company:the times

  • Does Being ’Zionist Feminist’ Mean Betraying Women for Israel? - Tikun Olam תיקון עולם
    https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2017/03/16/zionist-feminist-mean-betraying-women-israel


    Rasmea Odeh participates in Detroit Black Lives Matter rally

    March 16, 2017 by Richard Silverstein Leave a Comment

    Yesterday, I wrote a critique of Emily Shire’s diatribe against the Women’s Strike Day USA protest. She especially singled out platform statements supporting Palestinian rights. Shire, a professed Zionist feminist, dismissed the criticisms of Israeli Occupation contained in the event platform as irrelevant to the issue of women’s rights. Then she launched into an attack on one of the conveners of the Strike Day, Rasmea Odeh. Shire alleges that Odeh is a convicted terrorist and former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S. designated terror group.

    A comment Deir Yassin published yesterday here got me to thinking further about this issue. I researched Rasmea’s case and the torture she endured. My view is this is precisely the sort of case and individual any women’s movement should embrace. Here is a summary of the facts of the case. In 1969, a cell of the PFLP planted bombs at a Jerusalem Super-Sol. They exploded, killing two Hebrew University students.
    shin bet torture

    Afterward, security forces arrested Odeh and jailed her without charges or access to counsel. She was tortured, by her account, for 45 days. Here is how she described her treatment in testimony to a UN commission on torture in Geneva:

    …”They beat me with sticks, plastic sticks, and with a metal bar. They beat me on the head and I fainted as a result of these beatings. They woke me up several times by throwing cold water in my face and then started all over again.”

    In addition to this physical torture, Odeh also faced sexual torture. Her father, a U.S. citizen, was also arrested and beaten, “and once they brought in my father and tried to force him under blows to take off his clothes and have sexual relations with me.” Later, interrogators “tore my clothes off me while my hands were still tied behind my back. They threw me to the ground completely naked and the room was full of a dozen or so interrogators and soldiers who looked at me and laughed sarcastically as if they were looking at a comedy or a film. Obviously they started touching my body.” In her father’s presence, interrogators threatened to “violate me” and “tried to introduce a stick to break my maidenhead [hymen].” Shackled naked from the ceiling, interrogators “tied my legs, which were spread-eagled, and they started to beat me with their hands and also with cudgels.”

    Every method described in her account is known from previous descriptions of the treatment of Arab terror suspects. We know, for example, that Doron Zahavi, an IDF AMAN officer, raped Mustafa Dirani in Prison 504. The beatings and positions she describes are also previously described in testimony by the Public Committee to Prevent Torture in Israel. Therefore, it’s not just conceivable that Rasmea endured the treatment she claims, it’s almost a certainty. Especially given that two Israelis were killed in the bombing.

    In summary, the Shin Bet tried to force her father to rape her. The interrogators themselves raped her and further degraded her sexually. And her father was tortured as a means of compelling her to confess. If this isn’t a perfect portrait of a cause that all feminists should embrace, I don’t know what is. So when Shire claims that Palestine is the farthest thing from what Women’s Strike Day’s mission should be, she’s engaging in willful blindness to the plight of another woman. A woman who happens to be Palestinian.

    Rasmea was tried and convicted in an Israeli military court, which features military judges and prosecutors using rules that favor the prosecution and shackle the hands of the defense. It can rule any evidence secret and so prevent the defense from seeing it, let alone rebutting it. Such a conviction could never withstand scrutiny under U.S. criminal procedures or even Israeli civilian courts.

    Further, Shire justifies her denunciation of Odeh by noting that Israel denies torturing Rasmea. So you have an Israeli security apparatus which is well-known for lying when evidence against it is damning. And you have Rasmea’s testimony, supported by scores of accounts by other security prisoners as to their treatment under similar circumstances. It reminds me of the story of the husband who returns home to find his wife in bed with another man. The man jumps out of bed and says: “Hey, this isn’t what this looks like. Nothing happened. I swear it. Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lyin’ eyes?” Emily Shire prefers to believe the agency that lies to her with a straight face. In doing so, she shows that she is a Zionist first and foremost; and a feminist second, if at all.

    As for the citizenship application infractions which the Justice Department is exploiting in order to expel her from the U.S.: she had been tortured once by Israel. Her decision to hide her previous conviction was surely founded on a fear that she might be deported once again back to Israel or Jordan (where Israel had sent her after her release from prison). The Jordanian security apparatus collaborates closely with Israeli intelligence. The former is quite handy with torture itself. Further, the U.S. judge in her first trial prohibited her attorney from raising torture as part of her defense. Her second trial will explicitly permit such testimony. Though I’m not privy to the defense strategy, I hope it will demand that a Shabak officer who participated in her interrogation testify at trial. And if his testimony diverges from the truth, I hope there is means to document this and hold him accountable. It would be one of the first times such an agent would be held accountable legally either inside or outside Israel.

    In the attacks against Rasmea, it’s certainly reasonable to bring up her participation in an act of terrorism: as long as you also examine the entire case against her. She admitted participation in the attack. But she denied placing the bomb in the supermarket. Despite her denial, this was the crime for which she was convicted. Further, Rasmea was released after serving ten years as part of a prisoner exchange. If Israel saw fit to release her, what is the point of using her alleged past crime against her today?

    As for her membership in a terror organization, she has long since left the militant movement. Her civic activism is solely non-violent these days. Further, virtually every leader of Israel for the first few decades of its existence either participated directly in, or ordered acts of terror against either British or Palestinian targets. Why do we grant to Israel what we deny to Palestinians?

    It may be no accident that two days before Shire’s broadside against the U.S. feminist movement (and Rasmea) in the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune published another hit-piece against her. The latter was credited to a retired Chicago professor. Her bio neglected to mention that she is also a Breitbart contributor who is the local coördinator for StandWithUs. This sin of omission attests either to editorial slacking or a deliberate attempt to conceal relevant biographical details which would permit readers to judge the content of the op-ed in proper context.

    The Tribune op-ed denounces Jewish Voice for Peace’s invitation to Rasmea to address its annual conference in Chicago later this month. As I wrote in last night’s post, what truly irks the Israel Lobby is the growing sense of solidarity among feminist, Jewish, Palestinian, Black and LGBT human rights organizations. Its response is to divide by sowing fear, doubt and lies in the media. The two op-eds in the Times and Tribute are stellar examples of the genre and indicate a coordinated campaign against what they deride as intersectionality.

    #Palestine #femmes #résistance #zionisme

  • New York Times’s Global Edition Is Ending Daily Political Cartoons

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/business/international-new-york-times-political-cartoons.html

    The New York Times announced on Monday that it would no longer publish daily political cartoons in its international edition and ended its relationship with two contract cartoonists.

    Two months earlier, The Times had stopped running syndicated political cartoons, after one with anti-Semitic imagery was printed in the Opinion section of the international edition.

  • Zero Percent of Elite Commentators Oppose Regime Change in Venezuela
    https://fair.org/home/zero-percent-of-elite-commentators-oppose-regime-change-in-venezuela

    A FAIR survey of US opinion journalism on Venezuela found no voices in elite corporate media that opposed regime change in that country. Over a three-month period (1/15/19–4/15/19), zero opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post took an anti–regime change or pro-Maduro/Chavista position. Not a single commentator on the big three Sunday morning talkshows or PBS NewsHour came out against President Nicolás Maduro stepping down from the Venezuelan government.

    Of the 76 total articles, opinion videos or TV commentator segments that centered on or gave more than passing attention to Venezuela, 54 (72 percent) expressed explicit support for the Maduro administration’s ouster. Eleven (14 percent) were ambiguous, but were only classified as such for lack of explicit language. Reading between the lines, most of these were clearly also pro–regime change. Another 11 (14 percent) took no position, but many similarly offered ideological ammo for those in support.

    The Times published 22 pro–regime change commentaries, three ambiguous and five without a position. The Post also spared no space for the pro-Chavista camp: 22 of its articles expressed support for the end to Maduro’s administration, eight were ambiguous and four took no position. Of the 12 TV opinions surveyed, 10 were pro-regime change and two took no position.

