person:lay

  • A British Palestinian MP seeks recognition for Palestine in the home of the Balfour Declaration – Middle East Monitor
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190318-a-british-palestinian-mp-seeks-recognition-for-palestine

    Britain’s first Member of Parliament of Palestinian descent is preparing for a historic debate on Friday to have the government give official recognition to the state of Palestine in what she says is probably the “most personal and poignant” piece of legislation she has submitted since arriving in Westminster.

    Rising political star Layla Moran, a Liberal Democrat, sent shock waves through the ranks of the Conservative Party when she overturned a 10,000 majority at the 2017 General Election to take Oxford West and Abingdon which was previously regarded as a safe Tory seat. Now she’s making more waves with the second reading of her Private Members Bill this week to have Palestine recognised by Britain as a state.

    (...)

    Moran’s mother, Randa, is a Palestinian Christian from Jerusalem and the MP still has family living in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her British father’s diplomatic career took the family all over the world. She speaks four languages as well as English — French, Arabic, Spanish and Greek — and is not the only one in her family to enjoy a high profile. Her great-grandfather, Wasif Jawhariyyeh, was a celebrated writer who wrote extensive memoirs about Palestinian life under Ottoman and British rule, before fleeing Palestine after the State of Israel was created.

  • Muqata’a: ‘Our music is a way to disrupt, to be a glitch in the system’ | Music | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/20/muqataa-rapper-ramallah-interview-film-palestine-underground

    erview by Kieran Yates
    The Palestinian rapper on the power of Ramallah’s dance culture documented in a new film, Palestine Underground

    (...) Muqata’a is locally known as the “godfather” of the underground hip-hop scene in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank, Palestine. A former member of the acclaimed collective Ramallah Underground, he plies a brand of experimental hip-hop – based on sampling and looping the sounds of his city – that has been heralded for influencing a new generation of Palestinian musicians. His family are Palestinian refugees who moved between Nicosia, Cyprus and Amman, Jordan, and eventually came back to Ramallah. Muqata’a features in a new documentary, Palestine Underground, which follows members of the growing subterranean dance culture as they put on DIY parties across the region. It’s released online on 30 October via Boiler Room.

    “Muqata’a” means to disrupt, or boycott. How does your music reflect that?
    I sample classical Arabic music in my records. When our land is being taken away, our culture is muted. So it’s a way to try and disrupt that – being a glitch in the system is very important. When your heritage is being attacked by the state, you have to find ways of being remembered, so I sample a lot. A lot of the Arabic music or old records in my grandparents’ homes in Jaffa and Safed, for example, were taken when their house was confiscated. So this is a way to bring those sounds back. I have to find a lot of these vinyls abroad now – the UK, France or Greece. If I’m very lucky I might see them in a second-hand shop here, but it’s rare. One of my current favourites is Al Henna by Layla Nathmi.

    #palestine #musique

  • The future of water infrastructure goes beyond dams and reservoirs — Quartz
    https://qz.com/1353828/dams-and-reservoirs-cant-save-us-this-is-the-new-future-of-water-infrastructure

    #eau #eau_potable #épuration #eaux_usées #désalinisation #eau_saumâtre

    Treating brackish water is expensive, but it’s getting cheaper as the technology matures. In his work at the University of New Mexico, Hightower, the civil engineering professor, has been collecting data on desalination costs for decades. His research shows that in the US, starting in 2005, treating brackish groundwater from nearby sources has been less expensive on average than piping in fresh water from a remote source—especially if that source is 75 miles or more away, a common solution for arid places as their local supply of freshwater dwindles.

    Texas is on it: the 2017 state water plan set a goal to turn 111,000 acre-feet of brackish groundwater a year into drinking water by 2070.

    Toilet-to-tap

    Water engineers politely call it “direct potable reuse.” Others call it “toilet-to-tap.” The United Nations calls it a massive untouched resource that could nudge society into a “circular economy,” where economic development is “balanced with the protection of natural resources…and where a cleaner and more sustainable economy has a positive effect on the water quality.”

    In Singapore, an island nation lacking any freshwater resource big enough to sate its growing population (pdf), they’re a bit more direct: “Basically, you drink the water, you go to the toilet, you pee, and we collect it back and clean it,” George Madhavan, ‪a director at Singapore’s public utility, told USA Today in 2015.

    Since 2003, Singapore has been treating sewage to drinking-water standards. For now, most of that water is used for industrial purposes, but the volumes are impressive. About 40% of the nation’s total water needs are met by toilet-to-tap, significantly reducing the pressure on the rest of its freshwater sources—rainwater, desalinated seawater, and imports. In the last few years, the country started handing out bottles of the reclaimed water at events, to get its citizens used to the idea of drinking it directly. Singapore plans to squeeze a full 55% of its water supply from sewage by 2060. By then, they hope, drinking it will be the norm.

    In Namibia, the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, the capital city Windhoek has been doing “toilet-to-tap” for so long that several generations of residents don’t bat an eye at drinking the stuff. The city has been turning raw sewage into drinking water for 50 years. Windhoek has never had a single illness attributed to the reclaimed wastewater.

    “Public confidence is that very, very fragile link that keeps the system going,” Pierre van Rensburg, Windhoek’s strategic executive for urban and transport planning, told the American Water Works Association, an international nonprofit, in 2017. “I think if there is ever one incident that could be linked back to the [direct potable reuse] plant, the public would lose all confidence.”

    “It tastes like bottled water, as long as you can psychologically get past the point that it’s recycled urine.”

    The science behind this isn’t new. In fact, a high-tech version of direct potable reuse has been used by American astronauts since humans first left Earth. In space, humans have no choice but to drink their own distilled urine. On the US side of the International Space Station, a high-tech water system collects astronauts’ urine, sweat, shower water, and even the condensate they breathe into the air, and then distills it all to drinking-water standards.

    “It tastes like bottled water, as long as you can psychologically get past the point that it’s recycled urine and condensate,” Layne Carter, who manages the ISS’s water system out of the Marshall Flight Center in Alabama, told Bloomberg Businessweek (paywall) in 2015. The Russian astronauts, however, decline to include their urine in their water-purification system. So the US astronauts go over to the Russian side of the ISS and pick up their urine, bring it back over to the American side, and purify it. Water is precious, after all.

    Back on Earth, the technology is more rudimentary. Whereas in space, urine is spun in a centrifuge-like system until water vapor emerges, is recondensed, then heated, oxidized, and laced with iodine, the process on Earth involves a combination of extracting waste through membrane filters and exposure to UV light to kill bacteria. (And in Namibia, they use waste-eating bacteria before zapping the microorganisms with UV.) To keep up with the ever-expanding number of chemicals and pharmaceuticals that show up in water, these water-reuse will have to keep evolving. Still, it’s proven technology, and cost-effective at scale.

    Outside of a few examples, however, communities have been slow to adopt them as viable solutions to water scarcity, likely because of cultural stigma around drinking filtered sewage water. That’s slowly changing as rising temperatures, dwindling freshwater, and more frequent, more extreme droughts have cities looking around for options.

  • Cartographic abstraction in contemporary art: seeing with maps (e-Book) - Routledge

    https://www.routledge.com/Cartographic-abstraction-in-contemporary-art-seeing-with-maps/Reddleman/p/book/9781315200064

    Quelques extraits sur :

    https://books.google.no/books?id=5W5ADwAAQBAJ&pg=PT3&lpg=PT3&dq=Routledge+Cartographic+abstract

    In this book, Claire Reddleman introduces her theoretical innovation “cartographic abstraction” – a material modality of thought and experience that is produced through cartographic techniques of depiction. Reddleman closely engages with selected artworks (by contemporary artists such as Joyce Kozloff, Layla Curtis, and Bill Fontana) and theories in each chapter. Reconfiguring the Foucauldian underpinning of critical cartography towards a materialist theory of abstraction, cartographic viewpoints are theorised as concrete abstractions. This research is positioned at the intersection of art theory, critical cartography and materialist philosophy.

    #cartographie #cartoexperiment #art #cartographie_et_art

  • Israeli forces shoot, kill 16-year-old Palestinian in Ramallah area
    Jan. 30, 2018 8:51 P.M. (Updated: Jan. 31, 2018 1:47 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=779793

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces on Tuesday shot and killed a 16-year-old Palestinian during protests in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah.

    The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that 16-year-old Layth Abu Naim , from the al-Mughayyer village, was shot in the head by Israeli forces with live ammunition during clashes that erupted in the village.

    Reports said that local Palestinian youth threw stones and rolled burning tires towards armed Israeli soldiers who fired live ammunition.

    Abu Naim was critically injured and was taken to a hospital in Ramallah, where he succumbed to his wounds.

    Local sources in the village said that the teenager’s body will be buried after noon prayers on Wednesday in the village of al-Mughayyer.

    Abu Naim is the eighth Palestinian to have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of the year, four of them at the age of 16 years.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Comme pendant un safari : des troupes israéliennes en Jeeps donne la chasse à un adolescent palestinien et lui tire une balle en pleine tête
      11 février | Gideon Levy et Alex Levac pour Haaretz |Traduction MLB pour TACBI
      http://www.aurdip.fr/comme-pendant-un-safari-des.html

      Le champ de bataille du jeune Laith Abou Naim est un terrain vague du village reculé d’al-Moughayyi, au nord de Ramallah. Quelqu’un a planifié de construire une maison ici mais il n’est pas allé plus loin que les barres de fer et un mur de soutènement. Pourchassé par deux jeeps blindées de l’armée israélienne, le garçon s’est mis à courir entre les barres de fer pour sauver sa peau. La poursuite a pris fin quand la portière d’un des deux véhicules militaires s’est ouverte et qu’un soldat a pointé son arme en plein milieu du front de Laith qui était à 20 mètres de distance. Il n’a eu à tirer qu’une seule balle pour tuer l’adolescent – exactement de la même façon qu’un animal est abattu et emballé lors d’un safari.

