position:businessman

#turkey’s #erdogan declares use of birth control “treason”
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/turkey%E2%80%99s-erdogan-declares-use-birth-control-treason%E2%80

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described efforts to promote birth control as “treason,” saying contraception risked causing a whole generation to dry up, reports said Monday. Erdogan made the comments on Sunday, addressing a bride and groom at the wedding ceremony of the son of businessman Mustafa Kefeli, who is one his close allies. He told the newlyweds that using birth control was a betrayal of Turkey’s ambition to make itself a flourishing nation with an expanding young population. read more

#feminism #women_rights

The Death and Life of the 13-Month Calendar - CityLab
▻http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/12/the-world-almost-had-a-13-month-calendar/383610

The 13-month calendar worked so well at Kodak that the company used it until 1989, 57 years after Eastman committed suicide (a businessman to the end, his ashes are buried at Kodak’s old industrial complex). “I loved it,” says John Cirocco, a former Kodak employee who worked at the company in the late ’80s as a tech advisor. “It was a major piece of financial applications, and from a financial perspective it made the ability to compare sales periods a hell of a lot easier.”

#calendrier #temps

Hand back Donetsk its original British name
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/andy-hunder-hand-back-donetsk-its-original-british-name-361024.html

“Donetsk is a British city! God Save the Queen!” – so an online social media referendum campaign, slightly tongue-in-cheek, promulgated earlier this year. The link with Britain comes from John Hughes, a Welsh businessman, the city’s founder, who launched the first iron-works at the end of the 19th century and subsequently built a steel plant and opened several coal mines in the region. The town was consequently named Yuzovka, or Hughesovka (“Юз” being a Cyrillic approximation of Hughes).

Today, the eastern Ukrainian city of 1 million residents is seeing intense military confrontation, where Ukrainian troops are fighting off and closing in on the Russian backed and funded mercenaries and terrorists.

During the 19th century, Hughesovka received numerous immigrants from Wales, especially from the town of Merthyr Tydfil. By the beginning of the 20th century its main district was named English Colony, with the British origin of the city reflected in its layout and architecture.

During Soviet times, the city’s steel industry expanded and in 1924 it was renamed Stalino. In 1961, Nikita Krushchev, in order to distance it from the out-of-favour former leader Joseph Stalin, gave the city a new name – Donetsk, named after the Seversky Donets River. Apart from today being twinned with Sheffield in the UK, it is also twinned with the US steel city of Pittsburgh.

Yuzovka -> Stalino -> Donetsk -> ? (Hughesovka)

Pour effacer l’empreinte du passé, rien de mieux que le retour au passé. L’époque (bénie) de l’entrée des capitaux occidentaux en Russie.

http://www.kyivpost.com/media/images/2014/08/18/p18vkbp8pj1cc4q50dgvdvbr124/content.jpg

The #FILM about the small businessman who took on the bread cartel
▻http://africasacountry.com/the-film-about-the-small-businessman-who-took-on-the-bread-cartel

“Crumbs–Toppling the Bread Cartel” is the inside story of a #Cape_Town businessman, Imraahn Mukaddam’s fight for social justice and the personal cost of blowing the whistle on corporate greed. To fill you in: in late 2006 Imraahn Mukaddam, a local businessman, is told by his supplier that the price of bread is going up […]

#Crumbs_Toppling_the_Bread_Cartel #Pioneer #Premier #South_Africa #Tiger

Syrian opposition coalition elects new leader
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/syrian-opposition-coalition-elects-new-leader

The main exiled Syrian opposition group on Wednesday elected Saudi-based businessman Hadi al-Bahra as its new president in a bid to end internal divisions and breathe fresh life into its flagging struggle to oust President #Bashar_al-Assad. The Syrian National Coalition, the main exiled opposition group seeking the overthrow of Assad, will be hoping Bahra enjoys greater success than his predecessor Ahmad Jarba in keeping up the pressure on the regime. read more

#Hadi_el-Bahra #Saudi_Arabia #syria

Rich list exposes harm of extreme income inequality
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/business/rich-list-exposes-harm-of-extreme-income-inequality-352641.html

The billionaire businessman who became Ukraine’s president on June 7 is a beneficiary of the same opaque and corrupt economic system he now pledges to change, lending the campaign a sense of irony.

