archive

Paris ville à l’air de plus en plus propre
« Air pollution maps reveal a dramatic change. Air pollution fell substantially as the city restricted car traffic and made way for parks and bike lanes. »

«Dramatic» ? Spectaculaire en tout cas.

– Cartes de l’évolution du NO2 entre 2007 et 2024 :

https://archive.is/zWfzo/14f5c80e705533c948bf2d452230ebd5f9f539fb.jpg

– Évolution des particules fines :

https://archive.is/zWfzo/6eec2f21b03fb70ee19e84f26544454b8fdee89e.jpg

L’article : ▻https://archive.is/zWfzo

Far-left Argentine Lawmaker Indicted for Posts Comparing Gaza War to Holocaust - Israel News - Haaretz.com
▻https://archive.is/2025.04.08-145957/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-04-08/ty-article/.premium/far-left-argentine-lawmaker-indicted-for-posts-comparing-gaza-war-to-holocaust/00000196-1594-d412-abd7-7596d3e20000

https://archive.is/kfxgr/33bb498a993f8a5e3e5f6acfa64e7538dd80b7ed/scr.png

Toujours pire...

A far-left Argentine lawmaker has been indicted by a federal judge for various social media posts “inciting hate against the Jewish community.”

The decision to press charges against Vanina Biasi, a member of the Trotskyist Workers’ party, was announced on Monday by Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas, following an investigation into a series of posts she published after October 7, in which she referred to Israel as a “fascist” and “Nazi” state and described
Israel’s war in Gaza as a “Holocaust.”

Among them was a post shared on X in November 2023, when news broke that Emily Hand, a young girl from Kibbutz Be’eri who was believed to be dead, was actually alive and had been kidnapped by Hamas. In that post, Biasi wrote: “Thousands of people suffering because Emily had been murdered and, in the end, it was just a construction of the Zionist narrative that doesn´t care about people and its pain.”

In his decision to indict Biasi, Rafecas wrote that, based on his examination, her social media posts constitute a criminal offense and are not protected by free speech.

“Her expressions cannot be seen as mere critiques ... of the Israeli government for specific policies or actions,” the judge wrote in the 59-page decision.

“On the contrary, the accused labels the State of Israel (not just its government or temporary authorities) and Zionism as genocidal and Nazi, as occupiers of a land (not acknowledging its right to it), and as perpetuators of apartheid. And she does so in a series of messages with clear antisemitic content.”

The judge concluded that Biasi’s fierce condemnations of Israel and Israelis fit the definition of antisemitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, which Argentina has adopted. His main concerns, he wrote, were the comparisons drawn between the war in Gaza and the Holocaust, but he was also concerned that her expressions of anti-Zionism could be interpreted as calls for Israel’s eradication and, therefore, constituted a hate crime.
During the investigation by the state prosecutor, Biasi was quoted saying that as “a person that has fought against antisemitism for more than 30 years,” she was offended by the complaints and believed she was being targeted “for not having the same opinion as the DAIA [the representative body of the Jewish community] on the Middle East.”

Asked by the prosecutor about the parallels she had drawn between Zionism and Nazism, she cited in her defense Rabbi Yeshayahu Leibowitz, one of Israel’s most original and controversial thinkers, who coined the term “Judeo-Nazi.”

The judge decided to freeze her assets, valued at 10 million Pesos (roughly $300,000), to cover the costs of future legal proceedings and any fines that might be incurred.

Have humans passed #peak brain power ?
▻https://www.ft.com/content/a8016c64-63b7-458b-a371-e0e1c54a13fc

▻https://archive.is/20250317061217/https://www.ft.com/content/a8016c64-63b7-458b-a371-e0e1c54a13fc

-- Permalink

#cognition #intelligence #decline #flynn #language #attention #memory #selfregulation

Un projet bien antérieur aux attaques du 7 octobre 2023
Vider Gaza, ce vieux rêve israélien, par Alain Gresh (Le Monde diplomatique, mars 2025)
▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2025/03/GRESH/68098

https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/arton68098.jpg

La proposition du président américain Donald Trump de déporter plus de deux millions de Palestiniens de Gaza vers l’Égypte et la Jordanie a suscité des réactions très diverses, mais un soutien important en Israël. Elle correspond à d’anciennes velléités de l’establishment israélien, pour qui ce territoire représente depuis 1949 un obstacle au projet ­sioniste.
(...)

Israel Police Raid Prominent East Jerusalem Bookshops, Arrest Owners, Confiscate Books - Israel News - Haaretz.com
▻https://archive.is/2025.02.10-093318/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-02-10/ty-article/.premium/israel-police-raid-prominent-east-jerusalem-bookshops-arrest-owners-confiscate-books/00000194-eee4-dc0f-a7de-fef4f44c0000

Israel Police Raid Prominent East Jerusalem Bookshops, Arrest Owners, Confiscate Books
Police told the owners of the stores, specializing in Arabic and English books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of Jerusalem, that they were suspected of disturbing public order. Their lawyer says police likely pivoted once they realized they would not get approval for incitement charges

Israel Police raided two bookstores in East Jerusalem on Sunday, suspecting that the books sold there constituted incitement, but then arrested the owners on suspicion of disturbing the peace.
The police obtained a search warrant for the stores from Jerusalem Magistrate Court Judge Chavi Tucker.

