GameStop: Sony pulling game cards won’t “have a material impact” on sales
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-03-gamestop-sony-pulling-game-cards-wont-have-a-material-impa
Executive chairman Daniel DeMatteo believes PS4 owners will still fund digital purchases by buying currency in-store
European Border and Coast Guard: The Commission welcomes agreement on a standing corps of 10,000 border guards by 2027
Today, the Council green-lighted the political agreement reached last week to reinforce the European Border and Coast Guard, giving it the right level of ambition to respond to the common challenges Europe is facing in managing migration and borders.
The centre piece of the reinforced Agency will be a standing corps of 10,000 border guards – ready to support Member States at any time. The Agency will also have a stronger mandate on returns and will cooperate more closely with non-EU countries, including those beyond the EU’s immediate neighbourhood. Agreed in the record time of just over 6 months, the new European Border and Coast Guard represents a step-change in the EU’s ability to collectively better protect Europe’s external borders.
Welcoming the agreement, First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said: “In an area of free movement without internal border controls, strengthening and managing Europe’s external borders is a shared responsibility. I am glad to see that a 10,000-strong standing corps with the necessary equipment will help Member States to better protect our borders and our citizens. By working together constructively and swiftly, we can create a safer Europe.”
Commissioner for Home Affairs, Migration and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos added: “From now onwards, the European Border and Coast Guard will have the full operational capacity and powers needed to effectively and fully support Member States on the ground, at all times. Better controlling our external borders, fighting irregular migration, carrying out returns and cooperating with third countries – we can only succeed if we do this together. Ultimately, this will also help preserve the long-term viability of the Schengen area of free movement.”
The Agency supports Member States and does not replace their responsibilities in external border management and return. The reinforced European Border and Coast Guard Agency will be equipped with more resources and capabilities including:
A standing corps of 10,000 border guards: A standing corps of 10,000 border guards will be set up by 2027 and will ensure that the Agency can support Member States whenever and wherever needed. The standing corps will bring together Agency staff as well as border guards and return experts seconded or deployed by Member States, who will support the over 100,000 national border guards in their tasks. In addition, the Agency will have a budget to acquire its own equipment, such as vessels, planes and vehicles.
Executive powers: The standing corps will be able to carry out border control and return tasks, such as identity checks, authorising entry at the external borders, and carrying out borders’ surveillance – only with the agreement of the host Member State.
More support on return: In addition to organising and financing joint return operations, the Agency will now also be able to support Member States at all stages of return process with Member States remaining responsible for taking return decisions. This support will include for example by identifying non-EU nationals with no right to stay or acquiring travel documents.
Stronger cooperation with non-EU countries: The Agency will be able – subject to prior agreement of the country concerned – to launch joint operations and deploy staff outside the EU, beyond countries neighbouring the EU, to provide support on border and migration management.
Antenna offices: The Agency will be able to set up antenna offices in Member States and in a non-EU country (subject to a status agreement) to support logistically its operational activities and guarantee the smooth running of the Agency’s operations.
Next steps
The European Parliament’s LIBE Committee still has to confirm the political agreement reached in trilogues on 28 March. Then both the European Parliament and the Council will have to formally adopt the Regulation. The text will then be published in the Official Journal of the European Union and the European Border and Coast Guard’s enhanced mandate will enter into force 20 days later. The new European Border and Coast Guard standing corps will be available for deployment starting from 2021, once it becomes fully operational and will reach its full capacity of 10,000 border guards by 2027.
Background
The European Border and Coast Guard was established in 2016, building on existing structures of Frontex, to meet the new challenges and political realities faced by the EU, both as regards migration and internal security. The reliance on voluntary Member States’ contributions of staff and equipment has however resulted in persistent gaps affecting the efficiency of the support the European Border and Coast Guard could offer to Member States.
In his 2018 State of the Union Address President Juncker announced that the Commission will reinforce the European Border and Coast Guard even further. The objective of this upgrade was to equip the Agency with a standing corps of 10,000 operational staff and with its own equipment to ensure that the EU has the necessary capabilities in place — constantly and reliably. On 28 March, the European Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement on the Commission’s proposal, which was confirmed by the Council.
▻http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-1929_en.htm
Après #Frontex, #Frontex_plus (►https://seenthis.net/tag/frontex_plus)
Après Frontex plus, #Frontex_plus_plus
#renvois #expulsions #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #asile #migrations #réfugiés #externalisation #business
First Frontex #patrol_cars
For the first time in its history, Frontex is starting to use its own patrol cars in its various field deployments at Europe’s borders. This marks a leap forward in the agency’s efforts to develop a pool of its own equipment.
Leggeri dit :
« Vous savez ce qui arrive après ? », lance-t-il à nous, spectateurs ébahis. « Des vans, pour enregistrer les migrants illégaux, des drones, des navires, des avions et d’autres équipements technologiques qui seront déployés »
#voiture #équipement #propre_équipement #Fabrice_Leggeri #Leggeri #vidéo
ping @karine4 @isskein
AWIP Expands Local Network, Launches New South Bay Chapter in Silicon Valley
▻https://hackernoon.com/awip-expands-local-network-launches-new-south-bay-chapter-in-silicon-val
Inaugural Chapter Kickoff with a Panel Discussion Headlined by Shay Mowlem, enterprise software industry veteranAdvancing women in B2B product management via skills-based training and executive mentorshipSAN FRANCISCO — September 12, 2018 — Advancing Women in Product (AWIP), the organization empowering high-potential female product and tech leaders through equality of opportunity, is announcing the launch of a new South Bay chapter, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, to build a community that provides career development and networking opportunities for product managers (PMs).“We are excited to expand the AWIP network to South Bay and bring our services to PMs and tech leaders within this community,” said Nancy Wang, CEO & Founder of AWIP. “With the gender ratio in enterprise-focused (...)
Strategies to Help PMs get Executive Buy-in — Event by Advancing #women in Product (AWIP)
▻https://hackernoon.com/strategies-to-help-pms-get-executive-buy-in-event-by-advancing-women-in-
Strategies to Help PMs get Executive Buy-in — Event by Advancing Women in Product (AWIP)Credits: #awip Team, Thuria Narayan (AWIP Program Lead for October), Hanh Bui (AWIP Program Lead for December and who co-wrote this article with me), Carol Wong (AWIP Partnerships Lead)As Product Managers and other tech professionals grow in their careers, executive buy-in becomes key to growing your career. Projects, deadlines, and especially budding new stealth product lines all require executives as an organization to help sponsor and later, foster the product’s growth.On Wednesday, October 17th, Advancing Women in Product (AWIP), brought together a panel of senior Product Managers at Plaid: Scott Zuccarino (Manager of Product Management, Thumbtack), and Meryam Bukhari (Product Manager, Yelp), Kate (...)
GameStop appoints George Sherman as new CEO
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-03-22-gamestop-appoints-george-sherman-as-its-new-ceo
Sherman held executive roles at Best Buy, Target and Home Depot
Saudi students in U.S. say their government watches their every move | PBS NewsHour
▻https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/saudi-students-in-u-s-say-their-government-watches-their-every-move
The #surveillance of Saudi Arabian students is not a new phenomenon, said former FBI agent Frank Montoya, who served as the director of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive from 2012 to 2014. He says while he was there, he heard of a couple of cases, but it was never a priority because the agency did not believe it was a trend.
But Montoya said that according to agents he has spoken still serving with FBI, the practice of watching students in the U.S. has dramatically expanded under Prince Mohammed — also known as MBS.
#ai to Transform The Financial Services: Six Examples
▻https://hackernoon.com/ai-to-transform-the-financial-services-six-examples-dface3971532?source=
Artificial Intelligence is not a new kid on the block, but rather an integral part of a growing number of industries. Forward-thinking executive managers and business owners actively explore new AI use in finance and other areas to get a competitive edge on the market.First used mostly in computer science, AI now has advanced to the most important areas of our life, e.g.:TransportationEducationHealth careFinancial services.The rise of AI in the financial industry shows how fast it’s gaining traction, even in traditionally conservative areas, and how quickly it’s changing the business landscape. Here are just some of the most popular examples of AI in finance.1. AI and Credit DecisionsArtificial Intelligence provides a faster, more accurate assessment of a potential borrower, at less cost, (...)
#artificial-intelligence #fintech #financial-services #banking
Les références françaises des suprématistes blancs américains, dans le New Yorker en 2017 : The French Origins of “You Will Not Replace Us”
►https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/the-french-origins-of-you-will-not-replace-us
Spencer said that “clearly racialist” writers such as Benoist and Faye were “central influences” on his own thinking as an identitarian. He first discovered the work of Nouvelle Droite figures in the pages of Telos, an American journal of political theory. Most identitarians have a less scholarly bent. In 2002, a right-wing French insurrectionary, Maxime Brunerie, shot at President Jacques Chirac as he rode down the Champs-Élysées; the political group that Brunerie was affiliated with, Unité Radicale, became known as part of the identitaire movement. In 2004, a group known as the Bloc Identitaire became notorious for distributing soup containing pork to the homeless, in order to exclude Muslims and Jews. It was the sort of puerile joke now associated with alt-right pranksters in America such as Milo Yiannopoulos.
Copycat groups began emerging across Europe. In 2009, a Swedish former mining executive, Daniel Friberg, founded, in Denmark, the publishing house Arktos, which is now the world’s largest distributor of far- and alt-right literature. The son of highly educated, left-leaning parents, Friberg grew up in a wealthy suburb of Gothenburg. He embraced right-wing thought after attending a diverse high school, which he described as overrun with crime. In 2016, he told the Daily Beast, “I had been taught to think multiculturalism was great, until I experienced it.”
