city:berlin

  • Je ne suis pas une voyageuse | Ma vie à Téhéran
    https://blog.courrierinternational.com/ma-vie-a-teheran/2019/07/05/je-ne-suis-pas-une-voyageuse

    A l’étranger, cette routine agit comme un repère, une trace de soi, mais aussi comme une sorte de rite d’intégration. Mes premiers horaires de travail en Inde, ma première carte de métro en Iran, mon premier café fétiche pour étudier au Liban, mes virées dans les mythiques supermarchés 7/11 en Asie du Sud, mes plantes à arroser aux Émirats, mes cours de yoga à l’aube en Inde : tous ces petits détails me restent comme des souvenirs émus, comme autant de rites de passage vers un nouveau moi qui vit et s’épanouit à l’étranger.

    #voyages

  • • 72 cartes de Berlin pour Zadig
    https://editionsbt.fr/2019/07/05/72-cartes-de-berlin-pour-zadig

    La librairie française de Berlin, Zadig, profitant de son déménagement dans de nouveaux locaux plus spacieux, nous a commandé en exclusivité 72 cartes postales de Berlin.

    https://i2.wp.com/editionsbt.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/carteszadig1-copie.png?w=900&ssl=1

    #editionsbt #berlin #zadig #photographie #cartes_postales

  • Feu sur la liberté d’expression en Europe
    dimanche 30 juin 2019 par Coordination nationale de l’UJFP
    http://www.ujfp.org/spip.php?article7264

    Il aura fallu que Yossi Bartal, guide au musée juif de Berlin, démissionne pour qu’apparaissent toutes les manœuvres de l’État d’Israël, toutes ses compromissions aussi.

    La démission de Yossi Bartal(1) se produit huit jours après celle du Directeur du musée, Peter Schäfer (2).

    Peter Schäfer avait protesté avec 240 intellectuels juifs (dont Avraham Burg et Eva Illouz) pour s’opposer à une motion du Parlement allemand qui considérait le mouvement BDS comme antisémite. Il a été directement attaqué par l’ambassadeur d’Israël, Jeremy Issacharoff et Josef Schuster, directeur de l’équivalent du Crif allemand qui n’ont pas hésité à utiliser des « fake news » pour le salir.

    L’année dernière déjà le budget d’une exposition consacrée à Jérusalem, montrant aussi son versant palestinien a été divisé par 2 à la suite d’une intervention de Benjamin Netanyahou (qui réclamait l’annulation totale du budget). De son côté, Josef Schuster avait critiqué le fait que la majorité des employés du musée n’étaient pas juifs. Et les détracteurs de la liberté d’esprit du musée sont soutenus par l’ALD, le parti d’extrême droite…

    Un panier de crabe insoupçonné que nous révèle son (ex) guide. (...)

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    (1) Opinion Why I Resigned From Berlin’s Jewish Museum
    Yossi Bartal - Jun 22, 2019 9:39 AM
    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/why-i-resigned-from-berlin-s-jewish-museum-1.7398301

    Last Monday, after guiding hundreds of different tour groups from Germany and around the world to various exhibitions, I submitted my resignation as a guide at the Jewish Museum of Berlin in protest against the crass political intervention by the German government and the State of Israel in the work of the museum.

    The shameful firing of Peter Schäfer, among the most important scholars of Judaism in the world, in the wake of an aggressive campaign of “fake news” conducted by the Israeli Ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, made it clear that the German government is not interested any more in guarding the artistic and academic autonomy of the museum. And I am not interested in working for an institution that relinquishes its independence to serve the political interests of this or that state.

    From the beginning, working as a Jewish guide at a Jewish museum where most of the staff and visitors are not Jews presented personal, political and pedagogical challenges. Thus questions of representation of the other and of speaking in their name have accompanied the work of the museum since its opening in 2003.

    Is it appropriate for a German state museum to be called a Jewish museum at all, or must it be under the complete control of the official Jewish community (that itself only represents part of German Jewry)? Is a Jewish museum, in the absence of a similar institution addressing the Muslim community or other minority groups, responsible for providing space for the perspectives of children of migrants in Germany, many of whom live in neighborhoods nearby, and for conducting Jewish-Muslim dialogue?

    Should the museum function as a forum in which various opinions in the Jewish world can be heard, those touching on Israel as well? The answer of the head of the Jewish community, the Israeli ambassador and right-wing journalists, who for years have been running a toxic and untruthful campaign against museum staff, is an absolute no.

    Thus a significant portion of the criticism of the museum suggests, or even declares openly, that the very fact that many of the staff members of the museum are not Jews negates their right to social activism that is not in keeping with the political preferences of the Jewish community’s representatives. This discourse reached the point of absurdity when Schuster, the leader of a community in which many members are not considered Jewish according to halakha, negated the museum’s right to call itself Jewish.

    But we should not be confused by the legitimate criticism over the lack of Jewish representation in leading positions in Germany, because this criticism is raised only when non-Jews dare, even in the most sensitive way, to criticize policies of the Israeli government, or to come out against anti-Muslim racism. Proof of this may be seen in the Jewish community’s support for the 10 officials who have been nominated to fight anti-Semitism in the country: All 10 are non-Jews, and all 10 support the position that strong criticism of the occupation and of Israel’s religiously discriminatory character should be seen as an expression of anti-Semitism.

    Not surprisingly, the extreme right-wing “Alternative for Germany” is the party that, by way of parliamentary questions, has been leading the campaign against the museum for the last year, as reported sympathetically by the house newspaper of Benjamin Netanyahu. Despite the Israeli Embassy’s contention that it is not in contact with members of the party, its opposition to museum activities is based on a fervent rejection of democratic discourse, and its absolute conflation of the interests of the Israeli government with those of world Jewry. Already in the past year, as part of an exhibition on Jerusalem and its significance to three religions, the museum was forced to cancel a lecture on the status of LGBTQ Palestinians in East Jerusalem because the Israeli ambassador suspected that the speaker, God help us, supports BDS.

    Accusations of anti-Semitism, which carry enormous weight in Germany, lead more and more to censorship and self-censorship. Cultural institutions in Germany, which are supposed to provide a stage for critical positions, are threatened financially and politically if they even dare to host artists and musicians who at any time expressed support for non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. This policy of fear-mongering that Miri Regev leads in Israel is imported by supporters of Israel to Germany. Only in Germany, because of its great sensitivity to anti-Semitism and deep identification with Israel in the wake of the Shoah, are there politicians not only on the right but on the left as well who vehemently endorse the silencing of criticism of Israel.

    The extreme right’s ascendance to power in places across the globe is based in great part on the constriction of democratic space and the intimidation and sanctioning of anyone who dares to oppose suppressive nationalist policies. The efforts of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the Foreign Ministry, in cooperation with Jewish and right-wing organizations around the world, to defame and slander anyone who refuses to join their campaign of incitement against human rights activists, has now led to the firing of an esteemed scholar, strictly because he chose to defend the rights of Israeli academics to oppose the designation of the BDS movement as an anti-Semitic movement.

    Against this paranoid impulse toward purges, which to a great extent recalls the years of McCarthyism in the United States, one must take a clear public stance. If the firing of Peter Schäfer has a moral, it is that no matter how much approbation a person has received for his opposition to anti-Semitism and support for Israel, opposition to Netanyahu’s anti-democratic policies is enough to turn him into an enemy of the people and the nation.

    If the German and Israeli governments are interested in the Jewish Museum representing only their narrow political interests and denying its staff members freedom of expression, I am not interested in having a part in it. So despite my deep respect for the museum’s staff, I proffered my resignation. I and many other Jews of my generation do not want or need a kashrut certificate from the State of Israel or the heads of the institutional Jewish community, nor, certainly, from the German government. Judaism, as a pluralistic and democratic world culture, will continue to exist after the racist, ultra-nationalist politics that has taken over many communal institutions passes from the world.

    The writer has lived in Berlin for 13 years and works as a tour guide.

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    (2) https://seenthis.net/messages/788398

  • Paris streets, squares named in honour of LGBT+ figures

    Fifty years after New York City’s Stonewall riots laid the foundation for modern gay rights, Paris is carrying on that legacy by naming an array of streets and squares after historically important LGBT+ figures.

    New to the city map are Stonewall Riot and Harvey Milk squares – the first in recognition of the famous rebellion against Manhattan police in 1969; the latter in honour of the American civil rights leader and first openly gay politician to be elected in California.

    Other squares, gardens and passageways pay tribute to the likes of Irish gay rights activist Mark Ashton, French transsexual politician and poet Ovida-Delect and bisexual American writer and filmmaker Susan Sontag.

    There’s also a commemorative plaque in honour of Gilbert Baker, the man who invented the rainbow flag. Add to that Pierre Seel Street, named for the openly gay Holocaust survivor, and Place Renée Vivien, in honour of the British poet known for her Sapphic verse and party days during the Belle Epoque.

    Increasing LGBT+ visibility

    The new unveilings bring to more than 40 the number of people immortalised through plaques erected around the city – with most of them smattered about the vibrant 4th arrondissement, home to Paris’s unofficial gay district.

    These sorts of gestures are an important way of increasingly the visibility of the gay community and cementing its place in history, says Fabien Jannic-Cherbonnel, a journalist with the French LGBT+ news site Komitid.

    “France is very keen on talking about its history and the great men who shaped the country – and these plaques show people that women and LGBT+ figures are a part of that history, and they also helped to make this country what it is today,” he says.

    Paris playing catch-up

    While other European cities such as Amsterdam and Berlin are perhaps a little further ahead in celebrating the LGBT+ legacy, with their so-called “homomonuments” drawing in tourists, Paris is steadily playing catch-up – so much so the Town Hall has dared to label it the “flagship city of inclusion and diversity”.

    The street-naming gesture comes just ahead of this weekend’s pride march. Like many cities across the world, Paris cranks up the colour in June to celebrate gay pride – and this Saturday the capital will look like the rainbow city that mayor Anne Hidalgo has been striving to deliver.

    Tempering the pride party, however, is last month’s report by the French not-for-profit organisation SOS Homophobie, which noted a 15 percent rise in the number of homophobic attacks reported in 2018, compared with the previous year.

    While the NGO described 2018 as a “black year”, Jannic-Cherbonnel says the numbers aren’t necessarily evidence that homophobic assaults are on the rise.

    “This is a reflection of the number of calls that SOS received – which means that people are talking about it,” he says. “They know when something is wrong and when something happens they will report it.

    “I’m not convinced there’s a huge increase in homophobia in French society, especially in Paris, but we are talking more about it – which is good because this is all about visibility, which in turn helps to fight homophobia.”


    http://en.rfi.fr/france/20190626-paris-streets-squares-named-honour-lgbt-figures?ref=tw
    #LGBT #homosexualité #Paris #France #toponymie #noms_de_rue #Harvey_Milk

  • #WeUnite | Accompany farmers Carlo and Hanna as they drive their tractors to Berlin to protest for a better food and farming system.
    https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/weunite-accompany-farmers-carlo-and-hanna-as-they-drive-their-tracto

    #WeUnite - The 12-minute film ‘We Unite’ is a window into the lives of two organic farmers and the reasons they join the yearly ‘We are Fed-Up’ demonstration in Germany .Along with hundreds of...

  • The Tiananmen Square massacre, 30 years on - World Socialist Web Site
    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/08/tian-j08.html

    By Peter Symonds, 8 June 2019 - Thirty years have passed since heavily-armed Chinese troops, backed by tanks, moved through the suburbs of Beijing on the night of June 3–4, 1989, killing hundreds, probably thousands, of unarmed civilians. The military forces overwhelmed makeshift barricades with brute force as they made their way to Tiananmen Square—the site of weeks of mass protests by students and workers.

    Those barbaric events, which demonstrated the willingness of the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime to do anything to stay in power, have gone down in history as the Tiananmen Square massacre. Yet most of deaths during that murderous assault were of workers who courageously tried to halt the progress of troops to central Beijing. Estimates vary, but up to 7,000 were killed and 20,000 wounded.

    Moreover, in the reign of terror that followed throughout China it was the workers who received the harshest penalties, including lengthy jail terms and death sentences. Around 40,000 people were arrested just in June and July, mostly members of Workers Autonomous Federations that had sprung up in the course of the protests.
    Protesters in Tiananmen Square

    What is commonly depicted as the crushing of student protesters was in fact a wave of repression directed overwhelmingly against a mass movement of the working class. What had begun in April as student protests calling for democratic reforms had swelled into the millions as workers joined the demonstrations by mid-May, making their own class demands.

    The Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation was established on April 20 with a handful of workers and rapidly expanded to become a major organising centre by mid-May. On May 17, up to two million people marched through the centre of Beijing, the majority being workers and their families under the banners of their work units or enterprises. Reflecting the impact of events in Beijing, Workers Autonomous Federations were established in a host of major cities, including Changsha, Shaoyang, Xiangtan, Hengyang and Yueyang.

