facility:city university

Donald Trump Spell-Check : Why Does Our Leader Insist on Capitalizing ’Country’ ? | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/donald-trump-spell-check-why-does-our-leader-insist-capitalizing-country

https://www.alternet.org/sites/default/files/story_images/screen.jpg

Trump’s bizarre spelling choices may seem amusing. But stop laughing: His use of “Country” has a hidden meaning

By Chauncey DeVega / Salon
October 26, 2018, 3:06 AM GMT

There is nothing funny about Donald Trump. Like other autocrats and political thugs he thrives on being underestimated. Last week there was another example of this error by Donald Trump’s detractors and others who oppose him.

On Twitter, his preferred means of communication, Donald Trump proclaimed last week:

When referring to the USA, I will always capitalize the word Country!

Trump was mocked by comedians on late night television for this supposed gaffe. Other prominent voices pointed to Trump’s “misspelling” as further proof that he is a dolt and a fool. By implication, his voters are fools and dolts as well. This version of liberal Schadenfreude is a defining feature in the Age of Trump.

It is small comfort which ignores the fact that Donald Trump’s grammatical errors and odd spelling are — as admitted by White House insiders some months ago — strategic choices designed to make him appear more “folksy” and “authentic.” Trump’s faux-populist appeal depends upon his ability to relate to his supporters by sharing their grievances and hostility toward those liberals and progressives they perceive as looking down on “real Americans.”

To understand Donald Trump, one must begin with the fact that he is an American fascist — an autocrat and authoritarian by instinct, behavior, and values. This is the nucleus of his being. This is the prism through which to best understand Donald Trump.

I asked several leading experts on fascism and authoritarianism to help me understand Trump’s conversion of “Country” into a proper noun.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, author of the forthcoming book “Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall,” and featured commentator in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9”:

Trump’s statement that he’ll capitalize the word Country represents yet another attempt to polarize the American population and set up one half as “moral,” "just" and politically and, above all, racially acceptable. It is a technique used by every authoritarian leader, often with success. Some may look at this tweet as just another quirky Trump language proposition, but nothing he does is accidental, including his capitalization strategies.

Richard Frankel, professor of modern German History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, an expert on the rise of Nazism in Germany whose work has also been featured in Newsweek and on the History News Network:

I see it as another way of saying “America First.” He’s putting the emphasis on country, on nation, on America before anything else. He’s contrasting himself and his followers with those who see America as part of a much larger community of nations, in which cooperation, not confrontation, is what is what’s best for everyone. Those who see it his way are the “real Americans.” Those who don’t are the enemy. It’s the pitting of “America Firsters” against the dreaded “Globalists.” It’s another way to divide the country — inclusion through exclusion.

Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of “How Propaganda Works” as well as the new book “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them”:

Via linguistic style and repetition, Trump is inculcating his followers with an ethic of authoritarian nationalism. Organized religion is a local authoritarian structure; the authority of God is signaled linguistically, by capitalizing “God” or not completely spelling out the word. According to Trump, like “God,” "Country" should be capitalized. This is a linguistic means of signalizing the quasi-religious authority of the nation. And since the nation is not a person, or even a person-like figure, that religious authority should be transferred to its leader, Donald Trump.

It (again) reminded me of this quote from Victor Klemperer’s “Language of the Third Reich”: “Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously … language does not simply write and think for me, it also increasingly dictates my feelings and governs my entire spiritual being the more unquestioningly and unconsciously I abandon myself to it.”

Several days after Trump made his declaration about the correct spelling of our “Country,” he announced that he was a proud “nationalist.” Because Trump is a racial authoritarian — and a student of “alt-right” guru Steve Bannon as well as White House adviser Stephen Miller, principal architect of his nativist immigration policy — his brand of nationalism is in no sense “neutral.” It is in reality white nationalism, whether called by that name or not. Donald Trump may evade or deflect from that fact. But it is true nonetheless. This is evident through his repeated and overt hostility toward nonwhites and Muslims.

