organization:university of london

  • Antisémitisme et antisionisme : une assimilation absurde dans le monde arabe - Caroline HAYEK et Anthony SAMRANI - L’Orient-Le Jour
    https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1158662/antisemitisme-et-antisionisme-une-assimilation-absurde-dans-le-monde-

    Au Proche-Orient, c’est le sionisme et plus largement la politique israélienne qui ont fait le lit de l’antisémitisme.
    Caroline HAYEK et Anthony SAMRANI | OLJ
    23/02/2019

    C’est un débat qui se joue en France mais qui est suivi avec attention de l’autre côté de la Méditerranée. Emmanuel Macron a annoncé mercredi vouloir intégrer l’antisionisme – dans le sens de la négation du droit d’Israël à exister – à la définition juridique de l’antisémitisme. Le président français considère que « l’antisionisme est une des formes modernes de l’antisémitisme », alors que les actes antisémites en France étaient en hausse de 74 % en 2018 par rapport à l’année précédente.

    Plusieurs voix critiques ont fait remarquer que cela pouvait conduire à des incohérences – la plus absurde étant d’être amené à considérer certains juifs antisionistes comme des antisémites – et à créer une confusion entre une idéologie politique et une identité religieuse. Cela revient aussi à faire le jeu du Premier ministre israélien Benjamin Netanyahu, pour qui les deux termes sont indissociables, et à donner l’impression qu’il n’est pas permis en France de critiquer la politique israélienne, même si ce n’est pas du tout le sens de l’initiative présidentielle.

    Vue du monde arabe, l’assimilation entre ces deux termes apparaît pour le moins inadaptée. Si l’antisionisme peut parfois, comme en Europe, cacher des relents d’antisémitisme, c’est bien le sionisme qui apparaît comme la cause première de la montée de l’antisémitisme, et non l’inverse. L’antisémitisme est un terme inventé au XIXe siècle pour évoquer la discrimination à l’égard des populations juives au sein des sociétés européennes. Outre l’argument un peu simpliste que les Arabes sont eux-mêmes un peuple sémite, la notion n’a pas vraiment de sens dans le contexte arabe. Malgré un statut particulier les empêchant, à l’instar des chrétiens, d’accéder aux hautes fonctions politiques et administratives, les juifs étaient bien intégrés au sein des sociétés arabes et n’ont pas subi de persécutions comparables à ce qu’ont pu être les pogroms en Europe.

    « La communauté juive a connu un moment de gloire et de puissance à l’époque ottomane, notamment lors de l’arrivée massive des juifs chassés d’Espagne », note Henry Laurens, professeur au Collège de France et titulaire de la chaire d’histoire contemporaine du monde arabe, interrogé par L’Orient-Le Jour. « Avant la déclaration Balfour et tout ce qu’elle entraînera par la suite, les juifs sont une communauté parmi d’autres dans le monde arabe, qui, depuis l’ère ottomane en particulier, a été organisée sur une base communautaire », confirme à L’OLJ Gilbert Achcar, professeur à la School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London), auteur d’un ouvrage sur Les Arabes et la Shoah : la guerre israélo-arabe des récits (2013).

    Dégradation continue

    La diffusion des thèses sionistes développées par l’intellectuel autrichien Theodor Herzl va peu à peu changer la donne jusqu’au tournant de la création d’Israël en 1948, véritable choc pour les populations arabes. Au début du XXe siècle, les populations locales ne font pas nécessairement la distinction entre juifs et sionistes, le second terme n’étant pas encore véritablement assimilé. « Les habitants de la Palestine historique avaient l’habitude de désigner les juifs comme juifs. Certains étaient sionistes, mais beaucoup ne l’étaient pas. Ils étaient pour la plupart des juifs religieux et asionistes ou antisionistes », décrit à L’OLJ Tarek Mitri, ancien ministre et directeur de l’institut d’études politiques Issam Farès de l’AUB.

    « Les Arabes ont d’abord connu le sionisme de façon indirecte, en lisant la presse européenne. En Palestine, les premières réactions ne sont pas nécessairement négatives, mais les choses changent à partir de la déclaration Balfour, et le sionisme est progressivement considéré comme un danger pour les Palestiniens d’une part, et pour les Arabes du Proche-Orient d’autre part. Cela conduit à une dégradation continue de la situation des communautés juives du Proche-Orient à partir des années 1930 », dit Henry Laurens.

    Les relations se compliquent à mesure que l’immigration juive s’accélère en raison de la répression dont ils sont victimes en Europe.

    « Dans les discours, il y avait une distinction entre les juifs et les mouvements sionistes. Dans la pratique, ce qui inquiétait particulièrement les Arabes, c’est le fait de voir une communauté parmi d’autres se doter d’un territoire, de passer de la communauté à la nation », note Henry Laurens.Dans les années 1930 et 1940, c’est l’histoire européenne qui rencontre frontalement celle du Proche-Orient, de façon encore plus brutale après l’Holocauste et jusqu’à la création de l’État hébreu. Durant cette période, le grand mufti de Jérusalem Hajj Amine al-Husseini – qui n’était toutefois pas représentatif des Palestiniens – va collaborer avec l’Allemagne hitlérienne, au départ pour contrecarrer les projets anglais d’établissement d’un foyer juif, jusqu’à approuver sa politique génocidaire contre les juifs. Cet épisode va être largement instrumentalisé par la propagande israélienne pour démontrer un soi-disant antisémitisme arabe, au point que Benjamin Netanyahu va même aller jusqu’à présenter le mufti comme l’inspirateur de la solution finale.

    Complotisme et négationnisme

    La création de l’État hébreu va profondément changer les rapports entre les juifs et les autres communautés dans le monde arabe. Si, pour les sionistes, l’aboutissement du projet étatique est avant tout le fruit d’une volonté collective de plusieurs décennies, il apparaît aux yeux des Arabes comme une injustice liée à un génocide dont ils ne sont en aucun cas responsables. Les juifs du monde arabe n’accueillent pas forcément avec enthousiasme la naissance d’Israël. « Les communautés juives du monde arabe, surtout d’Égypte et d’Irak, n’étaient pas vraiment tentées au début par la migration vers la Palestine. Mais il y a eu deux facteurs qui ont encouragé ce mouvement. D’une part, la politique israélienne qui a tout fait pour les attirer, au point que le Mossad a organisé des attentats contre des synagogues pour leur faire peur. D’autre part, il y a une méfiance arabe qui s’est installée et qui faisait que les juifs pouvaient être perçus comme une sorte de 5e colonne », explique Tarek Mitri.

    Après la proclamation de l’indépendance d’Israël par David Ben Gourion, l’antisionisme va devenir dominant dans le monde arabe. Le sionisme apparaît comme un projet colonial avalisé par les puissances occidentales visant à déposséder les Arabes de leurs terres. La distinction devient très nette dans les discours entre juifs et sionistes. « Dans leurs discours, Nasser ou Arafat ne font pas d’amalgame entre sioniste et juif, bien au contraire. Au début de son combat, le projet politique de Arafat était d’instaurer un débat laïc et démocratique en Palestine où juifs, chrétiens et musulmans coexisteraient », explique Tarek Mitri.

    Le double sentiment d’injustice et d’humiliation que les Arabes ont vis-à-vis de l’État hébreu va toutefois être le moteur d’un antisémitisme qui va avoir un certain écho au sein des classes populaires arabes – où le terme juif est parfois utilisé comme une insulte – et va être largement relayé par les mouvements islamistes. Cela va être particulièrement visible à travers la propagation de deux phénomènes intimement liés : le complotisme et le négationnisme.

    « Les théories du complot qui sont dans le discours antisémite occidental ont pu facilement trouver un public dans le monde arabe, parce que, de fait, c’est une région qui a connu de vrais complots, à commencer par les fameux accords secrets Sykes-Picot », constate Gilbert Achcar. L’idée complotiste des protocoles des sages de Sion, qui attribuent aux juifs des plans de domination du monde, est largement répandue au sein du monde arabe. « Chez les islamistes, il y a eu un moment où on a ressuscité une vieille littérature parareligieuse qui ridiculise et avilie les juifs. Ils puisent dans les textes sacrés ce qui est de nature à susciter la méfiance ou même la haine à l’égard des juifs », note Tarek Mitri.

    Le négationnisme concernant l’Holocauste trouve aussi ses adeptes, même s’ils restent minoritaires. Dans un article publié en 1998 dans le Monde diplomatique, le grand intellectuel palestino-américain Edward Saïd s’indignait que « la thèse selon laquelle l’Holocauste ne serait qu’une fabrication des sionistes circule ici et là. Pourquoi attendons-nous du monde entier qu’il prenne conscience de nos souffrances en tant qu’Arabes si nous ne sommes pas en mesure de prendre conscience de celles des autres, quand bien même il s’agit de nos oppresseurs ? » ajoutait-il non sans une certaine verve. « La plupart des gens qui ont un peu de culture savent que la Shoah n’est pas une invention, mais un certain négationniste a pu trouver un écho favorable chez les gens étroits d’esprit, qu’ils soient ultranationalistes ou intégristes », dit Gilbert Achcar.

    Ce dernier insiste toutefois sur le fait qu’il n’y a pas d’antisémitisme propre au monde arabe, mais que la diffusion des thèses antisémites dans cette région n’est pas comparable à ce qui se passe en Occident. « Toute l’équation entre le monde occidental et le monde arabe est complètement faussée par le fait que les juifs étaient opprimés pendant des siècles en Europe, tandis que dans le monde arabe, ce qu’on peut qualifier de haine envers les juifs est surtout le produit d’une histoire moderne marquée par la présence d’un État oppresseur, qui insiste lui-même à se faire appeler État juif », résume Gilbert Achcar. Et Tarek Mitri de conclure, pour insister sur la nécessité de distinguer les deux termes dans le monde arabe : « Il y avait une résolution de l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU en 1975 qui disait que le sionisme était une forme de racisme et de discrimination. Elle a été révoquée en 1991, mais elle avait suscité un grand enthousiasme dans le monde arabe. »

  • Bricked in by poverty, Cambodia’s farmers fight debt bondage

    Bopha should be in school but instead toils seven days a week in a searing brick kiln on the outskirts of Phnom Penh — a 14-year-old trapped in debt bondage in a boom industry preying on the poverty of Cambodia’s farmers.

    Unpredictable weather linked to climate change is laying waste to Cambodian fields.

    Saddled with debt from failed harvests, tens of thousands of farmers are turning to brick factories, where owners pay off their bills in exchange for labour.

    The factories feed a surging construction sector, with high-rises cropping up around the capital Phnom Penh and beyond as money — much of it from China — pours in.

    But for the farmers who shape and bake the clay bricks, Cambodia’s newfound urban prosperity has passed them by.

    “I’m not going to school, I’m trying to help pay back the $4,000 that we owe, even if it will take years,” Bopha told AFP, as she loaded clay blocks on to a cart.

    “For 10,000 bricks transported, we receive $7.50.”

    Cambodian labour law prohibits those aged 12-15 from working if the job is hazardous or interferes with their education.

    Yet Bopha works all week with her family.

    They were driven into the industry two years ago after drought ruined their rice harvest, leaving them with no way of paying back money they borrowed to plant crops.

    A factory owner took over the debt and they went to work in the kilns about an hour’s drive from the capital.

    There, a dirt road leading to the sprawling facility is lined with hundreds of kilns resembling small pyramids.

    Bopha and her family are likely to be trapped for years as they try to clear their debts, in what campaigners warn amounts to modern-day slavery.

    Like most workers interviewed for this article they asked that their full names not be used for fear of losing their jobs.
    The University of London said in an October study that brick factories in Cambodia were creating a “multi-generational workforce of adults and children trapped in debt bondage -– one of the most prevalent forms of modern slavery in the world”.

    And the link between climate change and debt bondage is stark, explains Naly Pilorge, head of Cambodian rights NGO Licadho.

    “Many industries around the world employ climate refugees,” she said. “But what is unique in the brick factories in Cambodia is that the vast majority of workers are imprisoned in debt bondage.”

    Compensation is not enough to pay off debts quickly, and the workers become virtual prisoners of owners who do not let them leave until they pay what they owe — with some living there indefinitely.

    – ’They ignore their rights’ -

    Sov will soon be able to take a two-day holiday to return to her village in Stung Treng province in the north. But her husband and children must stay at the factory.

    “The boss is afraid we will run away without paying,” she said, standing in a maze of bricks.

    She started working at the factory two decades ago with a debt of $2,500. Now, at 57, she owes double that due to medical treatments and the cost of raising her children.

    “I will have to leave this debt to my children,” she said.

    Many workers have persistent health problems because of the smokey kilns, where men and women graft without gloves and masks. Complaints about respiratory or skin diseases, headaches and nosebleeds are common.

    Dim Phally, 31, works in Thmey village with her husband. They have two kids.

    When they went to borrow money, they were told by the brick factory owner to sign a document and pose for a photo holding the funds.

    The contract says they have to pay back double if they try to escape. She still owes $1,500.

    “I hope I can repay the owner and leave this place,” she said.

    Kiln workers have little recourse if abuses occur.

    Sok Kin, president of the Building and Wood Workers Trade Union of Cambodia, said bosses can be violent, but he cannot recall a case where any were prosecuted.