    While moderate student leaders were intent on pressing the CCP bureaucracy for concessions on democratic rights, workers were animated by concerns over deteriorating living standards, soaring inflation and a wave of sackings and closures. The regime’s embrace of the capitalist market since the 1970s had led to widening social inequality and rampant bureaucratic corruption and profiteering. Workers were bitterly hostile to the accumulation of privileges and wealth by the top CCP leaders, such as Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng, Zhao Ziyang, Jiang Zemin, Chen Yun and their family members, and were contemptuous of their claims to be communist and socialist.

    A statement by workers issued on May 25 expressed the rebellious currents in the working class. “Our nation was created by the struggle and labour of we workers and all other mental and manual labourers. We are the rightful masters of this nation. We must be heard in national affairs. We must not allow this small band of degenerate scum of the nation and the working class to usurp our name and suppress the students, murder democracy and trample human rights.” [1]

    Premier Zhao Ziyang had been sympathetic to the demands of student leaders and had counselled making small concessions to calls for basic democratic rights. However, no compromise was possible with the working class, whose unrest threatened the very existence of the regime. As the protest movement rapidly grew in size and confidence, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping removed his ally Zhao as premier, installed hardline Li Peng in his place and ordered the military to violently suppress the protests in Beijing and nationally.
    The crisis of Stalinism

    The resort to such extreme measures was bound up with the profound crisis of Stalinism, not only in China but internationally. In response to deepening economic and social crises, a turn was underway in China, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union toward the dismantling of centralised bureaucratic planning mechanisms, encouragement of private enterprise and establishment of market mechanisms.

    After assuming the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev introduced his keynote policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness and transparency) that laid the framework for greater autonomy for enterprises outside the central planning mechanisms and, under the guise of democratic reform, sought to establish a base of social support for the regime among the petty bourgeoisie.

    Gorbachev’s pro-market restructuring also encouraged the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe in their plans for capitalist restoration, making desperate bids to resolve their mounting economic and political crises. These processes dramatically accelerated as Gorbachev signaled that the Soviet Union would not intervene militarily to prop up its Soviet bloc allies, as it had done in Hungary in 1956 to crush the workers’ uprising and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 to end liberal reforms. In December 1987, he announced the withdrawal of 500,000 Soviet troops from Eastern Europe.

    In a very short period of time, during 1989–90, the Stalinist bureaucracies in one Eastern European country after another moved to restore capitalism, dismantling what remained of nationalised property relations and centralised planning.

    In Poland, talks between the government and opposition Solidarity leaders resulted in a deal in April 1989 to hold limited elections. This paved the way for the installation in August of Solidarity leader Tadeusz Mazowiecki as prime minister. He unleashed sweeping pro-market restructuring.

    Similar negotiations in Hungary, where the processes of pro-market restructuring were already advanced, led to a new constitution in August 1989. Multi-party elections in May 1990 resulted in a government that junked what remained of centralised planning and carried out wholesale privatisation.

    Amid a mounting economic and political crisis, Gorbachev visited Berlin in October 1989 to urge the East German government to accelerate pro-market reforms. Erich Honecker resigned as leader two weeks later. On November 9, the government announced the end of all border restrictions and Berlin citizens tore down the hated Berlin Wall. Before the end of the month, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl unveiled a plan to integrate East Germany with capitalist West Germany—a process that was completed by October 1990.

    The collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria quickly followed. By the end of 1990, governments throughout Eastern Europe were giving full rein to the plunder of state-owned property, an influx of foreign capital and the dismantling of social services, leading to a precipitous deterioration in living standards.

    Gorbachev’s policies in the Soviet Union gave rise to intense pressures within the Stalinist bureaucracy and the emerging layer of entrepreneurs for a far speedier dismantling of all fetters on private ownership and market relations. This found expression in the installation of Boris Yeltsin in July 1991 and the implementation of pro-market “shock therapy.” In December 1991, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved.

    The break-up of the Soviet Union and collapse of the Stalinist states in Eastern Europe led to an orgy of triumphalism in the capitalist media proclaiming the end of socialism. Pundits, politicians and academics, who had foreseen nothing and could explain nothing, exulted over the triumph of the market, even going so far as to pronounce the end of history. In other words, capitalism supposedly represented the highest and final stage of human development. A new period of peace, prosperity and democracy would dawn, they all declared.

    The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), based on the analysis made by Leon Trotsky of Stalinism, had rejected the universal adulation of Gorbachev and warned that his policies were rapidly leading to the dismantling of the gains of the first workers’ state. Its perspectives resolution entitled “The World Capitalist Crisis and the Tasks of the Fourth International,” published in August 1988, made clear that the breakdown of the Soviet Union was not a product of socialism, but rather of Stalinism and its reactionary autarchic conception of “socialism in one country”:

    The very real crisis of the Soviet economy is rooted in its enforced isolation from the resources of the world market and the international division of labour. There are only two ways this crisis can be tackled. The way proposed by Gorbachev involves the dismantling of state industry, the renunciation of the planning principle, and the abandonment of the state monopoly on foreign trade, i.e., the reintegration of the Soviet Union into the structure of world capitalism. The alternative to this reactionary solution requires the smashing of imperialism’s domination over the world economy by linking up the Soviet and international working class in a revolutionary offensive aimed at extending the planned economy into the European, North American and Asian citadels of capitalism. [2]

    In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the ICFI identified the root cause of the crisis of Stalinism in the processes of the globalisation of production that had been underway since the late 1970s, which had undermined all programs based on national economic regulation. While the crisis of Stalinism was the most immediate and acute expression, these same processes lay behind the international embrace of pro-market restructuring by Social Democratic and Labour parties, and trade unions, and their abandonment of any defence of the social rights of the working class.
    Capitalist restoration in China

    The events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had a profound impact in China, where processes of capitalist restoration had been underway since the 1970s. The CCP’s decision in June 1989 to use the military to brutally suppress the working class was in no small measure conditioned by its longstanding fear of a repetition in China of the mass strike movement in Poland in 1980–81 that led to the formation of the Solidarity trade union.

    China specialist Maurice Meisner explained that the involvement of masses of workers in the protests in Tiananmen Square on May 17 “did much to rekindle the ‘Polish fear’ among Party leaders, their decade-old obsession about the rise of a Solidarity-type alliance between workers and intellectuals in opposition to the Communist state. And that fear, in turn, contributed to their fateful decision to impose martial law.” [3]

    While Deng Xiaoping recognised the affinity of Gorbachev’s perestroika with the policies that he had already enacted, he did not embrace the political liberalisation of glasnost, fearing it would undermine the foundations of the CCP regime. When Gorbachev visited Beijing in mid-May 1989 to cement closer Sino-Soviet ties, the Chinese leadership kept him closeted from public view, anxious that his presence would give further impetus to the protests in Tiananmen Square. The rapid collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe only heightened the determination of the CCP bureaucracy to suppress any opposition.

    The roots of the crisis in China lay in the outcome of the 1949 Chinese revolution. The monumental events that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power ended more than a century of imperialist oppression that had mired the country of more than 500 million in squalor and backwardness. It expressed the aspirations of the vast majority of the population for economic security, basic democratic and social rights, and a decent standard of living. Decades of political upheaval and a war against Japanese imperialism from 1937 to 1945 had ravaged the country and left an estimated 14 million Chinese soldiers and civilians dead.

    Like the Soviet bureaucracy, however, the new CCP apparatus was based on the reactionary nationalist program of “socialism in one country,” which was a repudiation of socialist internationalism and Leon Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution which underpinned the October Revolution in Russia in 1917.

    As a result, the course of the revolution and the subsequent evolution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) proclaimed by Mao Zedong in 1949 was distorted and deformed by Stalinism, which dominated the CCP in the wake of Stalin’s betrayal of the Second Chinese Revolution of 1925–27. Stalin subordinated the very young CCP to the bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang, resulting in crushing blows to the Chinese Communists and working class in April 1927, and again in May 1927. CCP leaders and members who supported Trotsky’s analysis of the tragedy were expelled.

    In the wake of the 1949 Chinese Revolution, the pragmatic, nationalist ideology of Maoism led China rapidly into a blind alley. Mao’s perspective of a “New Democracy” sought to maintain a bloc with the national bourgeoisie, but the CCP government was driven, under conditions of the Korean War and the internal sabotage by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements, to go further than intended. By 1956, virtually every aspect of the economy was nationalised and subject to bureaucratic planning along the lines of the Soviet Union, but the working class had no say through its own democratic organs.

    The organic hostility of the Maoist regime to the working class was expressed in its repression of Chinese Trotskyists, all of whom were jailed in 1952 amid the rising resistance by workers. As with the Eastern European states, the Fourth International characterised China as a deformed workers’ state, a highly conditional formula that placed the emphasis on the deformed, bureaucratic character of the regime.

    The national autarky of “socialism in one country” generated worsening economic and social turmoil, and crises for which the CCP bureaucracy had no solution, leading to bitter internal factional warfare. Mao’s fanciful scheme for a peasant socialist society, which underpinned his “Great Leap Forward,” ended in economic catastrophe and mass starvation. His factional opponents, led by Liu Shaoqi, followed the Soviet model of bureaucratic planning with its emphasis on heavy industry, but this provided no alternative.

    The economic crisis was greatly worsened by the 1961–63 split with the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of Soviet aid and advisers, as the two Stalinist regimes advanced their conflicting national interests. In a last desperate bid to oust his rivals, Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966, which rapidly span out of his control, leading to confused and convulsive social struggles that threatened the very existence of the regime. Mao turned to the military to suppress workers who had taken literally his edict to “Bombard the Headquarters,” resulting in mass strikes in Shanghai and the formation of an independent Shanghai People’s Commune in 1967.

    Incapable of resolving the immense economic and social problems wracking the country, and facing a military confrontation with the Soviet Union, the CCP bureaucracy forged an anti-Soviet alliance with US imperialism that laid the basis for China’s integration into global capitalism. While Deng Xiaoping is generally credited with initiating market reforms, Mao’s rapprochement with US President Richard Nixon in 1972 was the essential political and diplomatic pre-condition for foreign investment and increased trade with the West.

    The process of “opening and reform” went hand-in-hand with the imposition of strict discipline and emphasis on boosting production in workplaces. Maurice Meissner noted: “Factory managers dismissed during the Cultural Revolution were restored to their former posts, accompanied by calls to strengthen managerial authority, labour discipline, and factory rules and regulations—and to struggle against ‘anarchism’ and ‘ultra-leftism.’ There were dramatic increases in foreign trade and in imports of foreign technology. Veteran party leaders attacked during the Cultural Revolution were ‘rehabilitated’ at an increasingly rapid pace; by 1973, it has been noted, ‘the pre-Cultural Revolution cadres were running the government ministries.” [4]

    From 1969 to 1975, the value of foreign trade increased from $US4 billion to $14 billion per annum. From the end of 1972 until mid-1975, China imported whole industrial plants, valued at $2.8 billion, mainly from Japan and western Europe.

    Deng Xiaoping who had been ostracised during the Cultural Revolution as the “No 2 capitalist roader,” was rehabilitated, appointed a vice premier of the state council under Zhou Enlai. Deng led the Chinese delegation to a special session of the UN in 1974 where he declared that the “socialist bloc” no longer existed and China was part of the Third World. In the factional power struggle that followed Mao’s death in 1976, Deng emerged as the dominant figure in the Stalinist bureaucracy. He embraced US imperialism ever more closely, formalising diplomatic relations in 1979, launching a border war against neighbouring Vietnam, and defending US allies such as the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

    From 1978, Deng greatly accelerated the “reform and opening” pro-market reforms. Four Special Economic Zones (SEZs) were established in 1979 in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen, where foreign entrepreneurs and joint ventures produced goods for export and enjoyed tax breaks and other concessions. A similar system was later implemented in key port cities such as Shanghai. In the countryside, the collectivised communes were dismantled and restrictions removed on the operation of private enterprises. Prices for agricultural produce were lifted. In the cities, moves were made to transform thousands of state-owned enterprises into profit-making corporations. Private enterprises were permitted, the market was increasingly allowed to determine prices for consumer goods, and a “labour market” was initiated, allowing the hiring and firing of workers.

    The pro-market reforms led to the rapid rise of social inequality. Millions of former peasants were left landless and forced to seek employment in the cities. In the SEZs, where the capitalist market was given free rein, corruption and criminal activity was rampant, including smuggling, bribery and the theft of state-owned property. The sons and daughters of the top party leaders took full advantage of their political connections to establish their own business empires. With the lifting of price restrictions, inflation rocketed to 18.5 percent in 1988, to which the regime responded by drastically reducing credit and re-imposing import restrictions. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs, as private enterprises reduced their workforces or closed down altogether. Unemployment, the loss of job security, as well as skyrocketing prices, combined with disgust at the corruption and enrichment of CCP bureaucrats, fueled the social unrest that erupted in the mass protests by workers the following year.
    Capitalist restoration following Tiananmen Square

    In the aftermath of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square and the police dragnet throughout the country, the factional battle inside the CCP leadership sharpened in the next three years over Deng’s program of capitalist restoration. In ordering the troops against workers and students, Deng had removed his chief ally in pro-market restructuring, Zhao Ziyang, as premier. Former Shanghai party leader Jiang Zemin was installed as a compromise choice to the top post of CCP secretary general. The initiative shifted to the so-called hardliners—Li Peng and Chen Yun, who, in criticising Zhao, were also criticising Deng’s policies.

