country:united states

Counter-mapping: cartography that lets the powerless speak | Science | The Guardian
►https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2018/mar/06/counter-mapping-cartography-that-lets-the-powerless-speak

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/89a70726f0c72a20fdc5cfda47052391adbf416e/0_121_5616_3371/master/5616.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&s=50e1158da1a5efaec00381c0c4a7d278

Sara is a 32-year-old mother of four from Honduras. After leaving her children in the care of relatives, she travelled across three state borders on her way to the US, where she hoped to find work and send money home to her family. She was kidnapped in Mexico and held captive for three months, and was finally released when her family paid a ransom of $190.

Her story is not uncommon. The UN estimates that there are 258 million migrants in the world. In Mexico alone, 1,600 migrants are thought to be kidnapped every month. What is unusual is that Sara’s story has been documented in a recent academic paper that includes a map of her journey that she herself drew. Her map appears alongside four others – also drawn by migrants. These maps include legends and scales not found on orthodox maps – unnamed river crossings, locations of kidnapping and places of refuge such as a “casa de emigrante” where officials cannot enter. Since 2011, such shelters have been identified by Mexican law as “spaces of exception”.

#cartographie_radicale #contre_cartographie #cartographie_participative #cartoexperiment

How CNN lost to Fox News - Big Think

▻https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/cnn-fox-news

https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTU0NjM1My85ODB4LnBuZyIsImV4cGlyZXNfYXQiOjE1NTk3MjkwNzZ9.axhdcn_xBEqj7XAcTooLtEhUztofDNAHVMt6YtZQe_s/img.png

he situation today: CNN pushed back to the edges of the country.

Over the course of no more than a decade, America has radically switched favorites when it comes to cable news networks. As this sequence of maps showing TMAs (Television Market Areas) suggests, CNN is out, Fox News is in.

The maps are certainly dramatic, but also a bit misleading. They nevertheless provide some insight into the state of journalism and the public’s attitudes toward the press in the US.

#cartographie #sémiologie #états-unis @média #cnn #foxnews

To Stop Border Crossings, the U.S. Made the Journey Deadlier

https://i.imgur.com/5HJHr6D.png

There is a crisis unfolding at the border — but it’s not the “criminal invasion” that Donald Trump would have you believe. Every day, migrants lost in the borderland deserts call 911 in the hopes of avoiding the gruesome fate of thousands of crossers before them.

▻https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/29/opinion/migrant-crisis.html
#cartographie #visualisation #mourir_aux_frontières #morts #décès #frontières #migrations #USA #Mexique #Etats-Unis
ping @reka @fil

Et le plan #prevention_through_deterrence en carte :

That plan, “Prevention Through Deterrence,” was implemented in 1994 under the Clinton administration.

https://i.imgur.com/Fn2ZpfC.png https://i.imgur.com/rwGlo4B.png

ça rappelle cette carte publiée sur @visionscarto :
« Ceux qui ne sont jamais arrivés », une image du naufrage migratoire en Méditerranée

https://visionscarto.net/local/cache-vignettes/L1200xH564/32321438495_e19e-b29de.png?1504825219#.jpg

ping @isskein @karine4

While you’re sleeping, your #iPhone stays busy — snooping on you - NZ Herald
▻https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12235267

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IPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties - just while I was asleep - include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit’s Mint, Nike, Spotify, the Washington Post and IBM’s the Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information in violation of its published privacy policy.

And your iPhone doesn’t feed data trackers only while you sleep. In a single week, I encountered over 5400 trackers, mostly in apps, not including the incessant Yelp traffic. According to privacy firm Disconnect, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. That’s half of an entire basic wireless service plan from US telecommunictions company AT&T.

“This is your data, why should it even leave your phone? Why should it be collected by someone when you don’t know what they’re going to do with it?” says Patrick Jackson, a former National Security Agency researcher who is chief technology officer for Disconnect. He hooked my iPhone into special software so we could examine the traffic. “I know the value of data, and I don’t want mine in any hands where it doesn’t need to be.”

In a world of data brokers, Jackson is the data breaker. He developed an app called Privacy Pro that identifies and blocks many trackers. If you’re a little bit techie, I recommend trying the free iOS version to glimpse the secret life of your iPhone.

High radiation levels found in giant clams near U.S. nuclear dump in Marshall Islands - Los Angeles Times
▻https://www.latimes.com/science/environment/la-me-marshall-islands-dome-is-leaking-radiation-20190528-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/resizer/pGlpccBZOkhONatwziPIcHQOo3A=/1200x0/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/EK3YEU234JCJ5AWDIHFU5OOTJY.jpg

Researchers have found high levels of radiation in giant clams near the Central Pacific site where the United States entombed waste from nuclear testing almost four decades ago, raising concerns the contamination is spreading from the dump site’s tainted groundwater into the ocean and the food chain.

The findings from the Marshall Islands suggest that radiation is either leaking from the waste site — which U.S. officials reject — or that authorities did not adequately clean up radiation left behind from past weapons testing, as some in the Marshall Islands claim.

