country:united states

  • Three incidents of police brutality spark outrage across US - World Socialist Web Site
    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/19/poli-j19.html

    Three incidents of police brutality spark outrage across US
    By Jessica Goldstein
    19 June 2019

    Three incidents of police brutality in the United States over the past month have sparked public outrage. Each incident exposes the systematic brutality that workers in all areas of the US suffer at the hands of police on a daily basis

    #violence_policière

  • YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates children’s privacy
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/19/facing-federal-investigation-youtube-is-considering-broad-changes-ch

    The U.S. government is in the late stages of an investigation into YouTube for allegedly violating children’s privacy, according to four people familiar with the matter, in a probe that threatens the company with a potential fine and already has prompted the tech giant to reevaluate some of its business practices. The Federal Trade Commission launched its investigation after numerous complaints from consumer groups and privacy advocates, according to the four people, who spoke on the (...)

    #Google #YouTube #TikTok #COPPA #enfants #BigData #publicité #[fr]Règlement_Général_sur_la_Protection_des_Données_(RGPD)[en]General_Data_Protection_Regulation_(GDPR)[nl]General_Data_Protection_Regulation_(GDPR) (...)

    ##publicité ##[fr]Règlement_Général_sur_la_Protection_des_Données__RGPD_[en]General_Data_Protection_Regulation__GDPR_[nl]General_Data_Protection_Regulation__GDPR_ ##FTC

  • US Navy says mine pieces suggest Iranian origin
    (video)
    https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/decorated-navy-seal-trial-63821387

    The United States sought on Wednesday to bolster its case for isolating Iran over its nuclear and regional activities by displaying limpet mine fragments it said came from a damaged oil tanker and saying the ordnance looked Iranian in origin. Nathan Frandino reports.

  • Trump’s Global Gag Rule Is Killing Women, Report Says – Foreign Policy
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/19/how-trumps-global-gag-rule-is-killing-women-colombia


    A mobile health brigade in an indigenous community in La Guajira, Colombia.
    PHOTO : MARTA ROYO/PROFAMILIA.

    The administration’s hard-line anti-abortion stance is undermining women’s rights and U.S. development aid around the world, critics say.
    […]
    Profamilia lost U.S. funds it used to run its clinics after the Trump administration brought back and expanded a Ronald Reagan-era policy—formally known as the Mexico City policy, but often called the “global gag rule” by critics—that prohibits U.S. health-related aid to foreign non-governmental organizations that perform or promote abortion. The rule has such far-reaching impacts that, beyond limiting abortion access, it has also decreased access to contraception and treatment for illnesses such as HIV and tuberculosis, as organizations that have lost funding roll back or close services.

    Scrambling, Profamilia tried to replace the closed clinics with mobile teams—called mobile health brigades—that set up pop-up clinics in communities for two to three days at a time for “the most basic, basic needs,” explained Royo. But it was a poor substitute: The clinics had offered extensive services, including free counseling for adolescents, and educational workshops about sexual health and reproductive rights. Teens in these communities, where teen pregnancy rates are as high as 49 percent, desperately need this information, Royo said. Otherwise, unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions could rise.

    Globally, the Trump administration’s policy is contributing to a backlash against women’s and girl’s rights, according to women’s rights advocates, including Royo, and political leaders from around the world who attended Women Deliver, the world’s largest conference on gender equality, in Vancouver in early June.

    We’re seeing a pushback against women’s rights, whether it is attacks on a woman’s fundamental right to choose or violence against indigenous women and girls,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a press conference at Women Deliver, where he pledged $525 million annually for global sexual and reproductive health rights, including abortion.

  • Exclusive: Overruling his experts, Pompeo keeps Saudis off U.S. child soldiers list - Reuters
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-saudi-childsoldiers-exclusive-idUKKCN1TJ25Y

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blocked the inclusion of Saudi Arabia on a U.S. list of countries that recruit child soldiers, dismissing his experts’ findings that a Saudi-led coalition has been using under-age fighters in Yemen’s civil war, according to four people familiar with the matter.

