position:driver

Exclusive: I Saw Nasrallah in Qusair - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/nasrallah-qusair-hezbollah.html

??

I stared at the man sitting beside the driver: The face was familiar, but something was missing. It was clear I was face to face with Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, without a turban, wearing a military uniform. He smiled and nodded to me, and while I was still in shock, the car was out of sight. There was no convoy, only one car, but as I said before, there were security measures taken in the city and around.

It took me some time to confirm that whom I saw was Nasrallah. When I returned to Beirut, I started my investigations to confirm it, and I did.

While investigating, I came across another piece of information: this visit wasn’t the first for Nasrallah to Qusair during this very crisis. “Sayyed Nasrallah went to Qusair a day before the start of the battle: he met the commanders, visited some injured fighters and gave a speech,” a source close to Hezbollah told me, “He spoke for around half an hour with his main commanders exchanging ideas on the battle and the expectations and how many days it’ll take them to finish it.”

As for the latest visit, the one day after the offensive, our source said that Nasrallah visited the city of Qusair and the towns around it in the country side. He added, “Sayyed Nasrallah wanted to thank the fighters personally, he met them, met the injured, and went around the area.”

I asked the source how Nasrallah is able to move from Beirut to Qusair in Syria and sometimes travel to Iran while Israel is saying that he is hiding.

“It’s a hide-and-seek game,” he replied, “Nasrallah’s security apparatus is professional enough to know when to move and how. No one knows what they do and what their measure are, we only know when things are done.”

Nasrallah’s visit to Qusair shows once again that the group’s fight in Syria isn’t a matter of interests, it’s a matter of existence.

Le corps (4/4) : « Le troisième sexe », Sur les docks (#France_Culture)
http://www.franceculture.fr/emission-sur-les-docks-le-corps-44-%C2%AB-le-troisieme-sexe-%C2%BB-201

Et si lorsque l’enfant paraît… Il n’est ni fille, ni garçon ? Quelle case cocher ? L’état civil n’en prévoit que deux pour déclarer le #sexe d’un individu, ignorant ainsi en quelque sorte les cas d’ambigüité sexuelle du nouveau-né.

Ces troubles du développement concernent entre 1,7 et 4 % des naissances selon la définition des cas d’#intersexualité. Beaucoup de ces enfants intersexués ont grandi dans un climat de secret ; celui de leur différence, mais aussi celui de chirurgies ou de traitements médicaux souvent décidés dès leur naissance.

Dans ce documentaire, certains d’entre eux parlent pour dénoncer ces mutilations, mais aussi pour oser la question… et pourquoi pas un troisième sexe ?

http://media.radiofrance-podcast.net/podcast09/10177-06.06.2013-ITEMA_20487823-0.mp3

La biologiste #Anne_Fausto-Sterling parle même de 5 sexes : féminin, masculin, herm (hermaphrodite complet), ferm (hermaphrodite tendance féminine), merm (hermaphrodite tendance masculine) : "The Five Sexes : Why Male and Female Are Not Enough"
http://capone.mtsu.edu/phollowa/5sexes.html

"The Five Sexes, Revisited" (l’article initial avait reçu des critiques, elle les a prises en compte dans ce second papier) :
http://www.neiu.edu/~lsfuller/5sexesrevisited.htm

Le #livre, traduit en français chez Payot
http://www.payot-rivages.net/livre_Les-cinq-sexes-Anne-Fausto-Sterling_ean13_9782228908856.html

#intersexes #genre #audio #radio

Syria, like Iraq and Lebanon, is on path toward sectarian split
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/05/193092/syria-like-iraq-and-lebanon-is.html

The men from the last Alawite family in the northern Syrian town of Darkush have been kidnapped twice. The Saleh men were fortunate both times: They were released by rebels who’d suspected them of being agents for the government of President Bashar Assad.

Their good fortune wasn’t shared by the rest of the Alawites who used to live here. They’ve all left, a pattern that’s been repeated across Syria and mirrors the demographic changes that war brought to its neighbors, Iraq and Lebanon, in past years.

