provinceorstate:arizona

  • Facebook Is Censoring Harm Reduction Posts That Could Save Opioid Users’ Lives
    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qv75ap/facebook-is-censoring-harm-reduction-posts-that-could-save-opioid-users-lives

    As Facebook rolls out its campaign with the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids to “Stop Opioid Silence” and other initiatives to fight the overdose crisis, some stalwart advocates in the field are seeing unwelcome changes. In the past few months, accounts have been disabled, groups have disappeared, posts containing certain content—particularly related to fentanyl—have been removed, and one social media manager reports being banned for life from advertising on Facebook.

    In its efforts to stop opioid sales on the site, Facebook appears to be blocking people who warn users about poisonous batches of drugs or who supply materials used to test for fentanyls and other contaminants. Just as 1990s web security filters mistook breast cancer research centers for porn sites, today’s internet still seems to have trouble distinguishing between drug dealers and groups trying to reduce the death toll from the overdose crisis. VICE reviewed screenshots and emails to corroborate the claims made in this story.

    Facebook seems to be especially focused on fentanyl. Claire Zagorski, a wound care paramedic at the Austin Harm Reduction Coalition in Texas, said she informally surveyed other harm reduction groups about their experiences. About half a dozen reported problems with reduced distribution of posts or outright rejection—especially if they were trying to report a specific, local instance of fentanyl-tainted drugs. Two of the organizations affected were a harm reduction group called Shot in the Dark in Phoenix, Arizona, and Southside Harm Reduction Services in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

    “I think it’s important to remember that they’re not being like, ‘Hooray drugs!’" Zagorski said. "They’re saying, ‘Be warned that this contaminated supply could be lethal.’”

    Devin Reaves, executive director and co-founder of the Pennsylvania Harm Reduction Coalition, who hasn’t personally had posts blocked, said: “Facebook wants to address the opioid crisis, but when harm reductionists try to inform their communities about what’s dangerous, their posts are being blocked.”

    Why then is Facebook cracking down?

    When reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson said the company is investigating these incidents. After VICE contacted Facebook, the company restored posts from Southside Harm Reduction and Shot in the Dark, as well as Louise Vincent’s ability to post her email address, which apparently triggered a spam filter unrelated to opioids.

    Facebook also told VICE that Marcom was blocked from posting ads due not to fentanyl test strips, but due to posts related to kratom, an herb used by some as a substitute for opioids. Facebook has decided that kratom is a “non-medical drug” and is removing posts and groups related to it—even though its use is considered to be a form of harm reduction.

    Marcom said he hadn’t posted any kratom-related ads since 2018 and added, “It’s extremely frustrating that they have chosen to ban a proven safe plant medicine, as Facebook used to be a space where tens of thousands went daily for help getting off of opiates and other pharmaceuticals.”

    #Facebook #Opioides #Liberté_expression #Régulation

  • Sikh drivers are transforming U.S. trucking. Take a ride along the Punjabi American highway - Los Angeles Times
    https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-col1-sikh-truckers-20190627-htmlstory.html

    By Jaweed Kaleem, Jun 27, 2019 -
    It’s 7:20 p.m. when he rolls into Spicy Bite, one of the newest restaurants here in rural northwest New Mexico. Locals in Milan, a town of 3,321, have barely heard of it.

    https://www.trbimg.com/img-5d12f8d2/turbine/la-1561524431-z6kcx6gnzm-snap-image
    Punjabi-operated truck stops

    The building is small, single-story, built of corrugated metal sheets. There are seats for 20. The only advertising is spray-painted on concrete roadblocks in English and Punjabi. Next door is a diner and gas station; the county jail is across the road.

    Palwinder Singh orders creamy black lentils, chicken curry and roti, finishing it off with chai and cardamom rice pudding. After 13 hours on and off the road in his semi truck, he leans back in a booth as a Bollywood music video plays on TV.

    “This is like home,” says Pal, the name he uses on the road (said like “Paul”).

    There are 3.5 million truckers in the United States. California has 138,000, the second-most after Texas. Nearly half of those in California are immigrants, most from Mexico or Central America. But as drivers age toward retirement — the average American trucker is 55 — and a shortage grows, Sikh immigrants and their kids are increasingly taking up the job.

    Estimates of the number of Sikh truckers vary. In California alone, tens of thousands of truckers trace their heritage to India. The state is home to half of the Sikhs in the U.S. — members of a monotheistic faith with origins in 15th century India whose followers are best recognized by the uncut hair and turbans many men wear. At Sikh temples in Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside, the majority of worshipers are truck drivers and their families.

    Over the last decade, Indian Americans have launched trucking schools, truck companies, truck washes, trucker temples and no-frills Indian restaurants modeled after truck stops back home, where Sikhs from the state of Punjab dominate the industry.

    “You used to see a guy with a turban and you would get excited,” says Pal, who is in his 15th year of trucking. “Today, you go to some stops and can convince yourself you are in India.”

    Three interstates — the I-5, I-80 and I-10 — are dotted with Indian-American-owned businesses catering to truckers. They start to appear as you drive east from Los Angeles, Reno and Phoenix, and often have the words “Bombay,” “Indian” or “Punjabi” on their storefront signs. But many, with names like Jay Bros (in Overton, Neb.) and Antelope Truck Stop Pronghorn (in Burns, Wyo.) are anonymous dots on a map unless you’re one of the many Sikhs who have memorized them as a road map to America.

    The best-known are along Interstate 40, which stretches from Barstow to North Carolina. The road, much of it alongside Historic Route 66, forms the backbone of the Sikh trucking world.

    It’s a route that Pal, 38, knows well. Three times a month, he makes the seven-day round trip between his Fontana home and Indiana, where he drops off loads and picks up new ones. Over his career, he’s driven 2 million miles and transported items as varied as frozen chickens and paper plates. These days, he mostly hauls chocolate, rice and fruits and vegetables from California farms. Today, it’s 103 containers of mixed produce, with mangoes, bell peppers, watermelons, yellow onions and peeled garlic among them. All are bound for a Kroger warehouse outside Indianapolis.

    Across the street from Spicy Bite, dozens of arriving drivers form a temporary village of 18-wheelers in a vast parking lot by the interstate. Most are white. Nearly all are men. More are older than younger.

    But every now and then there are Sikhs like Pal, with long salt-and-pepper beards, colorful turbans and thick Indian accents. They head straight toward Spicy Bite.

    Lines can form out the door at the restaurant, which opened two years ago outside the Petro Stopping Center, a longtime mainstay for truckers headed east.

    Pal makes a point to stop by the restaurant — even just for a “hello” — when he sleeps next door. The Sikh greeting is “Sat sri akaal.” It means “God is truth.” In trucking, where turnover is high, business uncertain and risk of accidents ever present, each day can feel like a leap of faith and an opportunity to give thanks.

    Punjabi Americans first appeared on the U.S. trucking scene in the 1980s after an anti-Sikh massacre in India left thousands dead around New Delhi, prompting many Sikhs to flee. More recently, Sikhs have migrated to Central America and applied for asylum at the Mexico border, citing persecution for their religion in India; some have also become truckers. Estimates of the overall U.S. Sikh population vary, placing the community’s size between 200,000 and 500,000.

    In recent years, corporations have pleaded for new truckers. Walmart kicked up salaries to attract drivers. Last year, the government announced a pilot program to lower the age for driving trucks from 21 to 18 for those with truck-driving training in the military. According to the American Trucking Assn., the trucker shortage could reach 100,000 within years.

    “Punjabis are filling the gap,” says Raman Dhillon, a former driver who last year founded the North American Punjabi Trucking Assn. The Fresno-based group advises drivers on regulations, offers insurance and tire discounts, and runs a magazine: Punjabi Trucking.

    Like trucking itself, where the threat of automation and the long hours away from home have made it hard to recruit drivers, the Punjabi trucking life isn’t always an easy sell. Three years ago, a group of Sikh truckers in California won a settlement from a national shipping company after saying it discriminated against their faith. The drivers, who followed Sikh traditions by wrapping their uncut hair in turbans, said bosses asked them to remove the turbans before providing hair and urine samples for pre-employment drug tests despite being told of the religious observance. The same year, police charged a man with vandalizing a semi truck at a Sikh temple in Buena Park. He’d scribbled the word “ISIS.”

    Still, Hindi- and Punjabi-language newspapers in the Eastern U.S. regularly run ads promising better wages, a more relaxed lifestyle and warm weather as a trucker out West. Talk to any group of Sikh drivers and you’ll find former cabbies, liquor store workers or convenience store cashiers who made the switch.

    How a rural Oklahoma truck stop became a destination for Sikh Punjabis crossing America »

    “Thirty years ago, it was hard to get into trucking because there were so few people like us in the business who could help you,” says Rashpal Dhindsa, a former trucker who runs Fontana-based Dhindsa Group of Companies, one of the oldest Sikh-owned U.S. trucking companies. When Pal first started, Dhindsa — now a close friend but then an acquaintance — gave him a $1,000 loan to cover training classes.

    It’s 6:36 a.m. the next day when the Petro Stopping Center switches from quiet darkness to rumbling engines. Pal flips on the headlights of his truck, a silver ’16 Volvo with a 500-horsepower engine. Inside the rig, he heats aloo gobi — spiced potatoes and cauliflower — that his wife prepared back home. He checks the thermostat to make sure his trailer isn’t too warm. He takes out a book wrapped in a blue cotton cloth that’s tucked by his driver’s seat, sits on a bed-turned-couch and reads a prayer in Punjabi for safety on the journey: There is only one God. Truth is His name…. You always protect us.

    He pulls east onto the highway as the sun rises.

    Truckers either drive in pairs or solo like Pal. Either way, it’s a quiet, lonely world.

    Still, Pal sees more of America in a week than some people will in their lives. Rolling California hills, spiky desert rock formations, the snow-dusted evergreens of northern Arizona, the fuzzy cacti in New Mexico and, in Albuquerque, hot air balloons rising over an orange sky. There’s also the seemingly endless fast food and Tex-Mex of Amarillo and the 19-story cross of Groom, Texas. There’s the traffic in Missouri. After hours of solitude on the road, it excites him.

    Pal’s not strict on dogma or doctrine, and he’s more spiritual than religious. Trucking has shown him that people are more similar than different no matter where you go. The best of all religions, he says, tend to teach the same thing — kindness to others, accepting whatever comes your way and appreciation for what’s in front of you on the road.

    “When I’m driving,” Pal says, “I see God through his creation.”

    His favorite sights are the farms. You spot them in Central California while picking up pallets of potatoes and berries, or in Illinois and Indiana while driving through the corn and soybean fields.

    They remind him of home, the rural outskirts of Patiala, India.

    Nobody in his family drove trucks. Still, to Pal, he’s continuing tradition. His father farmed potatoes, cauliflower, rice and tomatoes. As a child, Pal would ride tractors for fun with Dad. Today, instead of growing food, Pal transports it.

    He wasn’t always a trucker. After immigrating in 2001 with his younger brother, he settled in Canoga Park and worked nights at 7-Eleven. After he was robbed at gunpoint, a friend suggested trucking. Better pay, flexible hours — and less dangerous.

    Three years later, he started driving a rig he didn’t own while getting paid per mile. Today, he has his own company, two trucks between himself and his brother — also a driver — and bids on shipments directly with suppliers. Nationally, the average pay for a trucker is just above $43,000. Pal makes more than twice that.

    He uses the money to pay for the house he shares with his wife, Harjeet Kaur, 4-year-old son, brother and sister-in-law, nieces and parents. Kaur threads eyebrows at a salon and video chats with him during lunch breaks. Every week before he leaves, she packs a duffel bag of his ironed clothes and stacked containers of food for the road.

    “I love it,” Pal says about driving. “But there are always two sides of the coin, head and tail. If you love it, then you have to sacrifice everything. I have to stay away from home. But the thing is, this job pays me good.”

    The truck is fully equipped. From the road, you can see only driver and passenger seats. But behind them is a sleeper cab with a bed that’s 6-foot-7 by 3-foot-2.

    Pal likes to connect the TV sitting atop a mini-fridge to his phone to stream music videos when he’s alone. His favorite songs are by Sharry Maan, an Indian singer who topped charts two years ago with “Transportiye.” It tells the story of a Sikh American trucker who longs for his wife while on the road. At night, the table folds down to become a bed. Pal is just missing a bathroom and his family.

    The life of a Sikh trucker is one of contrasts. On one hand, you see the diversity of America. You encounter new immigrants from around the world working the same job as people who have been truckers for decades. All transport the food, paper and plastic that make the country run. But you also see the relics of the past and the reminders of how you, as a Sikh in 2019, still don’t entirely fit in.

    It’s 9:40 a.m. on Saturday when Pal pulls into Bowlin’s Flying C Ranch rest center in Encino, N.M., an hour past Albuquerque and two from Texas. Here, you can buy a $19,999 stuffed buffalo, Baja jackets and fake Native American moccasins made in China in a vast tourist stop attached to a Dairy Queen and an Exxon. “God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood plays in the background.

    It reminds Pal of the time he was paying his bill at another gas station. A man suddenly shouted at customers to “get out, he’s going to blow up this place!” “I will not fight you,” Pal calmly replied. The man left. Those kinds of instances are rare, but Pal always senses their danger. Some of the most violent attacks on Sikhs this century have been at the hands of people who mistook them for Muslims or Arabs, including the case of a turban-wearing Sikh man in Arizona who was shot dead by a gunman four days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

    For Pal, suspicious glances are more common. So are the truckers who think he’s new to the business or doesn’t speak English. None of it fazes him.

    “Everybody relates to us through Osama bin Laden because we look the same,” he says, driving across the plains toward the Texas Panhandle. “Or they think because my English sounds different that I am not smart. I know who I am.”

    Every day, he wears a silver bracelet that symbolizes a handcuff. “Remember, you are handcuffed to God. Remind yourself to not do bad things,” Pal says. It reminds him to be kind in the face of ignorance and hatred.

    At a Subway in Amarillo a few hours later, he grabs his go-to lunch when he’s taking a break from Indian food: a chicken sandwich on white bread with pepper jack, lettuce, tomato and onion. At home, the family is vegetarian. Pal relishes chances on the road to indulge in meat. He used to depend solely on his wife’s cooking. Today, he has other options. It’s a luxury to switch from homemade meals to Punjabi restaurants to fast food.

    Trucking has helped Pal find his faith. When he moved to the U.S., he used to shave, drink beer and not care much about religion. But as he got bored on the road, he started listening to religious sermons. Twelve years ago, he began to again grow his hair and quit alcohol; drinking it is against the faith’s traditions. Today, he schedules shipments around the temple calendar so he can attend Sikh celebrations with his family.

    “I don’t mind questions about my religion. But when people say to me, ‘Why do you not cut your hair?’ they are asking the wrong question,” Pal says. “The real question is, why do they cut their hair? God made us this way.”

    It’s 4:59 p.m. when he arrives in Sayre, Okla., at Truck Stop 40. A yellow Punjabi-language billboard advertises it as the I-40 starts to bend north in a rural region two hours from Oklahoma City.

    Among the oldest Sikh truck stops, it has a 24-hour vegetarian restaurant, convenience store, gas station and a housing trailer that functions as a temple — all spread over several acres.

    Pal has been coming here for more than decade, since it was a mechanic shop run by a Sikh former trucker who settled on the plot for its cheap land. When he has time, Pal lingers for a meal. But he’s in a rush to get to Joplin, Mo., for the night so he can make his drop-off the next day.

    He grabs a chai and heads to the temple. Resting on a small pillow upon the altar is the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book. An audiotape plays prayers on a loop. A print of Guru Nanak, the faith’s founder, hangs on the wall.

    Pal prostrates and leaves a few dollar bills on the floor as a donation for upkeep. He prays for God to protect the temple, his family and himself on the 891 miles that remain until he hits the Indianapolis suburbs.

    “This feels like a long drive,” Pal says. “But it’s just a small part of the journey of life.”

