• In Chicago, a Socialist Teacher Takes on the Entrenched Political Machine
    https://jacobin.com/2023/02/chicago-11th-ward-alderman-election-ambria-taylor-dsa

    Die Probleme der kleinen Leute sind überall die gleichen: Besser Schulen, bezahlbare Wohnungen, funktionierende öffentliche Einrichtungen und Transportmittel und die Beseitigung von Gewalt und Verbrechen. Der Süden von Chicago ist wie eine viel härtere Ausgabe der härtesten Ecken von Berlin Neukölln.

    In der Southside ist die Wahlkampagne einer Sozialistin Teil der Bewegung für einen gemeinsamen Kapf der Einwohner um eine Stadtverwaltung ohne die traditionelle Korruption und Vetternwirtschaft. Bis heute wird die Stadt wie der Erbhof einer Bügermeisterdynastie verwaltet. Damit soll jetzt Schluß sein.

    24.2.2023 by Caleb Horton - An interview with Ambria Taylor

    Chicago’s 11th Ward is the heart of the old “Chicago machine,” one of the largest, longest-running, and most powerful political forces in US history. For most of the twentieth century, the Chicago machine organized the political, economic, and social order of America’s second city. Patronage rewards like plum city jobs were awarded to lieutenants who could best turn out the vote for the Democratic Party, which in turn provided funds, connections, and gifts to the ruling Daley family and their inner circle.

    Mayor Richard J. Daley, often called “the last big city boss,” ruled Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976. Daley spearheaded infrastructure and urban renewal projects that physically segregated white and black parts of the city with expressways and housing blocks and drove black displacement from desirable areas. He tangled with Martin Luther King Jr over school and housing desegregation, sicced the cops on antiwar protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and gave “shoot to kill” orders during the uprisings following King’s assassination.

    The Chicago machine’s glory days are past, but the legacy of the Daleys lives on. Relatives and friends of Mayor Daley still hold office throughout Chicago, and his nephew, Patrick Daley-Thompson, had a strong hold over City Council as the 11th Ward alderman until July 2022, when he was convicted of tax fraud and lying to federal bank regulators and forced to resign.

    Although the Daley family has lost direct control over the 11th Ward, their presence is still felt in the neighborhood of Bridgeport. While racial segregation is not explicitly enforced, the neighborhood still has a reputation among many older black residents as a “no-go zone,” and throughout the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, white gangs roamed the streets with weapons questioning anyone who looked “out of place” — a callback to the racist mob violence perpetrated by the Hamburg Athletic Club, of which a teenage Daley was a member a whole century prior.

    So what is Ambria Taylor, a socialist public school teacher, doing running for office in the backyard of this entrenched political fiefdom? Jacobin contributor Caleb Horton sat down with Taylor to discuss why she chose to run at this time and in this place, and how she is building a movement that can overturn the power of one of the nation’s most notorious political dynasties.

    Taylor launched her campaign in October 2021, when Daley-Thompson was still in office. After a few months of campaigning, the 11th Ward began to undergo major changes. First Daley-Thompson was arrested and then convicted of fraud, and then the ten-year ward remap took place, removing parts of the old 11th Ward and adding parts of Chinatown and McKinley Park.

    In just a few short months, Taylor was facing a newly-appointed incumbent, a new map, and six other candidates for alderman. Taylor is the only progressive in the race.

    Caleb Horton

    Why did you decide to run for office?

    Ambria Taylor

    Growing up, I experienced poverty and homelessness in rural Illinois. I moved to Chicago when I was seventeen to escape that. I slept on my brother’s floor, shared an air mattress with my mom.

    Chicago saved my life in a lot of ways. Urban areas have public transportation, they have dense development where you can walk to get what you need, where you can get to a job without a car. Public goods help people survive.

    Experiencing all that defined me. It’s why I’m so committed to protecting public goods like affordable public transportation and affordable housing. It’s why I’m a socialist. It’s why I got my master’s degree and became a teacher.

    I had a chance to grow up and live a decent life thanks to the strong public goods and services available in Chicago, but unfortunately that’s all been under attack due to neoliberalism, the hollowing out of the public sphere, and the assaults on unions.

    That’s why I’m running. We deserve a city that works for everyone like it worked for me. We deserve a city that, in the richest country in the history of the world, provides for the people who live here and make it run. And here in Chicago we have been building the movement for the city we deserve through making the ward office a space for people who are marginalized to build power.

    Caleb Horton

    What do you want to do when you’re in office?

    Ambria Taylor

    In Chicago the local ward office has a lot of local power. The alderman is kind of like a mini-mayor of their district. They have power to make proposals for spending taxpayer money, and they each get a budget of discretionary funds of about $1.5 million annually for ward projects.

    Aldermen have influence in the committee that oversees Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts. On TIFs, we gave $5 million in taxpayer money to Pepsi and $1.5 million to Vienna Beef.

    We shouldn’t be taking money away from our schools to fund giveaways to megacorporations, period. But if we’re going to have TIFs, residents should have democratic input into how those funds are spent. We have dozens of empty storefronts in what should be our commercial hubs — why not fund small businesses providing needed services and quality of life to residents?

    My dream is to, for one thing, involve the public in development decisions. But most of all, I want to ensure that money goes to things that benefit residents. Things they can see and experience, like cleaning alleys or tree trimming or sidewalk maintenance. In this ward, there’s a history of “the deal is made, and then they have a public meeting about it.” I want things to be the other way around.

    I’m excited for the potential of what we could do here if there’s a ward office that’s open and collaborative and is genuinely trying to do things that benefit the most vulnerable.

    Caleb Horton

    Could you talk a little bit about the ward’s political history, and why it has been such an “insiders’ club” of decision makers?

    Ambria Taylor

    We are on the Near South Side of Chicago. This ward now includes Bridgeport, Chinatown, and parts of a few neighborhoods called Canaryville, Armor Square, and McKinley Park.

    The Daley family is from this area. The home that’s been in the family for generations is here. The family has been powerful here for a really long time. They were also involved in various clubs and associations, like the Hamburg Athletic Club that took part in the racist white riots in 1919.

    The 11th Ward is well known for being an enclave of extremely aggressive anti-black racism. In the 1990s there was a young black boy who dared cross over here from Bronzeville to put air in his bicycle tires from a place that had free air, and he was put into a coma by teenage boys.

    One of those boys was well connected to the Mafia here. Potential witnesses for the trial who knew this boy and were present when it happened weren’t willing to come forward. This happened in the 1990s. Think about how old the fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-year-old boys would be now. Many people who are influential now were alive during that time and were wrapped up in that culture. This was considered a sundown town, and to some people still is.

    Things are changing rapidly. People move to the suburbs, new people move in, things change over time. There still is a vocal conservative contingent here, but this is also a place where Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary two times. Because of where we stand at this moment amid all those contradictions, we have the chance to make monumental change.

    There’s always been dissatisfaction with the machine, but we’ve started to cohere that dissatisfaction and the latent progressive energy into an organized base. We’ve brought together a base of people around progressive issues that many have said couldn’t exist here. We’re proving them wrong and proving the narrative about this part of the city wrong.

