/2018

  • What These Medical Journals Don’t Reveal: Top Doctors’ Ties to Industry
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/health/medical-journals-conflicts-of-interest.html

    One is dean of Yale’s medical school. Another is the director of a cancer center in Texas. A third is the next president of the most prominent society of cancer doctors.

    These leading medical figures are among dozens of doctors who have failed in recent years to report their financial relationships with pharmaceutical and health care companies when their studies are published in medical journals, according to a review by The New York Times and ProPublica and data from other recent research.

    #pharma #conflits_d_intérêts #transparence

  • Opinion | Anti-Zionism Isn’t the Same as Anti-Semitism - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/opinion/rashida-tlaib-israel-antisemitism.html

    A consensus set in “that Jewish identity can be reduced to Israelism,” Eliyahu Stern, an associate professor of modern Jewish history at Yale, told me. “That’s something that takes place over the second half of the 20th century in America.”

    The centrality of Israel to American Jewish identity has at times put liberal American Jews in an awkward position, defending multiethnic pluralism here, where they’re in the minority, while treating it as unspeakable in Israel, where Jews are the majority.

    #sionisme #Israel #anti-sémitisme #progressisme

  • The Planet Has Seen Sudden Warming Before. It Wiped Out Almost Everything. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/science/climate-change-mass-extinction.html

    The Siberian volcanoes ultimately delivered much more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than we will ever emit by burning fossil fuels. But our annual rate of carbon emissions is actually higher.

    The carbon we released over the past two centuries already has made the atmosphere warmer, and the ocean has absorbed much of that heat. And now, just as during the Permian-Triassic extinction, the ocean is losing oxygen. Over the past fifty years, oxygen levels have declined by 2 percent.

    “The way the Earth system is responding now to the buildup of CO2 is in the exact same way that we’ve seen it respond in the past,” said Dr. Kump.

    Just how much warmer the planet will get is up to us. It will take a tremendous international effort to keep the increase below about 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

    If we proceed to use up all the fossil fuels on Earth, it could warm by as much as 17 degrees Fahrenheit by 2300.

    As the ocean warms, its oxygen levels will continue to drop. If ancient history is any guide, the consequences for life — especially marine life in the cooler parts of the ocean — will be disastrous.

    #climat #énergie_fossile #co2 #extinction

  • How Cheap Labor Drives China’s A.I. Ambitions - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/business/china-artificial-intelligence-labeling.html


    Workers at the headquarters of Ruijin Technology Company in Jiaxian, in central China’s Henan Province. They identify objects in images to help artificial intelligence make sense of the world.
    CreditCreditYan Cong for The New York Times

    Some of the most critical work in advancing China’s technology goals takes place in a former cement factory in the middle of the country’s heartland, far from the aspiring Silicon Valleys of Beijing and Shenzhen. An idled concrete mixer still stands in the middle of the courtyard. Boxes of melamine dinnerware are stacked in a warehouse next door.

    Inside, Hou Xiameng runs a company that helps artificial intelligence make sense of the world. Two dozen young people go through photos and videos, labeling just about everything they see. That’s a car. That’s a traffic light. That’s bread, that’s milk, that’s chocolate. That’s what it looks like when a person walks.

    I used to think the machines are geniuses,” Ms. Hou, 24, said. “Now I know we’re the reason for their genius.

    • via Antonio A. Casili sur FB, qui l’accompagne de ces utiles compléments :

      Ce n’est pas vraiment une surprise : d’après cette enquête du New York Times, derrière le système de reconnaissance faciale Face++ du chinois Megvii Technology, des micro-tâcherons qui, avec leur travail du clic, entraînent des IA depuis une ancienne usine de ciment. Là où ça redevient intéressant (et où l’enquête du New York Times s’interrompt) c’est quand on va fouiller sur les sites de sous-traitance de la tech chinoise et internationale, avec un petit coup de pouce de collègues sinophones que ma discrétion m’interdit de nommer ici. On y découvre l’étendue du portefeuille clients de la Nangong Yunzhi Data Processing, la petite usine à clics à laquelle le New York Times fait la part belle.

