city:new york

Uber strike: Drivers around the world turn off app ahead of IPO - CNN
▻https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/08/tech/uber-strike/index.html

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190508101946-03-uber-lyft-strike-0508-exlarge-169.jpg

Uber drivers around the world are logging out of the company’s app to protest its compensation policies ahead of a blockbuster public offering.

Strikes are scheduled for Wednesday in major US cities, as well as parts of the United Kingdom, Australia and South America. The message from participants: Uber needs to offer its drivers job security and higher wages.
Uber is expected to go public Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. The debut could raise roughly $10 billion for the ride-hailing company.
Uber and its rival Lyft (LYFT) have long argued their drivers are independent contractors. That status means workers in many countries don’t get the same rights as employees.

“Drivers are at the heart of our service — we can’t succeed without them,” Uber said in a statement.

“Whether it’s more consistent earnings, stronger insurance protections or fully-funded four-year degrees for drivers or their families, we’ll continue working to improve the experience for and with drivers,” it added.
The strike action kicked off in London at 7 a.m. local time and will last until 4 p.m., according to James Farrar, a spokesperson for the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, which advocates for people working in the gig economy.

Uber and Lyft drivers strike for better pay

The union wants UK drivers and customers to avoid the Uber app during the protest. It expects thousands of drivers to participate, based on the numbers that have joined its private drivers’ branch, Farrar said.

One driver on strike in London, Muhumed Ali, said he wants Uber to boost fares and take a smaller cut of sales.

“The drivers are the ones who are running the business,” said Ali, who’s been driving for Uber for four years and says it’s his primary source of income. “We are collecting pennies.”

Backing from politicians in Britain’s Labour Party, including opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, could help encourage customers to stay away, according to Farrar.

Uber cannot be allowed to get away with huge payouts for their CEOs while refusing to pay drivers a decent wage and respect their rights at work. Stand with these workers on strike today, across the UK and the world, asking you not to use Uber between 7am and 4pm. #UberShutDown
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) May 8, 2019

Other cities are expected to join the protests. Drivers are pushing for better treatment and improved conditions, but the specific demands vary by organizing group.

Uber drivers protest outside the Uber offices in London.
In San Diego and Los Angeles, drivers are slated to cease working for 24 hours. In Atlanta, workers plan to log off for 12 hours. And in New York City, a two-hour strike was planned for the morning commute.
In addition to powering off their apps, drivers will hold rallies held in strategic locations such as outside local Uber offices.
In the United Kingdom, protests are scheduled to take place outside Uber offices in London, Birmingham, Nottingham and Glasgow.

Independent Workers Union of Great Britain
►https://iwgb.org.uk

#Uber #Streik #London #USA

En Ethiopie, les petites mains de H&M ou Calvin Klein gagnent 23 euros par mois
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2019/05/08/en-ethiopie-les-petites-mains-de-h-m-ou-calvin-klein-gagnent-23-euros-par-mo

https://img.lemde.fr/2019/05/08/249/0/5184/2588/1440/720/60/0/17014a8_PhokQXiOmcokTVkNFkF3c0rx.jpg

Les salariés des usines de vêtements d’Ethiopie, qui travaillent pour des marques comme Guess, H&M ou Calvin Klein, sont les moins bien payés au monde, avec seulement 26 dollars (23 euros) par mois, selon un rapport rendu public mardi 7 mai.

L’Ethiopie, qui ambitionne de devenir le principal centre manufacturier du continent, a séduit les investisseurs en mettant en avant la disposition des salariés à travailler pour moins du tiers du salaire des travailleurs du Bangladesh, affirme le rapport du Centre Stern pour les affaires et les droits de l’homme de l’université de New York. Selon cette étude intitulée « Fabriqué en #Ethiopie : les défis de la nouvelle frontière de l’#industrie_du_vêtement », les salariés du Bangladesh, notoirement mal payés, gagnent 95 dollars par mois, ceux du Kenya 207 dollars et ceux de Chine 326 dollars.

Le rapport
▻https://issuu.com/nyusterncenterforbusinessandhumanri/docs/nyu_ethiopia_final_online?e=31640827/69644612

#mode #exploitation #femmes

Disparition du Salvator Mundi de Léonard de Vinci : « Notre patrimoine est vendu à la découpe »
▻http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/disparition-du-salvator-mundi-de-leonard-de-vinci-notre-patrimoine-est-vend

https://i.f1g.fr/media/eidos/805x453_crop/2019/05/06/XVMd56d8d96-6fde-11e9-b8c3-07871af7bb9d.jpg

FIGAROVOX/ENTRETIEN - Depuis qu’il a été vendu aux enchères à un investisseur saoudien, le tableau est introuvable, alors que le Louvre est à sa recherche pour son exposition d’octobre prochain à l’occasion des 500 ans de la mort du génie italien. Le décryptage de Laurent Izard.

Laurent Izard est normalien et agrégé de l’Université en économie et gestion. Diplômé en droit de l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, professeur de chaire supérieure, il est l’auteur de nombreux manuels d’enseignement supérieur en économie et gestion. Il vient de publier La France vendue à la découpe (L’Artilleur, janvier 2019), une enquête qui fait le récit d’un long renoncement et passe en revue de nombreux secteurs de l’économie française vendus à des capitaux étrangers.

FIGAROVOX.- Le « Salvator Mundi » de Léonard de Vinci, adjugé 450 millions de dollars en 2017 à un milliardaire saoudien, a disparu depuis sa vente dans le monde de l’art. Le Louvre souhaite pourtant qu’il figure dans son exposition pour les 500 ans de la mort de Léonard de Vinci prévue cet automne. Quelle analyse faites-vous de cet incident ? Que des milliardaires d’Arabie Saoudite possèdent nos plus grands tableaux ne pose-t-il pas problème ?
Laurent IZARD.- La situation du « Salvator Mundi » pose effectivement de nombreuses questions : qui en est aujourd’hui le véritable propriétaire ? Lors de la vente aux enchères à New York en 2017, l’adjudicataire était-il un simple mandataire ? Quelle est la localisation actuelle du tableau ?

Pourquoi son exposition au Louvre d’Abu Dhabi prévue en septembre 2018 a-t-elle été reportée ? Pourra-t-on le contempler en octobre prochain lors de l’exposition prévue à Paris, au Louvre, en octobre 2019 ? Ces interrogations ravivent de surcroît des querelles artistiques beaucoup plus anciennes : s’agit-il réellement d’une œuvre de Léonard de Vinci ou a-t-il seulement participé à la réalisation de ce tableau ? Les œuvres du Maître font-elles partie du patrimoine artistique français ou italien ?

Mais au-delà des controverses factuelles ou historiques, le « Salvator Mundi » est au cœur d’un débat beaucoup plus vaste, qui mêle des considérations juridiques, économiques et éthiques : d’un point de vue strictement juridique, l’acquéreur, titulaire d’un droit de propriété sur l’œuvre acquise en a l’entière maîtrise : il n’a aucune obligation d’exposer ou de prêter son bien.

Certains invoquent le caractère perpétuel et inaliénable du droit moral sur les œuvres d’art, qui s’opposerait aux prérogatives du propriétaire. Mais il est peu probable que le droit saoudien, par exemple, valide cette limitation du droit de propriété… Et d’un point de vue économique, celui qui propose la meilleure offre devient logiquement propriétaire de l’œuvre vendue aux enchères.
Il est néanmoins choquant qu’un particulier, quel qu’il soit, puisse avoir le bénéfice exclusif d’œuvres d’un intérêt exceptionnel comme le « Salvator Mundi ». Fort heureusement, la plupart de ces œuvres sont aujourd’hui la propriété de musées. Mais pour les autres, on peut légitimement s’interroger sur une évolution possible de leur statut juridique au regard du droit international. L’Unesco qui veille à la protection des sites d’exception du patrimoine mondial ou à la sauvegarde du patrimoine immatériel culturel de l’humanité pourrait avoir un rôle moteur en la matière.
[…]
N’y a-t-il pas aussi dans cette affaire le reflet d’une idéologie de la privatisation et de la cession de notre patrimoine qui est à l’œuvre plus globalement ? Est-ce abusif de penser qu’Emmanuel Macron en est la figure de proue ?
Que nous le voulions ou non, nous évoluons dans une économie ouverte et mondialisée. Mais aujourd’hui, le différentiel de potentiel financier entre acteurs économiques aboutit inéluctablement à des situations de domination voire de dépendance. Les États les plus fortunés s’approprient peu à peu le patrimoine économique et culturel d’autres pays, sans que ce phénomène inquiète la plupart de nos dirigeants, plus soucieux de la stabilité du taux de croissance ou de la préservation de l’emploi. Ainsi, en l’espace de quelques décennies, une part non négligeable du patrimoine industriel, immobilier, foncier et même historique de la France a été dispersée, souvent au profit d’investisseurs internationaux. Et même si ce processus n’en est qu’à son début, de nombreuses entreprises d’origine française sont d’ores et déjà contrôlées par des fonds d’investissement, des fonds souverains ou des firmes multinationales, principalement originaires des États-Unis, d’Allemagne, d’Asie ou du Moyen-Orient. Ce phénomène concerne tous les actifs patrimoniaux qui peuvent présenter un intérêt économique direct ou indirect : les œuvres d’art, le patrimoine immobilier, les brevets, les terres agricoles, les clubs sportifs, etc.

Évidemment, chaque cession présente un intérêt économique, industriel ou financier pour l’acquéreur comme pour le vendeur et l’on pourrait se réjouir de l’attractivité de notre pays ainsi que de la dynamique économique impulsée par les investisseurs internationaux. D’autre part, les investisseurs français rachètent également des entreprises étrangères. Mais si le jeu n’est pas à sens unique, il n’est pas non plus équilibré. Et la dispersion de notre patrimoine nous conduit peu à peu à perdre notre souveraineté économique et politique. Nous abandonnons notre pouvoir de décision et nous devenons chaque jour un peu plus dépendants d’investisseurs internationaux fortunés, publics ou privés. Les cessions de Péchiney, Arcelor ou Alcatel - comme celles de nombreux autres groupes ou de leurs filiales - ont d’autre part contribué à la désindustrialisation de notre pays, à l’aggravation de notre déficit extérieur et à la perte d’influence de la France dans le monde.

