provinceorstate:virginia




  • Patent Madness
    http://copyrightmadness.tumblr.com/post/47942224995/copyright-madness-du-7-au-13-avril-une-semaine-de

    YES WE SCAN ! Les trolls des #brevets, ça ose tout, c’est même à ça qu’on les reconnaît. Celui-ci s’est mis en tête qu’il possédait un brevet valide sur les #scanners et il occupe ses journées à harceler de petites entreprises pour exiger qu’elles payent des licences à 1000 dollars par employés ! L’article dresse le portrait de ce #Patent_Troll comme il en existe beaucoup aux #Etats-Unis. Le pire, c’est que le type reste droit dans ses bottes et ne voit même pas où est le mal...
    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/meet-the-nice-guy-lawyers-who-want-1000-per-worker-for-using-scanners

    Dites donc, à la rédac du @diplo, z’êtes z’en règle ? ->[]

    #copyright_madness


  • Pour terminer ce soir le référencement de trois années de biblio en retard, cette série de liens cartographiques en vrac où il y a beaucoup de savoirs passionnants

    Cartographie Blog
    http://www.savoirsenreseau.com/2007/11/23/cartes-heuristiques-et-performances-scolaires

    Cartographie interactive
    http://education.france5.fr/?EspId=1&DiscId=85&ObjId=17565
    http://www.autrement.com/cartotheque.php
    http://www.histoirealacarte.com

    Cartographie Antje Lehn
    http://socialtapestries.net
    http://research.urbantapestries.net
    http://diffusion.org.uk

    Cartography Imaginary museum project
    Tjebbe van Tijen - Imaginary Museum Projects
    Avec quelqus planches des oeuvres d’Otto Neurath
    http://imaginarymuseum.org
    info@imaginarymuseum.org
    t.tijen@chello.nl
    http://imaginarymuseum.org/MHV
    http://imaginarymuseum-archive.org/PILWARstat/PILWARstat01.html (Mapping Human Violence)

    Histoire de la cartographie
    http://maphistory.info/harlflws.html

    Cartographie Peuples premiers
    http://survivalfrance.org/related_material.php?id=508

    Presse alternative En anglais
    http://www.newsbatch.com
    http://www.theglobalist.com
    http://www.alternet.org
    http://www.motherjones.com

    Conflits, géopolitique
    http://www.crisisgroup.org
    http://www.grip.org

    #cartographie #presse-alternative #cartographie-radicale #savoirs #connaissance #géopolitique


  • 10 citations à propos des banques de Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) troisième président des États-Unis (1801-1809)…

    Can We Party like it’s 1776 and Just Start Over? Thomas Jefferson’s Top 10 Quotes on Money and Banking - Home - The Daily Bail
    http://dailybail.com/home/can-we-party-like-its-1776-and-just-start-over-thomas-jeffer.html

    The Bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostilities existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. (1803)


  • Encore des milliards de dollars « perdus » en Iraq, cette fois dans la « reconstruction ». Ce rapport estime qu’environ 15% des 60 milliards de dollars dépensés par les États-Unis dans la « reconstruction » et la « stabilisation » de l’Irak ont été perdus.
    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/stuart-bowen-iraq-reconstruction-lessons-waste-corruption.html

    These are among the common-sense lessons gleaned from the checkered record of Iraq, where the US has spent nearly $60 billion on so-called stabilization and reconstruction — of which at least $8-10 billion was wasted due to lack of security, poorly executed contracts and corruption, according to a new report.

    Mais, comme toujours : certainement pas perdus pour tout le monde. Et, à force de perdre des milliards de dollars dans des conditions totalement abracadabrantesques, il faut tout de même se demander si ça n’est pas plutôt une forme de « noircissement d’argent » :
    http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noircissement_d'argent

    Le noircissement d’argent est l’inverse du blanchiment d’argent.

    Si la préoccupation principale des organisations criminelles est de réinjecter des revenus illicites dans l’économie officielle, le souci d’une entreprise privée qui souhaiterait développer des activités illicites (comme la corruption de fonctionnaires ou de personnalités politiques, le financement illégal des partis politiques français) est, à l’inverse, de générer des fonds occultes et de l’argent noir en liquide.

    Autrement dit, si le blanchiment d’argent consiste à dissimuler l’origine de fonds « sales », le noircissement, quant à lui, consiste à dissimuler la destination de fonds « propres ».


  • Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network

    Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.



  • Suicidal Sensors: Darpa Wants Next-Gen Spy Hardware to Literally Dissolve | Danger Room | Wired
    http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/01/vapr-darpa

    le #vaporware du futur…

    The program to create transient electronics is called VAPR, for Vanishing Programmable Resources. Darpa’s going to say more about it in the coming weeks. But thus far, the idea is to make small hardware that performs just like current sensors, only fabricated from materials that can rapidly disintegrate on command.

    #armement #technologie


  • Exclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science
    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-billionaires-secretly-fund-attacks-on-climate-science-84663

    A secretive funding organisation in the United States that guarantees anonymity for its billionaire donors has emerged as a major operator in the climate “counter movement” to undermine the science of global warming, The Independent has learnt.

    #climat #corruption #conflits_d_intérêts


  • The Humiliation of Bradley Manning

    by RAY MCGOVERN

    It is a bitter irony that Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, whose conscience compelled him to leak evidence about the U.S. military brass ignoring evidence of torture in Iraq, was himself the victim of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment while other military officers privately took note but did nothing.

    That was one of the revelations at Manning’s pre-trial hearing at Ft. Meade, Maryland, on Tuesday, as Manning’s defense counsel David Coombs used e-mail exchanges to show Marine officers grousing that the Marines had been left holding the bag on Manning’s detention at their base in Quantico, Virginia, though he was an Army soldier.

    At Quantico, Manning, who is accused of giving hundreds of thousands of pages of classified material to WikiLeaks, was subjected to harsh treatment. He was locked in a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell for 23 hours a day and was kept naked for long periods. His incarceration led the UN Rapporteur for Torture to complain that Manning was being subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

    According to the e-mail evidence, the controversy over the rough handling of Manning prompted Quantico commander, Marine Col. Daniel Choike, to complain bitterly that not one Army officer was in the chain of blame. Choike’s lament prompted an e-mail reply from his commander, Lt. Gen. George Flynn, offering assurances that Choike and Quantico would not be left “holding the bag.”

    However, concerns about possible repercussions from softening up Manning did little to ease the conditions that Manning faced. His Marine captors seemed eager to give him the business and make him an example to any other prospective whistleblowers. Only after a sustained public outcry was Manning transferred to the Army prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

    Though his treatment was less harsh there, Manning still has faced 2 ½ years of incarceration without trial and could face up to life imprisonment after a court martial into his act of conscience, i.e., releasing extensive evidence of wrongdoing by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan and questionable foreign policies carried out by the U.S. State Department.

    The release of the documents led to hundreds of news stories, including some that revealed the willful inaction of U.S. military brass when informed of torture inflicted on Iraqi prisoners held by the U.S.-backed Iraqi military.

    Manning’s Conscience
    As a young intelligence analyst in Iraq, Pvt. Manning grew disgusted with evidence passing through his computer terminal revealing the secretive dark side of the U.S. military occupation, including this pattern of high-level disinterest in Iraqi-on-Iraqi torture, which resulted from a directive known as Frago 242, guidelines from senior Pentagon officials not to interfere with abusive treatment of Iraqi government detainees.

    As the UK Guardian reported in 2010 based on the leaked documents, Frago 242 was a “fragmentary order” summarizing a complex requirement, in this case, one issued in June 2004 ordering American troops not to investigate torture violations unless they involved members of the occupying coalition led by the United States.

    When alleged abuse was inflicted by Iraqis on Iraqis, “only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ,” the Guardian reported, adding: “Frago 242 appears to have been issued as part of the wider political effort to pass the management of security from the coalition to Iraqi hands. In effect, it means that the [Iraqi] regime has been forced to change its political constitution but allowed to retain its use of torture.”

    Some cases of torture were flagrant, according to the disregarded “initial” reports. For instance, the Guardian cited a log report of “a man who was detained by Iraqi soldiers in an underground bunker [and] reported that he had been subjected to the notoriously painful strappado position: with his hands tied behind his back, he was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists.

    “The soldiers had then whipped him with plastic piping and used electric drills on him. The log records that the man was treated by US medics; the paperwork was sent through the necessary channels; but yet again, no investigation was required. …

    “Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim – bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated – who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts, or chains.

    “At the torturer’s whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers, or boiling water – and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required.