    However, in advocating restrictions on market relations, Li and Chen based their policies on the status quo ante and the nationalist perspective of “socialism in country,” which had already proven to be a dead-end. They were looking toward the Soviet Union, even as the deformed workers’ states in Eastern Europe were collapsing and Gorbachev’s policies were undermining centralised planning and nationalised property relations. Their so-called “Soviet faction” represented sections of the Chinese bureaucracy whose power and privileges resided in their control of key sections of state-owned industry and the central apparatus in Beijing.

    At the Fifth Plenum in November 1989, Li delivered the main report, based on the recommendations of a revived State Planning Commission. The adopted plan called for cutting inflation to 10 percent in 1990 and economic growth to 5 percent by maintaining tight controls on credit and balancing the national budget. Rural industries would not be allowed to compete with state-owned enterprises. While keeping the SEZs and “open door” policy in place, the new restrictions hit rural and provincial industries, particularly in the south of the country.

    While Deng no longer held any official party or state position, he still retained considerable political clout, especially in the southern provinces where the new profit-making industries were concentrated. Deng had sided with the hardliners in opposing any political liberalisation and, above all, supported the 1989 military crackdown, but he was adamant that the restrictions on private enterprises and foreign investment had to be completely dismantled.

    The snowballing crisis in the Soviet Union brought matters to a head. An attempted Stalinist putsch in August 1991 to oust Gorbachev and Yeltsin and wind back their program of pro-market restructuring ended in dismal failure. China scholar Michael Marti explained: “This one event changed the thinking about the political equation within the Chinese leadership, including that of Deng Xiaoping. The failure of the Soviet Red Army to support the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its bid to regain control threw the CCP into a panic. The Chinese leadership feared that a precedent had been established.” [5]

    The factional battle lines were drawn. While the “Soviet faction” began to call into question the entire agenda of pro-market reforms, including the establishment of the SEZs, Deng insisted that the levels of economic growth were too low to maintain employment and social stability. “If the economy cannot be boosted over a long time,” he told a meeting of party elders as far back as late 1989, “it [the government] will lose people’s support at home and will be oppressed and bullied by other nations. The continuation of this situation will lead to the collapse of the Communist Party.” [6]

    Deng was also concerned that the crisis in the Soviet Union, following the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe, would greatly change geo-political relations. Not only had Deng’s strategy sought to balance between the US and the Soviet Union, but his economic policies depended on a large influx of foreign investment, which could potentially shift to exploiting new opportunities opening up in the former Soviet republics.

    Along with provincial leaders in the southern provinces, Deng counted on the support of People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The generals had been shocked by the way in which US imperialism and its allies had deployed hi-tech weaponry in the 1990–91 Gulf War to rapidly destroy the Iraqi military. Their conclusion was that China had to invest heavily in modernising the PLA and only Deng’s policies could transform the economy and produce the growth needed to supply that investment.

    Deng set out on his “Southern tour” in January–February 1992, just 20 days after the formal liquidation of the Soviet Union in December 1991, accompanied by top generals, the state security chief Qiao Shi and party elder Bo Yibo. As he visited the SEZs and southern cities, he declared that there would be no reversal of economic policies in the face of the Soviet collapse. Dismissing concerns about growing social inequality, he is said to have declared: “Let some people get rich first.”

    In a showdown with Chen Yun in Shanghai, Deng reportedly shouted: “Any leader who cannot boost the economy should leave office.” Openly backing capitalist restoration, he declared: “We should absorb more foreign capital and more foreign-advanced experiences and technologies, and set up more foreign-invested enterprises. Do not fear when others say we are practicing capitalism. Capitalism in nothing fearsome.” [7]

    Deng prevailed, opening the door for wholesale capitalist restoration that transformed the whole country into a giant free trade zone for the exploitation of cheap Chinese labour. The crocodile tears shed by Western politicians over the Tiananmen Square massacre were rapidly cast aside as foreign investors recognised that the police-state regime in Beijing was willing to use any method, no matter how brutal, to discipline the working class. In 1993, the CCP proclaimed that its objective was a “socialist market economy,” giving a threadbare “socialist” disguise to its embrace of capitalism.

    In 1994, the CCP formally established a “labour market,” by legitimising the sale and purchase of labour power. State-owned enterprises were corporatised into companies run for profit. The unprofitable ones were restructured or shut down. The better equipped, in sectors not designated as strategic, were sold off or converted into subsidiaries of foreign transnationals. A small number were preserved as state-owned “national flagships.”

    Between 1996 and 2005, the number of employees in state- and collective-owned enterprises halved, from 144 million to 73 million workers. Along with guaranteed life-time employment, the “iron rice bowl” of cradle-to-grave services was also dismantled. Essential services that had previously been provided by state-owned enterprises—childcare, education, health care and pensions—were now left to individual workers.
    Chinese capitalism today

    The restoration of capitalism in China over the past 30 years has only exacerbated the underlying social tensions within Chinese society and compounded the political and geo-political dilemmas confronting the CCP apparatus.

    The extraordinary economic expansion of China to become the world’s second largest economy has rested, in the first place, on the immense gains of the 1949 Revolution that unified China for the first time in decades, created an educated and skilled workforce, and developed basic industries and essential infrastructure. The flood of foreign investment into the country transformed China into the sweatshop of the world and produced a massive 11-fold increase in the economy between 1992 and 2010. This rapid growth, however, did not reflect an inherent strength of the Chinese economy, but rather its role in the world economy, dependent on foreign investment and technology.

    The imperialist powers, above all the United States, were more than willing to exploit cheap Chinese labour as long as China’s economic expansion did not challenge their own established geo-political interests. However, the vast quantity of raw materials and energy that Chinese industries require from around the world have increasingly brought it into conflict with the US and other major powers, in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and internationally. Moreover, as China has sought to create its own hi-tech “national champions” such as Huawei and ZTE, the US, under the Trump administration, has declared economic war on Beijing, not just in matters of trade. It has openly opposed Chinese plans to develop and expand hi-tech industries and to more closely link Eurasia to China through massive infrastructure projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

    The delusion promoted by CCP leaders that China could, through a “peaceful rise,” become a world power on a parity with the US has been shattered. China’s expansion has brought it into conflict with the global imperialist order dominated by the United States. Under Obama and now Trump, the US has begun using all means at its disposal to ensure its continued global hegemony. Trump’s economic war goes hand-in-hand with a military build-up in the Indo-Pacific, escalating naval provocations in the South China Sea, under the guise of “freedom of navigation operations, and more open preparations for a war between the two nuclear-armed powers.

    The CCP leadership has no answer to the mounting danger of war, other than desperately seeking an accommodation with imperialism, while engaging in a frenetic arms race that can only end in catastrophe for the working class in China and internationally. Capitalist restoration, far from strengthening China’s capacity to counter the US, has greatly weakened it. The regime is organically incapable of making any appeal to the international working class, as that would inevitably lead to social struggles by the working class at home.

    Having abandoned even its previous nominal commitment to socialism and internationalism, the CCP has increasing relied on whipping up Chinese nationalism to try to create a social base in layers of the middle class. There is nothing progressive about Chinese chauvinism and patriotism, which divides Chinese workers from their class brothers and sisters internationally, and within China from non-Han Chinese minorities. Its repressive measures against Uighurs, Tibetans and other ethnic groups have provided an opening that the US is seeking to exploit. Under the bogus banner of “human rights,” Washington is promoting separatist groups as part of its ambition to fracture and subordinate China to its interests.

    Thirty years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the CCP leadership is terrified of a renewal of working-class opposition, the first stirrings of which have been seen in the more numerous reports of workers’ strikes and protests, and, significantly over the past year, in a turn by a layer of university students to assist workers in their struggles. Since 1989, the working class in China has vastly expanded to an estimated 400 million and as a proportion of the population. One indicator is the growth of the country’s urban population from just 26.4 percent of the total in 1990, to 58.5 percent in 2017.

    The CCP leadership boasts of having lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, using the UN’s very austere measures of poverty. Such benchmarks ignore the many factors that are fueling discontent among workers, including the common practice of late or unpaid wages, unhealthy and dangerous factory conditions, harsh corporate disciplinary practices, and the lack of basic social rights for tens of millions of internal migrants in the cities. All of these oppressive conditions are monitored and policed by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which functions as an arm of the CCP bureaucracy in workplaces.

    Capitalist restoration has produced a dramatic rise in social inequality: from one of the most equal societies in the world, China has become one of the most unequal countries. It is home to more dollar billionaires than any other country except the United States. While Chinese workers struggle to survive on the minimum wage of $370 a month, the wealthiest individual, Tencent chairman Pony Ma, has a personal fortune of almost $40 billion. These super-rich oligarchs, who in many cases have built their fortunes through naked corruption and the looting of state-owned property, are represented in the Chinese Communist Party and sit on powerful advisory bodies.

    The gulf between the super-rich and the vast majority of the workers and the poor is generating huge social tensions that, sooner rather than later, will explode on a scale that will eclipse the rebellion by workers and students 30 years ago. The lesson drawn by the Stalinist leadership from the 1989 events was that it had to suppress, through all available means, any expression of opposition that could become the focus of a broader movement against the regime. Incapable of meeting the pressing social needs of the majority of the population, the CCP has vastly expanded its police-state apparatus, now spending more each year on its internal security forces than it does on external defence.

    The working class must also draw the necessary political lessons from the defeat of that movement in 1989, which was rapidly assuming revolutionary dimensions. What was lacking was not determination, audacity and courage, nor numbers, which were rapidly swelling across China, but the essential problem facing the international working class in the 20th century—the absence of revolutionary leadership.

    James Cogan summed up the issue in his analysis “Ten years since the Tiananmen Square massacre,” stating:

    Inexperienced politically and lacking a political perspective outside of opposition to the existing regime, the workers’ leaders advanced no alternative to, and deferred to, the student bodies. The workers of China knew in their life experience what they were against—Stalinism and capitalism—but they were not able to articulate any perspective for an alternative social order.

    Decades of domination by Stalinism and the active suppression of genuine Marxism in China meant there was no revolutionary socialist, that is, Trotskyist, tendency in the working class. No organisation within the country could spontaneously advance the program that was implicit in the actions and sentiments of the Chinese working class—a political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist regime and introduce major reforms into the economy for the benefit of the working class. [8]

    The essential political task of building a Trotskyist leadership in the Chinese working class as a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International remains. None of the oppositional tendencies that emerged out of the 1989 protests offer a viable political perspective for the working class. Advocates of independent trade unions such as Han Dongfang, who was prominent in the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation in 1989, have underscored the political bankruptcy of syndicalism by lurching to the right and into the arms of US trade union apparatus, in other words of US imperialism.

    A layer of youth, intellectuals and workers have turned to Maoism, and its banal “revolutionary” slogans, for answers. Capitalist restoration in China, however, was not a break from Maoism. It flowed organically out of the dead-end of “socialism in one country.” Maoism could aptly be termed Stalinism with Chinese characteristics, with its hostility to the working class, its emphasis on subjective will, and above all its putrid nationalism. It is diametrically opposed to genuine Marxism, that is the perspective of socialist internationalism, which alone was upheld by the Trotskyist movement, including the Chinese Trotskyists.

    The establishment of a genuinely revolutionary party in China, as part of the ICFI, requires the assimilation of the essential strategic experiences of the international working class, of which the Chinese revolutions of the 20th century are a critical component. The CCP leaders are petrified that workers and youth will begin to work over the lessons of history. They attempt to censor and black out any knowledge and discussion of the events of 1989, and continue to perpetrate the lies of Stalinism about the course of the 20th century.

    The crucial political lessons of the protracted struggle of Trotskyism against Stalinism are embedded in the program, perspective and documents of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Workers and youth should make a serious study of the political issues involved, beginning with the documents of the ICFI on the Tiananmen Square massacre, republished this week on the World Socialist Web Site. We urge you to contact the International Committee of the Fourth International, which is the first step toward forging a Trotskyist leadership in the Chinese working class.

    Footnotes:

    [1] Cited in “Workers in the Tiananmen protests: The politics of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation,” by Andrew G. Walder and Gong Xiaoxia, first published in the Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No 29, January 1993.

    [2] The World Capitalist Crisis and the Tasks of the Fourth International: Perspectives Resolution of the International Committee of the Fourth International, August 1988, Labor Publications, pp.30–31.

    [3] Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, The Free Press, Third edition, 1999, p.508.

    [4] ibid, p.389.

    [5] Michael Marti, China and the Legacy of Deng Xiaoping: From Communist Revolution to Capitalist Evolution, Brassey’s Inc, 2002, pp.47–48.

    [6] Cited in John Chan, “Twenty years since Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Southern tour’—Part 1”, 26 November 2012.

    [7] Cited in John Chan, “Twenty years since Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Southern tour’—Part 2”, 27 November 2012.

    [8] James Cogan, “Ten years since the Tiananmen Square massacre: Political lessons for the working class,” 4 June 1999.