After seizing the books and arresting the store owners, the police decided to change the charge from incitement to suspicion of disturbing public order, leaving the owners in custody until the morning. They will be brought to court on Monday morning for a hearing as the police request an eight-day extension of their detention.

Israel Police raided The Educational Bookshop. Nir Hasson X account
The Educational Bookshop chain is the most well-known bookstore chain in East Jerusalem, with three locations on Salah al-Din Street and in the American Colony Hotel complex. The stores specialize in Arabic and English books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of Jerusalem, and they are well-known to researchers, diplomats, journalists and tourists.

On Sunday afternoon, Israeli police officers raided the stores on Salah al-Din Street, searched the premises, examined the books for an extended period, confiscated dozens of books from both stores and arrested the owners, Mahmoud Muna and his nephew, Ahmad Muna, both well-known figures in East Jerusalem. The officers presented a search warrant signed four days ago by Judge Tucker.
“They used Google Translate on the books, and anything they didn’t like, they took,” said Mourad Muna, Mahmoud’s brother. “They even found a Haaretz newspaper with a picture of the hostages and asked what it was, saying it was incitement. They took every book with a Palestinian flag on it.”

Attorney Nasser Odeh, who represents the owners, stated that during their interrogation, they were told they were suspected of disturbing public order, not incitement.
“To open an incitement investigation, the police need approval from the prosecution. It seems they realized they had no chance of getting that approval, so they switched the charge to the more generic ’disturbing public order’ offense. I have never encountered a case where someone is held in custody overnight for suspicion of disturbing public order,” said Odeh.

The Israel Police have yet to provide a comment.

#Elon_Musk Wants What He Can’t Have: #Wikipedia

Musk and other right-wing tech figures have been on a campaign to delegitimize the digital encyclopedia. What happens if they succeed?