    As socialists, narratives are often used against us. It’s that narrative of what’s possible. The “Oh, we love Bernie, but he could never win. . . .” We say that a better world is possible. And what we’re seeing on the doors is that people are very excited to see a democratic socialist on the ballot. As far as I know, I’m the only person in the city running for office who has “socialist” on their literature. That’s big whether or not we win.

    Caleb Horton

    In what ways is this a movement campaign?

    Ambria Taylor

    We launched this campaign very early. We launched in October 2021 with an election at the end of February 2023. We did this because we needed time to organize.

    We started by holding community meetings for months. We brought communities together to articulate their desires for the city — like for streets and sanitation, public safety, the environment — and made those our platform planks.

    We engaged people with what they want to see happen in the ward: “How do you want an alderman to be working toward making those things happen? Let’s talk about how the city council works. Let’s talk about how the ward office operates and what budget it has.”

    Our residents have an appetite to get into the nitty-gritty about what an alderman can actually do to make progress on the things they want to see in this community and for Chicago. They want to take ownership over their own affairs.

    This is what political education can look like in the context of an aldermanic race. The people ask questions, articulate their needs, and we try to put that through the lens of what we can do as an aldermanic office and as organized communities.

    One thing we’ve found impactful is coming together for creative events. For instance, we had a huge block party with the owner and staff of a business called Haus of Melanin. This is a black-owned beauty bar that was vandalized twice in the months after they started up. A hair salon for black people? You can see why that might piss racists off.

    So we stepped in and built a relationship with them. We threw this huge block party, bringing a bunch of people together to say, “We’re going to celebrate that there are going to be black people in this neighborhood. There are going to be black-owned businesses that cater to black people.” And a lot of people came out in this neighborhood to say, “We support this business, we love that it’s here, and nobody is going to scare our neighbors away.”

    The business owner had talked about leaving. She had stylists leave because of the vandalism that happened. Haus of Melanin might have been chased out if the community didn’t turn out to say that these racists don’t represent us and we’re not going to take it. All of that is what a movement campaign looks like.

    Caleb Horton

    This is the city’s first Asian-majority ward, and the current alderperson is the city’s first Chinese American alderperson. Some people have said that this is an office that should go to an Asian American or a Chinese American person — that you as a white person shouldn’t be running for this office. How do you respond to that?

    Ambria Taylor

    We do remaps based on the census every ten years or so, and there was a big push to remap the 11th Ward to include Chinatown. Before the remap, the 11th Ward was 40 percent Asian, mostly Chinese. I think the biggest thing this remap did is unite a center politically that is already mapped culturally.

    The incumbent I’m running against was appointed by an unpopular mayor and is backed by the Daley family. Her father worked for Mayor Richard M. Daley. Richard M. Daley and John Daley sent out a letter backing our current alderman.

    It’s really exciting for this Asian-majority ward to have the opportunity to elect a representative they trust will fight for their interests.

    My team has worked hard to do everything on the campaign the way we plan to run our ward office. We have made the campaign a space to build power for people who are marginalized. We have a huge campaign team that includes canvassers who speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taishanese. Just today we used all three languages while we were at the doors.

    We make sure that people who are multilingual are present at our community meetings. Also every single piece of lit we’ve printed has been translated into three languages: English, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish.

    This election is not just about the candidate as a representative, but about electing someone who is going to focus on issues that matter to the people of this ward. This is bigger than one person, and we have been able to build a lot of meaningful connections.

    For example, we’ve made deep connections with Chinese-language newspapers, and that relationship is going to go a long way. We’ve had Chinese-language newspapers commenting on union rallies I was going to, my Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) endorsement, and so on, and we want to continue to nurture that relationship.

    Caleb Horton

    How has your experience as a Chicago Public Schools teacher influenced your politics?

    Ambria Taylor

    Teaching in Chicago Public Schools was really hard. I kind of expected that, but you have to live it for it to truly sink in.

    After a year of student teaching, I started my first lead teaching position in the 2019–2020 year. A month and a half later, we went on strike for almost two weeks. We came back to the classroom, and just as I was trying to get back into the swing of things, COVID hit.

    I became a remote teacher of middle schoolers, and things were really difficult. We had to eventually juggle hybrid learning and lack of staff. I became the union delegate for our school and experienced horrible retaliation from my principal. But through that, I learned to organize people in my building around workplace issues even if they had different politics than me.

    I saw how the workplace can unite us — it gives you something to convene around, and it’s hard to have anything interfere with that because your reality is informing it all. Public education is in a lot of trouble, and I firsthand experienced these schools unraveling at the seams.

    The city allocates money to bullshit while lead paint flakes off the walls and our buildings fall apart. As teachers, we face the struggle of trying to get through the day while kids are being put in the auditorium a few classes at a time because there is not enough staff to supervise them.

    That influenced me because a huge part of my campaign as a socialist is to fight against neoliberalism, austerity, and private interests’ attempt to narrow what the public sector does by choking these various public services and then saying, “It doesn’t work!”

    What is happening with Chicago Public Schools is happening everywhere — at the Chicago Public Library, in our transit system. My dream is being part of a movement that will help save our public sector.

    Caleb Horton

    The Chicago political machine faced an unsuccessful challenger in the 11th Ward four years ago. What makes your campaign different?

    Ambria Taylor

    There have been other challengers to the machine politicians in the 11th Ward. Usually it’s a person who has a few volunteers, and they raise less than $5,000. We’ve been able to raise over $90,000, and we have had over a hundred people volunteer for us. That’s something that challengers haven’t been able to muster up, and understandably so — it’s not an easy thing to do.

    The people of the ward want to support this kind of effort, and despite their modest fundraising, we’ve seen previous small campaigns still give the machine a run for its money. We had a guy take Patrick Daley to a runoff election, and he raised less than $5,000. What that shows is that a strong campaign stands a chance, and we’ve made a strong effort here.

    Caleb Horton

    What are the biggest issues facing the 11th Ward?

    Ambria Taylor

    Environmental issues are huge here. Our air quality is eight to nine times worse than northern parts of the city. Our city is very segregated. The further north you get the whiter it gets, and you will notice that the South Side has way worse air quality and way more heavy — or “dirty” — industry that pollutes our air and our soil.

    We used to have a Department of Environment that ticketed polluters that were breaking the rules and causing toxic contamination. That department is gone now, and the ticketing has gone down. When ticketing does happen, it happens on the North Side.

    So there is a lot we can do here, like reestablishing the Department of Environment and working with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to make sure that the polluters in this area are being held to the standards they should be held to; also, when it comes to developments, saying, “No, I will not support new dirty industry coming to this region which is already severely overburdened.”

    Caleb Horton

    Public safety has come up a lot this election. What do you believe the 11th Ward could be doing about this?

    Ambria Taylor

    Public safety has become a major talking point this year. That’s not to say that everything is safe and everything is fine: we have carjackings, shootings, and assaults. People experiencing violence is unacceptable.

    However, a lot of people have given in to saying, “I’m the alderman and I love the police.” What that does is absolve our leadership of any responsibility. We’ve had police officers responding to forty thousand mental health calls a year. There’s been a big movement in Chicago to shift things like mental health and domestic violence calls to other city workers instead of the police.

    What we’ve seen is poverty and austerity are on the rise, and when you have high poverty, you have high crime. We need resources for young people, better social services, housing, and mental health care. A lot of people who we’ve canvassed agree that police are not enough and we need to address violence holistically.

