region:eastern europe

Agrarian Justice | Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe
http://www.tni.org/briefing/land-concentration-land-grabbing-and-peoples-struggles-europe
http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/themes/custom/tni960/images/banner-top.png

Land grabbing is widely assumed to be happening only in the global South, but an in-depth analysis by a team of researchers shows that land grabbing is also expanding into Europe.

Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe (PDF, 2.95MB) http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/land_in_europe_1.pdf

Executive summary

The report, involving 25 authors from 11 countries, reveals the hidden scandal of how a few big private business entities have gained control of ever-greater areas of European land. It exposes how these land elites have been actively supported by a huge injection of public funds – at a time when all other public funding is being subjected to massive cuts. While some of these processes – in particular ever-increasing land concentration — are not new, they have accelerated in recent decades in particular in Eastern Europe. They have also paved the way for a new sector of foreign and domestic actors to emerge on the European stage, many tied into increasingly global commodity chains, and all looking to profit from the increasingly speculative commodity of land.

Le Monde’s Natalie Nougayrède : ’This is quite a revolution’ | Media | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/may/05/le-monde-editor-revolution?utm

Les explications bizarres de Natalie Nougayrède

Le Monde’s Natalie Nougayrède: ’This is quite a revolution’

The first woman to run a French national daily title defends her decision to run a full-page anti-gay marriage advert

#lemonde #journalisme #Média

Le racisme contre les bédouins en #Israël. What’s so special about one Israeli TV personality’s racism? -

Opinion By Rawia Aburabia

Haaretz Daily Newspaper

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/what-s-so-special-about-one-israeli-tv-personality-s-racism.premium-1.51819

Avri Gilad’s statement that Bedouin have taken over Israel’s Negev by force is overtly racist - but so are many of the state’s policies. Here are some facts on the Bedouin population in Israel.

Le père de la doctrine de financement des partisans afghans en guerre contre l’envahisseur l’URSS, Zbigniew Brzezinski http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski, propose l’instauration d’une zone de libre-échange transatlantique comme solution au déclin de l’occident

http://euobserver.com/economic/119871

Il n’y a pas que les États-Unis et la CIA qui ont lourdement aidé au développement des islamistes. Il y aussi, par exemple, Margaret Thatcher : Why Margaret Thatcher Loved Islamists
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/why-margaret-thatcher-loved-islamists

Overlooked in both portrayals is her support of political Islamism and, by extension, jihadis. In December 1979, Thatcher advocated political Islam as a counterweight to left-wing or communist ideologies, which she derogatively dubbed “imported Marxism.” As cited in Mark Curtis’ Secret Affairs, Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, she said:

“I do not believe that we should judge Islam by events in Iran…There is a tide of self-confidence and self-awareness in the Muslim world which preceded the Iranian revolution, and will outlast its present excesses. The West should recognize this with respect, not hostility. The Middle East is an area where we all have much at stake. It is in our own interests, as well as in the interests of the people of that region, that they build on their own deep religious traditions…”

Thatcher’s statement that “our interests” and “the interests of the people of the region” are one and the same is rooted in a particular type of British imperialist strategy that was articulated by Frederick Lugard.

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

Dr. Bishara’s speech at the Seventh Al Jazeera Forum

http://english.dohainstitute.org/content/233a0308-d7b9-406d-b6ef-456177fed58c

Une réflexion profonde sur les révolutions arabes et leur place dans l’histoire

What a wondrous thing a revolution is. It is a historical event, by virtue of the fact that it is an actual, materialist, immediate and tangible incident, and one which, with the aid of the communications revolution and the melting of time zones, we can all become real-time spectators to. Yet a revolution also lies outside of the path of history, since it contradicts hitherto apparent chains of causality. It forms a break in the normal process of history, in which subjectivity is subsumed into objective reality. “Revolutions” are one type of  rare occurrence in which groups of citizens act with complete freedom of will, and in which those citizens’ rejection of the status quo is turned into a challenge against the standing regime. When citizens thus challenge the regime during a revolution, they do so without fear for their lives.

