E-waste

Lagos, a city whose population is rapidly approaching 20 million, has a huge waste disposal problem. And, thanks to the monthly arrival of up to 500 shipping containers of waste from the US and Europe, the problem is getting worse. According to US environment group Basel Action Network, up to 75 per cent of the loads contain so-called e-waste – obsolete electronic items such as computers and TVs, often in the guise of ‘charitable donations’.
Although there is great demand for second-hand imported electronic goods in the city, the vast majority is discarded on arrival and ends up in dumpsites, where it is burnt. With some of the components containing hazardous substances, environmentalists are extremely concerned.
‘It is a very worrisome situation,’ says Leslie Adogame of the Nigerian Environmental Society. ‘People around the areas where the waste is burnt are suffering from chest-related diseases because they inhale a lot of noxious substances.’
Laws on safe disposal of electronic goods have been introduced in the US and Europe but continue to be flouted, despite campaigners’ efforts to ensure companies comply. The US Government recently proposed a new e-waste law which would allow US shippers legally to send waste anywhere in the world as long as it is labelled ‘recycling’.

New Internationalist
April 2008 Issue 410

Teen Finds Way to Decompose Plastic Bags

If ordinary plastic bags would rot away like banana peels there’s no doubt a host of environmental problems would be solved, the fate of the turtle above included. And one 11th grader from Canada set out to make that dream come true as part of his school science project. A wildly successful endeavor he figures will make them decompose in just 3 months.
But how did this extraordinary young scientist named Daniel Burd pull it off?
Well, he decided the fact that they do, eventually, decompose after 1,000 years on their own meant there must be something out there causing it, and postulated that it might well be naturally occurring microorganisms behind it.
So he set about with the good old-fashioned scientific method as his guide, searching for the microorganisms, rarely found in nature, that actually do make plastic decompose.
Ultimately, he identified two strains of bacteria that work together to pull it off, with Sphingomonas serving as the primary decomposer with help from Pseudomonas.
And according to Burd, industrial application should be easy, "All you need is a fermenter . . . your growth medium, your microbes and your plastic bags."
As many folks know, the simplest solutions are usually the ones that work best. And this kid has clearly come up with a potentially world changing idea.
So congrats from all of us here at TreeHugger, where we are inspired by your creativity!
By Kenny Luna,

