• Liverpool owner of asylum barge #Bibby_Stockholm awarded £20m to build new vessel

    The vessel will be the first for #Bibby_Marine in five years

    he Government has awarded £20m to the Liverpool company that owns the controversial asylum barge Bibby Stockholm to build a new vessel.

    A consortium led by Bibby Marine has secured the money alongside Port of #Aberdeen, #Offshore_Renewable_Energy (#ORE) Catapult, #Kongsberg, #DNV, #Shell and #Liverpool_John_Moores_University.

    The funding from the #Zero_Emission_Vessel_Infrastructure (#ZEVI) competition will be put towards the construction of the world’s first zero-emission #electric_Service_Operation_Vessel (#eSOV).

    Bibby Marine said the eSOV will have a “powerful” battery system and dual fuel methanol engines for back up, along with associated shore-charging facilities.

    The company received £19.4m while Liverpool John Moores University has awarded almost £100,000, DNV (£27,138), Shell (£120,320), #Aberdeen_Harbour_Board (£224,828) and #Offshore_Renewable_Energy_Catapult (£197,752).

    The project is expected to cost more than £30m in total.

    Bibby Marine CEO #Nigel_Quinn said: "We are excited to receive this funding and to work with our partners to launch the world’s first eSOV - the first new vessel for Bibby Marine in five years.

    "This project is the natural progression of our decarbonisation journey, which began in 2019, to find the right solution to achieve our net-zero goals.

    "Designed in the UK, the vessel will be a game changer for our industry – supporting its ambitions to turn the UK into the world’s number one centre for green technology, create jobs and accelerate our path to net zero, by harnessing the best of British technologies. The vessel also offers the opportunity for customers to increase local content and will shine a light on UK innovation.

    "We strive to be the UK’s clean and most committed SOV operator, and our commitment to innovation and sustainability drives us towards these zero-emission solutions.

    “This project is a crucial part of this vision and is in keeping with our own Environmental and Social Governance framework and net zero targets. The project will catapult our efforts for our own green future, resulting in Bibby Marine having one of the most advanced, efficient, and environmentally friendly SOVs on the market.”

    Andrew Macdonald, director of development and operations at ORE Catapult, added: "We are delighted to be supporting Bibby and partners in a project to create the world’s first zero-emission e-SOV - delivering a vessel capable of operating solely on 20MWh of batteries.

    "ORE Catapult will play an important role in understanding the lifecycle fuel savings of a zero-emission vessel, and what can be done to maximise UK content within this market.

    “This project will strengthen and demonstrate the ability of UK industry as a partner in design, manufacture and certification of the 300 vessels of this kind needed in Europe by 2050.”

    Lucas Ribeiro, regional manager, region West Europe at DNV, said: "At DNV we are very pleased to have been chosen as the preferred classification partner for the first zero-emission UK e-SOV. We look forward to working closely with Bibby Marine and the consortium partners on this innovative design.

    "The number of fully electric and hybrid vessels will surge over the next few years and continuing development on these technologies will be a key part of the maritime industry’s transition to a zero-carbon future.

    “DNV is looking forward to combining our extensive technical, offshore, renewable and battery experience, working in ensuring a successful fully compliant and future proof vessel delivery.”

    Alexandra Ebbinghaus, GM Marine Decarbonisation at Shell,, added: "Shell is delighted to be part of this consortium, verifying the framework to manage maritime risk for the world’s first zero-emission e-SOV.

    "This is an exciting project that will push the industry forward and help decarbonise short-sea shipping, whilst continuing to prioritise safe and efficient operations.

    “We look forward to supporting our long-term customer, Bibby Marine, as well as strengthening our collaboration with Kongsberg Maritime, DNV, the Port of Aberdeen and other consortium members.”

    https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-owner-asylum-barge-bibby-27693406

    –—

    ajouté à la métaliste sur la Bibby Stockholm :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/1016683

  • Ligue des champions : des scènes de chaos aux abords du Stade de France avant le coup d’envoi
    https://www.lemonde.fr/sport/article/2022/05/28/ligue-des-champions-des-scenes-de-chaos-aux-abords-du-stade-de-france-avant-

    « La situation a été proche de la catastrophe lorsqu’un goulot d’étranglement s’est formé, à la suite d’un mauvais aiguillage des supporters à leur sortie du RER D puis aux problèmes d’ouverture et de fermeture des portes d’entrée au stade, explique un spectateur présent sur les lieux. Les gens attendaient sagement depuis des heures quand les mouvements de foules se sont accentués. Certains – même des enfants et des personnes âgées – ont été gazés ou écrasés contre des barrières. »

    Carrie sur Twitter : https://twitter.com/MissCarrieW/status/1530648658512945154

    Good grief. Steve Douglas from AP providing his account to BBC of how the French police took his accreditation off him until he deleted all his videos of what was going on outside the stadium. He deleted video evidence because it was his job to cover the game.