    #USA #LKW #Transport #Immigration #Zuwanderung

  • Documentation pour un prochain patriarche


    Prometheus (arbre) — Wikipédia
    https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(arbre)

    Prometheus (également connu sous le code WPN-114) est le surnom d’un pin de Bristlecone (Pinus longaeva) âgé probablement de plus de 5 000 ans et situé dans le Nevada au niveau de l’étage alpin. Il est abattu en 1964 dans le cadre d’une étude de la dynamique des climats du Petit âge glaciaire par dendrochronologie. Il était considéré comme le végétal le plus âgé de la planète jusqu’en 2008 où on a fait la découverte d’un bosquet d’épicéas âgé de 9 550 ans en Suède1, le Old Tjikko.

    Il est abattu le 6 août 1964 par Donald Rusk Currey (en), un doctorant et un membre du Service des forêts des États-Unis à des fins de recherche et alors que son âge n’était pas encore connu. Depuis lors, c’est l’arbre Mathusalem qui est considéré comme le Bristlecone le plus âgé au monde.

    Il doit son nom à Prométhée, qui d’après la Théogonie d’Hésiode, créa les hommes à partir d’une motte d’argile.
    Le bosquet où se trouvait Prometheus, avec le pic Wheeler au loin.
    Les restes du tronc coupé.
    La souche (en bas à gauche) et des restes de l’arbre (au centre).
    Étude de l’arbre

    Cet arbre appartenait à une population de pins de Bristlecone qui poussent à la limite de l’étage alpin sur la moraine latérale d’un ancien glacier sur le pic Wheeler, où, depuis 1986, se trouve le parc national de Great Basin, dans le Nevada oriental. Le pic Wheeler est la plus haute montagne du Snake Range et la plus haute montagne située entièrement dans l’État de Nevada. La population de pins de Bristlecone qui y pousse se divise en au moins deux sous-populations distinctes, dont l’une est accessible par un sentier d’interprétation très fréquenté. Prometheus pourtant, a grandi dans une région où l’on ne peut se rendre que par des randonnées à pied hors piste. En 1958 ou en 1961, un groupe de naturalistes qui avaient admiré le bosquet où l’arbre avait poussé a donné des noms à un certain nombre d’arbres, les plus grands ou les plus curieux, y compris Prometheus. La désignation comme WPN-114 a été donnée par le chercheur Donald R. Currey et vient du fait que c’est le 114e arbre qu’il a retenu pour ses recherches dans le comté de White Pine au Nevada.

    Le compte des anneaux effectué par Currey sur la section de l’arbre était de 4 844. Quelques années plus tard, il a été porté à 4862 par Donald Graybill, du Laboratoire de recherche sur les cernes des arbres (université d’Arizona). En 2010, Chris Baisan et Matthew Salzer du même laboratoire ont affiné la mesure de l’âge, par interdatation, ce qui permet de tenir compte des anneaux manquants (fréquents dans les arbres poussant à la limite de l’étage alpin). Ils obtiennent 4 900 ans très précisément. Cependant, le compte des anneaux a été fait sur une coupe transversale du tronc prise à environ 2,5 m au-dessus du point de germination original de l’arbre, parce que les anneaux les plus centraux manquaient au-dessous de ce point. En ajoutant les années nécessaires pour atteindre cette hauteur, il est probable que l’arbre ait eu près de 5 000 ans au moment de la coupe. Cela fait de lui le plus vieil organisme unitaire (c’est-à-dire non-clonal) qu’on ait jamais connu, dépassant d’environ 200 ans l’arbre Mathusalem du Bosquet Schulman dans les Montagnes Blanches en Californie.

    Que Prometheus soit considéré ou non comme l’organisme le plus ancien qu’on ait jamais connu dépend de la définition qu’on donne aux termes « le plus ancien » et « organisme ». Par exemple, certains organismes germinatifs ou clonaux, comme un buisson de créosote ou un tremble, pourraient avoir des individus plus âgés si l’organisme clonal est regardé comme un tout. En pareil cas, l’organisme vivant le plus ancien est un bosquet de Populus tremuloides dans l’Utah, connu sous le nom de Pando, avec 80 000 ans. Dans un organisme clonal, pourtant, les pieds clonaux individuels ne sont nulle part et de loin aussi anciens et aucune partie de l’organisme à aucun point dans le temps ne devient particulièrement vieille. Prometheus était ainsi l’organisme non-clonal le plus ancien qui ait été découvert, avec son bois le plus profond qui avait de 5 000 ans d’âge. Il est possible, pourtant, qu’il existe un exemplaire plus ancien dont l’âge n’ait pas encore été évalué. Les pins bristlecones sont connus pour la difficulté qu’on a à évaluer leur âge à cause de leur croissance particulièrement contorsionnée et l’abattage de très vieux arbres n’est plus autorisé.
    L’abattage de l’arbre

    Dans les années 1950 les dendrochronologistes ont fait de grands efforts pour découvrir les espèces d’arbres actuelles les plus anciennes ; ils comptaient utiliser l’analyse des anneaux pour différents objectifs de recherche, comme la reconstitution d’anciens climats, la datation de ruines archéologiques et cette question fondamentale qui est la recherche des créatures actuelles les plus anciennes. Edward Schulman a découvert alors que les pins bristlecones dans les Montagnes blanches de Californie et ailleurs étaient plus vieux que n’importe quelle espèce déjà datée. On a eu donc envie de trouver des bristlecones très âgés, plus âgés peut-être que l’arbre Mathusalem, estimé par Schulman en 1957 à plus de 4700 ans.

    Donald R. Currey était doctorant à l’université de Caroline du Nord à Chapel Hill, et il étudiait la dynamique des climats du Petit âge glaciaire en utilisant les techniques de la dendrochronologie. En 1963 son attention fut attirée par les populations de bristlecones dans le Snake Range, et sur le pic Wheeler en particulier. En se fondant sur la taille, le taux de croissance et les formes de croissance de certains des arbres, il se convainquit qu’il existait sur la montagne quelques exemplaires très anciens et il préleva une carotte sur certains d’entre eux, trouvant des arbres dépassant 3 000 ans. Currey ne réussit pourtant pas à obtenir une série continue de carottages avec chevauchement pour WPN-114. Ici, les histoires divergent. On ne sait pas bien si c’est Currey qui a demandé, ou si c’est le personnel du service forestier qui a suggéré que l’on coupât l’arbre au lieu d’y pratiquer un carottage. Il y a aussi quelque incertitude quant à la raison pour laquelle un carottage n’a pu être fait. Une version est qu’il a brisé son unique longue tarière d’accroissement ou n’arrivait pas à la retirer et qu’il ne pouvait pas en obtenir une autre avant la fin de la campagne sur le terrain, une autre version prétend qu’il avait cassé deux tarières, et une autre encore qu’un échantillon de base était trop difficile à obtenir par taraudage et qu’il n’aurait pas fourni autant de renseignements définitifs qu’une coupe transversale complète de l’arbre.

    Il s’y ajoute des différences d’opinion sur le caractère exceptionnel de Prométhée dans le bosquet du pic Wheeler. On a dit que Currey et/ou le personnel de service forestier qui a autorisé l’abattage croyaient que l’arbre était seulement un des arbres très grands et très vieux dans le bosquet, tandis que d’autres, parmi lesquels un au moins a été impliqué dans la prise de décision et l’abattage de l’arbre, croyaient que l’arbre était vraiment exceptionnel - manifestement plus vieux que les autres arbres du domaine. Au moins une des personnes impliquées assure que Currey savait la vérité à l’époque bien que lui-même ne l’ait jamais avoué ; d’autres au contraire ont contesté que l’arbre fût de façon évidente plus vieux que les autres.

    On ne voit pas bien non plus en quoi il était nécessaire d’abattre un arbre aussi vieux si l’on considère le sujet que Currey étudiait. Comme le petit âge glaciaire a commencé, il n’y a pas plus de 600 ans, bien des arbres sans doute auraient pu fournir les renseignements qu’il recherchait pour cette période de temps. Pourtant, dans son rapport original (Currey, 1965), Currey fait allusion au petit âge glaciaire comme embrassant une période allant de 2000 avant Jésus-Christ jusqu’à maintenant, définissant ainsi cet âge comme une période de temps beaucoup plus longue que selon le consensus habituel. Était-ce l’opinion ordinaire à ce moment-là, on ne le sait pas. Dans l’article, Currey indique qu’il avait fait abattre l’arbre autant pour savoir si les bristlecones les plus âgés ont été nécessairement confinés aux Montagnes Blanches de Californie (comme des dendrochronologistes lui en avaient fait la demande) que parce que c’était utile pour étudier le petit âge glaciaire.

    Quoi qu’il en soit, l’arbre a été abattu et sectionné en août 1964, et plusieurs morceaux ont été emportés pour être traités et analysés, d’abord par Currey, puis par d’autres dans les années suivantes. Des sections, ou des morceaux de sections ont abouti à différents endroits, dont certains sont ouverts au public, entre autres : le centre de visite du parc national de Great Basin (Baker, NV), le Convention Center d’Ely (Ely, NV), le Laboratoire de Recherche sur les anneaux des arbres de l’université d’Arizona (Tucson, AZ) et l’Institut de génétique forestière du Service forestier américain (Placerville, CA).
    Répercussions de l’abattage de l’arbre

    On a soutenu que l’abattage de l’arbre a été un facteur important pour le mouvement de protection des bristlecones en général et des bosquets du pic Wheeler en particulier. Avant que l’arbre eût été coupé il y avait déjà eu un mouvement pour protéger les zones montagneuses et contiguës à l’intérieur d’un parc national et 22 ans après l’incident la région a vraiment acquis le statut de parc national.

    L’endroit exact de l’arbre qui est maintenant le plus vieux, Mathusalem, est gardé secret par l’agence chargée de l’administration, le Service des forêts américain. À cause de l’importance de l’espèce dans les recherches de dendrochronologie, tous les pins bristlecones sont maintenant protégés, qu’ils soient debout ou tombés.

    #patriarche #arbre #hommerie #mad_meg

  • U.S. is using unreliable dental exams to hold teen migrants in adult detention

    The young Bangladeshi sitting in the dentist’s chair last October thought he was getting checked for diseases.

    Dental staff examined his teeth, gave him a cleaning and sent him back to the juvenile facility where he had been held for months since illegally crossing the border in July.

    But a checkup wasn’t the real purpose of the dental work. The government wanted to figure out if “I.J.,” as the young migrant has been identified, really was 16, as he said, or an adult.

    The use of dental exams to help determine the age of migrants increased sharply in the last year, one aspect of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and illegal border crossings.

    The accuracy of forensic testing to help determine the age of migrants is very much a subject of the debate. And with the stakes so high, the exams are becoming another legal battleground for the government.

    Federal law prohibits the government from relying exclusively on forensic testing of bones and teeth to determine age. But a review of court records shows that in at least three cases – including I.J.’s – the government did just that, causing federal judges to later order the minors released from adult detention.

    In a case last year, a Guatemalan migrant was held in adult detention for nearly a year after a dental exam showed he was likely 18, until his attorneys fought to get his birth certificate, which proved he was 17.

    For I.J., the results had serious ramifications. Based on the development of his teeth, the analysis showed an 87.70% probability that he had turned 18.

    An immigration official reported that it was apparent to the case manager that I.J. “appeared physically older than 17 years of age,” and that he and his mother had not been able to provide a second type of identification that might prove his age.

    The next month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him away in shackles and placed him in a medium-security prison that houses immigrant detainees.

    He spent about five months in adult detention and 24 of those days in segregated custody. Whenever he spoke with an officer, he would say he was a minor — unaware for more than a month that his teeth had landed him there.

    “I came to the United States with a big dream,” I.J. said. “My dream was finished.”

    But when the Arizona-based Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project took I.J.’s case to federal court, a district judge found that the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s age re-determination violated federal law and the agency’s own guidelines.

    In April, the judge ordered I.J. released back into Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, a program responsible for unaccompanied migrant children. He has since reunited with his family in New York. The Florence Project also filed another case in federal court that resulted in the government voluntarily returning a Bangladeshi minor to ORR custody and rescinding his age re-determination.

    As the government grappled with an influx of the number of families and children arriving at the border in fiscal year 2018, approvals of ORR age determination exams more than doubled.

    These handful of cases where a minor was released from adult detention is almost certainly an undercount, as most migrants held in adult detention do not have legal representation and are unlikely to fight their cases.

    It is unclear how often migrants pretend to be minors and turn out to be adults. In a call with reporters earlier this year, a Customs and Border Protection official said that from April 2018 to March 25 of this year, his agents had identified more than 3,100 individuals in family units making fraudulent claims, including those who misrepresented themselves as minors.

    Unaccompanied minors are given greater protections than adults after being apprehended. The government’s standard refers migrants to adult custody if a dental exam analysis shows at least a 75% probability that they are 18 or older. But other evidence is supposed to be considered.

    Dr. David Senn, the director of the Center for Education and Research in Forensics at UT Health San Antonio, has handled more than 2,000 age cases since 1998.

    A program that Senn helped develop estimates the mean age of a person and the probability that he or she is at least 18. In addition to looking at dental X-rays, he has also looked at skeletal X-rays and analyzed bone development in the hand and wrist area.

    He handled a larger number of cases in the early 2000s, but last year he saw his caseload triple — rising to 168. There appears to be a slowdown this calendar year for Senn, one of a few dentists the government uses for these analyses.

    He said making an exact age determination is not possible.

    “We can only tell you what the statistics say,” Senn said. “I think the really important thing to note is that most people who do this work are not trying to be policemen or to be Border Patrol agents or immigration …. what we’re trying to do is help. What we’re trying to do is protect children.”

    In 2007 and again in 2008, the House Appropriations Committee called on the Department of Homeland Security to stop relying on forensic testing of bones and teeth. But it was the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 that declared age determinations should take into account “multiple forms of evidence, including the non-exclusive use of radiographs.”

    In a Washington state case, an X-ray analysis by Senn showed a 92.55% probability that Bilal, a Somali migrant, already had reached 18 years of age. ICE removed him from his foster home and held him in an adult detention center.

    “Not only were they trying to save themselves money, which they paid to the foster family, but they were wrecking this kid’s life,” said Matt Adams, legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which represented Bilal. “They were just rolling the dice.”

    In 2016, a federal judge found that the Office of Refugee Resettlement relied exclusively on the dental exam and overturned the age determination for the young Somali.

    Last year, in the case of an Eritrean migrant who said he was 17, Senn’s analysis of dental X-rays showed a 92.55% probability that he had turned 18, and provided a range of possible ages between 17.10 and 23.70.

    It was enough to prompt his removal from a juvenile facility and placement into an adult one.

    Again, a district judge found that the government had relied exclusively on the dental exam to determine his age and ordered the migrant released back into ORR custody.

    Danielle Bennett, an ICE spokeswoman, said the agency “does not track” information on such reversals.

    “We should never be used as the only method to determine age,” Senn said. “If those agencies are not following their own rules, they should have their feet held to the fire.”

    Similar concerns over medical age assessments have sprung up in other countries, including the United Kingdom and Sweden.

    The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ guidance about how adolescent migrants’ ages should be analyzed says that if countries use scientific procedures to determine age, that they should allow for margins of error. Michael Bochenek, an attorney specializing in children’s rights at Human Rights Watch, said that for adolescents, the margin of error in scientific tests is “so big that it doesn’t tell you anything.”

    An influx of Bangladeshi migrants claiming to be minors has contributed to the government’s recent use of dental exams. From October through March 8, more than 150 Bangladeshis who claimed to be minors and were determined to be adults were transferred from the Office of Refugee Resettlement to ICE custody, according to the agency.

    In fiscal year 2018, Border Patrol apprehensions of Bangladeshi migrants went up 109% over the year before, rising to 1,203. Similarly, the number of Bangladeshi minors in ORR custody increased about 221% between fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2018, reaching 392.

    Ali Riaz, a professor at Illinois State University, said Bangladeshis are leaving the country for reasons including high population density, high unemployment among the young, a deteriorating political environment and the “quest for a better life.”

    In October, Myriam Hillin, an ORR federal field specialist, was told that ICE had information showing that a number of Bangladeshi migrants in their custody claiming to be underage had passports with different birth dates than on their birth certificates.

    Bochenek said it’s common for migrant children to travel with fake passports that make them appear older, because in some countries minors are more likely to be intercepted or questioned by immigration agents.

    While I.J. was able to regain status as a minor, three Bangladeshi migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in the San Diego area in October 2018 are still trying to convince the government they are underage.

    Their passports didn’t match their birth certificates. Dental exams ordered by immigration officials found that each of them had about an 89% likelihood of being adults.

