person:rick perry

  • A Bruxelles, Rick Perry vante un gaz américain « plus fiable » que le gaz russe | Connaissances des énergies
    https://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/afp/bruxelles-rick-perry-vante-un-gaz-americain-plus-fiable-que

    « Si vous vous satisfaites d’acheter le produit le moins cher que vous trouvez, sans vous inquiéter de savoir si l’approvisionnement va arriver 24 heures sur 24, 365 jours par an (...) alors peut-être que vous n’achetez pas une BMW ou une Mercedes-Benz ou l’une des ces belles voitures fabriquées dans l’Union européenne », a lancé Rick Perry lors d’un point presse à l’issue du forum inter-entreprises organisé par l’UE et les Etats-Unis.

    « C’est la même chose avec le gaz russe. Si vous demandez à nos amis ukrainiens, ils vous diraient (...) que la fiabilité n’est peut-être pas au rendez-vous », a-t-il ajouté.

    #humour

  • Who writes history? The fight to commemorate a massacre by the Texas #rangers

    In 1918, a state-sanctioned vigilante force killed 15 unarmed Mexicans in #Porvenir. When their descendants applied for a historical marker a century later, they learned that not everyone wants to remember one of Texas’ darkest days.

    The name of the town was Porvenir, or “future.” In the early morning hours of January 28, 1918, 15 unarmed Mexicans and Mexican Americans were awakened by a state-sanctioned vigilante force of Texas Rangers, U.S. Army cavalry and local ranchers. The men and boys ranged in age from 16 to 72. They were taken from their homes, led to a bluff over the Rio Grande and shot from 3 feet away by a firing squad. The remaining residents of the isolated farm and ranch community fled across the river to Mexico, where they buried the dead in a mass grave. Days later, the cavalry returned to burn the abandoned village to the ground.

    These, historians broadly agree, are the facts of what happened at Porvenir. But 100 years later, the meaning of those facts remains fiercely contested. In 2015, as the centennial of the massacre approached, a group of historians and Porvenir descendants applied for and was granted a Texas Historical Commission (THC) marker. After a three-year review process, the THC approved the final text in July. A rush order was sent to the foundry so that the marker would be ready in time for a Labor Day weekend dedication ceremony planned by descendants. Then, on August 3, Presidio County Historical Commission Chair Mona Blocker Garcia sent an email to the THC that upended everything. Though THC records show that the Presidio commission had been consulted throughout the marker approval process, Garcia claimed to be “shocked” that the text was approved. She further asserted, without basis, that “the militant Hispanics have turned this marker request into a political rally and want reparations from the federal government for a 100-year-old-plus tragic event.”

    Four days later, Presidio County Attorney Rod Ponton sent a follow-up letter. Without identifying specific errors in the marker text, he demanded that the dedication ceremony be canceled and the marker’s production halted until new language could be agreed upon. Ponton speculated, falsely, that the event was planned as a “major political rally” for Beto O’Rourke with the participation of La Raza Unida founding member José Ángel Gutiérrez, neither of whom was involved. Nonetheless, THC History Programs Director Charles Sadnick sent an email to agency staff the same day: “After getting some more context about where the marker sponsor may be coming from, we’re halting production on the marker.”

    The American Historical Association quickly condemned the THC’s decision, as did the office of state Senator José Rodríguez, a Democrat whose district includes both Presidio County and El Paso, where the ceremony was to be held. Historians across the country also spoke out against the decision. Sarah Zenaida Gould, director of the Museo del Westside in San Antonio and cofounder of Latinos in Heritage Conservation, responded in an email to the agency that encapsulates the views of many of the historians I interviewed: “Halting the marker process to address this statement as though it were a valid concern instead of a dog whistle is insulting to all people of color who have personally or through family history experienced state violence.”

    How did a last-gasp effort, characterized by factual errors and inflammatory language, manage to convince the state agency for historic preservation to reverse course on a marker three years in the making and sponsored by a young Latina historian with an Ivy League pedigree and Texas-Mexico border roots? An Observer investigation, involving dozens of interviews and hundreds of emails obtained through an open records request, reveals a county still struggling to move on from a racist and violent past, far-right amateur historians sowing disinformation and a state agency that acted against its own best judgment.

    The Porvenir massacre controversy is about more than just the fate of a single marker destined for a lonely part of West Texas. It’s about who gets to tell history, and the continuing relevance of the border’s contested, violent and racist past to events today.

    Several rooms in Benita Albarado’s home in Uvalde are almost overwhelmed by filing cabinets and stacks of clipboards, the ever-growing archive of her research into what happened at Porvenir. For most of her life, Benita, 74, knew nothing about the massacre. What she did know was that her father, Juan Flores, had terrible nightmares, and that in 1950 he checked himself in to a state mental hospital for symptoms that today would be recognized as PTSD. When she asked her mother what was wrong with him, she always received the same vague response: “You don’t understand what he’s been through.”

    In 1998, Benita and her husband, Buddy, began tracing their family trees. Benita was perplexed that she couldn’t find any documentation about her grandfather, Longino Flores. Then she came across the archival papers of Harry Warren, a schoolteacher, lawyer and son-in-law of Tiburcio Jáquez, one of the men who was murdered. Warren had made a list of the victims, and Longino’s name was among them. Warren also described how one of his students from Porvenir had come to his house the next morning to tell him what happened, and then traveled with him to the massacre site to identify the bodies, many of which were so mutilated as to be virtually unrecognizable. Benita immediately saw the possible connection. Her father, 12 at the time, matched Warren’s description of the student.

    Benita and Buddy drove from Uvalde to Odessa, where her father lived, with her photocopied papers. “Is that you?” she asked. He said yes. Then, for the first time in 80 years, he began to tell the story of how he was kidnapped with the men, but then sent home because of his age; he was told that the others were only going to be questioned. To Benita and Buddy’s amazement, he remembered the names of 12 of the men who had been murdered. They were the same as those in Harry Warren’s papers. He also remembered the names of the ranchers who had shown up at his door. Some of those, including the ancestors of prominent families still in Presidio County, had never been found in any document.