    #Chine #4689

  • I Rode All the E-Scooters. Most of Them Are Awful Except Two
    https://jalopnik.com/i-rode-all-the-e-scooters-most-of-them-are-awful-excep-1835373127

    So sieht es im paradiesischen Wunderland des Transport-Sharing aus : #ASAB Alle Roller sind Mist, außer einem, und der ist genau genommen kein Roller. Und in Berlin? Sind das bessere E-Roller Made in Germany ? Wohl kaum. Tragt bloß einen Helm!

    Matt Farah, 6/10/19 3:45pm - One weekend morning toward the end of 2017, I woke up at home in Venice, CA and took a walk, only to see something entirely new: people on electric scooters. And I mean lots of people on electric scooters. Literally overnight, a new company called Bird, founded just two miles away in Santa Monica, had launched an app and dumped thousands of dockless scooters all over the place. A few things happened very quickly after that:

    Bird Scooters became litter. Freelance chargers, or “Juicers” as Lime would later call their not-employees, would do their best to place the scooters in an orderly fashion, out of the way in common areas. But since people only have respect for a.) things they, themselves personally own or b.) are locked down or are being watched, kicking, destroying, throwing them in the ocean, and more turned into Venice’s favorite new sport. The other morning, I watched someone line up a dozen or more scooters neatly, get into their van, and drive off. Not 10 seconds later, someone used a shopping cart as a bowling ball, turning the whole thing into some kind of bramble.
    Everyone wanted to compete with Bird. Lime was next, with its fun, fruit-themed livery. Bird and Lime were the new disruptors, and the OG disruptors, Uber and Lyft, wanted in on that sweet, sweet last-mile dollar. So those two started dropping their own scooters all over.
    E-Mobility Scooters have absolutely decimated the bike rental industry in Venice. Enterprising bike rental shop owners began to moonlight as scooter chargers or repair facilities. Some bike rental shop owners began buying and renting out their own scooters. Now, just 18 months later, on any given weekend, well over 50 percent of the wheeled traffic on the Venice bike path is battery powered.

    There were injuries. Lots of injuries. Anecdotally, I regularly see people wiping out and getting hurt on mobility scooters. It happens enough that I have made something of a pastime watching a specific corner on the bike path near my house. Business Insider reports over 1,500 injuries serious enough to record in the U.S., in 2018 alone, plus four fatalities.

    For the record, I sympathize with local residents who resent them taking up sidewalk space in front of their home, hate them for becoming litter in a neighborhood that often has too much of that already, and who have to deal with yet another way for dumb, lost tourists to be dumb and lost.

    I’ve found scooters blocking my own front door or garage on several occasions. And folks tend to want the best of all worlds while riding one: they want the rights of a pedestrian, the rights of a bicycle, and the rights of a car, all at the same time, which is an incredibly dangerous mindset.

    Also, for the record, I have found some extremely convenient uses for the scooters when I need to get somewhere that is just out of walking range, or to “run to the store to pick up some forgotten ingredient” while a recipe is in the oven. I have used every brand of scooter at one point or another, with extremely mixed results. I will factor in previous experience into my rankings.

    The Test: My goal was to find out which mobility company provides the best motoring experience for the rider, for their money. A showdown, for which scooter is best.

    For purposes of this piece, we will not be discussing company policy, only the scooter itself, and whether or not you should get down with it when you come hang out with me on Venice Beach.

    The Circuit

    Allow me to introduce you to The Mobiliring: a 3.4-mile handling circuit featuring a variety of surface changes, corners, crags, obstacles, sand, and people.

    You begin at the Venice Beach Parking lot at 2100 Ocean Front Walk, with the densest population of scooters around. Proceeding straight across the parking lot to the bike path, you go north on the bike path over a winding way made of slatted, rough, sandy concrete, all the way to the Santa Monica border, where you turn back south because mobility scooters can’t be ridden on the bike path at all in the city of Santa Monica.

    You ride south on Speedway, basically a decaying alley full of potholes, but appropriately named, as it was LA’s first paved road. Take Speedway south to Windward Avenue, the heart of Venice, and turn right, weaving across the freestyle dance skating grounds, through the throngs of tourists, and back to the bike path where it meets the legal graffiti area. Continue south on the bike path until you get to the Venice pier, then turn left on Washington Blvd and an immediate left to go north on Speedway, taking you right back to Start/Finish.

    This course is approximately 60 percent unlimited-speed bike path and 40 percent public roads, and in order to successfully complete a lap, you must pay attention and obey all posted road signs and laws.

    (Before you ask, Yes, I bought the Mobiliring domain name. Yes, I will be inviting you to post your own lap times.)

    The Contenders: We’ve restricted our entrants to scooter-type vehicles (as opposed to e-assist bicycles) available on the street for rent in Venice, CA as of May 13, 2019. For this test, that means Bird, Lime, Lyft, Jump (Uber), and Wheels are in the game. Now let’s see how they did on our handling course.

    5th Place – Jump – DNF

    Jump, along with Lyft, uses the Segway / Ninebot ES2 scooter with 19 miles of range and a claimed top speed of 15 mph. This scooter also uses two independent braking methods: regenerative via a toggle on the handlebar, and direct friction via a pressure plate on the rear tire. But, as with shared platforms in cars, the difference is often in the fine tuning, and here, the tuning mattered a lot.

    Our test started well. I picked up a fully charged and seemingly brand-new Jump scooter a few road blocks from the Mobiliring’s Start/Finish line. On the road, it seemed reasonably well made and stable, and reached the claimed top speed of 15 mph relatively drama-free. Then, just after starting off my official lap time, I hit the bike path, and it told me “no.”

    This is important. You see, the Venice bike path is exactly what it sounds like: a dedicated path for bikes, separate from cars and pedestrians. How each of these scooters deals with the bike path, as we will learn, is a defining factor in their Mobiliring time. The bike path and some of the surrounding pedestrian areas, a few of which are on-course, are “restricted” for some scooters, but not for others.

    While each scooter company deals with the bike path its own way, Jump has elected not to deal with it at all. The scooter refused to move, the app told me to take it back off the path, and into a “parking zone,” to lock it up and end my ride.

    I pushed it back where I found it, and even though my phone knew where I was, the scooter disagreed, and I was penalized for $5 for, ultimately, parking it legally.

    4th Place – Lime S – 44 minutes - $7.60

    Lime, the second scooter brand on the scene after Bird, has just released a heavier-duty version of their scooter, called the “Gen 3.” It features an underfloor battery for better stability, improved front suspension, bigger wheels, and a 30-mile range with all-weather capability.

    Unfortunately, since California doesn’t need that as badly as, say, Boston, we don’t get those. Here in Venice, we get the original Lime S scooter, also by Ninebot, but with a 18 mile range and a top speed of 14 mph. The Lime S has the tallest handlebars of all scooters and a single, rear-wheel bike-style cable and disc brake.

    In my previous experience, I’ve found the Lime S to be the fastest of the stand-up scooters, regularly exceeding the claimed 14 mph number, but also with the twitchiest handling in part because those handlebars are so high up and with a column full of heavy batteries in the front. Allegedly the handling issues are solved in the new scooter, but I will have to wait to see on that.

    Lime has decided that an appropriate speed for the Venice bike path should be 3 mph. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to operate a two-wheeled vehicle at 3 mph, but it’s actually quite a lot of work. Three is just barely enough speed to keep a two-wheeled vehicle standing up. It’s slow enough that I was passed by old people walking.

    It’s so slow, that you really can’t keep it in a straight line, which means the ride takes that much longer because you have to cover more zig-zaggy distance, and have I mentioned you’re going three? 

    I was openly mocked, to my face. I realize how mean-spirited you need to be to mock someone to their face for doing nothing besides silently riding a scooter very slowly on the bike path, but honestly, no one has just randomly mocked me on the street really ever in my lifetime. That’s how embarrassingly slow Lime wants you to go on the bike path.

    To make matters worse, Lime’s GPS calibration is so bad that, not 20 feet away from me on the pedestrian foot path I was passed by a dozen Limes going full-tilt, weaving between pedestrians, while I was a rolling chicane on the bike path, being passed by folks going slower than my own top speed.

    3rd Place – Lyft – 31 minutes, 47 Seconds - $7.01

    As I noted earlier, both Lyft and Jump use essentially the same Ninebot ES2scooter, painted different colors. But the difference between Jump’s DNF and Lyft’s podium finish? The software.

    Jump uses a basic LED display with a speedometer, whereas Lyft just has five little lights to indicate battery status. You could say that makes Jump better, but in fact it makes Jump worse, because there is nothing worse than looking at a powered vehicle’s speedometer and seeing a number lower than where you’d set the treadmill during cool down.

    Lyft’s “Prince Purple” and black livery also features a metal cage surrounding the column-mounted auxiliary battery pack, Mad Max style. I guess they follow @BirdGraveyard.

    I actually tested the Lyft before Lime and Jump, so when I hit the bike path and got stuck with a 5 mph limiter for the first mile and a half, it was bad. I thought that was, at the time, as embarrassed as I could be on a motorized vehicle, traveling barely faster than a walk. The thumb throttle, remained fully depressed for a solid 20 minutes, and my right hand began to cramp. I suddenly realized that, if the other scooters were this bad (they were worse) the test was actually going to take all day (it did).

    In unrestricted zones, the electrons flowed like a burst dam; the combination of power delivery and incredibly cheap, low-grip tires mean that you can actually get wheelspin on the sandy stuff – man this thing is fast. Maybe Lyft doesn’t put a speedometer on the handlebars because they are hiding the fact that their scooters are massively juiced up? Maybe it’s like Japan in the 1990s where everyone says their car makes 276 horsepower, and this is the R34 Skyline actually pushing 450?

    Southbound on Speedway, there were sections where I couldn’t use full throttle because it was just way, way too fast. With these tiny wheels, and this amount of power, when you hit the pavement head first (your only option when the front wheel “pivot point” of a crash is 4” in front of your toes), your head will explode like a Gallagher watermelon.

    The regenerative braking system on these Ninebot scooters is really cool, except, like most cheap regen systems, it stops working at low speed. So you really do have to use the friction brake on the rear wheel to come to a full stop.

    Considering the speed, you do not want to be standing on your toes on your back foot, which means you have to do a mid-brake foot shuffle to get that back foot planted on the brake to stop it. It seems like a good idea, and probably adds to the range to use regen as much as possible, but in a panic, complex braking systems are not good.

    Nevertheless, the bike path clearly took a lot away from Lyft’s time here, and so if you live in a city without restricted zones, commuting on one of these could be faster than you think. Wear a helmet.

    2nd Place – Bird Zero – 20 minutes - $6.20

    Bird is the Kleenex of mobility, the Google of mobility, the iPod of mobility. They were the first on the scene and made everyone else play catch-up. The original Bird scooter was a modified Xiaomi unit (sidebar: the guy who modified it is super interesting on his own and races a very fast and aero-fied Nissan GT-R in the Global Time Attack series), which proved not to be durable enough to stand up to the abuse put forth by Americans handling items they don’t own. So they first did a stint with Ninebot before developing their own in-house scooter, the Bird Zero, which is what I rode.

    The Zero has the widest deck of any standup scooter available, making it the most comfortable and stable to ride. (EDIT: New “Bolt” Scooters in LA have wider decks, but were not online at the time of my test). The handlebars fall between Jump and Lime height, so right in the middle, and between your hands is a speedometer and battery indicator.

    Though Bird says the Zero will go 25 km/hr (15 mph), the onboard speedometer would stop at 11.5 mph, and if you actually hit 12 mph (like on a small downhill), it would kill power until you dropped down to 9 mph, an incredibly annoying bug.

    It has larger wheels than the Ninebots used by Lyft, Jump and Lime, and what appear to be grippier tires. At 11 mph and change, you feel like you’re moving along pretty good, but it’s not sketchy fast, and the combination of (slightly) larger wheels and a basic front suspension mean the cracks in the sidewalk aren’t so jarring. The only brake is a bicycle-style cable disc brake on the rear wheel. The cable is exposed, so it’s vulnerable to tampering, but it’s intuitive and effective.

    (Side note: Yes, people are constantly messing with the brakes of these scooters. I regularly find cut cables, and on a few occasions, have started riding only to find out while in motion that the cables have been cut or removed entirely. Check any scooter before riding for functional brakes.)

    I took my first lap ever around the Mobiliring on a Bird, figuring they would be the one to beat, and frankly, Bird is the gold standard for a reason. The Zero is unrestricted on the bike path, and maintained its top speed for the entire first twisty section. The handling is predictable, and there is more grip than other scooters, right up until it gets sandy. Turning southward on Speedway at the north end of the course, the Zero absorbed many of the bumps and ruts in the road better than other scooters. Because I didn’t bump up on any stupid limiters, the entire lap was quite pleasant and relaxing.

    Having tried all three generations of Bird scooter, the Zero is a vast improvement from the first two, and if you’re going to scoot on your feet, not on a seat, Bird is probably the one to ride.

    1st Place – Wheels – 15 Minutes, 16 seconds - $5.60

    “Wheels” is the newest mobility company on the scene; their miniature bicycles only appeared in Venice a few months ago. These bikes are, frankly, genius. In theory, they go up to 35 km/hr, (21.7 mph), though I never saw more than 33.5 on the display.

