facility:georgetown university

The Future Is Here, and It Features Hackers Getting Bombed – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/06/the-future-is-here-and-it-features-hackers-getting-bombed

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/gettyimages-1141502357.jpg

Israeli armed forces responded to a Hamas cyberattack by bombing the group’s hacking headquarters.

With an airstrike on Sunday, the Israeli military provided a glimpse of the future of warfare.

After blocking a cyberattack that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said was launched by operatives working on behalf of the militant group Hamas, the IDF carried out an airstrike in Gaza targeting the building in which the hackers worked, partially destroying it. The strike appears to be the first time that a nation’s military has responded in real time to a cyberattack with physical force.

In a tweet, the IDF declared victory, saying: “We thwarted an attempted Hamas cyber offensive against Israeli targets. Following our successful cyber defensive operation, we targeted a building where the Hamas cyber operatives work.”

“HamasCyberHQ.exe has been removed,” the tweet added, in what appears to have been a macabre attempt at a joke using an invented file name.

For years, countries have used policy documents and strategy white papers to warn that they reserved the right to choose the method by which they respond to cyberattacks, either in kind through cyberspace or with physical force, said Catherine Lotrionte, an expert on international law and a professor at Georgetown University. Now, Israel has made those warnings concrete.

“You’ve got a physical operation against a building that was in response to an ongoing cyberattack or at least a cyberattack that Hamas was planning—that’s the interesting part,” Lotrionte said.

Key questions remain about the Israeli operation, and IDF officials declined to answer questions from Foreign Policy about the nature of the attack launched by Hamas against Israel.

In a press statement, the IDF said Hamas “attempted to establish offensive cyber capabilities within the Gaza Strip and to try and harm the Israeli cyber realm.” These “efforts were discovered in advance and thwarted,” and following the operation to thwart the cyberattack, “the IDF attacked a building from which the members of Hamas’ cyber array operated.”

The decision to bomb a Hamas hacking unit comes as armed forces are increasingly integrating cyberoperations into their militaries, and the Israeli decision to target such a unit was completely unsurprising to scholars and practitioners of cyberwarfare.

“It’s no surprise that in a digital age marked by heightened risk of cyberwarfare a nation-state engaged in a noninternational armed conflict would regard the cyber-capabilities of its adversary as valid military targets under international law,” said David Simon, a lawyer at the law firm Mayer Brown who worked on cybersecurity policy and operations as a special counsel at the U.S. Defense Department.

And even if the notion of bombing hackers appears surprising on its face, Israel was likely on solid legal footing when it did so, provided that the hackers were in fact carrying out an offensive operation on behalf of a militant group engaged in armed conflict with Israel.

Legal experts emphasized that the context of Sunday’s strike was key in understanding Israel’s calculus to carry it out. The strike came amid a renewed period of fighting that saw Palestinian militants fire hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, with Israel responding with an intense artillery and aerial barrage of Gaza.

Militaries around the world have recognized cyberspace as a domain of military operations, and that leaves hackers participating in an armed conflict in a highly exposed position. “Hackers who are engaged in military attacks are legitimate targets,” said Gary Brown, a cyberlaw professor at the National Defense University.

Militant groups such as Hamas have invested heavily in their online operations in recent years, using them as a way to poke at far more powerful, better resourced opponents. Cyberspace serves as a key way to distribute propaganda and gain intelligence about adversaries.

In one notorious example, a hacker working on behalf of the militant group Islamic Jihad pleaded guilty in 2017 to charges of hacking into the video feeds of IDF drones carrying out surveillance over Gaza.

Sunday’s bombing is not the first time hackers have been targeted in airstrikes—though it is believed to be the first time hackers engaged in an ongoing operation have been hit. In 2015, a U.S. airstrike in Syria killed the Islamic State hacker Junaid Hussain, who had become a prolific propagandist and recruiter for the group.

Hussain hacked into the personal accounts of hundreds of U.S. service members and posted their personal information online and helped recruit the men who opened fire in 2015 on a cartoon exhibition in Garland, Texas. As he ascended the ranks of the Islamic State’s leadership, he was singled out to be killed.

Hussain’s killing arguably laid the groundwork for Sunday’s strike, which experts argue sends a message to hackers engaged in offensive activity.

“It’s kind of a wake-up call for people who thought they were going to be able to engage in cyberactivity with impunity,” Brown said. “It now looks like states are willing to reach behind the lines and strike hackers.”

Opinion | My Father Faces the Death Penalty. This Is Justice in Saudi Arabia. - The New York Times

The kingdom’s judiciary is being pushed far from any semblance of the rule of law and due process.

By Abdullah Alaoudh

Mr. Alaoudh is a legal scholar at Georgetown University.

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/opinion/saudi-arabia-judiciary.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/02/13/opinion/13alaoudh1/13alaoudh1-facebookJumbo.jpg

Despite the claims of Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his enablers, Saudi Arabia is not rolling back the hard-line religious establishment. Instead, the kingdom is curtailing the voices of moderation that have historically combated extremism. Numerous Saudi activists, scholars and thinkers who have sought reform and opposed the forces of extremism and patriarchy have been arrested. Many of them face the death penalty.

Salman Alodah, my father, is a 61-year-old scholar of Islamic law in Saudi Arabia, a reformist who argued for greater respect for human rights within Shariah, the legal code of Islam based on the Quran. His voice was heard widely, partly owing to his popularity as a public figure with 14 million followers on Twitter.
The author’s father, Salman Alodah, has been held in solitary confinement since 2017.CreditFamily photograph
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The author’s father, Salman Alodah, has been held in solitary confinement since 2017.CreditFamily photograph

On Sept. 10, 2017, my father, who was disturbed by regional tensions after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt imposed a blockade on Qatar, spoke obliquely about the conflict and expressed his desire for reconciliation. “May Allah mend their hearts for the best of their peoples,” he tweeted.

A few hours after his tweet, a team from the Saudi security services came to our house in Riyadh, searched the house, confiscated some laptops and took my father away.

