provinceorstate:virginia

CIA Intercepts Underpin Assessment Saudi Crown Prince Targeted Khashoggi - WSJ
Conclusion that Mohammad ‘probably ordered’ killing relies in part on 11 messages he sent to adviser who oversaw hit squad around time it killed journalist

▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-intercepts-underpin-assessment-saudi-crown-prince-targeted-khashoggi-154364

WASHINGTON—Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who oversaw the team that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the hours before and after the journalist’s death in October, according to a highly classified CIA assessment.

The Saudi leader also in August 2017 had told associates that if his efforts to persuade Mr. Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia weren’t successful, “we could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements,” according to the assessment, a communication that it states “seems to foreshadow the Saudi operation launched against Khashoggi.”

Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom’s leadership who lived in Virginia and wrote columns for the Washington Post, was killed by Saudi operatives on Oct. 2 shortly after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he sought papers needed to marry his Turkish fiancée.

Excerpts of the Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment, which cites electronic intercepts and other clandestine information, were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The CIA last month concluded that Prince Mohammed had likely ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, and President Trump and leaders in Congress were briefed on intelligence gathered by the spy agency. Mr. Trump afterward questioned the CIA’s conclusion about the prince, saying “maybe he did; and maybe he didn’t.”

The previously unreported excerpts reviewed by the Journal state that the CIA has “medium-to-high confidence” that Prince Mohammed “personally targeted” Khashoggi and “probably ordered his death.” It added: “To be clear, we lack direct reporting of the Crown Prince issuing a kill order.”

The electronic messages sent by Prince Mohammed were to Saud al-Qahtani, according to the CIA. Mr. Qahtani supervised the 15-man team that killed Mr. Khashoggi and, during the same period, was also in direct communication with the team’s leader in Istanbul, the assessment says. The content of the messages between Prince Mohammed and Mr. Qahtani isn’t known, the document says. It doesn’t say in what form the messages were sent.

It is unclear from the excerpts whether the 2017 comments regarding luring Mr. Khashoggi to a third country cited in the assessment are from Prince Mohammed directly, or from someone else describing his remarks.

Saudi Arabia has acknowledged Mr. Khashoggi was murdered in the consulate. But it has denied Prince Mohammed had any role and blamed the operation on rogue operatives. The Saudi Public Prosecutor’s office last month announced charges against 11 Saudis in connection with Mr. Khashoggi’s death, saying it would seek the death penalty in five cases. The office didn’t release their names.

The U.S. Treasury Department in mid-November slapped sanctions on 17 Saudis whom it linked to the killing. But Mr. Trump, in a statement days later, said he intended to maintain strong relations with the crown prince because of Saudi Arabia’s opposition to Iran, its investments in the U.S. and its role in the oil market.

The Trump administration’s posture has angered many in Congress, and the intercepts and intelligence gathered by the CIA may complicate Mr. Trump’s efforts to maintain relations with Prince Mohammed, the de facto leader one of the world’s biggest oil producers. The two are among the world’s leaders meeting this weekend in Buenos Aires for a summit of Group of 20 nations.

Earlier this week, the Senate voted to begin consideration of a resolution to withdraw U.S. support for a Saudi-led military coalition fighting against Houthi rebels in Yemen, with senators venting their frustration over Mr. Trump’s reluctance to hold Prince Mohammed responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

A 600 percent increase in opioid antidote price cost taxpayers more than $142 million
▻https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2018/11/19/kaleo-opioid-overdose-antidote-naloxone-evzio-rob-portman-medicare-medicaid/2060033002

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2018/11/01/USAT/534015ad-22f3-41f6-8e58-5abf4db75d16-AP_Opioid_Epidemic_Test_Strips.JPG

As the nation struggled with the rising number of opioid deaths, a private drug company increased the price of an overdose antidote more than 600 percent, a Senate subcommittee says in a new report.

The increase has cost the federal Medicare and Medicaid health programs more than $142 million since 2014, according the Homeland Security permanent subcommittee on investigations.

Richmond, Virginia-based Kaleo increased the price of its auto-injectable overdose-reversal drug EVZIO from $575 to $4,100, the subcommittee reported.

The company also changed its sales strategy and encouraged doctors to complete paperwork identifying it as a medically necessary drug, allowing them to bypass potentially cheaper generic versions of naloxone, the subcommittee reported.

►https://usbeketrica.com/article/silicon-valley-capitalisme-dechaine

Le coût de la vie dans la « Valley » assomme aussi ceux qui, comme Gee et Virginia, respectivement fondateur d’une start-up et au service financier d’Hewlett-Packard, gagnent 350 000 dollars par an, soit six fois le salaire national médian d’un foyer, mais appartiennent ici à la « classe moyenne ». Coût exorbitant de la vie, inflation des loyers, creusement des inégalités, pollution environnementale liée à la production de silicium dans les années 1970…

Are Jared and Ivanka Good for the Jews? - The New York Times

Jewish communities stand more divided than ever on whether to embrace or denounce Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

By Amy Chozick and Hannah Seligson
Nov. 17, 2018

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/style/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner.html

On election night in Beverly Hills, Jason Blum, the hot shot horror-movie producer, was accepting an award at the Israel Film Festival. The polls in a string of midterm contests were closing, and Mr. Blum, a vocal critic of President Trump, was talking about how much was at stake.