    Because they are the first mobility option with hot-swappable batteries, the bikes themselves never go out of service during daytime hours. Wheels “Transporters” pick random bikes from where they are left, swap the batteries, and return the bikes to “hubs,” where, in my experience, you can pretty much always find at least one.

    The fact that they are more like bicycles than Razor scooters is, itself, a major advantage. Sitting, rather than standing, means stability. It means your knees and ankles aren’t a suspension component. It has 14-inch wheels with pneumatic tires. It uses dual disc brakes from a high-end bicycle. It has a twist-grip throttle, like a motorcycle. And it has Bluetooth speakers, so you can play your music from the bike itself, freeing you from having to dangerously (and in Santa Monica, illegally) ride on the street wearing headphones.

    A Wheels has enough power that you don’t have to push-start it, real tires so you can ride confidently on sandy tarmac, and the kind of brakes you’d want on a vehicle capable of keeping up with, and passing, folks on geared bicycles, or even cars in urban traffic. The kind of bumps that would sail you headfirst into a parked car on a traditional scooter are mere inconveniences on a Wheels.

    I knew it would be faster than the scooters on specs alone, but honestly, it was also so much more fun. Every single scooter is kinda terrifying, because a crack or a bump can come up so quickly, with really bad consequences. Even while having fun, it’s virtually impossible to escape this train of thought. Especially since right when you do, that’s when you crash.

    A Wheels is like riding an electric Honda Grom. The bike path, unrestricted on a Wheels, might as well be Angeles Crest Highway. I was taking apexes, leaning it down, balancing the brakes, and leaning into the throttle on exits. You can actually look up and around, rather than four feet in front of you, because you aren’t terrified of uneven pavement anymore.

    Best of all, because it looks more like a bike than a Razor scooter, many folks are riding them in more appropriate places than sidewalks, because they no longer see themselves as pedestrians.

    And the speed, Lord, the speed. It completed the Mobiliring a full five minutes faster than Bird, in half the time of Lyft, 1/3 the time of Lime, and for less money than all of them—after all, you’re literally renting these things by the minute, not the mile. Time is money.

    Downsides? Admittedly, there are two: First are the exposed brake cables for the dual disc brakes. During the single day of this test, I found three Wheels with intentionally cut brake lines. Someone not as vigilant as myself might not notice, which, considering where they were cut, I believe was the sadistic intent.

    Secondly, 20 mph is fast enough to have a crash where you can get hurt pretty badly, and Wheels is getting awfully close to moped territory; those do require helmets. While you’re no longer worried about pavement quality, you are going fast enough to misjudge things and just, crash. I hate to say it, but helmets should probably be mandated. And if I’m nit-picking, a height-adjustable seat would be nice, although not having to pedal negates most of the negative effects of a fixed seat.

    When scooters first arrived in Venice, I rolled my eyes and said to myself, “Great, at last a substitute for walking.” And in some ways, I was right. These scooters do expose us at our most slovenly, both in how we treat them when no one is looking, and in how tourists do actually use them, right in front of me, every day: as a walk you don’t have to walk; as a bike you don’t have to pedal.

    But they also do give mobility to people who don’t otherwise have it. 30 miles in LA is a pretty long way; you could ride a Wheels from Venice to Beverly Hills and back, for less than an Uber or Lyft, and without having to be a sweaty mess when you got there. Bird scooters and their ilk are good for short trips that are just out of walking distance, as long as you don’t have to deal with restricted zones and the surface is good.

    A Wheels is good for that too, but it can also be a bicycle. And frankly, it’s safer. Wheels wins this one by a mile.

    But as I write this, some three more e-scooters are coming to Venice in the next month. I guess the Mobiliring’s work isn’t done yet.❞

    #USA #Elektroroller #Verkehr

  • Rasmea Odeh Breaking the Silence in Berlin: #RasmeaSpricht #RasmeaSpeaks
    https://samidoun.net/2019/03/rasmea-odeh-breaking-the-silence-in-berlin-rasmeaspricht-rasmeaspeaks

    29 March 2019 - On Wednesday evening, 27 March, Rasmea Odeh‘s voice and words were heard in Berlin, Germany, despite a harsh, repressive campaign that included yet another ban on her speaking in person issued by Berlin’s Senator for the Interior. The successful event at be’kech in Berlin’s Wedding district brought crowds to the space despite a large police presence; the space was so crowded that many people stayed outside to watch the event through glass windows.

    The evening marked a significant achievement for Rasmea Odeh and all those defending the right to organize and advocate for Palestine in Berlin. Despite all attempts to prevent it from taking place, Rasmea’s voice was heard in Berlin and celebrated by people of conscience.
    Photo: Public-solidarity

    Once again, as was the case on 15 March, when Rasmea was to join Palestinian poet and former prisoner Dareen Tatour for an evening of solidarity and celebration of Palestinian women’s struggle, the venue itself was subject to harassment and threats. Another media smear campaign was launched against Rasmea along with attempts to demand that she once again be prohibited from speaking.

    On Wednesday afternoon, only hours before the event, Berlin Interior Senator Andreas Geisel, an SPD politician who had earlier declared that speaking “against the state of Israel” crossed a “red line” that justified the violation of freedom of speech, once again banned Odeh from delivering a public speech at the event. However, organizers presented a video from Odeh, ensuring that her message and her story would be able to be heard by supporters in person and everyone around the world who supports her and the struggle for justice in Palestine.
    Photo: Salim Salim, Arabi21

    Once again, several vans of police filled the area (although a smaller presence than that surrounding the 15 March event). They searched the crowd for Rasmea, but left partway through the event after it was clear that she was not attending in person. A claimed counter-demonstration by pro-apartheid Zionist organizations was not immediately visible, but there may have been several participants at the corner of the street.

    The moderator of the evening opened the event with a stirring call against the silencing of oppressed and marginalized people, especially Palestinian women. She noted the growing support received by the event and the campaign to defend Odeh by a number of organizations, including the Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte, which sent a statement to the organization. The event was supported by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Berlin Muslim Feminists, Bündnis gegen Rassismus, HIRAK (Palestinian Youth Mobilization, Berlin), The Coalition Berlin, Bloque Latinoamericano Berlin, Brot und Rosen international socialist women’s organiation, Revolutionäre Internationalistische Organisation – Klasse Gegen Klasse, Berlin Against Pinkwashing, Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace), RefrACTa Kollektiv Brasilien-Berlin, BDS Berlin and the Kali feminist collective.

    The event also included a speech by a Palestinian student on behalf of HIRAK, emphasizing that this week also marks the one-year anniversary of the Great March of Return in Gaza. Just this week, Israel has been shelling Gaza, causing further destruction after taking hundreds of lives in the past year as Palestinians participated in collective, popular protests for their right to return and break the siege. She urged people to get involved in struggles here in Berlin, including Palestinian community organizing, the solidarity movement and the BDS campaign.

    The organizers next showed a video from 2013 in which Rasmea speaks about her life as a Palestinian woman. The video was made when she received the 2013 Outstanding Community Leader award from the Chicago Cultural Alliance:

    The screening was followed by a 20-minute video presentation – the main speech of the night – in which Rasmea discussed her situation in Berlin as well as presenting more broadly on Palestinian women, Palestinian prisoners and the continuing struggle for liberation. Full video coming shortly!

    As Rasmea spoke, including discussing her personal experience of torture, people in the packed room were silent, watching and listening closely to the Arabic speech and the subtitles in German and English. The conclusion of her speech was met with loud and prolonged applause and cheers as the event’s moderator noted that “this is what they did not want you to hear.”

    The event continued with a cultural evening featuring anti-colonial poetry by Wind Ma, a silent theater sketch by Maher Draidi of Almadina Theater, a musical performance of songs and guitar by Nicolás Miquea and a closing dabkeh performance by the Yafa Dabkeh Troupe. The event concluded with a stirring moment as people chanted together, “Viva, viva Palestina! Free, free Palestine!”

    Rasmea Odeh, born in 1947, is a lifelong struggler for Palestine and a well-known feminist organizer and activist. After surviving torture and sexual assault under interrogation by occupation forces and serving 10 years in Israeli prison, she came to the United States, where she organized over 800 women in Chicago in the Arab Women’s Committee, a project of the Arab American Action Network. In 2013, she was targeted by the FBI and U.S. immigration authorities and accused of lying about her time in Israeli prison, despite the fact that it was publicly known; she even testified before a Special Committee of the United Nations about her experience under torture and imprisonment. After a years-long court battle that won widespread grassroots support, she was deported to Jordan in 2017. She was one of the initial signatories of the call for the International Women’s Strike.
    Photo: Public-solidarity

    After she was invited to speak in Berlin on 15 March, the U.S. ambassador (with ties to the German far right) Richard Grenell, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan, charged with fighting Palestine solidarity and the BDS movement internationally, and the Israeli ambassador in Germany launched calls to censor her. Media propaganda falsely labeled her an “anti-Semite,” when she is in reality a longtime anti-racist struggler who developed strong connections with other oppressed communities, particularly the Black liberation movement. In the U.S., Angela Davis and Jewish Voice for Peace were among her supporters. In this context, Berlin politicians yielded to the demands of Trump and Netanyahu, and when Rasmea arrived at the event location, she was given a sheaf of papers. Her Schengen visa was ordered cancelled and she was directed to leave the country; she was banned from speaking at the event.

    Most of the allegations in the documents simply restated attacks by pro-apartheid media publications, including labeling the BDS campaign “anti-Semitic”. The German authorities also claimed that allowing Rasmea to speak and retain her visa would “damage the relationship between Germany and Israel.” Thus, Rasmea Odeh’s voice, experience and analysis was ordered suppressed and silenced through the joint complicity of the German, U.S. and Israeli governments.

    Rasmea is committed to fighting back in court. Her lawyer, Nadija Samour, said that “cancelling a visa based on what has happened so far in the past is a completely new concept from a legal point of view.” However, she and her supporters are aware that this is not simply a legal question but a clear political battle that requires support from the broadest number of people in Germany and internationally.

    Supporters of Rasmea in the United States, including the US Palestinian Community Network, Committee to Stop FBI Repression, Rasmea Defense Committee and many other groups have worked to support the growing campaign in Germany, and more organizations have been adding their voices to express support for Rasmea. By cancelling her Schengen visa, German officials are not only attempting to silence Rasmea’s speech in Berlin but to prevent her from traveling elsewhere in Europe to speak about her experiences and her views – thus denying people across the continent the opportunity to hear from a leading transnational feminist and Palestinian organizer.

    Rasmea was ordered silenced based on a desire to stop her from sharing her words and her experience, telling her story and presenting her analysis. The U.S. government is apparently committed to chasing Rasmea around the world in order to persecute her wherever she goes; meanwhile, the Israeli state continues its intensive attack on people’s right to support Palestine everywhere in the world, which has included the promotion of anti-BDS laws and falsely labeling Palestinian human rights defenders and solidarity groups as “terrorists.” The German state and Berlin authorities also chose to join this campaign, issuing two separate bans in less than two weeks against Rasmea Odeh to prevent her from delivering a live speech about her experiences, her involvement in women’s organizing and her view of Palestine.

    In many ways, Rasmea’s case does not stand alone; in Germany, it comes alongside the Humboldt 3 case and the prosecution of activists for speaking up against war crimes, attempts to block Palestine events from taking place in any location and far-right campaigns particularly targeting migrant communities. It also comes alongside the pursuit of anti-BDS laws in the US, the use of “anti-terror” frameworks to criminalize Palestinian community work and the use of visa denial to suppress political and cultural expression, such as in Australia’s recent denial of a visa to Palestinian American poet Remi Kanazi.

    In a particularly disturbing media article containing propaganda against Kanazi, pro-apartheid groups demand that Kanazi is barred for, among other things, supporting Rasmea and other Palestinian political prisoners. They also use the recent far-right, white-supremacist massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, as a justification for banning him, despite the fact that this was an attack targeting Muslims, linked to racist, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab propaganda, based on white supremacy, and which took the lives of a number of Palestinians specifically. It is clear that there is a global attack, backed by Erdan and the Israeli government, aimed at all Palestinians and supporters of Palestine – and especially aiming to isolate Palestinian prisoners from the international movements that continue to defend their rights.

    The campaign to defend Rasmea Odeh is not ending with this event – instead, it marks a strong beginning of a resurgent movement against the silencing of Palestinian women and for justice in Palestine. It also made it clear that Palestinian women, on the frontlines of struggle from inside Israeli prisons, to the Great Return March in Gaza to organizing for justice in Berlin, will not be silenced. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges people and organizations around the world to get involved and join this campaign by following the Facebook page, Rasmea spricht (Rasmea will speak) and sending statements of solidarity to samidoun@samidoun.net.

    #Palestine #femmes #résistance #zionisme #Allemagne

  • Jüdische Stimme demand the right of free speech for Rasmea Odeh in Berlin | Jüdische Stimme
    https://www.juedische-stimme.de/2019/03/26/juedische-stimme-demands-the-right-of-free-speech-for-rasmea-odeh-i

    26. März 2019 - We demand that the Berlin authorities refrain in future from joining the political persecution of Palestinian human rights defenders, and of individuals and organizations who speak out for human rights for Palestinians.