Emmanuel Macron, en tant que ministre de l’Économie, de l’Industrie et du Numérique, puis en tant que président de la République, a joué un rôle actif dans la cession de fleurons de notre patrimoine économique. Il a notamment autorisé la privatisation de l’aéroport de Toulouse-Blagnac - cédé à un investisseur chinois peu fiable - et a approuvé le protocole de cession de la branche « énergie » d’Alstom à General Electric, qui nous prive de notre indépendance énergétique et militaire. Face au risque hégémonique chinois lié aux « Nouvelles routes de la soie », Emmanuel Macron a toutefois appelé à « la défense d’une souveraineté européenne ». Et Bruno Le Maire, quant à lui, n’a pas hésité à parler d’ « investissements de pillage ». Prise de conscience tardive ou double jeu ? Difficile de faire la part des choses.

En tout cas, il est peu probable que les mesures de protection de nos intérêts stratégiques prévues dans la loi « Pacte » auront une quelconque efficacité : dans un passé récent, les décrets « Villepin » et « Montebourg » ont montré leurs limites. Mais une chose est sûre : par naïveté, par faiblesse ou par couardise, nous avons jusqu’à présent toléré une totale absence de réciprocité dans l’investissement international : les entrepreneurs français qui ont tenté d’acquérir une entreprise chinoise ou américaine ne démentiront pas…

Intelligence artificielle : « La complexité de la modélisation du cerveau humain a toujours été sous-estimée »
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2019/05/03/intelligence-artificielle-la-complexite-de-la-modelisation-du-cerveau-humain

Les spécialistes de l’IA eux-mêmes commencent à reconnaître les limites des promesses « vendues » à une opinion publique gourmande d’utopies technologiques, rappelle l’experte Claire Gerardin dans une tribune au « Monde ».

http://images.populus.ch/pixdir/be//bender2000/Bender.Deux.jpg

Yann LeCun, chercheur en intelligence et vision artificielles à l’Université de New York et directeur de Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR), est l’un des pionniers de l’intelligence artificielle (IA) grâce à son rôle majeur dans le développement des technologies de l’apprentissage profond (« deep learning »). C’est à ce titre qu’il a reçu, le 27 mars, avec Yoshua Bengio et Geoffrey Hinton, le prix Turing – un « Nobel de l’informatique ».

Pourtant, Yann LeCun affirme volontiers que les ambitions en matière de recherche en intelligence artificielle ont toujours été extravagantes. La complexité de la modélisation du cerveau humain pour reproduire son fonctionnement – ce qui est l’objectif originel de l’intelligence artificielle – a toujours été sous-estimée, et les progrès des recherches sont moins importants que ceux auxquels on s’attendait. Pour ce chercheur, il faut délaisser la course à la performance technologique pour se recentrer sur les sujets fondamentaux que sont l’intelligence, le sens commun, ou encore l’apprentissage (« Y a-t-il un cerveau dans la machine ? », « La Méthode scientifique » – Nicolas Martin, France Culture, 30 août 2017).

La majorité des applications dont on dit qu’elles utilisent l’IA – la traduction, le diagnostic médical, la voiture autonome – utilisent en fait l’apprentissage profond, sa composante principale et quasi unique. Aujourd’hui, tous les assistants vocaux virtuels suivent des scripts préécrits par des humains en fonction de la reconnaissance de mots, ce qui confère à l’IA une compréhension encore très superficielle du sens de la parole.

Reconnaissance et connaissance

Pour entraîner cet apprentissage profond et écrire ces scripts, le sociologue Antonio Casilli, auteur d’En attendant les robots (Seuil, 400 p., 24 €), rappelle qu’il y a toujours un humain derrière la machine. En effet, pour exercer les ordinateurs à reconnaître des objets dans des images, les détourer, nettoyer les algorithmes imparfaits, ranger des bases de données, corriger des erreurs typographiques, transcrire des contenus audio, noter des sites Web, modérer les contenus, etc., les acteurs des nouvelles technologies recrutent des opérateurs humains. Ils le font sur des plates-formes de microtâches qui emploient des microtravailleurs, comme Mechanical Turk, UHRS (Universal Human Relevance System), EWOQ, Mighty AI, Crowdflower, Prolific, etc. L’ONU a publié une étude afin d’appeler à une régulation de cette économie parallèle qui touche tous les pays, développés comme en voie de développement (« Digital labour platforms and the future of work », International Labour Office, 2018).

Peut-on aller jusqu’à dire que L’intelligence artificielle n’existe pas, comme l’affirme le titre du livre de Luc Julia (First 200 p., 17,95 €), vice-président mondial de l’innovation de Samsung. Selon lui, pour créer une IA, il faudrait déjà pouvoir comprendre l’intelligence humaine. Et cela ne serait possible que grâce à une maîtrise scientifique et interdisciplinaire (mathématiques, statistiques, biologie, chimie, physique). Si aujourd’hui le deep learning représente une très grande avancée technologique, on ne peut pas le qualifier d’IA. Car il s’agit de reconnaissance d’images et de mots, et non de connaissance. Et cette reconnaissance demande encore beaucoup d’entraînement des ordinateurs. Par exemple, pour reconnaître un chat dans une image avec un taux de succès de 98 %, il faut à un ordinateur une base de données contenant 100 000 photos de chats, alors qu’un enfant a besoin de deux exemples de photos pour y parvenir sans erreur.

Récits technologiques

Ces entraînements représentent tellement d’investissements que le groupe PSA vient d’annoncer l’abandon de ses projets de développement de conduite autonome au-delà du niveau 3 pour ses véhicules particuliers. John Krafcik, le PDG de Waymo, filiale de Google en charge de concevoir la Google Car, affirme qu’il faudra encore des dizaines d’années avant que l’on puisse voir des véhicules autonomes de niveau 4 ou 5 sur les routes, et, dans tous les cas, elles devront avoir un conducteur à bord.

Alors, pourquoi l’IA connaît-elle un tel succès dans les médias, et un tel engouement dans l’opinion ? C’est l’une des questions à laquelle Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, informaticien et philosophe, tente de répondre dans son livre Le Mythe de la singularité (Seuil, 2017). Il y explique pourquoi l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’invention de l’IA déclencherait un emballement de la croissance technologique qui induirait des changements imprévisibles sur la société humaine, qu’il appelle le mythe de la singularité – s’est largement imposé ces dernières années. L’une des raisons serait que les systèmes de financement de la recherche privilégient les projets capables de susciter de grandes espérances. Leurs concepteurs n’hésitent alors pas à faire la promotion de leurs innovations avec des arguments exaltés.

Dans un contexte de concurrence intense, les entreprises essaient aussi de se démarquer en portant des ambitions exagérées, du genre de celles qui visent à « changer le monde ». Pour garder le contrôle de marchés où les exigences des clients évoluent en permanence, il ne reste aux entreprises du numérique que la fabrication et la promotion des récits qui accompagnent les technologies. Elles usent en particulier de deux d’entre eux : le récit de l’inéluctabilité, selon lequel les technologies seraient autonomes et se développeraient elles-mêmes ; et la promesse d’éthique, selon laquelle il s’agirait de faire en sorte qu’elles ne nuisent pas aux humains.

Dans une nouvelle vidéo, Imperial Girl, la chanteuse Danielle Alma Ravitsky, chanteuse israélienne vivant à New York, recommande à Madonna de ne pas participer au festival Eurovision de blanchiment de l’apartheid à Tel Aviv, entre le 14 et le 18 mai prochain :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar_RRzUyaVQ

Dans le même genre, en Angleterre :

Eurodivision - Cultural Boycott
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/758647
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3orfG--JhHI

Slovo - Not My Kinda Party
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/772317
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouibGAgONVQ

#Palestine #Musique #Musique_et_politique #Eurovision #Boycott #BDS #Boycott_culturel #Danielle_Alma_Ravitsky #Slovo #USA #UK

YOU MAY HAVE FORGOTTEN FOURSQUARE, BUT IT DIDN’T FORGET YOU
▻https://www.wired.com/story/you-may-have-forgotten-foursquare-it-didnt-forget-you

IT’S THURSDAY AFTERNOON, and I’m on the eighth floor of a nondescript building in the Flatiron District, sitting across from Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley. He pulls out his phone to show me an unreleased, nameless game that he and his skunkworks-style team Foursquare Labs have been working on. Think Candyland, but instead of fantasy locations like Lollipop Woods, the game’s virtual board includes place categories associated with New York City neighborhoods. There’s a Midtown Bar, a (...)

#AccuWeather #Foursquare #Twitter #Uber #algorithme #smartphone #géolocalisation #BigData

https://media.wired.com/photos/5c829a4fcf58fb286d37e673/191:100/pass/Business-Foursquare-Tracking-SXSW-586024368.jpg

Immobilisation du Boeing 737 MAX : les compagnies américaines accusent le coût
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/04/27/immobilisation-du-boeing-737-max-les-compagnies-americaines-accusent-le-cout

https://img.lemde.fr/2019/04/26/0/0/3610/2407/688/0/60/0/0b7ad63_6f0961dbca8142e197705be9bf68497f-6f0961dbca8142e197705be9bf68497f-0.jpg

American Airlines et Southwest ont fait part de leurs difficultés après avoir été contraints d’annuler des milliers de vols et de réorganiser leurs services du fait de leurs avions cloués au sol depuis un mois.