    #Arabie_saoudite #enfants_soldats #états-unis

  • The most expensive hyphen in history
    https://www.fastcompany.com/90365077/the-most-expensive-hyphen-in-history

    Bugs, bugs bugs

    By Charles Fishman4 minute Read

    This is the 18th in an exclusive series of 50 articles, one published each day until July 20, exploring the 50th anniversary of the first-ever Moon landing. You can check out 50 Days to the Moon here every day.

    In the dark on Sunday morning, July 22, 1962, NASA launched the first-ever U.S. interplanetary space probe: Mariner 1, headed for Venus, Earth’s neighbor closer to the Sun.

    Mariner 1 was launched atop a 103-foot-tall Atlas-Agena rocket at 5:21 a.m. EDT. For 3 minutes and 32 seconds, it rose perfectly, accelerating to the edge of space, nearly 100 miles up.

    But at that moment, Mariner 1 started to veer in odd, unplanned ways, first aiming northwest, then pointing nose down. The rocket was out of control and headed for the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. Four minutes and 50 seconds into flight, a range safety officer at Cape Canaveral—in an effort to prevent the rocket from hitting people or land—flipped two switches, and explosives in the Atlas blew the rocket apart in a spectacular cascade of fireworks visible back in Florida.

    The Mariner 1 probe itself was blown free of the debris, and its radio transponder continued to ping flight control for another 67 seconds, until it hit the Atlantic Ocean.

    This was the third failed probe in 1962 alone; NASA had also launched two failed probes to the Moon. But the disappointment was softened by the fact that a second, identical Mariner spacecraft (along with an identical Atlas-Agena rocket) were already in hangers at the Cape, standing by. Mariner 2 was launched successfully a month later and reached Venus on December 14, 1962, where it discovered that the temperature was 797º F and that the planet rotated in the opposite direction of Earth and Mars. The Sun on Venus rises in the West.

    It was possible to launch Mariner 1’s twin just 36 days after the disaster because it took scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory only five days to figure out what had gone wrong. In handwritten computer coding instructions, in dozens and dozens of lines of flight guidance equations, a single letter had been written incorrectly, probably forgetfully.

    In a critical spot, the equations contained an “R” symbol (for “radius”). The “R” was supposed to have a bar over it, indicating a “smoothing” function; the line told the guidance computer to average the data it was receiving and to ignore what was likely to be spurious data. But as written and then coded onto punch cards and into the guidance computer, the “R” didn’t have a bar over it. The “R-bar” became simply “R.”

    As it happened, on launch, Mariner 1 briefly lost guidance-lock with the ground, which was not uncommon. The rocket was supposed to follow its course until guidance-lock was re-achieved, unless it received instructions from the ground computer. But without the R-bar, the ground computer got confused about Mariner 1’s performance, thought it was off course, and started sending signals to the rocket to “correct” its course, instructions that weren’t necessary—and weren’t correct.

    Therefore “phantom erratic behavior” became “actual erratic behavior,” as one analyst wrote. In the minute or so that controllers waited, the rocket and the guidance computer on the ground were never able to get themselves sorted out, because the “averaging” function that would have kept the rocket on course wasn’t programmed into the computer. And so the range safety officer did his job.

    A single handwritten line, the length of a hyphen, doomed the most elaborate spaceship the U.S. had until then designed, along with its launch rocket. Or rather, the absence of that bar doomed it. The error cost $18.5 million ($156 million today).

    In the popular press, for simplicity, the missing bar became a hyphen. The New York Times front-page headline was “For Want of a Hyphen Venus Rocket Is Lost.” The Los Angeles Times headline: “‘Hyphen’ Blows Up Rocket.” The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, in his 1968 book The Promise of Space, called it “the most expensive hyphen in history.”

    For NASA’s computer programmers, it was a lesson in care, caution, and testing that ended up steeped into their bones. During 11 Apollo missions, more than 100 days total of spaceflight, the Apollo flight computers performed without a single fault.

