Brazil warns of humanitarian crisis as Haitians arrive in their thousands | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/13/brazil-humanitarian-crisis-haitians-arrive
Human rights activists and politicians in the Brazilian Amazon have warned of an imminent humanitarian crisis, as hundreds of Haitian migrants continue to pour into the region in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.
Could the desert sun power the world? | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/11/sahara-solar-panels-green-electricity
dossier du Guardian sur #Desertec
Green electricity generated by Sahara solar panels is being hailed as a solution to the climate change crisis
’Honour’ crimes against women in UK rising rapidly, figures show | UK news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/03/honour-crimes-uk-rising?intcmp=239
Statistics from police forces detailing numbers of crimes planned and carried out by families or communities reveals 47% rise
Spanish superspy Francisco Paesa, 75, gets out of yet another scrape. Paru le 29/11/2011 dans The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/29/spanish-superspy-franciso-paesa
For years Paesa featured on Interpol’s most wanted list after a Spanish court accused him of laundering millions of pounds stolen by a corrupt senior socialist government official.
Paesa had previously been involved in a sting operation against the Basque terrorist group Eta in 1986, in which he sold them missiles fitted with radio transmitters so that they could be tracked by the police.
His name was also mentioned in the mid-1990s as a middleman between the socialist government of prime minister Felipe González and the so-called Anti Terrorist Liberation Group (GAL), set up by Spain’s interior ministry to carry out attacks in south-west France on suspected Eta members.
The group hired mercenaries from Portugal, Italy and elsewhere to carry out attacks that killed 26 people – a third of whom turned out to have nothing to do with Eta.
Paesa’s contacts were said to be several bag men who worked in González’s office when he was prime minister between 1982 and 1996 – though courts found insufficient evidence to convict him of any GAL-related charges.
#Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operator ’ignored tsunami warning’ | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/29/fukushima-daiichi-operator-tsunami-warning
Tokyo Electric Power (#Tepco) officials rejected “unrealistic” estimates made in a 2008 internal report that the plant could be threatened by a tsunami of up to 10.2 metres, Kyodo news agency said.
The tsunami that crippled backup power supplies at the plant on the afternoon of 11 March, leading to the meltdown of three reactors, was more than 14 metres high.
(ce genre de truc qui ne fait scandale que dans les cas où la catastrophe est arrivée)
Bahrain medics face new charges of supplying weapons to protesters | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/28/bahrain-medics-face-new-charges
Twenty staff from the Salmaniya Medical Complex in Manama had thought their ordeal might be ending on Monday after the release of last week’s report detailing human rights abuses by Bahrain’s security forces during the Pearl revolution in February.
The report by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) found allegations that the medics “assisted the demonstrators by supplying them with weapons” to be unfounded.
But prosecutors produced guns, swords, knives and chains and claimed this was proof against the doctors, nurses, and paramedics. These weapons had not been presented previously – and led to an incredulous response in court. “It was really hilarious,” one of them, Dr Nada Dhaif, told BBC Radio 5. “The government has missed the chance that anyone will take this seriously.”
The 20 were initially convicted in the military-run national safety court in September on a raft of charges, including incitement to overthrow the regime. The government said they were involved with “hardline protesters” and they were sentenced to five to 15 years.
Au fait, tu sais que Bahrein a voté les sanctions économiques contre la Syrie ?
Letters : The King James Bible and eternal copyright | Books | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/27/king-james-bible-eternal-copyright
Michael Gove and the government are making a gift of the King James Bible to every school in the UK (Report, 25 November) but continue to restrict how we use it. The crown has a perpetual #copyright on the King James Bible, through “letters patent” originally issued to stop unofficial editions and then to protect the country from ranters, shakers, Quakers, nonconformity and popery.
Gay clergy row threatens mass resignations from Church of Scotland | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/14/gay-clergy-row-mass-resignation
The Church of Scotland is braced for mass resignations over moves to allow the ordination of gay ministers, with up to 150 conservative and evangelical ministers threatening to quit, the Guardian can reveal.
The rebellion began after the Church of Scotland became the first major presbyterian church in the world to allow openly gay and lesbian ministers to take up parishes at its general assembly in May, despite evidence that 20% of its elders and office-bearers could leave in protest.
Brazil census shows African-Brazilians in the majority for the first time | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/17/brazil-census-african-brazilians-majority
Preliminary results from the 2010 census, released on Wednesday, show that 97 million Brazilians, or 50.7% of the population, now define themselves as black or mixed race, compared with 91 million or 47.7% who label themselves white.
According to the census, 7.6% of Brazilians said they were black, compared with 6.2% in 2000, and 43.1% said they were mixed race, up from 38.5%.
In 1872, when Brazil’s first census was conducted, the population was split into just two groups: free people and slaves, who then represented 15% of the population.