Plus d’un mois après l’immobilisation du Boeing 737 MAX suite à deux crashs aériens, la facture commence à être salée pour les compagnies américaines, grosses clientes de cet avion. American Airlines et Southwest ont fait part, cette semaine, de leurs difficultés après avoir été contraints d’annuler des milliers de vols et de réorganiser leurs services du fait de leurs avions cloués au sol.
Dans la meilleure des hypothèses, cette crise inédite devrait coûter à American Airlines quelque 350 millions de dollars cette année, a fait savoir la compagnie. Cette dernière a en effet dû annuler 1 200 vols prévus sur ses vingt-quatre 737 MAX au premier trimestre pour un coût de 50 millions de dollars. Elle a déprogrammé tous les autres vols prévus jusqu’au 19 août, soit 115 vols par jour. Cela sera-t-il suffisant ? La compagnie a d’ores et déjà été forcée vendredi de revoir à la baisse ses ambitions financières pour 2019.

Du côté de Southwest, l’addition est toute aussi douloureuse pour cette compagnie qui exploite trente-quatre exemplaires du 737 MAX et attend une livraison de quarante-et-une unités supplémentaires cette année. L’entreprise a annulé plus de 10 000 vols au premier trimestre – un record depuis le troisième trimestre 2001 affecté par les attaques du 11-Septembre –, en raison non seulement du 737 MAX mais aussi d’un conflit social et des tempêtes dans certaines régions aux Etats-Unis. Résultat : le bénéfice net a chuté de 16 % à 387 millions de dollars. Le transporteur a suspendu en outre tous les vols programmés sur ses 737 MAX jusqu’au 5 août.

Women paint their clothes with red in protest against the J. Marion Sims statue in New York, known as the “father of modern gynaecology” the protestors highlighted the doctor performed painful surgeries on enslaved black women without consent or anaesthesia

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La statue a été déplacée en 2018

New York City’s Public Design Commission voted unanimously on Monday to remove the statue of J. Marion Sims, a 19th century surgeon who conducted experimental operations on female slaves, from its place of honor in Central Park.

It was the first decision to alter a prominent New York monument since Mayor Bill de Blasio called for a review of “symbols of hate” from city property eight months ago, in the wake of the white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Va., that left one person dead.

A commission that Mr. de Blasio created to make recommendations about how to evaluate the city’s monuments and other public images had proposed that the Sims statue be removed.

The Parks Department will remove the statue, at 103rd Street, near the northeast corner of Central Park, at 8 a.m. Tuesday, according to Natalie Grybauskas, a mayoral spokeswoman.

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/nyregion/nyc-sims-statue-central-park-monument.html

Déplacée pour la seconde fois mais toujours debout

A bronze statue by Ferdinand Freiherr von Miller (the younger), depicting Sims in surgical wear,[42] was erected in Bryant Park, New York, in 1894, taken down in the 1920s amid subway construction, and moved to the northeastern corner of Central Park, at 103rd Street, in 1934, opposite the New York Academy of Medicine.[23][43] The address delivered at its rededication was published in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine.[44] This is the first statue erected in the United States in honor of any physician. The statue became the center of protests in 2017 due to Sims’ operations on enslaved black women.[45] Vandals defaced the statue with the word RACIST and painted the eyes red.[46] In April 2018, the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to have the statue removed from Central Park and installed in Green-Wood Cemetery, near where Sims is buried.[43]

▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Marion_Sims

#grand_homme #chirurgie #racisme #gynécologie #femmes
#James_Marion_Sims

Apple Face-Recognition Blamed by N.Y. Teen for False Arrest
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-22/apple-face-recognition-blamed-by-new-york-teen-for-false-arrest

A New York student sued Apple Inc. for $1 billion, claiming the company’s facial-recognition software falsely linked him to a series of thefts from Apple stores. Ousmane Bah, 18, said he was arrested at his home in New York in November and charged with stealing from an Apple store. The arrest warrant included a photo that didn’t resemble Bah, he said in a lawsuit filed Monday. One of the thefts he was charged with, in Boston, took place on the day in June he was attending his senior prom in (...)

#Apple #CCTV #biométrie #facial #vidéo-surveillance #surveillance

How I Would Cover the College-Admissions Scandal as a Foreign Correspondent | The New Yorker
▻https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-i-would-cover-the-college-admissions-scandal-as-a-foreign-corresponde

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5c890ddc0c54352cc28c05d8/16:9/w_1200,h_630,c_limit/Gessen-CollegeAdmissionsScandal.jpg

The college-admissions scandal—in which fifty people have been indicted for scheming to get the children of wealthy parents into top schools—makes for perfect cocktail chatter. It involves a couple of celebrities among those who, prosecutors allege, bribed and cheated their kids’ way into college. It includes bizarre details, like the Photoshopping of photographs of said children’s faces onto the bodies of outstanding young athletes. It bears savoring and retelling, because it says something intuitively obvious but barely articulated about American society: its entire education system is a scam, perpetrated by a few upon the many.

It’s not just that higher education is literally prohibitively expensive (and at the end of it most college graduates still don’t know how to use the word “literally” correctly, as I am here). It’s not just that admission to an élite college—more than the education a student receives there—provides the foundation of future wealth by creating or, more often, reinforcing social connections. It’s not just that every college in the country, including public schools, makes decisions about infrastructure, curriculum development, hiring, and its very existence on the basis of fund-raising and money-making logic. It’s not just that the process of getting into college grows more stressful—and, consequently, more expensive—with every passing year. It’s not just that the process itself is fundamentally rigged and everyone knows this. It’s all of it.

There is an adage of journalism that holds that every story should be written as if by a foreign correspondent. I generally like this idea: coverage of many issues could benefit from a naïve but informed view. I now find myself imagining applying it to the college-scandal story.

I would, of course, begin by explaining that fifty people in six states are accused of conspiring to game the college-admissions system. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars each to have other people take standardized tests in place of their children, to insure that the administration of the test itself would be fixed, and to bribe coaches and falsify their children’s athletic records. Here, the story would get complicated. A reader in any country can understand the concept of a standardized test—in some countries, in fact, standardized tests have been a tool to fight corruption in admissions. But what does athletic ability have to do with college, especially a college considered academically challenging?

Soon, I would find myself explaining the exotic customs of American college admissions. As the parent of two young adults—one recently went through the application process and the other is in its beginning stages—I have accumulated some experience explaining the system to my friends in other countries. (A Canadian academic’s recent incredulous response: “In Canada, people just go to university!”) I would have to explain the concept of legacy admissions: the positively pre-modern concept that the right to an élite education is heritable. I would have to explain that colleges depend heavily on financial donors, whom they cultivate through generations. I would have to explain the growing part of softer criteria like extracurriculars—the race to be not only better-educated than your peers but also better at being a good person in the world—as if education and an initiation into adult civic life were not what college itself is for. I would have to note that it’s essential for parents to be able to afford to pay for their children’s extracurriculars and sponsor their volunteerism.

I would have to explain all that before I even got to the standardized tests. Then I would note that an SAT/ACT tutor in New York City charges between three hundred and four hundred and fifty dollars an hour. I would note that, to make parents feel better about parting with that sort of money, many programs guarantee a precise bump in test scores for their students: about a hundred and eighty points, out of a possible total of sixteen hundred, for the SAT; about four, out of thirty-six, for the ACT. I would note that gaming the test legally is such a well-established practice that children whose parents can’t afford thousands of dollars in test-prep fees will score more than ten per cent lower than those who get tutored.

Granted, the test results aren’t everything. Every college will tell you that it takes a “holistic approach” to admissions. There are essays, for which there is also coaching, and editing, and a formula; the hourly rate for these services can exceed that of the test tutors. There is also additional college counselling, because a guidance counsellor even at the best public school can’t give an aspiring college student the kind of individual attention, or the kinds of connection, that money can buy. And then there are the connections that money buys indirectly: the parents’ friends who teach, or who work in admissions, or who have generous tips on what colleges are looking for in an essay or an applicant’s list of extracurriculars. One of those things is interest in the particular college—an immeasurable quality, to be sure, but colleges like to see that an applicant has visited the campus. Yes, in most of the world, young people go to university in the city where they grew up, but in the United States, I would explain, most young people aspire to “go away” to college, and that means that even a pre-application tour is a costly and time-consuming proposition. I might mention that the dormitory system, a major source of revenue for the colleges, is also a giant expense for the families, but, these days, even colleges that used to be known as commuter schools require first- and often second-year students to live in the dorms, even if their families live in the same city. This is but an incomplete list of reasons that many low-income students don’t even try to apply to selective colleges. The wealthy compete with the even wealthier.

I would explain that many American colleges have made a concerted effort to admit students from more varied backgrounds, but have failed even to keep up with the changing demographics of the country. The top colleges and universities continue, overwhelmingly, to educate the wealthy and white. The proportional representation of African-Americans and Latinos in the population of top colleges has been dropping, with a few exceptions, which are, in turn, determined largely by wealth: only the wealthiest colleges can admit a lot of students whose parents can’t afford tuition. And if they want to keep these students, they have to invest in revamping their curricula and training faculty and allocating additional teaching and counselling resources to help students for whom the culture of élite colleges is alien and alienating.

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Explaining why these additional resources would be necessary would in turn require an explanation of how education is funded in this country, how school districts are drawn, how middle-class parents invest in a house in the right neighborhood, where public schools will give their kids a chance at a decent college. The best public primary schools, I would explain, enable graduates to compete with kids who went to expensive private schools. For the socially and economically hopeful, I would explain, raising a child in America is an eighteen-year process of investing in the college-admissions system.
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How To Write A New Yorker Cartoon Caption: Zach Galifianakis & Zoe Saldana Edition

All this, I would hope, would serve to elucidate how a corruption scheme like the college-admissions conspiracy could come to be. But it would also raise the question: Why are these ridiculous crooks the only people who might be punished for perpetuating—by gaming—a bizarre, Byzantine, and profoundly unmeritocratic education system? Why is such a clearly and unabashedly immoral system legal at all?

Masha Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author of ten books, including, most recently, “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017.

