position:king

Trailmix aims to reinvent casual games - with a little help from Supercell
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-02-01-trailmix-aims-to-reinvent-casual-games-with-a-little-help-

Backed by $4.2m from Supercell, King veterans Carolin Krenzer and Tristan Clark will push toward a richer and more meaningful take on casual gaming

#Mobile #Development #Financial

Camels banned from Saudi beauty contest over Botox - BBC News
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42802901

Twelve prized camels have been disqualified from a beauty contest in Saudi Arabia after their owners tried to tweak their good looks with Botox.

Thousands of camels are paraded at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival to be judged on their shapely lips and humps.

But judges stepped in when they discovered some owners had cheated in a bid to win the cash prizes.

The festival, which also features camel racing and camel milk tasting, has combined prize money of $57m (£40m).

Ali Al Mazrouei, the son of a top Emirati breeder, said Botox was used for the lips, the nose and even the jaw, news website The National reported.

Jan 30 Law & Revolution: Legitimacy and Constitutionalism After the Arab Spring by The Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King’s College London

–-> ▻https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/law-revolution-legitimacy-and-constitutionalism-after-the-arab-spring-

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Jordan’s Abdullah to Pence: East Jerusalem must be capital of Palestinian state - #Jordan
Haaretz and Reuters Jan 21, 2018 5:24 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/jordan/jordan-s-abdullah-to-pence-east-jerusalem-must-be-palestinian-capital-1.574
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=83&v=rbrbKJ6ku-M

Jordan’s King Abdullah voiced concern on Sunday over a decision by Washington to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, insisting that East Jerusalem must be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

In remarks during talks with U.S. Vice Mike Pence in Amman, the king said the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a two-state one.

“The U.S. decision on Jerusalem ...does not come as a result of a comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” the monarch told Pence at the start of the talks in the royal palace.

“For us, Jerusalem is key to Muslims and Christians, as it is to Jews. It is key to peace in the region and key to enabling Muslims to effectively fight some of our root causes of radicalization,” he continued.

Pence added he and Jordan’s King Abdullah ’agreed to disagree’ on Trump’s Jerusalem decision.

King Abdullah also told the vice president that he viewed the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a “potential major source of instability”. Abdullah went on to add: “We hope that the U.S. will reach out and find the right way to move forward in these challenging circumstances,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu praised Pence ahead of his landing in Israel, “Tonight a great friend of the State of Israel will arrive...a true friend.”

Netanyahu addressed plans by Israeli opposition members to boycott Pence’s speech to the Knesset, “I view it as a disgrace that members of Knesset intend to boycott this important visit,” said Netanyahu.

Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.

Pence was in Amman on the second leg of a three-country tour that concludes in Israel.

In comments delivered in Egypt, he said Washington would support a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians if the two sides agreed to it.
Last month’s endorsement of Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital by President Donald Trump drew universal condemnation from Arab leaders and widespread criticism elsewhere.

It also broke with decades of U.S. policy that the city’s status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Pence told the king that Washington was committed to preserving the status quo of holy sites in Jerusalem.

“We take no decision on boundaries and final status, those are subject to negotiation,” he said.

Pence’s is the highest-level visit by a U.S. official to the region since Trump made his declaration on Jerusalem last month.

Jordanian officials fear Washington’s move on Jerusalem had also wrecked chances of a resumption of Arab-Israeli peace talks which the monarch had sought to revive.

King Abdullah said the U.S. move on Jerusalem would fuel radicalism and inflame Muslim and Christian tensions.

King Abdullah’s Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman sensitive to any changes of status of the disputed city.

“For us, Jerusalem is key to Muslims and Christians, as it is to Jews. It is key to peace in the region,” he said.

Jordanian officials are further worried the move could trigger violence in the Palestinian territories and a spillover into Jordan, a country where many people are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948.

@Snowden : Two days after he said “I Have a Dream,” the @FBI classified Dr. King as the “most dangerous” national security threat in America. Read @AlvaroMBedoya on the Color of Surveillance, and the history they want you to forget: ►http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/01/what_the_fbi_s_surveillance_of_martin_luther_king_says_about_modern_spying.ht

The Untreatable
London Review of Books
▻https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n02/gavin-francis/the-untreatable

« #grippe_espagnole »

The flu wasn’t Spanish at all. The name stuck when in May 1918 the Spanish king, the prime minister and his entire cabinet all came down with it. In Madrid, it was known as the Naples Soldier after a catchy tune then in circulation, while French military doctors called it Disease 11. In Senegal it was Brazilian flu; in Brazil it was German flu. Poles called it the Bolshevik Disease and the Persians thought the British were responsible (Spinney writes about its devastating effect on the city of Mashed, where it probably arrived with a Russian soldier from the north).

As to the original source of the pandemic, there are three chief candidates: Kansas poultry farms, the army barracks of Etaples in northern France, and the Shansi province in China.