  • Your Complete Guide to the N.Y. Times’ Support of U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America
    https://www.truthdig.com/articles/your-complete-guide-to-the-n-y-times-support-of-u-s-backed-coups-in-latin-

    A survey of The New York Times archives shows the Times editorial board has supported 10 out of 12 American-backed coups in Latin America, with two editorials—those involving the 1983 Grenada invasion and the 2009 Honduras coup—ranging from ambiguous to reluctant opposition. The survey can be viewed here.

    Covert involvement of the United States, by the CIA or other intelligence services, isn’t mentioned in any of the Times’ editorials on any of the coups. Absent an open, undeniable U.S. military invasion (as in the Dominican Republic, Panama and Grenada), things seem to happen in Latin American countries entirely on their own, with outside forces rarely, if ever, mentioned in the Times. Obviously, there are limits to what is “provable” in the immediate aftermath of such events (covert intervention is, by definition, covert), but the idea that the U.S. or other imperial actors could have stirred the pot, funded a junta or run weapons in any of the conflicts under the table is never entertained.

    (bourré de citations accablantes...) #venezuela #medias

    • More often than not, what one is left with, reading Times editorials on these coups, are racist, paternalistic “cycle of violence” cliches. Sigh, it’s just the way of things Over There. When reading these quotes, keep in mind the CIA supplied and funded the groups that ultimately killed these leaders:

      – Brazil 1964: “They have, throughout their history, suffered from a lack of first class rulers.”
      – Chile 1973: “No Chilean party or faction can escape some responsibility for the disaster, but a heavy share must be assigned to the unfortunate Dr. Allende himself.”
      – Argentina 1976: “It was typical of the cynicism with which many Argentines view their country’s politics that most people in Buenos Aires seemed more interested in a soccer telecast Tuesday night than in the ouster of President Isabel Martinez de Perlin by the armed forces. The script was familiar for this long‐anticipated coup.”

      See, it didn’t matter! It’s worth pointing out the military junta put in power by the CIA-contrived coup killed 10,000 to 30,000 Argentines from 1976 to 1983.

  • A Day, a Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident?
    The New York Times - By David M. Halbfinger - Dec. 30, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/world/middleeast/gaza-medic-israel-shooting.html

    KHUZAA, Gaza Strip — A young medic in a head scarf runs into danger, her only protection a white lab coat. Through a haze of tear gas and black smoke, she tries to reach a man sprawled on the ground along the Gaza border. Israeli soldiers, their weapons leveled, watch warily from the other side.

    Minutes later, a rifle shot rips through the din, and the Israeli-Palestinian drama has its newest tragic figure.

    For a few days in June, the world took notice of the death of 20-year-old Rouzan al-Najjar, killed while treating the wounded at protests against Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Even as she was buried, she became a symbol of the conflict, with both sides staking out competing and mutually exclusive narratives.

    To the Palestinians, she was an innocent martyr killed in cold blood, an example of Israel’s disregard for Palestinian life. To the Israelis, she was part of a violent protest aimed at destroying their country, to which lethal force is a legitimate response as a last resort.

    Palestinian witnesses embellished their initial accounts, saying she was shot while raising her hands in the air. The Israeli military tweeted a tendentiously edited video that made it sound like she was offering herself as a human shield for terrorists.

    In each version, Ms. Najjar was little more than a cardboard cutout.

    An investigation by The New York Times found that Ms. Najjar, and what happened on the evening of June 1, were far more complicated than either narrative allowed. Charismatic and committed, she defied the expectations of both sides. Her death was a poignant illustration of the cost of Israel’s use of battlefield weapons to control the protests, a policy that has taken the lives of nearly 200 Palestinians.

    It also shows how each side is locked into a seemingly unending and insolvable cycle of violence. The Palestinians trying to tear down the fence are risking their lives to make a point, knowing that the protests amount to little more than a public relations stunt for Hamas, the militant movement that rules Gaza. And Israel, the far stronger party, continues to focus on containment rather than finding a solution.

    In life, Ms. Najjar was a natural leader whose uncommon bravery struck some peers as foolhardy. She was a capable young medic, but one who was largely self-taught and lied about her lack of education. She was a feminist, by Gaza standards, shattering traditional gender rules, but also a daughter who doted on her father, was particular about her appearance and was slowly assembling a trousseau. She inspired others with her outward jauntiness, while privately she was consumed with dread in her final days.

    The bullet that killed her, The Times found, was fired by an Israeli sniper into a crowd that included white-coated medics in plain view. A detailed reconstruction, stitched together from hundreds of crowd-sourced videos and photographs, shows that neither the medics nor anyone around them posed any apparent threat of violence to Israeli personnel. Though Israel later admitted her killing was unintentional, the shooting appears to have been reckless at best, and possibly a war crime, for which no one has yet been punished. (...)

    Rouzan al-Najjar, 20, was killed by an Israeli sniper on June 1 while she was treating the wounded at protests at the Gaza border.CreditIbraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
    #Razan_al-Najjar

  • ‘It’s an Act of Murder’: How Europe Outsources Suffering as Migrants Drown

    This short film, produced by The Times’s Opinion Video team and the research groups #Forensic_Architecture and #Forensic_Oceanography, reconstructs a tragedy at sea that left at least 20 migrants dead. Combining footage from more than 10 cameras, 3-D modeling and interviews with rescuers and survivors, the documentary shows Europe’s role in the migrant crisis at sea.

    On Nov. 6, 2017, at least 20 people trying to reach Europe from Libya drowned in the Mediterranean, foundering next to a sinking raft.

    Not far from the raft was a ship belonging to Sea-Watch, a German humanitarian organization. That ship had enough space on it for everyone who had been aboard the raft. It could have brought them all to the safety of Europe, where they might have had a chance at being granted asylum.

    Instead, 20 people drowned and 47 more were captured by the Libyan Coast Guard, which brought the migrants back to Libya, where they suffered abuse — including rape and torture.

    This confrontation at sea was not a simplistic case of Europe versus Africa, with human rights and rescue on one side and chaos and danger on the other. Rather it’s a case of Europe versus Europe: of volunteers struggling to save lives being undercut by European Union policies that outsource border control responsibilities to the Libyan Coast Guard — with the aim of stemming arrivals on European shores.

    While funding, equipping and directing the Libyan Coast Guard, European governments have stymied the activities of nongovernmental organizations like Sea-Watch, criminalizing them or impounding their ships, or turning away from ports ships carrying survivors.

    More than 14,000 people have died or gone missing while trying to cross the central Mediterranean since 2014. But unlike most of those deaths and drownings, the incident on Nov. 6, 2017, was extensively documented.

    Sea-Watch’s ship and rescue rafts were outfitted with nine cameras, documenting the entire scene in video and audio. The Libyans, too, filmed parts of the incident on their mobile phones.

    The research groups Forensic Architecture and Forensic Oceanography of Goldsmiths, University of London, of which three of us — Mr. Heller, Mr. Pezzani and Mr. Weizman — are a part, combined these video sources with radio recordings, vessel tracking data, witness testimonies and newly obtained official sources to produce a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the facts. Opinion Video at The New York Times built on this work to create the above short documentary, gathering further testimonials by some of the survivors and rescuers who were there.

    This investigation makes a few things clear: European governments are avoiding their legal and moral responsibilities to protect the human rights of people fleeing violence and economic desperation. More worrying, the Libyan Coast Guard partners that Europe is collaborating with are ready to blatantly violate those rights if it allows them to prevent migrants from crossing the sea.

    Stopping Migrants, Whatever the Cost

    To understand the cynicism of Europe’s policies in the Mediterranean, one must understand the legal context. According to a 2012 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, migrants rescued by European civilian or military vessels must be taken to a safe port. Because of the chaotic political situation in Libya and well-documented human rights abuses in detention camps there, that means a European port, often in Italy or Malta.

    But when the Libyan Coast Guard intercepts migrants, even outside Libyan territorial waters, as it did on Nov. 6, the Libyans take them back to detention camps in Libya, which is not subject to European Court of Human Rights jurisdiction.

    For Italy — and Europe — this is an ideal situation. Europe is able to stop people from reaching its shores while washing its hands of any responsibility for their safety.

    This policy can be traced back to February 2017, when Italy and the United Nations-supported Libyan Government of National Accord signed a “memorandum of understanding” that provided a framework for collaboration on development, to fight against “illegal immigration,” human trafficking and the smuggling of contraband. This agreement defines clearly the aim, “to stem the illegal migrants’ flows,” and committed Italy to provide “technical and technological support to the Libyan institutions in charge of the fight against illegal immigration.”