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The Saudi government was apparently angered and considered his tweet a criminal violation. His interrogators told my father that his assuming a neutral position on the Saudi-Qatar crisis and failing to stand with the Saudi government was a crime.

He is being held in solitary confinement in Dhahban prison in Jidda. He was chained and handcuffed for months inside his cell, deprived of sleep and medical help and repeatedly interrogated throughout the day and night. His deteriorating health — high blood pressure and cholesterol that he developed in prison — was ignored until he had to be hospitalized. Until the trial, about a year after his arrest, he was denied access to lawyers.

On Sept. 4, a specialized criminal court in Riyadh convened off-camera to consider the numerous charges against my father: stirring public discord and inciting people against the ruler, calling for change in government and supporting Arab revolutions by focusing on arbitrary detention and freedom of speech, possessing banned books and describing the Saudi government as a tyranny. The kingdom’s attorney general sought the death penalty for him.

Saudi Arabia has exploited the general indifference of the West toward its internal politics and presented the crackdown against reformist figures like my father as a move against the conservative religious establishment. The reality is far from their claims.

My father is loved by the Saudi people because his authority and legitimacy as an independent Muslim scholar set him apart from the state-appointed scholars. Using Islamic principles to support his arguments, he championed civil liberties, participatory politics, the separation of powers and judicial independence.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Historic Win and the Future of the Democratic Party | The New Yorker
▻https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-historic-win-and-the-future-of-the-democratic-p

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5b465113554b7b0b88500348/16:9/w_1200,h_630,c_limit/180723_r32440.jpg

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is twenty-eight. She was born in the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx and lives there now, in a modest one-bedroom apartment. Parkchester was originally a planned community conceived by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and was for decades segregated, predominantly Irish and Italian. Today, it’s largely African-American, Hispanic, and South Asian. Ocasio-Cortez comes from a Puerto Rican family in which the parents’ self-sacrifice has been rewarded by their daughter’s earnest striving, and, now, a historic achievement. Come November, Ocasio-Cortez is almost certain to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. As recently as ten months ago, she was waiting tables at a taco place near Union Square called Flats Fix. On June 26th, she pulled off a political upset in the Democratic primary for the Fourteenth Congressional District, soundly defeating the incumbent, Joseph Crowley, the most powerful politician in Queens County and the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives.

We sat down at a table near the window. She allowed that she was getting worn down. “You’re speaking to me when I am still emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and logistically processing all of this,” she said. “The whole thing’s got me knocked a little flat.”

With good reason. Not long ago, Ocasio-Cortez was mixing margaritas. Today, she is the embodiment of anti-corporate politics and a surge of female candidates in the midterm elections. “It’s a lot to carry,” she said. As a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, she was on the receiving end of Murdoch-media hysteria. The Post greeted her win with the headline “RED ALERT.” Sean Hannity pronounced her “downright scary.” And Ben Shapiro called her a member of the “howling at the moon” segment of the Democratic Party. On the anti-Trump right, Bret Stephens wrote in the Times that “Hugo Chávez was also a democratic socialist,” and warned that, in a national election, the likes of Ocasio-Cortez will be “political hemlock for the Democratic Party.” None of it seemed exactly real. When I asked her where she was going to live in D.C., her eyes widened in surprise, as if it had not occurred to her that she would no longer be spending most of her time in the Bronx. “Not a clue,” she said.

One of her most effective strokes was a two-minute-long video, the creation of Naomi Burton and Nick Hayes, D.S.A. activists from Detroit, who started Means of Production, a media-production company, and set out looking for working-class-oriented campaigns. They learned about Ocasio-Cortez on Facebook and sent her a direct message on Twitter. For less than ten thousand dollars, they produced a soulful social-media-ready film that showed the candidate in her apartment, on a subway platform, in a bodega, talking with a pregnant woman, to kids selling cupcakes. All the while, in voice-over, she speaks directly to the viewer:

Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office. I wasn’t born to a wealthy or powerful family. . . . This race is about people versus money. We’ve got people, they’ve got money. It’s time we acknowledged that not all Democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air cannot possibly represent us. What the Bronx and Queens needs is Medicare for all, tuition-free public college, a federal jobs guarantee, and criminal-justice reform.

The video went viral. Something was afoot.

On Election Day, in a car on the way to the billiards hall where Ocasio-Cortez was going to watch the returns, some of her advisers were getting encouraging reports from polling places. Shut it down, she said. No more looking at phones, no more guessing: “Let’s see the vote.” That night, cameras captured her expression of shock as she watched the news: a thirteen-point landslide. She had no words. It was a moment of pure joy playing out live on television. Crowley gamely accepted the results and, with a pickup band behind him, took out his guitar and dedicated “Born to Run” to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. For a man in six kinds of pain, he sang a creditable version.

If the Murdoch press was predictably outraged, some establishment Democrats were wary, too. Nancy Pelosi dismissed the win as a local phenomenon. And, while her tone was curt and superior, her larger point was clear: in November, Democratic candidates, no matter what shade of blue, had to beat Republicans. Districts had to flip. At dinner, Ocasio-Cortez bristled at the establishment dismissals. She did not doubt that there were many factors in her win—her identity as a young woman, as a Latina, as a daughter of a working-class family—but she had also out-organized a party boss, hammered away at immigration and health-care issues, and brought out new voters. It was infuriating for her to listen to the condescension.

“I’m twenty-eight years old, and I was elected on this super-idealistic platform,” she said. “Folks may want to take that away from me, but I won. When you hear ‘She won just for demographic reasons,’ or low turnout, or that I won because of all the white ‘Bernie bros’ in Astoria—maybe that all helped. But I smoked this race. I didn’t edge anybody out. I dominated. And I am going to own that.” The more complicated question was how she was going to own her identity as a democratic socialist.

When Ocasio-Cortez is interviewed now, particularly by the establishment outlets, she is invariably asked about “the S-word,” socialism; sometimes the question is asked with a shiver of anxiety, as if she were suggesting that schoolchildren begin the day by singing the “Internationale” under a portrait of Enver Hoxha. When I asked her about her political heroes, though, there was no mention of anyone in the Marxist pantheon. She named Robert F. Kennedy. In college, reading his speeches—“that was my jam,” she said. R.F.K., at least in the last chapter of his life, his 1968 Presidential campaign, tried to forge a party coalition of workers, minorities, and the middle class.