A recent target in Elon Musk’s long and eminently tweetable list of grievances: the existence of the world’s most famous encyclopedia. Musk’s latest attack—“Defund Wikipedia until balance is restored!” he posted on X last month—coincided with an update to his own Wikipedia page, one that described the Sieg heil–ish arm movement he’d made during an Inauguration Day speech. “Musk twice extended his right arm towards the crowd in an upward angle,” the entry read at one point. “The gesture was compared to a Nazi salute or fascist salute. Musk denied any meaning behind the gesture.” There was little to be upset about; the Wikipedia page didn’t accuse Musk of making a Sieg heil salute. But that didn’t seem to matter to Musk. Wikipedia is “an extension of legacy media propaganda!” he posted.
Musk’s outburst was part of an ongoing crusade against the digital encyclopedia. In recent months, he has repeatedly attempted to delegitimize Wikipedia, suggesting on X that it is “controlled by far-left activists” and calling for his followers to “stop donating to Wokepedia.” Other prominent figures who share his politics have also set their sights on the platform. “Wikipedia has been ideologically captured for years,” Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, posted after Musk’s gesture last month. “Wikipedia lies,” Chamath Palihapitiya, another tech investor, wrote. Pirate Wires, a publication popular among the tech right, has published at least eight stories blasting Wikipedia since August.
Wikipedia is certainly not immune to bad information, disagreement, or political warfare, but its openness and transparency rules have made it a remarkably reliable platform in a decidedly unreliable age. Evidence that it’s an outright propaganda arm of the left, or of any political party, is thin. In fact, one of the most notable things about the site is how it has steered relatively clear of the profit-driven algorithmic mayhem that has flooded search engines and social-media platforms with bad or politically fraught information. If anything, the site, which is operated by a nonprofit and maintained by volunteers, has become more of a refuge in a fractured online landscape than an ideological prison—a “last bastion of shared reality,” as the writer Alexis Madrigal once called it. And that seems to be precisely why it’s under attack.
The extent to which Wikipedia’s entries could be politically slanted has been a subject of inquiry for a long time. (Accusations of liberal bias have persisted just as long: In 2006, the son of the famed conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly launched “Conservapedia” to combat it.) Sock puppets and deceptive editing practices have been problems on the site, as with the rest of the internet. And demographically speaking, it’s true that Wikipedia entries are written and edited by a skewed sliver of humanity: A 2020 survey by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, found that roughly 87 percent of the site’s contributors were male; more than half lived in Europe. In recent years, the foundation has put an increased emphasis on identifying and filling in these so-called knowledge gaps. Research has shown that diversity among Wikipedia’s editors makes information on the site less biased, a spokesperson pointed out to me. For the anti-Wikipedia contingent, however, such efforts are evidence that the site has been taken over by the left. As Pirate Wires has put it, Wikipedia has become a “top-down social activism and advocacy machine.”
In 2016, two researchers at Harvard Business School examined more than 70,000 Wikipedia articles related to U.S. politics and found that overall they were “mildly more slanted towards the Democratic ‘view’” than analogous Encyclopedia Britannica articles. Still, the finding was nuanced. Entries on civil rights had more of a Democratic slant; articles on immigration had more of a Republican slant. Any charge of “extreme left-leaning bias,” Shane Greenstein, an economist who co-authored the study, told me, “could not be supported by the data.” Things could have changed since then, Greenstein said, but he’s “very skeptical” that they have.
Attacks will continue regardless. In June, the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, published a report suggesting that Wikipedia articles about certain organizations and public figures aligned with the right tend to be associated with greater amounts of negative sentiment than similar groups and figures on the left. When asked about bias on the site, the Wikimedia spokesperson told me that “Wikipedia is not influenced by any one person or group” and that the site’s editors “don’t write to convince but to explain and inform.” (They certainly like to write: A debate over the spelling yogurt versus yoghurt was similar in length to The Odyssey. In the end, yogurt won, but three other spellings are listed in the article’s first sentence.)
The fact that Musk, in his most recent tirade against Wikipedia, didn’t point to any specific errors in the entry about his inauguration gesture is telling. As he gripes about injustice, the fundamental issue he and others in his circle have with Wikipedia seems to be more about control. With his acquisitional approach to global technology and platforms, Musk has gained influence over an astonishing portion of online life. He has turned X into his own personal megaphone, which he uses to spout his far-right political views. Through Starlink, his satellite-internet company, Musk quite literally governs some people’s access to the web. Even other tech platforms that Musk doesn’t own have aligned themselves with him. In early January, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would back away from third-party fact-checking on its platforms, explicitly citing X as an inspiration. (Zuckerberg also announced that the company’s trust and safety teams would move from California to Texas, again borrowing from Musk.)
One thing Musk does not control is Wikipedia. Although the site is far from perfect, it remains a place where, unlike much of the internet, facts still matter. That the people who are constantly writing and rewriting Wikipedia entries are disaggregated volunteers—rather than bendable to one man’s ideological views—seems to be in the public interest. The site’s structure is a nuisance for anyone invested in controlling how information is disseminated. With that in mind, the campaign against Wikipedia may best be understood as the apotheosis of a view fashionable among the anti-“woke” tech milieu: Free speech, which the group claims to passionately defend, counts only so long as they like what you have to say. Attempts to increase the diversity of perspectives represented on the site—that is, attempts to bring about more speech—have been construed as “censorship.” This group is less interested in representing multiple truths, as Wikipedia attempts to do, than it is in a singular truth: its own. (Musk, Maguire, and Palihapitiya did not respond to requests for comment.)
Ironically, Wikipedia resembles the version of the internet that Musk and his peers speak most reverently of. Musk often touts X’s Community Notes feature, which encourages users to correct and contextualize misleading posts. That sounds a lot like the philosophy behind … Wikipedia. Indeed, in a recent interview, X’s vice president of product explained that Community Notes took direct inspiration from Wikipedia.
Strike hard enough and often enough, the Wikipedia-haters seem to believe, and the website might just fracture into digital smithereens. Just as Twitter’s user base splintered into X and Bluesky and Mastodon and Threads, one can imagine a sad swarm of rival Wikipedias, each proclaiming its own ideological supremacy. (Musk and others in his orbit have similarly accused Reddit of being “hard-captured by the far left.”) Musk can’t just buy Wikipedia like he did Twitter. In December 2022, months after he purchased the social platform, a New York Post reporter suggested that he do just that. “Not for sale,” Jimmy Wales, one of the site’s co-founders, responded. The following year, Musk mockingly offered to give the site $1 billion to change its name to “Dickipedia.”

Even if he can’t buy Wikipedia, by blasting his more than 215 million followers with screeds against the site and calls for its defunding, Musk may be able to slowly undermine its credibility. (The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual budget of $189 million. Meanwhile, Musk spent some $288 million backing Trump and other Republican candidates this election cycle.) Anyone who defends free speech and democracy should wish for Wikipedia to survive and remain independent. Against the backdrop of a degraded web, the improbable success of a volunteer-run website attempting to gather all the world’s knowledge is something to celebrate, not destroy. And it’s especially valuable when so many prominent tech figures are joining Musk in using their deep pockets to make their own political agendas clear. At Donald Trump’s inauguration, the CEOs of the companies who run the world’s six most popular websites sat alongside Trump’s family on the dais. There was no such representative for the next-most-popular site: Wikipedia.

▻https://archive.is/1mjMq#selection-723.0-723.134

via @freakonometrics

IDF sees chance for strikes on Iran nuke sites after knocking out Syria air defenses | The Times of Israel
▻https://www.timesofisrael.com/iaf-says-preparing-for-strikes-on-iran-nuke-sites-after-knocking-out-

The #Allopathic #Complex and Its Consequences
▻https://archive.is/2024.12.09-230659/https://breloomlegacy.substack.com/p/the-allopathic-complex-and-its-consequences

#luigi #mangione's last words

LM Dec 09, 2024

The second amendment means I am my own #chief_executive and commander in chief of my own military. I authorize my own act of #self-defense in response to a hostile entity making war on me and my family.

