A ’No Nukes’ Nation to Trump: Resign!
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/a-no-nukes-nation-to-trump-resign
In the shadow of Santa Monica’s legendary “Chain Reaction” monument, a clear message was sent to the unelected interloper in the White House: RESIGN!!!
Wednesday was the 72nd anniversary of the...
US won’t declare opioid emergency, Price says - CNN
►http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/08/health/hhs-opioid-emergency-declaration/index.html
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price announced Tuesday that President Donald Trump has no immediate plans to declare the nation’s opioid epidemic a public health emergency, a decision that flies in the face of the key recommendation by the President’s bipartisan opioid commission.
Public health experts had said that an emergency declaration was much needed in turning the tide to save American lives. The commission, headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, was resolute in maintaining the importance of an emergency declaration: “Our citizens are dying,” it said.
“We say to the president, you must declare an emergency,” Christie said on CNN last week.
Price sought to minimize the administration’s decision Tuesday, just after Trump said that a stronger law enforcement response is needed and that he is committed to combating the problem.
Ah ben si, finalement…
Trump declares opioid crisis a national emergency - CNN
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/10/health/trump-opioid-emergency-declaration-bn/index.html
President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national emergency Thursday, a designation that would offer states and federal agencies more resources and power to combat the epidemic.
In a statement released late Thursday, the White House said, “building upon the recommendations in the interim report from the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, President Donald J. Trump has instructed his Administration to use all appropriate emergency and other authorities to respond to the crisis caused by the opioid epidemic.”
“The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I am saying, officially, right now, it is an emergency. It’s a national emergency,” Trump said earlier at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis. It is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had.”
… du coup, les promoteurs de cette déclaration, totalement dépités 2 jours auparavant, couvrent le POTUS de louanges…
It was not immediately clear what had changed since Tuesday, when Price said the president had no immediate plans for an emergency declaration. In a statement issued Thursday night, Price thanked the President for his leadership in making the move and said it, “demonstrates our sense of urgency to fight the scourge of addiction that is affecting all corners of this country.”
Christie lauded the president’s decision, saying Trump “deserves great credit.”
“As I have said before, I am completely confident that the president will address this problem aggressively and do all he can to alleviate the suffering and loss of scores of families in every corner of our country,” he said in a written statement.
Trump Misdiagnoses the Opioid Crisis | The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/trump-misdiagnoses-the-opioid-crisis
[The report suggests] expand the definition of the kinds of in-patient facilities that are eligible for reimbursement under Medicaid, which the authors say is the quickest way to get help to a large number of people.
D. J. Trump et acolytes
– sur la Corée du Nord
– sur l’expulsion de Russie des diplomates états-uniens
Foreign Policy - Situation Report
▻http://link.foreignpolicy.com/view/52543e66c16bcfa46f6ced16650q6.2237/16212dee
And then, there’s Team Trump. The White House committed yet another unforced error Thursday when Sebastian Gorka — a presidential advisor allied with Stephen Bannon — ripped into Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for promoting diplomacy as a way to solve the North Korean crisis. At issue was Tillerson’s comment that no U.S. military strike was imminent, leading Gorka to charge that “idea that Secretary Tillerson is going to discuss military matters is simply nonsensical.”
Gorka, when not tooling around Capitol Hill in his Mustang with a custom license plate that reads ART WAR, and blocking journalists on Twitter, blankets cable TV to defend the administration. He was back at it Thursday night, trying to walk back his Tillerson comments, explaining that he was simply “admonishing the journalists of the fake news industrial complex” for putting words in Tillerson’s mouth.
Pals. In a staggering move that won’t do much for morale problems at the State Department, Trump on Thursday thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for ordering the United States to slash its diplomatic staff in Russia. It was the first time the president has commented on Putin’s July 30 order cutting U.S. embassy and consulate staff by nearly two thirds. Trump said: “I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll.”
On continue dans le délire…
Conspiracies and firings. Foreign Policy’s Jana Winter and Elias Groll got a copy of the internal NSC memo that got staffer Rich Higgins fired, and led to the ouster of other controversial staffers brought on board by fired Michael Flynn.
The full memo, dated May 2017, is titled “POTUS & Political Warfare”, and it provides a sweeping, if at times conspiratorial, view of what it describes as a multi-pronged attack on the Trump White House.
Trump is being attacked, the memo says, because he represents “an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative.” Those threatened by Trump include “‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans.”
Trump Is on Track to Insult 650 People, Places and Things on Twitter by the End of His First Term - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/26/upshot/president-trumps-newest-focus-discrediting-the-news-media-obamacare.html
Intéressante étude statistique (données au 25/07/17) sur les tweets insultants du #POTUS
Six months into his presidency, President Trump continues to use his Twitter account to insult people. Increasingly, those people are journalists. His attacks against the news media are at their highest frequency and intensity since he took office.
In recent weeks, more than half of his insults have been directed at the media in some way, and the rate has been increasing for weeks amid recent reports that the White House is seeking to discredit journalists reporting on the allegations of collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign.
As president, Mr. Trump has insulted the media with comments on Twitter like “dishonest”, “Fake News”, “phony”, “sick”, “DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!”, “highly slanted”, with an “agenda of hate”, “phony sources”, “fabricated lies” and “the enemy of the American People.”