    Talking about the massacre proved healing for Flores. His nightmares stopped. In 2000, at age 96, he decided that he wanted to return to Porvenir. Buddy drove them down an old mine road in a four-wheel-drive truck. Flores pointed out where his old neighbors used to live, even though the buildings were gone. He guided Buddy to the bluff where the men were killed — a different location than the one commonly believed by local ranchers to be the massacre site. His memory proved to be uncanny: At the bluff, the family discovered a pre-1918 military bullet casing, still lying on the Chihuahuan desert ground.

    Benita and Buddy began advocating for a historical marker in 2000, soon after their trip to Porvenir. “A lot of people say that this was a lie,” Buddy told me. “But if you’ve got a historical marker, the state has to acknowledge what happened.” Their efforts were met by resistance from powerful ranching families, who held sway over the local historical commission. The Albarados had already given up when they met Monica Muñoz Martinez, a Yale graduate student from Uvalde, who interviewed them for her dissertation. In 2013, Martinez, by then an assistant professor at Brown University, co-founded Refusing to Forget, a group of historians aiming to create broader public awareness of border violence, including Porvenir and other extrajudicial killings of Mexicans by Texas Rangers during the same period. The most horrific of these was La Matanza, in which dozens of Mexicans and Mexican Americans were murdered in the Rio Grande Valley in 1915.

    In 2006, the THC created the Undertold Markers program, which seemed tailor-made for Porvenir. According to its website, the program is designed to “address historical gaps, promote diversity of topics, and proactively document significant underrepresented subjects or untold stories.” Unlike the agency’s other marker programs, anyone can apply for an undertold marker, not just county historical commissions. Martinez’s application for a Porvenir massacre marker was accepted in 2015.

    Though the approval process for the Porvenir marker took longer than usual, by the summer of 2018 everything appeared to be falling into place. On June 1, Presidio County Historical Commission chair Garcia approved the final text. (Garcia told me that she thought she was approving a different text. Her confusion is difficult to understand, since the text was attached to the digital form she submitted approving it.) Martinez began coordinating with the THC and Arlinda Valencia, a descendant of one of the victims, to organize a dedication ceremony in El Paso.
    “They weren’t just simple farmers. I seriously doubt that they were just killed for no reason.”

    In mid-June, Valencia invited other descendants to the event and posted it on Facebook. She began planning a program to include a priest’s benediction, a mariachi performance and brief remarks by Martinez, Senator Rodríguez and a representative from the THC. The event’s climax would be the unveiling of the plaque with the names of the 15 victims.

    Then the backlash began.

    “Why do you call it a massacre?” is the first thing Jim White III said over the phone when I told him I was researching the Porvenir massacre. White is the trustee of the Brite Ranch, the site of a cross-border raid by Mexicans on Christmas Day 1917, about a month before the Porvenir massacre. When I explained that the state-sanctioned extrajudicial execution of 15 men and boys met all the criteria I could think of for a massacre, he shot back, “It sounds like you already have your opinion.”

    For generations, ranching families like the Brites have dominated the social, economic and political life of Presidio County. In a visit to the Marfa & Presidio County Museum, I was told that there were almost no Hispanic surnames in any of the exhibits, though 84 percent of the county is Hispanic. The Brite family name, however, was everywhere.

    White and others in Presidio County subscribe to an alternative history of the Porvenir massacre, centering on the notion that the Porvenir residents were involved in the bloody Christmas Day raid.

    “They weren’t just simple farmers,” White told me, referring to the victims. “I seriously doubt that they were just killed for no reason.” Once he’d heard about the historical marker, he said, he’d talked to everyone he knew about it, including former Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Mona Blocker Garcia.

    I visited Garcia at her Marfa home, an 1886 adobe that’s the same age as the venerable Marfa County Courthouse down the street. Garcia, 82, is Anglo, and married to a former oil executive whose ancestry, she explained, is Spanish and French Basque. A Houston native, she retired in the 1990s to Marfa, where she befriended the Brite family and became involved in local history. She told me that she had shared a draft text of the marker with the Brites, and they had agreed that it was factually inaccurate.

    Garcia cited a story a Brite descendant had told her about a young goat herder from Porvenir who purportedly witnessed the Christmas Day raid, told authorities about the perpetrators from his community and then disappeared without a trace into a witness protection program in Oklahoma. When I asked if there was any evidence that the boy actually existed, she acknowledged the story was “folklore.” Still, she said, “the story has lasted 100 years. Why would anybody make something like that up?”

    The actual history is quite clear. In the days after the massacre, the Texas Rangers commander, Captain J.M. Fox, initially reported that Porvenir residents had fired on the Rangers. Later, he claimed that residents had participated in the Christmas Day raid. Subsequent investigations by the Mexican consulate, the U.S. Army and state Representative J.T. Canales concluded that the murdered men were unarmed and innocent, targeted solely because of their ethnicity by a vigilante force organized at the Brite Ranch. As a result, in June 1918, five Rangers were dismissed, Fox was forced to resign and Company B of the Texas Rangers was disbanded.

    But justice remained elusive. In the coming years, Fox re-enlisted as captain of Company A, while three of the dismissed lawmen found new employment. One re-enlisted as a Ranger, a second became a U.S. customs inspector and the third was hired by the Brite Ranch. No one was ever prosecuted. As time passed, the historical records of the massacre, including Harry Warren’s papers, affidavits from widows and other relatives and witness testimony from the various investigations, were largely forgotten. In their place came texts like Walter Prescott Webb’s The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, which played an outsize role in the creation of the heroic myth of the Texas Rangers. Relying entirely on interviews with the murderers themselves, Webb accepted at face value Fox’s discredited version of events. For more than 50 years, Webb’s account was considered the definitive one of the massacre — though, unsurprisingly, he didn’t use that word.

    An Observer review of hundreds of emails shows that the state commission was aware of potential controversy over the marker from the very beginning. In an email from 2015, Executive Director Mark Wolfe gave John Nau, the chair of the THC’s executive committee, a heads-up that while the marker was supported by historical scholarship, “the [Presidio County Historical Commission] opposes the marker.” The emails also demonstrate that the agency viewed the claims of historical inaccuracies in the marker text made by Mona Blocker Garcia and the county commission as minor issues of wording.