    “Both subjects were adamant that the passports were given to them by the ‘agent’ (smuggler), however, there is little reason to lie to any of the countries they flew into,” wrote one Border Patrol agent, describing the arrest of two of the migrants. “Also, it is extremely difficult to fake a passport, especially for no reason. I have seen [unaccompanied children] fly into each of the countries (except for Panama and Costa Rica) and pass through with no problem. This is a recent trend with Bangladeshis. They do it in order to be released from DHS custody faster.”

    During interviews, the young migrants, Shahadat, Shahriar and Tareq, told asylum officers that smugglers had given them the passports, according to records from the interviews.

    When asked why they had been given those birth dates, they said it had something to do with smugglers’ plans for their travel.

    “I don’t have that much idea,” Shahadat told an asylum officer, according to the officer’s notes in a summary-style transcript. “When I asked why, they told me that if I don’t give this [date of birth] there will be problems with travel.”

    Shahriar told the officer that the smuggler became aggressive when questioned.

    The migrants have submitted copies of birth certificates, school documents and signed statements from their parents attesting to their claimed birth dates. An online database of birth records maintained by the government of Bangladesh appears to confirm their date of birth claims.

    Shahriar also provided his parents’ birth certificates. If he were as old as immigration officials believe him to be, his mother would have been 12 years old when she had him.

    In each case, immigration officials stood by the passport dates.

    Shahadat and Shahriar are being held in Otay Mesa Detention Center. Tareq was held at the facility for months before being released on a $7,500 bond. All three are moving through the immigration system as adults, with asylum proceedings their only option to stay in the U.S..

    At least one of the migrants, Shahadat, was placed in administrative segregation, a version of solitary confinement in immigration detention, when his age came into question, according to documents provided by their attorney.

    A judge ordered him deported.

    https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-immigrant-age-migrants-ice-dental-teeth-bangladesh-20190602-story.
    #tests_osseux #os #âge #USA #Etats-Unis #mineurs #enfants #enfance #rétention #détention_administrative #dents #migrations #asile #réfugiés #USA #Etats-Unis

  • Hundreds of Europeans ‘criminalised’ for helping migrants – as far right aims to win big in European elections

    Elderly women, priests and firefighters among those arrested, charged or ‘harassed’ by police for supporting migrants, with numbers soaring in the past 18 months.

    These cases – compiled from news reports and other records from researchers, NGOs and activist groups, as well as new interviews across Europe – suggest a sharp increase in the number of people targeted since the start of 2018. At least 100 people were arrested, charged or investigated last year (a doubling of that figure for the preceding year).


    https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/hundreds-of-europeans-criminalised-for-helping-migrants-new-data-show
    #délit_de_solidarité #solidarité #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Europe
    #Allemagne #criminalisation #statistiques #chiffres #Suisse #Danemark #Espagne #France #journalisme #journalistes #presse #Grèce #Calais

    #Norbert_Valley #Christian_Hartung #Miguel_Roldan #Lise_Ramslog #Claire_Marsol #Anouk_Van_Gestel #Lisbeth_Zornig_Andersen #Daphne_Vloumidi #Mikael_Lindholm #Fernand_Bosson #Benoit_Duclois #Mussie_Zerai #Manuel_Blanco #Tom_Ciotkowski #Rob_Lawrie

    ping @isskein @karine4

    • The creeping criminalisation of humanitarian aid

      At the heart of the trial of a volunteer with American migrant aid group No More Deaths that began in Arizona last week lies the question of when humanitarian aid crosses the line and becomes a criminal offence.

      Scott Warren, 37, faces three felony charges after he helped two undocumented migrants by providing them food, shelter, and transportation over three days in January 2018 – his crime, prosecutors say, wasn’t helping people but hiding them from law enforcement officers.

      Whichever way the case goes, humanitarian work appears to be under growing threat of criminalisation by certain governments.

      Aid organisations have long faced suspensions in difficult operating environments due to geopolitical or domestic political concerns – from Pakistan to Sudan to Burundi – but they now face a new criminalisation challenge from Western governments, whether it’s rescue missions in the Mediterranean or toeing the US counter-terror line in the Middle East.

      As aid workers increasingly find themselves in the legal crosshairs, here’s a collection of our reporting to draw attention to this emerging trend.

      http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/06/07/creeping-criminalisation-humanitarian-aid

      Dans l’article une liste d’articles poubliés dans The New Humanitarian sur le délit de solidarité un peu partout dans le #monde...

    • European activists fight back against ‘criminalisation’ of aid for migrants and refugees

      More and more people are being arrested across Europe for helping migrants and refugees. Now, civil society groups are fighting back against the 17-year-old EU policy they say lies at the root of what activists and NGOs have dubbed the “criminalisation of solidarity”.

      http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2019/06/20/european-activists-fight-criminalisation-aid-migrants-refugees

      Et le #rapport:
      Crackdown on NGOs and volunteers helping refugees and other migrants


      http://www.resoma.eu/sites/resoma/resoma/files/policy_brief/pdf/Final%20Synthetic%20Report%20-%20Crackdown%20on%20NGOs%20and%20volunteers%20h

    • Documentan incremento de amenazas contra defensores de migrantes tras acuerdo con EU

      Tras el acuerdo migratorio que México y los Estados Unidos firmaron el pasado junio, se han incrementado los riesgos y amenazas que sufren las y los activistas que defienden a migrantes en Centroamérica, México y Estados Unidos. Esa es la conclusión del informe “Defensores sin muros: personas defensoras de Derechos Humanos criminalizadas en Centroamérica, México y Estados Unidos”, elaborado por la ONG Frontline Defenders, el Programa de Asuntos Migratorios de la Universidad Iberoamericana y la Red Nacional de Organismos Civiles Todos los Derechos para Todas y Todos. El documento identifica 69 eventos de detención, amenazas, acoso, difamación, agresión, deportación, vigilancia o negación de entrada a un país. La mayoría de ellos, 41, tuvieron lugar durante 2019, según un listado que acompaña al informe. Uno de los grandes hallazgos: la existencia de colaboración entre México y Estados Unidos para cerrar el paso a los migrantes y perseguir a los activistas. “Los gobiernos tienen relaciones tensas, difíciles, complicadas. México y Estados Unidos están pasando por uno de sus peores momentos en bilaterales, pero cuando se trata de cooperar para restringir Derechos Humanos hay colaboración absoluta”, dijo Carolina Jiménez, de Amnistía Internacional. Entre estas colaboraciones destaca un trabajo conjunto de ambos países para identificar a activistas y periodistas que quedaron fichados en un registro secreto. El informe se presentó ayer en la Ciudad de México, al mismo tiempo en el que el presidente estadounidense, Donald Trump, habló ante la asamblea general de las Naciones Unidas, agradeciendo al presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador “por la gran cooperación que estamos recibiendo y por poner a 27 mil soldados en nuestra frontera sur”.

      https://www.educaoaxaca.org/documentan-incremento-de-amenazas-contra-defensores-de-migrantes-tras-a
      #Amérique_centrale #Mexique

    • Migration and the Shrinking Humanitarian Space in Europe

      As of October 10th, 1071 deaths of migrants were recorded in the Mediterranean in 2019.[1] In their attempt to save lives, civilian maritime search and rescue organisations like Sea Watch or Proactive Open Arms have gained high levels of media attention over the last years. Cases such as the arrest of the captain of the Sea Watch 3, Carola Rackete, in June 2019 or the three weeks odyssey of Open Arms in August 2019 dominate the media and public discourse in Europe. The closing of ports in Italy, Spain and Malta, the confiscation of vessels, legal proceedings against crew members alongside tight migration policies and anti-trafficking laws have led to a shrinking space for principled humanitarian action in Europe. While maritime search and rescue (SAR) activities receive most of the attention, focusing solely on them prevents one from seeing the bigger picture: a general shrinking of humanitarian space in Europe. In the following, the analysis will shed some light on patterns in which the space for assisting and protecting people on the move is shrinking both on land and at sea.
      Migration and Humanitarian Action

      Migration is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history people have left their homes to seek safety and pursue a better life. Yet, due to increasing human mobility and mounting crisis migration the number of people on the move is consistently rising (Martin, Weerasinghe, and Taylor 2014). In 2019, The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) documents more than 258 million international migrants worldwide, compared to 214 million in 2009.[2]

      This number is composed of a variety of different migrant groups, such as students, international labour migrants or registered refugees. Based on a distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration, not all these groups are considered people in need of international protection and humanitarian assistance (Léon 2018). Accordingly, unlike refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) migrants generally fall out of the humanitarian architecture.[3] Yet, notwithstanding the reasons for migrating, people on the move can become vulnerable to human trafficking, sexual exploitation and other forms of abuse during their journey. They strand at borders and live in deplorable conditions (Léon 2018).

      The UN Secretary General’s Agenda for Humanity therefore stresses the importance of addressing the vulnerabilities of migrants. This entails providing more regular and legal pathways for migration but also requires “a collective and comprehensive response to displacement, migration and mobility”, including the provision of humanitarian visas and protection for people on the move who do not fall under the narrow confines of the 1951 Refugee Convention.[4] The view that specific vulnerabilities of migrants are to be integrated into humanitarian response plans is reflected in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement’s approach to migration, which is strictly humanitarian and focuses on the needs and vulnerabilities of migrants irrespective of their legal status, type, or category (Linde 2009).

      Thereby, the term ‘migrant’ is deliberately kept broad to include the needs of labour migrants, vulnerabilities due to statelessness or being considered irregular by public authorities (ibid.). Despite this clear commitment to the protection of people on the move, migrants remain a vulnerable group with a high number losing their lives on migratory routes or going missing. Home to three main migratory routes, the Mediterranean is considered one of the world’s deadliest migration routes.[5]

      When in 2015 an unprecedented number of people made their way into Europe this exposed the unpreparedness of the EU and its member states in reacting quickly and effectively to the needs of people on the move. A report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) on refugees and vulnerable migrants in Europe concludes that “Europe’s actual humanitarian response must be judged a failure in many respects; basic needs have not been met and vulnerable people have not been protected” (De Largy 2016).

      For humanitarian organisations with experience in setting up and managing camps in countries of the Global South, managing the humanitarian response in their own backyard seems to have posed significant challenges. When more than one million people arrived in 2015, most international humanitarian organisations had no operational agreement with European states, no presences in affected areas, no funding lines for European activities and no established channels to mobilise resources (ibid.). This has led to protection gaps in the humanitarian response, which, in many cases, have been filled by activists, volunteers and civil society actors. Despite a number of factors, including the EU-Turkey deal, arrangements with Libya and toughening border controls, have since lead to a decline in the number of people arriving in Europe, sustained humanitarian action is needed and these actors continue to provide essential services to refugees and vulnerable migrants. However, with hostile attitudes towards migrants on the rise, and the marked effects of several successful smear campaigns, a number of organisations and civil society actors have taken it upon themselves to bring much needed attention to the shrinking space for civil society.
      Shrinking Humanitarian Space in Europe

      The shrinking space for civil society action is also impacting on the space for principled humanitarian action in Europe. While no agreed upon definition of humanitarian space[6] exists, the concept is used in reference to the physical access that humanitarian organisations have to the affected population, the nature of the operating environment for the humanitarian response including security conditions, and the ability of humanitarian actors to adhere to the core principles of humanitarian action (Collinson and Elhawary 2012: 2). Moreover, the concept includes the ability of affected people to reach lifesaving assistance and protection. The independence of humanitarian action from politics is central to this definition of humanitarian space, emphasising the need to adhere to the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence as well as to maintain a clear distinction between the roles and functions of humanitarian in contrast to those of military and political actors (OCHA, 2003). Humanitarian actors within this space strive to achieve their mission of saving lives and alleviating suffering by seeking ongoing access to the affected population.

      Though the many organisations, volunteers and individuals that work on migration issues in Europe would not all self-identify or be considered purely humanitarian organisations, many of them provide life-saving services to people on the move. Thus, the humanitarian space is occupied by a diversity of actors, including human rights organisations, solidarity networks, and concerned individuals alongside more traditional humanitarian actors (Léon 2018).

      Referring to the limited room for agency and restricted access to the affected population, the shrinking humanitarian space in Europe has been linked to the spreading of populism, restrictive migration policies, the securitisation of migration and the criminalisation of humanitarian action (Hammerl 2019). These developments are by no means limited to Europe. Other regions of the world witness a similar shrinking of the humanitarian space for assisting people on the move. In Europe and elsewhere migration and asylum policies have to a great extent determined the humanitarian space. Indeed, EU migration policies have negatively affected the ways in which humanitarian actors are able to carry out their work along the migration routes, limiting the space for principled humanitarian action (Atger 2019). These policies are primarily directed at combatting human trafficking and smuggling, protecting European borders and national security interests. Through prioritising security over humanitarian action, they have contributed to the criminalisation of individuals and organisations that work with people on the move (ibid.). As has been particularly visible in the context of civilian maritime SAR activities, the criminalisation of humanitarian action, bureaucratic hurdles, and attacks on and harassment of aid workers and volunteers have limited the access to the affected population in Europe.
      Criminalisation

      The criminalisation of migration that has limited the space for principled humanitarian action is a process that occurs along three interrelated lines: first, the discursive criminalisation of migration; second, the interweaving of criminal law and policing for migration management purposes; and finally, the use of detention as a way of controlling people on the move (Hammerl 2019, citing Parkin). With media and public discourse asserting that migrants are ‘illegal’, people assisting them have been prosecuted on the grounds of facilitating illegal entry, human trafficking and smuggling.

      Already back in 2002, the Cypriot NGO Action for Equality, Support and Anti-Racism (KISA) was prosecuted under criminal law after it had launched a financial appeal to cover healthcare costs for a migrant worker (Fekete 2009). This is just been one of six cases in which the Director of an organisation has been arrested for his work with migrants.[7] While KISA takes a clear human rights stance, these trends are also observable for humanitarian activities such as providing food or shelter. Individuals and organisations providing assistance and transportation to migrants have faced legal prosecution in France and Belgium for human smuggling in 2018. Offering shelter to migrants in transit has led to arrests of individuals accused of human trafficking (Atger 2019).[8] The criminalisation of civilian maritime SAR activities has led to the arrest and prosecution of crew members and the seizing of rescue vessels.

      The tension between anti-smuggling and anti-trafficking laws and humanitarian action is a result of the European ‘Facilitators’ Package’ from 2002 that defines the facilitation of unauthorised entry, transit and residence.[9] Though the Directive and its implementation in national legislatures foresees humanitarian exemptions[10], the impact of these laws and regulations on the humanitarian space has been critical. Lacking clarity, these laws have been implemented differently by EU member states and created a sense of uncertainty for individuals and organisations assisting migrants, who now risk criminal prosecution (Carrera et al. 2018). In several EU member states with humanitarian exemptions, humanitarian actors were reportedly prosecuted (ibid.). A case in point is Greece, which has a specific humanitarian exemption applying to maritime SAR activities and the facilitation of entry for asylum seekers rescued at sea. Despite sounding promising at first, this has not prevented the prosecution of volunteer crew members of the Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI) due to the existence of two legal loopholes. The first of these works on the basis that rescuers are not able to identify who is in need of international protection, and second, the legal framework contains an exemption from punishment, but not prosecution.[11]
      Bureaucratic Hurdles

      Besides the criminalisation of humanitarian activities, across Europe – predominantly at borders – administrative decisions and rules have narrowed the space for humanitarian action (Atger 2019). In countries such as France, Germany, Hungary, Spain and Italy, laws and regulations prevent organisations from accessing reception centres or transit zones between borders (Hammerl 2019, Amnesty 2019). A reduction of financial support and tighter legal requirements for operation further hinder organisations to assist people on the move (Atger 2019). In the case of maritime SAR operations, NGOs had to stop their operations due to de-flagging of rescue ships as ordered by EU member state authorities.[12]

      Access to people on the move is obstructed in manifold ways and organisations face a mix of intimidations strategies and bureaucratic obstacles in their mission to deliver aid (Léon 2018). In Germany, new asylum policies in 2015 changed the provision of the previous cash-based assistance to in-kind aid.[13] This is inconsistent with German humanitarian policy in other migrant and refugee hosting countries, where the German Foreign Ministry promotes cash-based programming as an efficient, effective and dignified way of assisting people in need.