(toutes les données des graphiques sont lissées par une moyenne mobile sur 30 jours)
par cible
par cible, en pourcentage
nombre de personnes distinctes visées
(étonnamment, il arrive à renouveler ses cibles dont le nombre croît avec une grande régularité,… d’où la prévision du titre)
These new entries are remarkably diverse, including the Broadway show “Hamilton”; the rapper Snoop Dogg; North Korea; Mr. Comey; John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign; the recount effort in Wisconsin; the Freedom Caucus; the European Union; and dozens more.
As the list grows, we’ll keep reading, tagging and sorting through them all. Here’s our full list as of Wednesday morning.
▻https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html
Trump gets a folder full of positive news about himself twice a day
▻https://news.vice.com/story/trump-folder-positive-news-white-house
Twice a day since the beginning of the Trump administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. The first document is prepared around 9:30 a.m. and the follow-up, around 4:30 p.m. Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer both wanted the privilege of delivering the 20-to-25-page packet to President Trump personally, White House sources say.
These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives. Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.
What is the culture of “Trumpism”? What best characterizes the rhetoric, actions, and personality of a figure so dazzlingly conceited, so pathologically narcissistic, and yet so politically inept that he has stunned many into stunned disbelief? As President Donald J. Trump’s administration is gradually staffed, we are beginning to get a clearer idea.
▻https://www.cineaste.com/summer2017/trump-at-the-movies-ayn-rand-fountainhead
McMaster boots top intel adviser and Bannon buddy Ezra Cohen from National Security Council -
Cohen’s dismissal is part of a larger battle between Gen. McMaster and Steve Bannon, who disagree on a number of key issues, including at least two related to Israel
Amir Tibon (Washington) Aug 03, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.804917
WASHINGTON – A senior White House adviser on intelligence was removed from the National Security Council on Wednesday, just days after drama within Washington’s top echelons led to the resignation and firings of U.S. President Trump’s chief of staff, press secretary and director of communications
Ezra Cohen, a staffer inside the NSC who was appointed by U.S. President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was dismissed by the latter’s successor, General H.R. McMaster. McMaster had wanted to fire Cohen ever since he replaced Flynn in March, but failed to do so because of an intervention by Steve Bannon, Trump’s far-right political adviser, who convinced the president to protect Cohen from McMaster.
Cohen’s title within the NSC, the body responsible for providing the president with foreign policy strategy and advice, was senior director for intelligence, a senior position which includes coordination between the White House and the U.S. intelligence community. McMaster, according to news reports, believed that Cohen, who is 31 years old, did not have the required experience for the job. Cohen is considered close to Flynn and Bannon, who both share extreme views about Islam and the Middle East and are opposed to McMaster’s more moderate approach, which is in line with traditional American policy.
Cohen’s firing was first reported on Wednesday by Jordan Schachtel, a journalist at Conservative Review, who used to work for Breitbart, the right-wing website previously edited by Bannon. In his story about Cohen’s firing, Schachtel also attacked McMaster for “refusing to fire” career diplomats working for the NSC ("Obama holdovers" is the phrase used by many right-wing publications to describe them) and for the leaks coming out of the NSC under his watch.
Another development within the NSC which was reported on Wednesday was the firing of Rich Higgins, another NSC staffer appointed by Flynn and considered close to Bannon. Higgins, according to a report by Rosie Gray in The Atlantic, was fired for authoring a memo which said that “globalists,” the “deep state” and “bankers” are working together with “Islamists” to destroy the Trump presidency. Higgins wrote in his memo that “Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed.”
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These two developments are part of a larger battle between McMaster and Bannon, who fundamentally disagree on a number of key issues, including at least two with a direct connection to Israel: the re-location of the American embassy to Jerusalem (Bannon supported the idea, McMaster and the NSC warned against it), and the Iran nuclear deal, which Bannon and his supporters pushed the president to scrap, against the advice of McMaster and other senior administration officials who urged Trump to keep it. For the time being, McMaster has won both battles. McMater also won an earlier battle in April when he forced Bannon to be removed from the NSC’s “principals committee.”
How the Trump Administration Broke the State Department | Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/31/how-the-trump-administration-broke-the-state-department
The office furniture started appearing weeks ago.
Employees at the State Department couldn’t help but notice the stacks of cubicles lined up in the corridor of the seventh floor.
For diplomats at the department, it was the latest sign of the “empire” being built by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s top aides. The cubicles are needed to accommodate dozens of outsiders being hired to work in a dramatically expanded front office that is supposed to advise Tillerson on policy.
Foreign service officers see this expansion as a “parallel department” that could effectively shut off the secretary and his advisors from the career employees in the rest of the building. The new hires, several State officials told Foreign Policy, will be working for the policy planning staff, a small office set up in 1947 to provide strategic advice to the secretary that typically has about 20-25 people on its payroll. One senior State Department official and one recently retired diplomat told FP that Tillerson has plans to double or perhaps triple its size, even as he proposes a sweeping reorganization and drastic cuts to the State Department workforce.