Defined by collective action, a revolution also forms a historic moment which takes a certain group of intellectuals and pundits unawares, leaving them confused. This group then reacts by faulting the revolution its unpredictability. In some cases, they declare that the revolution was never a revolution after all, but rather some form of random, arbitrary act and one which is inherently unruly-thus absolving them of not having foreseen the event.

To understand it by a value judgment, a revolution is an act of opposition to an extant injustice, during which neutrality is no longer an acceptable choice, and for which support is a virtue. This is why all those who awaited the revolution support it when it appears, yet there remains a diversity of opinion towards the revolution within the intelligentsia.

http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html
2013_wpfi_world_press_freedom_map.jpg (Image JPEG, 1900x1365 pixels) - Redimensionnée (44%)
http://en.rsf.org/IMG/jpg/2013_wpfi_world_press_freedom_map.jpg
#RSF

British Labour Party steps up anti-immigrant rhetoric - World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/14/immi-m14.html

British Labour Party steps up anti-immigrant rhetoric
By Robert Stevens

14 March 2013

The recent Eastleigh by-election has been the occasion for a marked shift to the right in official politics, with the Labour Party assuming pole position.

The Liberal Democrats managed to retain the seat but under conditions of a significant collapse in their vote and that of the Conservatives. With Labour recording virtually no change, the anti-European and anti-immigration United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) benefited from a swing of nearly 20 percent in its favour.

Migrations #asile #royaume-uni

Morozov et la rhétorique web - Repubblica.it
http://www.repubblica.it/politica/2013/03/05/news/morozov_english-53968261

Dans l’édition anglaise de la Repubblica, Evgeny Morozov analyse la montée du mouvement de Beppe Grillo. La #politique a toujours besoin de leaders et de messages universels. Internet n’est-il pas une astuce pour légitimer un mouvement d’amateurs ? L’arrivée de Grillo et de son mouvement ne tient pas à l’ère de l’internet, mais bien plus aux problèmes structurels de la politique et de l’économie italienne. Le mouvement 5 étoiles n’est pas sans chefs, ni hiérarchie, contrairement à ce qu’il voudrait (...)

#démocratie

[Blog] Je viens de passer une semaine à recenser des « vrais pokémons », selon une définition qui m’est personnelle.

http://hyperbate.fr/dernier/?p=22640

Activité terriblement addictive...

http://25.media.tumblr.com/93f7dc8d7ba1f5810f97af646c97d200/tumblr_mgzu981WJx1s3lktlo1_1280.jpg

#shameless_autopromo

Quelques éléments pour une #histoire critique du #sionisme :
http://libcom.org/history/impossible-reconciliation-contradictions-labor-zionism

Herzl also framed his argument to appeal to the Jewish bourgeoisie’s hope to quell the revolutionary impulses of the Jewish people. Writing in the The Jewish State, Herzl warned against the trend of the oppressed Jew “becom[ing] a revolutionary proletariat, the corporals of every revolutionary party.” This applied to both the working class and the Jewish intelligentsia, “We [Jews] continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellectuals who find no outlet… Educated Jews without means are now rapidly becoming socialists.” Herzl went as far as to state that the Zionist solution provided the only means to control the Jewish masses: “The Jews will serve as volatile revolutionary material just as long as the Jewish Question is not solved along lines suggested by us.”

#socialisme

"Deutschland über alles"
RECYCLAGE – Les Allemands exportent leurs retraités en Europe de l’Est et en Asie | Big Browser
►http://bigbrowser.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/12/28/recyclage-les-allemands-exportent-leurs-retraites-en-europe-

De plus en plus de vieux Allemands malades sont envoyés dans des maisons de retraite et des centres de rééducation à l’étranger en raison de la hausse des prix et de la dégradation de la qualité des traitements en Allemagne.

Les Allemands exportent leurs retraités en Europe de l’Est et en Asie | Big Browser
►http://bigbrowser.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/12/28/recyclage-les-allemands-exportent-leurs-retraites-en-europe-

De plus en plus de vieux Allemands malades sont envoyés dans des maisons de retraite et des centres de rééducation à l’étranger en raison de la hausse des prix et de la dégradation de la qualité des traitements en Allemagne. En 2011, environ 7 140 Allemands vivaient dans des maisons de retraite en Hongrie, 3 000 en République tchèque, et un peu plus de 600 en Slovaquie – un flux qualifié de « déportation inhumaine » par les organisations sociales.

