a well-documented reputation for violating international fishing laws and standards, bullying other ships, intruding on the maritime territory of other countries and abusing its fishing workers. In 2021, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a nonprofit research group, ranked China as the world’s biggest purveyor of illegal fishing. But frequent culprits can also be easy scapegoats: a country that regularly flouts norms and breaks the law can also at times be a victim of misinformation. When criticized in the media, China typically pushes back, not without reason, by dismissing the criticism as politically motivated and by accusing its detractors of hypocrisy.

China’s sheer size, global reach, and poor track record on labor and marine conservation is raising concerns. In Africa, for instance, Chinese trawlers catch 100,000 metric tons of fish each year just from Ghanian waters, and the country’s fishing stocks are now in crisis, as local fishermen’s incomes have dropped by up to 40 percent over the last decade. “Fishing vessel owners and operators exploit African flags to escape effective oversight and to fish unsustainably and illegally both in sovereign African waters,” wrote TMT, the nonprofit that tracks maritime crime, adding that the companies were creating “a situation where they can harness the resources of a State without any meaningful restrictions or management oversight.” In the Pacific, an inspection in 2024 by local police and the U.S. Coast Guard found that six Chinese flagged-in ships fishing in the waters of Vanuatu had violated regulations requiring them to record the amount of fish they catch.

And in South America, the increasingly foreign presence in territorial waters is stoking nationalist worry in places like Peru and Argentina. “China is becoming the only player, by displacing local companies or purchasing them,” said Mr. Miranda, the former Peruvian minister. Pablo Isasa, a captain of an Argentinian hake trawler, added: “We have the enemy inside and out.”

Several major studies have shown that China is not only the biggest player in the global seafood industry, but also the largest purveyor of illegal fishing. On the high seas, there is little-to-no law enforcement, which allows the Chinese fleet to dip into waters where they are not authorized and to use prohibited techniques that can give them an edge — and which makes the myriad human-rights abuses committed on China’s fishing vessels practically invisible.

All of this contributes to an accelerating pace of unsustainable fishing around the world. After years of similar behavior from Western nations, including the U.S. and Europe, China is leading the way in fishing species to near extinction. The fleet also operates the world’s largest collection of bottom trawlers, which drag nets across the ocean floor, destroying coral reefs and other marine life.

Most marine conservationists and researchers agree that with a third of all fish stocks at the edge or beyond the point of collapse, the trend of overfishing must be reversed, as it threatens not only ocean health, but also global food security and human rights. As stocks decline, driving competition, companies face increasing pressure to cut corners in their fishing practices, which can often lead to the use of forced labor and other human rights crimes. Researchers and advocates recommend scaling back the size of global fishing fleets; tightening the quotas that limit how many fish can be pulled from the water; removing the government subsidies that make seafood artificially cheap; and for companies to take further steps to monitor their supply chains. If this does not happen, according to these experts, environmental degradation and human rights abuses will continue to worsen.

The superpower of seafood, China is unequivocally the most important global actor on the high seas today, but it also plays an outsized role in foreign waters. Better control of the hundreds of industrial Chinese fishing ships in the national waters of poorer, global South countries will be an important part of any plan to protect the oceans.

(This story was produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project with reporting contributed by Maya Martin, Jake Conley, Joe Galvin, Susan Ryan, Austin Brush, and Teresa Tomassoni. Bellingcat also contributed reporting.)

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isoghana1 · 3 months

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What steps are involved in the mission of ISO 14001 Certification in Ghana?

ISO 14001 Certification in Ghana:

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