Veterans of the U.S. diplomatic corps say the expanding front office is part of an unprecedented assault on the State Department: A hostile White House is slashing its budget, the rank and file are cut off from a detached leader, and morale has plunged to historic lows. They say President Donald Trump and his administration dismiss, undermine, or don’t bother to understand the work they perform and that the legacy of decades of American diplomacy is at risk.
Tillerson Wants Fewer U.S. Diplomats, Fewer Meetings at U.N. Summit | Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/28/tillerson-wants-fewer-u-s-diplomats-fewer-meetings-at-u-n-summit
The State Department plans to scale back its diplomatic presence at this year’s annual U.N. gathering of world leaders in September, a cost-saving initiative that delivers another powerful signal that America is deepening its retreat from international diplomacy, according to four well-placed diplomatic sources.
For more than seven decades, American presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have attended the fall U.N. General Assembly general debate in New York to project their vision of American foreign policy to the world. They have been accompanied by a growing entourage of American diplomats, lawyers and technical experts who negotiate a wide range of issues, from nuclear arms treaties to climate change pacts and conflicts.
President Donald Trump does plan to address other world leaders at the U.N, General Assembly, and he will be accompanied by other top advisors, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka Trump, who stopped by U.N. headquarters Friday for a private lunch with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
But the ranks of professional diplomats, aides and officials that attend the event to promote American policy priorities on a range of issues will be thinned out. For now, it remains unclear precisely how large of a cut in U.S. staff is envisioned, but two officials said that the State Department is seeking to keep a ceiling down to about 300 people, including everyone from the President to support staff that schedule meetings and copy speeches back at the hotel.
Last year, 347 U.S. officials were counted by the U.N. in the official American delegation, which included then President Obama and his top diplomat, John Kerry. But the full delegation, including support staff and security, was far larger, according to former U.S. officials.
En même temps, passer de 347 à moins de 300 ne parait pas si drastique que ça…
The Mothers Being Deported by Trump
On June 28th, President Trump convened a roundtable at the White House that included victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. The event was part of the Administration’s push to pass several new immigration bills designed to, in Trump’s words, “close the dangerous loopholes exploited by criminals, gang members, drug dealers, killers, terrorists.” A regular theme of the Trump Administration’s messaging on immigration has been to present undocumented “bad hombres” as an immediate threat to the safety and cohesion of the American family unit.
Scaramucci on possible White House purge: ’I’m going to fire everybody’ - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/07/25/white-house-purge-im-going-to-fire-everybody-says-scaramucci
Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, threatened on Tuesday to fire his entire staff in an effort to stem the leaking that has plagued President Trump’s administration since almost the first day he took office.
“I’m going to fire everybody, that’s how I’m going to do it,” Scaramucci said. “You’re either going to stop leaking or you’re going to get fired.”
Just two years to go
Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan perform at the White House for a State Dinner in honor of the Shah of Iran on November 15, 1977.
Sashant qu’en réalité il s’appellait Shahanshah of Iran ... pauvres musiciens qui font le clown devant les puissants qui trop souvent ne comprennent rien à leur art ...
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz62AFc7gjE
7 Pundits Who Spread the Myth of Trump’s Working-Class Voter Base | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/7-pundits-who-spread-myth-trumps-working-class-voter-base
Following Donald Trump’s ascent to the U.S. presidency, both liberal and conservative pundits and commentators have circulated a dangerous myth that the white working-class propelled Trump to the White House. This has led the media to blame poor and working-class whites for the rise of Trump, which is an oversimplification and misevaluation of how we arrived at the current political moment.
As data from NBC indicates, during the 2016 primaries, more than one-third of Trump supporters had incomes of over $100,000, and two-thirds of Trump supporters earned over $50,000 a year, or above the median national household income. In other words, Trump’s base is not the working class, but what might be called the petit bourgeoisie: small-business owners, property owners and inheritors, technicians, electricians, plumbers, policemen, firemen, and other highly skilled workers.
This is not to say that poor and working-class whites didn’t turn out for Trump in large numbers—they did—but rather that working-class whites should not be seen as the core of Trump’s constituency.
Foreign Policy - Morning Brief
▻http://link.foreignpolicy.com/view/52543e66c16bcfa46f6ced1660r0o.1khf/a5e472e0
The White House confirmed that President Donald Trump had a previously-undisclosed second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit this month in Hamburg, Germany.
While the White House said the talk was only a brief conversation, multiple reports say the talk lasted around an hour.
et le plus dingue…
The only other person listening in on the meeting was Putin’s Russian interpreter who translated for both of them since the American interpreter present did not speak Russian.
D. J. Trump se rend au G20, au cours duquel est programmé un entretien avec V. V. Poutine, sans un interprète parlant russe !
Trump’s Air War Has Already Killed More Than 2,000 Civilians
▻http://www.thedailybeast.com/president-trumps-air-war-kills-12-civilians-per-day
Civilian casualties from the U.S.-led war against the so-called Islamic State are on pace to double under President Donald Trump, according to an Airwars investigation for The Daily Beast.
Airwars researchers estimate that at least 2,300 civilians likely died from Coalition strikes overseen by the Obama White House—roughly 80 each month in Iraq and Syria. As of July 13, more than 2,200 additional civilians appear to have been killed by Coalition raids since Trump was inaugurated—upwards of 360 per month, or 12 or more civilians killed for every single day of his administration.