“The past two years have been hard for all of us who cherish the freedoms we enjoy as citizens of this country,” Mr. Blum said.

That’s when the crowd of mostly Jewish producers and power brokers started to chant, “We like Trump!” An Israeli man stepped onto the stage to try to pull Mr. Blum away from the microphone as the crowd at the Saban Theater Steve Tisch Cinema Center cheered.

“As you can see from this auditorium, it’s the end of civil discourse,” Mr. Blum said, as security rushed the stage to help him. “Thanks to our president, anti-Semitism is on the rise.”
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In the weeks after a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, in one of the most horrific acts of anti-Semitism in years, debates about the president’s role in stoking extremism have roiled American Jews — and forced an uncomfortable reckoning between Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and his daughter and son-in-law’s Jewish faith.
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers greets Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump near the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Rabbi Jeffrey Myers greets Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump near the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
Rabbis and Jewish leaders have raged on Twitter and in op-eds, in sermons and over shabbat dinners, over how to reconcile the paradox of Jared Kushner, the descendant of Holocaust survivors, and Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism to marry Mr. Kushner.

To some Jews, the couple serves as a bulwark pushing the Trump administration toward pro-Israel policies, most notably the decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. To many others, they are the wolves in sheep’s clothing, allowing Mr. Trump to brush aside criticism that his words have fueled the uptick in violent attacks against Jews.

“For Jews who are deeply opposed to Donald Trump and truly believe he is an anti-Semite, it’s deeply problematic that he’s got a Jewish son-in-law and daughter. How can that be?” said Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.
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Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump serve as senior advisers in the White House. At a time when Judaism is under assault — the F.B.I. said this week that anti-Semitic attacks have increased in each of the last three years — they are unabashedly Orthodox, observing shabbat each week, walking to an Orthodox Chabad shul near their Kalorama home in Washington, D.C., dropping their children off at Jewish day school and hanging mezuzas on the doors of their West Wing offices.

After the Pittsburgh attack, Mr. Kushner played a key role in Mr. Trump (eventually) decrying “the scourge of anti-Semitism.” And Mr. Kushner helped arrange the president’s visit to the Squirrel Hill synagogue, including inviting Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States to accompany them. There, in Pittsburgh, thousands marched to protest what one organizer described as the insult of the Mr. Trump’s visit.
Arabella Kushner lights the menorah as her parents look on during a Hanukkah reception in the East Room of the White House in 2017.
Credit
Olivier Douliery/Getty Images

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Arabella Kushner lights the menorah as her parents look on during a Hanukkah reception in the East Room of the White House in 2017.CreditOlivier Douliery/Getty Images
The White House has referenced Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump’s religion to dismiss accusations that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric has emboldened anti-Semites. “The president is the grandfather of several Jewish grandchildren,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told reporters.

Using the couple in this way has unnerved many Jews who oppose the president and say Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump violated the sacred, if sometimes unspoken, communal code that mandates Jews take care of each other during times of struggle. “I’m more offended by Jared than I am by President Trump,” said Eric Reimer, a lawyer in New York who was on Mr. Kushner’s trivia team at The Frisch School, a modern Orthodox yeshiva in New Jersey that they both attended.

“We, as Jews, are forced to grapple with the fact that Jared and his wife are Jewish, but Jared is participating in acts of Chillul Hashem,” said Mr. Reimer, using the Hebrew term for when a Jew behaves immorally while in the presence of others.
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For Mr. Reimer, who hasn’t spoken to Mr. Kushner since high school, one of those incidents was the administration’s Muslim ban, which prompted members of the Frisch community to sign an open letter to Mr. Kushner imploring him “to exercise the influence and access you have to annals of power to ensure others don’t suffer the same fate as millions of our co-religionists.”

Leah Pisar, president of the Aladdin Project, a Paris-based group that works to counter Holocaust denial, and whose late father, Samuel Pisar, escaped Auschwitz and advised John F. Kennedy, said she found it “inconceivable that Jared could stay affiliated with the administration after Pittsburgh” and called Mr. Kushner the president’s “fig leaf.”

Those kinds of accusations are anathema to other Jews, particularly a subset of Orthodox Jews who accused liberal Jews of politicizing the Pittsburgh attack and who say that any policies that would weaken Israel are the ultimate act of anti-Semitism.
Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner at the opening ceremony of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in May.
Credit
Sebastian Scheiner/Associated Press

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Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner at the opening ceremony of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in May.CreditSebastian Scheiner/Associated Press
“Jared and Ivanka are one of us as traditional Jews who care deeply about Israel,” said Ronn Torossian, a New York publicist whose children attend the Ramaz School, the same Upper East Side yeshiva where Mr. Kushner’s eldest daughter Arabella was once enrolled. “I look at them as part of our extended family.”