#grippe

International Politics The West’s use and abuse of human rights in foreign affairs | Morning Star
▻https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/the-west-s-use-and-abuse-of-human-rights-in-foreign-affairs

As Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a 30-year veteran of the CIA, noted in 2016: “If the United States and the United Kingdom, tonight, told King Salman [of Saudi Arabia]: ‘This war has to end,’ it would end tomorrow. The Royal Saudi Air Force cannot operate without American and British support.”

#droits_humains #instrumentalisation

By the end of his life, Martin Luther King realized the validity of violence.
▻https://timeline.com/by-the-end-of-his-life-martin-luther-king-realized-the-validity-of-violenc

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*Rs--uh9A83z2ei1ug0jl6A.jpeg

In the summer of 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. was less than a year away from his death. It’s impossible to say if he knew this, but he must have felt something on the horizon. To be so black and so visible and so dangerous to the status quo for so long meant that the bullet was already on its way toward him. By then he had somewhat resigned himself to the idea of the riot as a necessary form of action.

Just a year earlier, in a tense 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace, he insisted that the vast majority of black people in America still honored nonviolent resistance as the best way forward, but acknowledged that a rising group in the black community was now advocating for violent resistance. This interview is where his famous “a riot is the language of the unheard” quote originated, citing the newfound urgency facing black people. Just a few sentences later, often left out of our retelling of the quote, King warned of violence in the coming summers while also holding fast to his hope for nonviolence. “I would say that every summer we’re going to have this kind of vigorous protest,” he told Wallace. “My hope is that it will be nonviolent. I would hope that we can avoid riots because riots are self-defeating and socially destructive. I would hope that we can avoid riots, but that we would be as militant and as determined next summer and through the winter as we have been this summer.”

IDF on Twitter: “In memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., take this day to be kind to others ▻https://t.co/paqaAdKoie”
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/952957645987696640

#FBI on Twitter: “Today, the FBI honors the Rev. Martin L. King Jr. and his incredible career fighting for civil rights. #MLKDAY ▻https://t.co/9UEulHmL8a”
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/FBI/status/821037660613398529

#chutzpah #sans_vergogne #Etats-Unis #Israel #MLK

Martin Luther King Jr. Spent the Last Year of His Life Detested by the Liberal Establishment
▻https://theintercept.com/2018/01/15/martin-luther-king-jr-mlk-day-2018

In an April 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City, the civil rights leader publicly denounced American involvement in Indochina.

[…]

The backlash from a liberal establishment that had once praised King for his civil rights campaign came as hard and fast as his allies had feared.

The New York Times editorial board lambasted King for linking the war in Vietnam to the struggles of civil rights and poverty alleviation in the United States, saying it was “too facile a connection” and that he was doing a “disservice” to both causes. It concluded that there “are no simple answers to the war in Vietnam or to racial injustice in this country.” The Washington Post editorial board said King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country and his people.” A political cartoon in the Kansas City Star depicted the civil rights movement as a young black girl crying and begging for her drunk father King, who is consuming the contents of a bottle labeled “Anti-Vietnam.”

In all, 168 newspapers denounced him the next day.

Guess Who’s Coming to ‘Peanuts’ - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/opinion/sunday/peanuts-franklin-charlie-brown.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/01/14/opinion/sunday/14Kamp1/14Kamp1-facebookJumbo.jpg

Dr. King’s assassination, on April 4, 1968, played a direct role in Franklin’s creation. Eleven days later, a Southern Californian named Harriet Glickman wrote to Mr. Schulz, introducing herself as “the mother of three children and a deeply concerned and active citizen.” In her grief, Ms. Glickman explained, she had been pondering “the areas of the mass media which are of tremendous importance in shaping the unconscious attitudes of our kids.” She then proposed an idea: “the introduction of Negro children into the group of Schulz characters.”

“I was acting on the feeling that maybe there was one little thing I can do,“ Ms. Glickman, who is now 91, told me in a recent interview. A civil rights and antiwar activist, she was shrewd to petition Mr. Schulz. “Peanuts” was at the peak of its popularity at the time, running in a thousand newspapers, with a devoted daily readership approaching 100 million. Mr. Schulz, as unassuming a man as he was, was a veritable godhead, revered in those divided times by Americans of all stripes.

Mr. Schulz wrote back to Ms. Glickman within two weeks, but only to tell her he couldn’t fulfill her request. He and his fellow white cartoonists, he said, were “afraid that it would look like we were patronizing our Negro friends.” Undaunted, Ms. Glickman sent another note, asking if she could share his letter with black acquaintances. Mr. Schulz assented, though he again expressed reluctance to introduce a black character into “Peanuts.”

Ms. Glickman wasted little time in enlisting her friend Kenneth C. Kelly, a black father of two, who told Mr. Schulz, essentially, to get over his anxiety.

“An accusation of being patronizing would be a small price to pay for the positive results that would accrue!” he wrote. Mr. Kelly suggested that Mr. Schulz begin with a “supernumerary” black character, a de facto extra, who “would quietly and unobtrusively set the stage for a principal character at a later date.” This cautious approach would serve the dual purpose of not burdening Mr. Schulz and “Peanuts” with the duty of making a Major Social Statement and presenting friendship between black and white children as utterly normal.