D.S.A., which was founded in 1982, is not a party but a dues-paying organization, and it has seen a bump in membership recently, from five thousand in 2016 to more than forty thousand today. The first co-chairs were Harrington and the author Barbara Ehrenreich. David Dinkins, the former mayor of New York, was a member of D.S.A. There’s no question that some members are Marxists in the traditional sense; some want to see the destruction of capitalism and the state ownership of factories, banks, and utilities. Jabari Brisport, a D.S.A. member from Brooklyn who recently ran, unsuccessfully, for City Council, told me that the group is “a big umbrella organization for left and leftish types, from Bernie-crats to hard-core Trotskyists.” Julia Salazar, a D.S.A. member in her mid-twenties who is running for the New York State Senate with the ardent support of Ocasio-Cortez, told Jacobin, a leftist quarterly, that a democratic socialist “recognizes the capitalist system as being inherently oppressive, and is actively working to dismantle it and to empower the working class and the marginalized in our society.”

Ocasio-Cortez and, for the most part, the people around her speak largely in the language of Sanders. Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, and yet in the most extensive speech he ever gave on the theme—at Georgetown University, in November, 2015—he did not mention Debs. Rather, he focussed almost entirely on Franklin Roosevelt and the legacy of the New Deal. He said that he shared the vision that F.D.R. set out in his 1944 State of the Union speech, what Roosevelt called the Second Bill of Rights. Sanders pointed out that universal health care was “not a radical idea” and existed in countries such as Denmark, France, Germany, and Taiwan. “I don’t believe government should own the means of production,” he said, “but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.”

Ocasio-Cortez and her circle focus less on the malefactions of the current Administration than on the endemic corruption of the American system, particularly the role of “dark money” in American politics and the lack of basic welfare provisions for the working classes and the poor. When they hear conservatives describe as a “socialist” Barack Obama—a man who, in their view, had failed to help the real victims of the financial crisis, while bailing out the banks—they tend to laugh ruefully. “I think the right did us a service calling Obama a socialist for eight years,” Saikat Chakrabarti, one of Ocasio-Cortez’s closest associates, said. “It inoculated us. But people focus on the labels when they are not sure what they mean. What people call socialism these days is Eisenhower Republicanism!”

#Alexandria_Ocasio_Cortez #Politique_USA #My_heroin_for_now

Mattis’s Last Stand Is Iran – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/28/mattiss-last-stand-is-iran

As the U.S. defense secretary drifts further from President Donald Trump’s inner circle, his mission gets clearer: preventing war with Tehran.

Long point de vue de Mark Perry (The Pentagon’s Wars). Après avoir décrit l’état d’usure et de fatigue des différentes forces armées états-uniennes, puis décrit en détail une attaque en règle de l’Iran,…

At the end of the air campaign, Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities would be in ruins. But the worry for senior military war planners is that the end of the U.S. campaign would not mark the end of the war, but its beginning. Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and a former professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program (and one of the Army’s most sophisticated strategic thinkers), argued that a conflict with Iran would not be confined to a U.S. attack — or Iran’s immediate response. Tehran, he said, would not surrender. “We should not go into a war with Iran thinking that they will capitulate,” he argued. “Al Qaeda did not capitulate; the Taliban did not capitulate. Enemies don’t capitulate. And Iran won’t capitulate.” Nor, Dubik speculated, would the kind of air campaign likely envisioned by U.S. military planners necessarily lead to the collapse of the Tehran government — a notion seconded by Farley. “There is very little reason to suppose that anything other than an Iraq-style war would lead to regime change in Iran,” Farley said. “Even in a very extensive campaign, and absent the use of ground troops in a major invasion, the Iranian regime would survive.” That is to say that, while Iran’s military would be devastated by a U.S. attack, the results of such a campaign would only deepen and expand the conflict.

“Shaping and executing an exit strategy after an attack is likely the most difficult task we will face,” [John Allen] Gay [the co-author of the 2013 book War with Iran] said. “While an overwhelming airstrike may end the war for us, it will not end it for Iran. Our conventional capabilities overawe theirs, but their unconventional capabilities favor them. Assassinations, terror attacks, the use of Hezbollah against Israel, and other options will likely be used by them over an extended period of time. All of this has to be factored in: Even if we destroy their nuclear capabilities, we will have to ask whether it will be worth it.”
[…]
In truth, the unease over any future conflict goes much deeper — and is seeded by what one senior and influential military officer called “an underlying anxiety that after 17 years of sprinkling the Middle East with corpses, the U.S. is not any closer to a victory over terrorism now than it was on September 12.”

#sprinkle_the_Middle_East_with_corpses
#parsemer_le_Moyen-Orient_de_cadavres …

dicks dicks dicks: Hardness and Flaccidity in (Virtual) Masculinity Amanda Phillips / Georgetown University – Flow
▻http://www.flowjournal.org/2017/11/dicks-dicks-dicks

The More Lavish the Gifts to Doctors, the Costlier the Drugs They Prescribe - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/well/live/the-more-lavish-the-gifts-to-doctors-the-costlier-the-drugs-they-prescribe.

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« Il vaut mieux ne pas visiter les #médecins que visitent les représentants des laboratoires pharmaceutiques »

Any gift was associated with higher cost prescriptions, but the larger gifts had an even greater effect. Those who received gifts worth more than $500 during the year averaged $189 per prescription.

The senior author, Dr. Adriane J. Fugh-Berman, director of PharmedOut, a project on drug prescribing based at Georgetown University Medical Center, had some straightforward advice for patients. “You shouldn’t see doctors who see drug reps,” she said. “Less than a minute of talking to a drug rep will increase prescribing of brand-name drugs.”

#pharma #corruption

U.S. Cyberweapons, Used Against Iran and North Korea, Are a Disappointment Against ISIS
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/world/middleeast/isis-cyber.html

The shortcomings of Glowing Symphony illustrated the challenges confronting the government as it seeks to cripple the Islamic State in cyberspace.

