Can a video game prevent domestic violence ?
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-10-26-can-a-video-game-prevent-domestic-violence
We speak to Professor Adele Jones about her ongoing work to tackle abuse and the attitudes that lead to it
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Brazilian media report that police are entering university classrooms to interrogate professors
In advance of this Sunday’s second-round presidential election between far-right politician Jair #Bolsonaro and center-left candidate Fernando Haddad, Brazilian media are reporting that Brazilian police have been staging raids, at times without warrants, in universities across the country this week. In these raids, police have been questioning professors and confiscating materials belonging to students and professors.
The raids are part a supposed attempt to stop illegal electoral advertising. Brazilian election law prohibits electoral publicity in public spaces. However, many of the confiscated materials do not mention candidates. Among such confiscated materials are a flag for the Universidade Federal Fluminense reading “UFF School of Law - Anti-Fascist” and flyers titled “Manifest in Defense of Democracy and Public Universities.”
For those worrying about Brazilian democracy, these raids are some of the most troubling signs yet of the problems the country faces. They indicate the extremes of Brazilian political polarization: Anti-fascist and pro-democracy speech is now interpreted as illegal advertising in favor of one candidate (Fernando Haddad) and against another (Jair Bolsonaro). In the long run, the politicization of these two terms will hurt support for the idea of democracy, and bolster support for the idea of fascism.
In the short run, the raids have even more troublesome implications. Warrantless police raids in university classrooms to monitor professor speech have worrisome echoes of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime — particularly when the speech the raids are seeking to stop is not actually illegal.
Perhaps the most concerning point of all is that these raids are happening before Bolsonaro takes office. They have often been initiated by complaints from Bolsonaro supporters. All of this suggests that if Bolsonaro wins the election — as is widely expected — and seeks to suppress the speech of his opponents, whom he has called “red [i.e., Communist] criminals,” he may have plenty of willing helpers.
▻https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2018/10/26/18029696/brazilian-police-interrogate-professors
#université #extrême_droite #Brésil #police #it_has_begun
Je crois que je vais commencer à utiliser un nouveau tag, qui est aussi le nom d’un réseau : #scholars_at_risk-
Brésil : à peine élu, Jair Bolsonaro commence la chasse aux opposants de gauche
Les universités dans le viseur
Enfin, toujours pour lutter contre l’opposition à gauche, Jair Bolsonaro entend faire pression sur les professeurs d’université qui parleraient de politique pendant leurs cours.
Le président élu a récemment scandalisé une partie du monde éducatif en accusant des professeurs, cités avec leurs noms et prénoms, de défendre les régimes de Cuba et de Corée du Nord devant leurs élèves, dans une vidéo diffusée sur Internet.
Et pour y remédier, il compte installer des pancartes devant les salles de cours pour appeler les étudiants à dénoncer leurs professeurs par le biais d’une « hotline » téléphonique dédiée à la question.
▻https://www.bfmtv.com/international/bresil-a-peine-elu-jair-bolsonaro-commence-la-chasse-aux-opposants-de-gauche-
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Au Brésil, vague de répression dans les universités à la veille du second tour
Quelques jours avant le second tour de l’élection présidentielle brésilienne, qui voit s’affronter le candidat d’extrême droite Jair Bolsonaro et le candidat du Parti des travailleurs (PT) Fernando Haddad, les campus universitaires du pays ont fait face à une vague inédite de répression de la liberté d’expression. Jeudi 25 octobre, la police a investi 27 universités, à la demande des tribunaux électoraux, dont les juges sont chargés de faire respecter les règles de communication et de propagande électorales des partis en lice. Les forces de police étaient à la recherche de supposé matériel de propagande électorale illégale. En fait, ces opérations ont visé des banderoles antifascistes, de soutien à la démocratie, un manifeste en soutien à l’université publique, des débats et des cours sur la dictature, la démocratie et les « fakes news » – ces mensonges ayant été largement diffusés pendant la campagne, en particulier par l’extrême-droite… [1]
À Rio, une juge a ainsi fait enlever une banderole du fronton du bâtiment de la faculté de droit de l’université fédérale Fluminense (UFF), sur laquelle était inscrit, autour du symbole antifasciste du double drapeau rouge et noir, « Droit UFF antifasciste ». À l’université de l’État de Rio, les agents électoraux ont retiré une banderole en hommage à Marielle Franco, l’élue municipale du parti de gauche PSOL assassinée en pleine rue en mars dernier.
220 000 messages de haine en quatre jours contre une journaliste
Dans une université du Pará, quatre policiers militaires sont entrés sur le campus pour interroger un professeur sur « son idéologie ». L’enseignant avait abordé la question des fake news dans un cours sur les médias numériques. Une étudiante s’en est sentie offensée, alléguant une « doctrine marxiste », et l’a dit à son père, policier militaire. Une enquête du journal la Folha de São Paulo a pourtant révélé mi-octobre que des entreprises qui soutiennent le candidat d’extrême droite avaient acheté les services d’entreprises de communication pour faire envoyer en masse des fausses nouvelles anti-Parti des travailleurs directement sur les numéros whatsapp – une plateforme de messagerie en ligne – des Brésiliens. L’auteure de l’enquête, la journaliste Patricia Campos Melo, et le quotidien de São Paulo, ont ensuite reçu 220 000 messages de haine en quatre jours ! [2] Le journal a demandé à la police fédérale de lancer une enquête.
Mais ce sont des conférences et des débats sur la dictature militaire et le fascisme qui ont pour l’instant été interdits. C’est le cas d’un débat public intitulé « Contre la fascisme, pour la démocratie », qui devait avoir lieu à l’université fédérale de Rio Grande do Sul (la région de Porto Alegre). Devaient y participer l’ex-candidat du parti de gauche PSOL au premier tour de la présidentielle, Guilherme Boulos, un ancien ministre issu du Parti des travailleurs, des députés fédéraux du PT et du PSOL. « J’ai donné des cours et des conférences dans des universités en France, en Angleterre, au Portugal, en Espagne, en Allemagne, en Argentine, et ici, même pendant la dictature. Aujourd’hui, je suis censuré dans l’État, le Rio Grande do Sul, que j’ai moi-même gouverné. Le fascisme grandit », a réagi l’un des députés, Tarso Genro, sur twitter.
Une banderole « moins d’armes, plus de livres » jugée illégale
Dans le Paraíba, les agents du tribunal électoral se sont introduits dans l’université pour retirer une banderole où était simplement inscrit « moins d’armes, plus de livres ». « Cette opération de la justice électorale dans les universités du pays pour saisir du matériel en défense de la démocratie et contre le fascisme est absurde. Cela rappelle les temps sombres de la censure et de l’invasion des facultés », a écrit Guilherme Boulos, le leader du PSOL, sur twitter, ajoutant : « Le parti de la justice a formé une coalition avec le PSL », le parti de Bolsonaro. « De telles interventions à l’intérieur de campus au cours d’une campagne électorale sont inédites. Une partie de l’appareil d’État se prépare au changement de régime », a aussi alerté l’historienne française, spécialiste du Brésil, Maud Chirio, sur sa page Facebook.
Dimanche dernier, dans une allocution filmée diffusée pour ses supporters rassemblés à São Paulo, Jair Bolsonaro a proféré des menaces claires à l’égard de ses opposants. « Ou vous partez en exil ou vous partez en prison », a-il dit, ajoutant « nous allons balayer ces bandits rouges du Brésil », et annonçant un « nettoyage jamais vu dans l’histoire de ce pays ». Il a précisé qu’il allait classer le Mouvements des paysans sans Terre (MST) et le Mouvement des travailleurs sans toit (MTST) comme des organisations terroristes, et menacé Fernando Haddad de l’envoyer « pourrir en prison aux côtés de Lula ».
►https://www.bastamag.net/Au-Bresil-vague-de-repression-dans-les-universites-a-la-veille-du-second-t -
We deplore this attack on freedom of expression in Brazil’s universities
107 international academics react to social media reports that more than 20 universities in Brazil have been invaded by military police in recent days, with teaching materials confiscated on ideological grounds
Reports have emerged on social media that more than 20 universities in Brazil have been subjected in recent days to: invasions by military police; the confiscation of teaching materials on ideological grounds; and the suppression of freedom of speech and expression, especially in relation to anti-fascist history and activism.
As academics, researchers, graduates, students and workers at universities in the UK, Europe and further afield, we deplore this attack on freedom of expression in Brazil’s universities, which comes as a direct result of the campaign and election of far-right President Bolsonaro.
Academic autonomy is a linchpin not only of independent and objective research, but of a functioning democracy, which should be subject to scrutiny and informed, evidence-based investigation and critique.
We call on co-workers, colleagues and students to decry this attack on Brazil’s universities in the name of Bolsonaro’s wider militaristic, anti-progressive agenda. We will not stand by as this reactionary populist attacks the pillars of Brazil’s democracy and education system. We will campaign vigorously in whatever capacity we can with activists, educators and lawmakers in Brazil to ensure that its institutions can operate without the interference of this new – and hopefully short-lived – government.