But in the context of the late ’60s, Franklin’s debut was indeed a Major Social Statement. Inevitably, a few newspaper editors in the South made noises of protest, but by and large, the reaction to Franklin was positive, particularly among black readers.

#Peanuts #Personnages_africains_américains #Culture_populaire

Tapes Reveal Egyptian Leaders’ Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move - The New York Times

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/world/middleeast/egypt-jerusalem-talk-shows.html?smid=tw-share

As President Trump moved last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an Egyptian intelligence officer quietly placed phone calls to the hosts of several influential talk shows in Egypt.

“Like all our Arab brothers,” Egypt would denounce the decision in public, the officer, Capt. Ashraf al-Kholi, told the hosts.

But strife with Israel was not in Egypt’s national interest, Captain Kholi said. He told the hosts that instead of condemning the decision, they should persuade their viewers to accept it. Palestinians, he suggested, should content themselves with the dreary West Bank town that currently houses the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah.

“How is Jerusalem different from Ramallah, really?” Captain Kholi asked repeatedly in four audio recordings of his telephone calls obtained by The New York Times.

“Exactly that,” agreed one host, Azmi Megahed, who confirmed the authenticity of the recording.

For decades, powerful Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have publicly criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, while privately acquiescing to Israel’s continued occupation of territory the Palestinians claim as their homeland.

Continue reading the main story
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But now a de facto alliance against shared foes such as Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State militants and the Arab Spring uprisings is drawing the Arab leaders into an ever-closer collaboration with their one-time nemesis, Israel — producing especially stark juxtapositions between their posturing in public and private.

Mr. Trump’s decision broke with a central premise of 50 years of American-sponsored peace talks, defied decades of Arab demands that East Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian state, and stoked fears of a violent backlash across the Middle East.

Arab governments, mindful of the popular sympathy for the Palestinian cause, rushed to publicly condemn it.

Egyptian state media reported that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had personally protested to Mr. Trump. Egyptian religious leaders close to the government refused to meet with Vice President Mike Pence, and Egypt submitted a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a reversal of Mr. Trump’s decision. (The United States vetoed the resolution, although the General Assembly adopted a similar one, over American objections, days later.)

King Salman of Saudi Arabia, arguably the most influential Arab state, also publicly denounced Mr. Trump’s decision.

At the same time, though, the kingdom had already quietly signaled its acquiescence or even tacit approval of the Israeli claim to Jerusalem. Days before Mr. Trump’s announcement, the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, privately urged the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to accept a radically curtailed vision of statehood without a capital in East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian, Arab and European officials who have heard Mr. Abbas’s version of events.

Trump on Saudi Leadership Shake-up: “We’ve Put Our Man on Top!”
▻https://theintercept.com/2018/01/04/trump-saudi-arabia-fire-and-fury-michael-wolff

When Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad bin Salman effectively launched a coup and unseated his political rival in June, President Donald Trump took private credit. “We’ve put our man on top!” Trump told his friends, writes Michael Wolff in his forthcoming book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman had ousted his nephew Mohammad bin Nayef as crown prince and replaced him with his then-31-year-old son, bin Salman, shaking up the line of succession and turning on decades of custom within the royal family. The move was announced in the dead of night and was just another step in bin Salman’s rise to power in the kingdom in recent years. The king also removed bin Nayef, once a powerful figure in the country’s security apparatus, from his post as interior minister.

Just a month earlier, Trump had visited Saudi Arabia on his first overseas trip, meeting with leaders from across the Middle East and signing a $110 billion aspirational arms deal with the kingdom’s leaders. When bin Salman was named crown prince, Trump called and congratulated him on his “recent elevation.”

Wolff describes Trump’s Saudi trip as a “get-out-of-Dodge godsend,” as it was an escape from Washington shortly after the president fired FBI Director James Comey. “There couldn’t have been a better time to be making headlines far from Washington. A road trip could transform everything.”

The book is based on 18 months of interviews and access to Trump and his senior staff. But Wolff has a history of being an unreliable narrator, and questions have already been raised about the veracity of his claims. Trump, for his part, is outraged by the book, which contains damning passages about him and his family, attributed to the president’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. The president’s lawyer has demanded that Wolff and his publisher cease and desist publication of the book.

#arabie_saoudite

Funplus Interactive ad deemed misleading by Advertising Standards Agency
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-01-04-funplus-interactive-ad-deemed-misleading-by-advertising-st

Mobile developer used image from different game to promote King of Avalon: Dragon Warfare

#Mobile #Marketing

EXCLUSIVE: Senior Saudi royal on hunger strike over purge | Middle East Eye
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/senior-saudi-royal-hunger-strike-722949715
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/main-images/Talal+bin%20Abdulaziz.AFP_.jpg

Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz, the father of Alwaleed bin Talal and first progressive reformer in the House of Saud, has gone on a hunger strike in protest at the purge being carried out by his nephew Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the detention of three of his own sons.