    As for the workers, “they don’t understand their rights and are afraid of losing their jobs”.

    He called for a minimum wage to be established and a nationwide campaign to raise awareness among the workers of their rights.

    The government has repeatedly said it will investigate the situation. The Ministry of Labour did not respond to a request for comment.

    Owners of multiple brick factories declined to speak with AFP.

    Many workers do not see things changing soon.

    “If we can repay the debt, we leave,” said Phan Heng, 33, while taking a break.

    “And if we cannot repay it, we stay and work until our kids grow up and can help us.”


    https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/1604110/bricked-in-by-poverty-cambodias-farmers-fight-debt-bondage
    #esclavage_moderne #Cambodge #travail #exploitation #briques #fabrique_de_briques
    ping @albertocampiphoto

  • Anderson Tan — The Renaissance Man
    https://hackernoon.com/anderson-tan-the-renaissance-man-842fcc7ab3e3?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3

    Anderson Tan: The Renaissance ManAnderson Tan — The Renaissance Man first appeared on Blockleaders, written by Jillian Godsil on 4th October 2018Anderson Tan is positively voracious in his search for knowledge and learning. In 2014, while between jobs (and by jobs I mean having sold two companies and being involved in real estate before casting about for a new adventure), he studied continuously computer science, physics, entrepreneurship, philosophy, technology, coding, creative problem solving, space, music among other things through online learning platforms operated by Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Wharton, Yale, Princeton, Babson, Berkeley, Northwestern, IBM, Linux, University of London, University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford, University of Tokyo and many more.He is a graduate of the (...)

    #startup #blockchain #cryptocurrency #angel-investors #profile

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Stopping Migrants, Whatever the Cost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A Deadly Policy in Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A Legal Challenge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ping @reka

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • How We Made an Invisible Crisis at Sea Visible

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

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

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

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

  • Brazilian media report that police are entering university classrooms to interrogate professors

    In advance of this Sunday’s second-round presidential election between far-right politician Jair #Bolsonaro and center-left candidate Fernando Haddad, Brazilian media are reporting that Brazilian police have been staging raids, at times without warrants, in universities across the country this week. In these raids, police have been questioning professors and confiscating materials belonging to students and professors.

    The raids are part a supposed attempt to stop illegal electoral advertising. Brazilian election law prohibits electoral publicity in public spaces. However, many of the confiscated materials do not mention candidates. Among such confiscated materials are a flag for the Universidade Federal Fluminense reading “UFF School of Law - Anti-Fascist” and flyers titled “Manifest in Defense of Democracy and Public Universities.”

    For those worrying about Brazilian democracy, these raids are some of the most troubling signs yet of the problems the country faces. They indicate the extremes of Brazilian political polarization: Anti-fascist and pro-democracy speech is now interpreted as illegal advertising in favor of one candidate (Fernando Haddad) and against another (Jair Bolsonaro). In the long run, the politicization of these two terms will hurt support for the idea of democracy, and bolster support for the idea of fascism.

    In the short run, the raids have even more troublesome implications. Warrantless police raids in university classrooms to monitor professor speech have worrisome echoes of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime — particularly when the speech the raids are seeking to stop is not actually illegal.

    Perhaps the most concerning point of all is that these raids are happening before Bolsonaro takes office. They have often been initiated by complaints from Bolsonaro supporters. All of this suggests that if Bolsonaro wins the election — as is widely expected — and seeks to suppress the speech of his opponents, whom he has called “red [i.e., Communist] criminals,” he may have plenty of willing helpers.

    https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2018/10/26/18029696/brazilian-police-interrogate-professors
    #université #extrême_droite #Brésil #police #it_has_begun
    Je crois que je vais commencer à utiliser un nouveau tag, qui est aussi le nom d’un réseau : #scholars_at_risk

    • Brésil : à peine élu, Jair Bolsonaro commence la chasse aux opposants de gauche

      Les universités dans le viseur

      Enfin, toujours pour lutter contre l’opposition à gauche, Jair Bolsonaro entend faire pression sur les professeurs d’université qui parleraient de politique pendant leurs cours.

      Le président élu a récemment scandalisé une partie du monde éducatif en accusant des professeurs, cités avec leurs noms et prénoms, de défendre les régimes de Cuba et de Corée du Nord devant leurs élèves, dans une vidéo diffusée sur Internet.

      Et pour y remédier, il compte installer des pancartes devant les salles de cours pour appeler les étudiants à dénoncer leurs professeurs par le biais d’une « hotline » téléphonique dédiée à la question.

      https://www.bfmtv.com/international/bresil-a-peine-elu-jair-bolsonaro-commence-la-chasse-aux-opposants-de-gauche-

    • Au Brésil, vague de répression dans les universités à la veille du second tour

      Quelques jours avant le second tour de l’élection présidentielle brésilienne, qui voit s’affronter le candidat d’extrême droite Jair Bolsonaro et le candidat du Parti des travailleurs (PT) Fernando Haddad, les campus universitaires du pays ont fait face à une vague inédite de répression de la liberté d’expression. Jeudi 25 octobre, la police a investi 27 universités, à la demande des tribunaux électoraux, dont les juges sont chargés de faire respecter les règles de communication et de propagande électorales des partis en lice. Les forces de police étaient à la recherche de supposé matériel de propagande électorale illégale. En fait, ces opérations ont visé des banderoles antifascistes, de soutien à la démocratie, un manifeste en soutien à l’université publique, des débats et des cours sur la dictature, la démocratie et les « fakes news » – ces mensonges ayant été largement diffusés pendant la campagne, en particulier par l’extrême-droite… [1]

      À Rio, une juge a ainsi fait enlever une banderole du fronton du bâtiment de la faculté de droit de l’université fédérale Fluminense (UFF), sur laquelle était inscrit, autour du symbole antifasciste du double drapeau rouge et noir, « Droit UFF antifasciste ». À l’université de l’État de Rio, les agents électoraux ont retiré une banderole en hommage à Marielle Franco, l’élue municipale du parti de gauche PSOL assassinée en pleine rue en mars dernier.

      220 000 messages de haine en quatre jours contre une journaliste

      Dans une université du Pará, quatre policiers militaires sont entrés sur le campus pour interroger un professeur sur « son idéologie ». L’enseignant avait abordé la question des fake news dans un cours sur les médias numériques. Une étudiante s’en est sentie offensée, alléguant une « doctrine marxiste », et l’a dit à son père, policier militaire. Une enquête du journal la Folha de São Paulo a pourtant révélé mi-octobre que des entreprises qui soutiennent le candidat d’extrême droite avaient acheté les services d’entreprises de communication pour faire envoyer en masse des fausses nouvelles anti-Parti des travailleurs directement sur les numéros whatsapp – une plateforme de messagerie en ligne – des Brésiliens. L’auteure de l’enquête, la journaliste Patricia Campos Melo, et le quotidien de São Paulo, ont ensuite reçu 220 000 messages de haine en quatre jours ! [2] Le journal a demandé à la police fédérale de lancer une enquête.

      Mais ce sont des conférences et des débats sur la dictature militaire et le fascisme qui ont pour l’instant été interdits. C’est le cas d’un débat public intitulé « Contre la fascisme, pour la démocratie », qui devait avoir lieu à l’université fédérale de Rio Grande do Sul (la région de Porto Alegre). Devaient y participer l’ex-candidat du parti de gauche PSOL au premier tour de la présidentielle, Guilherme Boulos, un ancien ministre issu du Parti des travailleurs, des députés fédéraux du PT et du PSOL. « J’ai donné des cours et des conférences dans des universités en France, en Angleterre, au Portugal, en Espagne, en Allemagne, en Argentine, et ici, même pendant la dictature. Aujourd’hui, je suis censuré dans l’État, le Rio Grande do Sul, que j’ai moi-même gouverné. Le fascisme grandit », a réagi l’un des députés, Tarso Genro, sur twitter.

      Une banderole « moins d’armes, plus de livres » jugée illégale

      Dans le Paraíba, les agents du tribunal électoral se sont introduits dans l’université pour retirer une banderole où était simplement inscrit « moins d’armes, plus de livres ». « Cette opération de la justice électorale dans les universités du pays pour saisir du matériel en défense de la démocratie et contre le fascisme est absurde. Cela rappelle les temps sombres de la censure et de l’invasion des facultés », a écrit Guilherme Boulos, le leader du PSOL, sur twitter, ajoutant : « Le parti de la justice a formé une coalition avec le PSL », le parti de Bolsonaro. « De telles interventions à l’intérieur de campus au cours d’une campagne électorale sont inédites. Une partie de l’appareil d’État se prépare au changement de régime », a aussi alerté l’historienne française, spécialiste du Brésil, Maud Chirio, sur sa page Facebook.

      Dimanche dernier, dans une allocution filmée diffusée pour ses supporters rassemblés à São Paulo, Jair Bolsonaro a proféré des menaces claires à l’égard de ses opposants. « Ou vous partez en exil ou vous partez en prison », a-il dit, ajoutant « nous allons balayer ces bandits rouges du Brésil », et annonçant un « nettoyage jamais vu dans l’histoire de ce pays ». Il a précisé qu’il allait classer le Mouvements des paysans sans Terre (MST) et le Mouvement des travailleurs sans toit (MTST) comme des organisations terroristes, et menacé Fernando Haddad de l’envoyer « pourrir en prison aux côtés de Lula ».


      https://www.bastamag.net/Au-Bresil-vague-de-repression-dans-les-universites-a-la-veille-du-second-t

    • We deplore this attack on freedom of expression in Brazil’s universities

      107 international academics react to social media reports that more than 20 universities in Brazil have been invaded by military police in recent days, with teaching materials confiscated on ideological grounds

      Reports have emerged on social media that more than 20 universities in Brazil have been subjected in recent days to: invasions by military police; the confiscation of teaching materials on ideological grounds; and the suppression of freedom of speech and expression, especially in relation to anti-fascist history and activism.

      As academics, researchers, graduates, students and workers at universities in the UK, Europe and further afield, we deplore this attack on freedom of expression in Brazil’s universities, which comes as a direct result of the campaign and election of far-right President Bolsonaro.

      Academic autonomy is a linchpin not only of independent and objective research, but of a functioning democracy, which should be subject to scrutiny and informed, evidence-based investigation and critique.

      We call on co-workers, colleagues and students to decry this attack on Brazil’s universities in the name of Bolsonaro’s wider militaristic, anti-progressive agenda. We will not stand by as this reactionary populist attacks the pillars of Brazil’s democracy and education system. We will campaign vigorously in whatever capacity we can with activists, educators and lawmakers in Brazil to ensure that its institutions can operate without the interference of this new – and hopefully short-lived – government.
      Dr William McEvoy, University of Sussex, UK (correspondent)
      Dr Will Abberley, University of Sussex
      Nannette Aldred, University of Sussex
      Patricia Alessandrini, Stanford University, USA
      Dr Michael Alexander, University of Glasgow
      Steven Allen, Birkbeck, University of London
      Dr Katherine Angel, Birkbeck, University of London
      Pedro Argenti, University of Antwerp, Belgium
      Nick Awde, International Editor, The Stage newspaper, London
      Professor Ian Balfour, York University, Toronto, Canada
      Lennart Balkenhol, University of Melbourne, Australia
      Nehaal Bajwa, University of Sussex
      Dr Louis Bayman, University of Southampton
      Mark Bergfeld, former NUS NEC (2010-2012)
      Professor Tim Bergfelder, University of Southampton
      Dr Patricia Pires Boulhosa, University of Cambridge
      Dr Maud Bracke, University of Glasgow
      Max Brookman-Byrne, University of Lincoln
      Dr Conrad Brunström, Maynooth University, Ireland
      Dr Christopher Burlinson, Jesus College, Cambridge
      Professor Martin Butler, University of Sussex
      Professor Gavin Butt, University of Sussex
      Cüneyt Çakirlar, Nottingham Trent University
      Guilherme Carréra, University of Westminster
      Geoffrey Chew, Royal Holloway, University of London
      Dr Maite Conde, University of Cambridge
      Dr Luke Cooper, Anglia Ruskin University, UK, and Institute of Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria
      Dr Sue Currell, University of Sussex
      Professor Dimitris Dalakoglou, Vrije University, Amsterdam, Netherlands
      William Dalziel, University of Sussex
      Dr April de Angelis, Royal Holloway, University of London
      Dr Olga Demetriou, Durham University
      Dr Stephanie Dennison, University of Leeds
      Dr Steffi Doebler, University of Liverpool
      Dr Sai Englert, SOAS University of London
      James Erskine, University of Sussex and Birkbeck, University of London
      Professor Martin Paul Eve, Birkbeck, University of London
      John Fallas, University of Leeds
      Dr Lynne Fanthome, Staffordshire University
      Dr Hannah Field, University of Sussex
      Dr Adrian Garvey, Birkbeck, University of London
      Dr Laura Gill, University of Sussex
      Dr Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge
      Bhavini Goyate, University of Sussex
      Dr Craig Haslop, University of Liverpool
      Professor Björn Heile, University of Glasgow
      Dr Phil Hutchinson, Manchester Metropolitan University
      Professor Martin Iddon, University of Leeds
      Dr Eleftheria Ioannidou, University of Groningen, Netherlands
      Dr Chris Kempshall, University of Sussex
      Andrew Key, University of California, Berkeley, USA
      Professor Laleh Khalili, SOAS University of London
      Dr Theodore Koulouris, University of Brighton
      Professor Maria Lauret, University of Sussex
      Professor Vicky Lebeau, University of Sussex
      Professor James Livesey, University of Dundee, Scotland
      Professor Luke Martell, University of Sussex
      Dr N Gabriel Martin, Lebanese American University, Lebanon
      Wolfgang Marx, University College, Dublin, Ireland
      Andy Medhurst, University of Sussex
      Professor Philippe Meers, University of Antwerp, Belgium
      Dr Shamira A Meghani, University of Cambridge
      Niccolo Milanese, CESPRA EHESS, Paris, France and PUC Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
      Dr Ian Moody, CESEM – Universidade Nova, Lisbon
      Professor Lucia Naqib, University of Reading
      Dr Catherine Packham, University of Sussex
      Professor Dimitris Papanikolaou, University of Oxford
      Mary Parnwell, University of Sussex
      Professor Deborah Philips, University of Brighton
      Dr Chloe Porter, University of Sussex
      Dr Jason Price, University of Sussex
      Dr Duška Radosavljević, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
      Francesca Reader, University of Sussex and University of Brighton
      Naida Redgrave, University of East London
      Professor Nicholas Ridout, Queen Mary, University of London
      Professor Lucy Robinson, University of Sussex
      Dr Kirsty Rolfe, University of Sussex
      Dr Joseph Ronan, University of Brighton
      Dr Michael Rowland, University of Sussex
      Dr Zachary Rowlinson, University of Sussex
      Professor Nicholas Royle, University of Sussex
      Dr Eleanor Rycroft, University of Bristol
      Dr Jason Scott-Warren, University of Cambridge
      Dr Deborah Shaw, University of Portsmouth
      Dr Lisa Shaw, University of Liverpool
      Kat Sinclair, University of Sussex
      Sandrine Singleton-Perrin, University of Essex
      Despina Sinou, University of Paris 13 – Sorbonne Paris Cité, France
      Dave Smith, University of Hertfordshire
      John Snijders, Durham University
      Dr Samuel Solomon, University of Sussex
      Dr Arabella Stanger, University of Sussex
      Professor Rob Stone, University of Birmingham
      Bernard Sufrin, Emeritus Fellow, Dept of Computer Science, University of Oxford
      Dr Natasha Tanna, University of Cambridge
      Professor Lyn Thomas, University of Sussex
      Simon Thorpe, University of Warwick
      Dr Gavan Titley, Maynooth University, Ireland
      Dr Pamela Thurschwell, University of Sussex
      Dr Dominic Walker, University of Sussex
      Dr Ed Waller, University of Surrey and University of Portsmouth
      Dr Kiron Ward, University of Sussex
      Helen Wheatley, University of Warwick
      Ian Willcock, University of Herfordshire
      Professor Gregory Woods, Nottingham Trent University
      Dr Tom F Wright, University of Sussex
      Dr Heba Youssef, University of Brighton