    #France #Police

    • Finale de Ligue des champions : Gérald Darmanin et l’UEFA blâment les supporters de Liverpool munis de faux billets - Le Parisien
      https://www.leparisien.fr/sports/football/finale-de-ligue-des-champions-gerald-darmanin-et-luefa-blament-les-suppor

      Sur Twitter, le ministre de l’Intérieur a publié un message. « […] Merci aux très nombreuses forces de l’ordre mobilisées ce soir (NDLR : samedi soir) dans ce contexte difficile. »

    • Johannes Herrmann (Phylloscopus) :
      https://twitter.com/Taigasangare/status/1530804925256683522

      Il ne faut pas laisser Lallement et Darmanin nous prendre pour des imbéciles en jouant sur la détestation universelle du footeux/du hooligan/de l’Anglais.

      Ce qui s’est passé hier est du jamais vu aux époques récentes, de l’avis unanime de la presse étrangère.

      Des Britanniques qui viennent deux fois plus nombreux qu’ils n’ont de billets ? Mais ils font toujours ça. Rien de plus prévisible. Et partout ailleurs, tout le monde a réussi à l’anticiper et à s’adapter. Tout le monde.

      Perso, je suis allé environ 300 fois au stade, j’ai vu un match de Coupe d’Europe à Bordeaux avec 10 000 Ecossais pour 4000 billets. On avait même véhiculé 2 Ecossais (avec billets) trop bourrés pour marcher.

      Tous ceux qui le devaient étaient entrés à l’heure et sans heurt.

      Et d’autres cas encore, avec des clubs turcs et tous les Turcs de la ville dans les rues pour soutenir l’équipe concernée, etc. Un match de LDC à Lyon en plein « dawa » de 2005.

      Jamais un merdier pareil. Jamais.

      Est-ce qu’on réalise que ç’a été la merde juste par incapacité à gérer correctement le flux des personnes ayant un billet ? Qu’il n’y a même pas eu d’affrontement entre supporters adverses (quels qu’ils soient) ?

      Imaginez par exemple que des black blocs aient décidé de venir se faire les Ultrassur, par-dessus le marché, ç’aurait donné quoi ? Ou si des hools du PSG avaient eu envie d’en découdre avec les uns ou les autres, façon PFC-OL ?

      Paris a échoué à gérer une situation de supporters CALMES voulant simplement entrer dans le stade. Il n’y a pas eu une charge massive de 40 000 personnes sans billet voulant entrer de force. C’est juste le tri et l’accès des personnes à billet qui a raté. La base de la base. 7/
      Des familles, des personnes âgées, avec billets, ont attendu des heures, raté la moitié du match, parce qu’on n’a pas été capable d’assurer cette gestion du flux. Et pour couronner le tout, on les a gazés, pour se donner l’illusion de contrôler et que c’était leur faute.

      Cerise sur le gâteau, des journalistes ont été malmenés et intimidés dans une tentative pathétique de cacher ce raté monumental qui faisait le tour du monde. Ça, c’est la honte au cube.

      C’est exactement ça. Lallement a considéré qu’il était en présence non pas de personnes qu’il fallait acheminer vers le stade mais d’une foule hostile qu’il fallait bloquer, intimider et disperser.
      https://twitter.com/mariemini/status/1530807285907439617

      Et comme certains l’ont fait remarquer, sur un site sensible visé par un attentat en 2015. On frémit à l’idée que quelque chose aurait pu se produire de ce côté-là dans de telles conditions.

      Et aujourd’hui Lallement et Darmanin se pavanent, très fiers d’avoir, justement, su matraquer fermement l’ennemi.

      Bordel c’étaient des clients d’un spectacle qu’il fallait canaliser vers le lieu de celui-ci. Ils ont été traités comme des émeutiers.

    • Dans l’article du Monde :

      Le couac d’organisation au stade dyonisien interroge sur la capacité de la France à gérer les déplacements de foule et à assurer la sécurité lors de grands événements sportifs. La finale 2022 de la Ligue des champions devait initialement avoir lieu à Saint-Pétersbourg, avant que son organisation soit retirée à la ville à la suite de l’invasion de l’Ukraine par la Russie. Elle a été rapatriée à Paris, qui a dû gérer l’afflux, notamment, de 60 000 supporteurs de Liverpool alors que 20 000 billets ont été dévolus aux supporteurs des Reds comme à ceux du Real.

      Le dispositif de sécurité – 6 800 policiers, gendarmes et pompiers – mis en place samedi devait servir de test pour la Coupe du monde de rugby, organisée par la France à la fin de 2023 et pour les Jeux olympiques de Paris, qui se tiendront en 2024.

