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When lectures go online, who gets to keep the copyright?

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When lectures go online, who gets to keep the copyright?

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AU’s policy said that if Sinnreich or any other teacher recorded their lessons or lectures through software like Skype or Google Hangouts, the teacher would own the copyright to those recordings. But if they used the university-provided software — a popular learning management system called Blackboard — the university would retain the rights. “It stood out for me in a way it wouldn’t necessarily stand out for people who don’t study copyright law,” Sinnreich tells The Verge.

The provision is unsettling because of the power it potentially gives universities, says Sinnreich. In a worst-case scenario, copyrighted teaching material could be deployed against staff during a standoff with management. If teachers were laid off as a result of pandemic-related cuts, for example (a situation that has been described as “unavoidable” by one university president), lectures could be deployed “to undermine the labor power of a faculty workforce,” Sinnreich says.

Universities could essentially tell staff: come back to work, or we’ll use your lecture recordings to teach your classes without you. Or if they were really desperate, universities could fire them and do that anyway.

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many universities, including their own, don’t even allow staff to delete video lectures they upload to Blackboard.
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They’re also the folks who, if they record their lectures this semester, there’s the highest chance they’re not going to be asked to teach those courses again, and maybe their recorded lectures will be run without their knowledge.”

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After American University in Washington, DC made the decision to move classes online this semester in response to the pandemic, it sent teaching staff guidance about how their work would change. When Aram Sinnreich, a media professor at AU specializing in intellectual property, received the documents, he naturally decided to check out the copyright provisions. What he found was strange.

AU's policy said that if Sinnreich or any other teacher recorded their lessons or lectures through software like Skype or Google Hangouts, the teacher would own the copyright to those recordings. But if they used the university-provided software - a popular learning management system called Blackboard - the university would retain the rights. "It stood out for me in a way it wouldn't necessarily stand out for people who don't study copyright law," Sinnreich tells The Verge.

Recorded lectures could replace staff in a standoff with management

The provision is unsettling because of the power it potentially gives universities, says Sinnreich. In a worst-case scenario, copyrighted teaching material could be deployed against staff during a standoff with management. If teachers were laid off as a result of pandemic-related cuts, for example (a situation that has been described as " unavoidable " by one university president), lectures could be deployed "to undermine the labor power of a faculty workforce," Sinnreich says.

Universities could essentially tell staff: come back to work, or we'll use your lecture recordings to teach your classes without you. Or if they were really desperate, universities could fire them and do that anyway.

Sinnreich says he doesn't think this was AU's intention at all by including this provision. The same document notes that staff have already objected to the clause, and discussions are underway to adjust it, something AU also told The Verge. "I think it was probably an afterthought that did not get thoroughly vetted," says Sinnreich. But when he shared the policy on Twitter, dozens of academics responded expressing exactly the same fears.

Many universities' blackboard installs will literally not allow you to delete video lectures once you've uploaded them. It's no stretch to think universities will try to use these to re-teach courses sans prof, with only a TA, copyright or not. Be mindful. https://t.co/yhb8Emv1WI
- Mar Hicks (@histoftech) August 5, 2020

Mar Hicks, a history of technology professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, noted that many universities, including their own, don't even allow staff to delete video lectures they upload to Blackboard. On Twitter, Hicks said it was "no stretch" to think that universities could use such recordings to "re-teach courses" in the future without the staff who created them. "If there's 1 thing we've seen in the pandemic it's that higher ed is in a grim austerity stage & many universities are desperate to make money at anyone's expense," said Hicks.

Speaking to The Verge over the phone, Hicks said such fears "predate this particular crisis" and are a result of austerity measures that have affected the education sector for many years. "For decades there's been a very strange idea that higher education and universities should be run like businesses instead of like the public goods they are," says Hicks. "So we've seen a lot of strange and harmful budgetary decisions made."

The pandemic is hitting an already beleaguered education sector hard

This has included disempowering teaching staff by moving them away from tenure-track positions and toward temporary contracts with low wages. Many academics The Verge spoke to for this article cited the rise in temporary contracts as a compounding factor in their fears about copyrighted lecture material being used against them. One 2018 analysis by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found that 73 percent of faculty positions in the US are non-tenure-track positions.

"Those are the folks we're most worried about in this current crisis, because they're going to get cut first," says Hicks. "They're also the folks who, if they record their lectures this semester, there's the highest chance they're not going to be asked to teach those courses again, and maybe their recorded lectures will be run without their knowledge."

Right now, the problems are mostly hypothetical. Normally in the US, anything created by employees belongs to employers because of the work for hire doctrine. But teaching material has long been excluded, thanks to custom and legal precedence. It's a carve-out known as the " teacher exception." This means that teaching staff generally own the copyright to content they produce.

Where things get complicated is that universities can and do create bespoke policies to claim copyright over recorded material if they so choose. Christopher Sprigman, a law professor at NYU specializing in intellectual property, tells The Verge that such policies are not common right now, but this is likely to change in the near future.

"The pandemic has really accelerated that conversation, and I've seen some evidence that universities are starting to push in this direction," says Sprigman. "It hasn't broken out into the open just yet, but it's in the air."

Last year, for example, Purdue University adopted a new policy that claimed all online modules as copyrightable work belonging to the institution (though individuals could negotiate specific rights agreements with the university). As reported by Inside Higher Ed, when the pandemic hit, staff worried the same policy would be applied to all traditional classes that were now being remotely delivered. After they voiced their worries, the university stated it would not reuse their online modules without permission.

As David Sanders, an associate professor of biology at Purdue, told Inside Higher Ed, the negotiations showed that "on these things you have to take collective action. People make a difference in what happens. Without that, faculty could have potentially lost all IP rights in posting everything online in the transition to remote instruction."

The UK also offers some guidance on what to expect during these sorts of negotiations. There, teaching staff have been under similar pressures as those in the US due to budget constraints and a push toward marketized education. But lecture recordings are far more common in the UK, used by roughly 70 percent of institutions as of 2016. That meant that when the UK's University and College Union (UCU) organized a series of strikes starting in 2018 in opposition to cuts, some universities floated the idea of using recorded lectures to break these strikes.

However, there's no clear evidence that any universities actually followed through on these threats. And indeed, teaching staff reacted with such fury to the suggestions that it actually led to better policies, says Emily Nordmann, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland whose research focuses on lecture capture.

"The backlash was so strong that the University of Edinburgh [one of the institutions where recorded lectures were suggested as a stand-in for teachers] became the first university in the UK to ban recordings to break strikes," Nordmann tells The Verge. The university's official policy on recorded lectures now states that "recordings will not be used to cover university staff exercising their legal right to take industrial action without the lecturers' consent," and other institutions have updated their own policies since. As Nordmann says: "They made a mistake but they completely rectified it in the right way."

"Clear policy and communication can solve a lot of these problems."

Nordmann notes that although the fear that recorded lectures will be used to break strikes is a quite specific one, it reflects anxieties about the future of higher education more generally. Recorded lectures have many benefits, making it easier for students to revisit challenging material and helping those who manage disabilities like dyslexia. And of course, during a pandemic, they're absolutely essential to make remote learning work. But teaching staff worry they are a relatively passive form of instruction, one that allows students to switch off, especially if they're watching last year's lectures, reheated for consumption.

"The conversation about lecture recordings is part of a larger conversation about what we're providing and how we expect students to engage with it," says Nordmann. She says if universities could communicate better with staff about how recorded lectures are used, it would benefit everyone. "Clear policy and communication can solve a lot of these problems."

Others are warier, however. Hicks says that as a historian of technology, they're all too aware of the problem of feature creep - the tendency for a technology's applications to expand beyond its initial scope. A 2018 paper on workplace surveillance and lecture capture compares the danger to that of CCTV. Although security cameras might be installed in a workplace with the intention of protecting against theft, the information they capture can be subject to all sorts of analysis, from making sure employees aren't wasting time to gauging their emotional moods. Recording lectures has obvious benefits, but norms about how this information is used are still being established, including the question of copyright.

"As we see from technologies and their unintended consequences, if things are built a certain way, even if the intention isn't there they can lead to bad outcomes just by virtue of how they work," says Hicks. "As a technology historian that's an issue I think about a lot."

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University staff are worried their recorded lectures will be used against them

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The pandemic is forcing university classes and lectures online, but teaching staff are worried that, as their work goes digital, universities could claim the copyright. That could open the door to replacing teachers with prerecorded lectures during strikes or cuts.

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A Day At The Beach - S1E1 - The Cyanide & Happiness Show - INTERNATIONAL RELEASE

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Son plan est arrêté : les récoltes de betteraves seront prioritairement orientées vers la production de sucre, et non plus d'alcool ; les 3,5 millions de bouilleurs de cru amateurs et professionnels seront surveillés pour que la fraude sur les quantités distillées cesse. Enfin, le lait sera promu et distribué chaque jour aux écoliers de France et de Navarre.
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Un décret impose dans les rations ordinaires du troufion un huitième de litre de lait quotidien. Idem pour les ouvriers : avec cinquante années d'avance, "PMF" rêve de voir les industriels installer des "fontaines d'eau fraîche à disposition des travailleurs dans l'usine".
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Le vin et l'alcool sont trop intimement attachés à la géographie, l'histoire et la mythologie françaises pour s'imaginer les réduire d'un coup de baguette magique.

La virilité du pays tout entier se sent blessée. Il ne sera pas donné au Prince de transmuer le vin en lait. Il a vu trop grand, trop loin.

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Cela ressemble à un conte. En cette année 1954, la France est dirigée par un Prince éclairé. Un jour, soucieux de la santé et de l'hygiène de ses sujets, le Prince décide de mettre le holà à une consommation effrénée d'alcool dans son pays. Il réunit alors en conseil ses principaux ministres et leur enjoint de réfléchir à cette grave question afin de publier au plus vite des décrets. Lui-même, annonce-t-il pour conclure, se fera désormais l'ambassadeur du lait, boisson saine et revigorante.

Aussitôt dit, aussitôt fait. En voyage aux Etats-Unis, notre Prince offre un immense banquet à cinq cents journalistes de la presse internationale. Et là, alors que chacun savoure à l'unisson une tranche de thon accompagnée de deux pommes de terre, le tout arrosé d'un verre d'eau, Pierre Mendès France se fait royalement servir un verre de lait. L'assistance en frissonne de stupéfaction. Les photographes se bousculent pour immortaliser la scène tandis que le président du Press Club international se remet mal de sa frustration d'un bon vieux cognac français...

A des millions de lieues de là, de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique, un manant de Saint-Céré, dans le Lot, Pierre Poujade, papetier de son état, connu pour agiter le petit monde de la boutique et lever des commandos qui s'en prennent aux inspecteurs du fisc, explose de colère et injurie son Prince : "Si vous aviez une goutte de sang gaulois dans les veines, vous n'auriez jamais osé, vous, représentant de notre France producteur mondial de vin et de champagne, vous faire servir un verre de lait dans une réception internationale ! C'est une gifle, monsieur Mendès, que tout Français a reçue ce jour-là, même s'il n'est pas un ivrogne."

Cette gifle-là sonne le début d'une franche jacquerie. La France de la vigne et des producteurs de betteraves entre en ébullition. La France des bistrotiers et des bouilleurs de cru s'étrangle de fureur. Du Nord au Sud, une effervescence hargneuse gagne les quatre millions de salariés concernés par l'industrie du gros rouge qui tache et du tord-boyaux bien de chez nous. Sans compter les 450 000 débits de boissons recensés. Le tocsin sonne dans les campagnes. Les bouilleurs de cru entonnent, sur l'air de La Madelon, un couplet martial :
"Nous sommes organisés - et nous nous défendrons. C'est pour la liberté qu'avec cœur - nous luttons. Nos alambics pour faire de la bonne goutte. N'ont pas besoin de plombs ni de scellés."
Responsable du Parti paysan, Jacques Le Roy Ladurie rappelle "qu'on ne gouverne pas contre les paysans". Le président des betteraviers prône "le recours à l'action directe", avec barrages routiers, manifs et grèves. Le président des limonadiers, lors du 75 e anniversaire du syndicat, repousse sans discussion toutes "les mesures antialcooliques". Pierre Poujade, encore lui, coalise commerçants et artisans contre la France d'en haut, incarnée par le secrétaire d'Etat à l'agriculture, Jean Raffarin (père de l'actuel premier ministre), qui mettrait, selon lui, le pays cul par-dessus tête, et ce "Mendès qui n'a de français que le mot ajouté à son nom".

Un message rationnel peut-il encore passer ? Le président du conseil le croit. Dans l'une de ses causeries du samedi soir qu'il affectionne, il redit son credo : "Quels sont les faits ? Aucune population ne consomme plus d'alcool que la population française. Nos hôpitaux psychiatriques ne peuvent abriter toutes les victimes de l'alcool, dont le nombre croît chaque année." Bref, il ne faut plus tergiverser. "Il s'agit de rendre des hommes libres, conscients des dangers qui les menacent, et de les aider à éviter ces dangers", dit-il.

La grande confrontation peut commencer. Pierre Mendès France - que L'Express appelle "PMF" - se fait fort de convaincre les jeunes, les cadres et les classes moyennes. Il croit au pouvoir des mots, aux arguments qui portent et l'emportent. Il plaide pour sa croisade en invoquant le terrible bilan de l'alcoolisme : l'alcool tue plus de 17 000 personnes chaque année par cirrhose et delirium tremens. Il plaide contre la gabegie financière : "Les sommes annuellement gaspillées, tant pour la production exagérée des boissons alcoolisées que pour le traitement des victimes de l'alcoolisme, atteignent un montant astronomique, des centaines et des centaines de milliards."

Son plan est arrêté : les récoltes de betteraves seront prioritairement orientées vers la production de sucre, et non plus d'alcool ; les 3,5 millions de bouilleurs de cru amateurs et professionnels seront surveillés pour que la fraude sur les quantités distillées cesse. Enfin, le lait sera promu et distribué chaque jour aux écoliers de France et de Navarre.

Le 18 septembre, "PMF" s'adresse à la radio aux cinq millions d'enfants qui s'apprêtent à retourner en classe après les grandes vacances. C'est un moment touchant et rétro. Il s'adresse à eux comme un grand-père : "Je vous vois assis à vos bancs, mes petits amis, encore un peu intimidés par la rentrée. Il se peut qu'un rayon de soleil, pénétrant par la fenêtre, vous rappelle soudain les moments de liberté dans les bois ou dans les champs et que, tout naturellement, vous vous posiez cette question : pourquoi donc faut-il aller à l'école ? Je vais vous le dire. (...)"

Et il leur confie qu'il rêve d'enfants studieux, solides, forts et vigoureux. Le verre de lait sera rédempteur. Il contrebalancera le petit verre de gnôle qui réchauffe, ce petit verre alors si répandu, si généreusement et indistinctement versé. Idem pour les jeunes soldats.

Un décret impose dans les rations ordinaires du troufion un huitième de litre de lait quotidien. Idem pour les ouvriers : avec cinquante années d'avance, "PMF" rêve de voir les industriels installer des "fontaines d'eau fraîche à disposition des travailleurs dans l'usine".

ON devine un utopiste actif, un romantique pessimiste, une étrange alchimie de grands rêves, de patriotisme forcené et de certitudes statistiques. D'où lui vient donc ce souffle, cette vision ? Faut-il remonter à ses lointaines origines familiales du côté paternel ? Fuyant les persécutions de l'Inquisition portugaise, Luis Mendes de França débarqua à Bordeaux en 1684. Les juifs trouvaient alors refuge au nord des Pyrénées. Faut-il ne considérer que son itinéraire de premier de la classe ? Né à Paris en 1907, fils de commerçants dans le textile, Pierre Mendès France acquiert très tôt le goût de l'excellence. Il sera tour à tour le plus jeune avocat de France (à 19 ans), le plus jeune député (à 25 ans), le plus jeune ministre (à 31 ans) comme secrétaire d'Etat aux finances de Léon Blum sous le Front populaire.

Rigueur et volontarisme, honneur et morale, voilà les mots qui le définissent. Quand la guerre éclate et que son nom se retrouve sur la liste des déserteurs pour avoir embarqué à bord du Massilia avec trente et un parlementaires pour gagner l'Afrique du Nord, il n'a de cesse de laver cette infamie. "Rien ne me fera renoncer au serment, que je répète ici, de léguer plus tard sans tache à mes enfants un nom que mes ancêtres m'ont transmis sans souillure et que je n'ai personnellement pas sali", écrit-il au maréchal Pétain. Jugé et condamné à six ans d'emprisonnement, il scie un barreau à la lucarne de sa cellule et s'évade. On le retrouve à Londres, auprès du général de Gaulle. Les places ne l'intéressent pas : il veut combattre. On le verse dans une escadrille du groupe Lorraine où, avec Romain Gary et quelques autres, il participe aux missions de reconnaissance et de bombardement de 1942 à 1943 au-dessus de l'Europe. Puis de Gaulle le nomme commissaire aux finances du Comité de libération nationale, à Alger.

A la Libération, il aimerait recevoir le portefeuille des finances. Il n'obtient que celui de l'économie nationale. Un titre ronflant pour un portefeuille davantage tourné vers la théorie que vers la pratique. Qu'importe : il plaide pour une justice économique et des sacrifices consentis ; il tente de faire partager sa hantise de l'inflation et son obsession de l'assainissement des finances publiques. Le général de Gaulle lui laisse la possibilité de faire une allocution radiodiffusée hebdomadaire. A la manière du président américain Roosevelt, il inaugure alors ses "leçons de morale civique et de rationalité économique", selon la formule de son biographe Jean Lacouture.

Il y a du prêcheur chez ce quaker buveur de lait, du pasteur chez ce politique orgueilleux. En désaccord avec une politique économique qu'il juge trop laxiste, il finit par démissionner, le 5 avril 1945. Le général de Gaulle, en signe d'estime, lui demande alors de représenter la France dans les grandes institutions financières internationales comme le FMI et la Banque internationale. "PMF" séjourne alors régulièrement aux Etats-Unis.

On néglige trop souvent ces voyages outre-Atlantique dans sa formation et sa vision du monde. Son attirance pour la communication en sort renforcée. Son goût de l'action aussi. La rationalité et la pédagogie lui apparaissent définitivement comme les deux mamelles de la politique. Sans compter le courage et la morale.

Il se réclame d'une gauche modérée, loin du périmètre communiste. Membre du Parti radical, maire de Louviers et député, il reste un élu singulier et farouche. Il refuse tous les postes ministériels et attend son heure, sachant fort bien qu'elle viendra. Qui d'autre possède sa hauteur de vues, ses compétences, son aura ? Alors que la France s'embourbe en Indochine dans une sale guerre, il prend date en réclamant la paix. Il prône l'apaisement au Maroc et en Tunisie. Il plaide pour une économie réformée.

Le 7 mai 1954, la terrible et amère défaite française à Dien Bien Phu provoque la chute du gouvernement Laniel. Le président de la République René Coty se tourne vers lui. L'Assemblée nationale lui accorde son investiture. Le voilà à pied d'œuvre, chargé de recoller les morceaux d'une France brisée. En quelques semaines - prouesse inouïe -, il parvient à signer la paix avec Ho Chi Minh à Genève : "La raison et la paix l'ont emporté... L'accord de cessez-le-feu a été signé", annonce-t-il lui-même au soir du 21 juillet.

Il apporte la concorde en Tunisie et au Maroc.

