Humvee maker suing Activision over trademark infringement in Call of Duty
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-11-09-humvee-maker-suing-activision-over-trademark-infringement-
Automotive firm says series success came “only at the expense of AM General”
Echoes of Cold War as NATO mulls new North Atlantic command
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-russia/echoes-of-cold-war-as-nato-mulls-new-north-atlantic-command-idUSKBN1D61ZP
NATO needs to establish a new regional base for protecting the North Atlantic against increased Russian naval strength, a senior alliance general said on Monday, as allies consider the next step in a military build-up reminiscent of the Cold War.
General Petr Pavel, head of NATO’s military committee, will help put the case to allied defense ministers this week for a new planning and strategy base to be located in a chosen NATO ally and focused on keeping Atlantic shipping lanes safe from enemy submarines.
It would be the first such expansion in two decades after NATO sharply cut back its commands in 2011.
“If we look at the growing capabilities of countries like Russia and China, with a global reach, it is quite obvious that maritime lines of communication have to be protected,” Pavel, a Czech army general, told Reuters in an interview.
[…]
Strong in symbolism, the decision is unlikely to revive a much larger Cold War-era Atlantic Command that was disbanded in 2002, but it would broaden NATO’s new deterrent against Russia.
Le premier ministre libanais, Saad Hariri, annonce sa démission
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2017/11/04/le-premier-ministre-libanais-saad-hariri-annonce-sa-demission_5210238_3218.h
Le premier ministre libanais, Saad Hariri, a annoncé sa démission, samedi 4 novembre, à la surprise générale. Il a accusé le Hezbollah chiite et son allié iranien de « mainmise » sur le Liban et a affirmé avoir peur d’être assassiné.
« J’annonce ma démission du poste de premier ministre », a ainsi déclaré M. Hariri, qui se trouve actuellement en Arabie saoudite, dans un discours retransmis par la chaîne satellitaire Al-Arabiya. Selon les informations du Monde, un des conseillers de M. Hariri lui avait déjà suggéré de démissionner il y a quelques semaines, mais l’idée avait alors été écartée.
« L’Iran a une mainmise sur le destin des pays de la région (…). Le Hezbollah est le bras de l’Iran non seulement au Liban mais également dans les autres pays arabes », a dénoncé le premier ministre démissionnaire. Et « ces dernières décennies, le Hezbollah a imposé une situation de fait accompli par la force de ses armes », a-t-il ajouté.
Bien entendu, le Monde-avec-AFP (ainsi que l’ensemble des médias francophones) qualifie la démission de Hariri de « totalement inattendue »… Si ces gens faisaient un tout petit peu leurs devoirs, ils sauraient que le renversement du gouvernement et la mise en accusation du Hezbollah ont été très clairement annoncés lundi par les Séoudiens :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/641376
que Hariri s’était déjà rendu en Arabie séoudite ce même lundi, et y et retourné hier :
▻https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1081985/hariri-se-rend-a-nouveau-en-arabie-saoudite.html
Le chef du gouvernement libanais se rend à Riyad pour une visite de travail. Lors de son dernier déplacement, il avait été reçu par le prince héritier saoudien, Mohammad Ben Salmane. M. Hariri avait affirmé être totalement en phase avec Riyad pour ce qui a trait à la stabilité du Liban.
Hum… les employés de Saudi Oger vont-ils (comme promis encore en septembre) être enfin payés ? (Oui, parce que si ça t’a échappé : Hariri n’a plus de sous et est proprement tenu en laisse.)
▻http://www.france24.com/fr/20170914-liban-france-groupe-btp-saudi-oger-saad-hariri-va-payer-arrieres-
L’aspect évidemment ridicule de l’événement, c’est que Saad se rend deux fois en Arabie séoudite en quelques jours, applique ce qui a été annoncé par un ministre séoudien en début de semaine, rencontre le nouveau Séoud-en-chef ben Salmane et dans la foulée annonce sa démission depuis l’Arabie séoudite, tout ça paraît-il pour dénoncer la « mainmise » de l’Iran sur le Liban.
Malgré cet aspect ridicule, on peut être particulièrement inquiet. Que l’Arabie séoudite décide de porter (à nouveau) son affrontement régional sur la scène libanaise ne présage d’absolument rien de bon pour le pays (tu as vu l’état des pays où l’Arabie a prétendu « contrer » l’influence iranienne ?).
▻http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=772730
Commentaire des Iraniens : "La démission de Hariri a été arrangée par Trump et Muhammad ben Salmane, en fionction d’une décision manifeste des Saoudiens de s’en prendre au Hezbollah."
طهران : استقالة الحريري جاءت بترتيب من ترامب ومحمد بن سلمان وبقرار سعودي واضح لمواجهة “حزب الله”
November 2, 2017
Targeting Lebanon Again
Edito d’ABA. Cela date du 2 novembre mais, comme c’est en anglais, je suppose que cela a dû être publié un peu avant.
▻http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=771836
We do not know what instructions Hariri was given when he met Saudi strongman Crown Prince Muhammad bin-Salman. But it would not come as a surprise to learn that he was told either to withdraw from the government or sack its Hezbollah ministers in order to create another government crisis in Lebanon. Hariri would have no option but to comply. That would mean the collapse of the hard-won political accommodation that enabled him to return to office and Gen. Michel Aoun to be elected president.
Angry Arab: Hariri resignation in Beirut
▻http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2017/11/hariri-assassination-in-beirut.html
It is funny: people of the Saudi and Israeli lobbies on social media are jubilant about Saad Hariri’s resignation (from Riyadh, no less and through Saudi regime media) and treating the matter as if it was a purely Lebanese matter. The resignation was days in the making. Saudi minister (for Gulf affairs but he also seems to be in charge of Lebanese affairs as well) has been threatening the Lebanese people and government for many days and warning of an impending action. In fact, he threatened hours before Hariri resignation that Saudi Arabia will “cut off” the hands of Iran—which was the same expression used by Hariri in the speech which was prepared for him. Hariri was sitting with Hizbullah ministers and defending the political arrangement in which all parties were represented against critics in his quarters. He also met with a senior Iranian delegation HOURS before his resignation (above) (the delegated was headed by Ali Akbar Welayeti, who said after the meeting that it was “constructive”). Just after the meeting, Hariri was summoned to Riyadh and he took a selfti with Minister Sabhan (the latter posted it on Twitter (above) and said it was after a long meeting), and then the speech of resignation was aired on Saudi media. Its text was counter to all the speeches that Hariri has been giving for many months. The best part is that Saudi regime media announced that there was an assassination attempt on Hariri’s life just before he departed for Saudi Arabia. The pro-Saudi branch of the Lebanese security services promptly told Lebanese media that they never heard of any of that and that they were not sources for this fable.