Dr William McEvoy, University of Sussex, UK (correspondent)
Dr Will Abberley, University of Sussex
Nannette Aldred, University of Sussex
Patricia Alessandrini, Stanford University, USA
Dr Michael Alexander, University of Glasgow
Steven Allen, Birkbeck, University of London
Dr Katherine Angel, Birkbeck, University of London
Pedro Argenti, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Nick Awde, International Editor, The Stage newspaper, London
Professor Ian Balfour, York University, Toronto, Canada
Lennart Balkenhol, University of Melbourne, Australia
Nehaal Bajwa, University of Sussex
Dr Louis Bayman, University of Southampton
Mark Bergfeld, former NUS NEC (2010-2012)
Professor Tim Bergfelder, University of Southampton
Dr Patricia Pires Boulhosa, University of Cambridge
Dr Maud Bracke, University of Glasgow
Max Brookman-Byrne, University of Lincoln
Dr Conrad Brunström, Maynooth University, Ireland
Dr Christopher Burlinson, Jesus College, Cambridge
Professor Martin Butler, University of Sussex
Professor Gavin Butt, University of Sussex
Cüneyt Çakirlar, Nottingham Trent University
Guilherme Carréra, University of Westminster
Geoffrey Chew, Royal Holloway, University of London
Dr Maite Conde, University of Cambridge
Dr Luke Cooper, Anglia Ruskin University, UK, and Institute of Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Dr Sue Currell, University of Sussex
Professor Dimitris Dalakoglou, Vrije University, Amsterdam, Netherlands
William Dalziel, University of Sussex
Dr April de Angelis, Royal Holloway, University of London
Dr Olga Demetriou, Durham University
Dr Stephanie Dennison, University of Leeds
Dr Steffi Doebler, University of Liverpool
Dr Sai Englert, SOAS University of London
James Erskine, University of Sussex and Birkbeck, University of London
Professor Martin Paul Eve, Birkbeck, University of London
John Fallas, University of Leeds
Dr Lynne Fanthome, Staffordshire University
Dr Hannah Field, University of Sussex
Dr Adrian Garvey, Birkbeck, University of London
Dr Laura Gill, University of Sussex
Dr Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge
Bhavini Goyate, University of Sussex
Dr Craig Haslop, University of Liverpool
Professor Björn Heile, University of Glasgow
Dr Phil Hutchinson, Manchester Metropolitan University
Professor Martin Iddon, University of Leeds
Dr Eleftheria Ioannidou, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Dr Chris Kempshall, University of Sussex
Andrew Key, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Professor Laleh Khalili, SOAS University of London
Dr Theodore Koulouris, University of Brighton
Professor Maria Lauret, University of Sussex
Professor Vicky Lebeau, University of Sussex
Professor James Livesey, University of Dundee, Scotland
Professor Luke Martell, University of Sussex
Dr N Gabriel Martin, Lebanese American University, Lebanon
Wolfgang Marx, University College, Dublin, Ireland
Andy Medhurst, University of Sussex
Professor Philippe Meers, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Dr Shamira A Meghani, University of Cambridge
Niccolo Milanese, CESPRA EHESS, Paris, France and PUC Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Dr Ian Moody, CESEM – Universidade Nova, Lisbon
Professor Lucia Naqib, University of Reading
Dr Catherine Packham, University of Sussex
Professor Dimitris Papanikolaou, University of Oxford
Mary Parnwell, University of Sussex
Professor Deborah Philips, University of Brighton
Dr Chloe Porter, University of Sussex
Dr Jason Price, University of Sussex
Dr Duška Radosavljević, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
Francesca Reader, University of Sussex and University of Brighton
Naida Redgrave, University of East London
Professor Nicholas Ridout, Queen Mary, University of London
Professor Lucy Robinson, University of Sussex
Dr Kirsty Rolfe, University of Sussex
Dr Joseph Ronan, University of Brighton
Dr Michael Rowland, University of Sussex
Dr Zachary Rowlinson, University of Sussex
Professor Nicholas Royle, University of Sussex
Dr Eleanor Rycroft, University of Bristol
Dr Jason Scott-Warren, University of Cambridge
Dr Deborah Shaw, University of Portsmouth
Dr Lisa Shaw, University of Liverpool
Kat Sinclair, University of Sussex
Sandrine Singleton-Perrin, University of Essex
Despina Sinou, University of Paris 13 – Sorbonne Paris Cité, France
Dave Smith, University of Hertfordshire
John Snijders, Durham University
Dr Samuel Solomon, University of Sussex
Dr Arabella Stanger, University of Sussex
Professor Rob Stone, University of Birmingham
Bernard Sufrin, Emeritus Fellow, Dept of Computer Science, University of Oxford
Dr Natasha Tanna, University of Cambridge
Professor Lyn Thomas, University of Sussex
Simon Thorpe, University of Warwick
Dr Gavan Titley, Maynooth University, Ireland
Dr Pamela Thurschwell, University of Sussex
Dr Dominic Walker, University of Sussex
Dr Ed Waller, University of Surrey and University of Portsmouth
Dr Kiron Ward, University of Sussex
Helen Wheatley, University of Warwick
Ian Willcock, University of Herfordshire
Professor Gregory Woods, Nottingham Trent University
Dr Tom F Wright, University of Sussex
Dr Heba Youssef, University of Brighton▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/01/we-deplore-this-attack-on-freedom-of-expression-in-brazils-universities
#liberté_d'expression -
Brazil Court Strikes Down Restrictions on University Speech
Brazil´s Supreme Court issued an important decision striking down restrictions on political speech on university campuses in a unanimous ruling yesterday. Meanwhile, president-elect Jair Bolsonaro´s allies in Congress are pressing ahead with efforts to restrict what students and educators can discuss in the classroom.
The court ruling overturned decisions by electoral court judges who recently ordered universities across the country to clamp down on what they considered illegal political campaigning. The orders were spurred by complaints from anonymous callers and, in a few cases, by members of conservative groups.
For example, at Grande Dourados Federal University, court officials suspended a public event against fascism, according to the student group that organized it. At Campina Grande Federal University, police allegedly seized copies of a pamphlet titled “Manifesto in defense of democracy and public universities” and hard drives, said a professors´ association.
At Rio de Janeiro State University, police ordered the removal of a banner honoring Marielle Franco, a black lesbian human rights defender and councilwoman murdered in March, despite not having a judicial order.
The attorney general, Raquel Dodge, asked the Supreme Court to rule the electoral court judges´ decisions unconstitutional, and Supreme Court justice Cármen Lúcia Rocha issued an injunction stopping them. The full court upheld that decision on October 31.
“The only force that must enter universities is the force of ideas,” said Rocha.
“The excessive and illegitimate use of force by state agents … echoes somber days in Brazilian history,” said Justice Rosa Weber, referring to Brazil´s 1964 – 1985 military dictatorship.
The ruling comes as Bolsonaro, who remains in Congress until he assumes the presidency on January 1, and his allies push a bill that would prohibit teachers from promoting their own opinions in the classroom or using the terms “gender” or “sexual orientation,” and would order that sex and religious education be framed around “family values.”
A state representative-elect from Bolsonaro´s party has even called on students to film and report teachers who make “political-partisan or ideological statements.” Bolsonaro made a similar call in 2016. State prosecutors have filed a civil action against the representative-elect, alleging she instituted “an illegal service for the political and ideological control of teaching activities.”
In his long career in Congress, Bolsonaro has endorsed abusive practices that undermine the rule of law, defended the dictatorship, and has been a vocal proponent of bigotry.
More than ever, Brazil needs its judiciary to defend human rights within and outside the classroom.
▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/01/brazil-court-strikes-down-restrictions-university-speech
#cour_suprême #justice -
Présidentielle au Brésil : relents de dictature militaire
Présidentielle au Brésil : Bolsonaro et le « risque d’un retour à l’ordre autoritaire en Amérique latine »
Porté par plus de deux cents universitaires, responsables politiques et citoyens d’Europe et du Canada, ce manifeste s’inscrit dans un mouvement mondial de soutien à la démocratie face à la violence déchaînée par la candidature de Jair Bolsonaro au Brésil. Il est ouvert aux démocrates de toutes les sensibilités politiques. Face au risque imminent d’un retour à l’ordre autoritaire en Amérique latine, la solidarité internationale est impérative.
Nous, citoyens, intellectuels, militants, personnalités politiques vivant, travaillant et étudiant en Europe et au Canada, exprimons notre vive inquiétude face à la menace imminente de l’élection de Jair Bolsonaro à la présidence du Brésil le 28 octobre 2018.
Le souvenir de la dictature militaire
La victoire de l’extrême droite radicale au Brésil risque de renforcer le mouvement international qui a porté au pouvoir des politiciens réactionnaires et antidémocratiques dans de nombreux pays ces dernières années.
Bolsonaro défend ouvertement le souvenir de la dictature militaire qui a imposé sa loi au Brésil entre 1964 et 1985, ses pratiques de torture et ses tortionnaires. Il méprise le combat pour les droits humains. Il exprime une hostilité agressive envers les femmes, les Afro-descendants, les membres de la communauté LGBT +, les peuples autochtones et les pauvres. Son programme vise à détruire les avancées politiques, économiques, sociales, environnementales et culturelles des quatre dernières décennies, ainsi que l’action menée par les mouvements sociaux et le camp progressiste pour consolider et étendre la démocratie au Brésil.
L’élection de Bolsonaro menace les fragiles institutions démocratiques pour la construction desquelles les Brésilien·ne·s ont pris tant de risques. Son arrivée au pouvoir serait aussi un frein majeur à toute politique internationale ambitieuse en matière de défense de l’environnement et de préservation de la paix.
Premiers signataires : Martine Aubry , maire de Lille, ancienne ministre (PS) ; Luc Boltanski , sociologue, directeur d’études, EHESS ; Peter Burke , historien, professeur émérite à l’université de Cambridge ; Roger Chartier , historien, directeur d’études EHESS/Collège de France ; Mireille Clapot , députée de la Drôme, vice-présidente de la commission des affaires étrangères (LRM) ; Laurence Cohen , sénatrice du Val-de-Marne (PCF) ; Didier Fassin , professeur de sciences sociales, Institute for advanced study, Princeton ; Carlo Ginzburg , professeur émérite à UCLA et à l’Ecole normale supérieure de Pise ; Eva Joly , députée européenne (groupe Verts-ALE) ; Pierre Louault , sénateur d’Indre-et-Loire (UDI) ; Paul Magnette, bourgmestre de Charleroi, ex-ministre président de la Wallonie, ex-président du Parti socialiste belge ; Thomas Piketty , directeur d’études à l’EHESS.
▻http://jennifer-detemmerman.fr/index.php/2018/10/23/presidentielle-au-bresil-relents-de-dictature-militaire
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Une pétition qui a été lancé avant l’élection...
Defend Democracy in Brazil. Say No to Jair BolsonaroDefend Democracy in Brazil,
Say No to Jair Bolsonaro
We, citizens, intellectuals, activists, politicians, people living, working, and studying in Europe and Canada, wish to express our growing alarm at the imminent threat of Jair Bolsonaro’s election to the presidency on October 28, 2018. The potential victory of a far-right radical in Brazil would reinforce a dangerous international trend of extremely reactionary and anti-democratic politicians gaining state power in recent years.
Bolsonaro explicitly defends the Brazilian military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964-85 and praises torture and torturers. He condemns human rights efforts. He has expressed aggressive and vile hostility toward women, people of African descent, the LGBT+ community, indigenous people, and the poor. His proposed policies would effectively undo all of the political, social, economic, labor, environmental, and cultural gains of the last four decades, efforts by social movements and progressive politicians to consolidate and expand democracy in Brazil. A Bolsonaro presidency also threatens to undermine the still fragile democratic politics that people throughout Brazil have risked so much to build.
His election would seriously hamper any ambitious international effort for environmental protection, against climate change and for the preservation of peace.
Adapted version of the text « Defend Democracy in Brazil, Say No to Jair Bolsonaro! »
▻https://www.change.org/p/association-pour-la-recherche-sur-le-br%C3%A9sil-en-europe-pour-la-d%C3%A9fe
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What the Numbers Really Tell Us About Living Longer in Retirement
▻https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/903969[...] overall, the study [1] found that Americans are faring worse in a wide range of measures, including infant mortality and low birth weight, injuries and homicides, drug-related deaths, obesity and diabetes, heart disease and chronic lung disease. Many of the conditions sharply reduce the odds of reaching age 50 - and for those who do, the conditions contribute to poorer health and greater illness later in life, the report found.
“If health were an Olympic event, we have been getting beat by lots of other nations,” said Stephen Bezruchka, a professor at the School of Public Health of the University of Washington in Seattle.
The poor performance does not stem only from problems with access to healthcare, he notes. “We tend to confuse health and healthcare,” he said, adding that research shows that medical care accounts for no more than 15 percent of the mortality gap between the United States and other rich countries.
Epidemiologists have documented that societies with less economic equality have worse than average health. Some of this stems from the inability of lower-income households to meet basic needs such as adequate nutrition and shelter. But at the high end of wealth, Bezruchka notes, there is a diminishing-return effect - money can purchase only so much health.
“Those with more income do have lower mortality, but you get a greater return on average health by taking a little from the rich and giving it to the poorer person.”
#santé #inégalités #états-unis
[1] rapport annuel de la Society of Actuaries (SOA): "mortality improvement scale”
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Donald Trump Spell-Check : Why Does Our Leader Insist on Capitalizing ’Country’ ? | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/donald-trump-spell-check-why-does-our-leader-insist-capitalizing-countryTrump’s bizarre spelling choices may seem amusing. But stop laughing: His use of “Country” has a hidden meaning
By Chauncey DeVega / Salon
October 26, 2018, 3:06 AM GMTThere is nothing funny about Donald Trump. Like other autocrats and political thugs he thrives on being underestimated. Last week there was another example of this error by Donald Trump’s detractors and others who oppose him.
On Twitter, his preferred means of communication, Donald Trump proclaimed last week:
When referring to the USA, I will always capitalize the word Country!
Trump was mocked by comedians on late night television for this supposed gaffe. Other prominent voices pointed to Trump’s “misspelling” as further proof that he is a dolt and a fool. By implication, his voters are fools and dolts as well. This version of liberal Schadenfreude is a defining feature in the Age of Trump.