Tout semble lui réussir. Mais, le 13 octobre, il rend visite à de Gaulle, qui, au terme d'une analyse de la situation politique lucide et sombre, ne lui laisse aucune chance : "On vous a permis de liquider l'Indochine, la Tunisie, la Communauté européenne de défense, mais on ne vous permettra pas de faire une politique constructive, une politique française... Quand vous aurez débarrassé le régime de ce qui le gênait, le régime se débarrassera de vous à la première occasion."
Laurent Greilsamer Pour en savoir plus En 1954
Tirade prémonitoire que "PMF" ignore. Débarrassé des grands dossiers internationaux qui encombraient sa route, il veut s'attaquer au chantier France. Il y a tant à faire : construire des logements, raser les bidonvilles, multiplier les voies de communication et les moyens de transport, bâtir des écoles, moderniser l'agriculture, muscler l'industrie, donner aux Français les moyens de se faire soigner...

C'est une déclaration de modernisme. Elle est prise comme une déclaration de guerre par les parlementaires. Dans Le Monde, le jeune journaliste politique Jacques Fauvet observe : "Parce qu'il n'est pas politicien ni même politique, il a pu commettre des erreurs psychologiques, minimiser la force d'inertie des hommes et des choses ; ce qui lui a valu la sympathie de l'opinion lui a aliéné celle des partis."

Son tranchant, sa manière de s'adresser directement au peuple par-dessus l'Assemblée nationale retournent contre lui les élus. La salve des mesures antialcooliques achève de soulever une France rurale attachée à ses traditions. La presse évoque de véritables "maquis de l'alcool".

Ces maquis-là tirent bientôt à vue sur le président du conseil. Le vin et l'alcool sont trop intimement attachés à la géographie, l'histoire et la mythologie françaises pour s'imaginer les réduire d'un coup de baguette magique.

La virilité du pays tout entier se sent blessée. Il ne sera pas donné au Prince de transmuer le vin en lait. Il a vu trop grand, trop loin.
Après
- 7 mai : chute de Dien Bien Phu.
Bibliographie
- 12 juin : chute du gouvernement Laniel.

- 18 juin : investiture de Pierre Mendès France.

- 20 juillet : les accords de Genève mettent fin à la guerre d'Indochine.

- 28 septembre : annonce des mesures contre l'alcoolisme.

Le gouvernement Mendès France est renversé le 6 février 1955. Initiateur du Front républicain, "PMF" sera brièvement ministre d'Etat dans le gouvernement Mollet en 1956. Après l'arrivée au pouvoir du général de Gaulle, en 1958, il prend position contre le régime, puis contre les institutions de la V e République. Il devient alors le maître à penser d'une partie de la gauche française. "PMF" meurt en 1982.

- La République des tourmentes, 1954-1959, Georgette Elgey, Fayard, 1992.

Un livre d'histoire vivant, clair et dynamique.

- Pierre Mendès France, Jean Lacouture, Seuil, 1981.

Une biographie riche, nourrie des précisions de "PMF".

- Dire la vérité, causeries du samedi, Pierre Mendès France, Julliard, 1955.

La voix de "PMF", cinquante ans après. Existe sous la forme de 2 CD diffusés par l'INA dans sa collection "Mémoire vive".

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Cela ressemble à un conte. En cette année 1954, la France est dirigée par un Prince éclairé. Un jour, soucieux de la santé et de l'hygiène de ses sujets, le Prince décide de mettre le holà à une consommation effrénée d'alcool dans son pays.

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Throughout the weekend, attendees variously mentioned bad experiences with early education, struggles with childhood illiteracy and, for more than a few, chronic social isolation. Around the room, heads would nod whenever anyone mentioned the ‘lies we were told at school’. The education system, and their experience of it, was an extension of the crooked system they thought was at work in the wider world, rather than the potential cause for what made them so likely to believe conspiracies in the first place.

For a few, some kind of personal trauma or major event - a divorce, a break-up, a bad trip - had happened to them directly before they realised that the earth was flat. ‘I had an experience with DMT [a psychoactive drug] that slapped me so hard in the face,’ announced one attendee during an open mic session, ‘that within four minutes I had seen God. Three weeks later I found out the earth was flat.’ For others, it was their growing belief in a flat earth that had prompted isolation from friends and family to begin with.
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So many of these people had come to a point in their lives where believing in a flat earth seemed a good option for them. Many more had been rejected and cast out, isolated from loved ones who thought they'd cracked. It was vindicating and comforting for them to find and meet others who believed what they did, even if the meeting itself was in such dour surroundings.
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If you can hold the idea in your mind that the earth is flat and deflect all incoming logical argument or evidence to the contrary, you are able to believe and do even more. You can do this because you operate from a position where your worldview is driven by your identity, not from what can be scientifically or objectively observed, or what the experts tell you. As a flat earther you may well ‘do your own research’ but this is only ever done to gather the supporting material needed to hold your identity in place. It is confirmation bias, the facts twisted or fabricated where necessary to make sense of what you believe to be true. With a firm hold on your new identity, you are better able to evangelise the new beliefs that have given you solace, spreading misinformation even further.

The human race has survived and thrived, in part, because we are able to trust each other. I do not know how to operate a power plant, grow a crop, or develop medicine. I am very happy for others to do these things for me because I trust they are acting in good faith, know what they're doing, and know better than I do. I leave it to them and we all gain something from the exchange - a salary for them and electricity, food and good health for me.

When a worldview grows in a group of people that requires the belief that this trust has been fundamentally broken by the institutions of modern society, modern society feels the effects.

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The First Duty

The world is round. I'm confident about this. I say it as an opening disclaimer because, a little under two and a half years ago, I attended 'FECON' (an event less scatological than it sounds), the UK's first ever Flat Earth Conference, to take portraits of the people who would be there. At the time, I was stunned by how there was even enough demand for it; I thought the matter had been laid to rest quite confidently some millennia ago. I'm not ashamed to say I was also morbidly curious about the people who would be going - both to speak and listen. Having said that, I also carried with me an optimism that it might not be so bad - there might be every possibility that the regular attendee would on average be more curious than conspiracist, and that maybe only a handful of people would turn up.

My optimism was largely a product of my lifelong interest in space and science and my faith that they will always win out. Among other things, I regularly stay up late to watch SpaceX launches and my favourite childhood TV show was Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show in which scientific analysis and long, diplomatic conversations always beat the lasers and trite quips of lesser SciFi. 'The first duty of every Starfleet officer,' Captain Picard tells a junior officer in one stirring speech, 'is to the truth - whether it is scientific truth, or historical truth or personal truth. It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based.' With virtually every after-school dinner of my youth eaten on board the Starship Enterprise, I became an adult imprinted with the progressive optimism and faith in science that Picard and his crew embodied.

With conspiracies still swirling unchecked in the wake of the Covid19 pandemic, that optimism would be quite helpful right now. Sadly, it was tackled firmly to the ground by one of the weirdest and most unsettling weekends I have ever experienced. On arrival at that conference, I had found myself thrust into an upside-down world where wrong is right, down is up, NASA is a scam and - don't you see? - everything you've ever been told is a lie.

I'll Stick to the Coffee

It's April 2018 and I'm inside a dreary hotel in the centre of Birmingham. A damp, grey midlands afternoon dribbles outside, streaking dark rainwater down the decades-old concrete of the building. I am in one of a series of meeting rooms, joined together to make space for the weekend's events. A brutal monolith from the outside, the building's interior feels fractal - corridors lead to meeting rooms that open out into corridors that take you to more meeting rooms, ad infinitum. Each room nested inside this impossible vortex has the air of a low budget team-building 'away day', the kind with coloured post-its, mass-manufactured clicky hotel biros, bullet-pointed 'learning outcomes' and the kind of dreck coffee that you wouldn't be able to survive such an ordeal without. The carpets are patterned to disguise spills and flip charts stand huddled, white and bare, in the dark of each distant corner.

As I gulp my bad coffee with growing disquiet, I chat to someone who has just told me they drink their own urine to stay healthy and free of disease. Online, he's an enormously popular Flat Earth YouTuber. This weekend, he is one of the headline presenters. 'The biggest lie in history, is history,' he tells me, unprompted. 'You don't know who you are. You don't know where you're from.'

I had blundered, foolish and naive, into a world I didn't understand, where everyone around me believed - passionately, angrily, without the possibility of wavering - that the earth is anything but a sphere. That the odds are stacked against us. That our minds are being controlled. That the truth is out there, but it's being hidden from us in a grand conspiracy. I was peering over the edge of a rabbit hole down which every attendee had flung themselves with no hope of emerging. I forced another sip of body temperature coffee as I thought, perhaps not hard enough, about what to say next. 'So, what was it like the first time you drank your own piss?'

Months earlier I had sat in a small café around the corner from my cramped, rented London flat searching for a project to focus on before my seasonal photography work picked up in the Summer. My interests had always gravitated towards the corners of society that we don't see much of - people on the fringe - but I was finding that gaining access to these communities was not always so easy. At the same time, I was spending probably too many hours on the internet, for better or worse, a byproduct of the free time I have every winter. My particular weakness was YouTube. In 2018, the Google-owned video platform had been straining for ever-higher viewing figures, massaging their algorithm to pump more and more videos in front of people at an alarming rate, showing them whatever performed best to keep them hooked. The strategy was working, but with unexpected side-effects.

One of the more prominent side-effects was a surge in views for 'flat earth' videos. It seemed people were finding them addictive to watch and, over and over, the algorithm duly gave them the hit they wanted. To watch a clutch of these videos in a row is not just about learning that the earth is flat, but that everyone in power is in on the game - NASA and the governments of the world are covering up a huge lie. 'Do your own research,' goes the common refrain in many videos. With YouTube immediately recommending even more flat earth videos for you to watch, it was hard not to. For a good number of people I would later meet, these marathon flat earth video sessions were the thin end of the wedge that would send their lives spiralling into a darkness that would see them lose friends, jobs and, in some cases, families.

While browsing, I chanced across the most surprising by-product of the YouTube algorithm and rampant flat-earth video popularity: the conference itself. Wondering if this might be a chance I couldn't possibly pass by, I contacted the organiser - an energetic and friendly guy, 'G' - and we ended up speaking on the phone for over an hour. We talked about the conference, who was speaking, how hard it was to arrange a big event (the catering budget was a pain in the neck) and, from time to time, he would earnestly ask me why I still believed the earth was round 'given all the evidence to the contrary'. I tried to tell him that I didn't think it was a matter of belief, that it was a matter of fact. Finally, he agreed that I could attend in a press capacity but I would still need to pay for a ticket. Conferences aren't cheap after all.

Satisfied that I had gained entry to an event where I would be able to meet dozens of people in this particularly unusual fringe (thereby making the whole process that much easier) I thought it would be a relatively simple exercise: turn up, meet some flat earthers, take some portraits, do some follow-up shoots and work on it over the course of the next few months to produce a cohesive series. Maybe I would even pitch it somewhere, to a magazine perhaps.

It didn't work out that way. After the weekend had finished, I was deeply shaken. This piece is the result of over two years of halting edits, redrafts and uneasy procrastination. As the world around us reels from the Covid19 pandemic, conspiracies are still here and stronger than ever: Bill Gates supposedly wants to commit mass mind-control through vaccination, anti-mask/virus-hoax demonstrations fill the streets of educated cities and 5G masts burn by the dozen, condemned by the acolytes of a conspiracy that believes the virus itself is not a hoax but instead a 'plandemic' to reduce the size of the population, its spread hastened by the masts they target.

I feel like I should be surprised by it all. But I'm not. I just keep thinking about that conference. I think especially about how the minds of those that attended were such fertile soil for the seeds of doubt, disbelief and distrust in the scientific knowledge that has brought our species so far and still yet has the chance to save us from oblivion. So if I was ever going to write about that weekend, it's either now or not at all.

The Burden of Proof

The opening event of the conference is standing room only. The first speaker stands at the front clasping a pint of strong French lager that he never drinks from throughout the next forty five minutes. The words 'Floaty Land' are on the slide projected behind him. 'The burden of proof,' he begins, 'is only on us to prove the earth is not a ball.' His presentation is the product of an experiment he'd tried on holiday by the coast not so long ago. He had lain prone where the beach meets the sea, pointing his digital camera at maximum zoom towards the islands on the horizon. Those islands, he had calculated, were higher than they should be, meaning that the earth was not as curved as most believed. QED, it must be flat. He continues, 'Do I need to be an expert in maths, physics, astronomy? No. My peers have reviewed this work, and to me that's as good as a peer review.'

To show us the video he'd filmed from the surf, he briefly minimises the presentation to reveal his desktop background: a picture of planet earth taken from space. Booing erupts in the audience. He suppresses a grin.

The next morning I learn that the flat earth is not the only conspiracy in play. I speak to a woman who believes that a human/reptile hybrid race is secretly controlling us all to serve an unknown agenda. A rigged banking system, the (ubiquitous) Illuminati, moon landings that never happened, 9/11-was-an-inside-job, 'false flag' school shootings with crisis actors and fake dead children, all of it pointing towards the same ominous conclusion: that the truth is being hidden from us all. After as many follow-up questions as I can muster, she can't even begin to suggest what 'the truth' might be or why it needs to be concealed so carefully by a cabal of space lizards. But concealing it they are.

For G, the organiser, who I manage to corner during a lull in the day's events, the Catholic Church is behind things. 'They want to hide God from us,' he claims. I ask him why, of all institutions, a religion would want to hide God. Surely she's central to the whole endeavour and the shape of the earth should have nothing to do with it. 'That's just something I can't answer right now,' he tells me. Whether he can't tell me because he was just too busy organising or because he secretly suspects I am actually a priest in mufti sent from the Vatican to conspire against him, I don't know. Letting him get on with his work, I turn and speak instead to somebody who claims that gravity doesn't exist. Before I have the chance to float up to the ceiling, he tells me it's all due to density; any experiments that say otherwise (such as how objects of different densities fall at the same rate) are - obviously - fabricated to support the globe earth lie.

If you find yourself wondering how they can resolve their belief in a flat earth against such apparently contradictory things like the International Space Station, rocket launches, GPS, pilots who see the curvature of the earth, the moon landings and, at a bare minimum, the collected works of Aristotle, Archimedes and Eratosthenes, then I'll just cut right to it: they can't. Of course, they don't know that, but then they don't really seem to care, either. The Imaginary Space Station - as one attendee likes to call it - is just cutting edge CGI and people dangling from wires. Rocket launches? If they even do ascend, they just circle above a pancake planet. GPS? Your position is actually being triangulated by pseudo-satellites atop mountains around the edge of the disc. Pilots who see a curve? Lying, part of a grand conspiracy. Moon landings? Faked in TV studios in the desert. Ancient Greek philosophers? Debunked by (yes) YouTube videos.

It is as if you could have taken the entire attended gathering of the conference, shot them all into a low earth orbit to circle our very, very round planet several times, then landed them back again to find their beliefs even stronger than before. They would emerge, removing their helmets, to kiss the flat earth beneath them and exalt their claims with even greater fervor.

All this is to say that rational questions and arguments miss the point entirely. These are not rational beliefs, nor even really beliefs. They are more like identities, firmly established and fiercely defended. Their existence is not a happy one, either. It seemed to me that they were commonly the product of deep personal and social tragedy.

Lonely Planet

In the two years since attending, I'm sometimes asked to tell the story. The main reaction people have is to laugh - to laugh it off and to laugh them off. Then to just ignore it all and go back to whatever they were doing. Sure, I normally keep it light hearted, but only because nobody really wants to go deeper than that. Spend a little longer on the topic and the laughter stops.

Something I regularly heard during presentations and conversations was a resentment that went deeper than any of the more pedestrian 'distrust in government' clichés that are out there. Throughout the weekend, attendees variously mentioned bad experiences with early education, struggles with childhood illiteracy and, for more than a few, chronic social isolation. Around the room, heads would nod whenever anyone mentioned the 'lies we were told at school'. The education system, and their experience of it, was an extension of the crooked system they thought was at work in the wider world, rather than the potential cause for what made them so likely to believe conspiracies in the first place.

For a few, some kind of personal trauma or major event - a divorce, a break-up, a bad trip - had happened to them directly before they realised that the earth was flat. 'I had an experience with DMT [a psychoactive drug] that slapped me so hard in the face,' announced one attendee during an open mic session, 'that within four minutes I had seen God. Three weeks later I found out the earth was flat.' For others, it was their growing belief in a flat earth that had prompted isolation from friends and family to begin with. On the first evening, a woman spoke to the room about how her flat earth obsession had isolated her entirely from her family. Her cheeks grew damp as she said how happy she was to finally meet other people who believed the same things she did. It seemed to me that this isolation only strengthened their beliefs because - through it all - they took solace in knowing they had received the truth where others remained unenlightened. From their noble isolation they could pity the non-believers.

Underneath every presentation there was what felt like a simmering disbelief that we could all possibly be so small, so insignificant. 'Can you really believe that we are on a tiny speck, shooting through an infinite space?' asked a speaker on the second day, 'I just can't go back to that way of living.' In (or on) a world that is flat, singular, finite and created just for us, there is meaning, purpose, a feeling of finally being special again and seeing the truth where others walk blind. Without a flat earth, 'you feel powerless, and they don't want us feeling special.'

Every evening a group of assorted press - a few documentarians, a reporter, a student, another photographer, a freelance writer and I - would gather in the bar to chew the day over. We huddled around cheap, flat beers and quietly discussed what we'd seen, wary of being overheard by any of the crowd around us. On the first evening, it was surreal and uneasy. By the third, it was nothing short of depressing. Losing what I had thought would have been some sort of calm and neutral point of view, I realised I was growing frustrated by the whole event.

What had been curious at first had morphed into concern and a sort of shame-by-proxy for everyone I spoke to. So many of these people had come to a point in their lives where believing in a flat earth seemed a good option for them. Many more had been rejected and cast out, isolated from loved ones who thought they'd cracked. It was vindicating and comforting for them to find and meet others who believed what they did, even if the meeting itself was in such dour surroundings. It was enough to generate the febrile atmosphere of a movement in genesis, an insurrection against the globe earth elite, the feeling that - finally! - it wasn't just videos online anymore, watched from a bedsit after your family had disowned you, there were real people to talk to. And yet, just beneath the surface, there lay an ocean of hurt.

Broken Social Contract

The other reaction people have to hearing about a flat earth conference is to wonder, 'How much harm could it possibly do?' It's a free country, after all - they're entitled to their beliefs. What of it?

If you can hold the idea in your mind that the earth is flat and deflect all incoming logical argument or evidence to the contrary, you are able to believe and do even more. You can do this because you operate from a position where your worldview is driven by your identity, not from what can be scientifically or objectively observed, or what the experts tell you. As a flat earther you may well 'do your own research' but this is only ever done to gather the supporting material needed to hold your identity in place. It is confirmation bias, the facts twisted or fabricated where necessary to make sense of what you believe to be true. With a firm hold on your new identity, you are better able to evangelise the new beliefs that have given you solace, spreading misinformation even further.

The human race has survived and thrived, in part, because we are able to trust each other. I do not know how to operate a power plant, grow a crop, or develop medicine. I am very happy for others to do these things for me because I trust they are acting in good faith, know what they're doing, and know better than I do. I leave it to them and we all gain something from the exchange - a salary for them and electricity, food and good health for me.

When a worldview grows in a group of people that requires the belief that this trust has been fundamentally broken by the institutions of modern society, modern society feels the effects. Things get ugly. Vaccination rates drop and otherwise banished diseases make unnecessary comebacks. People hurt themselves self-medicating with drugs touted by quacks. Gunmen burst into pizza restaurants to bust child trafficking rings that don't exist. Mobile phone masts burn because people don't understand how they work and what they do. We vote for demagogues. We vote to harm ourselves.

It is the stuff of medieval witch dunking, of the monster under the bed. It is the rejection of intellectuals, of experts, of modern science. It is to embrace only that which comforts and gives a feeling of control. It's the sticking of fingers in ears and shutting of eyes to benefit the individual and damn the people, the society at large. This doesn't just happen in a vacuum, it has knock-on effects. We laugh it off and ignore it at our peril.

