/2022

  • World War III Begins With Forgetting | Stephen Wertheim, 02 déc. 2022
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/america-world-war-iii.html

    After the Soviet Union collapsed and generations turned over, World War II was recast as a moral triumph and no longer a cautionary tale.

    In the 1990s, an outpouring of film, history and literature celebrated the “greatest generation,” as journalist Tom Brokaw anointed those who won the war for America. Under their watch, the United States had saved the world and stopped the Holocaust — which retrospectively vaulted to the center of the war’s purpose, even though stopping the mass murder of European Jews was not why the United States had entered. A new generation, personally untouched by great power war, reshaped the past, revering their elders but simplifying the often varied and painful experiences of veterans.

    In this context, the double lesson of the world wars — calling America to lead the world but cautioning it not to overreach — narrowed to a single-minded exhortation to sustain and even expand American power. Presidents began to invoke World War II to glorify the struggle and justify American global dominance. On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 1991, George H.W. Bush told the country that “isolationism flew escort for the very bombers that attacked our men 50 years ago.” Commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994, Bill Clinton recalled how the Allied troops gathered “like the stars of a majestic galaxy” and “unleashed their democratic fury,” fighting a battle that continued.

    In 2004 the imposing World War II Memorial, one decade and $197 million in the making, went up between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. George W. Bush, a year into invading Iraq, gave the dedication: “The scenes of the concentration camps, the heaps of bodies and ghostly survivors, confirmed forever America’s calling to oppose the ideologies of death.” Preventing a repeat of World War II no longer involved exercising caution; it meant toppling tyrants.

    https://archive.ph/YHow7

  • Title 42 Migrant Policy Must Stay in Place for Now, Supreme Court Says - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/us/politics/title-42-border-supreme-court.html

    Migrant Expulsion Policy Must Stay in Place for Now, Supreme Court Says
    The temporary stay in lifting the pandemic rule known as Title 42 is a provisional victory for 19 states, led mostly by Republicans, that had sought to keep it in place on the border

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#etatsunis#sante#pandemie#frontiere#politiquemigratoire#expulsion

  • ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html

    Dec. 15, 2022 - When the only thing better than a flip phone is no phone at all.

    “When I got my flip phone, things instantly changed,” a Luddite Club member said. “I started using my brain.”Credit...Scott Rossi for The New York Times

    On a brisk recent Sunday, a band of teenagers met on the steps of Central Library on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to start the weekly meeting of the Luddite Club, a high school group that promotes a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology. As the dozen teens headed into Prospect Park, they hid away their iPhones — or, in the case of the most devout members, their flip phones, which some had decorated with stickers and nail polish.

    They marched up a hill toward their usual spot, a dirt mound located far from the park’s crowds. Among them was Odille Zexter-Kaiser, a senior at Edward R. Murrow High School in Midwood, who trudged through leaves in Doc Martens and mismatched wool socks.

    “It’s a little frowned on if someone doesn’t show up,” Odille said. “We’re here every Sunday, rain or shine, even snow. We don’t keep in touch with each other, so you have to show up.”

    After the club members gathered logs to form a circle, they sat and withdrew into a bubble of serenity.

    Some drew in sketchbooks. Others painted with a watercolor kit. One of them closed their eyes to listen to the wind. Many read intently — the books in their satchels included Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” Art Spiegelman’s “Maus II” and “The Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius. The club members cite libertine writers like Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac as heroes, and they have a fondness for works condemning technology, like “Player Piano” by Kurt Vonnegut. Arthur, the bespectacled PBS aardvark, is their mascot.

    Image
    Three teenagers sit in a woodsy portion of Prospect Park with their books. Two of them are reading and one is looking off into the distance.
    Clementine Karlin-Pustilnik, Odille Zexter-Kaiser and Jameson Butler at a recent gathering of the Luddite Club in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

    “Lots of us have read this book called ‘Into the Wild,’” said Lola Shub, a senior at Essex Street Academy, referring to Jon Krakauer’s 1996 nonfiction book about the nomad Chris McCandless, who died while trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. “We’ve all got this theory that we’re not just meant to be confined to buildings and work. And that guy was experiencing life. Real life. Social media and phones are not real life.”

    “When I got my flip phone, things instantly changed,” Lola continued. “I started using my brain. It made me observe myself as a person. I’ve been trying to write a book, too. It’s like 12 pages now.”

    Briefly, the club members discussed how the spreading of their Luddite gospel was going. Founded last year by another Murrow High School student, Logan Lane, the club is named after Ned Ludd, the folkloric 18th-century English textile worker who supposedly smashed up a mechanized loom, inspiring others to take up his name and riot against industrialization.

    “I just held the first successful Luddite meeting at Beacon,” said Biruk Watling, a senior at Beacon High School in Manhattan, who uses a green-painted flip phone with a picture of a Fugees-era Lauryn Hill pasted to it.

    “I hear there’s talk of it spreading at Brooklyn Tech,” someone else said.

    A few members took a moment to extol the benefits of going Luddite.

    Jameson Butler, a student in a Black Flag T-shirt who was carving a piece of wood with a pocketknife, explained: “I’ve weeded out who I want to be friends with. Now it takes work for me to maintain friendships. Some reached out when I got off the iPhone and said, ‘I don’t like texting with you anymore because your texts are green.’ That told me a lot.”