    • Mon cerveau comprend plus vite que moi … il suffit que je lise

      Sur Twitter, le ministre de l’Intérieur a publié un message

      pour que mes neurones m’envoient

      Sur Twitter, le ministre de l’Intérieur a publié un mensonge

      nan, parce qu’en fait, je décroche et n’étais pas au courant de cette affaire, mais apparemment j’ai une ligne branchée sur le grand SDF …

    • En relayant la parole du préfet de police de la ville de Paris, la Brigade des Forces du Mal (#BFM) en profite pour détourner l’attention sur « les perturbations occasionnées par la grève de la RATP » et sur les « 300 ou 400 jeunes issus des quartiers sensibles de la Seine-Saint-Denis ».

      Fiasco au Stade de France : le préfet Didier Lallement se défend

      https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1531018866872266753/vid/1280x720/tuaqA0QwWmKM6z2o.mp4?tag=14

      https://twitter.com/BFMTV/status/1531018970182172673

    • info de terrain : je viens de boucler une vision avec une salariée d’un client qui était au match avec son mari, côté Real Madrid, le sujet s’est imposé de lui-même, car elle avait encore les yeux gonflés…

      Ils étaient venus en voiture, pour éviter la foule des transports en commun ; aucun problème pour arriver. Bien sûr, au moment prévu du coup d’envoi, le demi-stade d’en face était totalement vide ; il s’est rempli en 10 minutes, ce qui a permis le début du match.

      À la sortie, au moment où le conducteur tapait le code pour sortir du parking, ils ont vu débouler une masse de supporteurs qui fuyaient la police au milieu d’un énorme nuage de lacrymogène. Totalement aveuglé, le conducteur n’a pu terminer le code, ils ont rapidement dû sortir du véhicule puis se mettre à courir pour échapper à la police. Ils sont revenus ultérieurement récupérer la voiture…

    • #BFMTV le mensonge totalement décomplexé de la préfecture de police sur les faux billets qui seraient prétendument le « fait générateur » des troubles au stade de France (mensonge relayé tout la journée d’hier par BFM) démonté par un avocat.
      #LalleMENT :

      https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1531196549384048641/pu/vid/554x304/_ELoZA2HhPPRzHD9.mp4?tag=12

      Ah ! Et :

      « Elle commence très fort, la nouvelle ministre alors que la police même de #Liverpool était sur place 😂Ah, ces aigles 🦅 ! Au passage, la maire de Liverpool demande des explications à l’ UEFA et à #Macron himself »

      franceinfo :

      Ligue des champions : la ministre des Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, accuse Liverpool d’avoir « laissé ses supporters dans la nature »

    • Incidents au Stade de France : le déni des pouvoirs publics malgré une organisation défaillante

      (...) dès 17 h 30, plusieurs milliers d’entre eux s’engouffraient dans un lugubre passage couvert qui relie la gare du RER D au parvis du Stade de France. Quelques dizaines de mètres plus loin, un premier filtrage était censé permettre une opération de contrôle sommaire des billets avant l’arrivée aux portes Y et Z. Avec quatre couloirs et une vingtaine de stadiers en chasuble bleu et jaune, le dispositif est apparu bien sommaire face à une véritable marée humaine qu’un fléchage défaillant et des stewards débordés n’ont pas su rediriger vers une autre entrée, située à cinq minutes à pied sur l’avenue du Stade-de-France, où les opérations de filtrage étaient beaucoup plus fluides. « La sécu de l’UEFA n’était clairement pas assez dimensionnée, avec peu de stewards et pratiquement pas de barrières disposées en serpentins, qui permettent de canaliser la foule », assure un gradé de la police qui supervisait, samedi soir, une partie du dispositif de sécurité.

      Dans un rapport adressé au ministre de l’intérieur, dimanche soir, Didier Lallement, préfet de police de Paris, a indiqué avoir finalement pris la décision de lever ce barrage filtrant, « pour éviter un drame ». Une décision bienvenue mais soudaine, et si peu coordonnée sur le terrain qu’elle marque le début de la deuxième phase d’une soirée de chaos, lorsque de « 300 à 400 jeunes issus des quartiers sensibles de Seine-Saint-Denis », selon les estimations de la #Préfecture_de_police (PP), profitent de cette absence de contrôle en amont pour forcer le passage et gagner le parvis du stade.

      La ruée est diffusée en direct sur les réseaux sociaux et provoque un véritable appel d’air, tandis que les services de police tentent de repousser les intrus en utilisant leurs sprays de gaz lacrymogène « de manière encadrée, pour faire cesser les tentatives d’intrusion et de mouvements de foule », selon la commissaire Loubna Atta, porte-parole de la PP. Sans grand discernement, au regard d’images largement diffusées. Des familles, des enfants, se retrouvent « les yeux qui piquent, [avec] la sensation d’étouffer », s’indigne Joe Blott, responsable de Spirit of Shankly, la fédération des associations de #supporteurs du club de Liverpool, qui assure avoir « vécu tout ça au côté de très jeunes fans présents sur les lieux, et même d’handicapés ».