A parallel study, released this week by the Data Popular Institute, provided further evidence of the racial divide that continues to blight Brazilian society. The wealthiest group of Brazilians – known as “Class A” – was made up of 82.3% white people and just 17.7% African-Brazilians.
In contrast “Class E” – the poorest section of society – was 76.3% African-Brazilian and 23.7% white.
en conclusion
A news report on the census findings aired by the Brazilian channel Record TV said the rise in Brazil’s officially black and mixed race population was “a signal of growing pride among the descendants of Africans”. The story was presented by a white reporter and introduced by two white news anchors.
Mark Duggan was not armed when shot by police (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/18/mark-duggan-ipcc-investigation-riots
The investigation into the death of Mark Duggan has found no forensic evidence that he was carrying a gun when he was shot dead by police on 4 August, the Guardian has learned. A gun collected by Duggan earlier in the day was recovered 10 to 14 feet away, on the other side of a low fence from his body. He was killed outside the vehicle he was travelling in, after a police marksman fired twice. (...) Source: The Guardian
Revealed: Mark Duggan was not armed when shot by police | UK news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/18/mark-duggan-ipcc-investigation-riots?CMP=twt_gu
The investigation into the death of Mark Duggan has found no forensic evidence that he was carrying a gun when he was shot dead by police on 4 August, the Guardian has learned.
A gun collected by Duggan earlier in the day was recovered 10 to 14 feet away, on the other side of a low fence from his body. He was killed outside the vehicle he was travelling in, after a police marksman fired twice.
The new details raise questions about the official version of events. The shooting triggered some of the worst riots in modern British history, which began in Tottenham, north London, in response to the treatment of the Duggan family. The investigation into Duggan’s death is being carried out by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), but the Guardian has learned new details of the shooting, and a much more complex picture than first revealed is emerging.
Un billet très intéressant de Jonathan Steele dans le Guardian, à peu près l’exact opposé de tout ce qu’on peut lire ou entendre ailleurs.
Syria needs mediation, not a push into all-out civil war | Jonathan Steele | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/17/syria-mediation-arab-league-assad
It is no accident that the minority of Arab League members who declined to go along with that decision includes Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq. They are the three Arab countries that have experienced massive sectarian violence and the horrors of civil war themselves. Lebanon and Iraq, in particular, have a direct interest in preventing all-out bloodshed in Syria. They rightly fear the huge influx of refugees that would pour across their borders if their neighbour collapses into civil war.
That war has already begun. The image of a regime shooting down unarmed protesters, which was true in March and April this year, has become out of date. The so-called Free Syrian Army no longer hides the fact that it is fighting and killing government forces and police, and operating from safe havens outside Syria’s borders. If it gathers strength, the incipient civil war would take on an even more overt sectarian turn with the danger of pogroms against rival communities.
Moderate Sunnis in Syria are worried by the increasing militancy of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis who have taken the upper hand in opposition ranks. The large pro-regime demonstrations in Damascus and Aleppo over the past week cannot simply be written off as crowds who were intimidated or threatened with loss of jobs if they did not turn out.
[…]
If that were to become a serious effort at mediation, so much the better. The best model is the agreement that ended Lebanon’s civil war, reached after talks in Taif in Saudi Arabia in 1989. Although it was negotiated by the various Lebanese parties and interest groups, Saudi sponsorship and support were important.
Whether Saudi Arabia can play a similar role today is doubtful. Eagerly backed by the Obama administration, the monarchy seems bent on an anti-Iranian mission in which toppling Syria’s Shia-led regime is seen as a proxy strike against Tehran. The Saudis and Americans are working closely with the Sunni forces of Saad Hariri in Beirut, who are still smarting from their loss of control of the Lebanese government this spring.
Vulture funds await Jersey decision on poor countries’ debts | Global development | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/nov/15/vulture-funds-jersey-decision-debts?intcmp=122
The DRC should be one of Africa’s richest countries. It has a mineral wealth estimated to be around $24 trillion (£15tn). There are huge deposits of cobalt, diamonds, gold, copper, oil and 80% of the world’s supplies of coltan ore – a valuable mineral used in computers and mobile phones.
Yet 100 women a week are still dying in childbirth and 16,000 children under the age of five die every year. One in three children in the DRC will never get anything more than primary education.
One of the reasons the country has been unable to recover is that it is being pursued by international debt speculators, known as vulture funds, through offshore tax havens such as Jersey, for debts that were run up during 30 years of war and civil war.
Vulture funds also scare off new investors, who the vultures will target their investment, from a country. In the DRC, a large US company with plans to invest millions in mining pulled out last year after one vulture sued it as a result of its business with the DRC government.