    Vee De La Cruz, who had a copy of “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. Du Bois, said: “You post something on social media, you don’t get enough likes, then you don’t feel good about yourself. That shouldn’t have to happen to anyone. Being in this club reminds me we’re all living on a floating rock and that it’s all going to be OK.”

    Image
    The Luddite Club has been gathering once a week in Prospect Park. “It’s a little frowned on if someone doesn’t show up,” one member said.

    A few days before the gathering, after the 3 p.m. dismissal at Murrow High School, a flood of students emerged from the building onto the street. Many of them were staring at their smartphones, but not Logan, the 17-year-old founder of the Luddite Club.

    Down the block from the school, she sat for an interview at a Chock full o’Nuts coffee shop. She wore a baggy corduroy jacket and quilted jeans that she had stitched herself using a Singer sewing machine.

    “We have trouble recruiting members,” she said, “but we don’t really mind it. All of us have bonded over this unique cause. To be in the Luddite Club, there’s a level of being a misfit to it.” She added: “But I wasn’t always a Luddite, of course.”

    Image
    Logan Lane, the club’s founder, in her room. The movement she started at Murrow High School in Brooklyn has spread to other New York schools.

    It all began during lockdown, she said, when her social media use took a troubling turn.

    “I became completely consumed,” she said. “I couldn’t not post a good picture if I had one. And I had this online personality of, ‘I don’t care,’ but I actually did. I was definitely still watching everything.”

    Eventually, too burned out to scroll past yet one more picture-perfect Instagram selfie, she deleted the app.

    “But that wasn’t enough,” she said. “So I put my phone in a box.”

    For the first time, she experienced life in the city as a teenager without an iPhone. She borrowed novels from the library and read them alone in the park. She started admiring graffiti when she rode the subway, then fell in with some teens who taught her how to spray-paint in a freight train yard in Queens. And she began waking up without an alarm clock at 7 a.m., no longer falling asleep to the glow of her phone at midnight. Once, as she later wrote in a text titled the “Luddite Manifesto,” she fantasized about tossing her iPhone into the Gowanus Canal.

    While Logan’s parents appreciated her metamorphosis, particularly that she was regularly coming home for dinner to recount her wanderings, they grew distressed that they couldn’t check in on their daughter on a Friday night. And after she conveniently lost the smartphone they had asked her to take to Paris for a summer abroad program, they were distraught. Eventually, they insisted that she at least start carrying a flip phone.

    “I still long to have no phone at all,” she said. “My parents are so addicted. My mom got on Twitter, and I’ve seen it tear her apart. But I guess I also like it, because I get to feel a little superior to them.”

    Image
    Odille, Clementine, Jameson, Logan and Max Frackman on the way to their weekly meeting.

    At an all-ages punk show, she met a teen with a flip phone, and they bonded over their worldview. “She was just a freshman, and I couldn’t believe how well read she was,” Logan said. “We walked in the park with apple cider and doughnuts and shared our Luddite experiences. That was the first meeting of the Luddite Club.” This early compatriot, Jameson Butler, remains a member.

    When school was back in session, Logan began preaching her evangel in the fluorescent-lit halls of Murrow. First she convinced Odille to go Luddite. Then Max. Then Clem. She hung homemade posters recounting the tale of Ned Ludd onto corridors and classroom walls.

    At a club fair, her enlistment table remained quiet all day, but little by little the group began to grow. Today, the club has about 25 members, and the Murrow branch convenes at the school each Tuesday. It welcomes students who have yet to give up their iPhones, offering them the challenge of ignoring their devices for the hourlong meeting (lest they draw scowls from the die-hards). At the Sunday park gatherings, Luddites often set up hammocks to read in when the weather is nice.

    As Logan recounted the club’s origin story over an almond croissant at the coffee shop, a new member, Julian, stopped in. Although he hadn’t yet made the switch to a flip phone, he said he was already benefiting from the group’s message. Then he ribbed Logan regarding a criticism one student had made about the club.

    Image
    A poster for the Luddite Club in Logan Lane’s room featuring the club’s slogan “Don’t be a phoney.”

    “One kid said it’s classist,” he said. “I think the club’s nice, because I get a break from my phone, but I get their point. Some of us need technology to be included in society. Some of us need a phone.”

    “We get backlash,” Logan replied. “The argument I’ve heard is we’re a bunch of rich kids and expecting everyone to drop their phones is privileged.”

    After Julian left, Logan admitted that she had wrestled with the matter and that the topic had spurred some heated debate among club members.

    “I was really discouraged when I heard the classist thing and almost ready to say goodbye to the club,” she said. “I talked to my adviser, though, and he told me most revolutions actually start with people from industrious backgrounds, like Che Guevara. We’re not expecting everyone to have a flip phone. We just see a problem with mental health and screen use.”

    Logan needed to get home to meet with a tutor, so she headed to the subway. With the end of her senior year in sight, and the pressures of adulthood looming, she has also pondered what leaving high school might mean for her Luddite ways.

    “If now is the only time I get do this in my life, then I’m going to make it count,” she said. “But I really hope it won’t end.”

    On a leafy street in Cobble Hill, she stepped into her family’s townhouse, where she was greeted by a goldendoodle named Phoebe, and she rushed upstairs to her room. The décor reflected her interests: There were stacks of books, graffitied walls and, in addition to the sewing machine, a manual Royal typewriter and a Sony cassette player.