#déchets #nucléaire #contamination #chaine_alimentaire

If mayors ruled migration : Promises and gaps

On 8th December 2018, two days before the UN Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, some 80 cities around the world convened in Marrakech for the 5th Mayoral Forum on Human Mobility, Migration and Development. The cities signed a Mayors’ Declaration, identifying common priorities in the follow up and review process of the Global Compact. On that same occasion, a new initiative called the Mayors Migration Council was launched, to support cities’ engagement in international deliberations and policies concerning refugees and migrants. A couple of months afterwards, on February 9th, 2019, the mayors of the main Spanish and Italian cities launched an alliance to oppose the ‘closed harbours’ policy of the Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini and to denounce the incapacity of the EU to address the situation appropriately.

These are just two recent examples that show how city policies and mobilisation on migration can resonate well beyond municipal and national walls. Can cities’ international mobilisation rescue states (and the EU) from their failure in dealing with migration issues? Cities’ enthusiasts like Benjamin Barber, founder of the Global Parliament of Mayors, have no doubts about the governance capacity of city networks (CN henceforth): ‘Mayors can rule the world because cities represent a level of governance sufficiently local to demand pragmatism and efficiency in problem solving but sufficiently networked to be able to fashion cooperative solutions to the interdependent challenges they face’. Pragmatism and cooperative interaction are presented as the key assets of mayors, cities and, by extension, city networks’ mode of governing global challenges. On the basis of – the still scarce – existing research on city global mobilisation on migration-related issues and of the preliminary results of the MinMUS Project, we can identify the promises and challenges of transnational city networks for the building of a new multilevel governance of international migration.

Is local policy more pragmatic?

The idea that local governments must deal with the situation ‘as it is’, therefore taking distance from abstract – and presumably ineffective – ideological recipes, has underpinned the development of research on local migration policy. However, evidence is contradictory and, especially in the US, studies seem to show that pragmatic attitudes and accommodative solutions are just as likely to occur as decisions aiming at excluding migrants or simply ignoring the issue altogether. What a ‘pragmatic solution’ is cannot be easily established a priori, but will depend on policymakers’ interests, perceptions, and definitions of the situation.

Data collected by the Cities of Refuge project on 27 transnational city networks in Europe show that the most networked cities are leaning towards the centre-left, progressive-side of the political spectrum. And even if membership usually outlasts political shifts, this might not correspond to active participation, as pointed out by research in the field of climate change mitigation. Furthermore, according to Cities of Refuge, cities that adhere to international networks have an average population of 1.5 million, meaning that they are primarily large cities. However, as noted by OECD, while nearly two-thirds of migrants settle in metropolitan and densely populated regions, asylum seekers are more spread across urban-rural areas.

Territorial dispersal of asylum seekers reflects evidence on reception policies collected by the CeasEVAL Project. To face the sense of pressure generated by increasing inflows since 2011, national governments in both federal/regional countries (Germany, Italy and Spain) and centralised ones (Finland, Luxemburg, Greece and Bulgaria), have redistributed asylum seekers all over their territory, including small municipalities in rural and mountains areas. Even though the reaction of local populations has not necessarily been negative, CeasEVAL points out a high level of heterogeneity in the type of accommodation and quality of services provided, as well as in opportunities for effective integration. Policy learning and exchange of best practices would probably be of great interest to these ‘new immigrant destinations’; however, they often do not have the financial, human and political resources required to participate in international network activities.

Hence, the international arena is a highly selective one, which risks excluding those – especially small – cities that might be more in need of accessing knowledge and other – mainly financial – resources in order to deal effectively with the challenges of migration and asylum. Modes of inclusion will also depend on the goals of city networks, which are extremely diverse.

Cities as key players in the multilevel governance of migration?

City networks gather together on a voluntary basis local authorities in order to pursue perceived collective interests or purposes. They lack authoritative power, and therefore have to rely upon horizontal coordination and mutual cooperation to carry out and implement their initiatives. As such, city networks are organisations which aim at realising quintessential multilevel governance policy processes: on the vertical dimension, they interact with institutions operating at different – local, regional, national and supra-national – territorial scales; on the horizontal dimension city networks establish new relations between cities and with non-public actors mobilised at a city level.

To assess these hypotheses, the MInMUS project (website) has carried out an in-depth analysis of four transnational networks on migration, i.e.: the Migration and Integration Working Group of Eurocities, the European Coalition of Cities Against Racism (ECCAR), the Intercultural Cities Programme (ICC) and Welcoming America. Results show that these networks: 1) pursue different agendas and 2) are engaged in different types of policymaking processes.

Regarding agendas, ECCAR and ICC are focused on the promotion of a specific type of local policy, i.e. anti-discrimination and interculture respectively; Eurocities seeks to represent main cities vis-á-vis the European Commission, being involved primarily in lobbying activities; whereas Welcoming America is concerned with soliciting grassroots participation and community partnerships. As for policymaking processes, Welcoming America prioritizes relations with actors such as NGOs, CSOs and private business, whereas Eurocities is more focused on relations with the European Commission and national governments. A more balanced pattern of multilevel political dynamics can be discerned in the other two cases. In particular ICC, starting from 2016, has adopted an explicit multilevel governance approach aimed at promoting cooperation and coordination both on the vertical, i.e. between different levels of government, and on the horizontal, i.e. with non-public actors, dimensions of policy-making.