That tension between various religious sects has become a driver of Syria’s civil war, a development that was at the center of a U.N. report released Tuesday that decried the sharp, savage turn in the country’s violence. “The parties to the conflict are using dangerous rhetoric that inflames sectarian tensions and risks inciting mass, indiscriminate violence, particularly against vulnerable communities,” warned the report, compiled by an international panel of inquiry on Syria for the U.N.’s Human Rights Council.

Ezra Caldwell / Interview / The Photographic Journal
http://thephotographicjournal.com/interviews/ezra-caldwell

belle interview du photographe new-yorkais Ezra Caldwell, où il parle notamment de #danse, de #photographie, de #vélo (il en fabrique), et de #cancer (il en meurt)
http://thephotographicjournal.com/assets/images/ezra-caldwell/cancer-faces.jpg

Resistance Seen in EU to Blacklisting Hezbollah
http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-245700

All 27 EU member states must agree for Hezbollah to be added to the list. U.K. officials have said they hope for a final EU decision in June.

“My guess is it’s going to take some time” to reach a decision, said one EU diplomat briefed on the discussions. “There is no unanimity yet” on blacklisting Hezbollah, the person added, citing “big doubts” among a handful of member states.

Two other diplomats said about six countries appeared reluctant, including Finland, Austria and Ireland, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. Sweden has also traditionally been cautious.

[…]

One of the main concerns is the clarity of evidence linking Hezbollah to the Burgas attacks, which even some officials from member states in favor of blacklisting say appears circumstantial. The new Bulgarian government’s caution about whether to include Hezbollah on the terror list has also weighed on discussions, several diplomats said.

M of A - Erdogan Is Toast
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/06/erdogan-is-toast.html#more

There are now four possible ways out of these troubles:

The protests run out of steam and peter out. Unlikely in my view, especially as the labor unions are now joining.
Erdogan becomes a humble man, stops the Taksim square project and apologizes. This would be counter to everything that is know about Erdogan’s personality and seems unlikely.
The military launches a coup. It is dubious that a majority of Turks would support another coup and the military might not be willing to take on the burden. Why not just sit back, simply watch the show and smile?
Some faction in Erodgan’s AKP launches a party coup against him and put him out of office.

For now my bet is on the third alternative. But it will take a while. More clashes - maybe even outright shootings, more economic damage, more political strife will happen before someone dares to take the sultan down. The process could take weeks or months. But however it ends Erdogan will, in the end, lose out. There is no going back. He is toast.

Was Pablo Neruda killed by Pinochet?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/was-pablo-neruda-killed-by-pinochet-8641352.html

Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda, described as the “greatest poet of the 20th century” and known for his romantic works, died on 23 September, 1973, after battling prostate cancer. Now prosecutors claim he was murdered on the orders of Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

#chili

Ici, le Commitee to Protect Journalists justifie le meurtre d’une journaliste syrienne :
http://cpj.org/2013/05/syrian-correspondent-killed-by-sniper-fire.php

Abbas had gained prominence for her reporting on the front lines while embedded with government forces. In her last report from Al-Qusayr, Abbas can be seen wearing camouflage that closely resembles the uniforms of the Assad army. In the report, broadcast the day before her death, she described clashes between the Syrian army and the rebels, who she called “terrorists” and “mercenaries.”

(Signalé par un lecteur d’Angry Arab.)

Liban. Hezbollah (21 mai 2013)

La Grande Bretagne demande que la branche militaire du Hezbollah soit inscrite sur la liste européenne des organisations terroristes. (1) Bruxelles pourrait examiner cette requête début juin. Londres argue que le Hezbollah est responsable de l’attentat à l’aéroport de Burgas (Bulgarie, 18 juillet 2012) qui a coûté la vie à cinq Israéliens et un Bulgare (juillet 2013) et qu’il a été impliqué dans la préparation d’opérations contre des touristes israéliens à Chypre. Les Etats membres de l’Union européenne – notamment la France et la Suède - ont toujours été réticents à adopter cette mesure avec le souci de préserver le fragile équilibre politique libanais, de continuer à considérer le Hezbollah comme un parti politique et de garder une ligne de communication avec un mouvement qui, par ailleurs, offre de nombreux services sociaux à la population libanaise. Certains s jugent que la distinction entre parti politique et branche militaire du Hezbollah n’est pas pertinente et que le Hezbollah devrait être considéré comme une seule entité (2).