Few European nations have changed as drastically or as quickly as Sweden. Since 1960, it has added one and a half million immigrants to its population, which is currently just under ten million; a nationalist party, the Sweden Democrats, has become the country’s main opposition group. During this period, Friberg began to devour books on European identity—specifically, those of Benoist and Faye, whose key works impressed him as much as they impressed Richard Spencer. When Friberg launched Arktos, he acquired the rights to books by Benoist and Faye and had them translated into Swedish and English. Spencer told me that Arktos “was a very important development” in the international popularization of far-right identitarian thought.
Le créneau très haut de gamme des croisières de luxe se porte bien, merci…
MSC Cruises Inks 2 Billion Euro Order for New Luxury Ships – gCaptain
▻https://gcaptain.com/msc-cruises-inks-2-billion-euro-order-for-new-luxury-ships
MSC and Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri have announced the signing of the final contracts for the construction of four luxury cruise ships to join MSC Cruises fleet.
All four vessels will have gross tonnage of approximately 64,000 GT, 481 guest suites, and will feature the latest maritime and environmental technology.
The first of the four ships is expected to be delivered by Spring 2023. The remaining three will come into service at the rate of one per year through 2026.
The announcement follows the signing of a memorandum of agreement between the two parties in October 2018. Fincantieri said the contracts, subject to shipowner financing, have a total value exceeding EUR 2 billion,
The order marks MSC Cruises’ entry into the high-end ultra-luxury cruise sector.
“With this now firm order, MSC is entering a new segment that bears significant potential globally,” said Pierfrancesco Vago, Executive Chairman of MSC’s Cruises Division. “While we already serve the premium market with the MSC Yacht Club featured on MSC Cruises’ fleet, our new true luxury brand will deliver to this separate and fast-growing segment with super-yacht vessels and an experience to match that. Additionally, we are proud to partner again with Fincantieri for the development and construction of yet again another highly-innovative and exclusive class of ships.”
Since starting to work with Fincantieri, in 2014, MSC has also ordered four ships for its contemporary MSC Cruises brand worth a total value of EUR 3.2 billion. The first two of these vessels, MSC Seaside and MSC Seaview, are already in service. The next two vessels will be delivered in 2021 and 2023, with MSC Seashore already under construction at Fincantieri’s yard in Monfalcone.
Former Rovio executive launches gaming management consultancy
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-03-13-former-rovio-executive-launches-gaming-management-consulta
Will Luton heading up Department of Play, which has already worked on projects with Jagex
Seven Key Takeaways from Our Journey Through Y Combinator’s #startup School
▻https://hackernoon.com/seven-key-takeaways-from-our-journey-through-y-combinator-startup-school
Late last year, my team participated in the much talked-about Y Combinator Startup School on behalf of our startup, Affine Finance. We were assigned a great mentor (former C-level executive at Zynga and a startup advisor at multiple other prominent accelerators). It was a 10-week program, with weekly live sessions conducted both in-person and online (since I was close to YC’s Mountain View offices, I ended up attending most of the sessions in-person). The live sessions touched upon a broad range of topics — everything from legal matters to design and product development.YC had grouped the startups that were a part of the program into teams of 10–15 companies. In order to “graduate”, the teams were required to:1) Do weekly mentor office hours (a 2-hour group call with our mentor with all (...)
#y-combinator-school #startup-school #ycombinator #hackernoon-top-story
An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing about Suffering
▻https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jii/4750978.0006.107/--interview-with-ryszard-kapuscinski-writing-about-suffering?rgn=mai
Wolfe:
Were you trained as a journalist? Kapuscinski: No, never. I started in journalism in 1950 — I was 18, just finishing secondary school, and the newspaper people came to ask me to work. I learned journalism through practice.
Wolfe: How would you describe your genre?
Kapuscinski: It’s very difficult to describe. We have such a mixture now, such a fusion of different genres… in the American tradition you would call it New Journalism. This implies writing about the facts, the real facts of life, but using the techniques of fiction writing. There is a certain difference in my case, because I’m trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing… My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration, as concentration, as a purpose. The second is reading literature on the subject: books, articles, scholarship. The third is reflection, which comes from travel and reading. My books are created from a combination of these three elements.
Wolfe:When did the idea of Aesopian writing enter into the genre, the idea of putting layers into official texts?
Kapuscinski: Well, this is not a new thing — it was a nineteenth-century Russian tradition. As for us, we were trying to use all the available possibilities, because there wasn’t any underground. Underground literature only began in the 70s, when technical developments made it possible. Before that, we were involved in a game with the censors. That was our struggle. The Emperor is considered to be an Aesopian book in Poland and the Soviet Union. Of course it’s not about Ethiopia or Haile Selassie — rather, it’s about the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The First Secretary at the time was named Gierek, and he was very much the emperor with his court, and everybody read the book as being about him and the Central Committee.
Wolfe: But you didn’t write explicitly about the Central Committee.
Kapuscinski: No, but of course the authorities knew what it was about, and so it had a very small circulation, and it was forbidden to turn it into a film or a play. Aesopian language was used by all of us. And of course, using this language meant having readers who understood it.
Cohen: The other day we were discussing the crisis of readership, and wondering whether people were still capable of doing the double reading, of taking apart a text that has been written in a complicated way.
Kapuscinski: The limitation of sources under the Communists had a very political effect on reading. People had just one book, and nothing else — no television or other diversions — so they just read the same book very carefully several times. Readership was high, and very attentive. It was people’s only source of knowledge about the world. You have to understand that the tradition of Russian literature — and Russians are great readers — is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart. This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession. This art of reading, reading the text behind the text, is missing now.
Cohen: When did you first arrive on the African continent?
Kapuscinski:My first trip to Africa came when the first countries south of the Sahara became independent, in 1958. Ghana was the first African country I visited. I wrote a series of reports about Nkumrah and Lumumba. My second trip was just two years later, when I went to cover the events surrounding the independence of the Congo. At that time, I was not allowed to go to Kinshasa — it was Leopoldville at that time — but I crossed the Sudan-Congo border illegally with a Czech journalist friend, since there was nobody patrolling it. And I went to Kisangani, which was called Stanleyville then.
Cohen: Were you in Leopoldville during the actual transfer[1]?
Kapuscinski:No, afterwards. It was a moment of terrible international tension. I remember the atmosphere of danger: there was the expectation that the Congo might begin a new world war. I say this today and people just smile. But that’s why everybody was so nervous: Russians were going there, Americans were going there, the French, the United Nations… I remember one moment at the airport in Kisangani, thinking that Soviet planes were coming — all the journalists were there, and we all expected it to happen.
Cohen: At that time, in the early 1960s, there weren’t more than three regular American journalists covering Africa.
Kapuscinski:There were very few, because most correspondents came from the former colonial powers — there were British, French, and a lot of Italians, because there were a lot of Italian communities there. And of course there were a lot of Russians.
Wolfe: Was there competition among this handful of people?
Kapuscinski: No, we all cooperated, all of us, East and West, regardless of country, because the working conditions were really terrible. We had to. We always moved in groups from one coup d’état to another, from one war to another… So if there was a coup d’état of leftist orientation in some country I took my Western colleagues with me and said “look, let them come in,” and if there was one of rightist orientation they took me, saying “no, he’s okay, give him a visa please, he’s going with us, he’s our friend,” and so on. I didn’t compete with the New York Times, for example, because the Polish press agency is a small piece of cake, not important. And because conditions were so hard. For example, to send the news out, there was no e-mail, nothing: telex was the only means, but telex was very rare in Africa. So if somebody was flying to Europe, we gave him correspondence, to send after he arrived. I remember that during the period leading up to independence in Angola in 1975, I was the only correspondent there at all for three months. I was in my hotel room when somebody knocked on my door - I opened it, and a man said, “I’m the New York Times correspondent.” The official independence celebration was going to be held over four or five days, and a group of journalists from all over the world was allowed to fly in, because Angola was closed otherwise. So he said, “I’m sorry, but I’m the new man here, and I heard you’ve been here longer, and I have to write something from Angola, and this is the article I have to send to the New York Times. Could you kindly read it and correct things which are not real?” And he brought a bottle of whiskey. And whiskey was something which was absolutely marvelous, because there was nothing: no cigarettes, no food, nothing…The difference at that time, in comparison with today, was that this was a group of highly specialized people. They were real Africanists, and not only from experience. If you read articles from that time in Le Monde, in the Times, you’ll find that the authors really had background, a knowledge of the subject. It was a very highly qualified sort of journalism — we were all great specialists.
Woodford: Professor Piotr Michalowski[2] says that when he was growing up in Poland, people lived through your reports in a very special way: they were like a big, exotic outlet, given the state of world politics. People of all ranks and stations followed these adventures. When you went back, did regular Poles, non-educated people, also want you to tell them about what it was like to see these things?
Kapuscinski:Yes, very much so. They were very interested in what I was writing. This was a unique source of information, and Africa held incomparably greater interest for them at that time than it does now. People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.
Wolfe: What did the Poles know about Africa?