    In the living room downstairs, her father, Seth Lane, an executive who works in I.T., sat beside a fireplace and offered thoughts on his daughter’s journey.

    “I’m proud of her and what the club represents,” he said. “But there’s also the parent part of it, and we don’t know where our kid is. You follow your kids now. You track them. It’s a little Orwellian, I guess, but we’re the helicopter parent generation. So when she got rid of the iPhone, that presented a problem for us, initially.”

    He’d heard about the Luddite Club’s hand-wringing over questions of privilege.

    “Well, it’s classist to make people need to have smartphones, too, right?” Mr. Lane said. “I think it’s a great conversation they’re having. There’s no right answer.”

    Image
    “To be in the Luddite Club, there’s a level of being a misfit to it,” Logan said .

    A couple days later, as the Sunday meeting of the Luddite Club was coming to an end in Prospect Park, a few of the teens put away their sketchbooks and dog-eared paperbacks while others stomped out a tiny fire they had lit. It was the 17th birthday of Clementine Karlin-Pustilnik and, to celebrate, the club wanted to take her for dinner at a Thai restaurant on Fort Hamilton Parkway.

    Night was falling on the park as the teens walked in the cold and traded high school gossip. But a note of tension seemed to form in the air when the topic of college admissions came up. The club members exchanged updates about the schools they had applied to across the country. Odille reported getting into the State University of New York at Purchase.

    “You could totally start a Luddite Club there, I bet,” said Elena Scherer, a Murrow senior.

    Taking a shortcut, they headed down a lonely path that had no park lamps. Their talk livened when they discussed the poetry of Lewis Carroll, the piano compositions of Ravel and the evils of TikTok. Elena pointed at the night sky.

    “Look,” she said. “That’s a waxing gibbous. That means it’s going to get bigger.”

    As they marched through the dark, the only light glowing on their faces was that of the moon.

    Images by Scott Rossi for The New York Times

    #USA #New_York #jeunesse #culture #techno-scepticisme

  • Thousands of Teens Are Being Pushed Into Military’s Junior R.O.T.C.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/us/jrotc-schools-mandatory-automatic-enrollment.html

    J.R.O.T.C. programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said that requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found that thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.

    A review of J.R.O.T.C. enrollment data collected from more than 200 public records requests showed that dozens of schools have made the program mandatory or steered more than 75 percent of students in a single grade into the classes, including schools in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and Mobile, Ala. A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households, The Times found.

    [...] J.R.O.T.C. classes, which offer instruction in a wide range of topics, including leadership, civic values, weapons handling and financial literacy, have provided the military with a valuable way to interact with teenagers at a time when it is facing its most serious recruiting challenge since the end of the Vietnam War.

    While Pentagon officials have long insisted that J.R.O.T.C. is not a recruiting tool, they have openly discussed expanding the $400 million-a-year program, whose size has already tripled since the 1970s, as a way of drawing more young people into military service. The Army says 44 percent of all soldiers who entered its ranks in recent years came from a school that offered J.R.O.T.C.

    #jrotc #éducation #états-unis

  • Prise de conscience tardive au New York Times : tous les Palestiniens ne sont pas musulmans. Exemple : Edward Said.

    Milton Viorst, Writer Who Chronicled the Middle East, Dies at 92 - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/us/milton-viorst-dead.html

    A correction was made on Dec. 18, 2022: An earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to the scholar Edward Said. He was not Muslim.

    Mais au-delà de l’erreur, il est très typique que, pour citer un critique palestinien de Milton Viorst, le NY Times avait trouvé utile de préciser la (supposée) religion de Saïd. Ce qui évidemment valide sa critique de l’orientalisme…

  • Opinion | If You’re Suffering After Being Sick With Covid, It’s Not Just in Your Head - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/opinion/long-covid-pandemic.html

    When the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 ended, misery continued.

    Many who survived became enervated and depressed. They developed tremors and nervous complications. Similar waves of illness had followed the 1889 pandemic, with one report noting thousands “in debt and unable to work” and another describing people left “pale, listless and full of fears.”

    The scientists Oliver Sacks and Joel Vilensky warned in 2005 that a future pandemic could bring waves of illness in its aftermath, noting “a recurring association, since the time of Hippocrates, between influenza epidemics and encephalitis-like diseases” in their wakes.

    Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, the worst viral outbreak in a century, and when sufferers complained of serious symptoms that came after they had recovered from their initial illness, they were often told it was all in their heads or unrelated to their earlier infections.

    It wasn’t until the end of the first year of the pandemic that Congress provided $1.2 billion for the National Institutes of Health, which led to a long Covid research initiative called Recover, in February 2021. A year and a half later, there are few treatments and lengthy delays to get into the small number of long Covid clinics. Frontline medical workers don’t have the clinical guidelines they need, and some are still dismissive about the condition.

    Long Covid sufferers who caught the virus early have entered their third year with the condition. Many told me they have lost not just their health but also their jobs and health insurance. They’re running out of savings, treatment options and hope.

    To add to their misery — despite centuries of evidence that viral infections can lead later to terrible debilitating conditions — their travails are often dismissed as fantasy or as unworthy of serious concern.

