provinceorstate:texas

  • 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

  • La situation dans les centres de rétention à la frontière des Etats-Unis est « une bombe à retardement »
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/07/03/un-rapport-officiel-denonce-les-conditions-de-detention-des-migrants-a-la-fr


    Des familles entassées dans le poste de Weslaco, au Texas, le 11 juin 2019.
    www.oig.dhs.gov

    Un rapport du gouvernement admet que la surpopulation et l’insécurité dans ces centres mettent en danger migrants détenus et surveillants.

    Des cellules surpeuplées dans lesquelles il est impossible de s’asseoir ou de s’allonger, des enfants privés de douches ou de repas chauds… Le ministère américain de la sécurité intérieure (Department of Homeland Security ou DHS) a admis, mardi 2 juillet, que la surpopulation et l’insécurité dans les centres de rétention de migrants clandestins au Texas devenaient dangereuses.

    « La surpopulation et la détention prolongée représentent un risque immédiat pour la santé et la sécurité des agents et officiers du DHS ainsi que des détenus », précise dans un rapport l’inspection générale du ministère, un organisme de surveillance interne.
    […]
    Le point-presse a également été perturbé par des contre-manifestants qui ont scandé des slogans en faveur de Donald Trump.

  • 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

  • A firsthand report of ‘inhumane conditions’ at a migrant children’s detention facility | PBS NewsHour
    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-firsthand-report-of-inhumane-conditions-at-a-migrant-childrens-detention-faci

    Editor’s Note: After our broadcast, CPB responded to our request for comment with the following statement:

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) leverages our limited resources to provide the best care possible to those in our custody, especially children. As DHS and CBP leadership have noted numerous times, our short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis. CBP works closely with our partners at the Department of Health and Human Services to transfer unaccompanied children to their custody as soon as placement is identified, and as quickly and expeditiously as possible to ensure proper care.

    All allegations of civil rights abuses or mistreatment in CBP detention are taken seriously and investigated to the fullest extent possible.

    The Associated Press details grave conditions inside a Texas migrant detention facility where 250 infants, children and teenagers were being held without adequate food, water or sanitation during a recent visit. Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University, joins William Brangham to share her firsthand account, what Border Patrol agents think and what’s next for these children.

    #états-unis #migrations #enfants #camps_de_concentration

  • No to concentration camps in America! - World Socialist Web Site

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/26/pers-j26.html

    Along the US-Mexico border and in immigrant concentration camps within the United States, the Trump administration is committing crimes so depraved and sadistic that they have stained every branch of government, both parties and the entire political establishment with the mark of infamy. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are sickened by the rot at the core of American capitalism.

    Recent reports of conditions at detention facilities housing thousands of immigrant children expose systematic dehumanization and violence against children who have been torn from the arms of their parents and relatives.

    Dr. Dolly Lucio Sevier, a pediatrician who visited concentration camps in Texas last week, told ABC News that the jails are akin to “torture facilities,” and that children are forced to endure “extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water or adequate food.”

    #migrations #états-unis #camps #encampement #enfance #enfants

  • Horror across US-Mexico border with multiple parents, infants dead - World Socialist Web Site

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/25/immi-j25.html

    Catastrophe struck Central American immigrants attempting to flee imperialist war and violence across the US-Mexico border last weekend, generating widespread outrage in the Latin American working class.

    On Sunday morning, US officials discovered the bodies of four people—a 20-year-old, a young child and two babies—dead in the Texas desert on the US side of the Rio Grande, known to Latin Americans as the Rio Bravo. The Guatemalan embassy has since identified the young people as Guatemalan nationals. Temperatures in the area reached 113 degrees Sunday.

    The FBI has announced it is reviewing the deaths, a highly unusual step which raises questions about whether the immigrants were murdered on the US side of the border. Regardless of the exact cause of death, the immigrants were killed by the policies of the Trump administration.

    #états-unis #mexique #migrations

  • Schools Are Deploying Massive Digital Surveillance Systems. The Results Are Alarming
    https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/05/30/schools-are-deploying-massive-digital-surveillance-systems.html

    Last December, early on a Sunday morning, Amanda Lafrenais tweeted about her cats. “I would die for you,” the 31-year old comic book artist from Clute, Texas wrote. To human eyes, the post seems innocuous. But in an age of heightened fear about mass school shootings, it tripped invisible alarms. The local Brazosport Independent School District had recently hired a company called Social Sentinel to monitor public posts from all users, including adults, on Facebook, Twitter, and other social (...)

    #SocialSentinel #algorithme #CCTV #vidéo-surveillance #surveillance #étudiants #SocialNetwork

  • Aux États-Unis, extension du domaine de la #surveillance des élèves
    http://www.internetactu.net/a-lire-ailleurs/aux-etats-unis-extension-du-domaine-de-la-surveillance-des-eleves

    La peur des fusillades dans les écoles aux États-Unis fait prendre à la société américaine des décisions absurdes, estime le journaliste Benjamin Herold (@BenjaminBHerold) dans une longue enquête pour Education Week (@educationweek). Surveiller les #réseaux_sociaux pour prévenir les fusillades ? Dans une des banlieues de Houston au Texas, le district (...)

    #A_lire_ailleurs #Enjeux #Services #Education_et_formation #Territoires

  • 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

  • Call immigrant detention centers what they really are: concentration camps

    If you were paying close attention last week, you might have spotted a pattern in the news. Peeking out from behind the breathless coverage of the Trump family’s tuxedoed trip to London was a spate of deaths of immigrants in U.S. custody: Johana Medina Léon, a 25-year-old transgender asylum seeker; an unnamed 33-year-old Salvadoran man; and a 40-year-old woman from Honduras.

    Photos from a Border Patrol processing center in El Paso showed people herded so tightly into cells that they had to stand on toilets to breathe. Memos surfaced by journalist Ken Klippenstein revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s failure to provide medical care was responsible for suicides and other deaths of detainees. These followed another report that showed that thousands of detainees are being brutally held in isolation cells just for being transgender or mentally ill.

    Also last week, the Trump administration cut funding for classes, recreation and legal aid at detention centers holding minors — which were likened to “summer camps” by a senior ICE official last year. And there was the revelation that months after being torn from their parents’ arms, 37 children were locked in vans for up to 39 hours in the parking lot of a detention center outside Port Isabel, Texas. In the last year, at least seven migrant children have died in federal custody.

    Preventing mass outrage at a system like this takes work. Certainly it helps that the news media covers these horrors intermittently rather than as snowballing proof of a racist, lawless administration. But most of all, authorities prevail when the places where people are being tortured and left to die stay hidden, misleadingly named and far from prying eyes.

    There’s a name for that kind of system. They’re called concentration camps. You might balk at my use of the term. That’s good — it’s something to be balked at.

    The goal of concentration camps has always been to be ignored. The German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt, who was imprisoned by the Gestapo and interned in a French camp, wrote a few years afterward about the different levels of concentration camps. Extermination camps were the most extreme; others were just about getting “undesirable elements … out of the way.” All had one thing in common: “The human masses sealed off in them are treated as if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them were no longer of interest to anybody, as if they were already dead.”

    Euphemisms play a big role in that forgetting. The term “concentration camp” is itself a euphemism. It was invented by a Spanish official to paper over his relocation of millions of rural families into squalid garrison towns where they would starve during Cuba’s 1895 independence war. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans into prisons during World War II, he initially called them concentration camps. Americans ended up using more benign names, like “Manzanar Relocation Center.”

    Even the Nazis’ camps started out small, housing criminals, Communists and opponents of the regime. It took five years to begin the mass detention of Jews. It took eight, and the outbreak of a world war, for the first extermination camps to open. Even then, the Nazis had to keep lying to distract attention, claiming Jews were merely being resettled to remote work sites. That’s what the famous signs — Arbeit Macht Frei, or “Work Sets You Free” — were about.

    Subterfuge doesn’t always work. A year ago, Americans accidentally became aware that the Trump administration had adopted (and lied about) a policy of ripping families apart at the border. The flurry of attention was thanks to the viral conflation of two separate but related stories: the family-separation order and bureaucrats’ admission that they’d been unable to locate thousands of migrant children who’d been placed with sponsors after crossing the border alone.

    Trump shoved that easily down the memory hole. He dragged his heels a bit, then agreed to a new policy: throwing whole families into camps together. Political reporters posed irrelevant questions, like whether President Obama had been just as bad, and what it meant for the midterms. Then they moved on.

    It is important to note that Trump’s aides have built this system of racist terror on something that has existed for a long time. Several camps opened under Obama, and as president he deported millions of people.

    But Trump’s game is different. It certainly isn’t about negotiating immigration reform with Congress. Trump has made it clear that he wants to stifle all non-white immigration, period. His mass arrests, iceboxes and dog cages are part of an explicitly nationalist project to put the country under the control of the right kind of white people.

    As a Republican National Committee report noted in 2013: “The nation’s demographic changes add to the urgency of recognizing how precarious our position has become.” The Trump administration’s attempt to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census was also just revealed to have been a plot to disadvantage political opponents and boost “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites” all along.

    That’s why this isn’t just a crisis facing immigrants. When a leader puts people in camps to stay in power, history shows that he doesn’t usually stop with the first group he detains.

    There are now at least 48,000 people detained in ICE facilities, which a former official told BuzzFeed News “could swell indefinitely.” Customs and Border Protection officials apprehended more than 144,000 people on the Southwest border last month. (The New York Times dutifully reported this as evidence of a “dramatic surge in border crossings,” rather than what it was: The administration using its own surge of arrests to justify the rest of its policies.)