The 86-year-old prince, who is the half brother of King Salman, stopped eating on 10 November, shortly after his first son, Alwaleed, was arrested on 4 November, and has lost 10 kilos in one month.

Last week, a feeding tube was inserted into him, but his condition at the King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh remains weak, according to several people who have visited him.

(...) Prince Talal is known as a liberal. A former finance minister in the government of King Saud (1953-64), he became known as the Red Prince in the 1960s for leading the Free Princes Movement which called for an end to the absolute monarchy.

But the royal family rejected the movement and Talal was forced into exile in Cairo before his mother was able to engineer a reconciliation with the family.

Talal campaigned for women’s rights long before the decision in September to allow Saudi women to drive. The prince said in one interview: “Saudi women will take their rights eventually... the march towards that should not stop and we have to accelerate this a bit."

The prince has continued to campaign for a constitutional monarchy and the instigation of the separation of powers, which he claims is enshrined in the constitution.

(...) In addition to Alwaleed and his brothers, other princes are still in detention. They include Turki bin Nasser, Turki bin Abdullah, and Fahd bin Abdullah bin Abdulrahman.

There is no definitive word of the fate of Abdulaziz bin Fahd. There are persistent accounts that he resisted arrest, and during the fight that ensued, he suffered a stroke or a heart attack. He is believed still to be alive, but in a vegetative state, according to several sources.

Mohammed bin Nayef, the former crown prince, ousted in a palace coup conducted before the November purge, and Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, who was arrested as part of the purge, have reportedly been released.

Officials close to MbS have staged public appearances for Miteb, including an encounter in which bin Salman publicly kissed the man he imprisoned and had mistreated physically. This piece of theatre was staged at an annual horse race for locally bred and imported horses in Janadriyah.

#prison_dorée #arabie_saoudite

The New Year’s Feast That Transformed Fools Into Popes and Kings - Atlas Obscura
▻https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/feast-of-fools-medieval-tradition

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The Feast of Fools, as described by the French theologians who condemned it in 1445, sounds like a ton of fun. This New Year’s Day celebration, they wrote, caught up high-ranking church officials in a bacchanal unworthy of their exalted positions.

“Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of office,” the theologians recounted, presumably with a sniff of horror. “They dance in the choir dressed as women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings… while the celebrant is saying mass. They play at dice… They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame.”

Officially banned in the 15th century, the Feast of Fools had its origins 300 years before, in the 1100s, and continued as a tradition well into the 16th century. It was memorialized in church documents condemning its excesses and in paintings depicting streets full of merry chaos. It appears in Victor Hugo’s famous 19th century novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when Quasimodo is swept up in the festivities and crowned King of Fools.

This rowdy revelry may never has been quite as raucous as was rumored. It started out as a much tamer liturgical celebration, which accrued an outsized reputation for subversiveness. At its heart, though, the Feast of Fools always turned power on its head—a reversal that naturally made church leaders very nervous.

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In the book Sacred Folly, independent scholar Max Harris traces the history of the Feast of Fools to three locations in northern France. There, on the first day of each year, lower members of the clergy would take on the duties of higher-ranking priests and bishops. (There was, for instance, a Pope of Fools.) This inversion of power, though, wasn’t meant to bring down the more powerful clergy so much as uplift the lower: The “fools” here were fools in a particular Biblical sense, people beloved of God precisely because they were of lower status.
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There were some elements of merriment to these early Feasts of Fools, including a “song of the ass,” which “evoke[d] the beauty, strength, and virtues of an ass as it journey[ed] from the East, across the river Jordan, to Bethlehem,” and sometimes involved an actual donkey being led into church. And once, Harris reports, someone did use this celebration as an opportunity to hit a cleric with “an inflated and swollen hen’s bladder.”

For the most part, though, he finds “no verifiable rowdiness,” only second- and third-hand reports from worrywarts distant from the actual celebrations.

https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/50396/image.jpg

But outside the church doors, concurrent celebrations were much more irreverent. In these medieval centuries, Harris writes, it became popular for students to parade through the streets with their faces blackened with mud (or even animal dung) to conceal their identities while they parodied clergy, doctors, civil officials, and rulers. These parades certainly featured cross-dressing, drinking, singing, and all manner of other mischief and behavior that usually wouldn’t be tolerated.

Wintertime celebrations like these, where the less powerful parts of society had the chance to break loose for a day, trace their roots to Roman and other European pagan festivals of role-reversal. They weren’t always held on New Year’s Day, but in some places the New Year’s Feast of Fools took on a second, more secular meaning.

Compared to other scholars, Harris goes unusually far in trying to distinguish the Feast of Fools inside the church from the revelry outside, a distinction that leads him perhaps too close to “the opposite statement of the Feast of Fools as lacking disarray,” as one reviewer wrote. Even if actual clergymen weren’t getting dressed up and rampaging through the streets, the reversal of power that they did indulge in was enough to make their leaders crack down on the tradition. People in power don’t always have a sense of humor about their power being questioned, even if this critique stops at donkey songs and hen bladders.