Even some Jews who dislike Mr. Trump’s policies and recoil at his political style may feel a reluctance to criticize the country’s most prominent Orthodox Jewish couple, grappling with the age-old question that has haunted the Jewish psyche for generations: Yes, but is it good for the Jews?
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To that end, even as liberal New York Jews suggest the couple would be snubbed when they eventually return to the city, many in the Orthodox community would likely embrace them. “They certainly won’t be banned, but I don’t think most synagogues would give them an aliyah,” said Ethan Tucker, a rabbi and president of the Hadar yeshiva in New York, referring to the relatively limited honor of being called to make a blessing before and after the reading of the Torah. (Mr. Tucker is also the stepson of Joe Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate to run on a major party ticket in the U.S.) “I don’t think people generally honor people they feel were accomplices to politics and policies they abhor,” Mr. Tucker said.

Haskel Lookstein, who serves as rabbi emeritus of the Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, the modern Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side that Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump attended, wrote in an open letter to Mr. Trump that he was “deeply troubled” by the president saying “You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” in response to the white nationalist riots in Charlottesville, Va.

When reached last week to comment about the president’s daughter and son-in-law days after the Pittsburgh attack, Mr. Lookstein said simply, “I love them and that’s one of the reasons I don’t talk about them.”

Talk to enough Jews about Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, and you begin to realize that the couple has become a sort of Rorschach test, with defenders and detractors seeing what they want to see as it relates to larger rifts about Jewish identity.

“It’s not about Jared and Ivanka,” said Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “People look at them through the prism of their own worldviews.”
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From left to right on front row, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his wife Sara Netanyahu, Mr. Kushner, Ms. Trump, and the U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin at the opening ceremony of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.
Credit
Sebastian Scheiner/Associated Press

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From left to right on front row, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his wife Sara Netanyahu, Mr. Kushner, Ms. Trump, and the U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin at the opening ceremony of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.CreditSebastian Scheiner/Associated Press
Those worldviews are rapidly changing. One in five American Jews now describes themselves as having no religion and identifying as Jews based only on ancestry, ethnicity or culture, according to Pew. By contrast, in the 1950s, 93 percent of American Jews identified as Jews based on religion.
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As Jews retreat from membership to reform synagogues, historically made up of political liberals who were at the forefront of the fight for Civil Rights and other progressive issues, Chabad-Lubavitch, the Orthodox Hasidic group with which Mr. Kushner is affiliated, has become a rapidly-growing Jewish movement. The growth of Chabad correlates with fierce divisions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a small but growing contingent of American Jews who prioritize Israel above any other political or social issue.

Mr. Kushner, in particular, has become a sort of proxy for these larger schisms about faith and Israel, according to Jewish experts. “There is a great deal of anxiety around the coming of the Orthodox,” said Dr. Sarna, the Brandeis professor. “Jared in every way — his Orthodoxy, his Chabad ties, his views on Israel — symbolizes those changes.”

Mr. Kushner is the scion of wealthy real-estate developers and his family has donated millions of dollars to the Jewish community, including through a foundation that gives to settlements in the West Bank. Mr. Kushner influenced the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy, to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, and to shutter a Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington.

“You’d be hard pressed to find a better supporter of Israel than Donald Trump and Jared plays a role in that,” said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. Mr. Kushner is currently working on a Middle East peace plan expected to be rolled out in the coming months.

Haim Saban, an entertainment magnate and pro-Israel Democrat, is optimistic about Mr. Kushner’s efforts. He said in an interview from his hotel in Israel that although he disagrees with some of Mr. Trump’s policies, “Jared and by extension the president understand the importance of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel on multiple levels — security, intelligence, but most of all, shared values.”
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That embrace has only exacerbated tensions with secular Jews who overwhelmingly vote Democratic and oppose Mr. Trump. According to a 2018 survey by the American Jewish Committee, 41 percent of Jews said they strongly disagree with Mr. Trump’s handling of U.S.-Israeli relations and 71 percent had an overall unfavorable opinion of Mr. Trump. (In response to questions for this story, a White House press aide referred reporters to an Ami magazine poll of 263 Orthodox Jews in the tristate area published in August. Eighty-two percent said they would vote for President Trump in 2020.)

“To wave a flag and say ‘Oh, he’s obviously pro-Jewish because he moved the embassy’ just absolutely ignores what we know to be a deeply alarming rise of anti-Semitism and all sorts of dog-whistling and enabling of the alt-right,” said Andy Bachman, a prominent progressive rabbi in New York.
President Trump praying at the Western Wall.
Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

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President Trump praying at the Western Wall.CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times
In September, Mr. Kushner and his top advisers, Jason D. Greenblatt and Avi Berkowitz, hosted a private dinner at the Pierre Hotel on the Upper East Side. Over a kosher meal, Mr. Kushner, aware of concerns within the Jewish community that Israel policy had become an overly partisan issue, fielded the advice of a range of Jewish leaders, including hedge-fund billionaire and Republican donor Paul Singer and Mr. Saban, to craft his Middle East peace plan. “He called and said ’I’ll bring 10 Republicans and you bring 10 Democrats,’” Mr. Saban said.

The undertaking will only bring more kvetching about Mr. Kushner. Indeed, some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent Jewish supporters have already expressed their displeasure at any deal that would require Israel to give up land.

“I’m not happy with Jared promoting a peace deal that’s sending a message that we’re ready to ignore the horrors of the Palestinian regime,” said Morton A. Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America and a friend of Republican megadonor Sheldon G. Adelson.