The disruptions often require fighters to move to less secure communications, making them more vulnerable. Yet because the Islamic State fighters are so mobile, and their equipment relatively commonplace, reconstituting communications and putting material up on new servers are not difficult. Some of it has been encrypted and stored in the cloud, according to intelligence officials, meaning it can be downloaded in a new place.

“There were folks working hard on this stuff, and there were some accomplishments that had an impact, but there was no steady stream of jaw-dropping stuff coming forward as some expected,” said Mr. Geltzer, who now teaches law at Georgetown University Law Center. “There was no sort of shining cybertool.”

The Obama administration’s frustration with the lack of success against the Islamic State was one factor in its effort to oust Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the N.S.A. and the commander of Cyber Command, according to several former administration officials. They complained that the organizations were too focused on traditional espionage and highly sophisticated efforts to use networks to blow up or incapacitate adversary facilities, like those in Iran and North Korea.

#cyberwar #resilience #backup

Qatar restores ties with Iran, ignoring demands of Arab neighbors - CNN
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/24/middleeast/iran-qatar-diplomatic-ties/index.html

Qatar will restore full diplomatic relations with Iran, it announced Thursday, in a move that will infuriate the country’s Arab neighbors and could deepen the region’s worst diplomatic crisis in decades.

“The state of Qatar expressed its aspirations to strengthen bilateral relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran in all fields,” the Qatari Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The countries’ foreign ministers spoke on the phone Thursday and discussed “bilateral relations” as well as a “number of issues of common concern,” the statement said, adding Qatar’s ambassador will return to Iran to exercise “diplomatic duties.”
[…]
“Qatar has a number of tools in its toolbox to withstand the pressure. For example it’s got robust investments, it has healthy foreign reserves and now it is getting supplies — foodstuffs and other essential goods — from Turkey and Iran,” Mehran Kamrava, an expert at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, told CNN last month.
“It’s the Qatari business community that is suffering. A business community that has multiple roots in places like Dubai and in Saudi Arabia, and I think that’s the critical point — how long will the business community in Qatar remain behind the government’s position.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said recently the quartet was willing to negotiate, but “dialogue doesn’t mean there are concessions.”
In a joint statement in late July, the quartet said negotiations could only take place if Qatar showed “real intention” to stop supporting terrorism and interfering in the affairs of neighboring countries.

How a Drug to Treat Crying Sent Sales Soaring - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/pseudobulbar-affect-drug-advertising-sales.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/05/14/business/14cryingdrug1/14cryingdrug1-facebookJumbo.jpg

“I suspect this disease is being redefined to include overly emotional people” through advertising, said Adriane Fugh-Berman, a doctor who teaches at Georgetown University Medical Center and has investigated pharmaceutical #marketing practices. The United States is one of two countries that allows advertising of prescription drugs.

[...]

Nuedexta has also attracted attention because it is expensive, more than $700 a month for a supply of twice-a-day pills. The drug is a combination of two low-cost ingredients — an over-the-counter cough medicine and a generic heart drug — that, purchased separately, would run roughly $20 a month, according to online cost estimators.

#pharma #bizness #publicité #santé

NYPD Refuses to Disclose Information About Its Face Recognition Program, So Privacy Researchers Are Suing
▻https://theintercept.com/2017/05/02/nypd-refuses-to-disclose-information-about-its-face-recognition-progra

Researchers at Georgetown University law school filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the New York City Police Department today for the agency’s refusal to disclose documents about its longstanding use of face recognition technology. The NYPD’s face recognition system, which has operated in the department’s Real Time Crime Center since at least 2011, allows officers to identify a suspect by searching against databases of stored facial photos. Records pertaining to the NYPD’s program (...)

#NYPD #immatriculation #criminalité #biométrie #facial #automobilistes #surveillance (...)

##criminalité ##vidéo-surveillance

What did Tillerson’s Russia trip achieve?

▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/04/tillerson-lavrov-russia-meeting.html

❝Moscow also seized the moment of direct contact with the top US diplomat to clarify its own positions. On Syria, the departure of President Bashar al-Assad was and remains a non-starter for Russia. What neither Lavrov nor Putin would probably say to Tillerson, but do expect him to understand, is that Russia has invested so much into Syria now, politically and militarily, that Moscow’s primary concern is less about Assad than about the principle, power and prestige of maintaining its position. Hence, any plan that might move Moscow from this standing would have to involve some face-saving mechanism that the Kremlin could package as a win-win internationally, and as a “decision made in Russia’s best interest” domestically.

So far, the US vision has been to get Russia on board by offering Moscow an opportunity to “play a constructive role in the humanitarian and political catastrophe in the Middle East.” That approach misses a critical point in Russian political psychology: The Kremlin believes it has already stepped up as a constructive player to counter the increasingly destructive forces unleashed by the United States. This belief — no matter how uncomfortably it sits with anyone — is not entirely groundless. Many players in the region perceive Russia in this capacity, even if it’s just for their own political reasons.

A senior Russian diplomat speaking with Al-Monitor not for attribution said: “[Russia] stepping aside from Assad would mean, among other things, an ultimate win for the US regime-change policy. It would indicate that no matter how long you resist this policy, you’ll be made to surrender. That’s a serious red line in Russia’s foreign policy thinking, the one that President Putin cannot afford to be crossed — not for all the tea in China, or should I say, a chocolate cake in Mar-a-Lago?”

Therefore, Tillerson’s statement on the importance of Assad’s departure in a “structural, organized manner” is seen in Moscow as a positive outcome. It leaves open the prospect of returning to the political process that was underway for several months before the gas attack and the airstrikes.

However, it might be much more difficult to achieve now, as the parties focus on reinforcing their respective and contradictory narratives. Reports of US intelligence intercepting communications between Syrian military and chemical experts about preparations for a sarin nerve gas attack in Idlib are a powerful argument for the audience that shares the “American narrative” — as Moscow sees it. However, it is producing counternarratives on the Russian side. One such narrative, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, suggests that of all “12 facilities that stored Syrian chemical weapons, 10 were destroyed in the timeline between 2013 and 2016 under the watch of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons … [while] the remaining two compounds are out of reach for the Syrian government since they are located in the territory controlled by the so-called opposition.”