    But what happened to Mariner 1 was, in fact, an arresting vulnerability of the new Space Age. A single missing bolt in a B-52 nuclear bomber wasn’t going to bring down the plane, but a single inattentive moment in computer programming—of the sort anyone can imagine having—could have a cascade of consequences.

    George Mueller was NASA’s associate administrator for manned spaceflight from 1963 to 1969, the most critical period for Apollo’s development. Just before that, Mueller had been an executive at Space Technology Laboratories, which had responsibility for writing the guidance equations for Mariner 1, including the equation with the missing bar.

    During his years at NASA, Mueller kept a reminder of the importance of even the smallest elements of spaceflight on the wall behind his desk: a framed image of a hyphen.

    #Histoire_numerique #Nasa #Mariner

  • No Palestinians, no Israelis, maybe even no journalists: What’s left of Kushner’s Bahrain summit - Israel News - Haaretz.com

    The White House’s initial sense of euphoria about Arab participation at its economic workshop on June 25 has eroded, much to the (unspoken) relief of Jerusalem
    Amir Tibon and Noa Landau (Washington) Jun 18, 2019

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-no-palestinians-no-israelis-no-journalists-what-s-left-of-kushner-

    WASHINGTON - With just a week to go before the Bahrain conference convenes to discuss the economic chapter of the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan, things are looking increasingly gloomy for the U.S. team led by Jared Kushner.

    The White House had surprised journalists in Washington and Israel on an otherwise boring Sunday last month when it announced that the workshop would take place in the Gulf state on June 25-26. That announcement created a temporary sense of momentum behind the so-called deal of the century, and the small team working on the plan viewed Bahrain’s sponsorship of the event as a major achievement.

    But there have been a series of setbacks since then. The Palestinian Authority is boycotting the conference and has succeeded in convincing Palestinian business leaders not to attend as well. Russia and China — two of the most important economic players in the new Middle East — aren’t expected to attend, while Arab countries such as Iraq and Lebanon have also announced they won’t be participating.

  • The U.S. is wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood — and the Arab world is suffering for it
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/08/28/the-u-s-is-wrong-about-the-muslim-brotherhood-and-the-arab-world-is-suffering-for-it/?noredirect=on