The Coalition’s own confirmed casualty numbers—while much lower than other estimates—also show the same trend. Forty percent of the 603 civilians so far admitted killed by the alliance died in just the first four months of Trump’s presidency, the Coalition’s own data show.
How Big data mines personal info to manipulate voters and craft fake news
(June 2017, Nina Burleigh)
#Facebook, #Cambridge_Analytica, #artificial_intelligence #big_data #psychographics #OCEAN #surveillance
▻http://www.newsweek.com/2017/06/16/big-data-mines-personal-info-manipulate-voters-623131.html
“It’s my ([Alexander Nix]) privilege to speak to you today about the power of Big Data and psychographics in the electoral process,” he began. As he clicked through slides, he explained how Cambridge Analytica can appeal directly to people’s emotions, bypassing cognitive roadblocks, thanks to the oceans of data it can access on every man and woman in the country.
After describing Big Data, Nix talked about how Cambridge was mining it for political purposes, to identify “mean personality” and then segment personality types into yet more specific subgroups, using other variables, to create ever smaller groups susceptible to precisely targeted messages.
[...]
Big Data, artificial intelligence and algorithms designed and manipulated by strategists like the folks at Cambridge have turned our world into a Panopticon
[...]
it made tens of millions of “friends” by first employing low-wage tech-workers to hand over their Facebook profiles: It spiders through Facebook posts, friends and likes, and, within a matter of seconds, spits out a personality profile, including the so-called OCEAN psychological tendencies test score (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism)
[...]
Facebook was even more useful for Trump, with its online behavioral data on nearly 2 billion people around the world, each of whom is precisely accessible to strategists and marketers who can afford to pay for the peek. Team Trump created a 220 million–person database, nicknamed Project Alamo, using voter registration records, gun ownership records, credit card purchase histories and the monolithic data vaults Experian PLC, Datalogix, Epsilon and Axiom Corporation.
[...]
Facebook offers advertisers is its Lookalike Audiences program. An advertiser (or a political campaign manager) can come to Facebook with a small group of known customers or supporters, and ask Facebook to expand it. Using its access to billions of posts and pictures, likes and contacts, Facebook can create groups of people who are “like” that initial group, and then target advertising made specifically to influence it.
[...]
By 2012, there had been huge advances in what Big Data, social media and AI could do together. That year, Facebook conducted a happy-sad emotional manipulation experiment, splitting a million people into two groups and manipulating the posts so that one group received happy updates from friends and another received sad ones. They then ran the effects through algorithms and proved—surprise—that they were able to affect people’s moods. (Facebook, which has the greatest storehouse of personal behavior data ever amassed, is still conducting behavioral research, mostly, again, in the service of advertising and making money.
[...]
Psychographic algorithms allow strategists to target not just angry racists but also the most intellectually gullible individuals, people who make decisions emotionally rather than cognitively. For Trump, such voters were the equivalent of diamonds in a dark mine. Cambridge apparently helped with that too. A few weeks before the election, in a Sky News report on the company, an employee was actually shown on camera poring over a paper on “ The Need for Cognition Scale,” which, like the OCEAN test, can be applied to personal data, and which measures the relative importance of thinking versus feeling in an individual’s decision-making.
[...]
Big Data technology has so far outpaced legal and regulatory frameworks that discussions about the ethics of its use for political purposes are still rare. No senior member of Congress or administration official in Washington has placed a very high priority on asking what psychographic data mining means for privacy, nor about the ethics of political messaging based on evading cognition or rational thinking, nor about the AI role in mainstreaming racist and other previously verboten speech.
[...]
After months of investigations and increasingly critical articles in the British press (especially by The Guardian ’s Carole Cadwalladr, who has called Cambridge Analytica’s work the framework for an authoritarian surveillance state, and whose reporting Cambridge has since legally challenged), the British Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), an independent agency that monitors privacy rights and adherence to the U.K.’s strict laws, announced May 17 that it is looking into Cambridge and SCL for their work in the Brexit vote and other elections.
[...]
Now in the White House, Kushner heads the administration’s Office of Technology and Innovation. It will focus on “technology and data,” the administration stated. Kushner said he plans to use it to help run government like a business, and to treat American citizens “like customers.”
Notes sur leur House of Cards
▻http://www.dedefensa.org/article/notes-sur-leur-house-of-cards
Notes sur leur House of Cards
16 juillet 2017 – Au départ, ce n’est qu’une observation anecdotique faite par un twitter plus ou moins anonyme, dit-00Author87, le 7 juillet 2017, avec comme légende : « When you’re watching the news but you’ve seen it all before on House of Cards... » RT a repris ce tweet pour en faire l’argument d’un article, montrant évidemment les scènes concernées.
« Donald Trump’s ascend to the White House has often been compared to something out of fiction. But on Friday at the G20 Summit, Trump’s meeting with Putin in front of the cameras took on the uncanny resemblance of a scene from a Netflix series. [...]
» The G20 summit has already yielded two handshakes between Putin and Trump, with the second official greeting garnering the most interest due to its resemblance to (...)