Et la tendance n’est pas près de diminuer, compte tenu du système de santé allemand, trop cher (entre 2 900 euros et 3 400 euros par mois pour une chambre dans une maison de retraite), et du vieillissement de la population.

Germany ’exporting’ old and sick to foreign care homes
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/26/german-elderly-foreign-care-homes

According to Germany’s federal bureau of statistics, more than 400,000 senior citizens are currently unable to afford a German retirement home, a figure that is growing by around 5% a year.

#vieillesse #retraite #pauvreté #capitalisme #Allemagne

Using Passports to Construct Enemies?

http://www.globalpolicy.org/home/172-general/52142-using-passports-to-construct-enemies.html

In times of increasing mobility of individuals across borders, citizenship rights have become central to understand geopolitical disputes. This is particularly true in Eastern Europe, where passport have become weapons of foreign policy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russian passports have certainly facilitated Abkhazian and South Ossetian separatism in Georgia and allowed Moscow to launch a military intervention in the country in 2008. Some argue that “Russia has ‘weaponized’ citizenship by combining its right to grant citizenship with its sovereign ‘right’ or ‘duty’ to protect its citizens at home and abroad.” Governments in Georgia, Latvia and Estonia have also used citizenship rights to prevent their ethnic Russian populations from gaining political power in their country. Ultimately, Xenia de Graaf concludes that “ as long as Russia and former Soviet Republics remain insecure about their national identity and need ‘significant others’ to define themselves, passport and citizenship troubles are likely to remain.”

By Xenia de Graaf
International Relations and Security Network
December 12, 2012

Un nouveau rapport démasque le club d’élite des juristes qui font des millions en poursuivant des États — Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)
►http://www.legrandsoir.info/un-nouveau-rapport-demasque-le-club-d-elite-des-juristes-qui-font-des-

Le rapport de 76 pages explique comment l’#arbitrage relatif à l’investissement, qui fut originellement conçu pour les cas d’expropriation directe, a explosé ces dernières années. Il y avait 450 cas connus en 2011, contre 38 en 1996 [2]. Le montant des frais et des indemnités a également grimpé en flèche, les frais de justice et d’arbitrage s’élevant en moyenne à plus de 8 millions de dollars par litige, et même plus de 30 millions de dollars (US$) dans certains cas [3].

Le secteur est dominé par un petit nombre de cabinets juridiques occidentaux [4] et d’ arbitres d’élite [5]. Trois compagnies, Freshfield (UK), White & Case (US), et King and Spalding (US) se targuent d’avoir été impliquées dans 130 dossiers relatifs à des disputes d’investissement pour la seule année 2011, alors que 15 arbitres – la ’mafia intérieure’ – ont décidé de 55% de toutes les disputes connues relatives à des traités d’investissement.

Beaucoup d’arbitres agissent aussi en tant que conseil, et travaillent dans le même temps comme chercheurs, conseillers gouvernementaux, lobbyistes et commentateurs dans les médias. Certains ont des liens personnels et commerciaux solides avec le monde des affaires. Ces liens leur donnent une grande influence sur le système, qu’ils ont un intérêt direct à préserver [6].

Le rapport décrit également un nouvel aspect du secteur de l’arbitrage relatif aux investissements : le financement par des tiers. De plus en plus, des fonds d’investissement comme Burford (US) et Juridicia (UK) spéculent sur des cas, prêtent de l’argent aux compagnies pour qu’elles puissent poursuivre des gouvernements, et prennent entre 20 et 50% de l’indemnité finale décidée lors de l’arbitrage [7].

Les différends emblématiques État-investisseur comprennent le géant du tabac Philip Morris, qui a poursuivi l’Uruguay et l’Australie pour des avertissements de santé publique sur les paquets de cigarettes ; et la compagnie suédoise Vattenfall, qui demande 3,7 milliards de dollars à l’Allemagne suite à la décision nationale de sortir du nucléaire.