The Myth of Western Aid

The story of Western aid to the Third World needs to be demystified. Western populations almost universally believe that the story of Western aid is of massive transfers of aid to poor Third World countries for purely altruistic reasons. They know that much of this aid has not resulted in successful development. But many believe that this is not the fault of the West. It is true that there is a huge scandal of corruption on Western aid that is waiting to be exposed. However, if and when this story is fully exposed, it is the West that will be deeply embarrassed. The full story will show that the wide-held belief of altruistic Western aid is nothing but a myth. [ By Kishore Mahbubani ]It should be stressed upfront that there have been some beneficial effects of Western aid. Considering the huge sums involved, even if only a trickle did good, the results would still be significant. Hence, the West can legitimately point to a university in Lahore (LUMS), a bridge in Bhutan, a road in Laos or Colombo Plan Scholars in Singapore. But these are the exceptions. The vast majority of Western aid is as good as wasted. Or perhaps, wasted is not the correct word. It has been used – but it has been used to help the donor countries, not the poor developing countries. My rough guess is that out of every $ 10 of Western aid that is allegedly spent in the Third World, $ 8 returns to the donor country in the form of administration expenses, consultancy fees and contracts for donor country corporations. In short, there is very little actual transfer of aid to the developing countries. Sunset OECD The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was set up in 1961 to assist countries in economic development and sustainable economic growth. By any objective standards, the OECD has failed in its mission. Still, the West continues to spend € 342.9 million a year maintaining an expensive secretariat in Paris, which produces excellent research papers but achieves little in delivering results on its core mission. More critically, the OECD happily provides estimates of the total amount of Official Development Assistance (ODA) provided by the West. Recent estimates show that the OECD members gave approximately $ 104.4 billion to the developing world. However, what is missing from this massive OECD estimate is how much of it actually reaches the developing countries and how much of it is effectively recycled back into the donor countries. The OECD has more than enough bureaucratic and academic resources to carry out such an audit. But it would not even dream of doing so for it will be killed by its own Western paymasters for attempting such an audit. Nor will anyone in the West have the courage to state another obvious truth: after having failed in its core mission, the OECD has clearly become a “sunset” organisation. Its disappearance will have no impact on the developing world. There are many other distortions in the provision of Western aid; indeed too many to be documented in a brief article like this. A few deserve mention: - Western aid does not go to the poorest or neediest countries. It goes to those countries which support the foreign-policy agendas of the donor countries. Take American aid, for example. OECD estimates show that on a per capita basis, American aid is the lowest among the OECD countries. But even the relatively little amount that America gives goes only to select countries, like Israel or Egypt even though Israel is a developed country. In recent years, Israel has received between $ 2.5 to 3 billion annually in US aid (Sharp, 2007) – and that is more than what all of sub-Saharan Africa gets. - Western countries do not hesitate to pull the plug if any recipient country fails to support their foreign policy agenda. Many African countries signed on to the International Criminal Court (ICC) statute because Africa clearly needed the ICC process. But when some African countries took a principled stand and refused to sign the side agreement to exempt American nationals from ICC prosecution, America threatened to cut off, and in some cases actually withheld, foreign aid. Altruism never featured in these deliberations. - Much of the aid given could be nullified by other hugely damaging actions of the donor countries. Take the case of the EU. In 2003, Johan Norberg wrote: “According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, EU protectionism deprives developing countries of nearly $ 700 billion in export income a year. That’s almost 14 times more than poor countries receive in foreign aid”. 14 times! Much will have to be done to correct that distortion.- In 1969, the OECD countries pledged to raise ODA to 0.7 % of their gross national incomes (GNI). Yet very few OECD members have honoured this pledge. In 2006, the actual ODA flows amounted to 0.31 % of member countries’ GNI (OECD, 2007). The difference between 0.31 % and 0.7 % amounted to approximately $ 134.7 billion. Even if only 20 % of this would have actually reached the developing countries, this amounted to a real loss of $ 26.9 billion. Compare theses figures with the total GNI of Least Developed Countries, which, according to UN statistics, was approximately $ 148 billion in 2006. Does anyone really expect the people in the developing world to be impressed by the West’s repeated pledge that the 0.7 % threshold will finally be met in 2015?