Kapuscinski: They had very limited knowledge. This was very typical of the European understanding of Africa, which is full of stereotypes and biases. Nevertheless, there was a certain fascination with Africa. Maybe it has something to do with our literature: we have Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, for example, and Conrad is considered in Poland as a Polish writer. The similarity between Africa and Poland - and this is an argument I have always had with people in Africa - is that we were also a colonized country. We were a colony for 130 years. We lost independence at the end of the 18th century, and only regained it in 1918, after the First World War. We were divided between three colonial powers - Russia, Prussia, and Austria. There’s a certain similarity of experience. I’ve often quarreled with African friends about this. I’ve asked, “How long were you colonized?” "Eighty years," they’ve answered, and I’ve responded, “We were colonized 50 years longer, so what can you say about colonialism? I’ll tell you what colonial experience is.” And they’re shocked. But though there is a similarity of experience, the common people are not conscious of this.
Wolfe: At the end of the Copernicus Lecture, you said that you wrote Imperium because it was important to bring a Polish way of seeing things to your topic. How did you come to a sense that there was a Polish way of seeing things? Did it emerge from your experiences in Africa, or in relationship to Russia?
Kapuscinski: It developed in relation to Russia in particular. Our history, the history of Polish-Russian relations, is very tragic, very harrowing. There has been a lot of suffering on our side, because Stalin killed all our intelligentsia. It wasn’t just that he killed 100,000 people, it was that he purposely killed the 100,000 who were our only intelligentsia… When I started writing Imperium, I had a problem with my conscience, because if I wrote strictly from the point of view of this Polish experience, the book would be completely unacceptable and incomprehensible to the Western reader…So I had to put aside our Polish experience, and to find an angle, an objective way of writing about Russia.
Wolfe: Isn’t there something inherently difficult in writing about suffering? How does one go back and forth between a sense of causation in daily suffering on the one hand, and an understanding of the purges as a social phenomenon, on the other? How does one attempt to understand the cultural propensity of Russians to suffer?
Kapuscinski: There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state, to be disobedient to the state, was a patriotic act. In the Russian experience, although the Russian state is oppressive, it is their state, it is part of their fabric, and so the relation between Russian citizens and their state is much more complicated. There are several reasons why Russians view the oppressive state positively. First of all, in Russian culture, in the Russian Orthodox religion, there is an understanding of authority as something sent by God. This makes the state part of the sacred… So if the state is oppressive, then it is oppressive, but you can’t revolt against it. The cult of authority is very strong in Russian society.
Wolfe: But what is the difference between Soviet suffering and something like the battle of the Marne, the insanity of World War I and trench warfare?
Kapuscinski: It’s different. In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because there you had systematic murder, like in the Holocaust. Ten or 12 million Ukrainian peasants were purposely killed by Stalin, by starvation, in the Ukrainian hunger of 1932-3…It was a very systematic plan… In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.
Woodford: But what about Khrushchev in 1956?
Kapuscinski: I’m speaking about the present. Official Russian state doctrine and foreign policy doesn’t mention the Bolshevik policy of expansion. It doesn’t condemn it. If you ask liberal Russians - academics, politicians - if Russia is dangerous to us, to Europe, to the world, they say: “No, it’s not dangerous, we’re too weak, we have an economic crisis, difficulties with foreign trade, our army is in a state of anarchy…” That is the answer. They are not saying: “We will never, ever repeat our crimes of expansionism, of constant war.” No, they say: “We are not dangerous to you, because right now we are weak.”
Cohen:
When Vaclav Havel was president of Czechoslovakia, he was asked whether the state would take responsibility for the deaths, the oppression, the confiscations of the previous governments of Czechoslovakia, and he said “yes.” The same questions were asked in South Africa of the Mandela government. And I think Poland is now struggling with how much responsibility the government will have to take for the past. But the Russian official response has been that Stalin can be blamed for everything.
Kapuscinski:This is a very crucial point: there is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.
Polish-born journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski worked as an African correspondent for various Polish periodicals and press agencies from 1958 to 1980. In his book Imperium (Granta Books, 1994), he turns a journalist’s eye onto the Russian state, and the effects of authoritarianism on everyday Russian life. Kapuscinski delivered his November, 1997 Copernicus lecture: "The Russian Puzzle: Why I Wrote Imperium at the Center for Russian and East European Studies. During his visit, he spoke with David Cohen (International Institute); John Woodford (Executive Editor of Michigan Today ); and Thomas Wolfe (Communications). The following is an excerpted transcript of their conversation.
Sei Sekou Mobutu seized control of the Congo in 1965. After the evolution, the name of the capital was changed from Leopoldville to Kinshasa, and in 1971 the country was renamed Zaire, instead of the Congo. return to text
Piotr Michalowski is the George D. Cameron Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations and Languages at the Unversity of Michigan.
Kapuscinski, more magical than real
What’s the truth about Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski
▻https://www.newstatesman.com/africa/2007/02/wrong-kapuscinski-african
▻https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Kapu%C5%9Bci%C5%84ski
Whoever Predicts the Future Will Win the AI Arms Race – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/05/whoever-predicts-the-future-correctly-will-win-the-ai-arms-race-russi
The race for advanced artificial intelligence has already started. A few weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating the “#American_AI_Initiative,” with which the United States joined other major countries pursuing national strategies for developing AI. China released its “New Generation Plan” in 2017, outlining its strategy to lead the world in AI by 2030. Months after that announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared, “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”Russian President Vladimir Putin declared,
But it’s less clear how much AI will advance, exactly. It may only be able to perform fairly menial tasks like classifying photographs, driving, or bookkeeping. There’s also a distinct possibility that AI will become as smart as humans or more so, able to make complex decisions independently. A race toward a technology with such a range of possible final states, stretching from banal to terrifying, is inherently unstable. A research program directed toward one understanding of AI may prove to have been misdirected after years of work. Alternatively, a plan to focus on small and achievable advances could be leapfrogged by a more ambitious effort.
China, the United States, and Russia are each negotiating this fraught landscape differently, in ways responsive to their unique economic and military situations. Governments are motivated to pursue leadership in AI by the promise of gaining a strategic advantage. At this early stage, it’s tough to tell what sort of advantage is at stake, because we don’t know what sort of thing AI will turn out to be. Since AI is a technology, it’s natural to think of it as a mere resource that can assist in attaining one’s goals, perhaps by allowing drones to fly without supervision or increasing the efficiency of supply chains.
But computers could surpass humans in finding optimal ways of organizing and using resources. If so, they might become capable of making high-level strategic decisions. After all, there aren’t material limitations restricting the intelligence of algorithms, like those that restrict the speed of planes or range of rockets. Machines more intelligent than the smartest of humans, with more strategic savvy, are a conceptual possibility that must be reckoned with. China, Russia, and the United States are approaching this possibility in different ways. The statements and research priorities released by major powers reveal how their policymakers think AI’s developmental trajectory will unfold.
China is pursuing the most aggressive strategy, focusing on developing advanced AI that could contribute to strategic decision-making. The U.S. approach is more conservative, with the goal of producing computers that can assist human decision-making but not contribute on their own. Finally, Russia’s projects are directed at creating military hardware that relies on AI but leaves decisions about deployment entirely in the hands of generals. In all three situations, the forms of AI these governments are investing their resources in reveal their expectations of the technological future. The country that gets it right could reap huge benefits in terms of military might and global influence.
Israel releases PFLP leading member Khalida Jarrar
Feb. 28, 2019 12:25 P.M. (Updated : Feb. 28, 2019 12:25 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=782702
JENIN (Ma’an) — The Israeli authorities released leading member of the PFLP and former Palestinian lawmaker, Khalida Jarrar, early Thursday, after being held under administrative detention for 20 months.
Jarrar was released at the Salem Israeli military checkpoint, in the northern occupied West Bank district of Jenin, in the early morning hours to prevent family and activists from organizing a welcome ceremony for her.
Israeli forces had detained Jarrar on July 2nd, 2017, a year after her release, and confiscated her personal belongings including a computer and a mobile phone; her detention was renewed four times.
Jarrar, a leading member of the PFLP, deputy at the PLC (Palestinian Legislative Council), heads the PLC’s prisoners’ committee and acts as the Palestinian representative in the Council of Europe, an international organization promoting human rights and democracy around the world, was previously detained in 2015 and had spent 14 months in Israeli jails.
Israël libère une députée palestinienne après vingt mois de détention
Khalida Jarrar avait été arrêtée en 2017 pour des activités au sein du Front populaire de libération de la Palestine, mouvement considéré comme « terroriste » par Israël.
Le Monde, le 28 février 2019
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/02/28/israel-libere-une-deputee-palestinienne-apres-vingt-mois-de-detention_542952
#guillemets #Palestine #FPLP #détention_administrative #prison
Israel releases Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar
After detaining her for 20 months under administrative detention
February 28, 2019 at 9:48 am
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPEyY8KzWKg
Ashrawi: ’Israel’s administrative detention an assault on human rights’
March 1, 2019 10:53 A.M. (Updated: March 1, 2019 10:53 A.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=782711
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — Commenting on Israel’s release today of Palestinian lawmaker and prominent human rights defender Khalida Jarrar after spending 20 months in administrative detention, Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee Member, said Israel’s administrative detention policy is “an assault on universal human rights.”
Ashrawi said in a statement, on Thursday, “After twenty months in Israeli captivity, Khalida Jarrar is finally free. This imprisonment was yet another chapter in a lifetime of persecution and oppression from the Israeli occupation to this prominent human rights defender and elected representative, including several arrests, house arrest, and a ban on travel due to her activism against occupation and her work in defending the national and human rights of her people.”
She added, “As we celebrate the release of Khalida, we must not lose sight that nearly 500 Palestinian citizens, including children and other elected officials, are languishing in Israeli prisons, without charge or trial, under so-called administrative detention.”