An embrace of nationalism by Donald Trump fits neatly within his logic for capitalizing the word “Country” when referring to the United States of America.

Benjamin Hett, professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of “Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery” as well as the new book “The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic”:

This is language I do not remember hearing from any other president. And this is where the significance of “Country” comes in. Trump the “nationalist” with his capital C in “Country” uses “globalist” as a pejorative. He is step by step dismantling the international infrastructure which the United States created after the Second World War to maintain a democratic and prosperous global order. Just recently he has begun dismantling the key INF treaty with Russia, another horrifically dangerous step. This is all reminiscent of the nationalism of the German administrations of the early 1930s, up to and including Hitler — turn away from the world, turn away from crucial international connections, turn away from peace and democracy. We know, or should know, that this cannot and will not lead anywhere good.

*

Some people laugh when they are terrified. It is not that the situation is funny; rather, their brains process existential dread through the physical act of laughter. This is why so many of us laugh at Donald Trump’s supposed gaffes and misspellings, and his other crude and boorish behavior. Donald Trump’s America is a real thing. We are stuck in it and many of us still cannot believe this has all come to pass. In the final analysis, laughter provides some short-term relief during the walk to the political gallows. The laughter feels good. The noose is still waiting.

#Trump #Fascisme #Typographie #Histoire #Linguistique

Nearly 1,000 More People Died in Puerto Rico After Hurricane María - Latino USA
▻http://latinousa.org/2017/12/07/nearly-1000-people-died-puerto-rico-hurricane-maria

http://latinousa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Place2.png

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO – It’s official. In the 40 days after Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico, at least 985 additional people died, when compared to the same period in 2016.

And if the entire months of September and October are included (since Hurricane Irma also passed through the island days before María), the figure rises to 1,065 deaths—despite the fact that Puerto Rico would have lost over 100,000 inhabitants due to migration this year, according to estimates from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies of The City University of New York.

Since September 20, the day when the historic Category 4 storm struck the entire island with 155-mile-per-hour winds that left Puerto Rico without power, the average daily death rate increased by 43% with peaks of about 80% on days like September 21 and 25. In October, deaths increased by 23.3%.

This new data confirms the findings of a September 28 CPI investigation, revealing that at that time there were dozens and possibly hundreds of deaths linked to the hurricane, contrary to the official government death toll, which remained at 16 victims during the first two weeks of the emergency. Today, more than two months after the catastrophe, the official death count stands at 62, due to the poor methodology being used to analyze and account for cases, according to reporting by the CPI.

The revelation of this new data also coincides with accounts from relatives’ reports of victims that point to problems with essential health services such as dialysis, ventilators, oxygen, and other critical circumstances caused by the lack of power in homes and hospitals throughout Puerto Rico.

Demographer José A. López, the only person at the registry in charge of analyzing this data, said in an interview with the CPI that the trend of increase in deaths in the first two post-Maria months is significant. He also said the government’s inability to link more deaths to the hurricane shows that the current process to document causes of death in a disaster is not working and must be reformed. Last week, as part of an investigation of the failures in the process of accounting for deaths linked to María, López and the Department of Health appeared before Puerto Rico’s Senate to request that a dialogue begin about this issue and that they lead the process to change the system.

Numéro spécial de la revue #Fennia sur l’édition scientifique (très très bienvenu).

Can research quality be measured quantitatively? (2017-11-07)
Michael Richard Handley Jones

In this article I reflect on ways in which the neoliberal university and its administrative counterpart, new public management (NPM), affect academic publishing activity. One characteristic feature of NPM is the urge to use simple numerical indicators of research output as a tool to allocate funding and, in practice if not in theory, as a means of assessing research quality. This ranges from the use of journal impact factors (IF) and ranking of journals to publication points to determine what types of work in publishing is counted as meritorious for funding allocation. I argue that it is a fallacy to attempt to assess quality of scholarship through quantitative measures of publication output. I base my arguments on my experiences of editing a Norwegian geographical journal over a period of 16 years, along with my experiences as a scholar working for many years within the Norwegian university system.

