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What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings ? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer - The New York Times

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html

Pas mal ce graphique

#états-unis #arms_légères #meurtrs_de-mass #visualisation_classique_mais_puissante (ce qui veut dire que pour être puissante une visu n’est pas nécessairement un truc super designé)

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/07/world/interpreter-guns-image/interpreter-guns-image-facebookJumbo.png

L’#Union_Africaine s’active pour un plan de rapatriement des migrants en #Libye

L’ONU, l’Union Européenne et l’Union Africaine se sont données rendez-vous ce 04 novembre à Addis Abeba au siège de l’organisation panafricaine pour la mise en œuvre d’un plan de #rapatriement de migrants bloqués en Libye en partenariat avec l’Organisation Internationale pour les Migrations (l’#OIM).

Il s’agira d’abord pour les organisations régionales et internationales de mettre en place « une #cellule_opérationnelle » qui coordonnera le rapatriement de 15.000. Ensuite, mobiliser le fonds pour la réussite de cette opération.

A cet effet, le #Maroc a fait une promesse, celle de contribuer au transport des migrants et le #Rwanda d’accueillir 3000 qui ne veulent pas retourner dans leur pays d’origine.

▻http://rjdh.org/ethiopie-lunion-africaine-sactive-pour-un-plan-de-rapatriement-des-migrants-en
#UE #EU #ONU #OIM #IOM (tous complices !) #sommet #rencontre #plan #expulsions #Libye #asile #migrations #renvois #réfugiés #Sommet_UA-UE

Et l’article parle de l’étonnement face à la vidéo de la CNN qui a montré les tortures perpétrées aux migrants en Libye :

Le reportage de CNN sur la traite des migrants subsahariens et leur soumission à l’esclavage avaient indigné l’opinion africaine internationale. Après une mission de l’UA dans « l’enfer libyen » et le Sommet UA-UE, les responsables de l’organisation onusienne, européenne et africaine se réunissent pour mobiliser les moyens et réfléchir sur un plan de rapatriement des migrants en Libye.

#hypocrisie, on le sait depuis des années !

cc @reka @isskein

Trump’s Tweets Manage a Rare Feat : Uniting Britain, in Outrage - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/europe/trump-tweets-uk-visit.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/01/world/01britain/01britain2-facebookJumbo.jpg

LONDON — One member of Parliament called him a “fascist.” Another described him as “stupid.” A third wondered aloud whether President Trump was “racist, incompetent or unthinking — or all three.”

The stream of criticism that began after Mr. Trump shared anti-Muslim videos from a far-right British group on Wednesday morning turned into a gusher on Thursday, after he rebuked Prime Minister Theresa May in a nighttime tweet, telling her: “Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom.”

Mr. Trump’s one-two punch managed to generate rare unanimity in a Britain that is deeply divided over the contentious process of leaving the European Union.

Là, ça va aller très mal. Trump est en train de virer l’ex-patron d’Exon qui est Ministre des affaires étrangères, jugé trop « diplomate » (et pourtant !). Il le remplace par le chef de la CIA.

Il insulte son meilleur partenaire, qui heureusement réagit avec force et détermination (les anglais sont toujours très étonnants sur ce genre de choses). La vidéo de l’article est très représentative.

Les comportements de Trump sont trop souvent assimilés à de la bêtise, de l’instabilité... bref, rapportés à sa personnalité. Or l’histoire nous a montré que les personnalités détraquées sont aussi celles qui savent cristalliser des ambiances délétères.

Soyons au clair : c’est le fascisme qui essaie de s’installer, avec les mêmes méthodes, comportements et appels aux bas instincts que dans les années trente. Certes, les Etats-Unis disposent de contre-pouvoirs plus puissants et cohérents que l’Allemagne... mais le danger est bien là.

Ne croyons jamais que la bête immonde ne peut pas renaître de ses cendres.

The Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death. - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/technology/internet-dying-repeal-net-neutrality.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/30/business/30STATE/30STATE-facebookJumbo.jpg

Because net neutrality shelters start-ups — which can’t easily pay for fast-line access — from internet giants that can pay, the rules are just about the last bulwark against the complete corporate takeover of much of online life. When the rules go, the internet will still work, but it will look like and feel like something else altogether — a network in which business development deals, rather than innovation, determine what you experience, a network that feels much more like cable TV than the technological Wild West that gave you Napster and Netflix.

If this sounds alarmist, consider that the state of digital competition is already pretty sorry. As I’ve argued regularly, much of the tech industry is at risk of getting swallowed by giants. Today’s internet is lousy with gatekeepers, tollbooths and monopolists.

The five most valuable American companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — control much of the online infrastructure, from app stores to operating systems to cloud storage to nearly all of the online ad business. A handful of broadband companies — AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon, many of which are also aiming to become content companies, because why not — provide virtually all the internet connections to American homes and smartphones.

Together these giants have carved the internet into a historically profitable system of fiefs. They have turned a network whose very promise was endless innovation into one stuck in mud, where every start-up is at the tender mercy of some of the largest corporations on the planet.

This was not the way the internet was supposed to go. At its deepest technical level, the internet was designed to avoid the central points of control that now command it. The technical scheme arose from an even deeper philosophy. The designers of the internet understood that communications networks gain new powers through their end nodes — that is, through the new devices and services that plug into the network, rather than the computers that manage traffic on the network. This is known as the “end-to-end” principle of network design, and it basically explains why the internet led to so many more innovations than the centralized networks that came before it, such as the old telephone network.

But if flexibility was the early internet’s promise, it was soon imperiled. In 2003, Tim Wu, a law professor now at Columbia Law School (he’s also a contributor to The New York Times), saw signs of impending corporate control over the growing internet. Broadband companies that were investing great sums to roll out faster and faster internet service to Americans were becoming wary of running an anything-goes network.

To Mr. Wu, the broadband monopolies looked like a threat to the end-to-end idea that had powered the internet. In a legal journal, he outlined an idea for regulation to preserve the internet’s equal-opportunity design — and hence was born “net neutrality.”

Though it has been through a barrage of legal challenges and resurrections, some form of net neutrality has been the governing regime on the internet since 2005. The new F.C.C. order would undo the idea completely; companies would be allowed to block or demand payment for certain traffic as they liked, as long as they disclosed the arrangements.

But look, you might say: Despite the hand-wringing, the internet has kept on trucking. Start-ups are still getting funded and going public. Crazy new things still sometimes get invented and defy all expectations; Bitcoin, which is as Wild West as they come, just hit $10,000 on some exchanges.

Well, O.K. But a vibrant network doesn’t die all at once. It takes time and neglect; it grows weaker by the day, but imperceptibly, so that one day we are living in a digital world controlled by giants and we come to regard the whole thing as normal.

It’s not normal. It wasn’t always this way. The internet doesn’t have to be a corporate playground. That’s just the path we’ve chosen.

#Neutralité_internet #Vectorialisme

The #Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death. - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/technology/internet-dying-repeal-net-neutrality.html

But look, you might say: Despite the hand-wringing, the internet has kept on trucking. Start-ups are still getting funded and going public. Crazy new things still sometimes get invented and defy all expectations; #Bitcoin, which is as Wild West as they come, just hit $10,000 on some exchanges.

Well, O.K. But a vibrant network doesn’t die all at once. It takes time and neglect; it grows weaker by the day, but imperceptibly, so that one day we are living in a digital world controlled by giants and we come to regard the whole thing as normal.

It’s not normal. It wasn’t always this way. The internet doesn’t have to be a corporate playground. That’s just the path we’ve chosen.

Trump Once Said the ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape Was Real. Now He’s Not Sure. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/us/politics/trump-access-hollywood-tape.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/29/us/politics/29dc-tape/29dc-tape-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg

Despite his public acknowledgment of the recording’s authenticity in the final days of the presidential campaign — and his hasty videotaped apology under pressure from his advisers — Mr. Trump as president-elect began raising the prospect with allies that it may not have been him on the tape after all.