- Even aid channelled through multilateral organisations is not immune from these distortions. The donor countries are often able to control the agenda of the multilateral aid organisations and also ensure that the budgets of these organisations are used in favour of their countries. When Australia “donates” scholarships through the Asian Development Bank (ADB) most of them have to be used in Australian universities or on services provided by Australian academics. Undoubtedly, some good comes from these scholarships. But if someone from Papua New Guinea could find a degree or more relevant course in another developing country institution, the scholarship cannot be used. Donor sensitivities The multilateral aid organisations also know that they pay a price if they ignore the wishes of the donor countries. The Scandinavian countries enjoy the reputation of being most generous in the provision of aid (in 2006, three out of four Scandinavian countries met the pledge of giving ODA up to 0.7 % of GNI). But they too are not immune from applying pressures. In 1999, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan decided to choose the new Administrator of UNDP on merit and not select the candidates traditionally imposed on the UN by the EU. The EU had nominated Poul Nielsen, the Danish Development Minister at the time. On the basis of merit, Kofi Annan chose Mark Malloch Brown, a British national, instead. The Danish government retaliated by slashing Danish aid to UNDP by 23 %. No one knows how many poor Africans or Asians suffered because Danish national pride had been wounded. The real tragedy of this whole story is that the West could have actually accomplished its ostensibly altruistic goals in the developing world if it focused its efforts on helping the recipient countries, instead of ensuring that most of the ODA was used to secure their own interests. And it could have accomplished this with a fraction of the money that has been ostensibly transferred to the Third World. This is what the real story of the Asian economic miracle is all about. The Asian countries that have succeeded are those who took charge of their development agenda and used the ODA given to them to develop the capabilities that they really needed, not those that the donor countries were pushing on them. The biggest success story for UNDP is probably Singapore. Two UNDP consultants, in particular who were sent to Singapore, made a huge difference: They were Albert Winsemius, a Dutch national, and I.F. Tang, a Chinese national. They developed good relationships with the architect of Singapore’s economic miracle, Dr. Goh Keng Swee. They worked together as a team and Singapore took off. Depressing realities Contrast the Singapore experience with two real-life stories of how aid was distorted. In 1973/74, I served as the Charge d’Affaires of the Singapore Embassy in Phnom Penh, a war-torn capital, which was being shelled everyday by the Khmer Rouge. I was 25 years old then. I met another 25-year-old female diplomat from the American Embassy. The Lon Nol regime then in power was being kept afloat by American aid. Each day, this young American diplomat would call on the Cambodian Minister of Economic Affairs and instruct him on what measures to implement. She was a good person and well intentioned. But she, not the minister, was running the Cambodian economy. It is no wonder that the Lon Nol regime collapsed. No foreign aid succeeds if there is no sense of ownership of the development process by the recipient country. While OECD rhetoric has become aware of this fact for some time, it is doubtful, to say the least, that Western donors really accept the principle of national ownership. There is another similar horror story, a story which is worse in some ways because it was carried out not by the “hegemonic” American power but by a respected multilateral institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Joseph Stiglitz (2002) recounts this story well, it concerns Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world. Ethiopia’s leaders tried to take charge of their own development agenda, and yet, received no support from the IMF in doing so. In 1997, the lending programme to Ethiopia was suspended ostensibly on the grounds that the Fund was concerned about the country’s budgetary position. Ethiopia was pressured to limit expenditure on development to only money from tax revenues, instead of relying on international assistance, which was deemed less stable. Actual statistics showed the IMF assumption to be untrue. When Ethiopia repaid an American bank loan early using its reserves so as to be free from the high interest rates, the country faced strong objections from the IMF and the United States, despite the sound economic move, as prior approval had not been obtained from the IMF. It is evident that neither the sovereignty of the country nor its right to formulate its own development strategy was respected in both cases. I end this article with these stories to illustrate how sadly distorted the Western aid project has become. The real tragedy is that given the overwhelming amount of goodwill among Western populations towards the poor developing countries, so much could have been done with the money approved by Western taxpayers for the aid budgets. Unknown to these Western populations, very little of the money reached the Third World or was actually used to help the poor developing countries. The Western populations deserve to be told what really happened to their money. The time to tell the truth has come.