      Tout d’abord, ses micro-travailleur•ses font pas mal de classification de produits pour entraîner les algorithmes de recommandation des plateformes d’e-commerce, comme Jingdong & Taobao. Ils s’adonnent aussi à l’annotation audio pour l’entreprise spécialisée en traduction automatique SpeechOcean (contrôlée de la Beijing Haitian Ruisheng Science Technology Ltd., qui a son tour marchande des corpus annotés pour traduction et analyse lexicale sur sa propre plateforme, King Line Data Center).

      Après quoi, on sort les gros calibres, avec de la reconnaissance d’images pour Baidu Total View, concurrent chinois de Google Street View (pour la petite histoire, Google Street View semble recruter beaucoup moins de micro-travailleurs parce que... ses images sont largement reconnues par ses utilisateur•rices mêmes, digital laborers « gratuit•es », à l’aide des reCAPTCHA visuels).

      L’un des clients les plus inquiétants est Tencent, pour lequel notre usine à clics fait de la retranscription speech-to-text. Le géant chinois de la messagerie possède, entre autres, la communauté QQ et l’application WeChat avec son important trafic de voix-sur-IP et sa fonctionnalité de retranscription « automatique » de messages vocaux. Comme quoi, quand vous parlez dans ce machin, il y a toujours des chances que quelqu’un vous écoute pour retranscrire en temps quasi-réel ou pour corriger des transcriptions défectueuses de l’appli même. Bonjour, la privacy.
      Et à propos de privacy, notre Nangong Yunzhi Data Processing compte parmi ses projets la labellisation et la prépration des pièces d’identités indonésiennes — les tristement célèbres e-KTP qui contiennent une quantité pharamineuse de données biométriques et concernent plus de 100 millions de citoyen•nes.

      Enfin, le must : du véhicule autonome ! Plus précisément, de l’entraînement du système de reconnaissance faciale embarqué des véhicules NIO—nécessaire pour éviter vols, fraudes à l’assurance, ou vérifier que le conducteur ne soit pas distrait. Et oui, le « conducteur ». Parce qu’évidemment une voiture « driverless » doit toujours être conduit par quelqu’un.

      A suivre...

  • Federal Employees Are Warned Not to Discuss Trump ‘Resistance’ at Work - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/us/politics/federal-employees-hatch-act-trump-impeachment.html

    Generally, federal employees have been free to express opinions about policies and legislative activity at work as long as they do not advocate voting for or against particular candidates in partisan elections. But in a guidance document distributed on Wednesday, the independent agency that enforces the Hatch Act, a law that bars federal employees from taking part in partisan political campaigns at work or in an official capacity, warned that making or displaying statements at work about impeaching or resisting Mr. Trump is likely to amount to illegal political activity.

    The reasoning behind the guidance centers on the fact that Mr. Trump is already running for re-election in 2020. It contends that arguments about his policies or impeachment prospects are effectively statements in support or opposition to his campaign.

    “We understand that the ‘resistance’ and ‘#resist’ originally gained prominence shortly after President Trump’s election in 2016 and generally related to efforts to oppose administration policies,” the guidance said. “However, ‘resistance,’ ‘#resist’ and similar terms have become inextricably linked with the electoral success (or failure) of the president.”

    The reasoning behind the guidance centers on the fact that Mr. Trump is already running for re-election in 2020. It contends that arguments about his policies or impeachment prospects are effectively statements in support or opposition to his campaign.

    “We understand that the ‘resistance’ and ‘#resist’ originally gained prominence shortly after President Trump’s election in 2016 and generally related to efforts to oppose administration policies,” the guidance said. “However, ‘resistance,’ ‘#resist’ and similar terms have become inextricably linked with the electoral success (or failure) of the president.”

    #Liberté_expression #Fonctionnaires #Trump #Etats_Unis

  • Oltre 500 ore consecutive di culto per non far espellere una famiglia migrante

    In Olanda la legge vieta di interrompere una funziona religiosa: per questo centinaia di pastori da oltre tre settimane si alternano per evitare il rimpatrio di una famiglia ospitata in chiesa.

    In Olanda una chiesa protestante de l’Aja sta tenendo un culto da oltre tre settimane consecutive per proteggere una famiglia di migranti dall’espulsione dal Paese.