Lutter ensemble - Radio Zinzine
▻http://www.zinzine.domainepublic.net/?ref=4055

Lutter ensemble (60 mn) le 18 février 2019
A l’occasion du passage par chez nous de l’autrice de Lutter ensemble, pour de nouvelles complicités politiques paru le 7 novembre 2018 aux éditions Cambourakis, nous évoquons avec #Juliette_Rousseau les thématiques développées dans son livre.

De la ZAD à la Palestine, de la marche pour le climat de New York aux camps de réfugié·es de La Chapelle, Juliette Rousseau part à la rencontre de collectifs féministes, antiracistes, LGBT, de justice climatique, etc., qui interrogent les différents rapports de domination liés à la classe, au genre, à la race ou encore à la condition physique et mentale, à l’œuvre dans la société mais aussi dans les espaces militants.
À partir de nombreux entretiens, ce livre invite à explorer les nouvelles formes d’organisation et de solidarité politique qui se nouent entre les personnes concernées par une même oppression et leurs allié·es ou complices.

▻http://www.zinzine.domainepublic.net/emissions/SPX/2019/SPX20190223-LutterEnsemble.mp3
–-
La p’tite Blan
Du Poil sous les bras - Juliette Rousseau
(24 février 2019 - 55min)

A propos des luttes collectives…
Où l’on apprend que pour lutter ensemble, il va falloir se pencher sérieusement sur les oppressions qui traversent nos luttes, et c’est pas gagné !
Autour du livre Lutter ensemble - pour de nouvelles complicités politiques (Editions Cambourakis)

▻https://soundcloud.com/user-288683429/dpslb-juliette-rousseau

(en haut à droite de l’image, on peut aussi cliquer sur le pictogramme pour télécharger l’émission, et ça donne ▻https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/580560123/download?client_id=Iy5e1Ri4GTNgrafaXe4mLpmJLXbXEfBR)

Elle fait une tournée et sera présente « le 27 et 28/04, puis de nouveau le 1/05 à Arras entre autres pour le Salon du livre d’expression populaire et de critique sociale »

Samedi 27 avril
18h30 Grand Place, grand chapiteau – Rencontre avec Juliette Rousseau, le collectif comm’un (Notre-Dame-des-Landes), Thomas Azuelos
▻https://www.coleresdupresent.com/agenda/ensembles-pour-le-vivant

1er mai
14h15-15h30 Chapiteau des débats 1
Tisser nos luttes Les 27 et 28 avril, le Forum social régional d’Arras a réuni de nombreux militants qui oeuvrent chaque jour à la fabrication d’un autre possible. Avec Catherine Zambon, et Juliette Rousseau et des actrice·eur·s de ces deux journées, nous reviendrons sur ce que signifierait convergence, et ce que suppose Lutter ensemble. Un débat animé par Jean-Baptiste Jobard (CAC).
▻https://www.coleresdupresent.com/les-debats

(Tiré de ▻https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10216209030112750
via le compte facebook de Juliette Rousseau
▻https://www.facebook.com/jmhrousseau)

#audio #luttes #militer

#Vito_Ricci & #Lise_Vachon
▻http://www.radiopanik.org/emissions/moacrealsloa/vito-ricci-lise-vachon

http://www.radiopanik.org/media/cache/e5/1b/e51bb5bd2a48273d70cfd949c501ad32.jpg

Vito Ricci grown up in Brooklyn and Lise Vachon in Montreal. Now both living in Queens, New York.

Photo (c) Laurent Orseau

Playlist at the end of the page.

Vito Ricci’s leading edge instinct and creativity have made him a vital and prolific composer of illuminating and compelling works. Infused with poignancy and honesty, his music has the power to linger in the listener’s memory. An artist who has been called “composer of wide ranging and obsessively fascinating collection of works” by the Wire, and his soundtracks compared to “heirloom seeds put back in circulation” byPitchfork and “elegant and snappy” by the New York Times. Vito Ricci has been on the leading edge of the downtown music scene since 1979.

During his thirty-year-plus career, Mr. Ricci has scored over fifty (...)

#Jacob_Burkhardt #Zummo #Ursula_Mamlok #Byard_Lancaster #FLie_lux_Quartet #Eleanor_Cory #Ornette_Coleman #The_Woster_Group #Blue_Gene_Tyranny #Rashied_Ali #Martin_Goldray #Bob_Holman #Jacob_Burkhardt,Zummo,Ursula_Mamlok,Byard_Lancaster,FLie_lux_Quartet,Eleanor_Cory,Ornette_Coleman,The_Woster_Group,Lise_Vachon,Blue_Gene_Tyranny,Vito_Ricci,Rashied_Ali,Martin_Goldray,Bob_Holman
▻http://www.radiopanik.org/media/sounds/moacrealsloa/vito-ricci-lise-vachon_06556__1.mp3

Entre massacre et lutte antiterroriste, l’armée malienne à l’épreuve du feu | Mediapart
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/140419/entre-massacre-et-lutte-antiterroriste-l-armee-malienne-l-epreuve-du-feu?o

https://static.mediapart.fr/etmagine/default/files/2019/04/14/ibk-et-macron-en-novembre-2018.jpg

L’agence française de développement a annulé la publication d’un dossier sur le Mali qui devait paraître dans sa revue Afrique contemporaine. En cause, des articles qui ont déplu, mettant à mal la stratégie de la France ou les autorités du Mali. Mediapart publie l’un d’eux, consacré aux accusations visant l’armée malienne.

#Paypal #Mali #Censure #AgenceFrançaiseDéveloppement

« Je me lève à midi et je m’entraîne 5 à 6h par jour » : comment on se prépare à un mondial de #Fortnite

▻https://www.franceinter.fr/culture/je-me-leve-a-midi-et-je-m-entraine-5-a-6h-par-jour-comment-on-se-prepare

C’est donc quelque chose de nouveau, et je ne sais plus quoi penser pour ne pas ressembler au dernier des connards qui n’aurait rien compris à l’évolution de la société.

Mais étant confronté directement à une situation où un de mes enfants est à la frontière (externe pour le moment mais bon) de la dépendance à ces jeux vidéos (et je ne vous dis pas les immenses efforts que nous devons déployer pour limiter l’usage de ces jeux avant que ça ne fasse le même effet que l’héroïne), je me pose des questions sur cet événement et sur le choix que font certains de « tout abandonner pour devenir e-jouer » en pensant qu’ils vont pouvoir gagner leur vie de manière durable de cette manière.

En vrai, je m’inquiète. Je suis aussi perplexe sur l’article lui-même écrit comme si tout était normal et dans l’ordre des choses. Pas un gramme de questionnement critique. Je me demande si ce n’est pas ça qui est encore plus inquiétant.

https://cdn.radiofrance.fr/s3/cruiser-production/2019/04/1b9f19f0-d5f4-4a36-ba7b-8f9b01dc56ef/600x337_index.jpg

C’est un tournoi à 100 millions de dollars de dotation, et vous n’en avez peut-être jamais entendu parler : la coupe du monde de Fortnite, un e-sport pratiqué par 60 millions de personnes, débute ce samedi. Des centaines de joueurs vont s’affronter en réseau ces dix prochaines semaines, et la France a ses chances !

Pour s’en rendre compte, il suffit de discuter avec les membres de Bastille Legacy, l’un des clubs tricolores, basé à Lille, qui envoie plusieurs joueurs à la compétition. Parmi eux, Sabri, 19 ans, a lâché ses études d’informatique l’an dernier pour devenir e-sportif professionnel. Il s’entraîne toute l’année à Fortnite, et ses exploits sont visibles sur les réseaux sociaux.

Depuis quelques jours, il s’astreint à une alimentation plus saine et s’interdit les nuits blanches. « Je reste décontracté », confie-t-il, « je ne me lève pas à 8 heures, je me lève plutôt à midi. Je me réveille, je mange tranquillement, et je m’entraîne cinq à six heures par jour - quand je dis que je m’entraîne, c’est bien évidemment que je joue ».

How I Eat For Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Instagram
▻http://onpk.net/index.php/2019/04/09/717-how-i-eat-for-free-in-nyc-using-python-automation-artificial-intelligence-

Chris Buetti sur Medium : I’m going to explain to you how I’m receiving these free meals from some of the best eateries in New York City. I’ll admit — it’s rather technical and not everyone can reproduce my methodology. You’ll either need a background in Data Science/Software...

#Notes

Uber : une introduction en Bourse à 100 milliards de dollars prévue pour mai
▻https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/tourisme-transport/uber-une-introduction-en-bourse-a-100-milliards-de-dollars-prevue-pour-mai-

Longtemps présenté comme la plus grande start-up du monde, le numéro un mondial du VTC prévoit de lever 10 milliards de dollars sur la place de New York. Ce serait la plus grosse introduction en Bourse de l’année aux Etats-Unis. Attendue depuis des années, l’introduction en Bourse d’Uber Technologies, le leader mondial des véhicules de transport avec chauffeurs (VTC), devrait finalement avoir lieu en mai prochain. Selon l’agence Reuters, le groupe devrait annoncer dès ce jeudi aux Etats-Unis qu’il (...)

#Toyota #Uber #bénéfices #Softbank

https://media.lesechos.com/api/v1/images/view/5cad84508fe56f12c302c575/640x360/0601059215658-web-tete.jpg

All What Your #Jeans Can (and Do) Hide !

Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo… These are just some of the world’s most prestigious fashion catwalks. There, and elsewhere, perfectly – and often unrealistically – silhouetted young women and men graciously parade to impress elite guests and TV watchers with surprising, fabulous creativity of the most renowned fashion designers and dressmakers.

Yet…

… Yet, regardless of the amazing costs of such shows – and of what you may wonder how eccentric can be some of the displayed clothing – there is a hidden cost that Mother Nature pays (and which is not included in the price tag).