    #Covid #Covid_long #Zeynep_Tufekci

  • Opinion | Protesters So Ill, They Couldn’t Get Arrested - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/opinion/me-cfs-long-covid.html

    M.E./C.F.S. (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), a condition that’s often postviral and similar to what some long Covid sufferers appear to have, can be so debilitating that it leaves those who have it with a sense of desperation.

    That wasn’t apparent as they picketed and chanted, some in wheelchairs or using canes, wearing red shirts with slogans like “Still sick, still fighting” and “Millions missing.”

    They gave their best shot at civil disobedience, but instead of being arrested, they were largely ignored. A few news articles mentioned the protest, and the world moved on.

    #Covid #Covid_long #Zeynep_Tufekci

  • Opinion | A.I. Will Change Education. Don’t Let It Worsen Inequality. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/opinion/chatgpt-education-ai-technology.html

    It is in high schools and even college where some of ChatGPT’s most interesting and troubling aspects will become clear.

    Essay writing is most often assigned not because the result has much value — proud parents putting good grades on the fridge aside — but because the process teaches crucial skills: researching a topic, judging claims, synthesizing knowledge and expressing it in a clear, coherent and persuasive manner. Those skills will be even more important because of advances in A.I.

    When I asked ChatGPT a range of questions — about the ethical challenges faced by journalists who work with hacked materials, the necessity of cryptocurrency regulation, the possibility of democratic backsliding in the United States — the answers were cogent, well reasoned and clear. It’s also interactive: I could ask for more details or request changes.

    But then, on trickier topics or more complicated concepts, ChatGPT sometimes gave highly plausible answers that were flat-out wrong — something its creators warn about in their disclaimers.

    Unless you already knew the answer or were an expert in the field, you could be subjected to a high-quality intellectual snow job.

    In flipped classrooms, students wouldn’t use ChatGPT to conjure up a whole essay. Instead, they’d use it as a tool to generate critically examined building blocks of essays. It would be similar to how students in advanced math classes are allowed to use calculators to solve complex equations without replicating tedious, previously mastered steps.

    Teachers could assign a complicated topic and allow students to use such tools as part of their research. Assessing the veracity and reliability of these A.I.-generated notes and using them to create an essay would be done in the classroom, with guidance and instruction from teachers. The goal would be to increase the quality and the complexity of the argument.

    This would require more teachers to provide detailed feedback. Unless sufficient resources are provided equitably, adapting to conversational A.I. in flipped classrooms could exacerbate inequalities.

    Some school officials may treat this as a problem of merely plagiarism detection and expand the use of draconian surveillance systems. During the pandemic, many students were forced to take tests or write essays under the gaze of an automated eye-tracking system or on a locked-down computer to prevent cheating.

    In a fruitless arms race against conversational A.I., automated plagiarism software may become supercharged, making school more punitive for monitored students. Worse, such systems will inevitably produce some false accusations, which damage trust and may even stymie the prospects of promising students.

    Educational approaches that treat students like enemies may teach students to hate or subvert the controls. That’s not a recipe for human betterment.

    As societies responded to previous technological advances, like mechanization, by eventually enacting a public safety net, a shorter workweek and a minimum wage, we will also need policies that allow more people to live with dignity as a basic right, even if their skills have been superseded. With so much more wealth generated now, we could unleash our imagination even more, expanding free time and better working conditions for more people.

    The way forward is not to just lament supplanted skills, as Plato did, but also to recognize that as more complex skills become essential, our society must equitably educate people to develop them. And then it always goes back to the basics. Value people as people, not just as bundles of skills.

    #Education #Intlligence_artificielle #Zeynep_Tufekci

  • Twitter Suspends Over 25 Accounts That Track Billionaires’ Private Planes - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/technology/twitter-private-jet-accounts-suspended.html

    Twitter on Wednesday suspended more than 25 accounts that track the planes of government agencies, billionaires and high-profile individuals — including one that followed the movements of the social media company’s owner, Elon Musk, who has said he was committed to “free speech.”

    Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old college student and flight tracking enthusiast, said he woke up on Wednesday to find that his automated Twitter account, @ElonJet, had been suspended. In recent months, the account amassed more than 500,000 followers by using public flight information and data to post the whereabouts of Mr. Musk’s private plane. Twitter later reinstated the @ElonJet account before suspending it again.

    Mr. Musk had been aware of @ElonJet for months. After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, he said that he would allow the account to remain on the platform. “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Mr. Musk tweeted last month.

    My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk
    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022

    Mr. Sweeney’s personal Twitter account was also suspended on Wednesday, along with the other accounts that he runs that track the planes of tech billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Mr. Sweeney shared a message that he had received from Twitter, which said his account had been suspended for violating rules “against platform manipulations and spam.”

    `#Twitter #Elon_Musk #Liberté_expression

  • Tech Trade Group Sues California to Halt Children’s Online Safety Law - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/technology/netchoice-lawsuit-children-online-safety.html

    Ah le beau quarteron d’hypocrites...

    By Natasha Singer

    Natasha Singer, a technology reporter at The New York Times, has covered children’s online privacy since 2012.
    Dec. 14, 2022

    A tech industry trade association sued the state of California on Wednesday in an effort to halt a new children’s online safety law, a legal challenge that comes at a moment of intensified public concern over the risks that content on popular platforms like Instagram and TikTok could pose to younger users.

