Archives : 2013

Elites’ strange plot to take over the world
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/09/20/elites_strange_plot_to_take_over_the_world

(2013)

Questions of sovereignty still exists – as just one of many examples, the U.S. still refuses to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty, which is a nod to the Liberty League. But the history and reflexive embrace of globalism is far more complicated than we want to admit. And it’s time to begin grappling with the international architecture that we have. This means recognizing that the Cold War involved constructing a “deep state” to partially subordinate national sovereignty, and therefore, voting populations, to transnational elites.

As the spying scandal, a truly global scandal, continues, activists, citizens and journalists are recognizing the powerful remnants of this Cold War-era global deep state. The players in the scandal hop from country to country, some safe zones and some not. The Guardian is a British newspaper, and is now partnering with the New York Times, to keep the global intelligence services at bay. Cyberspace is a new and strange transnational front combining elements of war, trade, journalism, finance, activism, surveillance and applied government power. The Syrian situation too is a global security problem, with the French and the British tied to the American political order. The American executive is finding himself buffeted by British debates that should be irrelevant in a sovereign state acting solely in its vital national security interests.

Streit never achieved his goal of having a formal “Atlantic Union.” But with an international “intelligence community,” globalized supply chains, increasingly global free trade agreements that subordinate national court systems, and globalized private and central banks, all couched under the rubric of promoting “freedom,” he has as much claim to being the true animating force behind what we’re facing today as anyone else.

The “middle class” myth: Here’s why wages are really so low today
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/12/30/the_middle_class_myth_heres_why_wages_are_really_so_low_today

The argument given against paying a living wage in fast-food restaurants is that workers are paid according to their skills, and if the teenager cleaning the grease trap wants more money, he should get an #education. Like most conservative arguments, it makes sense logically, but has little connection to economic reality. Workers are not simply paid according to their skills, they’re paid according to what they can negotiate with their employers. And in an era when only 6 percent of private-sector workers belong to a union, and when going on strike is almost certain to result in losing your job, low-skill workers have no negotiating power whatsoever.

[...]

Slaughterhouses insist they hire immigrants because the work is so unpleasant Americans won’t do it. They hired European immigrants when Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle,” and they hire Latin American immigrants today. But it’s a canard that Americans won’t slaughter pigs, sheep and cows. How do we know this? Because immigration to the United States was more or less banned from 1925 to 1965, and millions of pigs, sheep and cows were slaughtered during those years. But they were slaughtered by American-born workers, earning middle-class wages. Mother Jones magazine explains what changed:

[...]

#compétences #syndicats #logique_d'apparence

Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class - Salon.com
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_destroyed_the_middle_class

http://media.salon.com/2013/05/jaron_lanier.jpg

#sharingeconomy #ideology

Déconstruire la virilité
▻http://chaotiqueneutre.tumblr.com/post/112694157258/deconstruire-la-virilite#disqus_thread
plusieurs liens sur le sujet

Monde du travail

"Des rituels virils pour conjurer la peur", Christophe Dejours sur la souffrance au travail
▻http://www.liberation.fr/economie/2005/05/31/des-rituels-virils-pour-conjurer-la-peur_521732

Représentations

Vidéo : how movies teach Manhood
▻http://www.ted.com/talks/colin_stokes_how_movies_teach_manhood

Cinéma : Gloire aux costauds
►http://www.lecinemaestpolitique.fr/gloire-aux-costauds

Vidéo : Sexism, Strength and Dominance : Masculinity in Disney Films
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CWMCt35oFY

Education

3rd grade teacher reminds boy writing is for girls…
▻http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/03/21/3rd-grade-teacher-reminds-boy-that-writing-is-for-girls

When boys misbehave it’s adorable
▻http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/05/09/when-boys-misbehave-its-adorable

The real boy crisis : 5 ways America tells boys not to be “girly”
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/09/25/5_ways_america_tells_boys_not_to_be_girly

Sylvie Ayral, La fabrique des garçons, Sanction et genre au collège
▻http://gc.revues.org/2107

Définir et déconstruire la virilité

Vidéo : Be A Man, by Joe Ehrmann
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVI1Xutc_Ws

Virilité et violence
▻http://antisexisme.net/2011/10/22/virilite-et-violence

Détruire la virilité
►http://www.crepegeorgette.com/2013/10/30/detruire-la-virilite

Résumé de Refuser d’être un homme de John Stoltenberg
►http://www.crepegeorgette.com/2013/10/09/virilite-stoltenberg

#virilité #homme #hommes #féminisme #condition_masculine #violence #domination

Enfin !