    “Most of the victims are young men, but there are also logs which record serious and sexual assaults on women; on young people, including a boy of 16 who was hung from the ceiling and beaten; the old and vulnerable, including a disabled man whose damaged leg was deliberately attacked. The logs identify perpetrators from every corner of the Iraqi security apparatus – soldiers, police officers, prison guards, border enforcement patrols.

    “There is no question of the coalition forces not knowing that their Iraqi comrades are doing this: the leaked war logs are the internal records of those forces. There is no question of the allegations all being false. Some clearly are, but most are supported by medical evidence and some involve incidents that were witnessed directly by coalition forces.”

    Possessing such evidence – and knowing that the U.S. high command was systematically ignoring these and other crimes – Manning was driven by a sense of morality to get the evidence to the American people and to the world.

    Punishing Morality
    For his act of conscience, Manning has become the subject of harsh incarceration himself, as some U.S. pundits and even members of Congress have called for his execution as a traitor. At minimum, however, he has been made an example to anyone else tempted to tell hard truths.

    Many in Official Washington find nothing wrong with humiliating Manning with forced nudity and breaking down his psychiatric health through prolonged isolation. After all, they say, his release of classified information might have put the lives of some U.S. allies at risk (although there is no known evidence to support that concern).

    There also are legal constraints upon the United States dishing out particularly nasty treatment to Pvt. Manning. Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners is expressly banned by the UN Convention Against Torture, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the Senate in 1994.

    And there are no exceptions for “wartime” whistleblowers like Manning. Here’s what the Convention says: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture” and “an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture” (Art. 2 (2-3)).”

    Personally, when I attended the Tuesday proceeding, I dreaded sitting through another “pre-trial hearing,” having been bored stiff at earlier sessions. But it was a welcome surprise to witness first-hand proof that military courts can still hold orderly proceedings bereft (on Tuesday, at least) of “command influence.”

    Most illuminating at Tuesday’s hearing was the central fact that the virtually indestructible nature of e-mail facilitates the kind of documentary evidence that lawyers lust after – whether they be attorneys, FBI investigators or just plain folks fed up with lies and faux history.

    To the Marine Corps’ credit, I suppose, there was no evidence at the hearing that anyone had tried to expunge the e-mail correspondence revealing the fears about being left “holding the bag” on the harsh treatment of Manning.

    E-Mail vs. Petraeus
    So the availability of e-mail is the major new reality playing out in several major ways. As we have seen, former Gen. David Petraeus is a notable recent victim of the truth that can turn up in e-mail.

    I used to call him “Petraeus ex Machina” for the faux-success of the celebrated “surge” in Iraq, which cost almost 1,000 additional U.S. troops dead (and many more Iraqis) to buy a “decent interval” for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to get out of town without a clear-cut military defeat hung around their necks.

    As it turned out, “Petraeus ex Machina,” after a little more than a year as CIA director, was undone in a sex scandal exposed by the modern “machine” of e-mail.

    More to the point, the torrent of e-mail and the “Collateral Murder” video that Manning now acknowledges giving to WikiLeaks as a matter of conscience were, of course, highly illuminating to students of real history. And the e-mails (and State Department cables) also were rather unflattering regarding the aims of U.S. policy and military actions around the globe.

    So how did the White House, the State Department and military brass respond? There was a strongly felt need to make an object lesson of Bradley Manning to show what happens to people whose conscience prompts them to expose deceit and serious wrongdoing, especially through official documents that can’t be denied or spun.

    In Manning’s case, he was delivered to the Marines, famous for their hard-headed determination to follow orders and to get the job done. So, his jailers took Manning’s clothes away and made him stand naked, supposedly out of concern that otherwise he might be “a risk to himself.” To further “protect” him, he was kept in a 23-hour lockdown in a tiny cell.

    The treatment of Manning at Quantico was too much for State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley, a 26-year Air Force veteran and former colonel. Crowley was of the old school on the treatment of prisoners; his father, a B-17 pilot spent two years in a German POW camp.

    On March 10, 2011, Crowley went public, telling an audience that Manning was being “mistreated” by the Defense Department; Crowley branded Manning’s treatment “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

    Three days later, Crowley resigned with this parting shot: “The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.”

    At Ft. Meade, the pre-trial hearings are continuing, including testimony about how the advice of health professionals regarding Manning was disregarded by the Marine officers and his jailers at Quantico. Later this week, Manning himself is expected to take the stand.

    Again, the fair and orderly manner in which Tuesday’s hearing was conducted was a reassuring sign that not everyone is prepared to cave before “command influence.” The judge, Col. Denise Lind, upon whom all depends, listened attentively and asked several good questions at the end.

    Let’s hope the kangaroos can be kept at bay.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/29/the-humiliation-of-bradley-manning

    Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early 60s, and then served for 27 years as a CIA analyst. He also serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).


  • How The CIA Uses Social Media to Track How People Feel - Jared Keller - The Atlantic
    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/how-the-cia-uses-social-media-to-track-how-people-feel/247923

    How stable is China? What are people discussing and thinking in Pakistan? To answer these sorts of question, the U.S. government has turned to a rich source: social media.

    #surveillance #text-mining


  • Frank Olsen case: CIA sued over 1950s ’murder’ of government scientist plied with LSD
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/29/cia-lawsuit-scientist-1950s-death

    The family of a US government scientist who fell to his death from a New York hotel window six decades ago have launched a lawsuit for damages against the CIA, alleging the agency was involved in his murder and a subsequent cover-up.

    In one of the most notorious cases in the organisation’s history, bioweapons expert Frank Olson died in 1953, nine days after he was given LSD by agency officials without his knowledge.

    In the lawsuit, filed in the US district court in Washington on Wednesday, Olson’s sons Eric and Nils claim their father was murdered after he witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA killed suspects using the biological agents he had developed.

    The CIA has long denied any foul play, though it was forced to admit in 1975, more than 20 years after the death, that the scientist had been given LSD in a spiked glass of Cointreau. The agency, which originally told the family the death was a result of job-induced stress, has since maintained that it was a drug-induced suicide.


  • ‘The Supreme Court’s Marriage Precedents’ « MasterAdrian’s Weblog
    http://masteradrian.com/2012/11/28/the-supreme-courts-marriage-precedents

    ‘The Supreme Court’s Marriage Precedents’
    November 28, 2012

    Prop 8 Trial Tracker has posted a new item, ‘The Supreme Court’s Marriage Precedents’

    By Matt Baume

    http://youtu.be/CqQar-ArbV4

    At AFER, we often talk about how the United States Supreme Court has ruled fourteen times that marriage is a fundamental right.

    But what are those fourteen cases, going all the way back to the 1880s? Let’s take a closer look at exactly what they were about, and how they bolster the case to […]

    You may view the latest post at http://www.prop8trialtracker.com/2012/11/27/the-supreme-courts-marriage-precedents

    You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted.

    Best regards, Adam Bink & the Prop 8 Trial Tracker team


  • A lire ailleurs du 9 au 21 novembre 2012 | Internetactu
    http://www.internetactu.net/2012/11/22/a-lire-ailleurs-du-9-au-21-novembre

    . affordance.info : On a longtemps cru que le Pagerank … “Le Page Rank ne classe pas les pages web, il classe les gens, classe ceux qui publient, désigne le rang qu’occupe un individu qui publie.” Olivier Ertzchied . De la visibilité à l’attention : les musiciens sur Internet – Revue Réseaux – Cairn.info Irène Bastard observe comment les musiciens…

    #A_lire_ailleurs


  • Special prosecutor appointed in investigation of hate group leader
    Brody Levesque - LGBTQ Nation
    November 12th, 2012

    Eugene Delgaudio Eugene Delgaudio

    ARLINGTON, Va. — A special prosecutor has been appointed to conduct an investigation into allegations of misuse of public office and improper campaign fund raising by veteran Loudoun County, Va., Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling, Va.).

    Delgaudio is head of the organization “Public Advocate of The United States,” a non-profit group that advocates against LGBT rights, and has been named as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    He has been accused by a former staffer of mixing that organization’s business with county business.

    The appointment of Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Theophani Stamo on Friday, follows a request by Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Plowman, in Circuit Court documents filed in Leesburg, Va., earlier in the week.

    In the court documents, Plowman cites the fact that his office had received additional information concerning the allegations against the four term supervisor “that merited further review.”

    "This information requires a request for an independent prosecutor from outside Loudoun County to conduct the investigation which would act to preserve public confidence in the integrity of any conclusions,” Plowman wrote.

    The investigation into Delgaudio was initiated after Donna Mateer, a former staffer, alleged that she spent the majority of her working hours early this year scheduling political fundraising meetings.

    In her complaint to the Loudoun County’s human resources department last spring, Mateer also claimed that Delgaudio subjected his employees to a hostile working environment. After news of the investigation was made public, Delgaudio reportedly fired her.