Multilevel governance, far from being the essence of city networking initiatives, is only one possible mode of policymaking interactions and it is not even the most relevant one. City networks may well find it more convenient or appropriate to pursue other types of policy interactions, centred on a vertical dimension as in the case of Eurocities or on the horizontal dimension as in that of Welcoming America. Multilevel governance seems easier to pursue in the case of networks that are already established as multilevel organisations. This is the case of ECCAR, launched by Unesco in 2004, and of ICC, officially started in 2008 as a joint initiative of the Council of Europe and the European Commission. Patterns of relations and modes of policymaking seem to reflect to a large extent the genesis of city networks and their distinctive policy agenda.

Getting back to our initial question: Can cities’ international mobilisation rescue states (and the EU) from their failure in dealing with migration issues? While one cannot deny the key role played by cities in the managing of migration crises as well as in supporting integration and community cohesion more generally, city networks’ skewed membership that consists mainly of larger and politically progressive cities should make us cautious about their impact on improving migrants’ living conditions at a grassroots level. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the initiative of supranational institutions ‘from above’ has played a key role in favouring cities’ collaboration around specific policy issues such as interculture and anti-discrimination. Indeed, cities and their networks represent a new actor in the multilevel political dynamics around migration; yet whether and to what extent they will be effective in promoting collaborative multilevel governance relations and influencing national government and EU agendas on migration remains to be seen.

▻https://blogs.eui.eu/migrationpolicycentre/mayors-ruled-migration-promises-gaps
#municipalisme #migrations #villes #collectivités_locales #asile #migrations #réfugiés #gouvernance

Ajouté à la métaliste sur les #villes-refuge :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/759145

ping @karine4

Sunk Costs. The border wall is more expensive than you think.

When the federal government builds a border wall, the taxpayer foots two bills. First, there’s the cost to get the thing built, a figure proclaimed in presidential budget requests and press accounts. And second, there’s a slew of concealed costs — expenditures that hide in general operations budgets, arise from human error or kick in years down the line. In the Trump era, those twin outlays combine to make the wall outlandishly expensive.

Excluding the hidden costs, Trump’s wall is running taxpayers a cool $25 million per mile, up nearly fourfold from just a decade ago. To understand why, it helps to know a little border history. In 1907, the U.S. government took possession of a 60-foot-wide strip of land along the U.S.-Mexico border from California to New Mexico as a buffer zone against smuggling. During his second term, George W. Bush built much of his border wall on this government-owned land. But in Texas, the vast majority of border real estate is privately owned, forcing the government to seize property all along the Rio Grande if it wants to build a barrier. That extra burden is a main reason the Lone Star State hosts a small fraction of existing border fence.

Then there’s the terrain. For example, in Starr County, an unfenced swath of South Texas that’s high on Customs and Border Protection’s priority list, Trump plans to build on the Rio Grande’s craggy, erosion-prone bank — an engineering challenge that adds millions of dollars per mile. As CBP spokesperson Rick Pauza wrote in an email to the Observer: “Every mile of border is different, and therefore there is no one-size-fits-all cost per mile.” In addition, taxpayers today are buying the luxury edition of the wall: a structure that’s up to 12 feet taller than the Bush-era fence and buffered by a 150-foot “enforcement zone.”

But all that’s only part of the story. Not included in the $25 million-per-mile figure is a suite of hidden expenses. Among them:

Routine Maintenance and Operation. Border barriers are potent political symbols. They’re also physical structures that accumulate debris, degrade and break over time. In 2009, CBP estimated that operating and maintaining $2.4 billion worth of fencing, along with associated roads and technology, would cost $3.5 billion over 20 years — almost 50 percent more than the original cost.

Breaches. Depending on design, border fences can be cut through using either bolt cutters or power tools. From 2010 to 2015, fencing was breached 9,287 times, according to the Government Accountability Office. At an average repair cost of $784, the government spent $7.3 million patching those holes in the wall. And the more new wall, the more breaches.

Waste. In November 2011, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General issued a scathing report regarding procurement of steel for the border fence. “CBP purchased more steel than needed, incurred additional storage costs, paid interest on late payments, and approved a higher-priced subcontractor, resulting in additional expenditures of about $69 million,” the report read.

Department of Justice Litigation. Every time landowners refuse to sell their land for the wall, the Department of Justice must take them to court. According to a 2012 planning document prepared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that legal process costs about $90,000 per tract of land. In sparsely populated Starr County — where property has been passed down for hundreds of years, often without legal record — almost every case must go to court to determine ownership. That money is unaccounted for in congressional appropriations for the wall; it comes instead from the DOJ’s general budget.