      Un garçon de 16 ans qui rêvait de devenir gardien de but au foot, a jeté des pierres sur une jeep et, pour le punir, un soldat l’a froidement exécuté. Il voulait lui donner une leçon ou peut-être voulait-il se venger de lui. La balle d’acier enrobé de caoutchouc a frappé exactement à l’endroit visé, au front du garçon, au-dessus de son œil gauche et a obtenu le résultat anticipé : Laith s’est effondré au sol et mourut peu après. Le remarquable sniper de l’armée israélienne aurait pu viser ses jambes, utilisé des grenades lacrymogènes ou essayer de l’arrêter. Mais il a choisi de tirer une balle en pleine tête – ce qui semble être presque le comportement standard adopté au cours des dernières semaines.

      C’est ainsi que les soldats ont tiré et grièvement blessé deux jeunes gens nommés Mohammed Tamimi, l’un de Nabi Salah, l’autre d’Aboud. Ce dernier est encore hospitalisé à Ramallah. Son état est sérieux. Quant au premier, il a perdu une partie de son crâne et il se remet chez lui.

      Laith Abou Naïm est maintenant inhumé dans le cimetière du village.

  • What Happens When We Let Tech Care For Our Aging Parents | WIRED
    https://www.wired.com/story/digital-puppy-seniors-nursing-homes

    Arlyn Anderson grasped her father’s hand and presented him with the choice. “A nursing home would be safer, Dad,” she told him, relaying the doctors’ advice. “It’s risky to live here alone—”

    “No way,” Jim interjected. He frowned at his daughter, his brow furrowed under a lop of white hair. At 91, he wanted to remain in the woodsy Minnesota cottage he and his wife had built on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, where she had died in his arms just a year before. His pontoon—which he insisted he could still navigate just fine—bobbed out front.

    Arlyn had moved from California back to Minnesota two decades earlier to be near her aging parents. Now, in 2013, she was fiftysomething, working as a personal coach, and finding that her father’s decline was all-consuming.

    Her father—an inventor, pilot, sailor, and general Mr. Fix-It; “a genius,” Arlyn says—started experiencing bouts of paranoia in his mid-eighties, a sign of Alzheimer’s. The disease had progressed, often causing his thoughts to vanish mid-sentence. But Jim would rather risk living alone than be cloistered in an institution, he told Arlyn and her older sister, Layney. A nursing home certainly wasn’t what Arlyn wanted for him either. But the daily churn of diapers and cleanups, the carousel of in-home aides, and the compounding financial strain (she had already taken out a reverse mortgage on Jim’s cottage to pay the caretakers) forced her to consider the possibility.

    Jim, slouched in his recliner, was determined to stay at home. “No way,” he repeated to his daughter, defiant. Her eyes welled up and she hugged him. “OK, Dad.” Arlyn’s house was a 40-minute drive from the cottage, and for months she had been relying on a patchwork of technology to keep tabs on her dad. She set an open laptop on the counter so she could chat with him on Skype. She installed two cameras, one in his kitchen and another in his bedroom, so she could check whether the caregiver had arrived, or God forbid, if her dad had fallen. So when she read in the newspaper about a new digi­tal eldercare service called CareCoach a few weeks after broaching the subject of the nursing home, it piqued her interest. For about $200 a month, a human-powered avatar would be available to watch over a homebound person 24 hours a day; Arlyn paid that same amount for just nine hours of in-home help. She signed up immediately.

    More From the Magazine
    Mara Hvistendahl

    Inside China’s Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking
    Nathan Hill

    The Overwatch Videogame League Aims to Become the New NFL
    Brian Castner

    Exclusive: Tracing ISIS’ Weapons Supply Chain—Back to the US

    A Google Nexus tablet arrived in the mail a week later. When Arlyn plugged it in, an animated German shepherd appeared onscreen, standing at attention on a digitized lawn. The brown dog looked cutesy and cartoonish, with a bubblegum-pink tongue and round, blue eyes.

    She and Layney visited their dad later that week, tablet in hand. Following the instructions, Arlyn uploaded dozens of pictures to the service’s online portal: images of family members, Jim’s boat, and some of his inventions, like a computer terminal known as the Teleray and a seismic surveillance system used to detect footsteps during the Vietnam War. The setup complete, Arlyn clutched the tablet, summoning the nerve to introduce her dad to the dog. Her initial instinct that the service could be the perfect companion for a former technologist had splintered into needling doubts. Was she tricking him? Infantilizing him?

    Tired of her sister’s waffling, Layney finally snatched the tablet and presented it to their dad, who was sitting in his armchair. “Here, Dad, we got you this.” The dog blinked its saucer eyes and then, in Google’s female text-to-speech voice, started to talk. Before Alzheimer’s had taken hold, Jim would have wanted to know exactly how the service worked. But in recent months he’d come to believe that TV characters were interacting with him: A show’s villain had shot a gun at him, he said; Katie Couric was his friend. When faced with an onscreen character that actually was talking to him, Jim readily chatted back.

    Jim named his dog Pony. Arlyn perched the tablet upright on a table in Jim’s living room, where he could see it from the couch or his recliner. Within a week Jim and Pony had settled into a routine, exchanging pleasantries several times a day. Every 15 minutes or so Pony would wake up and look for Jim, calling his name if he was out of view. Sometimes Jim would “pet” the sleeping dog onscreen with his finger to rustle her awake. His touch would send an instantaneous alert to the human caretaker behind the avatar, prompting the CareCoach worker to launch the tablet’s audio and video stream. “How are you, Jim?” Pony would chirp. The dog reminded him which of his daughters or in-person caretakers would be visiting that day to do the tasks that an onscreen dog couldn’t: prepare meals, change Jim’s sheets, drive him to a senior center. “We’ll wait together,” Pony would say. Often she’d read poetry aloud, discuss the news, or watch TV with him. “You look handsome, Jim!” Pony remarked after watching him shave with his electric razor. “You look pretty,” he replied. Sometimes Pony would hold up a photo of Jim’s daughters or his inventions between her paws, prompting him to talk about his past. The dog complimented Jim’s red sweater and cheered him on when he struggled to buckle his watch in the morning. He reciprocated by petting the screen with his index finger, sending hearts floating up from the dog’s head. “I love you, Jim!” Pony told him a month after they first met—something CareCoach operators often tell the people they are monitoring. Jim turned to Arlyn and gloated, “She does! She thinks I’m real good!”

    About 1,500 miles south of Lake Minnetonka, in Monterrey, Mexico, Rodrigo Rochin opens his laptop in his home office and logs in to the CareCoach dashboard to make his rounds. He talks baseball with a New Jersey man watching the Yankees; chats with a woman in South Carolina who calls him Peanut (she places a cookie in front of her tablet for him to “eat”); and greets Jim, one of his regulars, who sips coffee while looking out over a lake.

    Rodrigo is 35 years old, the son of a surgeon. He’s a fan of the Spurs and the Cowboys, a former international business student, and a bit of an introvert, happy to retreat into his sparsely decorated home office each morning. He grew up crossing the border to attend school in McAllen, Texas, honing the English that he now uses to chat with elderly people in the United States. Rodrigo found CareCoach on an online freelancing platform and was hired in December 2012 as one of the company’s earliest contractors, role-playing 36 hours a week as one of the service’s avatars.

    After watching her dad interact with Pony, Arlyn’s reservations about outsourcing her father’s companionship vanished.

    In person, Rodrigo is soft-spoken, with wire spectacles and a beard. He lives with his wife and two basset hounds, Bob and Cleo, in Nuevo León’s capital city. But the people on the other side of the screen don’t know that. They don’t know his name—or, in the case of those like Jim who have dementia, that he even exists. It’s his job to be invisible. If Rodrigo’s clients ask where he’s from, he might say MIT (the CareCoach software was created by two graduates of the school), but if anyone asks where their pet actually is, he replies in character: “Here with you.”

    Rodrigo is one of a dozen CareCoach employees in Latin America and the Philippines. The contractors check on the service’s seniors through the tablet’s camera a few times an hour. (When they do, the dog or cat avatar they embody appears to wake up.) To talk, they type into the dashboard and their words are voiced robotically through the tablet, designed to give their charges the impression that they’re chatting with a friendly pet. Like all the CareCoach workers, Rodrigo keeps meticulous notes on the people he watches over so he can coordinate their care with other workers and deepen his relationship with them over time—this person likes to listen to Adele, this one prefers Elvis, this woman likes to hear Bible verses while she cooks. In one client’s file, he wrote a note explaining that the correct response to “See you later, alligator” is “After a while, crocodile.” These logs are all available to the customer’s social workers or adult children, wherever they may live. Arlyn started checking Pony’s log between visits with her dad several times a week. “Jim says I’m a really nice person,” reads one early entry made during the Minnesota winter. “I told Jim that he was my best friend. I am so happy.”

    After watching her dad interact with Pony, Arlyn’s reservations about outsourcing her father’s companionship vanished. Having Pony there eased her anxiety about leaving Jim alone, and the virtual dog’s small talk lightened the mood.

    Pony was not only assisting Jim’s human caretakers but also inadvertently keeping an eye on them. Months before, in broken sentences, Jim had complained to Arlyn that his in-home aide had called him a bastard. Arlyn, desperate for help and unsure of her father’s recollection, gave her a second chance. Three weeks after arriving in the house, Pony woke up to see the same caretaker, impatient. “Come on, Jim!” the aide yelled. “Hurry up!” Alarmed, Pony asked why she was screaming and checked to see if Jim was OK. The pet—actually, Rodrigo—later reported the aide’s behavior to CareCoach’s CEO, Victor Wang, who emailed Arlyn about the incident. (The caretaker knew there was a human watching her through the tablet, Arlyn says, but may not have known the extent of the person’s contact with Jim’s family behind the scenes.) Arlyn fired the short-tempered aide and started searching for a replacement. Pony watched as she and Jim conducted the interviews and approved of the person Arlyn hired. “I got to meet her,” the pet wrote. “She seems really nice.”