      Directeur exécutif de Football Supporters Europe, une association accréditée comme observatrice des rencontres auprès de l’UEFA, à laquelle elle fait remonter ses observations, Ronan Evain, lui-même « gazé cinq fois en l’espace d’une heure et demie », se désole « d’un manque de flexibilité du dispositif de sécurité, avec un long flottement au barrage filtrant, aucun ordre précis, rien pour rediriger la foule », et il regrette « une approche française en matière de gestion des supporteurs toujours axée sur la démonstration de force, très en retard sur le reste de l’Europe ».

      « Un écran de fumée »

      Les accusations d’arrivée tardive de milliers de supporteurs anglais munis de faux billets, une tradition solidement établie chez les fans britanniques ? « Un écran de fumée utilisé par les autorités françaises pour camoufler leur piteuse organisation », avance Joe Blott, qui dit avoir déjà collecté « des centaines de témoignages qui prouvent le contraire », y compris ceux émanant de la #police de Merseyside-Liverpool, dont plusieurs éléments avaient été dépêchés sur place : sur son compte Twitter officiel, elle a dénoncé sa « pire expérience » de rencontre européenne.

      A l’issue du match, auquel des centaines de spectateurs munis de billets valables n’ont pu assister qu’à compter de la seconde période et d’autres pas du tout, un troisième acte est venu clôturer cette calamiteuse soirée : des supporteurs anglais et espagnols ont rapporté avoir été agressés et, pour certains, détroussés, alors qu’ils se dirigeaient vers l’entrée de la ligne 13 du métro parisien, par des petits groupes de dix à quinze délinquants du cru, parfois les mêmes qui avaient tenté de s’introduire dans le stade de France deux heures plus tôt.

      https://justpaste.it/4icw6

      #93 #Saint-Denis #maintien_de_l'ordre #Paris

  • Academic freedom is in crisis ; free speech is not

    In August 2020, the UK think tank The Policy Exchange produced a report on Academic Freedom in the UK (https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/academic-freedom-in-the-uk-2), alleging a chilling effect for staff and students expressing conservative opinions, particularly pro-Brexit or ‘gender critical’ ideas. This is an issue that was examined by a 2018 parliamentary committee on Human Rights which found a lack of evidence for serious infringements of free speech (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201719/jtselect/jtrights/1279/127904.htm). In a university context, freedom of speech is protected under the Human Rights Act 1998 as long as the speech is lawful and does not contravene other university regulations on issues like harassment, bullying or inclusion. Some of these controversies have been firmly rebutted by Chris Parr (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/free-speech-crisis-uk-universities-chris-parr) and others who describe how the incidents have been over-hyped.

    Despite this, the government seems keen to appoint a free speech champion for universities (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/15/tories-war-on-the-woke-ministers-statues-protests) which continues a campaign started by #Sam_Gyimah (https://academicirregularities.wordpress.com/2018/07/06/sams-on-campus-but-is-the-campus-onto-sam) when he was minister for universities in 2018, and has been interpreted by some commentators as a ‘war on woke’. In the current climate of threats to university autonomy, many vice chancellors wonder whether this might be followed by heavy fines or reduced funding for those institutions deemed to fall on the wrong side of the culture wars.

    While public concern has been directed to an imagined crisis of free speech, there are more significant questions to answer on the separate but related issue of academic freedom. Most university statutes echo legislation and guarantee academics ‘freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial and unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at their institutions.’ [Section 202 of the Education Reform Act 1988]. In reality, these freedoms are surrendered to the greater claims of academic capitalism, government policy, legislation, managers’ responses to the pandemic and more dirigiste approaches to academics’ work.

    Nevertheless, this government is ploughing ahead with policies designed to protect the freedom of speech that is already protected, while doing little to hold university managers to account for their very demonstrable violations of academic freedom. The government is suspicious of courses which declare a sympathy with social justice or which manifest a ‘progressive’ approach. This hostility also extends to critical race theory and black studies. Indeed, the New York Times has identified a right wing ‘Campaign to Cancel Wokeness’ (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opinion/speech-racism-academia.html) on both sides of the Atlantic, citing a speech by the UK Equalities Minister, Kemi Badenoch, in which she said, “We do not want teachers to teach their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt…Any school which teaches these elements of critical race theory, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law.”

    This has now set a tone for ideological oversight which some university leaders seem keen to embrace. Universities will always wish to review their offerings to ensure they reflect academic currency and student choice. However, operating under the cover of emergency pandemic planning, some are now seeking to dismantle what they see as politically troublesome subject areas.