    Libyan Coast Guard members have been trained by the European Union, and the Italian government donated or repaired several patrol boats and supported the establishment of a Libyan search-and-rescue zone. Libyan authorities have since attempted — in defiance of maritime law — to make that zone off-limits to nongovernmental organizations’ rescue vessels. Italian Navy ships, based in Tripoli, have coordinated Libyan Coast Guard efforts.

    Before these arrangements, Libyan actors were able to intercept and return very few migrants leaving from Libyan shores. Now the Libyan Coast Guard is an efficient partner, having intercepted some 20,000 people in 2017 alone.

    The Libyan Coast Guard is efficient when it comes to stopping migrants from reaching Europe. It’s not as good, however, at saving their lives, as the events of Nov. 6 show.

    A Deadly Policy in Action

    That morning the migrant raft had encountered worsening conditions after leaving Tripoli, Libya, over night. Someone onboard used a satellite phone to call the Italian Coast Guard for help.

    Because the Italians were required by law to alert nearby vessels of the sinking raft, they alerted Sea-Watch to its approximate location. But they also requested the intervention of their Libyan counterparts.

    The Libyan Coast Guard vessel that was sent to intervene on that morning, the Ras Jadir, was one of several that had been repaired by Italy and handed back to the Libyans in May of 2017. Eight of the 13 crew members onboard had received training from the European Union anti-smuggling naval program known as Operation Sophia.

    Even so, the Libyans brought the Ras Jadir next to the migrants’ raft, rather than deploying a smaller rescue vessel, as professional rescuers do. This offered no hope of rescuing those who had already fallen overboard and only caused more chaos, during which at least five people died.

    These deaths were not merely a result of a lack of professionalism. Some of the migrants who had been brought aboard the Ras Jadir were so afraid of their fate at the hands of the Libyans that they jumped back into the water to try to reach the European rescuers. As can be seen in the footage, members of the Libyan Coast Guard beat the remaining migrants.

    Sea-Watch’s crew was also attacked by the Libyan Coast Guard, who threatened them and threw hard objects at them to keep them away. This eruption of violence was the result of a clash between the goals of rescue and interception, with the migrants caught in the middle desperately struggling for their lives.

    Apart from those who died during this chaos, more than 15 people had already drowned in the time spent waiting for any rescue vessel to appear.

    There was, however, no shortage of potential rescuers in the area: A Portuguese surveillance plane had located the migrants’ raft after its distress call. An Italian Navy helicopter and a French frigate were nearby and eventually offered some support during the rescue.

    It’s possible that this French ship, deployed as part of Operation Sophia, could have reached the sinking vessel earlier, in time to save more lives — despite our requests, this information has not been disclosed to us. But it remained at a distance throughout the incident and while offering some support, notably refrained from taking migrants onboard who would then have had to have been disembarked on European soil. It’s an example of a hands-off approach that seeks to make Libyan intervention not only possible but also inevitable.

    A Legal Challenge

    On the basis of the forensic reconstruction, the Global Legal Action Network and the Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration, with the support of Yale Law School students, have filed a case against Italy at the European Court of Human Rights representing 17 survivors of this incident.

    Those working on the suit, who include two of us — Mr. Mann and Ms. Moreno-Lax — argue that even though Italian or European personnel did not physically intercept the migrants and bring them back to Libya, Italy exercised effective control over the Libyan Coast Guard through mutual agreements, support and on-the-ground coordination. Italy has entrusted the Libyans with a task that Rome knows full well would be illegal if undertaken directly: preventing migrants from seeking protection in Europe by impeding their flight and sending them back to a country where extreme violence and exploitation await.

    We hope this legal complaint will lead the European court to rule that countries cannot subcontract their legal and humanitarian obligations to dubious partners, and that if they do, they retain responsibility for the resulting violations. Such a precedent would force the entire European Union to make sure its cooperation with partners like Libya does not end up denying refugees the right to seek asylum.

    This case is especially important right now. In Italy’s elections in March, the far-right Lega party, which campaigned on radical anti-immigrant rhetoric, took nearly 20 percent of the vote. The party is now part of the governing coalition, of which its leader, Matteo Salvini, is the interior minister.

    His government has doubled down on animosity toward migrants. In June, Italy took the drastic step of turning away a humanitarian vessel from the country’s ports and has been systematically blocking rescued migrants from being disembarked since then, even when they had been assisted by the Italian Coast Guard.

    The Italian crackdown helps explain why seafarers off the Libyan coast have refrained from assisting migrants in distress, leaving them to drift for days. Under the new Italian government, a new batch of patrol boats has been handed over to the Libyan Coast Guard, and the rate of migrants being intercepted and brought back to Libya has increased. All this has made the crossing even more dangerous than before.

    Italy has been seeking to enact a practice that blatantly violates the spirit of the Geneva Convention on refugees, which enshrines the right to seek asylum and prohibits sending people back to countries in which their lives are at risk. A judgment by the European Court sanctioning Italy for this practice would help prevent the outsourcing of border control and human rights violations that may prevent the world’s most disempowered populations from seeking protection and dignity.

    The European Court of Human Rights cannot stand alone as a guardian of fundamental rights. Yet an insistence on its part to uphold the law would both reflect and bolster the movements seeking solidarity with migrants across Europe.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/26/opinion/europe-migrant-crisis-mediterranean-libya.html
    #reconstruction #naufrage #Méditerranée #Charles_Heller #Lorenzo_Pezzani #asile #migrations #réfugiés #mourir_en_mer #ONG #sauvetage #Sea-Watch #gardes-côtes_libyens #Libye #pull-back #refoulement #externalisation #vidéo #responsabilité #Ras_Jadir #Operation_Sophia #CEDH #cour_européenne_des_droits_de_l'homme #justice #droits_humains #droit_à_la_vie

    ping @reka

    • È un omicidio con navi italiane” L’accusa del Nyt

      Video-denuncia contro Roma e l’Ue per un naufragio di un anno fa: botte dei libici ai migranti, 50 morti.

      Patate scagliate addosso ai soccorritori della Sea Watch invece di lanciare giubbotti e salvagente ai naufraghi che stavano annegando. E poi botte ai migranti riusciti a salire sulle motovedette per salvarsi la vita. Ecco i risultati dell’addestramento che l’Italia ha impartito ai libici per far fuori i migranti nel Mediterraneo. È un video pubblicato dal New York Times che parte da una delle più gravi tra le ultime stragi avvenute del Canale di Sicilia, con un commento intitolato: “‘È un omicidio’: come l’Europa esternalizza sofferenza mentre i migranti annegano”.

      Era il 6 novembre 2017 e le operazioni in mare erano gestite dalla guardia costiera libica, in accordo con l’allora ministro dell’Interno, Marco Minniti. Il dettaglio non è secondario, lo stesso video mostra la cerimonia di consegna delle motovedette made in Italy ai partner nordafricani. Una delle imbarcazioni, la 648, la ritroviamo proprio al centro dell’azione dove, quel giorno, cinquanta africani vennero inghiottiti dal mare. Al tempo era consentito alle imbarcazioni di soccorso pattugliare lo specchio di mare a cavallo tra le zone Sar (Search and rescue, ricerca e soccorso) di competenza. Al tempo i porti italiani erano aperti, ma il comportamento dei militari libici già al limite della crudeltà. Il video e le foto scattate dal personale della Sea Watch mostrano scene durissime. Un migrante lasciato annegare senza alcun tentativo da parte dei libici di salvarlo: il corpo disperato annaspa per poi sparire sott’acqua, quando il salvagente viene lanciato è tardi. Botte, calci e pugni a uomini appena saliti a bordo delle motovedette, di una violenza ingiustificabile. Il New York Times va giù duro e nel commento, oltre a stigmatizzare attacca i governi italiani. Dalla prova delle motovedette vendute per far fare ad altri il lavoro sporco, al nuovo governo definito “di ultradestra” che “ha completato la strategia”. Matteo Salvini però non viene nominato. L’Italia, sottolinea il Nyt, ha delegato alle autorità della Tripolitania il pattugliamento delle coste e il recupero di qualsiasi imbarcazione diretta a nord. Nulla di nuovo, visto che la Spagna, guidata dal socialista Sanchez e impegnata sul fronte occidentale con un’ondata migratoria senza precedenti, usa il Marocco per “bonificare” il tratto di mare vicino allo stretto di Gibilterra da gommoni e carrette. Gli organismi europei da una parte stimolano il blocco delle migrazioni verso il continente, eppure dall’altra lo condannano. Per l’episodio del 6 novembre 2017, infatti, la Corte europea dei diritti umani sta trattando il ricorso presentato dall’Asgi (Associazione studi giuridici sull’immigrazione) contro il respingimento collettivo. Sempre l’Asgi ha presentato due ricorsi analoghi per fatti del dicembre 2018 e gennaio 2018; infine altri due, uno sulla cessione delle motovedette e l’altro sull’implementazione dell’accordo Italia-Libia firmato da Minniti.