Forbes Ukraine ranked Petro Poroshenko 6th in its latest list of the country’s richest, published on May 30, with an estimated $1.3 billion fortune. 

Notwithstanding a 23.6 percent loss in total wealth from the previous year, the combined net worth of the 100 wealthiest still comprise a quarter of the nation’s 2013 gross domestic product of $175 billion. They are a class of super-rich who have reaped substantial benefits from a growing divide between the poorest and richest strata in Ukrainian society. And rising income and wealth disparity appears to have repercussions that extend beyond social discontent. 

In a speech in London on Feb. 25, the International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned of the potential dangers of inequality for transitioning economies.

“Disparity… brings division. The principles of solidarity and reciprocity that bind societies together are more likely to erode in excessively unequal societies. History also teaches us that democracy begins to fray at the edges once political battles separate the haves from the have-nots,” she warned.

Christine Lagarde et le FMI mettant en garde contre l’augmentation des inégalités. On aura tout vu !

Heureusement, ça ne concerne que les économies en transition. Ouf !

#Iran hangs businessman convicted over $2.6 billion #scam
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/iran-hangs-businessman-convicted-over-26-billion-scam

An Iranian businessman convicted of masterminding a $2.6 billion banking scam, the biggest #fraud case in the country’s history, was hanged on Saturday, state media reported. Mahafarid Amir Khosravi was sent to the gallows in Tehran’s Evin prison, the official IRNA news agency reported. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of “corruption on earth... through bribery and money laundering,” a #justice department statement carried by Iranian media said. read more

#Corruption

Second candidate submits bid for #syria's #presidential_election
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/second-candidate-registers-syrias-presidential-election

A businessman who studied in the United States on Thursday became the second hopeful to register for Syria’s controversial June presidential election which is expected to return incumbent Bashar al-Assad to office. Like the first would-be candidate to declare, Hassan Abdullah al-Nuri is a member of the regime-tolerated opposition. The authorities have not spelt out how they plan to hold a credible election amid a raging civil war in which they have lost control of large swathes of the country to rebel groups and militias. read more

#Top_News

Kidnappers free son of Lebanese businessman
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/kidnappers-free-son-lebanese-businessman

Kidnappers freed the son of a wealthy businessman before dawn Saturday, hours after his abduction from the eastern Lebanese village of #Zahle led to clashes between security forces and gunmen suspected in the #kidnapping, state news reported. Four masked gunmen kidnapped Ibrahim Sakr, aged nine or 10, Friday morning from a car transporting him to school in what was suspected to be a kidnapping for ransom. But #Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) said the boy was released around 3:00 am Saturday without any exchange in money. The details of his release were not revealed. read more

#Bekaa #Top_News

Son of Lebanese businessman abducted in Zahle
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/son-lebanese-businessman-abducted-zahle

Masked gunmen abducted the son of a wealthy businessman as he traveled to school Friday morning in eastern town of Zahle, state news reported. #Lebanon's National News Agency said gunmen forced a vehicle transporting 10-year-old Michel Sakr and two girls to stop before they snatched the boy and took off in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. An investigation has been launched to locate the boy, son of Ibrahim Sakr, an industrialist who owns a number of gas stations and is involved in construction projects in Lebanon’s eastern #Bekaa Valley. read more

#kidnapping #Top_News

Businessman alleges #Canada gave Israeli spy new identity
▻http://www.torontosun.com/2014/02/15/businessman-alleges-canada-gave-israeli-spy-new-identity

MONTREAL — Passport Canada secretly supplied a new identity and passport to a #Mossad agent living in Canada after the Israeli spy participated in the 2010 plot to kill a leader of terrorist group Hamas in a #Dubai hotel, a Montreal businessman has alleged.

Mysterious Canadian-Iranian businessman Arian Azarbar made the startling allegations in an exclusive interview with QMI Agency.

Azarbar says he learned about the top secret operation during a relationship he had with Trina Kennedy, a senior national security investigator at Passport Canada.

(...)

Alexis Pavelich, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander (responsible for Passport Canada), did not answer any questions about Azarbar’s allegations.

QMI Agency reported Friday that Alexander ordered an internal probe and Kennedy had been relieved of her duties after Azarbar made a series of allegations about her to federal authorities.