Advertising. When the DOJ wants to take Texans’ property for the wall, the agency must sometimes issue notice to potential heirs in the local newspapers. So far, a DOJ spokesperson said, the agency has done so three times in the Rio Grande Valley — cramming many cases into a single publication. Each instance cost the DOJ about $100,000. At a November court hearing in McAllen, a DOJ attorney lamented the state of local media. “We have one person or corporation who owns both papers — so we can’t really negotiate,” he said. “So it’s a large expenditure.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/2017_06-border_wall-hidalgo-wildlife_preserve-jreel-759x506.jpg

Off-duty Israeli Soldier Caught on Video Torching Palestinian Farms– May 28, 2019 11:16 AM - IMEMC News
▻https://imemc.org/article/off-duty-israeli-soldier-caught-on-video-torching-palestinian-farms

Off-duty Israeli Soldier Caught on Video Torching Palestinian Farms
May 28, 2019 11:16 AM IMEMC News Human rights, Israeli attacks, Israeli Settlement, Nablus, News Report, West Bank 0

A video released by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem shows a group of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian villagers and setting their farms on fire on May 17th – and today, the group managed to identify one of the arsonists in the video as an off-duty Israeli soldier.

According to B’Tselem, on Friday, 17 May 2019, Israeli paramilitary settlers torched Palestinian farmers’ fields in Burin and ‘Asirah al-Qibliyah. In both villages, the settlers threw stones at the residents’ homes.

In ‘Asirah al-Qibliyah, where the area is controlled by military watchtowers, a settler even fired shots in the air. Soldiers nearby did not arrest the attackers and prevented the Palestinians from approaching their burning land.

The Israeli military followed the attack with a public statement containing the absurd and easily disproved claim that Palestinians had started the fires – a version of events that was then unquestioningly repeated by the Israeli and US media.

The attack took place about a kilometer away from the Giv’at Ronen settlement point, and the Israeli paramilitary settlers involved in the attack apparently came from the settlement of Yitzhar.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kAgYyaHvNuc

“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““"
Israeli Army Blamed Palestinians for West Bank Arson, but Settler Soldier Is Behind It
Yotam Berger - May 27, 2019 12:20 PM

One of the two settlers filmed setting fire to a field is an Israeli soldier who was on leave at the time ■ IDF initially blamed Palestinians, then admitted soldiers were involved too

One of the two Jewish settlers caught on video setting West Bank fields on fire last Friday is an Israel Defense Forces soldier, Haaretz has learned.

The army knows the identity of the settler, who was filmed by Israeli human rights nonprofit organization B’Tselem, and two security sources confirmed the details, saying that the soldier was on leave when the arson took place.

Selon l’armée, la police israélienne devrait gérer l’incident. La police a déclaré qu’elle n’avait pas encore arrêté le soldat.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob4AJ5sVXyc

Nation’s first opioid trial could set precedent for massive pharma payouts - POLITICO
▻https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/28/opioid-trial-pharma-payouts-1344953

https://static.politico.com/b5/2e/ce1c959743538eb72c4a15f530e6/190405-pills-ap-773.jpg

The Oklahoma trial, which will be broadcast online, is expected to last for much of the summer, putting a national spotlight on the opioid crisis, which is still killing 130 people in the United States every day. The testimony will focus on how much manufacturers of highly addictive painkillers are to blame for getting patients hooked on opioids through misleading medical claims and aggressive marketing practices.

The trial involving Johnson & Johnson will be closely watched by the hundreds of parties participating in the larger multi-district litigation overseen by U.S. District Court Judge Dan Polster, who has been pushing for a massive settlement before the first of those cases go to trial in the fall.

“It’s going to be one of the first times that there will be evidence presented in an open forum about how we got to where we are,” said Joe Rice, co-lead counsel in the federal litigation targeting drugmakers and distributors in Ohio. “That’s a big question that a lot of people in the health community want to know. … Why and how did we get here?”

On Sunday, Oklahoma also announced an $85 million settlement with Teva. That left Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals as the sole remaining defendant, barring a last-minute settlement.

Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, settled with Oklahoma for $270 million in March, which some state lawmakers and public health experts condemned as too meager. The biggest chunk of that settlement, $200 million, will be used to establish a new addiction treatment center at the University of Oklahoma. Another $60 million will be paid to attorneys involved in the case, and just $12 million will filter down to cities and towns struggling to deal with the addiction epidemic.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter stressed that the settlement was the best option because of the threat that Purdue would declare bankruptcy and the state might end up with nothing. But that means Oklahoma’s attorneys will have to make the potentially trickier case that other, less notorious players in the opioid pipeline created a “public nuisance” in the state by pushing misleading medical claims.