Also, as Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, put it: “The recitation of mantras on the necessity of Assad’s departure” won’t budge Moscow’s position an inch, nor will it help with a political solution to the Syria crisis. On the contrary, it will only reinforce Russia’s position on Assad. So far, Moscow has been operating on the principle of presumed innocence and calling for an “unbiased probe” into the Syria attack. To Russia, a refusal to have such an investigation would show that the case against Assad is being pursued for political rather than humanitarian reasons.

Remarkably, a recent Mir interview with Putin indicates Moscow hasn’t reached a concrete conclusion on exactly who perpetrated the attacks. Putin’s statement that it could have been the Syrian opposition or the Islamic State (IS) is based primarily on the opposition’s hope of saving itself in a losing battle and on previous IS chemical attacks in Iraq. On factual grounds, however, Russia’s arguments look as shaky as the West’s “confidence” that Assad did it. Yet this state of affairs leaves enough space for US-Russia cooperation on investigating the case, if only inspired by a solid political will.

Though it seems counterintuitive, Russia’s veto of the UN resolution on Syria proposed by the United States, the UK and France hours after the Tillerson-Lavrov press conference is an important sign of Russia’s commitment to work with the United States. Deputy Russian UN Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov explained the veto by saying the resolution assigned guilt “before an independent and objective investigation” could be conducted.

However, Russia probably had decided to veto the resolution even before Tillerson and Lavrov met, to give itself more time to think through the negotiation results. Moscow wanted to come up with a fresh proposal at the UN that would reflect a more engaging approach for both US and Russian interests. Hence came Safronkov’s heated and scandalous lashing out against British diplomat Matthew Rycroft, whom he accused of trying to derail a potential agreement on Syria and Assad’s fate that Moscow had hoped to reach with Washington. "Don’t you dare insult Russia!” he said at the UN Security Council meeting April 12.

Rycroft had accused Moscow of supporting Assad’s “murderous, barbaric” regime.

In general, the visit left a feeling in Moscow that the initiatives Lavrov and Tillerson discussed will face intense scrutiny in Washington. The confrontational rhetoric flying from both capitals will remain prevalent. But the parties have articulated a need and agreed on some — though not many — concrete steps toward managing the situation. It’s not likely to lead to a “great-power alliance” or help both parties accomplish much together. But it might be just what’s needed to take the two back from the brink of a direct military clash and spare the world even more uncertainty. Given the current circumstances, this might be the most comfortable paradigm for the bilateral relations — at least until Putin and Trump meet face to face.

MAXIM A. SUCHKOV
Editor, Russia-Mideast 
Maxim A. Suchkov, PhD is the Editor of Al-Monitor’s Russia-Mideast coverage as well as an expert of the Russian International Affairs Council. He is also an Associate Professor of International Relations and Deputy Director for Research at the School of International Relations, Pyatigorsk State University based in the North Caucasus, Russia. Formerly he was a Fulbright visiting fellow at Georgetown University (2010-11) and New York University (2015). He is the author of the “Essays on Russian Foreign Policy in the Caucasus and the Middle East.” On Twitter: @Max_A_Suchkov

#Russie #Syrie #Etats-Unis

swissinfo.ch | Trop peu de places de thérapie pour les victimes de torture et de guerre
▻http://asile.ch/2017/02/01/swissinfo-ch-de-places-de-therapie-victimes-de-torture-de-guerre

Les réfugiés provenant de pays en guerre ou de dictatures ont souvent vécu des choses terribles. Ils ont vu des hommes mourir, ont perdu des membres de leur famille ou ont peut-être été victimes de torture ou de violence. Une Conférence tenue à Berne a mis en évidence qu’en Suisse, les migrants traumatisés ne sont […]

Library of Congress | The Palestine Poster Project Archives

▻http://palestineposterproject.org/special-collection/library-of-congress

Déja sur les collines... J’avais raté ce site, sur lequel il y a des pépites.

http://palestineposterproject.org/sites/default/files/3760_pppa.jpg

The Palestine Poster Project Archives
The Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters - Nominated to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program 2016-2017
About the Palestine Poster Project Archives

This website has been created to mark headway on my masters’ thesis project at Georgetown University. It is a work-in-progress.

I first began collecting Palestine posters when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco in the mid-1970s. By 1980 I had acquired about 300 Palestine posters. A small grant awarded with the support of the late Dr. Edward Said allowed me to organize them into an educational slideshow to further the “third goal” of the Peace Corps: to promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. Over the ensuing years, while running my design company, Liberation Graphics, the number of internationally published Palestine posters I acquired steadily grew. Today the Archives numbers some 5,000 Palestine posters from myriad sources making it what many library science specialists say is the largest such archives in the world.

The Palestine poster genre dates back to around 1900 and, incredibly, more Palestine posters are designed, printed and distributed today than ever before. Unlike most of the political art genres of the twentieth century such as those of revolutionary Cuba and the former Soviet Union, which have either died off, been abandoned, or become mere artifacts, the Palestine poster genre continues to evolve. Moreover, the emergence of the Internet has exponentially expanded the genre’s network of creative contributors and amplified the public conversation about contemporary Palestine.

My research has two major components: (1) the development of a curriculum using the Palestine poster as a key resource for teaching the formative history of the Palestinian-Zionist conflict in American high schools. This aspect of my work is viewable in my New Curriculum and; (2) the creation of a web-based archives that displays the broadest possible range of Palestine posters in a searchable format with each poster translated and interpreted.

This library and teaching resource allows educators, students, scholars, and other parties interested in using the New Curriculum to incorporate Palestine posters into classroom learning activities. Titles included are from the Liberation Graphics collection, the Library of Congress, the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, Yale University, the University of Chicago and a host of other sources. To facilitate my research I have broken the genre of the Palestine poster into four sources, or wellsprings.