Le contexte est favorable à l’examen de la demande britannique par les Européens. La participation du Hezbollah libanais aux combats dans la ville de Qoussaïr (Syrie) aux côtés du régime d’Assad ne peut que contrecarrer les objectifs de ceux qui soutiennent l’opposition syrienne. La Grande Bretagne (en 2008) et les Pays Bas sont les deux seuls Etats membres qui ont déjà inscrit le Hezbollah (branche militaire) sur leur liste nationale de personnes et d’organisations terroristes. C’est aussi le cas des Etats Unis. La France (3) et la Suède ont fait savoir qu’elles n’avaient encore rien décidé. L’inscription sur une « liste terroriste » européenne vaut interdiction de toutes opérations bancaires sur le territoire européen (ce qui rend impossible par exemple la collecte de fonds à destination), gel des avoirs, interdiction de circuler, etc. Les sanctions sont modulables. Elles doivent être décidées à l’unanimité des 27.

Britain asks EU to put Hezbollah armed wing on terror list (21 May 2013)

(1) http://www.euronews.com/newswires/1963974-uk-asks-eu-to-put-hezbollah-military-wing-on-terror-list-diplomat
(2) http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/why-doesnt-europe-think-hezbollah-is-a-terror-group
(3) http://basedoc.diplomatie.gouv.fr/vues/Kiosque/FranceDiplomatie/kiosque.php?type=ppfr

Selon Al Mayadeen, l’armée syrienne a capturé un véhicule de brouillage de communications israélien à Al Qusayr.

قناة الميادين - الأخبار - « خاص الميادين » : آلية عسكرية إسرائيلية بالقصير
http://www.almayadeen.net/ar/news/syria-ATWPWvu3f02cmqHEAM3p7g/%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%B5-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%

قناة الميادين تعرض صورا حصرية لآلية عسكرية إسرائيلية من نوع جيب مزودة بأجهزة اتصالات كان يستخدمها مقاتلو المعارضة وتمت مصادرتها من قبل الجيش السوري، والعميد المتقاعد هشام جابر يعلق على الخبر بالقول إنه دليل على «تورط خطير لإسرائيل في الاحداث السورية».

Tsvetan Tsvetanov and Hezbollah
http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2013/05/tsvetan-tsvetanov-and-hezbollah.html

You might remember that this Tsvetan Tsvetanov is the Interior minister that pretended to have “well-grounded reasons” to implicate Hezbollah in an attack against Israeli tourists:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/bulgaria-hezbollah-bus-bomb-attack
“We have well-grounded reasons to suggest that the two were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah,” said Tsvetan Tsvetanov, Bulgaria’s interior minister

So, with 2 major political scandals on the Tsvetanov, I would bet that the accusation against Hezbollah is now dead.

178 self-immolations in Tunisia reflect despair of jobless Mideast youth

►http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/178-self-immolations-in-tunisia-reflect-despair-of-jobless-mideast-youth-including-vendor/2013/05/11/1e430bc0-ba61-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_print.html

In Tunisia, about 230,000 university graduates are unemployed, making up one-third of the jobless, according to the National Institute of Statistics. The Union of Unemployed University Graduates puts the actual number of jobless graduates closer to 350,000, saying many have stopped looking for work.

The few jobs available are awarded through nepotism and political connections, according to union member Soheil Idoudi, 32, who has an engineering degree but never worked in his field. His four college-educated siblings survive on odd jobs.

The problem is especially acute because in the Middle East, a job is often the first building block of adult life, as Adel soon found. Without a job, a young man cannot get married. And without marriage, a couple cannot live together.

GRANDEUR ET DECADENCE (RAPIDE) DE YAIR LAPID, MINISTRE DES FINANCES ISRAELIEN.
The meteoric rise and fall of Yair Lapid - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-meteoric-rise-and-fall-of-yair-lapid.premium-1.523567

Yair Lapid is finished. Wiped out. Done for.

