CrimethInc. : La Musique comme une Arme : La symbiose controversée du Punk Rock et de l’Anarchisme
►https://fr.crimethinc.com/2018/10/22/la-musique-comme-une-arme-la-symbiose-controversee-du-punk-rock-et-de
La Musique comme une Arme : La symbiose controversée du Punk Rock et de l’Anarchisme
►https://fr.crimethinc.com/2018/10/22/la-musique-comme-une-arme-la-symbiose-controversee-du-punk-rock-et-de
Revenons à la résurgence du folk-punk peu après le tournant du siècle. His Hero Is Gone a été l’un des premiers groupes DIY à passer d’amplis à une seule enceinte aux amplis composés de plusieurs baffles (« full stacks »), et en quelques années chaque groupe qui souhaitait être pris au sérieux a fait de même. Cela à conduit à une course aux armements et à une sorte d’inflation de l’esthétique : aucun volume sonore n’était assez fort, aucun enregistrement suffisamment puissant, aucun matériel suffisamment cher. Le folk-punk était une réaction à cela : un format accessible, peu onéreux, et consciemment brut et rudimentaire. Pourtant, il n’a jamais atteint la popularité du punk basé sur du matériel électrique ; de manière révélatrice, le groupe phare Against Me a adopté une instrumentation rock standard au cours de sa transition vers le carriérisme corporatiste.
De façon similaire, on pourrait se demander pourquoi, parmi tous les formats qui ont prospéré dans la scène underground DIY, il n’y avait jamais de troupes de théâtre itinérantes. À première vue, le théâtre serait le médium idéal pour des artistes indépendants ayant un accès aux ressources limité. Une troupe de théâtre pourrait voyager sans équipement coûteux ni le besoin d’avoir un gros véhicule ; les représentations pourraient avoir lieu pratiquement n’importe où. Dario Fo, le Living Theatre… le théâtre radical a eu une riche histoire dans tous les pays et à toutes les époques. Les spectacles de marionnettes étaient pratiquement devenues un cliché dans la scène DIY — alors pourquoi pas le théâtre ?
Ceci indique un matérialisme persistant dans la culture DIY. L’équipement, qu’il s’agisse d’une piètre scène de marionnettes en carton ou d’amplificateurs d’une valeur de dix mille dollars, confère la légitimité tant attendue par les artistes et les spectateur·rice·s. « Regarde, » pourraient se dire des marginaux de la classe ouvrière, en désignant un van rouillé rempli d’équipement qui leur coûte des années de salaire, « nous sommes un vrai groupe ! »
620 million accounts stolen from 16 hacked websites now for sale on dark web, seller boasts
▻https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/11/620_million_hacked_accounts_dark_web
Dubsmash, Armor Games, 500px, Whitepages, ShareThis, and more said to be up for grabs for $$$s in BTC Some 617 million online account details stolen from 16 hacked websites are on sale from today on the dark web, according to the data trove’s seller. For less than $20,000 in Bitcoin, it is claimed, the following pilfered account databases can be purchased from the Dream Market cyber-souk, located in the Tor network : Dubsmash (162 million), MyFitnessPal (151 million), MyHeritage (92 (...)
#MyHeritage #MyFitnessPal #données #hacking #génétique #santé
##santé
U.S. Army to Divest a Majority of its Watercraft and Maritime Capability – gCaptain
▻https://gcaptain.com/u-s-army-to-divest-a-majority-of-its-watercraft-and-maritime-capability
U.S. Army Maritime capabilities will be radically reduced this year as the service deactivates and divests itself of numerous vessels, watercraft equipment, watercraft systems, Soldiers, and Units. At least eighteen (18) of its 35 Landing Craft Utility (LCU) will be sold off or transferred to the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO). Landing Craft Utility (LCU), a versatile 174- foot landing craft capable of carrying 500 tons of cargo, personnel and containers, is the workhorse of the Army Watercraft field.
Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS), a combined service capability to ensure US Military units are able to offload personnel, supplies, equipment, fuel, and water in austere environments, depends heavily on Army LCUs and the US Army’s Watercraft command and control capability. Army Harbormasters, LSVs, LTs, LCMS, and its dedicated Watercraft Soldiers, specifically trained as mariners, are essential to the functioning of JLOTS for both military and humanitarian missions.
[…]
As stated in the Army’s Memo initiating this decision, “Army Watercraft Transformation Through Divestment of Capability and Force Structure by Inactivation of Units”, the intent is to “eliminate all United States Army Reserve and National Guard Bureau AWS (Army Watercraft Systems) capabilities and/or supporting structure”.
There appears to be no discussion on how the US Army plans to support their present maritime operations, and possible future commitments while eliminating nearly 80% of its present force, which resides in the US Army Reserve. Soldiers who are now in the Maritime field, and who have spent their careers training to be Army Mariners, will be “assessed into units where they can best serve the needs of the Army Reserve whiles also being gainfully employed”.
[…]
Our questions include asking how the Army now plans to respond to military and humanitarian aid in remote and austere locations, where ports and harbor infrastructure do not exist?
#Yemen death toll ’six times higher’ than estimated
▻https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/12/yemen-death-toll-six-times-higher-estimated
The figure of 10,000 used by the United Nations is outdated and nowhere near the likely true fatality figure of 60,223, according to UK-based independent research group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).
Calculating death tolls in Yemen, which is approaching its fourth year, is complicated by the lack of access.
The figure offered by ACLED, which looked at open-source data and local news reports, does not include those thought to have died from #malnutrition. Save the Children charity says some 85,000 may have died from starvation since 2016.
It Doesn’t Take 10 Years To Build A Brand Anymore. Here’s How To Scale Yours Fast
▻https://hackernoon.com/it-doesnt-take-10-years-to-build-a-brand-anymore-here-s-how-to-scale-you
Early in my career, the founder of Under Armour, Kevin Plank, told me that it takes a minimum of 10 years to build a widely-recognizable brand.He reasoned that people need to be exposed to a product or service multiple times and in a variety of settings to create strong, and hopefully positive, associations. That advice resonated, considering our first company, VEEV, was a spirits brand in the liquor industry — renowned for competing with companies that have been in the space for 100+ years. It took a while to make ourselves known to customers in the liquor space, so I assumed Kevin’s rule was hard and fast.But today, the 10-year rule simply no longer holds true.Startups are emerging and failing at unprecedented rates, and the amount of time it takes to become a household name has (...)
#brand-strategy #entrepreneurship #startup #marketing #branding
Arme Biologique ? Les scientifiques sonnent l’alarme lorsque la DARPA envisage de propager des virus à l’aide d’insectes...
▻https://www.crashdebug.fr/sciencess/15194-arme-biologique-les-scientifiques-sonnent-l-alarme-lorsque-la-darpa
Ce n’est pas une blague...
Une équipe de scientifiques tire la sonnette d’alarme dans un nouveau rapport du Science Policy Forum sur un mystérieux programme du gouvernement américain qui développe des virus génétiquement modifiés qui seraient dispersés dans l’environnement à l’aide d’insectes. Les insectes « Frankenstein » infectés par le virus sont mis au point pour contrer les menaces potentielles naturelles et artificielles qui pèsent sur l’approvisionnement alimentaire des États-Unis. Le programme, géré par la DARPA ( Agence de recherche avancée sur les projets de défense) du Pentagone, pourrait être considéré comme une tentative de développer une classe entièrement nouvelle d’armes biologiques qui inciterait d’autres pays à rechercher des armes similaires, at-il averti.
Les (...)
The US Army is developing AI that can recognize faces in the dark and through walls
▻https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/04/18/the-us-army-is-developing-ai-that-can-recognize-faces-in-the-dark-and-th
The US Army is developing a machine learning method for identifying faces from thermal imagery. Soon the American government will be able to film people from outside of buildings, using cameras that can see through walls in near-total darkness, and an AI will recognize the people in the images. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) scientists Benjamin S. Riggan, Nathaniel J. Short, and Shuowen Hu recently released a white paper detailing military efforts to develop a method for applying facial (...)
Trends and Trajectories from CES 2016
▻https://hackernoon.com/trends-and-trajectories-from-ces-2016-bb57d566f345?source=rss----3a8144e
10 themes that will shape consumer behavior and technology1. The world is consolidating into a single industry — technologyGranted I say this with the massive bias of just emerging from the world’s largest display of technology, but something quite profound is occurring in all enterprises. It’s been coming for years, and manifesting faster now. Essentially, if you have a business you’re in the technology business. At CES 2016 companies like Under Armour, BMW, NBC Universal, and United Healthcare proudly displayed how technology is at the core of their business. Technology is no longer a department within the world’s most admired businesses — it is the business.2. Looking to recharge in 2016Over the past few years we’ve seen marginal improvements in battery performance among our devices, and a (...)
#Taliban seen with SCAR rifle commonly carried by American commandos
▻http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/scar-taliban-us-weapons-propaganda-video
WASHINGTON — In a propaganda film posted to the Taliban’s official website, a fighter can be seen carrying a FN SCAR 7.62mm rifle, a weapon commonly issued to U.S. special operators, such as Marine Raiders and Army Rangers.