Au sujet de la prétendue tentative d’assassinat contre Hariri, le démenti des FSI (généralement pro-séoudienne et proches du camp Hariri) :
▻http://nna-leb.gov.lb/fr/show-news/83957/Les-FSI-mentent-les-rumeurs-sur-la-tentative-39-assassinat-jou-contre-Sa
La direction générale des FSI a démenti, ce samedi dans un communiqué, les informations qui circulent dans les médias, réseaux sociaux et sites électroniques, selon lesquelles son service de renseignements aurait déjoué une tentative d’assassinat contre le Premier ministre démissionnaire Saad Hariri.
« La direction des FSI précise que ces informations sont erronées, qu’elle n’a fourni aucun détail et qu’elle ne dispose d’aucune donnée à cet égard », précise le communiqué.
Benjamin Netanyahu @netanyahu
15:27 - 4 nov. 2017
▻https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/926878529240911872
My remarks on the resignation of Lebanese PM Hariri
Saad Hariri Quits as Lebanon Prime Minister, Blaming Iran - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/world/middleeast/saad-hariri-lebanon-iran.html
On en est là, il faut lire un article du NYT pour se rendre compte combien les articles des MSM français et les reportages de France 24 sur le sujet sont lamentables.
The surprise announcement — which shocked even his own staff — was an ominous sign of the escalating regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, analysts said, indicating the growing dominance of Iran and Hezbollah as well as the Saudis’ increasingly assertive response.
Lebanese and regional analysts, whether supporters or opponents of Hezbollah, said it appeared that Mr. Hariri had been pressured to resign by his patrons, the Saudis , as they and the United States ratchet up efforts to counter Iranian influence. The resignation came after weeks of sharp American and Saudi condemnations of Iran, including from President Trump, and new American sanctions against Hezbollah.
By pushing out Mr. Hariri, analysts said, Saudi Arabia could deny Hezbollah a credible Sunni governing partner — an attempt to isolate it and deny it the fig leaf of a national unity government.
“They concluded that Hariri was serving as more of a cover for Iranian and Hezbollah influence than as a counterweight to them,” said Rob Malley, a former special Middle East adviser to President Barack Obama and the vice president of the International Crisis Group.
Yet the resignation also shows how few options Iran’s opponents have. Without Mr. Hariri in power, the United States and Saudi Arabia lose their main partner in the Lebanese government.
Across the political spectrum, analysts and officials said the resignation ushered in new dangers. If the next government is more pro-Hezbollah, they said, that could lead to devastating sanctions. It could even increase the chances of a new war with Israel, which would see added justification for its argument that there is little distinction between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state.
Mr. Hariri even raised the specter of internal violence. [si jamais des attentats contre le camp du 14 mars reprennent on aura été averti] He compared the atmosphere in Lebanon now to the days before the 2005 assassination of his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, saying he believed his own life was in danger. “I sensed what’s being woven in secret to target my life,” he said.
Mr. Hariri’s father was killed when his motorcade was bombed on Beirut’s seafront. Several Hezbollah members are being tried in absentia in a special United Nations-backed tribunal in The Hague, although the militant group has denied involvement in the assassination.
[...]
Mr. Hariri headed a 30-member national unity cabinet that was crafted to protect the country from any spillover from the multisided war in neighboring Syria, where Iran backed the government and Saudi Arabia backed the insurgents.
That mission has largely been successful , even though Hezbollah has sided with the Syrian government, Lebanese Sunni militants have joined insurgents there, and well over one million refugees flooded this small Mediterranean country.
In Lebanon’s political system, power is divided between a prime minister, who must be Sunni; a president, who must be Maronite Christian; and a speaker of Parliament, who must be Shiite.
The exercise of real power in the country is a more complicated affair of alliances, rivalries and division of spoils between the leaders of sectarian groups, including former warlords from Lebanon’s civil war.
Hezbollah, which rose to prominence fighting the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, is the strongest because of its powerful militia, which can act independently of the state and in recent years has served as an expeditionary force across Syria.
In recent years Lebanon’s rival blocs have essentially agreed to confine their fight to Syria. But tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran have only increased.
In addition to Hezbollah’s decisive role in helping President Bashar al-Assad of Syria hold on to power, Iran has supported several militias in Iraq that have managed to defeat Islamic State forces in that country and remain a fighting force.
Iranian leaders say their interference is needed to stop terrorism, and to create a security zone for their country. The country’s influence started to rise after the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011, leaving behind an incomplete army and a pro-Iranian government.
Iran’s filling of the vacuum created by the departure of the United States military has been an extremely worrying development for Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states, who have seen their efforts to fight proxy wars with Iran largely fail.
And now that the Syrian war seems to be entering a new phase, with Mr. Assad still ruling a devastated country, there are fears that tensions that had been pushed to the back burner — inside Lebanon, between Hezbollah and Israel, and elsewhere — could re-emerge.
The United States has stepped up sanctions on Hezbollah in recent weeks after President Trump criticized Iran and the landmark nuclear deal it reached under Mr. Obama.
“It signals a new phase of escalation,” said Ali Rizk, a pro-Hezbollah Lebanese analyst, adding that the imminent defeat of Islamic State by the United States would put new pressure on what it sees as Shiite extremists. “Lebanon is in for a hard time,” Mr. Rizk said.
The resignation brought sharp words from Israel and Iran. Bahram Ghasemi, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said Mr. Hariri’s speech was driven by a Saudi, American and Israeli effort aimed at “creating tension in Lebanon and the region.”
And in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the resignation “a wake-up call for the international community to take action against the Iranian aggression.”
The pressure now is on the Lebanese president, Mr. Aoun, who will hold consultations with Parliament about appointing a caretaker government, said Imad Salamey, an analyst at the American University of Beirut.
“If he indeed is going to bring in a pro-Hezbollah government, then he has to face the consequences,” such as new sanctions, Mr. Salamey said. “It will be a massive U.S. and Saudi response. The economy will collapse for sure.”
In his speech, Mr. Hariri said he wanted to unite Lebanon and free it from outside influence. He pronounced himself “full of optimism and hope that Lebanon will be stronger, free, independent, with no authority over it except that of its own great people.”