His popular newspaper column was called Lo Sofi (“not final”). Well, this time it is final.

His political downfall will be a protracted one, but the end is certain. Lapid and his party will go down in history as just another meteoric episode in Israel’s political history, like Yitzhak Mordechai and the Center Party, like Rafi Eitan and the Pensioners Party, and yes, of course, like Tommy Lapid (Yair Lapid’s father) and Shinui.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The fall will be painful. It could also be ugly – falls usually are ugly.

It certainly happened quickly, even compared with meteors and comets — which, as everybody knows, burn out rapidly. Just two weeks ago, after lashing out against the Haredim in his speech from the Knesset podium, Lapid soared in hypothetical polls to 29 seats.

In a poll taken this week, almost half his voters said they regretted having voted for him and would not do so again.

It’s hard to imagine that new people will be joining his party. In rough figures, that puts him at 10 seats. That figure, too, will go down, probably stabilizing at about six seats — the hard core of historic Lapidists, in other words, bourgeois Ashkenazim who abominate anyone who is not like them who they think are spoiling the country (Haredim, Arabs, Mizrahim, settlers, left-wingers, socialists).

178 self-immolations in Tunisia reflect despair of jobless Mideast youth, including vendor - The Washington Post
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/178-self-immolations-in-tunisia-reflect-despair-of-jobless-mideast-youth-including-vendor/2013/05/11/1e430bc0-ba61-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_print.html

Adel is one of 178 people in Tunisia who have set themselves on fire since the self-immolation two years ago of another high school dropout-turned-street vendor launched the Arab Spring.

...

In Tunis, Issam briefly took over Adel’s stand, but has since returned to construction. He finds life unbearably lonely without his father and brother. He says getting married is out of the question as long as he has to support his mother and brothers.

He remembers how he and Adel talked after Bouazizi’s self-immolation.

They agreed it was “just inconceivable” that either of them would do such a thing.

The New Cartographers | Science Careers

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_03_18/caredit.a1300045?goback=%2Egde_1033567_member_236148631

The New Cartographers
By Emily Underwood
March 18, 2013

Twenty years ago, a driver lost at night would pull his car over, take out a paper map bought at a gas station, and pore over its folds under a dim light. With luck and some critical thinking, he would eventually get where he was going. Today, he’d be more likely to swipe his finger across a smart phone screen and follow directions using Google Maps.

As maps have changed, so have mapmakers. No longer static images, maps have become active interfaces for information exchange, continuously determining where we are in relation to distant satellites and suggesting where we ought to go, says Seth Spielman, a 38-year-old geography professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Today, the global geoservices industry collects, shares, and analyzes data on an unprecedented scale. It’s valued at as much as $270 billion per year and employs 500,000 people in the United States, according to a recent report from Google. The rapid transformation, which Spielman equates with a “renaissance” in the field, has overturned traditional ideas of what a geographer does.

#cartographie

Est-ce que quelqu’un ici arrive à faire fonctionner la GamePad API du HTML5, telle que décrite ici :
http://www.gamepadjs.com
et théoriquement testable là :
http://sgraham.github.io/gamepad.js/example

Sur mon Mac, je n’arrive rigoureusement à rien :
– Chrome ne me propose pas, dans chrome ://flags, d’activer quoi que ce soit concernant une manette de jeu ;
– Firefox répond au javascript qu’il connaît cette API, mais n’interagit pas du tout avec mes manettes (mais aucune d’elle n’est un contrôleur Xbox, ce sont de banales manettes USB – dont celle de la Freebox).

Et sous Parallels avec Windows XP, pas mieux.

Et tu vas pas le croire : on répond à un appel d’offre dans lequel ce serait top-kikou que je puisse contrôler une appli HTML5 avec un joystick. #mouahaha

#javascript #HTML5

Why is that cyclist in the middle of the road ? http://bikeyface.com/2012/12/05/middle-of-the-road #cycling

BIlan sécuritaire du WE du Grand Prix de Formule 1 :
–8000 policiers déployés,
–1000 Molotov, 137 pneus, 72 extincteurs saisis (d’après le chef de la police)
–deux jeunes filles arrêtées soupçonnées de préparer une attaque contre le circuit.