Canada Welcomes Mossad Assassin, Offers Him New Identity
▻http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2014/02/16/canada-welcomes-mossad-assassin-offers-him-new-identity

I’ve confirmed that the story is accurate through my own Israeli source. When asked, he said it would be fruitless even to try to deny it since the story came straight from the horse’s mouth (Canadian intelligence). There are many astonishing aspects of this story. First, in light of Israel cloning passports of dual citizens of nations like France, Ireland, Australia and the UK, it didn’t even have to take the trouble with Canada. That nation perpetrated the identity fraud on Israel’s behalf. Can you imagine a country creating a fake identity for an intelligence agent of a foreign country? It beggars belief. Second, this means that Canada doesn’t tolerate the presence of Mossad agents on its soil, it welcomes them. A country like the U.S. begrudgingly accepts that Israel is the third most intensive intelligence presence inside the U.S.. But not Canada. It’s motto is the old Monty Hall shout-out to the TV prize winner: “come on down!”

#Harper

Footage leak on construction project in Istanbul marred with fraud controversy
▻http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/footage-leak-on-construction-project-in-istanbul-marred-with-frau

Fresh footage leaked onto the Internet on Feb. 14 appears to reveal the model of a construction project marred by fraud claims in Istanbul’s upmarket Etiler neighborhood, adding a new twist to the massive graft allegations.

The footage shows a group of businessman examining the model of a complex that was allegedly set to be built by selling a parcel of land owned by a police school in the city. A number of reports on the graft probes launched in mid-December said the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality had sold the land to a construction company for less than half of its worth without organizing a tender

Regarding the land, Topbaş said it became the property of the municipality via protocol with the Interior Ministry, adding that the $460 million value was determined after an assessment by the state-run housing agency (TOKİ). Reports said the cost of the land, located in one of Istanbul’s most prized neighborhoods, should instead be up to $1 billion.

#Istanbul
#immobilier
#corruption

Fracking won’t avert energy crisis, Davos is told | Climate News Network

▻http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/01/fracking-wont-avert-energy-crisis-davos-is-told

By Alex Kirby

Some of the planet’s richest nations, meeting at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, are to hear a warning that a global oil crisis could happen as early as next year.

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/wp-content/uploads/1024px-Process_of_mixing_water_with_fracking_fluids_to_be_injected_into_the_ground.jpg

LONDON, 24 January – A British businessman will tell world leaders meeting in Switzerland today that it is dangerous to argue that fracking for shale oil and gas can help to avert a global energy crisis.

Jeremy Leggett, a former Greenpeace staff member who founded a successful solar energy company, has been invited to the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos from 22 to 25 January. The theme of the meeting is The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business.

Leggett told the Climate News Network: “The WEF likes to deal in big ideas, and last year one of its ideas was to argue that the world can frack its way to prosperity. There are large numbers of would-be frackers in Davos.

#gaz_de_schiste #énergie #climat

Report : Eroğlu helped businessmen obtain mining permit
▻http://todayszaman.com/news-336620-report-eroglu-helped-businessmen-obtain-mining-permit.html

Intermédiaires et marchandages pour obtenir un permis d’ouverture d’une mine dans une forêt d’Istanbul

A report appearing on the T24 news website on Tuesday claimed that Forestry and Water Affairs Minister Veysel Eroğlu helped some businessmen to obtain a permit for a mining facility in an İstanbul forest.

The website’s claim refers to recordings of telephone conversations that have led a prosecutor to call for the minister’s immunity to be removed as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged corruption and bribery that has implicated other government ministers.

According to the tapes, a businessman, identified as Adem Peker, applied to the Kanlıca Forestry Department for a permit to open a mining facility in forestland. The department refused to approve the permit, stating that the area is not appropriate for such an operation. The businessman then applied to the Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs to obtain the permit, but the ministry also turned down the application. Undeterred, the businessman then contacted businessmen Cengiz Aktürk and Osama Khoutub to ask them for help in obtaining the permit. Peker allegedly promised to give the businessmen 50 percent of the mining facility’s shares if they helped him obtain the permit.

Aktürk and Khoutub then contacted Investment Support and Promotion Agency of Turkey (ISPAT) President İlker Aycı to secure his support in obtaining the mining permit. As a result, these businessmen finally managed to obtain the permit.