    Mateer had turned over documents, including fundraising spreadsheets and e-mail records related to her allegations, to county officials, and, on several occasions, met with FBI agents regarding Delgaudio’s activities.

    Delgaudio, who has publicly denounced gay people as “perverts” and “freaks,” has routinely injected himself into political battles across the country through his conservative nonprofit group, Public Advocate.

    In particular, Delgaudio has used Public Advocate to rail against same-sex-marriage initiatives in various states and argue that federal anti-bullying legislation and even airport pat-downs are evidence of a “radical homosexual” agenda.

    Delgaudio’s organization is also the target of a lawsuit filed in U. S. District Court in Colorado for the unauthorized use of a gay couple’s engagement photo in several anti-gay propaganda direct mailers used in two separate GOP primary races last spring.

    Delgaudio has repeatedly denied the accusations, including in the Colorado case, and neither he nor his attorney, Charles King, responded to requests for comment.

    To read the original story or to visit LGBTQ Nation, a content partner with SDGLN, click HERE.


  • Why Did FBI Agent Go Outside Chain of Command in Reporting Petraeus Case to House Republicans?

    Posted: 12 Nov 2012 02:02 AM PST

    The NY Times report on the latest in the Petraeus case raised my eyebrows quite a bit. This is the most strikingly political aspect of this scandal:

    Meanwhile, the F.B.I. agent who had helped get a preliminary inquiry started, and learned of Mr. Petraeus’s affair and the initial concerns about security breaches, became frustrated. Apparently unaware that those concerns were largely resolved, the agent alerted the office of Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, the House majority leader, about the inquiry in late October. Mr. Cantor passed on the agent’s concerns to Mr. Mueller.

    Other news reports (this one published in the Times as well) portrayed this part of the story slightly differently. They say that the FBI agent contacted Rep. Dave Reichert (not Cantor) and that Reichert in turn contacted Cantor. For those who may not know, Reichert is a law-and-order Christian conservative House member representing a suburban Seattle district. His entre to victory in his first House race was that he’d been King County Sheriff when the Green River killings were solved. Reichert is generally an ineffective, do-nothing GOP House member who’s made no mark during his service.

    A number of questions arise about this part of the story: why would the FBI agent go outside the chain of command when he was dissatisfied with the progress in the case? Why did he tell Reichert and Cantor that his was a “national security concern?” Why did he contact Dave Reichert specifically? My guess is that the FBI agent may’ve known Reichert through law enforcement circles (perhaps he served in the FBI’s Seattle office?).

    The claim that knowledge of the affair by Republicans played no role in the decision to let Petraeus go seems weak to me. Once the FBI agent got word to Reichert it became a huge partisan political football. For that reason, the agent should be fired. I want to know everything that Reichert and Cantor did, who they called, what they said, etc. They were sniffing for a political advantage. Did they overstep in their partisan zeal to dig up dirt on a senior Obama appointee?

    Further, it appears this FBI agent began an investigation of the threatening e-mails sent to Jill Kelley because of a personal friendship between the victim and the agent. Again, suspicious. I’ve reported numerous e-mailed death threats sent to me and would love to know who sent them. The FBI has done nothing about them. Curious that they’d take this one so seriously except for that personal connection. I guess I need to make personal friends with some FBI agents.

    Once they discovered that Paula Broadwell was author of the threatening e mails how and why did Petraeus become involved? Since when does having e mails from a former mistress in your Inbox constitute a federal crime?

    I’m having a lot of trouble seeing what specifically Petraeus did that should’ve demanded his resignation. Throughout the investigation, the FBI attempted to uncover evidence that took this case outside the realm of an affair and that would make it a national security case. They couldn’t find any. Petraeus didn’t compromise national security, didn’t share classified documents. He simply had an affair. It appears he chose the wrong woman with which to do so as she caused the unraveling of his career. But why did the FBI take this outside the agency? What crime were they investigating? What evidence of a crime did they have?

    We’re still a nation of laws. What laws were broken? Would the affair be embarrassing to the president and all involved? Sure. But to give a distinguished general the ax because he’d engaged in a sexual indiscretion seems an impossibly high bar. In some senses, we’re returning to those prurient days of the Clinton impeachment when Republicans wanted us to judge a President’s ability to govern based on whether or not he could keep his pants zipped. I thought we, and Congress, said No to that by refusing to convict Clinton. Apparently not when it comes to this president.
    Related articles


  • National Institute of Corrections Library‏ « MasterAdrian’s Weblog
    http://masteradrian.com/2012/10/30/national-institute-of-corrections-library%e2%80%8f

    National Institute of Corrections Library‏
    October 30, 2012
    Unlocking the Truth: Real Stories About the Trial and Incarceration of Youth as Adults in Virginia (2010)
    10/29/2012 06:45 PM EDT
    “JustChildren advocates [have] repeatedly received requests from policymakers and others around the state for the “real” stories of how the practice of trying and incarcerating youth as adults impacts youth, families, and communities. In an effort to deliver on these requests and to tell the untold and often overlooked stories of these youth, JustChildren has compiled this report” (p. 3). What makes this publication so unique is that affected parties, be they youth, family, friends, or justice professionals, can make personal observations about the problems inherent in the system. Sections of this report include: introduction; a timeline of youth transfer in Virginia; methodology; what was learned; problems associated with reentry; safety concerns; variation in local practice; unfair plea bargaining power; and conclusion. SOURCE: Legal Aid Justice Center. JustChildren (Charlottesville, VA). Authored by Duvall, Kate.
    Juveniles in the Adult Criminal Justice System in Texas (2011)
    10/29/2012 06:43 PM EDT
    “The common assumption is that certified juveniles [juveniles 14 and older who have committed felony offenses and are transferred to the adult criminal justice system] are the “worst of the worst,” repeat, violent offenders who are beyond the rehabilitation offered by the juvenile justice system. But is this assumption in fact true? This report examines all available Texas data with respect to certified juveniles and compares them to the population of juveniles who receive determinate sentences and are placed in TYC [the Texas Youth Commission which is part of Texas’ juvenile justice system]. It also compares the significant differences in programming and services for the two populations of juvenile offenders” (p. xi). Sections following an executive summary include: introduction; overview; findings according to numbers of adult certification cases vs. juvenile determinate sentence populations, characteristics of the groups, disposition and sentencing outcomes, and placements and programming; discussion; and recommendations. Research shows that certified youth are not “the worst of the worst”—only those committing heinous crimes, for example 17% committing homicide. SOURCE: University of Texas at Austin. Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs (Austin, TX). Authored by Deitch, Michele.
    Fact Sheets (2012)
    10/29/2012 06:42 PM EDT
    These fact sheets show how much harm is inflicted on youth prosecuted in adult courts. Twenty-three items are organized according to: key statistics about youth crime (Key Facts—Youth in the Justice System, Chart of Youth Arrests, and Chart of Declining Juvenile Crime Rates and Age-Specific Arrest Rates; youth tried as adults (How a Youth Ends Up in the Adult Justice System, Teen Brains Are Not Fully Developed, Adolescent Brain Development, Comparison of the Juvenile System to the Adult System, Education Needs of Youth in the Justice System, Youth Have Lifelong Barriers to Employment, Young Children in the Adult System, International Consensus Against Trying Youth As Adults, and Transfer Laws Did Not Cause Crime Decline; studies on recidivism (Prosecuting Youth in the Adult System Leads to More Crime, Not Less, Summary of Transfer Research Studies, Fact Sheet on OJJDP Transfer Bulletin, and Fact Sheet on CDC Study; dangers of housing youth in adult facilities (Key Facts–Youth in Adult Jails and Prisons, Why Youth Facilities Are Better Than Adult Facilities, Youth Housed in Adult Jails and Prisons, and Fact Sheet on CFYJ Report – Jailing Juveniles); and racial and ethnic disparities (Disproportionate Impact on Youth of Color, Impact on African-American Youth, Impact on Latino Youth, and Impact on Native American Youth. SOURCE: Campaign for Youth Justice (Washington, DC).
    Conditions for Certified Juveniles in Texas County Jails (2012)
    10/29/2012 06:28 PM EDT
    “This report aims to provide a clearer picture of the conditions for certified juveniles [juveniles transferred to the adult criminal justice system for trial] in county jails based on the findings of this survey. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of how certified juveniles are housed in county jails in Texas, and the challenges faced by jail administrators when they confine certified youth. This information should help inform juvenile boards … and can also inform policy makers, state and county agencies, and advocates in future discussions about the most appropriate way to manage the confinement of certified juveniles” (p. ix). Five parts follow an executive summary: introduction; background; survey findings for number of certified juveniles in county jails, length of stay in county jails, housing, contact with adults, out-of-cell time, educational programming, and rehabilitative programming; discussion of survey findings; and recommendations. Many certified youth come in contact with adults when they are not being held in long-term isolation. SOURCE: University of Texas at Austin. Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs (Austin, TX). Authored by Deitch, Michele; Galbraith, Anna Lipton; Pollock, Jordan.