“This form of open-ended detention is a tool of cruel punishment and oppression that the Israeli occupation regime has employed against thousands of Palestinian activists throughout the past fifty-two years of occupation. It is an abhorrent practice that violates international law, including international humanitarian law and international criminal law, as well as the basic rights and dignity of Palestinians.” (...)
Israël libère une députée palestinienne après 20 mois de détention
Par RFI Publié le 28-02-2019 - Avec notre correspondante à Ramallah, Marine Vlahovic
▻http://www.rfi.fr/moyen-orient/20190228-israel-libere-une-deputee-palestinienne-apres-20-mois-detention
Khalida Jarrar avait été arrêtée en juillet 2017 à son domicile de Ramallah en Cisjordanie occupée par l’armée israélienne. Membre du Front populaire de libération de la Palestine (FPLP), un parti placé sur la liste des organisations terroristes par Israël, les Etats-Unis et l’Union européenne, cette députée palestinienne a passé près de deux ans en détention administrative, sans véritable procès, avant d’être finalement libérée ce jeudi 28 février. (...)
Internet Culture Roundup #9: Making The Right Decision
▻https://hackernoon.com/internet-culture-roundup-9-making-the-right-decision-51ce8d21ee74?source
On the path of #business and life, opportunities come about that can lead us in all sorts of directions. It is up to us to decide which path to take, and sometimes, you have to take risks and venture into the unknown in order to truly find the proper path for you. For example, Ashley Scorpio left an accomplished career as a political aide in Canadian Parliament to work in startups, and now she is a top executive at one. The decentralized artificial intelligence application, Effect.AI, made the decision to migrate off the NEO #blockchain and move their operations to EOS instead. Investor Geoff Lewis evaluates up and coming technology companies for his job and figures out which ones will be successful and cause the most disruption for the better. Vera Kopp already had a veteran career as (...)
What a wall means for landowners on the border
Customs and Border Protection has been preparing to acquire land in the Rio Grande Valley for new barriers since last fall, according to a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration.
Last Friday, the advocacy group Public Citizen filed a lawsuit on behalf of three landowners and a nature preserve arguing that the President had exceeded his authority and the declaration violated the separation of powers. But some attempts to acquire land came well before the declaration was announced.
In September, Customs and Border Protection requested access to survey private property in the Rio Grande Valley region “for possible acquisition in support of US Customs and Border Protection’s construction of border infrastructure authorized by Congress in the Fiscal Year 2019 appropriation and other funded tactical infrastructure projects,” according to a letter reviewed by CNN.
A form is attached to grant permission to the government to conduct “assessment activities.”
The documents reviewed by CNN were addressed to the late father and grandfather of Yvette Gaytan, one of the plaintiffs. Her home sits on an approximately half-acre lot near the Rio Grande River that she inherited from her father, according to the lawsuit. She is also one of the heirs of land owned by her grandfather.
Gaytan, a Starr County, Texas, resident, said she signed the form allowing Customs and Border Protection to survey her land, despite her reservations. Still, in January, she received another set of documents from the agency stating it expected to file a “Declaration of Taking and Complaint in Condemnation” in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas in order to access the land.
The back-and-forth has been frustrating for Gaytan, who says she’d be cut off from some of her property if a wall were mounted.
“This is very personal,” she told CNN. “Everyone wants to make it political. This is personal; this is my home.”
Gaytan’s story is emblematic of what landowners in the region can anticipate as plans move forward to build additional barriers in the Rio Grande Valley, where much of the land is privately owned.
Generally, the government is allowed to acquire privately owned land if it’s for public use, otherwise known as eminent domain. Eminent domain cases can be lengthy, though they generally don’t keep the agency from being able to proceed with construction. Landowners are often fighting for what is known as just compensation — what they deem a fair price for their property.
According to the Justice Department, as of last month approximately 80 cases were still outstanding.
The Trump administration still hasn’t acquired all the land it needs to build new barriers along the border, even as it embarks on new construction that was previously funded.
Customs and Border Protection plans to begin building about 14 new miles of wall in March, though that partly depends on real estate acquisitions, according to a senior agency official. Those miles were funded through the fiscal year 2018 budget.
Congress appropriated $1.375 billion for about 55 miles of new construction in its fiscal 2019 budget. Trump, seeing it as insufficient, is tapping into other federal funds through executive action and a national emergency declaration, though not all at the same time.
The White House does not plan to spend any of the funds that hinge on Trump’s national emergency declaration while lawsuits challenging that authority work their way through the courts, a source close to the White House said.
Instead, the White House plans to focus on building new portions of the border wall using funds from the Defense Department’s drug interdiction program and the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund, which do not rely on the national emergency declaration. Those two sources of funding alone amount to $3.1 billion.
That allows the White House to move forward with construction without risking an injunction tied to the national emergency declaration.
▻https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/21/politics/border-wall-land-seizure/index.html
#terres #murs #barrières_frontalières #frontières #propriété #expropriation #USA #Etats-Unis
#Shamima_Begum: Isis Briton faces move to revoke citizenship
The Guardian understands the home secretary thinks section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981 gives him the power to strip Begum of her UK citizenship.
He wrote to her family informing them he had made such an order, believing the fact her parents are of Bangladeshi heritage means she can apply for citizenship of that country – though Begum says she has never visited it.
This is crucial because, while the law bars him from making a person stateless, it allows him to remove citizenship if he can show Begum has behaved “in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK” and he has “reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the UK, to become a national of such a country or territory”.
Returning from outside the UK to challenge deprivation of citizenship
What procedure should be followed when someone is deprived of British citizenship, at a time when he or she is abroad, to enable return to the UK to participate in a statutory appeal to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC)? ...
▻https://www.freemovement.org.uk/statutory-appeal-siac-alternative-judicial-review
#paywall
Citizenship Revoked. Keeping a check on the UK government’s use of counterterrorism powers
▻https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/counter-terrorism
–-> une série d’articles sur la question de la déchéance de la nationalité au Royaume-Uni
What do we know about citizenship stripping?
The Bureau began investigating the Government’s powers to deprive individuals of their British citizenship two years ago.
The project has involved countless hours spent in court, deep and detailed use of the freedom of information act and the input of respected academics, lawyers and politicians.
The Counter-Terrorism Bill was presented to Parliament two weeks ago. New powers to remove passports from terror suspects and temporarily exclude suspected jihadists from the UK have focused attention on the Government’s citizenship stripping powers, which have been part of the government’s counter-terrorism tools for nearly a decade.
A deprivation order can be made where the home secretary believes that it is ‘not conducive’ to the public good for the individual to remain in the country, or where citizenship is believed to have been obtained fraudulently. The Bureau focuses on cases based on ‘not conducive’ grounds, which are related to national security and suspected terrorist activity.
Until earlier this year, the Government was only able to remove the citizenship of British nationals where doing so wouldn’t leave them stateless. However, in July an amendment to the British Nationality Act (BNA) came into force and powers to deprive a person of their citizenship were expanded. Foreign-born, naturalised individuals can now be stripped of their UK citizenship on national security grounds even if it renders them stateless, a practice described by a former director of public prosecutions as being “beloved of the world’s worst regimes during the 20th century”.
So what do we know about how these powers are used?
The numbers
53 people have been stripped of their British citizenship since 2002 – this includes both people who were considered to have gained their citizenship fraudulently, as well as those who have lost it for national security reasons.
48 of these were under the Coalition government.
Since 2006, 27 people have lost their citizenship on national security grounds; 24 of these were under the current Coalition government.
In 2013, home secretary Theresa May stripped 20 individuals of their British citizenship – more than in all the preceding years of the Coalition put together.
The Bureau has identified 18 of the 53 cases, 17 of which were deprived of their citizenship on national security grounds.
15 of the individuals identified by the Bureau who lost their citizenship on national security grounds were abroad at the time of the deprivation order.
At least five of those who have lost their nationality were born in the UK.
The previous Labour government used deprivation orders just five times in four years.
Hilal Al-Jedda was the first individual whose deprivation of citizenship case made it to the Supreme Court. The home secretary lost her appeal as the Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled her deprivation order against Al-Jedda had made him illegally stateless. Instead of returning his passport, just three weeks later the home secretary issued a second deprivation order against him.
This was one of two deprivation of citizenship cases to have made it to the Supreme Court, Britain’s uppermost court, to date.
In November 2014 deprivation of citizenship case number two reached the Supreme Court, with the appellant, Minh Pham, also arguing that the deprivation order against him made him unlawfully stateless.
Two of those stripped of their British citizenship by Theresa May in 2010, London-born Mohamed Sakr and his childhood friend Bilal al Berjawi, were later killed by US drone strikes in Somalia.
One of the individuals identified by the Bureau, Mahdi Hashi, was the subject of rendition to the US, where he was held in secret for over a month and now faces terror charges.
Only one individual, Iraqi-born Hilal al-Jedda, is currently known to have been stripped of his British citizenship twice.
Number of Bureau Q&As on deprivation of citizenship: one.
▻https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2014-12-10/what-do-we-know-about-citizenship-stripping
#statistiques #chiffres
‘My British citizenship was everything to me. Now I am nobody’ – A former British citizen speaks out
When a British man took a holiday to visit relatives in Pakistan in January 2012 he had every reason to look forward to returning home. He worked full time at the mobile phone shop beneath his flat in southeast London, he had a busy social life and preparations for his family’s visit to the UK were in full flow.