    Texte intégral de l’article:
    By Jamal Khashoggi

    August 28, 2018
    During the Obama presidency, the U.S. administration was wary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power in Egypt after the country’s first-ever free elections. Despite his declared support for democracy and change in the Arab world in the wake of the Arab Spring, then-President Barack Obama did not take a strong position and reject the coup against President-elect Mohamed Morsi. The coup, as we know, led to the military’s return to power in the largest Arab country — along with tyranny, repression, corruption and mismanagement.
    That is the conclusion that David D. Kirkpatrick arrives at in his excellent book “Into the Hands of the Soldiers,” which was released this month. A former Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times, Kirkpatrick gives a sad account of Egypt’s 2013 coup that led to the loss of a great opportunity to reform the entire Arab world and allow a historic change that might have freed the region from a thousand years of tyranny.
    The United States’s aversion to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is more apparent in the current Trump administration, is the root of a predicament across the entire Arab world. The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes. In turn, this will mean the continuation of the causes behind revolution, extremism and refugees — all of which have affected the security of Europe and the rest of the world. Terrorism and the refugee crisis have changed the political mood in the West and brought the extreme right to prominence there.
    There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it. A significant number of citizens in any given Arab country will give their vote to Islamic political parties if some form of democracy is allowed. It seems clear then that the only way to prevent political Islam from playing a role in Arab politics is to abolish democracy, which essentially deprives citizens of their basic right to choose their political representatives.
    Shafeeq Ghabra, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, explains the problem in this way: “The Arab regimes’ war on the Brotherhood does not target the movement alone, but rather targets those who practice politics, who demand freedom and accountability, and all who have a popular base in society.” A quick look at the political degradation that has taken place in Egypt since the military’s return to power confirms what Ghabra says. President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s regime has cracked down on the Islamists and arrested some 60,000 of them. Now it has extended its heavy hand against both secular and military figures, even those who supported him in the coup. In today’s Egypt, political life is totally dead.
    It is wrong to dwell on political Islam, conservatism and identity issues when the choice is between having a free society tolerant of all viewpoints and having an oppressive regime. Five years of Sissi’s rule in Egypt makes this point clear.
    There are efforts here in Washington, encouraged by some Arab states that do not support freedom and democracy, to persuade Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. If they succeed, the designation will weaken the fragile steps toward democracy and political reform that have already been curbed in the Arab world. It will also push backward the Arab countries that have made progress in creating a tolerant environment and allowing political participation by various components of society, including the Islamists.
    Islamists today participate in the parliaments of various Arab countries such as Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, Tunisia and Morocco. This has led to the emergence of Islamic democracy, such as the Ennahda movement in Tunisia, and the maturing of democratic transformation in the other countries.
    The coup in Egypt led to the loss of a precious opportunity for Egypt and the entire Arab world. If the democratic process had continued there, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political practices could have matured and become more inclusive, and the unimaginable peaceful rotation of power could have become a reality and a precedent to be followed.
    The Trump administration always says it wants to correct Obama’s mistakes. It should add his mishandling of Arab democracy to its list. Obama erred when he wasted the precious opportunity that could have changed the history of the Arab world, and when he caved to pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as from members of his own administration. They all missed the big picture and were governed by their intolerant hatred for any form of political Islam, a hatred that has destroyed Arabs’ choice for democracy and good governance.

    #démocratie #Islam #pays-arabes #Egypte #Sissi #Morsi #Révolutions-arabes #Trump #Etats-Unis #coup-d'état

  • Ebola’s spread shows how science needs societies to succeed - Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-ebola-society-analysis-idUSKCN1TI0H1

    Those seeking ways to end the Congo Ebola outbreak’s longevity and persistence say the issues it raises go to the heart of what public health means in the 21st century for countries across the world, rich and poor.

    The World Health Organization cites mistrust of authorities in Congo, with attacks on healthcare workers and patients avoiding treatment centers, as major factor in the failure so far to contain the Ebola outbreak. Similarly, it cites anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns in the United States, Ukraine and elsewhere as allowing measles to spread furiously among people who are fearful and confused.

    #santé #société

  • Sudan: Behind the Massacre in Khartoum : The Backstory, the Perpetrators, the Movement
    https://fr.crimethinc.com/2019/06/14/sudan-behind-the-massacre-in-khartoum-the-perpetrators-and-the-backst

    The following text, translated and adapted from the Sudanese-French project Sudfa, explores the origins of the janjawids, the paramilitary force behind the massacre of June 3. In the process, it offers a chilling glimpse of how the border regimes we experience in the United States and European Union function on the other side of the global apparatus of repression, in the zones designated for resource extraction and the containment of the so-called surplus population. Source: CrimethInc.

  • China’s Racing to the Top in Income Inequality - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-23/china-s-racing-to-the-top-in-income-inequality

    By Anjani Trivedi, September 23, 2018 - During China’s greatest period of economic growth, fed by widespread industrialization that lifted millions out of poverty, inequality has also increased — at the fastest pace and to the highest level in the world. It may get worse.

    China’s Gini coefficient, 1 a widely used measure of income dispersion across a population, has risen more steeply over the last decade than in any other country, according to an International Monetary Fund working paper. Some inequality is to be expected with industrialization, but in China it’s happened at a staggering pace. One of the main drivers, the research found, is growing differences in education levels and skill premiums.

    In education, China is among the most unequal societies. Demand for highly skilled workers soared with rapid technological change. Access to secondary and higher-level education has blossomed since 1980. Last year, around 8 million students graduated from Chinese universities, 10 times more than two decades ago and double the number at U.S. universities. But the gap in tertiary education completion rose even more, comparing rural to urban areas and richer to poorer people. In the relatively deprived southern autonomous region of Guangxi, for example, around 19 percent of the college-age population is enrolled in tertiary education. In Shanghai, the comparable figure is 70 percent.