It is small comfort which ignores the fact that Donald Trump’s grammatical errors and odd spelling are — as admitted by White House insiders some months ago — strategic choices designed to make him appear more “folksy” and “authentic.” Trump’s faux-populist appeal depends upon his ability to relate to his supporters by sharing their grievances and hostility toward those liberals and progressives they perceive as looking down on “real Americans.”
To understand Donald Trump, one must begin with the fact that he is an American fascist — an autocrat and authoritarian by instinct, behavior, and values. This is the nucleus of his being. This is the prism through which to best understand Donald Trump.
I asked several leading experts on fascism and authoritarianism to help me understand Trump’s conversion of “Country” into a proper noun.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, author of the forthcoming book “Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall,” and featured commentator in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9”:
Trump’s statement that he’ll capitalize the word Country represents yet another attempt to polarize the American population and set up one half as “moral,” "just" and politically and, above all, racially acceptable. It is a technique used by every authoritarian leader, often with success. Some may look at this tweet as just another quirky Trump language proposition, but nothing he does is accidental, including his capitalization strategies.
Richard Frankel, professor of modern German History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, an expert on the rise of Nazism in Germany whose work has also been featured in Newsweek and on the History News Network:
I see it as another way of saying “America First.” He’s putting the emphasis on country, on nation, on America before anything else. He’s contrasting himself and his followers with those who see America as part of a much larger community of nations, in which cooperation, not confrontation, is what is what’s best for everyone. Those who see it his way are the “real Americans.” Those who don’t are the enemy. It’s the pitting of “America Firsters” against the dreaded “Globalists.” It’s another way to divide the country — inclusion through exclusion.
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of “How Propaganda Works” as well as the new book “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them”:
Via linguistic style and repetition, Trump is inculcating his followers with an ethic of authoritarian nationalism. Organized religion is a local authoritarian structure; the authority of God is signaled linguistically, by capitalizing “God” or not completely spelling out the word. According to Trump, like “God,” "Country" should be capitalized. This is a linguistic means of signalizing the quasi-religious authority of the nation. And since the nation is not a person, or even a person-like figure, that religious authority should be transferred to its leader, Donald Trump.
It (again) reminded me of this quote from Victor Klemperer’s “Language of the Third Reich”: “Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously … language does not simply write and think for me, it also increasingly dictates my feelings and governs my entire spiritual being the more unquestioningly and unconsciously I abandon myself to it.”
Several days after Trump made his declaration about the correct spelling of our “Country,” he announced that he was a proud “nationalist.” Because Trump is a racial authoritarian — and a student of “alt-right” guru Steve Bannon as well as White House adviser Stephen Miller, principal architect of his nativist immigration policy — his brand of nationalism is in no sense “neutral.” It is in reality white nationalism, whether called by that name or not. Donald Trump may evade or deflect from that fact. But it is true nonetheless. This is evident through his repeated and overt hostility toward nonwhites and Muslims.
An embrace of nationalism by Donald Trump fits neatly within his logic for capitalizing the word “Country” when referring to the United States of America.
Benjamin Hett, professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of “Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery” as well as the new book “The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic”:
This is language I do not remember hearing from any other president. And this is where the significance of “Country” comes in. Trump the “nationalist” with his capital C in “Country” uses “globalist” as a pejorative. He is step by step dismantling the international infrastructure which the United States created after the Second World War to maintain a democratic and prosperous global order. Just recently he has begun dismantling the key INF treaty with Russia, another horrifically dangerous step. This is all reminiscent of the nationalism of the German administrations of the early 1930s, up to and including Hitler — turn away from the world, turn away from crucial international connections, turn away from peace and democracy. We know, or should know, that this cannot and will not lead anywhere good.
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Some people laugh when they are terrified. It is not that the situation is funny; rather, their brains process existential dread through the physical act of laughter. This is why so many of us laugh at Donald Trump’s supposed gaffes and misspellings, and his other crude and boorish behavior. Donald Trump’s America is a real thing. We are stuck in it and many of us still cannot believe this has all come to pass. In the final analysis, laughter provides some short-term relief during the walk to the political gallows. The laughter feels good. The noose is still waiting.
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Revealed: Israel’s cyber-spy industry helps world dictators hunt dissidents and gays
Haaretz investigation spanning 100 sources in 15 countries reveals Israel has become a leading exporter of tools for spying on civilians. Dictators around the world – even in countries with no formal ties to Israel – use them eavesdrop on human rights activists, monitor emails, hack into apps and record conversations
By Hagar Shezaf and Jonathan Jacobson Oct 20, 2018▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israel-s-cyber-spy-industry-aids-dictators-hunt-dissident
During the summer of 2016, Santiago Aguirre divided his time between part-time university lecturing and working for an organization that helps locate missing people. Mexico was then in the news internationally because of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall on the American border with its southern neighbor. However, for Aguirre, a Mexican human rights activist, the problems of the present were far more pressing than any future wall. At the time, he was in the midst of a lengthy investigation to solve the mystery of the disappearance and presumed murder of 43 students in the city of Iguala two years before. It was becoming increasingly clear that his findings were incompatible with the results of the investigation conducted by the government.
Aguirre wasn’t concerned when he received a series of text messages containing broken links. “Please help me with my brother, the police took him only because he is a teacher,” one message read. And another: “Professor, I encountered a problem. I am sending back my thesis, which is based on your dissertation, so that you can give me your comments.” The messages looked no different from many of the legitimate messages he received every day as part of his work. And therein lay the secret of their power. When Aguirre clicked on the links, however, he was inadvertently turning his smartphone into a surveillance device in the hands of the government.
To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz“Those text messages had information that was personal,” Aguirre notes, “the kind of information that could make the message interesting for me so I would click. It wasn’t until later that I actually thought – well, it is actually pretty weird that I received three messages with broken links.”
Mexican human rights activist Santiago Aguirre, left, and colleague Mario Patron. Centro Prodh
The discovery had a brutally chilling effect on the work of his organization. For the first time, he says, speaking with Haaretz by phone, he really and truly feared that every step he took was being watched, and that perhaps his family too was under surveillance.
“Over the past 10 years, we have a figure of around 30,000 people who disappeared” in Mexico, Aguirre explains. “Many places in Mexico are controlled by organized crime. It has under its influence and power the authorities of some regions of the country, so they use the police to detain and then disappear people that they think are the enemy. I can tell you of many examples in which the Mexican military, for example, has presented the work human rights defenders as [benefiting] the drug cartels and organized crime. So there’s a pattern of thinking about the human rights sector in Mexico as a sector that needs to be surveilled.”The public revelation of the fact that Aguirre was under surveillance was made possible by cooperation between Mexican organizations and the Canadian research institute Citizen Lab. It turned out that Aguirre was one of a group of 22 journalists, lawyers, politicians, researchers and activists who were being tracked by local authorities. An examination of Aguirre’s telephone revealed that the links in the text messages were related to Pegasus spyware, which the authorities were using.
But how did Pegasus get to Mexico? The trail of the malware led to Herzliya Pituah, the prosperous Tel Aviv suburb that is one of the major hubs of Israel’s high-tech industry. It’s there, in a narrow stretch of land between Israel’s coastal highway and the Mediterranean Sea, that NSO Group, the company that developed this Trojan-horse program, has its headquarters. Pegasus, which Forbes magazine called “the world’s most invasive mobile spy kit” in 2016, allows almost unlimited monitoring, even commandeering, of cellphones: to discover the phone’s location, eavesdrop on it, record nearby conversations, photograph those in the vicinity of the phone, read and write text messages and emails, download apps and penetrate apps already in the phone, and access photographs, clips, calendar reminders and the contacts list. And all in total secrecy.
Pegasus’ invasive capability was rapidly transformed into dazzling economic success. In 2014, less than five years after entering the world from a space in a chicken coop in Bnei Zion, a moshav in the country’s center, 70 percent of the company’s holdings were purchased for $130 million. The buyer was Francisco Partners, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, which specializes in high-tech investments. That deal followed Francisco Partners’ earlier purchases of Israeli firms Ex Libris and Dmatek, According to Reuters, a year after the NSO takeover, Francisco Partners enjoyed a profit of $75 million.
But the big money of NSO is only a small part of the big picture. Within a few years, the Israeli espionage industry has become the spearhead of the global commerce in surveillance tools and communications interception. Today, every self-respecting governmental agency that has no respect for the privacy of its citizens, is equipped with spy capabilities created in Herzliya Pituah. -
How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion | Science | Smithsonian
►https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-tuberculosis-shaped-victorian-fashion-180959029By the mid-1800s, tuberculosis had reached epidemic levels in Europe and the United States. The disease, now known to be infectious, attacks the lungs and damages other organs. Before the advent of antibiotics, its victims slowly wasted away, becoming pale and thin before finally dying of what was then known as consumption.
The Victorians romanticized the disease and the effects it caused in the gradual build to death. For decades, many beauty standards emulated or highlighted these effects. And as scientists gained greater understanding of the disease and how it was spread, the disease continued to keep its hold on fashion.
“Between 1780 and 1850, there is an increasing aestheticization of tuberculosis that becomes entwined with feminine beauty,” says Carolyn Day, an assistant professor of history at Furman University in South Carolina and author of the forthcoming book Consumptive Chic: A History of Fashion, Beauty and Disease, which explores how tuberculosis impacted early 19th century British fashion and perceptions of beauty.
During that time, consumption was thought to be caused by hereditary susceptibility and miasmas, or “bad airs,” in the environment. Among the upper class, one of the ways people judged a woman’s predisposition to tuberculosis was by her attractiveness, Days says. “That’s because tuberculosis enhances those things that are already established as beautiful in women,” she explains, such as the thinness and pale skin that result from weight loss and the lack of appetite caused by the disease.
The 1909 book Tuberculosis: A Treatise by American Authors on Its Etiology, Pathology, Frequency, Semeiology, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Prevention, and Treatment confirms this notion, with the authors noting: “A considerable number of patients have, and have had for years previous to their sickness, a delicate, transparent skin, as well as fine, silky hair.” Sparkling or dilated eyes, rosy cheeks and red lips were also common in tuberculosis patients—characteristics now known to be caused by frequent low-grade fever.
“We also begin to see elements in fashion that either highlight symptoms of the disease or physically emulate the illness,” Day says. The height of this so-called consumptive chic came in the mid-1800s, when fashionable pointed corsets showed off low, waifish waists and voluminous skirts further emphasized women’s narrow middles. Middle- and upper-class women also attempted to emulate the consumptive appearance by using makeup to lighten their skin, redden their lips and color their cheeks pink.
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A Local Food Revolution in Puerto Rico
▻https://foodtank.com/news/2018/10/a-local-food-revolution-in-puerto-ricoThe story of Puerto Rico’s food production is also the story of the island’s own colonial history. Large-scale plantations replaced native farming during Puerto Rico’s days as a Spanish colony, resulting in the consolidation of agricultural land and landholding, as well as the number of crops being grown on it. When the United States took over the island in the wake of the Spanish-American War in 1898, economic restructuring meant that the remaining agricultural activity focused only on cash crops like sugarcane and coffee.
Then, in the 1940s, Congress launched Operation Bootstrap, a campaign to overhaul the Puerto Rican economy that focused on manufacturing and tourism—moving even further away from agriculture. Subsequent tax breaks and economic initiatives to encourage investment in these sectors solidified these moves. Deliberately, over the course of years, an import-driven food system was put in place in Puerto Rico, and all other farming fell by the wayside.
“Puerto Rico’s economy has always been categorized by being an import economy: we produce things we do not consume but then we have to import things we do consume, especially in agriculture,” notes Gladys González-Martínez, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Puerto Rico.