    Caleb Horton

    What about affordable housing? Where do you stand on that?

    Ambria Taylor

    Here in the 11th Ward, there has been a push for affordable housing, but it’s really hit or miss as far as enforcement goes. Also, when it comes to affordability, we need to be stricter on how we define it. Right now, developments can say there are affordable units in a building even if they are not truly affordable and are just a little cheaper than other units in the building.

    We want affordable housing, and we want to hold developers’ feet to the fire as far as prices go. Having a resident-led ward gives us the opportunity to ask developers, “What do you plan to charge for the units?” and get them to commit to something truly affordable for people to live in.

    We must also expand public housing. Chicago has lots of money for it, yet we’re selling land that belongs to the housing authority off to private interests. That needs to stop. I’m interested in partnering with residents who live in public housing to make sure it improves and expands.

    I also support just cause for evictions and lifting the ban on rent control in Illinois. We have a ban on passing rent control — we can’t even introduce a bill on it. I very much support the effort to overturn that.

    Caleb Horton

    What are your plans for this progressive base that you’re building?

    Ambria Taylor

    From here on out, if I’m the next alderman, we will continue to organize through the ward office and institute participatory budgeting and resident-led zoning and development boards. We will make serious changes to how the ward office is engaging with the people who live here.

    And if we don’t win, we have movement institutions: we have the 11th Ward Independent Political Organization, we have DSA. We need to make sure we’re actually organizing people into groups where we can continue to grow what we’re doing. I’m really interested in where we are going to take this.
    –-----
    Filed Under
    #United_States #Politics #Cities #racism #democratic_socialists_of_america #Chicago_City_Council

    A Live Chat with Ambria Taylor, 11th Ward Alderperson Candidate!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9VYjSzwN_Q

    6 Candidates Are Challenging Ald. Nicole Lee In 11th Ward Race
    https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/01/11/six-candidates-are-challenging-ald-nicole-lee-in-the-11th-ward

    Two teachers, a veteran police officer, a firefighter and an attorney are among the challengers looking to unseat Lee, who was appointed to the City Council seat in 2022.

    Ambria Taylor | Chicago News | WTTW
    https://news.wttw.com/elections/voters-guide/2023/Ambria-Taylor

    Chicago DSA Endorses Ambria Taylor and Warren Williams
    https://midwestsocialist.com/2023/01/11/chicago-dsa-endorses-ambria-taylor-and-warren-williams-post-petiti

    #USA #Chicago #southside #Rassismus #Armut #Gewalt #Korruption #Sicherheit #Politik #Organizing

  • (Re)Constructing Inequality : Community Development in Public and Private
    https://metropolitiques.eu/Re-Constructing-Inequality-Community-Development-in-Public-and-Priva

    Claire Dunning #Reviews Jeremy R. Levine’s new book, Constructing Community, an ethnographic study of community development projects in #Boston. For a book about #urban_poverty and #redevelopment, Constructing Community recounts few protests or headline-grabbing incidents. Instead, the drama unfolds slowly over the course of a decade in poorly lit community rooms, downtown board rooms, and the backseats of cars. This is a book about the banalities of bureaucracy and #governance—a fact that author Reviews

    / Boston, #Massachusetts, #United_States, #mass_transit, #rapid_transit, #transport, #public_transportation, #community-based_organizations, urban #poverty, redevelopment, poverty, governance, #local_governance, #urban_governance, (...)

    #ethnography

  • Large DNA Study Traces Violent History of American Slavery

    Scientists from the consumer genetics company 23andMe have published the largest DNA study to date of people with African ancestry in the Americas.

    An 1823 cross-section diagram of a ship used to carry enslaved people. The illustration, which was used in abolitionist campaigns and contains several historical inaccuracies, has become one of the most famous depictions of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
    Credit...incamerastock/Alamy

    More than one and a half centuries after the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended, a new study shows how the brutal treatment of enslaved people has shaped the DNA of their descendants.

    The report, which included more than 50,000 people, 30,000 of them with African ancestry, agrees with the historical record about where people were taken from in Africa, and where they were enslaved in the Americas. But it also found some surprises.

    For example, the DNA of participants from the United States showed a significant amount of Nigerian ancestry — far more than expected based on the historical records of ships carrying enslaved people directly to the United States from Nigeria.

    At first, historians working with the researchers “couldn’t believe the amount of Nigerian ancestry in the U.S.,” said Steven Micheletti, a population geneticist at 23andMe who led the study.

    After consulting another historian, the researchers learned that enslaved people were sent from Nigeria to the British Caribbean, and then were further traded into the United States, which could explain the genetic findings, he said.

    The study illuminates one of the darkest chapters of world history, in which 12.5 million people were forcibly taken from their homelands in tens of thousands of European ships. It also shows that the historical and genetic records together tell a more layered and intimate story than either could alone.

    The study, which was published on Thursday in the American Journal of Human Genetics, represents “real progress in how we think that genetics contributes to telling a story about the past,” said Alondra Nelson, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who was not involved in the study.

    Although the work is commendable for making use of both historical and genetic data, Dr. Nelson said, it was also “a missed opportunity to take the full step and really collaborate with historians.” The history of the different ethnic groups in Africa, for example, and how they related to modern and historical geographic boundaries, could have been explored in greater depth, she said.

    The study began as a dream project of Joanna Mountain, senior director of research at 23andMe, even before the company had any customers. Over 10 years she and her team built a genetic database. Primarily the participants were 23andMe customers whose grandparents were born in one of the geographic regions of trans-Atlantic slavery. All participants consented to have their DNA used in the research.

    In the new study, Dr. Micheletti’s team compared this genetic database with a historical one, Slave Voyages, which contains an enormous amount of information about slavery, such as ports of embarkation and disembarkation, and numbers of enslaved men, women and children.

    The researchers also consulted with some historians to identify gaps in their data, Dr. Mountain said. Historians told them, for example, that they needed representation from critical regions, like Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The team worked with academics connected to West African institutions to find that data.

    The size of the project’s dataset is “extraordinary,” said David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard who was not part of the project.

    Because it drew participants from a direct-to-consumer database of millions of people, the study was able to “ask and answer questions about the past and about how people are related to each other” that could not be asked by academics like himself, he said. At best, academic projects are able to study hundreds or a few thousand people, and generally that data does not also include the genealogical information that the 23andMe research participants provided.

    The findings show remarkable alignment with the historical record. Historians have estimated, for example, that 5.7 million people were taken from West Central Africa to the Americas. And the genetic record shows a very strong connection between people in West Central Africa and all people with African ancestry in the Americas.

    Historians have also noted that the people who were taken to Latin America from Africa disembarked from West Central Africa, but many were taken originally from other regions like Senegambia and the Bight of Benin. And the new genetic evidence supports this, showing that the descendants of enslaved people in Latin America generally carry genetic connections with two or three of these regions in Africa.

    Historical evidence shows that enslaved people in the United States and the British Caribbean, by contrast, were taken from a larger number of regions of Africa. Their descendants today show a genetic connection to people in six regions in Africa, the study found.