    The new law, called the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, will require many online services to install sweeping safeguards for minors, including protecting children from potentially harmful content and turning off friend-finder features that could enable adult strangers to contact young people. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the children’s online safety bill, the first of its kind in the nation, into law in September.

    The trade association, called NetChoice, is suing to block the law before it is scheduled to take effect in 2024. The trade group’s members include Amazon; Pinterest; TikTok; Google, which owns YouTube; and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

    In a legal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, NetChoice said the legislation would require online services to act as content censors, violating constitutional protections for free speech. The group also argued that the law would harm minors and others by hindering their access to free and open online resources.

    The law “presses companies to serve as roving censors of speech on the internet,” the NetChoice complaint said. “Such over-moderation,” it added, “will restrict the availability of information for users of all ages and stifle important resources, particularly for vulnerable youth who rely on the internet for lifesaving information.”

    The British rules require online services that are likely to have minors as users to prioritize children’s safety. In practice, that means many popular social media and video game platforms must turn on the highest privacy settings for younger users in Britain. They must also turn off certain features that could prod children into staying online for hours on end, such as autoplay — videos that automatically play one after another.

    Last year, as the British rules were poised to take effect, Google, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Snap, YouTube and others introduced new safeguards for younger users worldwide. YouTube, for instance, turned off default video autoplay for minors.

    The California rules similarly require online services to turn off features like video autoplay for children.

    In response to a question from a reporter about why the group wanted to block the California law when many of its members were already complying with similar British rules, NetChoice said that the state law was unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

    “Although the U.K. has a similar law on the books, it has neither a First Amendment nor a long tradition of protecting online speech,” said Chris Marchese, NetChoice’s counsel.

    #Protection_enfants #Médias_sociaux #Californie

  • Bob Dylan Gets Tangled Up in Book Autograph Controversy - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/arts/bob-dylan-fake-signature.html

    Simon & Schuster sold 900 signed copies of the singer’s new essay collection, but superfans and internet sleuths noticed something wasn’t right with the autograph. Now the publisher is issuing refunds.

    Bernstein was one of hundreds of fans who sleuthed their way around social media, reaching the conclusion that the supposedly hand-signed books had not, in fact, been signed by Dylan.

    “I got the nostalgia bug,” said Bernstein, who already owned an unsigned copy of the book, as well as a Kindle version and an audio version. He added, “If he touches this book — he wrote it, signed it — it feels like the soul of Bob Dylan is with me.”

    #Fans #Bob_Dylan

  • Amid Israeli Blockade on Gaza, a Fishing Fleet Limps Along - The New York Times
    By Raja Abdulrahim | Nov. 27, 2022, 3:00 a.m. ET
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/world/middleeast/israeli-blockade-gaza-fishing.html

    A Palestinian fisherman carrying his bounty after a trip out to the sea along the Gaza Strip. Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

    An Israeli blockade that restricts the movement of Gazans out of the strip and limits imports — or bans them completely — has been devastating for the enclave’s fishing industry.

    GAZA CITY, Gaza — Not far from the edge of the port in the Gaza Strip lies its boat cemetery: two rows of beached fishing vessels that even Gazan ingenuity cannot salvage.

    Motors and propellers have been stripped. The once-bright blue, green and yellow paint on more than two dozen fishing boats is peeling. The fiberglass on some looks as if it has been eaten away.

    The boats began piling up in Gaza 15 years ago after Israel, aided by Egypt, imposed a land, air and sea blockade on the small Palestinian coastal enclave in 2007. The blockade severely restricts the movement of Gazans out of the strip and limits imports or bans them completely, including medical equipment and construction material.

    For Gaza’s fishermen, the blockade has prevented them from buying motors, propellers, fiberglass and many other items needed to repair the boats and maintain a functioning fishing fleet. It has damaged a vital but shrinking part of the strip’s economy while crimping the supply of an important but increasingly out-of-reach part of the local diet.

    Repairs and maintenance that were once easy and affordable became too costly or scarce, causing some fishermen to just give up and dump their unsalvageable boats in the cemetery.

    “This is a war on our livelihoods,” said Miflih Abu Rial, a fisherman and official in the fishermen’s union, standing on the bow of one of his family’s boats, which has been in the cemetery for years.

    Miflih Abu Rial at the boat cemetery in the Gaza port. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

    Gazan and industry officials warn that if Israeli restrictions are not eased, the strip’s fishing sector could completely collapse in the next few years as more and more boats are removed from service.

    Israel says the blockade and restrictions are for its security and intended to prevent Hamas, which controls Gaza, and other militant groups from using “dual use” items — products that Israel says can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

    “Some items that serve the fishing industry are defined as dual-use materials,” the Civil Administration, the Israeli authority that carries out civilian policy in occupied territories under the command of the military, said in a statement.

    Israel’s blockade has devastated Gaza’s economy, in which poverty is widespread and unemployment hovers around 50 percent. Palestinian officials and human rights groups have long maintained that the blockade amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s two million residents in the densely packed enclave.

    “The fishing sector now works at 50 percent capacity and every day it is decreasing,” said Jehad Salah, the head of the fisheries directorate in Gaza. “When they ban the equipment needed for maintenance then they are forcing people to leave this industry.”

    A fish auction at the Gaza port. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

    A United Nations-initiated program to allow maintenance and repair materials to be sent in was finally just put into place after months of negotiations, a U.N. official said.