The 70-minute video titled “Omari Army 5,” produced by Al Emarah Studio — a media branch of the Taliban— showcases seven Taliban training bases and military training exercises being carried out by the resurgent militant group.
The video also displays U.S. weapon systems and optics commonly carried by American soldiers and Marines.
Attached to the rifle is what appears to be an AN/PEQ 5 visible laser, which aids special operators in aiming and precision fires in close quarters.
Affixed to the rifle’s side rail mount is a past model Surefire flashlight, issued to special operators as part of the older generation of Special Operations Peculiar Modification Kits — assorted optics, lasers and night vision equipment issued to American commandos that can be attached to an M4 carbine or SCAR rifle.
[..,]
In terms of how U.S. military gear could wind up in the hands of the Taliban, #Afghanistan is a major market for illicit arms trafficking and plenty of these weapons are frequently captured by the Taliban during raids on Afghan troops.
The video prominently displays Ford Ranger trucks, for example, a vehicle supplied to the Afghan National Police by the U.S. The vehicles — and other equipment — are routinely captured by Taliban forces after attacks on poorly defended checkpoints.
“It would be more likely that the weapons were captured during an assault on a checkpoint, rather than raiding an armory or a base," Capt. William Salvin, a spokesperson for Operation Resolute Support, told Military Times.
“However, we can’t confirm where the weapons came from observed in the video,” Salvin added.
The U.S. supplies the Afghan army and its commando forces with M16s, M4s and ACOG sights through the Defense Department’s Afghan Security Forces Fund. The SCAR, however, is not part of the current inventory provided.
It is possible that Afghan forces are getting the SCAR through another Defense Department security assistance program, Salvin explained.
The rifle may have also been lost by U.S. forces last August, when American forces battling ISIS fighters in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, lost a SCAR and a host of other equipment — to include a tactical encrypted radio — as forces attempted to evacuate battlefield casualties, according to a report by the Washington Post.
“The August 2016 case is the only instance where an FN SCAR was not recovered from a mission,” Salvin told Military Times.
The FN SCAR is manufactured by FN Herstal, a Belgian company, and is also used by the British SAS, as well as special forces from Belgium, Lithuania, and Georgia.
Les petites mains nord-coréennes de Fructofresh, en Pologne
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2017/01/26/les-petites-mains-nord-coreennes-de-fructofresh-en-pologne_5069357_3244.html
Depuis 2004, cette entreprise polonaise de salades de fruits gagne des parts de marché en ajoutant des additifs interdits dans ses produits et en employant des travailleuses nord-coréennes dans son usine de Czarnowice.
Depuis l’esplanade du centre-ville de Gubin, on ne voit qu’elle. L’ancienne usine de chaussures, qui employait plus de 2 000 personnes à la fin des années 1980, n’est aujourd’hui qu’un vaisseau fantôme promis à la démolition. Victime de la désindustrialisation qui a suivi la chute du mur de Berlin, cette cité de 15 000 âmes de l’extrême ouest de la Pologne vivote désormais grâce aux salons de coiffure bon marché et aux magasins de cigarettes fréquentés par les habitants de Gubin, la partie allemande de la ville-frontière. Beaucoup de Polonais font le chemin inverse et franchissent chaque jour le pont enjambant la rivière Neisse, gelée en cette mi-janvier, pour chercher du travail en Allemagne.
Gubin perd peu à peu ses forces vives, attirées par le pouvoir d’achat de l’autre rive, lassées aussi des cadences et des bas salaires imposés par les entreprises locales. A 8 kilomètres de là, à Czarnowice, Fructofresh a fait fuir bon nombre de ses salariés. En mai 2014, deux employées levaient le voile, dans l’hebdomadaire local Tygodniowa, sur la réalité de l’usine. Elles avaient touché 649 zlotys (150 euros) en un mois – le salaire de base avoisine les 400 euros en Pologne – et dénonçaient un véritable « camp de travail ».
L’entreprise de fabrication de salades de fruits et de jus de fruits frais est l’un des principaux fournisseurs du marché français grâce à deux intermédiaires, le groupe Pomona, premier distributeur français de produits alimentaires aux professionnels, et la société Bharlev, un fabricant de salades et jus de fruits frais qui complète sa production par de la marchandise en provenance de Fructofresh. Des chaînes hôtelières de l’envergure d’Accor et Hilton, des géants de la restauration collective comme Sodexo ou encore l’Assemblée nationale s’approvisionnent auprès de ces deux opérateurs français.
« Plus aucun Polonais ne veut rester »
Fructofresh, née en 2004, exporte vers l’Allemagne, la Belgique, le Danemark, la France, l’Irlande ou le Luxembourg et a reçu en 2008 le Prix de l’entreprise polonaise enregistrant la plus forte croissance de l’année. Neuf ans après, un double scandale menace d’entacher la réussite spectaculaire de cette entreprise familiale qui affirme avoir réalisé un chiffre d’affaires de plus de 10 millions d’euros en 2016 : la présence dans ses salades de fruits frais d’un additif alimentaire interdit, et l’emploi d’une main-d’œuvre nord-coréenne dans des conditions sociales indignes pour faire tourner l’unité de production de Czarnowice.
« Plus aucun Polonais ne veut rester là-bas, raconte sans ambages Ana, la serveuse du Retro, l’un des derniers restaurants encore debout à Gubin. Il n’y a plus que des Ukrainiens et beaucoup de Nord-Coréennes, qui travaillent dans des conditions proches de l’esclavage. » Des Nord-Coréennes recluses au cœur de l’Europe ? « Oui, il y a quelques semaines, j’ai croisé une dizaine d’entre elles, venues faire leurs courses au supermarché », affirme Ana.
A la sortie du hameau assoupi, où les façades des maisons rappellent que la région fut allemande avant d’intégrer la Pologne en 1945, l’usine étend sa longue silhouette blanche entre champs en friche et fermes isolées. Blanche comme la palissade métallique de 2 mètres de haut qui enclot la fabrique.
Des caméras de vidéosurveillance et un portique électronique près de l’entrée principale complètent l’allure de Fort Knox de ce fabricant de salades de fruits. Selon Dariusz, un ancien employé de Fructofresh qui a requis l’anonymat, sur les 150 personnes employées sur le site, près de 70 Ukrainiens (hommes et femmes) et près de 50 Nord-Coréennes sont affectés aux ateliers de découpe des fruits achetés dans le monde entier. Des manutentionnaires polonais complètent l’effectif, chargés de remplir les camions qui partent chaque jour à 16 heures vers l’Allemagne et livrent, le lendemain matin, le marché de Rungis.
Dans un baraquement à l’intérieur de l’usine
Travailleuses nord-coréennes de Fructofresh à Czarnowice (Pologne), vues de l’extérieur de l’usine.
La direction de Fructofresh a refusé d’ouvrir ses portes au Monde. Il a fallu patienter de longues heures, à l’abri des regards, pour observer les va-et-vient de cette main-d’œuvre qui embauche vers 6 heures du matin et travaille une douzaine d’heures par jour, un peu moins pendant les mois d’hiver, où l’activité ralentit… et plus encore lorsque la demande atteint son pic, en été.
Les Nord-Coréennes ont moins de 100 mètres à parcourir pour rejoindre leur dortoir. Elles vivent confinées dans un baraquement, à l’intérieur de l’usine. « Lorsqu’elles ont intégré Fructofresh, en janvier 2015, il a fallu louer un hôtel à Gubin pour les loger, le temps de faire construire un dortoir dans l’usine, explique Dariusz. Mais ça coûtait de l’argent et les allers-retours en ville prenaient du temps. Désormais, la direction les a sous la main et peut les faire travailler à tout moment. »
Travailleuses nord-coréennes de l’usine Fructofresh rejoignant leur baraquement à Czarnowice (Pologne). Visible au premier plan, un vigile intervient pour faire cesser le travail du photographe.
A la tombée du jour, alors que quelques employés regagnent en bus Gubin et les villages environnants, des grappes de Nord-Coréennes convergent vers le bâtiment neuf construit à l’extrémité des hangars. Elles sont systématiquement escortées par une « surveillante », car le groupe n’a pas d’accès direct au baraquement. Il doit sortir de l’enceinte de l’usine puis longer la route sur 100 mètres et franchir le tourniquet électronique contrôlé par un vigile. Quelques secondes durant, les « invisibles » prennent forme humaine, avant de disparaître à nouveau derrière la haute palissade. La construction d’un nouveau bâtiment est prévue cette année, pour accueillir cette fois le personnel qui gère la production.
« Ce sont les Nord-Coréennes qui travaillent le mieux ; elles sont très disciplinées, très motivées, très organisées », dit le directeur général de Fructofresh
A la réception d’un modeste hôtel, à la sortie de Gubin, on confirme les avoir logées pendant sept mois. « Tout a été fait légalement. Les autorisations étaient en ordre, les gardes-frontières venaient contrôler leurs papiers », assure-t-on sur place. Pour autant, ces travailleuses, liées à Fructofresh jusqu’en 2018, ne jouissent d’aucune liberté de mouvement. Elles sont placées sous surveillance constante d’« anges gardiennes » nord-coréennes et, selon plusieurs témoignages, privées de leur passeport.