PDF

Reclaiming value from academic labor: commentary by the Editors of Human Geography (2017-11-07)
John C. Finn Christopher Newport University Richard Peet Graduate School of Geography, Clark University Sharlene Mollett University of Toronto, Scarborough John Lauermann Medgar Evers College, City University of New York

There have long been discussions about the need for an alternative publishing model for academic research. This has been made clear by the September 2017 scandal involving Third World Quarterly. The editor’s deeply problematic decision to publish an essay arguing in favor of colonialism was likely meant as click-bate to drive clicks and citations. But we should not lose sight of the fact that this latest scandal is only one recent manifestation of a long-simmering problem that has periodically commanded significant attention in the academic literature, blogs, email lists, conference sessions, and the popular press. As a direct result, over the last decade or more, new journals have been created that specifically endeavor to offer routes around corporate/capitalist academic publishing, and several existing journals have removed themselves from this profit-driven ecosystem. In this commentary, the editorial team of the journal Human Geography weighs in on what we see as the nature of the problem, what we are doing in response, what our successes have been, and what challenges remain.

PDF

Say ‘Yes!’ to peer review: Open Access publishing and the need for mutual aid in academia (2017-11-22)
Simon Springer University of Victoria Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch Claudia Villegas Levi Gahman

Scholars are increasingly declining to offer their services in the peer review process. There are myriad reasons for this refusal, most notably the ever-increasing pressure placed on academics to publish within the neoliberal university. Yet if you are publishing yourself then you necessarily expect someone else to review your work, which begs the question as to why this service is not being reciprocated. There is something to be said about withholding one’s labour when journals are under corporate control, but when it comes to Open Access journals such denial is effectively unacceptable. Make time for it, as others have made time for you. As editors of the independent, Open Access, non-corporate journal ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, we reflect on the struggles facing our daily operations, where scholars declining to participate in peer review is the biggest obstacle we face. We argue that peer review should be considered as a form of mutual aid, which is rooted in an ethics of cooperation. The system only works if you say ‘Yes’!

PDF

Evaluating otherwise: hierarchies and opportunities in publishing practices (2017-11-30)
Derek Ruez University of Tampere

This short paper responds to the provocations set out in Kirsi Pauliina Kallio’s recent editorial on ‘Subtle radical moves in scientific publishing’ and emerges out of my participation in a Fennia-organized panel at the 2017 Nordic Geographers’ Meeting where participants reflected on the challenges and opportunities of creating a more equitable and pluralistic international publishing environment. Given the dominance of English language publishing in international academic work and the broader geopolitics of knowledge production through which some contexts, approaches, and modes of knowledge are regularly devalued, I suggest that—to the extent that publishing outlets are evaluated or ranked—they should be evaluated and ranked, in part, based on their contribution to a pluralistically international academy. This revaluation could help shape the informal assessments made by scholars in the context of hiring, funding, and other key decisions. It could also be integrated into more formal channels, such as within the deliberations of the boards who produce publication rankings in, for example, Finland’s Publication Forum. Such a tactic need not preclude other work to contest rankings hierarchies and audit cultures as they advance the neoliberalization of academic work, but it does 1) suggest the importance of paying attention to what and how scholars value when we evaluate publishing outlets and 2) point toward the potential of critical and creative engagement with the range of processes (i.e. indexing, accrediting, measuring, ranking etc.) that surround and subsist within academic publishing.