    If we call them what they are — a growing system of American concentration camps — we will be more likely to give them the attention they deserve. We need to know their names: Port Isabel, Dilley, Adelanto, Hutto and on and on. With constant, unrelenting attention, it is possible we might alleviate the plight of the people inside, and stop the crisis from getting worse. Maybe people won’t be able to disappear so easily into the iceboxes. Maybe it will be harder for authorities to lie about children’s deaths.

    Maybe Trump’s concentration camps will be the first thing we think of when we see him scowling on TV.

    The only other option is to leave it up to those in power to decide what’s next. That’s a calculated risk. As Andrea Pitzer, author of “One Long Night,” one of the most comprehensive books on the history of concentration camps, recently noted: “Every country has said their camps are humane and will be different. Trump is instinctively an authoritarian. He’ll take them as far as he’s allowed to.”

    https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-katz-immigrant-concentration-camps-20190609-story.html
    #terminologie #vocabulaire #mots #camps #camps_de_concentration #centres_de_détention #détention_administrative #rétention #USA #Etats-Unis
    #cpa_camps

    • ‘Some Suburb of Hell’: America’s New Concentration Camp System

      On Monday, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to US border detention facilities as “concentration camps,” spurring a backlash in which critics accused her of demeaning the memory of those who died in the Holocaust. Debates raged over a label for what is happening along the southern border and grew louder as the week rolled on. But even this back-and-forth over naming the camps has been a recurrent feature in the mass detention of civilians ever since its inception, a history that long predates the Holocaust.

      At the heart of such policy is a question: What does a country owe desperate people whom it does not consider to be its citizens? The twentieth century posed this question to the world just as the shadow of global conflict threatened for the second time in less than three decades. The dominant response was silence, and the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty meant that what a state did to people under its control, within its borders, was nobody else’s business. After the harrowing toll of the Holocaust with the murder of millions, the world revisited its answer, deciding that perhaps something was owed to those in mortal danger. From the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting civilians in 1949 to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the international community established humanitarian obligations toward the most vulnerable that apply, at least in theory, to all nations.

      The twenty-first century is unraveling that response. Countries are rejecting existing obligations and meeting asylum seekers with walls and fences, from detainees fleeing persecution who were sent by Australia to third-party detention in the brutal offshore camps of Manus and Nauru to razor-wire barriers blocking Syrian refugees from entering Hungary. While some nations, such as Germany, wrestle with how to integrate refugees into their labor force—more and more have become resistant to letting them in at all. The latest location of this unwinding is along the southern border of the United States.

      So far, American citizens have gotten only glimpses of the conditions in the border camps that have been opened in their name. In the month of May, Customs and Border Protection reported a total of 132,887 migrants who were apprehended or turned themselves in between ports of entry along the southwest border, an increase of 34 percent from April alone. Upon apprehension, these migrants are temporarily detained by Border Patrol, and once their claims are processed, they are either released or handed over to ICE for longer-term detention. Yet Border Patrol itself is currently holding about 15,000 people, nearly four times what government officials consider to be this enforcement arm’s detention capacity.

      On June 12, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that Fort Sill, an Army post that hosted a World War II internment camp for detainees of Japanese descent, will now be repurposed to detain migrant children. In total, HHS reports that it is currently holding some 12,000 minors. Current law limits detention of minors to twenty days, though Senator Lindsey Graham has proposed expanding the court-ordered limit to 100 days. Since the post is on federal land, it will be exempt from state child welfare inspections.

      In addition to the total of detainees held by Border Patrol, an even higher number is detained at centers around the country by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency: on a typical day at the beginning of this month, ICE was detaining more than 52,500 migrants. The family separation policy outraged the public in the 2018, but despite legal challenges, it never fully ended. Less publicized have been the deaths of twenty-four adults in ICE custody since the beginning of the Trump administration; in addition, six children between the ages of two and sixteen have died in federal custody over the last several months. It’s not clear whether there have been other deaths that have gone unreported.

      Conditions for detainees have not been improving. At the end of May, a Department of Homeland Security inspector general found nearly 900 migrants at a Texas shelter built for a capacity of 125 people. On June 11, a university professor spotted at least 100 men behind chain-link fences near the Paso del Norte Bridge in El Paso, Texas. Those detainees reported sitting outside for weeks in temperatures that soared above 100 degrees. Taylor Levy, an El Paso immigration lawyer, described going into one facility and finding “a suicidal four-year-old whose face was covered in bloody, self-inflicted scratches… Another young child had to be restrained by his mother because he kept running full-speed into metal lockers. He was covered in bruises.”

      If deciding what to do about the growing numbers of adults and children seeking refuge in the US relies on complex humanitarian policies and international laws, in which most Americans don’t take a deep interest, a simpler question also presents itself: What exactly are these camps that the Trump administration has opened, and where is this program of mass detention headed?

      Even with incomplete information about what’s happening along the border today and what the government plans for these camps, history points to some conclusions about their future. Mass detention without trial earned a new name and a specific identity at the end of the nineteenth century. The labels then adopted for the practice were “reconcentración” and “concentration camps”—places of forced relocation of civilians into detention on the basis of group identity.

      Other kinds of group detention had appeared much earlier in North American history. The US government drove Native Americans from their homelands into prescribed exile, with death and detention in transit camps along the way. Some Spanish mission systems in the Americas had accomplished similar ends by seizing land and pressing indigenous people into forced labor. During the 245 years when slavery was legal in the US, detention was one of its essential features.

      Concentration camps, however, don’t typically result from the theft of land, as happened with Native Americans, or owning human beings in a system of forced labor, as in the slave trade. Exile, theft, and forced labor can come later, but in the beginning, detention itself is usually the point of concentration camps. By the end of the nineteenth century, the mass production of barbed wire and machines guns made this kind of detention possible and practical in ways it never had been before.

      Under Spanish rule in 1896, the governor-general of Cuba instituted camps in order to clear rebel-held regions during an uprising, despite his predecessor’s written refusal “as the representative of a civilized nation, to be the first to give the example of cruelty and intransigence” that such detention would represent. After women and children began dying in vast numbers behind barbed wire because there had been little planning for shelter and even less for food, US President William McKinley made his call to war before Congress. He spoke against the policy of reconcentración, calling it warfare by uncivilized means. “It was extermination,” McKinley said. “The only peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and the grave.” Without full records, the Cuban death toll can only be estimated, but a consensus puts it in the neighborhood of 150,000, more than 10 percent of the island’s prewar population.

      Today, we remember the sinking of the USS Maine as the spark that ignited the Spanish-American War. But war correspondent George Kennan (cousin of the more famous diplomat) believed that “it was the suffering of the reconcentrados, more, perhaps, than any other one thing that brought about the intervention of the United States.” On April 25, 1898, Congress declared war. Two weeks later, US Marines landed at Fisherman’s Point on the windward side of the entrance to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. After a grim, week-long fight, the Marines took the hill. It became a naval base, and the United States has never left that patch of land.

      As part of the larger victory, the US inherited the Philippines. The world’s newest imperial power also inherited a rebellion. Following a massacre of American troops at Balangiga in September 1901, during the third year of the conflict, the US established its own concentration camp system. Detainees, mostly women and children, were forced into squalid conditions that one American soldier described in a letter to a US senator as “some suburb of hell.” In the space of only four months, more than 11,000 Filipinos are believed to have died in these noxious camps.

      Meanwhile, in southern Africa in 1900, the British had opened their own camps during their battle with descendants of Dutch settlers in the second Boer War. British soldiers filled tent cities with Boer women and children, and the military authorities called them refugee camps. Future Prime Minister David Lloyd George took offense at that name, noting in Parliament: “There is no greater delusion in the mind of any man than to apply the term ‘refugee’ to these camps. They are not refugee camps. They are camps of concentration.” Contemporary observers compared them to the Cuban camps, and criticized their deliberate cruelty. The Bishop of Hereford wrote to The Times of London in 1901, asking: “Are we reduced to such a depth of impotence that our Government can do nothing to stop such a holocaust of child-life?”

      Maggoty meat rations and polluted water supplies joined outbreaks of contagious diseases amid crowded and unhealthy conditions in the Boer camps. More than 27,000 detainees are thought to have died there, nearly 80 percent of them children. The British had opened camps for black Africans as well, in which at least 14,000 detainees died—the real number is probably much higher. Aside from protests made by some missionaries, the deaths of indigenous black Africans did not inspire much public outrage. Much of the history of the suffering in these camps has been lost.

      These early experiments with concentration camps took place on the periphery of imperial power, but accounts of them nevertheless made their way into newspapers and reports in many nations. As a result, the very idea of them came to be seen as barbaric. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the first camp systems had all been closed, and concentration camps had nearly vanished as an institution. Within months of the outbreak of World War I, though, they would be resurrected—this time rising not at the margins but in the centers of power. Between 1914 and 1918, camps were constructed on an unprecedented scale across six continents. In their time, these camps were commonly called concentration camps, though today they are often referred to by the more anodyne term “internment.”

      Those World War I detainees were, for the most part, foreigners—or, in legalese, aliens—and recent anti-immigration legislation in several countries had deliberately limited their rights. The Daily Mail denounced aliens left at liberty once they had registered with their local police department, demanding, “Does signing his name take the malice out of a man?” The Scottish Field was more direct, asking, “Do Germans have souls?” That these civilian detainees were no threat to Britain did not keep them from being demonized, shouted at, and spat upon as they were paraded past hostile crowds in cities like London.