But in the streets of Tariq al-Jdeedeh, a mostly Sunni neighborhood of Beirut that is part of Mr. Hariri’s political base, anger and confusion contrasted with the posters of Mr. Hariri that festooned the buildings.
“Hariri didn’t do this for Lebanon, he did this for Saudi against Iran,” said Nabil Idriss, who was tending his son’s fabric shop. “Now with this move, the picture is more transparent than ever. Saad Hariri was never in control.”
Department of Defense Press Briefing by General Dunford in the Pentagon Briefing Room > U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE > Transcript View
▻https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1351411/department-of-defense-press-briefing-by-general-dunford-in-the-pentagon-bri
Q: Could you let us know how many U.S. forces are serving in #AFRICOM total, west and east Africa right now, maybe a potential breakdown?
GEN. DUNFORD: Yes, sure I can. I can give you — I’ll give you a range. We have on the order of 6,000 — a little over 6,000 forces in Africa and they’re in about 53 different countries.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels shoot down Saudi-led coalition Typhoon jet - Xinhua | English.news.cn
▻http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-10/28/c_136710936.htm
There were no immediate comments by the Saudi-led coalition over the Houthi claims.
But if confirmed, this fighter jet would be the second plane downed by the Yemeni rebels in less than one month.
On Oct. 1, the Houthis fired a surface-to-air missile and shot down a U.S.-made drone, General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, in north of the capital Sanaa.
The United States, which is the main supporter to the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iranian-allied Shiite Houthis, admitted losing its fighter aircraft.
Targeting the Eurofighter Typhoon, one of the world’s most advanced swing-role fighters, came few hours after Houthi fighters fired a ballistic missile toward a Saudi military base deep inside the Saudi southern border province of Najran.
The coalition said the missile destroyed a residential compound belonging to a Saudi-owned government company and slightly injured one worker.
The fierce escalation came one day after remarks by the Kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that his country will continue the war against the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels in #Yemen.
Yémen : Un drone de fabrication américaine abattu par les Houthis à Sanaa - Maghreb Emergent
▻http://maghrebemergent.info/actualite/breves/fil-monde/79562-yemen-un-drone-de-fabrication-americaine-abattu-par-les-hout
« Le #drone General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper a été abattu par un missile guidé tiré à partir de notre base de fuséologie », a-t-on appris d’un communiqué publié par les Houthis, qui contrôlent la capitale yéménite.
Les rebelles houthis du Yémen ont abattu un avion de combat de la coalition dirigée par l’#Arabie_saoudite – french.xinhuanet.com
▻http://french.xinhuanet.com/2017-10/28/c_136710979.htm
« Les défenses aériennes de l’armée et les forces populaires (les combattants houthis) ont abattu un avion de combat Typhoon de la coalition menée par l’Arabie saoudite aujourd’hui par un missile sol-air dans le district de Nehm au nord-est de Sanaa », a précisé un officier militaire houthi cité par le communiqué.
Les cartes de l’Empire
▻http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Les-cartes-de-l-Empire.html
Quelles étaient les représentations mentales occidentales du Moyen-Orient au tournant du XXème siècle ? En étudiant le champ restreint de la #cartographie, Daniel Foliard s’attache à dessiner une « carte mentale » de la pensée impériale britannique.
Livres & études
/ #empire_ottoman, #Empire_britannique, cartographie, #Bible
Dislocating the Orient: British Maps and the Making of the Middle East, 1854-1921, Foliard
▻http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo25793846.html
Dislocating the Orient, British Maps and the Making of the Middle East, 1854-1921, Daniel Foliard
320 pages | 45 halftones, 2 line drawings | 7 x 10 | © 2017
While the twentieth century’s conflicting visions and exploitation of the Middle East are well documented, the origins of the concept of the Middle East itself have been largely ignored. With Dislocating the Orient, Daniel Foliard tells the story of how the land was brought into being, exploring how maps, knowledge, and blind ignorance all participated in the construction of this imagined region. Foliard vividly illustrates how the British first defined the Middle East as a geopolitical and cartographic region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through their imperial maps. Until then, the region had never been clearly distinguished from “the East” or “the Orient.” In the course of their colonial activities, however, the British began to conceive of the Middle East as a separate and distinct part of the world, with consequences that continue to be felt today. As they reimagined boundaries, the British produced, disputed, and finally dramatically transformed the geography of the area—both culturally and physically—over the course of their colonial era.
Using a wide variety of primary texts and historical maps to show how the idea of the Middle East came into being, Dislocating the Orient will interest historians of the Middle East, the British empire, cultural geography, and cartography.
Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. From Sebastopol to Suez (1854–1869)
The Mid-Victorian Perspective: A Fragmented East
Labeling the East
Maps for the Masses?
• Part II. A Shifting East in the Age of High Imperialism (1870–1895)
Oriental Designs
Virtual Travel in the Age of High Imperialism
• Part III. The Fabrication of the Middle East (1895–1921)
Seeing Red?
Enter Middle East
Falling Into Places
• General Conclusion
Très alléchant !
EDIT : The University of Chicago Press a pour seuls points de vente en Europe : Gand (décidément !), Florence et Berlin.
:-(
Daniel Foliard revient dans Dislocating the Orient sur les origines du Moyen-Orient, tant dans les termes que dans les représentations mentales occidentales de la région. En huit chapitres suivant la chronologie de l’évolution des investissements européens entre l’Égypte et l’Inde, l’auteur retrace, à travers l’histoire du développement de la cartographie moderne, les transformations intervenues au cours du lent déclin de l’Empire ottoman entre la fin de la guerre de Crimée et les négociations de paix de 1918-1921.
Cet ouvrage s’inscrit dans une historiographie fournie dont le dernier acte d’importance date de 2011, avec le retentissant A Line in the Sand de James Barr (Londres : Simon and Schuster, 2011).
Dans la suite, ou plutôt en #antépisode (#prequel en québécois,…) de Une Ligne dans le Sable, ouaouh !
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/592523
Puerto Rico’s streets crawl with heavily armed, masked mercenaries bearing no insignia or nametags
▻https://boingboing.net/2017/10/15/katrina-rerun.html
Though Puerto Rican law prohibits ownership and bearing of most long-guns and especially semiautomatic weapons, the streets of the stricken US colony now throng with mercenaries in tactical gear bearing such arms, their faces masked. They wear no insignia or nametags and won’t say who they work for, apart from vague statements in broken Spanish: “We work with the government. It’s a humanitarian mission, we’re helping Puerto Rico.”