    Let’s start with the most egregious and transparent attack on academic freedom. The University of Leicester Business School, known primarily for its disdain of management orthodoxy, has announced it will no longer support research in critical management studies (https://www.uculeicester.org.uk/redundancy-briefing) and political economy, and the university has put all researchers who identify with this field, or who at some time might have published in CMS, at risk of redundancy. Among the numerous responses circulating on Twitter, nearly all point to the fact that the critical orientation made Leicester Business School distinctive and attractive to scholars wishing to study and teach there. Among those threatened with redundancy is the distinguished former dean, Professor Gibson Burrell. The sheer volume of protest at this anomaly must be an embarrassment to Leicester management. We should remember that academic freedom means that, as a scholar of proven expertise, you have the freedom to teach and research according to your own judgement. When those in a field critical of structures of power have their academic freedom removed, this is, unarguably, a breach of that expectation. Such a violation should be of concern to the new freedom of speech champion and to the regulator, the Office for Students.

    If the devastation in the School of Business were not enough humiliation for Leicester, in the department of English, there are plans to cancel scholarship and teaching in Medieval and Early Modern literature. The thoughtless stripping out of key areas that give context and coherence within a subject is not unique to Leicester – similar moves have taken place in English at University of Portsmouth. At Leicester, management have offered the justification that this realignment will allow them to put resources towards the study of gender and sexuality. After all, the Vice Chancellor, Nishan Canagarajah, offered the keynote speech at the Advance HE conference in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion on 19th March (https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/programmes-events/conferences/EDIConf20#Keynotes) and has signalled that he supports decolonising the curriculum. This might have had more credibility if he was not equally committed to extinguishing critical scholarship in the Business School. The two positions are incompatible and reveal an opportunistic attempt to reduce costs and remove signs of critical scholarship which might attract government disapproval.

    At the University of Birmingham, the response to the difficulties of maintaining teaching during the pandemic has been to issue a ruling that three academic staff must be able to teach each module. The explanation for this apparent reversal of the ‘lean’ principle of staffing efficiency, is to make modules more resilient in the face of challenges like the pandemic – or perhaps strike action. There is a consequence for academic freedom though – only the most familiar, established courses can be taught. Courses that might have been offered, which arise from the current research of the academic staff, will have to be cancelled if the material is not already familiar to other colleagues in the department. It is a way of designing innovation and advancement out of courses at the University of Birmingham.

    Still at Birmingham, UCU is contesting a proposal for a new ‘career framework’ (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/strike-warning-over-birminghams-or-out-probation-plan) by management characterised as ‘up or out’. It will require newly appointed lecturers to achieve promotion to senior lecturer within five years or face the sort of performance management procedures that could lead to termination of their appointment. The junior academics who enter on these conditions are unlikely to gamble their careers on academic risk-taking or pursue a challenge to an established paradigm. We can only speculate how this apprenticeship in organisational obedience might restrain the pursuit of discovery, let alone achieve the management’s stated aim to “develop and maintain an academic culture of intellectual stimulation and high achievement”.

    Meanwhile at the University of Liverpool, Vice Chancellor Janet Beer is attempting to apply research metrics and measures of research income over a five-year period to select academics for redundancy in the Faculty of Life Sciences. Staff have been threatened with sacking and replacement by those felt to hold more promise. It will be an unwise scholar who chooses a niche field of research which will not elicit prime citations. Astoundingly, university mangers claim that their criteria are not in breach of their status as a signatory to the San Fransisco Declaration on Research Assessment (https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2021/03/08/project-shape-update). That is correct insofar as selection for redundancy by grant income is clearly such dishonorable practice as to have been placed beyond contemplation by the international board of DORA.

    It seems we are reaching a pivotal moment for academic freedom for higher education systems across the world. In #Arkansas and some other states in the #USA, there are efforts to prohibit the teaching of social justice (https://www.chronicle.com/article/no-social-justice-in-the-classroom-new-state-scrutiny-of-speech-at-public).

    In #France, the education minister has blamed American critical race theory (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/france-about-become-less-free/617195) for undermining France’s self-professed race-blindness and for causing the rise of “islamo-gauchisme”, a term which has been cynically deployed to blunt any critique of structural racism.

    In Greece, universities are now bound by law to ensure policing and surveillance of university campuses (https://www.crimetalk.org.uk/index.php/library/section-list/1012-exiting-democracy-entering-authoritarianism) by ‘squads for the protection of universities’ in order to suppress dissent with the Orwellian announcement that the creation of these squads and the extensive surveillance of public Universities are “a means of closing the door to violence and opening the way to freedom” and an assertion that “it is not the police who enter universities, but democracy”.

    Conclusion

    It occurs to me that those public figures who feel deprived of a platform to express controversial views may well be outnumbered by the scholars whose universities allow their work to be suppressed by targeted intellectual purges, academic totalitarianism and metric surveillance. It is telling that assaults on academic freedom in the UK have not attracted comment or action from the organisations which might be well placed to defend this defining and essential principle of universities. I hereby call on Universities UK, the Office for Students and the freedom of speech champion to insist on an independent audit of academic freedom and autonomy for each higher education institution.