      Though a small number of people were shot in riots in these camps, and hunger became a serious issue as the conflict dragged on, World War I internment would present a new, non-lethal face for the camps, normalizing detention. Even after the war, new camps sprang up from Spain to Hungary and Cuba, providing an improvised “solution” for everything from vagrancy to anxieties over the presence of Jewish foreigners.

      Some of these camps were clearly not safe for those interned. Local camps appeared in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, after a white mob burned down a black neighborhood and detained African-American survivors. In Bolshevik Russia, the first concentration camps preceded the formation of the Soviet Union in 1922 and planted seeds for the brutal Gulag system that became official near the end of the USSR’s first decade. While some kinds of camps were understood to be harsher, after World War I their proliferation did not initially disturb public opinion. They had yet to take on their worst incarnations.

      In 1933, barely more than a month after Hitler was appointed chancellor, the Nazis’ first, impromptu camp opened in the town of Nohra in central Germany to hold political opponents. Detainees at Nohra were allowed to vote at a local precinct in the elections of March 5, 1933, resulting in a surge of Communist ballots in the tiny town. Locking up groups of civilians without trial had become accepted. Only the later realization of the horrors of the Nazi death camps would break the default assumption by governments and the public that concentration camps could and should be a simple way to manage populations seen as a threat.

      However, the staggering death toll of the Nazi extermination camp system—which was created mid-war and stood almost entirely separate from the concentration camps in existence since 1933—led to another result: a strange kind of erasure. In the decades that followed World War II, the term “concentration camp” came to stand only for Auschwitz and other extermination camps. It was no longer applied to the kind of extrajudicial detention it had denoted for generations. The many earlier camps that had made the rise of Auschwitz possible largely vanished from public memory.

      It is not necessary, however, to step back a full century in American history to find camps with links to what is happening on the US border today. Detention at Guantánamo began in the 1990s, when Haitian and Cuban immigrants whom the government wanted to keep out of the United States were housed there in waves over a four-year period—years before the “war on terror” and the US policy of rendition of suspected “enemy combatants” made Camps Delta, X-Ray, and Echo notorious. Tens of thousands of Haitians fleeing instability at home were picked up at sea and diverted to the Cuban base, to limit their legal right to apply for asylum. The court cases and battles over the suffering of those detainees ended up setting the stage for what Guantánamo would become after September 11, 2001.

      In one case, a federal court ruled that it did have jurisdiction over the base, but the government agreed to release the Haitians who were part of the lawsuit in exchange for keeping that ruling off the books. A ruling in a second case would assert that the courts did not have jurisdiction. Absent the prior case, the latter stood on its own as precedent. Leaving Guantánamo in this gray area made it an ideal site for extrajudicial detention and torture after the twin towers fell.

      This process of normalization, when a bad camp becomes much more dangerous, is not unusual. Today’s border camps are a crueler reflection of long-term policies—some challenged in court—that earlier presidents had enacted. Prior administrations own a share of the responsibility for today’s harsh practices, but the policies in place today are also accompanied by a shameless willingness to publicly target a vulnerable population in increasingly dangerous ways.

      I visited Guantánamo twice in 2015, sitting in the courtroom for pretrial hearings and touring the medical facility, the library, and all the old abandoned detention sites, as well as newly built ones, open to the media—from the kennel-style cages of Camp X-Ray rotting to ruin in the damp heat to the modern jailhouse facilities of Camp 6. Seeing all this in person made clear to me how vast the architecture of detention had become, how entrenched it was, and how hard it would be to close.

      Without a significant government effort to reverse direction, conditions in every camp system tend to deteriorate over time. Governments rarely make that kind of effort on behalf of people they are willing to lock up without trial in the first place. And history shows that legislatures do not close camps against the will of an executive.

      Just a few years ago there might have been more potential for change spurred by the judicial branch of our democracy, but this Supreme Court is inclined toward deference to executive power, even, it appears, if that power is abused. It seems unlikely this Court will intervene to end the new border camp system; indeed, the justices are far more likely to institutionalize it by half-measures, as happened with Guantánamo. The Korematsu case, in which the Supreme Court upheld Japanese-American internment (a ruling only rescinded last year), relied on the suppression of evidence by the solicitor general. Americans today can have little confidence that this administration would behave any more scrupulously when defending its detention policy.

      What kind of conditions can we expect to develop in these border camps? The longer a camp system stays open, the more likely it is that vital things will go wrong: detainees will contract contagious diseases and suffer from malnutrition and mental illness. We have already seen that current detention practices have resulted in children and adults succumbing to influenza, staph infections, and sepsis. The US is now poised to inflict harm on tens of thousands more, perhaps hundreds of thousands more.

      Along with such inevitable consequences, every significant camp system has introduced new horrors of its own, crises that were unforeseen when that system was opened. We have yet to discover what those will be for these American border camps. But they will happen. Every country thinks it can do detention better when it starts these projects. But no good way to conduct mass indefinite detention has yet been devised; the system always degrades.

      When, in 1940, Margarete Buber-Neumann was transferred from the Soviet Gulag at Karaganda to the camp for women at Ravensbrück (in an exchange enabled by the Nazi–Soviet Pact), she came from near-starvation conditions in the USSR and was amazed at the cleanliness and order of the Nazi camp. New arrivals were issued clothing, bedding, and silverware, and given fresh porridge, fruit, sausage, and jam to eat. Although the Nazi camps were already punitive, order-obsessed monstrosities, the wartime overcrowding that would soon overtake them had not yet made daily life a thing of constant suffering and squalor. The death camps were still two years away.

      The United States now has a vast and growing camp system. It is starting out with gruesome overcrowding and inadequate healthcare, and because of budget restrictions, has already taken steps to cut services to juvenile detainees. The US Office of Refugee Resettlement says that the mounting number of children arriving unaccompanied is forcing it to use military bases and other sites that it prefers to avoid, and that establishing these camps is a temporary measure. But without oversight from state child welfare inspectors, the possibilities for neglect and abuse are alarming. And without any knowledge of how many asylum-seekers are coming in the future, federal administrators are likely to find themselves boxed in to managing detention on military sites permanently.

      President Trump and senior White House adviser Stephen Miller appear to have purged the Department of Homeland Security of most internal opposition to their anti-immigrant policies. In doing so, that have removed even those sympathetic to the general approach taken by the White House, such as former Chief of Staff John Kelly and former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in order to escalate the militarization of the border and expand irregular detention in more systematic and punitive ways. This kind of power struggle or purge in the early years of a camp system is typical.

      The disbanding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police, in February 1922 and the transfer of its commander, Felix Dzerzhinsky, to head up an agency with control over only two prisons offered a hint of an alternate future in which extrajudicial detention would not play a central role in the fledgling Soviet republic. But Dzerzhinsky managed to keep control over the “special camps” in his new position, paving the way for the emergence of a camp-centered police state. In pre-war Germany in the mid-1930s, Himmler’s struggle to consolidate power from rivals eventually led him to make camps central to Nazi strategy. When the hardliners win, as they appear to have in the US, conditions tend to worsen significantly.

      Is it possible this growth in the camp system will be temporary and the improvised border camps will soon close? In theory, yes. But the longer they remain open, the less likely they are to vanish. When I visited the camps for Rohingya Muslims a year before the large-scale campaign of ethnic cleansing began, many observers appeared to be confusing the possible and the probable. It was possible that the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi would sweep into office in free elections and begin making changes. It was possible that full democracy would come to all the residents of Myanmar, even though the government had stripped the Rohingya of the last vestiges of their citizenship. These hopes proved to be misplaced. Once there are concentration camps, it is always probable that things will get worse.

      The Philippines, Japanese-American internment, Guantánamo… we can consider the fine points of how the current border camps evoke past US systems, and we can see how the arc of camp history reveals the likelihood that the suffering we’re currently inflicting will be multiplied exponentially. But we can also simply look at what we’re doing right now, shoving bodies into “dog pound”-style detention pens, “iceboxes,” and standing room-only spaces. We can look at young children in custody who have become suicidal. How much more historical awareness do we really need?

      https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/06/21/some-suburb-of-hell-americas-new-concentration-camp-system

    • #Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez engage le bras de fer avec la politique migratoire de Donald Trump

      L’élue de New York a qualifié les camps de rétention pour migrants érigés à la frontière sud des Etats-Unis de « camps de concentration ».

      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/06/19/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-engage-le-bras-de-fer-avec-la-politique-migratoire-

  • Ces femmes qui ont compté dans l’ombre
    https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2019/06/05/ces-femmes-qui-ont-compte-dans-l-ombre_5471924_1650684.html


    photo apparaissant « par magie », donc non créditée

    On trouve beaucoup d’exemples de travaux scientifiques basés sur le travail de « calculatrices féminines », dont les noms apparaissent au mieux dans les remerciements.

    L’un de mes articles scientifiques préférés a été écrit par Edward Lorenz, en 1963, et s’intitule « Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow » (flot déterministe et non périodique). Il s’agit de l’un des textes fondateurs de la théorie du chaos. Son contenu passera dans le grand public un peu plus tard à travers la belle image de l’effet papillon : un battement d’ailes d’un papillon au Brésil pourrait engendrer un ouragan au Texas. Cette publication est un mélange extraordinaire de physique, de météorologie, de mathématiques et de simulations numériques. Je l’ai lue et relue un très grand nombre de fois et je croyais la connaître jusque la semaine dernière.