Two years later, the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is stranded in Pakistan, and claims he is under threat from the Taliban and unable to find work to support his wife and three children.
He is one of 27 British nationals since 2006 who have had their citizenship removed under secretive government orders on the grounds that their presence in the UK is ‘not conducive to the public good’. He is the first to speak publicly about his ordeal.
‘My British citizenship was everything to me. I could travel around the world freely,’ he told the Bureau. ‘That was my identity but now I am nobody.’
Under current legislation, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has the power to strip dual nationals of their British citizenship if she deems their presence in the UK ‘not conducive to the public good’, or if their nationality was gained on fraudulent grounds. May recently won a Commons vote paving the way to allow her to strip the citizenship of foreign-born or naturalised UK nationals even if it rendered them stateless. Amendments to the Immigration Bill – including the controversial Article 60 concerning statelessness – are being tabled this week in the House of Lords.
A Bureau investigation in December 2013 revealed 20 British nationals were stripped of their citizenship last year – more than in all previous years under the Coalition combined. Twelve of these were later revealed to have been cases where an individual had gained citizenship by fraud; the remaining eight are on ‘conducive’ grounds.
Since 2006 when the current laws entered force, 27 orders have been made on ‘conducive’ grounds, issued in practice against individuals suspected of involvement in extremist activities. The Home Secretary often makes her decision when the individual concerned is outside the UK, and, in at least one case, deliberately waited for a British national to go on holiday before revoking his citizenship.
The only legal recourse to these decisions, which are taken without judicial approval, is for the individual affected to submit a formal appeal to the Special Immigration and Asylum Committee (Siac), where evidence can be heard in secret, within 28 days of the order being given. These appeals can take years to conclude, leaving individuals – the vast majority of whom have never been charged with an offence – stranded abroad.
The process has been compared to ‘medieval exile’ by leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.
The man, who is referred to in court documents as E2, was born in Afghanistan and still holds Afghan citizenship. He claimed asylum in Britain in 1999 after fleeing the Taliban regime in Kabul, and was granted indefinite leave to remain. In 2009 he became a British citizen.
While his immediate family remained in Pakistan, E2 came to London, where he worked and integrated in the local community. Although this interview was conducted in his native Pashto, E2 can speak some English.
‘I worked and I learned English,’ he says. ‘Even now I see myself as a British. If anyone asks me, I tell them that I am British.’
But, as of March 28 2012, E2 is no longer a British citizen. After E2 boarded a flight to Kabul in January 2012 to visit relatives in Afghanistan and his wife and children in Pakistan, a letter containing May’s signature was sent to his southeast London address from the UK Border Agency, stating he had been deprived of his British nationality. In evidence that remains secret even from him, E2 was accused of involvement in ‘Islamist extremism’ and deemed a national security threat. He denies the allegation and says he has never participated in extremist activity.
In the letter the Home Secretary wrote: ‘My decision has been taken in part reliance on information which, in my opinion should not be made public in the interest of national security and because disclosure would be contrary to the public interest.’
E2 says he had no way of knowing his citizenship had been removed and that the first he heard of the decision was when he was met by a British embassy official at Dubai airport on May 25 2012, when he was on his way back to the UK and well after his appeal window shut.
E2’s lawyer appealed anyway, and submitted to Siac that: ‘Save for written correspondence to the Appellant’s last known address in the UK expressly stating that he has 28 days to appeal, i.e. acknowledging that he was not in the UK, no steps were taken to contact the Appellant by email, telephone or in person until an official from the British Embassy met him at Dubai airport and took his passport from him.’
The submission noted that ‘it is clear from this [decision] that the [Home Secretary] knew that the Appellant [E2] is out of the country as the deadline referred to is 28 days.’
The Home Office disputed that E2 was unaware of the order against him, and a judge ruled that he was satisfied ‘on the balance of probabilities’ that E2 did know about the removal of his citizenship. ‘[W]e do not believe his statement,’ the judge added.
His British passport was confiscated and, after spending 18 hours in an airport cell, E2 was made to board a flight back to Kabul. He has remained in Afghanistan and Pakistan ever since. It is from Pakistan that he agreed to speak to the Bureau last month.
Daniel Carey, who is representing E2 in a fresh appeal to Siac, says: ‘The practice of waiting until a citizen leaves the UK before depriving them of citizenship, and then opposing them when they appeal out of time, is an intentional attack on citizens’ due process rights.
‘By bending an unfair system to its will the government is getting worryingly close to a system of citizenship by executive fiat.’
While rules governing hearings at Siac mean some evidence against E2 cannot be disclosed on grounds of national security, the Bureau has been able to corroborate key aspects of E2’s version of events, including his best guess as to why his citizenship was stripped. His story revolves around an incident that occurred thousands of miles away from his London home and several years before he saw it for the last time.
In November 2008, Afghan national Zia ul-Haq Ahadi was kidnapped as he left the home of his infirmed mother in Peshawar, Pakistan. The event might have gone unnoticed were he not the brother of Afghanistan’s then finance minister and former presidential hopeful Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi. Anwar intervened, and after 13 months of tortuous negotiations with the kidnappers, a ransom was paid and Zia was released. E2 claims to have been the man who drove a key negotiator to Zia’s kidnappers.
While the Bureau has not yet been able to confirm whether E2 had played the role he claimed in the release, a source with detailed knowledge of the kidnapping told the Bureau he was ‘willing to give [E2] some benefit of the doubt because there are elements of truth [in his version of events].’
The source confirmed a man matching E2’s description was involved in the negotiations.
‘We didn’t know officially who the group was, but they were the kidnappers. I didn’t know whether they were with the Pakistani or Afghan Taliban,’ E2 says. ‘After releasing the abducted person I came back to London.’
E2 guesses – since not even his lawyers have seen specific evidence against him – that it was this activity that brought him to the attention of British intelligence services. After this point, he was repeatedly stopped as he travelled to and from London and Afghanistan and Pakistan to visit relatives four times between the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2012.
‘MI5 questioned me for three or four hours each time I came to London at Heathrow airport,’ he says. ‘They said people like me [Pashtun Afghans] go to Waziristan and from there you start fighting with British and US soldiers.
‘The very last time [I was questioned] was years after the [kidnapping]. I was asked to a Metropolitan Police station in London. They showed me pictures of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [former Afghan prime minister and militant with links to the Pakistani Taliban (TTP)] along with other leaders and Taliban commanders. They said: ‘You know these guys.’
He claims he was shown a photo of his wife – a highly intrusive action in conservative Pashtun culture – as well as one of someone he was told was Sirajuddin Haqqani, commander of the Haqqani Network, one of the most lethal TTP-allied groups.
‘They said I met him, that I was talking to him and I have connections with him. I said that’s wrong. I told [my interrogator] that you can call [Anwar al-Ahady] and he will explain that he sent me to Waziristan and that I found and released his brother,’ E2 says.
‘I don’t know Sirajuddin Haqqani and I didn’t meet him.’
The Haqqani Network, which operates in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and across the border in Afghanistan, was designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States in September 2012. It has claimed responsibility for a score of attacks against Afghan, Pakistani and NATO security forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The UN accuses Sirajuddin Haqqani of being ‘actively involved in the planning and execution of attacks targeting International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), Afghan officials and civilians.’
E2 says he has no idea whether Haqqani was involved in Zia’s kidnapping, but he believes the security services may have started investigating him when he met the imam of a mosque he visited in North Waziristan.
‘The imam had lunch with us and he was with me while I was waiting for my father-in-law. I didn’t take his number but I gave him mine. That imam often called me on my shop’s BT telephone line [in London]. These calls put me in trouble,’ he says.
If E2’s version of events is accurate, it would mean he gained his British citizenship while he was negotiating Zia’s release. He lost it less than three years later.
The Home Office offered a boilerplate response to the Bureau’s questions: ‘The Home Secretary will remove British citizenship from individuals where she feels it is conducive to the public good to do so.’
When challenged specifically on allegations made by E2, the spokesman said the Home Office does not comment on individual cases.
E2 says he now lives in fear for his safety in Pakistan. Since word has spread that he lost his UK nationality, locals assume he is guilty, which he says puts him at risk of attack from the Pakistani security forces. In addition, he says his family has received threats from the Taliban for his interaction with MI5.
‘People back in Afghanistan know that my British passport was revoked because I was accused of working with the Taliban. I can’t visit my relatives and I am an easy target to others,’ he said. ‘Without the British passport here, whether [by] the government or Taliban, we can be executed easily.’
E2 is not alone in fearing for his life after being exiled from Britain. Two British nationals stripped of their citizenship in 2010 were killed a year later by a US drone strike in Somalia. A third Briton, Mahdi Hashi, disappeared from east Africa after having his citizenship revoked in June 2012 only to appear in a US court after being rendered from Djibouti.
E2 says if the government was so certain of his involvement in extremism they should allow him to stand trial in a criminal court.
‘When somebody’s citizenship is revoked if he is criminal he should be put in jail, otherwise he should be free and should have his passport returned,’ he says.
‘My message [to Theresa May] is that my citizenship was revoked illegally. It’s wrong that only by sending a letter that your citizenship is revoked. What kind of democracy is it that?’
