person:ibrahim

Soldiers Demolish Children’s Park, Wells, And Uproot Trees In Natural Reserve
July 3, 2019 – IMEMC News
▻https://imemc.org/article/soldiers-demolish-childrens-park-wells-and-uproot-trees-in-natural-reserve

Israeli soldiers invaded, Wednesday, a natural reserve area in the villages of Khashm ad-Daraj and Um el-Kheir, east of Yatta town, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and demolished a children’s park, in addition to uprooting trees and demolishing water wells.

Ibrahim Eid al-Hathalin, the head of Khashm ad-Daraj village council, said dozens of soldiers invaded the area, before demolishing a children’s park, used by dozens of families.

He added that the soldiers also demolished several water wells, in addition to uprooting evergreens and other trees in the natural reserve.

The Israeli army claimed that the invaded lands, and the uprooted trees, are in an area “designated for military training.”

#colonisation_de_peuplement

Au Liban, la fête du Fitr assombrie par les attaques de Tripoli
▻https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1173476/au-liban-la-fete-du-fitr-assombrie-par-les-attaques-de-tripoli.html

Le premier jour de la fête du Fitr, qui marque la fin du mois de jeûne musulman du ramadan, a été assombri au Liban par l’attaque meurtrière qui a fait quatre tués lundi soir dans les rangs des forces de sécurité à Tripoli. En dépit de la gravité de cette agression, les responsables se veulent rassurants quant à la situation sécuritaire dans le pays.

Abdel Rahmane Mabsout a abattu lundi soir quatre membres des forces de sécurité avant de se faire exploser. La direction générale des Forces de sécurité intérieure a ainsi annoncé mardi dans un communiqué la mort du sergent Johnny Khalil et du caporal Youssef Faraj. Le commandement de l’armée libanaise a pour sa part annoncé la mort du lieutenant Hassan Ali Farhat et du soldat Ibrahim Mohammad Saleh.

Il n’y a pas eu de revendication immédiate des attaques et les mobiles de l’assaillant restent inconnus. Mais selon des responsables de sécurité, l’auteur était un extrémiste récemment libéré de prison. Des médias locaux ont rapporté que cet homme, originaire de Tripoli, avait combattu à Raqqa, en Syrie, dans les rangs de l’Etat islamique. Le tireur a d’abord ouvert le feu sur une branche de la Banque centrale, puis sur un poste de police et un véhicule militaire, avant d’être coincé dans un immeuble résidentiel par les forces de sécurité et de faire détonner sa ceinture d’explosifs.

Ibrahim Maalouf nous donne rendez-vous le 27 septembre avec la sortie de son nouvel album S3NS. Entouré de quinze musiciens, Ibrahim rend sur ce disque hommage à la culture latine et à la musique afro-cubaine…en mode Maalouf !
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfsPSF1doM8&feature=youtu.be

Egyptian navy detains 4 Palestinian fishermen in Gaza
May 13, 2019 12:19 P.M. (
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=783430

http://www.maannews.com/Photos/482447C.jpg

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Egyptian naval forces detained four Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Rafah, south of the besieged Gaza Strip bordering Egypt, on Sunday.

Head of the Palestinian Fishermen Union in Gaza, Zakariya Bakr, told Ma’an that Egyptian naval forces detained four fishermen from two fishing boats off the coast of Rafah.

Bakr added the Egyptian forces confiscated the two fishing boats and sailed them to an unknown location.

Bakr identified the four fishermen as Muhammad Ziyad Sayad, 22, Ahmad Omar al-Bardawil, 30, Ibrahim Muhammad al-Bardawil, 22, and Ibrahim Khalil al-Bardawil, 42.

Egypt upholds an Israeli military blockade on Gaza, keeping borders largely closed and limiting imports, exports, and the freedom of movement of its residents.

The threat from Egyptian forces comes as Palestinian fishermen already face daily risks in order to make a living, including routine harassment from Israeli naval forces, confiscation of boats and materials, detention and potentially death.

Israeli forces open fire towards Palestinian fishing boats on a daily basis.

#GazaEgypte

Entre massacre et lutte antiterroriste, l’armée malienne à l’épreuve du feu | Mediapart
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/140419/entre-massacre-et-lutte-antiterroriste-l-armee-malienne-l-epreuve-du-feu?o

https://static.mediapart.fr/etmagine/default/files/2019/04/14/ibk-et-macron-en-novembre-2018.jpg

L’agence française de développement a annulé la publication d’un dossier sur le Mali qui devait paraître dans sa revue Afrique contemporaine. En cause, des articles qui ont déplu, mettant à mal la stratégie de la France ou les autorités du Mali. Mediapart publie l’un d’eux, consacré aux accusations visant l’armée malienne.

#Paypal #Mali #Censure #AgenceFrançaiseDéveloppement

Ratoma (Guinée-Conakry) : un quartier squatté a été entièrement démoli par l’État
▻https://fr.squat.net/2019/03/05/ratoma-guinee-conakry-un-quartier-squatte-a-ete-entierement-demoli

Début février 2019, à Ratoma (une des cinq communes constituant la ville de Conakry), Ibrahima Kourouma, le ministre de la Ville et de l’Aménagement du Territoire a annoncé son intention de faire « nettoyer » le site du centre directionnel de Koloma, c’est-à-dire détruire tout un quartier squatté où vivent des dizaines de personnes pauvres. L’expulsion-destruction de […]

#Afrique #émeutes #expulsion #Guinée-Conakry

« Gilets jaunes » : à La Réunion, le mouvement a été « pire qu’un cyclone » Le Figaro avec AFP - 12 Février 2019 - Le figaro

Particulièrement virulent en fin d’année à La Réunion, le mouvement des « gilets jaunes » a paralysé l’île pendant près de trois semaines : l’impact des blocages et des violences urbaines a été « pire que celui d’un cyclone », estiment les acteurs économiques.

Au plus fort du mouvement pour protester contre les hausses de prix des carburants, la vie chère et les inégalités, plus d’une vingtaine de barrages routiers bloquaient l’île et un couvre-feu avait été instauré, dans un territoire où 42% de la population vit sous le seuil de pauvreté.

https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/sites/regions_outremer/files/styles/top_big/public/assets/images/2018/11/24/j8_gilets_jaunes_au_port_2_lp_241118-937503.jpg

« Nous devons encore attendre un peu pour avoir plus de visibilité », note Bernard Picardo, président de la Chambre des métiers et de l’artisanat. Mais il estime déjà à 40 millions d’euros les pertes enregistrées par les entreprises artisanales.

Le seul port marchand ayant été bloqué pendant plusieurs jours, « de nombreux artisans se sont retrouvés sans matière première » et à « cause des barrages de routes, les salariés et les patrons n’ont pas pu aller travailler, des Salons ont été annulés », ajoute-t-il. Pour lui, le mouvement a été « pire qu’un cyclone. On remet vite les choses en place après un cyclone. Ce mouvement social s’est déroulé sur plus de deux semaines, avec des conséquences beaucoup plus dramatiques », lâche-t-il.

Ibrahim Patel, président de la Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de La Réunion, estime que « sur la totalité des 36.000 entreprises de l’île, il y a eu entre 600 et 700 millions euros de pertes ». Rien que les pertes de stocks, les dégâts matériels dus aux violences urbaines, les loyers impayés sont estimés à plus de 30 millions d’euros. Selon Ibrahim Patel, « les salariés touchés (chômage partiel, activité réduite... ndlr) sont au nombre de 20.900, répartis dans les 3492 entreprises qui ont déclaré des pertes ». « Le commerce a été le secteur le plus touché. Les petites comme les grandes surfaces étaient fermées », rappelle-t-il.

#La_Réunion #Grève #Grève_générale #Blocage #GiletsJaunes

Jagal - The Act of Killing
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tILiqotj7Y

avec sous-titres
▻https://amara.org/en/videos/lCHCQE8uqUJb/en/749348
à 00:16:00 un gangster parle de sa passion pour le cinémà et comment c’était pratique d’avoir les locaux pour tuer et torturer en face de la salle de projection.

C’est le film le moins apprécié par l’office de tourisme indonésien car il montre que le pays est gouverné aujourd’hui par les assassins de 1965/66 qui se font un plaisir de se vanter de leurs crimes devant la caméra.

BACKGROUND | The Act of Killing
▻http://theactofkilling.com/background

CONTEXT, BACKGROUND AND METHOD
First Encounter with the 1965-66 Massacres – The Globalization Tapes
In 2001-2002, Christine Cynn and I went to Indonesia for the first time to produce The Globalization Tapes (2003), a participatory documentary project made in collaboration with the Independent Plantation Workers Union of Sumatra. Using their own forbidden history as a case study, these Indonesian filmmakers worked with us to trace the development of contemporary globalization from its roots in colonialism to the present.

The Globalization Tapes exposes the devastating role of militarism and repression in building the global economy, and explores the relationships between trade, third-world debt, and international institutions like the IMF and the World Trade Organization. Made by some of the poorest workers in the world, the film is a lyrical and incisive account of how our global financial institutions shape and enforce the corporate world order. The film uses chilling first-hand accounts, hilarious improvised interventions, collective debate and archival collage.

Several scenes in The Globalization Tapes reveal the earliest traces of the methods we refined in the shooting of The Act of Killing: plantation workers stage a satirical commercial for the pesticide that poisons them; worker-filmmakers pose as World Bank agents who offer microfinance to ‘develop’ local businesses – offers that are both brutal and absurd, yet tempting nonetheless.

While shooting and editing The Globalization Tapes, we discovered that the 1965-66 Indonesian massacres were the dark secret haunting Indonesia’s much-celebrated entrance into the global economy. One of the military’s main objectives in the killings was to destroy the anti-colonial labour movement that had existed until 1965, and to lure foreign investors with the promise of cheap, docile workers and abundant natural resources. The military succeeded (The Globalization Tapes is a testament to the extraordinary courage of the plantation worker-filmmakers as they challenge this decades-long legacy of terror and try to build a new union).

The killings would come up in discussions, planning sessions, and film shoots nearly every day, but always in whispers. Indeed, many of the plantation workers were themselves survivors of the killings. They would discretely point out the houses of neighbors who had killed their parents, grandparents, aunts, or uncles. The perpetrators were still living in the same village and made up, along with their children and protégés, the local power structure. As outsiders, we could interview these perpetrators – something the plantation workers could not do without fear of violence.

In conducting these first interviews, we encountered the pride with which perpetrators would boast about the most grisly details of the killings. The Act of Killing was born out of our curiosity about the nature of this pride – its clichéd grammar, its threatening performativity, its frightening banality.