Le leader polonais de la salade de fruits frais se montre peu loquace sur ce point. « La question du passeport relève de la compétence de l’employeur de ces salariées, ce que nous ne sommes pas, élude Anna Suchowacka, la directrice des ventes de Fructofresh. Ces personnes sont employées par plusieurs sociétés auxquelles nous faisons appel dans le cadre de contrats de sous-traitance. »
Cezary Zwoinski, le directeur général de Fructofresh, rencontré à Paris mardi 24 janvier, assume : « Ce sont les Nord-Coréennes qui travaillent le mieux ; elles sont très disciplinées, très motivées, très organisées. » Dariusz avance un deuxième argument : « Lorsque la direction s’est tournée vers une agence de placement pour renforcer son effectif, cette dernière lui a conseillé de choisir des Nord-Coréennes. Des Indiens ou d’autres nationalités auraient peut-être cherché à fuir, la frontière est très proche, a expliqué l’agence. Pas les Nord-Coréennes », dont le moindre faux pas mettrait en péril leur famille restée au pays.
Près de 50 000 ressortissants nord-coréens à l’étranger
La politique d’envoi de travailleurs nord-coréens à l’étranger s’est développée après le décès, fin 2011, de Kim Jong-il. Sous le « règne » de son fils Kim Jong-un, l’armée populaire de Corée a multiplié les tirs de missile et procédé à trois essais nucléaires. Le pays subit en retour de nouvelles sanctions. « Kim Jong-un devait trouver des alternatives pour obtenir des devises, qui se faisaient rares », analyse Remco Breuker, titulaire de la chaire d’études coréennes à l’université de Leyde (Pays-Bas), qui a coordonné en 2016 une analyse sur la main-d’œuvre nord-coréenne en Europe, « Slaves to the system ».
Cité dans cette étude, un Nord-Coréen témoigne qu’une des conditions pour travailler à l’étranger est d’être marié et d’avoir des enfants restés au pays, afin d’éviter la tentation de faire défection. Il confie ne pas avoir eu connaissance du salaire payé par l’employeur européen. « Ils ne nous laissent jamais savoir combien nous sommes censés gagner et combien ils ponctionnent pour les charges, dit-il encore. C’est pourquoi aucun de nous ne sait à quel point nous sommes exploités. »
Cette migration est connue des instances internationales. D’après un rapport rendu public à l’automne 2015 par Marzuki Darusman, le rapporteur spécial des Nations unies sur les droits de l’homme en Corée du Nord, près de 50 000 ressortissants nord-coréens travailleraient à l’étranger, principalement dans le secteur des mines, du textile et de la construction. La majeure partie d’entre eux exerceraient en Chine et en Russie, mais le phénomène gagnerait plusieurs pays d’Afrique et d’Asie, la région du golfe Arabo-Persique, et la Pologne. Les relations entre Varsovie et Pyongyang datent de l’époque soviétique.
En 2013, l’édition polonaise de Newsweek avait déjà mis en lumière la présence d’employés nord-coréens dans les serres de tomates d’une société agricole, à 25 kilomètres de Varsovie. Un an plus tard, la mort d’un travailleur sur un chantier naval proche de Gdynia, port de la mer Baltique, relançait le dossier. Chon Kyongsu faisait de la soudure lorsque ses habits, inadaptés, prirent feu. L’inspection du travail avait pourtant établi une année plus tôt que 29 ouvriers nord-coréens œuvraient illégalement. Leurs permis de travail ne précisaient pas qu’ils opéraient sur les chantiers navals mais plutôt qu’ils étaient employés par une société intermédiaire, Armex, elle-même en contact avec un conglomérat d’état nord-coréen, Rungrado Trading.
Prélèvement de 70 % du salaire
La députée européenne Kati Piri, travailliste néerlandaise, a demandé à la Commission européenne d’engager une procédure contre la Pologne pour infraction aux traités garantissant les droits les plus basiques des travailleurs. L’article 20 de la convention du Conseil de l’Europe contre la traite des êtres humains – signée à Varsovie en 2005 et ratifiée par la Pologne en 2008 – qualifie de « traite » le fait de retenir les documents d’identité d’un individu. « Quel membre de l’Union européenne sommes-nous pour faire venir des esclaves d’un régime totalitaire ? », s’indigne un habitant de Gubin qui craint de s’exprimer à visage découvert.
Les conditions d’arrivée des Nord-Coréennes de Czarnowice sont difficiles à éclaircir. Y compris pour leurs collègues. « On ne se parle pas trop, car on ne se comprend pas », confie Marina, une ouvrière ukrainienne. « Nous ne sommes pas employeurs de ces salariés. Néanmoins, nous nous sommes assurés que cette main-d’œuvre est employée en conformité avec le droit du travail », se défausse Anna Suchowacka.
Selon le chercheur néerlandais Remco Breuker, les ouvriers nord-coréens ne sont pas emmenés de force en Europe, ils sont volontaires. Même après le prélèvement de 70 % de leur salaire par la compagnie qui sert d’intermédiaire avec Pyongyang, celui-ci reste un revenu précieux pour leur famille. Et, dans un cadre extrêmement surveillé, cette expatriation est souvent la seule occasion de sortir du pays et de voir de leurs propres yeux l’opulence du monde extérieur.
Un vélo à Noël
« On ne peut pas tolérer le travail forcé au sein de l’UE. Nous devons nous assurer que les valeurs européennes les plus fondamentales soient respectées », fait valoir Kati Piri.Même indignation du côté de la Commission européenne. « Nous condamnons fermement toute forme de travail forcé, renchérit Christian Wigand, le porte-parole de Bruxelles pour l’emploi et les affaires sociales. Mais c’est aux Etats membres de décider à qui et selon quelles conditions les permis de travail sont accordés. »
En France, où Fructofresh réalise 40 % de son activité, ses deux principaux clients, Pomona et Bharlev, assurent ne rien savoir de l’existence de cette main-d’œuvre. « Pomona a signé un contrat avec ce fournisseur polonais dans lequel il s’engage explicitement à respecter les conditions d’ordre général en matière de travail en Europe, et au minimum la déclaration de l’Organisation internationale du travail, réagit Jean-Brice Hernu, directeur de TerreAzur, la filiale de Pomona centrée sur les produits frais. S’il était avéré que ce n’est pas le cas, ça remettrait naturellement en cause la relation commerciale que nous avons avec lui. » « Nous diligentons cette semaine un audit social de cette usine », annonce Jean-Brice Hernu.
La Pologne a annoncé en juin 2016 avoir cessé de délivrer de nouveaux visas aux travailleurs nord-coréens. A en croire le patron de Fructofresh, Cezary Zwoinski, ses travailleuses nord-coréennes ne font l’objet d’aucune surveillance particulière. Il se targue d’avoir organisé pour elles une excursion touristique et même offert à certaines un vélo à Noël, photos à l’appui. Si toutefois cette filière nord-coréenne venait à se tarir à Czarnowice, l’homme a déjà des alternatives en tête – le Bangladesh et le Népal, par exemple. « Nous réfléchissons à l’avenir », dit-il.
Pierre Douillard-Lefevre - Violences policières : « L’objectif n’est plus de repousser un groupe, mais de blesser des individus »
►http://www.lesinrocks.com/2016/05/29/actualite/violences-policieres-lobjectif-nest-plus-de-repousser-groupe-de-blesser-
Depuis le début des mobilisations contre la “loi travail”, la répression contre les manifestants s’accentue, et les blessés se multiplient. Pour Pierre Douillard-Lefevre, auteur de L’Arme à l’œil, ces violences sont le fruit d’une “militarisation de la police”. Entretien.
La militarisation du maintien de l’ordre est le processus par lequel on a introduit des armes de plus en plus dangereuses dans les mains des policiers. Il y a aujourd’hui un effacement de la limite entre opérations militaires de “maintien de la paix” à l’étranger et opérations policières de “maintien de l’ordre” à l’intérieur de nos frontières. Cela s’illustre aussi bien dans le lexique de la police – on parle de “neutraliser des cibles”, “d’adversaires” – que dans ses pratiques – utilisation de drone, d’hélicoptères, quadrillage de l’espace, opérations de grande envergure sur les ZAD.
Des soudeurs nord-coréens exploités dans les chantiers navals polonais
▻http://www.lemarin.fr/secteurs-activites/chantiers-navals/25371-des-soudeurs-nord-coreens-exploites-dans-les-chantiers
La mort accidentelle d’un soudeur dans le chantier naval Crist à Gdansk a mis au grand jour l’existence d’un discret réseau de travailleurs détachés nord-coréens dans deux des plus importants chantiers de construction et de réparation navales polonais. Crist, comme son voisin Nauta, à Gdynia, sont connus pour être les principaux sous-traitants des chantiers navals d’Europe de l’ouest en raison de prix très compétitifs. Avec des ouvriers coréens rémunérés entre 70 et 140 euros par mois, on comprend pourquoi.