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/01/we-deplore-this-attack-on-freedom-of-expression-in-brazils-universities
      #liberté_d'expression

    • Brazil Court Strikes Down Restrictions on University Speech

      Brazil´s Supreme Court issued an important decision striking down restrictions on political speech on university campuses in a unanimous ruling yesterday. Meanwhile, president-elect Jair Bolsonaro´s allies in Congress are pressing ahead with efforts to restrict what students and educators can discuss in the classroom.

      The court ruling overturned decisions by electoral court judges who recently ordered universities across the country to clamp down on what they considered illegal political campaigning. The orders were spurred by complaints from anonymous callers and, in a few cases, by members of conservative groups.

      For example, at Grande Dourados Federal University, court officials suspended a public event against fascism, according to the student group that organized it. At Campina Grande Federal University, police allegedly seized copies of a pamphlet titled “Manifesto in defense of democracy and public universities” and hard drives, said a professors´ association.

      At Rio de Janeiro State University, police ordered the removal of a banner honoring Marielle Franco, a black lesbian human rights defender and councilwoman murdered in March, despite not having a judicial order.

      The attorney general, Raquel Dodge, asked the Supreme Court to rule the electoral court judges´ decisions unconstitutional, and Supreme Court justice Cármen Lúcia Rocha issued an injunction stopping them. The full court upheld that decision on October 31.

      “The only force that must enter universities is the force of ideas,” said Rocha.

      “The excessive and illegitimate use of force by state agents … echoes somber days in Brazilian history,” said Justice Rosa Weber, referring to Brazil´s 1964 – 1985 military dictatorship.

      The ruling comes as Bolsonaro, who remains in Congress until he assumes the presidency on January 1, and his allies push a bill that would prohibit teachers from promoting their own opinions in the classroom or using the terms “gender” or “sexual orientation,” and would order that sex and religious education be framed around “family values.”

      A state representative-elect from Bolsonaro´s party has even called on students to film and report teachers who make “political-partisan or ideological statements.” Bolsonaro made a similar call in 2016. State prosecutors have filed a civil action against the representative-elect, alleging she instituted “an illegal service for the political and ideological control of teaching activities.”

      In his long career in Congress, Bolsonaro has endorsed abusive practices that undermine the rule of law, defended the dictatorship, and has been a vocal proponent of bigotry.

      More than ever, Brazil needs its judiciary to defend human rights within and outside the classroom.


      https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/01/brazil-court-strikes-down-restrictions-university-speech
      #cour_suprême #justice

    • Présidentielle au Brésil : relents de dictature militaire

      Présidentielle au Brésil : Bolsonaro et le « risque d’un retour à l’ordre autoritaire en Amérique latine »

      Porté par plus de deux cents universitaires, responsables politiques et citoyens d’Europe et du Canada, ce manifeste s’inscrit dans un mouvement mondial de soutien à la démocratie face à la violence déchaînée par la candidature de Jair Bolsonaro au Brésil. Il est ouvert aux démocrates de toutes les sensibilités politiques. Face au risque imminent d’un retour à l’ordre autoritaire en Amérique latine, la solidarité internationale est impérative.

      Nous, citoyens, intellectuels, militants, personnalités politiques vivant, travaillant et étudiant en Europe et au Canada, exprimons notre vive inquiétude face à la menace imminente de l’élection de Jair Bolsonaro à la présidence du Brésil le 28 octobre 2018.

      Le souvenir de la dictature militaire

      La victoire de l’extrême droite radicale au Brésil risque de renforcer le mouvement international qui a porté au pouvoir des politiciens réactionnaires et antidémocratiques dans de nombreux pays ces dernières années.

      Bolsonaro défend ouvertement le souvenir de la dictature militaire qui a imposé sa loi au Brésil entre 1964 et 1985, ses pratiques de torture et ses tortionnaires. Il méprise le combat pour les droits humains. Il exprime une hostilité agressive envers les femmes, les Afro-descendants, les membres de la communauté LGBT +, les peuples autochtones et les pauvres. Son programme vise à détruire les avancées politiques, économiques, sociales, environnementales et culturelles des quatre dernières décennies, ainsi que l’action menée par les mouvements sociaux et le camp progressiste pour consolider et étendre la démocratie au Brésil.

      L’élection de Bolsonaro menace les fragiles institutions démocratiques pour la construction desquelles les Brésilien·ne·s ont pris tant de risques. Son arrivée au pouvoir serait aussi un frein majeur à toute politique internationale ambitieuse en matière de défense de l’environnement et de préservation de la paix.

      Premiers signataires : Martine Aubry , maire de Lille, ancienne ministre (PS) ; Luc Boltanski , sociologue, directeur d’études, EHESS ; Peter Burke , historien, professeur émérite à l’université de Cambridge ; Roger Chartier , historien, directeur d’études EHESS/Collège de France ; Mireille Clapot , députée de la Drôme, vice-présidente de la commission des affaires étrangères (LRM) ; Laurence Cohen , sénatrice du Val-de-Marne (PCF) ; Didier Fassin , professeur de sciences sociales, Institute for advanced study, Princeton ; Carlo Ginzburg , professeur émérite à UCLA et à l’Ecole normale supérieure de Pise ; Eva Joly , députée européenne (groupe Verts-ALE) ; Pierre Louault , sénateur d’Indre-et-Loire (UDI) ; Paul Magnette, bourgmestre de Charleroi, ex-ministre président de la Wallonie, ex-président du Parti socialiste belge ; Thomas Piketty , directeur d’études à l’EHESS.

      http://jennifer-detemmerman.fr/index.php/2018/10/23/presidentielle-au-bresil-relents-de-dictature-militaire

    • Une pétition qui a été lancé avant l’élection...
      Defend Democracy in Brazil. Say No to Jair Bolsonaro

      Defend Democracy in Brazil,

      Say No to Jair Bolsonaro

      We, citizens, intellectuals, activists, politicians, people living, working, and studying in Europe and Canada, wish to express our growing alarm at the imminent threat of Jair Bolsonaro’s election to the presidency on October 28, 2018. The potential victory of a far-right radical in Brazil would reinforce a dangerous international trend of extremely reactionary and anti-democratic politicians gaining state power in recent years.

      Bolsonaro explicitly defends the Brazilian military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964-85 and praises torture and torturers. He condemns human rights efforts. He has expressed aggressive and vile hostility toward women, people of African descent, the LGBT+ community, indigenous people, and the poor. His proposed policies would effectively undo all of the political, social, economic, labor, environmental, and cultural gains of the last four decades, efforts by social movements and progressive politicians to consolidate and expand democracy in Brazil. A Bolsonaro presidency also threatens to undermine the still fragile democratic politics that people throughout Brazil have risked so much to build.

      His election would seriously hamper any ambitious international effort for environmental protection, against climate change and for the preservation of peace.

      Adapted version of the text « Defend Democracy in Brazil, Say No to Jair Bolsonaro! »

      https://www.change.org/p/association-pour-la-recherche-sur-le-br%C3%A9sil-en-europe-pour-la-d%C3%A9fe

  • Flawed reporting on antisemitism claims against the Labour party | Letter | Politics | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/30/flawed-reporting-on-antisemitism-claims-against-the-labour-party

    We have long had serious concerns about the lack of due impartiality and accuracy in the reporting of allegations of antisemitism against Jeremy #Corbyn and the Labour party. The recent report by the Media Reform Coalition examining coverage of Labour’s revised code of conduct on antisemitism shows that we are right to be concerned.

    #désinformation

    • New MRC research finds inaccuracies and distortions in media coverage of antisemitism and the Labour Party - Media Reform Coalition
      http://www.mediareform.org.uk/blog/new-mrc-research-finds-inaccuracies-and-distortions-in-media-coverag

      We use the concept of disinformation to denote systematic reporting failures that broadly privileged a particular political agenda and ideological narrative. This does not mean that these failures were intentional or that journalists and news institutions were inherently biased. We recognize, for instance, that resource pressures combined with acute and complex controversies can foster particular source dependencies or blind spots. 

      Nor does our research speak in any way to allegations of smear tactics. To interrogate the root causes of disinformation would necessitate a far more wide-ranging study than was undertaken here.

    • Signé par:
      Prof Noam Chomsky
      Brian Eno
      Francesca Martinez
      Yanis Varoufakis
      Ken Loach
      Raoul Martinez
      Justin Schlosberg Birkbeck, University of London
      Prof Des Freedman Goldsmiths, University of London
      Prof Imogen Tyler Lancaster University
      Prof Aeron Davis Goldsmiths, University of London
      Prof Annabelle Sreberny Soas, University of London
      Prof Greg Philo University of Glasgow
      Prof Natalie Fenton Goldsmiths, University of London
      Prof David Miller Bristol University
      Prof David Hesmondhalgh University of Leeds
      Prof James Curran Goldsmiths, University of London
      Prof Julian Petley Brunel University
      Stephen Cushion Cardiff University
      Jason Hickel Goldsmiths, University of London
      Einar Thorsen Bournemouth University
      Mike Berry Cardiff University
      Tom Mills Aston University
      Jenny Manson Jewish Voice for Labour
      Leah Levane Jewish Voice for Labour
      Lindsey German Stop the War Coalition
      Mike Cushman Free Speech on Israel
      Glyn Secker Jewish Voice for Labour

  • Study finds first evidence of #air #pollution particles reaching mothers’ #placentas | Euronews
    http://www.euronews.com/2018/09/16/study-finds-first-evidence-of-air-pollution-particles-reaching-mothers-pla

    The study, conducted by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, adds to an existing body of evidence linking pregnant mothers’ exposure to air pollution with issues including premature birth and childhood respiratory problems.

    “We’ve known for a while that air pollution affects foetal development and can continue to affect babies after birth and throughout their lives… [But] until now, there has been very little evidence that inhaled particles get into the blood from the lung,” Dr Lisa Miyashita, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

    To conduct the study, the scientists used the placentas of five non-smoking women in London, who had all delivered healthy babies via planned caesarean sections.

    Using a high-powered microscope, they analysed 3,500 macrophage cells, which form part of the body’s immune system and engulf harmful particles such as air pollution.

    Within the cells, they found 72 small black areas that they believed to be carbon particles.