  • These dates in Gay History AUGUST 11, AUGUST 12, AUGUST 13, and AUGUST 14 « MasterAdrian’s Weblog
    http://masteradrian.com/2012/10/11/these-dates-in-gay-history-august-11-august-12-august-13-and-august-14

    These dates in Gay History AUGUST 11, AUGUST 12, AUGUST 13, and AUGUST 14
    October 11, 2012
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    Gay Wisdom for Daily Living…

    from White Crane Institute
    Exploring Gay Wisdom
    & Culture for over 20 Years!

    www.gaywisdom.org
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    AN ANNOUNCEMENT — Please bear with us today. You’ll see that we’re including not only today’s Gay Wisdom entry but this weekend’s too.
    This is one of those rare occasions when both of us are completely out of pocket the next few days. Family business calls for both of us this weekend and it’s callin’ early. So we didn’t want to leave you without your Gay Wisdom these next few days. We’ll see you on the other side of the weekend. Have a great one!

    This Weekend In Gay History
    THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012
    National Coming Out Day

    Today is National Coming Out Day!
    If you’re not very out, try to come out to one person today that you haven’t already.

    Already “came out” you say? Well perhaps today could be seen as a day to tell the story.

    Try to find someone and share the story of how you came to discover, claim, and or celebrate who you really are. Those stories are important and we need to offer a space for folks to share them. Perhaps see if you can ask a Gay friend to tell you their story. Today’s just the day for telling our stories.

    This week is also ALLY WEEK.
    It’s the time to take a moment to thank our straight allies in the struggle for full equality.

    1884 - on this date ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, iconic First Lady of the United States, was born (d. 1952).

    One of the most influential non-elected American political leaders of the twentieth century who used her influence as an active First Lady from 1933 to 1945 to promote the New Deal policies of her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as taking a prominent role as an advocate for civil rights and international cooperation. After FDR’s death in 1945, she continued to be an internationally prominent author and speaker for the New Deal coalition. She was a suffragist who worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women. During the 1932 Presidential Campaign, Lorena Hickok of the Associated Press was assigned to cover Mrs. Roosevelt. At first the business relationship was rocky. Hickok didn’t believe it was worth the paper’s time and money to report on Mrs. Roosevelt, and Mrs. Roosevelt wasn’t happy about the intrusion on her privacy. Besides that, Mrs. Roosevelt came from a high class, aristocratic background, and Hickok came from a brash and rustic one. She was at home playing poker with the guys, smoking, and drinking. In time, their friendship became very close and intimate. Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t seem to mind, as he was busy with his own romantic affairs.

    Due to the public nature of Mrs. Roosevelt’s life, she and Hickok were often separated. Even so, they wrote daily letters to each other. Roosevelt wrote ten to fifteen page letters daily to Hick for a time. In one Hickok writes: “Good night, dear one, I want to put my arms around you, and kiss you at the corner of your mouth. And in a little more than a week – I shall!” and Mrs. Roosevelt writes
    “Hick darling, All day I’ve thought about you & another birthday I will be with you & yet tonight you sounded so far away & formal. Oh! I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it.”

    In 1941, Hickok moved into the White House with the Roosevelts when she took a post in Washington. Some of the passion between the two seems to have died by this point. Mrs. Roosevelt was not able to give Hickok as much from their relationship as she wanted, yet Hickok remained because at least they had something. They remained friends until Mrs. Roosevelt’s death in 1962. Hickok destroyed many of the letters Mrs. Roosevelt sent to her and edit personal references out of many others. Those that remain still hint at an intimate love between the two women.

    1918 - the American choreographer, JEROME ROBBINS, was born on this date (d. 1998). Among the numerous stage productions he worked on were On The Town, High Button Shoes, The King and I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy: A Musical Fable and Fiddler on the Roof. For much of his life, Robbins pursued a career in both ballet and Broadway theater. He lived in a world of like-minded collaborators, most of whom were his age, Jewish, New Yorkers, leftist and — among the men Gay.


    1926 - today’s the birthday of American stage, television, and film actor EARLE HYMAN.

    Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina Hyman is best known for his recurring role on The Cosby Show as Cliff’s father, Russell Huxtable.

    He made his Broadway stage debut as a teenager in 1943 in Run, Little Chillun, and later joined the American Negro Theater. The following year, Hyman began a two year run playing the role of Rudolf on Broadway in Anna Lucasta. He was a member of the American Shakespeare Theatre beginning with its first season in 1955, and played the role of Othello in the 1957 season.

    In 1959 he appeared in the West End in the first London production of A Raisin In the Sun alongside Kim Hamilton. The show ran at the Adelphi Theatre and was directed again by Lloyd Richards.

    Throughout his career, Hyman has appeared in productions in both the United States and Norway (he is fluent in Norwegian) where he also owns a home on Norway’s west coast and an apartment in Oslo. In 1965, won a Theatre World Award and in 1988, he was awarded the St Olav’s medal for his work in Norwegian theater.

    In addition to his stage work, Hyman has appeared in various television and film roles including adaptions of Macbeth (1968),Julius Caesar (1979), and Coriolanus (1979), and voiced Panthro on the animated television series ThunderCats (1985-1990). One of his most well known roles, that of Russell Huxtable in The Cosby Show, earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1986 where he played the father of lead character Cliff Huxtable, played by actor Bill Cosby despite only being 11 years senior to Cosby.

    1947 - today’s the birthday of SHERIFF LUPE VALDEZ. Valdez is an Latino-American law enforcement official and the Sheriff of Dallas County, Texas. She is Texas’s only elected female sheriff, as well as being the only openly Lesbian holder of that office. Her election in 2004, combined with the fact that Valdez is female, Hispanic and a lesbian, made national headlines and was even reported overseas. She immediately faced opposition by the “good old boys” in the department who resented her election and her commitments to reforming the department.

    In 2008, Valdez was re-elected Sheriff of Dallas County with 388,327 votes to her opponent’s 322,808 votes, a margin of roughly 65,500. Valdez received over 99,000 more votes than the “Straight Democratic” option as many described it during the race. She won in precincts across Dallas County, including formerly-Republican areas including Irving and Mesquite. Her opponent won most precincts in far North Dallas, Richardson, Coppell, and the southern part of Irving. She began her second four-year term in 2009.


    1963 - on this date the French writer and artists JEAN COCTEAU died (b. 1889). He was many things: poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker. His versatile, unconventional approach and enormous output brought him international acclaim. In his early twenties, Cocteau became associated with Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, and Maurice Barr s. The Russian ballet-master Sergei Diaghilev challenged Cocteau to write for the ballet – “Astonish me,” he urged. This resulted in Parade which was produced by Diaghilev, designed by Pablo Picasso, and composed by Erik Satie in 1917.

    Cocteau is best known for Les enfants terrible the 1929 play, Les parent terribles the 1948 film, and the 1946 film, Beauty and the Beast.

    Cocteau died of a heart attack at his chateau in Milly-la-Foret, only hours after hearing of the death of his friend, the French singer Edith Piaf. He is buried in the garden of his home in Milly La Foret, Essonne, France. The epitaph reads: “I stay among you.”


    1987 - The Second National March on Washington For Lesbian and Gay Rights. More than a half million people (between 500,000 and 650,000, according to organizers) descended on the capital to participate in the second national March on Washington. Many of the marchers were angry over the government’s slow and inadequate response to the AIDS crisis, as well as the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision to uphold sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick.

    With the first display of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, the 1987 march succeeded in bringing national attention to the impact of AIDS on Gay communities. In the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, a tapestry of nearly two thousand fabric panels offered a powerful tribute to the lives of some of those who had been lost in the pandemic. It was the first time the quilts were displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It covered a space larger than a football field and included 1,920 panels. Half a million people visited the Quilt that weekend.

    The overwhelming response to the Quilt’s inaugural display led to a four-month, 20-city, national tour for the Quilt in the spring of 1988. The tour raised nearly $500,000 for hundreds of AIDS service organizations. More than 9,000 volunteers across the country helped the seven-person traveling crew move and display the Quilt. Local panels were added in each city, tripling the Quilt’s size to more than 6,000 panels by the end of the tour.

    The march also called attention to anti-Gay discrimination, as approximately 800 people were arrested in front of the Supreme Court two days later in the largest civil disobedience action ever held in support of the rights of Lesbians, Gay men, Bisexuals, and Transgender people.