    Pony—friend and guard dog—would stay.
    Grant Cornett

    Victor Wang grew up feeding his Tama­got­chis and coding choose-your-own-­adventure games in QBasic on the family PC. His parents moved from Taiwan to suburban Vancouver, British Columbia, when Wang was a year old, and his grandmother, whom he called Lao Lao in Mandarin, would frequently call from Taiwan. After her husband died, Lao Lao would often tell Wang’s mom that she was lonely, pleading with her daughter to come to Taiwan to live with her. As she grew older, she threatened suicide. When Wang was 11, his mother moved back home for two years to care for her. He thinks of that time as the honey-­sandwich years, the food his overwhelmed father packed him each day for lunch. Wang missed his mother, he says, but adds, “I was never raised to be particularly expressive of my emotions.”

    At 17, Wang left home to study mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia. He joined the Canadian Army Reserve, serving as an engineer on a maintenance platoon while working on his undergraduate degree. But he scrapped his military future when, at 22, he was admitted to MIT’s master’s program in mechanical engineering. Wang wrote his dissertation on human-machine interaction, studying a robotic arm maneuvered by astronauts on the International Space Station. He was particularly intrigued by the prospect of harnessing tech to perform tasks from a distance: At an MIT entrepreneurship competition, he pitched the idea of training workers in India to remotely operate the buffers that sweep US factory floors.

    In 2011, when he was 24, his grandmother was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a disease that affects the areas of the brain associated with memory and movement. On Skype calls from his MIT apartment, Wang watched as his grandmother grew increasingly debilitated. After one call, a thought struck him: If he could tap remote labor to sweep far-off floors, why not use it to comfort Lao Lao and others like her?

    Wang started researching the looming caretaker shortage in the US—between 2010 and 2030, the population of those older than 80 is projected to rise 79 percent, but the number of family caregivers available is expected to increase just 1 percent.

    In 2012 Wang recruited his cofounder, a fellow MIT student working on her computer science doctorate named Shuo Deng, to build CareCoach’s technology. They agreed that AI speech technology was too rudimentary for an avatar capable of spontaneous conversation tailored to subtle mood and behavioral cues. For that, they would need humans.

    Older people like Jim often don’t speak clearly or linearly, and those with dementia can’t be expected to troubleshoot a machine that misunderstands. “When you match someone not fully coherent with a device that’s not fully coherent, it’s a recipe for disaster,” Wang says. Pony, on the other hand, was an expert at deciphering Jim’s needs. Once, Pony noticed that Jim was holding onto furniture for support, as if he were dizzy. The pet persuaded him to sit down, then called Arlyn. Deng figures it’ll take about 20 years for AI to be able to master that kind of personal interaction and recognition. That said, the CareCoach system is already deploying some automated abilities. Five years ago, when Jim was introduced to Pony, the offshore workers behind the camera had to type every response; today CareCoach’s software creates roughly one out of every five sentences the pet speaks. Wang aims to standardize care by having the software manage more of the patients’ regular reminders—prodding them to take their medicine, urging them to eat well and stay hydrated. CareCoach workers are part free­wheeling raconteurs, part human natural-­language processors, listening to and deciphering their charges’ speech patterns or nudging the person back on track if they veer off topic. The company recently began recording conversations to better train its software in senior speech recognition.

    CareCoach found its first customer in December 2012, and in 2014 Wang moved from Massachusetts to Silicon Valley, renting a tiny office space on a lusterless stretch of Millbrae near the San Francisco airport. Four employees congregate in one room with a view of the parking lot, while Wang and his wife, Brittany, a program manager he met at a gerontology conference, work in the foyer. Eight tablets with sleeping pets onscreen are lined up for testing before being shipped to their respective seniors. The avatars inhale and exhale, lending an eerie sense of life to their digital kennel.

    CareCoach conveys the perceptiveness and emotional intelligence of the humans powering it but masquerades as an animated app.

    Wang spends much of his time on the road, touting his product’s health benefits at medical conferences and in hospital executive suites. Onstage at a gerontology summit in San Francisco last summer, he deftly impersonated the strained, raspy voice of an elderly man talking to a CareCoach pet while Brittany stealthily cued the replies from her laptop in the audience. The company’s tablets are used by hospitals and health plans across Massachusetts, California, New York, South Carolina, Florida, and Washington state. Between corporate and individual customers, CareCoach’s avatars have interacted with hundreds of users in the US. “The goal,” Wang says, “is not to have a little family business that just breaks even.”

    The fastest growth would come through hospital units and health plans specializing in high-need and elderly patients, and he makes the argument that his avatars cut health care costs. (A private room in a nursing home can run more than $7,500 a month.) Preliminary research has been promising, though limited. In a study conducted by Pace University at a Manhattan housing project and a Queens hospital, CareCoach’s avatars were found to reduce subjects’ loneliness, delirium, and falls. A health provider in Massachusetts was able to replace a man’s 11 weekly in-home nurse visits with a CareCoach tablet, which diligently reminded him to take his medications. (The man told nurses that the pet’s nagging reminded him of having his wife back in the house. “It’s kind of like a complaint, but he loves it at the same time,” the project’s lead says.) Still, the feelings aren’t always so cordial: In the Pace University study, some aggravated seniors with dementia lashed out and hit the tablet. In response, the onscreen pet sheds tears and tries to calm the person.

    More troubling, perhaps, were the people who grew too fiercely attached to their digi­tal pets. At the conclusion of a University of Washington CareCoach pilot study, one woman became so distraught at the thought of parting with her avatar that she signed up for the service, paying the fee herself. (The company gave her a reduced rate.) A user in Massachusetts told her caretakers she’d cancel an upcoming vacation to Maine unless her digital cat could come along.

    We’re still in the infancy of understanding the complexities of aging humans’ relationship with technology. Sherry Turkle, a professor of social studies, science, and technology at MIT and a frequent critic of tech that replaces human communication, described interactions between elderly people and robotic babies, dogs, and seals in her 2011 book, Alone Together. She came to view roboticized eldercare as a cop-out, one that would ultimately degrade human connection. “This kind of app—in all of its slickness and all its ‘what could possibly be wrong with it?’ mentality—is making us forget what we really know about what makes older people feel sustained,” she says: caring, interpersonal relationships. The question is whether an attentive avatar makes a comparable substitute. Turkle sees it as a last resort. “The assumption is that it’s always cheaper and easier to build an app than to have a conversation,” she says. “We allow technologists to propose the unthinkable and convince us the unthinkable is actually the inevitable.”

    But for many families, providing long-term in-person care is simply unsustainable. The average family caregiver has a job outside the home and spends about 20 hours a week caring for a parent, according to AARP. Nearly two-thirds of such caregivers are women. Among eldercare experts, there’s a resignation that the demographics of an aging America will make technological solutions unavoidable. The number of those older than 65 with a disability is projected to rise from 11 million to 18 million from 2010 to 2030. Given the option, having a digital companion may be preferable to being alone. Early research shows that lonely and vulnerable elders like Jim seem content to communicate with robots. Joseph Coughlin, director of MIT’s AgeLab, is pragmatic. “I would always prefer the human touch over a robot,” he says. “But if there’s no human available, I would take high tech in lieu of high touch.”

    CareCoach is a disorienting amalgam of both. The service conveys the perceptiveness and emotional intelligence of the humans powering it but masquerades as an animated app. If a person is incapable of consenting to CareCoach’s monitoring, then someone must do so on their behalf. But the more disconcerting issue is how cognizant these seniors are of being watched over by strangers. Wang considers his product “a trade-off between utility and privacy.” His workers are trained to duck out during baths and clothing changes.

    Some CareCoach users insist on greater control. A woman in Washington state, for example, put a piece of tape over her CareCoach tablet’s camera to dictate when she could be viewed. Other customers like Jim, who are suffering from Alzheimer’s or other diseases, might not realize they are being watched. Once, when he was temporarily placed in a rehabilitation clinic after a fall, a nurse tending to him asked Arlyn what made the avatar work. “You mean there’s someone overseas looking at us?” she yelped, within earshot of Jim. (Arlyn isn’t sure whether her dad remembered the incident later.) By default, the app explains to patients that someone is surveilling them when it’s first introduced. But the family members of personal users, like Arlyn, can make their own call.

    Arlyn quickly stopped worrying about whether she was deceiving her dad. Telling Jim about the human on the other side of the screen “would have blown the whole charm of it,” she says. Her mother had Alzheimer’s as well, and Arlyn had learned how to navigate the disease: Make her mom feel safe; don’t confuse her with details she’d have trouble understanding. The same went for her dad. “Once they stop asking,” Arlyn says, “I don’t think they need to know anymore.” At the time, Youa Vang, one of Jim’s regular in-­person caretakers, didn’t comprehend the truth about Pony either. “I thought it was like Siri,” she said when told later that it was a human in Mexico who had watched Jim and typed in the words Pony spoke. She chuckled. “If I knew someone was there, I may have been a little more creeped out.”

    Even CareCoach users like Arlyn who are completely aware of the person on the other end of the dashboard tend to experience the avatar as something between human, pet, and machine—what some roboticists call a third ontological category. The care­takers seem to blur that line too: One day Pony told Jim that she dreamed she could turn into a real health aide, almost like Pinoc­chio wishing to be a real boy.

    Most of CareCoach’s 12 contractors reside in the Philippines, Venezuela, or Mexico. To undercut the cost of in-person help, Wang posts English-language ads on freelancing job sites where foreign workers advertise rates as low as $2 an hour. Though he won’t disclose his workers’ hourly wages, Wang claims the company bases its salaries on factors such as what a registered nurse would make in the CareCoach employee’s home country, their language proficiencies, and the cost of their internet connection.