    La storia è tanto semplice quanto geniale: secondo la legge statale le forze dell’ordine non possono interrompere una funzione religiosa in corso. Centinaia di pastori si stanno dunque alternando per non far cessare mai il culto cui sta partecipando la famiglia in questione, una coppia armena con tre figli di 15, 19 e 21 anni. L’idea è venuta al presidente del consiglio generale della Chiesa protestante olandese, il pastore Theo Hettema, una volta saputo che la famiglia, da ben 8 anni nei Paesi Bassi, con un figlio iscritto all’università e gli altri alle scuole dell’obbligo, rischiava il rimpatrio perché non può più godere delle tutele internazionali in quanto l’Armenia, terra d’origine dei cinque, non è considerata nazione a rischio.

    I cinque, cristiani, frequentano la chiesa protestante della cittadina in cui risiedono, Katwijk, nei pressi proprio de L’Aja, e una delle figlie svolge volontariato in una associazione legata alla chiesa. L’ appello del pastore Hettema ha raccolto l’adesione di centinaia di colleghi e di moltissimi membri di chiesa, provenienti anche dai Comuni vicini. Tutti consapevoli che la splendida iniziativa non potrà durare in eterno, ma con la speranza di far nel mentre cambiare idea al governo, che ha però più volte affermato che la famiglia non ha i requisiti per rimanere nel Paese. Otto anni per ottenere una risposta sulla possibilità di asilo o meno in una nazione rischiano di essere un tragico record, e ignorare che la famiglia si sia oramai integrata nel nuovo contesto pare un’inutile cattiveria.

    Quando i 5 non partecipano alla funzione, si riposano nei locali sopra la cappella. Un tempo in Italia le chiese erano luoghi di asilo e rifugio in cui le forze dell’ordine non potevano entrare, ma da oltre un secolo le cose sono cambiate (secondo quanto normato prima dalle leggi Siccardi del 1850 e quindi dai Patti Lateranensi del 1929 il cui l’articolo 5 recita comunque con formula ambigua “Salvo i casi di urgente necessità, la forza pubblica non potrà entrare, per l’esercizio delle sue funzioni, negli edifici aperti al culto, senza averne dato previo avviso all’autorità ecclesiastica”). Le norme in materia cambiano molto da Stato a Stato e non sono mancate in questi anni polemiche a seguito di arresti di migranti in chiesa (in Germania, in Islanda).

    La Chiesa protestante in Olanda, nata dalla fusione di tre precedenti chiese, la riformata olandese, la riformata in Olanda e la evangelica luterana, rappresenta circa un terzo dei 6 milioni di abitanti dei Paesi Bassi.

    https://riforma.it/it/articolo/2018/11/19/oltre-500-ore-consecutive-di-culto-non-far-espellere-una-famiglia-migrante
    #messe #résistance #expulsions #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Pays-Bas #culte #religion #refuge #Eglise #église

    • To Protect Migrants From Police, a Dutch Church Service Never Ends

      Jessa van der Vaart and Rosaliene Israel, two Dutch pastors, usually get to church by cycling through the streets of Amsterdam to a Protestant parish in the city center. But last Wednesday night, they packed their robes into the trunk of a car and drove down the highway to The Hague for what was the equivalent of a priestly shift change.

      They would take over at 8 p.m. from a local minister at the modest Bethel Church. Then, at 11 p.m., they would be replaced by a group from the city of Voorburg, who were scheduled to pull an all-nighter, singing hymns and preaching until daylight, when another cleric would arrive to take the baton.

      The two pastors from Amsterdam were running slightly late. “Well,” said Ms. van der Vaart, as Ms. Israel started the engine. “They’ll have to keep going till we get there.”

      For the marathon church service, which started more than six weeks ago, and hasn’t stopped since, can never take a break.

      Under an obscure Dutch law, the police may not disrupt a church service to make an arrest. And so for the past six weeks, immigration officials have been unable to enter Bethel Church to seize the five members of the Tamrazyan family, Armenian refugees who fled to the sanctuary to escape a deportation order.

      The service, which began in late October as a little-noticed, last-gasp measure by a small group of local ministers, is now a national movement, attracting clergy members and congregants from villages and cities across the Netherlands. More than 550 pastors from about 20 denominations have rotated through Bethel Church, a nonstop service all in the name of protecting one vulnerable family.