Rosa Emilia Rodríguez, head of Puerto Rico’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office, initially dismissed reports of the mercenaries, then, after reporters from the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo pressed her she said she’d “check it out.”
After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Erik Prince’s Blackwater mercenaries flooded the city again, turning it into an “armed camp”, after Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force announced “This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”
Erik Prince is now reportedly considering a senate run as a Trumpist candidate in Wyoming. His sister, Betsy Devos, has used millions from her husband’s pyramid-scheme fortunes to fund efforts to destroy public education, and now serves as Trump’s Secretary of Education.
Though the mercenaries in Puerto Rico won’t identify their employers, there’s good evidence that Blackwater (now called Academi) is or will soon be operating there, as well as other notorious mercenary gangs like Ranger America and the Whitestone Group.
Security firm Academi —known by its former name, Blackwater, which won $21 million contract with the U.S. government to provide security services during the Iraq war in 2003— said that they already have offers from the local and federal government and by the Red Cross to come to Puerto Rico.
“We’re ready to go,” said Paul Donahue, Chief Operating Officer of Constellis, Academi’s parent company, in a phone interview with the CPI. He explained that if the government of Puerto Rico accepts the proposal made by Academi to respond to the government’s offer, they would be providing security services for water transportation. The company already operates in the Caribbean islands of Dominica and St. Martin, where they arrived after Hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall. This company, described as an army of mercenaries by investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, has changed its name three times since its founding in 1997 by a former Navy Seal Officer (United States Marine, Air and Land Teams.)
Is Excel 2018 going to be the game changer in data visualization? – DataVis Experts
▻http://datavisxperts.com/excel-2018-and-datavis
I am afraid not.
Is Excel 2018 going to be the game changer in data visualization?
Tech giant Microsoft recently announced a ton of new features that it would be adding to our old pal Excel. Perhaps its time and God knows Excel has waited long enough for a major upgrade. But what will this upgrade actually do? Will it really live up to the buzz its announcement stirred up? And what are these new data types that they are talking about? We will try to answer all these queries here. Let’s dive in !
“It is meant to take any list of data and then start to generate insights”. Spataro [Microsoft’s general manager for Office] also said, “It will look at combinations, charts, pivot tables and it will recognize those that are most interesting by looking at outliers, looking at trends in the data, looking at things that represent changes.” It is named #INSIGHTS as of now. And machine learning is also being incorporated into this in order to facilitate the ability to take data from other services using APIs.
En fait, ce qu’on met maintenant sous le mot visualisation, c’est le processus de réflexion et d’interprétation des données dont celle-ci n’est que le résultat. Si, en plus, l’outil magique qui fait tout tout seul et pense pour vous intègre du machine learning, les #lendemains_qui_chantent, c’est pour… demain, enfin, pour la date de sortie d’Excel 2018.
Si on retombe sur ses pieds, il faut comprendre que la lutte avec gg:sheets est féroce, notamment autour de l’interface de réalisation des graphiques pour laquelle gg avait pris une nette avance. Avance que M$ avait en partie rattrapée avec Excel 2016 où l’interface des graphiques proposait, déjà, des « graphiques recommandés » et incorporait de nouveaux types de graphique introduit par gg, comme le treemap. En forçant le trait, ce qui est (sera ?) nouveau, c’est que la « recommandation » se revendiquera d’une intelligence en boîte (le fameux ML…)
btw #merci !
Will the #GDPR (European General Data Protection Regulation) put the Whois at risk? OVH and Afnic are opening the debate ▻https://www.ovh.co.uk/news/articles/a2535.whois-at-risk-gdpr-discussion-with-afnic #Privacy #Data
Srebrenica’s Bone Hunter | Srebrenica | Al Jazeera
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2017/09/bone-hunter-170914105108744.html
Filmmakers: Muris Beglerovic and Jasmina Djikoli
In July 1995, months before the end of the three-year Bosnian war and in violation of international law, the Serbian army marched into the United Nations’ supported enclave of Srebrenica.
It would be a relief to bury the remains and to know where they are. Now I keep looking at the door expecting him to come [home].
Hajra Rizvanovic, Srebrenica massacre survivor, mother of a Srebrenica victim
Led by General Ratko Mladic, thousands of women and children either fled Srebrenica to neighbouring Potocari, or were forcibly evacuated by the Bosnian Serb army. The remaining men and boys of the then majority-Muslim town were systematically tortured and murdered in what would come to be known as the darkest hour for Europe since World War II.
Over 8,000 men, some only children, were executed in a span of days; an ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of bodies are estimated to still be lost in the land surrounding Srebrenica.
#balkans #ex-yougoslavie #bosnie_herzégovine #srebrenica #guerre #génocide #massacre
The world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis is taking place in Myanmar. Here’s why. - Vox
▻https://www.vox.com/world/2017/9/18/16312054/rohingya-muslims-myanmar-refugees-violence
Entire villages have been burned to the ground. Women have been raped. Rohingya refugees report that soldiers shot at them as they fled. Along the border with Bangladesh, there are reports that the military has laid land mines to ensure those fleeing won’t return. Though independent observers have no access to the region, the Myanmar government now says 175 villages in the region — 30 percent of all Rohingya villages — are empty.
“We are hearing really horrendous stories of people who have survived by the skin of their teeth,” Paolo Lubrano, an Oxfam worker in Cox’s Bazar, a town on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, told me by Skype Friday morning. Lubrano described “dire violence” and an enormous number of very young, and very traumatized, Rohingya refugees. Among those fleeing Myanmar, he added, are many pregnant women who have been walking for three, four, or even five days to find safety.
The military calls the campaign a “clearance” operation against an insurgent terrorist military group. They claim the crackdown is in response to a series of armed attacks on border police by Rohingya militants on August 25 that left 12 officers dead, the second such type of attacks in the past 12 months. But observers say that though armed Rohingya insurgents exist, their overall numbers are small, and they are poorly equipped. And the crackdown has affected the entire ethnic group.
Meanwhile, in a Facebook post on Sunday, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s military, was dismissive: “They have demanded recognition as Rohingya, which has never been an ethnic group in Myanmar.”
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, has dubbed this crisis a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Some are going further — saying the country is tipping toward crimes against humanity and even possibly genocide. On September 14, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke out about the “horrors that we are witnessing occurring in Burma.”