    The 1987 March on Washington also sparked the creation of what became known as BiNet U.S.A. and the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Organization (LLEGO), the first national groups for Bisexuals and GLBTQ Latinas and Latinos, respectively. Prior to the march, Bisexual activists circulated a flyer entitled “Are You Ready for a National Bisexual Network?” that encouraged members of the community to be part of the first Bisexual contingent in a national demonstration. Approximately 75 Bisexuals from across the U. S. participated and began laying the groundwork for an organization that could speak to the needs of bi-identified people and counter the animus against Bisexuals that was commonplace in both Lesbian and Gay communities and the dominant society.

    By 1987, Latino GLBTQ activists from Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, and elsewhere had been meeting for two years, discussing ways to work together to further the basic rights and visibility of GLBTQ Latinas and Latinos. But with AIDS having a disproportionate impact on Latino GLBTQ communities throughout the United States, the activists recognized the need for a national organization and met at the March on Washington to form what was then called NLLGA, National Latina/o Lesbian and Gay Activists. Renaming themselves LLEGO the following year, the group has since expanded to address issues of concern to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Latinas and Latinos in other countries.

    Along with the formation of new national groups, the most lasting effects of the weekend’s events were felt on the local level. Energized and inspired by the march, many activists returned home and established social and political groups in their own communities, providing even greater visibility and strength to the struggle for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights. The date of the march, October 11th, has been celebrated internationally ever since as National Coming Out Day to inspire members of the GLBTQ community to continue to show, as one of the common march slogans proclaimed, “we are everywhere.”

    Speakers at the rally included former National Organization for Women president Eleanor Smeal, union president and Latino civil rights figure Cesar Chavez, actor and comedian Whoopi Goldberg, and activist Jesse Jackson.

    FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2012
    Today is NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY in the United Kingdom.

    Today’s also FREETHOUGHT DAY, the annual observance by freethinkers and secularists of the anniversary of the effective end of the Salem Witch Trials. The seminal event connected to Freethought Day is a letter written by then Massachusetts Governor William Phips in which he wrote to the Privy Council of the British monarchs, William and Mary, on this day in 1692. In this correspondence he outlined the quagmire that the trials had degenerated into, in part by a reliance on “evidence” of a non-objective nature and especially “spectral evidence” in which the accusers claimed to see devils and other phantasms consorting with the accused.

    1875 – on this date the English occultist and author ALEISTER CROWLEY was born (d. 1947).
    Crowley is best known today for his occult writings, especially The Book of The Law, the central sacred text of “Thelema,” an initially fictional philosophy of life first described by Francois Rabelais (16th century) in his famous books, Gargantua andPantagruel. Other interests and accomplishments were wide-ranging — he was a chess player, mountain climber, poet, painter, astrologer, hedonist, drug experimenter, and social critic. Crowley was a highly prolific writer, not only on the topic of Thelema and magick, but on philosophy, politics, and culture. He left behind a countless number of personal letters and daily journal entries. He self-published many of his books, expending the majority of his inheritance to disseminate his views.

    Within the subject of occultism Crowley wrote widely, penning commentaries on magick, the Tarot, Yoga, Qabalah, astrology, and numerous other subjects. He also wrote a Thelemic interpolation of the Tao Te Ching, based on earlier English translations since he knew little or no Chinese. Like the Golden Dawn mystics before him, Crowley evidently sought to comprehend the entire human religious and mystical experience in a single philosophy.

    Crowley gained wide notoriety during his lifetime, and was infamously dubbed “The Wickedest Man In the World.” There is little wiggle room with Crowley. Either you consider him to be nuts, bonkers, loony, albeit brilliant, fascinating and perhaps a touch of con-man – or you are completely in his thrall. Much depends on how you feel about his central thesis: Do whatever you wish. No wonder he was so popular in the 1960s. Crowley also wrote fiction, including plays and later novels, most of which have not received significant notice outside of occult circles. In his The Book of Lies, the title to chapter 69 is given as “The Way to Succeed – and the Way to Suck Eggs!” a pun, as the chapter concerns the 69 sex position as a mystical act.

    Largely despicable, and larger than life, the hashish-smoking, yoga-practicing, occult-preaching, self-described religious prophet probably would do even better today. The man knew how to cause a stir. To say he slept around is to practice understatement that borders on the naive. He was an outspoken racist an anti-Semite and sexist. To give the reader a sense of his contradictory and maddening character, Crowley, according to his biographer, Lawrence Sutin, used racial epithets and brutal verbal attacks to bully his Jewish lover Victor Neuburg. And while he slept with men, women, and virtually anything that moved, his background was distinctly pederastic. His writings reveal this nature with, for example, a poem beginning “I was bumming a boy in the black-out…” Known his whole life for a cutting wit, once, when a woman asked him which American college would be most suitable for her daughter he replied, “Radclyffe Hall.”

    1942 - the gay rights advocate and author ARTHUR EVANS was born on this date (d. 2011). Born in York, Pennsylvania, Evans was most well known for his book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture (1978).

    When Evans graduated from public high school in 1960, he received a four-year scholarship from the Glatfelter Paper Company in York to study chemistry at Brown University. While at Brown, Evans and several friends founded the Brown Freethinkers Society, describing themselves as ‘militant atheists’ seeking to combat the harmful effects of organized religion.

    The society picketed the weekly chapel services at Brown, then required of all students, and urged students to stand in silent protest against compulsory prayer. National news services picked up the story, which appeared in a local York newspaper.

    As a result, the paper company informed Evans that his scholarship was cancelled. Evans contacted Joseph Lewis, the elderly millionaire who headed the national Freethinkers Society. Lewis threatened the paper company with a highly publicized lawsuit if the scholarship were revoked. The company relented, the scholarship continued, and Evans changed his major from chemistry to political science.

    Evans withdrew from Brown and moved to Greenwich Village, which he later described it as the best move he ever made in his life. In 1963, Evans discovered gay life in Greenwich Village, and in 1964 became lovers with Arthur Bell who later became a columnist for The Village Voice. In 1966, Evans was admitted to City College of New York, which accepted all his credits from Brown University.

    Evans participated in his first sit-in in 1966, when students occupied the administration building of City College in protest against the college’s involvement in Selective Service. A picture of the students, including Evans, appeared on the front page of The New York Times. In 1967, after graduating with a BA degree from City College, Evans was admitted into the doctoral program in philosophy at Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek philosophy. His doctoral advisor was Paul Oskar Kristeller, one of the world’s leading authority on Renaissance humanist philosophy. Kristeller had studied under Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger in Germany but fled to the US after his parents were killed in the Holocaust.

    Evans participated in many anti-war protests during these years, including the celebrated upheaval at Columbia in the spring of 1968. He also participated in the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. While at Columbia, Evans joined the Student Homophile League, founded by Nino Romano and Stephen Donaldson, although Evans himself was still closeted. On December 21, 1969, Evans, Marty Robinson, and several others met to found the early gay rights group Gay Activists Alliance.

    In November 1970, Robinson and Evans, along with Dick Leitsch of the Mattachine Society, appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, making them among the first openly gay activists to be prominently featured on a national TV program. In 1971, Evans and Bell separated. Bell died from complications of diabetes in 1984.

    By the end of 1971, Evans had become alienated from urban life and the academic world. With a second lover, Jacob Schraeter, he left New York in April 1972 to seek a new, countercultural existence in the countryside.

    Evans, Schraeter, and a third gay man formed a group called the ‘Weird Sisters Partnership’. They bought a 40-acre spread of land on a mountain in Washington State, which they named New Sodom. Evans and Schraeter lived there in tents during summers. During winter months in Seattle, Evans continued research that he had begun in New York on the underlying historical origins of the counterculture, particularly in regard to sex. In 1973, he began publishing some of his findings in the gay journal Outand later in Fag Rag. He also wrote a column on the political strategy of zapping for The Advocate, the gay newspaper.

    In 1974, Evans and Schraeter moved into an apartment at the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco, in which Evans remained until he died. Schraeter returned to New York in 1981 and died from AIDS in 1989.

    In the fall of the 1975, Evans formed a new pagan-inspired spiritual group in San Francisco, the Faery Circle. The Circle combined countercultural consciousness, gay sensibility, and ceremonial playfulness. In early 1976, he gave a series of public lectures at 32 Page Street, an early San Francisco gay community center, entitled ‘Faeries’, on his research on the historical origins of the gay counterculture. In 1978 he published this material in his ground-breaking book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. It demonstrated that many of the people accused of ‘witchcraft’ and ‘heresy’ in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were actually persecuted because of their sexuality and ancient pagan practices.

    Evans also was active in Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL) and the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club, which later became the vehicle through which Harvey Milk rose to political prominence.