« In defense of the pit bull » [Salon]

They used to be considered the perfect “nanny dogs” for children — until the media turned them into monsters

▻http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/in_defense_of_the_pitbull_partner

http://media.salon.com/2013/02/shutterstock_62858089.jpg

While they have been a favorite of dog-fighters for a century, pit bulls weren’t originally bred for fighting. According to the United Kennel Club, sometime in the 19th century European breeders began crossing various terriers with bulldogs in search of a breed that had the former’s enthusiasm and the latter’s stamina and strength. The pit bull breeds that resulted were then imported and embraced “as catch dogs for semi-wild cattle and hogs, to hunt, to drive livestock, and as family companions.” (UKC also notes that pitbulls “have always been noted for their love of children,” but aren’t “the best choice for a guard dog since they are extremely friendly, even with strangers.”)

Pit bulls are among dozens of strong, muscular breeds of canine. All are capable of doing damage to humans if they’re not properly socialized and supervised. Most dogs do not, even when they’ve been neglected or abused. None are inherently monstrous – they are all just dogs. And we know what makes dogs of any breed more likely to be aggressive.

#chiens #animal #pit_bull

#Noam_Chomsky, the Salon interview: Governments are power systems, trying to sustain power
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/12/29/chomsky_governments_are_power_systems_trying_to_sustain_power

We’re developing technologies that will be used by our own governments and by commercial corporations and are already being used to maximize information for themselves for control and domination. That’s the way power systems work. Of course, they’ve always played the security card. But I think one should be very cautious about such claims. Every government pleads security for almost anything it’s doing, so since the plea is predictable it essentially carries no information. If after the event the power system claims security, that doesn’t mean it’s actually a functioning principle. And if you look at the record, you discover that security is generally a pre-text and security is not a high priority of governments. By that I mean the security of the population — security of the power system itself and the domestic interests it represents, yes, that’s a concern. But security of the population is not.

The Presidential Hack List: Ranking Barack Obama’s favorite columnists - Salon.com
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/12/23/the_presidential_hack_list_ranking_barack_obamas_favorite_columnists

Barack #Obama loves newspaper columnists. He reads them, because he thinks they offer smarter commentary than one hears on cable news, and he invites them to the White House regularly, so he can influence their writing. Unfortunately, judging by media reports of his favorites, he has terrible taste in newspaper columnists. Every columnist ever specifically named as an Obama favorite, with one exception, is white. None are women. Nearly all of them, to a man, vigorously supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003

2. #Thomas_Friedman, The Davos Herald-Register. Possibly the dumbest human being ever to write a column for a major newspaper. It’s terrifying that a president would take him seriously.

TED talks are lying to you: The creative class has never been more screwed. Books about creativity have never been more popular. What gives?

It is the story of brilliant people, often in the arts or humanities, who are studied by other brilliant people, often in the sciences, finance, or marketing. The readership is made up of us — members of the professional-managerial class — each of whom harbors a powerful suspicion that he or she is pretty brilliant as well. What your correspondent realized, relaxing there in his tub one day, was that the real subject of this literature was the professional-managerial audience itself, whose members hear clear, sweet reason when they listen to NPR and think they’re in the presence of something profound when they watch some billionaire give a TED talk. And what this complacent literature purrs into their ears is that creativity is their property, their competitive advantage, their class virtue. Creativity is what they bring to the national economic effort, these books reassure them — and it’s also the benevolent doctrine under which they rightly rule the world.

Full article : ▻http://www.salon.com/2013/10/13/ted_talks_are_lying_to_you

#creative_class #TED

Crush GOP obstruction, and reduce inequality now!
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/12/20/crush_gop_obstruction_and_reduce_inequality_now

President Obama’s last speech on income inequality was by far his best. He linked rising inequality, and declining social mobility, to the growing low-wage work swamp, in which one in four workers makes little enough that they qualify for public assistance.

“We know that there are airport workers, and fast-food workers, and nurse assistants, and retail salespeople who work their tails off and are still living at or barely above poverty,” he said, adding, “It’s well past the time to raise a minimum wage that in real terms right now is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office.” Obama supports hiking the federal minimum wage from $7.50 to $10.10, but such a push is stalled for the time being by congressional Republicans.

Obama didn’t mention the one move he could make himself: issuing an executive order mandating that federal contractors pay their workers a higher wage. Back in August, the New York Times editorialized on behalf of such a move, pointing to new research showing that hundreds of billions in federal contracts go to firms paying low wages and offering no benefits. An estimated 2 million low-wage workers are employed by federal contractors, making the federal government the largest employer of low-wage workers in the country.

“In effect, tax dollars are being used to fuel the low-wage economy and, in the process, worsen inequality,” the Times argued.