    The growing network includes people like Jill Paragas, a CareCoach worker who lives in a subdivision on Luzon island in the Philippines. Paragas is 35 years old and a college graduate. She earns about the same being an avatar as she did in her former call center job, where she consoled Americans irate about credit card charges. (“They wanted to, like, burn the company down or kill me,” she says with a mirthful laugh.) She works nights to coincide with the US daytime, typing messages to seniors while her 6-year-old son sleeps nearby.

    Even when Jim grew stubborn or paranoid with his daughters, he always viewed Pony as a friend.

    Before hiring her, Wang interviewed Paragas via video, then vetted her with an international criminal background check. He gives all applicants a personality test for certain traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. As part of the CareCoach training program, Paragas earned certifications in delirium and dementia care from the Alzheimer’s Association, trained in US health care ethics and privacy, and learned strategies for counseling those with addictions. All this, Wang says, “so we don’t get anyone who’s, like, crazy.” CareCoach hires only about 1 percent of its applicants.

    Paragas understands that this is a complicated business. She’s befuddled by the absence of family members around her aging clients. “In my culture, we really love to take care of our parents,” she says. “That’s why I’m like, ‘She is already old, why is she alone?’ ” Paragas has no doubt that, for some people, she’s their most significant daily relationship. Some of her charges tell her that they couldn’t live without her. Even when Jim grew stubborn or paranoid with his daughters, he always viewed Pony as a friend. Arlyn quickly realized that she had gained a valuable ally.
    Related Galleries

    These Abandoned Theme Parks Are Guaranteed To Make You Nostalgic

    The Best WIRED Photo Stories of 2017

    Space Photos of the Week: When Billions of Worlds Collide
    1/7Jim Anderson and his wife, Dorothy, in the living room of their home in St. Louis Park, Minnesota in the ’70s. Their house was modeled after an early American Pennsylvania farmhouse.Courtesy Arlyn Anderson
    2/7Jim became a private pilot after returning home from World War II.Courtesy Arlyn Anderson
    6/7A tennis match between Jim and his middle daughter, Layney, on his 80th birthday. (The score was tied at 6-6, she recalls; her dad won the tiebreaker.)Courtesy Arlyn Anderson
    Related Galleries

    These Abandoned Theme Parks Are Guaranteed To Make You Nostalgic

    The Best WIRED Photo Stories of 2017

    Space Photos of the Week: When Billions of Worlds Collide
    1/7Jim Anderson and his wife, Dorothy, in the living room of their home in St. Louis Park, Minnesota in the ’70s. Their house was modeled after an early American Pennsylvania farmhouse.Courtesy Arlyn Anderson

    As time went on, the father, daughter, and family pet grew closer. When the snow finally melted, Arlyn carried the tablet to the picnic table on the patio so they could eat lunch overlooking the lake. Even as Jim’s speech became increasingly stunted, Pony could coax him to talk about his past, recounting fishing trips or how he built the house to face the sun so it would be warmer in winter. When Arlyn took her dad around the lake in her sailboat, Jim brought Pony along. (“I saw mostly sky,” Rodrigo recalls.)

    One day, while Jim and Arlyn were sitting on the cottage’s paisley couch, Pony held up a photograph of Jim’s wife, Dorothy, between her paws. It had been more than a year since his wife’s death, and Jim hardly mentioned her anymore; he struggled to form coherent sentences. That day, though, he gazed at the photo fondly. “I still love her,” he declared. Arlyn rubbed his shoulder, clasping her hand over her mouth to stifle tears. “I am getting emotional too,” Pony said. Then Jim leaned toward the picture of his deceased wife and petted her face with his finger, the same way he would to awaken a sleeping Pony.

    When Arlyn first signed up for the service, she hadn’t anticipated that she would end up loving—yes, loving, she says, in the sincerest sense of the word—the avatar as well. She taught Pony to say “Yeah, sure, you betcha” and “don’t-cha know” like a Minnesotan, which made her laugh even more than her dad. When Arlyn collapsed onto the couch after a long day of caretaking, Pony piped up from her perch on the table:

    “Arnie, how are you?”

    Alone, Arlyn petted the screen—the way Pony nuzzled her finger was weirdly therapeutic—and told the pet how hard it was to watch her dad lose his identity.

    “I’m here for you,” Pony said. “I love you, Arnie.”

    When she recalls her own attachment to the dog, Arlyn insists her connection wouldn’t have developed if Pony was simply high-functioning AI. “You could feel Pony’s heart,” she says. But she preferred to think of Pony as her father did—a friendly pet—rather than a person on the other end of a webcam. “Even though that person probably had a relationship to me,” she says, “I had a relationship with the avatar.”

    Still, she sometimes wonders about the person on the other side of the screen. She sits up straight and rests her hand over her heart. “This is completely vulnerable, but my thought is: Did Pony really care about me and my dad?” She tears up, then laughs ruefully at herself, knowing how weird it all sounds. “Did this really happen? Was it really a relationship, or were they just playing solitaire and typing cute things?” She sighs. “But it seemed like they cared.”

    When Jim turned 92 that August, as friends belted out “Happy Birthday” around the dinner table, Pony spoke the lyrics along with them. Jim blew out the single candle on his cake. “I wish you good health, Jim,” Pony said, “and many more birthdays to come.”

    In Monterrey, Mexico, when Rodrigo talks about his unusual job, his friends ask if he’s ever lost a client. His reply: Yes.

    In early March 2014, Jim fell and hit his head on his way to the bathroom. A caretaker sleeping over that night found him and called an ambulance, and Pony woke up when the paramedics arrived. The dog told them Jim’s date of birth and offered to call his daughters as they carried him out on a stretcher.

    Jim was checked into a hospital, then into the nursing home he’d so wanted to avoid. The Wi-Fi there was spotty, which made it difficult for Jim and Pony to connect. Nurses would often turn Jim’s tablet to face the wall. The CareCoach logs from those months chronicle a series of communication misfires. “I miss Jim a lot,” Pony wrote. “I hope he is doing good all the time.” One day, in a rare moment of connectivity, Pony suggested he and Jim go sailing that summer, just like the good old days. “That sounds good,” Jim said.
    Related Stories

    James Vlahos

    A Son’s Race to Give His Dying Father Artificial Immortality
    Alex Mar

    Are We Ready for Intimacy With Robots?
    Karen Wickre

    Surviving as an Old in the Tech World

    That July, in an email from Wang, Rodrigo learned that Jim had died in his sleep. Sitting before his laptop, Rodrigo bowed his head and recited a silent Lord’s Prayer for Jim, in Spanish. He prayed that his friend would be accepted into heaven. “I know it’s going to sound weird, but I had a certain friendship with him,” he says. “I felt like I actually met him. I feel like I’ve met them.” In the year and a half that he had known them, Arlyn and Jim talked to him regularly. Jim had taken Rodrigo on a sailboat ride. Rodrigo had read him poetry and learned about his rich past. They had celebrated birthdays and holidays together as family. As Pony, Rodrigo had said “Yeah, sure, you betcha” countless times.

    That day, for weeks afterward, and even now when a senior will do something that reminds him of Jim, Rodrigo says he feels a pang. “I still care about them,” he says. After her dad’s death, Arlyn emailed Victor Wang to say she wanted to honor the workers for their care. Wang forwarded her email to Rodrigo and the rest of Pony’s team. On July 29, 2014, Arlyn carried Pony to Jim’s funeral, placing the tablet facing forward on the pew beside her. She invited any workers behind Pony who wanted to attend to log in.

    A year later, Arlyn finally deleted the CareCoach service from the tablet—it felt like a kind of second burial. She still sighs, “Pony!” when the voice of her old friend gives her directions as she drives around Minneapolis, reincarnated in Google Maps.

    After saying his prayer for Jim, Rodrigo heaved a sigh and logged in to the CareCoach dashboard to make his rounds. He ducked into living rooms, kitchens, and hospital rooms around the United States—seeing if all was well, seeing if anybody needed to talk.

  • Quatre heures à Chatila
    Chronique de Palestine | dimanche 17 septembre 2017
    http://chroniquepalestine.com/quatre-heures-a-chatila

    Jean Genet – Note de la rédaction – Il y a 35 ans, , du 16 au 18 septembre 1982, l’horreur s’est abattue dans les camps palestiniens de Sabra et Chatila à Beyrouth. Durant plus de 40 heures, près de 3000 Palestiniens ont été décimés par des miliciens phalangistes libanais armés et protégés par les forces d’occupation israéliennes. Un massacre planifié et orchestré par l’armée israélienne.
    En septembre 1982, Jean Genet accompagne à Beyrouth Layla Shahid, devenue présidente de l’Union des étudiants Palestiniens. Le 16 septembre ont lieu les massacres de Sabra et Chatila par les milices libanaises, avec l’active complicité de l’armée israélienne qui vient d’envahir et d’occuper le Liban.
    Le 19 septembre, Genet est un des premiers Européens à pouvoir pénétrer dans le camp de Chatila. Dans les mois qui suivent, il écrit « Quatre heures à Chatila », publié en janvier 1983 dans La Revue d’études palestiniennes.

    Ce texte magnifique, réquisitoire implacable contre les responsables de cet acte de barbarie, ne commence pas par évoquer l’horreur du charnier. Il commence par le souvenir des six mois passés dans les camps palestiniens avec les feddayin, dix ans avant le massacre de Sabra et Chatila.