“The danger facing the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council concerns each and everyone of us and demands that we be united,” he said at a consultative meeting of GCC interior ministers in Manama, the BNA reported.

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/sports/bahrain-police-arrest-2-girls-over-bid-to-attack-f1

Twitter / aletecno : Argentina pone en órbita al ...
https://twitter.com/aletecno/status/327502117545836544/photo/1

Trafic d’êtres humains dans le Sinaï : ça continue

By the count of Human Rights Watch, thousands of sub-Saharan asylum seekers and migrants have fallen victim to abusive traffickers and other criminals in the Sinai. The organization has called on the Egyptian government to use its increased law enforcement operations in the area to rescue victims of trafficking and end the abuses. The Israeli government says some 58,000 sub-Saharan African nationals have crossed into Israel via the Sinai. Rights advocates say Eritrean migrants interviewed in Israel report having been subjected to serious abuses in the Sinai, including beating, whipping, branding, electric shock, being buried, exposed to the sun, sexual abuse, threat of execution, shooting, and threats of organ removal.

http://www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairoreview/Pages/articleDetails.aspx?aid=334

Inside America’s Dirty Wars
http://www.thenation.com/article/173980/inside-americas-dirty-wars?page=full

While the battle over leaks concerning the operation—as well as the various contradictory stories on how bin Laden was killed—raged in the media, the White House was deeply immersed in planning more lethal operations against so-called “High Value Targets.” Chief among these was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen of Yemeni descent born in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

#JSOC #exécutions #guerre

La voiture autonome n’est pas pour demain - Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/review/513531/proceed-with-caution-toward-the-self-driving-car

Will Knight pour la Technology Review estime que nous avons plus besoin d’une technologie qui augmente les capacités du conducteur que d’une technologie qui les rend obsolètes. La voiture autonome n’est pas pour demain et la recherche d’une technologie équilibrée n’est pas si simple, car la voiture autonome pourrait plutôt décourager notre attention que de la favoriser, estime le journaliste qui a testé et rend compte de différents systèmes de conduite assistée. Le problème estime un spécialiste (...)

#voitureautonome #transport #mobilité

Une norvégienne perdue dans la montagne par très mauvais temps a la vie sauve grâce à son téléphone portable et un SMS.

Hello Eirin, la Croix-rouge a lancé une grande opération de recherche pour te retrouver. S’il te plait, clique sur le lien ci-dessous, et ce sera alors beaucoup plus facile de te repérer

http://www.nrk.no/drfront/resources/img/2013/04/05/w=638|68350.jpg

Hello Eirin, nous savons exactement où tu es. Les secours vont arriver bientôt. Reste en mouvement, et surtout, ne bouge pas d’où tu es.

Denne SMSen reddet Eirins liv - Nordland - NRK Nyheter

http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/nordland/1.10975013

Etter å ha vært savnet i nesten seks timer på den 1200 meter høye Gråtåtinden i nordlandskommunen Beiarn, ble 37-åringen reddet takket være et helt nytt sporingssystem som ble testet ut i påsken.
Beiarn (Foto : Eirin Martinsen)

På en skitur ved Gråtåtinden påskeaften skiftet været seg dramatisk fra sol til vind, snø og null sikt.

Islamic Restrictions Hinder Artists, Singers in Gaza - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/islamic-restrictions-gaza-artists.html

Driving in the Surveillance Society : Cameras, RFID tags and Black Boxes... — Centre for Internet and Society
http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/driving-in-the-surveillance-society-cameras-rfid-black-boxes

installing red light cameras, but by also including radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on vehicles´ number plates, as well as by installing electronic toll collection systems and black boxes in some automobiles. Although such measures could potentially increase our safety, privacy concerns have arisen as it remains unclear how data collected will be used.

#voiture #automobile #surveillance vs #sécurité (à rapprocher des discussions sur les #autopilotes)