      Apart from instructions and orders by public authorities and law enforcement entities, other tactics range from frequent ID checks, parking fines to threats of arrest (Amnesty 2019). In Calais, humanitarian action was obstructed when the municipality of Calais prohibited the distribution of food as well as the delivery of temporary showers to the site by a local charity with two municipal orders in March 2017 (Amnesty 2019). In 2017, the Hungarian Parliament passed the so-called LEX NGO. Like the foreign agent law in Russia, it includes provisions for NGOs that receive more than EUR 23 000 per year from abroad (including EU member states) to register as “organisations receiving foreign funding”. Coupled with a draft bill of a new Tax Law that establishes a 25% punitive tax to be paid for “propaganda activities that indicate positive aspects of migration”, these attempts to curtail work with migrants has a chilling effect both on NGOs and donors. As the punitive tax is to be paid by the donor organisation, or by the NGO itself in case the donor fails to do so, organisations risk bankruptcy.[14]
      Policing Humanitarianism[15]

      An increasingly hostile environment towards migration, fuelled by anti-immigrant sentiments and public discourse, has led to suspicion, intimidation and harassment of individuals and organisations working to assist and protect them. The securitisation of migration (Lazaridis and Wadia 2015), in which migrants are constructed as a potential security threat and a general atmosphere of fear is created, has given impetus to a general policing of humanitarian action. Even when not criminalised, humanitarian actors have been hindered in their work by a whole range of dissuasion and intimidation strategies. Civilian maritime SAR organisations in particular have been targets of defamation and anti-immigration rhetoric. Though analyses of migratory trends have proved that a correlation between SAR operations and an increase of migrant crossings was indeed erroneous (Cusumano and Pattison, Crawley et al. 2016, Cummings et al. 2015), organisations are still being accused of both constituting a pull-factor for migration (Fekete 2018) and of working together with human traffickers. In some instances, this has led to them being labelled as taxis for ‘illegal’ migrants (Hammerl 2019). In Greece, and elsewhere, volunteers assisting migrants have been subject to police harassment. Smear campaigns, especially in the context of SAR operations in the Mediterranean, have affected the humanitarian sector as a whole “by creating suspicion towards the work of humanitarians” (Atger 2019). Consequently, organisations have encountered difficulties in recruiting volunteers and seen a decline in donations. This prevented some organisations from publicly announcing their participation in maritime SAR or their work with migrants.[16] In severe cases, humanitarian actors suffered physical threats by security personnel or “self-proclaimed vigilante groups” (Hammerl 2019).

      Moreover, having to work alongside security forces and within a policy framework that primarily aims at border policing and migration deterrence (justified on humanitarian grounds), humanitarian actors risk being associated with migration control techniques in the management of ‘humanitarian borders’ (Moreno-Lax 2018, Pallister-Wilkins 2018). When Italy in 2017 urged search and rescue organisations to sign a controversial Code of Conduct in order to continue disembarkation at Italian ports, some organisations refused to do so. The Code of Conduct endangered humanitarian principles by making life-saving activities conditional on collaborating in the fight against smugglers and the presence of law enforcement personnel on board (Cusumano 2019).

      Beyond the maritime space, the politicisation of EU aid jeopardises the neutrality of humanitarian actors, forcing them to either disengage or be associated with a political agenda of migration deterrence. Humanitarian organisations are increasingly requested to grant immigration authorities access to their premises, services and data (Atger 2019). In Greece, a legislation was introduced in 2016 which entailed the close monitoring of, and restrictive access for, volunteers and NGOs assisting asylum seekers, thereby placing humanitarian action under the supervision of security forces (Hammerl 2019). As a consequence of the EU-Turkey Deal in 2016, MSF announced[17] that it would no longer accept funding by EU states and institutions “only to treat the victims of their policies” (Atger 2019).
      The Way Ahead

      The shrinking space poses a fundamental challenge for principled humanitarian action in Europe. The shrinking humanitarian space can only be understood against the backdrop of a general shrinking civil space in Europe (Strachwitz 2019, Wachsmann and Bouchet 2019). However, the ways in which the shrinking space affects humanitarian action in Europe has so far received little attention in the humanitarian sector. The problem goes well beyond the widely discussed obstacles to civilian maritime SAR operations.

      Humanitarian organisations across Europe assist people arriving at ports, staying in official or unofficial camps or being in transit. An increasingly hostile environment that is fuelled by populist and securitisation discourses limits access to, and protection of, people on the move both on land and at sea. The criminalisation of aid, bureaucratic hurdles and harassment of individuals and organisations assisting migrants are just some of the ways in which humanitarian access is obstructed in Europe.

      A defining feature of humanitarian action in Europe has been the important and essential role of volunteers, civil society organisations and solidarity networks both at the grassroots’ level and across national borders. Large humanitarian actors, on the other hand, took time to position themselves (Léon 2018) or have shied away from a situation that is unfamiliar and could also jeopardize the financial support of their main donors – EU member states.

      Since then, the humanitarian space has been encroached upon in many ways and it has become increasingly difficult for volunteers or (small) humanitarian organisations to assist and protect people on the move. The criminalisation of humanitarian action is particularly visible in the context of civilian maritime SAR activities in the Mediterranean, but also bureaucratic hurdles and the co-optation of the humanitarian response into other political objectives have limited the space for principled humanitarian action. In order to protect people on the move, national, regional and international responses are needed to offer protection and assistance to migrants in countries of origin, transit and destination. Thereby, the humanitarian response needs to be in line with the principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence to ensure access to the affected population. While the interests of states to counter organised crime, including human trafficking, is legitimate, this should not restrict humanitarian access to vulnerable migrants and refugees.

      In Europe, the biggest obstacle for effective humanitarian action is a lacking political will and the inability of the EU to achieve consensus on migration policies (DeLargy 2016). The Malta Agreement, a result of the latest EU Summit of Home Affairs Ministers in September 2019 and subsequent negotiations in Luxembourg in October of the same year, has failed to address the shortcomings of current migration policies and to remove the obstacles standing in the way of principled humanitarian action in the Mediterranean. For this, new alliances are warranted between humanitarian, human rights and migration focussed organizations to defend the humanitarian space for principled action to provide crucial support to people on the move both on land and at sea.

      http://chaberlin.org/en/publications/migration-and-the-shrinking-humanitarian-space-in-europe-2

      Pour télécharger le rapport:
      http://chaberlin.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-10-debattenbeitrag-migration-shrinking-humanitarian-space-roepstorff
      #CHA #Centre_for_humanitarian_action

  • First-ever private border wall built in #New_Mexico

    A private group announced Monday that it has constructed a half-mile wall along a section of the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico, in what it said was a first in the border debate.

    The 18-foot steel bollard wall is similar to the designs used by the Border Patrol, sealing off a part of the border that had been a striking gap in existing fencing, according to We Build the Wall, the group behind the new section.

    The section was also built faster and, organizers say, likely more cheaply than the government has been able to manage in recent years.

    Kris Kobach, a former secretary of state in Kansas and an informal immigration adviser to President Trump, says the New Mexico project has the president’s blessing, and says local Border Patrol agents are eager to have the assistance.

    “We’re closing a gap that’s been a big headache for them,” said Mr. Kobach, who is general counsel for We Build the Wall.


    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/27/first-ever-private-border-wall-built-new-mexico
    #privatisation #murs #barrières_frontalières #USA #Mexique #frontières #business #complexe_militaro-industriel
    ping @albertocampiphoto @daphne

    • The #GoFundMe Border Wall Is the Quintessential Trump-Era Grift

      In 2012, historian Rick Perlstein wrote a piece of essential reading for understanding modern conservatism, titled “The Long Con” and published by the Baffler. It ties the right’s penchant for absurd and obvious grifts to the conservative mind’s particular vulnerability to fear and lies:

      The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.

      Lying, Perlstein said, is “what makes you sound the way a conservative is supposed to sound.” The lies—about abortion factories, ACORN, immigrants, etc.—fund the grifts, and the grifts prey on the psychology that makes the lies so successful.

      Perlstein’s piece is all I could think of when I saw last night’s CNN story about the border wall GoFundMe, which seemingly has actually produced Wall. According to CNN, the group We Build the Wall says it has produced a half-mile of border wall in New Mexico. CNN was invited to watch the construction, where Kris Kobach, who is general counsel for the group, spoke “over the clanking and beeping of construction equipment.”

      #Steve_Bannon, who is naturally involved with the group, told CNN that the wall connects existing fencing and had “tough terrain” that means it was left “off the government list.” The half-mile stretch of wall cost an “estimated $6 million to $8 million to build,” CNN reported.

      CNN also quoted #Jeff_Allen, who owns the property on which the fence was built, as saying: “I have fought illegals on this property for six years. I love my country and this is a step in protecting my country.” According to MSN, Allen partnered with United Constitutional Patriots to build the wall with We Build the Wall’s funding. UCP is the same militia that was seen on video detaining immigrants and misrepresenting themselves as Border Patrol; the Phoenix New Times reported on the “apparent ties” between the UCP and We Build the Wall earlier this month.

      This story is bursting at the seams with an all-star lineup of right-wing scammers. The GoFundMe itself, of course, has been rocked by scandal: After the effort raised $20 million, just $980 million short of the billion-dollar goal, GoFundMe said in January that the funds would be returned, since creator Brian Kolfage had originally pledged that “If for ANY reason we don’t reach our goal we will refund your donation.” But Kolfage quickly figured out how to keep the gravy train going, urging those who had donated to allow their donations to be redirected to a non-profit. Ultimately, $14 million of that $20 million figure was indeed rerouted by the idiots who donated it.

      That non-profit became #We_Build_The_Wall, and like all good conservative con jobs, it has the celebs of the fever swamp attached to it. Not only #Kris_Kobach, a tenacious liar who failed at proving voter fraud is a widespread problem—but also slightly washed-up figures like Bannon, Sheriff David Clarke, Curt Schilling, and Tom Tancredo. All the stars are here!

      How much sleazier could it get? Try this: the main contractor working at the site of New Wall, according to CNN, is Tommy Fisher. The Washington Post reported last week that Trump had “personally and repeatedly urged the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers” to give the contract for the border wall to the company owned by Fisher, a “GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News,” despite the fact that the Corps of Engineers previously said Fisher’s proposals didn’t meet their requirements.

      Of course, like all good schemes, the need for more money never ceases: On the Facebook page for the group, the announcement that Wall had been completed was accompanied with a plea for fans to “DONATE NOW to fund more walls! We have many more projects lined up!”

      So, what we have is: A tax-exempt non-profit raised $20 million by claiming it would be able to make the federal government build Wall by just giving it the money for it and then, when that didn’t happen, getting most of its donors to reroute that money; then it built a half-mile of wall on private land for as much as $8 million, which went to a firm of a Fox News star whom President Trump adores.

      Perlstein wrote in the aforementioned piece that it’s hard to “specify a break point where the money game ends and the ideological one begins,” since “the con selling 23-cent miracle cures for heart disease inches inexorably into the one selling miniscule marginal tax rates as the miracle cure for the nation itself.” The con job was sold through fear: “Conjuring up the most garishly insatiable monsters precisely in order to banish them from underneath the bed, they aim to put the target to sleep.”

      The Trump era is the inartful, gaudy, brazen peak of this phenomenon. This time, instead of selling fake stem cell cures using the language of Invading Liberals, the grifters are just straight-up selling—for real American dollars—the promise of building a big wall to keep the monsters out.

      https://splinternews.com/the-gofundme-border-wall-is-the-quintessential-trump-er-1835062340

    • Company touted by Trump to build the wall has history of fines, violations

      President Donald Trump appears to have set his sights on a North Dakota construction firm with a checkered legal record to build portions of his signature border wall.
      The family-owned company, #Fisher_Sand_&_Gravel, claims it can build the wall cheaper and faster than competitors. It was among a handful of construction firms chosen to build prototypes of the President’s border wall in 2017 and is currently constructing portions of barrier on private land along the border in New Mexico using private donations.
      It also, however, has a history of red flags including more than $1 million in fines for environmental and tax violations. A decade ago, a former co-owner of the company pleaded guilty to tax fraud, and was sentenced to prison. The company also admitted to defrauding the federal government by impeding the IRS. The former executive, who’s a brother of the current company owner, is no longer associated with it.
      More than two years into his presidency, Trump is still fighting to build and pay for his border wall, a key campaign issue. After failing to get his requests for wall funding passed by a Republican-held Congress during his first two years in office, Trump has met resistance this year from a Democratic-controlled House. His attempt to circumvent Congress through a national emergency declaration has been challenged in the courts.
      On May 24, a federal district judge blocked the administration from using Defense Department funds to construct parts of the wall. The Trump administration has since appealed the block to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and in the interim, asked the district court to allow building to continue pending appeal. The district court denied the administration’s request.
      Despite the uncertainty, construction firms have been competing to win multimillion-dollar contracts to build portions of wall, including Fisher Sand & Gravel.

      Asked by CNN to comment on the company’s history of environmental violations and legal issues, the company said in a statement: “The questions you are asking have nothing to do with the excellent product and work that Fisher is proposing with regard to protecting America’s southern border. The issues and situations in your email were resolved years ago. None of those matters are outstanding today.”
      Catching the President’s attention
      The company was founded in North Dakota in 1952 and operates in several states across the US. It’s enjoyed public support from North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer, who as a congressman invited the company’s CEO, Tommy Fisher, to Trump’s State of the Union address in 2018. Cramer has received campaign contributions from Fisher and his wife. A photo of the event shared by Fisher in a company newsletter shows Tommy Fisher shaking Trump’s hand.
      The Washington Post first reported the President’s interest in Fisher. According to the Post, the President has “aggressively” pushed for the Army Corps of Engineers to award a wall contract to Fisher.
      The President “immediately brought up Fisher” during a May 23 meeting in the Oval Office to discuss details of the border wall with various government officials, including that he wants it to be painted black and include French-style doors, according to the Post and confirmed by CNN.
      “The Army Corps of Engineers says about 450 miles of wall will be completed by the end of next year, and the only thing President Trump is pushing, is for the wall to be finished quickly so the American people have the safety and security they deserve,” said Hogan Gidley, White House deputy press secretary.
      A US government official familiar with the meeting tells CNN that the President has repeatedly mentioned the company in discussions he’s had about the wall with the head of the Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite.
      Fisher has recently made efforts to raise its public profile, both by upping its lobbying efforts and through repeated appearances on conservative media by its CEO, Tommy Fisher.

      In the past two years, for example, the company’s congressional lobbying expenditures jumped significantly — from $5,000 in 2017 to $75,000 in 2018, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit that tracks lobbying expenditures.

      When asked about Fisher Sand & Gravel’s lobbying, Don Larson, one of Fisher’s registered lobbyists, said: “I am working to help decision makers in Washington become familiar with the company and its outstanding capabilities.”
      Media Blitz
      As part of a media blitz on outlets including Fox News, SiriusXM Patriot and Breitbart News, Tommy Fisher has discussed his support for the border wall and pitched his company as the one to build it. In a March 5 appearance on Fox & Friends, Fisher said that his company could build 234 miles of border wall for $4.3 billion, compared to the $5.7 billion that the Trump administration has requested from Congress.
      Fisher claimed that his firm can work five-to-10 times faster than competitors as a result of its construction process.
      The President has also touted Fisher on Fox News. In an April interview in which he was asked about Fisher by Sean Hannity, Trump said the company was “recommended strongly by a great new senator, as you know, Kevin Cramer. And they’re real. But they have been bidding and so far they haven’t been meeting the bids. I thought they would.”
      Despite the President’s interest, the company has thus far been unsuccessful in obtaining a contract to build the border wall, beyond that of a prototype.

      Earlier this year, Fisher put its name in the running for border wall contracts worth nearly $1 billion. When it lost the bid to Barnard Construction Co. and SLSCO Ltd., Fisher protested the awards over claims that the process was biased. In response, the Army Corps canceled the award. But after a review of the process, the Army Corps combined the projects and granted it to a subsidiary of Barnard Construction, according to an agency spokesperson.
      It’s unclear whether the project will proceed, given the recent decision by a federal judge to block the use of Defense Department funds to build parts of the border wall and the administration’s appeal.
      Fisher, which has a pending lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims over the solicitation process, is listed by the Defense Department as being among firms eligible to compete for future border contracts.