“But …” Mr. Klein added, as if self-aware of how other Jews will view his position, “I am a fanatical, pro-Israel Zionist.”
Amy Chozick is a New York-based writer-at-large and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, writing about the personalities and power struggles in business, politics and media.

Amazon HQ2 Will Cost Taxpayers at Least $4.6 Billion, More Than Twice What the Company Claimed, New Study Shows
▻https://theintercept.com/2018/11/15/amazon-hq2-long-island-city-virginia-subsidies

Amazon’s announcement this week that it will open its new headquarters in New York City and northern Virginia came with the mind-boggling revelation that the corporate giant will rake in $2.1 billion in local government subsidies. But an analysis by the nation’s leading tracker of corporate subsidies finds that the government handouts will actually amount to at least $4.6 billion. But even that figure, which accounts for state and local perks, doesn’t take into account a gift that Amazon will (...)

#Amazon #urbanisme

https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/11/RTS25U2M-amazon-virginia-1542307641-e1542307732421.jpg

‘Tell Your Boss’: Recording Is Seen to Link Saudi Crown Prince More Strongly to Khashoggi Killing - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/world/middleeast/jamal-khashoggi-killing-saudi-arabia.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/11/13/us/politics/13dc-intel-print/13dc-intel1-facebookJumbo.jpg

The recording, shared last month with the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel, is seen by intelligence officials as some of the strongest evidence linking Prince Mohammed to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia resident and Washington Post columnist whose death prompted an international outcry.

While the prince was not mentioned by name, American intelligence officials believe “your boss” was a reference to Prince Mohammed. Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, one of 15 Saudis dispatched to Istanbul to confront Mr. Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate there, made the phone call and spoke in Arabic, the people said.

Turkish intelligence officers have told American officials they believe that Mr. Mutreb, a security officer who frequently traveled with Prince Mohammed, was speaking to one of the prince’s aides. While translations of the Arabic may differ, the people briefed on the call said Mr. Mutreb also said to the aide words to the effect of “the deed was done.”

“A phone call like that is about as close to a smoking gun as you are going to get,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer now at the Brookings Institution. “It is pretty incriminating evidence.”

#mbs #khashoggi

All the president’s men: what to make of Trump’s bizarre new painting | Hannah Jane Parkinson | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/15/president-trump-new-painting-white-house-republican

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b65950a10354ae7bf76edc1ff14f278d0a2586c8/0_0_1800_1185/master/1800.jpg?width=1020&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=9cad7931c5fcb59eae10ed424276e2bc

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, unless it’s a shredded Banksy, obviously, which is worth around £1m. But how to put a value on the majestic artwork Donald Trump was revealed to have gracing the wall outside the Oval Office, as eagle-eyed viewers of 60 Minutes spotted?

So far, we know of two other “artworks” that Trump has: that Photoshopped picture of his inauguration crowd (dude, let it go), and the electoral college map. It is no wonder Trump wanted to spruce the place up in his own way, given that he referred to the White House as “a dump”. I still cackle at this, given its sheer, disparaging rudeness – like how when Location, Location, Location’s Phil shows a couple around a three-bedroom semi with a north-facing garden, Kirstie mugs to the camera and draws an imaginary knife across her throat.

#on_est_en_2018 #allégorie #images #propagande #représentation

Photos : Oil Spills After Tunisian Ferry T-Bones Anchored Containership in Mediterranean – gCaptain
▻https://gcaptain.com/photos-oil-spills-after-tunisian-ferry-t-bones-anchored-containership-in-m

https://gcaptain.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Do_OgAjXoAE_nu2.jpg

Authorities in France and Italy are responding to a major oil slick after a ferry collided with an anchored containership in the Mediterranean Sea off the island of Corsica.

The collision occurred Sunday morning when the Tunisian roll-on/roll-off ferry Ulysses collided broadside with the Cypriot registered containership CLS Virginia approximately 17 miles (28 km) north of Cape Corsica. 

The collision caused a breach of the containership’s hull measuring several meters and resulting in the release of bunker fuel.

An oil slick measuring 20 km long by several hundred meters wide has been observed moving to the northwest, moving away from Corsica, according to France’s Maritime Prefecture for the Mediterranean.

Photos show the bow of the ferry embedded in the starboard side of the containership, which is not loaded with any containers.

« On se comportait comme des porcs » : un an après #MeToo, des hommes racontent comment ils ont changé leur comportement
▻https://www.francetvinfo.fr/culture/cinema/affaire-harvey-weinstein/on-se-comportait-comme-des-porcs-un-an-apres-metoo-des-hommes-racontent

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/image/75j0xc8g5-b3cf/1500/843/15917135.jpg

Pour le sociologue Eric Fassin, cette impression d’être pointé du doigt n’est pas étonnante, car le mouvement « a amené les hommes à se poser des questions sur ce qui relevait jusque-là de l’évidence » et « à questionner leurs propres privilèges ».