      “It’s about practicing what we preach,” said Ms. van der Vaart, as she and Ms. Israel sped down the Netherlands’ A4 highway toward the church.

      At a moment when Christianity’s relevance in Europe is waning — and when xenophobia and nationalism are rising — the Bethel service has also been a reminder of the influence that religious institutions can still exert in a largely secular Western Europe. The pastors have given protection to the Tamrazyan family; the family has given them a cause to show the power of their faith.

      “We’re kind of struggling here as churches in the West, we’re more and more in the margins, and as church leaders we can kind of feel this,” said Ms. Israel, who is the secretary general of Protestant Church Amsterdam.

      “But with this,” she added, “we feel that what we’re doing is quite relevant.”

      In recent years, nationalists have used xenophobic messaging to win office in Italy, Hungary and Austria, and achieve prominence in Sweden, Germany, Britain, France and the Netherlands, underscoring the impression of a European continent that is turning inward. But as the two pastors reached the outskirts of The Hague, Ms. van der Vaart said the marathon at Bethel shows that another Europe still exists.

      “I often think we’re entering times with less and less solidarity,” said Ms. van der Vaart, the vicar at the Oude Kerk, the oldest church and building in Amsterdam. “But then this initiative is all about solidarity, and that gives me hope.”
      An Unassuming Hideaway

      If you weren’t looking for it, you might walk straight past Bethel Church, a red-brick building tucked away on a quiet side-street in The Hague. Inside is a wider complex, which includes accommodation for the Tamrazyan family, as well as various offices and meeting rooms. At first it seems sort of mundane.

      When Ms. van der Vaart and Ms. Israel arrived, with a few minutes to spare, there were no police officers waiting to pounce. The sheer fact of the ongoing service is enough to keep them away. The two pastors quickly donned their robes and hurried into the chapel. On the tiled wall behind the altar hung a migration-themed interpretation of the Madonna and child — a portrait of an African refugee and her baby, dressed as Mary and Jesus.

      In the pews sat roughly a dozen worshipers, some of whom had come before, some there for the first time. Most were believers, but one or two were not.

      “I’m not religious but when I heard about this, I said to my husband, ‘Don’t be shocked, but I want to go to church,’” said Florine Kuethe, a public relations consultant who later agreed to help the church deal with the heightening news media interest. “This type of thing makes the church relevant again.”

      Inside the chapel, the pastors began with a greeting, then a rousing Dutch hymn, then Psalm 82.

      “Rescue the weak and the needy,” read the translation of one line. “Deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

      The three Tamrazyan children — Haryarpi, 21, Warduhi, 19, and Seyran, 15 — came in and out, frequently playing an active part in the service. Journalists, however, were only allowed in for brief sequences, a rule the pastors said was to ensure that the service retained its spiritual value, instead of becoming a media spectacle.

      “Sometimes I look back and ask why it has been as big as it has,” said Pastor Derk Stegeman, a spokesman for the family, and the service’s main organizer. “It’s because we protected our service and did not make it into an action for other things.”

      Where It All Began

      The story of the service started not in The Hague but in Katwijk, a large seaside town southwest of Amsterdam. The Tamrazyan family ended up there after the father was forced to flee Armenia for political reasons in 2010, Mr. Stegeman said. At the family’s request, their full predicament has been kept a secret, along with the names of the parents, to prevent repercussions for relatives still in Armenia.

      In a six-year legal process, Dutch officials twice tried to deny the family asylum, and were twice defeated in court. But the government finally got its way on its third attempt, even though the three children had all been in the country for more than five years and were theoretically eligible for an amnesty under legislation enacted in 2013.

      Lennart Wegewijs, a spokesman for the Dutch ministry of justice and security, said that the government could not comment on individual cases. But speaking generally, he said that under Dutch law, families can only qualify for amnesty if they, somewhat paradoxically, are willing to cooperate with official efforts to deport them from the country.

      To avoid what they believed to be certain danger back in Armenia, the Tamrazyans did not cooperate. Instead, they took refuge in a church in Katwijk. It was when that first church ran out of resources to help them that the leadership at Bethel agreed, after some deliberation, to welcome the family instead.