L’enquête menée en Pologne par l’équipe allemande du magazine Vice (voir la vidéo ci dessous, en allemand sous-titrage en anglais) décrit un système bien huilé qui dure depuis plusieurs années. Ces #travailleurs_détachés sont rémunérés par la société polonaise Armex qui a commencé à recruter des ouvriers nord-coréens en 2011 pour les louer à des chantiers navals. Les salaires sont directement reversés à la Corée du Nord, les ouvriers vivant en vase clos avec interdiction de tout contact avec le monde extérieur.
Pendant que le Polonais est plombier détaché en Europe de l’Ouest, le Nord-Coréen est « détaché » (et, apparemment, un peu beaucoup attaché) comme soudeur en Pologne.
Intéressants les sujets traités, et les angles choisis, par ce site :-)
Le Marin est un excellent hebdomadaire spécialisé que j’ai cité assez souvent ces derniers temps. Il fait partie du groupe Ouest-France.
Ironie du sort, c’est dans ces anciens chantiers de Gdynia et de Gdansk qu’est né le syndicat polonais Solidarnosk, à l’origine de la chute du régime communiste polonais.
On comprend maintenant à qui profite la chute du régime communiste polonais .
La corée du nord offre des conditions particulièrement avantageuses (pour les exploiteurs), mais d’autres pays et secteurs professionnels sont également connus pour ce type d’activité illégale. Voici un exemple du transport routier :
▻http://www.trucker.de/kabotage-macht-fahrer-zu-asphaltnomaden-1362671.html
2012 fiel das lettische Unternehmen Dinotrans auf, weil es philippinische Fahrer zu einem Monatslohn von 600 Euro beschäftigte.
Des camionneurs philippins qui travaillent 60 heures et plus par semaine pour un salaire mensuel de 600 Euros ...
#exploitation #transport #Europe #camionneurs #Pologne #Lettonie #Philippines
Kyiv, Separatists Report Armored Clash Despite Cease-Fire
▻http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-army-separatists-armored-clash/27181238.html
Vladyslav Seleznyov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff, said on August 10 that Ukrainian forces had managed to maintain control over the town of Starohnativka after a separatist attack.
Starohnativka is located about halfway between separatist-held Donetsk and Kyiv-controlled Mariupol.
Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, told reporters in Kyiv that up to 400 separatists supported by 10 tanks and 10 armored personnel carriers and other vehicles attacked Ukrainian positions overnight.
According to Lysenko, “the enemy suffered significant losses in personnel and equipment.”
Meanwhile, the de facto defense minister of the separatist Donetsk People Republic, Eduard Basurin, says forces under his command stopped an attempt by Ukrainian forces to advance in the same area on August 10.
According to Basurin, Ukrainian forces lost two tanks, one armored personnel carrier, and a military truck with a missile on it.
(UNIAN and Interfax reporting)
***********************************************
Ukraine reports heavy tank battle with pro-Russians rebels | World | Dunya News
▻http://dunyanews.tv/index.php/en/World/292759-Ukraine-reports-heavy-tank-battle-with-proRussian
President Petro Poroshenko said about “200 insurgents used tanks to storm” Novolaspa — a village halfway between the separatists de facto capital Donetsk and the Kiev-held port of Mariupol — in a pre-dawn raid that caught government soldiers off guard.
Chief of Staff General Viktor Muzhenko “informed the president that the Ukrainian forces gave a fitting rebuff and repelled all the attacks,” the presidency said.
But the defence ministry later reported the insurgents mounting a second attack on the same village whose outcome was not immediately clear.
“Ignoring the truce agreements, our enemies are continuing to stage provocations that are meant to escalate the conflict,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry called the clashes “a dangerous indication of a further escalation to come”.
But the rebels denied the push and signalled that they had always had militia units stationed in Novolaspa.
“The armed forces of Ukraine simply put the village under a heavy shelling attack,” a local separatist official told the rebels main news site.
“Novolaspa remains under the control of the People s Republic of Donetsk.”
(AFP reporting)
**************************************************
énième prémisse de la grande offensive russe <strike>de printemps</strike> d’été <strike>d’automne</strike>
Novolaspa et Starohnativka sont voisines (moins de 10 km)
Un patron canadien du secteur minier retrouvé mort en #Mongolie | Asie & Océanie
▻http://www.lapresse.ca/international/asie-oceanie/201504/24/01-4864009-un-patron-canadien-du-secteur-minier-retrouve-mort-en-mongolie.p
Un dirigeant canadien d’entreprise minière, arrivé à Oulan-Bator pour tenter de récupérer plus de 100 millions de dollars de compensation obtenus en justice contre le gouvernement mongol, a été retrouvé mort dans sa chambre d’hôtel, ont annoncé vendredi les autorités.
Jim Doak était le président de #Khan_Resources, une société minière cotée à Toronto dont les licences d’exploitation en Mongolie avaient été annulées par le gouvernement d’Oulan-Bator en 2009.
Le site de la mine d’#uranium de Dornod, initialement dévolu à Khan Resources avant l’annulation de ses licences, est aujourd’hui exploité par l’entreprise d’État russe #ARMZ Uranium Holding Co.
Le litige qui s’en est suivi est l’un de ceux qui ont mis aux prises le gouvernement mongol avec des compagnies minières internationales, au prix d’une nette dégradation de l’image du pays —immensément riche en ressources minérales— et d’une chute des investissements étrangers.
Le mois dernier, un arbitrage rendu par un tribunal de Paris avait attribué 103,8 millions de dollars de compensation à Khan Resources, aux dépens du gouvernement mongol.
Jim Doak, âgé de 59 ans, était arrivé dimanche à Oulan-Bator pour évoquer l’arbitrage. La police a indiqué qu’il a été retrouvé mort mardi dans sa chambre d’hôtel.
L’hypothèse d’un meurtre est écartée, selon un porte-parole de la police, assurant que de premiers examens ne montraient aucun signe visible de traumatisme.
Ouf ! si le meurtre est exclu, ce ne peut donc qu’être une sombre machination de l’intéressé pour ternir l’image de la Mongolie.
Mongolia to rescind $100m payment to Khan Resources | MINING.com
▻http://www.mining.com/mongolia-to-rescind-100m-payment-to-khan-resources
Barely three days after Canada’s Khan Resources (TSE:KRI) chairman, Jim Doak, was found dead in a hotel in Mongolia, the country’s ministry of justice revealed it would try to annul a $100 million arbitration claim awarded to the miner last month, FT.com reports.
Doak (59), who appeared as an analyst on business channel BNN, had travelled to Ulaanbaatar to negotiate the terms of the payment granted to his company for the expropriation of the Dornod uranium project back in 2009.
Doak told a Globe and Mail reporter his company had hired an unnamed firm that specialized in collecting delinquent government debts by seizing assets, such as airplanes or ships temporarily located outside the country.
The Toronto-based firm halted negotiations Thursday, after not reaching any agreement with Mongolian officials. Hours later, it learned of the death of its chairman and said, while police did not find any indication of foul play, it would wait for a full autopsy report to be released this week to comment further.
Khan Resources had sought $326 million in compensation for having its mining licenses cancelled by Mongolia and given to Russian producer ARMZ, but the tribunal lowered the payout to $100 million, including interest and costs, based on previous offers made for the asset.
Bizarrement, son entreprise n’a pas l’air d’avaler l’hypothèse de la police…
La concession minière est située à l’endroit exact où se déroule quelques uns des violents événements de Yeruldelgger 2.
Et le siège de l’une des deux sociétés russes à Krasnokamensk, ville de l’uranium en Transbaïkalie (Sibérie) et autre lieu où se déroulent pas mal de choses. Et où fût détenu M. Khodorkovsky (également longuement commenté dans le bouquin).
pour mémoire : ▻http://www.khanresources.com
(avec les pièces du contentieux de leur point de vue)
Il-76 abattu à Luhansk, le procureur militaire d’Ukraine ouvre des poursuites contre des responsables militaires et la direction de « l’opération anti-terroriste ».
Military prosecutor’s office opens case against army officials due to downed aircraft near Luhansk
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/military-prosecutors-office-opens-case-against-army-officials-due-to-downe
The main department for supervision over the observance of laws in the military sphere of the Prosecutor General’s Office has launched criminal proceedings against officials of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the operational headquarters for the management of the anti-terrorist operation of the SBU Anti-Terrorist Center due to the downing of an Il-76 aircraft near Luhansk, in which 49 servicemen were killed.
[DCSS] Do Gargoyles have any downside?
▻http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/1lb055/dcss_do_gargoyles_have_any_downside
They have amazing inherent resistances (including TORMENT), AC that scales (even though they can still wear armour), slow metabolism, oh, and they get permaflight at level 14. Not to mention their claws, fangs, and good aptitudes in Unarmed Combat, Armour and Earth Magic. Where’s the balance, or is there none and the devs made them to make a good race for new players? Please enlighten me. submitted by DesertDM [link] [7 (...)
[DCSS] So your MiFi finds Haste spell early. What would you sacrifice to get that castable earlier?