Sources:
OECD, 2007: Final ODA flows in 2006,
Norberg, Johan, 2003: American and European protectionism is killing poor countries and their people, CATO Journal, 4 September.
Sharp, Jeremy M., 2007: CRS report for Congress: U.S. foreign aid to Israel, 25 April 2007.
Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2002: Globalisation and its discontents, New York: Norton & Company.
United Nations, 2007: “The list of least developed countries (2006 Review): Key indicators”, retrieved from http://www.un.org/esa/policy/devplan/ldc06list.pdf on 2 January 2008. »» http://www.un.org/esa/policy/devplan/ldc06list.pdf
Kishore Mahbubani is the Dean of National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and a former Ambassador to the United Nations. His forthcoming book is “The new Asian hemisphere: The irresistible shift of global power to the East”. He would like to thank Loh Su Hsing for her research assistance in preparing this article. »» http://www.mahbubani.net

Safe Sex Subsidy

In an interesting experiment, the World Bank plans to use conditional cash transfers to keep HIV/AIDS in check. A pilot project is to be launched in southern Tanzania this year.[ By Eleonore von Bothmer ]Over the next three years, the World Bank plans to pay 3000 young Tanzanians between the age of 15 and 30 for having safe sex, so they don’t catch AIDS. According to The Financial Times, each participant will receive $ 45 if no sexually transmitted diseases are found in regularly conducted laboratory tests. For most of the people concerned, this amount is equivalent to a fourth of their annual income. The researchers who are designing the pilot study hope that the financial incentive will make people consider long-term consequences of their behavior. It is believed that the payment, along with counseling, can reduce infection rates, especially in the target group most in danger: young women. Many of them depend upon the generosity of their lovers. Once these women have more money of their own, they will be in a stronger position when negotiating the use of condoms. In the pilot project, there will also be a control group that is not paid any money. Conditional cash transfers have proven successful in Mexico and Brazil. In either country, however, they are not used in relation to sexual behavior. Rather, poor families there are paid for sending their children to school and having them vaccinated. For good reason, the World Bank wants to launch the new health programme this year to slow down the spread of HIV/AIDS. In spite of large sums spent on prevention and care all over the world, 2.5 million people become infected every year, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The finishing touches are still being put on the scientific concept, which also has yet to undergo an ethical review. The approach makes sense. Should the experiment not be undertaken, it would be a pity if, in the neighbourhood of the White House in Washington, the only reason was conservatives’ obsession with other people’s sexual morals.

Eleonore von Bothmer is current-affairs editor at D+C/E+Z. »» euz.editor@fsd.de

The Fall of Tonderai Ndira

Death of a Zimbabwean activist
The body of Tonderai Ndira was found this week, the 43rd Zimbabwean opposition activist to die in violence since elections in March. Journalist Farai Sevenzo looks back at his life and the circumstances leading up to his murder.
It is clear that the change we were waiting for is here. If we do not get it, the people must rise up and fight for their victory Tonderai Ndira
Tonderai Ndira lived in the desperately poor township of Mabvuku and Tafara, east of Harare.
He was no stranger to the Zimbabwean police and at one stage had 38 charges levelled against him, ranging from "political nuisance" to attempted murder.
He was one of a group of young men and women, barely in their thirties, who formed the backbone of the opposition's ranks.
Theirs was the thankless and arduous task of mobilising moribund, disillusioned and tired folk to believe in this new concept called change and to sign up to the messages of the eight-year-old opposition - the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
On election day, 29 March, the tall and charismatic Ndira was hanging around by what passes for shops in his sewage-ridden constituency, where electricity is erratic and where cholera has already claimed lives in the last 12 months.
I asked him what he felt that day would bring, and if, given the history of elections in this country, the day would make any difference.
"It is clear that the change we were waiting for is here. If we do not get it, the people must rise up and fight for their victory," he said.
Rising up and fighting for victory pits one against the awesome strength of the security machinery the state has at its disposal.
That is an undisputed fact in the history of this country's opposition.
It is an impossible task.
Beyond politics
In the weeks following polling day, a campaign of intimidation was unfurled which largely affected opposition people rather than ruling party folk.
He was campaigning for things like better streets, more rubbish collections, healthy water supplies ZimRights official
Huts and houses were torched on both sides of the political divide; images of the beaten and tortured were wired around the world, and diplomats based in Harare collected eyewitness accounts of the horrors being unleashed in the countryside by people variously described as war veterans, militias or soldiers.
It was with this background that Tonderai Ndira continued to lend his leadership to the idea of democratic change, and his activism went beyond the politics of the MDC.
An official from human rights organisation ZimRights, who declined to be named, outlined what Ndira meant to civic society in and around Harare.
"I knew him personally, he was a youth activist who went around the country holding workshops and teaching people their rights.
"He was very active in the Combined Harare Residents Association - campaigning for things like better streets, more rubbish collections, healthy water supplies.
"And so he became a target for the Zanu-PF, because they are targeting active members."
And why would such people become targets of the ruling party?
"They know that if people like Ndira are removed, there will be less likelihood of an uprising."
Disappearances
Ordinarily it was a mission to find Ndira.
He would venture into the centre of town for the odd demonstration and then disappear for days on end.
His wife and three young children became used to the idea of him coming home after weeks away because a healthy sense of paranoia was needed to avoid spurious charges and lengthy stays in remand prison.
But on Tuesday 13 May, according to his friends and eyewitnesses, Ndira came home and slept the sleep of the exhausted in Mabvuku township.
At around 0645, a pick-up truck packed with 10 men arrived on his narrow street and drove past his house, stopping at the neighbours.
The 10 men were armed with revolvers and AK-47s - some of them wore masks.
The neighbour's child duly told them the right address and they reversed, disembarked and told Ndira's wife they were looking for her husband.
The presence of so many armed men frightened her into calling out his name and announcing that there were people there to see him.
He answered with a voice drunk with sleep and asked her to tell them to come by later, as he needed his rest.
We are like chickens waiting for the knife to reach our throats Tonderai Ndira's brother Cosmas
He was abducted in his underwear, in front of his young children as they were heading to school and beaten into the truck until he was bleeding.
In the ensuing week, his family and friends desperately tried to locate him.
The omens were not good, several activists had been found dead and funerals were happening throughout the city and the rural areas - all connected to Zimbabwe's protracted political impasse.
On Wednesday, the MDC went to claim two more bodies from Harare's Parirenyatwa Hospital morgue.
Party officials were told by the mortician there was another body that had not been claimed.
Unrecognisable
This new body was badly decomposed; a pair of bloody shorts was plastered to a face clearly broken and shattered.
"We only knew it was my brother by his distinctive ring, his bangles, and his unmistakeable height," said Cosmas Ndira, as family and friends filled his small home to mourn his passing before his funeral, which is yet to be finalised.
"His jaw was shattered, his knuckles broken, a bullet hole below his heart, many many stab wounds and a large hole at the back of his head which seemed to have been caused by a hammer."
Jimmy Chidakwa, a colleague and fellow activist, struggled to contain his anger both at the assassins and his party's leadership.
"They are cowards, all of them. Ten men to take down one unarmed man.
"And where are our leaders? Out of the country."
I know so many people now too frightened to vote with their hearts come the run-off Activist Jimmy Chidakwa
Cosmas chipped in: "Yes, we are like chickens waiting for the knife to reach our throats.
"Given his position in the party, my brother should have had more protection.
"I know so many people now too frightened to vote with their hearts come the run-off."
Unlike the opposition leadership, who are not here and have been at pains to tell the world of diplomatic efforts under way as they travel - to Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, the UN headquarters in New York - the foot soldiers like Tonderai Ndira remained on the ground, visiting the injured, co-ordinating relief efforts to the displaced.
The opposition may yet feel the full force of the loss of such urban activists in the weeks to come as the country heads for the presidential run-off on 27 June.
Story from BBC NEWS Published: 2008/05/23 15:12:43 GMT© BBC MMVIII