The Globalization Tapes was a film made collectively by the plantation workers themselves, with us as facilitators and collaborating directors. The Act of Killing was also made by working very closely with its subjects, while in solidarity and collaboration with the survivors’ families. However, unlike The Globalization Tapes, The Act of Killing is an authored work, an expression of my own vision and concerns regarding these issues.

THE BEGINNING OF THE ACT OF KILLING

By the time I first met the characters in The Act of Killing (in 2005), I had been making films in Indonesia for three years, and I spoke Indonesian with some degree of fluency. Since making The Globalization Tapes (2003), Christine Cynn, fellow film-maker and longtime collaborator Andrea Zimmerman and I had continued filming with perpetrators and survivors of the massacres in the plantation areas around the city of Medan. In 2003 and 2004, we filmed more interviews and simple re-enactments with Sharman Sinaga, the death squad leader who had appeared in The Globalization Tapes. We also filmed as he introduced us to other killers in the area. And we secretly interviewed survivors of the massacres they committed.

Moving from perpetrator to perpetrator, and, unbeknownst to them, from one community of survivors to another, we began to map the relationships between different death squads throughout the region, and began to understand the process by which the massacres were perpetrated. In 2004, we began filming Amir Hasan, the death squad leader who had commanded the massacres at the plantation where we made The Globalization Tapes.

In late 2004, Amir Hasan began to introduce me to killers up the chain of command in Medan. Independently in 2004, we began contacting ‘veterans’ organizations of death squad members and anti-leftist activists in Medan. These two approaches allowed us to piece together a chain of command, and to locate the surviving commanders of the North Sumatran death squads. In early interviews with the veterans of the killings (2004), I learned that the most notorious death squad in North Sumatra was Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry’s Frog Squad (Pasukan Kodok).

During these first meetings with Medan perpetrators (2004 and 2005), I encountered the same disturbing boastfulness about the killings that we had been documenting on the plantations. The difference was that these men were the celebrated and powerful leaders not of a small rural village, but of the third largest city in Indonesia (Greater Medan has a population of over four million people).

Our starting point for The Act of Killing was thus the question: how had this society developed to the point that its leaders could – and would – speak of their own crimes against humanity with a cheer that was at once celebratory but also intended as a threat?

OVERVIEW AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE METHODS USED IN THE ACT OF KILLING

Building on The Globalization Tapes and our film work outside Indonesia, we had developed a method in which we open a space for people to play with their image of themselves, re-creating and re-imagining it on camera, while we document this transformation as it unfolds. In particular, we had refined this method to explore the intersection between imagination and extreme violence.

In the early days of research (2005), I discovered that the army recruited its killers in Medan from the ranks of movie theatre gangsters (or preman bioskop) who already hated the leftists for their boycott of American movies – the most profitable in the cinema. I was intrigued by this relationship between cinema and killings, although I had no idea it would be so deep. Not only did Anwar and his friends know and love the cinema, but they dreamed of being on the screen themselves, and styled themselves after their favorite characters. They even borrowed their methods of murder from the screen.

Of course, I began by trying to understand in as much detail as possible Anwar and his friends’ roles in the killings and, afterwards, in the regime they helped to build. Among the first things I did was to bring them to the former newspaper office directly across the road from Anwar’s old cinema, the place where Anwar and his friends killed most of their victims. There, they demonstrated in detail what they had done. Although they were filming documentary re-enactment and interviews, during breaks I noticed that they would muse about how they looked like various movie stars – for instance, Anwar compared his protégé and sidekick, Herman to Fernando Sancho.

To understand how they felt about the killings, and their unrepentant way of representing them on film, I screened back the unedited footage of these early re-enactments, and filmed their responses. At first, I thought that they would feel the re-enactments made them look bad, and that they might possibly come to a more complex place morally and emotionally.

I was startled by what actually happened. On the surface at least, Anwar was mostly anxious that he should look young and fashionable. Instead of any explicit moral reflection, the screening led him and Herman spontaneously to suggest a better, and more elaborate, dramatization.

To explore their love of movies, I screened for them scenes from their favorite films at the time of the killings – Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah and, ironically, The Ten Commandments topped the list – recording their commentary and the memories these films elicited. Through this process, I came to realize why Anwar was continually bringing up these old Hollywood films whenever I filmed re-enactments with them: he and his fellow movie theatre thugs were inspired by them at the time of the killings, and had even borrowed their methods of murder from the movies. This was such an outlandish and disturbing idea that I in fact had to hear it several times before I realized quite what Anwar and his friends were saying.

He described how he got the idea of strangling people with wire from watching gangster movies. In a late-night interview in front of his former cinema, Anwar explained how different film genres would lead him to approach killing in different ways. The most disturbing example was how, after watching a “happy film like an Elvis Presley musical”, Anwar would “kill in a happy way”.

In 2005, I also discovered that the other paramilitary leaders (not just the former movie theater gangsters) had other personal and deep-seated relationship to movies. Ibrahim Sinik, the newspaper boss who was secretary general of all the anti-communist organizations that participated in the killings, and who directly gave the orders to Anwar’s death squad, turned out to be a feature film producer, screenwriter, and former head of the Indonesian Film Festival.

In addition to all this, Anwar and his friends’ impulse towards being in a film about the killings was essentially to act in dramatizations of their pasts – both as they remember them, and as they would like to be remembered (the most powerful insights in The Act of Killing probably come in those places where these two agendas radically diverge). As described, the idea of dramatizations came up quite spontaneously, in response to viewing the rushes from Anwar’s first re-enactments of the killings.

But it would be disingenuous to claim that we facilitated the dramatizations only because that’s what Anwar and his friends wanted to do. Ever since we produced The Globalization Tapes, the thing that most fascinated us about the killings was the way the perpetrators we filmed would recount their stories of those atrocities. One had the feeling that we weren’t simply hearing memories, but something else besides – something intended for a spectator. More precisely, we felt we were receiving performances. And we instinctively understood, I think, that the purpose of these performances was somehow to assert a kind of impunity, to maintain a threatening image, to perpetuate the autocratic regime that had begun with the massacres themselves.

We sensed that the methods we had developed for incorporating performance into documentary might, in this context, yield powerful insights into the mystery of the killers’ boastfulness, the nature of the regime of which they are a part, and, most importantly, the nature of human ‘evil’ itself.

So, having learned that even their methods of murder were directly influenced by cinema, we challenged Anwar and his friends to make the sort of scenes they had in mind. We created a space in which they could devise and star in dramatisations based on the killings, using their favorite genres from the medium.

We hoped to catalyze a process of collective remembrance and imagination. Fiction provided one or two degrees of separation from reality, a canvas on which they could paint their own portrait and stand back and look at it.

We started to suspect that performance played a similar role during the killings themselves, making it possible for Anwar and his friends to absent themselves from the scene of their crimes, while they were committing them. Thus, performing dramatizations of the killings for our cameras was also a re-living of a mode of performance they had experienced in 1965, when they were killing. This obviously gave the experience of performing for our cameras a deeper resonance for Anwar and his friends than we had anticipated.

And so, in The Act of Killing, we worked with Anwar and his friends to create such scenes for the insights they would offer, but also for the tensions and debates that arose during the process – including Anwar’s own devastating emotional unravelling.

This created a safe space, in which all sorts of things could happen that would probably elude a more conventional documentary method. The protagonists could safely explore their deepest memories and feelings (as well as their blackest humor). I could safely challenge them about what they did, without fear of being arrested or beaten up. And they could challenge each other in ways that were otherwise unthinkable, given Sumatra’s political landscape.

Anwar and his friends could direct their fellow gangsters to play victims, and even play the victims themselves, because the wounds are only make-up, the blood only red paint, applied only for a movie. Feelings far deeper than those that would come up in an interview would surface unexpectedly. One reason the emotional impact was so profound came from the fact that this production method required a lot of time – the filmmaking process came to define a significant period in the participants’ lives. This meant that they went on a deeper journey into their memories and feelings than they would in a film consisting largely of testimony and simple demonstration.

Different scenes used different methods, but in all of them it was crucial that Anwar and his friends felt a sense of fundamental ownership over the fiction material. The crux of the method is to give performers the maximum amount of freedom to determine as many variables as possible in the production (storyline, casting, costumes, mise-en-scene, improvisation on set). Whenever possible, I let them direct each other, and used my cameras to document their process of creation. My role was primarily that of provocateur, challenging them to remember the events they were performing more deeply, encouraging them to intervene and direct each other when they felt a performance was superficial, and asking questions between takes – both about what actually happened, but also about how they felt at the time, and how they felt as they re-enacted it.

We shot in long takes, so that situations could evolve organically, and with minimal intervention from ourselves. I felt the most significant event unfolding in front of the cameras was the act of transformation itself, particularly because this transformation was usually plagued by conflict, misgivings, and other imperfections that seemed to reveal more about the nature of power, violence, and fantasy than more conventional documentary or investigative methods. For this same reason, we also filmed the pre-production of fiction scenes, including castings, script meetings, and costume fittings. Make-up sessions too were important spaces of reflection and transformation, moments where the characters slip down the rabbit hole of self-invention.

In addition, because we never knew when the characters would refuse to take the process further, or when we might get in trouble with the military, we filmed each scene as though it might be the last, and also everything leading up to them (not only for the reasons above), because often we didn’t know if the dramatization itself would actually happen. We also felt that the stories we were hearing – stories of crimes against humanity never before recorded – were of world historical importance. More than anything else, these are two reasons why this method generated so many hours of footage (indeed, we have created a vast audio-visual archive about the Indonesian massacres. This archive has been the basis of a four-year United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council project called Genocide and Genre).

After almost every dramatization, we would screen the rushes back to them, and record their responses. We wanted to make sure they knew how they appeared on film, and to use the screening to trigger further reflection. Sometimes, screenings provoked feelings of remorse (as when Anwar watches himself play the victim during a film noir scene) but, at other times, as when we screened the re-enactment of the Kampung Kolam massacre to the entire cast, the images were met with terrifying peals of laughter.

Most interestingly, Anwar and his friends discussed, often insightfully, how other people will view the film, both in Indonesia and internationally. For example, Anwar sometimes commented on how survivors might curse him, but that “luckily” the victims haven’t the power to do anything in today’s Indonesia.

The gangster scenes were wholly improvised. The scenarios came from the stories Anwar and his friends had told each other during earlier interviews, and during visits to the office where they killed people. The set was modeled on this interior. For maximum flexibility, our cinematographer lit the space so that Anwar and his friends could move about freely, and we filmed them with two cameras so that they could fluidly move from directing each other to improvised re-enactments to quiet, often riveting reflection after the improvisation was finished.