    “Our results provide the first evidence that inhaled pollution particles can move from the lungs into the circulation and then to the placenta,” said Dr Norrice Liu, who presented the research at the European Respiratory Society International Congress on Sunday.

    “We do not know whether the particles we found could also move across into the foetus, but our evidence suggests that this is indeed possible,” she added.

    Professor Mina Gaga, president of the European Respiratory Society, said the research, which she was not involved in, “suggests a possible mechanism of how babies are affected by pollution while being theoretically protected in the womb.”

    “This should raise awareness amongst clinicians and the public regarding the harmful effects of air pollution in pregnant women,” she added.

    #particules #santé

  • Attaques contre #Jeremy_Corbyn (et accusations d’antisémitisme) :

    Dans le #Guardian :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/606127

    I’m ashamed at the way my party is offending Jews, says Labour MP
    Peter Walker, The Guardian, le 29 juillet 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/711737

    Remarks about Zionists draw official complaint against Jeremy Corbyn
    Michael Savage, The Guardian, le 26 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/717315

    Israël se cache-t-il derrière les attaques contre Jeremy Corbyn ?
    Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye, le 30 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/716567

    Dans #Le_Monde :

    Antisémitisme : le leader travailliste britannique Jeremy Corbyn à nouveau dans la tourmente
    Eric Albert, Le Monde, le 14 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715022

    Dans #Médiapart :

    Au Royaume-Uni, la décomposition du paysage politique se poursuit
    Ludovic Lamant, Médiapart, le 21 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/716567
    –--------------------------------------------------------
    Comment un diplomate israélien a travaillé au cœur du Parti travailliste pour mettre à mal Corbyn
    Alex MacDonald et Simon Hooper, Middle East Eye, le 9 janvier 2017
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715022

    Jeremy Corbyn appelle à une révision de la question des ventes d’armes du Royaume Uni à Israël après les morts sur la frontière de Gaza
    Jeremy Corbyn, le 10 avril 2018
    https://www.aurdip.org/jeremy-corbyn-appelle-a-une.html

    Antisémitisme. Offensive orchestrée contre Jeremy Corbyn au Royaume-Uni
    Jonathan Cook, Orient XXI, le 8 mai 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/692587

    The Jewish establishment’s ‘War Against Corbyn’ risks bringing real antisemitism to Britain
    Robert A. H. Cohen, Patheos, le 28 juillet 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/711737

    Who’s guilty of antisemitism ? Questioning Labour’s Definition Bind
    Peter Hallward, Verso, le 6 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/714306

    How Israel lobby attacked an Auschwitz survivor to smear Corbyn
    Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada, le 7 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/713760

    Jeremy Corbyn, le futur premier ministre du Royaume-Uni ?
    Gidéon Lévy, Haaretz, le 9 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/716567

    Israel Is The Real Problem
    Media Lens, le 9 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715022

    La vérité sur la relation spéciale du Royaume-Uni avec Israël
    Mark Curtis, Middle East Eye, le 10 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715335

    No, this Netanyahu row won’t destroy Corbyn – it will only make him stronger
    Richard Seymour, The Independent, le 14 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715078

    Grande-Bretagne : le leader travailliste Jeremy Corbyn attaqué par Benyamin Netanyahou
    Middle East Eye, le 14 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715022

    Anti-Semitism and Labour : Jeremy Corbyn must stop apologising and start fighting back
    Ghada Karmi, Middle East Eye, le 14 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715022

    Netanyahu Falsely Attacks Corbyn for Laying Wreath on Palestinian Terrorist’s Grave
    Richard Silverstein, le 15 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715022

    Jeremy Corbyn, les Palestiniens et l’antisémitisme
    Alain Gresh, Orient XXI, le 16 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715399

    Israël se cache-t-il derrière les attaques contre Jeremy Corbyn ?
    Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye, le 30 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/716567

    It’s time to stand up and be counted - what defending Corbyn really means
    Chris Nineham, Counterfire, le 30 août 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/719141

    Ken Loach appelle les Travaillistes à ne pas ‘trahir la Palestine’ en cédant aux ennemis de Corbyn
    Ben Chacko, The Morning Star, le 3 septembre 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/719511

    Grande-Bretagne : le Labour adopte la définition complète de l’antisémitisme
    Sonia Delesalle-Stolper, Libération, le 4 septembre 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/719685

    #Royaume-Uni #Grande-Bretagne #UK #Labour #Parti_Travailliste #antisémitisme #antisionisme #Palestine #censure #IHRA #recension

  • Vu sur Twitter :

    M.Potte-Bonneville @pottebonneville a retweeté Catherine Boitard

    Vous vous souvenez ? Elle avait sauvé ses compagnons en tirant l’embarcation à la nage pendant trois heures : Sarah Mardini, nageuse olympique et réfugiée syrienne, est arrêtée pour aide à l’immigration irrégulière.

    Les olympiades de la honte 2018 promettent de beaux records

    M.Potte-Bonneville @pottebonneville a retweeté Catherine Boitard @catboitard :

    Avec sa soeur Yusra, nageuse olympique et distinguée par l’ONU, elle avait sauvé 18 réfugiés de la noyade à leur arrivée en Grèce. La réfugiée syrienne Sarah Mardini, boursière à Berlin et volontaire de l’ONG ERCI, a été arrêtée à Lesbos pour aide à immigration irrégulière

    #migration #asile #syrie #grèce #solidarité #humanité

    • GRÈCE : LA POLICE ARRÊTE 30 MEMBRES D’UNE ONG D’AIDE AUX RÉFUGIÉS

      La police a arrêté, mardi 28 août, 30 membres de l’ONG grecque #ERCI, dont les soeurs syriennes Yusra et Sarah Mardini, qui avaient sauvé la vie à 18 personnes en 2015. Les militant.e.s sont accusés d’avoir aidé des migrants à entrer illégalement sur le territoire grec via l’île de Lesbos. Ils déclarent avoir agi dans le cadre de l’assistance à personnes en danger.

      Par Marina Rafenberg

      L’ONG grecque Emergency response centre international (ERCY) était présente sur l’île de Lesbos depuis 2015 pour venir en aide aux réfugiés. Depuis mardi 28 août, ses 30 membres sont poursuivis pour avoir « facilité l’entrée illégale d’étrangers sur le territoire grec » en vue de gains financiers, selon le communiqué de la police grecque.

      L’enquête a commencé en février 2018, rapporte le site d’information protagon.gr, lorsqu’une Jeep portant une fausse plaque d’immatriculation de l’armée grecque a été découverte par la police sur une plage, attendant l’arrivée d’une barque pleine de réfugiés en provenance de Turquie. Les membres de l’ONG, six Grecs et 24 ressortissants étrangers, sont accusés d’avoir été informés à l’avance par des personnes présentes du côté turc des heures et des lieux d’arrivée des barques de migrants, d’avoir organisé l’accueil de ces réfugiés sans en informer les autorités locales et d’avoir surveillé illégalement les communications radio entre les autorités grecques et étrangères, dont Frontex, l’agence européenne des gardes-cotes et gardes-frontières. Les crimes pour lesquels ils sont inculpés – participation à une organisation criminelle, violation de secrets d’État et recel – sont passibles de la réclusion à perpétuité.

      Parmi les membres de l’ONG grecque arrêtés se trouve Yusra et Sarah Mardini, deux sœurs nageuses et réfugiées syrienne qui avaient sauvé 18 personnes de la noyade lors de leur traversée de la mer Égée en août 2015. Depuis Yusra a participé aux Jeux Olympiques de Rio, est devenue ambassadrice de l’ONU et a écrit un livre, Butterfly. Sarah avait quant à elle décidé d’aider à son tour les réfugiés qui traversaient dangereusement la mer Égée sur des bateaux de fortune et s’était engagée comme bénévole dans l’ONG ERCI durant l’été 2016.

      Sarah a été arrêtée le 21 août à l’aéroport de Lesbos alors qu’elle devait rejoindre Berlin où elle vit avec sa famille. Le 3 septembre, elle devait commencer son année universitaire au collège Bard en sciences sociales. La jeune Syrienne de 23 ans a été transférée à la prison de Korydallos, à Athènes, dans l’attente de son procès. Son avocat a demandé mercredi sa remise en liberté.

      Ce n’est pas la première fois que des ONG basées à Lesbos ont des soucis avec la justice grecque. Des membres de l’ONG espagnole Proem-Aid avaient aussi été accusés d’avoir participé à l’entrée illégale de réfugiés sur l’île. Ils ont été relaxés en mai dernier. D’après le ministère de la Marine, 114 ONG ont été enregistrées sur l’île, dont les activités souvent difficilement contrôlables inquiètent le gouvernement grec et ses partenaires européens.

      https://www.courrierdesbalkans.fr/Une-ONG-accusee-d-aide-a-l-entree-irreguliere-de-migrants

      #grèce #asile #migrations #réfugiés #solidarité #délit_de_solidarité

    • Arrest of Syrian ’hero swimmer’ puts Lesbos refugees back in spotlight

      Sara Mardini’s case adds to fears that rescue work is being criminalised and raises questions about NGO.

      Greece’s high-security #Korydallos prison acknowledges that #Sara_Mardini is one of its rarer inmates. For a week, the Syrian refugee, a hero among human rights defenders, has been detained in its women’s wing on charges so serious they have elicited baffled dismay.

      The 23-year-old, who saved 18 refugees in 2015 by swimming their waterlogged dingy to the shores of Lesbos with her Olympian sister, is accused of people smuggling, espionage and membership of a criminal organisation – crimes allegedly committed since returning to work with an NGO on the island. Under Greek law, Mardini can be held in custody pending trial for up to 18 months.

      “She is in a state of disbelief,” said her lawyer, Haris Petsalnikos, who has petitioned for her release. “The accusations are more about criminalising humanitarian action. Sara wasn’t even here when these alleged crimes took place but as charges they are serious, perhaps the most serious any aid worker has ever faced.”

      Mardini’s arrival to Europe might have gone unnoticed had it not been for the extraordinary courage she and younger sister, Yusra, exhibited guiding their boat to safety after the engine failed during the treacherous crossing from Turkey. Both were elite swimmers, with Yusra going on to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

      The sisters, whose story is the basis of a forthcoming film by the British director Stephen Daldry, were credited with saving the lives of their fellow passengers. In Germany, their adopted homeland, the pair has since been accorded star status.

      It was because of her inspiring story that Mardini was approached by Emergency Response Centre International, ERCI, on Lesbos. “After risking her own life to save 18 people … not only has she come back to ground zero, but she is here to ensure that no more lives get lost on this perilous journey,” it said after Mardini agreed to join its ranks in 2016.

      After her first stint with ERCI, she again returned to Lesbos last December to volunteer with the aid group. And until 21 August there was nothing to suggest her second spell had not gone well. But as Mardini waited at Mytilini airport to head back to Germany, and a scholarship at Bard College in Berlin, she was arrested. Soon after that, police also arrested ERCI’s field director, Nassos Karakitsos, a former Greek naval force officer, and Sean Binder, a German volunteer who lives in Ireland. All three have protested their innocence.

      The arrests come as signs of a global clampdown on solidarity networks mount. From Russia to Spain, European human rights workers have been targeted in what campaigners call an increasingly sinister attempt to silence civil society in the name of security.

      “There is the concern that this is another example of civil society being closed down by the state,” said Jonathan Cooper, an international human rights lawyer in London. “What we are really seeing is Greek authorities using Sara to send a very worrying message that if you volunteer for refugee work you do so at your peril.”

      But amid concerns about heavy-handed tactics humanitarians face, Greek police say there are others who see a murky side to the story, one ofpeople trafficking and young volunteers being duped into participating in a criminal network unwittingly. In that scenario,the Mardini sisters would make prime targets.

      Greek authorities spent six months investigating the affair. Agents were flown into Lesbos from Athens and Thessaloniki. In an unusually long and detailed statement, last week, Mytilini police said that while posing as a non-profit organisation, ERCI had acted with the sole purpose of profiteering by bringing people illegally into Greece via the north-eastern Aegean islands.

      Members had intercepted Greek and European coastguard radio transmissions to gain advance notification of the location of smugglers’ boats, police said, and that 30, mostly foreign nationals, were lined up to be questioned in connection with the alleged activities. Other “similar organisations” had also collaborated in what was described as “an informal plan to confront emergency situations”, they added.

      Suspicions were first raised, police said, when Mardini and Binder were stopped in February driving a former military 4X4 with false number plates. ERCI remained unnamed until the release of the charge sheets for the pair and that of Karakitsos.

      Lesbos has long been on the frontline of the refugee crisis, attracting idealists and charity workers. Until a dramatic decline in migration numbers via the eastern Mediterranean in March 2016, when a landmark deal was signed between the EU and Turkey, the island was the main entry point to Europe.

      An estimated 114 NGOs and 7,356 volunteers are based on Lesbos, according to Greek authorities. Local officials talk of “an industry”, and with more than 10,000 refugees there and the mood at boiling point, accusations of NGOs acting as a “pull factor” are rife.

      “Sara’s motive for going back this year was purely humanitarian,” said Oceanne Fry, a fellow student who in June worked alongside her at a day clinic in the refugee reception centre.

      “At no point was there any indication of illegal activity by the group … but I can attest to the fact that, other than our intake meeting, none of the volunteers ever met, or interacted, with its leadership.”