Most of Mr. Trump’s aides ignored his changing story. But in January, shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the recording that had him boasting about grabbing women’s genitals.

“We don’t think that was my voice,” Mr. Trump told the senator, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Since then, Mr. Trump has continued to suggest that the tape that nearly upended his campaign was not actually him, according to three people close to the president.

Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the “Access Hollywood” tape are part of his lifelong habit of attempting to create and sell his own version of reality. Advisers say he continues to privately harbor a handful of conspiracy theories that have no grounding in fact.

In recent months, they say, Mr. Trump has used closed-door conversations to question the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He has also repeatedly claimed that he lost the popular vote last year because of widespread voter fraud, according to advisers and lawmakers.

One senator who listened as the president revived his doubts about Mr. Obama’s birth certificate chuckled on Tuesday as he recalled the conversation. The president, he said, has had a hard time letting go of his claim that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States. The senator asked not to be named to discuss private conversations.

#Fake_news #Post_truth #Alt_Facts #Donald_Trump

Floating Guantanamos:
The US Coast Guard is operating floating prisons in the Pacific Ocean, outside US legal protections | Public Radio International
▻https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-11-24/us-coast-guard-operating-floating-prisons-pacific-ocean-outside-us-legal
▻https://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/USCG_National_Security_Cutter_BERTHOLF_%28WMSL-750%29.jpeg?itok=j0savHeM

Now, it turns out, there’s a secret US detention system in the War on Drugs, too — and this one is aboard US Coast Guard cutters sailing in the Pacific Ocean.

Can A.I. Be Taught to Explain Itself? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/magazine/can-ai-be-taught-to-explain-itself.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/26/magazine/26explicableai1-alph/26explicableai1-facebookJumbo.jpg

lending a deep neural network the power of internal monologue, so that it can narrate what’s going on inside

Feature Visualization
▻https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization

https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/thumbnail.jpg

#google #image #AI #boîte_noire #Chris_Olah

Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, at Last - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-arab-spring.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/24/opinion/24friedman/24friedman-facebookJumbo.jpg

Morceaux choisis pour un texte dans lequel Thomas Friedman se dépasse, c’est dire !

Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, at Last. The crown prince has big plans to bring back a level of tolerance to his society.

I never thought I’d live long enough to write this sentence: The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right. Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style.

Unlike the other Arab Springs — all of which emerged bottom up and failed miserably, except in Tunisia — this one is led from the top down by the country’s 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and, if it succeeds, it will not only change the character of Saudi Arabia but the tone and tenor of Islam across the globe. Only a fool would predict its success — but only a fool would not root for it.

(...) Iran’s “supreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East,” said M.B.S. “But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.” What matters most, though, is what Saudi Arabia does at home to build its strength and economy.

(...) Now they have a young leader who is driving religious and economic reform, who talks the language of high tech, and whose biggest sin may be that he wants to go too fast. Most ministers are now in their 40s — and not 60s. And with the suffocating hand of a puritanical Islam being lifted, it’s giving them a chance to think afresh about their country and their identity as Saud

Jon Hendricks, 96, Who Brought a New Dimension to Jazz Singing, Dies - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/obituaries/jon-hendricks-96-who-brought-a-new-dimension-to-jazz-singing-dies.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/13/arts/hendricksobit2/hendricksobit2-facebookJumbo.jpg

Jon Hendricks, a jazz singer and songwriter who became famous in the 1950s with the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross by putting lyrics to well-known jazz instrumentals and turning them into vocal tours de force, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 96.

Mr. Hendricks did not invent this practice, known as vocalese — most jazz historians credit the singer Eddie Jefferson with that achievement — but he became its best-known and most prolific exponent, and he turned it into a group art.

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, with Mr. Hendricks as principal lyricist and ebullient onstage between-songs spokesman, introduced the concept of vocalese to a vast audience. Thanks not just to his clever lyrics but also to the group’s tight harmonies, skillful scat singing and polished showmanship, it became one of the biggest jazz success stories of the late 1950s and early ’60s.