    On August 6, the day before the decision to halt the marker, Charles Sadnick, the history programs director, wrote Wolfe to say that the “bigger problem” was the ceremony, where he worried there might be disagreements among Presidio County residents, and which he described as “involving some politics which we don’t want a part of.”

    What were the politics that the commission was worried about, and where were these concerns coming from? Garcia’s last-minute letter may have been a factor, but it wasn’t the only one. For the entire summer, Glenn Justice, a right-wing amateur historian who lives in a rural gated community an hour outside San Angelo, had been the driving force behind a whisper campaign to discredit Martinez and scuttle the dedication ceremony.

    “There are radicals in the ‘brown power’ movement that only want the story told of Rangers and [the] Army and gringos killing innocent Mexicans,” Justice told me when we met in his garage, which doubles as the office for Rimrock Press, a publishing company whose catalog consists entirely of Justice’s own work. He was referring to Refusing to Forget and in particular Martinez, the marker’s sponsor.

    Justice has been researching the Porvenir massacre for more than 30 years, starting when he first visited the Big Bend as a graduate student. He claims to be, and probably is, the first person since schoolteacher Harry Warren to call Porvenir a “massacre” in print, in a master’s thesis published by the University of Texas at El Paso in 1991. Unlike White and Garcia, Justice doesn’t question the innocence of the Porvenir victims. But he believes that additional “context” is necessary to understand the reasons for the massacre, which he views as an aberration, rather than a representatively violent part of a long history of racism. “There have never been any problems between the races to speak of [in Presidio County],” he told me.

    In 2015, Justice teamed up with former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Sul Ross State University archaeologist David Keller on a privately funded excavation at the massacre site. He is working on a new book about the bullets and bullet casings they found — which he believes implicate the U.S. Army cavalry in the shooting — and also partnered with Patterson to produce a documentary. But they’d run out of money, and the film was taken over by noted Austin filmmaker Andrew Shapter, who pitched the project to PBS and Netflix. In the transition, Justice was demoted to the role of one of 12 consulting historians. Meanwhile, Martinez was given a prominent role on camera.

    Justice was disgruntled when he learned that the dedication ceremony would take place in El Paso. He complained to organizer Arlinda Valencia and local historical commission members before contacting Ponton, the county attorney, and Amanda Shields, a descendant of massacre victim Manuel Moralez.

    “I didn’t want to take my father to a mob scene,” Shields told me over the phone, by way of explaining her opposition to the dedication ceremony. She believed the rumor that O’Rourke and Gutiérrez would be involved.

    In August, Shields called Valencia to demand details about the program for the ceremony. At the time, she expressed particular concern about a potential Q&A event with Martinez that would focus on parallels between border politics and violence in 1918 and today.

    “This is not a political issue,” Shields told me. “It’s a historical issue. With everything that was going on, we didn’t want the ugliness of politics involved in it.” By “everything,” she explained, she was referring primarily to the issue of family separation. Benita and Buddy Albarado told me that Shields’ views represent a small minority of descendants.

    Martinez said that the idea of ignoring the connections between past and present went against her reasons for fighting to get a marker in the first place. “I’m a historian,” she said. “It’s hard to commemorate such a period of violence, in the midst of another ongoing humanitarian crisis, when this period of violence shaped the institutions of policing that we have today. And that cannot be relegated to the past.”

    After communicating with Justice and Shields, Ponton phoned THC Commissioner Gilbert “Pete” Peterson, who is a bank investment officer in Alpine. That call set in motion the sequence of events that would ultimately derail the marker. Peterson immediately emailed Wolfe, the state commission’s executive director, to say that the marker was becoming “a major political issue.” Initially, though, Wolfe defended the agency’s handling of the marker. “Frankly,” Wolfe wrote in his reply, “this might just be one where the [Presidio County Historical Commission] isn’t going to be happy, and that’s why these stories have been untold for so long.” Peterson wrote back to say that he had been in touch with members of the THC executive committee, which consists of 15 members appointed by either former Governor Rick Perry or Governor Greg Abbott, and that an email about the controversy had been forwarded to THC chair John Nau. Two days later, Peterson added, “This whole thing is a burning football that will be thrown to the media.”

    At a meeting of the Presidio County Historical Commission on August 17, Peterson suggested that the executive board played a major role in the decision to pause production of the marker. “I stopped the marker after talking to Rod [Ponton],” Peterson said. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking with the chairman and vice-chairman [of the THC]. What we have said, fairly emphatically, is that there will not be a dedication in El Paso.” Through a spokesperson, Wolfe said that the executive committee is routinely consulted and the decision was ultimately his.

    The spokesperson said, “The big reason that the marker was delayed was to be certain about its accuracy. We want these markers to stand for generations and to be as accurate as possible.”

    With no marker to unveil, Valencia still organized a small commemoration. Many descendants, including Benita and Buddy Albarado, chose not to attend. Still, the event was described by Jeff Davis, a THC representative in attendance, as “a near perfect event” whose tone was “somber and respectful but hopeful.”

    Most of THC’s executive committee members are not historians. The chair, John Nau, is CEO of the nation’s largest Anheuser-Busch distributor and a major Republican party donor. His involvement in the Porvenir controversy was not limited to temporarily halting the marker. In August, he also instructed THC staff to ask the Presidio historical commission to submit applications for markers commemorating raids by Mexicans on white ranches during the Mexican Revolution, which Nau described as “a significant but largely forgotten incident in the state’s history.”

    Garcia confirmed that she had been approached by THC staff. She added that the THC had suggested two specific topics: the Christmas Day raid and a subsequent raid at the Neville Ranch.

    The idea of additional plaques to provide so-called context that could be interpreted as justifying the massacre — or at the very least setting up a false moral equivalence — appears to have mollified critics like White, Garcia and Justice. The work on a revised Porvenir massacre text proceeded quickly, with few points of contention, once it began in mid-September. The marker was sent to the foundry on September 18.
    “It’s hard to commemorate such a period of violence, in the midst of another ongoing humanitarian crisis, when this period of violence shaped the institutions of policing that we have today.”