    In the late 1970s, Evans became upset at the pattern of butch conformity that was then overtaking gay men in the Castro. Adopting the nom de plume ‘The Red Queen’, he distributed a series of controversial satirical leaflets on the subject. In a leaflet entitled Afraid You’re Not Butch Enough? (1978) he facetiously referred to the new, butch-conforming men of the Castro as clones, initiating use of the now widely used term ‘Castro clones’.

    In 1984 Evans directed a production at the Valencia Rose Cabaret in San Francisco of his own new translation, from ancient Greek, of the Euripides play The Bacchae. The hero of Euripides’ play is the Greek god Dionysos, the patron of homosexuality. In 1988, this translation, with Evans’ commentary on the historical significance of the play, was published by St. Martin’s Press in under the name of The God of Ecstasy.

    As AIDS began to spread in 1980s, Evans became active in several groups that later became ACT UP/SF. Evans was HIV-negative. With his close friend, the late Hank Wilson, Evans was arrested while demonstrating against pharmaceutical companies making AIDS drugs, accusing the companies of price-gouging.

    In 1988, Evans began work on a nine-year project on philosophy. Thanks to a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, it was published in 1997 as Critique of Patriarchal Reason and included artwork by San Francisco artist Frank Pietronigro. The book was an overview of Western philosophy from ancient times to the present, showing how misogyny and homophobia have influenced the supposedly objective fields of formal logic, higher mathematics, and physical science. Evans’ former advisor at Columbia University, Dr. Kristeller, called the work ‘a major contribution to the study of philosophy and its history’.

    Diagnosed in October 2010 with an aortic aneurysm, Evans died in his Haight-Ashbury apartment of a massive heart attack on 11 September 2011.


    1946 - today’s the birthday of U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist MINNIE BRUCE PRATT.

    Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, grew up in Centreville, Alabama and graduated with honors from the University of Alabama and received a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina. She is a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university’s first Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Study Program. She emerged out of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s and 1980s and has written extensively about race, class, gender and sexual theory. Pratt, along with Lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, received a Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett award from the Fund for Free Expression, an award given to writers “who have been victimized by political persecution.” Pratt, Chrystos and Lorde were chosen because their experience as “a target of right-wing and fundamentalist forces during the recent attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts.” Her political affiliations include the International Action Center, the National Women’s Fightback Network, and the National Writers Union. She is a contributing editor to Workers World newspaper. Pratt’s partner is author and activist Leslie Feinberg.

    Her latest book, Inside the Money Machine is one of the best new books of poetry to come out this year.


    1971 - the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs recommends the repeal of a city law banning homosexuals from working in or going to bars.

    1998 - MATTHEW SHEPARD died on this date (b. 1976). Shepard was an openly Gay American student at the University of Wyoming who as we noted last weekend, was attacked near Laramie, on the night of October 6th in what was widely reported by international news media as a savage beating because of his sexuality. Shepard died from severe head injuries at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, 1998. His murder brought national attention to the issue of hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels. His two assailants were convicted of the crime and imprisoned. One is currently serving two consecutive life sentences and the other is serving the same but without the possibility of parole. After his death, Shepard’s parents became full-time advocates for the passage of hate crime legislation that would include sexual orientation.

    The Matthew Shepard Act (officially the “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act”), was a bill in the United States Congress that expanded the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. After years of attempting to pass the act, on October 22, 2009, the act was passed by the Senate by a largely party line vote with Republicans opposing the Act and Democrats supporting it. During debate in the House of Representatives, Republican Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina called the “hate crime” labeling of Shepard’s murder a “hoax.” Shepard’s mother was said to be in the House gallery when the congresswoman made this comment. President Obama signed the measure into law on October 28, 2009. Proving once again that elections do matter.



    SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012

    1307 - on this date – Friday, October 13, 1307 (a date sometimes linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition) the French king Philip IV ordered all French TEMPLARS to be arrested. The Templars were charged with numerous heresies and tortured to extract false confessions of blasphemy. The trials were based on these confessions, despite having been obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. After more bullying from Philip, Pope Clement then issued the bill Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.
    Brian Lacey, in his wonderful book Terrible Queer Creatures: Homosexuality In Irish History writes about the use of same sex male relations in the purging of the Order of the Knights Templar.

    The respect for same-sex male relationships, which Lacey paints as characteristic of the pre-Christian era in Ireland and which carried over well into the Christian epoch, began to wane as the power of the Catholic Church grew. The first known homosexual purge in Ireland concerned the Order of Knights Templar, established in Ireland in the 1170s under the auspices of the English King Henry II.

    The purge had its origins in the desire of the impoverished 14th century French King Philip le Bel (the Fair) to get his hands on the Templars’ wealth. Philip engineered the election of the bishop of Bordeaux to become Pope Clement V on condition that he put an end to the Templars, and Clement duly set up an inquisition in which allegations of homosexuality against the knights were in the foreground. “They were said to have included homosexual acts in their private rituals and to have insisted on sexual intercourse with new recruits,” Lacey wrote. “It is an indication of the negative feelings against homosexuality in that period that this could be made as one of the principal charges against such a powerful institution.”

    The homosexual English King Edward II was ordered by Pope Clement and pressured by the French monarch to seize the Templars’ extensive holdings in Ireland, and the Irish Knights Templar were arrested en masse in February 1308. The inquisition opened its trial of the Irish Templars in January 1310 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. While only a few of the Knights confessed to the charges of sodomy, the order was abolished and much of its property expropriated.


    1929 - today’s the birthday of distinguished American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator RICHARD HOWARD.

    He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a graduate of Columbia University, where he now teaches. He lives in New York City. Howard had a brief early career as a lexicographer. He soon turned his attention to poetry and poetic criticism. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the PEN Translation Prize, and the American Book Award. Howard was a long-time poetry editor of The Paris Review and is currently poetry editor of The Western Humanities Review. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, he is Professor of Practice in the writing program at Columbia’s School of the Arts.

    In 1982, Howard was named a Chevalier of L’Ordre National du Mérite by the government of France

    1966 - the American actor, dancer and singer CLIFTON WEBB died on this date (b. 1889). He was best known for his Oscar-nominated roles in such films as Laura, The Razor’s Edge, and Sitting Pretty. In the theatrical world he was known for his appearances in the plays of Noël Coward, notably Blithe Spirit.

    The never married Webb lived with his mother until her death at age ninety-one in 1960, leading Coward to remark, apropos Webb’s grieving, “It must be terrible to be orphaned at 71.”

    Actor Robert Wagner, who co-starred with Webb in the movies Stars and Stripes Forever and Titanic and considered the actor one of his mentors, stated in his memoirs, Pieces of My Heart: A Life, that “Clifton Webb was gay, of course, but he never made a pass at me, not that he would have.”

    1967 - today’s the birthday of ARTURO BRACHETTI, the Italian transformation artist and director, born in Turin. In theGuinness Book of Records 2006 and 2007, he is described as the fastest quick change artist in the world. Quick-change is a performance style in which a performer or magician changes quickly within seconds from one costume into another costume in front of the audience.

    You can watch him in action on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4XUvWwaPFI



    SUNDAY, AUGUST 14, 2012

    1856 – the French Victorian writer VERNON LEE was born on this date. Also known as Violet Paget, she was responsible for introducing the concept of “empathy” (Einfühling) into the English language. Empathy was a key concept in Lee’s psychological aesthetics which she developed on the basis of prior work by Theodor Lipps. Her response to aesthetics interpreted art as a mental and corporeal experience. This was a significant contribution to the philosophy of art which has been largely neglected. She fell in love with three women in succession, and fully expected, being the Victorian she was, to live out her life with each of them, falling swooning into her fainting bed each time the friendship ended. She kept a faded portrait of her first love over her bed. Her second love announced her marriage to (horrors!) a Jew, which required liberal application of smelling salts and her third simply drifted away.

    1888 – the New Zealand born author KATHERINE MANSFIELD was born on this date.

    Considered to be the British Chekhov and her quiet stories are painful commentaries on the inadequacy of human relationships. Although she had many affairs with men and was married to John Middleton Murry, her diaries and letters reveal her to have been a Lesbian, and a troubled one at that, with a “slave” by the name of Ida Baker.

    1959 - the swashbuckling acting legend ERROL FLYNN died on this date (b. 1909).

    1977 - on this date Minneapolis Gay rights activist THOM HIGGINS threw a banana cream a pie into the face of Anita Bryant during a news conference in Des Moines, Iowa. The former beauty queen (Bryant) was in the middle of a nationwide campaign to criminalize Gay behavior and overturn the few Gay rights ordinances in the country.