Exclusive: Facebook Silences Rohingya Reports of Ethnic Cleansing
▻http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-rohingya-activists-say-facebook-silences-them
Rohingya activists—in Burma and in Western countries—tell The Daily Beast that Facebook has been removing their posts documenting the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya people in Burma (also known as Myanmar). They said their accounts are frequently suspended or taken down.
The Rohingya people are a Muslim ethnic minority group in Burma. They face extraordinary persecution and violence from the Burmese military; military personnel torch villages, murder refugees, and force hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Human rights watchdogs say the persecution has intensified in recent months, and a top UN official described a renewed offensive by the Burmese military as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh. Sen. John McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for reduced military cooperation with the Burmese government because of the violence.
Rohingya people trying to use social media to share information about the attacks on them tell The Daily Beast they have had their posts removed and their accounts shut down, and that they hope Facebook stops silencing them.
A Facebook representative told The Daily Beast the company would look into the situation. “We want Facebook to be a place where people can share responsibly, and we work hard to strike the right balance between enabling expression while providing a safe and respectful experience,” said Facebook spokesperson Ruchika Budhraja in a statement. “That’s why we have Community Standards, which outline what type of sharing is allowed on Facebook and what type of content may be reported to us and removed. Anyone can report content to us if they think it violates our standards. In response to the situation in Myanmar, we are carefully reviewing content against our Community Standards.”
Facebook is currently facing substantial criticism for what appears to be an indifferent attitude toward promoting divisive material. Last week, ProPublica revealed that the network sold ads tailored to “Jew haters.” Days earlier, The Daily Beast reported that Russian front groups used Facebook to
CIA Papers Link Harvard To Mind-Control Project
▻http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1977/9/28/cia-papers-link-harvard-to-mind-control
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informed University officials this week that Harvard “was involved in one way or another” in two research projects conducted under the agency’s MK-ULTRA human behavior control project, Daniel Steiner ’54, general counsel to the University, said yesterday.
Steiner said the University received substantial financial records from the CIA outlining Harvard’s involvement in the controversial mind-control program. He refused to release any details about the documents yesterday, but said the two research projects in question did not include any drug experimentation.
The CIA secretly operated the MK-ULTRA research project for 12 years beginning in the 1950s to study the effects of alcohol and various narcotics on witting and unwitting human subjects at a number of American universities and colleges.
The New York Times reported last month that the CIA had sponsored a separate series of hallucinogenic drug experiments conducted during the 1950s at a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital. The tests studied the effects of LSD on students from Harvard and other Boston area universities.
NOAA’s New Weather Satellite Captured Stunning Images of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/noaa-weather-satellite-goes-16-stunning-images-hurricanes-irma-harvey
The most-advanced weather satellite ever developed by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has given scientists and the general public an unprecedented birds-eye-view of the major hurricanes hitting the United States in recent weeks.
Launched in November 2016, the #GOES-16 is NOAA’s next-generation weather satellite equipped with Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument that provides four times greater resolution than NOAA’s existing GOES imagers.
Sélection de photos et vidéos de la . Je retiens celle-ci
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3JLisAzstw
Below is the lightning from storms associated with Hurricane Irma over a period of more than 80 hours beginning at noon on September 4, 2017, to 9:30 pm (eastern) on September 9. NOAA noted that hurricanes don’t often exhibit a great deal of lightning, particularly around the eye, due their winds. Irma of course is an exception.
sur les éclairs, cf. récemment ►https://seenthis.net/messages/628343
Egyptian Chronicles: Rebellion in Egypt’s Clubs : Beyond Classism
▻http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.fr/2017/09/rebellion-in-egypts-clubs-beyond.html
Rebellion in Egypt’s Clubs : Beyond Classism
On Thursday, Egyptian Olympic Committee “EOC” rejected a request from The Egyptian Shooting Club to hold another General assembly meeting on Friday to have a new vote on the Club’s bylaws and rules once again.
The Upper Middle class-Giza club held its general assembly meeting early August and out of 94 thousand members, only 573 attended the meeting.
As a result of failing to meet the minimum number of members eligible to vote on the famous club’s bylaws, the club would be following the guideline bylaws issued by the EOC instead of the Club’s elected board of administration’s bylaws.
An old 1950s news report in some old
Egyptian magazine about Cairo clubs
What followed then at upscale and Upper/Upper middle classes clubs in Cairo was hysteria and panic reaching to the level of mobilization for a vote to save the “clubs’ independence and class” that some considered unjustified. Before going on with that August hysteria, I must go back a couple of months to explain what is going on.
In May, the Egyptian Parliament approved the new Sports law prepared by Egypt’s Sports and Youth ministry “Yes, we have a ministry with such name” after two years of debates and amendments.
In June, President El-Sisi ratified the Sports law aka No.71 for the year 2017.
Aside from creating a judicial body that has the power to judge sports disputes and to regulate spectators’ attendance and violations “aka a special court, not a civilian court”, the law also regulates the relation between the government or the state and sports clubs as well sports associations.
Compiled as much as it can be with the provisions of the International Olympic Charter, the law moves power and control over sports clubs and sports associations to the elected boards of those bodies themselves as well to the Olympic Committee in Egypt. The government represented in the Youth and Sports Ministry and its minister will be monitoring only the sports clubs and sports associations.
Theoretically, this is a huge improvement because now officially and legally the State has got no control on the clubs and sports associations if their General assemblies chose the official guidelines bylaws over their clubs’ bylaws.
According to the Sports law’s 4th article, the social and sports clubs got 3 months since the start of June till 31 August to adopt the new system and to have general assemblies.
There are more than 40 sports clubs in the country classified into Sports clubs, clubs owned by companies and syndicates as well clubs owned by the armed forces and police. Each one of those categories got guideline bylaws issued by the EOC.
Stalingrad diaries: The battlefield transcripts that Stalin deemed too true to publish -
During the most ferocious battle in human history, in 1943, Soviet historians interviewed over 200 Red Army soldiers about the fighting that helped seal Nazi Germany’s fate. Decades later, Prof. Jochen Hellbeck became the first historian to read their stories
By Michal Shapira Sep 06, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.810966
The book is based on interviews with Red Army soldiers that you found in the archives. They describe shocking violence. Can you talk about the nature of the violence?
The interviews were recorded in Stalingrad, during the final stage of the battle and its immediate aftermath. They resonate with the din of the battlefield, and violence is everywhere in the picture. Red Army soldiers describe how they fought their way into the city center, blowing up basements and entire buildings filled with Germans after at least some of them refused to lay down their arms. What becomes very clear is the extent to which the Soviet defenders were driven by hatred toward the Germans. In the interviews I was surprised to discover the source of this hatred.