    Un article de Joshua Sokol dans Quanta Magazine m’a appris que j’aurais dû lire le dernier paragraphe dans lequel l’auteur remercie « Miss Ellen Fetter qui a pris en charge les nombreux calculs et les graphiques ». Comment ? Ce n’est pas Edward Lorenz qui a fait les calculs, mais une assistante ? Il faut comprendre que simuler le mouvement de l’atmosphère sur un ordinateur était une composante essentielle de l’article. En 1963, les ordinateurs étaient primitifs et « prendre en charge les calculs » aurait probablement mérité un peu plus qu’un discret remerciement.

    Ce n’est pas la première fois que des scientifiques utilisent des « calculatrices féminines », dont les noms apparaissent au mieux dans les remerciements. Dix ans auparavant, Enrico Fermi, John Pasta et Stanislaw Ulam publiaient la première simulation numérique d’un système physique complexe. On peut considérer cet article comme la naissance d’une nouvelle discipline de physique mathématique. Il s’agissait d’étudier, sur un ordinateur, les vibrations d’une chaîne constituée d’une soixantaine de ressorts « non linéaires ».

    Là encore, deux lignes discrètes dans la publication remercient Miss Mary Tsingou pour « la programmation efficace du problème et pour avoir effectué les calculs sur l’ordinateur Maniac de Los Alamos », ce qui représente pourtant une partie très importante du travail. Ce n’est qu’en 2008 que le physicien Thierry Dauxois lira ces deux lignes et proposera d’appeler Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou cette simulation numérique. J’aurais même proposé de respecter l’ordre alphabétique…

    #paywall

    • Nicole-Reine Lepaute — Wikipédia
      https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole-Reine_Lepaute


      Détail d’un portrait de Nicole-Reine Lepaute
      par Guillaume Voiriot, là aussi, il faut aller chercher l’auteur qui n’est pas mentionné dans les infos WP de l’image, mais en note de l’article…

      Nicole Reine Lepaute, née Étable, le 5 janvier 1723 à Paris, morte dans la même ville le 6 décembre 1788, est une calculatrice et astronome française. Elle est, avec Caroline Herschel et la marquise du Châtelet une des principales femme scientifique du siècle des Lumières.

      Son travail est souvent inclus dans celui d’autres auteurs, dont Jérôme de Lalande et son mari. Mais, s’il faut en croire Lalande, qui l’aimait beaucoup, elle était « un maître plutôt qu’un émule ». Elle a notamment aidé au calcul de la date précise du retour de la comète de Halley de 1759 et contributrice majeure au calcul de l’éphéméride astronomique La connaissance des temps.

    • On trouve beaucoup d’exemples de travaux scientifiques basés sur le travail de « calculatrices féminines », dont les noms apparaissent au mieux dans les remerciements.

      L’un de mes articles scientifiques préférés a été écrit par Edward Lorenz, en 1963, et s’intitule « Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow » (flot déterministe et non périodique). Il s’agit de l’un des textes fondateurs de la théorie du chaos. Son contenu passera dans le grand public un peu plus tard à travers la belle image de l’effet papillon : un battement d’ailes d’un papillon au Brésil pourrait engendrer un ouragan au Texas. Cette publication est un mélange extraordinaire de physique, de météorologie, de mathématiques et de simulations numériques. Je l’ai lue et relue un très grand nombre de fois et je croyais la connaître jusque la semaine dernière.

      Un article de Joshua Sokol dans Quanta Magazine m’a appris que j’aurais dû lire le dernier paragraphe dans lequel l’auteur remercie « Miss Ellen Fetter qui a pris en charge les nombreux calculs et les graphiques ». Comment ? Ce n’est pas Edward Lorenz qui a fait les calculs, mais une assistante ? Il faut comprendre que simuler le mouvement de l’atmosphère sur un ordinateur était une composante essentielle de l’article. En 1963, les ordinateurs étaient primitifs et « prendre en charge les calculs » aurait probablement mérité un peu plus qu’un discret remerciement.

      Calculs faits à la main

      Ce n’est pas la première fois que des scientifiques utilisent des « calculatrices féminines », dont les noms apparaissent au mieux dans les remerciements. Dix ans auparavant, Enrico Fermi, John Pasta et Stanislaw Ulam publiaient la première simulation numérique d’un système physique complexe. On peut considérer cet article comme la naissance d’une nouvelle discipline de physique mathématique. Il s’agissait d’étudier, sur un ordinateur, les vibrations d’une chaîne constituée d’une soixantaine de ressorts « non linéaires ».

      Là encore, deux lignes discrètes dans la publication remercient Miss Mary Tsingou pour « la programmation efficace du problème et pour avoir effectué les calculs sur l’ordinateur Maniac de Los Alamos », ce qui représente pourtant une partie très importante du travail. Ce n’est qu’en 2008 que le physicien Thierry Dauxois lira ces deux lignes et proposera d’appeler Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou cette simulation numérique. J’aurais même proposé de respecter l’ordre alphabétique…

      En remontant encore dans le temps, on arrive à une période où les calculs étaient faits à la main, et où la main en question était bien souvent féminine. Dans les années 1940, un membre d’un institut de mathématiques appliquées ose parler du kilogirl (kilofille) : la quantité de calculs qu’une femme peut produire en mille heures ! Vers 1880, l’astronome Edward Charles Pickering recrute, à Harvard (Massachusetts), une équipe de plus de 80 calculatrices féminines surnommées « harem de Pickering » et payées moins qu’un ouvrier.

      On sait que la comète de Halley est visible dans le ciel à peu près tous les soixante-seize ans. Sa trajectoire est perturbée par l’attraction de Jupiter et de Saturne. Au milieu du XVIIIe siècle, certains savants doutaient encore de la théorie de la gravitation de Newton. Le calcul de la date du retour de la comète fut un grand moment de l’histoire des sciences. En novembre 1758, l’académicien Alexis Clairaut annonce un retour « vers le mois d’avril de l’année prochaine ».

      Ce fut un triomphe quand sa prédiction se réalisa. La théorie est en effet due à Clairaut, mais les calculs monstrueux ont été effectués par Joseph Lalande et Nicole-Reine Lepaute qui « calculaient depuis le matin jusqu’au soir, parfois même à table ». Clairaut « oubliera » de remercier sa collaboratrice. La Ville de Paris rendra partiellement justice à Nicole-Reine, en 2007, en donnant son nom à une rue.

      Nicole-Reine Lepaute (1723-1788), calculatrice et astronome.

      En 2017, l’ingénieur de Google James Damore a été renvoyé après avoir affirmé que le manque d’informaticiennes était d’origine biologique.

  • Le Texas songe à appliquer la peine de mort pour les femmes qui avortent - Cosmopolitan.fr
    https://www.cosmopolitan.fr/le-texas-songe-a-appliquer-la-peine-de-mort-pour-les-femmes-qui-avorten

    Les États-Unis vivent une période noire en termes de droits des femmes. Alors que le Missouri souhaite désormais poursuivre les médecins qui pratiqueront des avortements après huit semaines de grossesse, la Géorgie vient d’interdire l’IVG dès le premier battement de cœur du fœtus.

    L’Alabama vient de voter la loi la plus restrictive des États-Unis, en interdisant totalement l’avortement et ce, y compris en cas de viol ou d’inceste. C’est une loi similaire qu’étudie actuellement la Chambre des représentants du Texas depuis le 4 avril dernier.

    La loi HB 896 entend tout d’abord interdire le droit à l’avortement, autorisé actuellement jusqu’à 20 semaines de grossesse au Texas. Mais elle ne s’arrête pas là puisqu’elle prévoit également de donner au foetus les mêmes droits que ceux d’un enfant.

    Comme en Géorgie, le Texas réfléchit en effet à donner lui aussi une identité juridique à l’embryon puis au foetus. Un statut qui permettra de condamner les femmes qui avorteront malgré la loi à une peine de prison pouvant aller jusqu’à la peine de mort. Les médecins, infirmières ou tout autre personnel de santé qui les auront aidées pourront eux aussi être incriminés.

    Tony Tinderholt, élu républicain à l’origine du projet de loi, tentait de convaincre début avril la Chambre des représentants du Texas en expliquant : « je pense qu’il est important de rappeler qu’un conducteur ivre a une peine de prison deux fois plus lourde quand il tue une femme enceinte (...). Je ne suis pas en train de criminaliser les femmes. Ce que je fais, c’est appliquer la même loi pour tous ».
    L’avortement interdit, y compris en cas de viol

    Comme en Alabama, le projet de loi ne considère ni le viol, ni l’inceste comme une exception. Si le projet de loi vient à passer, une femme qui tombera enceinte suite à un viol sera donc dans l’obligation de poursuivre sa grossesse jusqu’à l’accouchement. Un scénario glaçant qui s’est déjà emparé de l’Alabama le 15 mai dernier, après que sa gouverneure, la républicaine Kay Ivy, ait validé le projet de loi, justifiant que « toute vie est un cadeau sacré de Dieu ».

    Selon un décompte de l’Institut Guttmacher, vingt-huit Etats américains ont introduit plus de 300 nouvelles règles afin de limiter l’accès à l’avortement depuis le début de l’année 2019. Derrière ces mesures se cache un objectif clair : celui de pousser la Cour suprême des Etats-Unis à revenir sur l’arrêt Roe vs. Wade, introduit en 1973 et qui reconnaît le droit des femmes à avorter tant que le foetus n’est pas viable.

    #féminicide #ivg #misogynie
    Les « pro-vie » pour la peine de mort ca me laisse toujours songeuse. C’est sympas de te rendre compte que ta vie compte moins que celle d’un tas de cellulles non viable.