      As well as maintaining round-the-clock prayers, the church has provided psychological help for the family and teaching for the children, who can no longer go to school or university classes.

      To avoid compounding their stress, the family rarely gives interviews, and they made no exception for The New York Times.

      But on a blog that Haryarpi, the eldest child, started soon after entering the church, she has written about the relief of being granted shelter.

      “I often think the only place where I am safe is the church,” she wrote in Dutch on Nov. 4. “It really feels like a refuge.”

      The pastors have promised to continue the service indefinitely — even after a Dutch minister, Mark Harbers, said on Friday that the service hadn’t changed the government’s mind.

      Initially, the nonstop services were run by a core group of around a dozen pastors. Some of them pulled all-nighters on their own, including Mr. Stegeman and his wife. But a few days into the process, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands endorsed the service and used its newsletter to encourage other congregations to participate.

      Soon it became hard to fit all the volunteers into the schedule.

      “It’s amazing,” said Mr. Stegeman. “From all over our country people are coming, from the north to the very south, west and east.”

      Some preachers simply reuse services and sermons they gave at other churches. But others have used the opportunity to try something new, turning the church into a kind of greenhouse for liturgical experiments.

      Ms. Israel read from a modern reinterpretation of the biblical story of King David and his wife Bathsheba, told from Bathsheba’s perspective. One minister incorporated meditative song into her service, and another interspersed prayers and hymns with sermons from Martin Luther King Jr. During one all-nighter, Mr. Stegeman even brought along a harpist.

      “You see preachers from every background across the country, bringing their own way of celebrating and worshiping that is different hour by hour,” said Pauline Kuipers, who chairs the fund that owns the church. “It goes on continuously but it changes all the time.”

      By 11 p.m., the two pastors from Amsterdam were relieved by the group that had just arrived from Voorburg.

      After three hours of singing, preaching and praying, Ms. van der Vaart’s voice was now slightly hoarse, and Ms. Israel admitted to being “a little bit tired.”

      But she was also moved. As Ms. Israel left the chapel, Haryarpi told her that she had been inspired to write a poem about one of the psalms they had sung.

      “For me, that’s what it’s all about,” Ms. Israel said a few minutes later, packing her robes back into her cycling bag.

      “You could read that psalm a hundred times and not get touched by it,” she said. “But here, in this night, in Bethel Church, it’s very real.”

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/world/europe/migrants-dutch-church-service.html

    • Dutch church clocks up 1,400 hours to prevent family being deported

      A non-stop church service in the Netherlands — aimed at stopping an Armenian family from being deported — has become so popular it has issued tickets for the Christmas period to control numbers.


      The service has been going around the clock since October 26 — more than 1,400 hours.
      Under Dutch law, police officers are not permitted to enter a church while a religious service is taking place. So, church leaders hatched the idea of meeting non-stop to prevent the Tamrazyan’s from being removed from the country.
      https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/24/europe/non-stop-church-service-netherlands-armenia-intl/index.html

  • Nissan Chairman, Carlos Ghosn, Is Arrested Over Financial Misconduct Allegations - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/business/nissan-carlos-ghosn-misconduct.html

    Born in Brazil to Lebanese parents and educated at elite universities in France , Mr. Ghosn made his reputation after joining Nissan in 1999. Renault, where Mr. Ghosn was an executive vice president, had bought a large stake in the Japanese company, which was on the verge of collapse at the time.

    Mr. Ghosn made sweeping changes at Nissan, closing five domestic factories and cutting 21,000 jobs. Later, he engineered an arrangement between Renault and Nissan that allowed them to operate like a single carmaker. Short of a full merger, the alliance enabled them to share the cost of developing new models and to negotiate better deals with suppliers by buying components together.

    As chairman and chief executive of the partnership, Mr. Ghosn was celebrated in Japan: His life story was made into a manga comic, although critics on the left noted he had earned his French nickname, “Le cost killer.” Still, he had enough political savvy to retain the support of the French government, which owns 15 percent of Renault, despite some bitter pay disputes.

    In 2016 and 2017, Mr. Ghosn’s salary at Renault was questioned publicly, by French government officials and a shareholder group; this year he agreed to a 30 percent pay cut in return for another four-year term as chief executive.

