Immigration Detention Centres, our next-door concentration camps

In 1985 the Spanish government approved an immigration law including detention centres (CIES in Spanish) for immigrants who do not have papers in order, but are not to be imprisoned. According to this law, immigrants should spend a maximum of 40 days in those detention centres until they are expelled from Spain.  

In 1995, with the implementation of the Schengen Agreement, many detention centres were built around Europe. In Spain, even if these centres are managed by the Ministry of Home Affairs, there is no official information about the exact number of centres and the exact number of people in detention. According to the campaign Stop CIES, conducted by the NGO “SOS Racisme” and the Barcelona Youth Council, there are 280 detention centres in Europe, including 11 in Spain. Now-a-days, with the new detention law, immigrants can spend there 60 days. 

Several organisations denounced that immigrants are ill-treated in these centres, to the point that in the detention centre of Barcelona there have been four casualties so far. The Spanish Minister of Home Affairs argues that they were all natural deaths, except for a suicide, but there is no way to check it out. There is no control on police actions in these centres, there are no annual reports, no lists of immigrants in detention, no financial reports and no public information made available. In short, it is like a concentration camp for people who have committed no crime (not having your papers in order is not a crime but just an administrative offence), and these people are denied most of their rights.

At the beginning of 2012, several campaigns against these shameful centres were reported in the mass media. The Catalan ombudsman decided to enter the detention centre in Barcelona with some journalists to make an inspection, but they were not allowed in. Some days later, the Spanish Minister of Home Affairs allowed some journalists to enter this centre in an attempt to improve the public opinion about CIES. As a result, from now on, detention centres will be named CECE in Spain (Centres for the Controlled Stay of Foreigners), which allegedly sounds better. But they are still the same: detention centres without any transparent information.

As citizens, we get almost no information about the existence of detention centres or what happens there, but we are an accessory nonetheless. Detention centres are like concentration camps, and they may be located next door.

Sources:

1. Organic Law 7/1985 on Rights and Liberties of the Foreigners in Spain: http://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1985-12767
2. The Schengen Agreement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement
3. Information of the Spanish Ministry of Home Affairs about detention centres: http://www.interior.gob.es/extranjeria-28/regimen-general-189/centro-de-internamiento-de-extranjeros-208?locale=es
4. Campaign against detention centres: http://ciesno.wordpress.com/about/
5. A young man dies in the detention centre of Barcelona: http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/01/06/inenglish/1325830851_850210.html
6. Not having your papers in order is not a crime but an administrative offence: http://www.papelesespana.com/documentacion/sin-papeles.html
7. Journalist entering the detention centre in Barcelona: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/04/26/barcelona/1335425279.html
8. Detention centres are named differently: http://www.abc.es/20120612/espana/abci-cies-anteproyecto-novedades-201206112037.html

   
   
   
    

A living planet

With more than five million members, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is the world’s largest conservation organisation. 

In spring 2012 it became notorious because one of its honorary presidents, the Spanish King Juan Carlos, went hunting elephants in Botswana. This NGO received mass criticism to have a hunter as honorary president of the Spanish section, being a wildlife conservation organization. In July, an extraordinary assembly decided to sack him with a vote carried by a 94% majority. However, it was a hard blow for the image of this organization and some members resigned.

WWF has been linked to the monarchies for a long time. One of its founders was the Prince Consort of the Netherlands, Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, and its current president is Charles, Prince of Wales. The aim is having international projection and making sure that WWF acts and campaigns appear not only in environmental publications but also in gossip magazines, to reach many more people, more or less as if we were talking of goodwill ambassadors. 

Leaving this issue aside, WWF plays a very important role. This NGO creates and manages many protected areas, launches campaigns to protect species, collaborates with indigenous communities to preserve territories… WWF has more than 1,200 projects around the world. 

And besides this field work, WWF also plays a significant role in denouncing environmental problems of our planet. Among other documents, this organization publishes a report called the Living Planet, analysing the health of our planet, with many data and proposals for a better future. Read this report and you will learn how things are and which problems we should face. And, most importantly, you will realise that we should change many things: either we reduce the impact of human activity on the environment or our future is doomed to failure. 

Some data from this report, which we encourage you to read:

• The planet biodiversity in the last 35 years has been reduced by 30%.
• Our current consumption of raw materials exceeds by 50% the planet’s regenerating capacity. We live in one planet, but we consume as if we were living in one and a half planets. 
• Deforestation and forest degradation account for 20% of our CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. 
• Only a third of the world’s rivers longer than 1,000 km are free flowing, without dams.
• In the last 50 years, global sea fishing has increased five-fold, so many species are overexploited. 
• The past few decades have been warmer than any other comparable period for the last 400 years.

Sources:

1. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Fund_for_Nature
2. WWF removes King Juan Carlos as its honorary president: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18942736
3. Goodwill ambassadors: http://www.deliveringdata.com/2011/07/goodwill-ambassadors.html
4. Living Planet Report 2012: http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/1_lpr_2012_online_full_size_single_pages_final_120516.pdf

The price of a cereal box

Original photo by Dr. Roy Winkelman from ClippixETC

The giants of the food industry (Nestlé, Kellogg, Kraft, General Foods, etc.) are the ones imposing rules on the food market. On the one hand, they can decide which price is paid to farmers for raw materials. On the other, they put pressure on retailers to favour their company products and get a larger profit margin. They can even have a saying on the advertising campaigns in supermarkets.  
In order to understand who rules the roost in the food sector, we should take a look at the benefit percentage of each actor playing a role in the whole manufacturing and sale process. We took the data from a cereal box, which can be easily extrapolated in most countries. 