    1979 - The First Gay Rights March On Washington D.C. was held on this date and called for “an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of Lesbian and Gay people.” Marking the tenth anniversary of the Stonewall riots and coming in the wake of the lenient jail sentence given to Dan White for the assassination of openly Gay San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, the First National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights on October 14, 1979 was an historic event that drew more than 200,000 people from across the United States and ten other countries.

    In the wake of the Milk/Moscone assassinations, the Anita Bryant campaign to roll back protections extended to sexual orientation, and years of community building around the nation, the support for a massive demonstration in the nation’s capital grew. There were strong reservations on the part of those who worried that anything less than massive numbers would negate the demonstration and undermine political activism. However, by the late summer of 1979 it was clear that the March would be a large media event. Locally, the National Coalition of Black Gays and the DC Coalition of Black Gays supported the March from the beginning.

    Both groups were also involved in planning and holding the first Third World Conference, held at Harambee House on Georgia Avenue. The Third World Conference concluded with a march by persons of color down Georgia Avenue to the Mall where they joined the March on Washington. This walk down Georgia Avenue was the first public demonstration by Lesbians and Gays in the heart of the African-American areas of the city.

    The plans for the 1979 March were determinedly more inclusive of persons of color and the Transgendered. The souvenir booklet for the March includes an article by Jim Kepner summarizing GLBT activism leading to the March and an article by Brandy Moore detailing the preparations for the March. Speakers included Richard Ashworth and Adele Starr (PFLAG) Marion Berry (then D.C. mayor), S.F. Councilman Harry Britt, Lesbian feminist theorist, Charlotte Bunch, poet Alan Ginsberg, activists Flo Kennedy, Morris Kight, poet and activist Audre Lorde, musicians, Robin Tyler and Tom Robinson, Leonard Matlovich, Arthur McCombs (Gay Atheist League), feminist theorist Kate Millett, Rev. Troy Perry (listed as a “cameo” appearance”!), Juanita Ramos (Comite Homosexual Latinamericano), Betty Santoro (NY Spokeswoman for Lesbian Feminist Liberation), Eleanor Smeal (N.O.W.) and labor activist, Howard Wallace. Recordings of speeches, including Audre Lorde’s keynote address to the masses on the Washington Mall, and Alan Ginsberg reading his poetry and warning Congress can be heard here:http://www.rainbowhistory.org/mow79.htm And a wonderful collection of photos from the events can be seen here:http://www.queermusicheritage.us/march79.html

    1990 – LEONARD BERNSTEIN, the American composer and conductor, died on this date (b. 1918)

    2006 – on this date the Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts GERRY STUDDS died on this date (b. 1937).

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  • Regnerus Scandal: Researcher Lying, Not Independent From Anti-Gay Funders | The New Civil Rights Movement
    http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/regnerus-scandal-researcher-lying-not-independent-from-anti-gay-funders/news/2012/10/07/50176

    Regnerus Scandal: Researcher Lying, Not Independent From Anti-Gay Funders

    by Scott Rose on October 7, 2012

    in Analysis,Bigotry Watch,News,Scott Rose

    WHAT THIS INVOLVES

    A study booby-trapped against gay parents.

    The booby-trapped study is serving as a basis for National Organization for Marriage anti-gay attack ads all over the country.

    The hoax study was perpetrated by Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin (UT).

    The most outrageously defamatory of its false findings is that children of gay parents experience dramatically high levels of sex abuse.

    Regnerus’s chief funding agency is the NOM-linked Witherspoon Institute.

    NOM officials have a long history of conflating homosexuals with pedophiles, a known falsehood.

    Nothing can so potently hate-and-fear-monger voters into voting against gay rights, quite like telling them that homosexuals sexually molest children.

    REGNERUS DID NOT CONDUCT THE STUDY INDEPENDENTLY OF HIS FUNDERS’ ANTI-GAY POLITICAL GOALS FOR IT

    The study design began in 2010.

    IRS documents show that Regnerus’s study specifically is a project of Witherspoon’s Program for Family, Marriage and Democracy.

    In 2010, when the Regnerus study was in its design phase, W. Bradford Wilcox was director of that Witherspoon program.

    Wilcox, who is against contraception, sees social research as a “vindication of Christian moral teaching.”

    Wilcox has confessed that in 2010, he was involved in the design of the Regnerus study.

    Wilcox’s confession was forced into the open by accumulating evidence of scientific misconduct connected to the study, its publication, and Wilcox himself.

    However, Wilcox, Regnerus, and Witherspoon president Luis Tellez — who is a NOM board member — are attempting to deny that Wilcox was acting as a Witherspoon agent when he collaborated with Regnerus on study design in 2010.

    Even in his confession, Wilcox attempts to deny that he ever engaged with Regnerus about the study in any official Witherspoon capacity.

    Wilcox alleges that his title of “Director of the Program for Family, Marriage and Democracy” was an “honorific.”

    SOCIOLOGISTS SAY THAT WILCOX IS LYING

    Philip Cohen, Ph.D. is Director of Graduate Studies in Sociology at the University of Maryland’s Population Research Center. In a comment under Wilcox’s confession, Cohen said:

    “I find this description not credible. I do not think any reasonable auditor or ethical agency would subscribe to the idea that the “director” of an organization was not and [sic] “officer” of it.”

    Dr. Andrew J. Perrin is a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He also considers that Wilcox is not being truthful:

    “Brad Wilcox’s affiliation with Witherspoon is all over the place, attached to his name in numerous websites, flyers, talk titles, etc., and so it was certainly incumbent upon both Regnerus and Wilcox to recognize the conflict of interest, and it would not have required any significant investigation to note that conflict. If, in fact, Wilcox was one of the peer reviewers of the article, as has been the subject of conjecture, that’s obviously a further conflict.” Dr. Perrin continues: “the idea that this web of associations doesn’t constitute a serious conflict of interest in the publication of the article just doesn’t pass the smell test. The most reasonable explanation, given what we know, is that Wilcox, Regnerus, and others in their circle colluded to make an end run around serious academic review in order to get seriously flawed information into the public eye.” (Bolding added).

    Witherspoon, meanwhile, has been desperately attempting to scrub its sites of all evidence of Wilcox’s associations with the Witherspoon Institute.

    Wilcox, however, as noted by the sociologist Dr. Perrin, constantly used his Witherspoon Institute affiliation as a resume booster. To see abundant evidence of Wilcox’s affiliations with the Witherspoon Institute, go here.

    FRESH DOCUMENTATION SHOWS THAT WILCOX IS LYING

    Fresh evidence demonstrates conclusively that Wilcox was indeed working as a Witherspoon official when he collaborated with Regnerus on study design.

    Here is that evidence:

    At the University of Virginia, Wilcox is Director of the National Marriage Project. Regnerus’s published study says that a “leading family researcher” from the University of Virginia was on Regnerus’s study design team.

    This reporter sent an Open Records Act request to Regnerus’s University of Texas, asking for one very specific sort of documentation only. I asked only for Regnerus study consulting contracts that were 1) for study design; and 2) made for anybody from the University of Virginia.

    On October 4, 2012, I received a letter from UT. The letter states that the university has no documents responsive to my request. What that means, is that when Witherspoon program director Brad Wilcox collaborated with Regnerus on study design, he did so as a Witherspoon agent — as a Witherspoon Program Director — not as an independent contractor through Regnerus’s university.

    WHY THIS MATTERS SO MUCH

    Regnerus and his funders booby-trapped the study against gays for political reasons.

    Regnerus and his funders are actively and deliberately seeking to mislead the public into believing that Regnerus conducted his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for the study.

    Witherspoon tells that deliberate lie in Question 13 of the stand-alone site it created to promote the Regnerus study.

    Regnerus tells that lie right in his published study. Regnerus has written “No funding agency representatives were consulted about research design, survey contents, analyses or conclusions.”

    Yet, very, very obviously, when Wilcox was Witherspoon’s Director of the Program on Family, Marriage and Democracy, he was a Regnerus study “funding agency representative.”

    Regnerus clearly is lying.

    WITHERSPOON, REGNERUS, AND THE STUDY “PLANNING GRANT”

    Witherspoon did not just arrange for Regnerus to have his full $785,000 in study funding, and then tell him to do whatever he wanted with it.

    Rather, as per Regnerus’s C.V. downloadable from his author’s website, Witherspoon gave Regnerus a $55,000 planning grant before giving him his full study funding.

    That means that Witherspoon had to approve Regnerus’s study plan, before it would give him his full study funding.

    In the period of the Witherspoon planning grant, Regnerus collaborated with Witherspoon’s Wilcox on study design.

    REGNERUS, WILCOX, AND CHILD SEX ABUSE

    Regnerus says that his study answers this question:

    “Do the children of gay and lesbian parents look comparable to those of their heterosexual counterparts?”