    Mr. Ghosn’s pay was long debated there. In 2016, Renault was pressured by Mr. Macron, the finance minister at the time, to reduce his compensation. In 2017, he insisted on a package of 7.4 million euros, about $8.5 million. The French government balked but Renault shareholders ultimately approved that payout.

    In Japan, Mr. Ghosn’s compensation made him an outlier. Japanese executives typically earn far less than their American or European counterparts. Takeshi Uchiyamada, chairman of Toyota, for example, was paid ¥181 million in 2017, compared to Mr. Ghosn’s reported ¥735 million.

    1€ = 130¥, pff salaire de 6 millions € / an … ça fait du 34000€ de l’heure si il bosse 24/24 sur 365 jours mais ça ne suffit toujours pas ? et encore, ajoute à cela les stocks options et le fruit des magouilles fiscales pour lesquelles il est arrêté.

    #prédateur #élite_française

  • En Californie, l’ère des « tempêtes de feu »
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/181118/en-californie-l-ere-des-tempetes-de-feu

    Ces derniers jours, de nombreux commentateurs ont fait référence à un article prémonitoire publié en 1995 dans une revue historique par le théoricien et historien #Mike_Davis, professeur à l’université de #Californie, auteur de nombreux ouvrages sur la ville néolibérale – il a notamment publié en France City of Quartz, Paradis infernaux, ou Le stade Dubaï du capitalisme.

    Un feu venait alors de détruire dix maisons à Malibu. « Laissons Malibu brûler », écrivit Mike Davis. « Cela ne va qu’empirer, prévenait Davis, convaincu de l’absurdité de faire payer la collectivité pour des maisons presque mécaniquement vouées à brûler. De tels désastres périodiques seront inévitables : installer votre maison à Malibu et vous finirez par être confrontés aux flammes. »

    Il y a vingt-trois ans, l’article décrivait par le menu la privatisation et l’« aristocratisation » progressive du territoire de Malibu peu à peu planté de « châteaux », au mépris de l’environnement et des règles de sûreté élémentaires.

    Davis annonçait aussi l’émergence d’une nouvelle ère où les « tempêtes de #feu suburbaines » risquaient de devenir plus « apocalyptiques », quasiment impossibles à combattre. « La densité nouvelle du logement sur les collines a transformé la bataille contre les feux de forêt : c’était une guerre de manœuvres, cela devient une bataille de rues. » À l’époque, son texte avait été accueilli par un déluge de critiques.

    Il y a un peu plus d’un an, alors que le feu venait de ravager le magnifique paysage de vignes de Sonoma et Santa Rosa, juste au nord de San Francisco, Mike Davis publiait dans la London Review of Books un texte lumineux, « El Diablo in Wine Country », pointant le refus persistant des Californiens d’admettre que leur « paradis » est en train de devenir un enfer.

    « Il y a, écrit-il, une suffisance mortifère à l’œuvre derrière les politiques environnementales “mainstream” en Californie. Certains pointent le feu, d’autres le changement climatique, mais tous ignorent le pouvoir destructeur de la finance et de l’immobilier qui pousse à la surburbanisation de nos paysages sauvages de plus en plus “enflammables”. »

    Après chaque incendie, expliquait Davis, « le paradis est vite restauré, avec des maisons plus immenses que les précédentes ». Elles sont confortables, suréquipées, situées dans des endroits sublimes où l’on peut passer des heures à regarder les étoiles. Mais elles sont aussi situées dans des culs-de-sac cernés de maquis.

    « Une version rustique du couloir de la mort », commentait Davis, preuve « de l’absurdité de toute planification rationnelle dans une société fondée sur le capitalisme immobilier ».

    • En Californie, le blé protège des brasiers
      https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2018/11/15/en-californie-le-ble-protege-des-brasiers_1692372

      Dans la patrie du capitalisme débridé, l’inégalité existe pourtant, aussi, face au feu. Selon le site TMZ, spécialisé dans les célébrités, Kim Kardashian et Kanye West ont ainsi recruté une équipe privée de pompiers pour combattre les flammes qui menaçaient leur villa à 60 millions de dollars. Ces derniers ont creusé des fossés pour stopper la propagation de l’incendie. La résidence a été épargnée, tout comme celles de nombreux voisins reconnaissants, assure TMZ. Pour l’historienne Amy Greenberg, citée par The Atlantic, l’exemple des Kardashian illustre « les ramifications de la disparité économique aux Etats-Unis. […] Les riches ne sont pas censés disposer de "meilleurs" pompiers ».