For all of this, I still cannot bring myself to blame them as individuals. There will always be conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. There will always be ranks of charlatans and enough of the misinformed to keep them in business. Normally, they lie low in the more obscure corners of society the way that low-level muckraking goes on in even the most erudite of workplaces. And if it weren't for that algorithmic quirk of YouTube those videos would not have gained such traction, so many of those people would not have been swept into the vortex and a conference like the one I attended would never have happened. I believe they are, organisers, speakers and attendees all, the victims of a bad equation and a society that would rather not think about them.

Beam Me Up

On the afternoon of the final day, three science PhDs from a prestigious London university arrive to take part in the grand finale: a debate between them and three of the weekend's biggest-hitting presenters. Standing uneasily at the back of the room, I watch as this sincere trio of well-meaning scientists fight Canute-like against a bewildering series of half-baked arguments and attempted gotchas from their opponents. They thought they were there to make the case that, yes, science is pretty sure the earth is round and, yes, we do know what we're talking about. They never stood a chance. The crowd was against them, hostile, seething. Before the debate the organiser, G, had put up a picture of a plastic globe dunked in a rubbish bin. During audience Q&A a woman at the front, feet away from the nearest scientist, wails about how she and her daughter had looked out to sea and realised that the horizon was level and how could they lie to her face like that? The scientists stared back at her, stunned.

This was my limit. Most of the other journos had left long ago after managing to stay for considerably less time. I quietly packed away my notes and camera gear, said goodbye to the lone remaining reporter, left to get in my car and drove off. When I returned home I put dinner in the oven, heaved a giant sigh, and settled down to an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In early 2019, YouTube made changes to their algorithm to stop the recommendation of flat earth-related videos and other conspiracy content. Source: Author's note: To protect the identities of those attending who, I hope, have some small chance of later changing their views and possibly regretting their attendance, names have either not been included or abbreviated and images that include faces have either not been shown or heavily obscured. I still have some optimism left.
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Notes From A Flat Earth Conference - Will Patrick

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The world is round. I'm confident about this. I say it as an opening disclaimer because, a little under two and a half years ago, I attended 'FECON' (an event less scatological than it sounds), the UK's first ever Flat Earth Conference, to take portraits of the people who would be there.

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La revue Phytomedicine a rétracté ces travaux qui prétendaient démontrer les effets bénéfiques de la tisane d'Artemisia contre le paludisme et la bilharziose.

Coup dur pour le professeur Perronne, victoire pour ceux qui dénoncent les irrégularités de ses travaux depuis des années. Deux études publiées en 2018 et 2019 dans la revue médicale Phytomedicine ont été rétractées en août. Signées par l'orthodontiste Lucile Cornet-Vernet, fondatrice de la Maison de l'Artemisia, une association qui promeut cette plante dans plusieurs pays d'Afrique et cosignées par Christian Perronne, chef du service des maladies infectieuses de l'hôpital de Garches (AP-HP), ces études étaient censées démontrer l'efficacité de la tisane d'Artemisia pour traiter deux maladies potentiellement mortelles : le paludisme, causé par des parasites transmis aux personnes par des piqûres de moustiques, et la bilharziose, une maladie chronique provoquée par des vers parasites.

"Ces articles ont été rétractés à la demande du rédacteur en chef, peut-on lire sur le site de Phytomedicine. Des inquiétudes ont été soulevées quant à [...] la fiabilité des données incluses. Les auteurs n'ont pas été en mesure de fournir des explications raisonnables et le rédacteur en chef a décidé de les retirer."

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Deux études cosignées par le professeur Perronne sur la tisane d'Artemisia rétractées

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Coup dur pour le professeur Perronne, victoire pour ceux qui dénoncent les irrégularités de ses travaux depuis des années. Deux études publiées en 2018 et 2019 dans la revue médicale Phytomedicine ont été rétractées en août.

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L''électro au naturel
podcast, 5x60'

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Loin d'être dévitalisé, l'art sonore des machines et la création numérique explorent depuis les années 50 le monde végétal, animal, humain et même post-hu-main. Quand la musique électronique plonge dans les formes du vivant, assume ses aléas et revendique ses aspérités : la frontière du synthétique et du naturel tombe.

Etienne Menu est rédacteur en chef du site Musique Journal et de la revue Audimat. Il a produit pour France Culture plusieurs séries musicales, sur la pop française, les figures de la masculinité ou les moyens de transport.

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L'électro au naturel - série de podcasts à écouter - France Culture

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Loin d'être dévitalisé, l'art sonore des machines et la création numérique explorent depuis les années 50 le monde végétal, animal, humain et même post-hu-main. Quand la musique électronique plonge dans les formes du vivant, assume ses aléas et revendique ses aspérités : la frontière du synthétique et du naturel tombe.

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PURE-UNADULTERATED-FUN

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FAT GIRL SLIM - World premiere DJ set by Nelly Cook (with a little help from dad Fatboy Slim.....)

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Un bouilleur ambulant est une personne habilitée à produire ses propres eaux-de-vie. Ce n'est pas une profession mais un statut qui découle du statut de propriétaire récoltant (ne pas confondre avec distillateur qui est une profession). Certains bouilleurs ambulants bénéficient de manière résiduelle d'une allocation en franchise leur donnant droit à une exonération de taxes sur les 1 000 premiers degrés d'alcools pur qu'ils produisent. C'est ce que l'on nomme « privilège », et par abus de langage « droit de bouillir ». En France, d epuis 1959, ce privilège n'est plus transmissible par héritage, et s'éteindra donc au décès des derniers détenteurs. Depuis 2008, les bouilleurs de cru ne bénéficiant pas du privilège sont taxés à 50 % sur les dix premiers litres d'alcool pur et ensuite à 100 %.

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Film by Robert Findlay
Sound engineering by Andrew Findlay

www.robertfindlay.tv

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In the UK, between April 2010 and 2018, there was 14% more violent crime at 20C than there was at 10C. In Mexico, there is more organised crime in warmer weather – and some academics suspect this is because it creates a “taste for violence”. In South Africa, scientists have discovered that, for every degree that the temperature goes up, there is a 1.5% increase in the number of murders. In Greece, one study found that more than 30% of 137 homicides reported in a particular region occurred on days with an average temperature of more than 25C.

Similar patterns involving violent crime and heat have also been observed Sub-Saharan Africa, Taiwan, the United States, Finland, and Spain… the list goes on. In all, the effect has been demonstrated in hundreds of scientific studies.

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It was July 1988. Across the United States, the land was simmering in the warmest summer on record. City dwellers swarmed onto beaches, electricity use was higher than ever as people cranked up the air conditioning and the freeways were lined with broken-down, overheated vehicles. Ice lollies melted before they could be eaten.

But something else was happening too.

In fact, 1988 wasn't just a year of record-breaking sunshine, but also record-breaking violence. There were an unprecedented number of murders, rapes, armed robberies and assaults - around 1.56 million of them. Could there have been a link between the weather and the general trend for violence?

People have suspected that warm weather can alter our behaviour for centuries. The idea is embedded into our very language - we talk of tempers "flaring", "incandescent" rage, getting "hot under the collar" - and Shakespeare described "mad blood stirring" in the oppressive heat of a Verona summer back in 1597.
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The earliest studies into the phenomenon emerged in the late 19th Century, coinciding with the first reliable crime statistics. According to one analysis, offences against people tended to peak in the summer months, while crimes against property were found to be more common in the winter.

Since then, the evidence has been piling up.

Every year, as the mercury rises, we undergo a collective transformation. Some of the symptoms are relatively minor - people are more likely to honk their horns when they're stuck in traffic; the police usually notice a spike in disorderly behaviour; and we're less likely to help strangers out.

But others are more disconcerting.

The global heatwave of 2018 - which led to widespread droughts and unusually high numbers of Arctic wildfires; drove reindeer to Finland's beaches; and even shrunk a mountain in Sweden - was also associated with some alarming human occurrences. In the UK, there were a record number of 999 calls, with one police officer commenting that the public react "very strangely" to that kind of weather. In some areas, police reported that calls were up 40%.

Of course, this is all heavily anecdotal - and there are plenty of alternative explanations for these individual incidents. But the wider correlation appears to be supported by a weight of academic research from around the world.

In the UK, between April 2010 and 2018, there was 14% more violent crime at 20C than there was at 10C. In Mexico, there is more organised crime in warmer weather - and some academics suspect this is because it creates a "taste for violence". In South Africa, scientists have discovered that, for every degree that the temperature goes up, there is a 1.5% increase in the number of murders. In Greece, one study found that more than 30% of 137 homicides reported in a particular region occurred on days with an average temperature of more than 25C.

Similar patterns involving violent crime and heat have also been observed Sub-Saharan Africa, Taiwan, the United States, Finland, and Spain ... the list goes on. In all, the effect has been demonstrated in hundreds of scientific studies.

Then there are the uprisings. In one study, scientists tracked uprisings around the world from 1791 to 1880 - and found that the overwhelming majority occurred in the summer months. Whichever end of the planet they looked at, the relationship still held up. For example, in Europe they were most likely to happen in July - while in South America they were more likely to happen in January.

More recent studies have confirmed the link between social movements and the weather. An analysis of more than 7,000 events over 36 years found that they tended to happen on more clement days, and as the temperature went up, they were more likely to get violent. Anecdotally, it seems to fit. Just last week, rioting broke out in the Netherlands after the hottest week since the nation started keeping records; a building was set alight, fireworks were hurled at police officers and 27 people were arrested.

While it's clear that the injustices and other triggers for social unrest can happen all year round, it seems that we're far more likely to react when it's warm.

"There is a caveat," says Trevor Harley, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Dundee. "The relationship between heat and things like rioting is U-shaped. So when it becomes very hot or humid, people don't do anything because it's just too uncomfortable to move."

Finally, the conditions outdoors can also impact the incidence of self-harm. A study of 1,320,148 suicides across 12 countries found that higher ambient temperatures were associated with an increased risk of suicide in general, and that this relationship was especially straightforward in Western countries and South Africa. Overall, the highest risk occurred when temperatures reached 27C. Research in Australia has found that there tends to be a spike in hospital admissions at around this temperature, with an increase of 7.3% during heatwaves.

Why the weather has such power over our behaviour is a total mystery - but as the world heats up, scientists are racing to find some answers.

One of the more obvious possibilities is that hot, stuffy weather is uncomfortable, which puts us in a collectively worse mood, and leads to harmful behaviour. There is plenty of evidence that the first part of this is true - high temperatures make us more angry and stressed, and less happy. In hot weather, professional football in the US National Football League (NFL) are more likely to engage in aggressive penalties; journalists are more prone to using negative language in their reporting; and people are more likely to strike and quit their jobs.

One researcher put it in these stark terms: on average, there's a greater difference between how people feel on 32C vs 21C days, compared to whether they're widowed or divorced vs married.

The idea is further backed up by the discovery that the weather might be able to infiltrate our brains by altering our biology. In 2017, scientists discovered that the ambient temperature in Finland correlated with the amount of serotonin - an important brain chemical which regulates anxiety, happiness and overall mood - circulating in the blood of healthy volunteers and violent offenders. Crucially, they also found a strong link between this measure and the monthly violent crime rate. This suggests that heat alters our serotonin levels, which in turn affect our levels of aggression.

Another idea is that hot weather increases our levels of testosterone, which makes us more aggressive - a fact which could also partly explain why, as the days start to lengthen, there's a jump in the incidence of sexual and domestic violence. In the United States, there is 12% more " intimate partner violence ", which includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, in the summer than the winter.

However, there are plenty of alternative explanations. An important consideration is that most of these studies are based on correlation - they link one factor, temperature, with another, crime. But this doesn't mean one necessarily affects the other directly. When the sun comes out, we inhabit a very different world - one of partying at crowded festivals, socially acceptable daytime drinking, and generally being more active.

Could these summer activities, which bring us into contact with other people and heighten our emotions, be the real drivers behind our heatwave behaviour?

"It is difficult to disentangle these things, because they always go together," says Harley. "If you take suicide rates - they go up when it's warmer and means of suicide are more available because people are outdoors... But they are highly variable across the world. Russia has one of the highest levels, and that's probably something to do with the high levels of alcohol consumption, rather than the weather."

The Covid-19 pandemic might just provide some answers, because since it emerged, many of our normal summer activities have become impossible. The pandemic has already proved to be a natural experiment for a number of urgent questions, such as what happens when long-distance travel is dramatically reduced or how whales respond when the oceans become less noisy, so who knows, perhaps it will reveal whether violence really is linked to summer revelling or just heat. (Read more about how it has proved to be a 'mass experiment' for the climate.)

Regardless of what's driving the link between the weather and our behaviour, it has some uneasy implications for the future. Scientists have predicted that, as climate change kicks in, just a 2C increase in global average temperatures could increase the rate of violent crime by more than 3% in temperate regions such as Western Europe. At the moment, many experts believe we're on track for a temperature rise of over 3C, even if we meet all our current climate commitments.

Though why the weather affects us remains a mystery, perhaps we'd better brace ourselves for what's coming.

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The troubling ways a heatwave can warp your mind

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It was July 1988. Across the United States, the land was simmering in the warmest summer on record. City dwellers swarmed onto beaches, electricity use was higher than ever as people cranked up the air conditioning and the freeways were lined with broken-down, overheated vehicles. Ice lollies melted before they could be eaten.

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Should the Olympics cease to exist?

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Dvora Meyers | Longreads | August 2020 | 5,722 words (23 minutes)

A year ago, back when we were still allowed to gather in groups larger than a minyan, activists convened in Tokyo to talk about how they were going to end the biggest global gathering of them all - the Olympic Games.

The activists came from all over: past host cities like Rio, London, Nagano, and Pyeongchang; future host cities Paris and Los Angeles; cities that had managed to derail their bids, including Boston and Hamburg; and places like Jakarta, which is gearing up for a 2032 bid.

They were in Tokyo exactly a year out from the scheduled start of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, attending the first-ever transnational anti-Olympic summit, which was organized by Hangorin no Kai, a group of unhoused and formerly unhoused people based in Tokyo. The activists, along with academics and members of the media, talked about common Games-related issues, like displacement and police militarization, and discussed strategies for resisting local political forces and the IOC to protect their communities. Elsewhere in Tokyo, Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, and the rest of the IOC crew had arrived to mark the start of the 365-day countdown to the Opening Ceremonies.

Eight months after these two very different gatherings in Tokyo, the IOC announced that the 2020 Olympics were going to be postponed by a full year due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. By the time they made the announcement, most other major sports tournaments planned for the summer had been canceled or postponed and the athletes, many of whom were shut out of training facilities due to lockdowns, were calling on the IOC to act for over a week. Once the IOC made the inevitable official, the athletes were able to reset and refocus their training on July 2021.

That even a stripped-down version of the 2021 Games will happen is hardly a foregone conclusion. The pandemic may not be under control by then. Even if it is, and even if an effective vaccine against the coronavirus is developed in time, the Games still might not happen. The postponement is likely going to add billions to a budget that was already triple that of the original projection of the Tokyo bid that the IOC had accepted in 2013. Public opinion in Japan seems to be swinging against the Games, too. In a recent survey, 77 percent of respondents said that the Olympics could not be held next year. In another poll, a slim majority of Tokyo residents said the same thing.

The horrors of the pandemic are real and massive. Yet COVID-19 has offered an opportunity to derail the Games - one that didn't exist just a few months ago and certainly hadn't existed when the activists came to Tokyo last July. Dr. Satoko Itani, a professor of sport, gender, and sexuality studies at Kansai University, told me that the pandemic is a "powerful wake-up call to the people who otherwise wouldn't have given a thought about the costs of the Olympics."

"Now that a lot of people in Japan are counting and monitoring the government's spending to fight the pandemic, it became ever more clear actually just how much taxpayers' money we had allowed the TOCOG [Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games] and the government to spend on the two-week-long sport spectacle while we don't have enough money to equip 'essential workers' with the essential protective gear," they wrote in an email.

That even a stripped-down version of the 2021 Games will happen is hardly a foregone conclusion.

The Games' postponement is happening not just against the backdrop of a global pandemic, but also that of a global uprising against state-sanctioned murders of Black people by the police. The catalyst for this movement was the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, but the protests quickly spread beyond the Twin Cities to the rest of the U.S. and then around the world, including Japan.

The pandemic, police brutality, and the Olympics are not unconnected events. While COVID-19 might be a virus incapable of racial bias, the course it has taken through the population of the U.S., wending its way through Black, Latinx, and poor communities, was determined by decades of racist policy and discrimination. American police forces have killed Black people for decades with impunity as part of the same system that allowed more African Americans to die from COVID-19 than any other group. It's also the system that has allowed the Olympic Games in the post-war period to reshape the cities that host the event, rarely for the benefit of all citizens. The Games have been a driving force behind displacement, police militarization, increased surveillance, and violence against the working class and poor people, especially Black and Brown, in the cities where they've touched down. The very same groups that the pandemic has disproportionately killed and that the police disproportionately target are those who become the victims, rather than the beneficiaries, of the Olympics.

But people are growing wise to what the Olympic Games are actually about. "It wasn't 15, 20 years ago you could say, 'We're going to have a bid in our city,' and stand behind the podium and jabber on about jobs and economic upticks floating everybody's boat, and people just nodded along," Jules Boykoff told me. (Boykoff is a professor at Pacific University and author of Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics and NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond.) "Today, no way. People aren't nodding along like they once did."

Over the last decade, residents of potential Olympic host cities have voted overwhelmingly to reject the Games. The IOC and local organizers have lost referenda in Hamburg, Calgary, Graubünden, Krakow, Munich, Sion, Vienna, and Innsbruck. Activists in other cities like Boston, Budapest, and Graz/Schladming managed to turn public opinion against the Games so decisively that the bids were pulled before the IOC and Olympic boosters could be embarrassed by yet another referendum loss. If the anti-Olympics activists have their way, soon no city will be a safe harbor for the Games.

* * *

Resistance to the Games is almost as old as the Games themselves. The very first modern Games in Athens, in 1896, already inspired wariness about using public funds to pay for Baron Pierre de Coubertin's pet project. Greek prime minister Charilaos Trikoupis didn't want the state to be responsible for financing the Olympics, and private (mostly aristocratic) donors footed the bill.

Nowadays, a lot of tax money goes into financing Games-related projects, but one practice has persisted to this day: wildly underestimating the cost of running the event. Coubrertin had claimed that the whole thing would cost no more than 200,000 drachmas; as Boykoff writes in Power Games, "the stadium refurbishment alone cost three times that much."

Rome was originally supposed to host the 1908 Olympics, but many people there protested the decision because of the costs. London ended up taking over hosting duties at the last minute - not because the Italian government suddenly became responsive to the will of its citizens but because Mount Vesuvius erupted less than 200 miles away.

In 1912, the Olympics really hit their stride, at least according to their most ardent supporters - the entire city of Stockholm was taken over by the event. The Games were no longer a thing happening in a city, a footnote to the World's Fair. (The early Olympics were often held in tandem with the World's Fair.) In Stockholm, residents couldn't ignore the Games even if they wished to. "Whereas in London the life of the huge metropolis had not been influenced by the invasion of Olympism, the whole of Stockholm was impregnated by it," Coubertin said of the 1912 Olympics. That the Olympics have since affected every aspect of life in their host cities is a feature, not a bug, and it's been there almost from the get-go.