Or, le privilège du privilégié, c’est de ne pas penser à ses privilèges.Eric Fassin, sociologue spécialiste des études de genreà franceinfo

« Ce que révèle ce mouvement, ce n’est pas simplement qu’il y a des hommes violents, mais que la norme favorise de telles pratiques, poursuit le sociologue. Or, si la norme est problématique, il est compliqué de se dire qu’on n’est pas concerné. »

The truth about false rape accusations — Quartz
▻https://qz.com/980766/the-truth-about-false-rape-accusations

https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ap_384795252375-e1494475124719.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1400

False rape accusations loom large in the cultural imagination. We don’t forget the big ones: The widely-read 2014 Rolling Stone article, later retracted, about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia; the 2006 accusations against innocent members of the Duke University lacrosse team. These cases are readily cited by defense attorneys and Republican lawmakers and anyone else who wants a reason to discuss the dangers of false allegations. What if a woman has consensual sex, and then regrets it the next day? What if a woman gets dumped by her boyfriend and decides to accuse him of rape as revenge? What if she’s just doing it for attention? Are false accusations reaching epidemic levels in today’s hard-drinking hookup culture, where the lines of consent have been blurred? Critics argue that reports of rape should be treated with more caution, since men’s lives are so often ruined by women’s malicious lies.

But my research—including academic studies, journalistic accounts, and cases recorded in the US National Registry of Exonerations—suggests that every part of this narrative is wrong. What’s more, it’s wrong in ways that help real rapists escape justice, while perversely making it more likely that we will miss the signs of false reports.

#viol

Opinion | Is Boycotting Israel ‘Hate’? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/opinion/is-boycotting-israel-hate.html

Opponents of the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement are involved in a dishonest branding campaign.

By Joseph Levine
Mr. Levine is a philosophy professor and a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council.

The debate over the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement against Israel has been one of the most contentious in American political culture for more than a decade. Now, given the tumultuous and deadly events of the past several months, it is likely to heat up further.

Casualties in the ongoing protests in Gaza, which began in March, continue to mount; nearly 180 mostly unarmed Palestinian protesters have been killed by Israeli forces, with more than 18,000 injured, according to the United Nations. Dozens of those deaths came in mid-May, as the United States took the provocative step of moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Tensions will surely spike again following last week’s decision by the United States to stop billions in funding to the United Nations agency that delivers aid to Palestinian refugees.

B.D.S. began in 2005 in response to a call by more than 100 Palestinian civil society organizations, with the successful movement against apartheid South Africa in mind. The reasoning was that Israel, with its half-century occupation of Palestinian territories, would be equally deserving of the world’s condemnation until its policies changed to respect Palestinian political and civil rights. B.D.S. calls for its stance of nonviolent protest to remain in effect until three conditions are met: that Israel ends its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantles the wall; that Israel recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and that Israel respects, protects and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in United Nations Resolution 194.

State of Virginia Confirms Immigrant Teenagers Were Strapped to Chairs With Bags Over Their Heads | Democracy Now!

▻https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/14/headlines/state_of_virginia_confirms_immigrant_teenagers_were_strapped_to_chairs

https://www.democracynow.org/images/headlines/68/43368/full_hd/h05-child-detention.jpg

In immigration news, a review by the state of Virginia has confirmed immigrant teenagers were strapped to chairs and had mesh bags placed over their heads while being held at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center. But the state concluded this harsh treatment did not meet the state’s legal threshold of abuse or neglect. The state review came after the Associated Press revealed in June that children as young as 14 said they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.

#droits_humains

Les Etats-Unis, homme malade des pays du Nord
▻https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/demographie/article/2018/08/16/les-etats-unis-l-homme-malade-des-pays-du-nord_5342838_1652705.html ?

https://img.lemde.fr/2018/08/16/0/0/2705/1351/644/322/60/0/9c99b29_e_5pfOJVqci5Dimnpf35SF5M.jpg

Les Etats-Unis sont atteints d’une maladie « systémique », et cela devrait inciter les autres pays développés à la vigilance. C’est, en substance, la conclusion de deux études publiées, mercredi 15 août, dans le British Medical Journal. La première, conduite par Steven Woolf (Virginia Commonwealth University), révèle une hausse inquiétante de la mortalité chez les adultes américains d’âge moyen au cours des dix-sept dernières années et singulièrement depuis 2012, où l’espérance de vie américaine a commencé à stagner, avant de décliner à partir de 2015.

Outre-Atlantique, cette baisse de l’espérance de vie enregistrée en 2015 s’est même confirmée en 2016. L’indice pointait alors à 78,6 ans, soit 0,3 an de moins qu’en 2014. Des données préliminaires rendues publiques en mai par l’Associated Press indiquaient que l’année 2017 devait connaître une nouvelle chute de la longévité. Elle serait alors la troisième année d’affilée de déclin – situation sans précédent depuis plusieurs décennies.

Pour comprendre, Steven Woolf et ses coauteurs ont comparé les caractéristiques de la mortalité de la population américaine âgée de 25 à 64 ans, par origine ethnique, entre 1999 et 2016. « Entre 1999 et 2016, les taux de mortalité toutes causes confondues n’augmentent pas uniquement parmi les Blancs, mais aussi chez les Amérindiens », écrivent les auteurs. Les trois autres groupes ethniques étudiés (Noirs, Hispaniques et Asiatiques) ont d’abord connu une baisse de mortalité, qui s’est interrompue entre 2009 et 2011, avant de partir à la hausse.