    Regnerus’s study methodology, though, did not truly allow for studying children of gay and lesbian parents.

    The majority of Regnerus’s study subjects — as per his own admission in his study — were products of opposite-sex couples who later separated, with one parent going on to have a same-sex relationship.

    In asking about childhood sex abuse, Regnerus asked his young adult respondents if “a parent or other adult caregiver” ever sexually victimized them.

    The result thus is un-interpretable. The respondent’s heterosexual parent, or a babysitter, or a priest could have committed the alleged sexual victimization.

    Yet, in their anti-gay attack ads based on the Regnerus study, NOM attributes the alleged child sex abuse exclusively to gay parents. Regnerus himself has done that on national television.

    Regnerus alleges that 23% of his study’s children of “lesbian mothers” were sexually victimized as children.

    Past studies of lesbian mothers have consistently found low rates of child sex abuse. The second highest rate for child sex abuse in Regnerus’s study is step-families, at 12% just over half that for lesbian mothers.

    Regnerus’s “finding” has no credibility. Other of Regnerus’s reported results are just plainly absurd. In any event, it is impossible to say who committed the alleged sex abuse, and therefore, connecting it to lesbian mothers in any way is defamatory.

    To connect a mother to sex abuse of her child, in the public mind, with no knowledge of whether the mother ever abused her child, is as despicable as blaming a rape victim for getting raped.

    The numbers seen in Regnerus’s published study are not the same as those in the data files given to him by Knowledge Networks, the company that administered his study’s surveys.

    Rather, Regnerus applied weights and controls and used other tools to adjust the number.

    To know the correct weights and controls to use, a sociologist must be certain of the percent which the minority he is studying constitutes within the general population.

    Regnerus only vaguely described “lesbian mother” or “gay father.” If his respondents said that a parent had ever had “a same-sex romantic relationship,” Regnerus counted them as having either a “lesbian mother” or a “gay father.”

    However, there is simply no way to know what percent of the general population has a parent who has ever had “a same-sex romantic relationship.”

    That is what one would need to know, in order to be able to apply a correct “weight” or “control” to Regnerus’s raw data.

    It is absolutely true, that neither Regnerus nor anybody else knows the correct weights to use for Regnerus’s very vaguely defined, so-called “lesbian mothers” and/or “gay fathers.”

    In sum that means; 1) that in applying weights and controls and other strategies to his raw data; 2) Regnerus and Wilcox were free to play around with theoretical population percents representing children of; 3) a parent who has ever had a “same-sex romantic relationship,” 4) moving the study’s “finding” number up or down, according to the result that Regnerus and Wilcox most wanted to be able to report to the public.

    I directly asked Regnerus to explain to me how he derived his reported finding — that “23% of lesbian mothers’ children are sexually victimized” — from his raw data.

    Regnerus refused to answer.

    A sociologist who had behaved honestly with his study’s numbers should have no hesitations about explaining how he derived his reported numbers from his data.

    DOES REGNERUS’S REFUSAL TO ANSWER THE QUESTION IMPLY GUILT?

    Regnerus very willingly gives lengthy, rambling interviews to right wing religious publications, but refuses to respond to simple, direct, science-based inquiries about his study.

    Subsequently, I made an Open Records Act request to UT, asking for all of the Regnerus study’s data analyses communications between Regnerus and Wilcox.

    In reaction to that request, UT sent the Texas Attorney General a letter, asking for exemptions to my document request.

    The UT letter told the Texas Attorney General that Wilcox was involved with both data collection and data analyses on the Regnerus study.

    So, Wilcox was involved in collaborating with Regnerus during many stages of the study, including 1) when the vague way of defining gay parents was settled on; 2) when the vague question about child sex abuse was formulated; 3) when the data was collected, and 4) when the data was analyzed.

    It can almost seem funny, that Regnerus claims to have “found” that out of every 2,988 Americans aged 18 to 39, six-hundred and twenty have never once in their lives masturbated.

    As obviously untrue as that is, though, Regnerus and his NOM-linked funders and NOM itself are using his equally ridiculous, maliciously invented sex abuse “findings” to demonize gay people and to hate-and-fear-monger voters into voting against gay rights.

    REGNERUS IS NOT EVEN MAKING A PRETENSE OF INDEPENDENCE FROM HIS FUNDERS

    On November 3, 2012, Regnerus and Witherspoon’s Ana Samuel — a hateful anti-gay bigot — will be appearing together to discuss the study at an event sponsored by a Witherspoon/NOM affiliate, the so-called Love and Fidelity Network.

    Love and Fidelity has its office space inside Witherspoon’s building on the Princeton campus. NOM/Witherspoon’s Robert P. George, and Witherspoon/NOM’s Luis Tellez, as well as NOM’s Maggie Gallagher are on the “Love and Fidelity” advisory board.

    Also appearing to discuss the study with Regnerus and his funding agency representative Ana Samuel will be Robert Oscar Lopez, who appears to fit into the documented NOM strategy for getting children of gay parents to denounce their own parents to the public.

    Regnerus recruited Lopez off the internet, and Lopez’s gay-bashing essay subsequently was published on Witherspoon’s “Public Discourse.”

    At the time Lopez’s essay appeared in “Public Discourse,” Brad Wilcox was listed on the roster of the “Public Discourse” editorial board.

    After I reported that fact, Witherspoon scrubbed Wilcox’s name off its editorial board roster. Witherspoon previously has been caught scrubbing incriminating, Regnerus-related evidence from its websites.

    CONCLUSION

    Regnerus, the Witherspoon Institute, and Brad Wilcox all are very deliberately lying to the public,in hopes of misleading the public into believing that Regnerus conducted his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for it.

    Regnerus did not conduct his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for it.

    Regnerus very actively continues to promote his study with his anti-gay-rights funding agency representatives, while refusing to take any science-based questions about his study from the non-anti-gay-bigot media.

    New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.


  • Report: Schools Should Move from Print to Digital Content by 2017 - Marketplace K-12 - Education Week
    http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2012/09/transition_from_print_to_digital_2017.html

    A report released Monday by a national education technology group suggests schools switch to digital instructional materials by 2017, and highlights some of the policy barriers that must be knocked down in order to get there.

    #éducation #enseignement #ebooks


  • Presque amusant dans la forme : Yes, Geraldine, the Palestinians Were Ethnically Cleansed. Ilan Pappe parvient cependant à répondre sérieusement aux questions.
    http://middleeastrealitycheck.blogspot.fr/2012/09/yes-geraldine-palestinians-were.html

    How fascinating the interaction on Radio National’s Breakfast program yesterday between Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, a bloke who knows what he’s talking about because he’s done his homework and more, and veteran ABC journalist Geraldine Doogue, who, despite having worked for the ABC for more decades than I can remember, seems utterly clueless when it comes to the basics of one of the planet’s great unresolved colonial conflicts.

    So clueless, in fact, that Ilan Pappe’s account of what really happened when Israel sprang into being in 1948, seems actually to have shocked her. Nor was it just 1948. Pappe even had to explain at one point that the vast majority of Israelis are actually Zionists!

    How to explain the bizarre phenomenon of someone at the very top of the journalism tree experiencing the kind of discombobulation suffered by young Virginia when doubt was first cast on the existence of her beloved Santa Claus?

    Is this the legacy of years of Zionist pressure on the ABC over the issue of Palestine, and the culture of self-censorship that has developed there and elsewhere in the ms media in response to it? How else is one to account for this 60-something journalist and broadcaster being so comprehensively shielded from the awful truth of what really happened back in 1948, the year of Israel’s birth?


  • Passionnante interview de Patrick Volkerding (le fondateur du système #Slackware Linux) sur son passé, sa vie, ses opinions techniques (par exemple sur le « desktop » Linux). Très bon et très détaillé, enfin un interview où les intervieweurs prennent leur temps et ne se contentent pas de trois questions bateau.

    Slackware reste aujourd’hui le petit village gaulois qui résiste : non commerciale et toujours faite par une bande de passionnés qui n’écoutent aucune sirène marketing.

    http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/interviews-28/interview-with-patrick-volkerding-of-slackware-949029

    On y apprend par exemple que le non-commercial dans un monde capitaliste, ce n’est pas facile : Volkerding n’a ainsi plus de Sécu...

    • Slackware a été le premier système Unix libre que j’ai installé, sur un vieux PC, en 1993. J’avais été stupéfait de la facilité d’installation, et de la transformation du PC en l’équivalent des stations de travail Unix hors de prix de l’époque (DECstations et Sony chez mon employeur).

      Et quel plaisir d’avoir du premier coup un Unix correct, pas des logiciels antédiluviens comme c’était le cas sur Ultrix où il fallait commencer par tout recompiler (un shell récent, entre autres).