▻http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/1joqf8/dcss_so_your_mifi_finds_haste_spell_early_what
For example, stick with trident rather than trying to get min delay on a heavier weapon. And wear a lighter armour like Ring Mail, and go for a balance between AC and Evasion rather than a pure armour build. Goes without saying that you choose Int every time you gain a level (I do that regardless on almost everyone other than Be’s). At what point, after min delay on trident, would you stop putting points into Fighting, Dodging & Armour and start trying to build up Charms? You’ll (...)
The Humiliation of Bradley Manning
by RAY MCGOVERN
It is a bitter irony that Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, whose conscience compelled him to leak evidence about the U.S. military brass ignoring evidence of torture in Iraq, was himself the victim of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment while other military officers privately took note but did nothing.
That was one of the revelations at Manning’s pre-trial hearing at Ft. Meade, Maryland, on Tuesday, as Manning’s defense counsel David Coombs used e-mail exchanges to show Marine officers grousing that the Marines had been left holding the bag on Manning’s detention at their base in Quantico, Virginia, though he was an Army soldier.
At Quantico, Manning, who is accused of giving hundreds of thousands of pages of classified material to WikiLeaks, was subjected to harsh treatment. He was locked in a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell for 23 hours a day and was kept naked for long periods. His incarceration led the UN Rapporteur for Torture to complain that Manning was being subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
According to the e-mail evidence, the controversy over the rough handling of Manning prompted Quantico commander, Marine Col. Daniel Choike, to complain bitterly that not one Army officer was in the chain of blame. Choike’s lament prompted an e-mail reply from his commander, Lt. Gen. George Flynn, offering assurances that Choike and Quantico would not be left “holding the bag.”
However, concerns about possible repercussions from softening up Manning did little to ease the conditions that Manning faced. His Marine captors seemed eager to give him the business and make him an example to any other prospective whistleblowers. Only after a sustained public outcry was Manning transferred to the Army prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Though his treatment was less harsh there, Manning still has faced 2 ½ years of incarceration without trial and could face up to life imprisonment after a court martial into his act of conscience, i.e., releasing extensive evidence of wrongdoing by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan and questionable foreign policies carried out by the U.S. State Department.
The release of the documents led to hundreds of news stories, including some that revealed the willful inaction of U.S. military brass when informed of torture inflicted on Iraqi prisoners held by the U.S.-backed Iraqi military.
Manning’s Conscience
As a young intelligence analyst in Iraq, Pvt. Manning grew disgusted with evidence passing through his computer terminal revealing the secretive dark side of the U.S. military occupation, including this pattern of high-level disinterest in Iraqi-on-Iraqi torture, which resulted from a directive known as Frago 242, guidelines from senior Pentagon officials not to interfere with abusive treatment of Iraqi government detainees.
As the UK Guardian reported in 2010 based on the leaked documents, Frago 242 was a “fragmentary order” summarizing a complex requirement, in this case, one issued in June 2004 ordering American troops not to investigate torture violations unless they involved members of the occupying coalition led by the United States.
When alleged abuse was inflicted by Iraqis on Iraqis, “only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ,” the Guardian reported, adding: “Frago 242 appears to have been issued as part of the wider political effort to pass the management of security from the coalition to Iraqi hands. In effect, it means that the [Iraqi] regime has been forced to change its political constitution but allowed to retain its use of torture.”
Some cases of torture were flagrant, according to the disregarded “initial” reports. For instance, the Guardian cited a log report of “a man who was detained by Iraqi soldiers in an underground bunker [and] reported that he had been subjected to the notoriously painful strappado position: with his hands tied behind his back, he was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists.
“The soldiers had then whipped him with plastic piping and used electric drills on him. The log records that the man was treated by US medics; the paperwork was sent through the necessary channels; but yet again, no investigation was required. …
“Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim – bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated – who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts, or chains.
“At the torturer’s whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers, or boiling water – and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required.
“Most of the victims are young men, but there are also logs which record serious and sexual assaults on women; on young people, including a boy of 16 who was hung from the ceiling and beaten; the old and vulnerable, including a disabled man whose damaged leg was deliberately attacked. The logs identify perpetrators from every corner of the Iraqi security apparatus – soldiers, police officers, prison guards, border enforcement patrols.
“There is no question of the coalition forces not knowing that their Iraqi comrades are doing this: the leaked war logs are the internal records of those forces. There is no question of the allegations all being false. Some clearly are, but most are supported by medical evidence and some involve incidents that were witnessed directly by coalition forces.”
Possessing such evidence – and knowing that the U.S. high command was systematically ignoring these and other crimes – Manning was driven by a sense of morality to get the evidence to the American people and to the world.
Punishing Morality
For his act of conscience, Manning has become the subject of harsh incarceration himself, as some U.S. pundits and even members of Congress have called for his execution as a traitor. At minimum, however, he has been made an example to anyone else tempted to tell hard truths.
Many in Official Washington find nothing wrong with humiliating Manning with forced nudity and breaking down his psychiatric health through prolonged isolation. After all, they say, his release of classified information might have put the lives of some U.S. allies at risk (although there is no known evidence to support that concern).
There also are legal constraints upon the United States dishing out particularly nasty treatment to Pvt. Manning. Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners is expressly banned by the UN Convention Against Torture, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the Senate in 1994.
And there are no exceptions for “wartime” whistleblowers like Manning. Here’s what the Convention says: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture” and “an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture” (Art. 2 (2-3)).”
Personally, when I attended the Tuesday proceeding, I dreaded sitting through another “pre-trial hearing,” having been bored stiff at earlier sessions. But it was a welcome surprise to witness first-hand proof that military courts can still hold orderly proceedings bereft (on Tuesday, at least) of “command influence.”
Most illuminating at Tuesday’s hearing was the central fact that the virtually indestructible nature of e-mail facilitates the kind of documentary evidence that lawyers lust after – whether they be attorneys, FBI investigators or just plain folks fed up with lies and faux history.
To the Marine Corps’ credit, I suppose, there was no evidence at the hearing that anyone had tried to expunge the e-mail correspondence revealing the fears about being left “holding the bag” on the harsh treatment of Manning.
E-Mail vs. Petraeus
So the availability of e-mail is the major new reality playing out in several major ways. As we have seen, former Gen. David Petraeus is a notable recent victim of the truth that can turn up in e-mail.
I used to call him “Petraeus ex Machina” for the faux-success of the celebrated “surge” in Iraq, which cost almost 1,000 additional U.S. troops dead (and many more Iraqis) to buy a “decent interval” for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to get out of town without a clear-cut military defeat hung around their necks.
As it turned out, “Petraeus ex Machina,” after a little more than a year as CIA director, was undone in a sex scandal exposed by the modern “machine” of e-mail.
More to the point, the torrent of e-mail and the “Collateral Murder” video that Manning now acknowledges giving to WikiLeaks as a matter of conscience were, of course, highly illuminating to students of real history. And the e-mails (and State Department cables) also were rather unflattering regarding the aims of U.S. policy and military actions around the globe.
So how did the White House, the State Department and military brass respond? There was a strongly felt need to make an object lesson of Bradley Manning to show what happens to people whose conscience prompts them to expose deceit and serious wrongdoing, especially through official documents that can’t be denied or spun.
In Manning’s case, he was delivered to the Marines, famous for their hard-headed determination to follow orders and to get the job done. So, his jailers took Manning’s clothes away and made him stand naked, supposedly out of concern that otherwise he might be “a risk to himself.” To further “protect” him, he was kept in a 23-hour lockdown in a tiny cell.
The treatment of Manning at Quantico was too much for State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley, a 26-year Air Force veteran and former colonel. Crowley was of the old school on the treatment of prisoners; his father, a B-17 pilot spent two years in a German POW camp.
On March 10, 2011, Crowley went public, telling an audience that Manning was being “mistreated” by the Defense Department; Crowley branded Manning’s treatment “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”
Three days later, Crowley resigned with this parting shot: “The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.”
At Ft. Meade, the pre-trial hearings are continuing, including testimony about how the advice of health professionals regarding Manning was disregarded by the Marine officers and his jailers at Quantico. Later this week, Manning himself is expected to take the stand.
Again, the fair and orderly manner in which Tuesday’s hearing was conducted was a reassuring sign that not everyone is prepared to cave before “command influence.” The judge, Col. Denise Lind, upon whom all depends, listened attentively and asked several good questions at the end.
Let’s hope the kangaroos can be kept at bay.
►http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/29/the-humiliation-of-bradley-manning
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early 60s, and then served for 27 years as a CIA analyst. He also serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
#Cancer Culture - S. Lochlann Jain
►https://anthropology.stanford.edu/people/lochlann-s-jain
Usually cancer is studied as a distinct, finite, disease that some unfortunate people get. Nevertheless, over half of all Americans will be diagnosed with an invasive cancer. In this book, based in extensive analysis of the history, politics, and science of cancer, as well as years of fieldwork, I examine the ways that cancer is not separate from, but is central to medical, political, and social economies.
lire en particulier “Be Prepared” et “Cancer Butch”
▻https://anthropology.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/jain.beprepared.pdf
Did my mind declare war on my body ?