Britain's Holocaust Shame

Britain's Holocaust shame: The voyage of the Exodus
The ship was filled with Jewish refugees, desperately seeking a new life in the Promised Land after the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. But, thanks to the Royal Navy, they were sent back to prison camps in Germany

By Robert VerkaikMonday, 5 May 2008
When British soldiers reached the concentration camps of Nazi Germany in the last days of the Second World War, the survivors of the Holocaust hailed them as saviours.
The troops' gruesome discoveries at Bergen-Belsen in 1945, where piles of skeletal corpses lay amid the camp's death ovens and gas chambers, prompted Britain's political leaders to promise that the world would never forget the suffering of the Jews.
Yet, just two years later, the British government was accused of mistreating thousands of Holocaust survivors, who, when prevented from fleeing to Palestine, had been forcibly sent back to barbed-wire detention camps in Germany, staffed by Germans.
Secret papers released at the National Archives for the first time today reveal the fate of Jewish immigrants aboard the 1947 refugee ship Exodus and the bitter propaganda battle that ensued when Britain used force to return them to Germany.
British soldiers, ordered to storm the transport vessels to which the Jewish immigrants on board Exodus had been transferred, were accused of behaving like "Hitler Commandos", "gentleman fascists" and sadists.
As the British soldiers clashed with the Jewish refugees at the port of Hamburg, dockside banners read: "You are bringing us back to Germany, to a concentration camp worse than Belsen."
The episode proved hugely embarrassing for the British. But the international condemnation which accompanied the spectacle of Jews being marched off ships and put on trains for internment camps helped create the political climate for the creation of Israel the following year.
At the end of the war, it was left to the British to try to stem the flow of illegal immigration to Palestine, where the British government, conscious of Arab sensitivities in the region, decided to maintain strict quotas upon Jewish entry. So it was that, in July 1947, the Exodus, under the close scrutiny of the Royal Navy, docked in Marseille and picked up 4,553 Jewish refugees, each determined to defy the British blockade of Palestine.
On its voyage, later made into a Hollywood film starring Paul Newman, the Exodus was escorted by the British cruiser Ajax and a convoy of destroyers. The ship's captain, Yossi Harel, who died at the age of 90 last month, had planned to slip away from the escorts as he neared the coast of Palestine but, in the end, he decided to ignore the British warnings to stop, and made a run for the port.
The British response to that was to fire a warning shot into the Exodus's bow, immediately followed by the dispatch of a boarding party.
The passengers and crew resisted, and fierce fighting broke out on the Exodus. Three passengers and a soldier died, and many were wounded. The British then towed the Exodus into Haifa harbour, from where it was planned that the passengers would be sent back to France on three separate transport vessels.
But when the ships reached Marseilles, the refugees refused to disembark and the British decided the only course of action left to them was to escort them back to Germany.
By the time they had docked at Hamburg, many of the refugees were in defiant mood. When they first set out on their historic quest, they had believed they were days away from arriving at a Jewish homeland. The prospect of being sent to prison camps in Germany represented a pitiful failure of their original mission and for many of the Holocaust survivors, it was almost impossible to bear.
But the British government had no intention of backing down or relaxing its policy.
Under Operation Oasis, plans were put in place to storm the ships.
The British had identified one of the ships, the Runnymede Park, as the vessel most likely to cause them trouble.
A confidential report of the time noted: "It was known that the Jews on the Runnymede Park were under the leadership of a young, capable and energetic fanatic, Morenci Miry Rosman, and throughout the operation it had been realised that this ship might give trouble."
One hundred military police and 200 Sherwood Foresters troops were ordered to board the ship and eject the Jewish immigrants.
The officer in charge of the operation, Lt-Col Gregson, later gave a very frank assessment of the success of the storming of the ship, which, according to a secret minute, left up to 33 Jews, including four women, injured in the fighting. Sixty-eight Jews were held in custody to be put on trial for unruly behaviour. Only three soldiers were hurt.
But it could have been a lot worse. Gregson later admitted that he had considered using tear gas against the immigrants.
He concluded: "The Jew is liable to panic and 800-900 Jews fighting to get up a stairway to escape tear smoke could have produced a deplorable business." He added: "It is a very frightening thing to go into the hold full of yelling maniacs when outnumbered six or eight to one."