Nelson Mandela says no form of viooence can be excused. Camus says it’s all the same, whether you live or die or have a cup of coffee. MLK says violence never brings permanent peace. Gandhi says that non-violence is the mightiest power available to mankind.
That’s who they tell you are heroes. That’s who our revolutionaries are.

Yet is that not capitalistic? Non-violence keeps the system working at full speed ahead.

What did it get us. Look in the mirror.

They want us to be #non-violent, so that they can grow fat off the blood they take from us.

The only way out is through. Not all of us will make it. Each of us is our own chief executive. You have to decide what you will tolerate.
In #Gladiator 1 #Maximus cuts into the military tattoo that identifies him as part of the roman legion. His friend asks “Is that the sign of your god?” As Maximus carves deeper into his own flesh, as his own blood drips down his skin, Maximus smiles and nods yes. The tattoo represents the emperor, who is god. The god emperor has made himself part of Maximus’s own flesh. The only way to destroy the emperor is to destroy himself. Maximus smiles through the pain because he knows it is worth it.

These might be my last words. I don’t know when they will come for me. I will resist them at any cost. That’s why I smile through the pain.

They diagnosed my mother with severe neuropathy when she was forty-one years old. She said it started ten years before that with burning sensations in her feet and occasional sharp stabbing pains. At first the pain would last a few moments, then fade to tingling, then numbness, then fade to nothing a few days later.
The first time the pain came she ignored it. Then it came a couple times a year and she ignored it. Then every couple months. Then a couple times a month. Then a couple times a week. At that point by the time the tingling faded to numbness, the pain would start, and the discomfort was constant. At that point even going from the couch to the kitchen to make her own lunch became a major endeavor

She started with ibuprofen, until the stomach aches and acid reflux made her switch to acetaminophen. Then the headaches and barely sleeping made her switch back to ibuprofen.

The first doctor said it was psychosomatic. Nothing was wrong. She needed to relax, destress, sleep more.

The second doctor said it was a compressed nerve in her spine. She needed back surgery. It would cost $180,000. Recovery would be six months minimum before walking again. Twelve months for full potential recovery, and she would never lift more than ten pounds of weight again.

The third doctor performed a Nerve Conduction Study, Electromyography, MRI, and blood tests. Each test cost $800 to $1200. She hit the $6000 deductible of her #UnitedHealthcare plan in October. Then the doctor went on vacation, and my mother wasn’t able to resume tests until January when her deductible reset.

The tests showed severe #neuropathy. The $180,000 surgery would have had no effect.

They prescribed #opioids for the pain. At first the pain relief was worth the price of constant mental fog and constipation. She didn’t tell me about that until later. All I remember is we took a trip for the first time in years, when she drove me to Monterey to go to the aquarium. I saw an otter in real life, swimming on its back. We left at 7am and listened to Green Day on the four-hour car ride. Over time, the opioids stopped working. They made her MORE sensitive to pain, and she felt withdrawal symptoms after just two or three hours.

Then gabapentin. By now the pain was so bad she couldn’t exercise, which compounded the weight gain from the slowed metabolic rate and hormonal shifts. And it barely helped the pain, and made her so fatigued she would go an entire day without getting out of bed.

Then Corticosteroids. Which didn’t even work.

The pain was so bad I would hear my mother wake up in the night screaming in pain. I would run into her room, asking if she’s OK. Eventually I stopped getting up. She’d yell out anguished shrieks of wordless pain or the word “fuck” stretched and distended to its limits. I’d turn over and go back to sleep.

All of this while they bled us dry with follow-up appointment after follow-up appointment, specialist consultations, and more imagine scans. Each appointment was promised to be fully covered, until the insurance claims were delayed and denied. Allopathic medicine did nothing to help my mother’s suffering. Yet it is the foundation of our entire society.

My mother told me that on a good day the nerve pain was like her legs were immersed in ice water. On a bad day it felt like her legs were clamped in a machine shop vice, screwed down to where the cranks stopped turning, then crushed further until her ankle bones sprintered and cracked to accommodate the tightening clamp. She had more bad days than good.

My mother crawled to the bathroom on her hands and knees. I slept in the living room to create more distance from her cries in the night. I still woke up, and still went back to sleep.
Back then I thought there was nothing I could do.

The high copays made consistent treatment impossible. New treatments were denied as “not medically necessary.” Old treatments didn’t work, and still put us out for thousands of dollars.
UnitedHealthcare limited specialist consultations to twice a year.
Then they refused to cover advanced imaging, which the specialists required for an appointment.

Prior authorizations took weeks, then months.

UnitedHealthcare constantly changed their claim filing procedure. They said my mother’s doctor needed to fax his notes. Then UnitedHealthcare said they did not save faxed patient correspondence, and required a hardcopy of the doctor’s typed notes to be mailed. Then they said they never received the notes. They were unable to approve the claim until they had received and filed the notes.

They promised coverage, and broke their word to my mother.
With every delay, my anger surged. With every denial, I wanted to throw the doctor through the glass wall of their hospital waiting room.