J’ai passé un peu de temps pour mettre le pdf en texte ici (en OCR car ce sont des images du livre de mauvaise qualité), de manière à ce qu’il puisse être lu par les non anglophones. J’ai corrigé les premières pages, si j’ai le courage je ferais la suite au fur et à mesure.
Dans tous les cas, ce texte méritait d’être diffusé, j’espère que l’auteur sera d’accord.
I don’t blame people for not knowing how to engage with a person with cancer.
How would they? Heck, I hadn’t either. Despite the fact that each
year 70,000 Americans between the ages of fifteen and forty are diagnosed
with the disease and that incidence in this age group has doubled in the last
thirty years, many of my friends in their thirties have never had to deal with
it on a personal level.
I remember when my cousin Elise was undergoing chemotherapy treatment while in her early thirties. When I met her I couldn’t even mention it,
couldn’t (or wouldn’t, or didn’t) say that I was sorry or ask her how it was
going---even though it was so obviously the thing that was going on. I was
thirty-five for God’s sake, a grown—up, a professional, a parent, and cancer
was so unthinkable that I couldn’t even acknowledge her disease. When my
former partner’s sister showed up at our house all bald after her chemotherapy, my only remark was, “Hey, you could totally be a lesbian.” I was terrified,
or in denial. More likely I had picked up the culture of stigma and this disabled me from giving genuine acknowledgment. But whatever sympathetic spin you want to put on it, I sucked in all the ways that I had to learn how to deal with later. Indeed, an assumption of exceptionalism was only the flip side of my own shame.
Fantasies of agency steep both sides of diagnosis. On the “previvor” side,
images continually tell us that cancer can be avoided if you eat right, avoid
Teflon and smoking, and come from strong stock. Alternatively, tropes of
hope, survivorship, battling, and positive attitude are fed to people post-
diagnosis as if they were at the helm of a ship in known waters, not along
stormy and uncharted shores. And yet, so little of cancer science, patient
experience, or survival statistics seems to provide backing for the ubiquitous
calls for hope in the popular culture of cancer. After all, who would celebrate
a survivor who did not stand amid at least a few poor SOBs who fell?
Everyone who has "battled,” “been touched by,” “survived,” been “made
into a shadow of a former self,” or has been called to inhabit the myriad can-
170
car cliches has been asked to live in a caricature. As poets say in rendering
their craft, clichés serve to shut down meaning. Clichés allow us not to think
about What we are describing or hearing about: we know roses are red. People
with cancer are called to live in and through—even if recalcitrantly—these
hegemonic clichés by news articles, TV shows, detection campaigns, patient
pamphlets, high—tech protocol—driven treatments, hospital organizations and
smells, and everyday social interactions. Such cultural venues as marches
for hope, research funding and direction, pharmaceutical interests, survivor
rhetoric, and hospital ads constitute not distinct cultural phenomena, but
overlap to form a broader hegemony of ways that cancer is talked about and
that in turn control and diminish the ways that cancer culture can be inhab-
ited and spoken about. Cancer exceeds the biology of multiplying cells. But
the paradoxes of cancer culture can also be used to reflect on broader Ameri—
can understandings of health and the mismatch of normative assumptions
with the ways people actually live and die. "lhe restricted languages of cancer
are not innocent.
For an example of how individuated agency is used in cancer, one might
look to the massive literature and movement spurred by Bernard Siegel,
which is based in the moral complex of cancer and what he describes as the
“exceptional patient.” In Love, Medicine, and Miracles: Lessons Learned about
Self—Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients, Siegel
writes about having the right attitude to survive cancer(1). In Siegel’s View and
its variants, surviving cancer becomes a moral calling, as if dying indicates
some personal failure. Siegel—style literature offers another form of torture
to people with cancer: Did my mind declare war on my body? Am I a cold,
repressed person? (Okay, don’t answer that.) This huge and punishing industry preys on fear as much as any in the cancer complex and adds guilt to the mix.
As one woman with metastatic colon cancer said on a retreat I attended,
“Maybe I haven’t laughed enough. But then I looked around the room and
some of you laugh a lot more than I do and you’re still here.” She died a year
later, though she laughed plenty at the retreat.
It’s no wonder that shame is such a common response to diagnosis. The
dictionary helps with a description of shame: “The painful emotion arising
from the consciousness of something dishonoring, ridiculous, or indecorous in one’s own conduct or circumstances, or of being in a situation which
offends one’s sense of modesty or decency.(2)” Indeed, cancer does offend. People in treatment are often advised to wear wigs and other disguises, to joke
with colleagues; they are given tips on how to make others feel more at ease.
One does want to present decency, to seem upbeat. And so do others. A quick
171
“you look good,” with a response of “oh, thanks,” offers a Welcome segue to
the next discussion topic and enables a certain propriety to circumscribe the
confusion of proper responses to illness, to the stigma embodied by the possibility of a short life and a painful death. One person with metastatic disease
calls herself, semi-facetiously, “everyone’s worst nightmare.” Others Speak
about how hard it is to see the celebration of survivors while knowing that
they themselves are being killed by the disease.
Social grace is a good thing. But given the scope of the disease --- half of all
Americans die of it and many more go through treatment --- one might wonder what or whom such an astonishing cultural oversight serves. After all how can cancer, a predictable result of an environment drowning in indus:
trial and military toxicity, be dishonoring or indecorous ? I don’t mean its
side effects; the physical breakdown of the body is perhaps definitive of the
word “indecorousf” But these pre- and post-diagnosis calls to disavowal can
help illuminate the ugly underside of American’s constant will to health, its
normative assumptions about health and the social) individual, and generational traumas that it propagates. Expectations and assumptions about life span and their discriminatory and generational effects offer but one of many venues for such an exploration.
Survivorship in America
Perhaps it’s a class issue, but I didn’t really think about survival until I was
called to consider being in the position of the one who might be survived.
I was just tootling along until I was invited by diagnosis to inhabit this category, to attend retreats, camps, and support groups, to share an infusion
room—to do all kinds of things with many people who have not, in fact,
survived cancer—and thus to survive them at their memorial services, the
garage sales of their things> and in the constructing and reading of memorial
Websites and obituaries.
To be sure, cancer survivorship (as opposed to either cancer death or
just plain survival) comes with its benefits. I got a free kayak, albeit with a
leak. When things are going really wrong I think about how my life insur-
ance could pay for some cool things for my kids, or that maybe I don’t have
to worry about saving for a down payment since in order for a home to be
, a good investment you should really plan to live in it for five years. Some-
times,when you find yourself buying into those cancer mantras of living in
the moment, you can look around from a superior place at all the people
scurrying around on projects you have determined do not matter—and then
172
go and do the laundry or shop for groceries, just like everyone else. Or like
Bette Davis does in the movie Dark Victory as she dies of a brain tumor; you
can consider yourself the lucky one, not having to survive the deaths of those
You love. You have that strange privilege of being able to hold the materiality
of your own mortality up against every attempt to make value stick. You may
Wonder, as I do, how anyone survives the death of a parent or a sibling or a
close friend or lover—the things that are purportedly normal life events—
until you go through it yourself.3
On the other hand, it may be easy to devolve into the narcissism of unremitting fear.
I like to keep in mind what a driver once told me when I asked
him what it was like to drive celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey around New
York He said, “They like to think they are important. But after every funeral
I’ve been to, people do the saaaaame thing. They eat.”
The doctor survives the clinical trial, the child survives the parent, the
well survive the sick But how have we come to take this survivorship for
granted, as something to which we are entitled? Even a century or two ago
there would have been a good chance that several of us would have died in
childbirth or of some illness. Devastating as it may have been, we would have
expected this. And we don’t exactly live in a medical nirvana. The United
States is not even in the top ten for the longevity of its population. In fact, the
United States is missing from the top twenty or even thirty for longevity in
the world. In some studies, it’s not even in the top forty.4 Despite this statistic,
the United States spends more than any other nation on health care. Part of
Americans’ dismal life expectancy results from the broad lack of access to
health care as well as the broader and well-documented discrimination in
health care against the usual suspects: African Americans, women, younger
people, and queers. But other factors that afiect even those with excellent
access to excellent care play in as well: the high levels of toxins in the environment, including those in human and animal bodies; cigarettes; guns; little
oversight for food, automobile, and other product safety; high rates of medical error.
In short, despite the insistent rhetoric of health, American economies
simply do not prioritize it. That’s okay. There is no particular reason that the
general health of a population should trump all other concerns. But given the
evidence, how do we come to believe this disconnect between dismal health
status in the United States and the entitlement to normative health and life
span? What kind of management has this necessary disavowal required? And
what about the obverse of this question: how do these stories constitute those
who are forced to drop out? After all, if survival is a moral and financial
173
Figure 13.1: The 2006 “Put Your Lance Face On” campaign from American Century
Investments. This version of the promotional photo omits the warning, required in print
advertisement publications, that it is possible to lose money by investing (included in the
original).
expectation and entitlement, then mortality must be constituted as something outside of normal life, even though these early deaths pay for pension:
and other deferred payments. Even though everyone will die. I hypothesize
that stigma and shame offer a way to examine and challenge ideals of health
and the Ways that normative life spans have been constructed.