It’s easy to imagine, too, that lower-ranking religious servants did occasionally get caught up in the madness going on in the streets. After all, if some strange behavior is banned, it’s usually because someone tried it.

Je vois passer ceci. Quelques reprises (dont Jerusalem Post), mais qui toutes se contentent de cette unique source. Avec de grosses pincettes donc… Jordan’s King arrests brothers and cousin in suspected Saudi-led coup | Al Sura English
▻http://al-sura.com/jordans-king-arrests-brothers-and-cousin-in-suspected-saudi-led-coup

King Abdullah spared no time in arresting both his brothers and cousin; Prince Faisal bin Hussein, Prince Ali bin Hussein and Prince Talal bin Muhammad after Jordanian intelligence services alerted the King that there was communication between the brothers and cousin and Saudi and Emirati leaders; Mohammad bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed. The shock house arrest of the King’s siblings comes as the Middle East faces a renewed ‘revolutionary’ movement in several countries. Leadership among the MENA states has looked towards Saudi Arabia for explanations for it’s belligerency towards the governments despite showing good working relations otherwise. Long standing allegiances with Qatar were seemingly thrown aside in moments when Saudi Arabia launched an economic blockade against long time ally Qatar. Many blame Saudi Arabia’s young Mohammad bin Salman for these poor choices in relations.

Saudi Ritz Carlton prisoner dies after torture
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/arabic-press-review-1383981136

One of the Saudi prisoners at the Ritz Carlton has died under torture, according to London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

Major general Ali Alqahtani, who was detained in early November as part of an alleged anti-corruption drive, had been working in the royal guard forces.

He was the manager of the private office of Prince Turki Bin Abdullah, the son of former king Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, according to the newspaper.

Alqahtani died on 12 December after being tortured with electric shocks, and his family struggled to recognise him after receiving his body, according to sources, the newspaper reported.

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Saudi regime is furious: that spectators in Algerian sport event raise this image of Trump and Saudi King
▻http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2017/12/saudi-regime-is-furious-that-spectators.html

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#Algérie

Families with stable jobs at risk of homelessness in England, report finds | Society | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/15/homelessness-report-working-families-stable-jobs-local-government-ombud

Homelessness is now a serious risk for working families with stable jobs who cannot find somewhere affordable to live after being evicted by private-sector landlords seeking higher rents, the local government ombudsman has warned.

Michael King said nurses, taxi drivers, hospitality staff and council workers were among those assisted by his office after being made homeless and placed in often squalid and unsafe temporary accommodation by local authorities.

“People are coming to us not because they have a ‘life crisis’ or a drug and alcohol problem, but because they are losing what they thought was a stable private-sector tenancy, being evicted and then being priced out of the [rental] market,” he said.

King said the common perception that homelessness was about people with chaotic lives who slept rough no longer held true. “Increasingly, [homeless people] are normal families who would not have expected to be in this situation,” he said.

#logement #gentrification #sans_abri #Angleterre #fragilisation

The Real History of Hindu-Muslim Relations Under Akbar | The Diplomat

▻https://thediplomat.com/2017/12/the-real-history-of-hindu-muslim-relations-under-akbar

In October this year, Sangeet Som, a member of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) legislative assembly from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shocked the country by calling the Taj Mahal a blot on Indian culture. Built by the Mughal king Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj, situated in Agra in Western UP has for centuries been synonymous with India and Indian culture.

I was born Agra and spent 18 years there. For as long as I can remember, this incredible monument has been a source of pride for a city that – thanks to rampant corruption, malfeasance, and public apathy –has little else to be proud of. Yet, on my latest visit, which happened to be a few days after Som’s remarks, I sensed a change. While not many were ready to disown the Taj as readily as the BJP’s Som, they agreed with the spirit of his argument.

“Mughals were obviously traitors,” said my grandfather. “Don’t call it that!” admonished my aunt when a neighbor’s kid compared the marble on our courtyard floor to the Taj Mahal. “The BJP has put the Muslim in his place,” my childhood friend rejoiced. I was a foreigner in my own city.

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In hindsight, though, I should not have been surprised. Som’s statements are symptomatic of the communal malaise that has gripped India for centuries now. Since coming into power at the center and in various states the BJP has tapped into it and exacerbated it – but the blame for the malaise’s origin cannot be placed at its feet. Nor is the BJP original in using communalism as a political weapon. The Hindu-Muslim divide was fostered by the British to maintain the Raj, used by Mohammad Ali Jinnah to garner support for the creation of Pakistan, and then exploited by the Congress Party in India for the next 60 years to keep its hold on the reins of power.

Centuries of Hindus and Muslims being pitted against each other does not make for a convivial relationship. Indeed, in his Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington identified the Hindu-Muslim divide as one of the great civilizational fault-lines. To any reasonable observer then, it would appear that the Hindu and the Muslim are constituted in direct opposition to the other, destined to share a relationship characterized by intolerance and conflict. The observer would be wrong. The (admittedly distant) past sheds a very different light on relations between the two communities.