    We now know where intervention into the rights of academics to teach and research autonomously may lead. We also know that many of the candidates targeted for redundancy are UCU trade union officials; this has happened at University of East London and the University of Hull. Make no mistake, this is a PATCO moment (https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-241252) for higher education in the UK as management teams try to break union support and solidarity in order to exact greater control in the future.

    Universities are the canary down the mine in an era of right-wing authoritarianism. We must ensure that they can maintain their unique responsibility to protect against the rise of populism and the dismantling of democracy. We must be assertive in protecting the rights of academics whose lawful and reasoned opinions are increasingly subject to some very sinister threats. Academic freedom needs to be fought for, just like the right to protest and the right to roam. That leaves a heavy responsibility for academics if the abolition of autonomy and academic freedom is not to be complete.

    http://cdbu.org.uk/academic-freedom-is-in-crisis-free-speech-is-not
    #liberté_académique #liberté_d'expression #UK #Angleterre #université #facs #justice_sociale #black_studies #races #race #approches_critiques #études_critiques #privilège_blanc #économie_politique #Leicester_Business_School #pandémie #crise_sanitaire #Birmingham #Liverpool #Janet_Beer #concurrence #Grèce #Etats-Unis #métrique #attaques #éducation_supérieure #populisme #démocratie #autonomie #canari_dans_la_mine

    ping @isskein @cede

    • The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness. How the right is trying to censor critical race theory.

      It’s something of a truism, particularly on the right, that conservatives have claimed the mantle of free speech from an intolerant left that is afraid to engage with uncomfortable ideas. Every embarrassing example of woke overreach — each ill-considered school board decision or high-profile campus meltdown — fuels this perception.

      Yet when it comes to outright government censorship, it is the right that’s on the offense. Critical race theory, the intellectual tradition undergirding concepts like white privilege and microaggressions, is often blamed for fomenting what critics call cancel culture. And so, around America and even overseas, people who don’t like cancel culture are on an ironic quest to cancel the promotion of critical race theory in public forums.

      In September, Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget ordered federal agencies to “begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’” which it described as “un-American propaganda.”

      A month later, the conservative government in Britain declared some uses of critical race theory in education illegal. “We do not want teachers to teach their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt,” said the Tory equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch. “Any school which teaches these elements of critical race theory, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law.”

      Some in France took up the fight as well. “French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society,” Norimitsu Onishi reported in The New York Times. (This is quite a reversal from the days when American conservatives warned darkly about subversive French theory.)

      Once Joe Biden became president, he undid Trump’s critical race theory ban, but lawmakers in several states have proposed their own prohibitions. An Arkansas legislator introduced a pair of bills, one banning the teaching of The Times’s 1619 Project curriculum, and the other nixing classes, events and activities that encourage “division between, resentment of, or social justice for” specific groups of people. “What is not appropriate is being able to theorize, use, specifically, critical race theory,” the bills’ sponsor told The Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

      Republicans in West Virginia and Oklahoma have introduced bills banning schools and, in West Virginia’s case, state contractors from promoting “divisive concepts,” including claims that “the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist.” A New Hampshire Republican also proposed a “divisive concepts” ban, saying in a hearing, “This bill addresses something called critical race theory.”

      Kimberlé Crenshaw, a pioneering legal scholar who teaches at both U.C.L.A. and Columbia, has watched with alarm the attempts to suppress an entire intellectual movement. It was Crenshaw who came up with the name “critical race theory” when organizing a workshop in 1989. (She also coined the term “intersectionality.”) “The commitment to free speech seems to dissipate when the people who are being gagged are folks who are demanding racial justice,” she told me.

      Many of the intellectual currents that would become critical race theory emerged in the 1970s out of disappointment with the incomplete work of the civil rights movement, and cohered among radical law professors in the 1980s.
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      The movement was ahead of its time; one of its central insights, that racism is structural rather than just a matter of interpersonal bigotry, is now conventional wisdom, at least on the left. It had concrete practical applications, leading, for example, to legal arguments that housing laws or employment criteria could be racist in practice even if they weren’t racist in intent.

      Parts of the critical race theory tradition are in tension with liberalism, particularly when it comes to issues like free speech. Richard Delgado, a key figure in the movement, has argued that people should be able to sue those who utter racist slurs. Others have played a large role in crafting campus speech codes.

      There’s plenty here for people committed to broad free speech protections to dispute. I’m persuaded by the essay Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in the 1990s challenging the movement’s stance on the first amendment. “To remove the very formation of our identities from the messy realm of contestation and debate is an elemental, not incidental, truncation of the ideal of public discourse,” he wrote.