      It has moved forward with a private group, We Build the Wall, that is building sections of barrier on private land in New Mexico using private money raised as part of a GoFundMe campaign. Kris Kobach, the former Kansas Secretary of State who is now general counsel for the group, said a half-mile stretch is nearly complete, at an estimated cost of $6 million to $8 million.

      In a statement, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said Fisher Industries has told them that the company has begun construction on private property along the border “in the approximate area of a USBP border barrier requirement that was not prioritized under current funding.”
      The spokesperson added: “It is not uncommon for vendors” to demonstrate their capabilities using “their own resources,” but the agency goes on to “encourage all interested vendors” to compete for border contracts “through established mechanisms to ensure any construction is carried out under relevant federal authorities and meets USBP operational requirements for border barrier.”
      In responses provided to CNN through Scott Sleight, an attorney working on behalf of the company, Fisher maintained that it’s “committed to working with all appropriate federal government officials and agencies to provide its expertise and experience to help secure America’s southern border.”
      The company says it has “developed a patent-pending bollard fence hanging system that [it] believes allows border fencing to be constructed faster than any contractor using common construction methods.” It also added: “Fisher has been concerned about the procurement procedures and evaluations done by the USACE to date, and hopes these issues can be remedied.”
      Relationship with Sen. Cramer
      A month after attending the 2018 State of the Union address with Cramer, Fisher and his wife, Candice each contributed the $5,400 maximum donation to Cramer’s campaign for the US Senate, Federal Election Commission records show.
      Fisher also donated to several Arizona Republicans in the 2018 election cycle, including giving the $5,400-maximum donation to Martha McSally’s campaign, records show.
      A recent video produced by Fisher Sand & Gravel demonstrating its ability to construct the wall includes a clip of Cramer at the controls of a track-hoe lifting sections of barrier wall into place, saying “this is just like XBOX, baby.” Cramer was joined at the demonstration by a handful of other Republican lawmakers from across the country.

      Cramer has been publicly critical of how the Army Corps has handled its border wall construction work, arguing that it has moved too slowly and expressing frustration over how it has dealt with Fisher. In an interview with a North Dakota TV station, Cramer said that he believes the corps “made a miscalculation in who they chose over Fisher” and that the company had been “skunked so to speak.” Cramer added that Fisher “remains a pre-qualified, high level, competitor.”

      In an interview with CNN, Cramer said that the company has come up in conversations he has had with administration officials, including the President and the head of the Army Corps, but while the senator said that he would “love if they got every inch of the project,” he added that he has “never advocated specifically for them.”
      "Every time someone comes to meet with me, whether it’s (Acting Defense Secretary) Shanahan, General Semonite, even with Donald Trump, they bring up Fisher Industries because they assume that’s my thing," Cramer said.
      “One of the things I’ve never done is said it should be Fisher,” Cramer said. “Now, I love Fisher. I’d love if they got every inch of the project. They’re my constituents, I don’t apologize for that. But my interest really is more in the bureaucratic process.”
      According to an administration official familiar with the situation, Cramer sent information about Fisher to the President’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, who then passed it along to the Army Corps of Engineers for their consideration. The source tells CNN that Kushner was not familiar with the company prior to getting information about them from Cramer.
      Cramer said he does recall passing along information about the company to Kushner, but that he did not know what Kushner did with the information.
      On May 24, Cramer told a North Dakota radio station that the President has asked him to examine the process of how federal border wall projects are awarded.
      “We’re going to do an entire audit,” Cramer said. “I’ve asked for the entire bid process, and all of the bid numbers.” Cramer told CNN the President said he wanted the wall built for the “lowest, best price, and it’s also quality, and that’s what any builder should want.”
      Asked about aspects of the company’s checkered legal record, Cramer said “that level of scrutiny is important, but I would hope the same scrutiny would be put on the Corps of Engineers.”
      Environmental violations
      Though its corporate headquarters are in North Dakota, Fisher has a sizable footprint in Arizona, where it operates an asphalt company as well as a drilling and blasting company. It’s there that the company has compiled an extensive track record of environmental violations.
      From 2007 to 2017, Fisher Sand & Gravel compiled more than 1,300 air-quality violations in Maricopa County, culminating in the third highest settlement ever received by the Maricopa County Air Quality Department, according to Bob Huhn, a department spokesperson. That’s a record number of violations for any air-quality settlement in the county, Huhn said. The settlement totaled more than $1 million, though the department received slightly less than that following negotiations, Huhn said.
      Most of the violations came from an asphalt plant that the company was running in south Phoenix that has since closed. While the plant was still running, the City of Phoenix filed 469 criminal charges against the company from August to October of 2009, according to a city spokesperson.
      According to a 2010 article in the Arizona Republic, Fisher reached an agreement with Phoenix officials to close the plant in 2010. As part of the deal, fines were reduced from $1.1 million to an estimated $243,000 and all criminal charges were reduced to civil charges.
      Mary Rose Wilcox was a member of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors at the time the city and county were fighting Fisher over the asphalt plant, which was located in her district. “They tried to persuade us they were good guys since they were a family-owned company. But they were spreading noxious fumes into a residential area,” Wilcox said. “We tried to work with them, but their violations were just so blatant.”
      Michael Pops, a community activist who lived in the area around the plant, remembers fighting with Fisher for six years before the plant finally shut down. “The impact they had on this community was devastating,” Pops said, adding many low-income residents living near the asphalt plant were sickened from the fumes the plant emitted.
      The company has also racked up more than 120 violations with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality from 2004 until as recently as last summer, according to the department.
      In 2011, Fisher agreed to a Consent Judgement with ADEQ over numerous air quality violations the company had committed. As part of that settlement, Fisher agreed to pay $125,000 in civil penalties, and that it would remain in compliance with state air quality standards. Within two years Fisher was found to be in violation of that agreement and was forced to pay an additional $500,000 in fines, according to the state’s attorney general’s office.
      Legal trouble
      Internally, the company has also confronted issues.
      In 2011, Fisher Sand & Gravel agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a sexual discrimination and retaliation suit filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The lawsuit charged that the company violated federal anti-discrimination laws when it “subjected two women workers to egregious verbal sexual harassment by a supervisor and then fired one of them after she repeatedly asked the supervisor to stop harassing her and complained to a job superintendent.”
      The settlement required Fisher to provide anti-discrimination training to its employees in New Mexico and review its policies on sexual harassment.
      Micheal Fisher, a former co-owner of Fisher and Tommy’s brother, was sentenced to prison in 2009 for tax fraud, according to the Justice Department. Fisher pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to defraud the United States by impeding the [Internal Revenue Service], four counts of aiding in the filing of false federal tax returns for FSG and four counts of filing false individual tax returns,” according to a Justice Department release.
      The company also admitted responsibility for defrauding the US by impeding the IRS, according to the DOJ. Citing a long standing policy of not commenting on the contracting process, the Army Corps declined to comment on whether Fisher’s history factored into its decision not to award Fisher a contract.

      https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/31/politics/fisher-sand-and-gravel-legal-history-border-wall/index.html

    • Private US-Mexico border wall ordered open by gov’t, fights back and is now closed again

      The privately funded portion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall is now fully secure and closed again after one of its gates had been ordered to remain open until disputes about waterway access could be resolved.

      “Our border wall & gate are secure again and we still have not had a single breach. I want to thank the IBWC for acting swiftly and we look forward to working with you on our future projects,” triple amputee Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage posted to Twitter on Tuesday night.

      Kolfage created We Build The Wall Inc., a nonprofit that is now backed by former Trump Administration Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. The group crowd-funded more than $22 million in order to privately build a border wall and then sell it to the U.S. government for $1.

      A portion of that wall has been constructed in Texas for between $6 and $8 million. The 1-mile-long wall is located on private property near El Paso, Texas, and Sunland Park, New Mexico.

      However, the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) had ordered a 33-foot gate within the private border wall to remain open – not locked and closed – over a waterway access issue, according to BuzzFeed News. The IBCW addresses waterway issues between the U.S. and Mexico.

      “This is normally done well in advance of a construction project,” IBWC spokesperson Lori Kuczmanski said. “They think they can build now and ask questions later, and that’s not how it works.”

      BuzzFeed reported that the IBWC said the gate “had blocked officials from accessing a levee and dam, and cut off public access to a historic monument known as Monument One, the first in a series of obelisks that mark the U.S.–Mexico border from El Paso to Tijuana.”

      By Tuesday night, the IBWC said the gate would remain locked at night and issued a statement.

      “The U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) will lock the privately-owned gate on federal property at night effective immediately due to security concerns,” it said.

      The statement continues:

      The USIBWC is continuing to work with We Build the Wall regarding its permit request. Until this decision, the private gate was in a locked open position. We Build the Wall, a private organization, built a gate on federal land in Sunland Park, N.M., near El Paso, Texas, without authority, and then locked the gate closed on June 6, 2019. The private gate blocks a levee road owned by the U.S. Government. After repeated requests to unlock and open the private gate, the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC), accompanied by two uniformed law enforcement officers from the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office, removed the private lock, opened the gate, and locked the gate open pending further discussions with We Build the Wall. The gate was also opened so that USIBWC employees can conduct maintenance and operations at American Dam.

      The USIBWC did not authorize the construction of the private gate on federal property as announced on We Build the Wall’s Twitter page. The USIBWC is not charged with securing other fences or gates as reported by We Build the Wall. The international border fences are not on USIBWC property. The USIBWC did not open any other gates in the El Paso area as erroneously reported. Other gates and the border fence are controlled by other federal agencies.

      When the proper documentation is received for the permit, USIBWC will continue to process the permit application.

      Before the statement had been released, Kolfage posted to Twitter.
      https://a

      mericanmilitarynews.com/2019/06/private-us-mexico-border-wall-ordered-open-by-intl-group-later-closed-locked-after-security-concerns/

  • #Émilie_Dubreuil : « Je pensais que j’étais transgenre »
    http://tradfem.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/je-pensais-que-jetais-transgenre

    Une dizaine d’études ont été menées à travers le monde et arrivent sensiblement aux mêmes résultats : la majorité des enfants qui vivent une dysphorie de genre se réconcilient avec leur sexe biologique à la puberté.

    On parle ici de « désistance ». Le mot n’est pas très français, mais c’est celui utilisé dans le vocabulaire spécialisé.

    Et toujours dans une vaste majorité, ces jeunes se révèlent homosexuels.

    Ces recherches divisent les spécialistes de la question, qui se disputent à coup d’études, publiées principalement par la revue scientifique International Journal of Transgenderism. Le ton y est plus ou moins courtois, ce qui est plutôt singulier dans le monde sobre des revues scientifiques.

    Une des critiques les plus retentissantes de ces études va même jusqu’à suggérer de ne carrément pas faire d’études longitudinales et de seulement écouter les enfants. Elle s’attaque aussi à l’étymologie des mots « persistance » et « désistance » entrés dans le jargon. Ces mots, dit cette critique, seraient péjoratifs.

    En Suède, un chercheur a été jusqu’à publier une étude dont la conclusion est pour le moins originale en science : il demande à ses collègues d’arrêter de se chicaner ! « Les enfants et leurs familles n’ont pas besoin de cliniciens qui s’engueulent, mais de traitements responsables basés sur des données solides », résume-t-il.

    Traduction : #Tradfem
    Version originale : https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/2019/05/transgenre-sexe-detransitionneurs-transition-identite-genre-orientation/#

  • “The Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Apply Here” — U.S. Border Guards Arrest Arizona Immigrant Rights Volunteer
    https://theintercept.com/2019/05/09/asylum-border-humanitarian-aid

    An immigrant rights advocate on the U.S.-Mexico border was arrested and accused of “illegal alien smuggling” as she accompanied an asylum-seeker to a port of entry in southern Arizona. Ana Adlerstein, a volunteer at Casa del Migrantes, a migrant shelter in the Mexican town of Sonoyta, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials told her that “the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply here” and “the border’s different,” as she was taken into custody Sunday. Adlerstein was detained for more than four (...)

    #ICE #migration #surveillance #frontières

  • Meet Voatz, the #blockchain company tackling election fraud
    https://hackernoon.com/meet-voatz-the-blockchain-company-tackling-election-fraud-1c95737138f5?s

    As the midterm elections have come and gone, voter fraud and suppression has continued to be an issue and hot topic item for Florida, Arizona, and Georgia. Claims and lawsuits are being dealt with in these crucial states as officials attempt to sort out the chaos. However, a preliminary test with mobile election system Voatz is trying to find a solution to these problems before they arise.Voatz is looking to introduce blockchain technology into the voting process. Common misconceptions tends to tie blockchain and cryptocurrency together into one entity. As blockchain is simply the technology that allows cryptocurrency to live, it has many other practical uses. However, cryptocurrency as been seeing trouble transitioning over into the mainstream lately, unable to work on essential, (...)

    #politics #finance

  • News | NASA’s Cassini Reveals Surprises with Titan’s Lakes
    https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7378


    This near-infrared, color view from Cassini shows the sun glinting off of Titan’s north polar seas.
    Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. Arizona/Univ. Idaho

    On its final flyby of Saturn’s largest moon in 2017, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft gathered radar data revealing that the small liquid lakes in Titan’s northern hemisphere are surprisingly deep, perched atop hills and filled with methane.

    The new findings, published April 15 in Nature Astronomy, are the first confirmation of just how deep some of Titan’s lakes are (more than 300 feet, or 100 meters) and of their composition. They provide new information about the way liquid methane rains on, evaporates from and seeps into Titan - the only planetary body in our solar system other than Earth known to have stable liquid on its surface.

  • University of Arizona will charge 2 students over protest of Border Patrol event on campus

    Two students at the University of Arizona will be charged with misdemeanors after a video showing them protesting a Customs and Border Protection event on campus went viral, UA President Robert Robbins announced Friday.

    The potential charges stem from a Border Patrol presentation to a student club, the Criminal Justice Association, on campus on March 19.

    Video of the incident showed two Border Patrol agents in a classroom giving a presentation, with people outside the door recording them and calling them “Murder Patrol,” "murderers" and “an extension of the KKK.”

    After the agents leave the classroom, a group followed them until they left campus, chanting “Murder Patrol,” video footage on social media shows.

    Conservative media and commentators shared the video on social media and blogs as an example of free speech issues on college campuses.

    In the letter sent to students posted online, Robbins said the protest represented a “dramatic departure from our expectations of respectful behavior and support for free speech on this campus.”

    UA police determined Friday that they “will be charging” two students involved in the incident with “interference with the peaceful conduct of an educational institution,” which is a misdemeanor. A Class 1 misdemeanor could result in up to six months of jail time.

    Charges have not been filed yet, UA Police Chief Brian Seastone said in an email. The names of the two students have not been released.

    Robbins wrote that UA police will continue to investigate the matter for potential “additional criminal violations.” The Dean of Students’ office also is reviewing the incident to determine if the student code of conduct was violated.

    Separately, Robbins said the university would conduct a “probe into actions involving UA employees.” It’s unclear what role employees played in the situation.

    Robbins also has directed staff members to examine university policies “to ensure we are working effectively to help prevent similar incidents in the future” while still maintaining First Amendment rights.
    ’Protest is protected … but disruption is not’

    “At the core of these inquiries is the University of Arizona’s commitment to free speech,” he wrote. “The student club and the CBP officers invited by the students should have been able to hold their meeting without disruption. Student protest is protected by our support for free speech, but disruption is not.”

    In the days after the March 19 incident, Robbins wrote a statement affirming the university’s commitment to free speech.

    Top officers from the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, the school’s student government organization, wrote a letter dated March 21 that said unannounced visits to campus by Border Patrol were “unacceptable.”

    The letter pointed to an arrest by Border Patrol a few miles from campus the same day as the UA presentation, saying the concerns of undocumented and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals students were valid.

    Students should be notified in advance of Border Patrol visits to campus, the letter said. And there should be an understanding that the “mere presence” of Border Patrol on campus can negatively affect DACA and undocumented communities, it stated.

    On Monday, DACA recipients who attend UA also released a letter saying they face “discomfort and fear” when they see Customs and Border Protection.