#Opioides #Oklahoma #Sackler

Comparison of Opioid Prescribing by Dentists in the United States and England | Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology | JAMA Network Open | JAMA Network
▻https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2734067

https://cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_public/journal/jamanetworkopen/937980/zoi190188t1.png?Expires=2147483647&Signature=NAjrejabz-Avhx3PdJF2ttPbEivL-PI2-FHmyl7A9cQFRZXjpW0IWfZvxzFzSfOsyKAsNBWrSpVng0A-Fz~yiBhhCGztI3O5i8O0cJ~4cwnbtImwZOWc38FWcg5RZwVbgJz1soNq6ddPh9~w-LsexatZ3WeUFoygUr01ybfaKBk-179Uma7-9l0RyhWrD83vfjJNrTkMos1Khx6ElFbW6Us8zjkk97sDhTnIfwwDtOATDzKmU5rZuPCivC2vmq1ea4t0gq0KjVR5Nv6ZBCT8mB7m6KMfouC6r3tD97LGIhvnThA-cQ~6G-nk87M~l51tphwk~-4iRPPnyEAoNSNksQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIE5G5CRDK6RD3PGA

Key Points español 中文 (chinese)

Question How do opioid prescribing patterns differ between dentists in the United States and dentists in England?

Findings In this cross-sectional study of opioid prescribing by dentists in 2016, the proportion of dental prescriptions that were opioids was 37 times greater in the United States than in England.

Meaning In light of similar oral health and dentist use between the 2 countries, it is likely that opioid prescribing by US dentists is excessive and could be reduced.

#Opioides #Dentistes

Liquid used in e-cigarettes damages cells crucial for a healthy heart - EHN
▻https://www.ehn.org/vaping-hurts-your-heart-2638041485.html

https://ehnorg-img.rbl.ms/simage/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.rbl.ms%2F19551561%2F1200x600.jpg/2000%2C2000/WfNRcTyy0IwRddoV/img.jpg

The flavors used in e-cigarettes—especially menthol and cinnamon—damage blood vessel cells and such impacts increase heart disease risk, according to a new study.

The study, published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, is the latest to link e-cigarettes, or vaping — which has been touted as a safer alternative to smoking cigarettes—to heart problems. It is the first study to test how e-liquids affect the endothelial cells that line the interior of blood vessels. These cells are crucial in delivering the blood supply to the bodies’ tissues and sending cells to promote healthy blood vessels, tissue growth and repair.

E-cigarettes are small devices that heat up liquids (usually propylene glycol or glycerol) to deliver as aerosol (vape) mixture of nicotine and flavors.

The study comes as e-cigarette use continues to rise. Roughly 1 in 20 U.S. adults now use e-cigarettes but the real growth is happening among youth: use among U.S. high school students went from 11.7 percent in 2017 to 20.8 percent in 2018, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In addition, about 4.9 percent of middle school students use e-cigarettes, the FDA found.

The study was limited in that the e-liquids weren’t heated, which could alter how the exposed cells react. The research, however, is just the latest linking e-cigarettes to heart impacts.

In March, researchers presented a study of nearly 100,000 Americans that found e-cigarette users are more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes compared to non-users.

Another large national study in January of 400,000 Americans reported e-cigarette users have a 70 percent higher risk of stroke and a 60 percent higher risk of heart attack, when compared to non-users.

With use rising, health groups continue to push for more strict regulation. A judge this month ordered the FDA to review all U.S. e-cigarette products.

The ruling was a response to a federal lawsuit filed by health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, that alleged the FDA hasn’t adequately regulated e-cigarettes and is leaving a generation of U.S kids on the path to nicotine addiction.

#Tabac #E_cigarettes #Vaping #Santé_publique

“Some have suggested that the U.S. is actually two countries in one — a developed nation for the rich and a developing one for the poor. But recent trends like the fall in construction productivity and the rise in health costs suggest that inequality isn’t the whole story here. The U.S. is simply becoming less efficient along a broad spectrum of measures. How long can this loss of efficiency go on without hurting the country’s overall wealth? Nobody knows, but if the U.S. does eventually backslide in terms of gross domestic product, it wouldn’t be the first rich country to have done so in recent years.”
►https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-21/u-s-is-a-rich-country-with-symptoms-of-a-developing-nation

First-ever private border wall built in #New_Mexico

A private group announced Monday that it has constructed a half-mile wall along a section of the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico, in what it said was a first in the border debate.

The 18-foot steel bollard wall is similar to the designs used by the Border Patrol, sealing off a part of the border that had been a striking gap in existing fencing, according to We Build the Wall, the group behind the new section.

The section was also built faster and, organizers say, likely more cheaply than the government has been able to manage in recent years.

Kris Kobach, a former secretary of state in Kansas and an informal immigration adviser to President Trump, says the New Mexico project has the president’s blessing, and says local Border Patrol agents are eager to have the assistance.

“We’re closing a gap that’s been a big headache for them,” said Mr. Kobach, who is general counsel for We Build the Wall.

https://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/media/image/2019/05/27/WALL_c0-750-2448-2177_s885x516.jpg?a54ce2ab2f31b9e076dc9af47f4398fc88448152#.jpg

Chinese Surveillance Complex Advancing in Latin America

In February, 2019, in a story that went almost unnoticed in Washington, the small South American nation of #Uruguay began installing the first of 2,100 surveillance cameras, donated by the People’s Republic of China to improve control of its borders with neighboring Argentina and Brazil.