These wellsprings are:

1) Arab and Muslim artists and agencies

2) International artists and agencies

3) Palestinian nationalist artists and agencies

4) Zionist and Israeli artists and agencies

For the purpose of this research project, I have arbitrarily defined a “Palestine” poster as:

1) Any poster with the word “Palestine” in it, in any language, from any source or time period;

2) Any poster created or published by any artist or agency claiming Palestinian nationality or Palestinian participation;

3) Any poster published in the geographical territory of historic Palestine, at any point in history, including contemporary Israel;

4) Any poster published by any source which relates directly to the social, cultural, political, military or economic history of Palestine; and/or

5) Any poster related to Zionism or anti-Zionism in any language, from any source, published after August 31, 1897.

The majority of posters in this archives are printed on paper. However, an increasing number of new Palestine posters are “born digitally” and then printed and distributed locally, oftentimes in very small quantities. This localization represents a sea change in the way political poster art is produced and disseminated. Traditionally, political posters were printed in a single location and then distributed worldwide. The global reach of the internet combined with the rising costs of mass production is shifting production away from large centralized printing operations to a system controlled more by small end-users in myriad locations.

Electronic, digitally created images included in this archives meet these requirements: they are capable of being downloaded and printed out at a size at least as large as 18” X 24” and they deal substantially with the subject of Palestine. Computer generated images will be identified as such. I am uploading posters in what may appear to be a haphazard order; actually the order is a reflection of the way(s) in which many of the posters were originally collected, stored, and digitized on CDs over the past fifteen years.

As time and funds permit, I will be uploading the entire archives.

I want to specifically thank the following people without whose assistance I would not have been able to even begin this research: Dr. Lena Jayyusi, for both her thorough critique of the New Curriculum as well as her steadfast moral support over many years; Dr. Rochelle Davis, my academic advisor at Georgetown who gave me the freedom to explore the questions of most interest to me and who encouraged me to look at the genre from visual anthropology and ethnographic perspectives; Catherine Baker, who has provided creative, editorial and moral support of incalculable value to me and to whom I am forever indebted; Dr. Eric Zakim, the director of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland at College Park whose translations of the Hebrew text in the Zionist/Israel poster wellspring and whose breadth of knowledge of Zionist history and iconography proved indispensable; Dr. Elana Shohamy of Tel Aviv University for opening up to me the worlds of Jewish language history, Israeli language policy and perhaps most importantly, the principles of language rights, and; Richard Reinhard whose early and complete review of the New Curriculum helped keep me on schedule and in focus.

Special thanks are also due Jenna Beveridge, the Academic Program Coordinator at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, without whose guidance through the halls of academia I would have been hopelessly lost. There are, in addition, legions of people who over the years have encouraged me to persevere in this work. I will make it a point to thank them at regular intervals in the progress of this project.

Dan Walsh Silver Spring, MD April 2009

How #Big_Pharma Uses Charity Programs to Cover for Drug Price Hikes
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-19/the-real-reason-big-pharma-wants-to-help-pay-for-your-prescription

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i_OoBC_6Ep9w/v1/1200x-1.jpg

PSI is a patient-assistance charitable organization, commonly known as a copay charity. It’s one of seven large charities (among many smaller ones) offering assistance to some of the 40 million Americans covered through the government-funded Medicare drug program. Those who meet income guidelines can get much or all of their out-of-pocket drug costs covered by a charity: a large initial copay for a prescription, another sum known as the coverage gap or the donut hole, and more-modest ongoing costs. It adds up fast. After Turing raised Daraprim’s price, some toxoplasmosis patients on #Medicare had initial out-of-pocket costs of as much as $3,000.

That’s just a fraction of the total cost. Turing’s new price for an initial six-week course of Daraprim is $60,000 to $90,000. Who pays the difference? For Medicare patients, U.S. taxpayers shoulder the burden. Medicare doesn’t release complete data on what it pays pharmaceutical companies each year, but this much is clear: A million-dollar contribution from a pharmaceutical company to a copay charity can keep hundreds of patients from abandoning a newly pricey drug, enabling the donor to collect many millions from Medicare.

#complicité #vicié #vicieux

Forced Migration and Internal Displacement in the Arab World and Beyond - School of Foreign Service - Georgetown University
▻http://sfs.georgetown.edu/forced-migration-and-internal-displacement-in-the-arab-world-and-bey

Encore une fois merci à Elisabeth Vallet

http://sfs.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Cover-image.jpg

With 60 million people counted as refugees or internally displaced, we are currently witnessing the largest global forced displacement since World War II. These displaced millions are primarily fleeing war, conflict, and persecution, but a host of other factors also contribute to the unstable conditions they face in their home countries: forced conscription; lack of access to health care, jobs, and education; drought and environmental degradation. More than half come from the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa. Despite the news of migrants arriving daily in Europe, the overwhelming majority of those displaced remain in or near their home countries.

#migrations #Réfugiés

US government hack stole fingerprints of 5.6 million federal employees | Technology | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/23/us-government-hack-stole-fingerprints

The number of people applying for or receiving security clearances whose fingerprint images were stolen in one of the worst government data breaches is now believed to be 5.6 million, not 1.1 million as first thought, the Office of Personnel Management announced on Wednesday.

The agency was the victim of what the US believes was a Chinese espionage operation that affected an estimated 21.5 million current and former federal employees or job applicants. The theft could give Chinese intelligence a huge leg up in recruiting informants inside the US government, experts believe. It also could help the Chinese identify US spies abroad, according to American officials.

The White House has said it’s going to discuss cybersecurity with Chinese president Xi Jinping when he visits Barack Obama later this week.

This algorithm can predict a revolution | The Verge
▻http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/12/5404750/can-a-database-predict-a-revolution

the most exciting projects right now are fully open endeavors that publish their predictions for anyone to see. On the data side, researchers at Georgetown University are cataloging every significant political event of the past century into a single database called #GDELT, and leaving the whole thing open for public research. Already, projects have used it to map the Syrian civil war and diplomatic gestures between Japan and South Korea, looking at dynamics that had never been mapped before. And then, of course, there’s Ward Lab, releasing a new sheet of predictions every six months and tweaking its algorithms with every development.