      The mayor of Lesbos, Spyros Galinos, said he has seen “good and bad” in the humanitarian movement since the start of the refugee crisis.

      “Everything is possible,. There is no doubt that some NGOs have exploited the situation. The police announcement was uncommonly harsh. For a long time I have been saying that we just don’t need all these NGOs. When the crisis erupted, yes, the state was woefully unprepared but now that isn’t the case.”

      Attempts to contact ERCI were unsuccessful. Neither a telephone number nor an office address – in a scruffy downtown building listed by the aid group on social media – appeared to have any relation to it.

      In a statement released more than a week after Mardini’s arrest, ERCI denied the allegations, saying it had fallen victim to “unfounded claims, accusations and charges”. But it failed to make any mention of Mardini.

      “It makes no sense at all,” said Amed Khan, a New York financier turned philanthropist who has donated boats for ERCI’s search and rescue operations. To accuse any of them of human trafficking is crazy.

      “In today’s fortress Europe you have to wonder whether Brussels isn’t behind it, whether this isn’t a concerted effort to put a chill on civil society volunteers who are just trying to help. After all, we’re talking about grassroots organisations with global values that stepped up into the space left by authorities failing to do their bit.”


      https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/arrest-of-syrian-hero-swimmer-lesbos-refugees-sara-mardini?CMP=shar

      #Sarah_Mardini

    • The volunteers facing jail for rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean

      The risk of refugees and migrants drowning in the Mediterranean has increased dramatically over the past few years.

      As the European Union pursued a policy of externalisation, voluntary groups stepped in to save the thousands of people making the dangerous crossing. One by one, they are now criminalised.

      The arrest of Sarah Mardini, one of two Syrian sisters who saved a number of refugees in 2015 by pulling their sinking dinghy to Greece, has brought the issue to international attention.

      The Trial

      There aren’t chairs enough for the people gathered in Mytilíni Court. Salam Aldeen sits front row to the right. He has a nervous smile on his face, mouth half open, the tongue playing over his lips.

      Noise emanates from the queue forming in the hallway as spectators struggle for a peak through the door’s windows. The morning heat is already thick and moist – not helped by the two unplugged fans hovering motionless in dead air.

      Police officers with uneasy looks, 15 of them, lean up against the cooling walls of the court. From over the judge, a golden Jesus icon looks down on the assembly. For the sunny holiday town on Lesbos, Greece, this is not a normal court proceeding.

      Outside the court, international media has unpacked their cameras and unloaded their equipment. They’ve come from the New York Times, Deutsche Welle, Danish, Greek and Spanish media along with two separate documentary teams.

      There is no way of knowing when the trial will end. Maybe in a couple of days, some of the journalists say, others point to the unpredictability of the Greek judicial system. If the authorities decide to make a principle out of the case, this could take months.

      Salam Aldeen, in a dark blue jacket, white shirt and tie, knows this. He is charged with human smuggling and faces life in jail.

      More than 16,000 people have drowned in less than five years trying to cross the Mediterranean. That’s an average of ten people dying every day outside Europe’s southern border – more than the Russia-Ukraine conflict over the same period.

      In 2015, when more than one million refugees crossed the Mediterranean, the official death toll was around 3,700. A year later, the number of migrants dropped by two thirds – but the death toll increased to more than 5,000. With still fewer migrants crossing during 2017 and the first half of 2018, one would expect the rate of surviving to pick up.

      The numbers, however, tell a different story. For a refugee setting out to cross the Mediterranean today, the risk of drowning has significantly increased.

      The deaths of thousands of people don’t happen in a vacuum. And it would be impossible to explain the increased risks of crossing without considering recent changes in EU-policies towards migration in the Mediterranean.

      The criminalisation of a Danish NGO-worker on the tiny Greek island of Lesbos might help us understand the deeper layers of EU immigration policy.

      The deterrence effect

      On 27 March 2011, 72 migrants flee Tripoli and squeeze into a 12m long rubber dinghy with a max capacity of 25 people. They start the outboard engine and set out in the Mediterranean night, bound for the Italian island of Lampedusa. In the morning, they are registered by a French aircraft flying over. The migrants stay on course. But 18 hours into their voyage, they send out a distress-call from a satellite phone. The signal is picked up by the rescue centre in Rome who alerts other vessels in the area.

      Two hours later, a military helicopter flies over the boat. At this point, the migrants accidentally drop their satellite phone in the sea. In the hours to follow, the migrants encounter several fishing boats – but their call of distress is ignored. As day turns into night, a second helicopter appears and drops rations of water and biscuits before leaving.

      And then, the following morning on 28 March – the migrants run out of fuel. Left at the mercy of wind and oceanic currents, the migrants embark on a hopeless journey. They drift south; exactly where they came from.

      They don’t see any ships the following day. Nor the next; a whole week goes by without contact to the outside world. But then, somewhere between 3 and 5 April, a military vessel appears on the horizon. It moves in on the migrants and circle their boat.

      The migrants, exhausted and on the brink of despair, wave and signal distress. But as suddenly as it arrived, the military vessel turns around and disappears. And all hope with it.

      On April 10, almost a week later, the migrant vessel lands on a beach south of Tripoli. Of the 72 passengers who left 2 weeks ago, only 11 make it back alive. Two die shortly hereafter.

      Lorenzo Pezzani, lecturer at Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths University of London, was stunned when he read about the case. In 2011, he was still a PhD student developing new spatial and aesthetic visual tools to document human rights violations. Concerned with the rising number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, Lorenzo Pezzani and his colleague Charles Heller founded Forensic Oceanography, an affiliated group to Forensic Architecture. Their first project was to uncover the events and policies leading to a vessel left adrift in full knowledge by international rescue operations.

      It was the public outrage fuelled by the 2013 Lampedusa shipwreck which eventually led to the deployment of Operation Mare Nostrum. At this point, the largest migration of people since the Second World War, the Syrian exodus, could no longer be contained within Syria’s neighbouring countries. At the same time, a relative stability in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi in 2011 descended into civil war; waves of migrants started to cross the Mediterranean.

      From October 2013, Mare Nostrum broke with the reigning EU-policy of non-interference and deployed Italian naval vessels, planes and helicopters at a monthly cost of €9.5 million. The scale was unprecedented; saving lives became the political priority over policing and border control. In terms of lives saved, the operation was an undisputed success. Its own life, however, would be short.

      A critical narrative formed on the political right and was amplified by sections of the media: Mare Nostrum was accused of emboldening Libyan smugglers who – knowing rescue ships were waiting – would send out more migrants. In this understanding, Mare Nostrum constituted a so-called “pull factor” on migrants from North African countries. A year after its inception, Mare Nostrum was terminated.

      In late 2014, Mare Nostrum was replaced by Operation Triton led by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, with an initial budget of €2.4 million per month. Triton refocused on border control instead of sea rescues in an area much closer to Italian shores. This was a return to the pre-Mare Nostrum policy of non-assistance to deter migrants from crossing. But not only did the change of policy fail to act as a deterrence against the thousands of migrants still crossing the Mediterranean, it also left a huge gap between the amount of boats in distress and operational rescue vessels. A gap increasingly filled by merchant vessels.

      Merchant vessels, however, do not have the equipment or training to handle rescues of this volume. On 31 March 2015, the shipping community made a call to EU-politicians warning of a “terrible risk of further catastrophic loss of life as ever-more desperate people attempt this deadly sea crossing”. Between 1 January and 20 May 2015, merchant ships rescued 12.000 people – 30 per cent of the total number rescued in the Mediterranean.

      As the shipping community had already foreseen, the new policy of non-assistance as deterrence led to several horrific incidents. These culminated in two catastrophic shipwrecks on 12 and 18 April 2015 and the death of 1,200 people. In both cases, merchant vessels were right next to the overcrowded migrant boats when chaotic rescue attempts caused the migrant boats to take in water and eventually sink. The crew of the merchant vessels could only watch as hundreds of people disappeared in the ocean.

      Back in 1990, the Dublin Convention declared that the first EU-country an asylum seeker enters is responsible for accepting or rejecting the claim. No one in 1990 had expected the Syrian exodus of 2015 – nor the gigantic pressure it would put on just a handful of member states. No other EU-member felt the ineptitudes and total unpreparedness of the immigration system than a country already knee-deep in a harrowing economic crisis. That country was Greece.

      In September 2015, when the world saw the picture of a three-year old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in Turkey, Europe was already months into what was readily called a “refugee crisis”. Greece was overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the Syrian war. During the following month alone, a staggering 200.000 migrants crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to reach Europe. With a minimum of institutional support, it was volunteers like Salam Aldeen who helped reduce the overall number of casualties.

      The peak of migrants entered Greece that autumn but huge numbers kept arriving throughout the winter – in worsening sea conditions. Salam Aldeen recalls one December morning on Lesbos.

      The EU-Turkey deal

      And then, from one day to the next, the EU-Turkey deal changed everything. There was a virtual stop of people crossing from Turkey to Greece. From a perspective of deterrence, the agreement was an instant success. In all its simplicity, Turkey had agreed to contain and prevent refugees from reaching the EU – by land or by sea. For this, Turkey would be given a monetary compensation.

      But opponents of the deal included major human rights organisations. Simply paying Turkey a formidable sum of money (€6 billion to this date) to prevent migrants from reaching EU-borders was feared to be a symptom of an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude pervasive among EU decision makers. Moreover, just like Libya in 2015 threatened to flood Europe with migrants, the Turkish President Erdogan would suddenly have a powerful geopolitical card on his hands. A concern that would later be confirmed by EU’s vague response to Erdogan’s crackdown on Turkish opposition.

      As immigration dwindled in Greece, the flow of migrants and refugees continued and increased in the Central Mediterranean during the summer of 2016. At the same time, disorganised Libyan militias were now running the smuggling business and exploited people more ruthlessly than ever before. Migrant boats without satellite phones or enough provision or fuel became increasingly common. Due to safety concerns, merchant vessels were more reluctant to assist in rescue operations. The death toll increased.
      A Conspiracy?

      Frustrated with the perceived apathy of EU states, Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) responded to the situation. At its peak, 12 search and rescue NGO vessels were operating in the Mediterranean and while the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) paused many of its operations during the fall and winter of 2016, the remaining NGO vessels did the bulk of the work. Under increasingly dangerous weather conditions, 47 per cent of all November rescues were carried out by NGOs.

      Around this time, the first accusations were launched against rescue NGOs from ‘alt-right’ groups. Accusations, it should be noted, conspicuously like the ones sounded against Mare Nostrum. Just like in 2014, Frontex and EU-politicians followed up and accused NGOs of posing a “pull factor”. The now Italian vice-prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, went even further and denounced NGOs as “taxis for migrants”. Just like in 2014, no consideration was given to the conditions in Libya.

      Moreover, NGOs were falsely accused of collusion with Libyan smugglers. Meanwhile Italian agents had infiltrated the crew of a Save the Children rescue vessel to uncover alleged secret evidence of collusion. The German Jugendrettet NGO-vessel, Iuventa, was impounded and – echoing Salam Aldeen’s case in Greece – the captain accused of collusion with smugglers by Italian authorities.

      The attacks to delegitimise NGOs’ rescue efforts have had a clear effect: many of the NGOs have now effectively stopped their operations in the Mediterranean. Lorenzo Pezzani and Charles Heller, in their report, Mare Clausum, argued that the wave of delegitimisation of humanitarian work was just one part of a two-legged strategy – designed by the EU – to regain control over the Mediterranean.
      Migrants’ rights aren’t human rights

      Libya long ago descended into a precarious state of lawlessness. In the maelstrom of poverty, war and despair, migrants and refugees have become an exploitable resource for rivalling militias in a country where two separate governments compete for power.

      In November 2017, a CNN investigation exposed an entire industry involving slave auctions, rape and people being worked to death.

      Chief spokesman of the UN Migration Agency, Leonard Doyle, describes Libya as a “torture archipelago” where migrants transiting have no idea that they are turned into commodities to be bought, sold and discarded when they have no more value.

      Migrants intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) are routinely brought back to the hellish detention centres for indefinite captivity. Despite EU-leaders’ moral outcry following the exposure of the conditions in Libya, the EU continues to be instrumental in the capacity building of the LCG.

      Libya hadn’t had a functioning coast guard since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011. But starting in late 2016, the LCG received increasing funding from Italy and the EU in the form of patrol boats, training and financial support.

      Seeing the effect of the EU-Turkey deal in deterring refugees crossing the Aegean Sea, Italy and the EU have done all in their power to create a similar approach in Libya.
      The EU Summit

      Forty-two thousand undocumented migrants have so far arrived at Europe’s shores this year. That’s a fraction of the more than one million who arrived in 2015. But when EU leaders met at an “emergency summit” in Brussels in late June, the issue of migration was described by Chancellor Merkel as a “make or break” for the Union. How does this align with the dwindling numbers of refugees and migrants?

      Data released in June 2018 showed that Europeans are more concerned about immigration than any other social challenge. More than half want a ban on migration from Muslim countries. Europe, it seems, lives in two different, incompatible realities as summit after summit tries to untie the Gordian knot of the migration issue.

      Inside the courthouse in Mytilini, Salam Aldeen is questioned by the district prosecutor. The tropical temperature induces an echoing silence from the crowded spectators. The district prosecutor looks at him, open mouth, chin resting on her fist.