    The historical record shows that of the 10.7 million enslaved people who disembarked in the Americas (after nearly 2 million others died on the journey), more than 60 percent were men. But the genetic record shows that it was mostly enslaved women who contributed to the present-day gene pool.

    The asymmetry in the experience of enslaved men and women — and indeed, many groups of men and women in centuries past — is well understood. Enslaved men often died before they had a chance to have children. Enslaved women were often raped and forced to have children.

    The 23andMe project found this general pattern, but also uncovered a startling difference in the experience of men and women between regions in the Americas.

    The scientists calculated that enslaved women in the United States contributed 1.5 times more to the modern-day gene pool of people of African descent than enslaved men. In the Latin Caribbean, they contributed 13 times more. In Northern South America, they contributed 17 times more.

    What’s more, in the United States, European men contributed three times more to the modern-day gene pool of people of African descent than European women did. In the British Caribbean, they contributed 25 times more.

    This genetic evidence, the scientists say, may be explained by local practices. In the United States, segregation between enslaved people and the European population may have made it more likely that the child of an enslaved mother would have an enslaved father. But in other regions where enslaved men were less likely to reproduce, dangerous practices like rice farming — in which harsh conditions and muddy fields made it easier to drown, and malaria was common — may have killed many of them before they could have children.

    In some regions in Latin America, the government enacted programs that brought men from Europe to father children with enslaved women in order to intentionally diminish the African gene pool.

    The study illustrates how much physical and sexual violence were part of slavery — and how they are still built into our society, Dr. Nelson said. It confirms the “mistreatment, discrimination, sexual abuse, and violence that has persisted for generations,” she said, and that many people are protesting today.

    #DNA #American_Slavery #ancestry #trans-Atlantic_slave_trade #United_States

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/science/23andme-african-ancestry.html?referringSource=articleShare

    • EDUCATION THAT LEADS TO LEGISLATION

      ‘Segregated By Design’ examines the forgotten history of how our federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America through law and policy.

      Prejudice can be birthed from a lack of understanding the historically accurate details of the past. Without being aware of the unconstitutional residential policies the United States government enacted during the middle of the twentieth century, one might have a negative view today of neighborhoods where African Americans live or even of African Americans themselves.

      We can compensate for this unlawful segregation through a national political consensus that leads to legislation. And this will only happen if the majority of Americans understand how we got here. Like Jay-Z said in a recent New York Times interview, “you can’t have a solution until you start dealing with the problem: What you reveal, you heal.” This is the major challenge at hand: to educate fellow citizens of the unconstitutional inequality that we’ve woven and, on behalf of our government, accept responsibility to fix it.

      https://www.segregatedbydesign.com

    • The Color of Law

      This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review).

      Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.


      https://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?id=4294995609&LangType=1033
      #livre

  • Lyft Is Not Your Friend
    http://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/the-myth-of-the-woke-brand-uber-lyft-capitalism

    10.25.2018 BY MEAGAN DAY #UNITED_STATES #CAPITAL #CONJECTURES #LIBERALISM

    Lyft is the latest brand trying to build market share by posing as a “progressive” corporation. But the fight can’t be good corporations against bad ones — it’s working people against capitalism.
    In early 2017, liberals hit on a new strategy to resist the nascent Trump administration: #DeleteUber.

    It started when New York City’s taxi drivers refused to service JFK airport to protest Trump’s travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries, and Uber was spotted leveraging the ensuing crisis for profit. Then Uber CEO Travis Kalanick came under fire for accepting an appointment to Trump’s economic advisory council. He announced his resignation from the council, but only weeks later a video leaked of Kalanick reprimanding a driver for his company.

    Amid various ensuing scandals, Kalanick stepped down as CEO of Uber, but by then millions of consumers had turned on the brand in protest, deleting the Uber app from their phone and opting instead for the rideshare giant’s rival Lyft.

    Lyft leaned in, eagerly branding itself as the progressive alternative to Uber by pledging a $1 million donation to the ACLU and trotting out celebrities to promote it as a company committed to “doing things for the right reasons.” Lyft, of course, operates on the same labor model as Uber — its drivers are not employees but independent contractors, and are therefore denied all the benefits and protections that workers receive under more ideal circumstances. Nevertheless, a new refrain rang out across liberaldom: “I don’t use Uber, I use Lyft.”

    What socialists understand that liberals don’t is that brands are corporate enterprises, and corporate enterprises are fundamentally motivated by the pursuit of profit — even in their ostentatious acts of charity and wokeness.

    Three surefire ways to maximize profit are: suppressing labor costs by paying workers as little as you can get away with, lobbying the state for deregulation and lower taxes, and opening new markets by finding new things to commodify and sell. Businesses will always pursue these avenues of profit maximization where they can. It’s not a matter of ethics but of market discipline: if they don’t, they run the risk of losing out to the competition and eventually capsizing.

    Sometimes corporations do things for publicity that make it seem like their interests are not fundamentally misaligned with those of the working-class majority, who rely on decent wages and well-funded public services. But those efforts are meant to sustain public confidence in a given corporation’s brand, which is occasionally necessary for keeping up profits, as Uber’s losses in 2017 demonstrate. When corporate profits come into direct conflict with active measures to improve people’s wellbeing, corporations will always select the former. Case in point: Lyft just donated $100k to the campaign against a ballot measure that would create a tax fund to house the homeless in San Francisco, where the company is based.

    Why did the progressive alternative to Uber do this? Well, because the company doesn’t want to pay higher taxes. Because high taxes imperil profits, and profits are the point. Another likely rationale is to build stronger bonds with pro-business advocacy groups in San Francisco, so that the company will have allies if the city decides to implement regulations against ride-sharing services, which is rumored to be a possibility.

    Lyft has already mastered the art of suppressing labor costs and opening new markets. Next on the wish list, low taxes and deregulation. It’s pretty formulaic when you get down to it.

    San Francisco is home to an estimated 7,500 homeless people. Proposition C would tap the large corporations that benefit from the city’s public infrastructure to double the city’s homelessness budget in an attempt to resolve the crisis. The corporations opposing Proposition C say that the move would imperil jobs. This is not an analysis, it’s a threat. What they’re saying is that if the city reaches too far into their pockets, they’ll take their business elsewhere, draining the region of jobs and revenue as punishment for government overreach. It’s a mobster’s insinuation: Nice economy, shame if something happened to it. Meanwhile thousands of people sleep in the streets, even though the money to shelter them is within the city’s borders.

    Of course, in every struggle over taxes and industry regulation there may be a few canny corporate outliers looking to ingratiate their brand to the public by bucking the trend. In the case of Proposition C, it’s Salesforce, whose CEO Marc Benioff has made a public display of support for the ballot measure. But before you rush to praise Benioff, consider that only two months ago he lauded Trump’s tax cuts for fueling “aggressive spending” and injecting life into the economy.

    You could spend your life as an engaged consumer hopping from brand to brand, as liberals often do, pledging allegiance to this one and protesting that one to the beat of the new cycle drum. You could delete Lyft from your phone the same way you did with Uber, and find another rideshare app that you deem more ethical, until that one inevitably disappoints you too.