The move highlights the significant deepening of the Uruguay-PRC relationship over the last decade, including their establishment of a “Strategic Partnership” in October 2016, and the signing of a memorandum of understanding in August 2018 for Uruguay to join China’s Belt and Road initiative (despite being about as far from the PRC as is geographically possible).

Beyond Uruguay, the development also highlights a little-discussed but important dimension of China’s advance: its expanding global sales of surveillance and control technologies. Although the press and U.S. political leadership have given significant attention to the risks of employing Chinese telecommunications companies such as Huawei the equally serious but newer issue of expanding sales of Chinese surveillance systems has been less discussed.

The installation of Chinese surveillance systems, acquired through PRC government donations or commercial contracts, is a growing phenomenon in Latin America and elsewhere.

Such systems began to appear in the region more than a decade ago, including in 2007, when then mayor of Mexico City (now Mexican Foreign Minister) Miguel Ebrard returned from a trip to the PRC with a deal to install thousands of Chinese cameras to combat crime in the Mexican capital. More recent examples include ECU-911 in Ecuador, a China-built national system of surveillance and communication initially agreed to by the administration of anti-U.S. populist president Rafael Correa. The system, which has expanded to currently include 4,300 cameras and a command center manned by thousands of Ecuadorans, has been built almost completely from Chinese equipment, designed for a range of otherwise noble purposes from emergency response and combatting crime, to monitoring volcanoes. Bolivia boasts a similar Chinese built system, albeit more limited in scope, BOL-110, in addition to hundreds of surveillance cameras donated by the PRC to at least four of Bolivia’s principal cities.

In Panama, which abandoned Taiwan to establish relations with the PRC in 2017, the government of Juan Carlos Varela has agreed to allow Huawei to install a system of cameras in the crime-ridden city of Colon and the associated free trade zone. Not by coincidence, in July 2019, Hikivision, China’s largest producer of surveillance cameras, announced plans to set up a major distribution center in Colon to support sales of its products throughout the Americas.

In northern Argentina, near where the Chinese are developing a lithium mining operation and constructing the hemisphere’s largest array of photovoltaic cells for electricity generation, the Chinese company ZTE is installing another “911” style emergency response system with 1,200 cameras.

In Venezuela, although not a surveillance system per se, the Chinese company ZTE has helped the regime of Nicholas Maduro implement a “fatherland identity card” linking different kinds of data on individuals through an identity card which allows the state to confer privileges (such as rationing food) as a tool for social control.

As with sectors such as computers and telecommunications, the PRC arguably wishes to support the global export of such systems by its companies to advance technologies it recognizes as strategic for the Chinese nation, per its own official policy documents such as Made In China 2025.

The risks arising from spreading use of Chinese surveillance equipment and architectures are multiple and significant, involving: (1) the sensitivity of the data collected on specific persons and activities, particularly when processed through technologies such as facial recognition, integrated with other data, and analyzed through artificial intelligence (AI) and other sophisticated algorithms, (2) the potential ability to surreptitiously obtain access to that data, not only through the collection devices, but at any number of points as it is communicated, stored, and analyzed, and (3) the long-term potential for such systems to contribute to the sustainment of authoritarian regimes (such as those in Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and formerly Ecuador) whose corrupt elites provide strategic access and commercial benefits to the Chinese state.

The risk posed by such Chinese architectures is underestimated by simply focusing on the cameras and sensors themselves.

Facial and other recognition technologies, and the ability to integrate data from different sensors and other sources such as smartphones enables those with access to the technology to follow the movement of individual human beings and events, with frightening implications. It includes the ability to potentially track key political and business elites, dissidents, or other persons of interest, flagging possible meetings between two or more, and the associated implications involving political or business meetings and the events that they may produce. Flows of goods or other activities around government buildings, factories, or other sites of interest may provide other types of information for political or commercial advantage, from winning bids to blackmailing compromised persons.

While some may take assurance that the cameras and other components are safely guarded by benevolent governments or companies, the dispersed nature of the architectures, passing information, instructions, and analysis across great distances, means that the greatest risk is not physical access to the cameras, but the diversion of information throughout the process, particularly by those who built the components, databases and communication systems, and by those who wrote the algorithms (increasingly Chinese across the board).

With respect to the political impact of such systems, while democratic governments may install them for noble purposes such as crimefighting and emergency response, and with limitations that respect individual privacy, authoritarian regimes who contract the Chinese for such technologies are not so limited, and have every incentive to use the technology to combat dissent and sustain themselves in power.

The PRC, which continues to perfect it against its own population in places like Xinjiang (against the Uighur Muslims there), not only benefits commercially from selling the technology, but also benefits when allied dictatorships provide a testing ground for product development, and by using it to combat the opposition, keeping friends like Maduro in power, continuing to deliver the goods and access to Beijing.

As with the debate over Huawei, whether or not Chinese companies are currently exploiting the surveillance and control systems they are deploying across Latin America to benefit the Chinese state, Chinese law (under which they operate) requires them to do so, if the PRC government so demands.

