• Twins With 1 Body And 2 Heads Born In Brazil - From the Wires - Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/2011/12/21/twins_with_1_body_and_2_heads_born_in_brazil

    Hospital officials in northern Brazil say a woman have given birth to conjoined twin boys with one body and two heads.

    She says one of the boys is having respiratory problems and requires “special care.”

    The boys are named Jesus and Emanuel.

    http://m.ctv.ca/assets/images/thumbs/470_twins_two_heads_brazil_111221.jpg

    http://m.ctv.ca/health/20111221/twins-two-heads-brazil-111221.html

  • Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths - Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/christohper_hitchens_and_the_protocol_for_public_figure_deaths/singleton

    There’s one other aspect to the adulation of Hitchens that’s quite revealing. There seems to be this sense that his excellent facility with prose excuses his sins. Part of that is the by-product of America’s refusal to come to terms with just how heinous and destructive was the attack on Iraq. That act of aggression is still viewed as a mere run-of-the-mill “mistake” — hey, we all make them, so we shouldn’t hold it against Hitch – rather than what it is: the generation’s worst political crime, one for which he remained fully unrepentant and even proud. But what these paeans to Hitchens reflect even more so is the warped values of our political and media culture: once someone is sufficiently embedded within that circle, they are intrinsically worthy of admiration and respect, no matter what it is that they actually do.

    Très intéressant.

  • Hillary Clinton and Internet Freedom - Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/2011/12/09/hillary_clinton_and_internet_freedom/singleton

    Article très hypertextuel

    Hypocrisy from the U.S. Government — having U.S. officials self-righteously impose standards on other countries which they routinely violate — is so common and continuous that the vast majority of examples do not even merit notice. But sometimes, it is so egregious and shameless — and sufficiently consequential — that it should not go unobserved. Such is the case with *the speech delivered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday at a Conference on Internet Freedom held at the Hague [8 et 9 décembre 2011 Cf. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/world/at-hague-hillary-rodham-clinton-urges-countries-not-to-restrict-internet.ht, a conference devoted to making “a stand for #freedom of expression on the #internet, especially on behalf of cyber dissidents and bloggers.”

    Quelques rappels donc, exemple :

    The Washington Post‘s Dana Priest and William Arkin reported in their “Top Secret America” series last year: “Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.”

    So let’s review Secretary Clinton’s list of grave threats to Internet freedom and see how it applies to her actions and those of the Obama administration. “Those around the world whose words are now censored . . . who are blocked from accessing entire categories of internet content” – check. Attempting to undermine the Internet’s ability to “enliven public debates, quench a thirst for knowledge” – check. “Ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices” – check. “Companies turning over sensitive information about political dissidents” and “a company shutting down the social networking accounts of activists in the midst of a political debate” — check. ”Those who push these plans often do so in the name of security” – big check.

    #wikileaks #sopa

  • Billet intéressant de Glenn Greenwald: The fruits of liberation
    http://www.salon.com/2011/11/25/the_fruits_of_liberation/singleton

    At some point, doesn’t a country’s ongoing willingness year after year to extinguish the lives of innocent human beings in multiple countries, for no good reason, seriously mar the character of the country and the political leaders responsible for it, to say nothing of the way it inexorably degrades the political culture of the nation and the minds of the citizens who acquiesce to it?

  • GGreenwald : de l’État policier (USA) :

    The second exacerbating development is more subtle but more important: the authoritarian mentality that has been nourished in the name of Terrorism. It’s a very small step to go from supporting the abuse of defenseless detainees (including one’s fellow citizens) to supporting the pepper-spraying and tasering of non-violent political protesters. It’s an even smaller step to go from supporting the power of the President to imprison or kill anyone he wants (including one’s fellow citizens and even their teenaged children) with no transparency, checks or due process to supporting the power of the police and the authorities who command them to punish with force anyone who commits the “crime” of non-compliance. At the root of all of those views is the classic authoritarian mindset: reflexive support for authority, contempt for those who challenge them, and a blind faith in their unilateral, unchecked decisions regarding who is Bad and deserves state-issued punishment.

  • Why Chomsky is wrong about Twitter - Social Media - Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/why_chomsky_is_wrong_about_twitter

    When the linguist claims that social media is “shallow,” he isn’t very deep or convincing

    Chomsky avait évoqué Twitter, dans deux interviews :
    http://figureground.ca/interviews/noam-chomsky
    http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/articles/the-secret-of-noam-a-chomsky-interview.htm

    (ps : je seenzisse l’article pour le lire plus tard, faut pas taper s’il est mauvais)

    • L’article repose sur une opposition stéréotypée qui me semble soit carrément biaisée, soit carrément farfelue.