For instance, Anwar re-enacted how he killed people by placing them on a table and then pulling tight a wire, from underneath the table, to garrote them. The scene exhausted him, physically and emotionally, leaving him full of doubt about the morality of what he did. Immediately after this re-enactment, he launched into a cynical and resigned rant against the growing consensus around human rights violations. Here, reality and its refraction through fiction, Anwar’s memories and his anticipation of their impact internationally, are all overlaid.

The noir scenes were shot over a week, and culminated in an extraordinary improvisation where Anwar played the victim. Anwar’s performance was effective and, transported by the performance, the viewer empathizes with the victim, only to do a double take as they remember that Anwar is not a victim, but the killer.

The large-scale re-enactment of the Kampung Kolam massacre was made using a similar improvisational process, with Anwar and his friends undertaking the direction. What we didn’t expect was a scene of such violence and realism; so much so that it proved genuinely frightening to the participants, all of whom were Anwar’s friends from Pancasila Youth, or their wives and children. After the scene, we filmed participants talking amongst themselves about how the location of our re-enactment was just a few hundred meters from one of North Sumatra’s countless mass graves. The woman we see fainting after the scene felt she had been possessed by a victim’s ghost. The paramilitary members (including Anwar) thought so, too. The violence of the re-enactment conjured the spectres of a deeper violence, the terrifying history of which everybody in Indonesia is somehow aware, and upon which the perpetrators have built their rarefied bubble of air conditioned shopping malls, gated communities, and “very, very limited” crystal figurines.

The process by which we made the musical scenes (the waterfall, the giant concrete goldfish) was slightly different again. But here too Anwar was very much in the driver’s seat: he chose the songs and, along with his friends, devised both scenes. Anwar and his cast were also free to make changes as we went.

In the end, we worked very carefully with the giant goldfish, presenting motifs from a half-forgotten dream. Anwar’s beautiful nightmare? An allegory for his storytelling confection? For his blindness? For the willful blindness by which almost all history is written, and by which, consequently, we inevitably come to know (and fail to know) ourselves? The fish changes throughout the film, but it is always a world of “eye candy”, emptiness and ghosts. If it could be explained adequately in words, we would not need it in the film.

For the scenes written by the newspaper boss Ibrahim Sinik and his staff, Sinik enlisted the help of his friends at state television, TVRI. He borrows the TVRI regional drama studios, and recruits a soap opera crew. In these scenes, our role was largely to document Anwar and his friends as they work with the TV crew, and to catalyze and document debates between fiction set-ups. In our edited scenes, we cut from the documentary cameras to TVRI’s fiction cameras, highlighting the gap between fiction and reality – often to comic effect. But above all, we focused our cameras on moments between takes where they debated the meaning of the scene.

The Televisi Republik Indonesia “Special Dialogue” came into being when the show’s producers realised that feared and respected paramilitary leaders making a film about the genocide was a big story (they came to know about our work because we were using the TVRI studios.) After their grotesque chat show was broadcast, there was no critical response in North Sumatra whatsoever. This is not to say that the show will not be shocking to Indonesians. For reasons discussed in my director’s statement, North Sumatrans are more accustomed than Jakartans, for example, to the boasting of perpetrators (who in Sumatra were recruited from the ranks of gangsters – and the basis of gangsters’ power, after all, lies in being feared).

Moreover, virtually nobody in Medan dares to criticise Pancasila Youth and men like Anwar Congo and Ibrahim Sinik. Ironically, the only significant reaction to the talk show’s broadcast came from the Indonesian Actors’ Union. According to Anwar, a representative of the union visiting family in Medan came to Anwar’s house to ask him if he would consider being president of the North Sumatra branch of the union. According to Anwar, the union was angry that such a large-scale production had occurred in North Sumatra without their knowing about it. Luckily, Anwar had the humility to tell them that he is not an actor, that he was playing himself in scenes made for a documentary, and therefore would decline the offer.

Anwar and his friends knew that their fiction scenes were only being made for our documentary, and this will be clear to the audience, too. But at the same time, if these scenes were to offer genuine insights, it was vital that the filmmaking project was one in which they were deeply invested, and one over which they felt ownership.

The Act of Killing : don’t give an Oscar to this snuff movie | Nick Fraser | Film | The Guardian
►https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/23/act-of-killing-dont-give-oscar-snuff-movie-indonesia

It has won over critics but this tasteless film teaches us nothing and merely indulges the unrepentant butchers of Indonesia

The Act of Killing won the documentary prize at the Baftas last week and is the favourite to win the much-coveted Oscar. I watch many documentaries on behalf of the BBC each year and I go to festivals. I’m a doc obsessive. By my own, not quite reliable reckoning, I’ve been asked by fans to show The Act of Killing on the BBC at least five times. I’ve never encountered a film greeted by such extreme responses – both those who say it is among the best films and those who tell me how much they hate it. Much about the film puzzles me. I am still surprised by the fact that so many critics listed it among their favourite films of last year.

For those who haven’t seen the film, it investigates the circumstances in which half-a-million Indonesian leftists were murdered in the 1960s, at the instigation of a government that is still in power. You might think this is a recondite subject, worthy of a late-night screening for insomniacs or atrocity buffs on BBC4, but, no, the film-maker Joshua Oppenheimer has made the subject viewable by enlisting the participation of some of the murderers. He spent some years hanging out with them, to his credit luring them into confessions. But he also, more dubiously, enlisted their help in restaging their killings. Although one of them, the grandfatherly Anwar, shows mild symptoms of distress towards the end of the film, they live in a state of impunity and it is thus, coddled and celebrated in their old age, that we revisit them.

So let me be as upfront as I can. I dislike the aesthetic or moral premise of The Act of Killing. I find myself deeply opposed to the film. Getting killers to script and restage their murders for the benefit of a cinema or television audience seems a bad idea for a number of reasons. I find the scenes where the killers are encouraged to retell their exploits, often with lip-smacking expressions of satisfaction, upsetting not because they reveal so much, as many allege, but because they tell us so little of importance. Of course murderers, flattered in their impunity, will behave vilely. Of course they will reliably supply enlightened folk with a degraded vision of humanity. But, sorry, I don’t feel we want to be doing this. It feels wrong and it certainly looks wrong to me. Something has gone missing here. How badly do we want to hear from these people, after all? Wouldn’t it be better if we were told something about the individuals whose lives they took?

I’d feel the same if film-makers had gone to rural Argentina in the 1950s, rounding up a bunch of ageing Nazis and getting them to make a film entitled “We Love Killing Jews”. Think of other half-covered-up atrocities – in Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa, Israel, any place you like with secrets – and imagine similar films had been made. Consider your response – and now consider whether such goings-on in Indonesia are not acceptable merely because the place is so far away, and so little known or talked about that the cruelty of such an act can pass uncriticised.

The film does not in any recognisable sense enhance our knowledge of the 1960s Indonesian killings, and its real merits – the curiosity when it comes to uncovering the Indonesian cult of anticommunism capable of masking atrocity, and the good and shocking scenes with characters from the Indonesian elite, still whitewashing the past – are obscured by tasteless devices. At the risk of being labelled a contemporary prude or dismissed as a stuffy upholder of middle-class taste, I feel that no one should be asked to sit through repeated demonstrations of the art of garrotting. Instead of an investigation, or indeed a genuine recreation, we’ve ended somewhere else – in a high-minded snuff movie.

What I like most about documentary film is that anything can be made to work, given a chance. You can mix up fact and fiction, past and present. You can add to cold objectivity a degree of empathy. You will, of course, lie to reluctant or recalcitrant participants, in particular when they wish not to divulge important pieces of information. And trickery has its place, too. But documentary films have emerged from the not inconsiderable belief that it’s good to be literal as well as truthful. In a makeshift, fallible way, they tell us what the world is really like. Documentaries are the art of the journeyman. They can be undone by too much ambition. Too much ingenious construction and they cease to represent the world, becoming reflected images of their own excessively stated pretensions.

In his bizarrely eulogistic piece defending The Act of Killing (of which he is an executive producer), Errol Morris, the documentary maker, compares the film to Hamlet’s inspired use of theatre to reveal dirty deeds at the court of Denmark. But Hamlet doesn’t really believe that theatrical gestures can stand in for reality. Nor, we must assume, did his creator. A more apt analogy than Morris’s might come from Shakespeare’s darkest play, Macbeth. What would we think if Macbeth and his scheming wife were written out of the action, replaced by those low-level thugs paid to do bad business on their behalf? We might conclude that putting them centre stage, in the style of The Act of Killing, was indeed perverse and we’d be right.

There are still half-forgotten, heavily whitewashed atrocities from the last century, such as the Bengali famine allowed to occur during the second world war through the culpably racist inattention of British officials; the never wholly cleared-up question of Franco’s mass killings; or the death of so many millions in the 1950s as a consequence of Mao’s catastrophic utopianism. Those wondering how to record such events will no doubt watch The Act of Killing, but I hope they will also look at less hyped, more modestly conceived depictions of mass murder. In Enemies of the People (2010), the Cambodian journalist Thet Sambath goes after the murderers of the Khmer Rouge. He finds Pol Pot’s sidekick, but it is the earnest, touching quest of Sambath himself that lingers in the mind, rather than the empty encounters with evil-doers. Atrocity is both banal and ultimately impossible to comprehend.

Writing in 1944, Arthur Koestler was among the first to gain knowledge of the slaughter of eastern European Jews and he estimated that the effect of such revelations was strictly limited, lasting only minutes or days and swiftly overcome by indifference. Koestler suggested that there was only one way we could respond to the double atrocity of mass murder and contemporary indifference and that was by screaming.

I’m grateful to The Act of Killing not because it’s a good film, or because it deserves to win its Oscar (I don’t think it does), but because it reminds me of the truth of Koestler’s observation. What’s not to scream about?

Nick Fraser is editor of the BBC’s Storyville documentary series

#film #documentaire #Indonésie #hécatombe

U.S. says suspected USS Cole bombing planner killed in Yemen strike | Reuters
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-yemen-military-idUSKCN1P00LL

https://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20190106&t=2&i=1342794720&w=1200&r=LYNXNPEF050L2#.jpg

Jamal al-Badawi, wanted by the United States for his suspected role in the attack on the USS Cole 18 years ago, was killed in a precision strike in Yemen on Jan. 1, U.S. Central Command said on Sunday.

Badawi was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2003 over his role in the October 2000 deadly bombing of the _USS Col_e, a Navy guided-missile destroyer. He escaped from prison in Yemen twice, once in 2003 and again in 2006.
[…]
It is the latest blow to Yemen’s al Qaeda branch, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has lost key leaders in U.S strikes in recent years. In 2018, U.S. officials said they believed that Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, once one of the world’s most feared bombmakers, had been killed.