Several subsequent Games were met with resistance and with citizens arguing against a misallocation of public resources. The first Games ever hosted in Los Angeles took place in the middle of the Great Depression; "Groceries, not Games" was the rallying cry of people opposing the 1932 Olympics. In London, which in 1948 was a city still rebuilding after the Nazi bombing campaigns of World War II, people accused organizers of misspending public funds. Right before the 1968 Olympics, Mexican authorities massacred protesters, who, among other things, felt that the money being spent on the Games should instead go to social welfare programs.

The very same groups that the pandemic has disproportionately killed and that the police disproportionately target are those who become the victims, rather than the beneficiaries, of the Olympics.

Looking at this history of resistance to the Olympics is simultaneously inspiring and dispiriting. Ordinary people have consistently stood up to the IOC and to their local elected officials and demanded that residents' needs be met before cities pay for a massive sports spectacle. Yet despite their best efforts, they mostly haven't succeeded - at least if we define success as kicking the Games to the curb. In over a century, only one city has managed to cast off the Games after they had been awarded to it: Denver.

"I voted for the Olympics to come to Colorado," Richard Lamm, former Colorado Governor, told me. At the time he was still in the state's General Assembly. He had been to the 1960 Games in California's Squaw Valley and had quite enjoyed himself. He thought it would be a good idea to bring the Olympics to Colorado. A couple of years after that vote, Denver secured the 1976 Winter Olympics. When I asked Lamm what he and his fellow legislators knew about the plans for the Games before they voted, he said that "the state legislature voted in ignorance."

But Lamm, a certified public accountant by training, changed his tune when he became chair of the Legislative Audit Committee. He found that the local boosters, who were prominent, wealthy businessmen, grew more and more defensive as Lamm started to ask questions. "They condescendingly looked down on me and said, 'Just move aside, you're not being patriotic.'"

This behavior is not unusual for Olympic organizers. They don't provide much information about what it actually means to host the Olympics, because they recognize that the more people learn, the less they like it. Remember that scene in Clueless where Cher, the protagonist, describes her nemesis as a "full-on Monet"? "From far away, it's okay, but up close, it's a big ol' mess." The Olympics is the Monet of global mega-sporting events.

Former Governor Stephen McNichols, in his attempt to keep the 1976 Olympics in Denver, appealed to manners and civility. "It's like inviting somebody to dinner," he said. "You just can't tear up the invitation." (I'm certain that even Emily Post would approve of uninviting someone if that person threatens to turn over the table and smash the china and leave you to clean it all up.)

Despite fierce opposition from moneyed interests, the activists in Colorado managed to get a measure on the ballot in 1972, a constitutional amendment that would prevent any additional public monies from being spent on the 1976 Olympics. The Games' boosters far outspent the activists, but the latter still won 60 percent of the vote. After the measure to withdraw public funding was passed, the IOC pulled the Games from Denver and moved them to Innsbruck, which had previously hosted them in 1964. (In 2017, Innsbruckers voted against bidding on another Olympics. Two was enough for them.)

Activists in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Paris are hoping to pull off a similar feat to the one that Lamm and Denver activists pulled off nearly half a century ago - but they also want to take it a step further. Not only do they want to rid their respective cities of the Games; they want to end the Olympic Games entirely. They believe that the Olympics bring misery to the already-vulnerable, so why would they advocate for ridding their cities of the Games only to see them pop up elsewhere? That would make them the Olympic Nimbys.

In over a century, only one city has managed to cast off the Games after they had been awarded to it: Denver.

To get rid of the Olympics, they're going to have to fight both the forces of capital and the sense that these Games, once awarded, are a done deal. When I was in Los Angeles in late 2019, the people I spoke to who weren't directly involved in activism - Lyft drivers, friends, people at cafes - seemed to believe that it was probably too late to stop them. A sense of inevitability had already set in.

For better and for worse, the pandemic has destroyed that feeling in numerous ways. Before COVID-19, students assumed that if they passed their classes, they'd be able to attend their graduation ceremonies. Engaged couples believed that if they paid for a wedding, their family and friends could come from all over. Olympic athletes may have acknowledged the possibility that they might not make it to the Games due to injury or a weak performance at trials, but never considered that the Games themselves might not happen at all.

"The coronavirus shows how fragile the world system can be... COVID-19 showed [that] everything can come crashing down in dramatic fashion," Boykoff wrote in an email.

"COVID turned the global economy and our social order upside down," Jonny Coleman, one of the organizers with the NOlympics-LA group, wrote. "Right now, when I talk to people, almost across the board there is a willingness to imagine a better city." NOlympics-LA is a grassroots anti-Olympic activist organization that was started in 2017 by the Housing and Homelessness Committee of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America with the goal of derailing the LA 2024 bid. (Paris ended up with 2024 and, in a weird Hail Mary move, the IOC awarded LA the 2028 Games at the same time, possibly concerned that no one would submit a bid to host the XXXIV Olympiad.) Coleman wrote that the group has seen their membership numbers go up and interest in their work increase since the start of the pandemic. "There's both an increased interest in specifically anti-Olympic work, exploring alternatives to sports in general, and a lot of interest in the specific issues we organize around: gentrification, displacement, policing, capitalism, and so on... Who knows where [we] can take this?"

( Disclosure: I have been a member of the DSA and will be again once I remember to pay my dues, which will be any day now.)

* * *

One of the activists who has recently come to NOlympics is Aliza Rood, granddaughter of Rodney Rood, an oil executive who was one of the men responsible for bringing the Olympics to Los Angeles in 1984.

"I attended the 1984 Olympics as an 8-year-old while, unbeknownst to me, Black and Brown communities in Los Angeles were actively being decimated in the service of the spectacle," she wrote in an email. "I'm personally horrified by everything my grandfather helped to 'achieve' for LA, I feel a responsibility to assist in keeping the Olympics from returning in 2028 (or ever) to cause further harm."

That the 1984 Summer Olympics harmed residents of the city might come as a surprise to many. In American collective memory, LA84 is the "good" Olympics. It didn't sink the city into debt the way that the '76 Games did to Montreal. The facilities used to host the sporting events didn't become ruins with rolling tumbleweeds as those built for the 2004 Games in Athens. And the city didn't divert funds from public employees to Games-related projects as officials did in Rio right before the start of the 2016 Olympics.

But it was a disaster for some communities in Los Angeles. A Black Enterprise article from 1991 described the toll the 1984 Games took on Black-owned businesses in the city. "When it came to generating revenues for black owned businesses, I would give the Los Angeles Olympics an F," Congresswoman Maxine Waters said at the time. Many Black business owners had been verbally assured by local organizers that they would have access to Olympic venues. They took on debt to make the improvements needed to compete in the Olympic marketplace. But they were shut out.

Olympic organizers were not sending any foot traffic to those businesses, either. Though half the athletes were being housed in the USC dorms located in South-Central, they were actively discouraged from exploring the surrounding neighborhoods and speaking to locals.

Black lives didn't matter to the organizers of the 1984 Olympics. And Black activists in LA haven't forgotten what the Olympics did to their community.

"Upon moving into the USC Olympic Village in 1984, we were told to be mindful of where [we] were going outside of the large walls and barriers that surrounded the Village," Tracee Talavera, a member of the silver medal-winning U.S. 1984 Olympic gymnastics team, said in an email. "We were told not to go past the fences and if we did venture past the Village barriers, the USOC would not be responsible for our safety."

Judging from how the city and the USOC treated them in the run-up to the Games and beyond, it's clear that LA's Black and Brown residents weren't thought of as people who deserved to benefit from an event framed as a public good. Instead, they were treated like a security problem - as if the Olympics and its attendees had to protect themselves from them. Ahead of the 1984 Olympics, the LAPD went on a hiring spree, bringing additional cops onto the force to deal with the threat that the local population allegedly posed to the proceedings. These officers - and the rest of the force - were armed to the teeth.

In conjunction with the FBI and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the LAPD started rounding up Black and Brown youth and homeless people. Many of these sweeps took place right around the city's Olympic stadium, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

"We saw how people were pushed out on the street, how all of the homeless people were being pushed out of downtown and pushed in the periphery," Leonardo Vilchis, an East LA organizer and co-founder and co-Director of Union de Vecinos, said. "There was this very aggressive policing around the homeless community; a lot of our people were put into jail."

Black lives didn't matter to the organizers of the 1984 Olympics. And Black activists in LA haven't forgotten what the Olympics did to their community. They, more than any other group, recognize that events like the Olympics, which expand police budgets and powers, pose a major threat to their safety. Black Lives Matter-LA was one of the earliest coalition partners for NOlympics; their work against the 2028 Games predates the formation of the NOlympics working group.

The LAPD has made it clear that hosting the Olympics in 2028 - and before that, the Super Bowl in 2022 and the World Cup in 2026 - will require an expansion of their budget and of policing in the city in general. Jamie McBride, director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, recently discussed Mayor Eric Garcetti's proposed cuts to the LAPD's budget, and said that "If he cuts the budget, we're going to be so far behind I don't think it'll be safe to have the World Cup here. I don't think it'll be safe to have the Olympics here." Hosting the Games is not remotely compatible with current popular demands to defund the police, and McBride wanted to be sure that we all realized that.

McBride is probably right. It will be impossible to secure the Games in the way we currently understand "security" - surveillance, mass arrests, targeting of minorities - if the budget of the LAPD is slashed. But McBride is actually making the activists' arguments for them, explaining precisely why we need to call the whole thing off.

"Any time you talk about putting more resources into policing, you're talking about taking those resources away from things that actually make the people that we care about safe," Dr. Melina Abdullah, co-founder of BLM-LA, said at an anti-Olympic forum held in 2017.

"When we talk about putting police on the streets it means putting people with guns who are there trained to see us with targets on our backs and our fronts," she said.

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Vilchis, the East LA organizer, agrees. "We saw the continuity from 1984 to 1992 with the riots." This is a point that many other activists and academics have made over the years - that you could draw a line from the militarization of the police in 1984 to the 1992 uprising. The LAPD didn't fire the officers it had hired for the '84 Games; they just found ways to use them, notably by deploying them to terrorize Black communities. They also didn't give back the fancy weapons they had received from the federal government for '84. That tank-like vehicle that they got for the Games? They used it for drug raids. In one incident, they took down the wall of a suspected drug house only to find a mother and her children eating ice cream.

The militarization of local forces, mass arrests, and mass surveillance did not stop with the 1984 LA Games; they've all become even more prominent Olympics staples since 9/11.

"There are [...] standardized, globalized security models associated with the Olympics, and that involves the heavy use of exclusionary zones around sports venues where public space gets privatized; the heavy use of private security corporations in public space; militarization of local police forces," Dennis Pauschinger, a professor whose research has focused on the security at sports mega-events, told me last year. (He's also affiliated with the anti-Olympic activists in Hamburg that defeated that city's bid.) "Also what happens is always a huge mobilization of CCTV cameras and other surveillance technologies."

And as we saw with LA, the security upgrades aren't short-lived; they remain even after the athletes have gone home. "It's called the security legacy of the Games," Pauschinger told me.

The militarization of local forces, mass arrests, and mass surveillance did not stop with the 1984 LA Games; they've all become even more prominent Olympics staples since 9/11.

Organizers and politicians will argue that they have to do everything in their power to keep athletes and spectators safe, but Pauschinger argues that the security measures are almost always in excess of what is actually needed to secure the event. If something does happen, they will be asked why they didn't pull out all the stops - so they preemptively terrorize whole communities for the sake of appearing to do something.

But it's not just the athletes and spectators that officials are concerned about protecting. They are worried about protecting their product, too. "The security is put into place with the justification of the War on Terror... but also to protect the highest and best product they have, which is the World Cup and the Olympic Games," Pauschinger said.

Sometimes, the security itself becomes the product. Pauschinger said that mega-events like the Olympics and the World Cup have become showrooms for security and surveillance technologies, such as the ALSOK Reborg X model, a surveillance robot that NOlympian Spike Friedman encountered when he went to Tokyo for last summer's transnational activist summit. "The robot is designed to scan crowds and target individuals who are too 'jittery' or have skin that is too 'red tinted' as these are supposedly signs that someone is about to commit a terrorist act," and not, say, that they're having an allergic reaction to something they ate. The potential here for racial and ethnic profiling is terrifying. But if these robots are shown to "work" - and I'm not sure how we'd measure success here - then you'd probably see them popping up all over, perhaps even at future Olympic Games.

In fact, the security industry in Japan has the Olympics to thank for its very existence. According to Tokyo 2020's own promotional materials, the country's security sector came into being in preparation for the 1964 Olympics. The upcoming Games have been a boon to the very same industry; in the name of security, the ISDEF, a large Israeli security and weapons expo, was held outside of Israel for the first time. One of the reasons cited for hosting this event in Kawasaki was the 2020 Olympics. Itani, professor at Kansai University, said that some activists managed to sneak inside the event and saw that weapons were being advertised there in addition to high tech security and surveillance equipment on display. The Olympics, which claim to be a movement promoting peace and unity, are used to rationalize the buying and selling of arms.

* * *

One legacy of the Games that no one puts in promotional materials is that of displacement.

According to a report from the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, more than two million people - most of them poor - have been displaced from their homes since 1988 in order to make room for Olympics-related projects. Most of the activists I spoke with put displacement at the top of their concerns. This issue is not separate from the racism and police brutality highlighted by BLM activists. The unhoused are particularly vulnerable to over-policing and violence, and more often than not, the people who are displaced by events such as the Olympic Games are poor and marginalized.

Concerns over displacement and housing were foremost on the agenda when I attended a NOlympics meeting last September. NOlympics is partnered with more than two dozen organizations in California, including Black Lives Matter, K-Town for All, Union de Vecinos, SAJE, LA Tenants Union, and several others. The work of several of its partner organizations is focused on housing insecurity and displacement in the city.

The meeting, which was convened to discuss the Tokyo summit that many of the activists had attended in July 2019, was held at the Skid Row offices of one of its other coalition partners, Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA-CAN). The setting, one of the most visible encampments for the unhoused in the U.S., provided an object lesson in what happens when resources are shifted from social programs meant to serve the poor to mega sporting events for the global elite. All of the messaging inside LA-CAN was a response to the homelessness crisis - LA's unhoused population increased by 12 percent in 2019; things are looking even more grim for 2020. Of the few folding tables pushed up against the perimeter of the room, one was laden with leaflets, bumper stickers, totes, and zines, all with some sort of anti-Olympics or housing-justice message, such as "Homes, Not Hotels." Rooster, a small mutt belonging to one of the activists, was wearing an orange bandana with a pin that read "Services not sweeps." Even the dog was on message.

According to Boykoff, the form that Olympic displacement takes usually depends on where the Games are being held. In the global north, it's usually the racist market forces of gentrification that do the dirty work. In the global south, however, the displacement is usually achieved through force. To prepare for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese government pushed more than a million people out of their homes. More than 77,000 people living in favelas lost their homes to make way for the 2016 Olympics.

Atlanta went to great lengths to rid the city of as many poor residents as possible before the 1996 Olympics, issuing people one-way bus tickets to leave the city, and making them put it in writing that they wouldn't come back. Anita Beaty, the former executive director for the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, "came into possession of piles and piles of arrest citations pre-printed with the designations 'homeless' and 'African-American,'" according to a 2016 radio story. Over 9,000 Atlantans were arrested during the lead-up to the Games.

The 1996 Olympics also led to the destruction of Techwood, the oldest public-housing project in the United States. The housing project stood on valuable Atlanta real estate in the center of the city, next to Georgia Tech and the Coca-Cola headquarters. By the time the athletes arrived in Atlanta, the housing projects were gone and so were their former residents. The transfer of public resources to the private sector was complete.

"It's not a coincidence that they happened to be the residents of public housing because that's the easiest target. It was sitting on this prime location by the national stadium," Itani said of the homes destroyed for 2020. To make this even more horrific, these razed buildings were constructed for Japanese citizens displaced by the 1964 Games. And worse still, the buildings destroyed for the 1964 Games had been built for people left homeless by World War II and soldiers returning from the conflict. Boykoff and Nation columnist Dave Zirin interviewed two elderly women who had been displaced twice.

Displacement isn't just about losing the roof over your head; it's about losing the community you've built over the course of years.

The move to displace low-income residents in LA has already started. Right across from Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which was used for the '32 and '84 Games, are a couple of blocks of two-story homes, broken down into apartments. These will be gone by the time the 2028 Olympics kick off, and so will the people who have lived in them for decades. What attendees will see instead is the Fig, a gleaming 4.4-acre mixed-use development that'll contain a hotel, private student housing, and residential units, some of which will be set aside as so-called "affordable housing."

LA city councilmember Curren Price, Jr., who put forth the motion for the Fig, said that the city "must balance the need for affordable housing with the needs for hotel rooms." A preposterous thing to think, let alone say aloud, in a city where there is a pressing houselessness crisis, one that is getting worse by the day. And that was before COVID-19. Activists are bracing themselves for thousands of evictions once the moratorium is lifted.

Displacement isn't just about losing the roof over your head; it's about losing the community you've built over the course of years. Hundreds of people were displaced from London's East End to make way for the 2012 Olympics when the Clays Lane housing estate was destroyed to make way for Games-related construction, and those forced to leave mourned not just the loss of their physical home but the community that the unique complex, replete with communal living spaces and a cafe, engendered. "We'll never see the likes of this kind of community again," Ed Doherty, one of the residents who was forced to leave, said.

Giselle Tanaka, an organizer in Brazil working in the social housing movement, told me that some of the displaced from London sent notes of encouragement to those facing eviction in Rio. "They said messages like, 'We know what you're suffering, and we hope you have more success than us,' because those people were evicted in London."

Itani told me that some of the senior citizens who were displaced for the 2020 Games had asked if they could be resettled together to keep their community intact. That request, they said, was denied.

When demolition of the Kasumigaoka public housing complex began in July 2016, it was after a protracted battle with the last three remaining households, who had resisted the city's eviction orders. One of the elderly residents died while protesting their upcoming forced relocation.

You can also lose your claim to the city in smaller ways. Boykoff described watching a father playing catch with his child on a cement patch in Tokyo. He later learned that they could no longer play on grass at a neighboring park because a warm-up track was being constructed on top of the grass, right where people used to play baseball.

* * *

Should the Olympics cease to exist? It's a question I never thought I'd ask. I did gymnastics when I was younger and have been thoroughly obsessed with the sport ever since. I even built my writing career around gymnastics, so the Olympics - where the sport is a perennial favorite - factor heavily into my work (and my income).

"I had an emotional attachment to the Olympics growing up as an athlete," Itani said. "It's such a well-produced media spectacle. It's amazing to see these athletes, the quality of the camera, the angles, the stories of the athletes in the Olympics that are covered by the media."

I experienced the same emotional attachment that Itani described - and still do. I was aware of all of the harm that the Olympics brought to communities but I took a reformist approach: we could preserve the good and eliminate the bad through smart policies and transparency. But reform hasn't worked. In 2014, the IOC introduced Agenda 2020 to make reforms to the bidding process and curb the excesses of hosting the Games. Yet the tab for Tokyo 2020 is more than triple what was originally projected.

Nobody's right to participate in sports justifies the amount of destruction and the violence that goes into hosting the Olympics.

"It took me a while to really digest the critical writings about the Olympics," Itani said. It was visiting Vancouver in 2010 and Rio in 2016 and seeing the damage firsthand that helped them let go of that emotional attachment. "Nobody's right to participate in sports justifies the amount of destruction and the violence that goes into hosting the Olympics. People understand on many levels that this is not a good idea but something about the Olympics makes it so hard for people to say no."

And even if you get to the "no," the powers that be will force you to offer up alternatives. Well, if you say no to the Olympics, how will we get all those jobs and all those tourists? If you say no to this luxury housing development, what do you propose to build in its place? It's a twist on the first rule of improv: "No, and." But "no" can be a full sentence. It is enough.