PDF

Socially just publishing: implications for geographers and their journals (2017-11-26)
Simon Batterbury Lancaster University

There have been a range of protests against the high journal subscription costs, and author processing charges (APCs) levied for publishing in the more prestigious and commercially run journals that are favoured by geographers. But open protests across the sector like the ‘Academic Spring’ of 2012, and challenges to commercial copyright agreements, have been fragmented and less than successful. I renew the argument for ‘socially just’ publishing in geography. For geographers this is not limited to choosing alternative publication venues. It also involves a considerable effort by senior faculty members that are assessing hiring and promotion cases, to read and assess scholarship independently of its place of publication, and to reward the efforts of colleagues that offer their work as a public good. Criteria other than the citation index and prestige of a journal need to be foregrounded. Geographers can also be publishers, and I offer my experience editing the free online Journal of Political Ecology.

PDF

English: lingua franca or disenfranchising? (2017-12-04)
Sara Fregonese University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Conceiving academic publishing as a long-term process that often includes oral communication and knowledge exchange at academic conferences, this commentary offers a critical take on English as lingua franca. Contrarily to the historical use of lingua franca as a simplified system of transnational communication that facilitates the pragmatics of economic and cultural exchange, academic English is instead used vernacularly and becomes an excluding barrier. In the writing and peer review stages of publishing, the linguistic positionality of both authors and peer reviewers thus needs more reflection in order for academic English not to become once again part of a disenfranchising process.

►https://fennia.journal.fi/forthcoming/view/index

#revue #édition_scientifique #publications_scientifiques #université #peer_review #anglais #langue #impact_factor #open_source #indicateurs

At anti-Semitism panel, Linda Sarsour asks, ’I am the biggest problem of the Jewish community?’

The prominent feminist activist and controversial anti-Zionist speaks out against anti-Semitism and the importance of ’organizing at the intersections of oppression’

Asher Schechter Nov 29, 2017
read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.825582

Minutes before Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour took the stage at The New School’s Alvin Johnson Auditorium as part of a panel on anti-Semitism, one of the organizers went up to deliver a number of key instructions to audience members in case protesters would try to shut down the event.
But the fears that the event would be disrupted by right-wing protesters turned out to be for naught. Despite two weeks of a media frenzy, a petition signed by more than 21,000 people and loads of criticism from both left and right, the panel concluded with only two very minor interruptions.
skip - fb

>> American Jews, lay off Linda Sarsour | Opinion
skip - A video of the panel on anti-Semitism at The New School

“Apparently I am the biggest problem of the Jewish community? I am the existential threat, Apparently? I am confused, literally, every day,” said Sarsour, addressing the controversy that preceded the event.
Sarsour, a prominent advocate for Muslim Americans, criminal justice reform and civil rights, is the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and co-chaired last January’s National Women’s March. During the past year, particularly as her profile in progressive circles increased after the march, Sarsour has raised the ire of conservatives, Zionist activists and so-called alt-right figures who accuse her of supporting terrorists and promoting anti-Semitism – largely due to her support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and her criticism of Israel.
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter
Email* Sign up

>> Extremists on left and right empowering BDS on U.S. college campuses | Opinion
“I am deeply honored and humbled to be here on this stage with people who have been some of the staunchest allies of the communities that I come from,” Sarsour said during the panel. “We cannot dismantle anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, every phobia and -ism without also dismantling anti-Semitism.”
“Intersectionality is not about black and white people organizing together or Jews and Muslims organizing together. It is all of us organizing at the intersections of oppression and seeing oppression [as] connected. Anti-Semitism is one branch on a larger tree of racism,” she added. “You can’t just address one branch, you need to address all branches together so we can get to the root of the problem.”