Chronique du cinéma palestinien : la renaissance d’un cinéma sans État
Lou Mamalet, Middle East Eye, le 3 novembre 2018
▻https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/reportages/chronique-du-cin-ma-palestinien-la-renaissance-d-un-cin-ma-sans-tat-5

Quand il s’agit de définir les contours du cinéma palestinien, la réponse n’est jamais évidente. Il est en effet complexe de délimiter les frontières d’un art sans État. Le cinéma palestinien est un territoire fragmenté qui s’ancre dans différents espaces temporels et géographiques, conséquence d’un passé intrinsèquement lié à l’exil et à la dispersion.

Malgré les difficultés économiques de cette industrie en quête permanente de financement, elle continue de porter à l’écran ceux que l’on a essayé de rendre invisibles, notamment à travers une nouvelle vague de jeunes réalisateurs, tels Rakan Mayasi ou Muayad Alayan , qui se sont fait remarquer lors de festivals de films internationaux.

Début du XIX e siècle : premiers pas du cinéma palestinien

Les prémices du cinéma palestinien remontent au début du XX e siècle, à l’occasion d’une visite du roi d’Arabie saoudite Ibn Saoud en Palestine en 1935. Accompagné par le mufti de Jérusalem Amin al-Husseini, son périple est immortalisé par Ibrahim Hassan Sirhan, réalisateur palestinien autodidacte, qui filme l’événement avec un appareil de fortune acheté à Tel Aviv.

Sirhan s’associe plus tard à Jamal al-Asphar, un autre réalisateur palestinien, avec qui il filme The Realized Dreams (« les rêves réalisés »), un documentaire de 45 minutes sur les orphelins palestiniens.

Considérés comme les pères fondateurs du cinéma palestinien, Sirhan et Asphar sont les premiers autochtones à faire des films en Palestine ; les premières images du pays avaient jusqu’alors été tournées par les frères Lumières ou d’autres sociétés européennes empreintes d’une forte dimension orientaliste, se contentant de dépeindre des sujets folkloriques et traditionnels.

Dix ans plus tard, Ibrahim Hassan Sirhan ouvre le premier studio de production cinématographique en Palestine avec Ahmad al-Kalini, un compatriote ayant étudié le cinéma au Caire. Le duo produira plusieurs longs métrages, dont aucune trace ne demeure de nos jours, comme la majeure partie des réalisations de cette époque.

La déclaration Balfour en 1917 et la création de l’État d’Israël trente ans plus tard dessinent cependant un autre destin pour le cinéma palestinien. En 1948, plus de 700 000 Palestiniens sont forcés à l’exil lors de la Nakba (« catastrophe »), assénant un coup dur à la production cinématographique palestinienne. Le peuple est traumatisé et doit faire face à une nouvelle situation, ne laissant derrière lui presqu’aucun document. C’est le commencement d’une longue période de silence cinématographique de plus de deux décennies.

Fin des années 1960, début des années 1970 : le cinéma de la révolution

Ce mutisme prend fin en 1968, après la défaite arabe de la guerre des Six Jours (la Naksa) et ses conséquences politiques : l’occupation israélienne de la Cisjordanie, de Jérusalem-Est et de Gaza.

Cette tragédie renforce le statut de l’Organisation de libération de la Palestine (OLP) et d’autres institutions palestiniennes, qui sont alors perçues comme les derniers symboles d’espoir et de résistance arabe. Sous leurs auspices, un nouveau cinéma militant apparaît afin de documenter la lutte palestinienne et la vie des réfugiés dans les camps.

Certains réalisateurs palestiniens ayant étudié à l’étranger rejoignent ainsi les rangs de l’OLP à Amman, puis à Beyrouth. Parmi eux, Sulafa Jadallah Mirsal, une jeune photographe palestinienne qui a étudié au Caire. Dans sa cuisine, elle monte une unité photographique avec des équipements basiques et se focalise sur les photographies des martyrs de guerre.

En 1968, son travail est transféré à Amman où se situe le siège du Fatah, principal parti de l’OLP dirigé par Yasser Arafat, et pour la première fois, un département de photographie est créé.

Elle est très rapidement rejointe par deux réalisateurs palestiniens : Mustafa Abu Ali , qui a par ailleurs travaillé avec Jean-Luc Godard sur son film Ici et ailleurs (1974), et Hani Jawharieh, avec qui elle mettra en place la première Unité du film palestinien (PFU).

Ils sortent en 1969 No to a Peace Solution (« Non à une solution de paix »), un film de vingt minutes qui documente les manifestations de civils contre la solution de paix proposée par le secrétaire d’État américain de l’époque William Rogers.

Suite au conflit entre l’OLP et le roi Hussein de Jordanie qui débouche, en 1970, sur les événements de Septembre noir , l’organisation de Yasser Arafat doit quitter la Jordanie et se relocalise au Liban. Durant cette période, plus de 60 documentaires sont tournés malgré les difficultés économiques et le début de la guerre civile libanaise, comme With our Souls and our Blood (« avec nos âmes et notre sang »), qui narre les massacres de septembre 1970.

On assiste alors à l’accélération d’une prise de conscience de l’importance du cinéma et des images comme outil politique dans la promotion des idéaux révolutionnaires de la cause palestinienne.

En 1974, est ainsi produit par Mustafa Abu Ali They Do Not Exist (« ils n’existent pas »), un documentaire dépeignant la vie des Palestiniens dans un camp de réfugiés du Sud-Liban et dont le titre est inspiré des déclarations négationnistes de Golda Meir (Première ministre israélienne de l’époque) au sujet des Palestiniens.

Comme l’explique à Middle East Eye Hanna Atallah, réalisateur palestinien et directeur de FilmLab Palestine , une association qui supporte l’industrie cinématographique palestinienne, « Il s’agissait de construire un récit-réponse à celui des Israéliens, de trouver une alternative au discours selon lequel la Palestine était une terre sans habitants uniquement peuplée de bédouins. Les Israéliens ont vite compris qu’écrire l’histoire était un instrument politique, chose que les Palestiniens n’avaient pas réalisée jusqu’alors ».

Un outil politique qui nécessite de centraliser les œuvres réalisées, ce à quoi s’attèle Mustafa Abu Ali en créant l’Archive du film palestinien en vue de réunir les efforts des réalisateurs palestiniens du monde entier et de préserver l’identité palestinienne en donnant une certaine reconnaissance à son cinéma.

Cette archive contient une vaste quantité de documents sur le siège de Beyrouth, les batailles des fédayins, mais aussi des interviews de politiciens et d’intellectuels. Malheureusement, elle disparaîtra lors de l’invasion du Liban par Israël en 1982.

Des efforts seront toutefois déployés par plusieurs réalisateurs – comme Monica Maurer, cinéaste allemande ayant autrefois opéré au sein de l’Unité du film palestinien de l’OLP, et l’artiste palestinienne Emily Jacir – afin de restaurer et digitaliser les rushes de cette période, à l’instar de ceux de Tel al-Zaatar , un film sur le siège du camp de réfugiés palestiniens du même nom à Beyrouth par les milices chrétiennes, initialement filmé par le cinéaste libanais Jean Khalil Chamoun et le Palestinien Mustafa Abu Ali.

Une période également documentée dans Off Frame a.k.a. Revolution Until Victory (2016) de Mohanad Yaqubi, cinéaste palestinien et fondateur de Idiom , une société de production basée à Ramallah. Après un long travail de recherche dans le monde entier, Yaqubi est parvenu à exhumer des images d’archives inédites montrant le travail de cinéastes militants durant les années 60-70, un résultat qui réfléchit aussi sur la lutte palestinienne dans sa représentation d’elle-même et la réappropriation de son récit à travers l’établissement de l’Unité du film palestinien.

1980-1990 : cinéma indépendant et réalisme social

Les années 1980-1990 sont particulièrement difficiles pour les Palestiniens. Face à la persistance de l’occupation israélienne et à l’échec des tentatives de paix, les nouvelles générations commencent à perdre espoir en l’avenir. La crise économique, le chômage et l’augmentation des colonies dans les territoires occupés sont autant de facteurs qui précipitent l’éclatement de la première Intifada , le 9 décembre 1987.

Un tournant politique qui marque aussi l’avènement d’une nouvelle génération de réalisateurs palestiniens ayant étudié à l’étranger. D’un cinéma de la révolution, principalement militant et documentaire, on passe alors au récit de la vie sous occupation et de la résistance.

Parmi eux, Michel Khleifi , qui revient dans sa ville natale de Nazareth, en Galilée, après avoir passé dix ans en Belgique. Il produit son premier long métrage, Fertile Memory (mémoire fertile), en 1980, une fiction empruntant au documentaire qui raconte l’histoire de deux femmes palestiniennes dont l’une est forcée de travailler dans une entreprise de textile israélienne après avoir vu sa terre expropriée par Israël.

Cette nouvelle vague est également représentée par les œuvres de Mai Masri , une réalisatrice palestinienne qui a grandi à Beyrouth et étudié à San Francisco. Dans Wild Flowers : Women of South Lebanon (1987), réalisé avec Jean Khalil Chamoun, elle filme la vie de femmes libanaises résistant durant l’occupation militaire israélienne du Sud Liban.

Après les accords d’Oslo en 1993, on assiste à une certaine désillusion de la société palestinienne, qui se ressent à l’écran. Le cinéma s’éloigne de l’esprit révolutionnaire des années 1970 et de la nostalgie des années 1980 pour migrer vers un réalisme social traitant des problèmes que rencontrent les Palestiniens dans leur vie quotidienne.

Comme le souligne Hanna Atallah, « Il n’est plus question de la vision romanesque et fantasmée de la Palestine perdue, avec ses champs d’orangers et d’oliviers. On parle du quotidien, des check-points et du mur ».

Une situation tragique souvent tournée au ridicule par les réalisateurs, à l’instar d’Elia Suleiman, qui se met toujours en scène dans ses films comme observateur passif du délitement de l’identité palestinienne.

Avec Chronique d’une disparition (1996), il dresse un portrait caustique de la réalité palestinienne sous occupation, entre anecdotes personnelles et discours politique sur Israël. Dans Intervention divine (2002), il raconte les déboires d’un couple de Palestiniens qui, pour se voir, l’un vivant à Jérusalem-Est et l’autre à Ramallah, doit se donner rendez-vous dans un terrain vague proche du check-point.

Des difficultés de l’occupation aussi décrites par Rashid Masharawi. Qu’il s’agisse de Couvre-feu , description de celui imposé à son village de la bande de Gaza pendant 40 jours en 1993 (film qui lui fait gagner le prix UNESCO au festival de Cannes 1993), de L’Attente , qui suit Ahmad, un réalisateur faisant passer des auditions dans différents camps de réfugiés du Proche-Orient afin de constituer la troupe du futur théâtre palestinien (2006), ou de L’Anniversaire de Leïla (2008), qui raconte les obstacles d’un juge forcé de devenir chauffeur de taxi, le réalisateur évoque la douleur d’un peuple qui doit subir un état d’apartheid.