      https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/premium/articoli/e-un-omicidio-con-navi-italiane-laccusa-del-nyt

    • Comment l’Europe et la Libye laissent mourir les migrants en mer

      Il y a un peu plus d’un an, le 6 novembre 2017, une fragile embarcation sombre en mer avec à son bord 150 migrants partis de Tripoli pour tenter de rejoindre l’Europe. La plupart d’entre eux sont morts. Avec l’aide de Forensic Oceanography – une organisation créée en 2011 pour tenir le compte des morts de migrants en Méditerranée – et de Forensic Architecture – groupe de recherche enquêtant sur les violations des droits de l’homme –, le New York Times a retracé le déroulement de ce drame, dans une enquête vidéo extrêmement documentée.

      Depuis l’accord passé en février 2017 entre la Libye et l’Italie, confiant aux autorités libyennes le soin d’intercepter les migrants dans ses eaux territoriales, le travail des ONG intervenant en mer Méditerranée avec leurs bateaux de sauvetage est devenu extrêmement difficile. Ces dernières subissent les menaces constantes des gardes-côtes libyens, qui, malgré les subventions européennes et les formations qu’ils reçoivent, n’ont pas vraiment pour but de sauver les migrants de la noyade. Ainsi, en fermant les yeux sur les pratiques libyennes régulièrement dénoncées par les ONG, l’Europe contribue à aggraver la situation et précipite les migrants vers la noyade, s’attache à démontrer cette enquête vidéo publiée dans la section Opinions du New York Times. Un document traduit et sous-titré par Courrier international.

      https://www.courrierinternational.com/video/enquete-comment-leurope-et-la-libye-laissent-mourir-les-migra

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=dcbh8yJclGI

    • How We Made an Invisible Crisis at Sea Visible

      An ambitious Opinion Video project produced across three continents — in collaboration with a pioneering forensic research group — shines a spotlight on the more than 16,000 migrants who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2014.

      Forensic Oceanography had created a report and a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the episode (http://www.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018-05-07-FO-Mare-Clausum-full-EN.pdf) intended partly to support a case that was about to be filed on behalf of survivors at the European Court of Human Rights.

      Their reporting was deep, but it was very technical. We wanted to build on the original research to create a short film that would sharpen the story while still embracing complexity.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/reader-center/migrants-mediterranean-sea.html
      #visibilité #invisibilité #in/visiblité #Mare_clausum

  • Facebook : des accès « partenaires » aux données utilisateurs ont été accordés à Apple, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Yahoo !
    https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2018/12/19/facebook-des-acces-partenaires-aux-donnees-utilisateurs-ont-ete-accordes-a-a

    Le « New York Times » dévoile les contours des partenariats menés entre Facebook et d’autres géants de la tech. Si l’accès aux données des utilisateurs semble souvent justifié, la question de leur consentement se pose. A quel point Facebook, ces dernières années, a-t-il donné à des entreprises extérieures l’accès aux données de ses utilisateurs ? La question est devenue centrale, depuis le scandale Cambridge Analytica, qui a démontré que, au cours de son développement tous azimuts dans les années 2010, (...)

    #Microsoft #Sony #Apple #Amazon #Facebook #Netflix #Spotify #BlackBerry #Altaba/Yahoo ! #Pandora #données #BigData #BankOfCanada (...)

    ##Altaba/Yahoo_ ! ##écoutes

    • @biggrizzly voici une probable raison de cette ormerta :

      https://www.01net.com/actualites/facebook-a-donne-a-netflix-spotify-microsoft-et-amazon-un-acces-a-vos-donnees

      Par exemple, le New York Times révèle que le moteur de recherche Bing de Microsoft avait accès à la liste complète de vos amis, sans votre consentement. Grâce à ces informations, il pouvait améliorer ses suggestions. Amazon a de son côté pu compléter sa liste d’informations personnelles sur ses utilisateurs (mail, téléphone etc.) en se basant sur leurs amis. Yahoo pouvait accéder à votre fil d’actualité alors qu’Apple avait accès aux contacts et à l’agenda Facebook de ses utilisateurs, même si ces derniers avaient désactivé l’option. Interrogé par le New York Times, l’entreprise de Tim Cook assure ne pas avoir été mis au courant de cet « accès spécial ».

      Le journal confesse lui même avoir eu un deal avec Facebook , qui lui donnait accès à la liste d’amis de ses lecteurs jusqu’à 2011. Au total, plus de 150 entreprises auraient bénéficié de ces « exceptions de confidentialité » et n’auraient pas été soumises aux règles habituelles du réseau social. Certaines entreprises comme Amazon, Yahoo ou le Chinois Huawei (que le gouvernement américain considère comme une menace) auraient aussi partagé les données personnelles de leurs utilisateurs ou clients avec Facebook.

  • Apple News’s Radical Approach: Humans Over Machines - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/apple-news-humans-algorithms.html

    Apple has waded into the messy world of news with a service that is read regularly by roughly 90 million people. But while Google, Facebook and Twitter have come under intense scrutiny for their disproportionate — and sometimes harmful — influence over the spread of information, Apple has so far avoided controversy. One big reason is that while its Silicon Valley peers rely on machines and algorithms to pick headlines, Apple uses humans like Ms. Kern.

    The former journalist has quietly become one of the most powerful figures in English-language media. The stories she and her deputies select for Apple News regularly receive more than a million visits each.

    Their work has complicated the debate about whether Silicon Valley giants are media or technology companies. Google, Facebook and Twitter have long insisted they are tech entities and not arbiters of the truth. The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and others have bet heavily on artificial intelligence to help them sort through false news and fact-based information. Yet Apple has unabashedly gone the other direction with its human-led approach, showing that a more media-like sensibility may be able to coexist within a technology company.

    There are ambitious plans for the product. Apple lets publishers run ads in its app and it helps some sign up new subscribers, taking a 30 percent cut of the revenue. Soon, the company aims to bundle access to dozens of magazines in its app for a flat monthly fee, sort of like Netflix for news, according to people familiar with the plans, who declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Apple also hopes to package access to a few daily-news publications, like The Times, The Post and The Wall Street Journal, into the app, the people said.

    Apple’s executives grandly proclaim that they want to help save journalism. “There is this deep understanding that a thriving free press is critical for an informed public, and an informed public is critical for a functioning democracy, and that Apple News can play a part in that,” Ms. Kern said.

    But there are early signs that Apple is not the industry’s savior. Many publishers have made little on ads in Apple News, and Apple’s 30 percent cut of subscriptions it helps sell does not help. Having experienced Google’s and Facebook’s disruption of their industry, many publications are wary of Apple, according to conversations with executives from nine news organizations, many of whom declined to comment on the record for fear of upsetting the trillion-dollar corporation. Some were optimistic that Apple could be a better partner than other tech giants, but were leery of making the company the portal to their readers.

    The rise of Google and Facebook in news was partly driven by algorithms that provided enormous scale, enabling them to surface millions of articles from thousands of sources to their billions of users. The algorithms were largely designed to keep users engaged and clicking, meaning they tended to promote posts that drew clicks and shares, which often meant the sensational. That elevated fringe and partisan sites that produced intentionally misleading, highly partisan or downright false content.

    (A Google spokeswoman said the company aimed to avoid misinformation by screening publishers before letting them into Google News. She added that Google this year began helping news organizations sell subscriptions. A Facebook spokeswoman said the company helps publishers reach more readers, earn ad revenue and sell subscriptions. She said Facebook’s algorithm recently decreased the visibility of pages that share clickbait.)