      Le couple star n’est pas le seul à pouvoir se payer une protection haut de gamme en cas d’incendie. Depuis 2005, le géant des assurances AIG, pionnier en la matière, propose à ses clients les plus fortunés, membres du très sélect « Private Client Group », un service exclusif. Sobrement baptisé « Wildfire Protection Unit » (« Unité de protection contre les incendies »), il déploie ses camions et équipes pour protéger les maisons de ses richissimes clients. Selon NBC, 42 % des membres du classement des 400 Américains les plus fortunés, établi par le magazine Forbes, appartiennent au Private Client Group.

    • As Inmates, They Fight California’s Fires. As Ex-Convicts, Their Firefighting Prospects Wilt.
      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/us/california-paying-inmates-fight-fires.html

      As the Camp Fire rages in Northern California, the deadliest and most destructive in state history, and wildfires scorch western Los Angeles, about 1,500 inmates have been deployed to help fight active fires, out of a firefighter total of roughly 9,400, according to California state officials.

      [...] California relies on prisoners to fight wildfires more than any other state. In 1946, the state opened Camp Rainbow in Fallbrook, which housed inmates to fight fires. Over the decades, the program would grow.

      Today, 3,700 inmates work at 44 fire camps across the state, said Alexandra Powell, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which helps run the fire camp program.

      https://seenthis.net/messages/656494

    • Sur le booming business in private firefighting aux Etats-Unis :

      Private firefighters fuel tensions while saving California vineyards and mansions [mai 2021]
      https://www.reuters.com/world/us/private-firefighters-fuel-tensions-while-saving-california-vineyards-mansio

      When they do battle blazes, private contractors run the risk of getting in the way or even accelerating a fire, state firefighters warn. That’s because the private groups are focused on saving a particular property rather than protecting entire communities.

      [...] A recent job advertisement seeking private firefighters in California offered pay of $13 to $15 per hour - far lower than the average of nearly $42 an hour for the state’s firefighters, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  • Brooklyn’s Visual Reboot
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/nyregion/brooklyns-visual-reboot.html

    Photographs of the most populous borough reveal a new landscape being experienced by people new to the terrain, with little investment in Brooklyn’s past


    Brooklyn Summit, 2014 Credit Pascal Perich
    #photographie

  • Tests Showed Children Were Exposed to Lead. The Official Response: Challenge the Tests
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/nyregion/nycha-lead-paint.html

    Within two weeks, a city health inspector visited the two Brooklyn public housing apartments where Mikaila spent her time — her mother’s in the Tompkins Houses; her grandmother’s in the Gowanus Houses — to look for the source of the lead exposure, records show. The inspector, wielding a hand-held device that can detect lead through multiple layers of paint, found the dangerous heavy metal in both homes. The Health Department ordered the Housing Authority to fix the problems.

    The discovery spurred the Housing Authority to action: It challenged the results.

    Rather than remove or cover the lead, the Housing Authority dispatched its own inspector who used a different test, documents show. The agency insisted that however Mikaila was poisoned, there was no lead in her apartments.

    #plomb #saturnisme

  • 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

    Image

    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

    Image

    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

    Image

    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

    Image

    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

    Image

    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.

  • Top White House Official Involved in Saudi Sanctions Resigns - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/us/politics/trump-khashoggi-saudi-arabia.html

    A top White House official responsible for American policy toward Saudi Arabia resigned on Friday evening, a move that may suggest fractures inside the Trump administration over the response to the brutal killing of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

    The official, Kirsten Fontenrose, had pushed for tough measures against the Saudi government, and had been in Riyadh to discuss a raft of sanctions that the American government imposed in recent days against those identified as responsible for the killing, according to two people familiar with the conversations. Specifically, she advocated that Saud al-Qahtani, a top adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, be added to the list, and he ultimately was.