  • Un appel de 60 personnalités contre le « Hollande bashing » Maxime VIVAS - 20 Novembre
    https://www.legrandsoir.info/un-appel-de-60-personnalites-contre-le-hollande-bashing.html

    Extraits de leur manifeste où sont par ailleurs louées les réussites du président (1) : « Nous, artistes, sportifs et créateurs, penseurs, chercheurs, entrepreneurs et citoyens indépendants, dénonçons cet acharnement indigne qui entraîne le débat politique dans une dérive dangereuse pour la démocratie…. François Hollande a droit au respect comme tout citoyen, et comme président de notre République. »

    Premiers signataires : Agnès B., Catherine Deneuve, Benjamin Biolay, Juliette Binoche, Denis Podalydès, Irène Jacob, Sylvie Testud, Laure Adler, Patrick Chesnais, Gérard Darmon, François Marthouret, Dominique Besnehard, Jean-Michel Ribes, Mazarine Pingeot, Claudine Nougaret et Raymond Depardon, Andrée Zana Murat et Bernard Murat, Michel Rotman, Patrick Pelloux, Laurent Davenas, Gilles Achache, Gabriel Gautier, Marie d’Ouince, Bruno Masure, Dany Dan - Melopheelo - Zoxea, Layla Metssitane, Touria Benzari, Emilie Chesnais Laurent Hébert, Bertrand Van Effenterre, Anna Medvecsky, Gaëlle Bayssière, Fethi Benslama, Pierre Douglas, Rachid Benzine, David Kodsi, Florence Muracciole, Stephane Distinguin, Jean Minondo, Yohann Diniz, Jean-Philippe Derosier, Sakina M’sa, Éric Dussart, Évelyne Schapira, Philippe Lemoine, Nicole Baldet, Anne Baveray, Rachel Khan, Michel Cantal-Dupart, Anne-Carole Denès, Yves Denès, Gerard Cicurel, Gisela Blanc, Mathieu Sapin, Françoise Huguier, Édouard Brézin, Julie Saavedra, Alex Menu, Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo, Jean-Philippe Derosier, Leïla Grison, Alexandre Leroy, C215, Dominique Miller, Christian Zerbib, Christiane Hessel…

    On les comprend puisque, comme ils le disent « cet acharnement indigne […] entraîne le débat politique dans une dérive dangereuse pour la démocratie » , contrairement sans doute à l’Etat d’urgence, au 49-3, à la criminalisation de l’action syndicale, au fichage des citoyens, aux tentatives de faire voter la déchéance de la nationalité, à la sur-médiatisation du FN, à la plongée de 9 millions de citoyens dans la pauvreté, à la multiplication des milliardaires, à l’écoeurement généralisé qui s’exprime par la désertion des urnes .

    Et puis, le parti du président a de l’humour, comme en témoignent ces outils de propagande (du cynisme, vous croyez ?) :


    Heureusement, les signataires de l’appel, conscients et informés, ne vont pas en rester là 
Laure Adler va probablement démissionner de France Inter, qui ne confond pas radio d’Etat et officine politique. Un des journalistes phare d’un hebdo qui fut « bête et méchant » ne fait que rembourser sa dette à François Hollande qui lui a attribué la Légion d’honneur et qui a fait débloquer un million d’euros pour Charlie Hebdo. Jean-Michel Ribes, va désormais refuser pour son théâtre l’argent ponctionné annuellement dans les poches des Français (de toutes obédiences) via le Ministère de la Culture et la Mairie de Paris. Dans l’exercice de ses activités, aucun de autres signataires n’a reçu d’aide de l’Etat (c’est-à-dire, de nous tous).

    Ces adversaires du « Hollande bashing » vont signer un de ces quatre une pétition contre le « chômeur bashing », le « salarié bashing », le « stagiaire bashing », l’« enseignant bashing », le « retraité bashing », le « SDF bashing », le « migrant bashing », le « musulman bashing » le « gréviste bashing », le « manifestant bashing », le « sécurité sociale bashing », le « SMIC bashing » le « RSA bashing », le « Code du travail bashing », le « 35 heures bashing », le « retraite à 60 ans bashing », le « Tribunal des Prud’hommes bashing », le « Mélenchon bashing », le « CGT bashing », etc.

    Mieux : les 60 s’indignent (en secret pour l’instant) que le pouvoir solférinien s’acharne dans un « Stéphane Guillon bashing » et tous sont (discrètement) solidaires de l’humoriste impudent qui a bizarrement subi trois contrôles fiscaux en six mois.
    Fassent le ciel, Michel Sapin et Bercy, que cela leur soit épargné.
    Maxime Vivas


    (1) http://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/Deneuve-Binoche-Biolay-Une-cinquantaine-de-personnalites-disent-stop-au-Hollan

    #PS #françois_hollande #bashing #propagande #jet_set #privilégiés # #élites #classes_sociales #classe supérieure #establishment #conformisme #système #stupidité_structurellement_induite #éduqués_supérieurs

  • Les communistes arabes et la lutte contre le fascisme et le nazisme | Aggiornamento hist-geo
    https://aggiornamento.hypotheses.org/3497

    Dès l’entrée en scène du fascisme, puis du nazisme, en Europe, les partis communistes des pays arabes prirent une position nette vis-à-vis d’eux, mettant en garde contre leurs ambitions et leurs politiques agressives. Cette prise de position plaça les communistes arabes à contre-courant de certains secteurs de l’opinion publique arabe, influencés par la propagande du fascisme et du nazisme et qui voyaient dans l’Italie et l’Allemagne des alliés potentiels dans leur lutte contre la Grande-Bretagne et la France, puissances coloniales dans la majorité des pays arabes.

    C’est peu dire que cette Historie est mal connue. Quant à imaginer qu’il y avait encore, il y a moins d’un demi-siècle, pléthore de puissants mouvements communistes dans le monde arabe, on a du mal à le faire...

    • C’est loin, mais il en reste des traces. Je connais certaine librairie d’Amman où on trouve les œuvres complètes de Lénine, édition des années 60. Dans la Jordanie d’aujourd’hui, ces livres sont des objets si incongrus. Et tout est devenu si compliqué qu’on se demande par quel bout on reprendrait les choses, si on en avait la possibilité.

      Et dire aussi que la dernière guérilla communiste dans le « tiers monde » (on disait comme ça à l’époque), ça se passe... dans le Golfe, en Oman, avec le front de libération des pays du Golfe, jusqu’en 1975 - le sujet du roman de Sonallah Ibrahim, Warda, et d’un livre récent « Monsoon revolution » de Abdelrazzaq Taqriti. Espérons que cela reviendra, dès qu’on en aura fini avec ce que vous nommez si justement cette catastrophe arabe.

    • Solidarité avec l’URSS et lutte universelle contre le nazisme

      A la suite de la signature, par les démocraties occidentales, du traité de Munich avec l’Allemagne, fin septembre 1938, le pouvoir soviétique, redoutant de voir les troupes germaniques envahir son territoire, donna son accord, le 23 août 1939, pour signer un traité de non agression avec l’Allemagne nazie. En dépit de l’embarras que cette décision soudaine de l’URSS provoqua dans les rangs des communistes arabes, ils n’en ont pas moins soutenu cette dernière, dans la conviction qu’il fallait à tout prix soutenir l’« État socialiste unique ».

      L’agression allemande contre l’URSS, en juin 1941, a conduit toutefois les communistes du monde, dont les communistes arabes, à considérer le soutien de l’URSS comme une tâche primordiale. C’est alors que les communistes arabes se sont mis à organiser des campagnes de solidarité avec les peuples soviétiques et à créer des comités, ad hoc, pour les assister.

      à propos de la note : [2] Ercoli [Palmiro Togliatti], « Les tâches de l’Internationale Communiste en liaison avec les préparatifs d’une nouvelle guerre mondiale par les impérialistes », in Résolutions et décisions du VIIème congrès de l’Internationale Communiste, Paris, Bureau d’éditions, s.d., p. 24-32.
      Palmiro TOGLIATTI écrit des textes de propagande sous le nom de plume d’Ercole Ercoli jusqu’en 1926, époque où le régime fasciste l’expulse du pays. En exil à Moscou, il participe aux activités du #Komintern et coordonne l’action clandestine du #Parti_communiste_italien. En août 1936, il signe avec tout le comité central du PCI émigré en France,
      l’« #Appel_aux_fascistes »
      Titre original : Per la salvezza dell’Italia riconciliazone del popolo italiano (publié par Lo Stato Operaio, Aout 1936, n°8, Paris revue du PCI) , qui proclame entre autres :

      « Les communistes adoptent le programme fasciste de 1919, qui est un programme de paix, de liberté, de défense des intérêts des travailleurs. (...) Nous proclamons que nous sommes prêts à combattre avec vous et tout le peuple italien pour la réalisation du programme fasciste. (...)
      Nous devons unir la classe ouvrière et faire autour d’elle l’unité du peuple et marcher unis, comme des frères. Donnons-nous la main, fascistes et communistes, catholiques et socialistes, hommes de toutes les opinions. Donnons-nous la main et marchons l’un à côté de l’autre pour arracher le droit à être des citoyens d’un peuple civilisé comme le nôtre. »

      Ce texte, daté d’août 1936,a été écrit par Palmiro TOGLIATTI, secrétaire général du parti communiste italien, et signé par le comité central au complet ainsi que par des dizaines de dirigeants du parti.
      Ce document qui est à la fois étonnant et significatif a été soustrait furtivement au jugement des communistes et des révolutionnaires : il n’a jamais été republier intégralement et il n’est que très rarement mentionné par les historiens.
      On ne peut s’empêcher d’éprouver un profond malaise à la lecture de cet appel qui suscite toujours une vive inquiétude quatre-vingts ans après sa rédaction, non seulement par ce qui est dit littéralement, mais surtout par la « tactique » utilisée par le parti communiste.
      Celle-ci, qui consiste en une alliance conjoncturelle avec les forces les plus réactionnaires du moment, s’intègre en fait dans un système plus complexe de compromission, de manipulation et de collaboration de classe contribuant à l’élaboration du #totalitarisme.
      http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmiro_Togliatti
      http://cgecaf.com/mot173.html
      http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcgecaf.com%2Farticle1846.html

      #Palmiro_TOGLIATTI naît à Gènes, le 26 mai 1893. Rédacteur aux côté de #Gramsci du journal « L’ORDINE NUOVO », dans les années vingt, il est l’un des fondateurs du parti communiste italien ; il en sera même l’un de ses plus haut dirigeants jusqu’à sa mort. Pendant la #période_fasciste, il a de très nombreuses responsabilités au sein de l’internationale communiste ou il sera l’interprète fidèle et zélé des directives de Moscou. En 1937, il est envoyé en Espagne par le Komintern pour « renforcer » l’activité du #parti_communiste_espagnol dont il deviendra ¬ en coulisse ¬ le secrétaire. Après la seconde guerre mondiale, durant laquelle il séjourne en URSS, il revient en Italie pour reprendre aussitôt la direction du parti communiste italien (PCI).
      En 1946, il est ministre de la justice ; il marquera cette période par un décret d’amnistie « d’une très grande générosité » envers tous les fascistes. Il accueille très tièdement le « revirement » du XXͤ congrès du PCUS ; Il meurt à Yalta, le 21 aout 1964.