    Into that environment came Apple. In late 2015, the iPhone maker released a free news app to match users with publications they liked. People selected their interests and favorite publications, and the app returned a feed of relevant stories.

    The announcement attracted little fanfare. Three months later, Apple announced an unusual new feature: humans would pick the app’s top stories, not algorithms.

    Not all of the stories in Apple News are handpicked. Algorithms still deliver stories based on which new sources or topics users have followed, such as sports, cars or entertainment. Algorithms also pick the five prominent “trending” stories below Ms. Kern’s team’s curated stories. Those items tend to focus on Mr. Trump or celebrities. Making the list on Oct. 2: a People magazine headline reading “Kate Middleton Is Back from Maternity Leave — with a New Haircut and Old Boots!”

    Daniel Hallac, chief product officer for New York Magazine, said traffic from Apple News has doubled since December to now account for nearly 12 percent of visits to the magazine’s website. Traffic from Facebook has dropped about a third, to 8 percent of visits, while Google’s share has increased slightly to nearly half of the site’s traffic. “I’m optimistic about Apple News,” he said.

    But in return for that traffic, publishers are stuck with Apple’s less-than-ideal terms. Apple News readers typically stay in Apple’s app, limiting the data that news organizations learn about them and curbing their ad revenues. Slate reported last month that its Apple News readers had roughly tripled over the past year but that, on average, it earned more money on 50,000 views on its site than the six million views it averaged per month in Apple News.

    Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president who oversees its services push, said publishers can run their own ads alongside their stories in Apple News and keep all of the revenue. “That’s very rare,” he said. He noted most major publishers take advantage of that feature. Apple also places ads for publishers for a 30 percent cut.

    But news publishers said selling ads for Apple News is complicated, and that advertisers’ interest was limited because of the lack of customer data. Slate also attributed its issues to minuscule revenue from the ads Apple placed. Apple recently made it easier for publishers to place their own ads, but Mr. Cue conceded Apple is not terribly good — or interested — in advertising.

    #Apple #Journalisme #Médias #Apple_news #Editorialisation

  • State is funding settler institute squatting illegally in Palestinian home | The Times of Israel
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/state-funding-settler-institute-squatting-illegally-in-palestinian-ho

    The Culture Ministry has been funding an Israeli religious institute whose founders illegally took over a Palestinian home in the central West Bank and have continued to operate at the site under IDF protection for over 15 years.

    An investigation into the financials of the Mishpetei Eretz (“laws of the land”) institute revealed that it has received at least NIS 200,000 ($54,786) annually for the past three years from the Culture Ministry, and that, in total, the academy has enjoyed NIS 781,617 ($214,039) in government funding since 2015.

    #vol #voleurs #Israel#villa_dans_la_jungle

  • ’NY Times’ uses old tricks to distort Israel’s latest attacks on #Gaza
    https://mondoweiss.net/2018/07/distort-israels-attacks

    Les vieilles ficelles du #New_York_Times, pro-#Israël #indécent,

    Falsifier la chronologie des événements,

    Distort the timeline to try and blame the Palestinians. The Times recounts yesterday’s latest news: Israeli airstrikes that killed 2 Gazans and mortar fire from Gaza that wounded 4 Israelis. But the paper nowhere mentions that 5 days earlier, on July 9, Israel had further choked off cargo shipments into Gaza, a territory which was already under a punishing blockade — a drastic act that any neutral observer might have concluded contributed greatly to the latest escalation.

    Insister sur les victimes israéliennes,

    Spend more time on Israeli victims than on Palestinian ones. Today’s online article has 6 full paragraphs on Israelis in the town of Sderot who were hurt by rockets or mortars. Three different Israelis were quoted, including one, Refael Yifrah, who said, “It’s better to be in Gaza where they get warning that they’re going to be fired upon in one neighborhood or another and they evacuate. . . Here, there’s an alert, no one knows where it going to land.”

    By contrast, the Times cited only one Palestinian by name, even though the paper has two reporters in Gaza City. The Times did report that Muhammad Abdelaal, a 30-year-old, “was interviewed at Shifa Hospital while soaked with blood and being treated for his wounds” — but, unlike the Israelis, he apparently didn’t say anything quotable.

    Présenter les déclarations non vérifiées des autorités israéliennes comme des faits avérés,

    Don’t challenge Israel’s framing of the events. The Times headline calls yesterday’s exchange the “Most Intense Fighting Since 2014 War” — without quotation marks. In fairness, the first sentence of the report does make clear that the “most intense” assessment comes straight from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Israeli soldiers have shot dead at least 137 Gazans in the months-long Great March of Return and wounded more than 4000. Israeli snipers murdering un- or barely-armed protesters hardly qualifies as “fighting,” but it has certainly been more “intense” than yesterday’s events. Clearly Netanyahu wanted to distract world attention from those 137 dead Palestinians, and the thousands more wounded — and the New York Times let him get away with it.

  • Poll shows deep divisions between Israeli and US Jews on Trump, peace, religion | The Times of Israel

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-shows-deep-divisions-between-israeli-and-us-jews-on-trump-peace

    An opinion poll published Sunday shows deep divisions between Israeli and American Jews, particularly in relation to US President Donald Trump, highlighting the growing rift between the world’s two largest Jewish communities.

    The survey by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) showed 77 percent of Israeli Jews approved of the president’s handling of US-Israel relations, while only 34 percent of American Jews did. Fifty-seven percent of US Jews disapproved, while only 10 percent of Israeli Jews did.

    Concerning the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the relocation of the US embassy to the city, 85% of Israeli Jews support the decision, compared to just 46% of US Jews. Forty-seven percent of American Jews opposed the move, a position held by only 7% of Israelis.

  • Token Economics To Help The Homeless
    https://hackernoon.com/token-economics-to-help-the-homeless-65ba94907781?source=rss----3a8144ea

    Using tokens and blockchain there is a path to helping improve the lives’ of homeless people on our city streets. This is a call for ideas, feedback and a plea to work together to solve this issue.Experiencing brief homelessness during #BlockchainWeekNYCI spent a day attending a blockchain unconference in NYC recently. Being tight on budget, I didn’t book a hotel room for my very brief visit (and didn’t want to bother friends/family either), and ended up “co-habiting” a local Starbucks in the Times Square area with other homeless people who used it as a “sitting” space until it shut down for the night. Hotels were running at over $1000/night; and Airbnbs were not a viable option either. I started to feel panic around midnight!This was during Consensus 2018, at the peak of blockchain week NYC, (...)

  • The Daphne Project

    Six months ago, Maltese journalist #Daphne_Caruana_Galizia was brutally killed by a car bomb just meters from her home. The investigation into her killing is ongoing, but there is little doubt that she was murdered because of her work. With a brazen, unapologetic and uncompromising style, she denounced corruption, nepotism, clientelism, and all kinds of criminal behaviours in her tiny EU member state.

    A group of 45 journalists representing 18 news organisations from 15 countries picked up Daphne’s work after it was abruptly halted by her gruesome death on the doorstep of Europe. For five months they kept digging — pouring over her findings, gathering documents, talking to sources — to try to get to the bottom of the many leads the formidable woman left behind.

    The Daphne Project is a unique collaboration coordinated and led by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based organisation established specifically to continue the work of killed, imprisoned, or otherwise incapacitated journalists.

    The Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) contributed with its knowledge on mafias and illicit traffics in the Mediterranean area, assigning reporters to dig on the transnational network of criminals that thrive in Malta, on related money laundering as well as on wrongdoing among Malta’s elite.

    Forbidden Stories with IRPI, OCCRP, La Repubblica, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reuters, The Times of Malta, Le Monde, The Guardian, The New York Times, Tages-Anzeiger, Premières Lignes Télévision, Radio France, France 2, Die Zeit, Direkt 36, WDR, NDR are now shining lights onto the stories that killed her.

    On April 17, we will start revealing what Daphne left behind. Watch this space.


    https://irpi.eu/il-progetto-daphne

    #projet_Daphne #journalisme #médias #presse
    cc @albertocampiphoto @fil @reka

  • Israel Kills Palestinians and Western Liberals Shrug. Their Humanitarianism Is a Sham.
    https://theintercept.com/2018/04/02/israel-killing-palestine-civilian-liberal-humanitarian

    So, where is the outcry from liberal interventionists across the West? Where is BHL, as Palestinians are being shot and wounded in the hundreds in 2018?