  • How We Investigated the New York Taxi Medallion Bubble - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/reader-center/taxi-medallion-investigation.html

    It took a year, 450 interviews and a database built from scratch to answer a simple question: Why had anyone ever agreed to pay $1 million for the right to drive a yellow cab?

    By Brian M. Rosenthal
    May 22, 2019

    Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

    The story started, like a lot of stories seem to, with President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen.

    On April 9, 2018, the F.B.I. raided Mr. Cohen’s office, thrusting him into the national spotlight. The next day, the top editors at The New York Times asked five reporters to start working on a profile. I was one of them.

    The other reporters researched Mr. Cohen’s family, his legal career, his real estate interests and, of course, his work for the president. I took on the last piece of his business empire: his ownership of 30 New York taxi medallions, the coveted permits needed to own a yellow cab.

    After a few weeks of reporting, the team learned enough to publish our story on Mr. Cohen. And I discovered enough to know what I wanted to investigate next.

    At that time, the taxi industry was becoming a big story. Mr. Cohen had owned his medallions as an investment, counting on them rising in value because of the city’s decision to issue only about 13,000 permits. But thousands of the medallions were owned by drivers themselves, and two driver-owners had just died by suicide. Public officials were talking about how the price of a medallion had plummeted from over $1 million to under $150,000. Most were blaming ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft.

    I had a different question: Why had anybody ever paid $1 million for the right to the grueling job of being a cabby?

    When I pursue an investigation, I identify the single most important question that I am trying to answer, and orient all of my reporting around it. (For example, why did it cost more to build subway track in New York than anywhere else in the world? Or why did Texas have the lowest special education rate in the country?) In this case, I ended up interviewing about 450 people, and I asked almost all the same question: Why did the price reach $1 million? It became my North Star.

    I heard plenty of theories, but I began to get somewhere only when I had an epiphany: No driver-owner had ever really paid close to $1 million for a medallion. On paper, thousands of low-income immigrants had. But while they had poured their life savings into their purchase, virtually all had signed loans for most of the cost — and never really had a chance to repay.

    I needed to examine as many loans as possible, to see if they were as unusual and reckless — and predatory — as some of my sources said they were. But how?

    I got a lead from an unexpected source: the lenders themselves.

    After prices had started crashing, the lenders in the industry had tried to squeeze money out of borrowers. Many of them had filed lawsuits against borrowers — lawsuits which had to include copies of the loans.

    I ultimately reviewed 500 of these loans, and I saw disturbing patterns: Almost none of them included a large down payment. Almost all of them required the borrower to repay everything within three years, which was impossible. There were a lot of interest-only loans, and a wide variety of fees, including charges for paying loans off too early. Many of the loans required borrowers to sign away their legal rights.

    Armed with the loan documents, I started calling dozens of current and former industry bankers, brokers, lawyers and investors. Some pointed me to disclosures that lenders had filed with the government, which were enormously helpful. Others shared internal records, which were even better.

    New York City did not have reliable digital data on medallion sales, so I used paper records to build a database of all the 10,888 sales between 1995 and 2018. The city taxi commission had never analyzed the financial records submitted by medallion buyers, so I did. Nobody knew how many medallion owners had gone bankrupt because of the crisis, so I convinced my boss to pay a technology company, Epiq, to create a program that sped through court records and spat out a tentative list — and then two news assistants helped me verify every result.

    As I dug into the data and the documents, I sought out driver-owners. I wanted to understand what they had been through. To find them, I went to Kennedy International Airport.

    The fare from taking someone from the airport into Manhattan can make a cabby’s day, and so drivers wait in line for hours. And over several visits during a couple of months, I waited with them, striking up conversations outside a food stand run by a Greek family and next to pay phones that had stopped working years ago. After talking briefly, I asked if I could visit their homes and meet their friends.

    In all, I met 200 taxi drivers, including several I interviewed through translators because they did not speak English fluently. (Some of those men still had signed loans of up to $1 million.) One by one, they told me how they had come to New York seeking the American dream, worked hard and gotten trapped in loans they did not understand, which often made them give up almost all of their monthly income. Several said that after the medallion bubble burst, wiping out their savings and their futures, they had contemplated suicide. One said he had already attempted it.

    The day after we began publishing our findings, city officials announced they were exploring ways to help these driver-owners, and the mayor and state attorney general said they were going to investigate the people who channeled them into the loans.

    In the end, the three front-page stories that we published this week about the taxi industry barely mentioned Mr. Cohen at all.

    But they did something much more important: They told the stories of Mohammed Hoque, of Jean Demosthenes and of Wael Ghobrayal.

    Brian M. Rosenthal is an investigative reporter on the Metro Desk. Previously, he covered state government for the Houston Chronicle and for The Seattle Times. @brianmrosenthal

    #USA #New_York #Taxi #Betrug #Ausbeutung

  • Baltimore paralysée par un virus informatique en partie créé par la NSA
    https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/05/29/la-ville-de-baltimore-paralysee-par-un-virus-informatique-en-partie-cree-par

    Le problème, c’est que, trois semaines plus tard, l’affaire n’est toujours pas résolue. Les serveurs et les e-mails de la ville restent désespérément bloqués. « Service limité », indiquent les écriteaux à l’entrée les bâtiments municipaux. Les équipes municipales, le FBI, les services de renseignement américains et les firmes informatiques de la Côte ouest s’y sont tous mis : impossible de débarrasser les dix mille ordinateurs de la ville de ce virus, un rançongiciel. Et pour cause : selon le New York Times, l’un des composants de ce programme virulent a été créé par les services secrets américains, la National Security Agency (NSA), qui ont exploité une faille du logiciel Windows de Microsoft. L’ennui, c’est que la NSA s’est fait voler en 2017 cette arme informatique devenue quasi impossible à contrôler.

    Alors, beaucoup de bruit pour rien ? Non, à cause du rôle trouble de la NSA. Selon le New York Times, celle-ci a développé un outil, EternalBlue (« bleu éternel »), en cherchant pendant plus d’une année une faille dans le logiciel de Microsoft.

    L’ennui, c’est que l’outil a été volé par un groupe intitulé les Shadow Brokers (« courtiers de l’ombre »), sans que l’on sache s’il s’agit d’une puissance étrangère ou de hackeurs américains. Les Nord-Coréens l’ont utilisé en premier en 2017 lors d’une attaque baptisée Wannacry, qui a paralysé le système de santé britannique et touché les chemins de fer allemands. Puis ce fut au tour de la Russie de s’en servir pour attaquer l’Ukraine : code de l’opération NotPetya. L’offensive a atteint des entreprises, comme l’entreprise de messagerie FedEx et le laboratoire pharmaceutique Merck, qui auraient perdu respectivement 400 millions et 670 millions de dollars.

    Depuis, EternalBlue n’en finit pas d’être utilisé, par la Chine ou l’Iran, notamment. Et aux Etats-Unis, contre des organisations vulnérables, telle la ville de Baltimore, mais aussi celles de San Antonio (Texas) ou Allentown (Pennsylvanie). L’affaire est jugée, à certains égards, plus grave que la fuite géante d’informations par l’ancien informaticien Edward Snowden en 2013.

    Le débat s’ouvre à nouveau sur la responsabilité de la NSA, qui n’aurait informé Microsoft de la faille de son réseau qu’après s’être fait voler son outil. Trop tard. En dépit d’un correctif, des centaines de milliers d’ordinateurs n’ayant pas appliqué la mise à jour restent non protégés. Un de ses anciens dirigeants, l’amiral Michael Rogers, a tenté de dédouaner son ancienne agence en expliquant que, si un terroriste remplissait un pick-up Toyota d’explosifs, on n’allait pas accuser Toyota. « L’outil qu’a développé la NSA n’a pas été conçu pour faire ce qu’il a fait », a-t-il argué.

    Tom Burt, responsable chez Microsoft de la confiance des consommateurs, se dit « en total désaccord » avec ce propos lénifiant : « Ces programmes sont développés et gardés secrètement par les gouvernements dans le but précis de les utiliser comme armes ou outils d’espionnage. Ils sont, en soi, dangereux. Quand quelqu’un prend cela, il ne le transforme pas en bombe : c’est déjà une bombe », a-t-il protesté dans le New York Times.

    #Virus #NSA #Baltimore #Cybersécurité

  • Andreas Malm: Revolutionary Strategy in a Warming World
    https://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/03/17/malm-revolutionary-strategy

    Who shall execute it? Who are the Petrograd metalworkers and the Kronstadt sailors of the climate revolution? Look at the country that tops a survey of the populations most worried about global warming: Burkina Faso, currently devastated by declining rains and magnified sandstorms, topping the list of African nations suffering from excessively hot working days.[62] Can a farmer from Burkina Faso storm the Winter Palaces of fossil capital — can she even catch sight of them in her lifetime, or are the headquarters of ExxonMobil in Texas and the glittering towers of Dubai so distant as to be utterly beyond her reach, let alone her and her peers’ capacity for effective revolutionary action? It would probably be as easy to gain mass support for the above program in Burkina Faso as it would be hard to implement it from there.

    #climate #strategy #mode_de_production #prolétariat_climatique

  • Sunk Costs. The border wall is more expensive than you think.

    When the federal government builds a border wall, the taxpayer foots two bills. First, there’s the cost to get the thing built, a figure proclaimed in presidential budget requests and press accounts. And second, there’s a slew of concealed costs — expenditures that hide in general operations budgets, arise from human error or kick in years down the line. In the Trump era, those twin outlays combine to make the wall outlandishly expensive.