Of gag rules and global partnerships
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/07/of-gag-rules-and-global-partnerships
On his third day in the White House, Donald Trump signed an executive order barring U.S. funding to international organizations that discuss abortion as a family-planning option. Women’s rights and reproductive health advocates immediately pointed to the grave effects that reinstatement of this policy, first introduced by the Reagan administration in 1984, would have in Africa. Several cited a 2011 study that offered evidence that enforcement of the “global gag rule” under the George W.…
Trump Warns China That He Is Willing to Pressure North Korea on His Own - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/world/asia/trump-xi-jinping-china-north-korea.html
President Trump, frustrated by China’s unwillingness to lean on North Korea, has told the Chinese leader that the United States is prepared to act on its own in pressuring the nuclear-armed government in Pyongyang, according to senior administration officials.
Mr. Trump’s warning, delivered in a cordial but blunt phone call on Sunday night to President Xi Jinping, came after a flurry of actions by the United States — selling weapons to Taiwan, threatening trade sanctions and branding China for human trafficking — that rankled the Chinese and left little doubt that the honeymoon between the two leaders was over.
[…]
The precarious state of United States-China relations was captured by the way the two sides characterized the call. The White House said only that Mr. Trump had raised the “growing threat” of North Korea’s weapons programs with Mr. Xi. The Chinese, in a more detailed statement, said the relationship was being “affected by some negative factors.”
Exclusive: White House weighs tightening U.S. food aid shipping rules - sources | Reuters
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-aid-exclusive-idUSKBN19K33S
President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing an executive order that will require all U.S. food aid to be transported on American ships, according to four sources with knowledge of the deliberations.
Currently, 50 percent of such aid must be transported on U.S.-flagged vessels. The sources said Trump is considering going as far as doubling that to 100 percent, a move likely to stir opposition from both Republicans and Democrats.
[…]
Although unlikely to have any significant effect on the $4 trillion global cargo shipping industry, the initiative touted as part of Trump’s “#America_First” platform may slow food aid getting to millions of people and do little to create jobs, critics said.
Aid groups, and members of Congress from both parties have been working for years to lower, or eliminate, the 50 percent shipping requirement. The United States, the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance, spent about $2.8 billion on foreign food aid in 2016. About half of that is estimated to go to shipping and storage.
The conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute said in a November report that shipping food aid on U.S.-flagged vessels costs 46 percent more than aid shipped at internationally competitive rates and can take as much as 14 weeks longer.
Contre-ordre…
Exclusive : Trump Drops Plans for Order Tightening Food Aid Shipping Rules-Sources - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/06/30/us/politics/30reuters-usa-trump-aid.html
Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stopped short of confirming information about the order but said he had discussed the issue with Trump and that he understands that the shift would have increased the cost of food aid and caused more people to starve.
“I had a good conversation today with President Trump,” Corker said in a statement emailed to Reuters.
“As a businessman, he understands that expanding the cargo preference would substantially drive up the cost of food aid and cause more people to starve around the world,” Corker said.
Il faut dire que R. P. Corker Jr milite depuis longtemps pour la suppression de l’obligation existante de transport sous pavillon états-unien de 50% de l’aide alimentaire.
Quant aux motivations…
Corker has been pushing for years to reform the U.S. food aid program, including by eliminating the cargo preference. He said in his statement he looked forward to working with Congress and the administration to achieve “long overdue reforms.”
After hearing about the possible executive order, several members of Congress called the White House to express their concern, congressional aides said.
The administration’s budget proposal has suggested slashing foreign aid in general while increasing defense spending.
That plan was also met with stiff opposition in Congress, as lawmakers argued that “#soft_power” options such as food and medical aid and disaster recovery assistance can be effective tools in foreign policy that should not be discounted.
Bygger prototyper for Mexico-mur i sommer - Aftenposten
▻https://www.aftenposten.no/article/ap-624146b.html
Quatre à huit entreprises choisies auront 30 jours pour construire un prototype du mur pour la frontière entre les États-Unis et le Mexique
Les autorités américaines évalueront les propositions pour la conception, le choix des matériaux et... les solutions « pratiques » pour la « gestion » du mur.
Fire til åtte selskaper er valgt og vil få 30 dager på seg til å bygge en prototyp av sine designforslag til mur på grensen mellom USA og Mexico
Det opplyser direktoratet som har ansvaret for å vurdere forslagene til utforming, materialvalg og praktiske løsninger for president Donald Trumps mur på grensen mellom Mexico og USA.
#états-unis #Mexique #Mur #trump
Arizona company building Trump border-wall prototype has checkered environmental record
On Aug. 31, 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced winning construction contracts for President Trump’s proposed wall between the United States and Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection
▻http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2017/09/17/fisher-sand-gravel-building-border-wall-prototype-checkered-environmental-record/643189001
#prototype
As border wall prototype construction starts, Arizona geographer speaks up
PHOENIX – Leaving behind violence and poverty, a Central American family travels thousands of miles by foot, train, and bus. Once they finally arrive at the U.S. border, they have one more difficult decision to make: carry a bag full of marijuana and cross the desert with some help, or risk their life and cross alone.
Trump said he’ll pick a border wall design himself. Turns out, he can.