Describing the assault, the officer wrote to his superiors: "After a very short pause, with a lot of yelling and female screams, every available weapon up to a biscuit and bulks of timber was hurled at the soldiers. They withstood it admirably and very stoically till the Jews assaulted and in the first rush several soldiers were downed with half a dozen Jews on top kicking and tearing ... No other troops could have done it as well and as humanely as these British ones did."
He concluded: "It should be borne in mind that the guiding factor in most of the actions of the Jews is to gain the sympathy of the world press."
One of the official observers who witnessed the violence was Dr Noah Barou, secretary of the British section of the World Jewish Congress, who had 35 years experience of reporting. He gave a very different account of the fighting.
He described young soldiers beating Holocaust survivors as a "terrible mental picture".
"They went into the operation as a football match ... and it seemed evident that they had not had it explained to them that they were dealing with people who had suffered a lot and who are resisting in accordance with their convictions."
He noted: "People were usually hit in the stomach and this in my opinion explains that many people who did not show any signs of injury were staggering and moving very slowly along the staircase giving the impression that they were half-starved and beaten up.
"When the people walked off the ship, many of them, especially younger people, were shouting to the troops 'Hitler commandos', 'gentleman fascists', 'sadists'."
Dr Barou was "especially impressed" by one young girl who "came to the top of the stairs and shouted to the soldiers, 'I am from Dachau'. And when they did not react she shouted 'Hitler commandos'".
While the British could find no evidence of excessive force, they conceded that in one case a Jew "was dragged down the gangway by the feet with his head bumping on the wooden slats".
After the soldiers had cleared the ships, the refugees were packed on to trains and taken to two camps in the British zone, Poppendorf and Am Stau.
At the camps, the treatment of the refugees caused an international outcry after it emerged that the conditions could be likened to the concentration camps where six million Jews had perished.
Dr Barou was once again on hand to witness events. He reported that conditions at Camp Poppendorf were poor and claimed that it was being run by a German camp commandant. That was denied by the British.
But the allegations of cruel and insensitive treatment would not go away and, on 6 October, 1947, the Foreign Office sent a telegram to the British commanders in the region demanding to know whether the camps really were surrounded with barbed wire and guarded by German staff.
It turned out that Barou's reports had been only partially accurate. There was no German commandant or guards but there were German staff carrying out duties inside the camp.
As winter set in, the British government made a further attempt to end the stalemate.
In return for leaving Germany and going to France, the refugees were offered increased rations.
It turned out to be yet another diplomatic blunder, leaving the British vulnerable to the accusation that they were adopting a policy of "starvation or return to France".
In an explanation of its policy a Foreign Office document states: "Those who refuse transport to France and choose to remain in Germany will be accommodated in camps provided by the British authorities.
"Those who volunteer to return to France will continue to receive the present generous ration of 2,800 calories per day up to and including the time of their departure. Those who choose to remain in Germany will receive the same basic scale ration as that received by the normal consumer."
Only two Jews chose to accept the offer of the transfer.
A telegram written by Jewish leaders of the camps on 20 October 1947 makes clear the determination of the refugees, mostly displaced from Germany and eastern Europe, to find a home in Palestine.
"Nothing will deter us from Palestine. Which jail we go to is up to you (the British). We did not ask you to reduce our rations, we did not ask you to put us in Poppendorf and Am Stau."
Britain's impossible position was later summed up by John Coulson, a diplomat at the Briitsh Embassy in Paris.
He pointed out: "The pros and cons of keeping the Exodus immigrants in camps ... there is one point that should be kept in mind. Our opponents in France, and I dare say in other countries, have made great play with the fact that these immigrants were being kept behind barbed wire, in concentration camps and guarded by Germans.
"If we decide it is convenient not to keep them in camps any longer, I suggest that we should make some play that we are releasing them from all restraint of this kind in accordance with their wishes and that they were only put in such accommodation for the preliminary necessities of screening and maintenance."
In the end, the Government decided to follow this advice and the Jewish migrants were set free. The vast majority did find their way to Palestine and help in the struggle to create and secure the state of Israel.