But it wasn’t them. It wasn’t the doctors, the receptionists, administrators, pharmacists, imaging technicians, or anyone we ever met. It was UnitedHealthcare.

People are dying. Evil has become institutionalized. Corporations make billions of dollars off the pain, suffering, death, and anguished cries in the night of millions of Americans.

We entered into an agreement for healthcare with a legally binding contract that promised care commensurate with our insurance payments and medical needs. Then UnitedHealthcare changes the rules to suit their own profits. They think they make the rules, and think that because it’s legal that no one can punish them.

They think there’s no one out there who will stop them.

Now my own chronic back pain wakes me in the night, screaming in pain. I sought out another type of healing that showed me the real antidote to what ails us.

I bide my time, saving the last of my strength to strike my final blows. All extractors must be forced to swallow the bitter pain they deal out to millions.

As our own chief executives, it’s our obligation to make our own lives better. First and foremost, we must seek to improve our own circumstances and defend ourselves. As we do so, our actions have ripple effects that can improve the lives of others.

Rules exist between two individuals, in a network that covers the entire earth. Some of these rules are written down. Some of these rules emerge from natural respect between two individuals. Some of these rules are defined in physical laws, like the properties of gravity, magnetism or the potential energy stored in the chemical bonds of potassium nitrate.

No single document better encapsulates the belief that all people are equal in fundamental worth and moral status and the frameworks for fostering collective well-being than the US constitution.

Writing a rule down makes it into a law. I don’t give a fuck about the law. Law means nothing. What does matter is following the guidance of our own logic and what we learn from those before us to maximize our own well-being, which will then maximize the well-being of our loved ones and community.

That’s where UnitedHealthcare went wrong. They violated their contract with my mother, with me, and tens of millions of other Americans. This threat to my own health, my family’s health, and the health of our country’s people requires me to respond with an act of war.

END

#UnitedHealthcare #LuigiMangione #Luigi_Mangione #mangione

▻https://seenthis.net/messages/1087255

China Approaches Record $1 Trillion Trade Surplus to World ’s Ire - Bloomberg
▻https://archive.is/2024.11.11-061022/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-11/china-approaches-record-1-trillion-trade-surplus-to-world-s-ire

“With Chinese export prices still falling, export volume growth was enormous,” Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said on X. “The overall story is of an economy that is again growing off exports.”

China has been relying more on exports to compensate for the weakness of domestic demand that Beijing has only recently tried to redress by injecting stimulus into the economy.

Silicon Valley’s Elite Back Controversial Research Into Blocking the Sun - Bloomberg
▻https://archive.is/2024.10.25-131649/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-25/silicon-valley-s-elite-back-controversial-research-into-blocking-the-sun

Reflecting sunlight to cool the planet — known as solar radiation management (SRM) — could come with dangerous consequences such as shifting rainfall patterns and changing the prevalence of diseases like malaria — to say nothing of the potential geopolitical chaos. Those risks have scientists urging caution and governments slowly working to build policies. But the tech world has rarely shied away from testing a new product and figuring out the bugs later, and prominent philanthropists are dedicating more money than ever to these radical ideas.

Netanyahu Is Selling Gaza to Private Militias - Opinion - Haaretz.com
▻https://archive.is/2024.10.24-200413/https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-22/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahu-is-selling-gaza-to-private-militias/00000192-b563-dcbd-ab92-b5fb6c5a0000

While Netanyahu’s opponents are criticizing him for his lack of any organized plan for Gaza on the day after the war, in practice, such a plan is being advanced through deeds. First, this is being done by occupying large swaths of Gaza, expelling the residents, destroying their homes, paving new roads and building army outposts and other infrastructure for the long term. And right now, it is also being done by pushing a plan to transfer civilian control of Gaza to private companies, which will be paid for it.

The government has gone quite some distance from the intent it announced in February under heavy American pressure – that it would transfer civilian control of Gaza to “local actors with administrative experience” that “aren’t identified with countries or organizations that support terror.” Next came the plan to transfer responsibility for humanitarian aid in Gaza to the Israel Defense Forces – a euphemism for a military government. Now, due to the army’s opposition to being involved in distributing aid, a decision is taking shape to hire a private Israeli-American company to handle his issue.

The company that has recently been mentioned as a candidate, GDC, is a military contractor of the kind that flooded Iraq and Afghanistan during America’s occupation of those countries. The masses of studies that have been done about this system over the years found that it carried enormous risks. These are mercenary corporations, and there are major questions about their compliance with international law and international standards.

Essentially, this would privatize military rule over Gaza by handing it over to private companies with private financial interests and nothing beyond that. The goal is to transfer moral and legal responsibility from Israel to these armed militias. And indeed, in a very troubling interview in Tuesday’s Yedioth Ahronoth, the company’s founder and CEO, Moti Kahana, said that “if something happens, we’ll send a message to Gaza’s residents – you don’t want to mess with us.” That’s a genuine mafia-style line.

Beyond the fact that Israel has no right to decide who should control Gaza’s civilian affairs after Hamas’ rule ends, all this is being done solely to avoid allowing the Palestinian Authority any foothold there. This is a direct continuation of the policy of bolstering Hamas and weakening the PA that Netanyahu implemented throughout his years in power. That’s another policy that was determined through actions and dollars, even as others attacked him for his supposed lack of any diplomatic vision.