    Excluding the hidden costs, Trump’s wall is running taxpayers a cool $25 million per mile, up nearly fourfold from just a decade ago. To understand why, it helps to know a little border history. In 1907, the U.S. government took possession of a 60-foot-wide strip of land along the U.S.-Mexico border from California to New Mexico as a buffer zone against smuggling. During his second term, George W. Bush built much of his border wall on this government-owned land. But in Texas, the vast majority of border real estate is privately owned, forcing the government to seize property all along the Rio Grande if it wants to build a barrier. That extra burden is a main reason the Lone Star State hosts a small fraction of existing border fence.

    Then there’s the terrain. For example, in Starr County, an unfenced swath of South Texas that’s high on Customs and Border Protection’s priority list, Trump plans to build on the Rio Grande’s craggy, erosion-prone bank — an engineering challenge that adds millions of dollars per mile. As CBP spokesperson Rick Pauza wrote in an email to the Observer: “Every mile of border is different, and therefore there is no one-size-fits-all cost per mile.” In addition, taxpayers today are buying the luxury edition of the wall: a structure that’s up to 12 feet taller than the Bush-era fence and buffered by a 150-foot “enforcement zone.”

    But all that’s only part of the story. Not included in the $25 million-per-mile figure is a suite of hidden expenses. Among them:

    Routine Maintenance and Operation. Border barriers are potent political symbols. They’re also physical structures that accumulate debris, degrade and break over time. In 2009, CBP estimated that operating and maintaining $2.4 billion worth of fencing, along with associated roads and technology, would cost $3.5 billion over 20 years — almost 50 percent more than the original cost.

    Breaches. Depending on design, border fences can be cut through using either bolt cutters or power tools. From 2010 to 2015, fencing was breached 9,287 times, according to the Government Accountability Office. At an average repair cost of $784, the government spent $7.3 million patching those holes in the wall. And the more new wall, the more breaches.

    Waste. In November 2011, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General issued a scathing report regarding procurement of steel for the border fence. “CBP purchased more steel than needed, incurred additional storage costs, paid interest on late payments, and approved a higher-priced subcontractor, resulting in additional expenditures of about $69 million,” the report read.

    Department of Justice Litigation. Every time landowners refuse to sell their land for the wall, the Department of Justice must take them to court. According to a 2012 planning document prepared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that legal process costs about $90,000 per tract of land. In sparsely populated Starr County — where property has been passed down for hundreds of years, often without legal record — almost every case must go to court to determine ownership. That money is unaccounted for in congressional appropriations for the wall; it comes instead from the DOJ’s general budget.

    Advertising. When the DOJ wants to take Texans’ property for the wall, the agency must sometimes issue notice to potential heirs in the local newspapers. So far, a DOJ spokesperson said, the agency has done so three times in the Rio Grande Valley — cramming many cases into a single publication. Each instance cost the DOJ about $100,000. At a November court hearing in McAllen, a DOJ attorney lamented the state of local media. “We have one person or corporation who owns both papers — so we can’t really negotiate,” he said. “So it’s a large expenditure.”


    https://www.texasobserver.org/the-border-wall-is-more-expensive-than-you-think
    #murs #barrières_frontalières #coût #prix #coûts_cachés #frontières #USA #Etats-Unis

  • 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/

  • Why are so many people dying in US prisons and jails? | US news | The Guardian

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/26/us-prisons-jails-inmate-deaths

    On 10 July 2015, 28-year-old Sandra Bland was pulled over in Prairie View, Texas, for what she was told by Texas state trooper Brian Encinia was failing to use her turn signal.

    Three days after Bland’s arrest, she was found dead in her jail cell. The death was ruled a suicide but remains shrouded in mystery over how a wrongful arrest stemming from a minor traffic violation resulted in death.

    “She was arrested and alleged to have put this officer’s life and safety in jeopardy. Really what happened is he didn’t like that his authority was questioned,” attorney Cannon Lambert, who represented Bland’s family, told the Guardian.

    #états-unis #prison #droits_humains

  • Muslims lived in America before Protestantism even existed | Aeon Essays
    https://aeon.co/essays/muslims-lived-in-america-before-protestantism-even-existed

    Eight centuries of Muslim rule left a deep cultural legacy on Spain, one evident in clear and sometimes surprising ways during the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the chronicler of Hernán Cortés’s conquest of Meso-America, admired the costumes of native women dancers by writing ‘muy bien vestidas a su manera y que parecían moriscas’, or ‘very well-dressed in their own way, and seemed like Moorish women’. The Spanish routinely used ‘mezquita’ (Spanish for mosque) to refer to Native American religious sites. Travelling through Anahuac (today’s Texas and Mexico), Cortés reported that he saw more than 400 mosques.

    #Amériques #musulmans

  • Réunion cruciale pour Boeing autour des déboires du 737 MAX
    https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/05/23/reunion-cruciale-pour-boeing-autour-des-deboires-du-737-max_5465909_3234.htm


    Les avions 737 MAX de la compagnie américaine Southwest Airlines immobilisés sur le tarmac de l’aéroport de Victorville, en Californie, le 28 mars 2019.
    MARK RALSTON / AFP

    Les régulateurs de l’aviation de 34 pays doivent se réunir jeudi à propos du modèle critiqué de la compagnie américaine. Celui-ci est immobilisé depuis 71 jours après le crash de deux avions.

    L’attente vis-à-vis du 737 MAX va-t-elle se prolonger encore longtemps pour la compagnie Boeing ? Cela fait déjà 71 jours que ce modèle de l’avionneur est immobilsé après les catastrophes aériennes d’Ethiopian et de Lion Air, qui ont fait 346 morts. La réunion cruciale entre l’Administration fédérale de l’aviation américaine (FAA) et des régulateurs venant de trente-trois pays qui se tient jeudi 23 mai à Fort Worth (Texas) pourrait justement donner une idée un peu plus précise sur le retour en service du 737 MAX.

    Cette réunion à huis clos, qui débutera à 9 heures (heure locale) – soit 16 heures à Paris –, doit durer toute la journée. Elle devrait fournir des indices sur les intentions et le degré de confiance que les autres autorités de l’aviation civile portent encore à Boeing ainsi qu’à la FAA. Ni Boeing ni les compagnies aériennes n’ont été conviés à cette réunion à l’issue de laquelle aucune déclaration commune n’est prévue, seulement une conférence de presse en fin d’après-midi.

    Le système antidécrochage MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) devait être au centre des discussions puisque c’est lui qui a été mis en cause dans le crash d’un avion de la compagnie Ethiopian Airlines en mars, qui a coûté la vie à 157 personnes, et dans la catastrophe de Lion Air en Indonésie fin octobre 2018, au cours de laquelle 189 personnes ont péri. Au mois de mars, la compagnie Boeing avait effectué une mise à jour logicielle du système MCAS du 737 Max.

    Mais les autorités américaines ont d’ores et déjà annoncé mercredi que Boeing n’avait pas encore formellement soumis le correctif du 737 MAX pour certification. Cette annonce intervient alors que Boeing avait affirmé la semaine dernière avoir finalisé les changements exigés par l’agence américaine et que le correctif était prêt pour certification.

    Aussi, la formation finale des pilotes n’a pas encore été déterminée. Les autorités américaines estiment qu’une formation sur ordinateur ou iPad serait suffisante pour des pilotes expérimentés, alors que le régulateur canadien réclame un passage obligé sur simulateur qui a l’avantage de reproduire les conditions de vol.

    Au vu du retard pris par Boeing, il est difficile, selon M. Elwell, de déterminer quand interviendra la levée de l’interdiction de vol. « Je ne suis attaché à aucun calendrier », a fait savoir Dan Elwell, chef intérimaire de la FAA, qui a refusé de s’aligner sur American Airlines et Southwest, deux compagnies clientes du 737 MAX, qui ont annulé les vols programmés pour cet avion jusqu’à la mi-août dans l’espoir que l’interdiction de vol serait levée d’ici à juillet au plus tard.

    « Ça prendra le temps qu’il faudra pour faire les choses comme il se doit », a-t-il assuré, soulignant toutefois qu’en tant qu’autorité d’origine du 737 MAX, la FAA « doit être le premier régulateur » à l’autoriser à voler à nouveau. Jusqu’aux déboires du 737 MAX, avait toujours prévalu un système de réciprocité qui voulait que les autres régulateurs s’en remissent à la certification de l’autorité d’origine. « Il y a de la méfiance vis-à-vis de la FAA et de Boeing et les informations distillées au compte-gouttes sur ce que Boeing savait (…) sont fâcheuses », avance Scott Hamilton, expert chez Leeham.

    Des responsables des autorités de l’aviation de l’Union européenne et du Canada ont expliqué qu’il n’était pas question de faire redécoller le 737 MAX chez eux tant que des questions resteront en suspens. « Il y a des conditions au retour en vol (du 737 MAX) et pour nous c’est que nous procédions à une évaluation indépendante », a fait savoir Jagello Fayl, responsable de la communication de l’agence européenne EASA.

    • Les Boeing 737 MAX interdits de vol pour une durée indéterminée
      https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/05/24/les-boeing-737-max-toujours-cloues-au-sol-pour-une-duree-indeterminee_546629


      Les avions 737 MAX de la compagnie American Airlines immobilisés à Tulsa dans l’Oklahoma, le 10 mai.
      HANDOUT / REUTERS

      Aucune date de remise en service de l’avion n’a été décidée à l’issue d’une longue réunion entre les différentes autorités mondiales de l’aviation civile.