    The Rich Get Smarter

    The percentage of people enrolled in a tertiary institution out of the whole college-age population varies widely across provinces depending on income levels

    China’s capital-accumulation boom has been backed by state subsidies that encourage technological advances. Many R&D handouts are based, in turn, on employees’ educational qualifications.

    Take the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Innovation Company program. Access to its incentives include stipulations that research and development spending amount to 6 percent of sales for companies with less than 50 million yuan ($7.3 million) revenue; that at least 30 percent of employees have a college degree; and that 10 percent of the staff be involved in R&D. Plenty of big names have taken advantage of such policies, including the likes of Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., the surveillance giant that we wrote about here.

    Other measures to bring home so-called sea turtles — qualified Chinese people living overseas — have deepened the divide. Under Beijing’s Thousand Talents program, launched a decade ago, returnees can get a 2 million-yuan research grant and a personal reward of more than 500,000 yuan, along with benefits. That program had attracted more than 7,000 Chinese scientists and engineers as of November 2017. Local governments, including Shenzhen, also have housing policies aimed at luring talent.

    On top of the influx of expertise, it’s harder for people to find good jobs as the population generally becomes better-educated. To be sure, inequality does diminish as workers change industries, for example from agriculture to sectors that add more value. But that hasn’t happened as fast, in part because of pro-farmer policies and the dibao system that guarantees rural incomes.

    Beijing is now trying to reduce the income-tax burden, adding a potentially powerful tool to address inequality. The working paper’s authors say this is especially the case in China, given the “limited role” fiscal policy has played in “moderating income inequality in China to date.”

    Under tax reforms announced last month by the finance ministry, for example, the greatest benefit accrues to about 20 million people who earn more than 100,000 yuan a year — just 3 percent of the total workforce — according to a Bernstein analysis. With a higher percentage of salary earners in Tier 1 and 2 cities, the gains there will be disproportionate.

    Deepening Divide

    The government also plans to introduce a household allowance for children’s and higher education next year. Spending on education, culture and recreation accounts for 11 percent of household consumption in China.

    Urbanization and an aging population no doubt have added to inequality. By 2008, China had slowed the growth of inequality from previous decades. Since then, however, the government has started running out of measures and now faces the challenge of deleveraging its financial system as the economy slows. As a trade war worsens and Beijing pushes its technological edge, the balancing act will get tougher. Alongside the recent income-tax breaks, the government also announced more stringent social-security collection from companies to fund pensions.

    In an ideal world, Beijing would balance the books sufficiently to slash taxes for the poorest people. Yet for funding, it’s having to turn to the very companies that are supposed to drive the “Made in China 2025” program, reducing their effectiveness. The latest change in social-security collection could cut machinery, industrial and telecom companies’ net profits by 11 percent to 15 percent, according to CLSA.

    The IMF paper suggests the most effective policies to reduce inequality are those “with the largest effect coming from social-protection spending and redistribution” of income. But as Beijing’s push-and-pull gets tougher, the policy avenue will narrow. As Thomas Piketty’s work has found, wealth accumulated in the past grows faster than output and wages. In doing so, “The past devours the future.”

  • The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Americans From Top Cancer Research - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-13/the-u-s-is-purging-chinese-americans-from-top-cancer-research

    In January, Wu, an award-winning epidemiologist and naturalized American citizen , quietly stepped down as director of the Center for Public Health and Translational Genomics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center after a three-month investigation into her professional ties in China. Her resignation, and the departures in recent months of three other top Chinese American scientists from Houston-based MD Anderson, stem from a Trump administration drive to counter Chinese influence at U.S. research institutions.