    Where is the call from former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose 1999 speech in Chicago defending the concept of a “just war” and a “doctrine of the international community” became a key text for liberal interventionists, for a “no-fly” zone over Gaza? Why does a guest speaker at Ariel Sharon’s funeral have nothing to say about the increasing number of Palestinian funerals?

    Where is the moral outrage from former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, the famously pro-intervention, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a “A Problem From Hell,” which lamented U.S. inaction in Rwanda, over the sheer number of unarmed Palestinians shot, killed, and injured in recent days? How does she have time to retweet a picture of an elephant and a lion cub, but not to make a statement about the violence in Gaza?

    Where is the demand from Canadian academic-turned-politician Michael Ignatieff, who was once one of the loudest voices in favor of the so-called responsibility to protect doctrine, for peacekeeping troops to be deployed to the Occupied Territories?

    Where are the righteously angry op-eds from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, or Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, or David Aaronovitch of The Times of London, demanding concrete action against the human rights abusers of the IDF?

    And where is the appeal from former U.S. Secretary of State and arch-interventionist Madeleine Albright for economic and financial sanctions against the state of Israel? For an arms embargo? For travel bans on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Lieberman, and IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot?

    Their silence is deafening — and telling. Palestinians, it seems, have been so dehumanized that they don’t deserve a humanitarian intervention

  • French fear losing control of Louvre in Middle East

    The Times & The Sunday Times
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-fear-losing-control-of-louvre-in-middle-east-097n8nvxl

    When the Louvre opened its first outpost in November, President Macron declared that the £3 billion museum in Abu Dhabi would be the repository of “creation, reason, intelligence and fraternity”.

    Less than two months later, the custodians of one of the world’s most famous art collections are accused of losing control of the Louvre of the Sands, as it has been nicknamed, and becoming a tool in the hands of Abu Dhabi’s ruling Al Nahyan family, which also owns Manchester City football club. Far from bringing Renaissance values to the Gulf, the new museum is enveloping the Louvre in Middle Eastern culture, critics have argued. Didier Rykner, founder of La Tribune de l’Art, an art news website, said: “The Louvre has been kidnapped by diplomatic issues in the Middle East. It’s scandalous.”

    The criticism came after the Abu Dhabi gallery omitted Qatar from a map next to an exhibit. Officials claimed it had been an oversight, but detractors said it was a deliberate slight borne of the diplomatic row between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the capital.

    h
    Inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi
    “It’s like publishing a map of France and leaving off Brittany,” Mr Rykner said. “No one seriously believes it was a mistake.” The omission showed that the Louvre had little control over the Arab museum to which it has lent its name, he said. His concerns are shared by Jean Lebrun, a historian and radio presenter, who said Mr Macron had fallen into a trap laid by Abu Dhabi’s “ruling clan”. He said: “At the precise moment that it is extending its absolute monarchy, Paris has declared it to be the guarantor of tolerance and progress.”

    Concerns first arose when the Louvre Abu Dhabi said that it was due to exhibit Salvator Mundi, the painting by Leonardo da Vinci which sold for a record $450.3 million in November.

    The buyer was reported to be Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, a Saudi prince who is close to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Prince Bader is thought to have acquired the work for Abu Dhabi, although there has been no official confirmation.

    Alexandre Kazerouni, a researcher at the Institute of Political Studies, Paris, said France was “not informed about this purchase, about which we know nothing of the details. This is a sign that the UAE authorities have politically appropriated the museum.”

    The Arab world’s first universal museum was borne of a treaty between Paris and the UAE in 2007. France lent 300 artworks, including Monet’s La Gare Saint-Lazare, Leonardo’s La Belle Ferronnière and Edouard Manet’s The Fife Player, along with cultural expertise and the Louvre’s brand, for 30 years.

    In return, Abu Dhabi agreed to pay €400 million for the right to use the name, along with other fees that could push the total sum up to €1.3 billion. The treaty says the museum will “work towards a dialogue between the East and the West, with each party respecting the cultural values of the other”.

    Mr Rykner said: “Jean-Luc Martinez [the Louvre’s president] is very afraid of upsetting the authorities in Abu Dhabi, so he lets them do what they like.”

    The Louvre declined to comment.

  • The Follower Factory - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html

    #Devumi sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. Drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over, the company has provided customers with more than 200 million #Twitter followers, a New York Times investigation found.

    #robots #abonnés

  • My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror
    https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terro

    Très long article de #James_Risen, #journaliste d’investigation du #New_york_Times

    My experience with [some] stor[ies] [...] made me much less willing to go along with later government requests to hold or kill stories. And that ultimately set me on a collision course with the editors at the New York Times, who were still quite willing to cooperate with the government.

    [...]

    By 2002, I was also starting to clash with the editors over our coverage of the Bush administration’s claims about pre-war intelligence on Iraq. My stories raising questions about the intelligence, particularly the administration’s claims of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, were being cut, buried, or held out of the paper altogether.

    [...]

    Meanwhile, #Judy_Miller, an intense reporter who was based in New York but had sources at the highest levels of the Bush administration, was writing story after story that seemed to document the existence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Her stories were helping to set the political agenda in Washington.

    [...]

    After weeks of reporting in late 2002 and early 2003, I was able to get enough material to start writing stories that revealed that intelligence analysts were skeptical of the Bush administration’s evidence for going to war, particularly the administration’s assertions that there were links between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda.

    But after I filed the first story, it sat in the Times computer system for days, then weeks, untouched by editors. I asked several editors about the story’s status, but no one knew.

    Finally, the story ran, but it was badly cut and buried deep inside the paper. I wrote another one, and the same thing happened. I tried to write more, but I started to get the message. It seemed to me that the Times didn’t want these stories.

    What angered me most was that while they were burying my skeptical stories, the editors were not only giving banner headlines to stories asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they were also demanding that I help match stories from other publications about Iraq’s purported WMD programs. I grew so sick of this that when the Washington Post reported that Iraq had turned over nerve gas to terrorists, I refused to try to match the story. One mid-level editor in the Washington bureau yelled at me for my refusal. He came to my desk carrying a golf club while berating me after I told him that the story was bullshit and I wasn’t going to make any calls on it.

    As a small protest, I put a sign on my desk that said, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” It was New York Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst’s supposed line to artist Frederic Remington, whom he had sent to Cuba to illustrate the “crisis” there before the Spanish-American War. I don’t think my editors even noticed the sign.

    #manipulation #mensonges #désinformation #MSM

  • Un grand journal britannique se porte à la défense des jeunes contre les outrances du lobby transgenre
    https://tradfem.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/un-grand-journal-britannique-se-porte-a-la-defense-des-jeunes-con


    Une période de transition
    THE TIMES , 13 novembre 2017
    Un débat confus sur le genre menace de porter préjudice à des jeunes. Les médecins et les politiciens doivent avoir le courage de leur dire qu’elles et ils se trompent.
    Albert Einstein a jadis défini le sens commun comme « la collection des préjugés acquis à l’âge de dix-huit ans ». Il est peu sûr que cela ait jamais été vrai et ce n’est pas vrai aujourd’hui. Nous voyons actuellement un débat confus sur le genre, partagé et attisé dans les médias sociaux, mettre particulièrement à risque les jeunes femmes. La tentative de se montrer compréhensifs et d’éviter toute attitude offensante cache le danger qu’un mal véritable soit en train de se produire.
    Un récent exemple de cette confusion est le compte rendu de travestis invités dans des écoles maternelles pour instruire les enfants des questions liées au transgenrisme. La chaîne de magasins de vêtements Top Shop a récemment déclaré, sous la pression de l’artiste de performance Travis Alabanza, que ses salles d’essayage deviendraient unisexes. Ce serait bien si ses magasins avaient des espaces sécurisés dans lesquels les jeunes femmes pourraient être épargnées de l’attention de voyeurs plus âgés, mais ce n’est pas le cas.
    Pourtant, ce genre de confusion commence à bénéficier d’une sanction officielle. Le gouvernement écossais a récemment publié des directives qui permettraient aux élèves d’école primaire de changer de sexe sans le consentement de leurs parents. Un rapport du comité des femmes et des égalités, qui est déjà sur le bureau de la secrétaire d’État à l’Éducation, Justine Greening, propose que cette politique prenne une envergure nationale. Elle entraînerait que les espaces réservés aux femmes, tels que les refuges pour violences conjugales, les centres de crise anti-viol et les services hospitaliers non mixtes, devraient admettre tout homme qui prétend s’identifier comme femme.
    Il ne fait aucun doute que les enjeux transgenres soulèvent des questions difficiles. Aucun pays sensible aux droits des personnes ne souhaite stigmatiser des personnes dont la conscience de soi ne correspond pas à leur sexe biologique. Tout harcèlement ou discrimination envers les personnes transgenres est inacceptable. Pourtant, le mouvement transgenre actuel veut pousser son plaidoyer beaucoup plus loin.