  • Le Festv’ALARM, c’est fini… Quel bon moment ! Ci-joint...
    http://f-dellerie-illustration.tumblr.com/post/150633953069

    Le Festv’ALARM, c’est fini… Quel bon moment ! Ci-joint une petite photo des merveilles que j’ai ramenées avec moi :► Une superbe toile “Vagins Vigilants” (parodie des panneaux “Voisins Vigilants” qu’on peut voir dans certains quartiers), d’Etoile Sauvage, créatrice végane dont je vous invite à découvrir les créations, pleines d’humour, d’esprit, d’engagement et d’originalité. ► Une création pleine de couleur, signée Liam, jeune homme avec qui j’ai fait un peu de troc : 4 de mes stickers militants + un petit galet peint, contre un beau dessin de monstre. Merci et bravo à lui pour ses talents d’artiste. :)► Et plein de belles choses créées par Layla Benabid. Un de ses albums jeunesse, “Li-Loup” ; des badges, et sa toute nouvelle BD auto-éditée “Nous sommes”. Cette dernière, qui met en scène une famille de (...)

  • « Il y a beaucoup de façons de parler de la télévision. Mais dans une perspective « business », soyons réaliste : à la base, le métier de TF1, c’est d’aider Coca-Cola, par exemple, à vendre son produit. […] Or pour qu’un message publicitaire soit perçu, il faut que le cerveau du téléspectateur soit disponible. Nos émissions ont pour vocation de le rendre disponible : c’est-à-dire de le divertir, de le détendre pour le préparer entre deux messages. Ce que nous vendons à Coca-Cola, c’est du temps de cerveau humain disponible. »

    Patrick Le Lay, PDG de TF1, in Les Dirigeants français et le Changement (2004).

    http://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-revue-numerique/la-guerre-contre-les-djihadistes-se-fait-aussi-sur-les-reseaux-sociaux


    http://www.acrimed.org/Attentats-de-Bruxelles-le-bal-des-experts-de-l#top
    http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidperrotin/bruxelles-comment-reconnaitre-un-expert-antiterroriste-un-vr?sub=4190331_8
    #actualité #numérique #terrorisme #Etat_Islamique #Twitter #réseaux_sociaux #expert #info_continue #matraquage_médiatique #décervelage

  • 5-year-old Duma attack survivor to visit Real Madrid on March 17March 6, 2016 1:44 P.M. (Updated : March 6, 2016 1:54 P.M.)
    http://maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=770581

    RAMALLAH (Ma’an) – Major Spanish football team Real Madrid will be welcoming on March 17 a young Palestinian boy whose family was killed in an arson attack committed by Israeli settlers last year, the Palestinian Football Federation said on Saturday.

    Ahmad Dawabsha, 5, was the sole survivor of a deadly arson attack carried out by extremist Israeli settlers on his family home in the northern West Bank village of Duma on July 30 last year. The child lost both his parents, Saad and Riham, as well as his 18-month-old brother, Ali.

    Federation president Jibril Rajoub said in a statement that Real Madrid “sympathized with Dawabsha after a photo of him wearing the team’s uniform in his hospital bed went viral,” and agreed to host Ahmad later this month.

    Ahmad will be accompanied by two adult family members, as well as a representative of the Palestinian Real Madrid supporters club.

    ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

    Israeli forces detain nine, including football player, in West Bank
    March 6, 2016 11:13 A.M. (Updated : March 6, 2016 5:17 P.M.)
    http://maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=770578

    HEBRON (Ma’an) — Israeli forces detained at least nine Palestinians — including a football player — in raids in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.

    At least five Palestinians were detained in and around the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said in a statement.

    The organization identified the detainees as Yasin al-Rajabi and his son Shadi, Layth Noor al-Alami, Shadi Ibrahim Bahar, and Sami al-Daour.

    Al-Daour is a football player from the Gaza Strip currently playing for Shabab al-Samu club, which is ranked in the first division of the West Bank league, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said.

    Israeli troops also stormed the southern West Bank town of Beit Ummar at dawn and detained three teenagers, including twin brothers, a local committee spokesman told Ma’an.

    Muhammad Ayyad Awad identified the detainees as brothers Mamoon and Jamal Mahmoud al-Qam, 17, and Muataz Nayhal Bahar, 17.

    #infofoot

  • APPEL à amplifier la mobilisation pour sauver les communes

    25 maires, adjoints et conseillers municipaux élus en 2014 et 10 citoyens*, réunis le 10 février
    2016, certains d’exprimer le refus maintes fois répété dans les localités, de la politique de
    disparition des communes, appellent les élus et la population à amplifier la mobilisation pour
    sauver les communes qui doivent pouvoir choisir librement leur avenir !

    En Maine-et-Loire, 133 communes en moins, au 1er janvier 2016, pour 25 communes nouvelles (pour l’essentiel des
    grandes, voire des très grandes communes nouvelles). D’autres devraient suivre au 1er juillet prochain.

    C’est la démocratie qui est en danger !

    . Jamais la question ne fut abordée pendant la campagne électorale de 2014, et depuis, la population et parfois
    même une partie des conseillers municipaux ont été tenues à l’écart.
    . Il a fallu décider très vite : en quelques mois l’affaire a été conclue. Certains cabinets ou conseils privés ont
    produit des chiffres tronqués et les conseils municipaux ont décidé, sans avoir tous les éléments en main.
    . Dans toutes les grandes communes nouvelles, c’est le bureau, les adjoints et le maire, qui traitent les dossiers.
    Le conseil municipal (jusqu’à 200 membres) vote mais sans véritable débat.
    . Le sommet est atteint à Baugé en Anjou, où le Maire de Clefs Val d’Anjou a été écarté du poste de Maire
    délégué, comme les adjoints, parce qu’ils se sont opposés à la commune nouvelle de Baugé, avec 400 foyers (sur
    550) qui soutiennent leur démarche ! C’est pourtant eux, et eux seuls, qui ont été régulièrement élus en mars
    2014 par la population ! Où est la démocratie ? Un recours au tribunal administratif est en cours.

    Avec les grandes communes nouvelles, demain avec les immenses intercommunalités, les centres de décisions seront
    loin des citoyens. Elles sont les instruments de la soumission des communes à un pouvoir centralisé. Les communes
    déléguées, sans aucun pouvoir, ne sont là que pour faire écran.

    En même temps ce sont les services de la commune, publics ou non, qui seront mutualisés, rationnalisés. Les agents
    territoriaux sont les premiers visés. Les écoles devraient suivre le chemin de la Poste. Et derrière, inévitablement, ce
    sont les services pour le social, la culture, la petite enfance, la jeunesse, les personnes âgés qui devront s’adapter. Puis
    les professions libérales, les commerces et les associations se concentreront peu à peu autour des communes centres,
    comme dans d’autres pays européens précurseurs.

    Une résistance est née. Lorsqu’elle a été consultée, la population s’est prononcée pour la préservation de la commune
    historique, ou pour de plus petites communes nouvelles, comme à Pruillé, à la Ferrière de Flée, ou à Clefs Val d’Anjou. A
    Bauné, de nombreux habitants se sont prononcés contre la commune nouvelle. Des conseils municipaux rejettent la
    commune nouvelle comme à Carbay, à Armaillé, à Chazé sur Argos... D’autres n’ont pas adhéré à la transformation de
    leur Communauté de Communes, comme dans le Beaufortais ou le Vihiersois, par exemple. Des associations ou des
    collectifs d’habitants et d’élus se constituent à Corné, à Pruillé, à Rablay/Layon. En signe de protestation, des conseillers
    municipaux démissionnent dans beaucoup de communes nouvelles. Leur nombre n’a jamais été aussi important en
    Maine et Loire mais aussi dans d’autres départements.

    Nous invitons les élus et les citoyens à organiser des réunions publiques dans les cantons, les communes et les
    communes nouvelles autour des revendications suivantes :

    . Le gouvernement doit maintenir les dotations des collectivités, quelle que soit leur taille.

    . Il doit revenir sur les dispositions des lois de 2010 et de 2015 sur les communes nouvelles, et de
    la loi NOTRe qui entraînent les communes dans les dérives des grandes communes nouvelles et
    des grandes intercommunalités.

    . Aux élus des communes dans tout le pays, nous proposons de préparer une rencontre pour la
    défense des communes et des services publics qui pourrait avoir lieu en Maine et Loire dans les
    prochaines semaines. Nous proposons de multiplier les initiatives pour médiatiser au plan national nos
    actions via internet, les réseaux sociaux et tous les médias.