The environmental price

2,000 gallons (some 7.570 litres) of water needed to make one pair of jeans;
93 billion cubic metres of water, enough for 5 million people to survive, is used by the fashion industry every year;
fashion industry produces 20% of global wastewater;
clothing and footwear production is responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions;
every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned;
clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014.

http://cdn.ipsnews.net/Library/2019/04/jeans1.jpg

An Inspiring Story of Mobile-First Approach as a Winning Game Plan
▻https://hackernoon.com/an-inspiring-story-of-mobile-first-approach-as-a-winning-game-plan-a8153

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*52BWMCUpoGhFRvE5hU5Mkw.jpeg

A 2018 study in Ireland found that local consumers checked their phones 55 times per day on average (Mobile Consumer Survey, Deloitte). Photo credit: Shutterstock“There are no experts of tomorrow, only of yesterday,” says Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and China’s wealthiest person.When Kenny Kline and a friend founded their marketing agency in 2014, the entrepreneurs brought laptops to coffee shops and routinely burned the midnight oil in a cramped New York apartment.Digital marketing is notoriously competitive, and the bootstrapped duo’s prospects looked middling, at best.A Mobile-First Game PlanFueled by late-night lattes, JAKK Media’s founders stuck with their convictions: The future belongs to marketers who could communicate and entertain via iPhones, Samsung devices, and small screens. (...)

#digital-marketing #mobile-strategy #user-engagement #mobile-engagement #smartphones

YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Let Toxic Videos Run Rampant - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube-executives-ignored-warnings-letting-toxic-videos-run-rampant

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i4iG6lCmJAGA/v0/1200x748.jpg

Wojcicki’s media behemoth, bent on overtaking television, is estimated to rake in sales of more than $16 billion a year. But on that day, Wojcicki compared her video site to a different kind of institution. “We’re really more like a library,” she said, staking out a familiar position as a defender of free speech. “There have always been controversies, if you look back at libraries.”

Since Wojcicki took the stage, prominent conspiracy theories on the platform—including one on child vaccinations; another tying Hillary Clinton to a Satanic cult—have drawn the ire of lawmakers eager to regulate technology companies. And YouTube is, a year later, even more associated with the darker parts of the web.

The conundrum isn’t just that videos questioning the moon landing or the efficacy of vaccines are on YouTube. The massive “library,” generated by users with little editorial oversight, is bound to have untrue nonsense. Instead, YouTube’s problem is that it allows the nonsense to flourish. And, in some cases, through its powerful artificial intelligence system, it even provides the fuel that lets it spread.

Mais justement NON ! Ce ne peut être une “bibliothèque”, car une bibliothèque ne conserve que des documents qui ont été publiés, donc avec déjà une première instance de validation (ou en tout cas de responsabilité éditoriale... quelqu’un ira en procès le cas échéant).

YouTube est... YouTube, quelque chose de spécial à internet, qui remplit une fonction majeure... et également un danger pour la pensée en raison de “l’économie de l’attention”.

The company spent years chasing one business goal above others: “Engagement,” a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with online videos. Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement.

In response to criticism about prioritizing growth over safety, Facebook Inc. has proposed a dramatic shift in its core product. YouTube still has struggled to explain any new corporate vision to the public and investors – and sometimes, to its own staff. Five senior personnel who left YouTube and Google in the last two years privately cited the platform’s inability to tame extreme, disturbing videos as the reason for their departure. Within Google, YouTube’s inability to fix its problems has remained a major gripe. Google shares slipped in late morning trading in New York on Tuesday, leaving them up 15 percent so far this year. Facebook stock has jumped more than 30 percent in 2019, after getting hammered last year.

YouTube’s inertia was illuminated again after a deadly measles outbreak drew public attention to vaccinations conspiracies on social media several weeks ago. New data from Moonshot CVE, a London-based firm that studies extremism, found that fewer than twenty YouTube channels that have spread these lies reached over 170 million viewers, many who were then recommended other videos laden with conspiracy theories.

So YouTube, then run by Google veteran Salar Kamangar, set a company-wide objective to reach one billion hours of viewing a day, and rewrote its recommendation engine to maximize for that goal. When Wojcicki took over, in 2014, YouTube was a third of the way to the goal, she recalled in investor John Doerr’s 2018 book Measure What Matters.

“They thought it would break the internet! But it seemed to me that such a clear and measurable objective would energize people, and I cheered them on,” Wojcicki told Doerr. “The billion hours of daily watch time gave our tech people a North Star.” By October, 2016, YouTube hit its goal.

❞

YouTube doesn’t give an exact recipe for virality. But in the race to one billion hours, a formula emerged: Outrage equals attention. It’s one that people on the political fringes have easily exploited, said Brittan Heller, a fellow at Harvard University’s Carr Center. “They don’t know how the algorithm works,” she said. “But they do know that the more outrageous the content is, the more views.”

People inside YouTube knew about this dynamic. Over the years, there were many tortured debates about what to do with troublesome videos—those that don’t violate its content policies and so remain on the site. Some software engineers have nicknamed the problem “bad virality.”

Yonatan Zunger, a privacy engineer at Google, recalled a suggestion he made to YouTube staff before he left the company in 2016. He proposed a third tier: Videos that were allowed to stay on YouTube, but, because they were “close to the line” of the takedown policy, would be removed from recommendations. “Bad actors quickly get very good at understanding where the bright lines are and skating as close to those lines as possible,” Zunger said.

His proposal, which went to the head of YouTube policy, was turned down. “I can say with a lot of confidence that they were deeply wrong,” he said.

Rather than revamp its recommendation engine, YouTube doubled down. The neural network described in the 2016 research went into effect in YouTube recommendations starting in 2015. By the measures available, it has achieved its goal of keeping people on YouTube.

“It’s an addiction engine,” said Francis Irving, a computer scientist who has written critically about YouTube’s AI system.

Wojcicki and her lieutenants drew up a plan. YouTube called it Project Bean or, at times, “Boil The Ocean,” to indicate the enormity of the task. (Sometimes they called it BTO3 – a third dramatic overhaul for YouTube, after initiatives to boost mobile viewing and subscriptions.) The plan was to rewrite YouTube’s entire business model, according to three former senior staffers who worked on it.

It centered on a way to pay creators that isn’t based on the ads their videos hosted. Instead, YouTube would pay on engagement—how many viewers watched a video and how long they watched. A special algorithm would pool incoming cash, then divvy it out to creators, even if no ads ran on their videos. The idea was to reward video stars shorted by the system, such as those making sex education and music videos, which marquee advertisers found too risqué to endorse.

Coders at YouTube labored for at least a year to make the project workable. But company managers failed to appreciate how the project could backfire: paying based on engagement risked making its “bad virality” problem worse since it could have rewarded videos that achieved popularity achieved by outrage. One person involved said that the algorithms for doling out payments were tightly guarded. If it went into effect then, this person said, it’s likely that someone like Alex Jones—the Infowars creator and conspiracy theorist with a huge following on the site, before YouTube booted him last August—would have suddenly become one of the highest paid YouTube stars.

In February of 2018, the video calling the Parkland shooting victims “crisis actors” went viral on YouTube’s trending page. Policy staff suggested soon after limiting recommendations on the page to vetted news sources. YouTube management rejected the proposal, according to a person with knowledge of the event. The person didn’t know the reasoning behind the rejection, but noted that YouTube was then intent on accelerating its viewing time for videos related to news.

#YouTube #Economie_attention #Engagement #Viralité

A Jewish Councilman Who Said ‘#Palestine Does Not Exist’ Loses Seat on Immigration Committee - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/nyregion/kalman-yeger-israel-palestine.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/03/31/nyregion/31PALESTINENYC/31PALESTINENYC-facebookJumbo-v4.jpg

... as more Palestinian immigrants have settled in New York, the political calculus has grown slightly more complicated, as seen last week, when Kalman Yeger, a Brooklyn councilman who represents the Orthodox Jewish community of Borough Park, took to Twitter on Wednesday to state that “Palestine does not exist.”

#etats-unis

The Programmable Self
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-programmable-self-e816dc005f9b?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/926/1*3SqUl21dyDwGNlJNOPxdEw.png

Why there’s always somewhere better to be“It’s hot. It’s loud. Goddamn this mariachi band to hell!” I thought to myself while waiting on the New York City subway platform.My mind sought separation from my body. They couldn’t stand to be together. And so I put on my headphones and scrolled through Instagram until, gradually, my consciousness was taken somewhere else — somewhere better.New Yorkers love Instagram. I love tacos and thought my drawings might too.I sometimes wonder, if you live in New York City, but 95% of the time you are on Instagram — are you ever really in New York City?Sure the body is in New York, but that magic alchemy of human sensation that infuses you with awareness, and empathy, is overridden by #technology. The present is programmed, with my consent, by whoever writes the app (...)

#programmable-self #life #internet #social-media

Lawsuits Lay Bare Sackler Family’s Role in Opioid Crisis - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/health/sacklers-oxycontin-lawsuits.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/03/30/science/00SACKLER-purdue/00SACKLER-purdue-facebookJumbo.jpg

The Sacklers had a new plan.

It was 2014, and the company the family had controlled for two generations, Purdue Pharma, had been hit with years of investigations and lawsuits over its marketing of the highly addictive opioid painkiller OxyContin, at one point pleading guilty to a federal felony and paying more than $600 million in criminal and civil penalties.

But as the country’s addiction crisis worsened, the Sacklers spied another business opportunity. They could increase their profits by selling treatments for the very problem their company had helped to create: addiction to opioids.

The filings cite numerous records, emails and other documents showing that members of the family continued to push aggressively to expand the market for OxyContin and other opioids for years after the company admitted in a 2007 plea deal that it had misrepresented the drug’s addictive qualities and potential for abuse.

In addition to New York and Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Utah have filed suit against members of the family. Last month, a coalition of more than 500 counties, cities and Native American tribes named the Sacklers in a case in the Southern District of New York, bringing the family into a bundle of 1,600 opioids cases being overseen by a federal court judge in Cleveland.