Take Vassily Zaitsev, the famed sniper at Stalingrad, who killed 242 enemy soldiers over the course of the battle, until he suffered an eye injury, in January 1943. Asked by the historians about what motivated him to keep fighting to the point of exhaustion and beyond, he talked about scenes he had personally witnessed: of German soldiers dragging a woman out of the rubble, presumably to rape her, while he helplessly listened to her screams for help. [Quoting Zaitsev]: “Or another time you see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park. Does that get to you? That has a tremendous impact.”
German atrocities, which many Soviet soldiers were familiar with, certainly played an important role in mobilizing them to fight, and fight hard. There was in addition ample violence within the Red Army, perpetrated against soldiers who were unwilling to risk their lives. In his interview, Gen. Vassily Chuikov described how he shot several commanders, as their soldiers watched in line formation, for retreating from the enemy without permission.
Maj. Gen. Ivan Burmakov and Lt. Col. Leonid Vinokur, two of the Russian officers interviewed after the Battle of Stalingrad. Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad
Until your book came out in Russian translation, in 2015, these interviews had never been published. Why is that?
The testimonies were too truthful and multifaceted for their times, and Stalin forbade their publication, not least because he alone claimed full credit for the victory at Stalingrad. Little changed after Stalin’s death. Yes, leading generals of the Stalingrad battle, like Chuikov, were able to publish accounts of their role in the battle, but they carefully omitted any reference to executions within the Red Army. In his memoirs, Chuikov writes that he issued “a sharp rebuke” to his cowardly officers.
Archival documentation tells me that at least some Soviet historians read the interviews, but it seems that they were at a loss about how to integrate individual, “subjective” voices, as they called them, into a mandated “objective” (communist) history of the war, and so the documents were overlooked and forgotten. I was extraordinarily lucky to have been the first historian to fully explore the 215 interviews conducted with Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, and publish them. I found them in the archive of the Institute for Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
‘Edge of Europe’
Who was conducting the interviews and why? Who were the interviewees of these “Stalingrad transcripts”?
Josef Stalin in 1950. AP
The interviews were conducted by historians from Moscow who responded to the German invasion in 1941 with a plan to document the Soviet war effort in its totality, and from the ground up. From 1942 to 1945, they interviewed close to 5,000 people – most of them soldiers, but also partisans, civilians who worked in the war economy or fought in the underground, and Soviet citizens who had survived Nazi occupation. These historians hoped that the published interviews would mobilize readers for the war. They also wanted to create an archival record for posterity. I was struck by how they made this decision as early as fall 1941, when the Soviet Union seemed to be teetering under the German assault. But the historians drew confidence from history, notably the War of 1812, when the Russian people had been able to defeat a technologically superior invader. Hitler, they were certain, would meet Napoleon’s end.
Why did Stalingrad become important to the Nazis and the Soviets in 1942? In what way was it a battle that changed world history?
When the Germans resumed their offensive, in spring 1942, their strategic target was the oil fields of the Caucasus. Only as Army Group South advanced toward Maikop and Grozny did Hitler order a separate attack on Stalingrad. He banked on the psychological blow that the fall of “Stalin’s city,” which is what Stalingrad literally means, would deliver to Stalin. It was largely because of its symbolic charge that the battle for Stalingrad turned into a decisive showdown between the two regimes.
As violence intensifies, Israel continues to arm Myanmar’s military junta
Responding to a petition filed by human rights activists, Defense Ministry says matter is ’clearly diplomatic’
By John Brown Sep. 3, 2017 | 5:58 PM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.810390
The violence directed at Myanmar’s Rohingya minority by the country’s regime has intensified. United Nations data show that about 60,000 members of the minority group have recently fled Myanmar’s Rahine state, driven out by the increasing violence and the burning of their villages, information that has been confirmed by satellite images. But none of this has led to a change in the policy of the Israeli Defense Ministry, which is refusing to halt weapons sales to the regime in Myanmar, the southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma.
On Thursday, the bodies of 26 refugees, including 12 children, were removed from the Naf River, which runs along the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Of the refugees who managed to reach Bangladesh, many had been shot. There were also reports of rapes, shootings and fatal beatings directed at the Rohingya minority, which is denied human rights in Myanmar. The country’s army has been in the middle of a military campaign since October that intensified following the recent killing of 12 Myanmar soldiers by Muslim rebels.
Since Burma received its independence from Britain in 1948, civil war has been waged continuously in various parts of the country. In November 2015, democratic elections were held in the country that were won by Nobel Prize-winning human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi. But her government doesn’t exert real control over the country’s security forces, since private militias are beholden to the junta that controlled Myanmar prior to the election.
Militia members continue to commit crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of human rights around the country, particularly against minority groups that are not even accorded citizenship. Since Myanmar’s military launched operations in Rahine last October, a number of sources have described scenes of slaughter of civilians, unexplained disappearances, and the rape of women and girls, as well as entire villages going up in flames. The military has continued to commit war crimes and violations of international law up to the present.
Advanced Israeli weapons
Despite what is known at this point from the report of the United Nations envoy to the country and a report by Harvard University researchers that said the commission of crimes of this kind is continuing, the Israeli government persists in supplying weapons to the regime there.
One of the heads of the junta, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, visited Israel in September 2015 on a “shopping trip” of Israeli military manufacturers. His delegation met with President Reuven Rivlin as well as military officials including the army’s chief of staff. It visited military bases and defense contractors Elbit Systems and Elta Systems.
The head of the Defense Ministry’s International Defense Cooperation Directorate — better known by its Hebrew acronym, SIBAT — is Michel Ben-Baruch, who went to Myanmar in the summer of 2015. In the course of the visit, which attracted little media coverage, the heads of the junta disclosed that they purchased Super Dvora patrol boats from Israel, and there was talk of additional purchases.
In August 2016, images were posted on the website of TAR Ideal Concepts, an Israeli company that specializes in providing military training and equipment, showing training with Israeli-made Corner Shot rifles, along with the statement that Myanmar had begun operational use of the weapons. The website said the company was headed by former Israel Police Commissioner Shlomo Aharonishki. Currently the site makes no specific reference to Myanmar, referring only more generally to Asia.
Who will supervise the supervisors?