Still, Puerto Rican local farming had been experiencing the beginning stages of a renaissance even before the storm hit, spurred by the economic crisis of 2006. According to statistics provided by the governor’s office, farm income grew 25 percent from 2012 to 2014, while the number of acres under cultivation rose by 50 percent between 2012 and 2016, generating at least 7,000 jobs.
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Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Closer to Medicinal Use (It’s Not Just Your Imagination) - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/science/magic-mushrooms-psilocybin-scheduleiv.htmlResearchers from Johns Hopkins University have recommended that psilocybin, the active compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms, be reclassified for medical use, potentially paving the way for the psychedelic drug to one day treat depression and anxiety and help people stop smoking.
The suggestion to reclassify psilocybin from a Schedule I drug, with no known medical benefit, to a Schedule IV drug, which is akin to prescription sleeping pills, was part of a review to assess the safety and abuse of medically administered psilocybin.
Before the Food and Drug Administration can be petitioned to reclassify the drug, though, it has to clear extensive study and trials, which can take more than five years, the researchers wrote.
The analysis was published in the October print issue of Neuropharmacology, a medical journal focused on neuroscience.
For decades, though, researchers have shunned the study of psychedelics. “In the 1960s, they were on the cutting edge of neuroscience research and understanding how the brain worked,” Dr. Johnson said. “But then it got out of the lab.”
Research stopped, in part, because the use of mind-altering drugs like LSD and mushrooms became a hallmark of hippie counterculture.
The researchers who conducted the new study included Roland R. Griffiths, a professor in the departments of psychiatry and neurosciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who is one of the most prominent researchers on the behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs. The researchers reviewed data going back to the 1940s.
Dr. Johnson said that the F.D.A. had approved a number of trials of psilocybin. If its use is approved for patients, he said, “I see this as a new era in medicine.”
He added, “The data suggests that psychedelics are powerful behavioral agents.” In legal studies, he said, participants are given a capsule with synthetic psilocybin. (They are not given mushrooms to eat, which is how the drug is most often ingested.)
He warned, though, that psilocybin is not a panacea for everyone. In their analysis, the researchers called for strict controls on its use. There are areas of risk, too, for patients with psychotic disorders and anyone who takes high doses of the drug.
#Psychédéliques #Psylocybine #Champignons #Usage_médical #Pharmacie
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A Nobel Prize-winning physicist sold his medal for $765,000 to pay ...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/7807944A Nobel Prize-winning physicist sold his medal for $765,000 to pay medical bills
Only in America. Article word count: 307
HN Discussion: ▻https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18142147 Posted by pseudolus (karma: 1229) Post stats: Points: 116 - Comments: 108 - 2018-10-04T18:05:04Z
#HackerNews #765000 #bills #for #his #medal #medical #nobel #pay #physicist #prize-winning #sold
Article content:
Physicist Leon Lederman sold his 2012 Nobel Prize medal to pay mounting health care bills. Amy Sussman/Getty Images for World Science Festival
Leon Lederman won a Nobel Prize in 1988 for his pioneering physics research.
But in 2015, the physicist, who passed away Wednesday, sold his Nobel Prize medal for $765,000 to pay his mounting medical bills. The University of Chicago professor (...)
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lien propre : ▻https://www.vox.com/health-care/2018/10/4/17936626/leon-lederman-nobel-prize-medical-bills
cf. aussi ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/726759 (apnews.com)
#santé #assurance_maladie #États-Unis
Àma la discussion ici liée chez news.ycombinator.com montre pas mal du mauvais goût.
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#Traugott_Fuchs (1906-1997) : A German Exile in İstanbul
Traugott Fuchs, a professor of German and French literature, painter and writer, left Nazi Germany in 1934 due to his political opposition to the regime and came to İstanbul, where he spent the rest of his life. He is one of the lesser-known intellectuals who emigrated from Nazi Germany to Turkey, but nonetheless, he has left a distinctive imprint on countless generations of Turkish students and academics.
▻http://bogaziciarsivleri.boun.edu.tr/en/exhibition/fuchs.php
#exil #chercheurs #asile #réfugiés #université #histoire #Istanbul #scienceQuand la #Turquie accueillait les chercheurs en exil...
voici le commentaire d’une chercheuse de Turquie, actuellement accueillie en France avec le programme PAUSE :
While I was working at the Boğazici University Archives, I and my colleagues worked on a special collection belong to Traugott Fuchs, a scholar, painter, translator and musician who ran away from the Nazi Germany and found his way in Istanbul. I never thought that one day, many scholars from Turkey will be experiencing something similar…
ping @reka
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Traugott Fuchs
Traugott Fuchs (* 23. November 1906 in Lohr, Elsass; † 21. Juni 1997 in Istanbul / Türkei) war ein deutscher Literaturprofessor, Philologe und Maler in Istanbul. Als Flüchtling aus NS-Deutschland im türkischen Exil trug er maßgeblich zum Aufbau der Lehre in deutscher Sprache an den Istanbuler Universitäten bei.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/A2-selbstbild.JPG/440px-A2-selbstbild.JPG 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/L-06Kinali-Ada.jpg/240px-L-06Kinali-Ada.jpg 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/D04Segelsschiff.JPG/240px-D04Segelsschiff.JPG 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/P-41Junger-Tuerke.jpg/240px-P-41Junger-Tuerke.jpg 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/M-03Hamam-Leben.jpg/231px-M-03Hamam-Leben.jpg 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/A-005Sardes.jpg/240px-A-005Sardes.jpg
▻https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traugott_Fuchs
#peinture #art
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Peter #Gotzsche dénonce l’industrie pharmaceutique - YouTube
Ce médecin danois, lanceur d’alerte sur de nombreux sujets a cofondé Cochrane, organisme indépendant pour organiser l’information sur la recherche médicale, qui était reconnu pour son sérieux et son indépendance.Cependant, il y avait déjà eu un financement de Cochrane controversé en mai dernier par la fondation Gates
▻https://healthimpactnews.com/2018/gates-foundation-buys-cochrane-integrity-for-1-15-million-the-deatEt voilà qu’il y a quelques semaines Gotzsch a été expulsé du conseil de gouvernance. Sur wikipedia :
Quatre membres du conseil de gouvernance ont démissionné à la suite de cela. Certains suspectent que l’organisation a cédé à des pressions de l’industrie pharmaceutiquer. Selon BMJ EBM Spotlight, cette expulsion n’a été possible que grâce à une manœuvre bureaucratique : Peter Gøtzsche a été renvoyé de la salle de conférence avant le vote, ce qui a permis à une minorité, 6 personnes sur les 13 que comportent normalement le conseil d’administration, de voter l’expulsion de Peter Gøtzsche (6 pour, 5 contre, 1 abstention).
Plus d’informations ici, ▻https://www.nouvelles-du-monde.com/collaboration-cochrane-pour-le-dr-peter-gotzsche
Cette décision intervient des semaines après que lui et ses collègues aient sévèrement critiqué une revue Cochrane du vaccin contre le virus du papillome humain (VPH), la décrivant comme incomplète et biaisée.
Gøtzsche a par le passé été un critique virulent du dépistage par #mammographie du #cancer du sein, arguant que les bénéfices sont surestimés et que les risques potentiels sont sous-estimés.
Il a également plaidé contre l’utilisation généralisée des médicaments psychotropes, affirmant qu’ils sont extrêmement nocifs à long terme et n’apportent que peu d’avantages.
Ces dernières années, cependant, il s’est prononcé contre les examens scientifiques du vaccin contre le VPH.
En 2016, son centre a déposé une plainte contre l’Agence européenne des médicaments (EMA) pour son traitement des problèmes de sécurité concernant les vaccins anti-HPV.Suite à cette éviction il a publié une lettre de 3 pages, qu’on peut lire ici ▻http://healthimpactnews.com/2018/the-end-of-scientific-integrity-cochrane-collaboration-expels-crit
I regret to inform you that I have been expelled from membership in the Cochrane Collaboration by the favourable vote of 6 of the 13 members of the Governing Board.
No clear reasoned justification has been given for my expulsion aside from accusing me of causing “disrepute” for the organization.
This is the first time in 25 years that a member has been excluded from membership of Cochrane.
This unprecedented action taken by a minority of the Governing Board is disproportionate and damaging to Cochrane, as well as to public health interests.
As a result of this decision, and a number of broader issues concerning the inadequate governance of Cochrane, in accordance with its principles and objectives, four other members of the Board have resigned.
As a result, the Cochrane Collaboration has entered an unchartered territory of crisis and lack of strategic direction. A recovery from this dire situation would call for the dissolution of the present board, new elections and a broad-based participatory debate about the future strategy and governance of the organization.
In just 24 hours the Cochrane Governing Board of thirteen members has lost five of its members, four of which are centre directors and key members of the organization in different countries.
Recently the central executive team of Cochrane has failed to activate adequate safeguards, not only technical ones (which are usually very good) to assure sufficient policies in the fields of epistemology, ethics and morality.
Transparency, open debate, criticism and expanded participation are tools that guarantee the reduction of uncertainty of reviews and improve the public perception of the democratic scientific process.
These are conditions and tools that cannot be eliminated, as has happened recently, without placing into serious doubt the rigorous scientific undertaking of Cochrane and eroding public confidence in Cochrane´s work.
My expulsion should be seen in this context.
There has also been a serious democratic deficit. The role of the Governing Board has been radically diminished under the intense guidance of the current central executive team and the Board has increasingly become a testimonial body that rubber-stamps highly finalized proposals with practically no ongoing in-put and exchange of views to formulate new policies. On dozens of issues the Board can only vote yes or no with very little opportunity to amend or modify the executive team´s proposals.
This growing top-down authoritarian culture and an increasingly commercial business model that have been manifested within the Cochrane leadership over the past few years threaten the scientific, moral and social objectives of the organization.
Many Cochrane centres have sustained negative pressure and a lack of productive dialogue with the CEO of the central office.
Upon alerting the Cochrane leadership of these worrisome tendencies that negatively affect the operability and social perception of our scientific work, the Nordic Cochrane Centre has received a number of threats to its existence and financing.
Many of the directors or other key staff of the oldest Cochrane centres in the world have conveyed their dissatisfaction with the senior central staff’s interactions with them.
While the declared aims of interactions with the central office is to improve the quality of our work, the heavy-handed approach of some of the central staff has sometimes created a negative environment for new scientific initiatives, open collaboration and academic freedom.
There has also been criticism in Cochrane concerning the over-promotion of favourable reviews and conflicts of interest and the biased nature of some scientific expert commentary used by the knowledge translation department of Cochrane.
At the same time, Cochrane has been giving less and less priority and importance to its civic and political commitment to promoting open access, open data, scientific transparency, avoiding conflicts of interest and, in general, not promoting a public interest innovation model.
I feel that these issues are intricately related to providing “better evidence” as the Cochrane motto professes.
Recently the Cochrane executive leadership has even refused to comment publicly on new health technology policies, open access policies and other key advocacy opportunities despite the fact that an auditing of Cochrane fulfilment of objectives has shown a total failure to comply with Cochrane advocacy objectives.
There is stronger and stronger resistance to say anything that could bother pharmaceutical industry interests. The excuse of lack of time and staff (around 50) is not credible.
There has also been great resistance and stalling on the part of the central executive team to improving Cochrane´s conflict of interest policy.
A year ago, I proposed that there should be no authors of Cochrane reviews to have financial conflicts of interests with companies related to the products considered in the reviews.
This proposal was supported by other members of the Board, but the proposal has not progressed at all.
The Cochrane executive leadership almost always uses the commercial terms of “brand”, “products” and “business” but almost never describes what is really a collaborative network with the values of sharing, independence and openness.
To the chagrin of many senior leaders in Cochrane, the word “Collaboration”, which is part of our registered charity name, was deleted from communications about Cochrane.