"The saying 'no' is really your real goal, to stop these things. When you already start thinking that, 'Oh, this a done deal, we have to negotiate,' you're not just negotiating your defeat. You're preparing for your exit, for your displacement, for your criminalization," Vilchis said.

People might finally be ready to say "no" to the Olympics, to the police, and to many other oppressive institutions as Vilchis, Itani, and many others have done. They're not willing to wait for things to get worse.

Back in 2017, at the NOlympics forum, someone asked about the potential for an uprising after the next LA Olympics, similar to what happened in 1992. Abdullah replied, "Let's not wait until after to have the uprising. Let's do that shit now."

* * *
Dvora Meyers is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in several publications, including Deadspin, the Guardian, and Texas Monthly. She also writes a newsletter about gymnastics called Unorthodox Gymnastics.
Editor: Ben Huberman
Factchecker: Julie Schwietert Collazo

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Dvora Meyers | Longreads | August 2020 | 5,722 words (23 minutes) A year ago, back when we were still allowed to gather in groups larger than a minyan, activists convened in Tokyo to talk about how they were going to end the biggest global gathering of them all - the Olympic Games.

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La technique de marbrure est très répandue en Turquie depuis au moins le XVe siècle. Elle était notamment utilisée sur les documents officiels pour qu'ils ne soient pas falsifiables.

Lorsque l'on arrive devant l'atelier de Baykul Baris Yilmaz on ne trouve pas de boutique sur rue. Vous traverserez une cour pavée pour trouver son atelier. A chaque création, Baris travaille dans le même état d'esprit : qualité des matières premières (il n'utilise que des pigments naturels), maîtrise des dosages, harmonie des couleurs, précision et spontanéité du geste, curiosité à l'égard des traditions qu'il transforme à sa guise. Au cours de l'atelier, l'artiste artisan vous apprendra, avec pédagogie, à vous approprier cet état d'esprit.

Partager un moment avec Baris c'est découvrir un art ancestral et apprendre par un maître à la gentillesse incroyable.

Baris est d'origine turque. Il est arrivé en France à l'âge de 22 ans. Il a d'abord été formé à Istanbul depuis son adolescence puis à Paris. Encore aujourd'hui il montre ses œuvres à son maître turc pour bénéficier de ses conseils précieux et continuer de s'inscrire dans la tradition.

Actuellement, Baris travaille essentiellement pour des relieurs. Dès les premiers instants il sait nous mettre à l'aise. Il a plein de choses à vous apprendre sur son métier, laissez-vous embarquer !

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La technique de marbrure est très répandue en Turquie depuis au moins le XVe siècle. Elle était notamment utilisée sur les documents officiels pour qu'ils ne soient pas falsifiables. Lorsque l'on arrive devant l'atelier de Baykul Baris Yilmaz on ne trouve pas de boutique sur rue.

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apps on Apple mobile devices have to go through the company’s App Store, which charges a 30 percent commission for app purchases as well as any purchases made within the app itself. As a “freemium” game, Fortnite makes all of its money through in-app purchases of its virtual currency, and Apple gets a cut of that. When Epic attempted to get around this by offering customers the option of purchasing Fortnite currency directly from Epic at a discount, Apple kicked Fortnite out of the store for violating its terms of service. Epic responded with a lawsuit, joining an ever-louder chorus of developers and legislators who have accused the App Store of monopolistic practices, given its total control over the apps offered on its devices.

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This story is part of a group of stories called

Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing - and changing us.

Apple's App Store war against developers and its ongoing antitrust issues appear to be coming to a head.

Epic Games, the creator of the hugely popular game Fortnite, is suing the company, claiming that its App Store practices violate the Sherman Act. Epic says that Apple's requirement that all mobile apps come through its App Store (and the 30 percent commission Apple charges for app sales and in-app purchases) is a monopoly, and that Epic - as well as its fellow developers and their customers - should have alternatives.

Apple, a $2 trillion company, has not only refused to consider changing its lucrative business model, but it's also kicked Fortnite out of the App Store. And now Apple is threatening to cut off Epic's access to its developer tools program, which could affect any apps that use the company's Unreal Engine - and therefore, any consumers who use those apps.

As Recode's Peter Kafka explained last week, apps on Apple mobile devices have to go through the company's App Store, which charges a 30 percent commission for app purchases as well as any purchases made within the app itself. As a "freemium" game, Fortnite makes all of its money through in-app purchases of its virtual currency, and Apple gets a cut of that. When Epic attempted to get around this by offering customers the option of purchasing Fortnite currency directly from Epic at a discount, Apple kicked Fortnite out of the store for violating its terms of service. Epic responded with a lawsuit, joining an ever-louder chorus of developers and legislators who have accused the App Store of monopolistic practices, given its total control over the apps offered on its devices.

The outcome of all this could significantly change the app ecosystem Apple helped create, possibly to developers' and consumers' benefits. Right now, however, everyone is losing.

The App Store can be mutually beneficial to Apple and app developers

When the App Store launched on iPhones in 2008, it was pitched as a win-win. Developers would have easy access to Apple users as well as tools to create and sell the apps they made - all of which was especially good for small developers that didn't have the resources to do so otherwise. In return, Apple would get a rapidly expanding roster of apps to offer its consumers and a steady stream of cash from commissions it took off the purchase price of paid apps as well as in-app purchases. This concept has largely been a success. The App Store now offers millions of apps, and Apple says that in 2019 alone it generated more than $500 billion, most of which was not subject to the 30 percent commission Apple takes off in-app purchases and paid apps.

Because the App Store is the only way consumers can get apps on their iOS devices, Apple has been able to make whatever rules and set whatever prices it wants around all app purchases. App developers, therefore, have to agree to them or else lose their access to hundreds of millions of potential customers. For years, developers have complained about this, but they've had little recourse. As Epic recently found out, if you break the rules, you get banned.

Developers have also accused Apple of using inside knowledge about which apps do well to inform its own decisions about which native apps to develop. Many of those Apple-made apps come preloaded on iOS devices and can't be deleted, and they're pushed to customers in a way that third-party versions are not. Apple also gives its native apps access to certain features, like Siri, that third-party apps don't have, although the company has recently made efforts to give third-party apps that access.

These complaints, brewing for years, are now coming to the forefront as a handful of major developers protest against the perceived monopoly.

Developers are fighting back

Epic is far from the only company to complain about the App Store. Spotify has been especially vocal. The Sweden-based music streaming platform filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission in March 2019, saying it was forced to increase subscription rates for in-app subscriptions to make up for Apple's fee. (Subscription services like Spotify are charged a 30 percent commission for their first year, after which it's 15 percent.) Spotify has also claimed that Apple made its own rival streaming music service, Apple Music, after seeing Spotify's success on its platform.

Prompted by Spotify's complaint, the European Commission announced in June 2020 that it was investigating Apple for antitrust violations. If the company is found to have violated the EC's antitrust rules, consequences for Apple could be severe: a fine of up to 10 percent of the company's annual revenue.

There have been legal issues in the United States, too. A few months after Spotify's complaint in June 2019, American developers sued Apple, saying its rules and the lack of an app store alternative gave the company an unfair monopoly and drove up prices. This is after the Supreme Court ruling in May 2019 gave the green light to a class action lawsuit from iPhone owners accusing Apple's App Store of violating antitrust laws. If Apple loses the lawsuit - or decides to settle - the company could be on the hook for a massive payout to millions of App Store customers. Apple may also decide to change its App Store policies to avoid more lawsuits and payouts.

As for Epic, it has long been a critic of app store commissions in general. The company even refused to offer Fortnite in Google's Play store until April 2020, but because Android doesn't force users to get apps through that store, Android users could still get the game. This wasn't possible for its Apple customers, and Fortnite has been in the App Store since 2018. According to the Wall Street Journal, the game has been downloaded on more than 130 million Apple devices and generated $1.2 billion in App Store spending - a tidy sum for Epic and Apple, but apparently not enough for Epic.

Last week, Epic basically dared Apple and Google to ban Fortnite from their stores by offering users the option to purchase virtual currency from Epic within the app, violating both companies' rules. Both companies responded by banning Fortnite. Epic responded by suing both companies. It's also mobilized its user base on social media, releasing a cheeky video and encouraging its users to share the hashtag #FreeFortnite.

Following the Epic lawsuit, Facebook - which has its own antitrust issue - jumped on the bandwagon, claiming that the Apple tax will harm the pages and businesses using Facebook's new paid events feature. Facebook is urging Apple to temporarily waive its commission, as Facebook is waiving its own commissions on the new feature for a year, giving any and all paid events proceeds to the pages that offer them. The social media giant framed this as a way to help businesses struggling during the Covid-19 pandemic, and as a result, Apple's refusal to waive the fee could be seen as harmful to those businesses.

The App Store advantage

Apple claims that the 30 percent App Store commission helps pay for the costs it incurs to host the apps. This includes peace of mind, as requiring consumers to download apps directly from the App Store helps the company ensure they meet certain standards and are secure - which is especially important when it comes to things like credit card information.

The origins of the 30 percent cut are from the cut that Apple took from iTunes sales - between 30 and 40 percent per track. Back when the App Store was introduced, then-CEO Steve Jobs said the 30 percent commission was needed to "pay for running the store," and that Apple didn't "intend to make any money" from it. That may have been true in 2008 when the App Store launched with a few hundred apps, but Apple now makes billions from App Store commissions every year.

Apple also maintains that the vast majority of App Store apps are free, which means most of the apps benefit from the App Store ecosystem while giving Apple nothing in return. Free apps usually make their money from ads and by selling their data to third parties, which Apple doesn't get a cut of. Apple has also pointed out in a recent study it commissioned that its commission is on par with the rest of the industry. But this ignores the fact that the industry was created by Apple in the first place and that other app stores followed its lead when setting their own commissions.

What this means for customers

So, what does this all mean for you, the App Store customer? Right now, it means you can't download Fortnite or, if you already have it, you can't download updates. You may also be paying inflated prices for paid apps and in-app purchases that were set so developers could account for that 30 percent commission. As some developers have decided to forgo in-app purchases entirely to avoid paying Apple a commission, you might have taken the extra step of paying for app subscriptions on developers' websites rather than through the apps themselves. Apple allows this for so-called "reader apps" like Spotify and Netflix, but Fortnite does not qualify. Apple's rules also don't make it easy for customers to figure out how to do this:

Decent chance we are imagining conflict. A little difficult to imagine Disney doing anything to irk Apple in any circumstance. Look how mute Spotify has to be. pic.twitter.com/Rz24WQOZwV
- Peter Kafka (@pkafka) August 15, 2020

As evidenced by Fortnite's removal from its store, Apple is now digging in its heels and defending these policies. But the company has given in on occasion - for instance, by allowing "premium" video providers like Amazon Prime Video to use its own payment systems for in-app purchases and avoid the 30 percent commission. (It remains to be seen if providers like Disney, which is set to debut its " Premier Access" for Disney+ subscribers on September 4 with a $29.99 Mulan rental, will qualify for this or if it will be forced to either pay the commission or go the Spotify route to circumvent in-app purchases.)

In a slight relaxing of the status quo, the upcoming iOS 14 will allow users to set third-party apps as their default email and web browsing apps for the first time. But these concessions have also fueled developer complaints that Apple's guidelines are arbitrarily enforced and preference is given to some companies over others.

None of this is a good look for Apple as antitrust investigations into it, both in the United States and abroad, heat up. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has helped lead this charge, saying in March 2019 that Apple should have to choose between selling apps and offering an app store. To do both gives the company an unfair advantage over its competitors.

"Apple and Google have bullied competitors who need their platform just to exist, all while favoring their own products and services," Warren told Recode. "If we let companies act as both the umpire and one of the teams competing, they will continue to rig the game in their favor."

In January 2020, CEOs from a few smaller companies testified before the House antitrust subcommittee about how tech giants, including Apple, have so much control and power that they usually own the market and offer their own products in it, making it impossible for other companies to compete.

"After years of living in fear, more companies and small businesses are beginning to speak out about the monopoly power of the tech giants," Stacy Mitchell, the co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and well-known thorn in Big Tech's side, told Recode. "The tech platforms are a major threat to innovation and entrepreneurship. Developers and small firms are starting to tell their stories - and more than just about anything else, that's driving momentum in Congress, and it's making it clear how much the antitrust agencies have to do to make up for lost time."

One way Apple could possibly avoid antitrust regulation - and satisfy Epic Games - is by allowing its mobile devices to obtain apps outside of the App Store, as Android does. This could give more money to developers and allow them to charge users less. But it also introduces new risks to the users if alternate app stores don't have the same security standards as Apple or its in-app purchasing system.

Consumers trust Apple, and it has a track record to back that up. Apple apps don't have nearly as many security and malware issues that Android apps do. Part of the reason that Apple's security reputation is much better is because the company strives to control every aspect of its devices, including the apps and security measures they're forced to put in place. Consumers pay a premium for this, and so do developers.

There's also the possibility that Apple will be able to insist on continuing to operate as normal. Developers will have to decide if the Apple tax is worth the access to Apple's consumers. If enough of them remove their apps from the store, consumers may well decide to purchase a device with a different operating system that gives them access to the apps the App Store doesn't. If they stay, Apple's large cut may mean less money to the developer that would go toward improving existing apps or creating more, or that customers are paying more than they otherwise would if the App Store had some competition.

Apple, which once dealt primarily in goods, is increasingly becoming a services company - which means its income is also increasingly coming from those services rather than sales. Cutting off some of that income, either by giving developers an App Store alternative or lowering the commission, will likely force the company to make that money up some other way. And the customer always pays for that, one way or another.
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
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Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing - and changing us. Apple's App Store war against developers and its ongoing antitrust issues appear to be coming to a head. Epic Games, the creator of the hugely popular game Fortnite, is suing the company, claiming that its App Store practices violate the Sherman Act.

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Collège de pataphysique

Boris Vian rejoint, le 8 juin 1952, cette « société de recherches savantes et inutiles », sous le patronage de l'écrivain Alfred Jarry. Il est coopté par Raymond Queneau et nommé Equarrisseur de première classe, en référence à sa pièce L'Equarrissage pour tous. Ses divers travaux tirant vers l'absurde le mènent dès 1953 au prestigieux grade de Satrape et de Promoteur insigne de l'Ordre de la Grande Gidouille.

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avait 61 pseudos connus

Docteur Gédéon Molle pour écrire dans Jazz News, une revue lancée après la guerre avec son ami Eddie Barclay.

Vernon Sinclair pour l’écriture de morceaux de rock parodique (avec Henri Salvador et Michel Legrand).

Honoré Balzac

Bison Ravi, anagramme de son nom, pour ses Cent sonnets puis surtout dans son cercle privé. Il le déclinera pour ses enfants, les surnommant ses Bisonnots.

mort

tombe en syncope, au début de la première du film tiré de J'irai cracher sur vos tombes. Il meurt d'un œdème pulmonaire à l'hôpital Laennec, à Paris.

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Vernon Sullivan (littéraire) (1946). En référence à Paul Vernon, musicien de l'orchestre Abadie et Joe Sullivan, pianiste de jazz dans une prise de position contre le racisme et la discrimination. J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, etc .

Honoré Balzac (sans particule)

Baron Visi (anagramme)

Bison Ravi (littéraire) (anagramme) pour signer le poème Référendum en forme de ballade publié en mars 1944 dans le magazine Jazz Hot.

Brisavion (anagramme)

Butagaz (jazz)

Bison Duravi (littéraire) dérivé des précédents, pour signer L'ékume des jhours, un poème inédit en quatorze variantes.

Andy Blackshick (jazz) (Festival du rire au Théâtre de Ranelagh)

Agénor Bouillon avec Henri Salvador sur un 45 tours (Barclay no 70246)

S. Culape (jazz) pour Le Spectacle de K. Dunham.

Aimé Damour pour Nous avons été trompés ! le Manifeste du Cocu (Comité d'organisation des consommateurs et usagers).

Amélie de Lambineuse dans sa lettre Conseils à mes neveux signée : Votre Grand-tante Amélie de Lambineuse pcc Boris Vian.

Joëlle du Beausset (littéraire) pour La Valse.

Jules Dupont (Socio-Politique) pour écrire son Traité de civisme, inachevé et publié " post-mortem ". Ancien combattant de réserve, officier d'académie, chef de services de la compagnie d'assurance La Cigogne parisienne.

Hugo Hachebuisson, Hugo Hachebouisson (articles de presse) à rapprocher de Hugo Hackenbush, personnage de Groucho Marx dans Un jour aux courses, Les Pères d'Ubu-roi.

Zéphirin Hanvélo (avec Henri Salvador) Rapport du brigadier cycliste Zéphirin Hanvélo.

Onuphre Hirondelle (avec Henri Salvador)

Otto Link (jazz)

Gédéon Mauve pour Panégyrique du savant Cosinus.

Eugène Minoux pour présenter certains 45 tours, en particulier de Michel Legrand.

Gédéon Molle, Dr G. Molle, Professeur Gédéon Molle (jazz) (articles de presse) notamment Le jazz est dangereux.

Josèfe Pignerole, amateur de Jaze Bande (jazz) article sur Boris Vian (textes rassemblés par Claude Rameil) Écrits sur le Jazz et Lettre au père Noël.

Adolphe Schmürz (articles de presse) et pour Quand vos femmes se querellent.

Vernon Sinclair pour l'écriture de morceaux de rock parodique (avec Henri Salvador et Michel Legrand). Des historiens du rock'n roll français les considèrent comme les créateurs des quatre premiers morceaux de rock'n and roll français.

Lydio Sincrazi pour plusieurs textes de chansons sur un 45 tours Pathé 45 EA 130, Fredo Minablo, un disque produit par Fontana : texte signé Lydio Sincrazi, adapté par Boriso Viana (Boris Vian).

Ces pseudo n'ont d'ailleurs pas été bien mis en valeur lors de l'expo à la BnF, c'est dommage.
Voir mes autres billets sur Boris Vian :

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Boris Vian & quelques uns de ses nombreux pseudos

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Vernon Sullivan (littéraire) (1946). En référence à Paul Vernon, musicien de l'orchestre Abadie et Joe Sullivan, pianiste de jazz dans une prise de position contre le racisme et la discrimination. J'irai cracher sur vos tombes , etc .

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efficace

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We invite you to dive in and explore a database of words that appeared prominently in the print history of Scientific American. Below, each year of that historyis represented by a single word, which was selected through a text-analysis project that started with all 5,107 issues of the magazine. Words whose relative frequency peaked in each individual year were identified. Among those top contenders, the single noun, verb, adjective or adverb that was used most often was deemed the winner. The line charts, which reflect the frequency of each word over time from 1845 ( far left) to 2020 ( far right), are scaled to the maximum value. To learn more about how the data were collected, analyzed and visualized, see " How to Turn 175 Years of Words in Scientific American into an Image."

As science historian Lorraine Daston wrote in an essay for our special 175th anniversary issue: "Science has never been speechless. Scientific journals began in the 17th century, and since then, science has been all about communication-first and foremost between scientists and other scientists, but also with a broader public fascinated by the latest discoveries, inventions and speculations about fossils, electricity, atoms, computers, genes and galaxies.... It is entirely in keeping with the visual spirit of scientific communication that the very words used in all 5,107 issues of Scientific American since 1845 should be turned into an image. [In this project, you'll see] word frequencies undulate, soaring and plunging as a function of time to track the way science talked about itself to itself."

To read more from Daston-and for a guided graphical tour of popular words paired with key moments in the history of the magazine-see " Visualizing 175 Years of Words in Scientific American."

Have you found fun patterns or interesting word juxtapositions? Share your screenshots and thoughts on social media using the hashtags #SciAm175 and #ScienceWords.