Controversial Syria Researcher Fired Over Doctorate Claim
▻http://www.buzzfeed.com/susannahgeorge/syria-researcher-elizabeth-o-bagy-fired

A young researcher whose opinions on Syria were cited by both Senator McCain and Secretary of State John Kerry in congressional testimony last week has been fired from the Institute for the Study of War for allegedly faking her academic credentials.

The institute issued a statement on its website concerning the researcher, Elizabeth O’Bagy:
The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O’Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O’Bagy’s employment, effective immediately.

International Migrants Bill of Rights — Georgetown Law

►http://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/centers-institutes/isim/imbr

There is no single, legal framework that effectively protects all international migrants. The International Migrants Bill of Rights (IMBR) consolidates international human rights law governing the protection of migrants into a unifying soft-law document, restating and reformulating existing rights to make their application to migrants clearer and more effective, and positing a margin of enhancement consistent with progressive values.

The IMBR Initiative started in 2007 at Georgetown University Law Center as part of the Global Law Scholars Program. The Initiative has developed over the past four years through the collaborative effort of students and scholars from Georgetown University Law Center, the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at American University in Cairo, the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Migration Studies Unit at the London School of Economics. Currently the Initiative is housed at Georgetown University Law Center and the Georgetown Institute for the Study of International Migration.

AARP and AARP Foundation Fraudulent Profile of Director Barbara O’Connor of California Emerging Technology Fund (TLR Note:AARP, CETF, McPeak, English, O’Connor, Lucas and others mislead by intentionally withholding O’Connor part of Lucas Public Affairs)

AARP Home » Foundation » About Us »Barbara O’Connor
Barbara O’Connor
AARP Affiliated Foundation board member

from: AARP Foundation | June 6, 2012

Barbara O’Connor, Ph.D., of Sacramento, Calif., was elected to the AARP Board in 2010. She serves on the Audit and Finance Committee and is on the Insurance Trust.

She is a former professor of communication studies and director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media, California State University, Sacramento. Previously, she was assistant director of debate, University of Southern California, a summer debate instructor, Georgetown University, and a design consultant, Cablevision Systems, New Jersey. She has been chairperson and founding board member of the Alliance for Public Technology; a board member and officer, California Emerging Technology Fund; a member of the Bellcore Advisory Board; and a member of the Federal Communication Commission’s Network Reliability Council. She chaired the California Educational Technology Commission, the California Public Broadcasting Commission, the CEO Task Force on Digital Literacy and the International Council on Information Communication Technology.

Source: ►http://www.aarp.org/aarp-foundation/about-us/info-06-2012/barbara-oconnor-board-member.html

AARP Leadership Profile:

Life Perspectives

"I grew up in West Texas, raised by a single mother. I was a first-generation college graduate. So I’ve lived through lots of what our members are living through.

"Communications and politics have really been my longstanding interests, including technology access and equity, disabled rights, communication strategies and social movement building. I have a political background, and I started a public radio station in Sacramento and ran it for a while. We now have six radio stations there, the Capital Public Radio Network.

"I have taught mostly technology policy and technology evolution — the hardware stuff. I also teach political communications and the impact of messaging on social movement formation.

"I was fortunate enough to go to the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, which is very geeky, so I was able to keep up with technology as it evolved. I chaired the California Public Broadcasting Commission, and I’m now an officer and director of the California Emerging Technology Fund.

“AARP provides me an opportunity to do tele-health, to deal with issues of getting the 50-plus generation online. I get to help people who are unemployed at 50, using the Web. So being part of the AARP board is really a wonderful synergy of my interests and the organization’s interests….”

"It’s getting more and more difficult to find a center in American politics. Part of it is the media’s fault. The news hole, in both broadcast and in print, has really been reduced. The downsizing and the mergers and acquisitions that have gone on in the media world have really done a disservice to public policy discussion. It’s made the media more event- and scandal-chasing — the lowest common denominator.

"In political campaigns, it’s 30-second spots. So it’s no surprise that the public has fatigue about dealing with politicians. Every poll in America shows that they are held in very low esteem.

"We can’t return to retail politics because we have the technology and everyone is used to using it. But longer formats, discussions, call-ins, coherent talk would be welcome. Certainly, AARP’s members would welcome that to address their concerns about big things such as Social Security.

"AARP is nonpartisan, and ours is a trusted voice. We have to provide the voice of reason in these debates, so that it’s not a partisan political discussion, but really a rational, practical discussion.

"People really do care about the issues that we work on. They’re central to their lives. We have to find a coherent solution to intractable problems.

"We need to be very heavily data-driven. I think we do that, by the way. I think staff and our board are the best. And our volunteers are terrific. So I’m optimistic, actually.

"A big part of our job as board members is to listen. You don’t let your own biases govern what you do. I have to listen to what the data says and to what members are telling me.

“So if you’re data-driven and you really do listen to the members tell you what their issues are — and we have very good organs of information that help us with that, by the way, in the organization — then you can find consensus.”

Expertise

Politics, communications, debate, telecommunications policy, digital divide, senior health, tele-health, digital literacy, education technology.

Education

Ph.D., communications, University of Southern California, Annenberg School of Communications; M.A., communications, California State University, Northridge; B.A., communications, California State University, Northridge; A.A., history, Los Angeles Valley College.

Experience

Currently, professor of communication and director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media, California State University, Sacramento. Previously, assistant director of debate, University of Southern California; summer debate instructor, Georgetown University; design consultant, Cablevision Systems, New Jersey.

Volunteer experience

Boards: Serves on AARP Board’s Audit and Finance Committee and the AARP Insurance Trust. Formerly, chairperson and founding board member, The Alliance for Public Technology; board member and officer, California Emerging Technology Fund; member, Bellcore Advisory Board.

Other: Formerly, presidential debate judge, Washington Bureau, Associated Press; chair and commission member, California Public Broadcasting Commission (governor’s appointee); commission member, Federal Communication Commission, Network Reliability Council; chair, California Educational technology commission; chair, CEO Task Force on Digital Literacy; chair, International Council on Information Communication Technology; among many others.