    Jüdische Stimme rejects the political persecution of Rasmea Odeh, a well-known Palestinian women’s rights and civic liberties activist. On March 15, 2019, Berlin authorities announced that had canceled Rasmea’s Schengen visa and prohibited her from speaking at a public Event and from engaging in any political activity in Berlin. Rasmea was due to speak about the role of Palestinian women political prisoners in the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

    We are incensed at the complicity of the Berlin authorities in the political persecution of Rasmea and believe this should alarm each and every person concerned with civil rights and freedom in Berlin and beyond. This act is to be understood in the context of anti-democratic trends and of closing civic and democratic space in Germany and internationally. The Berlin Senate for Interior Affairs based its decision on the “threat” presented by Rasmea to Germany and/or the people Living in Germany. This is absurd. Rasmeah has dedicated over four decades to public work and human rights activism for women and immigrant communities.

    The Israeli military court, which convicted Odeh in 1970, is not a legitimate court. United Nations human rights experts have determined that the Israeli military court – which has a conviction rate of 99% – does not deliver justice. The Israeli human rights information center B’Tselem explains that “while the courts offer an illusion of proper judicial conduct, they mask one of the most injurious apparatuses of the occupation.”

    We live in dangerous times, when public opinion is easily manipulated. Berlin authorities refer to Rasmea as a “convicted terrorist” solely based on a conviction by an illegitimate court, where prosecutors and judges are all Israeli soldiers in uniform, and defendants are Palestinian civilians under occupation. Rasmea’s “confession” was obtained under torture.

    We reject these manipulative and false accusations of anti-Semitism. There is no evidence of even a single anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish statement or act committed by Rasmea. There is however plenty of evidence that accusations of anti-Semitism are repeatedly used manipulatively to silence critics of Israel and defenders of Palestinian human rights.

    We demand that the Berlin authorities reverse their decision and allow Rasmea Odeh to
    speak in Berlin. Rasmea has the right to speak and Berliners have the right to listen.

    We demand that the Berlin authorities refrain in future from joining the political persecution of Palestinian human rights defenders, and of individuals and organizations who speak out for human rights for Palestinians.

    We stand in solidarity with Palestinian women political prisoners and those who have been held in Israeli prisons, and we wholeheartedly support their right to tell their story, to be heard, and to seek truth and justice.

    #Palestine #femmes #résistance #zionisme #Allemagne

  • A Paris, des classes moyennes en voie de disparition
    https://www.lemonde.fr/smart-cities/article/2019/06/11/a-paris-des-classes-moyennes-en-voie-de-disparition_5474562_4811534.html

    Berlin tente une solution : En Allemagne les régions politiques (Land) sont compétents pour le contrôle des loyers. Afin d’arrêter leur augmentation explosive la ville de Berlin bloque les loyers pendant cinq ans. Cette mesure sera rétroactive pour éviter les augmentations abusives suite à l’annonce de la loi municipale. D’autres mesures visent à obliger les propriétaires de baisser les loyers actuels qui dépassent le seuil défini dans le Mietspiegel , un état des lieux élaboré régulièrement par le gouvernement municipal en collaboration avec les associations de bailleurs et de de locataires.

    Cette initiative est devenue possible parce que le parti social-démocrate SPD craint les élections municipales à venir. Il a donc cédé aux arguments du parti de gauche Die Linke qui forme le gouvernement aves le SPD et les écologistes Die Grünen . En même temps une intitiative très populaire revendique l’application aux grandes sociétés immobilières du paragraphe de la constitution allemande qui autorise des nationalisations d’entreprises privées. Nous nous trouvons dans une situation exceptionelle où l’introduction de mesures qui rejettent l’idéologie néolibérale est possible.

    Dans les autres régions allemandes l’emprise du néolibéralisme sur les partis politiques est totale. Seulement Die Linke fait exception à cette règle, mais il est trop faible ailleurs pour obtenir des solutions efficaces contre la résistance de tous les partis et associations majoritaires. Avec un peu de chance l’exemple berlinois encouragera quand même d’autres gouvernements régionaux à prendre des décisions comparables.

    Avec la flambée des prix immobiliers qu’elle connaît, comme beaucoup de grandes métropoles, la ville de Paris voit s’éloigner de plus en plus les familles des classes moyennes.

    Par Soazig Le Nevé Publié le 11 juin 2019 - « Paris est une ville où on laisse des plumes. Il faut se battre pour y habiter. » A 37 ans, Florence et son conjoint, Alban, ont quitté le ring « après avoir bataillé pendant des années pour y rester ». Les 5 000 euros de revenus, « dans les bons mois », de ce couple de travailleurs indépendants dans le domaine de la communication n’auront donc pas suffi.

    « Quand le propriétaire de notre appartement est décédé, on avait le choix : soit de racheter le bien au prix de 700 000 euros, ce qui était impossible pour nous, ou de repartir dans une recherche immobilière monstrueuse, vu notre profil d’indépendants, relate Florence, qui payait jusque-là 1 700 euros de loyer pour un trois-pièces dans le 9e arrondissement. Nos parents sont retraités de la fonction publique, mais ça ne suffisait pas comme garants, et parce qu’ils ont plus de 70 ans, c’était même un handicap auprès des bailleurs. » Froidement, elle en tire une conclusion : « En tant qu’enfant de la classe moyenne, je n’ai plus ma place à Paris. »
    Lire aussi « Libertés, égalité, viabilité : la ville-monde face aux défis du siècle » : une conférence « Le Monde » Cities à Paris

    Le couple vient d’emménager à Montbard (Côte-d’Or), une ville bourguignonne de 5 500 habitants située sur la ligne TGV Paris-Dijon. Un changement radical pour le couple, qui fait pourtant partie de la fourchette haute de la classe moyenne, constituée, selon l’Insee, de toutes les personnes dont le revenu disponible est situé entre 1 350 euros et 2 487 euros par mois. « Au final, c’est un vrai soulagement, j’ai le sentiment d’être descendue d’un manège infernal », souffle la jeune femme.

    Professeure de sciences de la vie et de la terre dans un collège du 14e arrondissement de Paris, Karine a déménagé dans le Val-de-Marne fin 2018. Séparée de son mari en 2016, elle a dû revendre l’appartement qu’ils occupaient avec leurs deux enfants, à quelques encablures de son établissement scolaire. « Je me suis retrouvée seule à assumer la charge de la famille, sans pension alimentaire. J’ai loué un trois-pièces 1 600 euros auprès d’un particulier, car les agences immobilières écartaient mon dossier au motif que je ne gagnais pas trois fois le montant du loyer », détaille Karine, qui gagne 2 800 euros par mois. Mais, très vite, « le reste à vivre » de la famille s’étiole.

    L’attente devient interminable pour un logement social. Après deux propositions finalement avortées, à Paris et à Issy-les-Moulineaux, c’est à Villejuif que Karine et ses enfants finissent par poser leurs valises. « Je vis une nouvelle vie. Je redécouvre ce que sont les rapports avec des gens moins favorisés que moi, mais aussi des nuisances sonores que je ne connaissais plus », confie, « aigrie », celle pour qui emménager à Paris au début de sa carrière avait été « un saut qualitatif ».
    Bientôt 10 000 euros le mètre carré

    La capitale est-elle toujours en mesure de loger des enseignants, des infirmiers, des indépendants, des commerçants ou de petits entrepreneurs ? Ni pauvre ni riche, la classe moyenne y a-t-elle encore droit de cité ? A Paris, le montant des loyers a augmenté de 1,4 % en 2018 et de 2,9 % en cas de changement de locataire, soit une hausse supérieure à celle des quatre années précédentes, souligne l’Observatoire des loyers de l’agglomération parisienne (OLAP).

    A l’achat, le coût du mètre carré s’est accru, lui, de 6,4 % en un an et atteint, en moyenne, 9 680 euros, selon les chiffres des notaires et de l’Insee publiés fin mai. D’ici au mois de juillet, il devrait même approcher des 10 000 euros (9 990 euros), en hausse de 27 % depuis mai 2015. Désormais, plus aucun arrondissement n’est à moins de 8 000 euros le mètre carré. Fait nouveau, les quartiers populaires connaissent aussi une envolée des prix : + 13,8 % dans le 19e arrondissement, + 11,4 % dans le 10e. Mais aussi la petite couronne, avec une progression de 4,2 %, voire 4,9 % en Seine-Saint-Denis.

    Avec ses 105 km², Paris intra-muros attire des populations aux profils de plus en plus contrastés, les très riches s’établissant dans « l’ancien » et les très pauvres dans des logements sociaux. L’Institut d’aménagement et d’urbanisme (IAU) de la région Ile-de-France note un accroissement significatif des ménages les plus aisés dans les 7e et 8e arrondissements.

    L’enrichissement touche également des quartiers proches, « par un effet de diffusion et de consolidation des territoires de la richesse », observe-t-il dans une étude parue début juin consacrée à la gentrification et à la paupérisation en Ile-de-France. Entre 2001 et 2015, la part des ménages très aisés s’est fortement accrue (+ 5 points) dans les 2e et 3e arrondissements, et sensiblement (de 2 à 3 points) dans les 17e, 4e et 1er arrondissements. Les ménages aisés, souvent cadres de profession, investissent aussi les quartiers populaires du nord de Paris. C’est dans le 18e arrondissement que le phénomène est le plus marqué : la part de ménages riches à très riches s’est accrue de 3,6 points et celle relevant des ménages les plus pauvres a baissé d’autant.
    « Un repaire pour super-riches »

    « Si vous faites partie de la classe moyenne, lorsque vous êtes majeur, il faudrait vous inscrire aussitôt sur la liste pour obtenir un logement social !, ironise Martin Omhovère, directeur du département habitat de l’IAU [Institut d’aménagement et d’urbanisme]. Au-delà des prix, le parc de logements parisien n’est pas fait pour les familles des classes moyennes. A 50 %, il se compose d’habitations d’une ou deux pièces, ce qui ne correspond pas aux aspirations d’un couple avec enfants. »

    « Paris est en train de devenir un repaire pour super-riches, corrobore Emmanuel Trouillard, géographe chargé d’études sur le logement à l’IAU. Des familles s’en vont, des écoles ferment dans les arrondissements du centre de la capitale… Le problème de Paris, c’est de maintenir l’accès des classes moyennes au logement intermédiaire et au logement social. »

    Une gageure, même si la ville se targue d’offrir aujourd’hui plus de 20 % de logements sociaux, contre 13 % seulement en 2001, souligne Emilie Moreau, pilote des études sociétales à l’Atelier parisien d’urbanisme (APUR). Fin 2017, sur plus de 244 000 ménages inscrits comme demandeurs d’un logement social intra-muros, 134 964 étaient déjà des Parisiens. Combien parmi eux finiront-ils par s’établir en dehors de la capitale ?

    « Les très riches à Paris sont plus riches que les très riches à l’échelle du pays. Mais les classes moyennes qui touchent le smic, elles, n’ont pas de primes particulières lorsqu’elles vivent à Paris », relève Robin Rivaton, entrepreneur et auteur de La Ville pour tous (2019, Editions de l’Observatoire). Résultat : « Des professions essentielles au fonctionnement de la métropole, tels les enseignants, les infirmiers ou les policiers, se retrouvent avec de réelles difficultés pour se loger dans la capitale. Difficultés que leurs collègues en province ne rencontrent absolument pas. »

    Une nouvelle catégorie de population tire son épingle de ce jeu immobilier : les touristes. A la faveur du succès des plates-formes comme Airbnb ou Abritel, un marché parallèle s’est créé, venant assécher un peu plus l’offre locative privée. « Airbnb tue beaucoup de quartiers. En quatre ans, le marché locatif traditionnel a perdu 20 000 logements », dénonce Ian Brossat, adjoint à la maire de Paris chargé du logement.

    L’élu pointe aussi les 100 000 logements vacants et les 100 000 résidences secondaires (en hausse de 40 % en cinq ans) que compte la capitale, sujet d’autant plus brûlant qu’il existe très peu de possibilités pour construire du neuf dans une ville déjà saturée. « Il faudrait réquisitionner les immeubles vides, mais ce droit relève du préfet et non du maire », précise Ian Brossat, qui appelle à une redistribution des compétences. Pour l’heure, l’élu mise sur le retour – après deux ans de suspension – de l’encadrement des loyers qui devrait « donner un appel d’air aux classes moyennes ». A condition, toutefois, que les bailleurs ne choisissent pas exclusivement les locataires aux revenus les plus élevés.