      Immobilisé à travers le monde depuis le 13 mars, le Boeing 737 MAX risque encore d’attendre plusieurs mois avant de pouvoir reprendre son envol. Les autorités mondiales de l’aviation civile, réunies jeudi 23 mai au Texas, se sont séparées après huit heures de discussions sans date de retour en service de l’avion-phare de la compagnie américaine.

      « Le seul calendrier est de s’assurer que l’avion est sûr avant de voler », a déclaré Dan Elwell, chef intérimaire de l’Agence fédérale américaine de l’aviation (FAA), lors d’une conférence de presse. Cette incertitude traduit la méfiance des autres régulateurs envers la FAA, à laquelle ils ont posé « beaucoup de questions » et dont ils voulaient des « clarifications » sur les procédures. M. Elwell a indirectement reconnu l’absence de consensus en déclarant que « chaque pays prendra[it] sa propre décision », en toute indépendance, même si le « dialogue » va se poursuivre, notamment avec des échanges d’informations.
      […]
      Dan Elwell avait jeté un froid mercredi en révélant que Boeing n’avait pas soumis pour évaluation la mise à jour du système antidécrochage MCAS, en raison de questions additionnelles. C’est le dysfonctionnement de ce dispositif, mis en cause dans les accidents d’Ethiopian Airlines, le 10 mars (157 morts), et de Lion Air, le 29 octobre en Indonésie (189 morts), qui a entraîné l’interdiction provisoire de vol du 737 MAX, dernier-né du constructeur américain. L’avionneur avait pourtant affirmé la semaine dernière que le correctif était prêt pour la certification.
      […]
      Au-delà du problème de réputation, la crise du 737 MAX devrait avoir un coût financier important alors que cet avion représentait près de 80 % du carnet de commandes de Boeing à la fin d’avril. Le constructeur, qui a suspendu les livraisons, ne perçoit plus d’argent des compagnies aériennes, qu’il devra aussi indemniser pour leur manque à gagner.

  • Citrus Farmers Facing Deadly Bacteria Turn to Antibiotics, Alarming Health Officials - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/health/antibiotics-oranges-florida.html

    Since 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency has allowed Florida citrus farmers to use the drugs, streptomycin and oxytetracycline, on an emergency basis, but the agency is now significantly expanding their permitted use across 764,000 acres in California, Texas and other citrus-producing states. The agency approved the expanded use despite strenuous objections from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warn that the heavy use of antimicrobial drugs in agriculture could spur germs to mutate so they become resistant to the drugs, threatening the lives of millions of people.

    The E.P.A. has proposed allowing as much as 650,000 pounds of streptomycin to be sprayed on citrus crops each year. By comparison, Americans annually use 14,000 pounds of aminoglycosides, the class of antibiotics that includes streptomycin.

    The European Union has banned the agricultural use of both streptomycin and oxytetracycline. So, too, has Brazil, where orange growers are battling the same bacterial scourge, called huanglongbing, also commonly known as citrus greening disease.

    “To allow such a massive increase of these drugs in agriculture is a recipe for disaster,” said Steven Roach, a senior analyst for the advocacy group Keep Antibiotics Working. “It’s putting the needs of the citrus industry ahead of human health.”

    But for Florida’s struggling orange and grapefruit growers, the approvals could not come soon enough. The desperation is palpable across the state’s sandy midsection, a flat expanse once lushly blanketed with citrus trees, most of them the juice oranges that underpin a $7.2 billion industry employing 50,000 people, about 40,000 fewer than it did two decades ago. These days, the landscape is flecked with abandoned groves and scraggly trees whose elongated yellow leaves are a telltale sign of the disease.

    The decision paves the way for the largest use of medically important antibiotics in cash crops, and it runs counter to other efforts by the federal government to reduce the use of lifesaving antimicrobial drugs. Since 2017, the F.D.A. has banned the use of antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals, a shift that has led to a 33 percent drop in sales of antibiotics for livestock.

    The use of antibiotics on citrus adds a wrinkle to an intensifying debate about whether the heavy use of antimicrobials in agriculture endangers human health by neutering the drugs’ germ-slaying abilities. Much of that debate has focused on livestock farmers, who use 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the United States.

    Although the research on antibiotic use in crops is not as extensive, scientists say the same dynamic is already playing out with the fungicides that are liberally sprayed on vegetables and flowers across the world. Researchers believe the surge in a drug-resistant lung infection called aspergillosis is associated with agricultural fungicides, and many suspect the drugs are behind the rise of Candida auris, a deadly fungal infection.

    Créer du doute là où il n’y en a pas, au nom de la science évidemment... une science « complète » qui est impossible avec le vivant, donc un argument qui pourra toujours servir.

    In its evaluation for the expanded use of streptomycin, the E.P.A., which largely relied on data from pesticide makers, said the drug quickly dissipated in the environment. Still, the agency noted that there was a “medium” risk from extending the use of such drugs to citrus crops, and it acknowledged the lack of research on whether a massive increase in spraying would affect the bacteria that infect humans.

    “The science of resistance is evolving and there is a high level of uncertainty in how and when resistance occurs,” the agency wrote.

    Since its arrival in Florida was first confirmed in 2005, citrus greening has infected more than 90 percent of the state’s grapefruit and orange trees. The pathogen is spread by a tiny insect, the Asian citrus psyllid, that infects trees as it feeds on young leaves and stems, but the evidence of disease can take months to emerge. Infected trees prematurely drop their fruit, most of it too bitter for commercial use.

    Taw Richardson, the chief executive of ArgoSource, which makes the antibiotics used by farmers, said the company has yet to see any resistance in the 14 years since it began selling bactericides. “We don’t take antibiotic resistance lightly,” he said. “The key is to target the things that contribute to resistance and not get distracted by things that don’t.”

    Many scientists disagree with such assessments, noting the mounting resistance to both drugs in humans. They also cite studies suggesting that low concentrations of antibiotics that slowly seep into the environment over an extended period of time can significantly accelerate resistance.

    Scientists at the C.D.C. were especially concerned about streptomycin, which can remain in the soil for weeks and is allowed to be sprayed several times a season. As part of its consultation with the F.D.A., the C.D.C. conducted experiments with the two drugs and found widespread resistance to them.

    Although the Trump administration has been pressing the E.P.A. to loosen regulations, Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the agency’s pesticides office had a long track record of favoring the interests of chemical and pesticide companies. “What’s in the industry’s best interest will win out over public safety nine times out of 10,” he said.

    A spokesman for the E.P.A. said the agency had sought to address the C.D.C.’s and F.D.A.’s concerns about antibiotic resistance by ordering additional monitoring and by limiting its approvals to seven years.

    #Antibiotiques #Citrons #Agrumes #Pesticides #Conflits_intérêt #Pseudo-science

  • A Vigilante Militia Defends an Imaginary Border
    https://theintercept.com/2019/05/18/border-militia-texas-mexico-guardian-patriots

    “Is that what we think it is ?” gasped a woman on the Patriot Caravan. The MAGA- and Trump-hatted group of about 25 people were on a walking tour of the U.S.-Mexico border in the desert near El Paso, Texas. It was led by a large, garrulous man named Jim Benvie, a member of the Guardian Patriots, which used to be the United Constitutional Patriots, or UCP. “Oh sh … It might be the coyotes bringing them in !” said another woman. “It is what you think it is,” said Benvie. As he lectured about (...)

    #migration #surveillance #frontières #militarisation #ACLU

  • The Future Is Here, and It Features Hackers Getting Bombed – Foreign Policy
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/06/the-future-is-here-and-it-features-hackers-getting-bombed


    Smoke billows from a targeted neighborhood in Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike on the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave on May 5.
    MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

    Israeli armed forces responded to a Hamas cyberattack by bombing the group’s hacking headquarters.

    With an airstrike on Sunday, the Israeli military provided a glimpse of the future of warfare.

    After blocking a cyberattack that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said was launched by operatives working on behalf of the militant group Hamas, the IDF carried out an airstrike in Gaza targeting the building in which the hackers worked, partially destroying it. The strike appears to be the first time that a nation’s military has responded in real time to a cyberattack with physical force.

    In a tweet, the IDF declared victory, saying: “We thwarted an attempted Hamas cyber offensive against Israeli targets. Following our successful cyber defensive operation, we targeted a building where the Hamas cyber operatives work.

    HamasCyberHQ.exe has been removed,” the tweet added, in what appears to have been a macabre attempt at a joke using an invented file name.

    For years, countries have used policy documents and strategy white papers to warn that they reserved the right to choose the method by which they respond to cyberattacks, either in kind through cyberspace or with physical force, said Catherine Lotrionte, an expert on international law and a professor at Georgetown University. Now, Israel has made those warnings concrete.

    You’ve got a physical operation against a building that was in response to an ongoing cyberattack or at least a cyberattack that Hamas was planning—that’s the interesting part,” Lotrionte said.

    Key questions remain about the Israeli operation, and IDF officials declined to answer questions from Foreign Policy about the nature of the attack launched by Hamas against Israel.

    In a press statement, the IDF said Hamas “attempted to establish offensive cyber capabilities within the Gaza Strip and to try and harm the Israeli cyber realm.” These “efforts were discovered in advance and thwarted,” and following the operation to thwart the cyberattack, “the IDF attacked a building from which the members of Hamas’ cyber array operated.

    The decision to bomb a Hamas hacking unit comes as armed forces are increasingly integrating cyberoperations into their militaries, and the Israeli decision to target such a unit was completely unsurprising to scholars and practitioners of cyberwarfare.