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Explore 175 Years of Words in Scientific American

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We invite you to dive in and explore a database of words that appeared prominently in the print history of Scientific American. Below, each year of that historyis represented by a single word, which was selected through a text-analysis project that started with all 5,107 issues of the magazine.

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Scientific American : Reckoning with our mistakes 

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Scientific American : Reckoning with our mistakes 

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For more than 100 years we revered inventor-entrepreneur types with a tone that undermined the collaborative spirit of science while ignoring the contributions of women and nonwhite scholars. In doing so, we perpetuated the myth of the eccentric male genius whose discoveries arise though his brilliance alone.
//
In the name of progress (and manifest destiny), we often disparaged knowledge that threatened the expansion of Western civilization.
//
During the 19th century, Scientific American published articles that legitimized racism. The magazine vigorously advocated for the patent system and its route to wealth—but only for white people. In 1861 the editors wrote that even free Black Americans could not be granted patents, because they were “not regarded as citizens” and could not defend against infringement in court.
//
Scientific American also covered eugenics extensively. The intellectual roots of eugenics sought to improve the human species through breeding. Long before it became the obsession of the Nazi regime, the bias along racial and class lines had become apparent—yet we continued covering eugenics neutrally rather than critically. With the proliferation of both-sides-ism, we allowed contributors to hide racist political agendas under the guise of science. Articles written against eugenics were often labeled “the opposition.”
//

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An article about women engineers, published in 1908, has a promising start: If women are attending technical schools and are not legally blocked from working in a forge or firm, why do they face so many obstacles to employment?

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Fabrice Midal : "La méditation présentée aujourd'hui est d'une grande niaiserie"

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Fabrice Midal, philosophe, pionnier de la méditation en France, dénonce la mode qui galvaude le sens premier de l'art méditatif, et ses injonctions au bien-être. L'Express : Vous dénoncez la logique du "que vais-je en retirer?"

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HotMobile 2020 - Listen to Your Key: Towards Acoustics-based Physical Key Inference

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Daft Trump - Harder, Woman, Faster, Camera

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Researchers can make a key based on the sound made when it goes into a lock

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Researchers can make a key based on the sound made when it goes into a lock

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Researchers have recently demonstrated a method of creating a 3D printed copy of a key with the design of the key obtained by listening to the sounds made when the key is slipped into a lock. The system doesn’t require a high-end microphone. The sounds can be recorded using a smartphone or smart doorbell if it’s close enough to the lock.

As odd as this sounds, security researchers say they have proven the series of audible, metallic clicks made as a key slides into a lock can be deciphered by signal processing software. The clicks reveal the exact shape of the sequence of ridges on the key shaft. Once the scientists know this, a working copy of it can be 3D printed.

The system is known as SpiKey, and focuses on the metallic clicks as key ridges hit the locks pins. The team says the clicks are critical to the inference analysis, which is the time between them that allows the SpiKey software to compute the inter-Ridge distances and what locksmiths call the “biting depth” of those ridges. The latter is basically how deeply they cut into the key shaft or were they plateau out.

One way to ruin the analysis is by inserting the key into the lock at a non-constant speed. However, the software is able to compensate for small speed variations. The system outputs the three most likely key designs that will fit the lock used in the audio file that reduces the potential options from 330,000 keys to only three.

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Researchers have recently demonstrated a method of creating a 3D printed copy of a key with the design of the key obtained by listening to the sounds made when the key is slipped into a lock. The system doesn't require a high-end microphone. The sounds can be recorded using a smartphone or smart doorbell if it's close enough to the lock.

As odd as this sounds, security researchers say they have proven the series of audible, metallic clicks made as a key slides into a lock can be deciphered by signal processing software. The clicks reveal the exact shape of the sequence of ridges on the key shaft. Once the scientists know this, a working copy of it can be 3D printed.

The system is known as SpiKey, and focuses on the metallic clicks as key ridges hit the locks pins. The team says the clicks are critical to the inference analysis, which is the time between them that allows the SpiKey software to compute the inter-Ridge distances and what locksmiths call the "biting depth" of those ridges. The latter is basically how deeply they cut into the key shaft or were they plateau out.

One way to ruin the analysis is by inserting the key into the lock at a non-constant speed. However, the software is able to compensate for small speed variations. The system outputs the three most likely key designs that will fit the lock used in the audio file that reduces the potential options from 330,000 keys to only three.

The researchers say that one of the three keys printed will unlock the door in question. The upside of this research is that it sounds as if you slide your key into your door lock at an inconsistent speed, you might foil the technology.

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Researchers can make a key based on the sound made when it goes into a lock

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Researchers have recently demonstrated a method of creating a 3D printed copy of a key with the design of the key obtained by listening to the sounds made when the key is slipped into a lock. The system doesn't require a high-end microphone.

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On William McGonagall, the worst famous poet in the English language

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On William McGonagall, the worst famous poet in the English language

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What followed over the next two and a half decades was one of the most bizarre careers in Victorian letters. The Weekly News proved a reliable publisher, though it often accompanied McGonagall’s hapless texts with scathingly ironic commentary (a courtesy they were not inclined to extend to their more traditional poetic contributors). Encouraged by what he misconstrued to be rightful artistic recognition, the poet took to local theaters to read his own works and recite Shakespearean soliloquies, whereupon he was often met with raucous crowds who either mockingly encouraged him—sometimes carrying him aloft into the streets—or pelted him with garbage. (Contemporary accounts allege that among the objects he was barraged with were potatoes, footwear, rotten eggs, fish, sacks of soot, peas, snowballs, and, on at least one occasion, a brick.) His profile rising amid these riotous performances, McGonagall increasingly became the victim of a number of cruel pranks, which only served to inflate his own sense of vocational destiny.

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It's the rare story that's equally familiar to both engineers and literature students: On December 28, 1879, a train was carrying passengers across Scotland's River Tay from Wormit to Dundee on a very windy evening. The Tay Bridge, which had been completed only a year earlier, spanned some two miles. When it opened, it was the longest railway bridge in the world; the chief engineer was honored for his achievement with a knighthood from Queen Victoria. But this same engineer had neglected to ensure that his construction would withstand particularly heavy gales, and as the train's six cars reached the center of the bridge's span, the structure gave way, plunging an estimated seventy-five passengers and crew members into the river's freezing depths. No one survived.

The incident made front-page news across Britain. Queen Victoria had a missive sent directly to the lord provost of Dundee: "The queen is inexpressibly shocked, and feels most deeply for those who have lost friends and relatives in this terrible accident." (Initial reports suggested that the death toll was higher, around two hundred, further compounding the intensity of national emotions.) Despite the carnage, however, the wreck is principally known today as the occasion for one of the English language's clumsiest poetic efforts, William McGonagall's "The Tay Bridge Disaster." Here is one of its infamous stanzas:

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

The syntax of the "Disaster" is tortuously arranged to hit the poem's rhymes; its literalness preempts any possibility for gravitas or emotional weight; and its meter seems beamed in from an alien universe. Undermined by its own technical haplessness, written with the impregnable conviction of the talentless, the "Disaster" is a heartfelt paean to the doomed train passengers that-however ironically and unfortunately-better serves as a memorial to the poet's own buffoonery.

Not unjustly, McGonagall is rarely mentioned without an epithet: some version of "the worst poet in the English language." And by any reasonable account, any judgment based on the most universally shared values of poetics, prosody, and taste, there is little to admire in McGonagall. The rest of his corpus shares-replicates, really-the faults of "The Tay Bridge Disaster": its lapses into bathos, its involuted syntactical structures, its rhymes so slanted as to be more or less horizontal.

There have been worse poets, of course, and as such it would be more accurate to describe McGonagall as the worst famous poet in the English language, a testament in part to the man's powers of self-promotion and the caprices of literary history. But McGonagall's notoriety still owes much to the singularly strange power of his own badness. There's something, I think, in poems like "The Tay Bridge Disaster"-as well as McGonagall's many poems on his great themes of death and destruction-that is worth examining; something that might redeem him, ever so slightly, from the annals of amusing semi-obscurity; something unsettling about his ostensibly blinkered artistic vision that might help to account for why he lingers as the patron saint of misbegotten verse.

Scotland has justifiably claimed him as its own, but in all likelihood McGonagall was born in Ireland, in 1825. His family migrated to Dundee when William was a child, and like much of the city's population, he grew up to be a weaver. The textile business was booming then, though the apogee of the mechanical revolution wasn't far behind. And as the industry began to make workers redundant amid its collapse in 1877, McGonagall had a conveniently timed epiphany. Sitting in his room on a spring day, he recalls, "I seemed to feel as it were a strange kind of feeling stealing over me...I imagined that a pen was in my right hand, and a voice crying, 'Write! Write!'" He complied, writing a graceless tribute to the Scottish preacher George Gilfillan (himself a poet, although the misfortune of having been eulogized by his fellow Dundonian has been the better part of his literary legacy). McGonagall sent the results to Dundee's Weekly News, where they were subsequently published by a deeply bemused editorial staff.

What followed over the next two and a half decades was one of the most bizarre careers in Victorian letters. The Weekly News proved a reliable publisher, though it often accompanied McGonagall's hapless texts with scathingly ironic commentary (a courtesy they were not inclined to extend to their more traditional poetic contributors). Encouraged by what he misconstrued to be rightful artistic recognition, the poet took to local theaters to read his own works and recite Shakespearean soliloquies, whereupon he was often met with raucous crowds who either mockingly encouraged him-sometimes carrying him aloft into the streets-or pelted him with garbage. (Contemporary accounts allege that among the objects he was barraged with were potatoes, footwear, rotten eggs, fish, sacks of soot, peas, snowballs, and, on at least one occasion, a brick.) His profile rising amid these riotous performances, McGonagall increasingly became the victim of a number of cruel pranks, which only served to inflate his own sense of vocational destiny. He trekked to Balmoral Castle seeking an audience with Queen Victoria after someone had passed him a sham letter of patronage; he was tricked into dining with an imposter posing as the dramatist Dion Boucicault; and in the last years of his life, McGonagall was made a knight of the fictional "Holy Order of the White Elephant," an honor supposedly bestowed upon him by the king of Burma, and of which he proudly and obliviously boasted until his death.

Many of McGonagall's poems, which he churned out at a reliable clip after his poetic conversion, were benign and banal odes to Scottish and English landscapes in the manner of a one-man lyrical tourism bureau. He writes that Crieff, a trendy nineteenth-century vacation spot, "is admirably situated from the cold winter winds / And the visitors, during their stay there, great comfort finds, / Because there is boating and fishing, and admission free, / Therefore they can enjoy themselves right merrily." What's more: "There is also golf courses, tennis greens, and good roads, / Which will make the traveling easier to tourists with great loads." The specificity of McGonagall's laundry list of amenities is at every point undermined, in his typical manner, by a penchant for recycling some wonderfully ungainly idioms. Parts of Montrose in "Bonnie Montrose," for instance, are "most magnificent to be seen," "most charming to be seen," and "most beautiful to see," in three successive stanzas. Even with their regional particularity, the poems feel perfectly interchangeable. The poem's titles often do the work of announcing the sameness of their portrayals: "Bonnie Kilmany" and "Bonnie Callander," "Beautiful North Berwick" and "Beautiful Village of Penicuik."

Despite a penchant for the versified guidebook, however, the principal thematic fixture of McGonagall's career was cataclysm. "The Tay Bridge Disaster" was only the inaugurating work in a long series of calamity chronicles. It seems as if the poet never met a catastrophe that he didn't contrive to transform into misguided elegy. Shipwrecks were his forte, but any disaster would do, really. He memorialized the victims of fires, tornadoes, stampedes, floods, military routs, any mass-casualty event that would have found its way into the Dundee press. According to Norman Watson, McGonagall's biographer, out of the 270 poems attributed to McGonagall, twelve are on funerals, six on fires, fifty on battles, and twenty-four on "maritime disasters." The poems' rote, straightforward titles compose a global charnel house of grisly incident: "The Terrific Cyclone of 1893," "The Pennsylvania Disaster," "The Horrors of Majuba," "The Wreck of the Steamer 'Stella,' " "The Great Yellow River Inundation in China."

While remaining true to the general principles of McGonagallian style, these poems carried with them their own particular formal and phrasal tics. "The Pennsylvania Disaster," written to commemorate the Johnstown Flood, is a useful case in point. The poem opens with a kind of dateline: "'Twas in the year of 1889, and in the month of June, / Ten thousand people met with a fearful doom." The death count established, the reader adequately oriented in historical time, McGonagall moves on to narrate the horrors of the flood in his characteristic tragic mode: comically flattened affect punctuated by mannered exclamations of grief.

Oh, heaven! it was a pitiful and a most agonizing sight,
To see parents struggling hard with all their might,
To save their little ones from being drowned,
But 'twas vain, the mighty flood engulfed them, with a roaring sound.

In the end, virtually all of his poems conclude with the assertion that these events "will never be forgot," or "will be remember'd for a very long time," manifesting a certain (and ultimately, somehow, warranted) confidence about the afterlife of his verse itself. But in poems like "The Pennsylvania Disaster," McGonagall also tends to fixate on more particular, character-driven vignettes-a husband and wife lifting a dead child from a burning cradle, an orphaned "beautiful girl, the belle of Johnstown" staring into the torrent of water in which her parents had just drowned, a heroic telegraph operator wiring messages until the bitter end-that often derive from contemporary accounts.

For that reason, Watson and other critics have contended that McGonagall's poetry might be considered a kind of nineteenth-century news broadcast. It's a neat way of making sense of these poems' strangeness-their fixation on specificity of number, time, and place might be McGonagall's way of incorporating or transforming the generic markers of "news" into literature. His plodding couplets constitute a kind of doleful formal grid onto which any instance of horror can easily be installed, not unlike the strictures of an Associated Press dispatch or evening news segment. But I found myself wondering if his disaster poetry might be less a dramatization of the news than a staging of its consumption.

The most recognizable elements of his poems-the banal repetitiveness (both across individual works and within them), the recourse to platitude and bromide, the obsession with quantification and particularity-it all bears the contemporary hallmarks of the experience of news. Prior to this year, it was most familiar with regard to mass shootings-the obsessive tracking of the escalating death count; the offerings of hackneyed "thoughts and prayers," followed by the complaints that have become their own benumbing clichés; the avowals that it will never happen again, supplemented by reassurances that it will be "remembered for a very long time." Any disaster, in this way, is both devastatingly unique and inevitably iterative.

This year we've been introduced to the same phenomenon on a far more deadly scale than McGonagall's most ghastly memorials could have accounted for. But the plot of this infectious disaster still follows the standard arc of his poems, drifting inexorably from particularity toward abstraction and thus detachment, as the Covid-19 death toll in the United States reached five, then six figures. In this sense, McGonagall's poetry feels eerily familiar, not unlike reading a versified front page of the New York Times. All that's left to do is count the dead, mourn predictably, and await the next catastrophe, until the dimly recalled horrors of Covid-19 feel as distant as the litany of nineteenth-century disasters toward which McGonagall's poetry endlessly gravitated.

T he final years of McGonagall's life, like his poems' metrical schemas, were a set of frustrated expectations. He had thus far managed to eke out a piddling living through his live performances and the pecuniary kindness of certain acquaintances, but by the end of the nineteenth century he had been banned from most public performances in Dundee. Imposters sent imitations of his work to the local newspapers, one of his sons was accused of breaking the ribs of a local ropemaker, and another was placed in an asylum. The aging poet could hardly leave his home without being ridiculed on the streets with a vehemence that verged on assault. More or less destitute, he took on a few commercial jobs, producing verses in celebration of Sunlight soap and Beecham's Pills, a laxative.When McGonagall died of a brain hemorrhage in 1902, his death certificate misspelled his name.

McGonagall faded from the public's imagination for several decades, but the inevitable cult gradually began to coalesce. Appreciation societies were formed, plaques were erected, Dundee and Edinburgh squabbled over who deserved to claim McGonagall as a native son. A 1974 film, The Great McGonagall, starred one of the poet's biggest boosters, the comedian Spike Milligan, in the title role. (It was a flop, and featured an incongruous nude scene inserted at the insistence of the film's producer, a noted pornographer.) More recently, J.K. Rowling's Professor Minerva McGonagall was named for the poet, the belabored joke being the apparent vast intellectual gulf between the clueless William and Greek mythology's sage Minerva.

One school of thought still wonders whether or not McGonagall was the genuine rube that he often seems; whether there was a subtle careerism at play, even a knowing hucksterism; and whether he might have been perfectly willing to play to his audience's expectations for a meager income in desperate times. It's a theory that could partly explain his fixation on national tragedy: What better way to elevate himself above his provincial status than to garner notice by casting himself as national bard? As poetic town crier on a countrywide scale?

This is likely an irresolvable question, and any honest account of McGonagall's career has to settle somewhere in between these two poles-assuming that the poet was aware of the joke if never entirely in on it (by the end of his life, McGonagall's card identified himself as both a poet and a comedian). But to regard him chiefly as a fool, to laugh at him from a comfortable historical distance, is to ignore the ways in which his disaster poetry, in all its maladroit amateurism, can make contemporary readers uncomfortable, sensitive to the distance, even the callousness, with which the unimaginable must be confronted.

McGonagall's poems seem to mark the point at which language fails to adequately respond to a kind of loss that is, perhaps literally, unimaginable. Its desperate recourse is the jumbled McGonagallisms for which the poet is known but with which we're all familiar as a way of processing tragedy. There's something funny about "The Tay Bridge Disaster," to be sure, but I wonder whether its critics have missed the mark about the nature of its comedy. I wonder, especially now, whether it isn't nervous laughter after all.

¹ In addition to curing constipation, wrote McGonagall, "They are admitted to be worth a guinea a box / For bilious and nervous disorders, also smallpox, / And dizziness and drowsiness, also cold chills, And for such diseases nothing else can equal Beecham's Pills." ↩

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It's the rare story that's equally familiar to both engineers and literature students: On December 28, 1879, a train was carrying passengers across Scotland's River Tay from Wormit to Dundee on a very windy evening. The Tay Bridge, which had been completed only a year earlier, spanned some two miles.

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Laura Loomer is a former contributor to the conspiracy site Infowars and a self-described " proud Islamophobe." She is famous for, among other things, spreading conspiracy theories about mass shootings and demanding that Uber and Lyft stop allowing Muslims to work as drivers. She has been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Paypal, Venmo, and GoFundMe for violating their policies on hate speech.

On Tuesday night, she won the Republican nomination for Congress in Florida's 21st Congressional District - the stretch of southeastern Florida where President Trump is registered to vote. And on Wednesday morning, the president voiced his support, tweeting about Loomer's victory five separate times.

"Great going Laura," Trump wrote in one tweet. "You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!"

Loomer does not, in fact, have a great chance. FL-21 has been represented by a Democrat since 2013 and is generally seen as a safe seat for the party. It would likely take a massive Republican wave election for Loomer to unseat incumbent Rep. Lois Frankel, which seems exceptionally unlikely in 2020. (The Loomer campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this story.)

But her victory is telling nonetheless. In a healthy political party, extremists who cheer the deaths of migrants and were arrested for trespassing on the California governor's mansion while wearing a sombrero wouldn't get more than a handful of votes. Instead, Loomer was endorsed by two sitting members of Congress - Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) - and feted by the president himself.

Loomer is now part of a group of fringe Republicans winning congressional primaries in 2020, the most notable of whom is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia-based believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory who won in a safe Republican district and is very likely heading to Congress.

This is not an isolated problem. A closer look at Loomer, in particular, reveals that the causes of this rot run deeper than Trump and are very likely to continue remaking the Republican Party after he's gone.

Who is Laura Loomer?

Loomer isn't a household name for most Americans. But she's been a presence in the conservative media ecosystem for quite some time.

