Second, and more important, is the issue of what the president actually means when he says that he wants to close Guantánamo. He has long wanted to shutter the physical facility in Cuba—that much is clear. But as both Benjamin Wittes and Glenn Greenwald (a supporter and a critic of indefinite detention, respectively) noted after Obama made his comments two weeks ago, that does not mean ending the system of indefinite detention that is Guantánamo’s defining characteristic. Even if Congress had put no restrictions on Obama’s ability to close Guantánamo, the practice of holding some number of people indefinitely, without any charges, would have continued. It would have simply been a smaller number of people, held at a domestic facility within the United States. As Wittes wrote, Obama is trying to have it both ways. He wants to keep the core benefit of Guantánamo, “the ability to detain enemy fighters and leaders outside of the criminal justice system,” but also wants to “partake of the rhetoric of its delegitimization.”
(Source : nationalinterest.org)
(Source : eltictacdictaa, via moaningxx)
Washington Post's racism map omits Israel -
How convenient
Marinaleda’s mayor, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, has gained national notoriety and has even been dubbed the “Robin Hood of Spain” after he and a group of labourers refused to pay a supermarket for 10 shopping trolleys filled with food, which they distributed to the area’s food banks, sparking headlines in countries as far away as Iran.
“That was to draw attention to the fact there are so many people in Spain who have a hard time getting enough to eat right now,” says Mr Sánchez Gordillo. “We wanted to say, in the 21st century in Spain, ‘this problem exists’. Gandhi would have supported it.”
But the supermarket “raids” were just the tip of the iceberg for Mr Sánchez Gordillo, who has spent more than 30 years fighting for wealth redistribution via land occupations, cheap housing and co-operatives. In Marinaleda, he has promoted equal wages policies, scrapped the police force and offered mortgages on previously state-owned properties, which cannot be sold on for profit, of just €15 a month.
(Source : independent.co.uk)
«Les énarques n’ont pas été entraînés à réussir dans le monde mais dans le centre de Paris» estime le journaliste Simon Kuper dans les colonnes du Financial Times de lundi . Critiquer les élites fait partie intégrante de la culture hexagonale depuis la Révolution française, mais les énarques et autres hauts fonctionnaires sortant des toutes meilleures écoles sont devenus une cible privilégiée selon le quotidien. En l’espace d’un an, les politiques venant de gauche comme de droite n’ont jamais été aussi méprisés, perçus comme incapables de résorber un taux de chômage au sommet ou faisant l’objet de scandales de corruption sans commune mesure (affaire Cahuzac).
Elle est devenue «la plus petite élite pour un pays aussi vaste» selon les travaux du sociologue Pierre Bourdieu. Une caste qui se reproduit de générations en générations, vivant dans les mêmes quartiers, fréquentant les mêmes écoles. Là où un PDG d’entreprise et un écrivain à succès ne se rencontreraient jamais aux Etats-Unis par exemple, en France, au contraire, ils se fréquentent avec assiduité. Les élites politiques, du monde des affaires et de la culture font partie des mêmes cercles d’amis, «se marient entre eux», se servent mutuellement de «pistons» pour trouver du travail, s’écrivent des critiques dithyrambiques sur leurs livres respectifs et se couvrent les uns les autres en cas d’affaires de corruption peut-on encore lire dans les colonnes du quotidien britannique. Une «solidarité de classe» en somme, selon les termes des «sociologues de la bourgeoisie» que sont Monique et Michel Pinçon-Charlot.
(Source : lesechos.fr)
“The concept of a #queer #Iranian cinema may sound impossible, but that is exactly how one might describe Facing Mirrors (آینه های روبرو), the first movie to feature a female-to-male transgender main character that has been written, produced, and screened in Iran. Directed by Negar Azarbayjani and produced by Fereshteh Taerpour (two cisgender female filmmakers), Facing Mirrors features the story of the unlikely friendship between the upper-class Adineh (“Eddy”), a pre-op transman in Tehran struggling to escape from the grips of his transphobic father, and Rana, a modest, devout, working class woman who ferries passengers in order to pay her imprisoned husband’s debts and secure his release.
Although transpeople seeking transition are legally accepted in Iran, they are not often visible in popular culture. The legal acceptance began with a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978, which laid the groundwork for the current legal regime dealing with trans issues. Today, not only does the government recognize transpeople, but it also financially supports those who cannot fully afford hormones and sex reassignment surgeries through charity grants, and more recently, by mandating that insurance companies cover the full cost of the operation.
The surprising aspect of this story, therefore, is not the positive response from both critics and ordinary moviegoers in Iran, but rather a lack of coverage by mainstream Western press of such an internationally successful movie.”
(Source : ajammc.com)
Venezuela employs one of the most technologically advanced verifiable voting systems in the world, designed to protect voters from fraud and tampering and ensure the accuracy of the vote count. Accuracy and integrity are guaranteed from the minute voters walk into the polls to the point where a final tally is revealed.
The system Venezuela uses has some of the most advanced and voter-friendly security features in modern elections. Voters use a touch-sensitive electronic pad to make and confirm their choices. After confirmation, the electronic vote is encrypted and randomly stored in the machine’s memories. Voters audit their own vote by reviewing a printed receipt that they then place into a physical ballot box.
At the end of Election Day, each voting machine computes and prints an official tally, called a precinct count. It transmits an electronic copy of the precinct count to the servers in the National Electoral Council’s central facility, where overall totals are computed.
By mutual agreement between the contenders, 52.98% of the ballot boxes are chosen at random, opened, and their tallies compared with the corresponding precinct counts. This audit step ensures that no vote manipulation has occurred at the polling place. The extent of this audit, the widest in automatic elections, leaves little room for questioning.
The series of tests before, during, and after a Venezuelan election is thorough and intense, conducted in the presence of election officials and political parties to ensure proper functionality and full confidence in the system. When it comes to elections, Venezuela has become a highly advanced nation of auditors, with the most advanced audit tools at its disposal and a voting process that is as transparent as any in the world.
Even though the election to succeed Chavez was announced with only 34 days to campaign and organize the election mechanics, the National Electoral Council and Smartmatic, the company that developed the highly-sophisticated voting machines and the technology supporting them, managed to perform more than 12 audits on the voting platform, many in front of both Capriles’ and Maduro’s representatives.
(Source : forbes.com)