Experts on government contracting said Tuesday that as head of the executive branch, the president has the authority to direct an agency to award a contract to a particular bidder, though they strongly advise against it.
▻https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2017/09/26/trump-said-pick-border-wall-design-turns-can
’Another brick in the wall’: 8 prototypes of Trump’s US-Mexico border wall are put on display in San Diego - as seen from Tijuana
Eight Ways to Build a Border Wall
SAN DIEGO — They all stand neatly in a row: eight large panels on a barren dirt patch just a few hundred yards from the San Diego border with Mexico. Unveiled in late October, these are the prototypes for the border wall President Trump has vowed to erect on the southern border. Later this year, the federal government will test the panels for strength and effectiveness.
Trump’s border wall through the eyes of an architecture critic
As for their looks? This was the most surprising thing of all. When I first caught sight of them from the SUV, I worried about making even basic distinctions among them. They looked virtually identical. But as I spent more time in this odd open-air architecture gallery, it became clear that the aesthetic spectrum the prototypes covered was very wide.
The one furthest east, by #Fisher_Sand_&_Gravel, was the idea of a wall stripped to its essence, suggesting a kind of accidental minimalism, a section of a Peter Zumthor facade after a trip through the federal bureaucracy. Made of three panels that matched almost perfectly the color of the dirt at its feet, it was the simplest of the group and also — at $365,000 — among the least expensive to produce.
A very different sensibility was evident in the slab designed by #ELTA. Its bottom half was concrete, its upper half metal. The concrete section (though only on the side facing the U.S., per the official guidelines) was painted white and blue, as if it were covering a split-level ranch house outside Phoenix.
Also in this decorative vein was the concrete wall by #Texas_Sterling_Construction, which featured a white faux-brick pattern stamped into its American side. The argument these two walls made was pragmatism à la HGTV: that any piece of construction could be humanized, even made cheerful, with some measured, cost-effective ornament.
What the prototypes didn’t resemble, in any practical sense, was a wall. (A swatch of fabric is not a shirt; a lone panel from an umbrella won’t keep you dry when it rains.) It wasn’t just that they suggested Potemkin slices, architectural stand-ins to match the human ones Trump’s campaign invited to the news conference kicking off his White House bid.
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Is Donald Trump, Wall-Builder-in-Chief, a Conceptual Artist?
That’s the intriguing possibility put forth in an online petition Tuesday that seeks to have the group of eight prototypes for Mr. Trump’s controversial Mexican border wall designated a national monument.
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/arts/design/is-donald-trump-wall-builder-in-chief-a-conceptual-artist.html
Should Donald Trump’s border wall prototypes be considered #art?
Swiss-Icelandic artist #Christoph_Büchel claims that the significant cultural value of the president’s structures should be recognized – not everyone agrees
▻https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jan/12/should-donald-trumps-border-wall-prototypes-be-considered-art
Art Industry News: Artists Condemn Christoph Büchel’s Trump Border Wall Project + More Must-Read Stories
Plus, a new survey seeks to promote salary transparency in the art world and a business tycoon renames his Picasso painting.
▻https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-industry-news-february-7-2018-1217951
Assad préparerait une attaque chimique selon Washington, qui menace Damas - L’Orient-Le Jour
▻https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1059269/assad-preparerait-une-attaque-chimique-selon-washington-qui-menace-da
Ce Bachar, il est tellement bête qu’il ne mérite pas d’être sur terre comme disait l’autre ! Non seulement il fait des attaques chimiques tactiquement inutiles, mais en plus il le dit à l’avance. La #syrie, toujours aussi surréaliste !
A moins que ce ne soit une réacrtion aux nouvelles révélations de Seymour Hersh : « Une enquête menée par le célèbre journaliste Seymour Hersh prétend que les autorités américaines savaient que l’armée syrienne n’avait pas utilisé d’armes chimiques à Khan Cheikhoun en avril dernier », fort peu relayées comme il se doit (▻https://francais.rt.com/international/40209-donald-trump-disposait-il-preuves-tangibles-justifiant-attaque-al).
Juste un aperçu :
Assad may be preparing a chemical attack, says US - Aljazeera.com
Assad preparing new chemical weapons attack in Syria, claims ... - The Guardian
White House says Syria’s Assad preparing another chemical attack ... - Washington Post
White House Suspects Syria Is Preparing For Another Chemical Attack - NPR
Assad regime ’preparing chemical weapons attack’, White House says - Sky News
Syria Will ’Pay a Heavy Price’ for Another Chemical Attack, White ... -New York Times
White House says Syria’s Assad preparing another chemical attack, warns of ’heavy’ penalty - Washington Post
White House warns Syria’s Assad against chemical attack -
Los Angeles Times
US warns Syria over ’potential’ plan for chemical attack - BBC News
White House accuses Syria of preparing another chemical attack, issues ominous warning to Assad - Business Insider
White House threatens Syria over possible chemical attack - Politico
US threatens Syria, says Assad is planning chemical weapons attack - Reuters
Et il y en a encore des pages comme ça !
Et dans ces cas là, tout le monde (qui compte) se (re)met à aimer Trump,
Tight circle of security officials crafted Trump’s Syria warning - POLITICO
▻http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/27/trump-syria-warning-security-240021
The move, and the frustration were reflective of the Trump administration’s approach of making key decisions within a close, inner circle — unlike the deliberative, and sometimes paralyzingly inclusive, decision making that defined Obama’s process.