      Disagreeing with certain ideas, however, is very different from anathematizing the collective work of a host of paradigm-shifting thinkers. Gates’s article was effective because he took the scholarly work he engaged with seriously. “The critical race theorists must be credited with helping to reinvigorate the debate about freedom of expression; even if not ultimately persuaded to join them, the civil libertarian will be much further along for having listened to their arguments and examples,” he wrote.

      But the right, for all its chest-beating about the value of entertaining dangerous notions, is rarely interested in debating the tenets of critical race theory. It wants to eradicate them from public institutions.

      “Critical race theory is a grave threat to the American way of life,” Christopher Rufo, director of the Center on Wealth and Poverty at the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank once known for pushing an updated form of creationism in public schools, wrote in January.

      Rufo’s been leading the conservative charge against critical race theory. Last year, during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, he called on Trump to issue an executive order abolishing “critical race theory trainings from the federal government.” The next day, he told me, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, called him and asked for his help putting an order together.

      Last month, Rufo announced a “new coalition of legal foundations and private attorneys that will wage relentless legal warfare against race theory in America’s institutions.” A number of House and Senate offices, he told me, are working on their own anti-critical race theory bills, though none are likely to go anywhere as long as Biden is president.

      As Rufo sees it, critical race theory is a revolutionary program that replaces the Marxist categories of the bourgeois and the proletariat with racial groups, justifying discrimination against those deemed racial oppressors. His goal, ultimately, is to get the Supreme Court to rule that school and workplace trainings based on the doctrines of critical race theory violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

      This inversion, casting anti-racist activists as the real racists, is familiar to Ian Haney López, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in critical race theory. “There’s a rhetoric of reaction which seeks to claim that it’s defending these higher values, which, perversely, often are the very values it’s traducing,” he said. “Whether that’s ‘In the name of free speech we’re going to persecute, we’re going to launch investigations into particular forms of speech’ or — and I think this is equally perverse — ‘In the name of fighting racism, we’re going to launch investigations into those scholars who are most serious about studying the complex forms that racism takes.’”

      Rufo insists there are no free speech implications to what he’s trying to do. “You have the freedom of speech as an individual, of course, but you don’t have the kind of entitlement to perpetuate that speech through public agencies,” he said.

      This sounds, ironically, a lot like the arguments people on the left make about de-platforming right-wingers. To Crenshaw, attempts to ban critical race theory vindicate some of the movement’s skepticism about free speech orthodoxy, showing that there were never transcendent principles at play.

      When people defend offensive speech, she said, they’re often really defending “the substance of what the speech is — because if it was really about free speech, then this censorship, people would be howling to the high heavens.” If it was really about free speech, they should be.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opinion/speech-racism-academia.html

      #droite #gauche #censure #cancel_culture #micro-agressions #Trump #Donald_Trump #Kemi_Badenoch #division #critical_race_theory #racisme #sexisme #Kimberlé_Crenshaw #Crenshaw #racisme_structurel #libéralisme #Richard_Delgado #Christopher_Rufo #Ian_Haney_López

    • No ‘Social Justice’ in the Classroom: Statehouses Renew Scrutiny of Speech at Public Colleges

      Blocking professors from teaching social-justice issues. Asking universities how they talk about privilege. Analyzing students’ freedom of expression through regular reports. Meet the new campus-speech issues emerging in Republican-led statehouses across the country, indicating potential new frontiers for politicians to shape campus affairs.

      (paywall)
      https://www.chronicle.com/article/no-social-justice-in-the-classroom-new-state-scrutiny-of-speech-at-public

  • Liverpool’s 30-year boycott of The Sun is one of the most successful of all time ~ The Overtake [beta]

    https://theovertake.com/~protest/liverpool-vs-the-sun

    Trente ans après il semble que Liverpool n’ait pas oublié ...

    he reasons are clear. After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 in which 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death in overcrowding, the Murdoch-owned newspaper printed pages of false claims that not only blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster, but accused them of urinating on police officers and other fans, beating up officers attempting CPR, and pickpocketing the dead. These reports have since all been proven as fabrication.

    #journalisme #liverpool

  • Sous la pression d’activistes, Liverpool se penche sur son passé esclavagiste - Page 1 | Mediapart
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/261219/sous-la-pression-d-activistes-liverpool-se-penche-sur-son-passe-esclavagis

    #Liverpool fut le premier port négrier européen au XVIIIe siècle, d’où sont partis plus de bateaux que l’ensemble des ports français, dont Nantes et Bordeaux. Dès 1740, Liverpool avait dépassé l’activité de ses concurrents nationaux, Londres et Bristol. Dans les années 1790 jusqu’à l’abolition du commerce d’#esclaves par le #Royaume-Uni en 1807, quelque 120 bateaux quittaient chaque année Liverpool vers l’Afrique, soit les trois quarts environ de la flotte partant d’Europe. Ils sont 1,5 million d’Africains à avoir été emmenés de force en Amérique sur des bateaux affrétés à Liverpool – un peu plus de 10 % de l’ensemble des populations esclavagisées.