    “As DACA recipients at the university, the presence of CBP on campus has a traumatic impact on our overall well being and impedes us from fully engaging with our academics. In a space where all students are given the right to pursue an education, their presence was and will always be an infringement on that right,” the letter states.

    Since the video was released, students have been “bombarded with threats to their physical and emotional well being,” the letter claimed.

    Robbins’ announcement of criminal charges for two students proves “the swiftness with which institutions criminalize people of color,” the letter said.

    The DACA recipients wrote that they are in “full support” of students who spoke out against Border Patrol on campus.

    https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education/2019/04/01/protest-university-arizona-over-border-patrol-event-result-charges-for-2-students/3335688002
    #liberté_d'expression #résistance #criminalisation #USA #Etats-Unis #frontières #protestations #délit_de_solidarité

  • UM exhibit to showcase human toll of U.S.-Mexico border crossings

    University of Michigan anthropologist #Jason_De_León and a few students were doing field work in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert seven years ago when the group stumbled upon the corpse of a woman.

    For years, De León had been studying undocumented migrants crossing the Mexico border into the U.S. through the desert, so he was aware of the thousands of people who died in the desert because of the perilous terrain.


    https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/03/22/university-of-michigan-popup-exhibit-showcase-human-toll-us-mexico-border-debate/3202996002
    #visualisation #cartographie #morts #mourir_aux_frontières #décès #migrations #asile #réfugiés #USA #Etats-Unis #cartoexperiment #frontières #violent_borders #Mexique

    via @isskein
    ping @reka @karine4

  • Les astéroïdes Bénou et Ryugu, deux amas de gravats sombres dans l’espace
    https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2019/03/19/les-asteroides-benou-et-ryugu-deux-amas-de-gravats-sombres-dans-l-espace_543


    L’ombre de la sonde Hayabusa-2 à la surface de l’astéroïde Ryugu.
    HANDOUT / AFP

    Les sondes japonaise Hayabusa-2 et américaine Osiris-Rex ont permis de collecter des données qui font l’objet de dix publications simultanées, mardi 19 mars, dans les revues scientifiques « Science » et « Nature ».

    Cela s’appelle une rafale éditoriale. Mardi 19 mars, les équipes de deux missions spatiales – la japonaise #Hayabusa-2, qui ausculte l’astéroïde #Ryugu depuis juin 2018, et l’américaine #Osiris-Rex, qui en fait autant avec l’astéroïde #Bénou (#Bennu) depuis décembre 2018 – ont publié les premiers résultats sur ces deux petits corps dans un total de dix études. Trois sont consacrées à Ryugu et paraissent dans Science et les sept autres décrivent Bénou dans Nature et trois de ses revues filles, Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience et Nature Communications.

    Indices sur la naissance et l’évolution du Système solaire
    Dix études simultanées dans quelques-uns des plus grands journaux scientifiques mondiaux, l’affaire n’est pas si courante. Pour Patrick Michel, directeur de recherches CNRS à l’Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, et qui a le privilège d’appartenir aux équipes des deux missions, cette rafale se justifie : « Ce sont les premiers résultats jamais obtenus in situ sur des astéroïdes carbonés », explique-t-il. Les astronomes font la cour à ces objets parce qu’ils sont les restants des matériaux qui ont composé les planètes il y a un peu plus de 4,5 milliards d’années. Les auteurs de l’étude de Science consacrée à la surface de Bénou soulignent par ailleurs que ces astéroïdes sont représentatifs des objets qui ont pu apporter à la Terre primitive de l’eau et des molécules favorables à l’apparition de la vie. Les informations que l’on peut en tirer constituent donc autant d’indices sur la naissance et l’évolution du Système solaire.


    Bennu, OSIRIS-REx, source : NASA
    la (vraie) légende est derrière le #paywall

  • Boeing 737Max, l’enchaînement des modifications marginales aboutit à une catastrophe (deux catastrophes ?) Sous la pression de la réduction des coûts, un bricolo dans le logiciel de contrôle de vol a été introduit et de ne pas en informer les pilotes (il aurait fallu les faire repasser au simulateur de vol pour les habiliter au nouveau système…)

    After a Lion Air 737 Max Crashed in October, Questions About the Plane Arose - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html


    Boeing’s 737 Max is the latest version of a plane that first went into service half a century ago.
    Credit : Matt Mcknight/Reuters

    But Boeing’s engineers had a problem. Because the new engines for the Max were larger than those on the older version, they needed to be mounted higher and farther forward on the wings to provide adequate ground clearance.

    Early analysis revealed that the bigger engines, mounted differently than on the previous version of the 737, would have a destabilizing effect on the airplane, especially at lower speeds during high-banked, tight-turn maneuvers, Mr. Ludtke said.

    The concern was that an increased risk of the nose being pushed up at low airspeeds could cause the plane to get closer to the angle at which it stalls, or loses lift, Mr. Ludtke said.

    After weighing many possibilities, Mr. Ludtke said, Boeing decided to add a new program — what engineers described as essentially some lines of code — to the aircraft’s existing flight control system to counter the destabilizing pitching forces from the new engines.

    That program was M.C.A.S.
    […]
    The F.A.A. would also determine what kind of training would be required for pilots on specific design changes to the Max compared with the previous version. Some changes would require training short of simulator time, such as computer-based instruction.

    I would think this is one of those systems that the pilots should know it’s onboard and when it’s activated,” said Chuck Horning, the department chairman for aviation maintenance science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

    That was not the choice that Boeing — or regulators — would make.

    The F.A.A. Sides With Boeing
    Ultimately, the F.A.A. determined that there were not enough differences between the 737 Max and the prior iteration to require pilots to go through simulator training.

    While the agency did require pilots to be given less onerous training or information on a variety of other changes between the two versions of the plane, M.C.A.S. was not among those items either.
    […]
    At least as far as pilots knew, M.C.A.S. did not exist, even though it would play a key role in controlling the plane under certain circumstances.

    Boeing did not hide the modified system. It was documented in maintenance manuals for the plane, and airlines were informed about it during detailed briefings on differences between the Max and earlier versions of the 737.

    But the F.A.A.’s determination that the system did not have to be flagged for pilots gave pause to some other regulators.

    Across the Atlantic, the European Aviation Safety Agency, the European Union’s equivalent of the F.A.A., had qualms, according to a pilot familiar with the European regulator’s certification process.

    At first, the agency was inclined to rule that M.C.A.S. needed to be included in the flight operations manual for the Max, which in turn would have required that pilots be made aware of the new system through a classroom or computer course, the pilot said. But ultimately, he said, the agency did not consider the issue important enough to hold its ground, and eventually it went along with Boeing and the F.A.A.

    • Après avoir tergiversé devant l’énormité de l’enjeu, la FAA a suspendu les vols et Boeing annonce cesser les livraisons. Deux par jour ! comme le dit l’article, il va falloir pousser les murs à Renton…

      Boeing gèle les livraisons des B 737 MAX : près de 2 avions par jour sont concernés !
      https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/boeing-gele-les-livraisons-des-b-737-max-pres-de-2-avions-par-jour-sont-co


      Crédits : © POOL New / Reuters

      Boeing annoncé la suspension des livraisons de ses avions moyen-courriers 737 MAX, qui ont été interdits provisoirement de vol dans le monde après deux accidents récents d’appareils de ce type, l’un d’Ethiopian Airlines, l’autre de Lion Air. Mais l’avionneur continue la production en espérant implémenter la solution à ses problèmes une fois qu’elle sera validée.

      Ce jeudi, en début de soirée en France, au lendemain de l’immobilisation totale de la flotte de B 737 MAX qui a suivi l’accident d’Ethiopian Airlines le 10 mars dernier dans des circonstances similaires à celles observées lors du crash de Lion Air en octobre, Boeing a annoncé la suspension des livraisons de ses appareils moyen-courriers.

      « Nous suspendons la livraison des 737 MAX jusqu’à ce que nous trouvions une solution », a déclaré à l’AFP un porte-parole, ajoutant que l’avionneur américain poursuivait en revanche leur production en écartant l’éventualité de réduire les cadences.

      Il va falloir trouver de la place. Boeing construit 52 B737 MAX par mois, quasiment deux par jour.

      « Nous sommes en train d’évaluer nos capacités », c’est-à-dire de savoir où les avions sortis des chaînes d’assemblage vont être stockés, a-t-il admis.

      Boeing entend donc continuer à assembler les avions et introduire la solution à ses problèmes une fois que ces derniers auront été clairement identifiés et que la façon de les résoudre validée.

    • Ça ne s’arrange pas pour Boeing et la FAA qui a délégué une grande partie de la certification de la nouvelle version à …Boeing.

      Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system | The Seattle Times
      https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-im


      A worker is seen inside a Boeing 737 MAX 9 at the Renton plant. The circular sensor seen at bottom right measures the plane’s angle of attack, the angle between the airflow and the wing. This sensor on 737 MAX planes is under scrutiny as a possible cause of two recent fatal crashes.
      Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times

      Federal Aviation Administration managers pushed its engineers to delegate wide responsibility for assessing the safety of the 737 MAX to Boeing itself. But safety engineers familiar with the documents shared details that show the analysis included crucial flaws.

      As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis.

      But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX — a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly — had several crucial flaws.

      That flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), is now under scrutiny after two crashes of the jet in less than five months resulted in Wednesday’s FAA order to ground the plane.

      Current and former engineers directly involved with the evaluations or familiar with the document shared details of Boeing’s “System Safety Analysis” of MCAS, which The Seattle Times confirmed.

      The safety analysis:
      • Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the plane down to avert a stall. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis document.
      • Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly pushing the airplane’s nose downward.
      • Assessed a failure of the system as one level below “catastrophic.” But even that “hazardous” danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor — and yet that’s how it was designed.

      The people who spoke to The Seattle Times and shared details of the safety analysis all spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs at the FAA and other aviation organizations.

      Both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX last Sunday.
      […]
      Delegated to Boeing
      The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.

      Early on in certification of the 737 MAX, the FAA safety engineering team divided up the technical assessments that would be delegated to Boeing versus those they considered more critical and would be retained within the FAA.

      But several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing.

      A former FAA safety engineer who was directly involved in certifying the MAX said that halfway through the certification process, “we were asked by management to re-evaluate what would be delegated. Management thought we had retained too much at the FAA.

      There was constant pressure to re-evaluate our initial decisions,” the former engineer said. “And even after we had reassessed it … there was continued discussion by management about delegating even more items down to the Boeing Company.

      Even the work that was retained, such as reviewing technical documents provided by Boeing, was sometimes curtailed.
      […]
      Inaccurate limit
      In this atmosphere, the System Safety Analysis on MCAS, just one piece of the mountain of documents needed for certification, was delegated to Boeing.

      The original Boeing document provided to the FAA included a description specifying a limit to how much the system could move the horizontal tail — a limit of 0.6 degrees, out of a physical maximum of just less than 5 degrees of nose-down movement.

      That limit was later increased after flight tests showed that a more powerful movement of the tail was required to avert a high-speed stall, when the plane is in danger of losing lift and spiraling down.
      […]
      After the Lion Air Flight 610 crash, Boeing for the first time provided to airlines details about MCAS. Boeing’s bulletin to the airlines stated that the limit of MCAS’s command was 2.5 degrees.

      That number was new to FAA engineers who had seen 0.6 degrees in the safety assessment.
      […]
      System failed on a single sensor
      The bottom line of Boeing’s System Safety Analysis with regard to MCAS was that, in normal flight, an activation of MCAS to the maximum assumed authority of 0.6 degrees was classified as only a “major failure,” meaning that it could cause physical distress to people on the plane, but not death.

      In the case of an extreme maneuver, specifically when the plane is in a banked descending spiral, an activation of MCAS was classified as a “hazardous failure,” meaning that it could cause serious or fatal injuries to a small number of passengers. That’s still one level below a “catastrophic failure,” which represents the loss of the plane with multiple fatalities.
      […]
      Boeing’s System Safety Analysis assessment that the MCAS failure would be “hazardous” troubles former flight controls engineer Lemme because the system is triggered by the reading from a single angle-of-attack sensor.

      A hazardous failure mode depending on a single sensor, I don’t think passes muster,” said Lemme.

      Like all 737s, the MAX actually has two of the sensors, one on each side of the fuselage near the cockpit. But the MCAS was designed to take a reading from only one of them.

      Lemme said Boeing could have designed the system to compare the readings from the two vanes, which would have indicated if one of them was way off.

      Alternatively, the system could have been designed to check that the angle-of-attack reading was accurate while the plane was taxiing on the ground before takeoff, when the angle of attack should read zero.

      They could have designed a two-channel system. Or they could have tested the value of angle of attack on the ground,” said Lemme. “I don’t know why they didn’t.

      The black box data provided in the preliminary investigation report shows that readings from the two sensors differed by some 20 degrees not only throughout the flight but also while the airplane taxied on the ground before takeoff.

      No training, no information
      After the Lion Air crash, 737 MAX pilots around the world were notified about the existence of MCAS and what to do if the system is triggered inappropriately.

    • VF

      Crashs de 737 MAX : la justice américaine se saisit du dossier
      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/03/19/crashs-de-737-max-la-justice-americaine-s-en-mele_5438002_3210.html


      Les Boeing 737 Max sont collés au sol à Phoenix, dans l’Arizona (Etats-Unis).
      Matt York / AP

      La justice américaine a décidé de faire la lumière sur les relations entre Boeing et les autorités fédérales chargées de certifier ses appareils 737 MAX, à la suite de deux accidents qui ont fait 346 morts à moins de cinq mois d’intervalle.
      Le 11 mars, soit au lendemain de la tragédie du vol d’Ethiopian Airlines, la justice a assigné au moins une personne impliquée dans le développement du programme 737 MAX à fournir des documents, incluant des lettres, des courriels ou d’autres messages, révèle le Wall Street Journal lundi 18 mars, qui cite des sources proches du dossier.
      […]
      L’affaire « prend un tour entièrement nouveau avec l’enquête criminelle », a réagi Scott Hamilton, expert aéronautique chez Leeham Company. « Contrairement à la France, où les enquêtes criminelles sont habituelles quand il y a un accident d’avion, c’est très, très rare aux Etats-Unis », souligne-t-il, se souvenant d’un seul précédent, celui de ValuJet. Le 11 mai 1996, l’accident d’un DC-9 de cette compagnie en Floride avait fait 110 morts.

      Parallèlement, le département américain des transports mène une enquête sur le processus d’approbation par le régulateur du transport aérien (FAA) des 737 MAX, a également dévoilé le WSJ dimanche. Il se penche en particulier sur le système de stabilisation de l’avion destiné à éviter le décrochage, dit « MCAS » (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System).
      […]
      Des documents disponibles sur le site de la FAA montrent que le 737 MAX a été certifié comme une variante du 737 NG, son prédécesseur. Autrement dit, il n’a pas été inspecté dans son intégralité, la FAA estimant qu’il n’était pas nécessaire d’examiner certains systèmes. Cela n’est pas inhabituel dans l’aéronautique s’agissant d’un avion qui n’est pas entièrement nouveau.

      Plus gênant, selon des sources concordantes, le régulateur, confronté à des coupes budgétaires et manquant d’expertise, a délégué à des employés de Boeing la certification du MCAS. Or ce système a, lui, été spécialement conçu pour le 737 MAX, afin de compenser le fait que ce nouvel aéronef dispose de moteurs plus lourds que ceux équipant le 737 NG et qu’il présentait, de ce fait, un risque plus élevé de décrochage.

      Note que l’explication fournie est au minimum rapide, voire carrément fausse (cf. supra, la modification des moteurs (plus gros) a surtout entrainé un changement de leur position – surélévation et déplacement vers l’avant - ce qui modifie fortement le centrage de l’avion)

      Et la Chambre s’y mettrait aussi…

      Peter DeFazio, le président de la commission parlementaire des transports à la Chambre des représentants, envisage, lui, de lancer une enquête sur la certification du 737 MAX, selon des sources parlementaires, ajoutant que des auditions publiques de responsables de la FAA ne sont pas exclues.

    • Washington lance un audit sur la certification du Boeing 737 MAX
      https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/washington-lance-un-audit-sur-la-certification-du-boeing-737-max-811302.ht

      [La] secrétaire américaine aux Transports, Elaine Chao, a annoncé mardi qu’elle avait demandé à ses services de vérifier la procédure de certification du Boeing 737 MAX par l’aviation civile américaine. Par ailleurs, un nouveau patron a été nommé à la tête de la FAA, la direction de l’aviation civile américaine. Boeing a également [re]manié l’équipe dirigeante de l’ingénierie.

