#AntoineSfeir, spécialiste du monde arabe et musulman, fondateur des @CahiersOrient et auteur de plusieurs articles de la @RevueEtudes, est décédé. Découvrez cet entretien avec la @RevueEtudes : "Quelles perspectives pour le Proche-Orient ?" ▶️ (_link) pic.twitter.com/2fFxKXSyHS

— Jésuites EOF (@Jesuites) October 1, 2018

○ Death of Antoine Sfeir - Statement by Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian
○ Antoine Sfeir, politologue spécialisé dans le monde arabe et musulman, est mort | Le Monde |

Antoine Sfeir, director of Cahiers de l'Orient, talks to France24 about his book on the geopolitics of Islam - interview.

Global Warming - distance between America and Europe is steadily increasing.

Bavaria's CSU tumbles to record low 1 week before election | DW |

With just over a week to go before a regional election, support for Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) has a hit a record low of 33 percent, a poll published Thursday by German public broadcaster ARD showed.

The results were a drop of 2 percentage points for the CSU since last month. The ARD poll also showed that 52 percent of Bavarians are partially or entirely unsatisfied with the current CSU government.

The conservative party, only present in Bavaria, has been bleeding support over the past months due to voter dissatisfaction over its hard-line immigration policies and challenges from parties on both the left and right.

It has historically governed alone in Bavaria thanks to a typical vote share of around 50 percent. However, should the results of Bavaria's regional election on October 14 mirror Thursday's poll, the southern state would be headed for a coalition government -- a rarity in its post-World War II history that would also carry implications at the national political level.  

○ German Election: The AfD Profits from Non-Voters and Merkel Defectors | Die Zeit - Sept. 2017 |
○ Germany's political parties CDU, CSU, SPD, AfD, FDP, Left party, Greens - what you need to know

Global Warming - distance between America and Europe is steadily increasing.

The new leader of the Welsh national party Plaid Cymru has declared himself a "rebel and heretic" and claimed that the "cataclysm" of Brexit could increase the chance of independence for Wales.

Michelle Obama's book tour is generating "Beyonce-level sales," the Washington Post reports. Front-row tickets to hear her discuss her upcoming memoir "Becoming" are going for $3,000, which includes a pre-show photo op, a reception with Obama, a signed book and an "exclusive VIP gift item." ...

"Many of the causes of death that increased in Greece are potentially responsive to care, including HIV, neoplasms, cirrhosis, neurological disorders, chronic kidney disease, and most types of cardiovascular disease. Improvements in child mortality in Greece have also stagnated since 2000, with increases in deaths due to neonatal haemolytic disease and neonatal sepsis since 2010, both of which might also reflect reduced health system performance."

Elliott comments:

The troika's austerity programme helped French and German banks avoid losses on their loans but at the expense of a rising Greek death rate. That has resulted in 50% less public hospital funding in 2015 than 2009, hospitals being left without basic supplies, the long-term unemployed stripped of their health insurance and those on low pay finding drugs more expensive because of a 20% cut in the minimum wage. The number of individuals with unmet healthcare needs has nearly doubled since 2010, with a considerable fraction reporting cost as the main reason for not receiving the recommended healthcare services.

(...)

For the past eight years, Greece has been used in a laboratory experiment to test out a theory. The evidence from the report in the Lancet could hardly be clearer. Austerity kills.

Guardian - Nicholas Shaxton - The finance curse: how the outsized power of the City of London makes Britain poorer

Academics had worked out that many countries with abundant natural resources seemed to suffer from slower economic growth, more corruption, more conflict, more authoritarian politics and more poverty than their peers with fewer resources. (Some mineral-rich countries, including Norway, admittedly seem to have escaped the curse.) Crucially, this poor performance wasn't only because powerful crooks stole the money and stashed it offshore, though that was also true. The startling idea was that all this money flowing from natural resources could make their people even worse off than if the riches had never been discovered. More money can make you poorer: that is why the resource curse is also sometimes known as the Paradox of Poverty from Plenty.