In her remarks, Sarsour spoke at length about her criticism of Zionism. “Just in case it’s not clear, I am unapologetically Palestinian-American and will always be unapologetically Palestinian-American. I am also unapologetically Muslim-American. And guess what? I am also a very staunch supporter of the BDS movement. What other way am I supposed to be, as a Palestinian-American who’s a daughter of immigrants who lived under military occupation and still has relatives in Palestine that live under military occupation? I should be expected to have the views that I hold,” she said.
Regardless of their feelings toward Israel, said Sarsour, Jews and non-Jews alike “must commit to dismantling anti-Semitism. The existential threat resides in the White House, and if what you’re reading all day long in the Jewish media is that Linda Sarsour and Minister [Louis] Farrakhan are the existential threats to the Jewish community, something really bad is going to happen and we are going to miss the mark on it.”
skip - A tweet from Jonathan Greenblatt

Apart from Sarsour, the panel also featured Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of Jewish Voices for Peace, Leo Ferguson of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Lina Morales, a member of Jews of Color and Mizrahi/Sephardi Caucus of JVP. The event was moderated by journalist and author Amy Goodman, the host of the alternative news program “Democracy Now!”
The panel, organized by JVP, Haymarket Books, Jacobin magazine, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and The New School’s Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism program, was preceded by great controversy over Sarsour’s participation. Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted that “Having Linda Sarsour & head of JVP leading a panel on antisemitism is like Oscar Meyer leading a panel on vegetarianism.” Writing for Tablet Magazine, Phyllis Chesler, a New School alumni, wished that she could give back her diploma.
“Antisemitism is harmful and real. But when antisemitism is redefined as criticism of Israel, critics of Israeli policy become accused and targeted more than the growing far-right,” read the event’s description.
The other panelists were similarly critical of Israel and of the Jewish American community that rebukes activists like Sarsour yet embraces far-right figures like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka. “I am angry at the profound hypocrisy of the institutional Jewish community, which has taught us that loving Israel does not mean that you love Jews,” said Vilkomerson. “Because I care about Jews, I am anti-Zionist,” said Morales. “Nothing can be more counterproductive or hurtful to Jews than to be intentionally confusing the issue of anti-Semitism by spreading false charges of anti-Semitism,” said Ferguson, in reference to the “smearing” of pro-Palestinian activists by Jewish-American organizations. Lobbing false accusations of anti-Semitism, he argued, “slowly erodes our ability to accurately assess threats.”
Two hours before the debate was scheduled to begin, over 15 policemen and security guards and multiple police cars were already surrounding the venue where it was to be held. A small protest took place across the street, with some demonstrators holding signs and chanting against Sarsour and JVP.
“This panel is spitting in the face of Jews – four anti-Semites talking about anti-Semitism,” Karen Lichtbraun, one of the demonstrators and head of the New York chapter of the Jewish Defense League told Haaretz. JVP, she charged, wanted to “drive a wedge between Jews” by inviting Sarsour. “[Sarsour] wants to bring Sharia law to America. She is brainwashing a lot of young Jews,” she claimed.
“Nobody has a monopoly on talking about anti-Semitism,” Rabbi Alissa Wise, deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace and one of the event’s organizers, told Haaretz. “As a rabbi and a Jew, I feel safer in the world knowing that there are more people, non-Jewish allies, Muslims, Christians, people of no faith, who are taking up the question of anti-Semitism seriously.”
When asked about the commotion in the media that surrounded the event, Wise said: “There’s something particular about the role that Linda plays in the psyche of the American Jewish community. We’ve done these anti-Semitism events in Indianapolis, Chicago, the Bay Area, Philadelphia, and this is not the only one where a Muslim is speaking. Never before have we seen this kind of frenzy. It just seems like a witch hunt of sorts.”
Tuesday’s event was not the first time a planned appearance by Sarsour caused controversy: Her invitation to deliver the commencement address at the City University of New York School of Public Health in June raised the ire of pro-Israel activists. The uproar included a protest rally against her speech outside CUNY’s main office building, headed by far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who called Sarsour a “Sharia-loving, terrorist-embracing, Jew-hating, ticking time bomb of progressive horror.”
“When I spoke at the CUNY graduate center back in June, something really disturbing happened,” said Sarsour during the panel. “I don’t care if people protest against me. What was confusing to me at that moment was, how is it that people that are Jewish are standing in a really against me with Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, and Gavin McInnes? Why are they there with them? I hope the Jewish community stands up and says that’s wrong, that under no circumstance should Jewish people align with people like Milo or Pamela Geller or Richard Spencer or Gavin McInnes.”
When asked about her previous statement that feminism is “incompatible with Zionism,” Sarsour said: “I am not as important as I am made out to be. I am not the one that actually gets to say who gets to be in the movement and who doesn’t. Let’s stop talking about the civil rights movement that happened 50 years ago because there is a civil rights movement happening right now. We live under fascism, and we need all hands on deck.”