    In the end, the Porvenir descendants will get their marker — but it may come at a cost. Martinez called the idea of multiple markers “deeply unsettling” and not appropriate for the Undertold Marker program. “Events like the Brite Ranch raid and the Neville raid have been documented by historians for over a century,” she said. “These are not undertold histories. My concern with having a series of markers is that, again, it casts suspicion on the victims of these historical events. It creates the logic that these raids caused this massacre, that it was retribution for these men and boys participating.”

    In early November, the THC unexpectedly announced a dedication ceremony for Friday, November 30. The date was one of just a few on which Martinez, who was still planning on organizing several public history events in conjunction with the unveiling, had told the agency months prior that she had a schedule conflict. In an email to Martinez, Sadnick said that it was the only date Nau could attend this year, and that it was impossible for agency officials to make “secure travel plans” once the legislative session began in January.

    A handful of descendants, including Shields and the Albarados, still plan to attend. “This is about families having closure,” Shields told me. “Now, this can finally be put to rest.”

    The Albarados are livid that the THC chose a date that, in their view, prioritized the convenience of state and county officials over the attendance of descendants — including their own daughters, who feared they wouldn’t be able to get off work. They also hope to organize a second, unofficial gathering at the marker site next year, with the participation of more descendants and the Refusing to Forget historians. “We want people to know the truth of what really happened [at Porvenir],” Buddy told me, “and to know who it was that got this historical marker put there.”

    Others, like Arlinda Valencia, planned to stay home. “Over 100 years ago, our ancestors were massacred, and the reason they were massacred was because of lies that people were stating as facts,” she told me in El Paso. “They called them ‘bandits,’ when all they were doing was working and trying to make a living. And now, it’s happening again.”

    #mémoire #histoire #Texas #USA #massacre #assassinat #méxicains #violence #migrations #commémoration #historicisation #frontières #violence_aux_frontières #violent_borders #Mexique

  • Pathologie en stock
    http://www.dedefensa.org/article/pathologie-en-stock

    Pathologie en stock

    Les journalistes russes, et ceux de RT-FakeNews plus précisément, n’en sont pas encore revenus. Rick Perry, ancien gouverneur du Texas, très “texan” et ami des pétroliers, devenu le secrétaire à l’énergie (comme ça se trouve) de Trump, rencontrait hier son homologue russe à Moscou. Il y eut une conférence de presse dont personne n’attendait grand-chose ; sauf qu’un journaliste de RT eut l’outrecuidance de lui poser une question sacrilège, du type “vous reprochez à la Russie, soi-disant d’utiliser sa politique énergétique dans des buts politiques, mais vous-même que faites-vous avec ;l’Iran ?”.

    La conférence de presse prit aussitôt un tour inattendu, Perry se dressant comme la statue du Commandeur, les pieds sans doute bottés (un Texan) fermement posés sur cette terre russe chargée de tant (...)

  • How to fuck up America :
    #Trump has a brilliant plan to turn Silicon Valley into a desert.
    (by a sarcastic Kevin Maney)

    http://europe.newsweek.com/donald-trump-trolls-silicon-valley-543327

    1. Humble the Technology Industry

    Well, apparently we need to stop immigrants from coming here so there’s more room for Americans to start tech companies. That’s how it works, right? Why would we want people with good ideas from India or Ireland or Israel coming over to build tech companies? Let them do it at home.

    2. Dismiss Alternative Energy

    In the new regime, oil is better. So is coal. There’s no global warming. No carbon-burning problem. That’s why it’s brilliant to make Rex Tillerson the secretary of state, so he can negotiate better oil deals for us, and give the Department of Energy to Rick Perry, who would like to kill it. You can’t spell America without carbon—or at least some of it.

    3. Derail Health Care

    New artificial intelligence technology can help doctors sift through millions of pages of medical research and match it to data about a patient to diagnose diseases way better than ever. If U.S. companies get this stuff right and lead such tech advances, they will drive the economy for years.

    But that seems to weird out the new regime. Better to preserve traditions: the swamped family doctor, the half-day sitting in waiting rooms reading old copies of O magazine, the prostate exam.
    [...]
    If millennials want to stay healthy, the new regime is singling, they can abandon the uninsured path of entrepreneurship and instead work at a company that offers health benefits

    4. Ignore Russian Hacking

    the Russians are now our friends. They wouldn’t steal our data or harm our systems. And other countries like North Korea or Iran can’t possibly be smart enough to follow Russia’s lead and do damage. So there’s no data security threat to address. We’ll be fine.

    5. Shift Resources From Cities to Small Towns and Rural Areas

    Cities have a lot of wealthy folks and artists and people who were born in other countries. The trend is toward moving to cities
    [...]
    But the new regime doesn’t want the future. It won by promising the past.

    So too bad, cities. Rural and small town America kicked your butts this time. Cities can bend over and kiss their federal resources goodbye.

  • Les experts du climat dans le collimateur de Trump

    http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2016/12/14/les-experts-du-climat-dans-le-collimateur-de-trump_5048729_3244.html

    Les scientifiques redoutent une chasse aux sorcières et dénoncent des tentatives d’intimidation de la part de l’équipe de transition du président élu.

    C’est un symposium au sujet surprenant qui devait se tenir mercredi 14 décembre à San Francisco, à l’occasion du congrès d’automne de l’American Geophysical Union (AGU), la société savante des chercheurs en géosciences. La thématique – « Le détournement de la loi américaine à des fins de harcèlement, d’intimidation et de discrédit des chercheurs » – illustre l’inquiétude de la communauté des sciences du climat devant les récentes déclarations du président élu Donald Trump.
    Une inquiétude avivée par la révélation, par la presse américaine, d’un questionnaire transmis par l’équipe de transition de M. Trump à l’ensemble des services du ministère de l’énergie américain, leur demandant notamment de dresser la liste des personnels ayant travaillé, de près ou de loin, sur la question climatique ou sur les énergies renouvelables.