      Chomksy, of all people, ought to take note. When he defends his form of communicating (printed books and periodical essays) with claims that tweeting/texting lacks depth, he is implicitly suggesting that nonwhites and those in the Third World are inherently communicating less deeply than their white and first-world counterparts. He doesn’t seem to know enough about the reality of social media to examine his own assumptions.

      Chomsky ne s’est jamais limité à l’écrit imprimé (dans des formats « nobles » ou diffusés uniquement auprès d’une élite), bon sang. Une grosse partie de sa « production » est même en dehors de l’écrit, des livres et/ou des études longues : télévision, innombrables interviews, innombrables conférences... Et avec le Web, on peut suivre ses dernières productions directement en ligne.

      Partant de ce raccourci, prétendant que Twitter est un format pour les « non-blancs » et le tiers-monde, alors on ne peut juger qu’il est un support plus « méprisable » que les longs livres de Chomsky. Déjà cet argument de la popularité supposée de Twitter chez les « non-blancs » et le tiers-monde est idiot pour juger de la valeur du support ; les prolos écoutent beaucoup plus RTL que France-Culture, et plus encore que Radio-Aligre – si je dis que RTL c’est creux et superficiel, je fais de la haine de classe ?

      Surtout : à aucun moment les 140 caractères, la difficulté à tenir une conversation publique (ou même une conversation tout court) ne sont abordés. Ni l’invraisemblable imposition médiatique qui domine Twitter (à mon avis, largement un des effets de son format : en 140 caractères, difficile d’énoncer autre chose que ce qui fait déjà consensus).

      De manière flagrante, l’article commence en citant Chomksy :

      “Well, let’s take, say, Twitter,” he said.

      et se termine par cette généralisation :

      We might ask Chomsky today, when digital communications are disqualified as less deep, who benefits?

      Comment fait-on pour passer de « Twitter » à « digital communications » ? Comment fait-on, d’ailleurs, en réponse à Chomsky, pour passer des « digital communications » pour lesquelles nous avons tous milité, comme instrument de libération, à « Twitter », entreprise dont la principale actualité est de savoir à combien de milliards on estime sa future cotation en bourse ? Chomsky dit aussi (ça me semble clair) :

      Of course there are differences: the Internet has opened up many new possibilities that did not exist before, but as far as I can see the general picture is approximately the same.

      Comment passe-t-on d’un système de très courts messages (explicitement désignés par Chomsky : « an awful lot of their communication is extremely rapid, very shallow communication ») aux « communications numériques » en général ?

    • Au delà des critiques légitimes d’arno, ce qui me semble oublié dans l’article et pas Chomsky, c’est l’aspect curation de twitter dans le même esprit qu’ici, et de ce point de vue, du dialogue par lien interposés, qui s"éloigne du « very shallow ».

    • Je suis tout à fait d’accord avec vos remarques. Je rajouterai ceci à propos "de la popularité supposée de Twitter chez les « non-blancs » et le tiers-monde". Parenthèse, le tiers monde n’existe pas, c’était un projet assez beau qui n’a hélas jamais vu le jour. Déjà là, le truc manque de crédibilité mais admettons, les pays pauvres. Je n’ai pas lu l’enquête dont il est question mais apparemment elle porte autant sur le web que sur les applications qui y sont créées pour les téléphones portables. Je pense que le contexte méritait d’être précisé (ce qui n’était pas fait non plus), dans beaucoup de pays africains par exemple, il y a une télé d’état, une radio d’état, un journal d’état disponible en ville, et basta. Les portables sont là pour combler un vide immense en matière d’information. On a vu aussi récemment des programmes se mettre en place pour organiser l’aide humanitaire...

  • #WikiLeaks cables and the Iraq War - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war

    à propos de Bradley Manning :

    In other words, whoever leaked that cable cast light on a heinous American war crime and, by doing so, likely played some significant role in thwarting an agreement between the Obama and Maliki governments to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and thus helped end this stage of the Iraq war (h/t Trevor Timm). Moreover, whoever leaked these cables — as even virulent WikiLeaks critic Bill Keller repeatedly acknowledged — likely played some significant in helping spark the Arab Spring protests by documenting just how deeply corrupt those U.S.-supported kleptocrats were. And in general, whoever leaked those cables has done more to publicize the corrupt, illegal and deceitful acts of the world’s most powerful factions — and to educate the world about how they behave — than all “watchdog” media outlets combined (indeed, the amount of news reports on a wide array of topics featuring WikiLeaks cables as the primary source is staggering). In sum, whoever leaked those cables is responsible for one of the most consequential, beneficial and noble acts of this generation.

    #cablegate #journalisme #justice #irak