    It’s no surprise that in a digital age marked by heightened risk of cyberwarfare a nation-state engaged in a noninternational armed conflict would regard the cyber-capabilities of its adversary as valid military targets under international law,” said David Simon, a lawyer at the law firm Mayer Brown who worked on cybersecurity policy and operations as a special counsel at the U.S. Defense Department.

    And even if the notion of bombing hackers appears surprising on its face, Israel was likely on solid legal footing when it did so, provided that the hackers were in fact carrying out an offensive operation on behalf of a militant group engaged in armed conflict with Israel.

    Legal experts emphasized that the context of Sunday’s strike was key in understanding Israel’s calculus to carry it out. The strike came amid a renewed period of fighting that saw Palestinian militants fire hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, with Israel responding with an intense artillery and aerial barrage of Gaza.

    Militaries around the world have recognized cyberspace as a domain of military operations, and that leaves hackers participating in an armed conflict in a highly exposed position. “Hackers who are engaged in military attacks are legitimate targets,” said Gary Brown, a cyberlaw professor at the National Defense University.

    Militant groups such as Hamas have invested heavily in their online operations in recent years, using them as a way to poke at far more powerful, better resourced opponents. Cyberspace serves as a key way to distribute propaganda and gain intelligence about adversaries.

    In one notorious example, a hacker working on behalf of the militant group Islamic Jihad pleaded guilty in 2017 to charges of hacking into the video feeds of IDF drones carrying out surveillance over Gaza.

    Sunday’s bombing is not the first time hackers have been targeted in airstrikes—though it is believed to be the first time hackers engaged in an ongoing operation have been hit. In 2015, a U.S. airstrike in Syria killed the Islamic State hacker Junaid Hussain, who had become a prolific propagandist and recruiter for the group.

    Hussain hacked into the personal accounts of hundreds of U.S. service members and posted their personal information online and helped recruit the men who opened fire in 2015 on a cartoon exhibition in Garland, Texas. As he ascended the ranks of the Islamic State’s leadership, he was singled out to be killed.

    Hussain’s killing arguably laid the groundwork for Sunday’s strike, which experts argue sends a message to hackers engaged in offensive activity.

    It’s kind of a wake-up call for people who thought they were going to be able to engage in cyberactivity with impunity,” Brown said. “It now looks like states are willing to reach behind the lines and strike hackers.

    • Si je lis bien le communiqué des Forces de défense israéliennes, il ne s’agit pas du tout d’une riposte comme cela est repris partout, mais bien d’une attaque préemptive, pour parler comme un précédent président états-unien.

      https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1125066395010699264

      CLEARED FOR RELEASE: We thwarted an attempted Hamas cyber offensive against Israeli targets. Following our successful cyber defensive operation, we targeted a building where the Hamas cyber operatives work.

      HamasCyberHQ.exe has been removed.

      Je ne trouve pas le communiqué de presse du porte-parolat de l’armée israélienne. Mais celui-ci semble sans ambiguïté.

      IDF : Hamas cyber attack against Israel foiled - Israel National News
      http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/262717

      Over the course of the weekend, a joint IDF and Israel Security Agency (ISA) operation thwarted an attempted cyber attack by Hamas targeting Israeli sites, according to a press release by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit on Sunday.

      The Hamas terrorist organization attempted to establish offensive cyber capabilities within the Gaza Strip and to try and harm Israeli cyber targets.

      All of Hamas’ efforts were discovered in advance and thwarted. Hamas’ cyber efforts, which included an attempt in recent days, failed to achieve its goals.

      Following Israel’s technological activities to stop Hamas’s cyber efforts, the IDF attacked a building from which the members of Hamas’ cyber array operated.

      Israel’s cyber efforts and defensive capabilities have led Hamas’ cyber attempts to fail time and time again," a senior ISA official said.

    • On se demande vraiment comment David Israël, associé à David etats-unis, david Union européenne, david Canada, david Australie, david Nouvelle-Zélande, sans oublier les divers arabes modérés de la région, on se demande donc comment ces David et modérés réussissent à faire en sorte que les « cyber-efforts et les capacités défensives d’Israël » conduisent les « cyber-tentatives du [GOLIATHISSIME] Hamas à échouer à plusieurs reprises. »

  • L’exposition au glyphosate pourrait avoir des effets sur plusieurs générations
    https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2019/05/06/l-exposition-au-glyphosate-pourrait-avoir-des-effets-sur-plusieurs-generatio

    Une grande partie de ce que nous mangeons pourrait affecter directement nos petits-enfants. C’est, en tout cas, ce que suggèrent les résultats d’un rapport publié fin avril dans la revue américaine Scientific Reports. Cette étude, menée par le biologiste américain Michael Skinner, démontre qu’une exposition au glyphosate pourrait entraîner des modifications génétiques persistantes sur plusieurs générations.

    « Cette étude est importante, explique John McCarrey, chercheur en génétique à l’Université du Texas, sans lien avec cette publication. Car elle prouve que, une fois un individu exposé à certains produits chimiques perturbateurs tels que celui testé dans cette étude, les défauts qui en résultent peuvent être transmis aux enfants ou petits-enfants, même en l’absence de toute exposition ultérieure. Cela montre que les gens doivent faire plus attention aux produits chimiques auxquels ils sont exposés qu’on ne le pensait auparavant. »

    Mais les pathologies ont augmenté significativement pour les deuxième et troisième générations. « Les pathologies observées vont des tumeurs aux maladies de la prostate, en passant par des maladies des ovaires et certaines anomalies congénitales », observe Michael Skinner. Les chercheurs ont, par exemple, constaté une augmentation de 30 % des maladies de la prostate chez les mâles de troisième génération et une augmentation de 40 % des maladies rénales chez les femelles de la troisième génération. Deux animaux sur cinq de la troisième génération souffraient également d’obésité. « Pour la plupart des substances toxiques environnementales, comme le glyphosate, les pathologies induites sont similaires chez l’homme et le rat. La comparaison entre les deux est donc scientifiquement correcte », rappelle Michael Skinner.
    Article réservé à nos abonnés Lire aussi Le glyphosate suspecté d’être un perturbateur endocrinien

    Pour John McCarrey, ces résultats ne sont pas étonnants : « Si un composé modifie l’épigénétique du sperme ou de l’ovule de l’individu exposé, il transmet cela à ses descendants et continue ainsi pendant des générations. » L’observation sur au moins trois générations est nécessaire pour conclure à ce que les auteurs de l’étude appellent la « toxicologie générationnelle » :

    « Lorsqu’on observe des effets sur les deux premières générations, il est difficile de dire si ces impacts ne sont pas dus à des effets toxiques directs du produit chimique. Ce n’est que si les défauts persistent pendant trois générations ou plus que l’on peut en conclure qu’il existe, effectivement, des effets transgénérationnels. C’est exactement ce qu’ont fait les auteurs de cette étude. »

    Cette étude paraît au moment où l’Agence américaine de protection de l’environnement (EPA) a décidé de classer le glyphosate comme produit non cancérigène. Cette déclaration, effectuée le mardi 30 avril, contredit ainsi l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS), qui classe la substance comme potentiellement cancérigène.

    Pour les auteurs de la publication, cette déclaration serait due en partie à des études de toxicologie trop restreintes. « L’EPA et le domaine de la toxicologie ne pensent qu’à l’exposition directe de l’individu, jamais à la toxicologie générationnelle, explique Michael Skinner. Nous avons fourni la première étude, c’est à eux maintenant de poursuivre les recherches dans ce sens. »

    #Glyphosate #Perturbateurs_endocriniens #Toxicologie_environnementale

  • A software malfunction is injuring Lime riders around the world — Quartz
    https://qz.com/1558033/a-software-malfunction-is-injuring-lime-riders-around-the-world

    So sieht’s dann aus: E-Rollerfahrer werden softwaregesteuert vom störrischen Gerät abgeworfen. Kommt die Roller-Reithelmpflicht?

    Something is off with Lime scooters.

    Riders in Switzerland and New Zealand have reported the front wheels of their electric scooters locking suddenly mid-ride, hurling riders to the ground. The malfunction has resulted in dozens of injuries ranging from bruises to broken jaws.

    Lime pulled all its scooters from Swiss streets in January when reports of the incidents surfaced there. When the city of Auckland, New Zealand voted to suspend the company earlier this week following 155 reported cases of sudden braking, the company acknowledged that a software glitch was causing the chaos.

    “Recently we detected a bug in the firmware of our scooter fleet that under rare circumstances could cause sudden excessive braking during use,” Lime wrote in a blog post Saturday. “[I]n very rare cases—usually riding downhill at top speed while hitting a pothole or other obstacle—excessive brake force on the front wheel can occur, resulting in a scooter stopping unexpectedly.”

    The company claims that fewer than 0.0045% of all rides worldwide have been affected, adding that “any injury is one too many.” An initial fix reduced the number of incidents, it said, and a final update underway on all scooters will soon be complete.

    It’s unclear just how many of the other 17 countries where Lime has deployed scooters have been affected by the problem. A Texas man sued the company this week after a similar-sounding incident threw him from a Lime scooter.

    Lime was valued at $2 billion earlier this year, just two years after its launch. It’s not the only company in the crowded electric scooter rental market to field such reports. While most scooter-related injuries stem from traffic accidents or improper use by riders, there have also been reports of malfunctioning machines causing injuries, like the Skip scooter that flung Quartz reporter Mike Murphy onto the pavement in San Francisco late last year.