Nevertheless, it is precisely “collaboration” that is the key to what distinguished Cochrane from other scientific organisations where competition is at the forefront.
The collaborative aspect, social commitment, our independence from commercial interests and our mutual generosity are what people in Cochrane have always appreciated the most and have been our most cherished added-value.
Often it is forgotten that we are a scientific, grass-roots organisation whose survival depends entirely on unpaid contributions from tens of thousands of volunteers and substantial governmental support throughout the world.
We make a substantial contribution to people’s understanding and interpretation of scientific evidence on the benefits and harms of medical interventions, devices and procedures that impact the population.
Our work informs government legislation globally, it influences medical guidelines and drug approval agencies. Therefore, the integrity of the Cochrane Collaboration is paramount.
We pride ourselves on being global providers of “trusted evidence” on a foundation of values such as openness, transparency and collaboration.
However, in recent years Cochrane has significantly shifted more to a business – a profit-driven approach.
Even though it is a not-for-profit charity, our “brand” and “product” strategies are taking priority over getting out independent, ethical and socially responsible scientific results.
Despite our clear policies to the contrary, my centre, and others, have been confronted with attempts at scientific censorship, rather than the promotion of pluralistic, open scientific debate about the merits of concrete Cochrane reviews of the benefits and harms of health care interventions.
Because of this moral governance crisis of the Cochrane Collaboration, I decided to run for a seat on the Governing Board and was elected in early 2017, with the most votes of all 11 candidates. It was considered an achievement, especially since I was the only one who had questioned aspects of our leadership.
Regrettably today, I have been expelled because of my “behaviour”, while the hidden agenda of my expulsion is a clear strategy for a Cochrane that moves it further and further away from its original objectives and principles.
This is not a personal question. It is a highly political, scientific and moral issue about the future of Cochrane.
As most people know, much of my work is not very favourable to the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Because of this Cochrane has faced pressure, criticism and complaints.
My expulsion is one of the results of these campaigns. What is at stake is the ability of producing credible and trustworthy medical evidence that our society values and needs.
Peter C Gøtzsche
Professor, Director, MD, DrMedSci, MSc
Nordic Cochrane Centre
RigshoCe vaccin contre le HPV est d’ailleurs cité comme vaccin très problématique par le chercheur spécialiste de l’aluminium, dans le documentaire L’aluminium, les vaccins et les deux lapins ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/725164
Il est temps que les gens s’informent de manière indépendante sans céder aux pressions des vendus qui les accusent de complotisme. Il y a un très gros problème de fiabilité sur les vaccins et leurs adjuvants.
#lanceur_d_alerte #Gøtzsche #vaccins #HPV #industrie_pharmaceutique #big_pharma #médicaments #indépendance #recherche #médecine #lobbys
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George P. Smith, lauréat du prix Nobel est un pro palestinien de longue date et militant de BDS
AURDIP - 5 octobre | Allison Kaplan Sommer pour Haaretz |Traduction CG pour l’AURDIP
▻https://www.aurdip.org/george-p-smith-laureat-du-prix.htmlLe scientifique « antisioniste » dit s’opposer à la « souveraineté ethnique juive sur d’autres peuples » et il apparaît sur le site internet de la controversée Mission Canary
George P. Smith, un des lauréats du Prix Nobel de chimie 2018 est un vétéran du soutien au mouvement de boycott, désinvestissement et sanctions, dans le cadre de son militantisme pro palestinien.
Smith, qui est professeur émérite de biologie de l’Université du Missouri à Columbia, a été désigné mercredi comme co lauréat du prestigieux prix pour ses efforts de maîtrise du développement de la production de nouveaux enzymes et anticorps.
L’activité politique de Smith en a fait une figure controversée à l’Université du Missouri, où il est professeur titulaire et une cible de groupes pro israéliens. On peut le voir sur le site internet controversé de la Mission Canary qui publie des dossiers en ligne sur des professeurs, des étudiants et des intervenants pro palestiniens sur les campus ; et il a été signalé par des représentants d’Israël dans le cadre du refus de laisser entrer des militants dans le pays. (...)
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Nobel Prize Winner Supports BDS Movement For Palestinian Rights, Ending Military Aid to Israel
October 6, 2018 5:16 AM IMEMC News
▻http://imemc.org/article/nobel-prize-winner-supports-bds-movement-for-palestinian-rights-ending-militaDr. Samia Botmeh, Dean at Birzeit University in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and leading activist in the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), said:
Congratulations to Professor George P. Smith for winning the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His principled commitments are evident in both his scientific work to protect human life and his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.Professor Smith has consistently spoken out against Israel’s egregious violations of Palestinian human rights, and taken the extremely important step of calling on his government in the United States to end arms sales to the Israeli military. His call to end military aid to Israel is not only deeply principled, but a critical and effective form of solidarity that we hope to see multiplied. The US government should be investing in human needs, including health, education and dignified jobs, rather than giving Israel $3.8 billion in military aid a year to repress and destroy Palestinian life.
Thank you Professor Smith for your inspiring solidarity.
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Can Islamist moderates remake the politics of the Muslim world? - CSMonitor.com
▻https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2018/0919/Can-Islamist-moderates-remake-the-politics-of-the-Muslim-world
By Taylor Luck Correspondent
AMMAN, JORDAN; TUNIS, TUNISIA; KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA
Alaa Faroukh insists he is the future. After nearly a decade in the Muslim Brotherhood, he says that he has finally found harmony between his faith and politics, not as a hardcore Islamist, but as a “Muslim democrat.”“We respect and include minorities, we fight for women’s rights, we respect different points of view, we are democratic both in our homes and in our politics – that is how we honor our faith,” Mr. Faroukh says.
The jovial psychologist with a toothy smile, who can quote Freud as easily as he can recite the Quran, is speaking from his airy Amman clinic, located one floor below the headquarters of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, the very movement he left.
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“The time of divisive politics of older Islamists is over, and everyone in my generation agrees,” says the 30-something Faroukh. “The era of political Islam is dead.”Faroukh is symbolic of a shift sweeping through parts of the Arab world. From Tunisia to Egypt to Jordan, many Islamist activists and some established Islamic organizations are adopting a more progressive and moderate tone in their approach to politics and governing. They are reaching out to minorities and secular Muslims while doing away with decades-old political goals to impose their interpretation of Islam on society.
Taylor Luck
“The time of divisive politics of older Islamists is over, and everyone in my generation agrees. The era of political Islam is dead,” says Alaa Faroukh, a young Jordanian who left the Muslim Brotherhood for a moderate political party.
Part of the move is simple pragmatism. After watching the Muslim Brotherhood – with its call for sharia (Islamic law) and failure to reach out to minorities and secular Muslims – get routed in Egypt, and the defeat of other political Islamic groups across the Arab world, many Islamic activists believe taking a more moderate stance is the only way to gain and hold power. Yet others, including many young Muslims, believe a deeper ideological shift is under way in which Islamist organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of religious tolerance and political pluralism in modern societies.Think you know the Greater Middle East? Take our geography quiz.
While Islamist movements remain the largest and most potent political movement in the region, a widespread adoption of democratic principles by their followers could transform the discourse in a region where politics are often bound to identity and are bitterly polarized.“We believe that young Jordanians and young Arabs in general see that the future is not in partisan politics, but in cooperation, understanding, and putting the country above petty party politics,” says Rheil Gharaibeh, the moderate former head of the Jordanian Brotherhood’s politburo who has formed his own political party.
Is this the beginning of a fundamental shift in the politics of the Middle East or just an expedient move by a few activists?
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Many Islamist groups say their move to the center is a natural step in multiparty politics, but this obscures how far their positions have truly shifted in a short time.
Some 20 years ago, the manifesto of the Muslim Brotherhood – the Sunni Islamic political group with affiliates across the Arab world – called for the implementation of sharia and gender segregation at universities, and commonly employed slogans such as “Islam is the solution.”
In 2011, the Arab Spring uprisings swept these Islamist movements into power or installed them as the leading political force from the Arab Gulf to Morocco, sparking fears of an Islamization of Arab societies.
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But instead of rolling back women’s rights, the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda pushed through gender equality laws and helped write the most progressive, gender-equal constitution in the Arab world. The Moroccan Justice and Development Party (PJD) has played down its Islamic rhetoric, abandoning talk of Islamic identity and sharia and instead speaking about democratic reform and human rights. And the Brotherhood in Jordan traded in its slogan “Islam is the solution” for “the people demand reform” and “popular sovereignty for all.”The past few years have seen an even more dramatic shift to the center. Not only have Islamist movements dropped calls for using sharia as a main source of law, but they nearly all now advocate for a “civil state” – a secular nation where the law, rather than holy scriptures or the word of God, is sovereign.
Muhammad Hamed/Reuters
Supporters of the National Alliance for Reform rally in Amman, Jordan, in 2016. They have rebranded themselves as a national rather than an Islamic movement.
In Morocco and Jordan, Islamist groups separated their religious activities – preaching, charitable activities, and dawa (spreading the good word of God) – from their political branches. In 2016, Ennahda members in Tunisia went one step further and essentially eliminated their religious activities altogether, rebranding themselves as “Muslim democrats.”Islamist moderates say this shift away from religious activities to a greater focus on party politics is a natural step in line with what President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has done with his Justice and Development Party in Turkey, or even, they hope, with the Christian democrats in Europe: to become movements inspired by faith, not governing through faith.
“While we are a Muslim country, we are aware that we do not have one interpretation of religion and we will not impose one interpretation of faith over others,” says Mehrezia Labidi, a member of the Tunisian Parliament and Ennahda party leader. “As Muslim democrats we are guided by Islamic values, but we are bound by the Constitution, the will of the people, and the rule of law for all.”
Experts say this shift is a natural evolution for movements that are taking part in the decisionmaking process for the first time after decades in the opposition.
“As the opposition, you can refuse, you can criticize, you can obstruct,” says Rachid Mouqtadir, professor of political science at Hassan II University in Casablanca, Morocco, and an expert in Islamist movements. “But when you are in a coalition with other parties and trying to govern, the parameters change, your approach changes, and as a result your ideology changes.”
The trend has even gone beyond the borders of the Arab world. The Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (ABIM), founded in 1971 by Malaysian university students inspired by the Brotherhood and now one of the strongest civil society groups in the country, is also shedding the “Islamist” label.
In addition to running schools and hospitals, ABIM now hosts interfaith concerts, partners on projects with Christians and Buddhists, and even reaches out to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists in its campaign for social justice.
“We are in the age of post-political Islam,” says Ahmad Fahmi Mohd Samsudin, ABIM vice president, from the movement’s headquarters in a leafy Kuala Lumpur suburb. “That means when we say we stand for Islam, we stand for social justice and equality for all – no matter their faith or background.”
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IMF’s New Chief Economist Is a Great Choice
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2018-10-01/gita-gopinath-is-the-right-choice-for-imf-chief-economist
New thinking at the IMF.
Photographer: Ramesh Pathania/Mint via Getty ImagesHaving followed Gita Gopinath’s work closely for several years, I am delighted the International Monetary Fund appointed her to head its influential research department as chief economist.
Gopinath, a professor of International Studies and Economics at Harvard University and co-director of the International Finance and Macroeconomics program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, brings expertise, insights and cognitive diversity to the IMF. Her appointment comes at an important time, as the fund seeks to evolve its thinking and practices to better reflect realities on the ground, particularly the two-way causal relationship between macroeconomic and financial issues.