Premier constat : les overdoses sont la première cause d’accroissement de la mortalité, dans tous les groupes. Les taux de mortalité due à l’utilisation de drogues ou de médicaments augmentent ainsi de plus de 410 % chez les Amérindiens, 150 % chez les Noirs, 80 % chez les Hispaniques…

Lire aussi : « La crise des opioïdes travaille en profondeur, et pour longtemps, la société américaine »

Ce sont les stigmates de la crise des opioïdes qui frappe les Etats-Unis depuis la mise sur le marché, au milieu des années 1990, de puissants antalgiques proches de la morphine. Ceux-ci ont plongé dans la dépendance plus de 2 millions d’Américains et entraînent aux Etats-Unis plusieurs dizaines de milliers de morts par an. Ce constat n’est pas nouveau.
Des inégalités sociales fortes

Mais, soulignent Steven Woolf et ses coauteurs, ce n’est pas la seule cause. « Les taux de mortalité à mi-vie, expliquent les chercheurs, ont aussi augmenté pour un large éventail de maladies touchant de multiples fonctions et organes du corps humain. » Chez les Amérindiens, les taux de mortalité entre 25 et 64 ans ont ainsi augmenté pour douze causes différentes, dont les maladies dues à l’hypertension (+ 270 %), le cancer du foie (+ 115 %), les hépatites virales (+ 112 %), les maladies du système nerveux central (+ 100 %)… Suicides, maladies hépatiques liées ou non à l’alcool, tumeurs cérébrales, maladies respiratoires ou métaboliques ou encore obésité font grimper la mortalité dans parfois plusieurs groupes.

Les taux de mortalité augmentent à travers l’ensemble de la population américaine pour une douzaine d’affections. Cela signale, pour les auteurs, que la dégradation de la santé aux Etats-Unis est le fait « de causes profondes et systémiques ». « Nous soupçonnons que l’inégalité croissante des revenus, les déficiences de l’éducation, la fracture sociale et le stress peuvent jouer un rôle important, explique M. Woolf. D’autres facteurs pourraient inclure le manque d’accès universel aux soins, la possession d’armes à feu par la population et les taux élevés d’obésité. »

#Santé_publique #Opioides #Etats_unis #Mortalité

▻https://mavisstaples.bandcamp.com/track/no-time-for-crying

The history Mavis recalls from her early years touring with her family as The Staple Singers, the prejudice, ugliness and danger, well it’s all still here. In response, the singer has delivered If All I Was Was Black, ten songs about contemporary America today, a present day filled with ghosts of the past. “Nothing has changed,” Mavis remarked in early August, just days before neo-Nazis marched with swastika flags in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a young woman was murdered. "We are still in it.”

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Aux #Etats-Unis, lumière sur les disparitions et meurtres d’#Amérindiennes
▻https://information.tv5monde.com/info/aux-etats-unis-lumiere-sur-les-disparitions-et-meurtres-d-amer

https://information.tv5monde.com/sites/info.tv5monde.com/files/750d50e9b9daa3f35b16d8b04d8e15df948a2dc6.jpg

Autre facteur : les polices tribales n’ont pas autorité pour poursuivre les non-#Amérindiens, même pour des agressions commises sur leurs terres. La police fédérale délaisse beaucoup de cas et quand elle prend en charge un dossier, des mois ont parfois été perdus.

Path To Radicalization: A Mother Turns to Hate (2018)
▻https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/path-to-radicalization-a-mother-turns-to-hate-2018

Jacob Goodwin, a self-proclaimed white nationalist, was charged with injuring a black counterprotester in the wake of the August Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. As Goodwin...

Virginia Eubanks : « Les algorithmes servent de palliatifs à l’empathie »
▻https://m.usbeketrica.com/article/les-algorithmes-servent-de-palliatifs-a-l-empathie

Dans son ouvrage publié en janvier, Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks déplore l’« automatisation des inégalités » à l’oeuvre dans de nombreux programmes sociaux aux États-Unis, sous l’action d’algorithmes prétendument « neutres ». Futur.e.s l’a rencontrée en amont du festival qui se tiendra à Paris les 21, 22 et 23 juin. L’intitulé de l’ouvrage de Virginia Eubanks est d’une transparence cristalline. Automating Inequality : How High-tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor annonce la couleur dès sa (...)

#algorithme #solutionnisme #discrimination

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Big Oil eyes U.S. minority groups to build offshore drilling support | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters
▻https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL1N1TN29Y

The largest U.S. oil and gas lobby group is seeking to convince Hispanic and black communities to support the Trump administration’s proposed expansion of offshore drilling, arguing it would create high paying jobs, including for storm-displaced Puerto Ricans.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) launched its #Explore_Offshore campaign earlier this month to counter offshore drilling foes in coastal southeast states from Virginia to Florida, where lawmakers and governors on both sides of the aisle have expressed fear an oil spill could ruin tourism.

“We want to build support in minority communities because the message that increasing the supply of affordable energy and good paying jobs will resonate,” said Erik Milito, API’s director of Upstream and Industry Operations.

As part of the campaign, API has partnered with a number of black and Hispanic business groups, including the Virginia, Florida and North Carolina Hispanic Chambers of Commerce and the Florida Black Chamber of Commerce and South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce.

A Pew Research poll published in January showed that 56 percent of Hispanics and 54 percent of blacks opposed offshore drilling, compared to 48 percent of white people.