    (sans parler de celleux qui ont perdu la vie dans les entrepôts infâmes des ports de la côte africaine où ielles étaient entassées avant embarquement)
    #esclavage #traite_négrière #plantation #plantationocène #musée #mémoire

  • Les routes de l’#esclavage (1/4)
    476-1375 : au-delà du désert

    Domination, violence, profit : le système criminel de l’esclavage a marqué l’histoire du monde et de l’humanité. Au fil de ses routes, cette série documentaire retrace pour la première fois la tragédie des traites négrières. Captivant et implacable. Premier volet : de la chute de Rome en 476 à la fin du XIVe siècle.

    Après la chute de Rome en 476, les peuples (Wisigoths, Ostrogoths, Berbères, Slaves, Byzantins, Nubiens et Arabes) se disputent les ruines de l’Empire. Tous pratiquent l’asservissement – « esclave » viendrait du mot « slave ». Mais au VIIe siècle émerge un Empire arabe. Au rythme de ses conquêtes se tisse, entre l’Afrique et le Moyen-Orient, un immense réseau de traite d’esclaves, dont la demande ne cesse de croître et qui converge vers Bagdad, nouveau centre du monde. Après la révolte des Zanj – des esclaves africains –, qui s’achève dans un bain de sang, le trafic se redéploie vers l’intérieur du continent. Deux grandes cités commerciales et marchés aux esclaves s’imposent : Le Caire au nord, et Tombouctou au sud, place forte de l’Empire du Mali d’où partent les caravanes. Au fil des siècles, les populations subsahariennes deviennent la principale « matière première » de ce trafic criminel.

    https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/068406-001-A/les-routes-de-l-esclavage-1-4

    #film #documentaire #Afrique #Empire_romain #histoire #pratique_généralisée #traite #Fustat #économie #Nubie #guerre #violence #butins_de_guerre #Bagdad #main-d'oeuvre #Islam #Berbères #dromadaires #Sahara #Tombouctou #Empire_du_Mali #or #altérité #Touareg #essentialisme #fatalité #Basora #Le_Caire #esclaves_domestiques #paternalisme #négation_de_l'être #domination #esclavage_doux #oasis #Atlas_catalan

    #Catherine_Coquery-Vidrovitch :

    Dans l’Empire arabo-musulman, « l’#esclave n’était pas différencié par sa couleur, ça ne comptait pas. L’esclave était différencié par sa #culture. Il n’avait pas la culture du dominant »

    #géographie_culturelle #domination

    #Ibrahima_Thioub, université Cheickh Anta Diop, Sénégal :

    « Pour mettre en esclavage un individu, un des phénomènes importants c’est de le construire comme autre, de construire une #altérité. Les sociétés humaines ont des registres assez larges. On peut utiliser la différence de #couleur_de_peau, la différence de #religion. Dans la #traite_trans-saharienne, on va combiner les deux ».

    https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahima_Thioub

    Ibrahima Thioub :

    « L’intérêt des maîtres, c’est de faire croire à l’individu qu’il est esclave non pas parce qu’un jour on lui a opposé un rapport de force qui est réversible, mais parce que, par sa nature, il est destiné à être un esclave. C’est une #idéologie extrêmement forte. Si votre sang est considéré comme un sang servile, et que cette nature vous la transmettez à votre descendance, il devient impossible de sortir du phénomène esclavagiste »

    Selon ce qui est dit dans ce reportage, 3,5 millions d’Africains ont circulé sur les routes de l’esclavage entre le 7ème et le 14ème siècle.

  • #Grande-Bretagne : les #nazis chassés de #Liverpool, forcés de se cacher dans la consigne à bagages
    http://lahorde.samizdat.net/2015/08/21/grande-bretagne-les-nazis-chasses-de-liverpool-forces-de-se-cacher

     L’Anti-Fascist Network (AFN – réseau antifasciste) a publié le compte-rendu de la journée de mobilisation antifasciste contre la « marche de l’homme blanc » à Liverpool, ce samedi 15 aout 2015. Cette journée a été une réussite, cet article nous permet de revenir sur le déroulé et les enjeux de cette riposte. lire l’article originel [&hellip

    #International #AFN #fascistes #manifestation #national_action

  • Quand le football rend con, mais alors très con (le tatoué en premier lieu, les supporters de Liverpool – le plus grand club britannique de tous les temps s’il en est – en second lieu) :

    Menacé de mort pour un tatouage provocateur
    http://www.sofoot.com/menace-de-mort-pour-un-tatouage-provocateur-160356.html

    Un jeune supporter de Manchester United est menacé de mort par des supporters de Liverpool après s’être fait tatouer une phrase célébrant la disparition de 96 supporters des Reds à Hillsborough en 1989 et regrettant qu’il n’y en ait pas eu plus…

    #Football #MU #Liverpool_FC