Accumulation
For analytical wealth in this matter, nothing beats a recent advertisement for
American Century Investments that featured Lance Armstrong (figure 13.1).
Armstrong has provided something of a translational figure for the nexus
of industry, cancer, and humanitarianism that constitutes the discourses of
cancer survivorship, foregrounding and even heroizing cancer survivors. His
own story relentlessly underpins this cultural work.
174
While some accounts of Armstrong’s success go so far as to credit chemotherapy for literally rebuilding his body as a cycling machine, and others link his drive and success to his cancer experience, Armstrong continually presents himself in public as a survivor, claiming that his greatest success and pride is having survived cancer. In his autobiography, It’s Not About the Bike, Armstrong describes how, when diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996,
he actively sought the best care available to overcome a poor prognosis. He
chose a doctor Who offered a then-new treatment that turned out to revolutionize the treatment for testicular cancer, turning the disease from a highrisk cancer to a largely curable one even in its metastatic iteration. This coincidence in the timing of his disease and this new treatment has enabled him to make his own agency in finding medical care into another inspirational aspect of his cancer survival story.
In fact, cancer treatments are some of the most rote, protocol-driven
treatments in medical practice, perfect examples of what historian Charles
Rosenberg has detected as the rationalization of disease and diagnosis at
the expense of the humanness of individual patients.5 Yet Armstrong’s story
serves several purposes. It overemphasizes the role of agency in the success
of cancer treatment, a View that correlates well With the advertising messages
of high—profile cancer centers. It overestimates the curative potential of treatments for most cancers, something we would all like to believe in. And it
propagates the myth that everyone has the potential to be a survivor—even as, ironically, survivorship against the odds requires the deaths of others.
This Armstrong story comes with real social costs for many people surviving with and dying of cancer. Mixiam Engelberg’s graphic novel, like so many cancer narratives, ends abruptly with the recurrence of her metastatic disease and her subsequent death. One prominent page other book has a cartoon with her holding a placard stating, “Lance had a different cancer,” in response to her friends’ and colleagues’ comparison of her With Armstrong and their terrifying denial of her actual situation.6 So, While many cancer survivors consider Armstrong an icon and inspiration, others feel that he is misrepresentative of the
disease. He at once gives them impossible standards of survivorship while at
the same time building his heroism on the high death rates of other cancers.
The American Century Investments advertisement summons the reader
to “Put Your Lance Face On.” After gazing into the close—up image of a determined looking Armstrong and thinking quietly to oneself, “What the fuck?”
one reads that “putting on a Lance face” “means taking responsibility for your
future. . . . It means staying focused and determined in the face of challenges.
When it comes to investing . . .” This ad is about Lance the Cyclist, sure; it
175
is also about Lance the Cancer Survivor. Control over one’s future h
together the common thread of cancer survival, Tour de France victor Olds
smart investing. But all this folds into the tiny hedge at the bottom of tfieand
Past performance is no guarantee of future results . . . it is possible to lad:
money by investing.” Even the Lance Face can see only so far into the fumrose
’This warning, necessary by law, echoes a skill essential to living in cae:
talism. In heij study of market traders, Caitlyn Zaloom finds that “a tradJ 1.
must learn to manage both his own engagements with risk and the ph 31 Z
sensations and social stakes that accompany the highs and lows of wignc
and losing. . . . Aggressive risk taking is established and sustained by routiIlTig
zation and bureaucracy; it is not an escape from it.”7 The conflation of Arm—
strong as athlete and cancer survivor in this ad offers the perfect personifica-
tion of market investing, since the healthy functioning of a capitalist orde;
requires a valorization of focused determination and responsibility for one’s
future. By now a truism, liberal economic and political ideals require citi—
zens to place themselves within a particular masochistic relationship to time
What else but an ethos of deferred gratification would allow such retirement
plans to remain solvent?
As offensive as this ad is in its use of disease to create business, Ann.
Strong’s story constitutes a culturally acceptable version of courage, cancer
and survival that serves to comfort a population With increasing cancer rates,
and the ad puts to use and propagates these notions of survivorship. As one:
person wrote about giving Armstrong’s autobiography to her mother as she
was dying of cancer, “I wanted her to be a courageous ‘surVivor’ too. I think
we find it less creepy or at least difficult When people assume the role of sur-
vivor, where they pretend they’re going to live an easy and long life.”8
You can be angry at cancer; you can battle cancer. One campaign under-
written by a company that builds radiation technology even allows people to
write letters to cancer. But to be angry at the culture that produces the dis-
ease and disavows it as a horrible death is to be a poor sport, to not live up to
the expectations of the good battle and the good death witnessed everywhere
in cancer obituaries. A bad attitude of this genre certainly will never enable
you to become an exceptional patient. It’s as though a death threat blackmails
cancer anger and frustration. But more astonishing still is the way in which
this “poor sport” characterization carries over even into other cancer events.
There is nothing wrong With having fun while making money. As one
under—forty person who has been living in the cancer complex for over tWO
decades said, “A fundraiser is where you invite people to a big fun event,
serve great drinks, and do everything oossible for them not to think about
176
cancer.”You do want people to feel good and strong so that they will open
their wallets, but this humanitarian charity model (“Swim for women With
cancerl”) obscures the politics and paradoxes of such divisions. As one per—
son organizing a fundraiser for her particular and rare cancer said as she
thought about asking her doctors to attend her event, “They’ve made enough
money off my cancer, they could pay some back” I signed on as the mixolo—
gist for the event and spent several hours designing circus—themed drinks
with little cotton candy garnishes.
Time and Accumulationv
Armstrong’s class, gender, and curable cancer allow his iconic status to
overshadow the simple fact that cancer can completely destroy your financial
savings and your family’s future. Sixty percent of personal bankruptcies in
the United States result from the high cost of health care.11 This news, won—
derful for people working in the healthcare industry since many people wifl
pay anything for medical goods and services, means that cancer can be a
long, expensive disease, paid for over generations.
When one’s financial planner asks, semi—ironically, how long you plan to
five, he calls up the paradox of survivorship. Middle— and upper—class Ameri—
cans are asked to plan for an assumed longevity, and to be sure, a properly
planned life span combined With a little luck comes with its rewards. But in
times of trouble, the language of financial service starts to show cracks, even
for healthy youngish people. The other day, When interviewing a Fidelity rep—
resentative about my decreasing retirement account, the representative kept
using the phrase “as your retirement plan grows.” When I pointed out that it
had, in fact, shrunk by 45 percent, he just stared at me blanldy.‘ When, as an
experiment, I asked him about people who don’t make it to the age of sixty-
five, he pleaded, “You really need to think about it as a retirement plan.”
No matter how we are interpellated to think about these accounts, non—
normative life spans tell us about the ways that capitalist notions of time and
accumulation work both economically and culturally. Many kinds of eco—
nomic benefits, for example, are based in an implied life span: you work now,
and we’ll pay you later. Social Security benefits are granted on the basis of
how much you have put into the system over the years, and they last until
you or your survivors are no longer eligible. Middle-class jobs often include
not only salaries, but what are known as “deferred payments.” Pensions fall
into this category, as do penalty—free retirement savings, and the benefit some
academics get of partial payment of their children’s tuition.
177
If you croak, some of these contributions may revert back to your estate;
others may be disbursed to qualifying survivors; others Will be recycled into
the plans that will pay for the education of your colleagues’ children. As With
any insurance policy, such calculations require that the state or the employer
offer salary packages in the form of a financial hedge on your mortality and
calculate the averages over the Whole workforce. Payments for those Who
get old depend on the fact that some will die young. It’s not personal; it’s
statistical. ‘
Actually, I take that back. I guess there is not much that is more per50na1
than your sex life, and if you are heterosexual and married—that is, if you say
you are sleeping with one person only and that person is of the opposite sex
and over a certain age—your cancer card Will play more lucratively. If you
fit these criteria, you may be able to pass on these benefits and enable your
loved ones to pay off some of your medical debts or provide a way toward
a more comfortable life in (and sometimes because of) your absence. The
survivorship of a spouse is a state—endowed right, enabled in the form of a
cash benefit and various forms of tax relief. A husband’s or Wife’s death will
enable his or her spouse to receive Social Security checks for decades. This
cash enables a sort of proxy—survival by fulfilling your responsibility toward
the support of your spouse and possibly the support of your children.