She first attracted attention in 2015 when, as a college senior at Barry University in South Florida, she secretly filmed a meeting with administrators in which she attempted to form a campus club supporting ISIS. The video was released by Project Veritas, the conservative group that specializes in ( questionably edited) sting videos.

Loomer worked for Project Veritas during the 2016 presidential campaign and learned to build a career out of political stunts. She grabbed the national spotlight June 2017 when she stormed the stage at a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in New York that dressed the Roman general like Donald Trump. The disruption earned Loomer a booking on Sean Hannity's show.

"You were making a very strong point. I applaud you for what you've done," Hannity told her.

Loomer parlayed the notoriety from the Julius Caesar incident into a kind of internet celebrity on the pro-Trump right. The problem with celebrity, though, is that it can give you too many opportunities to show yourself. And Loomer proved to be someone with truly out-there opinions.

After an ISIS supporter killed eight people with a truck in November 2017, she went on an Islamophobic rant on Twitter, blaming popular ride-hailing apps for employing Muslim drivers. "Someone needs to create a non Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver," she wrote. The two services subsequently banned her, the first of many bans from high-profile tech platforms.

In 2018, Loomer teamed up with the conspiracy site Infowars to cover the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. She had suggested in a tweet that the students there speaking out against gun violence were plants: "it's obvious these kids are reading a screen or notes someone else wrote for them." In May 2018, after a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, Loomer went even further - suggesting in a tweet that the entire thing was staged.

"The doctor speaking to media outside the hospital in Santa Fe, TX where victims of a school shooting were taken today said they just had a 'mass casualty drill' at the hospital around the same time of the school drill," she wrote. "I'm sorry, but I can't help but notice these 'coincidences.'"

This particular cocktail of hate speech and conspiracy theory misinformation became the hallmark of Loomer's political style, prompting the bans from major social media platforms. The straw that broke the camel's back on Twitter, for example, came in November 2018 when Loomer tweeted that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) supported female genital mutilation because she is Muslim. In response to the ban, which came a year after Twitter stripped her blue check mark as punishment for similar false and offensive claims, Loomer physically chained herself to Twitter's headquarters in New York while wearing a Nazi-style yellow star (Loomer is Jewish).

Since these bans, alleged social media censorship of conservatives has become Loomer's cause du jour. She's found allies in popular far-right publications like Breitbart as well as in Washington. In December 2019, President Trump retweeted a Loomer supporter calling for donations to her campaign. In May 2020, Rep. Gosar sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr calling on him to open an investigation into Loomer's Facebook ban.

"Facebook is in essence preventing Loomer from using that platform to speak to potential voters, to raise money, and in effect, Facebook is supporting her opponent," Gosar wrote. "This is a campaign contribution that has not been reported and the value of which far exceeds the campaign limitations."

Gosar, along with Rep. Gaetz, endorsed Loomer during her primary. Positioning her as a victim of Big Tech censorship - a major concern on the right today - works to help normalize her, to bring her into the mainstream of political debate.

The story of Loomer's primary victory appears to be fairly straightforward. Her fame among very online right-wing voters, as well as support from Trump and prominent far-right Republicans like Gaetz and Gosar, helped her raise more than $1 million during the primary - outraising both her lesser-known Republican opponents and Frankel, the Democratic incumbent. She won 14,478 votes in the primary, about 43 percent of the total - enough for a solid plurality in six-way race.

Her extremism doesn't appear to have been an anchor. It was her selling point.

What Laura Loomer means

It's worth reiterating that Loomer is vanishingly unlikely to win the general. House races are fundamentally linked to the national climate: For a Republican to win in a district like FL-21, which is about 9 points more Democratic-leaning than the average, there would need to be some kind of massive groundswell of pro-Republican sentiment. This is not what appears to be happening.

But while the prospect of Rep. Loomer shouldn't cause anyone to lose too much sleep, the fact of Candidate Loomer should. She is living proof that the more sober elements of the Republican Party have lost the ability to contain the fringe - perhaps permanently.

Think about Loomer's pathway to prominence and primary victory. She came up through the conservative movement, a job with Project Veritas, and got signal-boosted by Fox News. She formed a hard core of support on social media, a right-wing fan base that survived bans from major platforms thanks to promotion on far-right outlets popular with the GOP base like Breitbart. And then she was embraced by elected Republicans, like Gaetz and Gosar, propelling her to victory in the primary.

For most of this time, there wasn't much of a secret as to who Laura Loomer was. It's obvious that she's a conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim bigot; that's her whole deal. These are red flags that a functioning political party would pick up on. In a healthy party, someone like Loomer would be very unlikely to get even an entry-level job - and if she did, through some mistake in vetting, her career would be short-lived. Instead, she's been consistently elevated by influential figures in the conservative movement. The more sober-leaning Republicans were either unwilling or unable to stop this.

Loomer isn't alone in this. In this cycle alone, six sympathizers with the QAnon movement- an outlandish conspiracy theory that posits Trump as America's champion against a secret ring of pedophiles who run the government - have won Republican primaries. One of them, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is overwhelmingly likely to win a seat in Congress.

Though Trump has stoked these fires, he didn't start them. The real problems - an irresponsible leadership and an alternative media infrastructure that doesn't seem to have a moral floor - preceded him and will outlast him. The Republican primary electorate has been remade by these forces over the course of decades to include a massive bloc of voters driven by racial grievance and conspiratorial thinking.

Loomer won "not in spite of being a crazy, but because she is a crazy," conservative journalist Jonathan Last writes in the Bulwark. "It is unclear to me what suite of policy options professional Republicans and conservatives could possibly offer these voters to compete with the psychic payoffs they get for voting for the Trumps and Loomers of the world."

Even if Trump loses in 2020, even if he loses big, the problem of a GOP that elevates voices like Loomer will still loom over American politics. And it's entirely unclear what, if anything, the rest of the country can do about it.

Will you become our 20,000th supporter? When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions, we weren't sure how it would go. Today, we're humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in. The reason is both lovely and surprising: Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it, too. We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy. That's never been more important than today, during a public health crisis, racial justice protests, a recession, and a presidential election. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive, and advertising alone won't let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will help keep Vox free for all. Contribute today from as little as $3.

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Laura Loomer, the anti-Muslim congressional candidate praised by Trump, explained

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Laura Loomer is a former contributor to the conspiracy site Infowars and a self-described " proud Islamophobe." She is famous for, among other things, spreading conspiracy theories about mass shootings and demanding that Uber and Lyft stop allowing Muslims to work as drivers.

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How a Cereal Box Toy Hacked AT&T's Phone Lines

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Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has resigned, after being detained by soldiers on Tuesday.

In a televised address he said he was also dissolving the government and parliament, adding: "I want no blood to be spilled to keep me in power."

He and PM Boubou Cissé were taken to a military camp near the capital Bamako, drawing international condemnation.

A spokesman for the soldiers called for "a civil political transition leading to credible general elections".

Live updates: Mali military makes fresh elections promise

A quick guide to Mali

Are coups on the rise in Africa?

Mr Keïta won a second term in elections in 2018, but there has been anger over corruption, the mismanagement of the economy and a dispute over legislative elections. It has prompted several large protests in recent months.

There has also been anger among troops about pay and over a continuing conflict with jihadists.

What did Mr Keïta say?

Wearing a surgical mask amid the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Keïta resigned in a brief address on state television.

"If today, certain elements of our armed forces want this to end through their intervention, do I really have a choice?" he asked.

"I hold no hatred towards anyone, my love of my country does not allow me to," he added. "May God save us."

What have the soldiers said?

A televised statement was read out early on Wednesday on behalf of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People.

Air force deputy chief of staff Col-Major Ismaël Wagué said: "Civil society and political social movements are invited to join us to create together the best conditions for a civil political transition leading to credible general elections for the exercise of democracy through a roadmap that will lay the foundations for a new Mali."

He added: "As of today, all air and land borders are closed until further notice. A curfew is in place from 09:00 to 17:00 until further notice."

Flanked by soldiers, Col Wagué said: "Our country is sinking into chaos, anarchy and insecurity mostly due to the fault of the people who are in charge of its destiny,"

What do we know about the mutiny?

It remains unclear who began the mutiny, how many soldiers took part or who will now take charge.

It appears to have started when mutinying soldiers took control of the Kati camp, where the president and PM were later taken.

BBC Afrique's Abdoul Ba in Bamako says it seems to have been led by Col Malick Diaw - deputy head of the Kati camp - and another commander, Gen Sadio Camara.

Who is behind Mali's coup?

After taking over the camp, about 15km (nine miles) from Bamako, the mutineers marched on the capital, where they were cheered by crowds who had gathered to demand Mr Keïta's resignation.

On Tuesday afternoon they stormed his residence and arrested the president and his prime minister - who were both there.

The president's son, the speaker of the National Assembly, the foreign and finance ministers were reported to be among the other officials detained.

Kati camp was the focus of a mutiny in 2012, also by mid-ranking soldiers, who were angry at the inability of the senior commanders to stop jihadists and Tuareg rebels taking control of northern Mali.

What has the reaction been?

When news first broke of the mutiny, the United Nations and African Union both called for the release of those held by the soldiers.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), a regional body, also said its 15 member states had agreed to close their borders with Mali, suspend all financial flows to the country, and eject Mali from all Ecowas decision-making bodies. In recent months, Ecowas has been trying to mediate between Mr Keïta's government and opposition groups.

The UN Security Council is to meet on Wednesday to discuss the latest developments in Mali.

Mali's former colonial ruler, France, was also quick to condemn the president's detention, and Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian urged the soldiers to return to barracks. Mali is a key base for French troops fighting Islamist insurgents across the Sahel region.

A member of Mali's opposition M5 movement, which has held protests against Mr Keïta for the past few weeks, welcomed his resignation.

Prof Ramata Sissoko Cisse told the BBC World Service: "I think it's a relief for the Malian people and for all the citizens of Mali to finally hear from the president that because of the lack of support of the Malian people he finally accepts to resign, to give back power to the people."

M5 is led by the conservative Imam, Mahmoud Dicko, who has called for reforms after rejecting concessions from Mr Keïta.

The popular imam taking on Mali's president

Why Mali matters to West Africa and beyond

The desert regions of northern Mali are home to various militant groups, some of whom are linked to al-Qaeda, which have also spread into neighbouring Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania.

How West Africa is under threat from Islamist militants

French troops, working with a regional force known as G5 Sahel, and a 10,000-strong force of UN peacekeepers are based in Mali, trying to tackle the militants.

The French troops first intervened in 2013 to prevent an alliance of Islamist and separatist Tuareg fighters, who had taken control of northern Mali, from marching on the capital.

The rebels had taken advantage of a security vacuum following the country's previous coup, when mutinous soldiers overthrew his predecessor, Amadou Toumani Toure.

Observers are worried that another round of instability in the country could further destabilise the region.

Some of the militant groups are also linked to networks smuggling people and drugs into Europe.

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Mali's president quits after soldiers mutiny

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Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has resigned, after being detained by soldiers on Tuesday. In a televised address he said he was also dissolving the government and parliament, adding: "I want no blood to be spilled to keep me in power." He and PM Boubou Cissé were taken to a military camp near the capital Bamako, drawing international condemnation.

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c'est beau ça

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My brother, Jamie, has a profound learning disability. Despite being close to nonverbal, he demonstrates charisma, a sharp sense of humour, and emotional sensitivity. I team up with my parents to discuss what it is like caring for someone with Down syndrome. We piece together fragments of insight to gain a sense of his inner life, but our differing perspectives reveal as much about our own subjectivity as they do Jamie’s.

We rarely see portrayals of the diverse, ordinary lives of people who have Down syndrome (unless we are connected to someone who has it). Much of what we hear instead is based off a medical narrative. As prenatal screening tests improve, the birth rate of people with Downs has fallen. I believe people should be able to base life-changing decisions on accurate information. But I also feel that a diagnosis does not reflect my brother’s human worth. This film attempts to complement the medical narrative with first-hand stories of what it is like to have someone with Down syndrome in your family. Jamie has enriched our lives and I believe a society can be measured by its capacity to nurture those who are most vulnerable.

Awards:
British Animation Awards, 2018-2020, UK - Best Post Graduate Animation
Royal Television Society Student Television Awards 2019, UK - Jury Prize for Best British Student Film
Royal Television Society Student Television Awards 2019, UK - Best Postgraduate Animation
Spark Animation 2018, Canada - winner of the Women In Animation's diversity award
San Francisco Independent Film Festival 2019, USA - Audience Award for Best Animation
British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Awards, 2020, UK: Runner -Up Essay/Experimental (Best Practice Research Portfolio)
NAHEMI Eat Our Shorts Awards, 2019, UK winner ARRI best film
NAHEMI Eat Our Shorts Awards, 2019, UK winner Audience Award.
Papaya Rocks International Film Festival, 2019, UK - winner best director
London International Animation Festival 2018, UK - Jury: Highly Commended
Cinanima 2018, Portugal - special mention for Best Student Film Gaston Roch Award

Nominations:
NYC Independent Film Festival, USA - Nominated best animation
British Independent Film Festival, 2019, UK - Best British Short (long list)

Official Selection:
DOC NYC 2018, USA
Factual Animation Film Festival 2018, UK
L'Alternativa 2018, Spain
Flatpack Film Festival 2019, UK
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2019, UK
Human Rights Arts & Film Festival 2019, Australia
Stuttgart international Animation festival 2019, Germany
Cardiff Animation Nights 2018, UK
Encounters 2019, UK
Aesthetica Short Film Festival, 2019, UK.
PÖFF 2019, Estonia
British Shorts in Berlin 2020, Germany
Underexposed Film Festival 2020, US

Directed and produced: Alex Widdowson

Featuring: Jamie Widdowson, Anna Widdowson, David Widdowson and Alex Widdowson

Animation: Alex Widdowson and Emily Downe

Animation Assistance: Ali Aschman, Emily Downe, Claudia Ortega Arus, Tanaka Tiriboyi, Silvia de Tommaso, Daniele Piscitello, Anna Smirnova and Frederikke Frydenlund

Sound: Vicky Freund and Adam Jones
Original music: Vicky Freund
Sound mix: Adam Jones

Score: 'Not On The Bus' U.S.Army Blues Band (cc) 2010

Archival Footage:'Child Care and Parenthood 4': BBC World Wide © 1986

Licensed by The New York Times Op-Docs
Senior Series Producer: Lindsay Crouse
Supervising Editors: Andrew Blackwell and Regina Sobel
Associate Producer: Yvonne Ashley Kouadjo
Executive Producer: Adam Ellick


Production Support: The New York Times Op-Docs, The Elf Factory and Royal College of Art

Thank you: Daniel Saul, Sylvie Bringas, Ed Foster, Tony Fish, Birgitta Hosea and Teal Triggs


Alex Widdowson © 2018 - 2020

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Fin juillet, la Cédéao s’inquiétait déjà des « similarités profondes » de la crise en cours avec celle de 2012, quand des manifestations violentes avaient donné lieu à un coup d’État militaire. Or ce renversement avait « plongé le Mali dans l’incertitude et favorisé l'expansion des groupes terroristes djhadistes dans le pays », soulignait l’institution. Début 2013, des djihadistes qui contrôlaient déjà le nord du pays avaient lancé une offensive contre la capitale du pays, Bamako, mais ils avaient été repoussés par des soldats français déployés dans le pays. Plus de 5 000 soldats français sont toujours présents dans le Sahel, une région qui s’étend sur le Burkina Faso, le Mali, la Mauritanie, le Niger et le Tchad, aux côtés de ceux de la Minusma, une mission de l’ONU. Mais les attaques terroristes continuent. L’ONU a dénombré plus de 4 000 morts, civils et militaires confondus, victimes du terrorisme dans le Sahel l’an dernier.

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Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has resigned, after being detained by soldiers on Tuesday.

In a televised address he said he was also dissolving the government and parliament, adding: "I want no blood to be spilled to keep me in power."

He and PM Boubou Cissé were taken to a military camp near the capital Bamako, drawing international condemnation.

A spokesman for the soldiers called for "a civil political transition leading to credible general elections".

Live updates: Mali military makes fresh elections promise

A quick guide to Mali

Are coups on the rise in Africa?

Mr Keïta won a second term in elections in 2018, but there has been anger over corruption, the mismanagement of the economy and a dispute over legislative elections. It has prompted several large protests in recent months.

There has also been anger among troops about pay and over a continuing conflict with jihadists.

What did Mr Keïta say?

Wearing a surgical mask amid the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Keïta resigned in a brief address on state television.

"If today, certain elements of our armed forces want this to end through their intervention, do I really have a choice?" he asked.

"I hold no hatred towards anyone, my love of my country does not allow me to," he added. "May God save us."

What have the soldiers said?

A televised statement was read out early on Wednesday on behalf of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People.

Air force deputy chief of staff Col-Major Ismaël Wagué said: "Civil society and political social movements are invited to join us to create together the best conditions for a civil political transition leading to credible general elections for the exercise of democracy through a roadmap that will lay the foundations for a new Mali."

He added: "As of today, all air and land borders are closed until further notice. A curfew is in place from 09:00 to 17:00 until further notice."

Flanked by soldiers, Col Wagué said: "Our country is sinking into chaos, anarchy and insecurity mostly due to the fault of the people who are in charge of its destiny,"

What do we know about the mutiny?

It remains unclear who began the mutiny, how many soldiers took part or who will now take charge.

It appears to have started when mutinying soldiers took control of the Kati camp, where the president and PM were later taken.

BBC Afrique's Abdoul Ba in Bamako says it seems to have been led by Col Malick Diaw - deputy head of the Kati camp - and another commander, Gen Sadio Camara.

Who is behind Mali's coup?

After taking over the camp, about 15km (nine miles) from Bamako, the mutineers marched on the capital, where they were cheered by crowds who had gathered to demand Mr Keïta's resignation.

On Tuesday afternoon they stormed his residence and arrested the president and his prime minister - who were both there.

The president's son, the speaker of the National Assembly, the foreign and finance ministers were reported to be among the other officials detained.

Kati camp was the focus of a mutiny in 2012, also by mid-ranking soldiers, who were angry at the inability of the senior commanders to stop jihadists and Tuareg rebels taking control of northern Mali.

What has the reaction been?

When news first broke of the mutiny, the United Nations and African Union both called for the release of those held by the soldiers.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), a regional body, also said its 15 member states had agreed to close their borders with Mali, suspend all financial flows to the country, and eject Mali from all Ecowas decision-making bodies. In recent months, Ecowas has been trying to mediate between Mr Keïta's government and opposition groups.

The UN Security Council is to meet on Wednesday to discuss the latest developments in Mali.

Mali's former colonial ruler, France, was also quick to condemn the president's detention, and Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian urged the soldiers to return to barracks. Mali is a key base for French troops fighting Islamist insurgents across the Sahel region.

A member of Mali's opposition M5 movement, which has held protests against Mr Keïta for the past few weeks, welcomed his resignation.

Prof Ramata Sissoko Cisse told the BBC World Service: "I think it's a relief for the Malian people and for all the citizens of Mali to finally hear from the president that because of the lack of support of the Malian people he finally accepts to resign, to give back power to the people."

M5 is led by the conservative Imam, Mahmoud Dicko, who has called for reforms after rejecting concessions from Mr Keïta.

The popular imam taking on Mali's president

Why Mali matters to West Africa and beyond

The desert regions of northern Mali are home to various militant groups, some of whom are linked to al-Qaeda, which have also spread into neighbouring Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania.

How West Africa is under threat from Islamist militants

French troops, working with a regional force known as G5 Sahel, and a 10,000-strong force of UN peacekeepers are based in Mali, trying to tackle the militants.

The French troops first intervened in 2013 to prevent an alliance of Islamist and separatist Tuareg fighters, who had taken control of northern Mali, from marching on the capital.