    #Chine #Etats-unis #air_du_temps #régression

  • The Epoch Times
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times


    Je constate que les membres de Falun Gong sont des personnes apolitiques et paisibles alors que les organisateurs du mouvement dépensent des millions pour soutenir des extrémistes de droite dans le monde entier. Ceci met en question les affirmations de l’organisation qui accuse la Chine d’emprisonner ses disciples afin de les tuer pour vendre leurs d’organes.

    The Epoch Times is a multi-language newspaper headquartered in New York City. The company was founded in 2000 by John Tang and a group of Chinese Americans associated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The newspaper covers general interest topics with a focus on news about China and human rights issues there. It draws from a network of sources inside China, as well as Chinese expatriates living in the West. It is also known for coverage favorable to rightist politicians in the West, including Donald Trump in the United States and far-right groups in Germany.

    The Epoch Times is widely distributed in overseas Chinese communities, and has been publishing in Chinese since May 2000. It is either sold or distributed free-of-charge in 35 countries, including various intranational regional editions. It has editions in English, Chinese and nine other languages in print, as well as 21 different languages on the internet.

    #Chine #religion #politique #extrême_droite

  • Spy used AI-generated face to connect with targets
    https://mamot.fr/system/media_attachments/files/004/862/107/original/0f2b67672f8aa011.mp4

    Last month I my attention was drawn to something suspicious: A fake LinkedIn profile connecting to Washington think tank types and senior US officials.

    Even weirder: Her face itself appeared to be fake.

    https://apnews.com/bc2f19097a4c4fffaa00de6770b8a60d

    via https://social.tcit.fr/@manhack/102274512502562853

  • Petrodollar warfare - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr...
    https://diasp.eu/p/9207880

    Petrodollar warfare - Wikipedia The term, petrodollar warfare, refers to the alleged motivation of US military offensives as preserving by force the status of the United States dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency and as the currency in which oil is priced. The term was coined by William R. Clark, who has written a book with the same title. The phrase oil currency war is sometimes used with the same meaning. #oil #war #usd #iraq #iran #libya #venezuela

  • "he had become a pariah in U.S. society, and for many years after h...
    https://diasp.eu/p/9207143

    “he had become a pariah in U.S. society, and for many years after his death, he was either ignored or excoriated—the price he paid for The Age of Reason and its disparagement of religious institutions, especially Christianity.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/14/tom-paine-christianity-and-modern-psychiatry

  • UK rights advocate co-owns firm whose spyware is ’used to target dissidents’
    https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/jun/14/yana-peel-uk-rights-advocate-serpentine-nso-spyware-pegasus

    A leading human rights campaigner and head of a prestigious London art gallery is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents, the Guardian can reveal.

    Yana Peel, the chief executive of the Serpentine Galleries and a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, co-owns NSO Group, a $1bn (£790m) Israeli tech firm, according to corporate records in the US and Luxembourg.

    NSO is the subject of multiple ongoing lawsuits and has been criticised by human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which has asked Israel’s ministry of defence to revoke the company’s export licences.

    However, Peel, who has declared the Serpentine a “safe space for unsafe ideas” and served as a judge for international freedom-of-expression awards, defended her stake in NSO, which she has held since February. She described criticism of the company as “misinformed”.

    #surveillance

  • Days of palestine - Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC Sign Bill To Stop US Aid to Israel Over Child Detentions
    Jun 14 2019
    https://daysofpalestine.com/post/12189
    https://daysofpalestine.com/thumb.php?src=uploads//images/79ee8167dc9c9d1fba29d41d38acd805.jpg&w=560&h=292

    Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) said they would be signing a bill to stop funding Israel due to its abuse of Palestinian children by detaining them.

    he bill was introduced by Minnesota Congresswoman Betty McCollum and would prohibit aid from being used by the Israeli authorities to detain Palestinian minors. (...)