Asher Schechter
Haaretz Columnist

Send me email alerts

Uber Is Dealt a Fresh Blow in European Legal Case - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/business/uber-ecj-europe-france.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/07/05/business/05UBEREUROPE1/05UBEREUROPE1-facebookJumbo.jpg

By AMIE TSANGJULY 4, 2017
LONDON — Uber suffered a blow to its expansion plans in Europe on Tuesday after a senior adviser to the region’s highest court said that the ride-hailing service should have to abide by tough rules governing taxi services.

The recommendation, a nonbinding opinion by an advocate general for the Court of Justice of the European Union, adds to an array of challenges that Uber is facing worldwide. This year alone, the company has grappled with a sexual harassment scandal and the resignation last month of its chief executive, Travis Kalanick.

The case before the court hinged on whether Uber should be treated as a taxi service in France, and therefore be subject to rigorous safety and employment rules, or as a digital platform that merely connected independent drivers with passengers.

The French authorities brought criminal proceedings last year against the ride-hailing service for infringing a law that required any vehicle carrying passengers for a fee to be licensed as a taxi service and to have appropriate insurance.

Uber had argued that the law was also a “technical regulation” over digital services. That being the case, the company said, the French authorities were required to notify the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, before adopting the legislation. Because France did not do so, Uber contended, the law could not be enforced.

The senior adviser, Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general of the court, recommended on Tuesday that Uber was effectively a taxi service. He wrote that France could ban certain types of transportation services it deemed illegal, including Uber’s low-cost service UberPop, without having to notify the European Commission.

“We have seen today’s statement and await the final ruling later this year,” an Uber spokeswoman said in a statement. She said that the company had stopped offering the services in question, and that it now worked only with professionally licensed drivers in France.

The latest recommendation came less than two months after Mr. Szpunar delivered a similar opinion to the court, arguing that Uber should have to comply with rules governing transportation companies. A final ruling in that case is expected by late summer, and a decision related to Tuesday’s case is due by the end of the year.

The court typically follows the recommendations of its senior advisers, but it could still rule in the company’s favor.

“The two ways Uber sold itself — as a digital company and as a ride-sharing service — don’t stand up, according to this legal opinion,” said André Spicer, a professor of organizational behavior at the Cass Business School at City University in London.

When companies like Uber and Airbnb, the short-term rental company, set up, he said, “They skirted around national laws, and that was what made them competitive and cheap.” He added, “Many national regulators are beginning to chip away at that.”

Uber already operates in many European cities in compliance with transportation rules, but some of its services — particularly those that do not require drivers to have a taxi license — have been banned and face stiff opposition.

In France, protests against Uber have at times turned violent. The company and two of its executives have also been convicted and fined the equivalent of nearly $500,000 in France for running an illegal transportation service in a case related to UberPop, which did not require a professional livery license. That service was suspended after a series of strikes by taxi unions led to a ban in France.

The pushback against Uber is part of wider tensions between the European authorities and American technology companies.

Google was slapped with a record $2.7 billion fine for antitrust violations last month, and Amazon and Apple have faced investigations over their tax practices in the region. Facebook has been scrutinized for its handling of its users’ data, and social networks face fines in Germany for failing to swiftly take down hate speech and illegal content.