Shah Jahan’s grandfather, Akbar, ruled almost all of India from 1556 to 1605. During this period, there did exist various areas of contestation between the two religions, but it was largely characterized by a syncretism that has few parallels in modern-day India. Akbar’s era represented the zenith of Islamic power in India and the zeitgeist was a reflection of the man himself – curious, open-minded, and pragmatic. He is quite possibly one of the first regents in the world to lend his support to regular state-sponsored inter-faith public dialogue, which brought together learned men from across the religious spectrum – Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Parsees, Jains, and even atheists from across the realm were invited to participate in what must surely have a unique event at the time.

At the famed Ibadatkhana (House of Worship), which was completed in 1576, Akbar is said to have proclaimed that his sole aim was to lay bare the facts of any religion, “whether Hindu or Muslim.” Thanks partly to these dialogues, and partly to personal interactions with Hindu Brahmins, he acquired ever deepening knowledge of the various schools of Hindu thought. Thus, of the transmigration of the soul and divine reincarnation, he is believed to have said: “In India (Hind’) no one set forth a claim to Prophethood: this is because the claim to divinity has had precedence.”

Upon consideration, this is a remarkable statement. For a Muslim ruler to even brook the idea of reincarnation, let alone to take to its logical conclusion — i.e. the inadmissibility of a Prophet — shows a startling level of open-mindedness. At the same time, he did not shy away from criticizing those sages who advocated that Hindus should do good deeds in order to reap the rewards in their next life: “To me it seems that in the pursuit of virtue, the idea of death should not be thought of, so that without any hope or fear, one should practice virtue simply because it is good.”

Florida rally cheers when Republican predicts Trump’s Jerusalem embassy decision may usher in Armageddon
▻https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/florida-rally-cheers-when-republican-predicts-trumps-jerusalem-embassy-dec

A conservative politician at President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida suggested that the president’s controversial decision to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem may usher in the biblical end times.

Republican state Senator Doug Broxson represents the Florida Panhandle in the legislature and gave an introductory speech welcoming President Trump to Florida.

“Now, I don’t know about you, but when I heard about Jerusalem — where the King of Kings [applause] where our soon coming King is coming back to Jerusalem, it is because President Trump declared Jerusalem to be capital of Israel,” Sen. Broxson predicted.

Trump tells Abbas of plans to move embassy as world leaders warn of consequences
Dec. 5, 2017 7:42 P.M. (Updated: Dec. 5, 2017 7:42 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=779571

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — After days of speculation over whether the US would be moving its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, American President Donald Trump called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday and confirmed his intentions to move the embassy.

Abbas’ spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh released a statement saying that Abbas "warned [Trump] of the dangerous repercussions of such step” for the peace-process between Israel and Palestine, and for general security and stability in the region and world.

Abbas reportedly reiterated the Palestinian leadership’s unwavering position that without what is no occupied East Jerusalem as its capital, there is not future of Palestinian state as stipulated in international resolutions.

Abu Rudeineh stressed that Abbas “will continue to contact world leaders in order to prevent this unacceptable.”

Israeli news daily Haaretz quoted Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, as saying that “the mother of all the [peace] deals dies here on the rocks in Jerusalem if he says tomorrow that he recognizes a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

Meanwhile, international media outlets reported that Trump also phoned Jordanian King Abdullah II, who, according to Haaretz, told Trump over the phone that he pledged to “thwart any American initiative to renew the peace process and would encourage rage and resistance among Muslims and Christians alike,” if the embassy was moved.

King vets raise $2.2m for #Mobile start-up Strange Quest
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-12-04-king-vets-raise-USD2-2m-for-mobile-start-up-strange-quest

New Swedish studio focused on “fast, explosive and action packed multiplayer games for the mobile games market”

#Financial

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Mask of Anarchy”
▻http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/anarchy.html

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/The_Funeral_of_Shelley_by_Louis_Edouard_Fournier.jpg

Peterloo Massacre
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre

Friedrich Engels - Deutsche Zustaende
▻http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me02/me02_564.htm

Brief II, The Northern Star Nr. 417 vom 8. November 1845
..
Die Niederschlagung der Französischen Revolution wurde gefeiert durch die Niedermetzelung von Republikanern im Süden Frankreichs, durch das Auflodern der Scheiterhaufen der Inquisition und die Wiederherstellung des heimischen Despotismus in Spanien und Italien sowie durch die Maulkorbgesetze und „Peterloo“ in England. Wir werden nun sehen, daß die Ereignisse in Deutschland einen ähnlichen Verlauf nahmen.

Das Königreich Preußen war der erste unter allen deutschen Staaten, der Napoleon den Krieg erklärt hatte. Es wurde damals regiert von Friedrich Wilhelm III., mit dem Spitznamen „der Gerechte“,
...
er kannte nur zwei Gefühle - Furcht und feldwebelhafte Anmaßung. Während der ersten Hälfte seiner Herrschaft war sein vorherrschender Geisteszustand die Furcht vor Napoleon, der ihn mit der Großmut der Verachtung behandelte, indem er ihm die Hälfte seines Königreichs zurückgab, die zu behalten er nicht der Mühe für wert hielt.