    Premiers signataires :

    Yannick Benoist adjoint St Laurent du Mottay, Pascal Brebion ex conseiller Rablay/layon, Didier Brémaud Association de défense de la démocratie
    communale (ADDC) Mûrs-Erigné, Olivier Chauveau maire La Ferrière de Flée, Cathy Cottin conseillère Chemillé Melay, Guy Dailleux maire Cernusson,
    Hubert Dupont 1er adjoint Le May/Evre, Laurent Girard adjoint Chemillé Melay, Hubert Lardeux ex candidat aux municipales à Angers (Contre les
    politiques d’austérité), Céline Maury conseillère Les Ponts de Cé, Olivier Schaffer conseiller Coron, Patrice Fournier ex 1er adjoint Marigné, Denis
    Chaleil et Jean-Michel Leray (Association Pruillé), Dany Rosier (Saumur), Viviane Tulasne conseillère Chigné, Pierre Devêche conseiller St Macaire en
    Mauges, Bernard Pannefieu conseiller Corné, Jocelyne et Didier Cousseau Le Mesnil en Vallée, Michel Renault maire Clefs Val d’Anjou, Mireille
    Villette ADDC Mûrs-Erigné, R Bineau pdt de l’association de défense de Clefs Val d’Anjou, Laurent Cadou maire Carbay, Hugues Vaulerin maire St
    Jean de la Croix, Joël Bruand adjoint Carbay, Nicole Glacial ex adjointe Bauné, Alain Cotteverte Rablay/Layon, Patrice Daviau maire Marcé, Jean-Luc
    Poidevineau adjoint Ecouflant, Monique Deslandes conseillère Corné, Laurent Pluchart ex conseiller Nyoiseau, Frédéric Mortier maire
    Longué-Jumelles, Bertrand Saget maire Chazé sur Argos, Dominique Philippeau adjoint Chazé sur Argos,

    * Parmi lesquels des responsables et membres d’associations ou de groupements de défense des communes

    Pour nous joindre ou transmettre vos signatures :

    defendonslescommunes@gmail.com

    https://www.facebook.com/defensedescommunes49/?ref=hl

    #communes#communes_nouvelles#réforme_territoriale#loi_NOTRe#services_publics#collectivités_territoriales#communes_déléguées#démocratie#démission#conseiller_municipal#dotation_de_l'état#D.G.F.#maine_et_loire

  • Nawaat – De quelques films tunisiens : Triomphes de la domination
    http://nawaat.org/portail/2016/02/17/de-quelques-films-tunisiens-triomphes-de-la-domination
    Critique virulente et instructive de quelques récents, notamment A peine j’ouvre les yeux de Layla Bouzid (qui est plutôt bien fait et agréable à regarder).

    sans aucune raison valable narrativement ni dramatiquement, l’on se retrouve à Gafsa, foyer de la révolte du bassin minier. Le père de Farah se dirige vers son lieu de travail et est accueilli par une horde d’ouvriers en colère, pelles et pioches à l’appui, qui éructent contre le bon monsieur et passent à deux doigts de le lyncher s’il ne s’était pas réfugié dans sa voiture et n’avait pris jambes à son cou. Ça sera la première de trois séquences essentielles où les personnages petit-bourgeois seront confrontés au peuple. Nous ne reverrons ni Gafsa, ni sa population, durant le reste du métrage.

    Après le père manquant de se faire agresser par ces ouvriers sauvages qu’il était, en bon colon, venu aider au cours de la seule minute de film que la réalisatrice daigne consacrer aux mineurs de Gafsa (minute qui n’ajoute rien au récit au demeurant), la mère dans une station de louages puis dans un « bar d’hommes » est à son tour confrontée à ces figures du peuple qui effraie. Le peuple ne manque plus laissant l’espace à sa réinvention3. Le peuple est violent, opportuniste, lubrique. Il est la plaie dans le corps social. Systématiquement, sa présence est anxiogène et il joue le rôle de l’antagoniste du héros ou de l’héroïne (bourgeois il va sans dire). Le péril peuple joue à plein poumon dans A peine j’ouvre les yeux, comme dans la fantasmagorie bourgeoise et comme dans l’imagerie médiatique.

    Une chanson est chantée dans un bar populaire et c’est le chahut et le mécontentement parce qu’elle « parle du pays » [sic]. Pour la même raison, la même chanson chantée dans un bar bourgeois provoque l’adhésion et créée l’engouement. Cette vision du monde totalement moulée par l’intelligentsia du pouvoir travaille de même la pièce Violence(s) d’une Jalila Baccar enfermée dans ses certitudes aigris et d’un Fadhel Jaïbi devenu fonctionnaire d’Etat.

    #Tunisie

  • Bretonnaillerie et médiacrassie

    Synonyme de "centralisation", le jacobinisme, serait fondamentalement contre toutes les "libertés." Les libertés sont de préférence locales. Au singulier la liberté , comme principe universel, est gravée au fronton des mairies. Comme toute dictature le jacobinisme à ses martyrs dont un des plus connus est Patrick Le Lay qui, lorsqu’il était directeur de TF1, se fendit d’une longue profession de foi :

    « Il y a beaucoup de façons de parler de la télévision. Mais dans une perspective business, soyons réaliste : à la base, le métier de TF1 c’est d’aider Coca-Cola à vendre son produit. Or, pour qu’un message publicitaire soit perçu, il faut que le cerveau du téléspectateur soit disponible. Nos émissions ont vocation de le rendre disponible. C’est-à-dire de divertir, de le détendre pour le préparer entre deux messages. Ce que nous vendons à Coca-Cola, c’est du cerveau humain disponible ».

    et :

    « Rien n’est plus difficile que d’obtenir cette disponibilité. C’est là que se trouve le changement permanent. Il faut chercher en permanence les programmes qui marchent, suivre les modes, surfer sur les tendances, dans un contexte où l’information s’accélère, se multiplie et se banalise ».

    et encore :

    "La télévision, c’est une activité sans mémoire. Si l’on compare cette industrie à celle de l’automobile, par exemple, pour un constructeur d’autos, le processus de création est bien plus lent ; et si son véhicule est un succès il aura au moins le loisir de le savourer. Nous, nous n’en aurons même pas le temps ! "

    > " Quand les cerveaux ne pensent pas à la pub, TF1 sort son revolver", par Antonio Molfese, le 11 juillet 2004 - ACRIMED.
    http://www.acrimed.org/Quand-les-cerveaux-ne-pensent-pas-a-la-pub-TF1-sort-son-revolver

    Ils ont des chapeaux ronds

    Le même chantre de l’anti-jacobinisme déclarait que " lancer une télévision pour la Bretagne est une cause un peu similaire à celle de sauver des bébés phoques " et l’on retrouve quotidiennement dans les programmes de TV Breizh comment est mise en pratique ce sauvetage :

    Ainsi le Breton et la Bretonne sur leur banquise culturelle ont aimé, aiment et aimeront se nourrir - par exemple - d’Arabesque (série américaine, rediffusée à partir de 1993 sur TF1 ) ; de Monk ( série américaine , diffusée de 2003 à 2010 sur TF1) ; de Preuve à l’appui, (série américaine , diffusée dès 2002 sur TF1)... avant de palpiter avec Julie Lescaut ( série télévisée diffusée dès 1992 sur TF), une Femme d’honneur ( diffusée de 1996 à 2008 sur TF1) ou encore Dolmen, ( mini-série diffusée entre le 13 juin et le 18 juillet 2005 sur TF1) etc... Que ferait-donc les phoques bretons sans TF1, TV Breizh " première chaîne généraliste régionale bilingue en Europe" et Le Lay, l’ami des bêtes ?

    > " TV Breizh, télévision-miroir de la Bretagne ? ... ou de la stratégie des groupes de communication ? par Pierre Musso, le 15 août 2003 - ACRIMED
    http://www.acrimed.org/TV-Breizh-television-miroir-de-la-Bretagne

    C’est encore notre briochin qui, parlant de lui, des Bretons et de la Bretagne déclarait : " Le système administratif français, le système jacobin français ne veut pas de nous ".
    Ne pas oublier que notre homme est membre fondateur de " l’Institut de Locarn", que le journal Télérama décrit aimablement comme " une sorte de Davos breton, à la fois laboratoire de réflexion et centre de formation des élites entrepreneuriales locales " Un institut qui prône une Europe des régions et la dérèglementation, mais sous le joli terme de subsidiarité. On comprend mieux le slogan remis au goût du jour : ni droite, ni gauche, Bretons d’abord…

    > " Patrick Le Lay, nationaliste breton " par Françoise Morvan, auteur de « Le Monde comme si, Nationalisme et dérive identitaire en Bretagne », Actes Sud, 2002 - Le GRIB
    http://le-grib.com/politique/patrick-le-lay-nationaliste-breton

    " Françoise Morvan réagit ici à l’entretien accordé en septembre 2005 par Patrick Le Lay, PDG de TF1 et fondateur de la « télévision identitaire » TV Breizh, au magazine Bretons, intitulé « En France, je suis un étranger ». Accusations de « génocide culturel » en Bretagne à l’encontre de la République « jacobine », défense d’une langue parlée par une infime minorité de jeunes de moins de vingt ans, soutien aux terroristes de l’Armée révolutionnaire bretonne pourtant condamnés par la justice, reconnaissance des liens qui unissent nationalistes bretons et responsables politiques "de gauche" : les propos de Le Lay s’inscrivent dans la rhétorique nationaliste bretonne et en dévoilent les présupposés et les dangers."