    Or you could press pause, stop scrambling for some superior consumption choice to ease your conscience, and entertain the socialist notion that deep down all corporations are objectively the same. They all exist to maximize return on investment for the people who own them. They are all in competition with each other to plunder our commons most effectively, with the lowest overhead, which means compensating the least for employees’ work. And when the rubber meets the road, they will all prioritize private profits over the wellbeing of those who own no productive assets, which is the vast majority of the people on the planet. They will demonstrate these priorities on a case-by-case basis, and on a massive global scale so long as capitalism prevails.

    “We’re woke,” said Lyft CEO John Zimmerman at the height of the Uber scandal. It was horseshit — it always is. And until liberals stop believing than any brand can be truly “woke,” or can offer a genuine alternative to the predatory behavior they observe in other “unwoke” brands, they’ll be unable to mount a meaningful resistance to anything.

    Whether we want to ensure clean drinking water for the residents of Flint or to shelter the homeless of San Francisco, we have to draw clear battle lines that are up to the challenge. The fight can’t be good corporations against bad corporations. It has to be working people against capitalism.

    #USA #transport #disruption #Lyft

  • La vie de désespoir des réfugiés relégués par l’Australie sur une île du Pacifique

    La femme du Somalien Khadar Hrisi a tenté plusieurs fois de se suicider. R, une Iranienne de 12 ans, a voulu s’immoler par le feu : à Nauru, minuscule caillou du Pacifique, des réfugiés relégués par l’Australie racontent à l’AFP une vie sans perspective, sans soins et sans espoir.

    Nauru, le plus petit pays insulaire du monde, vient d’accueillir le Forum des îles du Pacifique (Fip) mais a interdit aux journalistes l’accès aux camps de rétention où Canberra refoule les clandestins qui tentent de gagner l’Australie par la mer.

    L’AFP a toutefois réussi à y pénétrer et à rencontrer des réfugiés dont la quasi totalité ont souhaité l’anonymat pour des raisons de sécurité.

    A Nauru, près d’un millier de migrants dont une centaine d’enfants, sur 11.000 habitants, vivent dans huit camps financés par Canberra, certains depuis cinq ans, selon leurs récits.

    Dans le camp numéro 5, que l’on atteint au détour d’un chemin sous une chaleur écrasante, dans un paysage hérissé de pitons rocheux, le Somalien Hrisi veut témoigner à visage découvert.

    Il n’a plus peur, il n’a plus rien. Sa femme ne parle pas, son visage est inexpressif.

    M. Hrisi la laisse seule le moins possible, à cause de sa dépression. Elle a tenté plusieurs fois de se suicider ces derniers jours, raconte-t-il.

    « Quand je me suis réveillé, elle était en train de casser ça », dit-il en montrant des lames de rasoir jetables. « Elle allait les avaler avec de l’eau ».

    – Problèmes psychologiques -

    M. Hrisi affirme qu’ils sont allés plusieurs fois à l’hôpital de Nauru financé par l’Australie mais que celui-ci refuse de les prendre en charge. L’autre nuit, « ils ont appelé la police et nous ont mis dehors ».

    Le camp numéro 1 traite les malades, expliquent les réfugiés. Mais il n’accueille qu’une cinquantaine de personnes car l’endroit croule sous les demandes. Or beaucoup de migrants vont mal et souffrent de problèmes psychologiques liés à leur isolement sur l’île.

    Les évacuations sanitaires vers l’Australie sont rares selon eux.

    Les ONG ne cessent de dénoncer la politique d’immigration draconienne de l’Australie.

    Depuis 2013, Canberra, qui dément tout mauvais traitement, refoule systématiquement en mer tous les bateaux de clandestins, originaires pour beaucoup d’Afghanistan, du Sri Lanka et du Moyen-Orient.

    Ceux qui parviennent à passer par les mailles du filet sont envoyés dans des îles reculées du Pacifique. Même si leur demande d’asile est jugée légitime, ils ne seront jamais accueillis sur le sol australien.

    Canberra argue qu’il sauve ainsi des vies en dissuadant les migrants d’entreprendre un périlleux voyage. Les arrivées de bateaux, qui étaient quasiment quotidiennes, sont aujourd’hui rarissimes.

    Le Refugee Council of Australia et l’Asylum Seeker Resource Centre ont dénoncé récemment les ravages psychologiques de la détention indéfinie, en particulier chez les enfants.

    « Ceux qui ont vu ces souffrances disent que c’est pire que tout ce qu’ils ont vu, même dans les zones de guerre. Des enfants de sept et douze ans ont fait l’expérience de tentatives répétées de suicide, certains s’arrosent d’essence et deviennent catatoniques », écrivaient-ils.

    R, une Iranienne de 12 ans rencontrée par l’AFP, a tenté de s’immoler. Elle vit à Nauru depuis cinq ans avec ses deux parents de 42 ans et son frère de 13 ans.

    Les enfants passent leurs journées prostrés au lit. La mère a la peau couverte de plaques, elle dit souffrir et ne recevoir aucun traitement.

    – Essence et briquet -

    Le père a récemment surpris sa fille en train de s’asperger d’essence. « Elle a pris un briquet et elle a crié +Laisse-moi seule ! Laisse-moi seule ! Je veux me suicider ! Je veux mourir !+ ».

    Son fils sort lentement de son lit et confie d’une voix monocorde : « Je n’ai pas d’école, je n’ai pas de futur, je n’ai pas de vie ».

    Non loin de là, entre deux préfabriqués, une cuve est taguée du sigle « ABF » et d’une croix gammée. L’Australian Border Force est le service australien de contrôle des frontières, honni par les réfugiés.

    Ces derniers se déplacent librement sur l’île car la prison, ce sont ses 21 kilomètres carrés.

    Khadar reçoit un ami, un ancien gardien de buts professionnel camerounais qui raconte avoir secouru un voisin en train de se pendre. Son meilleur ami a été retrouvé mort, le nez et les yeux pleins de sang, sans qu’il sache la cause du décès.

    Pas de perspectives, et pas de soins. Au grand désespoir d’Ahmd Anmesharif, un Birman dont les yeux coulent en permanence. Il explique souffrir aussi du cœur et passe ses journées sur un fauteuil en mousse moisie, à regarder la route.

    Les défenseurs des droits dénoncent des conditions effroyables et font état d’accusations d’agressions sexuelles et d’abus physiques.

    Les autorités de l’île démentent. Les réfugiés « mènent leur vie normalement, comme les autres Nauruans (...) on est très heureux de vivre ensemble », assurait ainsi lors du Fip le président de Nauru, Baron Waqa.

    Mais les réfugiés soutiennent que leurs relations avec les Nauruans se détériorent.

    « Ils nous frappent toujours, ils nous lancent toujours des pierres », accuse l’adolescent iranien.

    – Economie sous perfusion -

    Un autre Iranien, un mécanicien qui a réussi à monter un petit commerce, crie sa colère. Il vient de se faire voler « la caisse, les motos, les outils ». « La police ne retrouve jamais rien quand ce sont les Nauruans qui volent les réfugiés », assène-t-il.

    Si les conditions sont vétustes dans les camps, où la plupart des logements sont des préfabriqués, beaucoup d’habitants de Nauru semblent vivre dans des conditions plus précaires encore.

    Bon nombre habitent des cabanes de tôle, les plages sont jonchées de détritus. Ils disent ne pas comprendre de quoi se plaignent les migrants.