Es war diese Furcht, die ihn antrieb, einer Partei von Halb-und-halb-Reformern - Hardenberg, Stein, Schön, Schamhorst etc. - zu gestatten, an seiner Stelle zu regieren, die eine liberalere Gemeindeorganisation einführten, die Erbuntertänigkeit abschafften, die feudalen Dienste in Rente oder in eine fixe Summe mit fünfundzwanzigjähriger Tilgung verwandelten und vor allem die militärische Organisation einführten, die dem Volk gewaltige Macht verschafft und früher oder später gegen die Regierung gebraucht werden wird.

The Mask of Anarchy:
Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

1
As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

2
I met Murder on the way—
He had a mask like Castlereagh—
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:

3
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew

4
Which from his wide cloak he drew.
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

5
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.

6
Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.

7
And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

8
Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

9
And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw—
’I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!’

10
With a pace stately and fast,
Over English land he passed,
Trampling to a mire of blood
The adoring multitude.

11
And a mighty troop around,
With their trampling shook the ground,
Waving each a bloody sword,
For the service of their Lord.

12
And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.

13
O’er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.

14
And each dweller, panic-stricken,
Felt his heart with terror sicken
Hearing the tempestuous cry
Of the triumph of Anarchy.

15
For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
The hired murderers, who did sing
`Thou art God, and Law, and King.

16
We have waited, weak and lone
For thy coming, Mighty One!
Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,
Give us glory, and blood, and gold.’

17
Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed;
Like a bad prayer not over loud,
Whispering — `Thou art Law and God.’ —

18
Then all cried with one accord,
`Thou art King, and God, and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!’

19
And Anarchy, the Skeleton,
Bowed and grinned to every one,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten millions to the nation.

20
For he knew the Palaces
Of our Kings were rightly his;
His the sceptre, crown, and globe,
And the gold-inwoven robe.

21
So he sent his slaves before
To seize upon the Bank and Tower,
And was proceeding with intent
To meet his pensioned Parliament

22
When one fled past, a maniac maid,
And her name was Hope, she said:
But she looked more like Despair,
And she cried out in the air:

23
`My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!

24
`He has had child after child,
And the dust of death is piled
Over every one but me—
Misery, oh, Misery!’

25
Then she lay down in the street,
Right before the horses’ feet,
Expecting, with a patient eye,
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy.

26
When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak, and frail
Like the vapour of a vale:

27
Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky,

28
It grew — a Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper’s scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain.

29
On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning’s, lay;
And those plumes its light rained through
Like a shower of crimson dew.

30
With step as soft as wind it passed
O’er the heads of men — so fast
That they knew the presence there,
And looked, — but all was empty air.

31
As flowers beneath May’s footstep waken,
As stars from Night’s loose hair are shaken,
As waves arise when loud winds call,
Thoughts sprung where’er that step did fall.

32
And the prostrate multitude
Looked — and ankle-deep in blood,
Hope, that maiden most serene,
Was walking with a quiet mien:

33
And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Lay dead earth upon the earth;
The Horse of Death tameless as wind
Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust the murderers thronged behind.

34
A rushing light of clouds and splendour,
A sense awakening and yet tender
Was heard and felt — and at its close
These words of joy and fear arose

35
As if their own indignant Earth
Which gave the sons of England birth
Had felt their blood upon her brow,
And shuddering with a mother’s throe

36
Had turnèd every drop of blood
By which her face had been bedewed
To an accent unwithstood,—
As if her heart had cried aloud:

37
`Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
Hopes of her, and one another;

38
`Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.

39
`What is Freedom? — ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well —
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.<

40
`’Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants’ use to dwell,

41
`So that ye for them are made
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent
To their defence and nourishment.

42
`’Tis to see your children weak
With their mothers pine and peak,
When the winter winds are bleak,—
They are dying whilst I speak.

43
`’Tis to hunger for such diet
As the rich man in his riot
Casts to the fat dogs that lie
Surfeiting beneath his eye;

44
`’Tis to let the Ghost of Gold
Take from Toil a thousandfold
More than e’er its substance could
In the tyrannies of old.

45
`Paper coin — that forgery
Of the title-deeds, which ye
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of Earth.

46
`’Tis to be a slave in soul
And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye.

47
`And at length when ye complain
With a murmur weak and vain
’Tis to see the Tyrant’s crew
Ride over your wives and you—
Blood is on the grass like dew.

48
`Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood — and wrong for wrong —
Do not thus when ye are strong.

49
`Birds find rest, in narrow nest
When weary of their wingèd quest;
Beasts find fare, in woody lair
When storm and snow are in the air,

50
`Asses, swine, have litter spread
And with fitting food are fed;
All things have a home but one—
Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!

51
`This is Slavery — savage men,
Or wild beasts within a den
Would endure not as ye do—
But such ills they never knew.

52
`What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves
Answer from their living graves
This demand — tyrants would flee
Like a dream’s dim imagery:

53
`Thou art not, as impostors say,
A shadow soon to pass away,
A superstition, and a name
Echoing from the cave of Fame.