      Confirmant des informations de presse, le ministère américain des Transports (DoT) a indiqué mardi avoir lancé un audit sur le processus de certification du Boeing 737 MAX 8 par la Federal Administration Agency (FAA), la direction générale de l’aviation civile américaine, après les accidents de Lion Air fin octobre 2018 et d’Ethiopian Airlines le 10 mars denier, faisant au total 346 morts. Dans les deux cas, le 737MAX, un avion mis en service en mai 2017, était flambant neuf. Dans les deux cas, ils se sont écrasés peu après le décollage après avoir connu des montées et des descentes irrégulières lors de la phase de montée.
      […]
      Par ailleurs, Donald Trump a annoncé mardi son intention de nommer Steve Dickson, un ancien pilote de chasse et pilote de ligne, à la tête de la FAA. Steve Dickson doit être nommé comme administrateur de la FAA pour une période de cinq ans et comme président du Comité des services du trafic aérien au département du Transport. Steve Dickson, qui a pris récemment sa retraite, a une longue expérience du transport aérien puisqu’il était responsable de la sécurité et des services opérationnels au sein de la compagnie américaine Delta Airlines. Il était en outre instructeur. En tant que pilote de ligne, il a l’expérience des avions moyen-courriers : Airbus A320, Boeing 727, 737, 757. Steve Dickson était également, au début de sa carrière, pilote sur l’avion de combat F-15.

      La division d’aviation commerciale de Boeing a selon Reuters remanié l’équipe dirigeante de l’ingénierie. John Hamilton, qui occupait les fonctions de vice-président et d’ingénieur en chef, va se concentrer uniquement sur le rôle d’ingénieur en chef, a déclaré le PDG de la division d’aviation commerciale, Kevin McAllister, dans un email envoyé aux employés. Lynne Hopper, jusque-là en charge de l’unité test et évaluation, est nommée vice-présidente de l’ingénierie, a-t-il ajouté.

      La réorganisation va permettre à Hamilton de « focaliser toute son attention sur les enquêtes en cours sur l’accident », écrit McAllister, soulignant que des changements étaient nécessaires alors que l’avionneur américain « dédie des ressources supplémentaires » à ces enquêtes.

    • Boeing a le droit de faire voler ses 737 MAX (pour les stocker ailleurs qu’à Seattle)
      https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/boeing-a-le-droit-de-faire-voler-ses-737-max-pour-les-stocker-ailleurs-qu-

      Malgré l’interdiction des vols des 737 MAX la direction de l’aviation civile américaine a autorisé à Boeing à les faire [voler] pour parquer quelque part les avions assemblés qui ne pourront plus être stockés sur le site de production de Seattle, faute de place.

      Les Boeing 737 MAX peuvent reprendre les airs sans attendre les conclusions de l’enquête de l’accident d’un appareil de ce type d’Ethiopian Airlines, faisant 157 victimes à bord le 10 mars. Mais sans passagers à bord. Si les vols reprennent effectivement, ce sera uniquement pour aller parquer quelque part les appareils qui sortent de la chaîne d’assemblage et qui ne pourront plus être stockés sur le site de production de Renton, près de Seattle. Si Boeing a interrompu les livraisons, l’avionneur a maintenu la production dans le but d’introduite la solution à ses problèmes sur tous les avions stockés et livrer rapidement ces derniers.

      Selon les autorités américaines, de telles dispositions ont été accordées à Boeing par la Federal Administration Agency (FAA), la direction générale de l’aviation civile, lorsque cette dernière a interdit les vols des 737 MAX la semaine dernière. « La FAA a décidé d’interdire les opérations, mais n’a pas retiré le certificat de navigabilité de l’avion qui aurait décrété que l’avion n’était pas en mesure de voler », a expliqué surpris à La Tribune, un expert européen des questions de sécurité. En attendant, si Boeing décidait de faire voler ses avions pour aller les parquer ailleurs qu’à Renton, la décision pourrait en surprendre plus d’un. Comment pourrait-on autoriser un avion cloué au sol pour des raisons de sécurité reprendre les airs avec des pilotes à bord ?

      Avec une cadence de production de 52 appareils par mois, l’avionneur est confronté au défi du stockage de ces avions qu’il ne peut pas livrer aux compagnies aériennes. Selon nos informations, Boeing a des solutions pour absorber deux mois de production, soit plus de 100 appareils.

      (note, les chapeaux des articles sont rédigés au lance-pierre, il y manque des mots ou des bouts de mots…)

  • Mosaïques foncières en #Arizona : paradoxe et complexités de la domination des #terres publiques au pays de la #propriété_privée

    La structure foncière des États de l’Ouest américain, en particulier les plus récents, est fortement marquée par les processus pionniers qui ont pris place après l’annexion du Nord du Mexique par les États-Unis en 1848. Elle se caractérise notamment par une très forte proportion de #terres_publiques (fédérales ou d’État) et par une configuration dans laquelle les héritages du #homesteading et des #cessions_de_terres au profit des compagnies de #chemin_de_fer sont encore très visibles. Mais un autre aspect des #héritages de cette #histoire est la complexité des #droits_de_propriété et d’usage, l’empilement des agences responsables du #patrimoine public et la multiplicité des échelles impliquées dans la gestion. L’État d’Arizona est un bon exemple de ces dynamiques. L’article s’attache donc à décrire l’émergence et l’emprise du foncier privé, l’histoire et les catégories de #foncier public avant de pointer les difficultés posées par la configuration actuelle et les impasses qu’elle représente pour l’action au niveau local.


    https://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/31934
    #USA #Etats-Unis
    #cartographie #visualisation

  • La sénatrice américaine McSally, première femme pilote de chasse, raconte son viol par un supérieur
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/03/07/aux-etats-unis-la-senatrice-martha-mcsally-premiere-femme-pilote-de-chasse-r


    Martha McSally, mercredi 6 mars à Washington.
    JOSHUA ROBERTS / REUTERS

    Martha McSally n’a pas révélé le nom de son agresseur, ni la date à laquelle les faits se seraient déroulés. Elle a expliqué qu’à l’époque les scandales d’abus sexuels s’accumulaient dans les forces armées, qui, selon la sénatrice, y apportaient « une réponse vraiment inadéquate ». L’ancienne pilote de chasse affirme avoir finalement parlé de ce traumatisme des années après l’agression, mais a été « horrifiée » par la façon dont l’armée a réagi à son témoignage. Elle assure d’ailleurs avoir failli démissionner « par désespoir ».

    « Comme d’autres victimes, je pensais que le système me violait une nouvelle fois », a expliqué Martha McSally, visiblement très émue. Elle a finalement choisi de ne « pas abandonner » et de devenir « une voix pour les femmes » dans l’armée, puis en politique.

    Devant les sénateurs, l’élue de l’Arizona a souligné la responsabilité de la hiérarchie militaire, demandant un changement de culture dans l’institution. A son entrée à l’école de l’armée de l’Air, en 1984, « les agressions et le harcèlement sexuel étaient courants et les victimes souffraient le plus souvent en silence », a-t-elle raconté. Pendant sa carrière, elle a vu de nombreuses « faiblesses dans les processus de prévention des agressions sexuelles, d’enquête et de jugement ».

    Selon un rapport publié par le Pentagone en mai 2018, le nombre d’agressions sexuelles signalées a augmenté de 10 % entre octobre 2016 et septembre 2017. L’armée américaine compte 1,3 million de personnes en service actif.

    Ce n’est pas la première fois que Martha McSally prend la parole pour parler des agressions sexuelles envers les femmes. Très sportive dans sa jeunesse, la sénatrice avait déjà raconté, en avril 2018, comment, alors qu’elle était âgée de 17 ans, son entraîneur d’athlétisme de 37 ans l’avait attirée dans une relation sexuelle. En plein mouvement #metoo, elle racontait dans une interview au Wall Street Journal la « manipulation émotionnelle » mise en place par son agresseur. « Il m’a fallu beaucoup de temps pour arriver au point de comprendre ce que j’avais vécu. Il y a beaucoup de peur, de manipulation et de honte. »

    Dans cet entretien, elle expliquait déjà n’avoir jamais sérieusement envisagé de confronter son agresseur du lycée. Qui l’aurait crue ? « C’est déjà difficile à prouver le lendemain matin, ne parlons pas de dix ans plus tard. »

    En octobre 2016, quand la vidéo Access Hollywood montrant Donald Trump se flatter de pouvoir embrasser impunément qui bon lui semble, Martha McSally avait tweeté son « dégoût ». « Plaisanter à propos des agressions sexuelles est inacceptable. Je suis scandalisée », écrivait-elle à propos du président américain. Reste que depuis, elle a soutenu bec et ongles le locataire de la Maison Blanche dans tous ses choix politiques. Elle avait également soutenu la candidature du juge conservateur Brett Kavanaugh à la Cour suprême, malgré les accusations d’agression sexuelle qui pesait sur lui.

  • Changement d’heure
    Raisonnement par l’absurde


    Si j’ai bien compris, le prochain changement d’heure sera le dernier : décision européenne suite à un référendum.
    Donc on restera en heure d’été tout le temps.
    Donc on aura 2 heures de décalage par rapport au Soleil (à 14h de l’après midi, il sera midi solaire).
    Donc on sera dans le même fuseau horaire que l’Ukraine.
    Donc il sera la même heure en Corogne (Espagne) et au Donbass (Ukraine).
    Ce qui correspond à la même distance que de la côte est à la côte ouest des USA.
    Donc c’est comme si les USA normalisaient une heure unique sur tout leur territoire.

    Donc on sera quand même obligé de compenser le temps de présence du soleil dans nos vies.
    Donc on décalera sûrement un peu nos horaires de travail.
    Donc à l’échelle européenne certains commenceront à 7h et d’autres à 10h.
    Donc c’est comme si on ne changeait rien.

    Précédente discussion :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/719501

    PS : certains éléments sont de rapides raccourcis pour permettre de faire avancer le délire

    • Différences de longitude entre les points extrêmes de…
      • la Chine : 61°, heure unique
      • l’Union européenne : (hors Açores, Canaries et outre-mer) 48°, 3 fuseaux horaires
      • les États-Unis : (continentaux hors Alaska) 58°, 4 fuseaux horaires
      • les États-Unis : (Alaska inclus, hors Hawaï, 5 fuseaux (qui devraient être 6, l’Alaska étant décalé de pratiquement 1 fuseau,…)
      • les États-Unis (50 états) :6 fuseaux
      sans compter les territoires extrêmes, Îles Mariannes du Nord et Îles Vierges états-uniennes,…

      (pour mémoire, un fuseau horaire fait, théoriquement, 15°)

      Les Échos donne un point assez complet (09/18)
      https://www.lesechos.fr/26/09/2018/lesechos.fr/0302287681702_changement-d-heure---le-casse-tete-europeen.htm

    • Je n’ai pas d’opposition à l’arrêt des changement d’heure. Je trouve juste bête de mettre toute l’europe en Gmt+2 au lieu de Gmt+1 qui est la moyenne européenne. Et alors qu’à 60km d’ici, en Angleterre, ils restent en gmt. On travaillera aux meme horaires, sauf que ca s’appelera 8h chez eux et 10h chez moi. Simple convention. J’ai un peu entendu dire que le referendum européen c’était : vous préférez l’été ou l’hiver... Façon vous voulez une boule vanille ou chocolat ?

    • Il me semble qu’il s’agit de la fin du changement d’heure, pas de la fusion des fuseaux horaires. Cette uniformisation de l’heure de l’UE a été proposée début janvier par Szymon Dolecki, mathématicien polonais en retraite de l’Université de Bourgogne.

      Pour un fuseau horaire unique dans l’Union européenne
      https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/pour-un-fuseau-horaire-unique-dans-lunion-europeenne

      Pour ce mathématicien polonais, professeur émérite de l’université de Bourgogne, il ne devrait y avoir qu’un seul fuseau horaire en Europe, au lieu des trois actuels. Aux pays et aux régions de fixer les rythmes sociaux.

      #paywall

    • @aude_v Non. Mais c’est une idée simple qui marcherait. Un reproche cependant, ça pourrait amener à un libéralisation des décalages d’horaire par entreprise. Car je suis persuadé qu’avec l’heure fixe, on va tendre vers 2 à 3 horaires de travail par an dans chaque entreprise.

      @simplicissimus Ce n’est pas l’uniformisation d’un mono fuseau européen. (C’est une décision obligatoire mais individuelle de chaque état). Toutefois si en France il est choisi de rester à la prochaine heure d’été, on sera à la même heure que l’Ukraine. Il va peut être se produire des enclaves. Tu pourras aller en ligne droite et avoir GMT+2 GMT+1 GMT+2. J’appelle ça marcher sur la tête.

    • dans la série #enclaves, l’Arizona qui ne pratique pas l’heure d’été #daylight_saving_time à laquelle passent les États-Unis dimanche 10 mars, à l’exception de la nation Navajo qui la pratique, sauf la nation Hopi qui suit le choix de l’état, sachant qu’il y a une enclave navajo dans le territoire hopi…

      Most of Arizona Has No Daylight Saving Time
      https://www.timeanddate.com/time/us/arizona-no-dst.html

      Most of the US state of Arizona does not use Daylight Saving Time (DST). The exception is the Navajo Nation.
      ©timeanddate.com

      With the exception of the Navajo Nation, Arizona does not set the clocks forward 1 hour in spring for DST with the rest of the United States.

      Mountain Standard Time
      Almost all of Arizona is on the same time zone, Mountain Standard Time (MST), all year. The time zone has a UTC offset of minus 7 hours (UTC-7).
      It is also known as Mountain Time, but that term refers both to standard time and the time zone which is elsewhere used during DST: Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).

      Navajo Nation Uses DST
      The Navajo Nation, a semi-autonomous Native American territory, follows the United States DST schedule. It lies in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah.

      During DST the Navajo Nation, which includes the towns of Tuba City, Chinle, and Window Rock, sets the clocks forward 1 hour to Mountain Daylight Time (MDT), which is 6 hours behind UTC (UTC-6).

      No DST in Hopi Nation
      A part of the Hopi Nation, which lies within the Navajo Nation, follows Arizona’s no-DST rule. To confuse matters more, there is also an even smaller Navajo Nation territory within the Hopi Nation within the Navajo Nation. In addition to this, there is another Hopi area adjacent to the main Hopi Nation territory.

      As a result, if driving the correct route from the Arizona state border through both Navajo and Hopi areas to the other side one can end up changing one’s clock 7 times! For example: Tuba City (Navajo) and Moenkopi (Hopi) are only a couple of miles apart, but they have a 1-hour time difference during the summer. Jeddito (Navajo), in the middle of Hopi Nation territory, is 1 hour ahead of the surrounding areas during summer.

      Opted out of DST
      Arizona is exempt from DST according to the US Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Act gives every state or territory the right to decide if it wants to use DST. If DST is observed, the state has to schedule DST in sync with the rest of the US: From the second Sunday in March until the first Sunday in November.
      Because of Arizona’s hot climate, DST is largely considered unnecessary. The argument against extending the daylight hours into the evening is that people prefer to do their activities in the cooler evening temperatures.

      Note qu’avant la standardisation de 1977, c’était la même chose à l’échelle du pays tout entier, chaque état voire chaque comté se déterminait indépendamment des autres…
      (histoire compliquée, détaillée dans l’article WP ci-dessous.

      Sinon, la Californie est en train de passer à l’heure d’été toute l’année…
      Daylight saving time in the United States - Wikipedia
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States

      California
      California voters passed Proposition 12 in 1949, approving DST in the state.
      In 2018, voters ratified a legislative plan for year-round daylight saving time, subject to congressional approval.

  • States Are Introducing Bills That Could Prevent Teachers From Advocating for Climate Change - Pacific Standard
    https://psmag.com/news/state-bills-could-prevent-teachers-from-advocating-for-climate-change

    Several states have recently introduced bills that could interfere with the teaching of scientifically founded theories on climate change in public school science curricula.