Des années 2000 à nos jours : nouvelle vague et changement de récit

Depuis les années 2000, si la politique reste en toile de fond des films palestiniens, elle n’est plus nécessairement au cœur du sujet, faisant place à des fictions au ton décalé et aux intrigues inattendues.

De nouveaux thèmes sont abordés par de jeunes réalisateurs qui explorent la complexité de la réalité palestinienne, tels les écarts de perception entre les Palestiniens restés sur place et ceux revenus après avoir commencé une nouvelle vie à l’étranger ou encore les différences intergénérationnelles.

C’est le cas de Wajib – L’invitation au mariage d’Annemarie Jacir (2017) , un long métrage qui illustre avec humour et tendresse la situation palestinienne à travers le regard de deux générations. Alors que le fils reproche au père d’inviter un ami juif, qu’il suspecte de travailler pour les services de renseignement israéliens, au mariage de sa sœur, le père en veut à son fils d’être en couple avec la fille d’un membre de l’OLP à qui il reproche de ne pas se soucier du sort des Palestiniens.

Autre exemple, Love, Theft and Other Entanglements (« Amours, larcins et autres complications », 2015) des frères Muayad et Rami Musa Alayan, une fable absurde aux allures de western qui met en scène les aventures au milieu des milices palestiniennes et des services d’intelligence israéliens d’un petit magouilleur palestinien qui espère pouvoir se payer un visa de sortie du pays en volant une voiture appartenant à un Israélien et qui se retrouve enfermé dans le coffre de la voiture volée avec le soldat israélien qu’il a kidnappé.

Des œuvres qui n’hésitent donc pas à utiliser l’humour et le symbolisme pour dénoncer le quotidien tragique des Palestiniens sous occupation, à l’instar de The Wanted 18 (« les dix-huit fugitives »), film d’animation intégrant des images d’archives qui raconte l’histoire vraie de Palestiniens du village de Beit Sahour, en Cisjordanie, tentant de maintenir clandestinement une industrie de vaches laitières pendant la première Intifada. Réalisé par Amer Shomali et Paul Cowan, le film a reçu le prix du meilleur documentaire au Festival du film d’Abou Dabi.

Les courts-métrages ne font pas exception à la règle. En témoigne Farawaleh (« fraises »), la dernière création de la jeune réalisatrice palestinienne Aida Kaadan, lauréate du festival Palest’In & Out 2018, qui décrit l’épopée de Samir, responsable d’un magasin de chaussures à Ramallah qui n’a jamais vu la mer et qui décide, pour accomplir son rêve, de traverser la frontière israélienne parmi des ouvriers du bâtiment palestiniens.

Un autre court-métrage, réalisé par le cinéaste Rakan Mayasi, raconte pour sa part l’histoire d’un couple palestinien qui, pour faire un enfant, décide de sortir clandestinement du sperme de la prison israélienne où l’époux purge sa peine. Bonboné (« bonbon ») a cumulé les prix de festivals (notamment meilleur scénario au Festival du court-métrage méditerranéen de Tanger , meilleur film au Twin Cities Arab Film Festival ).

Bien que jamais très loin, la politique est devenue le personnage secondaire de ces nouvelles fictions qui font la part belle aux Palestiniens et à leur histoire, laquelle n’est plus cantonnée à une simple quête identitaire. The Reports on Sarah and Saleem , de Muayad Alayan, présenté au Festival des cinémas arabes de l’Institut du monde arabe en juillet dernier, retrace ainsi une histoire d’adultère banale entre une juive israélienne et un livreur palestinien, qui se transforme en affaire politique.

Un changement de paradigme dans les intrigues regretté par certains, qui y voient une perte des valeurs propres à la cause palestinienne, comme l’explique à MEE Mohanad Yaqubi.

« Le cinéma palestinien doit rester militant et engagé dans son essence. Avant, les réalisateurs parlaient un langage commun : celui du droit au retour. Aujourd’hui, l’identité palestinienne est dissoute et perd en force, alors que faire partie du peuple palestinien, c’est appartenir à une lutte pour l’auto-indépendance, que le cinéma doit soutenir », estime-t-il.

Une mission pour l’avenir de cette industrie qui a su se renouveler sur la forme et sur le fond, malgré une situation politique stagnante....

#Palestine #Cinéma

BALLAST | #Violences_policières : un #élu (#PCF) raconte
▻https://www.revue-ballast.fr/violences-policieres-un-elu-raconte
@davduf
#ambiance_dictature_fasciste
#chiens_du_capital

« Un policier me lance : Toi, le connard en écharpe, si tu dégages pas, je t’explose. Il brandissait son #Flash_Ball à hauteur de mon visage. »
#lbd

« Mon collègue Ibrahima Traoré, élu au Conseil départemental, s’est interposé et s’est fait molester. »

Un policier municipal a tenté de mettre un coup de matraque et, ratant son coup, a crié : « Reviens, je vais te la mettre dans le cul. » Les parents étaient extrêmement choqués. L’élu en question a demandé au maire, au cours du conseil municipal, une enquête administrative et des sanctions contre ce policier, identifié. Nous avons, pour notre part, publié un communiqué appelant à ouvrir les portes du #lycée, interdire l’usage des armes contre les élèves et envoyer des médiateurs. Pas de réponse… Un policier, responsable départemental du syndicat Alliance, a pour sa part déclaré au Parisien, en date du 11 décembre : « Ce n’est pas parce que des casseurs se réfugient à côté d’élus qu’on n’ira pas les chercher. »

« Gilets jaunes » : des conséquences économiques déjà lourdes en région Wladimir Garcin-Berson - 26 Novembre 2018 - Le Figaro Economie
▻http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2018/11/26/20002-20181126ARTFIG00167-gilets-jaunes-des-consequences-economiques-deja-l

FOCUS - Alors qu’une réunion se tient ce lundi à Bercy pour dresser un état des lieux des conséquences du mouvement sur l’activité des entreprises, les territoires tirent la sonnette d’alarme.

https://i.f1g.fr/media/figaro/680x382_crop/2018/11/26/XVMccfb8fa8-f17d-11e8-aaaa-72154de5404a.jpg

Réunion au sommet : ce lundi, une quinzaine de fédérations professionnelles sont réunies à Bercy pour une « première évaluation des conséquences économiques du mouvement des gilets jaunes sur l’ensemble des territoires », ainsi que pour « convenir de mesures d’accompagnement pour les professionnels ». Car les effets sont d’ores et déjà remarquables : à l’échelle nationale, l’institut Nielsen a par exemple estimé que la grande distribution avait vu ses pertes se creuser tout au long de la semaine dernière, de -35% samedi à -32% lundi, -13% mardi et -5% mercredi.

À l’échelle locale, un grand nombre d’institutions ont fait remonter les inquiétudes des entreprises et des professionnels qui souffrent des blocages et autres barrages filtrants. Ce sont ces échelons, aux préoccupations de plus en plus marquées, que le gouvernement devra rassurer.

Dans l’Hérault
La Chambre de commerce et d’industrie (CCI) de l’Hérault a mené une étude entre le 19 et le 21 novembre auprès des commerçants. Publiée jeudi, elle note un effet massif de la mobilisation : en comparaison avec une période « normale », les 300 commerçants ont pointé une « baisse moyenne de fréquentation de 60% » ainsi que de chiffre d’affaires « de 55% ». Près des trois quarts des personnes interrogées ont constaté un ralentissement de leur activité, et celui-ci s’étend sur l’ensemble du territoire, touchant les centres-villes comme les zones rurales, les centres commerciaux ou les commerces de proximité des petits villages.

Et la Chambre de citer l’exemple de six magasins Intersport du département : leur dirigeant, Patrick Hanot, déplore une « perte de 40% de chiffre d’affaires » depuis le samedi 17. « L’impact économique négatif est hélas bien réel et important », souligne le communiqué. Le même jour, le président de la Chambre, André Deljarry, a dénoncé le blocage d’une plateforme logistique alimentaire du groupe Intermarché, à Villeneuve-les-Béziers et a mis en garde contre les « conséquences » des actions « à l’opposé des fondements initiaux du mouvement ». Le dirigeant a exprimé son souhait de voir « la population et l’économie locale » retrouver de la « sérénité ».

Dans le Bordelais
La CCI Bordeaux Gironde a aussi appelé à une « sortie rapide du conflit » : pour son président, Patrick Seguin, les blocages pénalisent « fortement » les entreprises, en particulier à la veille des fêtes. Tout en disant comprendre « cette colère », il explique rester soucieux « de ne pas amplifier le conflit » et compte sur sa résolution le plus rapidement possible. Contactée par nos soins, la Chambre ne dispose pas encore d’éléments chiffrés permettant d’estimer l’impact de la mobilisation. Pour autant, les remontées dont elle dispose font état d’une perte de chiffre d’affaires de « 20 à 30% ». Elle cite également l’exemple du festival Bordeaux S.O Good, organisé le week-end du 17, et qui a vu sa fréquentation baisser de plus de 20%, une évolution que la Chambre impute en partie aux mobilisations organisées au même moment.
La situation dans cette zone est d’autant plus préoccupante que l’économie locale souffrait déjà d’une perte de vitesse marquée : l’activité girondine a enregistré, au troisième trimestre, un « ralentissement » de son chiffre d’affaires, son carnet de commandes, ses marges commerciales ainsi que de ses investissements. Les professionnels locaux comptent donc d’autant plus sur cette période de fin d’année.

À la Réunion
Exemple le plus emblématique, l’économie de la Réunion a été mise à l’arrêt par les mobilisations qui continuent aujourd’hui encore. Cité par nos confrères du Monde, le président de la Chambre de commerce locale, Ibrahim Patel, déplore une perte de chiffre d’affaires de « 500 millions d’euros » dans le commerce depuis le 17. Il souligne également les difficultés rencontrées par les salariés pour se rendre à leur lieu de travail et estime que les exportations ont perdu « 10 millions d’euros » depuis une semaine.

Devant les mobilisations, la ministre des Outre-mer, Annick Girardin, a annoncé qu’elle se rendrait sur l’île ce mercredi pour annoncer des mesures visant à calmer la colère populaire. De nouvelles annonces sur l’emploi et le coût de la vie sont attendues, au lendemain du gel de la hausse des taxes sur les carburants. Dès le début du mouvement des « gilets jaunes », le 19, la CCI demandait à l’État de « déclarer l’île en zone de catastrophe économique », expliquant qu’elle était « paralysée économiquement ».