  • “Unfortunately, none of this happened”: Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto (Summer), a take on the pre- perestroika period in the USSR - World Socialist Web Site

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/14/leto-j14.html

    Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s new film Leto (Summer), about the early years of two pre- perestroika-era rock groups, Kino and Zoopark, which screened at the Cannes film festival in 2018, has now opened in the US.
    Irina Starshenbaum in Leto

    The film was made under conditions of considerable financial and political duress. In August 2017, before shooting was completed, Serebrennikov was detained and placed under house arrest. The Russian authorities charge him, in an apparently politically motivated case, with misappropriating government funds allocated to a theater festival. Leto’s filming was completed in the summer of 2017 in St. Petersburg without Serebrennikov being able to direct in person. He was released from house arrest in April 2019 after some 20 months.

    #russie #cinéma

  • Oman attack: Iran is the immediate, but unlikely, suspect - Iran - Haaretz.com

    Oman attack: Iran is the immediate, but unlikely, suspect
    U.S. officials rushed to point to Tehran, but somehow the world’s leading intelligence services failed to discover who is actually behind the strike. And even if they knew, what could be done without risking all-out war?
    Zvi Bar’el | Jun. 14, 2019 | 8:36 AM | 3
    https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/.premium-oman-attack-iran-is-the-immediate-but-unlikely-suspect-1.7368134


    A unnamed senior U.S. Defense Department official was quick to tell CBS that Iran was “apparently” behind the Thursday attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, followed by State Secretary Mike Pompeo who later told reported that it was his government’s assessment. There’s nothing new about that, but neither is it a decisive proof.

    Who, then, struck the tankers? Whom does this strike serve and what can be done against such attacks?

    In all previous attacks in the Gulf in recent weeks Iran was naturally taken to be the immediate suspect. After all, Iran had threatened that if it could now sell its oil in the Gulf, other countries would not be able to ship oil through it; Tehran threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, and in any case it’s in the sights of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel. But this explanation is too easy.

    The Iranian regime is in the thrones of a major diplomatic struggle to persuade Europe and its allies, Russia and China, not to take the path of pulling out of the 2015 nuclear agreement. At the same time, Iran is sure that the United States is only looking for an excuse to attack it. Any violent initiative on Tehran’s part could only make things worse and bring it close to a military conflict, which it must avoid.

    Iran has announced it would scale back its commitments under the nuclear deal by expanding its low-level uranium enrichment and not transferring the remainder of its enriched uranium and heavy water to another country, as the agreement requires. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports reveal that it has indeed stepped up enrichment, but not in a way that could support a military nuclear program.

    It seems that alongside its diplomatic efforts, Iran prefers to threaten to harm the nuclear deal itself, responding to Washington with the same token, rather than escalate the situation to a military clash.

    Other possible suspects are the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who continue to pound Saudi targets with medium-range missiles, as was the case last week with strikes on the Abha and Jizan airports, near the Yemeni border, which wounded 26 people. The Houthis have also fired missiles at Riyadh and hit targets in the Gulf. In response, Saudi Arabia launched a massive missile strike on Houthi-controlled areas in northern Yemen.

    The strike on the oil tankers may have been a response to the response, but if this is the case, it goes against Iran’s policy, which seeks to neutralize any pretexts for a military clash in the Gulf. The question, therefore, is whether Iran has full control over all the actions the Houthis take, and whether the aid it gives them commits them fully to its policies, or whether they see assaults on Saudi targets as a separate, local battle, cut off from Iran’s considerations.

    The Houthis have claimed responsibility for some of their actions in Saudi territory in the past, and at times even took the trouble of explaining the reasons behind this assault or the other. But not this time.

    Yemen also hosts large Al-Qaida cells and Islamic State outposts, with both groups having a running account with Saudi Arabia and apparently the capabilities to carry out strikes on vessels moving through the Gulf.

    In the absence of confirmed and reliable information on the source of the fire, we may meanwhile discount the possibility of a Saudi or American provocation at which Iran has hinted, but such things have happened before. However, we may also wonder why some of the most sophisticated intelligence services in the world are having so much trouble discovering who actually carried out these attacks.