According to the tapes, Aycı made a phone call to Eroğlu to thank him after obtaining the permit. On the recording, the ISPAT president allegedly says: “I’d like to thank you about this mining issue. The gentleman called you yesterday, I think. He called me, too. He asked me details about this issue. I’d like to thank you. You supported us a lot in completing the job in time.” T24 claimed that Aycı was referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when he said “the gentleman.” In response, Eroğlu said that he wished the best for them.

#corruption
#mines
#Istanbul

#Cairo bus blast injures four
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/cairo-bus-blast-injures-four

http://english.al-akhbar.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/4cols/leading_images/889332-01-08.jpg

Angry Egyptians set fire to a microbus, said to be belong to a company owned by a businessman who supports the Muslim Brotherhood, after passengers allegedly held up four fingers, the symbol known as “Rabaa,” during the funeral of those killed in a car bomb attack earlier in the day, in the Egyptian city of Mansoura, north of Cairo, on December 24, 2013. (Photo: AFP - Mahmoud Khaled) Angry Egyptians set fire to a microbus, said to be belong to a company owned by a businessman who supports the Muslim Brotherhood, after passengers allegedly held up four fingers, the symbol known as “Rabaa,” during the funeral of those killed in a car bomb attack earlier in the day, in the Egyptian city of Mansoura, north of Cairo, on December 24, 2013. (Photo: AFP (...)

#Egypt #explosion #Top_News

Bahrain PM’s role in disputed aluminium deals probed at UK trial | Reuters
▻http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/02/britain-bahrain-trial-idUKL5N0JH3AF20131202

A British court saw documents on Monday purporting to show that Bahrain’s prime minister had direct influence over the affairs of aluminium smelter Alba when it was making deals now at the heart of a major corruption case.

The documents were shown by a lawyer for British-Canadian businessman Victor Dahdaleh, who is on trial accused of paying some $67 million in bribes to former Alba managers in return for a cut of contracts with suppliers worth more than $3 billion.

One of Britain’s biggest corruption cases for years, the trial has opened a rare window onto business practices normally shielded from public view in secretive Bahrain and comes at a sensitive time of political unrest in the tiny Gulf kingdom.

London-based Dahdaleh, 70, has pleaded not guilty to eight criminal charges brought by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in relation to events between 1998 and 2006 at Bahraini state-controlled Alba, the world’s fourth-largest aluminium smelter.

Exclusive: Iraq still using bogus bomb detectors – and thousands pay the price
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/exclusive-iraq-still-using-bogus-bomb-detectors--and-thousands-pay-th

Bogus bomb detectors are still being used in Iraq five months after a British businessman who supplied the devices was found guilty of fraud.

More than 4,500 people are estimated to have been killed in Iraq – 979 of them in September alone – since James McCormick, a former policeman, was convicted at the Old Bailey in April. His trial heard that the devices he was selling, called ADE-651, were based on novelty golf-ball finders and had no scientific means of detecting explosives.

#arnaque #corruption

الوليد بن طلال يقيل مدير عام قناة الرسالة لإنتمائه للإخوان المسلمين
▻http://www.alquds.co.uk/?p=75247

الوليد بن طلال يقيل مدير عام قناة الرسالة لإنتمائه للإخوان المسلمين

Al-Waleed bin Talal, prince saoudien milliardaire et en principe libéral, vire le directeur général d’al-Risala, une des chaînes religieuses du groupe Rotana, parce qu’il appartient aux Frères musulmans.
A mon avis, il aurait également dû, au minimum,le fouetter !

Israel’s answer to Al Jazeera vows to avoid propaganda
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.536925

The establishment of i24News was announced in April 2012. The press release spoke of an initiative by Patrick Drahi, the Franco-Jewish businessman who owns the HOT cable company, reporting that he planned to donate money to start a trilingual news channel with an Israeli flavor. It didn’t take long for the word “Al Jazeera” to be mentioned − a reference to the international news station based in Doha, which was established by the emir of Qatar and covers news from an Arab angle ‏(and for that reason was boycotted in Israel in 2008 because of allegedly tendentious coverage‏).

Chinese workers detain US businessman for a week - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/29/chin-j29.html

Marrant [enfin, façon de parler].

Chinese workers detain US businessman for a week
By Oliver Campbell
29 June 2013

An American businessman detained for almost a week by employees at a medical supply factory in Beijing was released on Thursday, following negotiations and an agreement to compensate workers . The incident has highlighted the growth of social tensions stemming from the slowing of the Chinese economy, and a growing tide of foreign companies moving production to cheaper labour platforms in countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia.