#grande_délinquance #business

Why French women have so little equality, a story in charts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/10/25/why-french-women-have-so-little-equality-a-story-in-charts

Other than Italy, which has long been accused of treating women relatively poorly, France is by far the worst country for women in Western Europe. (...)
Today, much of the inequality appears to affect women’s political empowerment, for which France ranks 63rd, just beneath Ethiopia. Economic opportunity for French women is similarly low, particularly on wage equality, on which France ranks a stunning 129th in the world. According to the World Economic Forum’s global survey, France is the absolute worst in the world for gender wage equality.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2012/10/france-gender-excel-chart.jpg

#femmes #inégalités #data

AIDS Spreading Fast Across East Europe | Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/09/aids-spreading-fast-across-east-europe

Eastern Europe and Central Asia (..) has the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemic.

Punitive drug policies, #discrimination and problems with #access to medicines and important therapy are all driving an epidemic which is unlikely to be contained, world experts say, until governments in countries with the worst problems change key policies and approaches to the disease.

#vih #sida #santé #drogues #europe_de_l'est #médicaments

Adobe releases its first open source type family: Source Sans Pro
http://typography-daily.com/2012/08/03/adobe-releases-its-first-open-source-type-family-source-sans-pro

http://typography-daily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/source-sans-extra-light.png

Adobe took a step that will probably please many graphic and web designers, the firm decided to go ahead and create it’s first open source type family: Source Sans Pro. This is great news for open source typography, there are many free fonts, even good quality ones, but not enough families of type.

For its release, Source Sans Pro get six weights and support for Latin scripts (this includes Eastern Europe languages, Vietnamese or Pinyin).

#typographie

#Cartographieradicale #Cartographie #Israel #Palestine #Europe #Visualisation #Frontières

Une rencontre sur la cartographie radicale à Toronto en juillet 2012
Je regrette de ne pouvoir y être, c’est très appétissant...

Mapping Transnational Space
July 23/24 2012
CCGES, York University, Toronto

Monday 23.7., 305 York Lanes

9:30 Introduction, welcome
Ulrich Best, Boris Michel

10:00-12:30 Mapping and critique
Cecile Gintrac (Paris): The critique of maps in French geography
Rosa Orlandini (York): Ethno-linguistic maps of South-Eastern Europe: an overview and discussion of
the Volkstumskarte maps
Boris Michel (Erlangen): commentary

12:30-13:30 Lunch break

13:30-15:15 Mapping and surveillance
Henning Fueller (Erlangen): Syndromic surveillance and the mapping of an unknown unknown
Bernd Belina (Frankfurt): Crime mapping/CompStat: a neoliberal technology going transnational?

15:30-17:30 Mapping Israel/Palestine
Christian Bittner (Erlangen): Old Game, new Rules? Web 2.0 Mapping in Israel/Palestine
Jess Bier (Maastricht): The Colonizer in the Computer: The Influence of Transnational Materialities on Digital Cartography in the Palestinian Authority
Kevin DeJesus (Rhode Island): Commentator

Tuesday 24.7., 305 York Lanes

10:00-12:30 European borders
Ulrich Best (York): Putting Poland on the map: the making of Poland as a border space after 1989
Jörg Mose (Muenster): Cartography and spatial identity in Spain
Andrew Burridge (Durham): Mapping border management at the external borders of Europe: Frontex and Greece

12:30-13:30 Lunch break with a poster presentation by Kevin DeJesus

13:30-16:30 North American borders
Heather Nicol (Trent): Border Stories: Universalizing US Hegemony in North America Through Border Metaphors
Juanita Sundberg (UBC), Andrew Burridge (Durham), Geoffrey Boyce (Arizona): Becoming Geographer: Mapping the Altar Valley in Arizona’s Contested Borderlands

16:30-17 Conclusion

The workshop is supported by a grant from the DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service

–-

Ulrich Best
DAAD Visiting Professor
Canadian Centre for German and European Studies
and Department of Geography
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3

Tel: 416 736 2100 ext. 22406
email: ubest@yorku.ca

Flash : after the presidential elections, Assad will leave to Russia, security forces and police will be reformed to unable more killings and revenge actions

zaidbenjamin
عاجل : بعد اجراء الانتخابات الرئاسية سيغادر الى روسيا ثم يجري اعادة هيكلة قوات الامن والشرطة لمن المزيد من القتل والانتقام #Syria #Assad

and in the same way as it was done in Eastern Europe after the fall of the communist regimes
50u5
#PRT بالطريقة التي أعيدت فيها هيكلة أجهزة الأمن في أوروبا الشرقية أيام الأنظمة الشمولية.