War of Aggression: The Saudi & UAE Slaughter in #Yemen isn’t a Proxy Conflict with Iran
▻https://www.juancole.com/2018/06/aggression-slaughter-conflict.

Richmond, Va. (Informed Comment) – Alongside their throttlehold over which reporters can visit what parts of Yemen, and thus what story they can tell, Saudi and Emirati investments in public relations, lobbying, think-tanks, and political consultants are shaping the narrative about their war there. Headline writers, pundits, Wikipedia, news correspondents, and even some so-called experts frame the asymmetric conflict as a “proxy war.” Sunnis nations led by Saudi Arabia are battling Shi`a Iran and its regional proxies, the story goes; the world’s worst man-made humanitarian disaster thus appears as un-named collateral damage.

#MSM

Reality Winner Has Been in Jail for a Year. Her Prosecution Is Unfair and Unprecedented.

▻https://theintercept.com/2018/06/03/reality-winner-nsa-paul-manafort

THIS IS A tale of two defendants and two systems of justice.

Christmas was coming, and Paul Manafort wanted to spend the holiday with his extended family in the Hamptons, where he owns a four-acre estate that has 10 bedrooms, a pool, a tennis court, a basketball court, a putting green, and a guest cottage. But Manafort was under house arrest in northern Virginia. Suspected of colluding with the Russian government, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump had been indicted on a dozen charges involving conspiracy, money laundering, bank fraud, and lying to federal investigators.

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Paul Manafort’s Hamptons estate, left, and the jail in Lincolnton, right.

A lobbyist who became mysteriously wealthy over the years, Manafort avoided jail by posting $10 million in bond, though he was confined to his luxury condo in Alexandria, Virginia. That’s why, in mid-December, his lawyers asked the judge to make an exception. Manafort’s $2.7 million Virginia home could not provide “adequate accommodations” for his holiday guests, some of whom would have difficulty traveling because of health problems, the lawyers stated. A day later, the judge agreed to the request. Manafort could have his Christmas getaway in the Hamptons.

Hundreds of miles away, another defendant in an eerily related case was not so blessed. Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran and former contractor for the National Security Agency, was sitting in a small-town jail in Lincolnton, Georgia. Arrested a year ago today, on June 3, 2017, Winner was accused of leaking an NSA document that showed how Russians tried to hack American voting systems in 2016.

The bail system plays to the advantage of wealthy defendants like Paul Manafort and Harvey Weinstein (who paid his $1 million bond with a cashier’s check), because they can provide the government with fantastic sums; freedom is quite literally for sale, as in a story Anton Chekhov might have written about czarist Russia. The poor and the unlucky are stuck behind bars, punished before their guilt is determined. Defendants who are unable to pay bail have sometimes been held for years without a trial.

IMAGINE THAT YOU are facing trial but are forbidden from searching for evidence to prove you are innocent. It is a scenario from a totalitarian “Alice in Wonderland” – you may do anything you want to defend yourself except the one thing that might actually help.

That’s a rough approximation of the situation Winner’s lawyers have faced due to a strange twist in her case. She is accused of potentially causing “exceptionally grave damage” to national security by leaking a classified document that, the government claims, contains “national defense information.”

Winner’s lawyers have stated in public filings that they needed to search on the internet to determine whether information in the document was known to a large number of government officials or was in the public domain. This was crucial to their effort to prove that the document did not merit NDI status. But because the document is classified, and because researching its contents on the internet could disclose search queries to hackers who theoretically could compromise the lawyers’ computers or access their routers, they were prohibited from Googling key phrases, according to court filings. In essence, Winner’s lawyers were forbidden from finding out if the document was as sensitive as the government claimed.

He’s pro-incest, pedophilia, and rape. He’s also running for Congress from his parents’ house. - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/06/01/hes-pro-incest-pedophilia-and-rape-hes-also-running-for-congress-fro

He believes in instituting a patriarchal system, with women under the authority of men; he supports abolishing age restrictions for marriage and laws against marital rape; he believes that white supremacy is a “system that works,” that Hitler was a “good thing for Germany,” and that incest should be legalized, at least in the context of marriage. And at one point in a conversation with The Post, he seemed to express admiration for the system run by the Taliban in Afghanistan, noting that the country’s birthrate fell as a consequence of increased opportunities for women after the United States’ more than decade-long intervention.

But Larson, 37, is hoping to take his views toward the mainstream by mounting a campaign for a congressional seat in Virginia, running as an independent libertarian for the state’s 10th district, a swath of land across three counties in Northern Virginia outside the Washington suburbs. The seat is currently held by Republican Barbara Comstock, but has attracted strong Democratic interest; Hillary Clinton won the district by 10 percentage points in 2016.
[…]
The HuffPost reported this week that Larson had created two websites that catered to the furthest fringes of the Internet: suiped.org and incelocalpse.today, information that Larson confirmed in an interview with The Post.

Both websites have since been removed by their domain hosts. Suiped or Suicidal Pedophiles, was a site and self-described organization created to lobby for pedophiles and other convicted or potential sex offenders to be able to kill themselves at clinics legally, according to cached images.