In 2009, two years after the federal guilty plea, Mortimer D.A. Sackler, a board member, demanded to know why the company wasn’t selling more opioids, email traffic cited by Massachusetts prosecutors showed.

In 2011, as states looked for ways to curb opioid prescriptions, family members peppered the sales staff with questions about how to expand the market for the drugs. Mortimer asked if they could sell a generic version of OxyContin in order to “capture more cost sensitive patients,” according to one email. Kathe, his half sister, suggested studying patients who had switched to OxyContin to see if they could find patterns that could help them win new customers, according to court filings in Massachusetts.

The lawsuits brought by the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts, Letitia James and Maura Healey, named eight Sackler family members: Kathe, Mortimer, Richard, Jonathan and Ilene Sackler Lefcourt — children of either Mortimer or Raymond Sackler — along with Theresa Sackler, the elder Mortimer’s widow; Beverly Sackler, Raymond’s widow; and David Sackler, a grandson of Raymond.

Purdue’s business was fundamentally changed after the F.D.A. approved OxyContin in 1995. The company marketed the drug as a long-acting painkiller that was less addictive than shorter-acting rivals like Percocet and Vicodin, a strategy aimed at reducing the stigma attached to opioids among doctors.

While the Sacklers “have reduced Purdue’s operations and size, Rhodes continues to grow and sell opioids for the benefit of the Sackler families,” the New York suit contends.

By 2016, Rhodes, though little known to the public, had a greater share of the American prescription opioid market than Purdue, according to a Financial Times analysis. Together, the companies ranked seventh in terms of the market share of opioids.

Purdue temporarily abandoned plans to pursue Project Tango in 2014, but revived the idea two years later, this time pursuing a plan to sell naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug, according to the Massachusetts filing. A few months later, in December 2016, Richard, Jonathan and Mortimer Sackler discussed buying a company that used implantable drug pumps to treat opioid addiction.

In recent years, the Sacklers and their companies have been developing products for opioid and overdose treatment on various tracks. Last year, Richard Sackler was awarded a patent for a version of buprenorphine, a drug that blocks opioid receptors, administered by mouth in a thin film. In March, the F.D.A. fast tracked the company’s application for an injectable drug for emergency treatment of overdoses.

Fait très rare, cet article comporte de nombreuses photos des membres de la famille Sackler

#Opioides #Sackler #Procès

Black Card on the #blockchain
▻https://hackernoon.com/black-card-on-the-blockchain-9df4df7781e7?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

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Exclusive experiences enabled by the blockchainThe Diners Club — then AmEx — spurred widespread acceptance of the credit card. Could a similar model trigger mass adoption of #cryptocurrency?“‘Someday…” said Frank McNamara.“Restaurants all over New York will honor this card.” A bold statement at the time. Until 1950, no other company had successfully issued a credit card accepted at more than one merchant.But in a matter of a few years, the Diners Club took the idea of a common courtesy card and turned it into an industry of its own.Not long after, credit cards became ubiquitous.Immediate PopularityThe Diners Club card was an innovation. It significantly improved upon previous cards and, as the first multi-purpose charge card, it paved the way to mass adoption.This unique product managed to gain (...)

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Where is the ‘Malta’ of Asia?
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The digital economy has given rise to megacities like London, Singapore, Hong Kong, and New York. A recent McKinsey study indicated that 600 cities across the world are creating over 60% of the global GDP and over 130 new cities are expected to enter the top 600 by 2025 , all of them from developing countries and 100 new cities from China. These cities are becoming smarter and will benefit from the fourth industrial revolution.Connectivity , human capital , use of internet service, integration of digital technology , and digital public services are indicators used to measure the success and impact of a digital economy.However, this is the case for developed cities. What about the other side?The Case of Emerging EconomiesIndia is a fine example. In spite of a proactive approach to digitise (...)

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Les #gilets_jaunes vus de New York...

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Driving was already expensive in France when in January 2018 the government of President Emmanuel Macron imposed a tax that raised the price of diesel fuel by 7.6 centimes per liter and of gasoline by 3.8 centimes (about 9 and 4 cents, respectively); further increases were planned for January 2019. The taxes were an attempt to cut carbon emissions and honor the president’s lofty promise to “Make Our Planet Great Again.”

Priscillia Ludosky, then a thirty-two-year-old bank employee from the Seine-et-Marne department outside Paris, had no choice but to drive into the city for work every day, and the cost of her commute was mounting. “When you pay regularly for something, it really adds up fast, and the increase was enormous,” she told me recently. “There are lots of things I don’t like. But on that I pushed.” In late May 2018, she created a petition on Change.org entitled Pour une Baisse des Prix du Carburant à la Pompe! (For a reduction of fuel prices at the pump!)

Over the summer Ludosky’s petition—which acknowledged the “entirely honorable” aim of reducing pollution while offering six alternative policy suggestions, including subsidizing electric cars and encouraging employers to allow remote work—got little attention. In the fall she tried again, convincing a radio host in Seine-et-Marne to interview her if the petition garnered 1,500 signatures. She posted that challenge on her Facebook page, and the signatures arrived in less than twenty-four hours. A local news site then shared the petition on its own Facebook page, and it went viral, eventually being signed by over 1.2 million people.

Éric Drouet, a thirty-three-year-old truck driver and anti-Macron militant also from Seine-et-Marne, created a Facebook event for a nationwide blockade of roads on November 17 to protest the high fuel prices. Around the same time, a fifty-one-year-old self-employed hypnotherapist named Jacline Mouraud recorded herself addressing Macron for four minutes and thirty-eight seconds and posted the video on Facebook. “You have persecuted drivers since the day you took office,” she said. “This will continue for how long?” Mouraud’s invective was viewed over six million times, and the gilets jaunes—the yellow vests, named for the high-visibility vests that French drivers are required to keep in their cars and to wear in case of emergency—were born.

Even in a country where protest is a cherished ritual of public life, the violence and vitriol of the gilets jaunes movement have stunned the government. Almost immediately it outgrew the issue of the carbon taxes and the financial burden on car-reliant French people outside major cities. In a series of Saturday demonstrations that began in mid-November and have continued for three months, a previously dormant anger has erupted. Demonstrators have beaten police officers, thrown acid in the faces of journalists, and threatened the lives of government officials. There has been violence on both sides, and the European Parliament has condemned French authorities for using “flash-ball guns” against protesters, maiming and even blinding more than a few in the crowds. But the gilets jaunes have a flair for cinematic destruction. In late November they damaged parts of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris; in early January they commandeered a forklift and rammed through the heavy doors of the ministry of state—the only time in the history of the Fifth Republic that a sitting minister had to be evacuated from a government building.

The gilets jaunes are more than a protest. This is a modern-day jacquerie, an emotional wildfire stoked in the provinces and directed against Paris and, most of all, the elite. French history since 1789 can be seen as a sequence of anti-elite movements, yet the gilets jaunes have no real precedent. Unlike the Paris Commune of 1871, this is a proletarian struggle devoid of utopian aspirations. Unlike the Poujadist movement of the mid-1950s—a confederation of shopkeepers likewise opposed to the “Americanization” of a “thieving and inhuman” state and similarly attracted to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories—the gilets jaunes include shopkeepers seemingly content to destroy shop windows. There is an aspect of carnival here: a delight in the subversion of norms, a deliberate embrace of the grotesque.

Many have said that the gilets jaunes are merely another “populist movement,” although the term is now so broad that it is nearly meaningless. Comparisons have been made to the Britain of Brexit, the United States of Donald Trump, and especially the Italy of Cinque Stelle. But the crucial difference is that the gilets jaunes are apolitical, and militantly so. They have no official platform, no leadership hierarchy, and no reliable communications. Everyone can speak for the movement, and yet no one can. When a small faction within it fielded a list of candidates for the upcoming European parliamentary elections in May, their sharpest opposition came from within: to many gilets jaunes, the ten who had put their names forward—among them a nurse, a truck driver, and an accountant—were traitors to the cause, having dared to replicate the elite that the rest of the movement disdains.

Concessions from the government have had little effect. Under mounting pressure, Macron was forced to abandon the carbon tax planned for 2019 in a solemn televised address in mid-December. He also launched the so-called grand débat, a three-month tour of rural France designed to give him a better grasp of the concerns of ordinary people. In some of these sessions, Macron has endured more than six hours of bitter criticisms from angry provincial mayors. But these gestures have quelled neither the protests nor the anger of those who remain in the movement. Performance is the point. During the early “acts,” as the weekly demonstrations are known, members refused to meet with French prime minister Édouard Philippe, on the grounds that he would not allow the encounter to be televised, and that sentiment has persisted. Perhaps the most telling thing about the gilets jaunes is the vest they wear: a symbol of car ownership, but more fundamentally a material demand to be seen.

Inequality in France is less extreme than in the United States and Britain, but it is increasing. Among wealthy Western countries, the postwar French state—l’État-providence—is something of a marvel. France’s health and education systems remain almost entirely free while ranking among the best in the world. In 2017 the country’s ratio of tax revenue to gross domestic product was 46.2 percent, according to statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—the highest redistribution level of any OECD country and a ratio that allows the state to fight poverty through a generous social protection system. Of that 46.2 percent, the French government allocated approximately 28 percent for social services.

“The French social model is so integrated that it almost seems a natural, preexisting condition,” Alexis Spire, a sociologist of inequality at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, told me recently. A number of the gilets jaunes I met said that despite the taxes they pay, they do not feel they benefit from any social services, since they live far from urban centers. But anyone who has ever received housing assistance, a free prescription, or sixteen weeks of paid maternity leave has benefited from the social protection system. The effect of redistribution is often invisible.

And yet the rich in France have gotten much richer. Between 1983 and 2015, the vast majority of incomes in France rose by less than one percent per year, while the richest one percent of the population saw their incomes rise by 100 percent after taxes. According to World Bank statistics, the richest 20 percent now earns nearly five times as much as the bottom 20 percent. This represents a stark shift from the Trente Glorieuses, France’s thirty-year economic boom after World War II. As the economist Thomas Piketty has pointed out, between 1950 and 1983, most French incomes rose steadily by approximately 4 percent per year; the nation’s top incomes rose by only one percent.