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Why Data Privacy Based on Consent Is Impossible
▻https://hbr.org/2018/09/stop-thinking-about-consent-it-isnt-possible-and-it-isnt-rightFor a philosopher, Helen Nissenbaum is a surprisingly active participant in shaping how we collect, use, and protect personal data. Nissenbaum, who earned her PhD from Stanford, is a professor of information science at Cornell Tech, New York City, where she focuses on the intersection of politics, ethics, and values in technology and digital media — the hard stuff. Her framework for understanding digital privacy has deeply influenced real-world policy.
HBR senior editor Scott Berinato spoke with Nissenbaum about the concept of consent, a good definition of privacy, and why privacy is a moral issue. The following excerpts from their conversation have been edited for clarity and length.
HBR: You often sound frustrated when you talk about the idea of consent as a privacy mechanism. Why?
Nissenbaum: Oh, it’s just such a [long pause] — look, the operationalization of consent is just so, so crummy. For example, as part of GDPR, we’re now constantly seeing pop-ups that say, “Hey, we use cookies — click here.” This doesn’t help. You have no idea what you’re doing, what you’re consenting to. A meaningful choice would be, say, “I’m OK that you’re using cookies to track me” or “I don’t want to be tracked but still want to enjoy the service” or “It’s fine to use cookies for this particular transaction, but throw unnecessary data out and never share it with others.” But none of these choices are provided. In what sense is this a matter of choosing (versus mere picking)?
The farce of consent as currently deployed is probably doing more harm as it gives the misimpression of meaningful control that we are guiltily ceding because we are too ignorant to do otherwise and are impatient for, or need, the proffered service. There is a strong sense that consent is still fundamental to respecting people’s privacy. In some cases, yes, consent is essential. But what we have today is not really consent.
Even if you tried to create totally transparent consent, you couldn’t. Well-meaning companies don’t know everything that happens with the data they collect, particularly those that have succumbed, against their better judgment, to the pressures of online tracking and behavioral targeting. They don’t know where the data is going or how it will be utilized. It’s an ever-changing landscape. On the one hand, requiring consent for every use isn’t reasonable and may prevent as many good outcomes as bad ones. Imagine if new science suggests a connection between a property, or cluster of properties, and a particular cancer treatment. Returning for consent may impose obstacles that are impossible to overcome.
But on the other hand, what exactly does it mean to grant consent no matter what uses may come up in the future? Think about a surgeon explaining a procedure to a patient in great medical detail and then asking, “Are you OK with this?” We kid ourselves if we believe that consent is all that stands in the way of surgery and outcome. Most of us say OK not because we deeply grasp the details and ramifications but because we trust the institutions that educate and train surgeons, the integrity of the medical domain, and — at worst — the self-interest of the hospitals and surgeons wishing for positive acclaim and to avoid being sued.
It’s not that we don’t know what consent means; it’s that getting to a point where we understand the true sense of what consent means is impossible.
Annexe : devinez chez quel éditeur le livre Obfuscation d’Helen Nissenbaum va paraître cet automne ?
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Irie™ Magazine | Respect | Khalifa
▻https://www.iriemag.com/2018/09/respect-khalifaMon ami Khalifa a les honneurs du principal journal de reggae... Caen au centre du monde. Khalifa le mérite.
Singer and songwriter since 1997 with Positive Radical Sound (PRS), Khalifa believes music can be more than making tunes and performing. Releasing four albums with PRS, two with Sly & Robbie as well as numerous songs featuring Mad Professor, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Sly & Robbie, Taxi Gang, Sugar Minott, Nambo Robinson, Steven Marley Wright and Paul Groucho Smykle, Khalifa is also involved in teaching music in detention centers in France, in refugee camps in Palestine or in youth clubs in Oran, Algeria.
“Music should help educate while exploring the depths of the Soul”. This is what Khalifa has learned to do.
Khalifa gets his energy from the sources of reggae music to take us beyond frontiers as shown in his last single ‘There’s a Light’ which music video was shot in Camden, London, or in his cover of French classic ‘Chanson pour l’auvergnat’ by George Brassens, North African style! For nearly 17 years Khalifa keeps producing music and writing songs, inspired by his travels and by everyday life, and backed by a powerful rhythm. A must-see performance!
For his album, ‘Hard Times for Dreamers’, Khalifa rounded up an international crew, bringing in Mad Professor, Winston Mac Anuff, Nambo Robinson, Sly and Robbie et Steven Marley Wright (I Jah Man) to put together 12 powerful, tight songs. Each tune has its subtlety; the punchy brass section gives way to the strings, and a 50s guitar trill weaves in and out of a raw afro-beat. Robbie Shakespeare’s bassline smoothly glides us from Lagos to the Kingston suburbs, while Khalif’s masterful voice takes the lead.
Hard times for dreamers was the result of trips to Oran, Ramallah, Kingston, Paris and London, and exchanges with Sly & Robbie, Mad Professor, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Taxi Gang, Sugar Minott, Nambo Robinson, Steven Marley Wright and Paul Groucho Smykle.
Official Website: Khalifa.fr
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Alala, PRS ! J’écoutais ça au lycée et à l’IUT !… Va falloir que j’écoute ce son.
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Le premier groupe de Khalifa, qui s’appelait « Les Mamelouks » m’a servi de démo quand j’ai présenté internet au Maroc... donc premier son entendu en direct internet dans ce pays, c’était en 97 je crois.
Les Mamelouks avaient fait le spectacle lors de l’étape de la Marche des chômeurs à Caen, et c’était super, un ska mélangé avec des musiques et rythmes arabisants. Khalifa a toujours continué à soutenir, à son rythme et de son point de vue, les mouvements sur Caen, avec Arnaud et Nesta... la bande à PRS ;-)
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Cornell professor resigns after review questions his food studies | syracuse.com
▻http://www.syracuse.com/state/index.ssf/2018/09/cornell_professor_resigns_food_research.htmlA Cornell professor whose attention-getting food studies made him a media darling has submitted his resignation, the school said Thursday, a dramatic fall for a scholar whose work increasingly came under question in recent years.
The university said in a statement that a year-long review found that Brian Wansink “committed academic misconduct in his research and scholarship, including misreporting of research data, problematic statistical techniques, failure to properly document and preserve research results, and inappropriate authorship.”
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According to BuzzFeed’s February report, which included a trove of Wansink’s emails obtained from New Mexico State University, which employs one of Wansink’s collaborators, “year after year, Wansink and his collaborators at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab have turned shoddy data into headline-friendly eating lessons that they could feed to the masses.”
[…]
JAMA said in a statement. “Their [Cornell University] response states: ’We regret that, because we do not have access to the original data, we cannot assure you that the results of the studies are valid.’ Therefore, the 6 articles reporting the results of these studies that were published in JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, and JAMA Pediatrics are hereby retracted.” -
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University of Glasgow publishes report into historical slavery
The University of Glasgow has published a comprehensive report into the institution’s historical links with racial slavery.
The study acknowledges that whilst it played a leading role in the abolitionist movement, the University also received significant financial support from people whose wealth at least in part derived from slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow report, co-authored by Professor Simon Newman and Dr Stephen Mullen, both from the University of Glasgow, follows a year-long investigation into bequests, support and other ways the University might have benefited from slavery-related wealth.
It estimates the present-day value of all monies given to the University which might have been fully or partly derived from slavery to be in the order of tens of millions of pounds, depending on the indexation formula.
The University has now agreed a proactive programme of reparative justice which includes the creation of a centre for the study of slavery and a memorial or tribute at the University in the name of the enslaved.
The University is also working with the University of the West Indies (UWI) and hopes to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen academic collaboration between the two institutions.
Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, said: “The University of Glasgow has a proud record of anti-slavery activity including petitioning Parliament to abolish slavery and awarding an honorary degree to the emancipationist, William Wilberforce. Glasgow also educated James McCune Smith, a formerly enslaved New Yorker who became the first ever African American to receive a medical degree.
“This report has been an important undertaking and commitment to find out if the University benefitted from slavery in the past. Although the University never owned enslaved people or traded in the goods they produced, it is now clear we received significant financial support from people whose wealth came from slavery.
“The University deeply regrets this association with historical slavery which clashes with our proud history of support for the abolition of both the slave trade and slavery itself.
“Looking to the future, the University has set out a programme of reparative justice through which we will seek to acknowledge this aspect of the University’s past, enhance awareness and understanding of historical slavery, and forge positive partnerships with new partners including the University of the West Indies.”
The University will also work to further enhance awareness and understanding of the history and its connections to both slavery and abolitionism.
Professor Simon Newman, the University of Glasgow report’s co-author, said: “The University of Glasgow has made history in the UK today by acknowledging that alongside its proud history of abolitionism is an equally significant history of financially benefitting from racial slavery. In doing this, Glasgow follows in the footsteps of leading American universities which have confronted the role of slavery in their histories.
“The University of Glasgow is an institution that grew in a city tied to the trade in tobacco, sugar and cotton, all of which were initially produced by enslaved Africans. Launching an in-depth investigation to look at how the University might have benefited from the profits of racial slavery was, in my opinion, a brave decision. But it is a decision rooted in the core values of an educational institution dedicated to the pursuit of truth and social justice.
“I am delighted that we have acknowledged our past, albeit indirect, ties to racial slavery and been inspired to develop new and exciting opportunities and collaborations for students and academics alike as part of a rolling programme of reparative justice.”
One of the three external advisors to the slavery report was Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, the Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies; along with Professor Sir Geoff Palmer, a leading civil rights and equality campaigner and Graham Campbell, a Glasgow City Council councillor and an activist for African-Caribbean issues in Scotland.
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles said: “I have looked closely at the report, reading it within the context of the University of Glasgow-University of the West Indies framework for mutual recognition and respect.
“The approach adopted by the University of Glasgow is commendable and is endorsed by the UWI as an excellent place to begin. Both universities are committed to excellent and ethical research, teaching and public service.
“I celebrate colleagues in Glasgow for taking these first steps and keenly anticipate working through next steps.”
The University has accepted the recommendations in the report. This commits it to:
Publish the Senior Management Group’s statement of July 2016, along with the final version of the report detailing the research and conclusions of the research into how the University benefited from the profits of historical slavery, and a statement describing the reparative justice actions to be undertaken by the University.
Strive to increase the racial diversity of students and staff and to reduce the degree attainment gap, in line with the University of Glasgow’s Equality and Diversity Policy. This will include awarding scholarships to BAME students of Afro-Caribbean descent to help address their under-representation in the University.
Pursue the negotiation and signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Glasgow and the University of the West Indies, designed to fit the needs and requirements of UWI staff and students, while working in alignment with the educational and research objectives of the University of Glasgow.
Create an interdisciplinary centre for the study of historical slavery and its legacies, including modern slavery and trafficking.
Inaugurate a named professorship, a rotating post to be awarded to University of Glasgow academics undertaking significant research relevant to historical and modern slavery and reparative justice.
Name a major new University building or space to commemorate a significant figure, perhaps James McCune Smith, with appropriate signage and public-facing information.
Add a commemorative plaque to the Gilbert Scott Building, explaining that this was the site of the house of Robert Bogle, a West India merchant who owned many enslaved people, and who was one of a number of people who made money from slavery and who then later donated funds for the construction of the building.
Develop a Hunterian exhibition exploring the often unknown and unexpected ways in which some items within the collections are related to the history of racial slavery.
Develop a creative arts and sciences series (under the auspices of the new centre), with performances, events and lectures.▻https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_607154_en.html
#esclavage #histoire #rapport
cc @rekaIci pour télécharger le rapport :
▻https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_607547_en.pdfAutres documents sur l’esclavage sur le portail de l’université de Glasgow :
▻https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/slavery-
Je découvre notamment cette BD...
Warren Pleece’s graphic novel, Freedom Bound, follows the interconnected stories of three enslaved people living in Scotland before Scots Law proved slavery illegal. From mountainous countryside to the inner city, Freedom Bound explores Scotland’s unsettling history of slavery and the injustices perpetrated through the decades.