Dans le Gard
Dans le Gard, la Chambre de commerce s’est dite « fortement sollicitée » par les professionnels inquiets devant l’ampleur des blocages. Une adresse mail spécifique blocages@gard.cci.fr a été créée pour les « aider à traverser au mieux cette crise ». La CCI a également adressé un communiqué estimant que la démarche des gilets jaunes est « contre-productive » : « ce qui se produit depuis samedi n’est pas tolérable », développe-t-elle, en regrettant notamment les « dégradations commises à l’encontre de certaines entreprises ».

Dans les zones rurales
Plusieurs départements ont souligné l’impact important des mouvements sur leur économie. Dès le 9 novembre, l’Allier s’inquiétait par exemple de « l’impact de la hausse du prix des carburants » sur les entreprises de la zone, et estimait qu’il fallait éviter de « pénaliser plus l’économie de proximité et des territoires déjà frappés par un vieillissement de la population, la désertification et un fort taux de chômage ».

Dans le Tarn, le préfet, Jean-Michel Mougard, a appelé la semaine dernière au « rétablissement de la libre circulation », plaidant pour un arrêt des rassemblements qui « perturbent le bon fonctionnement » des entreprises : les manifestants, ajoute-t-il, doivent garder en tête les « conséquences » de leurs actions « sur l’activité économique, le cas échéant sur l’emploi des Tarnais ».

En Ardèche, la CCI a également transmis la « très grande préoccupation des chefs d’entreprise » : « les ventes en ligne explosent et les commerces du territoire souffrent. Évitons d’affaiblir un peu plus le commerce de proximité, en centre-ville ou en périphérie », implore son président, Jean-Paul Poulet, qui conseille aux « gilets jaunes » de se concentrer sur des actions évitant de « se mettre à dos les personnes qui souhaitent circuler et travailler ».

#France #Giletsjaunes #Bercy économie #inquiétude #CCI

« Fuir l’enfer pour vivre dans un enfer » : quitter Gaza via le poste frontalier de Rafah
Entre pots-de-vin et postes de contrôle, quitter la bande assiégée est un processus coûteux, ardu et extrêmement difficile pour les Palestiniens
Middle East Eye - Kaamil Ahmed - 21 novembre 2018

▻https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/reportages/fuir-l-enfer-pour-vivre-dans-un-enfer-quitter-gaza-le-poste-frontalie

(...) Pour quitter la bande de Gaza, ses habitants palestiniens passent presque une journée à Rafah avant que des bus ne les transportent à travers le désert du Sinaï, pour ensuite traverser le canal de Suez en ferry et se diriger vers des hôpitaux en Égypte ou plus loin, jusqu’au Caire, pour accéder à des soins de santé, à l’enseignement ou à l’emploi.

En réalité, ce processus n’est pas aussi fluide ; il connaît des à-coups et dans tous les cas, très peu de gens se retrouvent ne serait-ce que proches d’effectuer le voyage, de nombreuses tentatives étant frustrées dès les premières étapes par la frontière généralement fermée et les listes d’attente trop longues.

Pour éviter ces listes, il faut payer quelqu’un, généralement du côté égyptien. Ces pots-de-vin sont devenus de plus en plus courants au cours des six derniers mois, lors desquels la frontière a été ouverte pendant des périodes sans précédent depuis plusieurs années, ce qui a encouragé les Palestiniens à quitter Gaza et ceux qui espéraient rentrer à franchir la frontière.

« Les personnes qui veulent quitter Gaza, elles fuient l’enfer pour vivre dans un enfer dans le désert du Sinaï », explique Ibrahim Ghunaim, un rappeur palestinien qui a quitté l’enclave sous blocus pour se consacrer à son travail, freiné à Gaza par l’impossibilité de voyager pour se produire.

Pour traverser le désert, il lui a fallu passer quatre jours à attendre de pouvoir franchir des postes de contrôle sur les terres arides et militarisées du Sinaï.

« C’est comme traverser le territoire d’un ennemi. » (...)

#Gaza

Dans l’ouest du Mali, l’arrêt du train siffle le départ des jeunes vers l’Europe

Depuis la fin du transport de voyageurs entre Bamako et Dakar, l’#économie tourne au ralenti dans la région de #Kayes, poussant les habitants à émigrer.
La gare de Mahina, dans l’ouest du Mali, le 30 octobre. MORGANE LE CAM
Les trous sont larges et profonds, les voitures zigzaguent, parfois à contresens, pour les éviter et garder leurs quatre pneus. La seule route goudronnée reliant Bamako à Kayes, dans l’ouest du Mali, n’en est plus vraiment une. Des carcasses de cars et de voitures, abandonnées sur le bas-côté, en témoignent. Depuis l’arrêt du train, il y a un an et demi, la route est devenue l’unique moyen d’accès à cette région frontalière du Sénégal.
Le premier train y est arrivé en 1924, apporté par les colons français. Une large partie de l’économie de cette zone de plus de 2 millions d’habitants tournait autour des rails. Mais à partir de 2005, les trains de voyageurs n’ont plus circulé que par intermittence. Et puis plus rien. En cause : l’absence de rentabilité du transport de voyageurs, à laquelle se sont ajoutés le manque d’investissements et la mauvaise gestion.
En 2003, l’Etat s’est vu contraint de privatiser la ligne, qu’il a confiée à la société Transrail. Malgré sa promesse de maintenir le volet voyageurs en parallèle du transport de marchandises, le consortium franco-canadien s’en est détourné. Il en sera de même pour Dakar-Bamako Ferroviaire, la structure bi-étatique qui a repris la ligne en 2015. Conséquence : les populations locales s’appauvrissent et ne croient plus aux promesses de l’Etat.
« Je ferai tout pour quitter cette ville »
A #Mahina, commune de 23 000 habitants située à deux heures de route de Kayes, la population est à bout de nerfs. La gare y était le principal lieu de vie et de commerce. Aujourd’hui, elle n’est plus que l’ombre d’elle-même. Sur les rails menant côté ouest à Dakar, côté est à Bamako, l’herbe a poussé et les bâtiments se sont transformés en cimetière de charrettes. Ce mardi 30 octobre, quelques cheminots errent, attendant désespérément que le train revienne.
Mahina et sa gare incarnent ce sentiment d’abandon partagé par de nombreux Maliens pour qui l’Etat a le regard tourné vers le nord du pays, en guerre, au détriment des habitants du sud. « On passe notre journée à regarder les rails, ce n’est plus possible », regrette Boubacar Sissoko, la trentaine, assis dans une des boutiques de la gare. Il n’a pas travaillé depuis dix jours. « Lorsque le train était là, tout allait à merveille, je me débrouillais pour gagner ma vie », se remémore-t-il. Torches, biscuits, jouets… Le long des 1 287 km de la ligne Bamako-Dakar, le jeune Malien vendait tout ce qu’il pouvait et cela marchait. « En un trajet, je pouvais faire jusqu’à 50 000 francs CFA [76 euros] », assure-t-il.

Aujourd’hui, il prépare sa traversée de la Méditerranée. Il l’a déjà tentée l’an dernier. Mais une fois arrivé en Algérie après avoir franchi la frontière les yeux bandés dans un 4x4 pour la somme de 125 000 francs CFA, il a été mis en prison pendant cinq jours. Ce voyage périlleux ne l’a pas découragé pour autant : « Tant que le train ne circulera pas, je ferai tout pour quitter cette ville. Ici, nous survivons. Il faut que l’Etat sache que les populations du bord des rails vivent un enfer. »
« Le président nous a menti »
Le gouvernement est pourtant conscient de l’importance du train pour le développement économique de la région. Le 15 juillet, en pleine campagne électorale, le président Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta s’était rendu à Kayes pour annoncer la redynamisation du transport de voyageurs.
Douze jours plus tard, le ministère des transports annonçait l’acquisition de trois locomotives en Afrique du Sud, pour un montant de 2 milliards de francs CFA (3 millions d’euros). « Attendues au Mali dans les meilleurs délais, ces trois locomotives vont certainement relancer l’activité du train voyageurs Bamako-Kayes et aussi le train marchandises, au grand soulagement des milliers de Kayésiens », précisait le communiqué. Depuis, silence radio. Contacté à plusieurs reprises, le ministère n’a pas donné suite à nos sollicitations.
« Rien n’est vrai, le président nous a menti, l’Etat nous a bernés et ce n’est pas la première fois ! », tempête Makoro Coulibaly en rangeant son stand sur le marché. Cette commerçante de 40 ans a participé à la révolte qui a secoué Mahina en mars 2017. A l’époque, afin d’obtenir le rétablissement du train de voyageurs, un collectif, Sauvons les rails, avait décidé d’empêcher le train de marchandises de circuler pour faire pression sur les autorités.

Deux mois plus tard, face aux pertes économiques engendrées par ce blocage, l’Etat s’était engagé à donner aux habitants ce qu’ils réclamaient : le retour du train de voyageurs. Le gouvernement promet alors un investissement de 4,6 milliards de francs CFA pour l’achat de trois locomotives. « La population a retrouvé espoir. Une locomotive est arrivée et a commencé à circuler. Mais au bout d’un mois à peine, le train est tombé en panne. Ils n’avaient fait que réparer de vieilles locomotives et les repeindre », dénonce Adama Bandiougou Sissoko, le maire de Mahina.
L’élu est en colère : « La situation est catastrophique. Les rails, c’est toute notre vie. Depuis l’arrêt du train, les prix des denrées alimentaires ont augmenté d’une manière extraordinaire, car le transport routier est beaucoup plus cher », souligne-t-il. La route, 20 % plus coûteuse que le rail, a selon lui plongé des milliers de commerçants dans la pauvreté. « Aujourd’hui, nous n’attendons plus rien de l’Etat. Il nous a montré son vrai visage, il nous a abandonnés. L’arrêt du train a suscité beaucoup de départs vers l’Europe », déplore Adama Bandiougou Sissoko.