The farmer gets about 7% of the final price. Taking an average cereal box costing 3.5 €, this means that the farmer gets 25 cents. Only a little tiny part of these 25 cents are real benefits for the farmer, because he has to cover the expenses of seeds, machinery, fertilisers, plot rental…
73% of the final price of a cereal box is for the processing company, which includes 29% for processing and packaging and 44% as real benefits. The processing company is, by far, the one who gets the best deal.
And finally, the retailer gets about 20%. This percentage is different if the retailer is a large supermarket, with more power to negotiate, or a grocer’s shop. This percentage includes all possible benefits.

The journalist Paul Roberts, who is specialised on this issue, summarises the whole idea: «The ability to generate such huge margins is why food companies have moved steadily and inexorably toward higher and higher levels of processing: the more a company processes a raw material and the closer that commodity comes to being a finished consumer product, the more the company can charge. In 1950, about half the retail price of a food product went to pay the farmer or other producer of raw materials, while half went to adding value. By 2000 this farm share had fallen below 20%. What this means is that even as farmers and other producers earned steadily less on their products, food processors and manufacturers were able to maintain their own revenues by steadily adding more value.»

Sources:

1. Data are taken from this book: John Connor et al. The Food Manufacturing Industries: Structure, Strategies, Performance and Polices. Lexington Books, page 66: http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/22263342?selectedversion=NBD3245057
2. These data are also mentioned in Paul Roberts’ book The End of Food: http://www.theendoffood.com/

    
     
     
     

Critical mass: 20 years celebrating bicycle rides

Bicycles do not block traffic: we are traffic. With this idea in mind, on 25 September 1992 about fifty cyclists in San Francisco (US) rode around this town to claim the use of bicycles. This idea came up after watching Ted White’s documentary film The Return of the Scorcher, describing traffic in some towns in China, where cyclists are not respected, so they wait until there are some more cyclists at a traffic light to cross large avenue as a single vehicle.
In the field of sociology, the expression critical mass is used to classify a sufficient number of people to make any phenomenon possible. This idea comes from the field of physics, and this group of cyclists from San Francisco adopted it to call their cycling event. The idea is quite simple: a bunch of cyclist meets once a month to ride around their town all together. As simple as that: it is not a demonstration, the area is not closed to traffic, so there is no argument between cyclists and drivers or cyclists and police officers. The point is making people get used to seeing bicycles around, because bicycles are part of the city traffic and they deserve the same respect as the rest of vehicles. It is a peaceful, celebratory event, often involving the whole family. 
This phenomenon soon spread around. In the following year, more than one thousand cyclists took part in San Francisco rides, and at present this event is celebrated in about 400 towns worldwide. If you want to know where and when the next cycling event is, check this web site.
Last month it was the twentieth anniversary of the first critical mass, but it became a real “critical mass” not so long ago. More and more people take part in these cycling meetings (be them regular or sporadic cyclists) because they understand that riding is not just a game for kids or a weekend hobby, but an alternative vehicle which is healthier, cheaper and more respectful with the environment than any other means of transport.
Ride your bicycle every day, and celebrate it once a month!

Sources:

1. The documentary film The Return of the Scorcher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF-ddhcnT-s
2. What “critical mass” means:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass_%28sociodynamics%29
3. When and where the next ride is: http://criticalmass.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_rides

    
     
     

KM 0 restaurants

Every year, 29,000 million kg of food is imported in Spain. That is, more than 700 kg every year per citizen. This is a major environmental atrocity, so in this blog we recently talked about some worldwide initiatives that advocate for local produce. In short, it is all about consuming products and food grown or manufactured nearby, so that we can all reduce the environmental impact of transport and reduce the problems of single-crop farming in Third World countries.
These initiatives are known by many names: km 0, 100-miles diet (or 100-km diet), Local Food, low CO2 diet or Locavore, just to set a few well-known examples, but there are many more.  
As any other change in our habits, promoting local produce in our everyday life is not easy and it will take its time. Although people have talked about it for a long time, there are not too many people who follow this diet. But consumers are gradually taking into account proximity values when going shopping.
One of the main actors implementing this “new” consumption model (which is not new, because our grandparents followed it) are restaurants. Recently, many bars and restaurants joined this movement and they play a significant role in promoting its qualities and making people realise that this is the only sustainable possibility. Thanks to these restaurants, citizens can have access to an excellent cuisine (with great variety and excellent quality) without importing products from far-away countries. And this movement includes bars serving sandwiches as well as sophisticated restaurants.
When we choose a restaurant, we usually take into account several factors: quality, price, location, the premises, the waiters’ kindness and the cook’s skills. From now on, we should include a new factor: local products. To help you in this hard choice, here you have some websites with the best Slow Food restaurants. Bon appetite!

KM 0 restaurants:

• In Catalonia: http://restaurantskm0.wordpress.com/
• In Spain: http://cocineros.slowfood.es/listado-de-restaurantes-y-cocineros-km-0-2010-11/
• In the US: http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Home
• Worldwide: http://www.foodkm.com/foodkm/myweb.php?hls=1031

Sources:

1. Post at Delivering Data about imported food: http://www.deliveringdata.com/2012/05/food-from-far-and-near.html
2. Post at Delivering Data about local produce: http://www.deliveringdata.com/2011/08/food-without-borders.html