The PRC record of systematic espionage, forced technology transfer, and other bad behavior should leave no one in Latin America comfortable that the PRC will not, at some point in the future, exploit such an enormous opportunity.

▻https://www.newsmax.com/evanellis/china-surveillance-latin-america-cameras/2019/04/12/id/911484

#Amérique_latine #Chine #surveillance #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #Argentine #Brésil
ping @reka

U.S. Is a Rich Country With Symptoms of a Developing Nation - Bloomberg
►https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-21/u-s-is-a-rich-country-with-symptoms-of-a-developing-nation

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iuiy5xUWsTbg/v0/1200x800.jpg

Some have suggested that the U.S. is actually two countries in one — a developed nation for the rich and a developing one for the poor. But recent trends like the fall in construction productivity and the rise in health costs suggest that inequality isn’t the whole story here. The U.S. is simply becoming less efficient along a broad spectrum of measures.

#états-unis

#MSF Access Campaign sur Twitter : “#Big_pharma uses undisclosed ? research and development costs to justify sky-high prices for medicines. Why do these countries ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? want pharma corporations to keep these costs a secret? #TransparencyResolution #WHA72 #NoMoreSecrets” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/MSF_access/status/1132899344665993216

▻https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/D7jd8F7WwAEYlXH.mp4

Verso - The Radical origins of international indigenous representation - ▻https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4329-the-radical-origins-of-international-indigenous-representation

While Indigenous representation has become a permanent feature at the UN, its radical origins are less well known. The historic 1977 Geneva gathering was preceded by a simpler, but no less monumental, gathering in Standing Rock, along the banks of the Missouri River. In the heat of the Northern Plains summer, 5,000 people from more than ninety-seven different Indigenous nations met from June 8 to 16, 1974. By the end of the week, the International Indian Treaty Council was founded as an international arm of the American Indian Movement (AIM), tasked with gaining international recognition at the UN for Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The Treaty Council’s founding document, the “Declaration of Continuing Independence,” foregrounded nationhood and treaty rights as central features of an American Indian political identity. “We condemn the United States of America for its gross violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty in militarily surrounding, killing, and starving the citizens of the Independent Oglala Nation into exile,” it read, in reference to the brutal crackdown on AIM following their occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. The Treaty Council appealed to “conscionable nations” to join “in charging and prosecuting the United States of America for its genocidal practices against the sovereign Native Nations; most recently illustrated by Wounded Knee 1973 and the continued refusal to sign the United Nations 1948 Treaty on Genocide.”2 Following the seventy-one-day siege, AIM leadership had been arrested and tied up in court proceedings. Then came the brutal repression under the infamous FBI Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that nearly destroyed Indigenous, Black, and revolutionary movements in the United States. The strategic turn to international human rights law largely saved the Indigenous movement from utter collapse in a moment of intense state repression.

#peuples_autochtones #internationalisme #standing_rock

Why are so many people dying in US prisons and jails? | US news | The Guardian

▻https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/26/us-prisons-jails-inmate-deaths

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On 10 July 2015, 28-year-old Sandra Bland was pulled over in Prairie View, Texas, for what she was told by Texas state trooper Brian Encinia was failing to use her turn signal.

Three days after Bland’s arrest, she was found dead in her jail cell. The death was ruled a suicide but remains shrouded in mystery over how a wrongful arrest stemming from a minor traffic violation resulted in death.

“She was arrested and alleged to have put this officer’s life and safety in jeopardy. Really what happened is he didn’t like that his authority was questioned,” attorney Cannon Lambert, who represented Bland’s family, told the Guardian.

#états-unis #prison #droits_humains

Gentrification Is a Feature, Not a Bug, of Capitalist Urban Planning

Look a little closer, however, and some important cracks arise. In his classic 1986 book Planning the Capitalist City, Richard Foglesong analyzes the relationship between capitalism and city planning as it evolved in the United States from the colonial period through the 1920s. He frames the book around two primary contradictions: one he calls “the property contradiction,” and the other “the capitalist-democracy contradiction.”

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Iran building new crossing on Syria border that would let it smuggle weapons, oil, experts say | Fox News
▻https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-border-crossing-syria-smuggle-weapons-oil-experts

La contribution de Fox à l’effort de guerre US contre l’Iran....

The images, obtained exclusively by Fox News and captured earlier this week, show a new construction in the Albukamal Al-Qaim crossing.
A new construction in the Albukamal Al-Qaim crossing was seen via satellite.
The area is under the control of Pro-Iranian Shiite militias. Last summer, Iran increased its presence in the area.

According to analysts for ISI, which captures satellite data, the existing border crossing is still closed and destroyed, and the Iranians have put a lot of effort and resources into building the new one.
Iran has put significant effort into building the new crossing, analysts said.

Photos obtained by Fox News showed an Iraqi army base near the deserted post.
The existing border crossing remained closed, analysts said.

The border crossing would enable Iran to maintain land access in Syria, Beirut and the Mediterranean Sea. Regional and western sources said the Iranians are planning to use this new route for smuggling operations, including trafficking weapons and oil, to avoid the looming U.S. sanctions. Without Syrian or Iraqi supervision, Iran and its allies would have an unprecedented advantage in transferring whatever they wish, experts say.
An Iraqi army base seen near the deserted crossing.