Honors

Received a Lifetime Community Service Award, an outstanding teaching award, and the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Professor Award from California State University, Sacramento. Received a Technology Pioneer Award from the Alliance for Public Technology; a Technology Leadership Award from Computer Using Educators. Named among 50 for the Future by Newsweek magazine.

Source: ►http://www.aarp.org/about-aarp/leadership/info-2010/barbara_oconnor.html

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Lucas Public Affairs is a California-based strategic consulting, public relations, and communications firm. Located in Sacramento, C.A., Lucas Public Affairs was founded in 2006 by Donna Lucas, who is the firm’s CEO and President. The firm’s clients come from a myriad of industries including energy, sports and entertainment, transportation, natural resources, health care, business and finance, tourism and education.[2] The firm also offers services in the following practice areas: Strategic Communications, Crisis Communications, Issue & Reputation Management, Government Relations, Media, and Social Media

Source: ►http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Public_Affairs

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June 15, 2011
Barbara O’Connor joins Lucas Public Affairs as senior counsel

Barbara O’Connor, a longtime Sacramento college professor and expert in political communications, has joined Lucas Public Affairs, the firm announced today.

O’Connor will provide strategic guidance for the Sacramento-based public relations firm, which serves clients in the fields of energy, sports, entertainment, insurance, local government, education, health care and other fields. Her title will be senior counsel.

“Barbara’s ongoing relationships with the California press corps, academic community, and national and statewide opinion leaders and policymakers make her a major asset to our team,” said Donna Lucas, president and chief executive officer, in a written statement.

O’Connor also released a statement, saying, “I’m excited about partnering with everyone at Lucas Public Affairs. The issues are interesting and challenging. I’m looking forward to adding to the mix. I know I’m going to learn a lot.”

Source: ►http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/06/barbara-oconnor-joins-lucas-pu.html

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SACRAMENTO, CA - Lucas Public Affairs, one of California’s top strategic communications firms, today announced the addition of Dr. Barbara O’Connor, Emeritus Professor at Sacramento State University, to its growing team.

"Dr. O’Connor will be serving as senior counsel to the firm, offering her experience and expertise on some of the firm’s top clients.

A nationally recognized expert in the field of political communications, Dr. O’Connor will provide strategic guidance on some of the most complex issues that Lucas Public Affairs’ clients face.

“I am thrilled that Barbara is joining our team. She is results-based and has a respected reputation – qualities that make her a perfect addition to the firm,” said Donna Lucas, CEO and President of Lucas Public Affairs. “Her years of experience and knowledge of California and her continued role in providing strategic counsel to many national organizations and media outlets will be of tremendous value as we help our clients navigate through challenges and achieve their business goals.”

O’Connor — formerly a professor at Sacramento State University and director of the university’s Institute for the Study of Politics and Media — has over 43 years of experience teaching and in research.

Besides Sacramento State, she has taught at Georgetown and USC where she was the assistant director of debate. She currently sits on the National Board of the American Association of Retired Persons. O’Connor has previously served as a consultant to McClatchy Newspapers, the Boston Globe Media Properties, the Tribune Company, the Washington Bureau of the Associated Press, the California Legislature, the United States Congress and the Federal Communications Commission.

“I’m excited about partnering with everyone at Lucas Public Affairs. The issues are interesting and challenging,” O’Connor said. “I’m looking forward to adding to the mix. I know I’m going to learn a lot.”

“Barbara’s ongoing relationships with the California press corps, academic community and national and statewide opinion leaders and policymakers make her a major asset to our team,” said Lucas.

Last year, the firm announced the promotions of Justin Knighten, Rachel Huberman and Annie Han and the addition of seasoned media strategist Beth Willon.

Led by Lucas, founder of the firm and one of the nation’s foremost public affairs strategists, Lucas Public Affairs’ existing team includes: public affairs experts Julie Marengo, Senior Vice President, and Jessica Spitz Biller, Vice President—who together have a combined 30+ years of experience managing complex and multi-faceted communications programs for a host of clients and issues; Beth Willon, Senior Account Supervisor & Media Specialist; Justin Knighten, Account Executive; Emilie Cameron, Account Coordinator; Rachel Huberman, Account Coordinator; and Annie Han, Executive Assistant.

Source: ►http://www.lucaspublicaffairs.com/lpa/index.cfm/news/dr-barbara-oe28099connor-joins-lucas-public-affairs

Read more here: ►http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/06/barbara-oconnor-joins-lucas-pu.html#storylink=cpy

Panetta on Al Qaeda : Leon Panetta says Al Qaeda defeat is "within reach" - latimes.com
►http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-panetta-qaeda-20110710,0,2299598.story

May showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against Al Qaeda had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives, most of whom are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.

– Balancer des missiles de croisière sur les lieux pré-cités :
☑ check

“It is certainly true that Al Qaeda’s leadership has been significantly eroded over the past two years,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, but “there is no empirical evidence that either the appeal of its message or the flow of recruits into its ranks has actually diminished.”

– Annoncer que le ralentissement de l’augmentation du nombre de recrutements est au point mort, mais en fait on ne sait pas trop :
☑ check

The Taliban movement has a primarily domestic agenda that differs from the global jihad espoused by Al Qaeda, and links between the two groups have loosened considerably in the nearly 10 years since the Taliban gave sanctuary to Bin Laden in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

– Expliquer, après tout ça, que finalement les Talibans ne sont pas nos ennemis (ils n’ont jamais qu’un « agenda domestique », et pas de jihad mondialisé)
☑ check

The U.S. believes Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian who succeeded Bin Laden as Al Qaeda’s top leader, was probably hiding in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas

– Coco, t’oublies pas de balancer des missiles de croisière là-bas, hein ?
☑ check

Panetta said that Yemen — not Pakistan — poses the most potent threat of terrorist attacks on America, from an Al Qaeda offshoot known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

– Ah ben finalement, les missiles de croisière, c’est pour le Yemen.
☑ check

– Pardon, tu parles bien du Yemen d’Ali Abdullah Saleh ?
☑ check