Syrie. Macron et Trump prêts à riposter en cas de nouvelle attaque chimique
▻http://www.ouest-france.fr/monde/syrie/syrie-macron-et-trump-prets-riposter-en-cas-de-nouvelle-attaque-chimiqu
Les présidents français et américain Emmanuel Macron et Donald Trump ont souligné mardi lors d’une conversation téléphonique « la nécessité de travailler à une réponse commune en cas d’attaque chimique en Syrie », a annoncé la présidence française.
White House pushes military might over humanitarian aid in #Africa
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/world/africa/white-house-pushes-military-might-over-humanitarian-aid-in-africa.html #aid #USA
Or as Mr. Mattis told Congress in 2013, when he was a general overseeing American military operations in the Middle East as head of United States Central Command, “If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition’’
Saudi Arabia’s new crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is good news for Israel and U.S.
Saudi crown prince Bin Salman agrees with U.S. on Russia, Assad, Iran and ISIS and according to some reports, he’s also met with top Israeli officials
Zvi Bar’el Jun 21, 2017
read more: ►http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-1.797007
New Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s appointment as Saudi Arabia’s heir apparent was only a matter of time. The “boy,” who will mark his 32nd birthday in August, has been leading the country de facto anyway. He already calls the shots on foreign policy. Many expect that in the not-too-distant future, King Salman, who is ill, will step down and hand the scepter to his son.
Bin Salman has been undergoing training for the throne since Salman’s coronation two and a half years ago, both through foreign missions carried out on behalf of his father, and also through the war in Yemen that – as defense minister – he planned and carried out (albeit not particularly successfully).
>>Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro: The impulsiveness of the king-in-waiting should worry Israel and the U.S.
Before the new crown prince’s advent, his cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, had been in charge of relationships with Washington, especially with the CIA. In short order, Nayef was pushed out and the Americans understood exactly who the strong man in town was.
Bin Salman became the contact not only between the kingdom and Washington, but also with Russia: the new heir met with President Vladimir Putin several times to coordinate policy on Syria and Iran.
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Until now, Mohammed bin Salman has been good news for Israel and the United States, as his firm anti-Iranian positions make him an important partner – and not only in the struggle against Iran. Bin Salman agrees with America on the need to thwart Russian influence in the region; to topple President Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria; and to act firmly against ISIS and other radical organizations, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Hezbollah. During the last two years, several Arab websites have reported that bin Salman also met with top Israelis.
File photo: US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the White House on March 14, 2017.NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP
>> Cluster bombs and yachts: 5 things you should know about Saudi Arabia’s new crown prince
According to these reports, one such meeting took place in Eilat in 2015; another on the margins of the Arab summit in Jordan this March, and there are regular meetings between Saudi and Israeli officers in the joint war room where Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States coordinate. What is not yet known is to what extent Bin Salman can and might want to advance the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan, and whether he can turn around relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
In a series of tweets this week, the Saudi blogger known as “Mujtahidd” revealed a “plot” by Crown Prince bin Salman and the heir to the Abu Dhabi throne, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to stage a coup in Qatar.
Mujtahidd – many of whose tweets have proven accurate, and who apparently relies on whispers from the Saudi Arabia monarchial court – wrote, among other things, that the two heirs intended to send Blackwater mercenaries (of Iraqi notoriety) to Qatar, together with forces from the UAE, to seize the government. After that, somebody from the ruling Al-Thani family who would be loyal to them would be appointed. Thusly, according to Mujtahidd, the two thought to reduce the crisis and bend Qatar to Saudi Arabia’s will. Based on these tweets, it was the United States that pressed, indirectly, to torpedo the notion.
By the way, this information has not been verified, and there is no certainty that these tweets rely on any actual fact. But what is unquestionable is the depth of relations between the two young heirs, a relationship that has created an axis of youth confident of the global mission – or at least Arab mission – placed on their shoulders, and confident that none but them are suited to run the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (R) talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, June 19, 2017. HANDOUT/REUTERS
This is a new generation that includes the ruler of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, 37. It is a generation that came late to the Gulf states, having been predated by youthful leaders in Morocco, Jordan and Syria.
Arab leaders like Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi and King Abdullah have felt the whip of Saudi foreign relations. Both have been lashed over their “behavior” – and they were punished, too. Saudi Arabia cut off the oil supply to Egypt six months ago because of Cairo’s support for the Russian proposal on Syria, and because what Saudi Arabia felt was Egypt’s retreat from the proposal to return the Sanafir and Tiran islands in the Red Sea to it. Saudi Arabia also suspended aid to Jordan until recently because Jordan refused to let Gulf forces operate from its territory against Syrian forces.
Mohammed bin Salman, newly appointed as crown prince, left, kisses the hand of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, June 21, 2017./AP
But the hardest blow was suffered, of course, by Qatar, which was declared non grata by the Gulf nations, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan, which turned the terrestrial and aerial blockade of the Gulf state into an economic one.
The new crown prince was the living spirit behind all these decisions, which required no more than a formal nod from his father.