    En attendant, les camps sont cruciaux pour l’économie de l’île, exsangue depuis l’épuisement des réserves de phosphate qui avait contribué à l’opulence du siècle dernier.

    Selon les chiffres australiens, les recettes publiques sont passées de 20 à 115 millions de dollars australiens (12 à 72 millions d’euros) entre 2010-2011 et 2015-2016, essentiellement grâce aux subventions australiennes liées aux camps.

    « Si on enlève les réfugiés, Nauru est morte : c’est pour ça que le président tient à ce que nous restions », juge le Camerounais.

    Mais tous les réfugiés rencontrés souhaitent partir, n’importe où pour certains.

    « Au XXIe siècle, les gens pensent en secondes, en instants. Le gouvernement australien a volé cinq ans de notre vie... qui s’en soucie ? », regrette le père de la petite Iranienne.


    https://actu.orange.fr/monde/la-vie-de-desespoir-des-refugies-relegues-par-l-australie-sur-une-ile-du-pacifique-CNT0000016r391/photos/un-refugie-du-sri-lanka-a-anibare-sur-l-ile-de-nauru-dans-le-pacifique-l
    #Nauru #externalisation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Australie #photographie
    via @marty
    cc @reka

    • The #Nauru Experience: Zero-Tolerance Immigration and #Suicidal_Children

      A recent visit to Nauru revealed the effects of Australia’s offshore #detention_policy and its impact on #mental_health.

      The Krishnalingam family on the roof of an abandoned mansion in Ronave, Nauru. The family applied for resettlement in the #United_States after fleeing Sri Lanka and being certified as #refugees.

      CreditCreditMridula Amin

      TOPSIDE, Nauru — She was 3 years old when she arrived on Nauru, a child fleeing war in #Sri_Lanka. Now, Sajeenthana is 8.

      Her gaze is vacant. Sometimes she punches adults. And she talks about dying with ease.

      “Yesterday I cut my hand,” she said in an interview here on the remote Pacific island where she was sent by the Australian government after being caught at sea. She pointed to a scar on her arm.

      “One day I will kill myself,” she said. “Wait and see, when I find the knife. I don’t care about my body. ”

      Her father tried to calm her, but she twisted away. “It is the same as if I was in war, or here,” he said.

      Sajeenthana is one of more than 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers who have been sent to Australia’s offshore #detention_centers since 2013. No other Australian policy has been so widely condemned by the world’s human rights activists nor so strongly defended by the country’s leaders, who have long argued it saves lives by deterring smugglers and migrants.

      Now, though, the desperation has reached a new level — in part because of the United States.

      Sajeenthana and her father are among the dozens of refugees on Nauru who had been expecting to be moved as part of an Obama-era deal that President #Trump reluctantly agreed to honor, allowing resettlement for up to 1,250 refugees from Australia’s offshore camps.

      So far, according to American officials, about 430 refugees from the camps have been resettled in the United States — but at least 70 people were rejected over the past few months.

      That includes Sajeenthana and her father, Tamil refugees who fled violence at home after the Sri Lankan government crushed a Tamil insurgency.

      Sajeenthana, 8, with her father after describing her suicidal thoughts and attempts at self-harm in September.CreditMridula Amin and Lachie Hinton

      A State Department spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the #rejections, arguing the Nauru refugees are subject to the same vetting procedures as other refugees worldwide.

      Australia’s Department of Home Affairs said in a statement that Nauru has “appropriate mental health assessment and treatment in place.”

      But what’s clear, according to doctors and asylum seekers, is that the situation has been deteriorating for months. On Nauru, signs of suicidal children have been emerging since August. Dozens of organizations, including #Doctors_Without_Borders (which was ejected from Nauru on Oct. 5) have been sounding the alarm. And with the hope of American resettlement diminishing, the Australian government has been forced to relent: Last week officials said they would work toward moving all children off Nauru for treatment by Christmas.

      At least 92 children have been moved since August — Sajeenthana was evacuated soon after our interview — but as of Tuesday there were still 27 children on Nauru, hundreds of adults, and no long-term solution.

      The families sent to Australia for care are waiting to hear if they will be sent back to Nauru. Some parents, left behind as their children are being treated, fear they will never see each other again if they apply for American resettlement, while asylum seekers from countries banned by the United States — like Iran, Syria and Somalia — lack even that possibility.

      For all the asylum seekers who have called Nauru home, the psychological effects linger.
      ‘I Saw the Blood — It Was Everywhere’

      Nauru is a small island nation of about 11,000 people that takes 30 minutes by car to loop. A line of dilapidated mansions along the coast signal the island’s wealthy past; in the 1970s, it was a phosphate-rich nation with per capita income second only to Saudi Arabia.

      Now, those phosphate reserves are virtually exhausted, and the country relies heavily on Australian aid. It accounted for 25 percent of Nauru’s gross domestic product last year alone.

      Mathew Batsiua, a former Nauruan lawmaker who helped orchestrate the offshore arrangement, said it was meant to be a short-term deal. But the habit has been hard to break.

      “Our mainstay income is purely controlled by the foreign policy of another country,” he said.

      In Topside, an area of old cars and dusty brush, sits one of the two processing centers that house about 160 detainees. Hundreds of others live in community camps of modular housing. They were moved from shared tents in August, ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum, an intergovernmental meeting that Nauru hosted this year.

      Sukirtha Krishnalingam, 15, said the days are a boring loop as she and her family of five — certified refugees from Sri Lanka — wait to hear if the United States will accept them. She worries about her heart condition. And she has nightmares.

      “At night, she screams,” said her brother Mahinthan, 14.

      In the past year, talk of suicide on the island has become more common. Young men like Abdullah Khoder, a 24-year-old Lebanese refugee, says exhaustion and hopelessness have taken a toll. “I cut my hands with razors because I am tired,” he said.

      Even more alarming: Children now allude to suicide as if it were just another thunderstorm. Since 2014, 12 people have died after being detained in Australia’s offshore detention centers on Nauru and Manus Island, part of Papua New Guinea.

      Christina Sivalingam, a 10-year-old Tamil girl on Nauru spoke matter-of-factly in an interview about seeing the aftermath of one death — that of an Iranian man, Fariborz Karami, who killed himself in June.

      “We came off the school bus and I saw the blood — it was everywhere,” she said calmly. It took two days to clean up. She said her father also attempted suicide after treatment for his thyroid condition was delayed.

      Seeing some of her friends being settled in the United States while she waits on her third appeal for asylum has only made her lonelier. She said she doesn’t feel like eating anymore.

      “Why am I the only one here?” she said. “I want to go somewhere else and be happy.”

      Some observers, even on Nauru, wonder if the children are refusing to eat in a bid to leave. But medical professionals who have worked on the island said the rejections by the Americans have contributed to a rapid deterioration of people’s mental states.

      Dr. Beth O’Connor, a psychiatrist working with Doctors Without Borders, said that when she arrived last year, people clung to the hope of resettlement in the United States. In May, a batch of rejections plunged the camp into despair.

      Mr. Karami’s death further sapped morale.

      “People that just had a bit of spark in their eye still just went dull,” Dr. O’Connor said. “They felt more abandoned and left behind.”