▻https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2014-03-17/my-british-citizenship-was-everything-to-me-now-i-am-nobody-a
#USS_Fitzgerald : le rapport de l’Amiral Fort sur la collision de juin 2017, produit moins de 6 semaines après l’événement et resté secret, fuite dans le Navy Times depuis le 14 janvier. Une succession d’articles décrit une situation catastrophique : des marins non formés, ne sachant pas utiliser les équipements, les équipements qui dysfonctionnent et sont bricolés ou carrément ignorés, absence de communication et de confiance entre les équipes, commandement dépassé dont un commandant absent de la passerelle…
Plusieurs articles, tous aussi effrayants les uns que les autres…
The ghost in the Fitz’s machine : why a doomed warship’s crew never saw the vessel that hit it
▻https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/14/the-ghost-in-the-fitzs-machine-why-a-doomed-warships-crew-never-saw-the-v
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When Navy Rear Adm. Brian Fort stepped aboard the guided-missile destroyer Fitzgerald in the aftermath of the 2017 collision with a commercial cargo ship, everything was off.
Any warship would seem a little off after a catastrophe that claimed the lives of seven sailors, but this was different.
“It didn’t look right, smell right, sound right,” Fort said during a hearing last year for a Fitzgerald officer facing court-martial in the wake of the June 17, 2017, disaster.
After gazing at the gash in the hull through which gushed the seawater that drowned the Fitz’s dead, Fort and his team of investigators walked to the destroyer’s electronic nerve center, the combat information center everyone calls the “CIC.”
It hadn’t taken a direct hit from the bow of the Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal, but it was trashed nonetheless and smelled like urine.
He found a pee bottle that had tipped and spilled behind a large-screen display. Fort’s eyes started to take over for his nose, and he took it all in.
“There was debris everywhere,” Fort said under oath. “Food debris, food waste, uneaten food, half-eaten food, personal gear in the form of books, workout gear, workout bands, kettlebells, weightlifting equipment, the status boards had graffiti on them.”
“I’d never seen a CIC like that in my entire time in the Navy,” the surface warfare officer of more than 25 years recollected.
The more Fort looked, the worse it got: broken sensors that were reported for repairs but never fixed, schedule changes ordered by superiors high above the Fitz’s command triad that delayed crucial maintenance, taped-up radar controls and, worse, sailors who had no idea how to use the technology.
About six weeks after the Fitzgerald collision, Fort signed and submitted his damning internal report to superiors.
Designed in part to help federal attorneys defend against a wave of lawsuits from the owners and operators of the ACX Crystal and, indirectly, the families of the Fitz’s injured, traumatized and drowned, the Navy sought to keep Fort’s findings from the public.
But Navy Times obtained a copy of it and began stitching his details to a growing body of court testimony by the crew of the Fitzgerald to reveal just how much worse conditions were on the destroyer than the Navy previously shared with the public.
What it all reveals is that a mostly green crew joined the Fitzgerald shortly after the warship left dry dock maintenance in early 2017.
They learned to make do with broken equipment, a lack of communication between departments and, especially in the CIC, a world in which failure had become “systemic across the board,” as Fort put it at last year’s hearing.
Or as his secret report described it, a lack of training in basic seamanship fatally combined with material deficiencies to create “a culture of complacency, of accepting problems, and a dismissal of the use of some of the most important, modern equipment used for safe navigation.”
A warship doomed by ‘confusion, indecision, and ultimately panic’ on the bridge
▻https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/14/a-warship-doomed-by-confusion-indecision-and-ultimately-panic-on-the-brid
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The Navy has paraded out a series of public reports addressing both the Fitzgerald tragedy and the Aug. 21, 2017, collision involving the John S. McCain and the Liberian-flagged tanker Alnic MC that killed 10 more American sailors.
But none of those investigations so starkly blueprinted the cascade of failures at all levels of the Navy that combined to cause the Fitzgerald disaster, especially the way the doomed crew of the destroyer was staffed, trained and led in the months before it the collision.
Fort’s team of investigators described a bridge team that was overworked and exhausted, plagued by low morale, facing a relentless tempo of operations decreed by admirals far above them, distrustful of their superiors and, fatally, each other.
And Navy officials knew all of that at least a year before the tragedy.
[…]
[The Commanding Officer (CO) Commander] Benson was “a little more active” on the bridge than Shu [his predecessor], but “it was not routine for the CO or (executive officer) to come up to the Bridge from (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.),” Fort wrote.
Out of 78 underway days from February to May of that year, the CO was on the bridge just four times between the dark hours of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., according to the report.
Et donc logiquement, absent de la passerelle quand le navire a croisé le “rail” de nuit…
A watery hell: how a green crew fought the Fitz to save her
▻https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/15/a-watery-hell-how-a-green-crew-fought-the-fitz-to-save-her
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On the day after the Fitzgerald limped back to Yokosuka, a plane carrying Rear Adm. Brian Fort landed in Japan.
A surface warfare officer with a quarter-century in uniform, Fort had been tasked with creating a report the Navy would use, in part, to defend itself against potential negligence lawsuits brought by ACX Crystal’s owners and operators and, indirectly, by the families of the Fitz’s dead sailors.
Completed 41 days after the disaster, it remained secret from the public until it was obtained by Navy Times.
Far more candid than the parade of public pronouncements by senior Navy officials since 2017, Fort’s report details how the the skills of Fitzgerald’s crew had atrophied in the months since it went into dry dock.
For example, after reporting to the Fitz, sailors were supposed to receive instruction on how to escape flooded berthing areas, a crucial course that was to be followed up by retraining every six months.
Of the 38 sailors assigned to Berthing 2, which flooded minutes after the ACX Crystal collision, 36 of 39 “were delinquent in the six-month periodic egress training,” Fort wrote.
Et si, le rapport de l’amiral Fort est resté secret, c’est parce qu’"il recouvre très largement les informations fournies dans les rapports publiés" (publiés d’ailleurs, nettement plus tard…
CNO defends hiding scathing internal report on Fitzgerald collision from public
▻https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/02/16/cno-defends-hiding-scathing-internal-report-on-fitzgerald-collision-from-
The Navy’s top officer Friday defended the decision to keep from the public eye a damning internal report on the 2017 warship Fitzgerald collision that killed seven sailors.
Speaking to reporters after his appearance at the U.S. Naval Institute’s West 2019 conference here, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said much of the report overlapped with what the service publicly released.
But much of the probe overseen by Rear Adm. Brian Fort portrayed a far grimmer picture of what the crew of the guided-missile destroyer faced. It also prompted hard questions about the actions taken by the Fitz’s squadron and Navy officials back in the United States.
First revealed by Navy Times, the Fort report chronicled details that Richardson, other Navy leaders and their public reports never mentioned, such as specifics about the destroyer’s brutal operational tempo, officers who didn’t trust each other, radars that didn’t work and sailors who didn’t know how to operate them.
The investigators also portrayed the warship’s chiefs mess as ineffective and their sailors plagued by low morale in the months leading up to the June 17, 2017, collision.
(les 3 expressions en gras sont des liens vers les articles ci-dessus)
Brazil dam disaster: police arrest eight employees of mining company | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/15/brazil-mine-collapse-vale-arrests-employees-latest
“The eight Vale employees … had full knowledge of the situation of instability in the dam and each one of them, as part of their job, also had the power and ability to adopt measures for either stabilizing the structure or evacuating areas at risk,” a judge in Minas Gerais wrote in an arrest warrant, issued in response to a petition from the state prosecutor’s office.
Vale said in a securities filing it was cooperating with the investigation.
The most senior Vale employees arrested on Friday were Joaquim Toledo, Vale executive director of geotechnical operations, who led the team given the task of monitoring the dam’s stability, and Alexandre Campanha, Vale executive corporate director of geotechnicals.
No top Vale executives have been arrested.
Reminder: Israel is still holding a Palestinian lawmaker as political prisoner indefinitely
Haaretz.com - Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar has been incarcerated in an Israeli jail without a trial for 20 months. Another period of ‘administrative detention’ will soon expire. Will she come home?
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Feb 14, 2019 5:20 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-reminder-israel-is-holding-palestinian-lawmaker-as-political-priso
Ghassan Jarrar says his life is meaningless without Khalida. In his office at the children’s toys and furniture factory he owns in Beit Furik, east of Nablus, its chairs upholstered with red fake fur, the face of the grass widower lights up whenever he talks about his wife. She’s been incarcerated in an Israeli prison for 20 months, without trial, without being charged, without evidence, without anything. In two weeks, however, she could be released, at long last. Ghassan is already busy preparing himself: He knows he’s liable to be disappointed again, for the fourth successive time.
Khalida Jarrar is Israel’s No. 1 female political prisoner, the leader of the inmates in Damon Prison, on Mt. Carmel, and the most senior Palestinian woman Israel has jailed, without her ever having been convicted of any offense.
The public struggle for her release has been long and frustrating, with more resonance abroad than in Israel. Here it encounters the implacable walls of the occupation authorities and the startling indifference of Israeli public opinion: People here don’t care that they’re living under a regime in which there are political prisoners. There is also the silence of the female MKs and the muteness of the women’s organizations.
Haaretz has devoted no fewer than five editorials demanding either that evidence against her be presented or that she be released immediately. To no avail: Jarrar is still in detention and she still hasn’t been charged.
She’s been placed in administrative detention – that is, incarceration without charges or a trial – a number of times: She was arrested for the first time on April 15, 2015 and sentenced to 15 months in jail, which she served. Some 13 months after she was released from that term, she was again put under administrative detention, which kept getting extended, for 20 consecutive months, starting in mid-2017: two stints of six months each, and two of four months each.
The latest arbitrary extension of her detention is set to end on February 28. As usual, until that day no one will know whether she is going to be freed or whether her imprisonment will be extended once again, without explanation. A military prosecutor promised at the time of the previous extension that it would be the last, but there’s no way to know. Typical of the occupation and its arbitrariness.