54
`For the labourer thou art bread,
And a comely table spread
From his daily labour come
In a neat and happy home.

55
`Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude—
No — in countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be
As in England now we see.

56
`To the rich thou art a check,
When his foot is on the neck
Of his victim, thou dost make
That he treads upon a snake.

57
`Thou art Justice — ne’er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England — thou
Shield’st alike the high and low.

58
`Thou art Wisdom — Freemen never
Dream that God will damn for ever
All who think those things untrue
Of which Priests make such ado.

59
`Thou art Peace — never by thee
Would blood and treasure wasted be
As tyrants wasted them, when all
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.

60
`What if English toil and blood
Was poured forth, even as a flood?
It availed, Oh, Liberty,
To dim, but not extinguish thee.

61
`Thou art Love — the rich have kissed
Thy feet, and like him following Christ,
Give their substance to the free
And through the rough world follow thee,

62
`Or turn their wealth to arms, and make
War for thy belovèd sake
On wealth, and war, and fraud—whence they
Drew the power which is their prey.

63
`Science, Poetry, and Thought
Are thy lamps; they make the lot
Of the dwellers in a cot
So serene, they curse it not.

64
`Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,
All that can adorn and bless
Art thou — let deeds, not words, express
Thine exceeding loveliness.

65
`Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless and the free
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around.

66
`Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.

67
`From the corners uttermost
Of the bonds of English coast;
From every hut, village, and town
Where those who live and suffer moan
For others’ misery or their own.2

68
`From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain, and weep for cold—

69
`From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares—

70
`Lastly from the palaces
Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
Of a wind alive around

71
`Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan, and toil, and wail
As must make their brethren pale—

72
`Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold—

73
`Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free—

74
`Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.

75
`Let the tyrants pour around
With a quick and startling sound,
Like the loosening of a sea,
Troops of armed emblazonry.

76
`Let the charged artillery drive
Till the dead air seems alive
With the clash of clanging wheels,
And the tramp of horses’ heels.

77
`Let the fixèd bayonet
Gleam with sharp desire to wet
Its bright point in English blood
Looking keen as one for food.

78
`Let the horsemen’s scimitars
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
In a sea of death and mourning.

79
`Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war,

80
`And let Panic, who outspeeds
The career of armèd steeds
Pass, a disregarded shade
Through your phalanx undismayed.

81
`Let the laws of your own land,
Good or ill, between ye stand
Hand to hand, and foot to foot,
Arbiters of the dispute,

82
`The old laws of England — they
Whose reverend heads with age are gray,
Children of a wiser day;
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo — Liberty!

83
`On those who first should violate
Such sacred heralds in their state
Rest the blood that must ensue,
And it will not rest on you.

84
`And if then the tyrants dare
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,—
What they like, that let them do.

85
`With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.

86
`Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

87
`Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand—
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the street.

88
`And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company.

89
`And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

90
`And these words shall then become
Like Oppression’s thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again — again — again—

91
`Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many — they are few.’

1. The following stanza is found in the Wise MS. and in Mary Shelley’s edition of 1839, but is wanting in the Hunt MS. and in the first edition of 1832:—

’Horses, oxen, have a home,
When from daily toil they come;
Household dogs, when the wind roars,
Find a home within warm doors.’

2. The following stanza is found (cancelled) at this place in the Wise MS.:—

’From the cities where from caves,
Like the dead from putrid graves,
Troops of starvelings gliding come,
Living Tenants of a tomb.’

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Portrait_of_Percy_Bysshe_Shelley_by_Curran%2C_1819.jpg

Percy Bysshe Shelley 4. August 1792 in Field Place, Sussex; † 8. Juli 1822 im Meer bei Viareggio in der italienischen Provinz Toskana)
▻https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley#Rezeption

Seine Schriften blieben politisch nicht unwirksam, sie hatten etwa Einfluss auf die Chartisten. Eleanor Marx, die jüngste Tochter von Karl Marx, stellte die Bedeutung Shelleys für die Arbeiterbewegung mit den Worten heraus: „Ich habe meinen Vater und Engels wieder und wieder darüber sprechen hören, und ich habe dasselbe von den vielen Chartisten gehört, die ich glücklicherweise als Kind kennenlernen durfte.“ Sie hatten außerdem Einfluss auf einen politisch verstandenen Vegetarismus: In den Notes zu Queen Mab begründete er seine Forderung nach einem vegetarischen „Zustand der Gesellschaft, in der alle Energien des Menschen in die Schaffung gänzlichen Glücks gelenkt werden sollen“.
...
Jeremy Corbyn rezitierte am 27. Juni 2017 in seiner Ansprache beim Glastonbury Festival aus Shelleys Gedicht Mask Of Anarchy:

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.”

und ermutigte die anwesenden jungen Leute, ihre gemeinsame Macht zu erkennen, durch die sie die Welt verändern könnten.

#poésie #royaume_uni #Frankenstein #romatisme #anarchisme