      Many of the detainees no longer hope to settle in Australia. #New_Zealand has offered to take in 150 refugees annually from Nauru but Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, has said that he will only consider the proposal if a bill is passed banning those on Nauru from ever entering Australia. Opposition lawmakers say they are open to discussion.

      In the meantime, Nauru continues to draw scrutiny.
      ‘I’m Not Going Back to Nauru’

      For months, doctors say, many children on Nauru have been exhibiting symptoms of #resignation_syndrome — a mental condition in response to #trauma that involves extreme withdrawal from reality. They stopped eating, drinking and talking.

      “They’d look right through you when you tried to talk to them,” Dr. O’Connor said. “We watched their weights decline and we worried that one of them would die before they got out.”

      Lawyers with the National Justice Project, a nonprofit legal service, have been mobilizing. They have successfully argued for the #medical_evacuation of around 127 people from Nauru this year, including 44 children.

      In a quarter of the cases, the government has resisted these demands in court, said George Newhouse, the group’s principal lawyer.

      “We’ve never lost,” he said. “It is gut-wrenching to see children’s lives destroyed for political gain.”

      A broad coalition that includes doctors, clergy, lawyers and nonprofit organizations, working under the banner #kidsoffnauru, is now calling for all asylum seekers to be evacuated.

      Public opinion in Australia is turning: In one recent poll, about 80 percent of respondents supported the removal of families and children from Nauru.

      Australia’s conservative government, with an election looming, is starting to shift.

      “We’ve been going about this quietly,” Mr. Morrison said last week. “We haven’t been showboating.”

      But there are still questions about what happens next.

      Last month, Sajeenthana stopped eating. After she had spent 10 days on a saline drip in a Nauruan hospital, her father was told he had two hours to pack for Australia.

      Speaking by video from Brisbane last week (we are not using her full name because of her age and the severity of her condition), Sajeenthana beamed.

      “I feel better now that I am in Australia,” she said. “I’m not going back to Nauru.”

      But her father is less certain. The United States rejected his application for resettlement in September. There are security guards posted outside their Brisbane hotel room, he said, and though food arrives daily, they are not allowed to leave. He wonders if they have swapped one kind of limbo for another, or if they will be forced back to Nauru.

      Australia’s Home Affairs minister has said the Nauru children will not be allowed to stay.

      “Anyone who is brought here is still classified as a transitory person,” said Jana Favero, director of advocacy and campaigns at the Asylum Seeker Resource Center. “Life certainly isn’t completely rosy and cheery once they arrive in Australia.”

      On Monday, 25 more people, including eight children, left the island in six family units, she said.

      Those left behind on Nauru pass the days, worrying and waiting.

      Christina often dreams of what life would be like somewhere else, where being 10 does not mean being trapped.

      A single Iranian woman who asked not to be identified because she feared for her safety said that short of attempting suicide or changing nationality, there was no way off Nauru.

      She has been waiting two years for an answer to her application for resettlement in the United States — one that now seems hopeless given the Trump administration’s policies.

      Each night, often after the power goes out on Nauru, she and her sister talk about life and death, and whether to harm themselves to seek freedom.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/world/australia/nauru-island-asylum-refugees-children-suicide.html

  • African immigrants and #race in America
    http://africasacountry.com/2016/10/no-segregation-in-matters-of-race-prejudice

    Perhaps the most famous example of “African passing” is the infamous anecdote of former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. A student in 1960s U.S., Annan had traveled to the Jim Crow South. He needed a haircut, but was told by a racist white barber: “I do not cut nigger hair.” Annan, who is Ghanaian, responded: […]

    #ESSAYS #Black_Lives_Matter #immigration #Police_Violence #United_States

  • L’historien éclaire-t-il le présent ?
    http://www.laviedesidees.fr/L-historien-eclaire-t-il-le-present.html

    En quoi l’Histoire est-elle pertinente pour comprendre les débats actuels sur la #race, les inégalités économiques ou bien encore le récit national ? Thomas Sugrue, historien renommé, spécialiste des crises urbaines et de la #ségrégation, insiste sur la valeur de la passion et d’un travail de recherche minutieux. Les historiens peuvent et doivent s’engager dans le débat public, mais selon leurs propres termes.

    Essais & débats

    / #United_States, race, ségrégation, #politics

    #Essais_&_débats

  • Sur Froggybottom un article de Maya Kandel , Docteur de l’IEP de Paris, responsable des recherches sur les U.S.A à l’Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l’École Militaire

    Etats-Unis Arabie Saoudite, une relation compliquée | Froggy Bottom
    https://froggybottomblog.com/2016/04/16/etats-unis-arabie-saoudite-une-relation-compliquee

    Alors que Barack Obama s’apprête à faire une nouvelle visite en Arabie Saoudite, la relation spéciale entre Washington et Riyad traverse une période de turbulences – et l’article sur « la doctrine Obama » paru il y a quelques semaines dans la revue américaine The Atlantic n’a rien arrangé.

    Certes, tous les documents officiels américains, qu’ils émanent du Pentagone, du département d’Etat ou du Congrès (cf. dernier rapport du CRS) insistent sur une relation bilatérale resserrée entre les Etats-Unis et l’Arabie Saoudite, relation qui s’appuie en particulier sur :

    Des ventes d’armes record (d’une valeur de 110 milliards pour la période 2010-2015),
    Une coopération militaire (notamment entraînements et exercices conjoints, relation mil-to-mil) ancienne et approfondie,
    Une coopération sécuritaire bilatérale renforcée, en particulier dans le contre-terrorisme (un haut-responsable américain parlant de « partenariat stratégique »)
    Et des préoccupations partagées, notamment concernant Al Qaeda et l’Etat Islamique.

    On note également les gestes récents, comme le soutien saoudien exprimé en septembre 2015 à Washington à l’accord sur nucléaire iranien, et le soutien américain apporté à Riyad dès le début de son intervention au Yémen – les deux étant évidemment liés. Sur le Yémen, on peut souligner quelques réticences et précautions de langage côté américain : ainsi la cellule conjointe américano-saoudienne pour l’échange de renseignements et le ciblage des frappes aurait évolué pour accroître la « supervision » américaine sur le choix des cibles (même si le discours officiel du DoD demeure “this is not our war”) . . .

    #ArabieSaoudite #United_state

  • Djihadism, conflicts and foreign interventions in the Sahel
    http://visionscarto.net/sahel-djihadism-foreign-intervention

    Title : Djihadism, conflicts et and foreign interventions in the Sahel Keywords : #Jihadism #Armament #War #Conflicts #Africa #United_States #France #Maghreb Publication : This map was introduced to the Planetary Security Conference in the Hague - Netherlands (2-3 November 2015). Author : Philippe Rekacewicz Date : Janvier 2016.

    #Collection_cartographique

  • The struggle for #Afrodescendant rights
    http://africasacountry.com/2015/12/the-struggle-for-afrodescendant-rights-in-latin-america

    In the short span since its inception, the Latin American Afrodescendant movement has had an extraordinary impact on the formulation of anti-racism policy in Latin America and beyond. Its origins.....