Un pirate, qu’est que c’est ?

Le pirate et la piraterie désignent une forme de banditisme pratiquée sur mer. Cependant, les pirates ne se limitent pas seulement aux pillages de bateau, et attaquent parfois de petites villes côtières.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator (e.g. one passenger stealing from others on the same vessel). The term has been used to refer to raids across land borders by non-state agents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy

Bei Piraterie (von griechisch πειρᾶν peiran, „versuchen, unternehmen, auskundschaften“, und πεĩρα peira, „Wagnis, Unternehmen, Überfall“ über πειρατής, peirātḗs und lateinisch pirata, „Seeräuber“) oder Seeräuberei handelt es sich um Gewalttaten, Eigentumsdelikte oder Freiheitsberaubungen, die zu eigennützigen Zwecken unter Gebrauch eines See- oder Luftfahrzeugs auf hoher See oder in anderen Gebieten verübt werden, die keiner staatlichen Gewalt unterliegen. Bis zu einer völkerrechtlichen Vertragsregelung 1958 wurden unter Piraterie meist dieselben Taten verstanden, soweit sie überhaupt auf See oder auch von See aus begangen wurden. Staatliche Maßnahmen stellen, selbst wenn sie unrechtmäßig sind, keine Piraterie dar. Heute sind solche Maßnahmen Kriegs- und Behördenschiffen vorbehalten, im Rahmen der Kaperei wurden sie bis 1856 jedoch auch von staatlich autorisierten Privaten (Freibeuter, Kaperfahrer) vorgenommen und waren dadurch in ihrer äußeren Erscheinungsform häufig nicht von Piraterie zu unterscheiden. Keine Piraterie im eigentlichen Sinn sind auch Strand-, Fluss- und Luftpiraterie.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piraterie

On se rend compte à quel point les définitions ne font pas l’unanimité quand on suit la discussion autour des positions politiques des pirates :

►http://seenthis.net/messages/69508
http://seenthis.net/messages/69508#message69511

Buzludzha Monument, Bulgaria
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/05/10/buzludzha-monument-bulgaria

The UFO-like monument on the Buzludzha peak in Bulgaria, built by the countries former communist regime to commemorate the events in 1891 when the socialists assembled secretly in the area to form an organised socialist movement, was opened in 1981, but abandoned after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markoneill/5768749965

Today, the trespassing visitor can explore the site’s interior, finding traces of the mosaic frescoes that once artfully decorated the walls and exploring the debating chamber with the hammer and sickle symbol still blazoning the centerpiece of the ceiling.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scouseandjules/4640543938/in/photostream

#ghost_building

Roma shown to be Europe’s poorest and most reviled people - Europe - World - The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/roma-shown-to-be-europes-poorest-and-most-reviled-people-7609052.html

“These are not simply consequences of poverty; they are the result of widespread, often systematic, discrimination and other human rights violations,” says the report. “They are, in particular, the result of prejudice – of centuries of societal, institutional and individual acts of discrimination, that have pushed the great majority of Roma to the very margins of society – and which are keeping them there.”

#Roms #discrimination #Europe

The Price of Sex
http://priceofsex.org

The Price of Sex is a feature-length documentary about young Eastern European women who’ve been drawn into a netherworld of sex trafficking and abuse. Intimate, harrowing and revealing, it is a story told by the young women who were supposed to be silenced by shame, fear and violence. Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova, who grew up in Bulgaria, takes us on a personal investigative journey, exposing the shadowy world of sex trafficking from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and Western Europe. Filming undercover and gaining extraordinary access, Chakarova illuminates how even though some women escape to tell their stories, sex trafficking thrives.

#documentaire #prostitution #commerce_du_sexe