#obama #théorie et #pratique #état #salaires #sous_traitance

How McDonald’s and Wal-Mart Became Welfare Queens - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/how-mcdonald-s-and-wal-mart-became-welfare-queens.html

According to one study, American fast food workers receive more than $7 billion dollars in public assistance. As it turns out, McDonald’s has a “McResource” line that helps employees and their families enroll in various state and local assistance programs. It exploded into the public when a recording of the McResource line advocated that full-time employees sign up for food stamps and welfare.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private sector employer, is also the biggest consumer of taxpayer supported aid. According to Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, in many states, Wal-Mart employees are the largest group of Medicaid recipients. They are also the single biggest group of food stamp recipients. Wal-mart’s “associates” are paid so little, according to Grayson, that they receive $1,000 on average in public assistance. These amount to massive taxpayer subsidies for private companies.

#précariat #pauvreté #travail #profitation #subvention #exploitation #capitalisme

Chomsky’s right : The New York Times’ latest big lie - Salon.com
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/11/16/chomskys_right_the_new_york_times_latest_big_lie

Sur l’utilisation vicieuse des guillemets.

Enclose something in quotation marks and all between them is instantly de-legitimized; no argument or explanation need be made.

http://media.salon.com/2013/10/jeffersons_quran-620x412.jpg

While conceding that many Americans in that era viewed Islam with suspicion, classifying Muslims as dangerous and unworthy of inclusion within the American experiment, [Denise Spellberg] also shows that such leading figures as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington spurned exclusionary arguments, arguing that America should be open to Muslim citizens, office-holders, and even presidents.

L’intro du livre :
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/10/05/our_founding_fathers_included_islam

Jefferson possédait donc un Coran dans sa bibliothèque et n’était pas particulièrement hostile aux musulmans ; il se battait au contraire, notamment avec Washington et Madison, pour la liberté religieuse et la séparation de l’Eglise et de l’Etat, soutenant l’inclusion de toutes les minorités religieuses (juifs, catholiques et musulmans), contre la domination d’une religion majoritaire. Une position courageuse qui rompt à l’époque avec les idées européennes traditionnelles, et qui révèle que les musulmans n’ont pas toujours été vus comme l’incarnation de l’antithèse des valeurs américaines. Les débats sur la place des musulmans dans la société américaine ne sont pas nouveaux.

Recent anti-Islamic slurs used to deny the legitimacy of a presidential candidacy contained eerie echoes of founding precedents. The legal possibility of a Muslim president was first discussed with vitriol during debates involving America’s Founders. Thomas Jefferson would be the first in the history of American politics to suffer the false charge of being a Muslim, an accusation considered the ultimate Protestant slur in the eighteenth century.

Cela dit, les droits des musulmans pour lesquels certains se battaient étaient purement théoriques, vu qu’ils ignoraient qu’il se trouvait à l’époque plusieurs milliers (ou dizaines de milliers) de musulmans en Amérique parmi les esclaves venus d’Afrique. Ils se battaient donc ironiquement (et tragiquement) pour les droits de personnes qui étaient par ailleurs leurs esclaves...

Indeed, when the Founders imagined future Muslim citizens, they presumably imagined them as white, because by the 1790s “full American citizenship could be claimed by any free, white immigrant, regardless of ethnicity or religious beliefs.”...

“Captain America in a turban”

“I wore that costume to challenge the way New Yorkers think about superheroes — and bearded Sikhs like me”

▻http://www.salon.com/2013/09/10/captain_america_in_a_turban/?upw

http://media.salon.com/2013/09/vishavjit_singh1.jpg

For Israeli soldiers, social media has become a showcase of horrors
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/10/13/for_israeli_soldiers_social_media_has_become_a_gallery_of_horrors

After all, what did anyone expect heavily armed teenagers to do when placed in control of a largely defenseless population that had been presented to them throughout their lives as a murderous enemy?

NSA director admits to misleading public on terror plots
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/nsa_director_admits_to_misleading_public_on_terror_plots

À la question de savoir s’il avait volontairement gonflé le chiffre du nombre d’attentats avortés grâce au programme de surveillance, le patron de la #NSA répond tranquillement « oui. »

During Wednesday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pushed Alexander to admit that plot numbers had been fudged in a revealing interchange:

“There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots,” said Leahy. The Vermont Democrat then asked the NSA chief to admit that only 13 out of a previously cited 54 cases of foiled plots were genuinely the fruits of the government’s vast dragnet surveillance systems:

“These weren’t all plots, and they weren’t all foiled,” Leahy said, asking Alexander, “Would you agree with that, yes or no?”