In any event, Ghassan is repainting their house, replacing air conditioners and the water heater, hanging new curtains, planting flowers in window boxes, ordering food and sweets in commercial quantities, and organizing a reception at one checkpoint and cars to await her at two other checkpoints – you can never know where exactly she will be released. A big celebration will take place in the Catholic church of Ramallah, which Ghassan has rented for three days on the last weekend of the month. Still, it’s all very much a matter of if and when.
Reminder: On April 2, 2015, troops of the Israel Defense Forces raided the Jarrar family’s home in El Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah, and abducted Khalida, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
She was placed in administrative detention. In the wake of international protests over Israel’s arrest without charges of a lawmaker who was elected democratically, the occupation authorities decided to try her. She was indicted on 12 counts, all of them utterly grotesque, including suspicion of visiting the homes of prisoners’ families, suspicion of attending a book fair and suspicion of calling for the release of Ahmad Saadat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who has been in prison for years.
The charge sheet against Jarrar – an opponent of the occupation, a determined feminist and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee – will one day serve as the crushing proof that there is not even the slightest connection between “military justice” and actual law and justice.
We saw her in the military court at Ofer base in the summer of 2015, proud and impressive, as her two daughters, Yafa and Suha, who returned from their studies in Canada after their mother’s arrest, wept bitterly with their father on the back benches of the courtroom. No one remained indifferent when the guards allowed the two daughters to approach and embrace their mother, in a rare moment of grace and humanity, as their father continued to cry in the back. It was a scene not easily forgotten.
Three months ago, she was transferred, along with the other 65 female Palestinian prisoners, from the Sharon detention facility where she’d been incarcerated to Damon, where the conditions are tougher: The authorities in Damon aren’t experienced in dealing with women and their special needs, Ghassan says. The showers are separate from the cells, and when a prisoner is menstruating, the red fluid flows into the yard and embarrasses the women. But at the same time, he says, the prison authorities are treating Khalida’s health situation well: She suffers from a blood-clotting problem and needs weekly medications and tests, which she receives regularly in her cell.
“You are my sweetheart” is inscribed on some of the synthetic-fur toys in the production room in Beit Furik. There are dolls of Mickey Mouse and of other characters from the cartoon world, sporting bold colors, along with padded rocking chairs and lamps for children’s rooms, all designed by Ghassan and all bespeaking sweet innocence and creativity. He’s devoted much less time to his factory since his wife’s incarceration. Of the 19 employees he had, only seven remain, one of whom, a deaf woman, is his outstanding worker. It’s a carpentry shop, an upholstery center and a sewing workshop all under one roof. Ghassan sells most of his products to Israel, although he’s been denied entry to the country for years.
Now his mind is focused on his wife’s release. The last time he visited her in prison was a month ago, 45 minutes on a phone through armor-plated glass. During her months in prison, Jarrar became an official examiner of matriculation exams for the Palestinian Education Ministry. The exam papers are brought to the prison by the International Red Cross. Among others that she has graded were Ahed Tamimi and her mother, Nariman. Ahed called Ghassan this week to ask when Khalida’s release was expected. She calls her “my aunt.”
The clock on the wall of Ghassan’s office has stopped. “Everything is meaningless for me without Khalida,” he says. “Life has no meaning without Khalida. Time stopped when Khalida was arrested. Khalida is not only my wife. She is my father, my mother, my sister and my friend. I breathe Khalida instead of air. Twenty months without meaning. My work is also meaningless.”
A business call interrupts this love poem, which is manifestly sincere and painful. What will happen if she’s not released, again? “I will wait another four months. Nothing will break me. I don’t let anything break me. That is my philosophy in life. It has always helped me.”
Ghassan spent 10 years of his life in an Israeli prison, too. Like his wife, he was accused of being active in the PFLP.
In the meantime, their older daughter, Yafa, 33, completed her Ph.D. in law at the University of Ottawa, and is clerking in a Canadian law firm. Suha, 28, returned from Canada, after completing, there and in Britain, undergraduate and master’s degrees in environmental studies. She’s working for the Ramallah-based human rights organization Al-Haq, and living with her father.
Both daughters are mobilized in the public campaign to free their mother, particularly by means of the social networks. Khalida was in jail when Yafa married a Canadian lawyer; Ghassan invited the whole family and their friends to watch the wedding ceremony in Canada on a large screen live via the Internet. Ghassan himself is prohibited from going abroad.
During Khalida’s last arrest, recalls her husband, IDF soldiers and Shin Bet security service agents burst into the house by force in the dead of night. They entered Suha’s room and woke her up. He remembers how she shouted, panic-stricken at the sight of the rifles being brandished by strange men in her bedroom wearing black masks, and how the soldiers handcuffed her from behind. As Ghassan replays the scene in his mind and remembers his daughter’s shouts, he grows distraught, as if it had happened this week.
Not knowing know what the soldiers were doing to her there, and only hearing her shouts, he tried to come to his daughter’s rescue, he recalls. He says he was almost killed by the soldiers for trying to force his way into Suha’s bedroom.
After the soldiers took Khalida, preventing Ghassan from even kissing her goodbye, despite his request – he discovered his daughter, bound by plastic handcuffs. After he released her, she wanted to rush into the street to follow the soldiers and her captive mother. He blocked her, and she went to the balcony of the house and screamed at them hysterically, cries of unfettered fury.
Last Saturday was Khalida’s 56th birthday. It wasn’t the first birthday she’d spent in prison, maybe not the last, either. Ghassan’s face positively glows when he talks about his wife’s birthday. He belongs to a WhatsApp group called “Best Friends” that is devoted to Khalida, where they posted his favorite photograph of her, wearing a purple blouse and raising her arms high in the courtroom of the Ofer facility. The members of the group congratulated him. Umar quoted a poem about a prisoner who is sitting in his cell in complete darkness, unable even to see his own shadow. Hidaya wrote something about freedom. Khamis wrote a traditional birthday greeting, and Ghassan summed up, “You are the bride of Palestine, renewing yourself every year. You are the crown on my head, al-Khalida, eternal one.”
3 Reasons Your #nonprofit Should Quit #facebook Ads
▻https://hackernoon.com/3-reasons-your-nonprofit-should-quit-facebook-ads-7fb9cf806c63?source=rs
(And maybe delete FB altogether)Image courtesy of PixabayIf you work at a nonprofit, chances are, social media drains you. Social media drains pretty much everyone these days. It drains you of energy, time, attention, and, for nonprofits, precious financial resources.As my Executive Director likes to say, “any nonprofit is always six months away from oblivion.” My meager three years of experience in the space agrees with this maxim — the end is always in sight, the work is never finished, and everyone on Facebook needs to know about it if your organization is to survive. At least, that’s the message that Mark Zuckerberg wants you to hear.Despite the rosey picture the media has painted of Facebook ads in the past, news continues to pile up that illustrates just how bleak the future of digital (...)
CEAR and the Greek Council for Refugees denounce through this video the inaction of European authorities on the situation of thousands of refugees, many of who face a third winter in tents and precarious accommodation in Greece, Until when Europe? This is what the more than 14,000 refugees who continue to be trapped on the islands in inhumane conditions are wondering. “We live in a small tent and the baby is very cold”, “If I was not sick and so tired, I would wait quietly. But I’m sick, very sick, and I can not wait”. These are some of the testimonies of the thousands of refugees who remain trapped in the islands, waiting for a response from Europe.
Greece: Council of Europe anti-torture committee calls for the situation of psychiatric patients to be improved, while criticising once again the poor treatment of immigration detainees
The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has published today the report on its most recent visit to Greece from 10 to 19 April 2018, together with the response of the Greek authorities.
The report highlights the systemic overcrowding in three of the five psychiatric establishments visited (Evangelismos, Gennimatas and Sotiria), with patients at Evangelismos being accommodated in the corridors. In all five hospitals visited, the CPT is critical of the lack of staff and over-reliance on pharmacotherapy, and the fact that patients were offered few activities. Another concern is the widespread practice of excessive and/or inappropriate use of mechanical restraint. The CPT also received some isolated allegations of ill-treatment (punches, tight restraints, and verbal abuse) by staff at the private “Athina Vrilissa” Psychiatric Clinic. Further, at Korydallos Prison Psychiatric Hospital, it found that the use of the basement protection cells for the seclusion of patients without supervision and for extended periods could easily be considered inhuman and degrading. Moreover, safeguards surrounding involuntary placement procedures were found to be insufficient in law and practice.
In their response, the Greek authorities accepted most of CPT’s recommendations aimed at improving the situation in psychiatric establishments. In particular, the new draft law governing involuntary placement will increase the safeguards for psychiatric patients. Swift action was taken to close down the basement protection cells at Korydallos Prison Psychiatric Hospital. Moreover, an external supervisory body will be established and a Committee be set up to monitor and evaluate the use of means of restraint and medication in all psychiatric institutions in Greece.
As regards immigration detention, the CPT stresses once again the need for a coordinated European approach to address the high number of foreign nationals arriving in Greece. At the same time, the report recalls that foreign nationals deprived of their liberty by the Greek authorities must be treated humanely and with dignity.
In the course of the visit, the CPT received a number of credible allegations of police ill-treatment (slaps, punches, kicks, baton blows and verbal abuse) from foreign nationals held in detention in the Evros region and at Moria Pre-removal Centre on Lesvos. It also received several credible allegations about the occurrence of “push-back” operations, whereby foreign nationals were returned from Greece to Turkey by boat across the Evros River; some of the persons met alleged that they had been ill-treated (including baton blows to the head) by police and border guard officers or (para-) military commandos during such operations.