Back in the 1990s, John Christensen was the official economic adviser to the British tax haven of Jersey. While I was writing about the resource curse in Angola, he was reading about it, and noticing more and more parallels with what he was seeing in Jersey. A massive financial sector on the tiny island was making a visible minority filthy rich, while many Jerseyfolk were suffering extreme hardship. But he could see an even more powerful parallel: the same thing was happening in Britain. Christensen left Jersey and helped set up the Tax Justice Network, an organisation that fights against tax havens. In 2007, he contacted me, and we began to study what we called the finance curse.

Little known fact: My parents did not take me on a "college campus tour" when I was in high school. I applied blind to the schools that attempted to lure me based on my SAT scores. I got in early decision, 4-year scholarship. So the first opportunity to visit the cradle of iniquity was the spring of my graduation year. I got an invitation from Black Students' Association at Yale (BSAY) to attend an evening "gala" for entering black students. My parents sprang for air fare. Family friends in Stamford, CT, put me up, and the eldest son escorted me to the event.

I lost him in the "town-gown" melee that erupted at the event. Policed were summoned, and I placed myself in a squad car until my escort could be located. Lucky for me, he was neither bloodied nor arrested. Then he drove me back to Stamford. The incident was forgotten, and I returned home to Michigan. The End.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

The woman is anonymous, by letter to Senator K. Harris. The nominee was questioned about this by the Judiciary committee privately, denying all.

I still am not sure if this is enough to tip the scales. I am sure i can't believe i'm posting this news.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09.26.18%20BMK%20Interview%20Transcript%20(Redacted). pdf

We constantly navigate being told, mostly by men, what to believe on topics from our abilities and work history to our appearance and personal experiences.

"This is the first time that the bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal bodies in Georgia [African Methodist Episcopal, Christian Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion] have united to encourage their congregants to 'Vote by Mail,'" New Georgia Project Executive Director Nse Ufot said in a statement.

1. "Purge rates" in 97 of 159 GA counties predicates re-registration of voters, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina Still Purging Voters at High Rates, Plan to Eliminate Polling Places in Black County Amid Backlash Voters and civil rights advocates in Randolph County
   
2. Why? Expiry of DOJ state-wide consent decree compliance of Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia and certain political divisions of Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, North Carolina, and NJ effective January 1, 2018, About Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act
   
3. Why? ROBERTS, SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, ALITO held in part, reversed in part constitutional basis for subjecting "jurisdictions to pre-clearance"; GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN dissented 2013, Shelby County, Alabama vs. Holder
   
4. Nse Ufot must be new here.

buh-bye

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

The right, enshrined in privacy law, allows Europeans to demand that information about them be removed from online search results if it's outdated, irrelevant or "excessive."

Just three places -- France, Germany and the U.K. -- generate 51 percent of all delisting requests, for instance, while Greeks barely assert the right all. In the U.S., enforcing the right could well be unconstitutional[?].

Mike Pompeo --Westpoint, Harvard Law, aggressive and belligerent.

Comments welcome.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Hillary Clinton compared the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the Russian interference campaign waged against the 2016 U.S. elections, calling them both attacks from foreign powers that provoked drastically different reactions from Republican administrations.

The simulations revealed that interactions of the turbines with the atmosphere would likely lead to a redistribution of heat in the lower atmosphere, resulting in a 0.54 degrees Celsius (0.97 degrees Fahrenheit) warming within the wind farms' region itself, and an increase of 0.24 degrees Celsius (0.43 degrees Fahrenheit) over the continental U.S.

Wind Power Isn't as Clean as We Thought It Was - Bloomberg

They also found that an expansive wind farm would need to operate for more than a century or so before the reduction of global carbon dioxide emissions would offset the local warming effect.

Why should it have to offset the local warming effect?

not neatly split sexist tragedy

SCALIA,  delivered  the  opinion  of the  Court,  in  which  ROBERTS, and KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO joined, and in which GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN joined as to Parts I an d III.

GINSBURG filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part,in which BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN joined.