    Mauvais timing pour le renvoi de cette fonctionnaire de la Maison blanche en charge du dossier saoudien et qui souhaitait apparemment des sanctions : cela vient juste au moment des fuites sur le rapport de la CIA mettant en cause #MBS et, par dessus le marché, une vidéo (totalement invérifiable) se met à circuler montrant des morceaux choisis (!) du démantèlement (https://twitter.com/mazmbc/status/1063753281099325440)

    #gore de gore #arabie_saoudite #grand_jeu

  • El Chapo Puts the Drug War on Trial
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/opinion/el-chapo-trial-drug-war.html

    In the years between Mr. Escobar’s death and Mr. Guzmán ’s trial, which began this week, the war on drugs has stumbled on. In terms of taking down kingpins and burning heaps of their narcotics, it has been a stunning success. It terms of reducing the number of Americans killed from overdoses or Latin Americans murdered over smuggling profits, it has been a resounding failure.

    #stupéfiants #santé #criminalité

  • Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html

    En partie de la manière suivante,

    Matt Stoller sur Twitter : “#Facebook is an impressive company. They both went after our coalition group @FacebookBreakup as Soros-funded AND worked with the Anti-Defamation League to accuse us of anti-semitism. https://t.co/MGZLJZO6hv” / Twitter
    https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1062816375046135808

  • Opinion | New York’s Amazon Deal Is a Bad Bargain - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/opinion/new-yorks-amazon-deal.html

    The city has what the company wants, talent. Why pay them $1.5 billion to come?

    Amazon wants to develop a four-million-square-foot campus by the East River because of the talent that resides in New York. Lots of it. According to the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, New York has more than 320,000 tech workers in the labor pool, the most in the nation. (Washington is second.) That talent commands high salaries, great benefits and won’t move to Pittsburgh or Austin or any other of the perfectly nice cities that tried to woo the online giant.

    Which raises the question: If New York has what Amazon wants, why is it paying the company so much to make the move? Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who offered to replace his given name with the company’s to land the deal, are doing a victory dance.

    But the plan calls for the state to dispense $1.525 billion to the company, including $1.2 billion from its Excelsior program, which will reimburse Amazon $48,000 for every job. Another state agency, Empire State Development, will offer $325 million to the Amazonians tied to real estate projects. As for the city, Amazon can apply for tax credits that could be worth north of $1 billion from programs known as ICAP and REAP that reward companies for job creation generally, and outside Manhattan specifically. (And the campus is in a federal redevelopment area that qualifies for corporate tax breaks, letting the company’s major stockholder, the world’s richest man, keep more of his wealth.)

    Oh, and Amazon wants a helipad for its chief executive, Jeff Bezos. No problem.

    The prospect of handing Long Island City over to a company recently valued at $1 trillion seems distorted to some Queens politicians. They sense gentrification by fiat — another neighborhood sacrificed to the tech elite.

    “I welcome the jobs if it means Amazon investment in L.I.C. infrastructure, without us having to pay a ransom for them to be here,” said the neighborhood’s state senator, Michael Gianaris.

    That is, rather than the state and the city paying off Amazon, Amazon should be required to invest in the subways, schools and affordable housing. It could also be required to include job guarantees for lower-income residents of Long Island City, not just flimsy promises of job training.

    #Amazon #New_York #Strategie_economique

  • Delay, Deny and Deflect : How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html

    Sheryl Sandberg was seething. Inside Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, top executives gathered in the glass-walled conference room of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. It was September 2017, more than a year after Facebook engineers discovered suspicious Russia-linked activity on its site, an early warning of the Kremlin campaign to disrupt the 2016 American election. Congressional and federal investigators were closing in on evidence that would implicate the company. But it wasn’t (...)

    #CambridgeAnalytica #Facebook #élections #manipulation #données #BigData #lobbying

  • How Facebook Wrestled With Scandal : 6 Key Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-crisis-mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg.html

    For more than a year, Facebook has endured cascading crises — over Russian misinformation, data privacy and abusive content — that transformed the Silicon Valley icon into an embattled giant accused of corporate overreach and negligence. An investigation by The New York Times revealed how Facebook fought back against its critics : with delays, denials and a full-bore campaign in Washington. Here are six takeaways. Facebook knew about Russian interference In fall 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, (...)

    #CambridgeAnalytica #Facebook #élections #manipulation #données #BigData #lobbying