The Independent May 5th 2008

Farewell To Granma Captain

April 2, 2008

NORBERTO Abilio Collado Abreu, the outstanding revolutionary fighter and captain of the yacht Granma, died in the early hours of this morning.
During WWII, in April of 1941, Collado, still very young, joined the Cuban War Navy, having been trained as a sonar technician to detect submarines. From his sonar room aboard the CS-13 destroyer, on May 15, 1943 he participated in the sinking of the German U-boat 176, much feared at that time given the number of ships it had attacked in the Atlantic.
After the 1955 amnesty, he went into exile, joining the group of youth training in Mexico to bring to life Fidel's commitment, "In 1956, we will be free or be martyrs!"
His distinguished experience as a sailor led to his selection as captain of the yacht Granma. Navigating the boat through stormy seas, he landed the expedition on December 2, 1956. After the battle of Alegría de Pío he was captured and imprisoned until the triumph of the Revolution.
In January of 1959, he joined the Revolutionary War Navy, taking on different responsibilities within this branch of the military, until in 1981 he was assigned to the care and maintenance of the Granma.
Captain Collado was always characterized by his lack of pretension, his modesty and discipline in the completion of whatever tasks required of him.
As requested by his family, the body will be cremated and his ashes will be placed in the Revolutionary Armed Forces Pantheon in Colón Cemetery at 3:00 p.m. (AIN)
Translated by Granma International