Un migrant par famille
Comme Boubacar, les trois enfants de Makoro Coulibaly préparent leur « aventure », une expression utilisée par les habitants de la région pour qualifier l’émigration vers l’Europe. La zone est réputée compter un migrant par famille. La migration y est une tradition, mais les habitants l’assurent : l’arrêt du train n’a fait qu’augmenter le nombre de départs.
Makoro Coulibaly, dont les revenus ont été divisés par deux, a vu ses trois enfants partir travailler dans une mine d’or de la région, une façon de gagner beaucoup d’argent, rapidement, et ainsi financer la traversée de la Méditerranée. « Ce n’était pas mon souhait. J’ai peur qu’ils meurent, confie-t-elle, émue mais résignée. C’est comme ça. Les jeunes préfèrent mourir là-bas plutôt que de vivre dans la misère ici. »

« J’ai vu les images en décembre 2017. Des enfants morts en mer ou alors bastonnés et vendus en Libye », se souvient Goundo Dembélé. Elle aussi est commerçante. Dans sa petite boutique, les trois frigos sont débranchés. Lorsque le train sifflait, ils fonctionnaient et étaient remplis de jus de gingembre, qu’elle vendait à la gare avec ses deux fils. Mais il y a quatre ans, ils sont partis. « Leur père venait de mourir et je n’avais plus de salaire depuis l’arrêt du train. Il n’y avait plus de travail pour eux non plus », raconte-t-elle.
Coincés depuis en Libye, ils appellent leur mère chaque semaine. « Ils me supplient de trouver une solution pour les faire rentrer. Mais je n’en ai pas. Je n’ai pas d’argent pour les faire revenir et ils n’en ont pas assez pour traverser la mer, soupire Goundo Dembélé, les larmes aux yeux. S’il y avait encore le train, mes enfants ne seraient pas partis. Maintenant, je ne peux plus rien faire pour eux, à part prier. »

https://img.lemde.fr/2018/11/13/0/0/5184/3456/688/0/60/0/62341e5_TlE5Vz5sp8RZEFX-7ZsIvwYA.jpg

▻https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2018/11/13/dans-l-ouest-du-mali-l-arret-du-train-siffle-le-depart-des-jeunes-pour-l-eur

#Mali #facteurs_push #facteurs-push #push-factors #train #transport

» Palestinian Man Dies From Serious Wounds Suffered In Khan Younis
IMEMC News - November 5, 2018 1:38 PM
▻http://imemc.org/article/palestinian-man-dies-from-serious-wounds-suffered-in-gaza

http://imemc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/GhanemSharab-e1541417885890.jpg

Palestinian medical sources have reported that a man died, on Monday morning, from complications resulting from wounds he suffered three weeks earlier, after Israeli soldiers shot him in southern Gaza.

The sources said the man, Ghanem Ibrahim Sharab , 44, from Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, was shot by the soldiers three weeks ago.

Sharab died from serious complications resulting from his injury, especially after the doctors had to amputate his left foot, on October 29th.

Gaza Strip hospitals have been complaining from serious deficiency in urgent medical supplies and equipment in the besieged and improvised coastal region.

The Health Ministry in Gaza issued numerous statements and appeals regarding the seriously deteriorating conditions in the hospitals, due to the thousands of injuries, including hundreds who suffered very serious wounds, since the Great Return March processions started on March 30th, and the ongoing Israeli siege on the coastal region.

#Palestine_assassinée #marcheduretour

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s A Season in France: The human cost of the refugee crisis - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/24/seas-o24.html

https://www.wsws.org/asset/25e0c72f-d9c1-4107-a422-401251f6650f/image.jpg

Sandrine Bonnaire, Eriq Ebouaney, Aalayna Lys and Ibrahim Burama Darboe in A Season in France

The never-ending neo-colonial wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of Africa, exacerbating the already terrible poverty in those regions, have driven millions upon millions to seek what they perceive to be more stable conditions in Western Europe.

The responsibility for the refugee crisis and the immense suffering involved lies entirely with the great powers led by the United States. Cynically and demagogically, American and European politicians of every stripe, from the extreme right to the so-called left, then demonize immigrants and blame them for mounting social and economic woes.

#migrations #asile #fiction

A rational Hamas

Hamas leader’s interview with Israeli paper caused an uproar. It wasn’t always like that

Amira Hass

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-hamas-leader-s-interview-with-israeli-paper-caused-an-uproar-it-wa

The interview with Yahya Sinwar, Hamas chief in Gaza, which was conducted by Italian journalist Francesca Borri and published in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth,” set off a major internet storm in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian diaspora. What? Sinwar spoke knowingly to an Israeli newspaper? It wasn’t the content that caused the uproar (“A new war is not in anyone’s interest, certainly not our interest”) – only the host.
>> Israel is incomparably stronger than Hamas – but it will never win: Interview with Hamas leader in Gaza
Sinwar’s bureau hastened to publish a clarification: The request was for an interview with an Italian newspaper and a British newspaper; the Western media department in the Hamas movement ascertained that the journalist was neither Jewish nor Israeli, and that she has never worked with the Israeli press. There was no face-to-face interview with the above-mentioned journalist, but rather a written response to her questions. The journalist met with Sinwar only for the purpose of a joint photo.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar greets militants in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, after his release from Israeli prison, October 20, 2011Adel Hana / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Borri, 38, is a freelance journalist who began writing only about six years ago, mainly from Syria. “I think that Sinwar agreed to let me interview him because he knew that I’m a war correspondent and that I would understand when he told me that he isn’t interested in another war,” she told me over the phone from Italy on Friday.
Her articles have been published in many languages – including in Hebrew in Yedioth Ahronoth. In June, Borri visited Gaza and published an article that was “tough on Hamas,” as she put it. She was haunted by the sight of little children begging, and in her opinion the Islamic resistance movement is also responsible for the terrible deterioration in the Strip. That article was also translated and published in Yedioth.
And then Borri received a text message from one of Sinwar’s advisers, she told me. Why are you so hard on the Palestinians, he complained. They exchanged several text messages, until she asked if she could interview Sinwar. In late August she came to the Gaza Strip again, to interview him.

Yahya Sinwar holds his son Ibrahim while he listens to Khaled Mashaal, the outgoing Hamas leader in exile, during his news conference in Doha, Qatar, on Monday, May 1, 2017Adel Hana,AP
I asked her whether Hamas really didn’t know that the article would be published in Yedioth. “As a freelancer, transparency is important to me,” she said. “It was clear to everyone that the interview would be translated into other languages, including Hebrew. Everyone in Sinwar’s bureau knew that my articles have been published in Yedioth Ahronoth.”

What caused the outrage was that the wording of the article seemed to indicate that Borri was sent by the Israeli newspaper, and that that’s how the situation was presented to Sinwar. Here is the wording of her first question: “This is the first time ever that you’re agreeing to speak to the Western media – and to an Israeli newspaper yet.” According to Borri, the words “and to an Israeli newspaper yet” didn’t appear in her original question to Sinwar.
>> ’We can’t prevail against a nuclear power’: Hamas’ Gaza chief says he doesn’t want war with Israel
On the other hand, she confirmed that Sinwar’s final remark in the article, “and they translate you regularly into Hebrew too,” really was said. “Sinwar spoke to me, and through me to the world. I had the impression that he’s interested in talking through me to the Israelis too,” she said.
And was the interview really conducted face-to-face and during joint trips with Sinwar and his aides over the course of five days, or in writing, as Hamas claimed. Borri explains: “I never record. I feel that people’s answers change when they see a recording device.” She didn’t travel with him in his car, but she says she did join a convoy of cars with Sinwar through the Strip, yet preferred not to say where.
On Thursday, in other words before the publication of the full article in Yedioth on Friday, the Al Jazeera website in Arabic already published the text of the written questions and answers that were exchanged, according to Hamas, between Sinwar’s bureau and Borri. A comparison of the written version with the article in Yedioth reveals great similarity between the two texts, with a few differences – mainly a change in the order of the questions and their answers, sentences, declarations and facts that were deleted from the Hebrew version, and a few sentences that were added to it.
>> Israeli military strikes Gazans who launched incendiary balloons
The questions and answers in the Arabic version flow, and there is a connection between the replies and the following questions; in other words, a conversation is taking place. According to Al Jazeera, the written questions and replies were exchanged several times between the parties. There is even mention of how during the interview, Sinwar pointed to one of his advisers and said that his son was killed by Israeli fire.
Borri confirmed in a conversation with me that she combined the replies received in writing, over a period of time, with answers she received orally. Due to the great similarity between the two versions, my impression is that many replies were sent to her in writing. A Gaza resident told me that he was convinced that most of the answers were given in writing because of “the polished wording, the level-headed replies and the rational explanations.”
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He believes that an entire team thought things through and wrote the answers, not Sinwar alone. He also said that the message in the interview is addressed to the Palestinians in Gaza “who are sick and tired of Hamas rule,” no less than to readers in the West, whom Borri enables to see a senior Hamas official as a leader who cares about his people, rather than as a caricature of a bloodthirsty fanatic.
And I was left longing for the period when senior Hamas officials gave interviews to the Israeli press and to a Jewish Israeli like me – including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Ismail Haniyeh and many others. And I was left with the following conclusion: When Israel doesn’t allow Israeli journalists to enter Gaza, it makes life easy for Hamas.

C.I.A. Drone Mission, Curtailed by Obama, Is Expanded in Africa Under Trump

The C.I.A. is poised to conduct secret drone strikes against Qaeda and Islamic State insurgents from a newly expanded air base deep in the Sahara, making aggressive use of powers that were scaled back during the Obama administration and restored by President Trump.

Late in his presidency, Barack Obama sought to put the military in charge of drone attacks after a backlash arose over a series of highly visible strikes, some of which killed civilians. The move was intended, in part, to bring greater transparency to attacks that the United States often refused to acknowledge its role in.

But now the C.I.A. is broadening its drone operations, moving aircraft to northeastern Niger to hunt Islamist militants in southern Libya. The expansion adds to the agency’s limited covert missions in eastern Afghanistan for strikes in Pakistan, and in southern Saudi Arabia for attacks in Yemen.

Nigerien and American officials said the C.I.A. had been flying drones on surveillance missions for several months from a corner of a small commercial airport in Dirkou. Satellite imagery shows that the airport has grown significantly since February to include a new taxiway, walls and security posts.

One American official said the drones had not yet been used in lethal missions, but would almost certainly be in the near future, given the growing threat in southern Libya. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the secretive operations.

A C.I.A. spokesman, Timothy Barrett, declined to comment. A Defense Department spokeswoman, Maj. Sheryll Klinkel, said the military had maintained a base at the Dirkou airfield for several months but did not fly drone missions from there.

The drones take off from Dirkou at night — typically between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. — buzzing in the clear, starlit desert sky. A New York Times reporter saw the gray aircraft — about the size of Predator drones, which are 27 feet long — flying at least three times over six days in early August. Unlike small passenger planes that land occasionally at the airport, the drones have no blinking lights signaling their presence.

“All I know is they’re American,” Niger’s interior minister, Mohamed Bazoum, said in an interview. He offered few other details about the drones.

Dirkou’s mayor, Boubakar Jerome, said the drones had helped improve the town’s security. “It’s always good. If people see things like that, they’ll be scared,” Mr. Jerome said.