    Thwarting such attacks with no precise intelligence is an almost impossible task, but even if the identity of those responsible for it is known, the question of how to respond to the threat would still arise.

    If it turns out that Iran initiated or even carried out these attacks, American and Saudi military forces could attack its Revolutionary Guards’ marine bases along the Gulf coast, block Iranian shipping in the Gulf and persuade European countries to withdraw from the nuclear deal, claiming that continuing relations with Iran would mean supporting terrorism in general, and maritime terrorism in particular.

    The concern is that such a military response would lead Iran to escalate its own and openly strike American and Saudi targets in the name of self-defense and protecting its sovereignty. In that case, a large-scale war would be inevitable. But there’s no certainty that U.S. President Donald Trump, who wants to extricate his forces from military involvement in the Middle East, truly seeks such a conflict, which could suck more and more American forces into this sensitive arena.

    An escape route from this scenario would require intensive mediation efforts between Iran and the United States, but therein lies one major difficulty – finding an authoritative mediator that could pressure both parties. Russia or China are not suitable candidates, and ties between Washington and the European Union are acrimonious.

    It seems that all sides would be satisfied if they could place responsibility for the attacks on the Houthis or other terror groups. That is not to say that the United States or Saudi Arabia have any magic solutions when it comes to the Houthis; far from it. The war in Yemen has been going on for five years now with no military resolution, and increased bombardment of concentrations of Houthi forces could only expand their efforts to show their strength. But the United States would pay none of the diplomatic or military price for assaults on the Houthis it would for a forceful violent response against Iran itself.

    If sporadic, small-scale attacks raise such complex dilemmas, one can perhaps dream of an all-out war with Iran, but it is enough to look at the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan to grow extremely cautious of the trajectory in which such dreams become a nightmare that lasts for decades.❞
    #Oman #Iran
    https://seenthis.net/messages/786937

    • UPDATE 1-"Flying objects" damaged Japanese tanker during attack in Gulf of Oman
      Junko Fujita – June 14, 2019
      (Adds comments from company president)
      By Junko Fujita
      https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-tanker-japan-damage/update-1-flying-objects-damaged-japanese-tanker-during-attack-in-gulf-of-om

      TOKYO, June 14 (Reuters) - Two “flying objects” damaged a Japanese tanker owned by Kokuka Sangyo Co in an attack on Thursday in the Gulf of Oman, but there was no damage to the cargo of methanol, the company president said on Friday.

      The Kokuka Courageous is now sailing toward the port of Khor Fakkan in the United Arab Emirates, with the crew having returned to the ship after evacuating because of the incident, Kokuka President Yutaka Katada told a press conference. It was being escorted by the U.S. Navy, he said.

      “The crew told us something came flying at the ship, and they found a hole,” Katada said. “Then some crew witnessed the second shot.”

      Katada said there was no possibility that the ship, carrying 25,000 tons of methanol, was hit by a torpedo.

      The United States has blamed Iran for attacking the Kokuka Courageous and another tanker, the Norwegian-owned Front Altair, on Thursday, but Tehran has denied the allegations.

      The ship’s crew saw an Iranian military ship in the vicinity on Thursday night Japan time, Katada said.

      Katada said he did not believe Kokuka Courageous was targetted because it was owned by a Japanese firm. The tanker is registered in Panama and was flying a Panamanian flag, he said.

      “Unless very carefully examined, it would be hard to tell the tanker was operated or owned by Japanese,” he said. (...)

  • Trans woman who died after illness in US custody had asked to be deported, family says | US news | The Guardian

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/trans-woman-death-us-custody-ice-deportation

    nouveau tag #USA_today

    A transgender woman who died after becoming sick in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody had asked to be deported after she was repeatedly denied medical care, attorneys said on Wednesday.

    The family of Johana Medina León, a 25-year-old asylum seeker from El Salvador who died this month, filed a civil rights claim against the US government this week, alleging that officials ignored her numerous requests for treatment as her health “rapidly deteriorated”.