    The agreement allows individual fishermen to request orders of dual-use materials needed to repair their boats. Each request must be approved by both the Palestinian and Israeli sides. Once approved, the fishermen can make the order, and the importation and distribution of the materials will be overseen by the United Nations.

    Only a few dozen have had their orders approved so far.

    On Nov. 13, the first batch of materials entered Gaza, the first since 2007, a shipment that included 500 pounds of fiberglass, 1,100 pounds of Polyester resin and a total of 70 pounds of blue, white and yellow paint.

    Next month, motors will be allowed in, Mr. Salah said. He added that he was withholding judgment on the program’s success.

    The Israeli civil administration said the materials will be brought in under strict security and supervision.

    For Gaza’s fishermen, the negative effect of the blockade is multifold. In addition to the limits on goods coming in, the naval blockade restricts how far out into the Mediterranean Sea fishermen can go and thus how much and the type of fish they are able to catch.

    Fishermen are at risk of being shot at by the Israeli coast guard and being detained or having their boats confiscated by Israel if they get too close to the boundaries of the permitted fishing areas. There have been more than 300 shooting episodes this year, according to the United Nations, with 14 fishermen injured. At least 47 have been detained by Israel.

    Fishermen transporting their catches for selling at the Gaza port. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

    With little relief from the blockade, Gaza’s boats limp along, kept semifunctioning by a combination of salvaged used parts from other vessels, modified car and truck parts that are not made to be in the salty sea, and occasionally smuggled items. But the black market mostly dried up after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt cracked down on smuggling tunnels between his country and Gaza.

    In June 2016, the brothers of Mr. Abu Rial, the fisherman, were on one of eight boats owned by their family when it was seized at sea by Israeli forces. The boat was returned to them nearly two years later but needed extensive repairs to make it seaworthy again. Family members did not have the money, nor could they find the necessary parts, so the boat was put in the cemetery.

    Now Mr. Abu Rial, 44 and a third-generation fisherman, uses another aging boat with a motor that has been on its last legs for the past two years. Sometimes the mechanic must fix it three times a week. Other times, Mr. Abu Rial goes weeks without fishing because the motor will not work.

    Recently, he had to sell some of his wife’s gold jewelry to pay bills.

    “After I get the motor fixed, I just pray that it will last a week or even a day,” he said, standing outside his family’s storage room at the port. Inside, the walls are covered with graffiti scrawled by their children, who occasionally visit the port to begin learning the family trade. A rusting refrigerator laid on its back is filled with old and spare boat parts.

    Jamal Tolba, a mechanic, left, trying to repair a motor from a Rial family fishing boat at the port in Gaza. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

    Farther down the port, along a breakwater built using rubble from previous wars in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, Methat Redwan Bakir’s boat has been tied up for years.

    “The Israelis took it for three years and returned to me with no nets and no engine and no lights,” he said. “It hasn’t moved since it came back.”

    Mr. Bakir’s brother and 11 other fishermen were on the boat in 2016 along the northern fishing limit when they were shot at by the Israeli coast guard, which also fired water cannons at the vessel, he said. The boat was confiscated and all 12 crew members detained. Ten of them were released the next day, and Mr. Bakir’s brother was detained for 18 days before being let go. Another man was imprisoned for five years.

    For decades, the boat supported five families on which they could make up to $1,000 a day from fishing.

    It would have cost Mr. Bakir, 57, a father of four daughters, several thousand dollars to fix. So he tied it up and abandoned it.

    In the green murky waters nearby, Mr. Bakir watched as a group of young men learned the trade, working to unravel fishing nets and preparing to go out to sea. But it remains unclear how long this industry can survive here.

    Fishermen mending their nets before sailing. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

    Now, Mr. Bakir goes out on a six-meter-long flat-bottomed boat with a 20-year-old motor that breaks down as often as it works. And instead of using nets, he relies on a rudimentary mix of equipment: fishing rods, plastic bottles and multiple baits.

    In the sand next to his boat lies a small banner from a past solidarity protest: “Viva Palestina,” it reads, and, “End the occupation.”

    With a dwindling number of functional motors in Gaza, increasing numbers of fishermen are using paddle boards to continue their trade. On any morning, men standing atop wide two-person boards, loaded with nets, can be seen going out to sea.

    “The paddle board is a new thing, but it is very dangerous,” said Mr. Salah, the fisheries director.

    Ashraf Al-Aawoo, 47, had been using a paddle board for months after his boat fell into disrepair.

    But one day in the spring, he and a partner found the fish plentiful. The net bulged with fish but the paddle board could not take the heavy weight and sank.

    A fisherman on a paddle board at sunrise inside the Gaza port. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

    Mr. Al-Aawoo, deeply tanned from a lifetime on the water and under the sun, had to swim more than a mile back to shore with his fellow fishermen.

    The Gazan coast guard fished the paddle board out of the water.

    Even if he had the money to repair it, there is not any fiberglass in Gaza to buy, Mr. Al-Aawoo said.

    In frustration, he dragged the board from the sandy shore to the entrance of the port and left it on the road shoulder as a statement — like a sole cemetery plot for another Gazan boat.

    #GAZA

  • Can Big Tech Get Bigger? Microsoft Presses Governments to Say Yes.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/technology/microsoft-activision-deal.html

    Microsoft’s $69 billion deal for Activision Blizzard, which is undergoing reviews in 16 countries, has become a test for whether tech giants can buy companies amid a backlash.