    L’équipe de Donald Trump a demandé la liste des employés du ministère de l’énergie ayant travaillé sur le climat

    La crainte d’une chasse aux sorcières gagne du terrain. « En temps normal, je réserverais mon jugement en supposant a priori qu’il s’agit simplement d’une collecte d’information légitime, observe Michael Mann, le directeur du Earth System Science Center de l’université de Pennsylvanie. Cependant, cette dernière révélation ne vient pas hors de tout contexte. Cela soulève une réelle préoccupation, celle que l’équipe de transition [de M. Trump] puisse prendre des gens pour cible, en particulier des scientifiques. »

    « C’est fréquent de voir les équipes de transition interroger les structures gouvernementales sur leurs politiques, ajoute Michael Halpern, de l’Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), une organisation de promotion de la science. Ce qui ne l’est pas, c’est de demander des listes d’employés de ces structures et de cibler des fonctionnaires qui font simplement leur travail. »

    « Inquiétude »

    Le ministère de l’énergie se refuse pour le moment à transmettre les noms de ses collaborateurs, mais cette tentative d’intimidation ne laisse pas indifférents les ONG et les think tanks investis dans la thématique climat, qui craignent eux aussi d’être la cible de l’administration entrante. « Il n’y a pas un membre du cabinet de Donald Trump qui ne soit climatosceptique », note Jesse Bragg, de Corporate Accountability International, une organisation de défense de l’environnement et des droits de l’homme.

    Mardi 13 décembre, le 45e président américain a en effet désigné Rex Tillerson, le patron du groupe pétrolier ExxonMobil, au poste de secrétaire d’Etat. « C’est cet homme lié au secteur des énergies fossiles, sans aucune expérience diplomatique, qui va représenter les Etats-Unis dans les négociations internationales sur le changement climatique », se désole Jesse Bragg.

    M. Trump a confié le ministère de l’énergie à Rick Perry, ancien gouverneur du Texas et partisan de la suppression de cette administration… Il a promis la direction de l’Agence de protection de l’environnement à Scott Pruitt, le ministre de la justice de l’Oklahoma, très hostile aux mesures prises par l’équipe Obama pour réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre. « Il y a à l’évidence dans la communauté des chercheurs en sciences du climat une inquiétude d’être harcelé, intimidé, d’être empêché de parler de ce que nous savons, c’est-à-dire de l’accumulation de faits sur le changement climatique et la manière dont les activités humaines y contribuent », explique Christine McEntee, la directrice exécutive de l’AGU.

    Un vade-mecum circule dans la communauté des chercheurs sur le climat pour les préparer au harcèlement

    Aux Etats-Unis, depuis le début des années 2000 et en vertu des lois de transparence, des think tanks néoconservateurs ou libertariens, ainsi que des ministres de la justice de certains Etats requièrent de manière systématique l’accès aux courriels ou aux documents de recherche de climatologues. Une pratique considérée par les chercheurs comme un détournement de la loi et une forme de harcèlement. Au point que, en 2011, des universitaires et des juristes ont créé le Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, qui offre une assistance juridique aux scientifiques confrontés à ces situations.
    Depuis début décembre, un petit vade-mecum rédigé par l’organisation circule dans la communauté des chercheurs sur le climat pour préparer ceux-ci « au harcèlement politique et à l’intimidation juridique » : « En cas de doute, appeler un avocat », « séparer les e-mails professionnels et personnels », « ne pas répondre aux messages de harcèlement, mais ne pas les effacer », etc.

    Parades

    Les chercheurs redoutent également que l’activité scientifique elle-même soit entravée. L’équipe de transition de M. Trump a déclaré que la NASA devrait cesser ses activités d’observation de la Terre. Une telle décision aurait un impact considérable, au-delà de la recherche américaine. Car, rappelle Stefan Rahmstorf, directeur du Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact (Allemagne), « comprendre notre planète implique une coopération mondiale des systèmes d’observation ». « Nous pensons qu’il y a un risque que les financements de la recherche et des infrastructures scientifiques soient remis en cause, dit Mme McEntee. Mais ce sont des risques que le Congrès a déjà fait peser sur nous l’an passé et nous avons réussi à les éviter. »

    La situation est toutefois jugée suffisamment inquiétante par les chercheurs eux-mêmes pour que des listes de bases de données (températures, couverture des glaces, etc.) s’échangent sur les réseaux sociaux, afin que des sites miroirs soient créés hors des Etats-Unis ou sur des sites non administrés par des agences fédérales. « Sous l’administration Bush, des chercheurs avaient remarqué que des sites Web d’agences fédérales avaient été modifiés, voire supprimés, témoigne Michael Halpern. Il y a donc une volonté de se prémunir contre ce genre de menace. D’autant plus que dans le questionnaire [adressé par l’équipe de M. Trump au ministère de l’énergie], il y avait une question spécifique sur les sites Web relatifs au climat, créés ou modifiés par ces services au cours des trois dernières années. »

    Le vent de panique ne concerne pas seulement les sciences du climat. « Des scientifiques des universités commencent à regarder les bases de données relatives à d’autres disciplines et maintenues par des laboratoires fédéraux qui pourraient être menacées et qui doivent être sauvegardées », raconte M. Halpern. Début décembre, une centaine d’ONG américaines ont par ailleurs adressé une lettre ouverte à Donald Trump et au Congrès, leur demandant de prendre conscience de la crise climatique et d’y répondre sans tarder.

    Dans la sphère des négociations sur le climat, on réfléchit à des parades. « Il ne s’agit pas pour le moment de résistance, mais plutôt de réflexion autour du repli américain ou de l’idée d’intenter des procès contre les abus du pouvoir exécutif », confie l’ex-négociatrice de la France, Laurence Tubiana.