Une anecdote très intéressante, qui montre la grande difficulté que représente intégrer le jazz, s’imprégner de jazz. Même les choristes n’arrivaient pas a rendre le balancement, le feeling qui fait le jazz, ce lui qui ne s’écrit pas sur une partition, mais se transmet par le disque, l’imitation et la participation à la famille des musicien·ne·s de jazz.

Mr. Hendricks proceeded to write words for 10 songs from the Count Basie band’s repertoire, based on the original recordings. Mr. Lambert wrote vocal arrangements. ABC-Paramount Records agreed to turn the concept into an album.

Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Lambert hired a rhythm section to accompany their vocals and a 12-piece choir to simulate the sound of the Basie band’s reed and brass sections. When the choir had trouble mastering the rhythmic nuances of the Basie style, Annie Ross, a British-born jazz singer who had made some vocalese recordings of her own, was brought in to coach it.

Ms. Ross’s efforts to imbue the studio vocalists with the proper jazz feeling proved futile, and they were let go. She ended up singing on the session with Mr. Lambert and Mr. Hendricks; their voices were multitracked, a rarity in those days.

The resulting album, “Sing a Song of Basie” (1958), was a hit. In the wake of its success, the three vocalists decided to make their partnership permanent.

Étrange article du New York Times qui ne parle jamais des engagements politiques et anti-ségrégationnistes de Jon Hendricks, de sa participation à la NAACP... Pour cela, il faut se reporter au livre de Nicolas Beniès Le souffle de la liberté (►https://cfeditions.com/souffle1944)
voir ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/646938

#Jon_Hendricks #Jazz #Vocalises

Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/science/japan-fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-fuel.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/21/science/21SCI-FUKUSHIMA4/21SCI-FUKUSHIMA4-facebookJumbo.jpg

Now that engineers say they have found the fuel, officials of the government and the utility that runs the plant hope to sway public opinion. Six and a half years after the accident spewed radiation over northern Japan, and at one point seemed to endanger Tokyo, the officials hope to persuade a skeptical world that the plant has moved out of post-disaster crisis mode and into something much less threatening: cleanup.

“Until now, we didn’t know exactly where the fuel was, or what it looked like,” said Takahiro Kimoto, a general manager in the nuclear power division of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco. “Now that we have seen it, we can make plans to retrieve it.”

Tepco is keen to portray the plant as one big industrial cleanup site. About 7,000 people work here, building new water storage tanks, moving radioactive debris to a new disposal site, and erecting enormous scaffoldings over reactor buildings torn apart by the huge hydrogen explosions that occurred during the accident.

C’est beau la com’ du nucléaire

At the plant’s entrance, a sign warned: “Games like Pokemon GO are forbidden within the facility.”

“We have finished the debris cleanup and gotten the plant under control,” said the guide, Daisuke Hirose, a spokesman for Tepco’s subsidiary in charge of decommissioning the plant. “Now, we are finally preparing for decommissioning.”

In September, the prime minister’s office set a target date of 2021 — the 10th anniversary of the disaster — for the next significant stage, when workers begin extracting the melted fuel from at least one of the three destroyed reactors, though they have yet to choose which one.

#Nucléaire #Fukushima #Propagande #Robots

The Doyenne of DNA Says : Just Chillax With Your Ex - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/style/anne-wojcicki-23andme-genetics.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/19/fashion/19WITH-1/19WITH-1-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg

Alors comme ça, les pages people ne sont plus pour les têtes couronnées, ou pour les vedettes du show biz... mais les tycoons de la Silicon Valley. Bon, c’est la page people du NYT, évidemment. Mais c’est significatif.

Il faudra aussi se rappeler ce que veut dire « aristocratie » en Californie à l’ère des start-ups et des licornes. Les mariages ont toujours été des manières de lier les familles de pouvoir. Mais la nouvelle définition des liens aristocratiques vient certainement de la manière de se comporter quand le mariage s’éteint. Quand le maintien des statuts devient l’enjeu majeur et doit par pure distinction effacer les douleurs et les sentiments d’abandon.