What Israel should have been doing, together with an international coalition led by the United States, was building a Palestinian alternative to Hamas’ government. The current plan gives private contractors the keys to civilian control of Gaza and thereby turning Gaza into another Iraq, which will be a tragedy for generations.
Alongside this process, Netanyahu is also benefiting from sowing ambiguity about his position on establishing settlements in Gaza. On one hand, he claims this won’t happen (or more accurately, that it’s “unrealistic”). But on the other, his party is running events promoting this messianic dream. On this issue too, in the end, the decisive factor won’t be the words, but that first settlement outpost, which will be “difficult to evacuate.”

In practice, Netanyahu’s plan for postwar Gaza consists of military occupation, mercenaries and settlements. That’s a surefire recipe for the next disaster.

You Can Now See the Code That Helped End Apartheid | WIRED
▻https://archive.is/2024.10.18-130646/https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-you-can-now-see-the-code-that-ended-apartheid

https://archive.is/yK8Jb/d510488474b5d0b927fd0448010816e5d5eb65fd/scr.png

John Graham-Cumming doesn’t ping me often, but when he does I pay attention. His day job is the CTO of the security giant CloudFlare, but he is also a lay historian of technology, guided by a righteous compass. He might be best known for successfully leading a campaign to force the UK government to apologize to the legendary computer scientist Alan Turing for prosecuting him for homosexuality and essentially harassing him to death. So when he DM’d me to say that he had “a hell of a story”—promising “one-time pads! 8-bit computers! Flight attendants smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!”—I responded.

Israel’s Blood-soaked Cabinet Won’t Stop if Sunday’s Protests Were a One-off - Israel News - Haaretz.com
▻https://archive.is/2024.09.02-114949/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-02/ty-article/.premium/israels-blood-soaked-cabinet-wont-stop-if-sundays-protests-were-a-one-off/00000191-b1ec-d67d-a7f5-fbee8a3f0000

https://archive.is/HuPBX/34885554eedc9c2e93f1bf88c7ded2b6262ea8fc/scr.png

During his useless address to the U.S. Congress and accompanied by an arrogant smile, Netanyahu pulled out a hackneyed internet joke that dates from the start of the war. Watching LGBTQ protesters in support of Hamas, he said, was like watching chickens protesting in favor of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

By the same token, it can be said that Netanyahu’s appearance on Capitol Hill that day wearing a yellow ribbon was like watching the CEO of McDonald’s proclaiming the sanctity of cattles’ lives.

Gene editors are modifying cow guts to stop their planet-warming burps - Washington Post
▻https://archive.is/2024.08.26-084407/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2024/cows-methane-emissions-gene-editing-microbiome

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Israel’s Assassination Program and Its Ties to US Intelligence | The Nation
▻https://archive.is/2024.08.09-183947/https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-assassinations

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Last Saturday, in the early afternoon, the massive US nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Theodore Roosevelt sailed slowly from the Gulf of Oman north into the narrow channel of the Strait of Hormuz. Appropriately nicknamed “the Big Stick,” it was on its way to the Persian Gulf, where it will take aim, like a primed and loaded cannon, directly at Iran. That was the same place it saw action during the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, supporting aircraft that dropped nearly 5 million pounds of bombs on the country. Now back, it’s once again cocked, loaded with fighter jets, and ready for another bloody war, while escorted by heavily armed destroyers, cruisers, and submarines. To provide additional support for the Roosevelt, last Saturday Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also ordered to the region the nuclear carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, along with its battle fleet of fighters, destroyers, and cruisers armed with both offensive and defensive ballistic missiles.
But this time it would be different. Instead of a war to rid the region of a brutal Iraqi dictator, it would be a war risking American lives and spending billions of American dollars to support a brutal Israeli prime minister—one facing multiple felony charges in an Israeli court, and numerous war crimes in The Hague. The catalyst for what many fear could soon become a new and deadly regional war was Israel’s recent dual assassinations. The first, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, targeted Fouad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander and adviser on military affairs to Hasan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah. Also killed was an Iranian military adviser along with three women and two children; at least 74 people were injured.
About a day later, Israel carried out another assassination, this one in Tehran and directed at Ismail Haniyeh, the man leading the negotiations on behalf of Hamas to bring a ceasefire to the long war in Gaza. As the group’s political leader, much of Haniyeh’s extended family had been killed by Israeli soldiers, and now he was among them. For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the murder of Haniyeh, in the works for months, was a big win. Since the start of the war, the Israeli leader had found every opportunity and excuse to delay and frustrate the ongoing peace talks so he could to continue the war. “The prime minister has recently foiled the chances of achieving a deal, in part by toughening Israel’s positions in the latest negotiations after Hamas had shown a certain amount of flexibility,” noted Haaretz last week.
Now with the opposing negotiator eliminated, there was nothing standing in the way of his total annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” asked Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who had been heavily involved in the talks. Thus, unimpeded by negotiations, the carnage continued. On Sunday Israel unleashed brutal strikes on two schools in Gaza City, where thousands of displaced persons were sheltering, killing at least another 30 Palestinians. An eyewitness to the attack, Osama Labad, told The Washington Post that women and children were among the dead and injured.
On Saturday, Iran informed Arab diplomats that “it didn’t care if the response triggered a war,” reported The Wall Street Journal. Should his decision to murder Haniyeh spark a bloody regional war, Netanyahu was confident that the US would, as always, come to Israel’s defense. “Our support for Israel’s security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah,” a State Department spokesperson said, almost robotically.
In fact, the Carnegie Endowment’s Michael Young believes that the rapid one-two timing of the double assassinations “strongly suggests that Benjamin Netanyahu may be trying to railroad the United States into a military confrontation with Iran.” Just prior to the assassinations, Iran’s new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, had been seeking to improve the country’s relations with the West, something very worrisome to Netanyahu.