The appointment, which has passed without opposition so far, and with the overwhelming support of the Allegiance Council (which, under the constitution, has the power to approve the appointment of heirs) is not expected to cause any new jolts in the kingdom.
Potential opponents have already been “summoned for a chat” in the king’s court. The new interior minister, Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Nayef, is another youngster, just 34, and is very close to Mohammed bin Salman. From now on, he will be the one responsible for managing the struggle against internal terrorism. He will also be the crown prince’s partner in oppressing subversion.
To gratify the subjects ahead of the change, King Salman announced the extension of Id al-Fitr (to mark the end of Ramadan) by another week. He also returned all the financial emoluments that were recently taken away from government and army officials. A pay raise is a time-honored way of maintaining quiet calm in the Saudi kingdom.
Republican Data-Mining Firm Exposed Personal Information for Virtually Every American Voter
▻https://theintercept.com/2017/06/19/republican-data-mining-firm-exposed-personal-information-for-virtually
The GOP’s 2016 presidential upset wasn’t surprising just because it put Donald Trump in the White House ; it also proved the party had vastly improved its ability to exploit data, including precision ad targeting campaigns on Facebook. Now comes the fallout of all that information hoarding : A California-based security researcher says Republican-linked election databases were inadvertently exposed to the entire internet, sans password, potentially violating the privacy of almost every single (...)
#électeurs #données #UpGuard #DeepRootAnalytics #data-mining #profiling
Israel, Saudi Arabia are reportedly negotiating economic ties
Ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of Iran’s staunchest enemies, would start small, The Times reports
Haaretz Jun 17,
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.796215
Saudi Arabia and Israel are negotiating the establishment of economic ties, The Times reported on Saturday.
The British daily quoted Arab and American sources as saying that the first steps toward ties between two of Iran’s staunchest enemies would start small, including allowing Israeli businesses to operate in the Gulf and letting Israel’s El Al airline fly over Saudi airspace.
>> Get all updates on Israel, Trump and the Palestinians: Download our free App, and Subscribe >>
But it also cited sources close to Saudi Arabia as saying that improved relations between the two countries are nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the White House in the wake of President Trump’s promise to reach the “ultimate” peace deal in the Middle East.
The report said the prospect has caused discord in the Trump administration. Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, has grown close to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi deputy crown prince, and the two have reportedly discussed improved ties with Israel as a step toward Israeli-Palestinian peace. In contrast, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, is favoring a more traditional approach to the peace process.
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According to the report, the Palestinians are opposed to the idea, fearing it would normalize ties between Arab states and Israel without ensuring the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Trump’s Business Ties in Persian Gulf Raise Questions About His Allegiances
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/world/middleeast/trumps-business-ties-in-persian-gulf-raise-questions-about-his-allegiances.
LONDON — President Trump has done business with royals from Saudi Arabia for at least 20 years, since he sold the Plaza Hotel to a partnership formed by a Saudi prince. Mr. Trump has earned millions of dollars from the United Arab Emirates for putting his name on a golf course, with a second soon to open.
He has never entered the booming market in neighboring Qatar, however, despite years of trying.
[...]
Mr. Trump is the first president in 40 years to retain his personal business interests after entering the White House. Other senior officials in the executive branch are required to divest their assets. Critics say his singular decision to hold on to his global business empire inevitably casts a doubt on his motives, especially when his public actions dovetail with his business interests.
“Other countries in the Middle East see what is happening and may think, ‘We should be opening golf courses’ or ‘We should be buying rooms at the Trump International,’” said Brian Egan, a State Department legal adviser under the Obama administration. “Even if there is no nefarious intent on behalf of the president or the Trumps, for a president to be making money from business holdings in sensitive places around the world is likely to have an impact.”
[...]
Mr. Trump’s dealings with the Saudis extend back to at least 1995, when he sold the Plaza Hotel to a partnership formed by a Saudi prince and an investor from Singapore. The deal, for $325 million, enabled Mr. Trump to escape a default on his loans. (The same prince had reportedly bought Mr. Trump’s yacht for $18 million four years earlier.)
The Saudis “buy apartments from me,” he said in August 2015 at a rally in Mobile, Ala. “They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
His company filed paperwork to create eight inactive corporations in Saudi Arabia around that time, presumably contemplating a hotel or licensing deal in Jidda that has not come to fruition.
In May, the rulers of the kingdom agreed to invest $20 billion in a fund to build invest in American infrastructure, billed as part of an initiative Mr. Trump has championed. The $20 billion investment went to a fund set up by the money manager Blackstone, whose founder is close to Mr. Trump, his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Mr. Trump made his first deal in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in 2005, to build a hotel with a state-owned developer. He pulled out after the 2008 recession, but by 2010 Mr. Trump and two of his children, Ms. Trump and Donald Jr., were back in the region scouting for new business.
[...]
Now some in Qatar are asking if missing a chance to do business with the Trumps might have been a mistake, Clayton Swisher, a journalist who works for the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera network, wrote in a recent column on the subject.
“Could anyone have imagined that five or 10 years ago, when businessmen turned down a New York mogul and reality TV host auditioning for its investment,” he wrote, “that they were jeopardizing the security of their country?”