According to a cached image, Incelocalypse was created to “serve as both headquarters and casual hangout for the hardest core of the hardcore incels,” the small but vocal community of “involuntary celibates” online who rage against feminism and a system of female empowerment that has deprived them of sexual gratification, an Internet subculture that has begun to draw some attention by mainstream media outlets.

Larson said he considers himself to be part of the “#incel movement” and said his views took a turn for the more extreme after an acrimonious divorce.

Democratic Candidate Who Criticized Israel Faces Charges of Anti-Semitism - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/us/politics/democrat-israel-anti-semitism.html

À cause d’un livre écrit en tant que journaliste il y a 27 ans, livre que le #new_york_times, dont l’objectivité envers #Israël est légendaire, avait jugé partisan et injuste à l’époque.

WASHINGTON — On Monday evening, at the home of a retired rabbi in Charlottesville, Va., the Democratic nominee for the Fifth Congressional District of Virginia sat down with about 40 Jewish leaders to try to defuse Virginia Republican charges that she was a “virulent anti-Semite.”

At issue was the candidate’s 27-year-old book, “Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship,” a broadside written by Leslie Cockburn, a journalist-turned-politician, with her husband, Andrew Cockburn, that was panned in several reviews as an inflammatory screed.

[...]

When the book was published in 1991, a review in The New York Times described it as “largely dedicated to Israel-bashing for its own sake.”

“Its first message is that, win or lose, smart or dumb, right or wrong, suave or boorish, Israelis are a menace,” the review said. “The second is that the Israeli-American connection is somewhere behind just about everything that ails us.”

Ms. Cockburn told the group on Monday that she was being critical of government policy from a fact-based perspective, not out of animus toward Jews. In the interview, she said she was seeking the endorsement of J Street, a Jewish political group that has set itself up as a progressive alternative to other American Jewish organizations more uncritical of Israeli government policies.

TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the “American Taliban”

▻http://whistlebl0wer.com/traitor-whistleblower-american-taliban

This is the the memoir of the Justice Department legal ethics advisor, Jesselyn Radack, who blew the whistle on government misconduct in the case of the so-called “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh–America’s first terrorism prosecution after 9/11.

http://whistlebl0wer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/TRAITOR.jpg

About the Author

Jesselyn Radack is currently the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower organization. Previously, she served on the DC Bar Legal Ethics Committee and worked at the Justice Department for seven years, first as a trial attorney and later as a legal ethics advisor.

“The Justice Department forced me out of my job” she writes, “placed me under criminal investigation, got me fired from my next job in the private sector, reported me to the state bars in which I’m licensed as an attorney, and put me on the ‘no fly list.’”

Her offense? She believed, erroneously as it turned out, that the Department would not want to use illegally obtained evidence in its prosecution of John Walker Lindh, an American convert to Islam. He had been imprisoned by Afghan warlords in November 2001 soon after the U.S.-led NATO invasion of the country after 9/11.

Lindh, then 20, was a California-born convert to Islam. He had travelled to Yemen on a spiritual quest in 2000, and went to Afghanistan in June 2001 to join the Taliban army at a time when the Taliban government, a United States ally in the 1980s, was still receiving United States aid. Lindh survived a harsh POW camp in which more than three quarters of his 400 fellow Taliban POWs died in chaotic conditions along with an American interrogator.

Radack advised against further federal interrogation of Lindh without a lawyer present because his parents had retained counsel. Later, she blew the whistle when she learned that the department destroyed evidence of her advice, and then withheld the evidence from a Virginia federal court, where Lindh faced charges of murder and treason in a high-profile prosecution helping inflame the public in the earliest stages of the war.

Radack’s gripping tale describes a culture clash at the Justice Department between due process advocates and conviction-hungry zealots.

#Jesselyn_Radack

DoD Offers to Host New NATO Command > U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE > News Release View
▻https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1512632/dod-offers-to-host-new-nato-command

The U.S. Department of Defense announced today that it has officially offered to host the proposed NATO Joint Force Command for the Atlantic at its naval facilities in Norfolk, Virginia.

#OTAN #Etats-Unis #bas_les_masques #tant_qu'à_faire

Happy slaves? The peculiar story of three Virginia school textbooks | Discover Richmond | richmond.com
▻http://www.richmond.com/discover-richmond/happy-slaves-the-peculiar-story-of-three-virginia-school-textbooks/article_47e79d49-eac8-575d-ac9d-1c6fce52328f.html

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/richmond.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/4b/f4bc07b7-c174-5aa8-b2aa-5a340d42ff04/5ae07d70d5bae.preview.jpg?resize=920%2C505

The textbook said slaves were happy, often referring to them as servants. It glorified Confederates. And it said precious little about women beyond Martha Washington and Pocahontas.

“It makes you wonder how we got so many Virginians, with so few women,” quipped Eichelman, now 82.

The book was “Virginia: History, Government, Geography,” and it was one of a trio of state-commissioned texts – the others were for fourth grade and high school – that taught Confederate-friendly “Lost Cause” ideas to a generation of Virginians and cast the state’s segregationist political leaders in a favorable light.

If you were a Virginian between fourth and 11th grades from 1957 to the 1970s, you may well have gotten a dose of this official state history. The books were estimated to reach more than a million students.

Why care about 50-year-old textbooks?