      She seems impatient with the translator and the process of going from Greek to English and back. Her eyes search the room. She questions him in detail about the night of arrest. He answers patiently. She wants Salam Aldeen and the four crew members to be found guilty of human smuggling.

      Salam Aldeen’s lawyer, Mr Fragkiskos Ragkousis, an elderly white-haired man, rises before the court for his final statement. An ancient statuette with his glasses in one hand. Salam’s parents sit with scared faces, they haven’t slept for two days; the father’s comforting arm covers the mother’s shoulder. Then, like a once dormant volcano, the lawyer erupts in a torrent of pathos and logos.

      “Political interests changed the truth and created this wicked situation, playing with the defendant’s freedom and honour.”

      He talks to the judge as well as the public. A tragedy, a drama unfolds. The prosecutor looks remorseful, like a small child in her large chair, almost apologetic. Defeated. He’s singing now, Ragkousis. Index finger hits the air much like thunder breaks the night sounding the roar of something eternal. He then sits and the room quiets.

      It was “without a doubt” that the judge acquitted Salam Aldeen and his four colleagues on all charges. The prosecutor both had to determine the defendants’ intention to commit the crime – and that the criminal action had been initialised. She failed at both. The case, as the Italian case against the Iuventa, was baseless.

      But EU’s policy of externalisation continues. On 17 March 2018, the ProActiva rescue vessel, Open Arms, was seized by Italian authorities after it had brought back 217 people to safety.

      Then again in June, the decline by Malta and Italy’s new right-wing government to let the Aquarious rescue-vessel dock with 629 rescued people on board sparked a fierce debate in international media.

      In July, Sea Watch’s Moonbird, a small aircraft used to search for migrant boats, was prevented from flying any more operations by Maltese authorities; the vessel Sea Watch III was blocked from leaving harbour and the captain of a vessel from the NGO Mission Lifeline was taken to court over “registration irregularities“.

      Regardless of Europe’s future political currents, geopolitical developments are only likely to continue to produce refugees worldwide. Will the EU alter its course as the crisis mutates and persists? Or are the deaths of thousands the only possible outcome?

      https://theferret.scot/volunteers-facing-jail-rescuing-migrants-mediterranean

  • Unless The Water Is Safer Than The Land

    Over the course of four weeks, twenty MA students conducted in-depth research into Australia’s immigration policies and practices at sea, producing spatial and visual analysis that reveals a striking pattern of human rights violations taking place against asylum seekers. The students specifically looked into a series of cases of maritime interception, on-sea detention, and pushback operations that took place under the ongoing, military-led border security initiative Operation Sovereign Borders. In investigating and reconstructing these events, students developed creative forensic methodologies in an attempt to overcome the Australian government’s policy of ‘on-sea’ secrecy. The materials produced offer a strong indictment of the policies and practices put in place to deter people from arriving in Australia by boat and reveal how the latter sit in continuity with the longer histories of settler-colonial violence. Students of the Research Architecture MA studies from Goldsmiths will share their research in this panel, moderated by Lorenzo Pezzani. With Research Architecture MA students (Goldsmiths, University of London), 2017–18: Esra Abdelrahman, Riccardo Badano, Nelson Beer, Guillaume De Vore, Anne-Sofie Hansen, Halima Haruna, Patrick Harvey, Faiza Khan, Naiza Khan, Robert Krawczyk, Enrico Murtula, Imani Robinson, Hanna Rullmann, Erin Schneider, Ariadna Serrahima, Elena Solis, Ido Tsarfati, Clive Vella, Sarah Vowden, and Liza Walling.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N3L_Z2ucrA

    #Australie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #architecture_forensique #mer #droits_humains #droits_fondamentaux #operatio_sovereign_borders #chronologie #fermeture_des_frontières #push-back #refoulement #Lorenzo_Pezzani

    v. aussi le #rapport :
    https://www.gold.ac.uk/media/images-by-section/departments/research-centres-and-units/research-centres/centre-for-research-architecture/Live-Project_CRA_2017.pdf

  • Algorithmic Humanitarianism - paradigm dissident :

    There is no intelligence in artificial intelligence

    http://www.danmcquillan.io/algorithmic_humanitarianism.html

    signalé par @isskein

    https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/ypd2s

    The Manifesto on Algorithmic Humanitarianism was presented at the symposium on ’Reimagining Digital Humanitarianism’, Goldsmiths, University of London, Feb 16th 2018.

    Download at SocArXiv
    intro

    humanitarian organisations will adopt ai because it seems able to answer questions at the heart of humanitarianism
    such as ’who should we save?’ and ’how can we be effective at scale?’
    it resonates strongly with existing modes of humanitarian thinking and doing

    in particular the principles of neutrality and universality

    the way machine learning consumes big data and produces predictions
    suggests it can both grasp the enormity of the humanitarian challenge and provide a data-driven response
    but the nature of machine learning operations mean they will actually deepen some humanitarian problematics
    and introduce new ones of their own
    thinking about how to avoid this raises wider questions about emancipatory technics
    and what else needs to be in place to produce machine learning for the people

  • LSE BREXIT – “No, where are you really from?”: Being a UK citizen of colour living in the EU27
    http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/05/11/no-where-are-you-really-from-being-a-uk-citizen-of-colour-living-in-the

    To be recognised as British abroad while also being a person of colour means answering uncomfortable questions about where you are really from. Since November 2017, Chantelle Lewis (Goldsmiths, University of London) has been interviewing UK citizens of colour who permanently reside within the EU27, as part of the UK in a Changing Europe (ESRC) funded project Brexit Brits Abroad. Brexit as a process brings into sharp relief the question of who is allowed to be British (abroad) and the lack of representation of UK citizens abroad who are not white.

    Mmh sounds quite familiar to french people…

  • Interview with #Forensic_Architecture Founder #Eyal_Weizman | 2018-05-01 | Architectural Record
    https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/13367-interview-with-forensic-architecture-founder-eyal-weizman

    Born in Israel and educated at the Architectural Association (AA), Eyal Weizman could be considered more a detective than an architect. In 2011, Weizman established Forensic Architecture, an agency based at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. He directs the center. The group, whose funders include the European Research Council, combs through data such as smartphone footage, satellite imagery, maps, and phone logs to create three-dimensional spatial maps of conflict sites, using architectural rendering software and other analytic tools. Significant projects have included full-scale replicas of key elements of Auschwitz gas chambers and incinerators for an exhibit at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, and an investigation into the U.S. bombing of a Syrian mosque last year. The firm, which was just shortlisted for the Turner Prize, is currently scrutinizing the deadly blaze at London’s Grenfell Tower in June 2017, mining publicly available footage to create a 3-D model that will serve as an open resource for people to better understand the events that led to the fire. Weizman spoke to RECORD from the group’s office at Goldsmiths.

  • Real Media: Facebook - What Next?
    http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=21567
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eMT8_F1Bvo

    Days before the Cambridge Analytica story broke, Professor Beverley Skeggs gave a presentation to the UK Ministry of Justice on the incontestable evidence she gathered when ’tracking the trackers,’ but she was not believed. Real Media spoke with Skeggs after the fallout about how to deal with Facebook and how technology is affecting inequality.

  • Facing outcry, UK Labour reverses expulsion of anti-Zionist Moshé Machover
    Asa Winstanley | 31 October 2017 | The Electronic Intifada
    https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/facing-outcry-uk-labour-reverses-expulsion-anti-zionist-moshe-ma

    Israeli anti-Zionist Moshé Machover in 2008. (Hossam el-Hamalawy)

    The UK Labour Party has reversed its summary expulsion of Israeli anti-Zionist Moshé Machover, it emerged on Tuesday.

    Machover told The Electronic Intifada that party bureaucrats had written “grudgingly” permitting him back into the party. He said they had backed down because they realized that they were “bringing the Labour Party into disrepute.”

    But so far they have refused to apologize for initially accusing him of writing an “apparently anti-Semitic” article.

    Machover is well known in scholarly and Palestine solidarity circles as an activist and a co-founder of Matzpen, a group of dissident Israeli socialists active in the 1960s and 1970s. He has lived in London since 1968.

    The false allegation was contained in the initial letter expelling him at the start of October.

    On Monday, Labour’s head of disputes Sam Matthews wrote saying that, “The Party has reviewed the matters of fact surrounding your case and the decision has been taken to rescind your automatic exclusion.”

    The letter can be read in full along with other recent correspondence below.

    The retired University of London professor said that giving him back his Labour membership was “the least they could do.”(...)

    `
    https://seenthis.net/messages/636841

    • Pétition pour la réouverture immédiate du carnet Russeurope, par Jacques Sapir
      Pour une science ouverte à la liberté d’expression des chercheurs.
      Demande de réouverture du Carnet en ligne de Jacques Sapir

      https://www.change.org/p/marin-dacos-demande-de-r%C3%A9ouverture-du-carnet-en-ligne-de-jacques-sapir?

      Le 26 septembre 2017, les responsables de la plateforme Hypotheses.org et de OpenEdition décidaient de suspendre le carnet de recherche (blog) de Jacques Sapir, Russeurope.

      Cette décision, que de nombreux juristes considèrent comme sans fondements et arbitraire, a immédiatement suscité une grande émotion dans le monde universitaire et au-delà. Cette décision met en cause le principe de la liberté des chercheurs.
      Elle s’avère contradictoire avec le fait que ces chercheurs, et en particulier dans les sciences humaines et sociales, sont directement et immédiatement insérés dans l’espace politique. Enfin, cette mesure est de nature à porter un immense préjudice aux institutions de recherches en France, et à les déconsidérer aux yeux des chercheurs étrangers.
      Des protestations très nombreuses ont été envoyées à M. Marin Dacos, responsable d’Hypotheses.org ainsi qu’à son supérieur au Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, M. Alain Beretz. Pour l’instant, M. Marin Dacos se refuse de répondre.

      Cette pétition sera remise à Marin Dacos, OpenEdition

      Premiers signataires
      *M. Denis Alland, Professeur en Droit Public, Université de Panthéon-Assas (Paris-2)

      *Bernard Cassen, Professeur émérite d’Anglais à l’Université de Paris-8.

      *David Cayla (Maître de Conférences en économie à l’université d’Angers).

      *Franck Collard, Professeur d’Histoire Médiévale à Paris-Ouest (Paris-10, Nanterre)

      *Daniel Bachet, Professeur des Universités, Sociologie, Université Paris-Saclay

      *Michel Bergès, Professeur de Sciences Politiques, Université de Bordeaux

      *Olivier Berruyer, actuaire et blogueur (Lescrises.fr)

      *Bernard Bourdin, Professeur à l’Institut Catholique de Paris, Historien des idées, philosophe politique.

      *Coralie Delaume, écrivain et blogueur (l-arene-nue.blogspot.fr)

      *Eric Desmons, Professeur de Droit Public, Université de Paris-XIII

      *Marcel Gaucher, Directeur d’études (retraité) à l’EHESS, Philosophe.

      *Jacques Généreux, économiste, maitre de conférences des Universités, professeur à l’IEPP – Sciences Po.

      *Jacques A. Gilbert, Professeur de Littérature comparée, Université de Nantes

      *Brigitte Granville, Professor of International Economics and Economic Policy, Chevalier des Palmes Academiques, Fellow of The Higher Education Academy (FHEA), School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London

      *Alain Guery, Directeur de recherche au CNRS, Historien.

      *Éric Guichard, Philosophe de l’internet et du numérique, Enssib-Ens, Ancien Directeur de programme au Collège international de philosophie

      *Annie Lacroix-Riz, professeur émérite d’histoire contemporaine, université Paris 7.

      *Dominique Lecourt, Philosophe, professeur émérite des universités, ancien recteur d’académie, président d’honneur des Presses Universitaires de France.

      *Laurent Loty, Historien des imaginaires et des idées scientifiques et politiques au CNRS, Président d’honneur de la Société Française pour l’Histoire des Sciences de l’Homme

      *Roseline Letteron, Professeur des Universités, professeur de Droit à Paris-Sorbonne.

      *Laurent Loti, Chargé de recherche au Centre d’Étude de la Langue et des Littératures Françaises (CNRS—Université Paris-Sorbonne)

      *Jérôme Maucourant, Maître de conférences (HDR) en sciences économique à l’Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Etienne

      *Laurent Pinsolle, blogueur (gaullistelibre.com)

      *Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Senior researcher in development economics, University of the Witwatersrand, Afrique du Sud

      *Benedetto Ponti, professeur de Droit administratif au département de Science Politique de l’Université de Perugia, professeur de droit des médias numériques.

      *Bertrand Renouvin, Journaliste et écrivain.

      *Stéphane Rials, professeur de relations internationales et de philosophie politique à Panthéon-Assas (Paris 2).

      *Claude Roddier, Professeur des universités, retraitée depuis 2001. Professeur d’astronomie à l’université Aix-Marseille

      *François Roddier, Professeur des universités, retraité depuis 2001. Directeur du département d’Astrophysique de l’Université de Nice

      *Antoni Soy, Honorary Professor of Applied Economy, University of Barcelona. Former Deputy Minister of Industry and Business, Government of Catalonia. Former Mayor of Argentona

      *Serge Sur, Professeur émérite à l’Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris 2)

      *Pierre-André Taguieff, philosophe et historien des idées, directeur de recherche au CNRS

      *Véronique Taquin, écrivain, normalienne et agrégée de Lettres modernes, professeur de chaire supérieure en khâgne au lycée Condorcet.