▻https://bhpcomics.squarespace.com/freedom-bound#bande_dessinée #BD #livre #Ecosse
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Universities urged to follow Glasgow’s lead on slave trade past
Scottish institution’s reparations for its slavery connections should be emulated by many more institutions, says black studies activist
▻https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/universities-urged-follow-glasgows-lead-slave-trade-past
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v. aussi:
Glasgow launches detailed study of its historical links with transatlantic slavery
►https://seenthis.net/messages/810253
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Study finds first evidence of #air #pollution particles reaching mothers’ #placentas | Euronews
▻http://www.euronews.com/2018/09/16/study-finds-first-evidence-of-air-pollution-particles-reaching-mothers-plaThe study, conducted by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, adds to an existing body of evidence linking pregnant mothers’ exposure to air pollution with issues including premature birth and childhood respiratory problems.
“We’ve known for a while that air pollution affects foetal development and can continue to affect babies after birth and throughout their lives… [But] until now, there has been very little evidence that inhaled particles get into the blood from the lung,” Dr Lisa Miyashita, who worked on the study, said in a statement.
To conduct the study, the scientists used the placentas of five non-smoking women in London, who had all delivered healthy babies via planned caesarean sections.
Using a high-powered microscope, they analysed 3,500 macrophage cells, which form part of the body’s immune system and engulf harmful particles such as air pollution.
Within the cells, they found 72 small black areas that they believed to be carbon particles.
“Our results provide the first evidence that inhaled pollution particles can move from the lungs into the circulation and then to the placenta,” said Dr Norrice Liu, who presented the research at the European Respiratory Society International Congress on Sunday.
“We do not know whether the particles we found could also move across into the foetus, but our evidence suggests that this is indeed possible,” she added.
Professor Mina Gaga, president of the European Respiratory Society, said the research, which she was not involved in, “suggests a possible mechanism of how babies are affected by pollution while being theoretically protected in the womb.”
“This should raise awareness amongst clinicians and the public regarding the harmful effects of air pollution in pregnant women,” she added.
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La pollution de l’air modifie le placenta au niveau #épigénétique : un risque pour le #foetus et sa #mère - Sciencesetavenir.fr
▻https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/sante/grossesse/la-pollution-de-l-air-modifie-le-placenta-au-niveau-epigenetique-un(étude antérieure)
L’exposition à la pollution atmosphérique pendant la grossesse peut entrainer des modifications épigénétiques du placenta potentiellement risquées pour la mère et le fœtus. C’est ce qu’explique une nouvelle étude française publiée dans la revue Environment International. Des scientifiques du CNRS et de l’Inserm ont en effet analysé le placenta de 668 mères et ont constaté que l’exposition à la pollution modifiait l’expression d’un gène bien précis.
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On l’ajoute à la troisième compilation :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/680147#effondrement #collapsologie #catastrophe #fin_du_monde #it_has_begun #Anthropocène #capitalocène
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Israel to expel French-American professor arrested during West Bank protest
In a rare move, Frank Romano was arrested according to military law. However, before his hearing he was released and taken into custody by the population authority in preparation for his deportation
Yotam Berger Sep 16, 2018 5:40 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-to-expel-french-american-professor-arrested-in-west-bank-prIsrael is set to expel the foreign law professor arrested on suspicion of disrupting the actions of Israeli soldiers on duty at the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar on Friday.
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’Bad faith’: Judge slams Israel for West Bank arrest of professor, orders release - Israel News
Judge criticizes authorities’ handling of case, rejects demand that he be immediately deported
Yotam Berger Sep 17, 2018 1:53 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-to-release-professor-arrested-protesting-west-bank-village-The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Sunday ordered the release of Professor Frank Romano from custody under the condition that he leave Israel by September 25, the date of his scheduled flight back to France.
Romano, 66, who holds both French and American citizenship and teaches law in France, arrested on suspicion of disrupting the actions of Israeli soldiers on duty at the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar on Friday.
Judge Chavi Toker rejected the government’s request to immediately expel Romano from the country and criticized the way authorities handled the request. The professor is expected to remain in custody pending another hearing to be held on Monday.
Judge Toker said that the police, military and Interior Ministry “acted in bad faith” and “refused to take responsibility for the appellant.” She noted that the court was not told of the military’s decision to the Population Authority for his immediate deportation, calling this an attempt to bypass a hearing.
Toker added that Romano “stopped a tractor in the middle of the road,” saying that “this happens a hundred times a day in Jerusalem. He is not a dangerous man.”
Romano was arrested together with two Palestinian activists for attempting to block the road and get in the way of security forces.
According to military law, which is enforced in the territories, a suspect’s detention can be extended by 96 hours before being brought to a judge.
According to the civil code, detainees must be brought before a judge no more than 24 hours after their arrest.
Gabi Lasky, Romano’s attorney, told Haaretz that it is very rare for military code to be used on foreign citizens and that she has encountered only one such other case in the past. Theoretically, Romano could have been arrested under the civil code, because the suspected infraction is supposedly against the authorities of the state.
Lasky said earlier Sunday that the intent was to bring Romano for a “regular” remand hearing before a Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court judge. But shortly before the hearing the security forces said that Romano was to be released and deported and so he would not be brought to court, although the hearing did ultimately take place.
“Like thieves in the night, instead of bringing Frank Romano to a hearing on my request that he be released from detention, which was set for today [Sunday] at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, without informing me or the court, at 2 PM [two hours before the scheduled hearing] he was handed over to the immigration police for deportation. Now it is clear why he was arrested according to military law – to give them time to deport him before he sees a judge.”
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Israeli court not to deport French professor
Sept. 17, 2018 3:41 P.M. (Updated: Sept. 17, 2018 3:53 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=781098JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — An Israeli court reversed a deportation order against French activist, Frank Romano, after the court had earlier released him from detention to deport him after being accused of “disruptions” at Khan al-Ahmar village, east of Jerusalem.
Romano, a 66-year-old law professor at the University of Paris and author of “Love and Terror in the Middle East,” and a holder of a French and American citizenship, was detained last week at Khan al-Ahmar, as he protested Israel’s intention to demolish the Bedouin village.
He declared a hunger strike following his detention, calling on Israel to not demolish the village of Khan al-Ahmar.
Romano was then released and allowed to return to the village; where he will continue to protest the demolition in solidarity with the residents, in attempt to prevent the demolition.
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Cisjordanie : un juriste français arrêté après une manifestation va être expulsé (avocat)
AFP
Publié le 16/09/2018 à 22:20 | AFP
▻http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/cisjordanie-un-juriste-francais-arrete-apres-une-manifestation-va-etre-expulUn juriste français, arrêté par les forces de l’ordre israéliennes lors d’une manifestation contre la démolition d’un village bédouin en Cisjordanie occupée, va être expulsé d’Israël, a annoncé son avocate dimanche.
Frank Romano, professeur de droit né aux Etats-Unis et de nationalité franco-américaine, a été arrêté vendredi après des échauffourées entre des militants propalestiniens et des garde-frontières israéliens près du village bédouin de Khan al-Ahmar, à l’est de Jérusalem.
« Il y a une décision administrative stipulant son expulsion », a dit dimanche à la presse son avocate Gaby Lansky. Elle avait affirmé la veille que Frank Romano était accusé d’entraves à l’action de la police et des soldats israéliens.
M. Romano a dit qu’il contesterait la décision de l’expulser devant les tribunaux israéliens.
« Je vais faire appel si on veut m’expulser », a dit ce juriste qui s’exprimait en français devant les journalistes lors d’une brève audience tard dimanche sur l’ordre d’expulsion.
« Il n’y a pas de raison de m’expulser. Je n’ai pas fait d’acte de violence », a-t-il ajouté.
La cour a ajourné l’audience sans annoncer de décision.
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Israël va expulser un professeur franco-américain arrêté pendant une manifestation en Cisjordanie
17 septembre | Yotam Berger pour Haaretz |Traduction CG pour l’AURDIP
▻https://www.aurdip.org/israel-va-expulser-un-professeur.html
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Cisjordanie : échauffourées près d’un village de bédouins promis à la démolition
L’Express - Par AFP , mis à jour le 15/09/2018 à 08:44▻https://www.lexpress.fr/actualites/1/monde/cisjordanie-echauffourees-pres-d-un-village-de-bedouins-promis-a-la-demolit
Un bulldozer israélien a tenté de barrer la route menant au village de Khan al-Ahmar en y déversant des pierres et de la terre, ce qui a provoqué des heurts.
Trois manifestants ont été arrêtés, a précisé un porte-parole de la police.
Parmi eux figure un professeur français de droit, Frank Romano, ont indiqué des manifestants, mais la police n’a pas confirmé.
Après des années de bataille judiciaire, la Cour suprême israélienne a donné la semaine dernière son feu vert à la démolition de Khan al-Ahmar, village de tôle et de toile où vivent environ 200 bédouins à l’est de Jérusalem, près de colonies israéliennes.
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French activist goes on hunger strike to protest Israeli plans to demolish Khan al-Ahmar
Israeli police detaining French-American activist Frank Romano for standing in the way of bulldozers attempting to block roads to Khan al-Ahmar. (WAFA Images / Suleiman Abu Srour)
▻http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=8RTRSsa99132688974a8RTRSsJERUSALEM, September 15, 2018 (WAFA) – A French-American activist started a hunger strike on Friday after he was detained by Israeli police when activists in Khan al-Ahmar village, east of Jerusalem, blocked Israeli bulldozers trying to close roads to the village, according to Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, from the Save Khan al-Ahmar campaign.
He told WAFA that Frank Romano, professor of law at University of Paris and author of “Love and Terror in the Middle East”, was detained along with four other Palestinians when they confronted Israeli police and bulldozers attempting to block roads to the village, slated for demolition by Israel in order to replace it with a settlement.
Romano, who lives in France but is also an American citizen, was first taken to a police station in the nearby illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim before he was transferred to the Russian Compound police station in West Jerusalem where his detention was extended for four days.
Abu Rahmeh said Romano started a hunger strike until Israel annuls the demolition decision against Khan al Ahmar. -
In Exceptional Move, Israeli Army Arrests French-American Law Professor in West Bank
Frank Romano was arrested along with two Palestinians while protesting the upcoming demolition of the Bedouin village Khan al-Ahmar, police say ■ IDF allowed to keep him under arrest for up to 96 hours without bringing him to court
Israeli border police arrest French-American law professor and other protesters and activists blocking Israeli army bulldozer operating at the West Bank Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar, September 1Nasser Nasser/AP
Yotam Berger
Sep 15, 2018 5:25 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-in-rare-move-idf-arrests-french-american-law-prof-in-west-bank-1.6A 66-year-old French-American citizen and two other activists were arrested Friday in the West Bank Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar.
According to border police, the three, law professor Frank Romano and two Palestinians, tried to block the road and disrupt soldiers situated near the village, which is slated for demolition.
Exceptionally, the arrest of Romano - a foreign national - was extended by 96 hours under military code rather than civil law. Military code applies to Palestinians and significantly reduces the rights granted to suspects. In comparison, in the Israeli legal system there is a duty to bring a suspect before a judge within 24 hours.
Attorney Gaby Lasky, who represents Romano, told Haaretz that this it is very rare for military code to be used for foreign citizens, saying that she had encountered only one such other case in the past. Lasky plans to appeal to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court to bring the man to a remand hearing.