“Yes,” replied Alexander.

College students cheer sex abuse
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/09/05/college_students_cheer_sex_abuse/?upw

The disgust over stuff like this isn’t about trying to be a big buzzkill or being oversensitive or gee, can’t you take a joke? It’s about the little ways we as both men and women are chipped away at by exactly the kind of mob mentality that the video displays. It’s the unthinking acceptance, the reinforcement of the notion that women exist to be used sexually. It’s about signing off on male aggression and female passivity. It’s about making that the norm, so much the norm that you wind up with girls cheering along for it.

#culture_du_viol #viol

CrossFit mirrors American militarism - Salon.com
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/09/08/crossfit_nation_partner

In fact, one of CrossFit’s most fascinating aspects doesn’t show up in the Games: the ethos that inspires CrossFit is one found in law enforcement and the military. You see this connection in everything from the number of men and women in military service who do CrossFit to the no-frills nature of the gyms themselves. “Boxes” tend to be gritty, garage-like spaces, without mirrors, juice bars, towel service, etc. Then there’s the way in which CrossFit athletes workout together as a unit. Glassman has repeatedly quoted Special Forces Captain Michael Perry on how CrossFit revealed to him the nature of the comradeship that Perry experienced in the Green Berets. He described it as “agony coupled with laughter,” and that’s often the vibe in the gym. Of course, the workouts themselves have an obvious likeness to boot camp. And, some of them are designated as “Hero Wods,” workouts that take their name from firefighters, cops and those in the military who had a connection to CrossFit and died in service. “Murph,” for example, is in recognition of Navy Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, who was killed in Afghanistan on June 28th, 2005, and subsequently received the Congressional Medal of Honor. In a remote area of the Konar Province, Murphy exposed himself to overwhelming enemy fire so he could transmit his team’s location and radio for support. “Murph” is a mile run, followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats, then another mile run. There are over fifty of these hero wods, and they’re all brutal. During “Murph,” you’re also supposed to wear body armor or a 20-pound weighted vest.

#sparta

The parody shirt the NSA doesn’t want you to wear
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/08/30/the_parody_shirt_the_nsa_doesnt_want_you_to_wear_partner

The NSA seal is protected by Public Law 86-36, which states that it is not permitted for “…any person to use the initials ‘NSA,’ the words ‘National Security Agency’ and the NSA seal without first acquiring written permission from the Director of NSA.”

Even little kids have a wage gap - Salon.com
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/08/15/even_little_kids_have_a_wage_gap

Gender as an organizing principle for how we value labor appears to have depressingly early, yet unsurprising, roots. Boys, on average, spend two fewer hours doing household chores per week than girls do (they play two hours more). And if they live in households where children are compensated for doing chores, boys make and save more money. Year after year, studies repeatedly confirm these patterns. The problems women face with unequal pay and housework duties actually start in childhood.

A 2009 study conducted by University of Michigan economists found a two-hour gender disparity in responsibilities per week in a study of 3,000 kids. That same year, Highlights magazine, a children’s publication, surveyed its readers and found that 75 percent of girls had chores, while just 65 percent of boys did. This disparity in chores and free time continues into adulthood all over the world. According to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), men “report spending more time in activities counted as leisure than women. Gender differences in leisure time are wide across OECD countries.”

The fact that boys’ chores appear to be more profitable makes the childhood chore gap even more disturbing. Turns out, parents tend to value the work that boys typically do more highly than the work girls do. A website that helps parents teach children how to earn, spend and save responsibly, pktmny, found “significant divides based on gender, age and the nature of the task being undertaken by each child,” according to Louise Hill, COO of the company. For example, mowing the lawn generally garners higher allowance wages than folding laundry. Shoveling a snow-covered driveway might yield more cash in hand than emptying the dishwasher.

http://media.salon.com/2013/08/girl_dishwasher-620x412.jpg

#sexisme #enfants

How everything went so wrong at #Fukushima - Salon.com
▻http://www.salon.com/2013/08/23/how_everything_went_so_wrong_at_fukushima

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, had “rigged a makeshift system of pipes and hoses” to continue cooling the reactors. From the beginning, that contaminated water has been leaking. As much as possible was contained in the plant’s storage tanks, but some made its way into the sea. For the past two and a half years, a “massive underground reservoir” of contaminated water has been building up underneath the plant. Tepco is widely alleged to have not done enough to contain it.

The slow, seeping buildup of a second catastrophe came to a head this summer. On July 10, Japan’s nuclear watchdog announced it “highly suspected” that the plant was leaking contaminated water into the ocean.

#nucléaire