Mr. Obama had curtailed the C.I.A.’s lethal role by limiting its drone flights, notably in Yemen. Some strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere that accidentally killed civilians, stirring outrage among foreign diplomats and military officials, were shielded because of the C.I.A.’s secrecy.

As part of the shift, the Pentagon was given the unambiguous lead for such operations. The move sought, in part, to end an often awkward charade in which the United States would not concede its responsibility for strikes that were abundantly covered by news organizations and tallied by watchdog groups. However, the C.I.A. program was not fully shut down worldwide, as the agency and its supporters in Congress balked.

The drone policy was changed last year, after Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director at the time, made a forceful case to President Trump that the agency’s broader counterterrorism efforts were being needlessly constrained. The Dirkou base was already up and running by the time Mr. Pompeo stepped down as head of the C.I.A. in April to become Mr. Trump’s secretary of state.

The Pentagon’s Africa Command has carried out five drone strikes against Qaeda and Islamic State militants in Libya this year, including one two weeks ago. The military launches its MQ-9 Reaper drones from bases in Sicily and in Niamey, Niger’s capital, 800 miles southwest of Dirkou.

But the C.I.A. base is hundreds of miles closer to southwestern Libya, a notorious haven for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups that also operate in the Sahel region of Niger, Chad, Mali and Algeria. It is also closer to southern Libya than a new $110 million drone base in Agadez, Niger, 350 miles west of Dirkou, where the Pentagon plans to operate armed Reaper drone missions by early next year.

Another American official said the C.I.A. began setting up the base in January to improve surveillance of the region, partly in response to an ambush last fall in another part of Niger that killed four American troops. The Dirkou airfield was labeled a United States Air Force base as a cover, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential operational matters.

The C.I.A. operation in Dirkou is burdened by few, if any, of the political sensitivities that the United States military confronts at its locations, said one former American official involved with the project.

Even so, security analysts said, it is not clear why the United States needs both military and C.I.A. drone operations in the same general vicinity to combat insurgents in Libya. France also flies Reaper drones from Niamey, but only on unarmed reconnaissance missions.

“I would be surprised that the C.I.A. would open its own base,” said Bill Roggio, editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, which tracks military strikes against militant groups.

Despite American denials, a Nigerien security official said he had concluded that the C.I.A. launched an armed drone from the Dirkou base to strike a target in Ubari, in southern Libya, on July 25. The Nigerien security official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program.

A spokesman for the Africa Command, Maj. Karl Wiest, said the military did not carry out the Ubari strike.

#Ubari is in the same region where the American military in March launched its first-ever drone attack against Qaeda militants in southern Libya. It is at the intersection of the powerful criminal and jihadist currents that have washed across Libya in recent years. Roughly equidistant from Libya’s borders with Niger, Chad and Algeria, the area’s seminomadic residents are heavily involved in the smuggling of weapons, drugs and migrants through the lawless deserts of southern Libya.

Some of the residents have allied with Islamist militias, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which operates across Algeria, Mali, Niger and Libya.

Dirkou, in northeast Niger, is an oasis town of a few thousand people in the open desert, bordered by a small mountain range. For centuries, it has been a key transit point for travelers crossing the Sahara. It helped facilitate the rise of Islam in West Africa in the 9th century, and welcomed salt caravans from the neighboring town of Bilma.

The town has a handful of narrow, sandy roads. Small trees dot the horizon. Date and neem trees line the streets, providing shelter for people escaping the oppressive midday heat. There is a small market, where goods for sale include spaghetti imported from Libya. Gasoline is also imported from Libya and is cheaper than elsewhere in the country.

The drones based in Dirkou are loud, and their humming and buzzing drowns out the bleats of goats and crows of roosters.

“It stops me from sleeping,” said Ajimi Koddo, 45, a former migrant smuggler. “They need to go. They go in our village, and it annoys us too much.”

Satellite imagery shows that construction started in February on a new compound at the Dirkou airstrip. Since then, the facility has been extended to include a larger paved taxiway and a clamshell tent connected to the airstrip — all features that are consistent with the deployment of small aircraft, possibly drones.

Five defensive positions were set up around the airport, and there appear to be new security gates and checkpoints both to the compound and the broader airport.

It’s not the first time that Washington has eyed with interest Dirkou’s tiny base. In the late 1980s, the United States spent $3.2 million renovating the airstrip in an effort to bolster Niger’s government against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, then the leader of Libya.

Compared with other parts of Africa, the C.I.A.’s presence in the continent’s northwest is relatively light, according to a former State Department official who served in the region. In this part of Niger, the C.I.A. is also providing training and sharing intelligence, according to a Nigerien military intelligence document reviewed by The Times.

The Nigerien security official said about a dozen American Green Berets were stationed earlier this year in #Dirkou — in a base separate from the C.I.A.’s — to train a special counterterrorism battalion of local forces. Those trainers left about three months ago, the official said.

It is unlikely that they will return anytime soon. The Pentagon is considering withdrawing nearly all American commandos from Niger in the wake of the deadly October ambush that killed four United States soldiers.

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/world/africa/cia-drones-africa-military.html
#CIA #drones #Niger #Sahel #USA #Etats-Unis #EI #ISIS #Etat_islamique #sécurité #terrorisme #base_militaire

Israeli forces kill 78-year-old Palestinian in central Gaza
Oct. 3, 2018 11:48 A.M. (Updated: Oct. 3, 2018 3:32 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=781307

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GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — A 78-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli forces, on Tuesday, east of the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central besieged Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced, on Wednesday, that 78-year-old Palestinian, Ibrahim Ahmad Nassar al-Arouqi , was shot and killed with two live bullets fired by Israeli forces on Tuesday.

The ministry confirmed the news after several hours of investigation, that took place after al-Arouqi was shot on Tuesday, to determine that the bullet was Israeli.

According to the ministry, since “The Great March of Return” began on March 30th, 193 Palestinians were killed, including 34 children, and 21,150 Palestinians were injured, including 4,200 children and 1,950 women, of whom 5,300 were injured due to Israeli live ammunition, while 464 of the injured were in serious condition.

#Palestine_assassinée

Le martyrologe scientifique irakien : 135 universitaires toutes disciplines confondues assassinés entre 2003 et 2006 à la faveur de l’invasion américaine de l’Irak. Par René Naba
▻https://www.les-crises.fr/le-martyrologe-scientifique-irakien-135-universitaires-toutes-disciplines

Vive la France ! : l’éclatante réponse de François Morel à Eric Zemmour - Les communistes de Pierre Bénite et leurs amis !
▻http://fdgpierrebe.over-blog.com/2018/09/vive-la-france-l-eclatante-reponse-de-francois-morel-a-eric-z

Vive la France ! Ibrahim Maalouf... Extrait « Missin ya » d’Ibrahim Maalouf Marek Halter Tristan Tzara Marjane Satrapi Vassily Kandinsky Joann Sfar …

https://cdn.radiofrance.fr/s3/cruiser-production/2018/09/75c26b8e-e93a-4373-96a2-be86f417a960/600x337_morel.jpg

» Israeli Soldiers Kills A Child In Southern Gaza
IMEMC News - September 20, 2018 5:42 AM
▻http://imemc.org/article/israeli-soldiers-kills-a-child-in-southern-gaza

http://imemc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/MomenEyada-e1537411349124.jpg

Israeli soldiers killed, on Wednesday night, a Palestinian child from Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and injured many Palestinians in several parts of the coastal region.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said the soldiers killed Mo’men Ibrahim Abu Eyada, 15 , from Rafah, after shooting him with a live round in the head, east of the city.

According to Israeli Ynet News, the army said they “had no knowledge of any casualties or any live fire used by the soldiers,” and added that “only a very few officials were available for comments, because Israel was marking the Yom Kippur fast day.”

Furthermore, the soldiers fired dozens of live rounds, and high-velocity gas bombs, at Palestinian protesters near the perimeter fence, east of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, wounding six Palestinians with live fire, and causing many to suffer the effects of teargas inhalation.

The two Palestinians were rushed to the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, while the medics provided the needed treatment to scores of Palestinians who suffered the effects of teargas inhalation, in addition to various cuts and bruises.

#Palestine_assassinée

 » Army Kills Two Palestinians In Gaza
IMEMC News - September 18, 2018 12:15 PM
▻http://imemc.org/article/army-kills-two-palestinians-in-gaza-2

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has reported, late on Monday at night, that an Israeli war jet fired a missile at Palestinians, east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, killing two young men.

Media sources in Gaza said the slain Palestinians have been identified as Ibrahim Najjar and Mohammad Khader , both from Khan Younis.

The Health Ministry stated that the medics managed to reach the two Palestinians, near the perimeter fence in southern Gaza, and took them to Nasser Medical Center.

Israeli sources said the Israeli Air Force targeted Palestinians, who reportedly approached the fence, and placed an explosive object.

It is worth mentioning that the soldiers also fired dozens of live rounds, and flares, at Palestinian protesters, east of Rafah, and in Khuza’a town, east of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

In related news, several Palestinians managed to reach an Israeli army sniper post, across the border fence, and burnt it, while a number of fighters fired live rounds at an Israeli drone, east of Khuza’a.

#Palestine_assassinée

Un appel face à la fin du monde
▻https://diacritik.com/2018/08/27/un-appel-face-a-la-fin-du-monde
▻https://i2.wp.com/diacritik.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/desertification-tchad-marocaine-660x330.jpg?fit=660%2C330&ssl=1

Les initiatives « locales » et la volonté citoyenne ne suffisent plus. Il est aujourd’hui vital que des décisions politiques drastiques – et contraignantes donc impopulaires – soient prises. Elles ne le seront que sous notre pression. Voilà le paradoxe avec lequel il faut jouer.

Libya’s oil crescent region is bracing for new armed conflict
▻https://www.libyaobserver.ly/news/libyas-oil-crescent-region-bracing-new-armed-conflict

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The former chief of the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) Ibrahim Jodran and Moamar Gaddafi’s tribal loyalists as well as Chadian rebels have been teaming up for a new alliance to carry out a military operation to control not only the oil crescent region but also many more areas in the country, The New Arab reported, citing Ajdabiya military sources.

The commander of the self-styled army in eastern Libya Khalifa Haftar sent more troops to the oil crescent region and reports said Al-Saiqa Force’s units were seen moving toward the southwestern region, especially to Ghat, yet Al-Saiqa spokesman Miloud Al-Zway denied the reports.

“Jodran met with former Haftar’s forces leader in western Libyan district of Wershiffana, Omar Tantoush, and other military officers who are loyal to Gaddafi in order to form a brigade of Gaddafi loyalist from different tribes in southern Libya.” The New Arab reported.

Tantoush defected from Haftar’s so-called army months ago.