Analyse : « Les médias israéliens dissimulent les données et les images insoutenables de la guerre de Gaza »
Par Amira Hass | Haaretz le 28 mai 2024| traduction rédaction A l’Encontre
▻http://alencontre.org/moyenorient/palestine/analyse-les-medias-israeliens-dissimulent-les-donnees-et-les-images-inso

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Il a été rapporté lundi après-midi 27 mai [dans les médias israéliens] que les Forces de défense israéliennes (FDI) ne s’attendaient pas ou n’estimaient pas que que des civils soient touchés lors de la frappe sur Rafah. Une déclaration aussi fallacieuse ne peut être faite qu’aux consommateurs des mêmes médias qui, depuis sept mois, cachent les chiffres insupportablement élevés et les photos terrifiantes de bambins tués ou blessés lors de chaque frappe israélienne sur la bande de Gaza. Une telle déclaration [des FDI] ne peut que persuader les Israéliens que, cette fois encore, les cibles des frappes et le type de munitions choisies ont été scrupuleusement sélectionnés par le Shin Bet (service du renseignement intérieur), les services de renseignement militaire et les FDI.

Il est très possible que les Israéliens qui ne soutiennent pas le Premier ministre Benyamin Netanyahou veuillent également croire que, cette fois-ci, il était totalement sincère lorsqu’il a déclaré qu’il s’agissait d’une « erreur tragique ». Il est également très possible qu’ils ne soupçonnent pas qu’il utilisa cette formule parce que la Cour internationale de justice de La Haye a récemment ordonné d’arrêter les opérations militaires à Rafah et que cette décision plane au-dessus de sa tête et de celle des décideurs israéliens.

Selon l’Unité du porte-parole des FDI, cette frappe visait deux cibles : Yassin Abu Rabia et Khaled Al-Najjar. Abu Rabia serait le commandant de l’état-major du Hamas en Cisjordanie et Al-Najjar serait un officier supérieur de l’état-major du Hamas. Les deux hommes auraient perpétré des attentats au début des années 2000 et transféré des fonds pour le terrorisme. Les attaques d’Abu Rabia auraient tué des soldats et celles d’Al-Najjar auraient assassiné des civils israéliens et blessé des soldats. D’ailleurs, c’est l’Unité du porte-parole des FDI qui a fait la distinction entre « tuer des soldats » et « assassiner des civils ».

Le communiqué n’a pas indiqué que les deux hommes avaient été libérés en échange de la libération du soldat kidnappé Gilad Shalit en 2011 et qu’ils étaient tous deux des résidents de Cisjordanie – Abu Rabia du village de Mazra’a al-Qibliya, à l’ouest de Ramallah, et Al-Najjar du village de Silwad, à l’est de Ramallah – qui avaient été déportés à Gaza. L’annonce n’a pas non plus précisé qu’un autre homme libéré dans le cadre du même accord et déporté à Gaza, Khuwaylid Ramadan, du village de Tel, au sud de Naplouse, avait été tué, comme l’ont rapporté les médias palestiniens. Etait-il également désigné comme une cible, ou se trouvait-il simplement dans le même campement de tentes à l’ouest de Rafah ? Nous n’en savons rien. (...)

#Rafah

Sur la guerre de Gaza, la diplomatie française en quête d’une boussole, 20 décembre 2023 (Le Monde).
▻https://archive.is/2023.12.20-134341/https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/12/20/sur-la-guerre-de-gaza-la-diplomatie-francaise-en-quete-d-une-boussole_620690

Le Quai d’Orsay, qui avait été court-circuité, est subitement remobilisé. Feu la « coalition anti-Hamas » a été rebaptisée « initiative pour la paix et la sécurité pour tous ». Et il s’agit de lui donner de la substance. Trois axes de travail sont identifiés : l’humanitaire, le sécuritaire et le politique, avec la relance de la solution à deux Etats. Le premier volet débouche sur la conférence internationale du 9 novembre, à Paris. Emmanuel Macron a mis la pression sur ses équipes pour monter l’événement en moins d’une semaine. Lors des préparatifs, il s’est agacé de l’absence annoncée du secrétaire général des Nations unies, Antonio Guterres, et a lui même sollicité plusieurs dirigeants, comme le président kényan, William Ruto, qui ne viendra pas non plus.