    Pour leur part, les climatologues gardent vif le souvenir de l’administration Bush. En février 2007, l’Union of Concerned Scientists avait mené une enquête auprès de 300 scientifiques issus de sept agences fédérales (NASA, NOAA, EPA, etc.). Quelque 46 % des répondants avaient déclaré avoir « été témoin ou fait personnellement l’expérience de pressions pour éliminer les expressions “changement climatique” ou “réchauffement global”, ou d’autres termes similaires, de toute une variété de communications ». Environ 40 % avaient constaté, sur les sites Internet de leur agence, « la publication anormalement retardée ou la disparition de rapports ou de documents scientifiques sur le climat ». Et près de la moitié avait remarqué « des exigences administratives nouvelles ou inhabituelles ayant entravé des travaux liés au climat ».

  • Trump taps former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to head Energy Department he once vowed to abolish - The Washington Post
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/trump-taps-former-texas-gov-rick-perry-to-head-energy-department-he-

    President-elect Donald Trump has picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department, said two people familiar with the decision, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it.

    Perry, who ran for president in the past two election cycles, is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and toward fossil fuels, whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years.

    The Energy Department was central to the 2011 gaffe that helped end his first presidential bid. Declaring that he wanted to eliminate three federal agencies during a primary debate in Michigan, Perry then froze after mentioning the Commerce and Education departments. “The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.
    […]
    Despite its name, most of the Energy Department’s budget is devoted to maintaining the nation’s stockpile of nuclear warheads and to cleaning up nuclear waste at sites left by military weapons programs. The department runs the nation’s national laboratories, sets appliance standards and hands out grants and loan guarantees for basic research, solar cells, capturing carbon dioxide from coal combustion and more.

  • Poll : New York Gov. Cuomo Is Part of Culture Of Corruption, Voters Say
    http://www.ibtimes.com/poll-new-york-gov-cuomo-part-culture-corruption-voters-say-1664252

    Encore un effort (annuler toute poursuite judiciaire) et les #Etats-Unis égaleront le #Liban,

    In recent months, three Republican governors positioning themselves for presidential runs, Texas’s #Rick_Perry, Wisconsin’s #Scott_Walker and New Jersey’s #Chris_Christie, have faced high-profile investigations into allegations that they abused their power. #Andrew_Cuomo now makes a fourth governor facing the same kind of scrutiny. The accusations against the men may not be of equal gravity, but if all four of the governors run, the probes could create an overarching corruption narrative that might dominate the 2016 presidential campaign.

  • Offensive anti-IVG

    Des lois restreignant considérablement le droit à l’interruption volontaire de grossesse (#IVG) ont été votées en l’espace de trois semaines dans quatre Etats américains.

    C’est le Texas qui a le plus retenu l’attention, après que le gouverneur Rick Perry eut convoqué une session spéciale pour voter de nouvelles dispositions sur l’#avortement. La sénatrice démocrate Wendy Davis a fait de l’obstruction parlementaire en prononçant un discours de onze heures, mais Perry a ensuite convoqué une autre session spéciale pour s’assurer que la loi passe. La Caroline du Nord, l’Ohio et le Wisconsin ont eux aussi fait voter des lois similaires ces dernières semaines. La plupart de ces Etats ne figuraient pas sur la liste, dressée en mars dernier, de ceux qui s’opposent avec le plus de virulence aux droits des femmes, ce qui indique bien le nombre de nouvelles lois qui sont passées au cours de cette seule année.

    #Droit #Femmes #Etats-Unis

    Kate Sheppard et Dana Liebelson, « The 4 worst new anti-abortion laws… in the past 3 weeks », Mother Jones, 11 juillet 2013.
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/abortion-texas-ohio-wisconsin-north-carolina

    #Coupures_de_presse (#2013/08)
    http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2013/08/A/49523

    • On attend les photos de petits embryon se faisant des bisous, à l’occasion d’une remise de médaille, en une de tous les journaux du monde libre. Avec un sous-titre en lettres rouges : « A quand une plus grande tolérance en Russie ? » (oui, je sais, c’est pas en Russie que ça se passe, mais on pourrait faire comme si nan ? Comme l’école maternelle, on dirait que...)

  • Rick Perry parade en tête devant les bigots du Texas. Pendant ce temps, en Europe...

    http://www.liberation.fr/monde/2013/07/12/avortement-les-drames-a-repetition-poussent-l-irlande-vers-l-assouplissem

    Juste après minuit, dans la nuit de mercredi à jeudi et après quarante-huit heures de débats tendus, le Dail, la chambre basse du Parlement irlandais, a voté en faveur d’un timide assouplissement de la loi sur l’avortement. Une fois votée par la chambre haute, probablement avant la fin du mois, la loi sur « la protection de la vie pendant la grossesse » autorisera l’avortement dans les cas où la vie de la mère serait en danger pour une raison médicale ou si un panel de trois médecins, dont deux psychiatres, attestent d’un risque de suicide de la mère si un avortement n’est pas pratiqué.

    La peine punissant une femme qui subit un avortement illégal, ou un médecin le pratiquant, sera également réduite à quatorze ans de prison, au lieu de la réclusion à perpétuité prévue jusqu’ici. Mais les victimes de viol, d’inceste ou les femmes enceintes de bébés atteints de graves malformations et non viables ne seront toujours pas autorisées à avorter en Irlande. Elles en seront encore réduites, comme environ 4 000 Irlandaises chaque année, à se rendre au Royaume-Uni, où l’avortement est légal depuis 1967.

    (...)

    « Meurtrier ». En présentant le projet de loi devant le Dail, Enda Kenny a relaté les tentatives d’intimidation dont il a été l’objet depuis des mois : les lettres écrites avec du sang, les fœtus en plastique réceptionnés, les accusations d’être un « meurtrier » et de porter « sur sa conscience la mort de 20 millions de bébés ». Sans oublier les avertissements de l’église catholique sur son éventuelle excommunication et celle de tous les députés qui auraient voté en faveur de la loi. Mais l’église catholique, il y a vingt ans encore toute puissante au point de dicter l’agenda politique du gouvernement irlandais, a singulièrement perdu de son aura. Notamment à la suite de la succession de scandales concernant des crimes de pédophilie, perpétrés par des membres du clergé et dissimulés pendant des années par la hiérarchie de l’Eglise. « Ma tâche, en tant que Taoiseach [le mot utilisé en Irlande pour désigner le Premier ministre, ndlr] est de diriger ce gouvernement pour gouverner pour tous les habitants de notre pays, je dis bien tous. Et je suis fier de me tenir devant vous […], comme un Taoiseach, qui se trouve être catholique, mais pas un Taoisach catholique », a ainsi déclaré Enda Kenny devant le Parlement.