Like others in Silicon Valley obsessed with living forever, she takes the long view: “If we’re going to live to 150 years, the reality that you’re going to be with one person for 100 years is low. And so you have to find a way that we can have relationships with people and preserve what’s positive.”

She says she wants to be a model for how to deal with controversy and disappointment to her son and daughter.

“I get really sad when I meet people who have conflict in their family,” she says. “Like people who hate their parents or don’t like a sibling or have an acrimonious divorce. Life is just too short.”

Et comme toujours, le mode de vie des aristocrates et des célébrités devient le modèle pour tous les autres. Peut être même de bons modèles, une fois que l’on met de côté les valuers de pouvoir qui s’y cachent.

Ms. Wojcicki admits that next time, “I’d really love to date someone who’s really simple and not famous. My life is already pretty complicated.”

I ask her if Harvey Weinstein, an early investor, is still involved.

“Once an investor, always an investor. It’s like ‘Hotel California,’” she says. “He has always been supportive of the company and of me, but he clearly has behavior that you can’t possibly condone. You recognize that people can have two different worlds. So it’s disappointing.”

She said that her best mentors have been Arianna Huffington and Diane von Furstenberg. “They are the two people who are just like, ‘I want to support women. I want to support you doing awesome things. I believe in you. You can do it.’”

#Presse_people #Médias #Anne_Vojcicki #23_and_me #Silicon_Valley #Aristocratie #Serguey_Brin

Skin Cancers Rise, Along With Questionable Treatments - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/health/dermatology-skin-cancer.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/21/science/21SCI-DERMATOLOGY1/21SCI-DERMATOLOGY1-facebookJumbo.jpg

The once sleepy field of dermatology is bustling these days, as baby boomers, who spent their youth largely unaware of the sun’s risk, hit old age. The number of skin cancer diagnoses in people over 65, along with corresponding biopsies and treatment, is soaring. But some in the specialty, as well as other medical experts, are beginning to question the necessity of aggressive screening and treatment, especially in frail, elderly patients, given that the majority of skin cancers are unlikely to be fatal.

“You can always do things,” said Dr. Charles A. Crecelius, a St. Louis geriatrician who has studied care of medically complex seniors. “But just because you can do it, does that mean you should do it?”

Ets-ce que médecine et care peuvent dépendre d’entreprises qui sont là pour faire de l’argent, souvent en plus en culpabilisant les patients.La dérive du Capital vers une forme d’anthropo-destruction au nom de l’argent a besoin d’une régulation forte. Très forte.

Dermatology — a specialty built not on flashy, leading edge medicine but on thousands of small, often banal procedures — has become increasingly lucrative in recent years. The annual dermatology services market in the United States, excluding cosmetic procedures, is nearly $11 billion and growing, according to IBISWorld, a market research firm. The business potential has attracted private equity firms, which are buying up dermatology practices around the country, and installing crews of lesser-trained practitioners — like the physician assistants who saw Mr. Dalman — to perform exams and procedures in even greater volume.

The vast majority of dermatologists care for patients with integrity and professionalism, and their work has played an essential role in the diagnosis of complex skin-related diseases, including melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, which is increasingly caught early.

But while melanoma is on the rise, it remains relatively uncommon. The incidence of basal and squamous cell carcinomas of the skin, which are rarely life-threatening, is 18 to 20 times higher than that of melanoma. Each year in the United States more than 5.4 million such cases are treated in more than 3.3 million people, a 250 percent rise since 1994.

The New York Times analyzed Medicare billing data for dermatology from 2012 through 2015, as well as a national database of medical services maintained by the American Medical Association that goes back more than a decade. Nearly all dermatologic procedures are performed on an outpatient, fee-for-service basis.

The Times analysis found a marked increase in the number of skin biopsies per Medicare beneficiary in the past decade; a sharp rise in the number of physician assistants, mostly unsupervised, performing dermatologic procedures; and large numbers of invasive dermatologic procedures performed on elderly patients near the end of life.