Israel’s High Court of Justice is scheduled to hear, in late September, a petition from human rights activists against the continued arms sales to Myanmar.
In a preliminary response issued in March, the Defense Ministry argued that the court has no standing in the matter, which it called “clearly diplomatic.”
On June 5, in answer to a parliamentary question by Knesset member Tamar Zandberg on weapons sales to Myanmar, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel “subordinates [itself] to the entire enlightened world, that is the Western states, and first of all the United States, the largest arms exporter. We subordinate ourselves to them and maintain the same policy.”
He said the Knesset plenum may not be the appropriate forum for a detailed discussion of the matter and reiterated that Israel complies with “all the accepted guidelines in the enlightened world.”
Lieberman statement was incorrect. The United States and the European Union have imposed an arms embargo on Myanmar. It’s unclear whether the cause was ignorance, and Lieberman is not fully informed about Israel’s arms exports (even though he must approve them), or an attempt at whitewashing.
In terms of history, as well, Lieberman’s claim is incorrect. Israel supported war crimes in Argentina, for example, even when the country was under a U.S. embargo, and it armed the Serbian forces committing massacres in Bosnia despite a United Nations embargo.
The Hateful Monk
▻http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/08/31/the-hateful-monk-venerable-w
Schroeder, an Iranian-born Swiss filmmaker, has spent decades documenting the morally despicable. His “Trilogy of Evil” began in 1974 with General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait, a character study of the Ugandan dictator. The second installment, Terror’s Advocate (2007), was on the French-Algerian defense lawyer Jacques Vergès, whose clients have included Klaus Barbie, Carlos the Jackal, the Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan, and the Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy. Wirathu is Schroeder’s final subject, and, for him, the most terrifying. “I am afraid to call him Wirathu because even his name scares me,” he said in a recent interview with Agence France-Presse. “I just call him W.”
The film charts Wirathu’s rise from provincial irrelevance in Kyaukse to nationwide rabble-rouser. It centers on the crucial moments of his budding ethno-nationalism, such as in 1997, when he says his eyes were “finally opened” to the “Muslims’ intentions” after reading a pamphlet entitled In Fear of Our Race Disappearing, which appeared in print by an unknown author; or 2003, when he delivered a chilling sermon—caught on camera—against Muslim “kalars” (kalar is the equivalent of “nigger”). “I can’t stand what they do to us,” he says to rapturous applause. “As soon as I give the signal, get ready to follow me…I need to plan the operation well, like the CIA or Mossad, for it to be effective…I will make sure they will have no place to live.” One month later, in Kyaukse, eleven Muslims were killed, and two mosques and twenty-six houses were burned to the ground. Wirathu was arrested by the military junta for inciting violence, and spent nine years in Mandalay’s Obo prison.
Personnellement j’ai trouvé ce film mal fait alors que L’avocat de la terreur était beaucoup mieux.
De bonnes intentions ne font pas un bon film. C’est vrai qu’il est important de parler de ce qu’il se passe en Birmanie mais là on a l’impression que c’est fait à la va-vite, qu’on survole le sujet. Le montage est pas terrible en plus. Un peu comme si c’était destiné à passer sur les chaînes de télé à une heure de grande écoute (bon j’exagère un peu là, à une heure de grande écoute les musulmans ont toujours le même rôle donc c’est pas possible).
@aude_v, ah oui effectivement. Ton analyse est beaucoup plus précise, j’ai pas pris la peine d’en faire autant et moi j’ai échappé aux punaises de plancher lol
C’est vrai que je n’ai pas appris grand chose et j’avais oublié la voix off, qui je dois dire, m’a pas mal agacée sans que je ne sache vraiment pourquoi.
J’ai pas trop aimé non plus le fait de centrer les choses à ce point sur W parce que la haine des musulmans en Birmanie ne se résume pas à lui. Il n’aurait pas le pouvoir de transformer un peuple ouvert et sans préjugé à un peuple de génocidaires en puissance. Quel est le terreau ?
Et puis dernière chose, je ne supporte pas qu’on compare à chaque fois les « méchants » à Hitler. C’est vraiment tarte à la crème et ça bloque toute analyse politique. Voilà, une fois qu’on a dit ça, tous les occidentaux poussent des cris d’indignation en disant « mais c’est horrible ! » et on n’est pas plus avancé.
Here’s the list of military weapons Trump will now allow police departments to receive, virtually free of charge.
Recommendations Pursuant toEXECUTIVE ORDER 13688
Federal Support for Local Law Enforcement Equipment Acquisition
Law Enforcement Equipment Working Group
▻https://www.bja.gov/publications/LEEWG_Report_Final.pdf
Trump is ending restrictions that limit the military from giving surplus gear to police
▻http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-military-gear-20170828-story.html
President Trump moved Monday to again allow the Pentagon to distribute surplus armored vehicles, grenade launchers and large-caliber weapons to local police, his latest reversal of an Obama-era policy intended to stop militarization of law enforcement.
Trump signed an executive order reversing the limits that President Obama had imposed after heavily armed police had used military equipment to quell street protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.
Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who has sought to restore tough-on-crime policies and remove what he sees as shackles on law enforcement, told a police union Monday that Obama’s restrictions “went too far.”
Trump’s order, he told the group, "will ensure that you can get the lifesaving gear that you need to do your job and send a strong message that we will not allow criminal activity, violence, and lawlessness to become the new normal.”
Xbox: Announcing our exclusives too early has been a mistake
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-25-xbox-announcing-our-exclusives-too-early-has-been-a-mistak
Shannon Loftis, general manager for Microsoft Studios #Publishing, said she regrets that Crackdown 3 was announced years in advance
After Barcelona attack, Trump said we should study John J. Pershing. Here’s what Trump got wrong. - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/08/18/after-barcelona-attack-trump-said-to-study-general-pershing-heres-wh
A sordid tale of General John J. Pershing executing Muslim insurgents in the Philippines at the turn of the century is a favorite of President Trump.
“They were having terrorism problems, just like we do,” Trump told a throng of cheering supporters in South Carolina in February 2016.
“[Pershing] caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pigs’ blood — you heard that, right? He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said: You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem.”
It’s a story Trump has repeated, and echoed again Thursday after what authorities have called a terrorist attack in Barcelona that killed at least 13 people and left many more wounded when a driver smashed his van onto a busy sidewalk.
“Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” he tweeted.
Brian M. Linn, a history professor at Texas A&M University, did just that nearly two decades ago when he published “Guardians of Empire,” a book on the U.S. military presence in Asia from 1902 to 1940.