    #avortement #IVG #Irlande #Galway_pro-choice

  • Let’s definitely tell him

    Tell Rick Perry How to Actually Help Women!

    Governor Rick Perry has demanded a second special Texas legislative session on July 1 just to take a vote on bill SB5 that would shutter most of the state’s abortion clinics.

    That’s ridiculous. Wasting public money on a special vote just to women’s restrict reproductive rights is unproductive and downright offensive. Senator Wendy Davis and hundreds of protesters fought the bill so hard this week because it is NOT concerned with women’s health—they are concerned with controlling women. Like many Americans, we’re Pissed at Perry. If Governor Perry and politicians nationwide actually wanted to support the lives and choices of women, why have 49 states passed measures that restrict our rights rather than actually preventing unwanted pregnancies?

    Instead of criminalizing abortion, politicians should push for funding comprehensive sex education in schools and making birth control affordable for all women. Those are two smart policies Texas Representative Senfronia Thompson tried to add to Texas’ bill, but Republicans shot them down.

    What policies should Rick Perry and politicians in every state support to improve the lives of women?

    Your ideas will be emailed directly to Rick Perry’s office!

    http://bitchmagazine.org/Tell-Rick-Perry-Texas-Abortion-SB5-Protest

    #asshole

  • Texas : l’exploit d’une sénatrice pour l’avortement - Arrêt sur images
    http://www.arretsurimages.net/vite.php?id=15777

    L’obstruction par la parole. La majorité républicaine au Texas veut voter une loi remettant en cause le droit à l’avortement dans cet état. Soutenue par Obama sur Twitter, une sénatrice démocrate a parlé debout pendant une dizaine d’heures pour empêcher que le vote puisse avoir lieu avant l’heure limite.

    Un projet de loi soutenu par la majorité républicaine remet en cause le droit à l’avortement qui serait interdit au delà de 20 semaines, et durcit les réglements concernant les cliniques qui pratiquent l’avortement, entraînant la fermeture de 37 des 42 qui existent au Texas. Le 2e Etat le plus peuplé des USA abrite 26 millions d’habitants. Une sénatrice a tenté de bloquer le vote, (par une manoeuvre appelée filibuster aux USA) en parlant une dizaine d’heures sans interruption, espérant dépasser l’heure limite fixée pour le vote.

    Mais finalement à 3 h du matin le gouverneur adjoint, le républicain David Dewhurst, reconnaissait que la loi n’avait pas été votée à temps. Davis a gagné pour l’instant, le Texas n’est pas encore devenu le 12e état américain à interdire l’avortement après 20 semaines . Le gouverneur Rick Perry qui veut que l’avortement disparaisse et devienne « une chose du passé » devra convoquer une autre session.

    #IVG #femmes

  • Texas abortion bill fails to pass after 11-hour Wendy Davis filibuster | World news | guardian.co.uk
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/26/texas-abortion-vote-defeated-deadline-wendy-davis

    A controversial abortion bill was defeated after a day of political drama in Texas that began with a marathon filibuster speech and ended with a raucous public protest that derailed a vote in the state legislature.

    A live video stream and a social media swirl drew attention from around the world to the remarkable scenes in Austin, Texas, where Democrats led by senator Wendy Davis staged a procedural filibuster to block a bill that would have severely restricted abortion in the state.

    #Texas #Etats_Unis #avortement #droits #Wendy_Davis #féminisme

  • Au texas, avant de pouvoir avorter, on t’introduit dans le vagin une sonde à ultrason, pour écouter le cœur du fœtus, Ensuite tu as droit au discours moralisateur du spécialiste, on te laisse mariner 24 h, avec tout ça et seulement tu peux obtenir un avortement. sic

    Under a new law that took effect three weeks ago with the strong backing of Gov. Rick Perry, she first must typically endure an ultrasound probe inserted into her vagina. Then she listens to the audio thumping of the fetal heartbeat and watches the fetus on an ultrasound screen.

    She must listen to a doctor explain the body parts and internal organs of the fetus as they’re shown on the monitor. She signs a document saying that she understands all this, and it is placed in her medical files. Finally, she goes home and must wait 24 hours before returning to get the abortion.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/opinion/sunday/kristof-when-states-abuse-women.html?_r=1&src=tp

  • Has Obama Waged A War On #Religion? : NPR
    http://www.npr.org/2012/01/08/144835720/has-obama-waged-a-war-on-religion

    Newt Gingrich warns the U.S. is becoming a secular country, which would be a “nightmare.” Rick Santorum says there’s a clash between “man’s laws and God’s laws.” And in a campaign ad, Rick Perry decried what he called “Obama’s war on religion,” saying there is “something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly ... pray in school.”

  • Les candidats républicains auxquels les États-Unis risquent de ne pas échapper - Primaires US - Basta !
    http://www.bastamag.net/article1999.html

    Pas loin des propositions de Ron Paul, actuellement en troisième position dans les sondages, qui, pour réduire les dépenses publiques de 1 000 milliards de dollars par an, veut supprimer cinq ministères : Éducation, Énergie, Commerce, Intérieur et Aménagement du territoire, ainsi que la Banque centrale américaine, jugée inutile

    #USA #élections #primaires_républicaines
    Pour le coup, « primaire » retrouve son sens d’adjectif...

    En avril 2010, pour dédouaner la compagnie pétrolière BP, Rick Perry suggère que la marée noire dans le golfe du Mexique est « un acte de Dieu ». En avril 2011, alors que des incendies ravagent l’État, il demande aux Texans de prier pour faire venir la pluie, décrétant trois jours de prières pour la pluie et « pour la guérison de notre terre » . Pas mieux du côté de Michele Bachmann, qui affirme en août que l’ouragan Irene est un châtiment divin qui vise à attirer l’attention des responsables politiques sur les problèmes des Américains.