This is precisely how one person explained to me his reasoning behind
a recent change of genders: he can now legally have a Wife, legally bring her
into the country, and legally offer her the protections of Social Security. For
the same reasons, my lawyer advised me to marry a man, so that my hus-
band could give the survivor—cash to my girlfriend. For the same reasonS,
my mother was bummed out When I turned out not to be straight. Health is
social and institutional as well as physical. Capital and family legitimate and
live through each other, in some sense rendering each other immortal.12
Social Security might be seen as ensuring that those Who do not conform
to its measures of social legitimacy—people with forms of support that do
not fall into the marriage category—are not given the forms of security into
Which they are asked to pay while they live. Straight marriage presents a form
of cultural longevity for the institution of marriage, and the labor of those
who cannot partake in such survivorship literally underwrites the security of
the individuals who can.13
Historians of marriage have documented how ideas about the well—being
of children led to these forms of social support. But take a closer look, and
you will see that it’s only some children who benefit from these protective
policies. Here’s an example. My employer offers a housing benefit that gives
178
some employees financial assistance in purchasing a house. It also describes
death as a “severed relationship.” The relationship between my employer and
an employee of the university can pass through a surviving partner—they
included same—seX couples in their benefits plan in 1992, alb eit as taxable ben—
efits rather than the untaxed benefits that straight people receive#such that
a surviving partner may continue to live in a house purchased with the help
of this fringe benefit. However, if an employee has children and no partner,
the relationship is severed and the children are “SOL” (shit out of luck); they
must sell the house no matter what the market is like and return the down
payment loan to the employer. The debt cycles of illness and the early deaths
of a parent are thus differently borne out through what counts as legitimate
survival, thus reinforcing and rewarding normative social structures.
But more important to my argument here, these retirement and Social
Security benefits offer one means by which the terms of life span come to
be taken for granted by the middle class in the United States. They make life
span into a financial and moral calling, albeit one that the state will be will—
ing to partially subsidize in the event of the deaths of the citizens who fulfill
its principles of economic and sexual responsibility
All this rests on a premise critical to economies in America: time and
accumulation go together. You need the former to get the latter, and you have
more smfi as you get older. No wonder people want to freeze themselves.
Seriously. Cryonics offers an obvious strategy to maximize capitalist accu—
mulation. On my salary, I’ll be able to pay for my kids’ college tuition in one
hundred and fifty years. If I could freeze myself and my daughters and let
my savings grow over that time, then come back to life after all the work of
accumulation has been done for me, well, I could take full advantage of both
the deferral and the gratification.” This may sound ludicrous, but it’s basi-
cally the next step of what is already happening; people already freeze their
eggs and sperm in order to maintain their fertility to a point at Which they
have gained the sort of financial security that time and accumulation (are
supposed to) bring.
While cryonics suspends biological life as capitalism proliferates, uncon-
trollably duplicating cells work to immobilize biological life. Cancer paro-
dies excess. It could not be farther from the metaphors of an external enemy
attacking the body imagined by visions of targeted chemotherapy, the broad
political imaginary of the war on cancer, or the trope of the courageously
battling and graciously accepting patient. If wealth rots the soul, accumulat-
ing tumors rot the host. It just grows, sometimes as a tumor you should have
noticed but didn’t, sometimes as a tumor you can’t help but notice but can’t
179
remove. It may just live there; you may touch it each day. It may disappear 0r ‘-
it may wrap its way around your tongue. Either way, its changing size may 7’,
make it seem living or dying. It inhabits a competing version of time, not ,
yours, to which such things as savings and retirement are supposed to cor. ’
relate, but its own, to which such words as “a o tosis” and “runawa ” ,
Y aCCrue.
These versions of competing time reveal a lot about life spans in capitalism ,
Conclusion
Alas, the Lance Face aims not toward the growing demographic of cancer
survivors whose bodies experience the fissures of the immortal pretensions of :
economic time. Unlike manypeople who calculate their odds and cash out their
retirement policies after diagnosis, or the friends of mine Who told me thatI L
was the inspiration for them to live in the moment and renovate their home, or ~
those ads that regularly appear in Cure magazine that offer to buy the life insux. 3
ance policies of people with cancer in exchange for a percentage, the Lance ad;
replays tiresome injunctions to future thinking, saving, and determination. :
The ad encourages the potential consumer of banking products to workin the ;
broader interests of capital. Simply put, the ad uses cancer for its own ends and ’
is able to do so because of the way that cancer rhetorics have so unquestion—
ingly oyerlapped With notions of progress and accumulation in capitalism.
The cultural management of cancer terror follows to some extent the,
Cold War strategies of damping nuclear terror. You may have wondered why
the phrase “you are the bomb” presents itself as something of a compliment
Whereas, in a romantic situation, the comment “you are the gas chamber”,
may not go over that well. Anthropologist Joseph Masco has analyzed how
Americans didn’t just turn the threat of nuclear annihilation into atomic
cafes, bikinis, and B—sz cocktails on their own; we were taught to survive
through specific governmental programs sought to manage the emotional
politics of the bomb. Nuclear terror, as a paralyzing emotion, was converted
into nuclear fear, “an affective state that would allow citizens to function
in a time of crisis.”5 Such emotional management required a two-pronged
approach. First, citizens were asked to “take responsibility for their own
survival.” Second, enemy status was displaced from nuclear war onto public
panic, such that the main threat was perceived as inappropriate reactions to‘
detonation, rather than to the bomb itself. Even With increased bomb testing
and its release of radiation into the atmosphere, the discovery of high levels
of radiation in American flesh and teeth, and the corresponding increasing
of cancer rates along fallout routes and among nuclear workers, the nuclear
180
threat was always constituted as coming from the outside, never as the pre-
dictable and calculated risk of American nuclear programs. In that sense, the
forms of emotional management that resulted from military technologies
underpin cancer culture in the United States as much as the technologies of
Chemotherapy and radiation do.
To be sure, the increasing use of the language of survivorship in main—
stream cancer culture offers a welcome change from the days when people
with cancer were asked to use plastic cutlery so as not to infect those around
them or were not told of their diagnoses in order to protect them. Now, the
Person who survives cancer walks a fine line between courage and deception,
horror and the quotidian, in ensuring that American models of health retain
their normative status. Lance Armstrong offers the perfect venue for such
disavowals, as he currently rises as if in a second coming, high above the
Nike building at Union Square in San Francisco and other American cities,
his Lance face in perfect shape, With another sufficiently vague, sportsmanly
tag line: “Hope Rides Again.”
What if, instead of some broad and grammatically, if not afiectiyely,
meaningless aim as marching and riding “for hope,” fundraisers attempted to
ban any one of the thousands of known carcinogens in legal use? What if we
walked, ran, swam, rode not for hope, but against PAH, MTBE, EPA or any
other common carcinogen? Such an effort would require naming. the prob—
lem rather than the symptom, and recognizing how we are all implicated. It
would require that we invest in cancer culture not as a node of sentimentality
but as a basic fact of American life.
NOTES
1. Bernie S. Siegel, Love, Medicine, and Miracles: Lessons Learned about Ser—Healing
from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients (New York: Harper and Row, 1986).
2. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “Shame.”
3. Again, I think it is easier to speak facetiously from the position of having a non—
metastatic diagnosis.
4. Stephen Ohlemachter, “US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings,” Wash—
ington Post, August 12, 2007, httpzllwww.washingtonpost.com/wp—dyn/content/arti-
c1e/2007/ 08/12/AR2007081200113html.
5. See Charles E. Rosenberg, “The Tyranny of Diagnosis: Specific Entities and Indi—
vidual Experience,” The Milbank Quarterly 80, no. 2 (June 2002): 237—60.
6. Miriam Engelberg, Cancer Made Me a shallower Person (New York: Harper,
2006).
7. Caitlin Zaloom, “The Productive Life of Risk,” Cultural Anthropology 19, no. 3
(Angust 2004): 365.
181
8. Personal correspondence with author, April 10, 2008.
9. Personal correspondence with author, March 15, 2009.
10. Personal correspondence with author, April 11, 2009.
11. See David U. Himmelstein, Deborah Thorne, Elizabeth Warren, and Steflie W001-
handler, “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study)” "me
American Journal ofMedicz’ne 122, no. 8 (August 2009): 741—46. -
12. These structures carry invisible costs even for straight people Who believe
themselves to be outside of these cycles. Think for example of the shooting of Harvey
Milk and George Moscone. The short sentence given to Dan White for the shooting is
usually ascribed to the fact that, since Milk was queer, the judge believed that his life Was
not worth much. Moscone Was considered collateral damage. See The Times of Harvey
Milk, dir. Rob Epstein, 90 min, Black Sand Productions, 1984.
13. This kind of structural attention to cultural institutions and actual care are
understudied For example, When President Barack Obama made an exception to his i
usual homophobic platform to call for allowing same-sex couples to be able to visit their
partners in hospitals, he was making a way for partners to be able to love each other
and to be able to share a deep experience. Advocacy and protection are huge parts of
contemporary medical care. I have eome across hundreds of examples of this in my years
of research. This aspect of contemporary medical care includes everything from making
sure that medical records are transferred properly or read, that medical allergies are made
known, that machinery is working, that people wash their hands and are given the proper
doses of medication. Such bedside advocacy is an enormous, and understadiei part of
healthcare provision.
14. Tiffany Romain is working on an important dissertation on this subject in the
Department of Anthropology at Stanford University.
15. Joseph Masco, “Survival Is Your Business: Engineering Ruins and Affect in Nuclear
America,” Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 2 (May 2008): 366.
182