      *Bruno Tinel, économiste, Maître de conférences, HDR, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

      *Michèle Tribalat, démographe

      *Jérôme Valluy, Maître de Conférences (HDR) de Sciences Politiques à Paris-1

      *Alain Venturini, archiviste-paléographe, conservateur général du patrimoine, directeur des Archives départementales de l’Aveyron

  • SARA FARRIS /// European Femonationalism and Domestic Violence Against Women - THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE
    https://thefunambulist.net/podcast/sara-farris-european-femonationalism-domestic-violence-women


    https://soundcloud.com/the-funambulist/sara-farris-european-femonationalism-and-domestic-violence-against-women

    This conversation with Sara Farris was recorded on August 7, 2017 to be featured as a transcript in the 13th issue of The Funambulist Magazine (Sept-Oct. 2017) Queers, Feminists & Interiors. It attempts to link the work she presents in her book, In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism (Duke University Press, 2017) with the violence against women that femonationalist discourses deliberately ignore (as these violences are exercised through what we could call “a universalist patriarchy”): domestic violence. The conversation first presents the political concept of femonationalism in the context of Europe, and then proceeds to describe the several dimensions of violence against women in domestic spaces.

    Sara Farris is a senior lecturer in the sociology department at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of Max Weber’s Theory of Personality. Individuation, Politics and Orientalism in the Sociology of Religion (Brill 2013) and In the Name of Women’s Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism (Duke 2017). Sara’s work to date has focused on the orientalist underpinnings of sociological theory, which she explored in my first monograph on Max Weber’s sociology of religion, and on theories of gender, race and social reproduction, particularly as they apply to the analysis of migrant women in Western Europe. Through these theoretical lenses and interests, Sara has examined theories of racism and nationalism; the specific gendered forms of Orientalist/Westocentric representations of women in the Western public discourse; the mobilization of women’s rights by right-wing nationalist parties within xenophobic campaigns (which Sara calls ‘Femonationalism’)

  • AYOTZINAPA
    Una cartografía de la violencia

    http://www.forensic-architecture.org/case/ayotzinapa
    https://cdn01.theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites

    On the night of 26-27 September 2014, students from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa were attacked in the town of Iguala, Guerrero, by local police in collusion with criminal organisations. Numerous other branches of the Mexican security apparatus either participated in or witnessed the events, including state and federal police and the military. Six people were murdered – including three students – forty wounded, and 43 students were forcibly disappeared.

    The whereabouts of the students remains unknown, and their status as ‘disappeared’ persists to this day. Instead of attempting to solve this historic crime, the Mexican state has failed the victims, and the rest of Mexican society, by constructing a fraudulent and inconsistent narrative of the events of that night.

    Forensic Architecture was commissioned by and worked in collaboration with the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (EAAF) and Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez (Centro Prodh) to conceive of an interactive cartographic platform to map out and examine the different narratives of this event. The project aims to reconstruct, for the first time, the entirety of the known events that took place that night in and around Iguala and to provide a forensic tool for researchers to further the investigation.

    The data on which the platform is based draws from publicly available investigations, videos, media stories, photographs and phone logs. We transposed the accounts presented across these sources into thousands of data points, each of which has been located in space and time and plotted within the platform in order to map the incidents and the complex relationships between them. This demonstrates, in a clear graphic and cartographic form, the level of collusion and coordination between state agencies and organised crime throughout the night.

    In 2014, 43 students were massacred. Can digital forensics help solve the crime?
    http://www.wired.co.uk/article/forensic-architecture-iguala-massacre-2014
    https://wi-images.condecdn.net/image/dnwaZZQ0YNv/crop/810

    The project relied on information compiled by the two reports of the International Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) and oral accounts recorded a month after the attack by investigative journalist John Gibler. “What is important is that we have not necessarily found new information. We have visualised the reports, which were actually incredibly inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t have six months to read through it, break it down and understand it,” Laxness says.

    “What you start to see immediately is that attacks happen at different parts of town at the same time and the act of forced disappearing actually happens at two different parts of town with a half an hour window, so almost identical, and the thing is being able to see that movement and see the data points on a map. The platform makes clear that all government forces are communicating by central communication system, everybody is either there perpetuating violence or an observer of violence.”


    THREE YEARS AFTER 43 STUDENTS DISAPPEARED IN MEXICO, A NEW VISUALIZATION REVEALS THE CRACKS IN THE GOVERNMENT’S STORY

    https://theintercept.com/2017/09/07/three-years-after-43-students-disappeared-in-mexico-a-new-visualizatio

    THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT’S story goes like this: On the night of September 26, 2014, roughly 100 students from Ayotzinapa, a rural teaching college, clashed with municipal police in the city of Iguala, in the southern state of Guerrero. Rocks were thrown, shots were fired, and 43 students were snatched up by the authorities and handed over to a local drug gang. The students were then driven to a garbage dump where they were murdered, burned to ash, and tossed into a river, never to be seen again. This, Mexico’s attorney general once said, was “the historical truth.”

    Horrific as it sounds, this “truth” is a hollow and misleading narrative, which has been debunked and exploded by independent inquiries. With the third anniversary of the tragedy approaching, a new project by an international team of investigators has taken the most damning of those inquiries and visualized them, offering a means of seeing the night of September 26 for what it truly was: a coordinated, lethal assault on the students involving Mexican security forces at every level, and grave violations of international law.

    The interactive platform, constructed by the research agency Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and shared with The Intercept in advance of its public release, pulls from a voluminous body of investigations into the crime. In addition to utilizing the most credible evidence available to illustrate how the night unfolded, the platform highlights inconsistencies in the government’s account of the events and tracks individual actors throughout the ordeal.

  • Why A.I. Is Just Not Funny - Facts So Romantic
    http://nautil.us/blog/why-ai-is-just-not-funny

    Although A.I. robots can pick up on jokes, they have a lot to learn about telling them.Queen Mary University of London / YouTubeIn the 2004 film I, Robot, Detective Del Spooner asks an A.I. named Sonny: “Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?” Sonny responds: “Can you?” Scientists have been working on answering Spooner’s question for the last decade with striking results. Researchers from Rutgers University, Facebook, and the College of Charleston have developed a system for generating original art called C.A.N. (Creative Adversarial Network). They “trained” C.A.N. on more than 81,000 paintings from 1,119 artists ranging from the 15th century to the 20th century. The A.I. experts wrote algorithms for C.A.N. to emulate painting styles such as (...)

  • Torture and Detention in Cameroon - Forensic Architecture
    http://www.forensic-architecture.org/case/cameroon

    Since 2014, Cameroon has been at war with Boko Haram, the armed extremist group responsible for thousands of murders and abductions across the Lake Chad Basin.

    Trained and supported by U.S and European governments and armed by Israeli private companies, the Cameroonian security forces are acting with increasing impunity against civilians in the country’s impoverished Far North region.

    Amnesty International has collected evidence of over a hundred cases of illegal detention, torture and extra-judicial killing of Cameroonian citizens falsely accused of supporting or being a member of Boko Haram, at around twenty sites across the country.

    Using testimony and information supplied by Amnesty International, Forensic Architecture reconstructed two of these facilities – a regional military headquarters, and an occupied school – in order to confirm and illustrate the conditions of incarceration and torture described by former detainees.

    At the two sites, detainees were kept in degrading and inhumane conditions in dark, crowded, airless cells. All were fed poorly, and most were tortured routinely. Dozens of detainees report witnessing deaths at the hands of Cameroon’s elite military unit, the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), or the Cameroonian intelligence agency, the DGRE.

    Cameroun. Un rapport d’Amnesty International met en lumière des crimes de guerre dans la lutte contre Boko Haram, dont le recours à la torture | Amnesty International
    https://www.amnesty.org/fr/latest/news/2017/07/cameroon-amnesty-report-reveals-war-crimes-in-fight-against-boko-haram-incl
    https://www.amnesty.org:443/remote.axd/amnestysgprdasset.blob.core.windows.net/media/16045/11-bir-2.jpg?preset=fixed_1200_630

    • Des détenus passés à tabac, placés dans des positions insoutenables et soumis à des simulacres de noyade, parfois torturés à mort

    • Torture généralisée sur 20 sites, y compris quatre bases militaires, deux centres dirigés par les services de renseignement, une résidence privée et une école

    • Les États-Unis et les autres partenaires internationaux appelés à établir si leur personnel militaire a eu connaissance des actes de torture infligés sur l’une des bases

    Au Cameroun, des centaines de personnes accusées, souvent sans preuve, de soutenir Boko Haram sont violemment torturées par les forces de sécurité, a déclaré Amnesty International dans un nouveau rapport publié jeudi 20 juillet 2017.

    Sur la base de dizaines de témoignages corroborés par des images satellitaires, des photos et des vidéos, le rapport intitulé Chambres de torture secrètes au Cameroun : violations des droits humains et crimes de guerre dans la lutte contre Boko Haram rassemble des informations sur 101 cas de détention au secret et de torture qui auraient eu lieu entre 2013 et 2017 sur plus de 20 sites différents.

  • Des artistes anglais à #Radiohead:

    Le grand #Ken_Loach:

    Radiohead need to join the cultural boycott of Israel – why won’t they meet with me to discuss it?
    Ken Loach, The Independent, le 11 juillet 2017
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/radiohead-israel-palestine-boycott-bds-thom-yorke-ken-loach-meet-disc

    Traduction en français:

    Radiohead devrait se joindre au boycott culturel d’Israël – pourquoi ne veulent-ils pas me rencontrer pour en discuter ?
    Ken Loach, The Independent, le 11 juillet 2017
    https://www.bdsfrance.org/radiohead-devrait-se-joindre-au-boycott-culturel-disrael-pourquoi-ne-veul

    #Dave_Randall est le guitariste du groupe #Faithless:

    Radiohead are wrong to play in Israel. Here’s why
    Dave Randall, The Guardian, le 11 juillet 2017
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/11/radiohead-reject-israel-boycott-play-tel-aviv-palestinians

    La réponse de #Thom-Yorke à Ken Loach:

    Thom Yorke responds to Ken Loach letter asking Radiohead to cancel Israel concert
    Roisin O’Connor, The Independent, le 12 juillet 2017
    http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/radiohead-israel-concert-ken-loach-letter-thom-yorke-boycott-tel-aviv

    Le grand #Mike_Leigh:

    Mike Leigh slams Radiohead for ignoring Palestinians
    Artists for Palestine, le 17 juillet 2017
    https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/2017/07/17/mike-leigh-slams-radiohead-for-ignoring-palestinians

    #Palestine #BDS #Boycott_culturel #Royaume_Uni #Musique

  • Thom Yorke, this is why you should boycott Israel

    Hasn’t the time come to do away with this artificial distinction between ’nice’ Israelis and the brutal occupation they are responsible for?

    Gideon Levy Jun 11, 2017
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.794946

    Anyone questioning whether a boycott is a just and effective means of fighting the Israeli occupation should listen to the counterarguments of Thom Yorke from British rock band Radiohead and Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid. The front men of Radiohead and Yesh Atid present: cheap propaganda. Their counterarguments could convince any person of conscience around the world – to support the boycott. Yorke, who ignores the boycott movement, and Lapid, who is an ardent opponent of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement, have enlisted to oppose the movement. Their reasoning says a lot more about them than the BDS movement.
    Boycotting is a legitimate means. Israel as a state makes use of it, and even preaches that other countries should follow suit. Some Israeli citizens also make use of it. There is a boycott of Hamas in Gaza, sanctions on Iran. There are boycotts of nonkosher stores, boycotts against eating meat, and of Turkish beach resorts. And the world also uses it, imposing sanctions on Russia right after its annexation of Crimea.
    The only question is whether Israel deserves such a punishment, like the one imposed on apartheid South Africa in an earlier era, and whether such steps are effective. And one more question: What other means have not been tried against the occupation and haven’t failed?
    Yorke directs his ire against fellow rock star Roger Waters, perhaps the most exalted of protest artists at the moment, who called on Yorke to reconsider his band’s concert appearance in Tel Aviv on July 19.

    • Struggling UK universities warn staff of possible job cuts

      Deteriorating balance sheets and political uncertainty blamed for redundancy threats.

      Universities are warning staff to prepare for redundancies in the new year as a result of deteriorating balance sheets and lowered forecasts for student recruitment, coupled with the uncertainty of Brexit and sudden shifts in government policy.

      In recent days more than half a dozen universities have told staff there could be job cuts in 2019, including members of the research-intensive Russell Group such as Cardiff University, while others are privately bracing for cuts later in the year.

      Universities are in the midst of reporting their financial results for 2017-18 and are monitoring student applications coming in for next year. Several have been alarmed by the projections they are seeing before a 15 January deadline for undergraduates.

      Insiders say universities are more likely to cut staff because of a number of other threats in the next 12 months, including the potential effect on international students of a no-deal Brexit, as well as cuts to tuition fees in England as a result of a review of funding ordered by Theresa May that will report early next year.