His verdict on Trump’s claim?
“There is absolutely no evidence this occurred,” he told The Washington Post.
#fake_news !
suivent détails sur l’affaire, son invention (ou ré-invention) après 2001 et autres horreurs commises par les états-uniens lors de la répression de l’insurrection aux Philippines après la conquête de 1898.
Other atrocities were committed by U.S. forces during the conflict. After a garrison of Army soldiers was overrun and massacred, a unit of Marines was dispatched in September 1902 to root out insurgents on the island of Samar on the central coast. Major Little Waller, who led the Marine unit, arrived from China and was unfamiliar with the terrain. Fever overtook him, his men panicked and the Filipino porters carrying his equipment mutinied.
Eleven porters were executed in a remote area, but news of the act quickly spread. “Dead men tell no tales, but they leave an awful smell” became a common American saying afterward, Linn said. Waller was later acquitted in a court-martial.
How the Nigerian Left imploded
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/08/how-the-nigerian-left-imploded
In the history of democratic transitions in Africa – whether from military, one-party, civilian or multi-party rule – Nigeria’s experience presents an interesting dimension. First, the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida handpicked the parties that would contest the first democratic elections on June 12th, 1993 after many years of dictatorship. Second, with the exception…
Internet Makes White Supremacists Regret Participating In #Charlottesville Violence
▻http://secondnexus.com/politics-and-economics/internet-makes-white-supremacists-regret-participating-charlottesville-
A #Twitter account called Yes, You’re Racist has been publicly outing white supremacists who attended “Unite the Right” demonstrations following a decision by the city of Charlottesville to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. The user of the account asked followers to send the names and social media profiles of anyone they recognized at the protests.
[...]
Yes, You’re Racist @YesYoureRacist
UPDATE : Cole White, the first person I exposed, no longer has a job ?♂️ #GoodNightColeWhite #ExposeTheAltRight #Charlottesville
North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/asia/north-korea-missiles-ukraine-factory.html
North Korea’s success in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears able to reach the United States was made possible by black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines probably from a Ukrainian factory with historical ties to Russia’s missile program, according to an expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies.
The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years, according to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Such a degree of aid to North Korea from afar would be notable because President Trump has singled out only China as the North’s main source of economic and technological support. He has never blamed Ukraine or Russia, though his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, made an oblique reference to both China and Russia as the nation’s “principal economic enablers” after the North’s most recent ICBM launch last month.
Analysts who studied photographs of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents.
Those engines were linked to only a few former Soviet sites. Government investigators and experts have focused their inquiries on a missile factory in #Dnipro, #Ukraine, on the edge of the territory where Russia is fighting a low-level war to break off part of Ukraine. During the Cold War, the factory made the deadliest missiles in the Soviet arsenal, including the giant SS-18. It remained one of Russia’s primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence.
But since Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed from power in 2014, the state-owned factory, known as #Yuzhmash, has fallen on hard times. The Russians canceled upgrades of their nuclear fleet. The factory is underused, awash in unpaid bills and low morale. Experts believe it is the most likely source of the engines that in July powered the two ICBM tests, which were the first to suggest that North Korea has the range, if not necessarily the accuracy or warhead technology, to threaten American cities.
“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine — probably illicitly,” Mr. Elleman said in an interview. “The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”
Yuzhmash - Wikipedia #Ioujmach
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzhmash
Today
In addition to production facilities in Dnipro, Pivdenne Production Association includes the Pavlohrad Mechanical Plant, which specialized in producing solid-fuel missiles. Pivdenmash’s importance was further bolstered by its links to Ukraine’s former President Leonid Kuchma, who worked at Pivdenmash between 1975 and 1992. He was the plant’s general manager from 1986 to 1991.
In February 2015, following a year of strained relations, Russia announced that it would sever its “joint program with Ukraine to launch Dnepr rockets and [was] no longer interested in buying Ukrainian Zenit boosters, deepening problems for [Ukraine’s] space program and its struggling Yuzhmash factory.”
The firm imposed a two-month unpaid vacation on its workers in January 2015. With the loss of Russian business the only hope for the company was increased international business which seemed unlikely in the time frame available. Bankruptcy seemed certain as of February 2015. As of October 2015, the company was over 4 months late on payroll. The employees worked only once per week, the last space related product were shipped in early 2014. 2014 revenues (in severely depreciated Ukrainian Hrivnas) are 4 times less than 2011.
… et en français #OKB-586
►https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_d'études_Ioujnoïe
Au sein du groupe industriel Pivdenne
Outre les Usines Sud de Dnipropetrovsk, la Sté Pivdenne possède les Ateliers de Mécanique de Pavlohrad, spécialisés dans les missiles à propergols solides. L’importance du groupe PivdenMach n’est pas sans rapport avec l’ascension politique de son ancien directeur (de 1986 à 1992), Leonid Koutchma, embauché comme ingénieur en 1975 et qui fut le directeur-général des Ateliers du Sud jusqu’en 1992. Celui-ci devient par la suite Premier ministre de l’Ukraine puis président de l’Ukraine de 1994 à 2005.
Shaitani Dracula : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
▻https://archive.org/details/ShaitaniDraculaMP4
Shaitani Dracula is an ultra low budget Indian horror film, directed by Harinam Singh. This is a truly weird movie that well deserves the many World’s Worst Movie nominations it has received from critics. Harinam Singh has been called the Ed Wood of India. Information is quite scarce about this film online- it is usually listed as having been made in 2006, but that doesn’t seem right, somehow. Dracula, played by the director, is a fat guy with a Saddam Hussein mustache, dressed up like General Custer. Although this movie has many unintentionally hilarious moments, my favorite part has got to be the repeated shots of a vampire girl “flying”. She’s wearing dollar-store fangs, cardboard-cutout wings, and is waving her arms. Although we’re supposed to think she’s flying, it’s painfully obvious that she’s standing on a rolling office chair, flapping her arms in a desperate attempt to avoid falling off. It’s a memorable sight. Shaitani Dracula stars nobody you ever heard of, has grade Z Minus picture quality, and is in unsubtitled Hindi. Watch it anyway- you won’t be disappointed. This is recommended to fans of cult movies and psychotronic cinema.
The U.S. war crime North Korea won’t forget - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-north-korea-wont-forget/2015/03/20/fb525694-ce80-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html
The story dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North. It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force, whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions.
The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.