    #LATIN_AMERICA_IS_A_COUNTRY #race #racism #United_States #Harvard #Afro-Latinos #Santiago_Conference

  • Anti-racism in Latin America discussion arrives at #Harvard
    http://africasacountry.com/2015/12/anti-racism-in-latin-america-discussion-arrives-at-harvard

    A Symposium entitled “Afrodescendants: Fifteen Years after Santiago. Achievements and Challenges” recently took place from December 4th to 5th at the Afro-Latin American Research Institute of the Hutchins Center for.....

    #LATIN_AMERICA_IS_A_COUNTRY #race #racism #United_States #Afrodescendant #Afro-Latinos #Santiago_Conference

  • Des pirates informatiques laissent des avertissements sur des réseaux américains
    http://www.lapresse.ca/international/etats-unis/201503/19/01-4853828-des-pirates-informatiques-laissent-des-avertissements-sur-des-re

    Dans certains cas, il est possible que des pirates informatiques cherchent à établir des « têtes de pont » pour établir une « présence permanente » sur certains réseaux, en particulier sur ceux liés aux infrastructures essentielles (électricité, transport, eau, contrôle aérien...).

    [...]

    Comme d’autres chefs militaires américains, « j’observe une Russie bien plus active et d’une manière plus visible » sur la toile, a expliqué l’amiral Rogers.

    « Je pense que nos amis russes sont en train d’essayer de nous envoyer un message fort sur ce qui est acceptable pour eux, et ce qui ne l’est pas », a-t-il indiqué.

    #Cyberguerre #Hacker_(sécurité_informatique) #Internet #Michael_S._Rogers #National_Security_Agency #Russie #Supervisory_Control_and_Data_Acquisition #Sécurité_informatique #United_States_Cyber_Command #États-Unis

  • Synthetic Biology : Life reconstructed by engineers and multinationals
    http://multinationales.org/Synthetic-Biology-Life

    According to its proposents, synthetic biology would seem to be leading us into a brighter future, full of promises of better medicines, anti-pollution bacteria and synthetic fuels. But whilst it continues to attract investments from the largest global companies in the biotechnology, #Energy and agribusiness sectors, the use of lab-built DNA and of patented gene factories to produce life at industrial scale raises many questions. As the first fully computer-designed organisms are just (...)

    #Investigations

    / Food & Agribusiness, Energy, #Pharma, #France, #United_States, #Michelin, #Total, #Sanofi, #Green_Economy, #Amyris, #new_technologies, #intellectual_property, #Environmental_Health, regulations and (...)

    #Food_&_Agribusiness #regulations_and_norms
    « http://www.genopole.fr/Bioparc-les-projets-structurants.html »
    « http://www.sanofi.com/Images/32474_20130411_ARTEMISININE_fr.pdf »
    « http://www.etcgroup.org »
    « http://www.foe.org/news/archives/2012-03-global-coalition-calls-oversight-synthetic-biology »
    « http://cache.media.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/file/Rapport_Biologie_de_synthese/58/5/L2_BIOLOGIE_DESYNTHeSE_version_finale_web2_202585.pdf »
    « http://biobricks.org/about-foundation »
    « https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank »
    « http://www.issb.genopole.fr/Research/teams »
    « http://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/2012/06/22/01008-20120622ARTFIG00775-faut-il-avoir-peur-de-la-biologie-synthetique.php »
    « http://www.lapaillasse.org »
    « http://www.lemonde.fr/le-monde-2/article/2009/09/04/biohackers-les-bricoleurs-d-adn_1235563_1004868.html »
    « http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Info/Index »
    « http://2013.igem.org/Team:INSA_Toulouse »
    « http://biologie-synthese.cnam.fr/historique »
    « http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/13/rap-off/i4354.asp »
    « http://wallpapersus.com/dna-nanotech-creative-design »
    « http://www.piecesetmaindoeuvre.com/spip.php?page=resume&id_article=395 »
    « http://total.com/fr/energies-savoir-faire/energies-renouvelables/biomasse/projets-realisations/amyris »
    « http://sciencescitoyennes.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Fiche_FSC_Artémisinine.pdf »

  • The Right to Grow Old: #Photos of the Central American Migrant Crisis
    http://africasacountry.com/the-right-to-grow-old-photos-of-the-central-american-migrant-crisis

    Central American #migration, and especially the migration of undocumented children from El Salvador, Guatemala and #Honduras to the #United_States, blew up in the American media during the summer. It was a time when many U.S. citizens felt that their government was deporting too many of these children back to the mostly violent and poverty-stricken […]

    #LATIN_AMERICA_IS_A_COUNTRY #Central_America #death_trains #immigrants #immigration #Mexico #Obama #photographs

  • Les communautés latinos aux USA
    http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Les-communautes-latinos-aux-USA.html

    Comment s’effectue l’assimilation des Latinos aux États-Unis ? Loin d’être un groupe monolithique, leurs différences impliquent des relations complexes entre diverses communautés, qui rejaillissent sur la construction identitaire des immigrés. C’est ce que montre l’étude menée par M.-L. Mallet dans trois grandes villes américaines.

    Essais & débats

    / #immigration, #minorities, #United_States

    #Essais_&_débats

  • Un essaim de patrouilleurs autonomes testés par la Navy
    http://www.humanoides.fr/2014/10/06/un-essaim-de-patrouilleurs-autonomes-testes-par-la-navy

    [U]e système a été installé sur cinq patrouilleurs de 2,13 mètres et 3,35 mètres, qui ont réalisé des exercices d’escorte et d’attaque en groupe. Ils ont d’abord escorté un bateau piloté par des marins, avant de foncer sur un navire considéré comme suspect, afin de l’encercler et le neutraliser.

    Dans le cadre de cet exercice inédit pour l’Office of Naval Research (ONR), les bateaux complètement autonomes ont agi en parfaite collaboration.

    On finira bien par créer un écosystème robotique autonome et complet. Et alors qu’aura-t-on gagné ?

    #Armée #Bateau #Drone #Défense_militaire #Exercice_militaire #Office_of_Naval_Research #United_States_Navy #États‐Unis

  • Highest-paid CEO’s company has never turned profit: Cheniere Energy and Charif Souki.
    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/08/21/highest_paid_ceo_s_company_has_never_turned_profit_cheniere_energy_and_charif

    Here’s something fun I saw on Bloomberg TV (whose Market Makers is truly the morning show of champions and/or people who are really interested in the bond market) Thursday morning: The highest-paid CEO in the United States, Charif Souki, works for a company that has never turned a profit.

    Souki made $142 million last year, $50 million more than the second-place earner, and since 2002 has worked for a company called Cheniere Energy that according to this article is 50 times smaller than ExxonMobil. What gives? Cheniere, apparently, is expected to be an industry leader in the process of taking hydraulically fracked......

    #United_States
    #Paid
    #CEO
    #Profit

  • Palestinian teen returns home to US after being beaten by Israeli police
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/20775

    Fifteen-year-old #Tareq_Abu_Khudair speaks to the media after his arrival home, having spent nine days under house in Jerusalem, on July 16, 2014 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images - Tim Boyles)

    A Palestinian-American teenager who was detained in #Israel and beaten by police returned home to Florida on Wednesday, eager to seek medical care and put behind him a summer trip that drew renewed world attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tareq Abu Khudair called his attack by masked police “the scariest thing that has happened to me,” and told reporters he believes his story drew outrage largely because he was a US citizen. read (...)

    #Gaza #united_states #west_bank