    Traduction : #Tradfem
    Version originale : The Times (On peut s’abonner au site Web du Times (1 £/ semaine) ou s’y inscrire gratuitement pour l’accès à 2 articles par semaine : https://www.thetimes.co.uk )
    #transgenres #identité

    • Pourtant, ce genre de confusion commence à bénéficier d’une sanction officielle.

      Pourquoi ? Parmi les catégories de personnes victimes de discrimination, cet article (et d’autres contributions, de @tradfem notamment, il me semble) donne l’impression que les transgenres « bénéficient » d’une capacité particulière à faire avancer leur cause. Est-ce le cas ? Et encore une fois, pourquoi, comment ? Merci d’avance pour un éclairage (si c’est possible d’éclairer des analphabètes de ce sujet sur la place publique : risque de trollage élevé a priori...).

  • The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: This is by far the most Islamophobic disgusting thing the #New_York_Times ever published: if a Muslim is accused of rape, what does this have to do with Islam?
    http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2017/10/this-is-by-far-most-islamophobic.html

    Look at this disgusting headline: “Could this be the Harvey Weinstein of Islam?” What does this have to do about Islam. Now we know that if an individual Muslim commits a terrorist act, his act is blamed on Islam, the religion. But now it got to the point that if an individual Muslim commits a crime of any kind, it will also be blamed on Islam, the religion? David Duke and other Nazi anti-Semites used the Harvey Weinstein scandal to spew their anti-Semitic trash. But the New York Times is doing the same. if someone were to relate the Harvey Weinstein scandal to Judaism it would be seen—and rightly so—as anti-Semitism and the Times would be outraged. But the Times with its long history of bigotry and racism against Arabs and Muslims, found no problem in publishing this headline? I don’t know the person in question and the crime of rape should be investigated but why relate it to 1) Harvey Weinstein? and 2) to Islam? This is a new low for the Times. So if an individual Muslim were to steal, the New York Times will publish a headline about “Theft in Islam”?

    • Juste un détail, mais j’ai peut-être raté un épisode à propos de

      despite scandals surrounding him, including his acceptance of female genital mutilation and the stoning of women.

      Je crois qu’il s’agit de son frère Hani Ramadan et pas Tariq Ramadan au moins pour la lapidation

      En septembre 2002, il avait fait scandale en défendant dans une tribune publiée dans Le Monde l’application de la charia et la lapidation des femmes adultères.
      http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/04/08/l-islamologue-hani-ramadan-expulse-de-france-vers-la-suisse_5108311_3224.htm

      Pour les mutilations génitales, je ne sais pas. Par ailleurs, j’ai
      vu deux vidéos au moins dans lesquelles Tariq Ramadan estime que l’homosexualité est tout à fait anormale pour ne pas dire plus.

    • @reka Non il s’agit bien de Tariq Ramadan, TR a lancé un appel international à un moratoire sur les châtiments corporels, la lapidation et la peine de mort dans le monde musulman. Tariq Ramadan discutait avec Nicolas Sarkozy, ministre de l’intérieur à cette époque. Lorsque le ministre s’enquit de l’avis de Tariq Ramadan à propos de la lapidation des femmes dans l’islam, celui-ci répondit qu’il était favorable à un « moratoire. »
      https://tariqramadan.com/appel-international-a-un-moratoire-sur-les-chatiments-corporels-la-lap
      Début de la polémique.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EHUnGq6FB8


      "Tariq Ramadan a tenu des propos particulièrement détestables en se refusant à condamner, du fond du cœur, la peine de mort, encore prononcée de nos jours contre des femmes accusées d’adultère, par certains tribunaux religieux musulmans, dans des pays comme le Nigéria, l’Arabie Saoudite, voire l’Iran ."
      "Pour quelle raison ne demandait-il pas tout simplement l’annulation pure et simple d’une mesure aussi barbare que celle-ci ? Comment ne pas s’opposer de toutes ses forces à une attitude digne du Moyen-Âge ?"

      Il y a une vidéo de la réponse de TR...
      "Tariq Ramadan se déclare musulman croyant et pratiquant. Partant, il donne un aspect divin au Coran et aux paroles de ceux qui se déclarent comme prophètes. Ceci est important à réaliser : un texte divin ne peut être réformé, modifier ou simplement annulé. En même temps, Tariq Ramadan s’oppose à la lapidation des femmes. Alors ?

      Le seul choix qui s’offre à Tariq Ramadan est celui-ci : plutôt que de demander une annulation des lapidations (ce qui ne peut être fait par aucune autorité religieuse), il préfère y mettre un terme en les déclarant « inapplicables. » L’idée d’un moratoire permettrait de suspendre ces mesures d’un autre âge et de reconnaître que nos sociétés ne peuvent plus admettre ce type de justice.

      Le moratoire pourrait être formulé de différentes façons, mais l’idée maîtresse serait d’admettre qu’il est actuellement impossible de lapider des femmes et que cette situation devrait changer lorsque les sociétés admettraient de nouveau de telles punitions.

      En se prononçant pour un moratoire, les législateurs islamiques ne s’opposeraient pas de plein fouet avec leurs écritures saintes ; en même temps, ils mettraient fin à un des aspects les plus inhumains de la justice islamique.

      J’ajoute que même si mon article fait référence seulement à la lapidation des femmes, Tariq Ramadan s’est opposé maintes fois aux punitions corporelles au nom de l’islam (voir vidéo ci-dessous). Sa position et ma conclusion peuvent donc s’appliquer au-delà des lapidations."
      https://blogs.mediapart.fr/lucasmartin/blog/211012/pause-des-lapidations-de-femmes

    • Merci cher @unagi pour avoir exhumé ces documents qui éclaire un peu ces positions. Il me semble que dans toutes les vidéos que j’ai vu, Tariq Ramadan adopte - pour l’essentiel de ces questions cruciales - une stratégie de contournement qui colle bien avec la position que tu signales. Lequel discours a largement de quoi nous mettre vraiment mal à l’aise, et particulièrement ce vendredi soir, après cette deuxième plainte contre TR pour viol.

      A propos de l’extrait du texte de Lucas Martin que tu cites :

      un texte divin ne peut être réformé, modifier ou simplement annulé.

      Tariq Ramadan se déclare musulman croyant et pratiquant. Partant, il donne un aspect divin au Coran et aux paroles de ceux qui se déclarent comme prophètes. Ceci est important à réaliser : un texte divin ne peut être réformé, modifier ou simplement annulé.

      En même temps, Tariq Ramadan s’oppose à la lapidation des femmes. Alors ?

      Le seul choix qui s’offre à Tariq Ramadan est celui-ci : plutôt que de demander une annulation des lapidations (ce qui ne peut être fait par aucune autorité religieuse), il préfère y mettre un terme en les déclarant « inapplicables. » L’idée d’un moratoire permettrait de suspendre ces mesures d’un autre âge et de reconnaître que nos sociétés ne peuvent plus admettre ce type de justice.

      Puisqu’il ne peut pas faire autrement, il contourne. Mais fondamentalement, le problème c’est quand même de ne « pas pouvoir réformer ou annuler » un texte divin. On peut changer la loi, mais pas les textes divins combien mêmes ils ne correspondent à aucune des exigences fondamentales du droit et de la justice. Si TR pense comme ça, c’est déjà très grave, ce qui serait plus humains serait de dire que les textes divins ne sont plus valables puisqu’ils violent la déclaration des droits humains par exemple.

  • Seas: The naming of seas: The associated problems and their resolutions - The Economic Times

    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/heres-how-seas-receive-names-and-the-associated-problems-and-resolutions/articleshow/59922770.cms

    In May 1988, the Times of India (ToI) reported on an issue riling readers of Pakistan Times, a now defunct newspaper that was then owned by the Pakistani government. This was the name of the Indian Ocean which they felt was unfairly linked to this country simply because “by calling itself India the country seemed to have become heir to the entire history of the subcontinent.”