#chine #sweatshops

Iraq continues using fake bomb detectors
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/iraq-continues-using-fake-bomb-detectors

James McCormick, a British businessman, made an estimated £50 million ($76 million/59 million euros) selling the “bomb detectors,” based on a novelty golf ball finder, to Iraq and other countries. He was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in jail for fraud.

But despite the sentencing and overwhelming evidence that the devices are worthless, the Iraqi government has not taken them out of circulation.

Relying on bomb detectors that do not work is an especially grave issue in Iraq, where violence is a major problem and bombings by militants are common.

Évidemment, on ne peut trouver cela drôle que si l’on écarte le fait qu’il y a eu 700 morts en avril en Irak.

Alwaleed bin Talal: Revolutions of ‘Arab Chaos’ won’t reach Gulf region

Middle East Online

Saudi billionaire prince Prince Alwaleed regretted the “negative” outcome of Arab Spring uprisings, saying the politics of new Islamist-dominated governments “do not reflect the aspirations of the people ... for freedom and justice.”

Prince Alwaleed, the richest Arab businessman and a nephew of King Abdullah, said in a television interview aired late Tuesday that uprisings which toppled strong Arab leaders would not reach the Gulf monarchies, where “the leaders look after the interests of their peoples,” said the prince.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has also called for parliamentary elections in the absolute monarchy where the king names members of a toothless Shura consultative council.

The Prince added that the monarch’s January decision to appoint 30 women to the council was “very important” but needed to go further.

“For this to become historic, I think two things are essential: first, elections, even if partial, and, more importantly, (giving) powers,” he said in the interview aired on several channels, most belonging to his media empire.

The prince also said that ending a ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia was a matter of time, despite strong resistance from religious conservatives in the desert kingdom that is the birthplace of Islam.

“I think that driving (for women) is definitely coming,” he said, playing up the economic benefits of saving wages paid to foreign drivers.

▻http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=57899

Peter Thiel’s Rise to Wealth and Libertarian Futurism : The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all

un long (et intéressant) portrait du businessman #libertarien

Thiel’s closest friends date back to the early days of PayPal, in the late nineties, or even further, to his years at Stanford, in the late eighties. They are, for the most part, like him and one another: male, conservative, and super-smart in the fields of math and logical reasoning. (...)

He pushed hard to build #PayPal, against formidable obstacles, because he wanted to create an online currency that could circumvent government control. (Though the company succeeded as a business, it never achieved that libertarian goal—Thiel attributes the failure mainly to heightened concerns, after 9/11, that terrorists might exploit electronic currency systems.)

(...) In Thiel’s techno-utopia, a few thousand Americans might own robot-driven cars and live to a hundred and fifty, while millions of others lose their jobs to computers that are far smarter than they are, then perish at sixty.

(...) [Thiel] wants to live forever, have the option to escape to outer space or an oceanic city-state, and play chess against a robot that can discuss Tolkien, because these were the fantasies that filled his childhood imagination.

#ayn_rand #disruption #robotisation #singularity

Lebanese Banks Sacrifice Privacy for ‘Efficiency’ | Al Akhbar English
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/lebanese-banks-sacrifice-privacy-‘efficiency’

n 2012, a Dutch businessman found out that his money transfer to a German counterpart, made through a German bank, had been appropriated by the Americans. While the sum of $26,000 was not huge, this incident had many implications regarding the extent of Washington’s reach in the world of “counter-terrorism.”

To justify the move, US authorities claimed the funds in question were intended as payment for a shipment of Cuban-imported cigars. Since the communist island state is subject to a US embargo, the Dutch businessman had broken US law.

The problem here does not lie in the pretext invoked by the US authorities, but rather in the mechanism that allowed them to detect and confiscate the funds. Indeed, this was only possible because they can manipulate the ‘secure’ interbank system operated by Belgium-based SWIFT, or Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

Labor rights activist Fatma Ramadan to Egypt independant : “Police arrest 27 workers from businessman Farag Amr’s “Faragello” factories."

Alexandria businessman shuts factories amid dispute with workers

▻http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/alexandria-businessman-shuts-factories-amid-dispute-workers