It is thought FG Hemisphere bought the debt for which it is claiming $100m in the Jersey court for $3.3m, with the help of another vulture fund, Debt Advisory International (DAI).
V for Vendetta: Political resonance (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/14/v-for-vendetta-politcal-resonance
The social implications of the story remain compelling – and not as unambiguous as you might assume Source: The Guardian
In Egypt, the stakes have risen | Comment is free | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/13/egypt-stakes-have-risen?CMP=twt_gu
The Egyptian revolution of 25 January, as we all know, had no leaders. But in the course of its unfolding, and in the months since, a number of people have emerged who are pushing it forward, advocating for it and articulating its principles. Alaa Abd El Fattah, the activist and blogger (and my nephew) who has been jailed by the military prosecutor in Cairo pending trial, is one of those. And in his character and the role he’s adopted, he embodies some of the core aspects of the Egyptian revolution.
Alaa is a techie, a programmer of note. He and Manal, his wife and colleague, work in developing open-source software platforms and in linguistic exchange. They terminated contracts abroad and flew home to join the revolution. In Tahrir he moved between groups; listening, facilitating, making peace when necessary, defending the square physically when he had to.
Amnesiac cellist astounds doctors with musical memory | Science | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/13/amnesiac-cellist-has-musical-memory
He can hardly remember a thing. He has no memory of any personal or professional events," Carsten Finke, a neurologist at Charité university hospital in Berlin, told the Guardian. “He is living in the moment, more or less. He has lost his whole life.”
Doctors made their discovery when they tested PM’s ability to recall musical information and found he could identify the scales, rhythms and intervals of pieces they played him. The man went on to score normally on a standard test for musical memory.
But it was later tests that surprised doctors most, when the cellist showed he could learn new pieces of music, even though he failed to remember simple information, such as the layout of his flat, who his doctors were and what medicines he should take.
Etonnant...
Police arrest EDL members to ’avert planned attack’ in London | UK news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/11/edl-arrests-london-occupy-armistice-day?newsfeed=true
Police arrested 179 members of the English Defence League after reports of repeated threats to attack Occupy protesters camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral on Armistice Day.
toujours aussi con, ils l’ont annoncé sur fessebouc :
The English Defence League had issued statements and made threats on Facebook to burn down protesters tents if they were still outside St Paul’s on Remembrance Sunday, according to Phillips.
Smoking and drinking in pregnancy ’harms 10,000 babies in UK each year’ | Society | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/11/smoking-drinking-pregnancy-harms-babies
Britain’s top children’s doctor has said that more than 10,000 babies each year suffer serious harm, including death, because their mothers drank alcohol, smoked, over-ate, or took drugs during pregnancy.
Medicinal tree used in chemotherapy drug faces extinction | Environment | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/10/iucn-red-list-tree-chemotherapy
A species of Himalayan yew tree that is used to produce Taxol, a chemotherapy drug to treat #cancer, is being pushed to the brink of extinction by over-harvesting for medicinal use and collection for fuel, scientists warned on Thursday.
The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen
| George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers
Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That’s why we’re nearly bankrupt
I
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.
The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. “The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.” Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.
Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. “The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture.”
Anglican newspaper defends ’Gaystapo’ article | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/08/anglican-newspaper-defends-gaystapo-article
An Anglican newspaper has defended the publication of an article that compares gay rights campaigners to Nazis, saying the author has “pertinent views”.
The column, by former east London councillor Alan Craig, appeared in the 28 October edition of the Church of England Newspaper, one of the oldest newspapers in the world. Although it is independent of the institution bearing the same name, it carries adverts for Church of England jobs and is read by its clergy.
Mullah Omar warns Taliban against hurting Afghan civilians | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/04/mullah-omar-warns-taliban-afghan-civilians
Taliban foot soldiers will face sharia justice if they kill or injure innocent civilians without taking precautions, the fugitive leader of the Afghan insurgency has warned.
Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s supreme cleric, released an 1,800-word statement that dwelled at length on the need to protect civilians in a sign of the insurgency’s growing defensiveness on the issue.
UK military steps up plans for Iran attack amid fresh nuclear fears | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/02/uk-military-iran-attack-nuclear
Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned.
The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.
In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign.
They also believe the US would ask permission to launch attacks from Diego Garcia, the British Indian ocean territory, which the Americans have used previously for conflicts in the Middle East.
Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones | UK news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/30/metropolitan-police-mobile-phone-surveillance
The surveillance system has been procured by the Metropolitan police from Leeds-based company Datong plc, which counts the US Secret Service, the Ministry of Defence and regimes in the Middle East among its customers. Strictly classified under government protocol as “Listed X”, it can emit a signal over an area of up to an estimated 10 sq km, forcing hundreds of mobile phones per minute to release their unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes, which can be used to track a person’s movements in real time.