A l’ouverture des débats, le chef de l’Etat réclame une « pause humanitaire très rapide » et appelle à « œuvrer à un cessez-le-feu ». Des formules encore empreintes de prudence et qui, aux yeux de nombreux participants, dont les ONG représentées, ne sont pas à la hauteur du carnage en cours à Gaza, où l’on compte désormais 10 000 morts et 700 000 déplacés. « Comment aider Gaza sans cessez-le-feu ? L’humanitaire ne peut pas aller sans le politique », déplore Hugh Lovatt, spécialiste du conflit israélo-palestinien au European Council on Foreign Relations, à Berlin.
Lors des discussions, qui permettent de collecter un milliard d’euros, M. Lazzarini, qui revient d’une première visite à #Gaza destinée à soutenir les employés de l’#UNRWA traumatisés par la mort de près d’une centaine d’entre eux sous les frappes israéliennes, fait un discours remarqué. « Mon collègue Farid est le chef de notre département éducation, raconte le commissaire de l’ONU. Lorsqu’il rencontre des élèves, dans nos abris, ils lui demandent pourquoi nous investissons tant de temps à leur enseigner les droits de l’homme si ces valeurs ne s’appliquent pas à eux. Que doit-il leur répondre ? »

« Formule magique »
Le lendemain, plus d’un mois après le début de la guerre, l’horreur des bombardements sur Gaza fait irruption dans le langage du président. (...)

#Israël #France

Groupes de niveau au collège : Nicole Belloubet révise le projet de Gabriel Attal, rejeté par la communauté éducative
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/03/07/groupes-de-niveau-au-college-nicole-belloubet-amende-le-projet-de-gabriel-at
▻https://archive.is/CCrGK

Deux mois plus tard, le principe d’une organisation en « groupes » reste de mise pour ces deux disciplines, mais il n’est désormais officiellement plus question de « groupes de niveau » Rue de Grenelle. L’expression devrait d’ailleurs être retirée des textes à paraître sur la nouvelle organisation du #collège. Aux équipes de décider des regroupements d’élèves les plus pertinents, « en fonction de leurs besoins ». « Les groupes de besoins seront constitués en fonction des compétences à atteindre. Il n’y aura donc pas d’assignation à un groupe faible ou fort », affirme-t-on au ministère.

Il devient surtout possible pour les chefs d’établissement et leurs équipes de préserver, à certains moments de l’année et « à titre dérogatoire », des « temps d’enseignement en classe entière » en mathématiques et en français, là où la mesure initiale faisait totalement disparaître les classes dans ces disciplines, qui pèsent pour un tiers du volume horaire hebdomadaire des collégiens.

Loin de l’idée initiale de groupes permanents, le ministère ne prévoit pas de limiter le nombre de semaines durant lesquelles les équipes des collèges pourront conserver des classes hétérogènes, même s’il insiste sur le fait que les groupes doivent rester la règle. « C’est aux équipes de trouver l’organisation la plus fine à partir de la règle que l’on a fixée », fait-on valoir, insistant sur la « confiance » accordée par la ministre aux équipes et à leur « autonomie ». Cette « souplesse » d’organisation doit, selon le ministère, « favoriser les brassages », « permettre une flexibilité entre les groupes » et éviter la « stigmatisation » d’élèves cantonnés « toute l’année dans un même groupe ».

#éducation

Meurtre de Federico Aramburú : Loïk Le Priol avait été recruté par les forces spéciales malgré sa fiche S
▻https://www.marianne.net/societe/police-et-justice/meurtre-de-federico-aramburu-loik-le-priol-avait-ete-recrute-par-les-force

Electricité : quatre fournisseurs s’allient pour des offres « plus vertes » et relancent le débat sur l’origine de l’énergie – La Tribune
▻https://www.latribune.fr/climat/energie-environnement/electricite-quatre-fournisseurs-s-allient-pour-des-offres-plus-vertes-et-r

EXCLUSIF. Quatre fournisseurs d’énergie (llek, Enercoop, Octopus Energy et Volterres) viennent de former un collectif afin de promouvoir des offres d’électricité « vraiment vertes », dans la jungle du marché de détail. Seulement voilà, leurs positions ne font pas l’unanimité dans le secteur. Au cœur du débat : le fonctionnement des garanties d’origine, ces certificats électroniques servant à prouver qu’une quantité donnée d’énergie renouvelable achetée par un opérateur a bien été produite pour approvisionner un client final.

Certains fournisseurs d’énergie sont-ils plus vertueux que d’autres ? Alors que le nombre d’offres d’électricité « 100% verte et locale » a explosé ces dernières années, difficile pour le consommateur d’y voir clair au-delà des slogans. Et pour cause, la plupart de ces entreprises ne génèrent pas elles-mêmes le courant qu’elles commercialisent. Or, le système certifiant que l’électricité qu’elles achètent pour un client est bien renouvelable, appelé « garantie d’origine », suscite de vives critiques.

#paywall