What has become painfully visible, however, is the extent of the country’s geographical fractures. Paris has always been the undisputed center of politics, culture, and commerce, but France was once also a country that cherished and protected its vibrant provincial life. This was la France profonde, a clichéd but genuinely existing France of tranquil stone villages and local boulangeries with lines around the block on Sundays. “Douce France, cher pays de mon enfance,” goes the beloved song by the crooner Charles Trenet. “Mon village, au clocher aux maisons sages.” These days, the maisons sages are vacant, and the country boulangeries are closed.

The story is familiar: the arrival of large multinational megastores on the outskirts of provincial French towns and cities has threatened, and in many cases asphyxiated, local businesses.1 In the once-bustling centers of towns like Avignon, Agen, Calais, and Périgueux, there is now an eerie quiet: windows are often boarded up, and fewer and fewer people are to be found. This is the world evoked with a melancholy beauty in Nicolas Mathieu’s novel Leurs enfants après eux, which won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize, in 2018.

The expansion since the 1980s of France’s high-speed rail network has meant that the country’s major cities are all well connected to Paris. But there are many small towns where the future never arrived, where abandoned nineteenth-century train stations are now merely places for teenagers to make out, monuments of the way things used to be. In these towns, cars are the only way people can get to work. I met a fifty-five-year-old truck and taxi driver named Marco Pavan in the Franche-Comté in late November. What he told me then—about how carbon taxes can seem like sneers from the Parisian elite—has stayed with me. “Ask a Parisian—for him none of this is an issue, because he doesn’t need a car,” Pavan said. “There’s no bus or train to take us anywhere. We have to have a car.” I cited that remark in a Washington Post story I filed from Besançon; in the online comments section, many attacked the movement for what they saw as a backward anti-environmentalism—missing his point.

Few have written as extensively as the French geographer Christophe Guilluy on la France périphérique, a term he popularized that refers both to the people and the regions left behind by an increasingly globalized economy. Since 2010, when he published Fractures françaises, Guilluy has been investigating the myths and realities of what he calls “the trompe l’oeil of a peaceful, moderate, and consensual society.” He is one of a number of left-wing French intellectuals—among them the novelist Michel Houellebecq, the historian Georges Bensoussan, and the essayist Michel Onfray—who in recent years have argued that their beloved patrie has drifted into inexorable decline, a classic critique of the French right since 1789. But Guilluy’s decline narrative is different: he is not as concerned as the others with Islamist extremism or “decadence” broadly conceived. For him, France’s decline is structural, the result of having become a place where “the social question disappears.”

Guilluy, born in Montreuil in 1964, is something of a rarity among well-known French intellectuals: he is a product of the Paris suburbs, not of France’s storied grandes écoles. And it is clear that much of his critique is personal. As a child, Guilluy, whose family then lived in the working-class Paris neighborhood of Belleville, was forcibly relocated for a brief period to the heavily immigrant suburb of La Courneuve when their building was slated to be demolished in the midst of Paris’s urban transformation. “I saw gentrification firsthand,” he told Le Figaro in 2017. “For the natives—the natives being just as much the white worker as the young immigrant—what provoked the most problems was not the arrival of Magrebis, but that of the bobos.”

This has long been Guilluy’s battle cry, and he has focused his intellectual energy on attacking what he sees as the hypocrisy of the bobos, or bourgeois bohemians. His public debut was a short 2001 column in Libération applying that term, coined by the columnist David Brooks, to French social life. What was happening in major urban centers across the country, he wrote then, was a “ghettoization by the top of society” that excluded people like his own family.

Guilluy crystallized that argument in a 2014 book that won him the ear of the Élysée Palace and regular appearances on French radio. This was La France périphérique: comment on a sacrifié les classes populaires, in which he contended that since the mid-1980s, France’s working classes have been pushed out of the major cities to rural communities—a situation that was a ticking time bomb—partly as a result of rising prices. He advanced that view further in 2016 with La Crépuscule de la France d’en haut—now translated into English as Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Future of France—a pithy screed against France’s bobo elite and what he sees as its shameless embrace of a “neoliberal,” “Americanized society” and a hollow, feel-good creed of multicultural tolerance. In 2018, one month before the rise of the gilets jaunes, he published No Society, whose title comes from Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 comment that “there is no such thing as society.”

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In Guilluy’s view, an immigrant working class has taken the place of the “native” working class in the banlieues on the outskirts of major cities. This native class, he argues, has been scattered throughout the country and become an “unnoticed presence” that France’s elite has “made to disappear from public consciousness” in order to consolidate its grip on power. Cities are now the exclusive preserve of the elites and their servants, and what Guilluy means by “no society” is that the visible signs of class conflict in urban daily life have vanished. This is his trompe l’oeil: rich, insulated Parisians have convinced themselves that everything is fine, while those who might say otherwise are nowhere near. “The simmering discontent of rural France has never really been taken seriously,” he writes in Twilight of the Elites.

Since November, much of the French press has declared that Guilluy essentially predicted the rise of the gilets jaunes. They seem, after all, a fulfillment of his prophecy about “the betrayal of the people” by the elites, even if he is always elusive about who exactly “the people” are. While critiques from the movement have remained a confused cloud of social media invective, Guilluy has served as its de facto interpreter.

No Society puts into words what many in the gilets jaunes have either struggled or refused to articulate. This is the hazy middle ground between warning and threat: “The populist wave coursing through the western world is only the visible part of a soft power emanating from the working classes that will force the elites to rejoin the real movement of society or else to disappear.”

For now, however, there is just one member of the elite whom the gilets jaunes wish would disappear, and calls for his violent overthrow continue even as the movement’s momentum subsides.

An intense and deeply personal hatred of Macron is the only unifying cry among the gilets jaunes. Eighteen months before the uprising began, this was the man who captured the world’s imagination and who, after populist victories in Britain and the United States, had promised a French “Third Way.” Yet the Macronian romance is already over, both at home and abroad.

To some extent, the French always turn against their presidents, but the anger Macron elicits is unique. This is less because of any particular policy than because of his demeanor and, most of all, his language. “Mr. Macron always refused to respond to us,” Muriel Gautherin, fifty-three, a podiatrist who lives in the Paris suburbs, told me at a December march on the Champs-Élysées. “It’s he who insults us, and he who should respond.” When I asked her what she found most distasteful about the French president, her answer was simple: “His words.”

She has a point. Among Macron’s earliest actions as president was to shave five euros off the monthly stipends of France’s Aide personalisée au logement (APL), the country’s housing assistance program. Around the same time, he slashed France’s wealth tax on those with a net worth of at least €1.3 million—a holdover from the Mitterand era.

Macron came to office with a record of unrelentingly insulting the poor. In 2014, when he was France’s economic minister, he responded to the firing of nine hundred employees (most of them women) from a Breton slaughterhouse by noting that some were “mostly illiterate.” In 2016 he was caught on camera in a heated dispute with a labor activist in the Hérault. When the activist gestured to Macron’s €1,600 suit as a symbol of his privilege, the minister said, “The best way to afford a suit is to work.” In 2018 he told a young, unemployed gardener that he could find a new job if he merely “crossed the street.”

Yet nothing quite compares to the statement Macron made in inaugurating Station F, a startup incubator in the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris, housed in a converted rail depot. It is a cavernous consulate for Silicon Valley, a soaring glass campus open to all those with “big ideas” who can also pay €195 a month for a desk and can fill out an application in fluent English. (“We won’t consider any other language,” the organization’s website says.) Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all have offices in it, and in a city of terrible coffee, the espresso is predictably fabulous. In June 2017 Macron delivered a speech there. “A train station,” he said, referring to the structure’s origins, “it’s a place where we encounter those who are succeeding and those who are nothing.”

This was the moment when a large percentage of the French public learned that in the eyes of their president, they had no value. “Ceux qui ne sont rien” is a phrase that has lingered and festered. To don the yellow vest is thus to declare not only that one has value but also that one exists.

On the whole, the gilets jaunes are not the poorest members of French society, which is not surprising. As Tocqueville remarked, revolutions are fueled not by those who suffer the most, but by those whose economic status has been improving and who then experience a sudden and unexpected fall. So it seems with the gilets jaunes: most live above the poverty line but come from the precarious ranks of the lower middle class, a group that aspires to middle-class stability and seeks to secure it through palliative consumption: certain clothing brands, the latest iPhone, the newest television.

In mid-December Le Monde profiled a young couple in the movement from Sens in north-central France, identified only as Arnaud and Jessica. Both twenty-six, they and their four children live in a housing project on the €2,700 per month that Arnaud earns as a truck driver, including more than €1,000 in government assistance. According to statistics from France’s Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (Insée), this income places them right at the poverty line for a family of this size, and possibly even slightly below it. But the expenses Arnaud and Jessica told Le Monde they struggled to pay included karate lessons for their oldest son and pet supplies for their dog. Jessica, who does not work, told Le Monde, “Children are so mean to each other if they wear lesser brands. I don’t want their friends to make fun of them.” She said she had traveled to Paris for gilet jaune protests on three separate weekends—journeys that presumably cost her money.

Readers of Le Monde—many of them educated, affluent, and pro-Macron—were quick to attack Arnaud and Jessica. But the sniping missed their point, which was that they felt a seemingly inescapable sense of humiliation, fearing ridicule everywhere from the Élysée Palace to their children’s school. They were explaining something profound about the gilets jaunes: the degree to which the movement is fueled by unfulfilled expectations. For many demonstrators, life is simply not as they believed it would be, or as they feel they deserve. There is an aspect of entitlement to the gilets jaunes, who are also protesting what the French call déclassement, the increasing elusiveness of the middle-class dream in a society in which economic growth has not kept pace with population increase. This entitlement appears to have alienated the gilets jaunes from immigrants and people of color, who are largely absent from their ranks and whose condition is often materially worse.2 “It’s not people who don’t have hope anymore, who don’t have a place to live, or who don’t have a job,” Rokhaya Diallo, a French activist for racial equality, told me recently, describing the movement. “It’s just that status they’re trying to preserve.”