    One writer felt that the fairer approach would be to limit the use of India up to August 1947 and after that “what remained outside Pakistan and Bangladesh should be called Bharat.” But since the Indian government had not been so obliging, writers felt Pakistan should not go along with this historical and geographic appropriation and should stop using the term “Indian Ocean’.

    #cartographie #frontières #territoires_contestés #toponymie #chine #inde #pakistan

  • In 2016, drug overdoses likely killed more Americans than the entire wars in Vietnam and Iraq
    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/7/15925488/opioid-epidemic-deaths-2016

    “Every year for the past few years, we’ve gotten even more horrible statistics showing the harrowing impact of the opioid epidemic on America. In 2015, overall drug overdose deaths, largely as a result of the opioid crisis, reached a new historic record — topping deaths from guns or cars that year, and even the toll from HIV/AIDS at the height of that epidemic’s peak in 1995.

    In 2016, we got another awful statistic: Drug overdose deaths reached another record — and, based on the highest estimate by a New York Times analysis of state data, topped total US casualties from the entire wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

    The Times’s analysis calculated that 59,000 to 65,000 people died of overdoses in 2016, with a harder, but likely imprecise, number of 62,497. (We’ll get the official numbers later in 2017.) In comparison, more than 58,200 US troops died in the Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975, and more than 4,500 have died so far in the Iraq War since 2003 — which adds up to more than 62,700.

    Although it’s hard to say for certain, the Times suggested “the [opioid] problem has continued to worsen in 2017.” In short, the opioid epidemic was already the deadliest drug crisis in American history in 2015. It got much deadlier in 2016, and is likely even worse so far in 2017.

    It can be hard to conceptualize the numbers we’re talking about here. So Bella Lucy from Vox’s graphics team put together the following chart. It requires a bit of scrolling.” @fil

  • Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/05/upshot/opioid-epidemic-drug-overdose-deaths-are-rising-faster-than-ever.html?_r=0

    “Because drug deaths take a long time to certify, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will not be able to calculate final numbers until December. The Times compiled estimates for 2016 from hundreds of state health departments and county coroners and medical examiners. Together they represent data from states and counties that accounted for 76 percent of overdose deaths in 2015. They are a first look at the extent of the drug overdose epidemic last year, a detailed accounting of a modern plague.

    The initial data points to large increases in drug overdose deaths in states along the East Coast, particularly Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine. In Ohio, which filed a lawsuit last week accusing five drug companies of abetting the opioid epidemic, we estimate overdose deaths increased by more than 25 percent in 2016.

    “Heroin is the devil’s drug, man. It is,” Cliff Parker said, sitting on a bench in Grace Park in Akron. Mr. Parker, 24, graduated from high school not too far from here, in nearby Copley, where he was a multisport athlete. In his senior year, he was a varsity wrestler and earned a scholarship to the University of Akron. Like his friends and teammates, he started using prescription painkillers at parties. It was fun, he said. By the time it stopped being fun, it was too late. Pills soon turned to heroin, and his life began slipping away from him.”

    @fil

  • Killing the Public Editor, NYT Deals Another Blow to the Public’s Trust | FAIR
    http://fair.org/home/killing-the-public-editor-nyt-deals-another-blow-to-the-publics-trust

    This move by the Times is tragically short-sighted, though admittedly not uncommon. (As of next week, among major outlets, only NPR and ESPN will have full-fledged ombuds on staff.) But for media organizations that shape our country’s discourse, to have a staff ombud offered a strong signal that they accept, own and take responsibility for that daily failure to arrive at the whole truth.

  • Barghouti’s N.Y. Times article met by Israeli ritual of diversion and denial -

    Comparing article to terror attack and suggesting sanctions against the Times, as Michael Oren did, is more damaging to Israel’s image

    Chemi Shalev Apr 19, 2017
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.784060

    At the end of his opinion piece in the New York Times about the Palestinian prisoners’ strike, Marwan Barghouti was originally described as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.” After 24 hours of outrage and condemnation, an editor’s note conceded that further context was needed, pointing out that Barghouti had been convicted on “five counts of murder and membership in a terrorist organization.” News of the clarification spread like wildfire on social media. It was described in glowing terms as yet another historic victory of good over evil and of the Jewish people over its eternal enemies.
    It was another example of the time-tested Israeli ritual of accentuating the insignificant at the expense of the essence, the results of which are well known in advance. First you manufacture righteous indignation over a minor fault in an article or the problematic identity of its writer, then you assault the newspaper or media that publicized it and cast doubt on its motives, then you demand to know how this was even possible and who will pay the price. In this way, the Israeli public is absolved of the need to actually contend with the gist of the article or public utterance, in this case Barghouti’s claims that he was physically tortured, that almost a million Palestinians have been detained over the years, that their conviction rate in the Israeli military court system is absurdly high, whether it’s really wise to hold as many as 6,500 security prisoners in custody at one time and so on.
    The guiding principle of this perpetual war waged by Israel and its supporters against the so-called hostile press - to paraphrase a legendary John Cleese episode about a visit by German visitors to Fawlty Towers - is “Don’t mention the occupation!” After one spends so much energy on protestations and exclamations of how unthinkable, how outrageous and how dare they, there’s very little enthusiasm left to consider eternal control over another people or the malignant status quo that many Israelis view as the best of all possible worlds or how is it even possible that someone who is defined by former Israeli Ambassador and current deputy minister Michael Oren as a terrorist and a murderer on a par with Dylann Roof, who killed nine African American worshippers in a church in Charleston, is considered by many people around the world, including those at the New York Times, as an authentic leader whose words should be read and heard.
    In an interview with IDF Radio on Tuesday, Oren put the ingenious diversionary strategy on full display. He described Barghouti’s op-ed as nothing less than a “media terror attack.” To this he added a pinch of conspiracy theory with a dash of anti-Semitism by claiming that the Times purposely published Barghouti’s article on Passover, so that Israeli and Jewish leaders wouldn’t have time to react. Then he approvingly cited the wise words of his new oracle, Donald Trump, describing the publication of the article and its content as “fake news.” And for his grand finale, Oren intimated that the proper Zionist response would be to close down the Times’ Israel office, no less.
    In this way, anyone who wants to address Barghouti’s claims substantively, even if it’s to criticize them, is seen as collaborating with a terrorist and enabling terror. It’s the same system by which anti-occupation groups such as Breaking the Silence are tarred as traitorous, backstabbing informants so that no one dares consider the actual testimonies they present about the hardships of occupation and the immorality of forcing the IDF to police the West Bank. What’s hilarious, however, is that so many Israelis and Jews are convinced that articles such as the one written by Barghouti, which most readers probably view as yet another tedious polemic about an intractable Middle East conflict, somehow causes more harm to Israel’s image than a senior government official who compares a news article to a terror attack and who recommends closing down the offices of the most widely respected news organization in the world, a la Putin or Erdogan.

    #Palestine #Israel #Barghouti

  • Bret Stephens’s greatest hits
    http://mondoweiss.net/2017/04/bret-stephenss-greatest

    I was shocked last night when I learned that Bret Stephens has been hired as an op-ed columnist by the New York Times. Being an idealist, I’ve always believed that the Times is going to begin to reflect progressive opinion on Israel and Palestine; but this hire told me I’m dreamin. It goes to show, there really is a neoconservative bloc at the Times. That’s why Jodi Rudoren was Jerusalem bureau chief (and told readers about “a sliver of opportunity” in Gaza). It’s why Bill Kristol was a columnist for a while. It’s why editors always let through stupid headlines about Jerusalem. It’s why the op-ed page is all Zionist, from Roger Cohen to David Brooks to waffling Tom Friedman. And why the paper slags the boycott movement against Israel without rejoinder from pro-BDS voices.

    But let’s hear from the temperamental Stephens himself; let’s see why I think this hire is so problematic. What characterizes Stephens’s speech is an irritable callowness that easily flares into prejudice. That prejudice is conventional neoconservative, and Jewish-centric with a boyish gloss. A former editor of the Jerusalem Post— the launching pad for Wolf Blitzer and Jeffrey Goldberg — Stephens is often Islamophobic.