"I'm a certified black man," he told The Post. "I'm certified black in all 50 states. But the federal government doesn't recognize me."
[...]
"It is nonsensical for Mr. Taylor to claim that he has encountered social and economic disadvantage due to a heritage he was not aware of until the DNA test conducted in 2010," the state's letter said. Taylor was frustrated by the inconsistency -- how could he be a disadvantaged minority for the purpose of a state-level program but not a federal-level one? He decided to sue.
[...]
In November 2016, a district court judge in Tacoma dismissed the lawsuit, describing Taylor's focus on his genetic background as "misplaced." His attorneys appealed the ruling that month. Oral arguments are scheduled to take place before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in December.

Ideally, he says, he would like to see the minority-business certification process scrapped and replaced with a program that would be based on socioeconomic status, not race. ... Taylor says that his lawsuit, now four years in the making, is entirely self-funded. He told the Seattle Times this month that he had spent up to $300,000 so far but declined to confirm that exact figure when speaking with The Post on Monday.

George P. Smith, one of the winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is a veteran supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement as part of his pro-Palestinian activism.

Smith, professor emeritus of biological sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, was named Wednesday as a co-winner of the prestigious award for his efforts in harnessing evolution to produce new enzymes and antibodies.

Smith's political activity has made him a controversial figure at the University of Missouri, where he is a tenured professor, and a target of pro-Israel groups. He appears on the controversial Canary Mission website, which publishes online dossiers on pro-Palestinian professors, students and campus speakers, and has been referenced by Israeli officials when refusing activists entry to the country.

We don't need many more indicators that we're living in a late-capitalist hell of our own making. From paying four hundred dollars for juice to tracking our children under the guise of a fun toy, it's painfully evident that the merge of tech, data, and happy-go-lucky branding is making modern life more dystopian by the day. And nothing embodies that spirit of dread more than the new coffee shop, Shiru Cafe, in Providence, Rhode Island. Shiru is a coffee shop built exclusively for students and staff at Brown University that does not require students to pay for their coffee.

While this initially sounds like a wonderfully altruistic endeavour to be kind to overworked students, there is, of course, a heinous catch. In exchange for a free coffee, students must handover swathes of personal information, from their date of birth to their phone number to their personal and professional interests. After providing this information, students must permit corporate sponsors to get in touch with them via phone or email to send them targeted advertising based on their submitted personal data. Sponsors range from banks to tech giants to car companies.

SHIRU CAFE® has its own business model that have never showed up in the café business before. SHIRU CAFE® is run by sponsor contract fee from company in global and serve students a free drink. Through a free drink we try to give students some information which sponsor company would like to inform exclusively for university students to diverse the choices of their future career.

In a textbook example of too little too late, the Prussian parliament finally agrees to almost equal suffrage, the almost being that people over 50 would get an extra vote. I've forgotten whether this abortive reform includes women's suffrage and the NYT either doesn't know or doesn't think it important enough to inform us about. Kaiser Wilhelm, in his letter accepting Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling's resignation, claims to be moving towards democracy: "I desire that the German people cooperate in a more effectual manner than hitherto in the task of deciding the destiny of the country." He suggests that his new cabinet will include some actual Socialists, you know, the largest party in the Reichstag, and you know how much Willy must haaaaaate that.

ARRESTED:
"I didn't know her and now I do. She was telling people she's my cousin, and it turns out, she is."
APPOINTED:
"Bill Clinton, I love you so much. Like crazy amounts of love." September 6, 2012

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

"I'm absolutely disgusted at the idea of pushing this very right wing, misogynist, totally bias character onto the court. It's extremely frustrating," MacDowell said, as he carried a sign which read: "FBI: You can't find what you're not allowed to look for." Voters from Maine call on Republican Sen. Susan Collins to vote against Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. (Photo by Brandi Buchman)

The UV water purification method within the filtration systems will disinfect lead and bacteria coming from water pipes, allowing students in Flint to safely drink from school water fountains once more. Flint school board president Diana Wright thanked the Musk Foundation for its donation, stating that it ensures that "students in Flint Community Schools have access to safe drinking water at the source -- in drinking fountains -- by way of the same type of water filtration system used by hospitals and colleges in Flint."