    #France #Paris #urbanisme #Stadtentwicklung #nantis #gentrification

  • Renaud Epstein & station urbaner kulturen

    (Feben Amara, Jochen Becker, Christian Hanussek, Eva Hertzsch, Adam Page) with Oliver Pohlisch and Birgit Schlieps

    One day, one ZUP, one postcard (2014-…), 2018

    Wallpaper / Display cabinet
    Collection station urbaner kulturen, Berlin-Hellersdorf

    The sociologist Renaud Epstein’s project has first and foremost been an online format since its initiation in 2014: he posts a new postcard of large housing estates (Zones à Urbaniser par Priorité / ZUP) on his Twitter account every day. From a time when France dreamed of being modern and urban and believed in its architectural utopias, the ZUP postcards evoke at best a golden era, at worst a contemporary delusion.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/vte4ejv9wsumzyh/ARLES%202019-PRESS%20KIT-kl.pdf?dl=0

    The Berlin collective station urbaner kulturen, based in the last big housing estate built in the GDR, has extracted sections from Epstein’s Twitter timeline in order to materialize the interaction between internet users and images. Their project «Going out of Circles / Kreise ziehen» presents a wider series of exhibitions that aims to create connections between the housing estates on the periphery of urban and economic centers, around Berlin and beyond.

    A display case with original postcards next to the Twitter wallpaper emphasises the different readings of formats of communication.

    Postcards – News from a Dream World
    Musée départemental Arles Antique

    1 July - 25 August / 10 - 18

    Exhibition curators: Magali Nachtergael and Anne Reverseau

    Eric Baudart & Thu-Van Tran (1972 et 1979), Fredi Casco (1967), Moyra Davey (1958), documentation céline duval (1974), Renaud Epstein & station urbane kulturen (1971 et créé en 2014), Jean Geiser (1848-1923), Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige (1969), Roc Herms (1978), Susan Hiller (1940-2019), John Hinde (1916-1997), Katia Kameli (1973), Aglaia Konrad (1960), Valérie Mréjen (1969), Martin Parr (1952), Mathieu Pernot (1970), Brenda Lou Schaub (1993), Stephen Shore (1947), John Stezaker (1948), Oriol Vilanova (1980), William Wegman (1943)

    The postcard is the ultimate circulating picture, constantly subject to a sense of déjà-vu. Throughout the twentieth century, it went hand in hand with the bottling of the visible world, the rise of image globalization and mass tourism. Collectors, hoarders, retouchers and iconographers seize existing pictures to give them a new meaning, clarify their status or context.

    By comparing this artistic vision with the making of postcards, this exhibition questions what they show and tell of the world, like a visual anthropology. What did they convey throughout the twentieth century, during their hour of glory? What vision of the world did they plant in the minds of their recipients, who got them from relatives and friends?

    Both a symbol of our private and collective imagination, the postcard represents an illusion, always close to hand. It shows us a dream world in which can project ourselves, as in a desirable fiction story.

    www.rencontres-arles.com/en/expositions/view/779/cartes-postales

    https://archiv.ngbk.de/projekte/station-urbaner-kulturen-hellersdorf-seit-2014
    https://www.ngbk.de/en/program/initiative-urbane-kulturen

    #renaud_epstein #cartes_postales

  • Sur la scène européenne, le « style Macron » ne passe plus
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/280619/sur-la-scene-europeenne-le-style-macron-ne-passe-plus

    Le bras de fer engagé par Emmanuel Macron sur les postes clefs de l’UE crispent les relations entre Paris et Berlin. Saluée par la presse hexagonale, la stratégie du président laisse pantois élus et commentateurs étrangers, qui soulignent le risque d’une crise institutionnelle et s’agacent de l’« arrogance » des Français.

    #EUROPE #union_européenne,_Nathalie_Loiseau,_europe,_Renaissance,_Emmanuel_Macron,_Angela_Merkel

  • En sport, la testostérone n’est pas un critère scientifique | Katrina Karkazis et Pierre-Jean Vazel (Sciences et Avenir) Karkazis et - Sciences et Avenir
    https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/sante/sexualite/katrina-karkazis-et-pierre-jean-vazel-reguler-les-athletes-sur-leur

    La position de l’IAAF est que la catégorie féminine a été créée pour « fournir aux femmes des opportunités égales à celles de hommes ». Mais c’est historiquement faux. Alice Milliat a créé les compétitions internationales d’athlétisme féminin dans les années 1920 car le CIO et l’IAAF avaient refusé d’intégrer des femmes dans leur programme. Source : Dans la presse

  • 3,800 Volunteers Have Joined an Artist to Challenge Trump’s Idea of a “Big, Beautiful Wall” on the US–Mexico Border

    With the help of thousands of volunteers, #Enrique_Chiu is creating a large-scale mural on Mexico’s side of the border to spread a message of peace.


    https://hyperallergic.com/506480/3800-volunteers-have-joined-an-artist-to-challenge-trumps-idea-of-a-b
    #USA #Etats-Unis #murs #barrières_frontalières #frontières
    #art #graffitis

    Et la question qui notamment Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary se pose... en invitant des artistes à rendre le mur "joli"... ne réifie-t-on pas le mur ? N’est-ce pas une démarche contre-productive ?

    • L’expression des artistes est qualifié de jolie par Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary. Ca me fait le même effet d’entendre reproché à une cause d’être porté par une belle voix.
      C’est ma manière de répondre par l’absurde à ce reproche qui me semble absurde.

    • En fait, Anne-Laure qualifie peut-être de « joli » l’expression des artistes, mais justement pour dénoncer l’effet pervers que ça induit... Pour connaître bien son travail, c’est vraiment quelqu’un qui a dès le début dénoncer l’effet pervers des actions artistiques sur les murs frontaliers.

    • Elle dit notamment cela :
      https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/809322/filename/Amilhat_que_montrent_les_murs.pdf
      et ça :

      Partout où les frontières se ferment, des formes de border art surgissent. Le border art, c’est à la fois l’art de la frontière, l’art à la frontière et l’art sur la frontière. Les murs-frontières où le border art s’est le plus illustré sont les murs les plus médiatiques : Israël / Palestine, Etats-Unis / Mexique, Berlin et puis les deux autres cas qui ont été beaucoup mobilisés : Belfast et Chypre. Les murs-frontières sont un catalyseur extrêmement fort du border art et le border art est un catalyseur de ce que les murs-frontières nous disent.

      https://www.franceculture.fr/video/border-art-signe-de-fermeture-du-monde
      #border_art

      Elle met en évidence l’ambiguïté du border art, qui réifie ce qu’ils essaient de dénoncer...

    • Citation :

      « Ces images fonctionnent comme des prophéties autoréalisatrices : une fois investis des millions dans la construction d’une barrière dont les clichés seront régulièrement présentés dans les médias, il devient évident pour le destinataire de cette communication que le danger contre lequel la barrière devait le prémunir est réel. Selon un syllogisme fallacieux, l’immigrant illégal voit sa dangerosité confirmée par l’ampleur du dispositif mobilisé pour le combattre ».

      Amilhat Szary, 2015, Qu’est-ce qu’une frontière aujourd’hui ?

  • Berlin Tempelhof | ARTE
    https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/071406-000-A/berlin-tempelhof

    C’est le meilleur film sur Berlin que j’ai vu depuis longtemps.
    Le regarder signifie apprendre plus de choses sur la ville et ses habitants que pendant plusieurs séjours ordinaires. C’est le résultat d’une collection d’observations et de témoignages pendant plusieurs mois et de leur assemblage qui emmène le spectateur dans les entrailles de la gestion de nouveaux arrivants par la société urbaine.

    Les prises de vue et les enrégistrements sonores sont extraordinaires par rapport à ce qu’on nous propose dans les reportages divers.

    A voir absolument !

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=sxjCz_zC_UI

    #Berlin #film_documentaire

  • Bande-son pour la chute du Mur
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-idees/220619/bande-son-pour-la-chute-du-mur

    Échapper aux formatages de la pop et créer une musique où la fête serait l’amorce de nouveaux rapports sociaux. Voilà ce que raconte cet ample et passionnant recueil d’entretiens avec les acteurs de la techno berlinoise naissante. La chute du Mur coïncida avec une musique qui se croyait du futur alors qu’elle incarna son époque plus que toute autre.

    #ESSAIS #Techno,_scène_alternative,_musique,_Allemagne,_Mur_de_Berlin

  • Programm - Fête de la Musique Berlin | #FETEBerlin 2019
    https://www.fetedelamusique.de/programm


    L’équipe responsable pour le programme de la fête de la musique berlinoise ne publie le programme qu’en allemand et anglais. Désolé.

    666 Veranstaltungen

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyjGIOZMfXM

    Wo man singt da laß dich ruhig nieder, böse Menschen kennen keine Lieder.

    En 2019 les organisateurs optent pour les langues des impérialistes les plus sanglants du 20ème siècle et utilisent the number of the beast pour définier le cadre de leur action . L’année prochaîne ils augmenteront sans doute la cadence et proposeront 888 Veranstaltungen .

    C’est un problème quand les pros de la culture aussi ignorent les codes culturels. Il était tellement simple d’éviter ces gaffes incroyables : En acceptant la candidature du bar Der Kleine Muck le nombre d’événements aurait atteint 667 et la version francaise du site d’information était sans doute faisable si on avait demandé au service culturel de l’ambassage de France.

    Adresse und Öffnungszeiten | Kleiner Muck
    https://kleinermucksteglitz.wordpress.com/2016/09/21/adresse

    Sie finden uns in der Schützenstr. 15 in 12165 Berlin-Steglitz.
    Das ist ca. 400 Meter vom U+S Bahnhof Rathaus Steglitz entfernt.
    Die Schützenstrasse ist eine ruhige Seitenstrasse, die von der Albrechtstrasse abzweigt.
    Der Kleine Muck hat von Montag bis Freitag ab 15 Uhr geöffnet. Geschlossen wird, wenn der letzte Gast geht…
    Am Wochenende und an Feiertagen ist ab 12 Uhr geöffnet.

    Der Kleine Muck (sur Facebook) : http://lili.de/u/pl8jx
    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Geschichte_von_dem_kleinen_Muck

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast

    #Berlin #événement #musique

  • Le directeur du musée juif de Berlin démissionne après une polémique sur l’antisémitisme
    Mis à jour le 15/06/2019
    https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/europe/allemagne/le-directeur-du-musee-juif-de-berlin-demissionne-apres-une-polemique-su

    Le directeur du musée juif de Berlin, Peter Schäfer, a démissionné, vendredi 14 juin, sur fond de polémique. En cause : un tweet controversé de son établissement recommandant la lecture d’un article critique de la décision, en mai, du Parlement allemand de considérer comme « antisémites » les méthodes du mouvement BDS (Boycott Désinvestissement Sanctions). Peter Schäfer a remis sa démission à la ministre de la Culture allemande, Monika Grütters, « pour éviter de nouveaux préjudices au musée juif de Berlin », a indiqué ce dernier.

    #BDS

    • Berlin Jewish Museum Director Resigns After Tweet Supporting BDS Freedom of Speech

      Peter Schäfer steps down days after sharing of petition calling on German government not to adopt motion defining anti-Israel boycotts as anti-Semitic
      Noa Landau - Jun 14, 2019 8:48 PM
      https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/berlin-jewish-museum-director-resigns-after-tweet-supporting-bds-freedom-of

      The director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum has resigned, the museum announced Friday, days after it was criticized for endorsing a petition against a parliamentary motion defining anti-Israel boycotts as anti-Semitic and banning the boycott movement from using public buildings.

      The resignation of museum Director Peter Schäfer comes after Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff called the museum’s sharing of the petition “shameful.”

      The petition, asserting that “boycotts are a legitimate and nonviolent tool of resistance,” was signed by 240 Jewish intellectuals.

      The signatories, among them Avraham Burg and Eva Illouz, called on the German government not to adopt the motion, to protect freedom of speech and continue funding of Israeli and Palestinian organizations “that peacefully challenge the Israeli occupation, expose severe violations of international law and strengthen civil society. These organizations defend the principles and values at the heart of liberal democracy and rule of law, in Germany and elsewhere. More than ever, they need financial support and political backing.”

      An Israeli guide at the Berlin museum told Haaretz he planned to resign in protest of “the crude interventions by the Israeli government and Germany in the museum’s work.”

      Professor Emeritus Yaacov Shavit, former head of the department of History of the Jewish People at Tel Aviv University, told Haaretz that “this whole story is nothing more than a cause to displace Prof. Sheffer, a researcher of international renown of the Second Temple period, Mishna, and Talmud.”

      “Community leaders in Berlin needed to be grateful that someone like him agreed to serve as manager of the museum. This foolish act by community leaders is outrageous and bothersome,” he added.

      Last year, it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded from Chancellor Angela Merkel that Germany stop funding the museum because it had held an exhibition about Jerusalem, “that presents a Muslim-Palestinian perspective.” Merkel was asked to halt funding to other organizations as well, on grounds that they were anti-Israel, among them the Berlin International Film Festival, pro-Palestinian Christian organizations, and the Israeli news website +972, which receives funding from the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

      Netanyahu did not deny the report and his bureau confirmed that he had raised “with various leaders the issue of funding Palestinian and Israeli groups and nonprofit organizations that depict the Israel Defense Forces as war criminals, support Palestinian terrorism and call for boycotting the State of Israel.”

      The Bundestag’s motion last month marked the first time a European parliament had officially defined the BDS movement as anti-Semitic. The motion, which is a call to the government and isn’t legally binding, won broad multiparty support from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the Social Democrats and the Free Democratic Party. Some members of the Greens Party also supported the motion, though others abstained at the last minute. The motion stated that the BDS movement’s “Don’t Buy” stickers on Israeli products evoke the Nazi slogan “Don’t buy from Jews.”