    #jeu_vidéo #jeux_vidéo #business #finance #acquisition #microsoft #sony #activision_blizzard #xbox #console_xbox #playstation #console_playstation #jeu_vidéo_candy_crush #jeu_vidéo_cod #jeu_vidéo_call_of_duty #concurrence #cwa #ftc

  • Opinion | The Most Eloquent Speaker at the Climate Summit Is Alaa Abd El Fattah - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/opinion/alaa-hunger-strike-egypt-cop.html

    By refusing to even drink water during the climate summit — an event dedicated to thinking about our planet and its future — Alaa is intervening in this global conversation by staking his fragile, incarcerated body as the argument. From his prison cell, he is arguing what environmental activists have long known: Our planet and its future are not separate from us, from how we treat one another’s bodies, from whether we are able to live and think and speak safely and freely.

    A few weeks earlier, Alaa’s sister Mona Seif visited him in prison. Like all his monthly visits, it was 20 minutes long and took place with a glass barrier between them. “I am going to die in here,” he told her. “You have to get over the notion that you’re going to rescue me. Focus on achieving the highest political price for my death.”

    Alaa’s words point to a greater democratic concern beyond his self: that vaunted liberal democracies prioritize maintaining relations with dictatorships to safeguard strategic interests over the lives of their citizens — celebrated or ordinary — incarcerated and pushed to the brink of death by their authoritarian clients. Against these shortsighted politics, Alaa understands that our crises and our fates are interconnected.

    Alaa’s radical decision to stop drinking water as diplomats, journalists, politicians, scholars and activists arrived in Sharm el Sheikh is galvanizing all of this. International government and grass-roots attendees have spoken out for him at the climate summit. Solidarity has poured in from everywhere: People in Egypt, New York, Palestine and around the world are writing, protesting, reading his work and going on hunger strikes in solidarity with him.

    Because of his activism and his prolific writings, and because of how long he has been in prison, Alaa has become a symbol of the 2011 revolution, which Mr. el-Sisi, who came to power following a coup in 2013, has tried very hard to erase and prevent from recurring.

    And yet, it seems that Mr. el-Sisi and his security state cannot stop people from embracing a renewed spirit of solidarity and calls for justice, which are reverberating throughout the climate summit. Alaa is on his sixth day of refusing water, after more than seven months without food. In response to pressure about his case, the Egyptian government has asked people to not get distracted, to focus on climate issues.

    After months of denying that he was on a hunger strike, Egyptian authorities told the family that he is receiving medical intervention to prevent him from dying in prison. Alaa is not on strike because he wants to die; he is on strike because he wants to truly live. Any unwanted bodily intervention will only become a new front in his fight for his life.

    In Sharm el Sheikh, the heads of the German, British and French governments said they raised Alaa’s case in their meetings with Mr. el-Sisi this week.

    Alaa’s hunger strike has exposed the limitations of business-as-usual diplomacy and energized our capacities to create change. That goes for all of us: his loved ones and supporters, and the governments that are supposed to represent and protect him.

    Yasmin El-Rifae is the author of “Radius,” a history of a feminist group that fought mass sexual assaults at Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring protests in Egypt.

    #Alaa_Abd_el_Fattah #Egypte

  • Jordan Is Running Out of Water, a Grim Glimpse of the Future - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/world/middleeast/jordan-water-cop-27.html

    Desalination is a promising lifeline for Jordan, but it will not happen quickly. A large-scale desalination project in the port city of Aqaba on the Red Sea is in the works, but it will take years.

    There is one potential quick fix: buying more water from Israel, a pioneer in desalination techniques. Cooperation on water was an important element of the 1994 peace treaty between the two countries, and they signed a water-for-energy agreement at the United Nations climate conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh on Tuesday.

    Protests broke out in Amman last year when the plan, which was brokered by the United Arab Emirates and would involve Jordan sending solar energy to Israel in exchange for water, was first announced. An overreliance on Israel water is unpalatable to many Jordanians, who oppose the occupation of the Palestinian territories.

    But water is a critical national security issue in Jordan, and shortages threaten to destabilize a stalwart U.S. Arab ally that has been an oasis of calm in a turbulent neighborhood. Iyad Dahiyat, a former water ministry official, said the water portfolio is as important as the military given the threats to Jordan posed by climate change.

    One recent study predicted that severe and potentially destabilizing water shortages will become common in Jordan by 2100 unless the country makes significant changes.

    “The government needs to increase supply to communities to limit discontent,” said Sandra Ruckstuhl, an American researcher based in Amman and a senior adviser at the International Water Management.

    Ms. Ruckstuhl and other experts say the government needs to raise water prices based on household income to account for the soaring cost of delivering it to homes and businesses. But many Jordanians are already struggling with unemployment and high prices and that would be an added, and unpopular, burden.

    Choosing crops wisely and managing water are crucial for Jordanian agriculture as climate change accelerates. The sector once used about 70 percent of the country’s water supply, though it contributes relatively little to the gross domestic product.

    Use has decreased to around 50 percent, which Mr. Salameh, the government spokesman, cited as a promising indicator. But many farmers still focus on water-intensive crops that are becoming more difficult to grow.