Uber has its own challenges. Revelations about sexual harassment and discrimination prompted an internal investigation into company culture. It has been dealing with an intellectual-property lawsuit from Waymo, the self-driving business under Google’s parent company, Alphabet. And revelations that it had used a tool called Greyball to avoid law enforcement led to a federal inquiry.

After months of turmoil and questions about its leadership and culture, the company is now without a chief executive — a committee of executives is in charge.

#Uber

Go with the Flow - Adventures in Vizualisation | giCenter U. London
▻http://robertradburn.co.uk/tableau/go-flow-commuting-migration-flows-within-london

https://img.scoop.it/GuNUFJQri3J79BHU3C4S8Tl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9#.jpg

Origin Destination Maps (OD Maps) were developed by the giCentre at City University London and allow an easier way to investigate spatial aspects of flowmapping

The #Mediterranean_Missing_Project

The Mediterranean Missing project is a 1 year ESRC-funded research project and a collaboration between the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, The International Organisation for Migration, and City University, London. The project seeks to collect data and explore current responses to migrant bodies in the Mediterranean, and the impacts of a missing relative on families left behind. In 2015, over 3,770 refugees and migrants are known to have died at sea while trying to reach Europe. The majority of these people are not identified, and in such cases a family is left in a state of ambiguous loss, unable to fully grieve for their loved one. This project aims to shed light on the policy vacuum at EU and national levels o this issue, through investigating law, policy and practice in Italy and Greece regarding the investigation, identification, burial and repatriation of migrant bodies. Research with families from Syria, Iraq and Tunisia aims to better understand the impacts of missing persons on their families.

▻https://espminetwork.com/2016/07/06/the-mediterranean-missing-project

Le site internet de la recherche:
▻http://www.mediterraneanmissing.eu
#asile #migrations #réfugiés #mourir_en_mer #Méditerranée #ceux_qui_restent #cadavres #corps #morts_en_Méditerranée #celleux_qui_restent

You are not what you read : librarians purge user data to protect privacy
▻http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/13/us-library-records-purged-data-privacy

US libraries are doing something even the most security-conscious private firm would never dream of : deleting sensitive information in order to protect users Last week, with little fanfare, the Graduate Center at the City University of New York did something very few private companies would ever do to protect its users’ privacy : it quietly began to purge its interlibrary loan records. “This policy change is motivated by the idea that libraries should not keep more information about their (...) #FBI #gestion_des_données #EFF #contrôle_de_l'État #surveillance

#David_Harvey interview : #Tarlabasi #Istanbul

Acclaimed geography academic and Professor of Anthropology at City University of New York provides an interview on urban issues in the district of Tarlabasi Istanbul, an area in the last throes of evictions for the long-standing residents. Tarlabasi is in the process of a #gentrification programme to create an upscale housing and shopping district in the centre of the city.

▻http://vimeo.com/44465815

“Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations”, by Mats Alvesson and André Spicer (Lund University; City University), Journal of Management Studies 49:7, November 2012.

We can now offer a more comprehensive definition of our core concept – functional stupidity. For us functional stupidity is inability and/or unwillingness to use cognitive and reflective capacities in anything other than narrow and circumspect ways. It involves a lack of reflexivity, a disinclination to require or provide justification, and avoidance of substantive reasoning. It is related to the intertwined elements of cognition, motivation, and emotion. In many cases functional stupidity can produce positive outcomes in the form of significant benefits to organizations and employees. The narrow and circumspect use of reason, high levels of means-ends oriented intelligence, and the partly positive outcomes, differentiate functional stupidity from ‘pure’ stupidity. Thus, the use of intelligence and functional stupidity may co-exist. Intelligent people (who score high on IQ tests, for instance) are not immune to functional stupidity.

▻https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8650451/Alvesson%20and%20Spicer%2012%20JMS.pdf