Conditions of detention were found to be grossly sub-standard in some of the police and border guard stations visited, such as at Isaakio, where foreign nationals were detained overnight in two filthy cells with less than 1.5 m² of living space each. The Pre-removal Centre in Fylakio was so severely overcrowded, that single men, families, children and pregnant women were crammed together for several weeks or months with little more than 1 m² of living space per person, a situation that can easily be considered as amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment. The provision of health care services also remained inadequate, with a chronic lack of health care staff and an absence of even the most basic medical equipment and medication.
Regrettably, the CPT had to reiterate its recommendations that the Greek authorities increase significantly the number of dedicated open (or semi-open) shelter facilities for unaccompanied minors and that they fundamentally revise their policy regarding the detention of unaccompanied minors both for reception and identification purposes and under “protective custody”. The CPT recommends that an end should be put to holding unaccompanied minors in reception and identification centres, pre-removal centres, special holding facilities for irregular migrants or police and border guard stations. The CPT also calls for an end to the routine detention of children with their parents in police establishments upon their arrival in the country.
In their response, the Greek authorities deny that the practice of “push-backs” exists and point out that investigations into alleged unofficial removals and police ill-treatment found no disciplinary liability by the Hellenic Police. Further, the authorities explain that the poor conditions of detention in the Evros region were due to the increased migratory pressure at the time of the CPT’s visit. On a more positive note, the authorities plan to refurbish police detention facilities used for holding irregular migrants in line with CPT standards and to improve the conditions in the eight pre-removal detention facilities in the country.
The main findings of the CPT are set out in the executive summary of the report.
The CPT’s report and the Greek authorities’ response have been made public at the request of the Greek Government.
▻https://www.coe.int/en/web/cpt/-/greece-council-of-europe-anti-torture-committee-calls-for-the-situation-of-psyc
Pour télécharger le #rapport:
▻https://rm.coe.int/1680930c9a
Bangladeshis being killed 20km inside India, says BGB chief
Border Guard Bangladesh director general major general Md Shafeenul Islam on Wednesday said Bangladeshi people were being killed 20 kilometres inside India and he condemned those incidents as ‘killings’ in the name of fighting petty crimes while refusing to accept the conventional category — ‘border killing.’
Border Guard Bangladesh chief came up with a new definition at a programme held at the border force headquarters in Peelkhana during the inaugural ceremony of a Data Centre.
The BGB chief went on to add, ‘Human life is very important whether it is our citizen or theirs. Our force is cognizant of human rights. No killing is acceptable to us.’
‘But the term border killing is a misnomer. It implies that the killing has taken place on the border,’ the BGB chief told the reporters and hastened to ask, ‘Can we term these murders “border killings” when they take place 15 to 20 kilometres inside [Indian] border?’
He pointed out to the journalist that a spade should be called a spade and termed every murder as ‘killing.’ He further said that it is killing in the name of fighting ‘petty crimes’.
If the killing took place within 200 yards of the border or on the no man’s land it could be termed as border killing, he argued.
Asked whether he had any statistics on such killings inside the Indian territory or in areas proximal to the border, he said this year eight Bangladeshis were killed so far.
BGB chief took issue with such incidents. ‘Why do members of Indian Border Security Force are killing Bangladeshis instead of arresting them. Bangladeshi people were getting killed when the Indian force were supposed to use non-lethal weapons instead of lethal ones,’ he added.
The BSF troops join the rank from various regions across India including Kashmir, and they need more time to become sensitised to the people living near the border areas. They easily become ‘trigger-happy’ when Bangladeshis are involved, said the BGB chief.
Last year, he said border killing was reported until October. It increased slightly during the winter.
‘Due to the fog in winter, the illegal trespassing usually increases. People cross the border even by cutting the barbed wire fences,’ said BGB chief.
He said they have intensified their vigilance along the western frontier so that none can cross the border.
‘We are arresting people every day when they set out to cross the border,’ he added.
According to the Border Guard chief, they have now a digital surveillance system in place on Putkhali border to check the border crime while another surveillance system was under trial on Tekhnaf border.
They have started getting benefits of the surveillance systems, he said, adding, ‘We expect that human trafficking and smuggling will reduce in the border regions.’
He said their troops were facing extreme hardship to protect the borders. ‘We can give better protection of borders once we will have border road that are yet to be constructed,’ he said, adding, ‘There are many border outposts which need seven days to reach.’
Binoy Krishna Mallik, executive director of Rights Jessore, said it doesn’t matter how far the place of incident is from the border, it is important whether it is related to the border or border forces. These are nothing but border killings,’ he told New Age.
As of February 3, 2019, the Indian Border Security Force shot dead seven Bangladeshi in less than five weeks along the Bangladesh-India border.
According to Ain o Salish Kendra six Bangladeshis were shot dead by BSF along border in January, four of them on the Thakurgaon frontier and one each on Nilphamari and Rajshahi border.
In 2018, ‘trigger-happy’ BSF killed 14 Bangladeshis, according to the Kendra.
According to Odhikar, at least 1,144 Bangladeshi were killed by the Indian border force between 2001 and 2018. Bangladesh and India share a border of 2,429 miles.
▻http://www.newagebd.net/article/64063/bangladeshis-being-killed-20km-inside-india-says-bgb-chief
#meurtres_aux_frontières #frontières #mobile_borders #frontières_mobiles #décès #mort #murs #barrières_frontalières #Bangladesh #Inde #zone_frontalière
–-> et la question sur les #mots :
‘But the term border killing is a misnomer. It implies that the killing has taken place on the border,’ the BGB chief told the reporters and hastened to ask, ‘Can we term these murders “border killings” when they take place 15 to 20 kilometres inside [Indian] border?’
Is #facebook now (also) a #blockchain company ?
▻https://hackernoon.com/is-facebook-now-also-a-blockchain-company-1d738bbae536?source=rss----3a8
The company has hired most of the team at a London-based smart contract startup.Facebook has had a blockchain group since about a year ago, when veteran Facebook executive and former PayPal president David Marcus was tapped to lead the company’s efforts in the space. Now, they have made their first big move into the blockchain and #crypto market by quietly hiring most of the team behind Chainspace, a smart contract platform registered in Gibraltar with offices in London.Chainspace, founded last year by researchers in London, uses smart contracts to offer extensibility, rather than catering to specific applications such as Bitcoin for a currency, or certificate transparency for certificate verification. Unlike Ethereum, Chainspace’s sharded architecture allows for a ledger linearly scalable (...)
’Combating BDS Act’ passes Senate, 77-23, as Dem presidential hopefuls vote No, and Paul slams ’paranoia’ of ’the lobby’
US Politics Philip Weiss on February 5, 2019
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2019/02/combating-presidential-paranoia
This afternoon the Senate by a vote of 77-23 passed S.1, which contains the Combating BDS Act, encouraging states to pass laws that authorize economic punishments against those who support boycott of Israel. Faiz Shakir, national political director of the ACLU, says:
The Senate just passed a bill that tramples on the 1st Amendment rights of Americans. The House should refuse to take it up.
The ACLU led opposition to the bill and is already moving on to the House. It reports:
Should the House take up similar legislation, we urge members to remove the Combating BDS Act from the package of bills due to the threat it poses to all Americans’ First Amendment right to boycott…
Senators who voted for the bill: we encourage you to read the Constitution, which protects against the McCarthy-era tactics this bill endorses.
I am told there is real hope that the Democratic House will reject the measure.
The 23 Senators who voted against include all likely or announced presidential candidates with the exception of Amy Klobuchar — who reportedly said she opposed the BDS provision but approved other parts of the bill. All the Nays were Democrats except for one Republican, Rand Paul, who warned that the majority is “paranoid” about the Israel lobby. The roll of honor:
Tammy Baldwin, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Tom Carper, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Martin Heinrich, Mazie Hirono, Tim Kaine, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Rand Paul, Jack Reed, Bernie Sanders, Brian Schatz, Jeanne Shaheen, Tom Udall, Chris Van Hollen, Elizabeth Warren
The bill is a landmark in anti-Palestinianism. The IMEU relates: “‘It’s disappointing that the Senate has voted to undermine the free speech rights of advocates for Palestinian freedom.’ – Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.”
J Herbert Nelson II of the Presbyterian Church’s Israel Palestine Mission Network called the bill “unjust” for limiting what more and more people wish to do for Palestinian rights:
A growing number of churches and other faith groups, including the Presbyterian Church (USA), have endorsed time-honored tools like boycotts to avoid profiting from Israel’s abuses of Palestinian rights. In passing the CBA, the Senate is condoning attempts by politicians at the state level to suppress our efforts to be true to our faith and avoid being complicit in the suffering of others.
There was an upside to the vote. “Ugly day for the Senate, but something important happened here: All serious 2020 candidates (Harris, Sanders, Warren, Gillibrand and Booker) bucked AIPAC and voted against this anti-BDS bill,” Ryan Grim tweets. “That tells you a LOT about the politics of Israel in the Democratic Party.”
The Jewish establishment was all for this bill. AIPAC urged its passage. So did Jewish Federations, the leading Jewish philanthropic organizations:
Suite de :
Les sénateurs américains rejettent la loi anti-BDS et pro-Israël
Maannews, le 10 janvier 2019
►https://seenthis.net/messages/752002