This development sheds new light on the rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran, which escalated after President Trump canceled the temporary waivers permitting countries, including Iraq, Turkey, Japan and China, to purchase Iranian oil without violating U.S. sanctions.

#iran #puissance_du_mal

“Truth ultimately is all we have:” Julian Assange appeals for publi...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/9107781

“Truth ultimately is all we have:” Julian Assange appeals for public support - World Socialist Web Site

In his first publicly-released comments to supporters since his arrest, WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has detailed the repressive conditions he faces in Britain’s Belmarsh prison and called for a campaign against his threatened extradition to the United States.

“I am defenceless and am counting on you and others of good character to save my life,” Assange wrote, adding, “Truth ultimately is all we have.”

I received a letter from Julian Assange - Invidious

#USA #news #politics #activism #Wikileaks #journalism #Assange #freedom #protectJulian (...)

Orange’s Sea Cable Repair Fleet Looks Beyond Investment Boom
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-24/orange-s-sea-cable-repair-fleet-looks-beyond-investment-boom

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• Phone carrier assessing opportunities in offshore wind sector
• France sees strategic interest in marine cable expertise

For decades, ships owned by French phone carrier Orange SA have traveled the world’s oceans, installing and fixing the undersea cables that carry internet traffic from one continent to another.

The fleet of six run by Orange Marine is now looking to diversify, even with the biggest investment boom for the infrastructure since the 1990s. Instead of creating more business, the new high-capacity lines being financed by the tech giants are expected to put older cables out of service, meaning less work for the seaborne repairmen.

One cable that started up last year highlights the issue. The line, running from the U.S. state of Virginia to Sopelana, Spain, accounts for half the capacity of the dozen or so trans-Atlantic cables. Known as Marea, the 6,600-kilometer (4,101-mile) link owned by Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Telefonica SA’s Telxius offers the fastest data transmission speeds in the world.

Jean-Luc Vuillemin, who oversees Orange Marine, sees potential opportunities in servicing offshore wind turbines, he said in an interview on the Pierre de Fermat, a 100-meter ship named after the 17th-century mathematician and docked at the Brest port in northwest France.

“The ecosystem is pretty favorable right now but this may change in the future,” Vuillemin said. “You need to diversify when the business is in order, so we’re thinking about the next steps.”

Orange Marine is a small yet profitable business for France’s dominant phone carrier, generating about 100 million euros ($112 million) of annual sales out of Orange’s roughly 41 billion euros of revenue. But it’s considered a strategic asset by the company, whose largest shareholder is the French state.

Being able to quickly repair cables can be crucial in an emergency, as Algeria experienced in 2015 when a link between Annaba in the country’s northeast and Marseille in southern France was cut by an anchor, disrupting internet service in the North African nation for almost a week.

Together, Orange Marine and its France-based competitor at Nokia Oyj, Alcatel Submarine Networks, own about one-quarter of the 40 or so ships focused on subsea cables globally, Vuillemin said.

“Our Western economies are increasingly dependent on these subsea cables. Orange Marine provides strategic autonomy. It’s a matter of sovereignty,” he said.

How Much Should You Save? 40% Would Struggle With $400 Emergency - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-23/almost-40-of-americans-would-struggle-to-cover-a-400-emergency

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Many U.S. households find themselves in a fragile position financially, even in an economy with an unemployment rate near a 50-year low, according to a Federal Reserve survey.

#précarité

Victoria Nuland, US midwife to Maidan-2014, denied visa to Russia — RT World News
▻https://www.rt.com/news/460124-victoria-nuland-denied-visa-russia

https://cdni.rt.com/files/2019.05/article/5ce70c98fc7e93df548b462f.JPG

Former US diplomat Victoria Nuland, best known for distributing cookies to protesters during the US-backed 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, has found out she was on a visa blacklist as she sought to enter Russia.

The former US ambassador to NATO and assistant secretary of state for Eurasia is best known for supporting the coup that ousted the government in Kiev, and dismissing the concerns of Washington’s European allies about meddling in Ukraine (“F*** the EU”) in the same conversation she mentioned bringing then-VP Joe Biden to “midwife this thing.”

ضابط إسرائيلي : قمنا باغتيال سمير القنطار في سوريا بمساعدة أحد قادة فصائل المعارضة السورية | رأي اليوم
▻https://www.raialyoum.com/index.php/%d8%b6%d8%a7%d8%a8%d8%b7-%d8%a5%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%8a%d9%84%d9%8a

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Un officier israélien à la retraite déclare sur une chaîne israélienne que l’assassinat de Samir Kountar, proche du Hezbollah, en 2015 à Damas a été rendu possible grâce à des informations d’un « membre de l’opposition syrienne »... On apprend aussi que des commandos israéliens se seraient infiltrés en Syrie en prétextant apporter des soins aux blessés syriens [de l’opposition on suppose].

#syrie #israël