The gilets jaunes have no substantive ideas: resentment does not an ideology make. They remain a combustible vacuum, and extremist agitators on the far right and the far left have sought to capitalize on their anger. Both Marine Le Pen of the recently renamed Rassemblement National and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the left-wing La France Insoumise have tried hard to channel the movement’s grassroots energy into their own political parties, but the gilets jaunes have so far resisted these entreaties. The gilets jaunes also found themselves at the center of a diplomatic spat: in early February Italy’s deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, met with two of their members on the outskirts of Paris in a jab at Macron. Two days later, France withdrew its ambassador to Rome for the first time since 1940, but the gilets jaunes have not attempted to exploit this attention for their own political gain. Instead there was infighting—a Twitter war over who had the right to represent the cause abroad and who did not.

The intellectual void at the heart of an amorphous movement can easily fill with the hatred of an “other.” That may already be happening to the gilets jaunes. Although a careful analysis by Le Monde concluded that race and immigration were not major concerns in the two hundred most frequently shared messages on gilet jaune Facebook pages between the beginning of the movement and January 22, a number of gilets jaunes have been recorded on camera making anti-Semitic gestures, insulting a Holocaust survivor on the Paris metro, and saying that journalists “work for the Jews.” Importantly, the gilets jaunes have never collectively denounced any of these anti-Semitic incidents—a silence perhaps inevitable for a movement that eschews organization of any kind. Likewise, a thorough study conducted by the Paris-based Fondation Jean Jaurès has shown the extent to which conspiracy theories are popular in the movement: 59 percent of those surveyed who had participated in a gilet jaune demonstration said they believed that France’s political elites were encouraging immigration in order to replace them, and 50 percent said they believed in a global “Zionist” conspiracy.

Members of the movement are often quick to point out that the gilets jaunes are not motivated by identity politics, and yet anyone who has visited one of their demonstrations is confronted with an undeniable reality. Far too much attention has been paid to the symbolism of the yellow vests and far too little to the fact that the vast majority of those who wear them are lower-middle-class whites. In what is perhaps the most ethnically diverse society in Western Europe, can the gilets jaunes truly be said to represent “the people,” as the members of the movement often claim? Priscillia Ludosky, arguably the first gilet jaune, is a black woman. “It’s complicated, that question,” she told me. “I have no response.”

The gilets jaunes are also distinctly a minority of the French population: in a country of 67 million, as many as 282,000 have demonstrated on a single day, and that figure has consistently fallen with each passing week, down to 41,500 during “Act 14” of the protest on February 16. On two different weekends in November and December, other marches in Paris—one for women’s rights, the other against climate change—drew far bigger crowds than the gilets jaunes did. But the concerns of this minority are treated as universal by politicians, the press, and even the movement’s sharpest critics. Especially after Trump and Brexit, lower-middle-class and working-class whites command public attention even when they have no clear message.

French citizens of color have been protesting social inequality for years without receiving any such respect. In 2005 the killing of two minority youths by French police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois ignited a string of violent uprisings against police brutality, but the government declared an official state of emergency instead of launching a grand débat. In 2009, the overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique saw a huge strike against the high cost of living—a forty-four-day uprising that also targeted fuel prices and demanded an increase to the minimum wage. In 2017 an almost identical protest occurred in French Guiana, another French overseas department, where residents demonstrated against household goods that were as much as 12 percent more expensive than they were in mainland France, despite a lower minimum wage. The French government was slow to respond in both of these instances, while the concerns of the gilets jaunes have resulted in a personal apology from the president and a slew of concessions.

Guilluy, whose analysis of la France périphérique ultimately fails to grapple significantly with France’s decidedly peripheral overseas territories, does not shy away from the question of identity. He sees a racial element to the frustrations of la France périphérique, but he does not see this as a problem. Some of the most frustrating moments in his work come when he acknowledges but refuses to interrogate white working-class behavior that seems to be racially motivated. “Public housing in outlying communities is now a last resort for workers hoping to be able to go on living near the major cities,” he writes in Twilight of the Elites, describing the recent astronomic rise in France’s urban real estate prices. “These projects, mostly occupied by immigrant renters, are avoided by white French-born workers. Barring some utterly unforeseeable turn of events, their expulsion from the largest urban centers will be irreversible.” It would not diminish Guilluy’s broader point about la France périphérique if he acknowledged that victims of structural changes can also be intolerant.

Guilluy also regularly recycles anxieties over immigration, often from controversial theorists such as Michèle Tribalat, who is associated with the idea of le grand remplacement, the alleged “great replacement” of France’s white population by immigrants from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. In making his case about “the demographic revolution in process,” Guilluy has been accused of inflating his statistics. France, he wrote in Fractures françaises, “welcomes a little less than 200,000 legal foreigners every year.” But these claims were attacked by Patrick Weil, a leading French historian of immigration, who noted in his book Le sens de la République (2015) that Guilluy failed to consider that a large number of those 200,000 are temporary workers, students who come and go, and others of “irregular” status. Guilluy has not responded to these criticisms, and in any case his rhetoric has since grown more radical. In No Society he writes, “Multiculturalism is, intrinsically, a feeble ideology that divides and weakens.”

Whether the gilets jaunes will eventually come to agree with him is a crucial question. Like Guilluy, they are responding to real social conditions. But if, following Guilluy’s lead, they ultimately resort to the language of race and ethnicity to explain their suffering, they will have chosen to become a different movement altogether, one in which addressing inequality was never quite the point. In some ways, they have already crossed that line.

On the afternoon of Saturday, February 16, the prominent French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut got out of a taxi on the Boulevard Montparnasse. A crowd of gilets jaunes noticed him and began hurling anti-Semitic insults. The scene, recorded on video, was chilling: in the center of Paris, under a cloudless sky, a mob of visibly angry men surrounded a man they knew to be Jewish, called him a “dirty Zionist,” and told him, “go back to Tel Aviv.”

Finkielkraut’s parents were Polish refugees from the Holocaust. He was born in Paris in 1949 and has become a fixture in French cultural life, a prolific author, a host of a popular weekly broadcast on France Culture, and a member of the Académie Française, the country’s most elite literary institution. In the words of Macron, who immediately responded to the attack, he “is not only an eminent man of letters but the symbol of what the Republic affords us all.” The irony is that Finkielkraut—another former leftist who believes that France has plunged into inexorable decline and ignored the dangers of multiculturalism—was one of the only Parisian intellectuals who had supported the gilets jaunes from the beginning.

I spoke to Finkielkraut after the attack, and he explained that the gilets jaunes had seemed to him the evidence of something authentic. “I saw an invisible France, neglected and forgotten,” he said. “Wearing fluorescent yellow vests in order to be visible—of being a ‘somewhere’ as opposed to an ‘anywhere,’ as Goodhart has said—seemed to me an absolutely legitimate critique.” The British journalist David Goodhart, popular these days in French right-wing circles, is the author of The Road to Somewhere (2017), which sees populist anger as the inevitable response to the widening gulf between those “rooted” in a particular place and cosmopolitans at home anywhere. “France is not a ‘start-up nation,’” Finkielkraut told me. “It can’t be reduced to that.”

Finkielkraut said that the attack was a sign that the reasonable critiques orginally made by the gilets jaunes had vanished, and that they had no real future. “I think the movement is in the process of degradation. It’s no longer a social movement but a sect that has closed in on itself, whose discourse is no longer rational.”

Although the Paris prosecutor has opened an investigation into his attackers, Finkielkraut has not pressed charges. He told me that the episode, as violent as it was, did not necessarily suggest that all those who had worn yellow vests in recent months were anti-Semites or extremists. “Those who insulted me were not the nurses, the shopkeepers, or the small business owners,” he said, noting that he doubted he would have experienced the same prejudice at the roundabouts, the traffic circles across the country where gilets jaunes protesters gathered every Saturday. In a sense, these were the essence of the movement, which was an inchoate mobilization against many things, but perhaps none so much as loneliness. The roundabouts quickly became impromptu piazzas and a means, however small, of reclaiming a spirit of community that disappeared long ago in so many French towns and villages.

In Paris, where the remaining gilets jaunes have now focused most of their energy, the weekly protests have become little more than a despicable theater filled with scenes like the attack on Finkielkraut. There is no convincing evidence that those still wearing yellow vests are troubled by the presence of bigotry in their ranks. What is more, many gilets jaunes now seem to believe that pointing out such prejudice is somehow to become part of a government-backed conspiracy to turn public opinion against them.

Consider, for instance, a February 19 communiqué released in response to the attack on Finkielkraut from La France en Colère, one of the movement’s main online bulletins. “For many days, the government and its friends in the national media seem to have found a new technique for destabilizing public opinion and discrediting the Gilets Jaunes movement,” it begins. “We denounce the accusations and the manipulations put in place by this government adept at fake news.” But this is all the communiqué denounces; it does not address the anti-Semitic violence to which Finkielkraut was subjected, nor does it apologize to a national figure who had defended the movement when few others of his prominence dared to do the same.

A month after our last conversation, I called Priscillia Ludosky back, to see if she had any reaction to the recent turn of events in the movement her petition had launched. She was only interested in discussing what she called the French government’s “systematic abuse to manipulate public opinion.” She also believes that a government-media conspiracy will stop at nothing to smear the cause. “If there was one person who ever said something homophobic, it was on the front page of every newspaper,” she told me.

In the days after the attack, Finkielkraut lamented not so much the grim details of what had happened but the squandered potential of a moment that has increasingly descended into paranoid feverishness. As he told me: “This was a beautiful opportunity to reflect on who we are that’s been completely ruined.”

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