    #Patrick_Le-Lay #Françoise_Morvan #TV_Breizh #acrimed #nationalisme_breton #bretagne #institut_de_locarn

  • Tu te souviens, quand on a essayé de te faire croire que Ziad Rahbani était grillé au Liban, qu’il s’était fait virer par des manifestations « spontanées » contre sa présence à l’AUB (avril 2013)… bon ben c’est pas vrai : Lebanese film ‘What About Tomorrow ?’ Crushes box office records In Lebanon
    http://deadline.com/2016/01/lebanese-film-ziad-rahbani-what-about-tomorrow-crushes-box-office-records-

    A new Lebanese film, What About Tomorrow?, which is made up of grainy footage of a 38-year-old play by legendary singer-writer Ziad Rahbani, is crushing box office records in the country. The film opened on Thursday January 21 and has already garnered 28,000 admissions in its first day. To put that into context, that’s more than Star Wars: The Force Awakens did in its entire opening weekend. The film is now anticipated to become the highest grossing Lebanese film of all time. A lot of tickets sold were part of a new phenomenon in Lebanon where people buy out whole screens and invite their friends and family for a private showing on the day of release. 12,000 tickets were sold in pre-sales alone, an un-heard of number for a film in the country.

    What makes this all the more remarkable is the film is not really a film at all, or even new for that matter. It is a collage of old 8mm footage of performances of Rahbani’s play, also called What About Tomorrow?, that first opened in Beirut in 1978, three years into Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. The footage was originally filmed by Rahbani’s sister Layal at his request so that he could show it to the actors during rehearsals and change stage elements such as the lighting and costumes. There are scenes in the film version where the same character appears in different clothes for no apparent reason. “The audience don’t care,” says Hyam Saliby, the head of sales and acquisitions at distributor Italia Film. “Even though the quality of the image is not great, the audience are just in love with Ziad and this experience. The amazing thing is this footage was never even meant to be shown. It was only intended for personal use.”

    Ziad Rahbani’s iconic play in Beirut cinemas
    http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/32/183494/Arts--Culture/Film/Ziad-Rahbanis-iconic-play-in-Beirut-cinemas.aspx

    The audience interacted with the film, as if they were watching the play firsthand, clapping the moment the actors went on stage, and singing along with late Lebanese singer Joseph Saker as he sang Aa Hadeer Al-Bosta, Esmaa Ya Reda and Aisha Wahda Balak.

    The audience members comprised members of Lebanon’s older generation who had attended the play’s premiere on 27 February 1978, which garnered huge commercial success, and hence wanted to reclaim the memories of Beirut in this production, which continued to be performed in Al-Hamra Street for eight months. Also attending were Lebanese youth who grew up listening to recordings of Rahbani’s works.

    Pas mal de choses sur Youtube en cherchant « Bel nesbe la boukra shou »…

  • Panik Session by PBG with Tav Exotic
    http://pbg.xyz/panik-session-tav-exotic

    Dans le cadre des Panik Sessions, les PBG ont reçu Tav Exotic, duo d’activites musicaux composé de Michael «Weird Dust» Crabbé & Ernesto «Bear Bones, Lay Low» González. Ente musique électronique et trips aériens, musique machine sans laptops ! Ils sont également à la tête du label K7s/cdrs, Sea true.

    Playlist

    Suicide –- New City Tav Exotic - (live) Meth Drinker - Desperation Weird Dust – Spectral Enhancer Bear Bones Lay Low – Cristal Poppies Soft Machine – Nettle bed Tav Exotic - (live) The Residents - Dimples and Toes Rick James - Super Freak

    https://tavexotic.bandcamp.com

    A télécharger pour les lives ici : http://www.radiopanik.org/emissions/pbg/panik-session-by-pbg-with-tav-exotic mp3 : part 1 - part 2 ogg : part 1 - part 2 -

    Ecoute en intégralité (...)

  • More people in #Europe are dying than are being born
    http://phys.org/news/2016-01-people-europe-dying-born.html

    Texas A&M Professor of Sociology Dudley Poston, along with Professor Kenneth Johnson, University of New Hampshire, and Professor Layton Field, Mount St. Mary’s University, published their findings in Population and Development Review this month.

    The researchers find that 17 European nations have more people dying in them than are being born (natural decrease), including three of Europe’s more populous nations: Russia, Germany and Italy. In contrast, in the U.S. and in the state of Texas, births exceed deaths by a substantial margin.

    #démographie

  • #Saudi_Arabia Carries out Seventh #beheading in 2015
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/saudi-arabia-carries-out-seventh-beheading-2015

    Saudi Arabia beheaded on Monday a Myanmar female child-killer, bringing to seven the number of death sentences carried out this year in the conservative Muslim kingdom. After a trial, Layla bint Abdul Mutaleb Bassim was executed for killing her husband’s daughter Kalthoum bint Abdul Rahman bin Ghulam Gadir, aged six, the interior ministry said, quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA). read more

    #executions #human_right

  • Gaza death toll at 165 as deadly Israeli strikes continue | Maan News Agency
    http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=712537

    GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Israel’s military assault on Gaza continued for a sixth day on Sunday with the Gaza Ministry of Health saying 165 Palestinians have been killed and over 1,000 injured.

    The latest airstrike on Sunday killed Layla Hasan al-Udat in al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, Ashraf al-Qidra said.

    Ashraf Zurub, 21 , on Sunday died from wounds sustained a day earlier in airstrikes while Husam Ibrahim al-Najjar, 14, was killed in Sunday attacks in northern Gaza.

    Earlier, 80-year-old Hijaziyya al-Hilou was killed in the Shujaiyya neighborhood of Gaza City when an Israeli missile hit the al-Hilou family home.

    Medics said it was a miracle the rest of the family survived the attack.

    Israeli warplanes intensified air raids overnight, targeting Hamas buildings in Gaza City and bombing a PA security services base in Rafah.

    Three people, including an unidentified child , died Sunday from wounds sustained overnight and days earlier.

    Ramziyya al- Abdul, 73, and Rami Abu Shanab, 25 died at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City of wounds they sustained two days ago in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Deir al-Balah.

    Izz Addin al-Bulbul, Shadi Muhammad Zurub, 21, Bassam Zurub, 21 , and Islamic Jihad fighter Muhannad Yousef Abu Dheir, 23 , were all killed in airstrikes targeting Rafah.

    Late Saturday, 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Tuffah neighborhood that hit a house and mosque, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said, making it the single most deadly attack since Israel’s assault began.

    Another 35 were wounded in the same strike, and three more people were killed in southern Gaza’s Rafah that also injured five people, Qidra added.

    Among the wounded was police chief Tayseer al-Batsh, officials said.

    A house and mosque were hit as worshipers left Ramadan prayers, locals said.

  • Bernard Stiegler « Le Front national prospère
dans le désert des idées politiques » | L’Humanité
    http://www.humanite.fr/politique/bernard-stiegler-le-front-national-prospere-dans-l-526499

    Le #marketing_politique s’est substitué 
à la #pensée_critique dites-vous. Vous parlez aussi d’un «  effondrement de l’attention  » comme d’une des causes de ce renoncement.

    Bernard Stiegler. Le marketing détourne le #désir de ses objets primordiaux (parents, proches, savoirs, culture) vers la #marchandise. Pour cela, il capte l’attention comme l’expliquait Patrick Le Lay, ex-PDG de TF1 : «  Mon travail, c’est de vendre à Coca-Cola du temps de cerveau disponible.  » Or cette captation détruit l’attention, qui est la forme ordinaire du désir, lequel régresse ainsi au stade de la pulsion. Le désir prend soin de son objet ; la pulsion détruit son objet.

    Notre cerveau est ainsi préparé à aller vers n’importe qui peut le manipuler. Y compris
 le Front national ?

    Bernard Stiegler. La destruction de l’attention pousse de plus en plus de gens vers le Front national parce qu’elle fait souffrir ceux qui la subissent tout en les empêchant de comprendre de quoi ils souffrent. L’attention est produite par l’éducation. Mais si on peut et on doit la former, on peut aussi la déformer. Le marketing la déforme en la manipulant avec d’énormes moyens. La #formation de l’attention produit des savoirs – savoir vivre, faire ou conceptualiser. Politesse, chaudronnerie et mathématiques sont des formes d’attention. La déformation de l’attention est le désapprentissage de ces savoirs. Privé de ces savoirs, on est privé de place sociale : on n’est plus soi-même un objet d’attention. Les électeurs du Front national souffrent de cette destruction de l’attention psychique et du manque d’attention sociale qui en résulte.

  • From London Bridge (Arizona) to Sheerness (Canada) | EastWestWestEast

    http://eastwestwesteast.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/the-thames-from-london-bridge-arizona-to-sheerness-canad

    From London Bridge (Arizona) to Sheerness (Canada)

    September 8, 2013

    British artist Layla Curtis has created an alternative map of the Thames. Section 1: From London Bridge, Arizona to Salt Island, British Virgin Islands.

    This ten-part collage, which is constructed by cutting and pasting locations from existing international maps and re-constructing them to form the familiar outline of the Thames, is available as a free download for the duration of the festival.

    Focusing on researching the etymology of place names along the river’s shores and tracing their global namesakes, she has created an artwork that presents new geographical fictions as well as reflecting the history and far-reaching influence of the Thames.

    #art_et_cartographie

  • L’armée intervient à Laylaki et Tarik Jdidé | Politique Liban | L’Orient-Le Jour
    http://www.lorientlejour.com/article/820943/larmee-intervient-a-laylaki-et-tarik-jdide.html

    De nouveaux affrontements assez violents à l’arme automatique hier entre les clans Zeayter et Hjoula à Laylaki, dans la banlieue sud, ont nécessité une intervention de l’armée, qui s’est déployée dans la zone des combats, a poursuivi les fauteurs de troubles et procédé à des perquisitions et des interpellations.
    D’autres affrontements à la roquette et à l’arme automatique entre des miliciens du mouvement Amal et des membres de la famille Crombi se sont déroulés dans le quartier dit « Hay Farhat » à Tarik Jdidé. La troupe s’est également déployée pour ramener le calme.

    Quand l’Etat dans l’Etat est lui même incapable de faire régner l’ordre chez lui...
    #Beyrouth
    #banlieue-sud
    #Hezbollah