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The future is here today : you can’t play Bach on Facebook because Sony says they own his compositions
▻https://boingboing.net/2018/09/05/mozart-bach-sorta-mach.htmlJames Rhodes, a pianist, performed a Bach composition for his Facebook account, but it didn’t go up — Facebook’s copyright filtering system pulled it down and accused him of copyright infringement because Sony Music Global had claimed that they owned 47 seconds’ worth of his personal performance of a song whose composer has been dead for 300 years. This is a glimpse of the near future. In one week, the European Parliament will vote on a proposal to force all online services to implement (...)
#Sony #Facebook #algorithme #ContentID #Robocopyright #censure #filtrage
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his personal performance
On doit bien pouvoir dire que c’est bien son interprétation à lui, sur son instrument à lui, qui a été reconnue comme un plagiat d’un enregistrement de Sony.
Et là, c’est une des références du texte : le chercheur publie des enregistrements antérieurs dans le domaine public, reconnus simplement par la signature musicale...
Les contrôleurs vont faire valoir que c’est un risque à courir afin de défendre les bases de notre civilisation... et que l’intelligence artificielle va s’améliorer... et qu’il y a une procédure d’appel.
Can Beethoven send takedown requests ? A first-hand account of one German professor’s experience with overly broad upload filters – Wikimedia Foundation
▻https://wikimediafoundation.org/2018/08/27/can-beethoven-send-takedown-requests-a-first-hand-account-of-onI decided to open a different YouTube account “Labeltest” to share additional excerpts of copyright-free music. I quickly received ContentID notifications for copyright-free music by Bartok, Schubert, Puccini and Wagner. Again and again, YouTube told me that I was violating the copyright of these long-dead composers, despite all of my uploads existing in the public domain. I appealed each of these decisions, explaining that 1) the composers of these works had been dead for more than 70 years, 2) the recordings were first published before 1963, and 3) these takedown request did not provide justification in their property rights under the German Copyright Act.
I only received more notices, this time about a recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5, which was accompanied by the message: “Copyrighted content was found in your video. The claimant allows its content to be used in your YouTube video. However, advertisements may be displayed.” Once again, this was a mistaken notification. The recording was one by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Lorin Maazel, which was released in 1961 and is therefore in the public domain. Seeking help, I emailed YouTube, but their reply, “[…] thank you for contacting Google Inc. Please note that due to the large number of enquiries, e-mails received at this e-mail address support-de@google.com cannot be read and acknowledged” was less than reassuring.
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Amazon’s Antitrust Antagonist Has a Breakthrough Idea - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antitrust-lina-khan-amazon.html
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/09/business/09Khan1.print/09Khan1.print-facebookJumbo-v3.jpg If competitors tremble at Amazon’s ambitions, consumers are mostly delighted by its speedy delivery and low prices. They stream its Oscar-winning movies and clamor for the company to build a second headquarters in their hometowns. Few of Amazon’s customers, it is safe to say, spend much time thinking they need to be protected from it.
But then, until recently, no one worried about Facebook, Google or Twitter either. Now politicians, the media, academics and regulators are kicking around ideas that would, metaphorically or literally, cut them down to size. Members of Congress grilled social media executives on Wednesday in yet another round of hearings on Capitol Hill. Not since the Department of Justice took on Microsoft in the mid-1990s has Big Tech been scrutinized like this.
Amazon has more revenue than Facebook, Google and Twitter put together, but it has largely escaped sustained examination. That is beginning to change, and one significant reason is Ms. Khan.
In early 2017, when she was an unknown law student, Ms. Khan published “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” in the Yale Law Journal. Her argument went against a consensus in antitrust circles that dates back to the 1970s — the moment when regulation was redefined to focus on consumer welfare, which is to say price. Since Amazon is renowned for its cut-rate deals, it would seem safe from federal intervention.
Ms. Khan disagreed. Over 93 heavily footnoted pages, she presented the case that the company should not get a pass on anticompetitive behavior just because it makes customers happy. Once-robust monopoly laws have been marginalized, Ms. Khan wrote, and consequently Amazon is amassing structural power that lets it exert increasing control over many parts of the economy.
“As consumers, as users, we love these tech companies,” she said. “But as citizens, as workers, and as entrepreneurs, we recognize that their power is troubling. We need a new framework, a new vocabulary for how to assess and address their dominance.”
The analogies with Amazon are explicit. Don’t let the government pursue Amazon the way it pursued A.&P., Mr. Muris and Mr. Nuechterlein warned.
“Amazon has added hundreds of billions of dollars of value to the U.S. economy,” they wrote. “It is a brilliant innovator” whose “breakthroughs have in turn helped launch new waves of innovation across retail and technology sectors, to the great benefit of consumers.”
Amazon itself could not have made the argument any better. Which isn’t surprising, because in a footnote on the first page, the authors noted: “We approached Amazon Inc. for funding to tell the story” of A.&P., “and we gratefully acknowledge its support.” They added at the end of footnote 85: “The authors have advised Amazon on a variety of antitrust issues.”
Amazon declined to say how much its support came to in dollars. It also declined to comment on Ms. Khan or her paper directly, but issued a statement.
“We operate in a diverse range of businesses, from retail and entertainment to consumer electronics and technology services, and we have intense and well-established competition in each of these areas,” the company said. “Retail is our largest business today and we represent less than 1 percent of global retail.”
The April issue of the journal Antitrust Chronicle, edited by Mr. Medvedovsky, features a drawing of a bearded man on the cover right above the words “Hipster Antitrust.” In the middle of an article by Philip Marsden, a professor of competition law and economics at the College of Europe in Bruges, there’s a photograph of a bearded man taking a selfie next to the chapter heading “Battle of the Beards.” It is perhaps relevant that only one of the 12 authors or experts in the issue is female.
The Hipster issue was sponsored by Facebook, another sign that Big Tech is striving to shape the monopoly-law debate. The company declined to comment.
Ms. Khan was not the first to criticize Amazon, and she said the company was not really her target anyway. “Amazon is not the problem — the state of the law is the problem, and Amazon depicts that in an elegant way,” she said.
From Amazon’s point of view, however, it is a problem indeed that Ms. Khan concludes in the Yale paper that regulating parts of the company like a utility “could make sense.” She also said it “could make sense” to treat Amazon’s e-commerce operation like a bridge, highway, port, power grid or telephone network — all of which are required to allow access to their infrastructure on a nondiscriminatory basis.
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Opioid billionaire granted patent for addiction treatment | Financial Times
▻https://www.ft.com/content/a3a53ae8-b1e3-11e8-8d14-6f049d06439c
▻https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fprod-upp-image-read.ft.com%2F9a83636a-b263-11e8-87e0-d84e0d934341?sPurdue owner Richard Sackler listed as inventor of drug to wean addicts off painkillers
Richard Sackler’s family owns Purdue Pharma, the company behind the opioid painkiller OxyContin © ReutersDavid Crow in New York
A billionaire pharmaceuticals executive who has been blamed for spurring the US opioid crisis stands to profit from the epidemic after he patented a new treatment for drug addicts.
Richard Sackler, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, the company behind the notorious painkiller OxyContin, was granted a patent earlier this year for a reformulation of a drug used to wean addicts off opioids.
The invention is a novel form of buprenorphine, a mild opiate that controls drug cravings, which is often given as a substitute to people hooked on heroin or opioid painkillers such as OxyContin.
The new formulation as described in Dr Sackler’s patent could end up proving lucrative thanks to a steady increase in the number of addicts being treated with buprenorphine, which is seen as a better alternative to other opioid substitutes such as methadone.
Last year, the leading version of buprenorphine, which is sold under the brand name Suboxone, generated $877m in US sales for Indivior, the British pharmaceuticals group that makes it.
Before the opioid crisis, the Sackler family was primarily known for its philanthropy, emerging as one of the largest donors to arts institutions in the US and UK. But the rising number of addictions and deaths has highlighted the family’s ownership of Purdue, which some members have tried to shy away from.
It’s reprehensible what Purdue Pharma has done to our public health
Luke Nasta, director of CamelotDr Sackler’s patent, which was granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in January, acknowledges the threat posed by the opioid crisis, which claimed more than 42,000 lives in 2016.
“While opioids have always been known to be useful in pain treatment, they also display an addictive potential,” the patent states. “Thus, if opioids are taken by healthy human subjects with a drug-seeking behaviour they may lead to psychological as well as physical dependence.”
It adds: “The constant pressures upon addicts to procure money for buying drugs and the concomitant criminal activities have been increasingly recognised as a major factor that counteracts efficient and long-lasting withdrawal and abstinence from drugs.”
However, the patent makes no mention of the fact that Purdue Pharma has been hit with more than a thousand lawsuits for allegedly fuelling the epidemic — allegations the company and the Sackler family deny.
“It’s reprehensible what Purdue Pharma has done to our public health,” said Luke Nasta, director of Camelot, an addiction treatment centre in Staten Island, New York. He said the Sackler family “shouldn’t be allowed to peddle any more synthetic opiates — and that includes opioid substitutes”.
Buprenorphine is prescribed to opioid addicts in tablets or thin film strips that dissolve under the tongue in less than seven minutes. These “sublingual” formulations are used to stop drug abusers from hoarding a stockpile of pills they can sell or use to get high at a later date.
The patent describes a new, improved form of buprenorphine that would come in a wafer that disintegrated more quickly than existing versions — perhaps in just a few seconds.
The original application was made by Purdue Pharma and Dr Sackler is listed as one of the inventors alongside five others, some of whom work or have worked for the Sackler’s group of drug companies.
“Drug addicts sometimes still try to divert these sublingual buprenorphine tablets by removing them from the mouth,” the patent application stated. “There remains a need for other . . . abuse-resistant dosage forms.”
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US opioid epidemic
What next for the Sacklers? A pharma dynasty under siegeIn June, the Massachusetts attorney-general filed a lawsuit against Dr Sackler and seven other members of the Sackler family, which accused them of engaging in a “deadly, deceptive scheme to sell opioids”.
Purdue and the family deny the allegations and Purdue said it intends to file a motion to dismiss. The company points out that OxyContin was, and still is, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
“We believe it is inappropriate for [Massachusetts] to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the regulatory, scientific and medical experts at FDA,” it said in a recent statement to the Financial Times.
Andrew Kolodny, a professor from Brandeis University who has been a vocal advocate for greater use of buprenorphine to battle the opioid crisis, said the idea Dr Sackler “could get richer” from the patent was “very disturbing”. He added: “Perhaps the profits off this patent should be used to pay any judgment or settlement down the line.”
Earlier this week, Purdue donated $3.4m to boost access to naloxone, an antidote given to people who have just overdosed on opioids.
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The irreplaceable scientific treasures lost in Brazil’s National Museum blaze
▻https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/09/07/inenglish/1536314750_865530.html?id_externo_rsoc=FB_CCThree days after the fire, the full extent of the damage had still not been assessed. But both professors and students are pessimistic, with many facing the possibility that the object of their studies has gone up in smoke.
One of the main concerns is the potential damage done to the material taken from the archeological site Lagoa Santa, in the state of Minas Gerais, which is considered of fundamental importance to understanding the origin of prehistoric American communities. The largest assortment of this material in the world, it was the indisputable jewel in the museum’s crown.
Labeled “the Luzia Group,” in reference to the oldest skeleton ever found in America, which came to light in 1974 and dates back 11,500 years, its discovery paved the way for a series of hypotheses concerning the colonization of the continent. Studies carried out on Luzia’s skull during the 1980s by Professor Walter Neves suggest that the first natives in America were possibly of African origin. As Luzia’s features do not resemble the features of Brazilian indigenous people at the time of its discovery, experts came up with the theory of an initial migration to Brazil of peoples with African characteristics who would have crossed from Asia to America via the Bering Strait 14,000 years ago, followed by another wave of migrants with Asiatic features, such as those of the American Indians, around 12,000 years ago. The delicate cranium was kept inside a steel case and it is not yet known what has become of it.
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