  • Détails macabres et responsabilité de l’Arabie saoudite : le cinglant rapport de l’ONU sur la mort de Jamal Khashoggi
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/06/19/details-sinistres-et-mise-en-cause-de-l-arabie-saoudite-le-cinglant-rapport-

    Après six mois d’enquête, le rapport appelle notamment la communauté internationale à mettre le prince héritier saoudien Mohamed Ben Salman sous sanctions.

    Mise en cause du prince héritier saoudien Mohamed Ben Salman, appel à l’imposition de sanctions contre lui, demande d’ouverture d’une enquête internationale, révélation de détails macabres sur le déroulement des faits : le rapport de l’experte onusienne Agnès Callamard sur l’assassinat du journaliste et opposant saoudien Jamal Khashoggi, éliminé le 2 octobre par des agents du royaume à Istanbul, est particulièrement embarrassant pour les autorités de Riyad.

    Ce gros document, d’une centaine de pages, est l’aboutissement de six mois d’enquête et d’une centaine d’interviews, menées en Turquie, bien sûr, le lieu du crime, mais aussi à Washington, Paris, Londres, Bruxelles, Berlin et Ottawa. Ce travail a été conduit par Mme Callamard, ancienne experte d’Amnesty International, en sa qualité de rapporteure du Conseil des droits de l’homme de l’ONU sur les exécutions extrajudiciaires, et par son équipe, composée de trois autres personnes : Duarte Nuno Vieira, un expert légiste, Paul Johnston, un enquêteur criminel, et Helena Kennedy, spécialiste des droits de l’homme.

    Le rapport conclut à la responsabilité de l’Arabie saoudite, en tant qu’Etat, dans l’assassinat de Jamal Khashoggi. Concernant le rôle exact de Mohamed Ben Salman, surnommé « #MBS », l’homme fort de la couronne, considéré par la CIA comme le commanditaire du meurtre, le rapport n’apporte pas d’éléments nouveaux mais il conforte ces soupçons.

    #paywall

  • En Allemagne, deux gynécologues face à la justice pour « publicité pour l’IVG »
    https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2019/06/14/en-allemagne-deux-gynecologues-face-a-la-justice-pour-publicite-pour-l-iv

    « Une IVG médicamenteuse et sans drogues anesthésiantes est également pratiquée par la Dr Gaber. » Ces mots ont mené Bettina Gaber devant la justice. Ce vendredi, cette gynécologue berlinoise comparaît devant le tribunal de première instance du Tiergarten, à Berlin, pour « publicité pour l’IVG ». Elle est accusée, ainsi que sa collègue Verena Weyer avec qui elle partage son cabinet, d’avoir détaillé sur son site internet les méthodes avec lesquelles elle pratique l’avortement. Or, en Allemagne, c’est interdit. Elle tombe sous le coup du paragraphe 219a du Code pénal allemand, qui réprime toute « publicité pour l’IVG », et risque une forte amende.

    Ce n’est pas la première fois qu’une gynécologue est poursuivie pour un tel motif ; mais c’est la première fois depuis que la loi a été légèrement assouplie, en février. Jusqu’ici, le paragraphe 219a du code pénal – relique de l’ère nazie datant de 1933 afin de criminaliser les médecins juifs et communistes – interdisait toute mention de l’IVG sur un site professionnel. Les médecins étaient susceptibles d’être poursuivis pour l’avoir simplement écrit sur leur site. C’est ce qui est arrivé à Kristina Hänel, de Gießen (Hesse), condamnée à 6 000 euros d’amende en 2017. Son cas, très médiatisé, a fini par entraîner un large débat en Allemagne. Des voix en faveur d’un assouplissement de la loi – voire de sa suppression – se sont fait entendre.

    À lire aussi En Allemagne, l’IVG est un chemin de croix

    C’est ainsi qu’une légère refonte du texte, votée par la grande coalition au pouvoir (CDU-SPD) a été décidée en février. Les professionnels de santé sont désormais autorisés à annoncer qu’ils pratiquent des IVG. Mais pas à en détailler les méthodes, que les patientes peuvent découvrir sur une liste établie par l’Ordre fédéral des médecins – qui n’est toujours pas disponible, quatre mois après le vote du texte. « De toute manière, explique la gynécologue berlinoise Jutta Pliefke, membre de Pro Familia, le Planning familial allemand, il semble peu réaliste d’avoir recours à ce genre de listes. De nombreux docteurs ne souhaitent pas y figurer, de peur de devenir la cible de militants anti-IVG. Et puis, comment la tenir à jour correctement ? »
    Les Verts, Die Linke et le FDP demandent la suppression de l’article 219a

    « Je ne connais pas un seul collègue qui écrive maintenant sur son site qu’il pratique des IVG, a expliqué Bettina Gaber à Die Zeit. Je ne crois pas non plus que beaucoup de collègues voudront être sur la liste de l’Ordre des médecins. Parce qu’ils se sentent toujours criminalisés. » La réforme reste contestée par les Verts, Die Linke et les Libéraux du FDP, qui demandent la suppression pure et simple du texte. « Le cas de Bettina Gaber montre bien que même après la réforme de la loi, les gynécologues continuent d’être poursuivis », dit Kate Cahoon, du Collectif pour l’autodétermination sexuelle (Bündnis für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung), représentant plusieurs associations prochoix.

    De manière générale en Allemagne, pays conservateur et sous forte influence de l’Eglise, l’IVG est difficile d’accès. Dans son livre témoignage intitulé le Politique est privé, Journal d’une médecine avorteuse (1), Kristina Hänel évoque les nombreuses lettres qu’elle a reçues. Notamment celle d’une jeune femme tombée enceinte sous stérilet. « J’habite dans le sud de la Bavière, explique la jeune femme, et la doctoresse de l’hôpital qui a confirmé la grossesse n’a pas voulu entendre que j’envisageais un avortement. La seule information qu’elle m’a donnée est qu’une telle intervention ne serait effectuée ni dans cet hôpital, ni ailleurs dans la région, et que je devrais me rendre "à Salzbourg ou quelque chose dans le genre". Le prix de l’avortement est d’environ 800 euros et bien entendu, cet acte n’est couvert par aucune compagnie d’assurance maladie allemande. »

    En Allemagne, l’acte est dépénalisé, mais toujours criminalisé – en vertu du paragraphe 218, que les prochoix veulent également voir disparaître. « L’IVG n’a rien à faire dans le code pénal aux côtés du meurtre et de l’infanticide », dit la gynécologue Jutta Pliefke.
    Des gynécologues traqués par des militants anti-IVG

    L’IVG ne se pratique que sous certaines conditions : après un délai légal de réflexion et après avoir demandé conseil dans un centre spécialisé agréé (ou l’entretien se doit, selon la loi, de « servir la protection de la vie non (encore) née ») ; en cas de menace pour la vie de la mère ; à la suite d’un viol. L’acte n’est remboursé que dans très peu de cas. Et cela ne risque pas de changer avec Jens Spahn (CDU) – qui ne cache pas sa profonde hostilité à l’avortement – à la tête du ministère fédéral de la Santé, et qui a annoncé ces derniers temps financer une étude sur « les conséquences psychologiques de l’IVG ».

    Dans ce contexte, de moins en moins de médecins osent pratiquer cet acte. « Les pressions à leur égard ont augmenté », dit Jutta Pliefke. Ils sont traqués par les militants antiavortement. Deux d’entre eux, Yannic Hendricks et Klaus Günter Annen, se sont fait une spécialité d’éplucher leurs sites internet afin de les épingler en vertu du fameux paragraphe 219a. C’est ce qui est arrivé à Bettina Gaber et à Kristina Hänel.

    Les noms des médecins avorteurs sont listés sur un site appelé « Babycaust », contraction de « Baby » et « Holocauste ». Les deux hommes noient les gynécologues sous les fax insultants, les traitent de tueurs d’enfants. Mais leur arme la plus efficace est sans doute ce paragraphe 219a. Car elle touche au portefeuille et épuise les médecins, forcés de se lancer dans une longue et fastidieuse procédure judiciaire. D’autant qu’en Allemagne, contrairement à la France, le délit d’entrave à l’IVG n’existe pas.

    Ainsi, pour de plus en plus de médecins, pratiquer l’IVG devient un acte militant. « Bien des gynécologues ont fini par se politiser depuis l’affaire Hänel », commente Kate Cahoon. C’est ainsi que le procureur a proposé à Bettina Gaber d’abandonner les poursuites si elle enlevait de son site la phrase concernant sa pratique de l’IVG. Elle a refusé, expliquant à Die Zeit : « Je me suis rendue compte que c’était aussi une bataille féministe. »

    (1) Das Politische ist persönlich. Tagebuch einer Abtreibungsärztin (« Le politique est privé, Journal d’une médecine avorteuse), Argument Verlag, 2019, non traduit en français.
    Johanna Luyssen correspondante à Berlin

    Pas le droit d’informer sur l’IVG, harcelement judiciaire des médecin·es et restrictions de l’IVG, dans ce pays où les mères sont traitées de corbeau si elles ont un emploi et où chaque homme est un putier en puissance qui peu aller défoncer des femmes et filles pauvres au forfait et sans capote si l’envie lui prend.

    #ivg #contraception #contrôle_des_femmes #hétérosexualité #nazisme #grossesses_forcées #viol_géstatif #domination_masculine #catholicisme #protestantisme #religion #natalisme #féminicide #proxenetisme #prostitution #culture_du_viol #hommerie #sexisme #misogynie #guerre_aux_pauvres #guerre_aux_femmes #femmes

    • La loi sur le pantalon a été abrogée sous Hollande @sandburg et par rapport à l’IVG en Allemagne l’article ci-dessus dit que l’IVG reste criminalisé, que les medecin·es sont harcelés judiciairement et que l’IVG n’est pas remboursé sauf en cas de viol reconnu par les tribunaux, autant dire jamais (quel délais pour un procès pour viol par rapport à une grossesse et le délais d’IVG ? ). Il me semble que ca indique que c’est pas pareil que la loi sur le pantalon. Si tu as d’autres sources qui indiquent autre chose je les veux bien mais pour le moment ce qu’indique cet article est particulièrement grave pour les femmes. La comparaison entre des grossesses forcées et le porte du pantalon c’est pas pertinant. Enfin si ces lois sur le pantalon sont tombées aujourd’hui en désuétude, c’etait des lois qui ont été appliquées par le passé et les femmes se sont battues pour ce droit au port du pantalon. Elles se battent encore car les entreprises leur imposent souvent des tenues de travail sexuées et invalidantes type talons haut, jupe, maquillage... sans parler du dress code des milliers de bordel allemands qui doit pas autorisé beaucoup de pantalons aux femmes. N’oublions pas non plus les hommes dans l’espace publique qui imposent aussi toujours de lourdes restrictions sur le code vestimentaire des femmes et des filles par leur harcelement massif, pareil à l’école, pareil à la maison où pères, frères et maris font la loi du dress code féminin. Oui on l’applique la loi sur le pantalon, c’est une loi sans tribunaux, sans avocats, les hommes étant toujours considéré comme les maîtres des femmes, ils sont autorisés à juger et à exécuter leur sentence en toute tranquillité. La police et les juges demandent toujours aux victimes féminines de violences sexuelles comment elles étaient habillées. C’est bien la manifestation qu’il y a toujours de lourdes restrictions sur les vetements autorisés aux femmes.

    • Même si c’etait reconnu, combien de temps pour obtenir une sentence de viol et quel délais autorisé pour une IVG ? Si c’est comme en France, l’IVG pour les femmes ayant subit un viol (par surprise ou autre technique), serait autorisé au mieux 3 ou 4 ans après la naissance...

  • Comment Joukov a tenu tête à Staline pendant l’après-guerre - Russia Beyond FR

    https://fr.rbth.com/histoire/83033-bras-de-fer-joukov-staline

    Gueorgui Joukov a mené la contre-attaque contre les nazis et s’est emparé de Berlin. Toutefois, l’illustre maréchal a moins réussi dans la lutte sans merci pour le pouvoir qui opposait les chefs communistes après la guerre.

    À la mort du plus important maréchal soviétique de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, qui s’est éteint en 1974, après 15 ans de retraite et d’abandon de la vie publique, le poète émigré Joseph Brodsky a écrit La mort de Joukov. Dans le poème, il le qualifiait de l’un de ceux qui « dans leur formation militaire avaient marché fièrement sur les capitales étrangères mais étaient revenus la peur au ventre dans leur patrie ».

    #russie #staline #ex-urss #stalinisme #union_soviétique

  • BBC - Travel - The Holocaust memorial of 70,000 stones
    http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190328-the-holocaust-memorial-of-70000-stones

    At the end of a quiet, suburban cul-de-sac in north-eastern Berlin, Michael Friedrichs-Friedländer quickly ushers me into his garage. He casts a watchful glance down the road, as if to check I’ve come here alone.

    “I’d ask you not to mention the precise location,” he said. “The neighbours all know what I do, but I don’t want any outside trouble.”

    #stolpersteine