      “Knee-jerk cuts to staff will harm universities’ ability to deliver high-quality teaching and research and provide the support students need. Staff are already overstretched and asking those who remain to do even more is not a sustainable strategy,” said Matt Waddup, head of policy for the University and College Union (UCU).

      “Students repeatedly say they want greater investment in their staff as a top priority, yet the proportion of expenditure spent on staff has fallen. Cutting staff will send out entirely the wrong signal to potential students. Axing educators is obscene at any time, let alone during the current uncertainty when we need our universities firing on all cylinders.”
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      Among the group of universities that have gone public, the University of Reading told staff in an email on Monday evening that a voluntary redundancy scheme was being drawn up and would open in January.

      “I want to emphasise that voluntary redundancies are only one tool available to us,” wrote Prof Robert Van de Noort, the acting vice-chancellor, suggesting that staff should consider early retirement, reduced hours or changes to contracts to help to avoid compulsory redundancies.

      Reading’s accounts, published a few days ago, reveal that the university made a £20m loss for the financial year, including a £27m loss on its subsidiary in Malaysia. Reading’s balance sheet was brought into the black only by £36m of pension “remeasurements”.

      Van de Noort told staff: “There is no doubt that the year ahead will be difficult at times, but I am confident that as a university community we can address these difficulties and remain a leader in teaching and research in the UK and globally.”

      Despite Reading’s deficit, the previous vice-chancellor, Sir David Bell, saw his total pay rise by £10,000 to £329,000. Bell announced his departure this year and is now vice-chancellor of the University of Sunderland.

      At Cardiff, the vice-chancellor, Colin Riordan, has also written to staff telling them they will be offered voluntary redundancy from January. The university has said compulsory staff cuts “cannot be ruled out”.

      In a joint statement the Cardiff University branches of the Unite, Unison and UCU unions said: “We are astonished that Cardiff University staff are facing their third voluntary severance scheme in six years, and we are very worried that the vice-chancellor still refuses to rule out further compulsory redundancies.”

      At the University of Gloucestershire, based in Cheltenham, unions say they have been advised of more than 100 job cuts and other redundancies as a result of what the university called a “rebalancing” in challenging conditions.

      “There is a demographic fall in the number of 18-year-olds in the population, which is affecting demand for higher education, the level of tuition fees universities are permitted to charge home undergraduate students is capped by the government, and there is increasing competition for recruitment,” the university said.

      “At the same time, we are facing large increases in some of our costs, particularly external increases in what we are required to spend on staff pensions. The combined effect of these factors is that, in common with many other universities, our costs are rising faster than our income. That is not a situation we can allow to continue.”

      In Scotland, union members at Queen Margaret University in Musselburgh begin voting on Wednesday on strike action over the possibility of 40 job cuts – about 10% of its staff – although the university says it hopes to meet the number through voluntary redundancies.

      Other universities considering redundancies include Birkbeck, University of London and Bangor University in Wales.

      The university financial reporting season also reveals that some universities continue to thrive. The University of Oxford said its income topped £1.5bn for the first time in 2017-18, with an overall surplus of £150m.

      Oxford’s investments grew by £286m, which was £68m more than the previous year, while the Oxford University Press contributed a further £205m.

      The financial statements suggest the public controversy over vice-chancellors’ high rates of pay has had some effect, with many leading universities showing little or no growth in pay for their leaders.

      At the University of Manchester, where revenue topped £1bn for the first time, the total earnings of the vice-chancellor, Nancy Rothwell, fell from £306,000 to £276,000 owing to lower pension contributions.

      https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/dec/11/struggling-uk-universities-warn-staff-of-possible-job-cuts

    • Bitter sweet citizenship: how European families in the UK cope with Brexit

      About 80,000 EU nationals have applied for British citizenship since the UK voted to leave the European Union. The decision has rarely been easy. On the contrary, it has often been perceived as “forced” or as an attempt to “take back control” of life amid the Brexit uncertainty, a new research has revealed.

      The contrasting feelings were highlighted in a study by “EU families and Eurochildren in Brexiting Britain”, a project by the University of Birmingham in cooperation with civil rights group the3million, Migrant Voice, and immigration barrister Colin Yeo.

      Researchers interviewed 103 families in the UK in which at least one of the partners is a non-British EU national. They wanted to understand how Brexit is impacting the decisions they make about their legal status.

      The study shows that while many are applying for naturalization, many more are still uncertain and “considering their options.” Better off and educated EU nationals from Western European countries are the most resistant to the idea of becoming British citizens as a solution to Brexit. This is especially true for Germans, “who feel like they somehow betray the European ideal in doing so,” says the report.

      Others, particularly from Eastern Europe, take a more pragmatic approach. Those who apply often do it to protect their children. But instead of being seen as “the culmination of a path to integration”, naturalisation often generates “feelings of un-belonging and of disintegration”.

      Lead author Nando Sigona, deputy director of the Institute of Research into Superdiversity at the University of Birmingham, discusses the research findings with Europe Street News.

      Why a research on families rather than individuals?

      We focused on families in which at least one of the partners is a non-British EU national because Brexit has legal implications for their rights and social implications for their choices. We wanted to explore the dilemmas these families face. For example, in a mix family ‘going back home’ is a complex issue: if you are a Polish-German couple who has met in the UK and speak English as main language, where is home? Probably in the UK.

      We also thought about their children, the next generation. Even pro-migration groups have been very utilitarian in their approach to European migrants. They say they are needed because they work hard, they are young and they contribute to the economy. I personally hate this narrative because I do not like to have a price tag on my head. And for children the situation is even more complicated: they are not productive, they use schools and services, and yet they are in the UK as legitimate residents. According to Migration Observatory, there are more than 900,000 children of EU parents (Ireland excluded) in the UK. How will British society look like in 20 or 30 years, when these children will be adult? What will be the impact of the way they have been treated? These are the questions we wanted to examine.

      Is this why the project refers to ‘Eurochildren’?

      Yes, but let’s not forget that in these families there are British nationals too. We could have called the project “British families with European heritage” and probably we would have got more attention from politicians who have a responsibility towards their citizens, those they do not treat as “others”.

      We usually refer to the 3.8 million EU nationals in the UK, according to the latest Eurostat data. But, as you say, many of them have British partners and children. How many people are really impacted by Brexit?

      It is almost impossible to know because of the way official data are collected. In case of dual nationality, the Office for National Statistics prioritises the British one so people disappear from the statistics on EU nationals. Our research also looked at the census data of the past 40 years, with children of earlier migrants now registered as British. The legacy of EU’s free movement in the UK is much larger that what people think.

      This means that no one knows how many people might or might not be protected by the withdrawal agreement – if there is one – or by the “settled status” scheme.

      The situation is so complicated. Within the same family different members may have different rights. The problem with European families is also that, when they moved to the UK, this was not part of the deal. Their legal status was not something they had to worry about. The government is now ignoring or underestimating this situation by imposing a retroactive bureaucratic monstrosity like the “settled status”. The risk is that many will be left out. The only solution would be to turn the process into a registration rather than an application, and to leave it open. Some people will be inevitably left out, but at least they won’t become unlawful.

      Based on your interviews, what has changed for these families since the Brexit vote?

      Most people feel unsettled because they failed to see Brexit coming. They did not think a majority would vote against the EU and they were not prepared for it. Secondly, they feel forced to consider their options and to make important decisions such as applying for British citizenship or leaving. The configuration of the family, for example whether or not the partners are from the same EU country, can make a difference for their opportunities. There is also a sense of being forced to define themselves. Previously mix families could reconcile their identities under a European umbrella, but Brexit is changing that. However, it is important to acknowledge that people have different feelings about the situation and to not monopolise their voices.

      Are the responses you received uniform across the UK?

      There are places where people feel more secure. London feels safer, respondents said, as a majority voted to stay in the EU, the environment does not feel hostile and there are long standing EU communities. In Scotland, the positive narrative coming from the government helped too. In contrast, people in areas with a strong leave vote felt very isolated. Outside big cities, where immigration is a fairly new phenomenon, Polish and Eastern Europeans in particular did not have established communities and social networks to support them in this hostile transition.

      Many of the people we interviewed were reflecting on neighbours and family members who voted for Brexit. It felt very personal. We heard of families avoiding Christmas meals and, in the most tragic situations, splitting up because the additional tension brought by Brexit pushed them beyond the tipping point. We have also seen tensions between parents and children, for example children asking parents not to speak their mother tongue in public or parents not speaking with their children in the native language because they do not feel safe. The Home Office and migration policies do not consider the reverberations within families of big geopolitical shifts.

      What is the approach of these families to naturalisation?

      Part of our respondents showed a lot of resistance to naturalisation. Especially those with higher social stardards do not want to be forced into it. Some who never felt the urge to become British eventually applied. Among the people who did so, there were often feelings of anger and frustration but this was seen as a strategy to secure the future of children, a sort of parental duty.

      A number of people said they have lost trust in the British government, they are sceptical about the settled status and they think naturalization is the safest option. Others want to retain the right to move freely in and out of the country: becoming British for them does not necessarily mean wanting to stay but keeping all options open for themselves and their children. A minority also said they want to be able to vote. But there are large groups who are not applying. Some cannot because their countries do not allow dual citizenship. The cost attached to the process is also a factor. There are strict eligibility criteria and the test is not easy. Citizenship is not a right: it is something you have to earn, pay for and deserve.

      What do you think of Michael Gove’s proposal to grant citizenship for free to EU nationals, if he becomes the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister?

      Great, but I’d feel uncomfortable if this applies only to Europeans. Fees are unfair for everyone and the government makes a large profit from them. Fees should be cut and the process simplified in general, especially for children. It would guarantee their future status and it would be good for the country.

      Are there groups of EU nationals applying more than others?

      Central and Eastern Europeans started to apply for British citizenship early, before the EU referendum. They were already victim of the hostile environment and they felt negatively targeted by populist media, so they tried to secure their rights earlier on. Free movement is also fairly recent for them [the country joined the EU in 2004].

      For French, Spanish, Italian and German nationals there has been a 250-300% increase in applications since the referendum, but this is mostly because few were applying before June 2016. Before the Brexit vote they felt their position in Britain was fully secured.

      Who is not applying?

      There are people who cannot apply because they do not have regular jobs, they are from minorities, for example the Roma, they struggle with the procedure or cannot afford it. We heard of parents who had to prioritize which one of their children could apply for naturalisation, as they could not afford to pay for all. There were people at the margins before Brexit and they will be even more so when they will lose the protections of EU law.

      How do children feel about these changes?

      It depends on the age. Children up to 3 years old are usually shielded by their parents. The 5-6 years old are aware that something is going on and ask questions. Teenagers are aware and sometimes join the conversation, for example participating in demonstrations. Maybe they are more conflicted about family decisions. But kids are the ones normalising the situation trying to be like others.

      Is the European identity of these families at risk?

      Not necessarily. For the first time in Britain we see large numbers of European flags. In a sense, the European identity has become a topic of conversation. For many British citizens and policy makers the EU has only just been an economic project, but now it is a political one and this can further develop. The European heritage is not going to disappear. If anything, some of the people we interviewed started teaching their language to the kids or sending them to language schools. What is clear is that the EU is a topic we will have to confront for years to come. The issue of belonging will have repercussions that can go in many directions, depending on how things will settle. One of the challenges of this research is precisely that it is happening while event are unfolding.

      https://europestreet.news/bitter-sweet-citizenship-how-european-families-in-the-uk-cope-with-br

  • Report reveals scale of food bank use in the UK | Society | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/29/report-reveals-scale-of-food-bank-use-in-the-uk-ifan

    Prof Jon May, of Queen Mary University of London and chair of Ifan [Independent Food Aid Network] said the figures emphasised the rapid rise in the number of food banks over the past five years, and the changing geography of poverty. “There are now food banks in almost every community, from the East End of London to the Cotswolds. The spread of food banks maps growing problems of poverty across the UK, but also the growing drive among many thousands of people across the country to try and do something about those problems”.

    Frank Field, the Labour MP, a veteran poverty campaigner and chair of the Feeding Britain charity, welcomed the figures, and called on the next government to do more to understand the scale of hunger and food insecurity. “These figures show the tide of hunger sweeping the UK. It’s another piece in the jigsaw puzzle of destitution in this country.”

    #faim #pauvreté #royaume_uni #insécurité_alimentaire

  • FORENSIC INVESTIGATIONS OF DESIGNED DESTRUCTIONS IN GAZA
    https://thefunambulist.net/podcast/eyal-weizman-forensic-investigations-designed-destructions-gaza

    https://soundcloud.com/the-archipelago/eyal-weizman-forensic-investigations-of-designed-destructions-in-gaza

    “This conversation with Eyal Weizman was recorded in February 2017 in order to be featured as a main component of the 12th issue of The Funambulist Magazine, entitled “Designed Destructions.” In it we address both descriptively and analytically the work of Forensic Architecture, a research agency at Goldsmiths, University of London, that he founded and directs, gathering architects, artists, filmmakers, and authors to investigate geopolitical crimes in which architecture or territorial components can be approached as witnesses and evidences. Although the agency’s investigations involves a variety of geographies (Guatemala, Syria, Serbia, Pakistan, etc.), this conversation mostly focuses on Palestine in general, and Rafah, Gaza in particular.”