Ce long article d’écrit ensuite méthode et objectif des entreprises de “médecine dermatlogique”, en général au détriment du bien-être des patients. Avec cette remarque terrible :

Examining the 2015 Medicare billing codes of three physician assistants and one nurse practitioner employed by Bedside Dermatology, The Times found that 75 percent of the patients they treated for various skin problems had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Most of the lesions on these patients were very unlikely to be dangerous, experts said, and the patients might not even have been aware of them.

“Patients with a high level of disease burden still deserve and require treatment,” Dr. Grekin said. “If they are in pain, it should be treated. If they itch, they deserve relief.”

Dr. Eleni Linos, a dermatologist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has argued against aggressive treatment of skin cancers other than melanomas in the frail elderly, said that if a lesion was bothering a patient, “of course we would recommend treatment.” However, she added, many such lesions are asymptomatic.

Dr. Linos added that physicians underestimate the side effects of skin cancer procedures. Complications such as poor wound healing, bleeding and infection are common in the months following treatment, especially among older patients with multiple other problems. About 27 percent report problems, her research has found.

“A procedure that is simple for a young healthy person may be a lot harder for someone who is very frail,” she said.
#Médecine #Dermatologie #Capitalisme_sauvage #Voyoucratie

Floating Cities, No Longer Science Fiction, Begin to Take Shape
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/business/dealbook/seasteading-floating-cities.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/14/business/dealbook/14DB-SEASCAPE/merlin_129549077_10b81a0e-c1d6-4c3c-845b-1267fb54cdaf-superJumbo.jpg

Earlier this year, the government of French Polynesia agreed to let the #Seasteading Institute begin testing in its waters. Construction could begin soon, and the first floating buildings — the nucleus of a city — might be inhabitable in just a few years.

“If you could have a floating city, it would essentially be a start-up country,” said Joe Quirk, president of the Seasteading Institute. “We can create a huge diversity of governments for a huge diversity of people.”

#silicon

Lebanese Prime Minister Meets Macron After Mysterious Saudi Stay - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/world/middleeast/hariri-france-saudi-lebanon.html

Mr. Hariri reached out to Jordan with a request to go to Amman as a safe haven, a Western official said. The request was denied, the official said, because the Saudis had pressured Jordan not to accept him.

C’est glissé presque subrepticement en fin d’article.

Via angry Arab

We’re With Stupid - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/opinion/were-with-stupid.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/17/opinion/17eganWeb/17eganWeb-facebookJumbo.jpg

“Opinion”

...Trump is a symptom; the breakdown in this democracy goes beyond the liar in chief. For that you have to blame all of us: we have allowed the educational system to become negligent in teaching the owner’s manual of citizenship.

#etats-unis #démocratie

She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced. - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/health/colombia-soda-tax-obesity.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/13/us/00OBESITYcolombia-store3/00OBESITYcolombia-store3-facebookJumbo.jpg

“If you don’t keep your mouth shut,” one man shouted, she recalled in a recent interview, “you know what the consequences will be.”

The episode, which Dr. Cerón reported to federal investigators, was reminiscent of the intimidation often used against those who challenged the drug cartels that once dominated Colombia. But the narcotics trade was not the target of Dr. Cerón and her colleagues. Their work had upset a different multibillion-dollar industry: the makers of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

Their organization, Educar Consumidores, was the most visible proponent of a proposed 20 percent tax on sugary drinks that was heading for a vote that month in Colombia’s Legislature. The group had raised money, rallied allies to the cause and produced a provocative television ad that warned consumers how sugar-laden beverages can lead to obesity and diet-related illnesses like diabetes.

“The industry sees sugary-drink taxes as an existential threat,” said Dr. James Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America, which tracks beverage tax initiatives. In the United States, the industry has spent at least $107 million at the state and local levels since 2009 to beat back soda taxes and beverage warning labels, a new study found. Compared to the domestic tactics, Dr. Krieger said, overseas, “it’s much dirtier, much more bare-knuckled.”

The beverage industry asserts that soda taxes unfairly burden the poor, cause higher unemployment by squeezing industry sales, and fail to achieve their policy goal: reducing obesity. Studies of soda taxes have shown they lead to a drop in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages — a 10 percent sales decline, for example, over the first two years of Mexico’s tax — however, such measures are so new that there is not yet evidence of their impact on health.