    Khaireddin Shukri, 68, is a retired farm owner and a consultant who has long pushed for crops that require less water and bring in more money. He said the water issue revolves around planning and pointed to inefficient practices and waste.

    “It’s a country with huge potential but lack of management,” he said of Jordan.

    #eau #changement_climatique #agriculture #irrigation

    • commentaire du journaliste Taylor Luck
      https://twitter.com/Taylor_Luck/status/1590603807545004032 et suivants

      Great article, but quick note, the #Jordan-#Israel 200mcm #water deal is not a “quick fix.” Even with water from Israel and 200mcm desalination from Aqaba (when?), the country faces 1.6 billion cubic meters demand amid dwindling groundwater and rainfall
      #Jordan-#Israel #water deal will ease the immediate emergancy, no doubt (when it happens). But it, along with the Red Sea Conveyance Project will barely keep up pace with increased water demand due to population growth and decline in rainfall/groundwater resources.
      Also, deal is dependent on construction of the solar plant and an #Israel-i prime Minister who won’t withhold water to strong-arm #Jordan. #Netanyahu has mused withholding water from Jordan in the past and has criticized this solar-water deal.

  • #Gérald_Darmanin veut rendre « impossible » la vie des étrangers soumis à une obligation de quitter le territoire

    Les circonstances de la mort de la petite #Lola et le profil de la suspecte, de nationalité algérienne et sous le coup d’une #obligation_de_quitter_le_territoire_français (#OQTF), ont suscité de vives critiques à droite et à l’extrême droite. Si les parents de l’enfant ont regretté les tentatives de récupération politique de ce terrible drame, les discussions politiques se poursuivent. Ce jeudi, le ministre de l’intérieur a annoncé l’intention du gouvernement de rendre « impossible » la vie des étrangers faisant l’objet d’une OQTF.

    « Nous avons un travail à faire pour rendre impossible la vie des OQTF en France » dans le futur projet de #loi sur l’immigration, a déclaré Gérald Darmanin sur France Inter, en soulignant comme exemple le fait qu’« aujourd’hui quelqu’un qui fait l’objet d’une OQTF peut encore avoir un #logement_social ». « Un étranger arrivé légalement sur le sol [français] et qui perd son statut, devenant irrégulier, ne doit plus pouvoir garder son logement social », a insisté l’entourage du ministre.

    « Un droit trop complexe » pour expulser

    La #mesure_d’expulsion, dite OQTF, fait l’objet de polémiques récurrentes, notamment sur son taux d’application réel que le gouvernement veut augmenter à l’aide de la loi. Cette polémique a été ravivée depuis le meurtre sauvage de Lola. Sur ce sujet, le ministre de l’Intérieur a déploré un « droit trop complexe pour expulser un étranger en situation irrégulière, avec jusqu’à douze recours administratifs et judiciaires ».

    Selon lui, « plus de la moitié » des 120.000 OQTF prises ne sont pas exécutoires à cause de #recours_administratifs. Le projet de loi à venir prévoit de diviser par trois ce nombre possible de recours, de douze à quatre, a expliqué Gérard Darmanin, en prévoyant sur ce sujet « un grand débat parlementaire très compliqué ». Le gouvernement envisage par ailleurs de « lever les protections pour un certain nombre d’étrangers », a dit le ministre en citant la nécessité de mettre fin au système de #double_peine, qui voit un étranger condamné devoir purger sa peine sur le territoire avant son expulsion.

    Une situation « déjà » impossible

    La suppression de cette mesure permettrait selon lui « d’expulser 4.000 étrangers délinquants supplémentaires par année ». Rendre la vie « impossible » aux étrangers en situation irrégulière, « c’est déjà le cas actuellement », dénonce Mélanie Louis, responsable des questions d’expulsions à l’association La Cimade, pour qui les mesures du projet de loi vont faire rompre la France avec « l’Etat de droit ».

    Selon Mélanie Louis, il est d’ailleurs « complètement faux » qu’une personne sous le coup d’une OQTF ait droit à un logement social en France : « ces personnes bénéficient simplement du droit, inconditionnel, à une place d’#hébergement_d’urgence via le 115 [le numéro d’urgence dédié aux sans-abri], mais dans aucun cas à un HLM ».

    « 100 % d’application » pour les expulsions

    Jeudi soir, le président Emmanuel Macron a dit vouloir « réformer en profondeur les règles, nos lois, pour simplifier les procédures » d’expulsion, à l’occasion d’une nouvelle #loi_sur_l’asile_et_l’immigration qui doit être présentée « On va durcir les règles » pour « aller à ces 100 % » d’application des obligations de quitter le territoire français, des #procédures_d’expulsion dont moins de 10 % seulement sont exécutées. « au premier semestre de l’année prochaine ».

    « On va durcir les règles » pour « aller à ces 100 % » d’application des obligations de quitter le territoire français, des procédures d’expulsion dont moins de 10 % seulement sont exécutées.

    https://www.20minutes.fr/politique/4007487-20221027-darmanin-veut-rendre-impossible-vie-etrangers-soumis-obli

    #Darmanin #Gérard_Darmanin_comme_Theresa_May #hostile_environment #environnement_hostile #asile #migrations #réfugiés #instrumentalisation #sans-papiers #rendre_la_vie_impossible #expulsions #renvois #durcissement

    ping @karine4 @isskein