    A bill in South Dakota would require each school board to adopt a code of ethics that prevents public school elementary and secondary school teachers from advocating “for any issue that is part of a political party platform at the national, state, or local level.” The Arizona legislature introduced a nearly identical bill.

    Virginia legislators proposed a bill with similar language, arguing that some teachers are abusing taxpayer dollars to “speak to captive audiences of students in an attempt to indoctrinate or influence students to adopt specific political and ideological positions on issues of social and political controversy ... under the guise of ’teaching for social justice’ and other sectarian doctrines.”

    In Maine, a comparable bill states that “the rules must require a teacher to provide students with materials supporting both sides of a controversial issue being addressed and to present both sides in a fair-minded, nonpartisan manner.”

    Science education groups are concerned that these bills, if enacted, would limit instruction on anthropogenic climate change, which is a key tenet of state and federal Democratic Party platforms. In the case of Maine, the bill could require teachers to discuss climate change as a disputed theory and present disproven theories for the global rise in temperatures as valid.

    Other states have introduced legislation that singles out the teaching of climate change directly. A bill in Montana takes a public stance on climate change that “reasonable amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere have no verifiable impacts on the environment; science shows human emissions do not change atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions enough to cause climate change; claims that carbon associated with human activities causes climate change are invalid; and nature, not human activity, causes climate change.” Any educational and informational materials on climate change would be required to include this information.

    Climate change has become an increasingly politicized topic under the Trump administration. The president has publicly denounced its existence, and some federal agencies have removed the phrase “climate change” from webpages and other documents. Yet as global temperatures continue to rise (2018 was the fourth hottest year on record), at least 97 percent of climate experts maintain that “[c]limate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”

    #Education #Climat #Politique_scientifique #Folie

  • No More Deaths volunteers prosecuted for providing humanitarian aid to migrants - World Socialist Web Site

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/16/nmde-f16.html

    On January 18, a federal judge rendered a guilty verdict against four volunteers from the humanitarian organization No More Deaths (NMD) for their actions in the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Arizona along the US-Mexico border a year and a half ago. Judge Bernardo Velasco’s ruling marks the first conviction of humanitarian aid volunteers in the US in a decade.

    The volunteers—Natalie Hoffman, Oona Holcomb, Madeline Huse and Zaachila Orozco-McCormick—were found guilty of misdemeanors related to entering a wildlife refuge without a permit and leaving behind “personal property.” The latter was a reference to basic lifesaving necessities such as food, water and other small items left behind by the volunteers in order to ensure migrants survive the dangerous desert crossing.

    #états-unis #migrations #asile #mexique #humanitaire

  • Democrats’ ‘smart border’ technology is not a ‘humane’ alternative to Trump’s wall

    In response to President Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a physical barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, and his threat to shut down the government again on Feb. 15 if Congress doesn’t provide it, Democratic Congressional leaders are promoting an alternative they refer to as a “smart border.” This is essentially an expansion of existing technologies like remote sensors, integrated fixed-towers, #drones and other #surveillance assets.

    On Jan. 29, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the third-ranking Democrat in the House, wrote an op-ed in The Hill arguing that this kind of “smart border” is preferable to a physical wall because it will “create a technological barrier too high to climb over, too wide to go around, and too deep to burrow under,” resulting in an “effective, efficient and humane” alternative to Trump’s border wall. Meanwhile, the “opening offer” announced on Jan. 31 by the Democrats in bipartisan budget negotiations included $400 million for this “smart border” surveillance package.

    In a recent peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Borderlands Studies, we raised fundamental questions about these kinds of “smart border” technologies, including their humanitarian implications. Using geospatial modeling and statistical analysis, we show how previous “high-tech” border solutions failed to deliver on their operational objectives; instead of preventing unauthorized crossing, the surveillance network simply shifted migration routes into much more difficult and remote terrain, with a measurable impact on the geography of migrant deaths in the southern Arizona desert.

    From 2006 to 2011 the United States appropriated $3.7 billion for the SBInet system, intended as a high-tech network of ground sensors connected to integrated fixed towers mounted with infrared, high-resolution cameras and motion-detecting ground radar. Experimentally deployed southwest of Tucson, Arizona, the surveillance network aimed to provide the Border Patrol “complete situational awareness” through the real-time, automated integration of multiple sources of surveillance data.

    The outcomes delivered by the SBInet program fell well short of these aspirations, however. In 2010 the Government Accountability Office concluded that the Department of Homeland Security had “yet to identify expected benefits from the [program], whether quantitative or qualitative.” After continuous operational shortcomings and delays, in 2011 the Obama administration quietly canceled the program.

    Simultaneously, the area where SBInet was deployed has become a “land of open graves,” according to anthropologist and 2017 MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Jason De León. From 2006 to 2011, at least 1,267 people died in southern Arizona attempting to cross the border. A significant majority of these deaths were the outcome of exposure to the elements: dehydration, hyperthermia and exhaustion. Meanwhile, during this same period the rate of death (the number of deaths / 100,000 Border Patrol apprehensions) skyrocketed, nearly tripling between 2008 and 2011 alone.

    These deaths are the result of many factors. But our research shows that significant among these has been the expansion of border surveillance technology. Using Geographic Information Science, we analyzed the mapped location of human remains pre- and post-SBInet. We then plotted the visual range of the SBInet system using publicly-available information on the location of the towers and the operational reach of their various components.

    Next, we created a model using variables like vegetation, slope and terrain to measure the physiological difficulty associated with pedestrian transit along different routes of travel. We found a meaningful and measurable shift in the location of human remains toward routes of travel outside the visual range of the SBInet system, routes that simultaneously required much greater physical exertion, thus increasing peoples’ vulnerability to injury, isolation, dehydration, hyperthermia and exhaustion.

    Our research findings show that in addition to its monetary cost and its questionable operational efficacy, the “smart border” technology presently being promoted by the Democratic congressional leadership contributes to deadly outcomes.

    Based on these findings there is a need to reconsider the premise that surveillance technology and infrastructure can provide a “humane” alternative to Trump’s border wall (a proposal we also consider to be wasteful and destructive). Instead, we’d like to see a shift in U.S. border policy that genuinely prioritizes the protection of human life, regardless of a person’s citizenship or immigration status.

    This kind of shift, of course, would require reforms not just to the Border Patrol and its enforcement strategy, but to U.S. immigration policy overall, allowing people to seek safety or reunite with family and loved ones without risking their lives crossing through the desert.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/429454-democrats-smart-border-technology-is-not-a-humane-alternative-to-tru

    #frontière_intelligente #alternative (?) #murs #barrières_frontalières #frontières #smart_border #smart_borders #technologie #mourir_aux_frontières #morts #décès

    En gros:

    Our research findings show that in addition to its monetary cost and its questionable operational efficacy, the “smart border” technology presently being promoted by the Democratic congressional leadership contributes to deadly outcomes.

  • Anti-BDS bill passed Senate, but trouble awaits in House
    Some Democrats are convinced the decision to tie the controversial bill together with motions on aid to Israel and Jordan and sanctions on Syria was designed to spark intra-Democratic fighting
    Amir Tibon Washington
    Feb 10, 2019 11:52 PM
    https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-anti-bds-bill-passed-senate-but-trouble-awaits-in-house-1.6920012

    WASHINGTON – The Senate passed a bill last week that encourages state governments across the U.S. not to sign contracts with supporters of boycotts against Israel and its settlements in the occupied West Bank. The bill has since been introduced in the House of Representatives, but Congressional sources from both parties told Haaretz in recent days they doubt it will pass the House any time soon.

    The bill in question is called the Combating BDS Act. It passed the Senate as part of a “package” of Middle East-related bills after being introduced by Republican Senator Marco Rubio. The other bills in the package deal with non-controversial, consensus issues such as military aid to Israel and Jordan, and sanctions on the Assad regime in Syria.

    Rubio and Senate Republicans added the anti-BDS bill into the package, setting the stage for an intense fight about it on Capitol Hill. The reason is that civil rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union are concerned that the Combating BDS Act is unconstitutional and harms American citizens’ freedom of speech.

    The bill encourages the implementation of local legislation passed in recent years by half of the states in the U.S., putting limits on state governments’ abilities to sign contracts with supporters of boycotts against Israel or the settlements. Two such laws have been frozen by federal courts in Arizona and Kansas, following lawsuits by state contractors who said the laws harmed their freedom of speech. Similar lawsuits have recently been filed in Texas and Arkansas.

    When the package bill came up for a vote last week, 23 senators voted against it, including one Republican, Rand Paul of Kentucky. Many of those who voted against it clarified that if every aspect of the bill had been voted on separately, they probably would have supported the bills on assistance to Israel and Jordan and on sanctioning Assad, and would have only objected to the BDS bill, mainly because of concerns surrounding freedom of speech.

    Such a vote could take place in the Senate, where Republicans hold the majority, but not in the House, according to the Congressional sources who spoke with Haaretz. Democrats are convinced that the entire purpose of the Republican decision to add the anti-BDS bill into the broader Middle East package was to orchestrate an intra-Democratic fight over the issue, and force many Democrats to choose between their position on the free speech criticism of the bill, and their general opposition to BDS.

    The Democratic leadership in the House, which has a majority ever since the midterm elections, will most likely break up the package into a number of separate bills. That will allow the House to approve the non-controversial bills on security aid to Israel and sanctions on Syria, without immediately setting the stage for a new round of internal party tensions on the “constitutional right to boycott” question.

    While the other bills are probably going to see quick and easy approval, the anti-BDS bill could be up for a lengthy period of debate in the relevant House committees. There could also be an amendment process. In the Senate, for example, one Democratic senator, Gary Peters of Michigan, offered an amendment that would make it absolutely clear that the bill only refers to large companies, not to small businesses or sole proprietors. Another amendment offered to distinguish in the bill’s language between Israel proper and the settlements in the occupied West Bank.

    Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, one of the most vocal opponents of the legislation, told Haaretz last week that Democrats in the House “can see what happened in the Senate and take a good guess that it will be even more controversial” in their chamber. “The only ones who benefit from seeing Democrats fight amongst themselves on this issue are the GOP and folks in the U.S. and Israel who want to see Israel turned into a weapon for partisan gain,” she added.

    AIPAC, the powerful lobby that supports the Israeli government, is urging Congress to pass the legislation. The organization wrote in its monthly publication, the Near East Report, that “Congress should take up and pass the Combating BDS Act as quickly as possible. This important bipartisan bill seeks both to protect states against claims they are preempting federal authority, and to demonstrate Congress’ strong support for state measures consistent with Congress’ historic commitment to oppose boycotts of Israel.”

    #BDS

    • En complément : attaquer Omar, Tlaib et Ocasio-Cortez, par imputation d’antisémitisme, pour explicitement diviser les Démocrates : McCarthy pressures Democrats to rebuke two Muslim lawmakers over alleged anti-Semitism
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/mccarthy-gop-challenge-house-democrats-to-denounce-alleged-anti-semitism/2019/02/08/aef28514-2bae-11e9-b2fc-721718903bfc_story.html

      Republicans are focusing their ire at the two Muslim women in Congress, accusing them of anti-Semitism and pressuring Democratic leaders to rebuke the lawmakers as attitudes in the party toward Israel shift from unquestioned support.

      The pressure on Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) is part of a larger GOP effort to drive a partisan wedge into the traditionally nonpartisan relationship between the United States and Israel. Republicans are casting themselves as the more resolute defender of Israel, heightening the party’s appeal to traditionally Democratic Jewish voters.

      […]

      Ralph Reed, the head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and an ally of the Trump White House, said Republicans are working to “change the center of gravity in the American electorate on the issue of Israel.”

      “The leftward drift of the grass roots of the Democrat Party, away from wholehearted and robust support of Israel, means you have people in that party who see Israel through the prism of apartheid and occupation,” he said. “That’s an opportunity for Republicans to say, ‘That’s not how we see Israel.’ ”

      Some Republicans have pointed to a recent phone call between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the high-profile young leader of her party’s hard-left wing, to British lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn, the head of the Labour Party who has come under intense criticism for tolerating anti-Semitism in his ranks.

      (Accessoirement donc : internationalisation de la manipulation anti-Corbyn…)

  • #ACME - numéro spécial sur « Border Imperialism »

    Situating Border Imperialism
    Levi Gahman, Elise Hjalmarson, Amy Cohen, Sutapa Chattopadhyay, Enrica Rigo, Sarah Launius, Geoffrey Boyce, Adam Aguirre, Elsa Noterman, Eli Meyerhoff, Amílcar Sanatan

    Border Imperialism, Racial Capitalism, and Geographies of Deracination
    Levi Gahman, Elise Hjalmarson

    “Slavery hasn’t ended, it has just become modernized”: Border Imperialism and the Lived Realities of Migrant Farmworkers in #British_Columbia, #Canada
    Amy Cohen

    Borders re/make Bodies and Bodies are Made to Make Borders: Storying Migrant Trajectories
    Sutapa Chattopadhyay

    Re-gendering the Border: Chronicles of Women’s Resistance and Unexpected Alliances from the Mediterranean Border
    Enrica Rigo

    Drawing the Line: Spatial Strategies of Community and Resistance in Post-SB1070 #Arizona
    Geoffrey A Boyce, Sarah Launius, Adam O Aguirre

    Revolutionary Scholarship by Any Speed Necessary: Slow or Fast but for the End of This World
    Eli Meyerhoff, Elsa Noterman

    Borders and Marxist Politics in the Caribbean: An Interview with #Earl_Bousquet on the Workers Revolutionary Movement in St. Lucia
    Earl Bousquet, Interviewed by: Amílcar Sanatan

    #revue #frontières #impérialisme #déracinement #esclavagisme #capitalisme_racial #déracinement #Caraïbes #femmes #genre #résistance_féminine #USA #Etats-Unis #corps #agriculture #exploitation

  • Under Western Skies (1945) [WEBRip] [720p] [YTS.AM]
    https://yts.am/movie/under-western-skies-1945#720p

    IMDB Rating: 6.1/10Genre: Action / Adventure / Music / WesternSize: 474.38 MBRuntime: 12hr 57 minIn a film that was closer to being a “sanitized” version of and contained more elements akin to Mae West’s and W.C. Fields’ “My Little Chickadee” than it did from anything John Ford had done, or was to do, a traveling show arrives in a small Arizona town and finds much opposition from local townspeople. They plan to stage the show in the saloon and the leading lady, Katie (Martha O’Driscoll), gets involved with the local school teacher, Tod (Noah Beery, Jr). and a mysterious masked bandit, King Randall (Leo (...)

    https://yts.am/torrent/download/91F0898A7E82E67DC02ACE02B35E9FA0C2CE3F91

  • As Trial Starts for Border Humanitarian Volunteers, New Documents Reveal Federal Bureaucrats’ Obsession With Stopping Activists
    https://theintercept.com/2019/01/17/no-more-deaths-border-documents-trial

    Trump administration prosecutors argued this week that members of the borderland faith-based organization No More Deaths broke the law by leaving jugs of water and cans of beans for migrants trekking through a remote wilderness refuge in the Sonoran Desert. The arguments came in the first of a series of high-profile federal trials in Tucson, Arizona, where humanitarian aid volunteers are facing prosecution under a litany of charges. Assistant U.S. Attorney Anna Wright, who is currently (...)

    #activisme #migration #surveillance

  • Bienvenue à bord des taxis autonomes de Google...
    https://www.crashdebug.fr/high-teck/15504-bienvenue-a-bord-des-taxis-autonomes-de-google

    USA : ... Taxi-robots envahissent l’Arizona

    1 ... Peu de gens comprennent ce qui va se passe, le taxi robot signale la mort des taxis + UBER/VTC

    2 ... On passe du CDI/Travail aux mini-jobs/esclavagisme puis à la banqueroute mondiale et à la misère, que croyez-vous qu’ils feront de leur temps libre ? évidemment ils penseront à la Révolution, souhaitée par le plan des sociétés secrètes

    Contributeur anonyme

    Depuis décembre 2018, Waymo propose un service de transport à la demande opéré par des voitures autonomes à

    Chandler (Arizona). CAITLIN O’HARA / NYT-REDUX-REA

    Un monospace blanc – Chrysler Pacifica hybride – s’approche lentement. Il est un peu bizarre avec son espèce de gros gyrophare noir et ses appendices qui le déforment au niveau du toit et sur les côtés. Il s’arrête, vous montez, vous (...)