  • Rick Perry misquoted historian, who likened Texans’ “inherent chauvinism,” “belligerence” to Israel
    http://maxblumenthal.com/2011/09/rick-perry-distorted-historians-quote-which-compared-inherent-chauvin

    According to Fehrenbach, what Israel did to the Palestinians in 1947 and ‘48 — and continues to do — is analogous to the Texans’ treatment of the Comanches and Mexicans during the 19th century. The comparison highlights Israel’s distinction as the world’s last settler-colonial state; a country based on an anachronistic system of ethnic exclusivism. It is hard to imagine that Perry would have scored any political points by quoting Fehrenbach accurately. So instead, in the name of his presidential ambitions, he distorted and abused the writing of one of the Lone Star state’s most celebrated historians.

    Le négationnisme des sionistes, à nouveau.

  • Je ne sais pas si vous avez vu la retransmission de débat des primaires républicaines, mais le passage où Perry est applaudi par la foule parce qu’il a un record de 234 exécutions capitales m’a porté au bord de la gerbe...

    http://clesnes.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/09/10/rick-perry-et-ses-234-executions

    Le fait que le « score » de Rick Perry au Texas (234 exécutions depuis qu’il a succédé à George Bush comme gouverneur de l’Etat en décembre 2000) ait été chaudement applaudi pendant le dernier débat des présidentiables républicains, en a choqué quelques uns.

  • Rick Perry, prayer and stem cells: Unexpected consequences | The Economist
    http://www.economist.com/node/21525940?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/unexpectedconsequences

    ast month Mr Perry had an operation to fix a recurring back problem. While the surgeon was at it, he injected the governor with stem cells, in an experimental procedure meant to speed recovery.

    Pro-life conservatives oppose embryonic stem-cell research on the grounds that it destroys life. They are keen, however, on adult stem cells, which they hope may obviate the use of the embryonic kind. The stem cells used in Mr Perry’s procedure were his own. And the governor has been a proponent of adult stem-cell research, for economic reasons as well as ethical ones. If such treatments gain federal approval, and become more popular, Texas could be a centre of that industry.

  • Un nouveau pas des Républicains vers la théocratie : Bob McDonnell aussi est un reconstructionniste chrétien.

    Bob McDonnell To Succeed Rick Perry As RGA Chairman
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/15/bob-mcdonnell-rga-chairman-_n_926990.html

    The Republican Governors Association announced on Monday that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell will replace Texas Governor Rick Perry as chairman of the organization.

    McDonnell has been serving as vice-chair of the RGA. News that he will succeed Perry comes as no surprise and comes on the heels of the Lone Star State governor announcing that he will run for president in the next election cycle.

  • On apprend un nouveau mot : « dominionisme ». Et on joue à se faire peur très fort.

    Dominionism : Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry’s Dangerous Religious Bond - The Daily Beast
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/14/dominionism-michele-bachmann-and-rick-perry-s-dangerous-religious-bon

    With Tim Pawlenty out of the presidential race, it is now fairly clear that the GOP candidate will either be Mitt Romney or someone who makes George W. Bush look like Tom Paine. Of the three most plausible candidates for the Republican nomination, two are deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism known as Dominionism. If you want to understand Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, understanding Dominionism isn’t optional. 

    Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing.

    [...]

    We have not seen this sort of thing at the highest levels of the Republican Party before. Those of us who wrote about the Christian fundamentalist influence on the Bush administration were alarmed that one of his advisers, Marvin Olasky, was associated with Christian Reconstructionism. It seemed unthinkable, at the time, that an American president was taking advice from even a single person whose ideas were so inimical to democracy. Few of us imagined that someone who actually championed such ideas would have a shot at the White House. It turns out we weren’t paranoid enough. If Bush eroded the separation of church and state, the GOP is now poised to nominate someone who will mount an all-out assault on it. We need to take their beliefs seriously, because they certainly do.

  • Rick Perry and the Hucksterism of the Rich | Juan Cole | Informed Comment
    http://www.juancole.com/2011/08/rick-perry-and-the-hucksterism-of-the-rich.html

    Thus, Rick Perry not only denies global climate change but has sued to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from trying to curb emissions in Texas. Ironically, if anybody will suffer from global warming, it is Texans, and the warmer temperatures of recent years are hitting them especially hard.

    Perry’s response to Texas’s drought? To pray for rain.

    [...]

    Perry has links to a theocratic evangelical movement that, like the Khomeinists in Iran, believes that religion should take control of the 7 power centers in society, including the arts, media, the family, and the government.

  • Encore un fondamentaliste religieux qui entend des voix. Celui-ci est gouverneur du Texas et paraît-il futur candidat à la présidentielle états-unienne de 2012.

    Rick Perry, the “hawk internationalist” | The Cable
    http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/10/rick_perry_the_hawk_internationalist

    As for Middle East politics, during his 2009 race against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), Perry told a group of journalists, “My faith requires me to support Israel.” He also said that the Obama administration is “out of tune with America” on the question of Israel.

    Perry also talked about his time working with the Israel Defense Forces when he was in the Air Force. In August 2009, he traveled to Israel to receive the “Defender of Jerusalem Award.”

    [...]

    For Republicans outside the Perryverse, his approach to foreign policy and national security appear to be a natural extension of his personality: aggressive, unapologetic, and instinctive... all of the traits Republicans see as lacking in the Obama’s foreign policy.

    “He’s a cowboy,” said Michael Goldfarb, former senior staffer on John McCain’s presidential campaign. “You have to assume he’d shoot first and ask questions later — which would be nice after four years of a leading from behind, too little too late foreign policy.”

    Est-ce que les ricains vont encore nous faire subir un zinzin évangéliste au prochain tour ?

  • Office of the Governor Rick Perry [Proclamation] Gov. Perry Issues Proclamation for Days of Prayer for Rain in Texas
    http://governor.state.tx.us/news/proclamation/16038

    NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.

    Si ça ne suffit pas, le mois prochain, le gouverneur Rick Perry proclamera un mois de danse de la pluie. Et après ça, on brulera des sorcières.