“Slapping a tax on our products and walking away won’t do anything about obesity in this country or globally,” said William Dermody, spokesman for the American Beverage Association, an industry trade group.

But public health organizations, including the W.H.O., cite soda taxes as one of the most effective policy tools for cutting consumption of what nutritionists call a “liquid candy” that has contributed to an epidemic of obesity and related health conditions around the world. Dr. Kathryn Backholer, an expert on the issue at Deakin University in Australia, said taxes on soda were “low-hanging fruit” in the fight against obesity, diabetes and other weight-related diseases because such drinks are easily categorized to tax and sensible to target because they “have little or no nutritional value.”

“In Colombia, the sugar industry and the main media companies belong to the same economic conglomerates,” Mr. Gaviria, the health minister, said. “They have an intimidating power. And they used it.”

That fall, at least 90 lobbyists worked to sway legislators, according to a tally of visitor logs obtained by Educar Consumidores. During committee hearings on the measure, lobbyists often sat next to lawmakers, a flagrant violation of congressional rules, said Óscar Ospina Quintero, a legislator from the Green Alliance party. Mr. Ospina said he protested the lobbyists’ presence in the chamber but was rebuffed by congressional leaders.

“The response was fierce,” Mr. Gaviria said. “I remember that, during one of the debates, a senator said to me: ‘In all my years in Congress I’ve never seen a lobbying effort like this.’”

Toute la suite est effrayante : intimidation, virus informatiques, pression, lobbies. Le sucre n’est pas doux.

#Sucre #Obésité #Soda #Colombie #Médias

Awake on the Autobahn: Academics, algorithms and accountability
▻https://medium.com/@geomblog/awake-on-the-autobahn-academics-algorithms-and-accountability-6ec0dda8f73a

Cathy O’Neil has been one of the most important public voices raising concerns about the indiscriminate use of algorithms in decision making and the danger this presents to society. For many of us, her book ‘Weapons of Math Destruction’ has been a powerful motivator for our work and for our students, which makes it all the more puzzling that she wrote a New York Times Op-Ed that accuses academics of “being asleep at the wheel” when it comes to talking and writing about the role of algorithms in society. Here are four ways in which her article incorrectly frames the issues and misrepresents the underlying facts.

The Ivory Tower Can’t Keep Ignoring Tech, by Cathy O’Neil - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/opinion/academia-tech-algorithms.html

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#AI #biais #machine_learning

Etats-Unis : la NSA infiltrée et dévalisée par des pirates anonymes - Amériques - RFI
▻http://www.rfi.fr/ameriques/20171113-etats-unis-nsa-infiltree-devalisee-pirates-anonymes

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« Ces fuites ont causé des dommages incroyables », reconnaît Leon Panetta, l’ancien directeur de la CIA dans les colonnes du New York Times. Selon le journal, ce vol a donné lieu à une vague de cybercriminalité sans précédent : les logiciels de demande de rançon qui ont affecté les ordinateurs de millions de personnes, les pannes informatiques du système informatique des hôpitaux du Royaume-Uni et d’Indonésie, et la perturbation de la production d’une usine automobile en France figurent parmi les attaques menées grâce aux armes informatiques volées à l’agence américaine.

She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced. - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/health/colombia-soda-tax-obesity.html

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Then at dusk one day last December, Dr. Esperanza Cerón, the head of the organization, said she noticed two strange men on motorcycles trailing her Chevy sedan as she headed home from work. She tried to lose them in Bogotá’s rush-hour traffic, but they edged up to her car and pounded on the windows.

“If you don’t keep your mouth shut,” one man shouted, she recalled in a recent interview, “you know what the consequences will be.”

The episode, which Dr. Cerón reported to federal investigators, was reminiscent of the intimidation often used against those who challenged the drug cartels that once dominated Colombia. But the narcotics trade was not the target of Dr. Cerón and her colleagues. Their work had upset a different multibillion-dollar industry: the makers of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

#sodas #multinationales #mafia #sucre #obésité