The rebels had taken advantage of a security vacuum following the country's previous coup, when mutinous soldiers overthrew his predecessor, Amadou Toumani Toure.

Observers are worried that another round of instability in the country could further destabilise the region.

Some of the militant groups are also linked to networks smuggling people and drugs into Europe.

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Mali's president quits after soldiers mutiny

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Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has resigned, after being detained by soldiers on Tuesday. In a televised address he said he was also dissolving the government and parliament, adding: "I want no blood to be spilled to keep me in power." He and PM Boubou Cissé were taken to a military camp near the capital Bamako, drawing international condemnation.

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Summarization is a huge potential market. In 1995, the average daily reading requirement of a U.S. intelligence analyst assigned to follow the events in one country was just 20,000 words (or about the equivalent of two New Yorker longreads). By 2016, the same analyst’s daily reading load was estimated at 200,000 words—more than the most capable speed reader could possibly skim in 24 hours. This phenomenon is affecting analysts in finance and law too, and is a huge issue for people in the sciences trying to keep up with the explosion in published research.

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Primer Labs showcases three NLP systems it built in the past year and allows anyone to upload any text to play around with the tech.

The first tool: question-answering.

Upload any document and you can then ask questions in natural language to prompt the system to find an answer in the text. The system also suggests questions that you might want to ask.

The next Primer tool: “named entity recognition.”

This is the task of identifying all the proper names in a document and figuring out which pronouns in the text refer to which people or which organizations. This task is relatively easy—if time-consuming—for humans, but it's historically stumped computers. It is a good example of a skill that is now within software’s grasp thanks to the NLP revolution. In benchmark tests Primer has published, its system has outperformed similar software created by Google and Facebook.

The final and perhaps most difficult task Primer Labs’ tools perform: summarization.

Accurately summarizing long documents is difficult for humans too. And gauging how useful a summary is can be highly subjective. But Primer came up with a clever way to automatically judge summary quality based on BERT, a very large language model that Google created and has made freely available. BERT is what is known as a “masked language model,” because its training consists of learning how to correctly guess what a hidden word in a text is. Primer's BLANC judges summaries by assessing how much better BERT performs in this fill-in-the-blank game after having accessed the summary. The better BERT does, the better the summary. Thanks to BLANC, Primer was able to train a summarization tool that can generate pretty fluent summaries.

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Primer Labs features examples that A.I. systems capable of natural language processing are poised to have a big impact on business.

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Music: YELLO: Dieter Meier, Boris Blank | www.yello.com | www.instagram.com/yello_official
Video: Dirk Koy | www.instagram.com/dirkkoy
2020

Music by Boris Blank
Lyrics by Dieter Meier
Published By: Warner Chappell Music
Produced by Yello
Vocals: Dieter Meier
Video Producer: Dirk Koy
Mastering Engineer: Ursli Weber

Music video by Yello performing Out Of Sight.
© 2020 Yello, under exclusive license to Universal Music GmbH

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Field Trips
podcast, 14x13'

déambulations sonores dans Londres, par une belle personne apparemment

Field Trips is a short podcast in which I talk about field recording and listening - why I do it, what I notice, and the often indistinct line between 'sound' and 'music'. The show is both an excuse to go out recording more regularly, as well an attempt to explain my hobby to people who might not otherwise be familiar with it (while also appealing to other like-minded recordists).

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published on

All episodes are free to download sans-commentary from https://mola-recordings.bandcamp.com/album/field-trips where you can also choose to leave a donation to help support the show, if you'd like. Please feel free to ask me any questions or requests/suggestions for places to record in or around London. Thank you for listening.

Contains tracks

License: all-rights-reserved

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All episodes are free to download sans-commentary from https://mola-recordings.bandcamp.com/album/field-trips where you can also choose to leave a donation to help support the show, if you'd like. Please feel free to ask me any questions or requests/suggestions for places to record in or around London. Thank you for listening.

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Comment sont délimitées les frontières maritimes ?
Signée en 1982, la Convention des Nations unies sur le droit de la mer (CNUDM) définit la notion de « zone économique exclusive » (ZEE).

La ZEE est un espace maritime sur lequel un État côtier exerce des droits souverains en matière d’exploration et d’usage des ressources. Elle s’étend jusqu’à un maximum d’environ 370 km de ses côtes.
Un État peut aussi bénéficier de ZEE supplémentaires grâce à ses îles, comme c’est le cas de la Grèce, qui dispose ainsi d’une très vaste zone économique exclusive en Méditerranée orientale. La Turquie, qui n’est pas signataire de la CNUDM, refuse ce principe. Selon elle, une ZEE peut être attribuée à une île seulement après la signature d’un accord bilatéral, comme celui que la Turquie a négocié avec la République turque de Chypre du Nord, un territoire seulement reconnu par la Turquie.

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Alors que l'attention internationale se concentrait sur le sommet de l'OTAN et la question kurde, la Turquie a signé le 27 novembre 2019 avec le gouvernement Libyen de Tripoli un accord de délimitation de leurs zones économiques exclusives (ZEE) respectives (1). Cet accord prévoit une délimitation de la Méditerranée orientale entre les deux pays, de manière disons " harmonieuse et équitable ". Problème : la Turquie n'est pas membre de la Convention des Nations Unies sur le Droit de la Mer (CNUDM) de 1982, dite "de Montego Bay" (2). La Libye n'en est que signataire et non " État partie ". En conséquence, la Turquie applique une vision du droit international maritime " coutumière ". Ce refus d'adhésion est essentiellement lié à la question chypriote, mais aussi à l'imbrication des îles grecques le long des côtes turques.

Selon cette vision proprement nationale, la Turquie refuse le principe selon lequel les îles " projetteraient " des ZEE : pour Ankara, une telle zone n'est projetée que par les côtes continentales. Toute zone économique attribuée à une île ne pourrait être que l'objet d'un accord bilatéral dédié au cas par cas après avoir délimité les zones continentales, comme celui que la Turquie a " négocié " avec la République turque de Chypre du Nord, territoire largement sous perfusion de la Turquie et reconnu par elle seule.

Les conséquences de ce refus sont claires : comme le montre la carte, la Turquie ne reconnaît aucune zone économique exclusive qui serait liée à Chypre ou aux îles grecques (notamment la Crète et le Dodécanèse).

Ratifier la CNUDM reviendrait, pour la Turquie, à abandonner ses revendications sur l'essentiel de sa vision de la ZEE. Pour mémoire, selon la CNUDM une ZEE peut s'étendre jusqu'à 200 miles nautiques de la limite des eaux territoriales, elles-mêmes fixées à un maximum de 12 miles de la ligne de base (la côte pour simplifier). Lorsque deux États sont situés à moins de 424 miles nautiques, la CNUDM prévoit une répartition équitable et négociée et, surtout, consacre le principe selon lequel les îles " permanentes " sont source de ZEE . C'est d'ailleurs grâce à ce principe que la France revendique le deuxième domaine maritime mondial, via sa souveraineté sur de nombreux archipels, notamment dans le Pacifique (4).

La question de la ratification par la Turquie de la CNUDM est ancienne et fait partie des nombreux sujets insolubles liés à une éventuelle candidature d'adhésion turque à l'Union européenne. Pour l'UE ce traité est un " acquis communautaire " : l'UE a ratifié la CNUDM en tant qu'organisation et attend de tous ses membres qu'ils fassent de même, la CNUDM étant située à cheval entre les compétences de l'UE et celles des Etats membres. Tout État " candidat " doit se mettre en conformité avec les " acquis " communautaires, dont la CNUDM (5). La reconnaissance de Chypre en tant qu'État indépendant fait également partie de ces " sujets insolubles ", Ankara désignant toujours la moitié sud de l'île comme " partie de Chypre sous administration grecque ". Il est délicat de rejoindre une union dans laquelle on ne reconnait pas un des membres...

Il faut rappeler également que l'assemblée nationale turque a voté, en 1995, un droit de " casus belli " permettant au gouvernement d'Ankara de déclarer la guerre à la Grèce si celle-ci décidait d'étendre ses eaux territoriales de 6 à 12 miles nautiques, comme la CNUDM lui en donne pourtant le droit. La Turquie a d'ailleurs procédé à cette extension en 1964, à son profit... Bien entendu, la Grèce a toujours fait du retrait de ce " casus belli " une question de principe préalable à toute négociation d'adhésion (mais n'a jamais " franchi le Rubicon ") (6).

Avec cet accord, le président Erdogan fait monter la pression en Méditerranée orientale, en cherchant des soutiens internationaux à ses revendications. Les enjeux sont de taille, puisque la région pourrait renfermer environ 1,5% des ressources mondiales de gaz naturel. En plus des ressources gazières également présentes sur zone, la délimitation des ZEE libyennes et turques enferme de facto le projet de gazoduc porté par l'Egypte, Israël et la Grèce, et qui devait passer par la ZEE de cette dernière et faciliter ainsi les exportations de gaz vers l'Europe, tout en contournant les infrastructures mises en place par la Turquie et la Russie (Turkstream) (7). À l'opposé, la carte suivante, qui montre les ZEE revendiquées par les Etats de la région signataires de la CNUDM, ne laisse clairement pas à la Turquie la possibilité de barrer la route à aucun projet de gazoduc pas plus qu'elle ne donne à Ankara d'accès significatif aux champs gaziers déjà découverts. On voit, en creux, se dessiner un irrédentisme insulaire turc, qui invoque volontiers l'héritage ottoman et parle de spoliation concernant la souveraineté grecque en Mer Égée.

Ce mouvement turc suit de quelques semaines les tensions qui avaient accompagné les missions de forage prospectif dans la zone revendiquée comme ZEE par Chypre et que la Turquie juge se dérouler dans sa zone de souveraineté économique. Les Européens avaient fait preuve d'une inhabituelle fermeté dans leur soutien à Nicosie, avec la prise de sanctions économiques par l'UE et l'envoi par la France d'une frégate sur zone. La France, mais aussi l'Italie, ont des intérêts via les groupes pétroliers Total et ENI qui sont concessionnaires pour l'État chypriote (8).

À un moment ou la solidarité transatlantique est l'objet de spéculations autour de son électroencéphalogramme, la question des eaux chypriotes et grecques est un vrai défi pour l'Union européenne. Avec le Brexit et le départ du Royaume Uni, traditionnellement impliqué dans les questions chypriotes et détenant toujours deux bases sous sa juridiction sur l'île, la position européenne se fragilise (9). Or l'UE se doit de tenir bon aux côtés de Chypre et de la Grèce : il en va de la crédibilité de tout l'édifice européen, qui ne peut se permettre de laisser un État, fut-il membre de l'alliance atlantique, miner la souveraineté des Etats européens reposant elle-même sur l'application de principes universels de droit international. Pour la France, par exemple, ne pas soutenir la Grèce reviendrait à admettre que l'ensemble de ses ZEE insulaires ne sont finalement qu'hypothétiques. Il en va donc bien au-delà de la question gazière, même si celle-ci est d'une importance bien entendu capitale : l'avenir de l'UE en tant qu'entité politique capable de défendre l'intégrité de ses membres en dépend, avec ou sans l'OTAN.
Stéphane AUDRAND Consultant spécialisé en maîtrise des risques, contrôle du commerce des armes et questions liées aux droits de l'homme
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(3) https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf. La CNUDM ne distingue pas, en fait, les côtes " continentales " des côtes " insulaires ". Les seuls régimes spéciaux invocables pour l'insularité sont ceux des atolls ou des îles non permanentes ou artificielles.

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Accord sur les ZEE entre la Turquie et la Libye : l'Union européenne au pied du mur

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Alors que l'attention internationale se concentrait sur le sommet de l'OTAN et la question kurde, la Turquie a signé le 27 novembre 2019 avec le gouvernement Libyen de Tripoli un accord de délimitation de leurs zones économiques exclusives (ZEE) respectives (1). Cet accord prévoit une délimitation de la Méditerranée orientale entre les deux pays, de ...

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demandé à participer en tant qu'observateur non-complotiste, mais sans succès

Ovésien(ne)s "complotistes",

Croyez-vous aux théories du complot ? En avez-vous ras-le-bol de cette pensée unique qui vous impose des choses que vous refusez catégoriquement ? En avez-vous assez de ce système pourri qui est en train de s'écrouler comme un château de cartes ? Êtes-vous exaspérés d'être considérés comme des "esclaves" et non comme des être humains libres et souverains, ayant des droits fondamentaux qui sont INVIOLABLES, INALIÉNABLES et IMPRÉSCRIPTIBLES, mais qui sont sans cesse bafoués par cette oligarchie mondialiste, qui impose sa vision des choses, alors qu'elle n'a aucune autorité légitime ?

Alors soyez toutes et tous les bienvenu(e)s. Étant moi-même un 'complotiste", je vous propose de se retrouver autour d'un verre pour parler des sujets de notre société actuelle tels que :

* Le port du masque obligatoire illégal ;

* Les antennes-relais 5G ;

* Le rôle de la franc-maçonnerie et du sionisme dans cette Ripoublique franc-maçonne, illégale et illégitime ;

* Les réseaux pédophiles, pédo-criminels & pédo-satanistes ;

* La montée du satanisme en France ;

* L'esclavage à la dette.

Les ovésien(ne)s bien-pensant(e)s sont invité(e)s à s'abstenir de tout commentaire concernant cette sortie et n'y sont pas convié(e)s.

En revanche, celles et ceux qui souhaitent réveiller leur conscience sont autorisé(e)s à y participer.

Adresse du RDV

Précisions pour se retrouver

Brasserie Les Cascades
2 place Édouard Renard
M° ligne 8 : Porte Dorée
Paris 12ème

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La Turquie a annoncé hier qu’elle mènerait du 18 août au 15 septembre des activités d’exploration avec un navire de forage qu’elle a déployé au large de Chypre, dans une zone maritime attribuée à Chypre par un accord bilatéral entre ce pays et l’Égypte.
La Turquie a envoyé lundi un autre de ses navires dans une zone maritime revendiquée par la Grèce afin de tenter d’y détecter des ressources énergétiques.
Depuis une dizaine d’années, plusieurs vastes réserves de gaz ont été découvertes par des compagnies pétrolières au fond de la Méditerranée orientale, principalement dans les eaux égyptiennes, grecques et chypriotes. Aucune de ces réserves ne se situe dans les eaux turques, mais fin 2019, la Turquie a signé avec le Gouvernement d’union nationale libyen (GNA), qu’elle soutient militairement, un accord l’autorisant à forer dans une large zone en Méditerranée orientale. Cet accord est jugé illégal par l’Égypte, la Grèce et Chypre.

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La France renforce sa présence militaire en Méditerranée orientale. C'est la réponse de Paris après la récente montée de tensions entre la Grèce et la Turquie sur la question du partage des zones maritimes. Le climat s'est encore détérioré cette semaine après une nouvelle provocation d'Ankara.

Le navire de recherche sismique Oruç-Reis escorté par des navires militaires turcs © AFP / TURKISH DEFENCE MINISTRY

La situation inquiète beaucoup l'Union européenne. Depuis que d'importants gisements gaziers ont été découverts en Méditerranée orientale ces dernières années, la Grèce et la Turquie s'opposent sur la délimitation de leurs zones économiques exclusives (ZEE). Le climat s'est encore détérioré cette semaine. C'est la Turquie qui est à l'origine de ces nouvelles tensions, accusée par le gouvernement grec d'avoir déployé en toute illégalité dans le sud-est de la mer Egée, dans les eaux grecques, un navire de recherche sismique escorté par cinq frégates militaires. Le gouvernement grec a aussitôt vivement réagi, en plaçant ses forces armées en état d'alerte et en déployant sur place des éléments de la marine nationale et de l'armée de l'air. Athènes dénonce la "politique du fait accompli" d'Ankara et demande à la Turquie de se retirer au plus vite de cette zone qui se trouve à 80 kilomètres de l'île grecque de Karpathos.

La bataille du partage des eaux

Ce climat de tension est le résultat de relations de voisinage compliquées avec la Grèce, particulièrement depuis que le président turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan s'est lancé dans la prospection d'hydrocarbures en Méditerranée. La Turquie semble depuis s'affranchir des règles internationales sur le partage des eaux, n'hésitant pas à revoir les cartes et repousser ses frontières maritimes pour servir ses ambitions gazières. Ainsi à la fin de l'année 2019, la Turquie négocie en dehors de tout cadre international un protocole d'accord avec la Libye qui modifie le partage des eaux. La nouvelle délimitation empiète sur la zone exclusive de la Grèce. L'Union européenne dénonce une initiative contraire au droit de la mer et exprime sa solidarité avec la Grèce.

Le difficile partage des eaux en Méditerranée. © Radio France / Rédaction internationale

Parallèlement à cela, Ankara ne cache pas sa volonté d'étendre sa zone économique exclusive sur la quasi-totalité de son littoral. Rhodes ainsi que plusieurs autres petites îles appartenant à la Grèce se retrouveraient ainsi au milieu des eaux turques, situation évidemment inacceptable pour la Grèce.

Le dialogue est-il possible ?

La présidence turque a expliqué cette semaine que la priorité était de résoudre les problèmes par le dialogue, mais Ankara ne cache pas sa volonté de faire aboutir ses projets. Le ministre turc des Affaires étrangères insiste :

"Nous défendrons jusqu'au bout les droits de la Turquie en Méditerranée et nous ne ferons aucune concession".

La Grèce de son côté affiche aussi sa fermeté. Le premier ministre grec explique qu'Athènes ne cherchera pas à aggraver les tensions mais "qu'aucune provocation ne restera sans réponse".

Un espoir de discussions était apparu avant l'été, avec dans le rôle de médiateur la chancelière allemande Angela Merkel, mais la tentative s'est finalement soldée par un échec. La partie turque n'a pas apprécié qu'entre temps la Grèce signe un autre accord maritime avec l'Égypte.

Réaction militaire de la France

Pour répondre à cette montée de tension, la France a décidé de renforcer sa présence militaire en Méditerranée orientale. La frégate Lafayette et deux avions de chasse Rafale déjà stationnés dans la région vont participer à un exercice naval avec la Grèce. Officiellement, selon le ministère des Armées, il s'agit d'affirmer l'attachement de la France à la libre circulation, à la sécurité de la navigation maritime et au droit international en Méditerranée, mais l'exercice organisé à la hâte est clairement un signal de fermeté envoyé à Recep Tayyip Erdogan par Emmanuel Macron, le président français qui est déjà en froid avec son homologue turc depuis l'intervention militaire d'Ankara en Libye et qui voit d'un très mauvais œil les velléités maritimes de la Turquie à l'est de la Méditerranée.

Comme l'a annoncé @EmmanuelMacron, nous renforçons notre présence en Méditerranée orientale. Par des déploiements aériens dans la région et des exercices maritimes avec les Grecs, nous réaffirmons notre attachement à la liberté de navigation et au respect du droit international.
- Florence Parly (@florence_parly) August 13, 2020

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Le partage des zones maritimes entre la Grèce et la Turquie provoque de vives tensions

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La France renforce sa présence militaire en Méditerranée orientale. C'est la réponse de Paris après la récente montée de tensions entre la Grèce et la Turquie sur la question du partage des zones maritimes. Le climat s'est encore détérioré cette semaine après une nouvelle provocation d'Ankara.

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Amazing Isaac Haxton Bluff vs Ryan Daut   YouTube

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Penguins originated in Australia and New Zealand 22 million years ago, researchers suggest; then, ancestors of the king and emperor penguins split off and moved to Antarctic waters, likely attracted by the abundant food supply there.

These findings also support the theory that king and emperor penguins are the "sister group" to all other penguin lineages -- adding another piece to the long-debated puzzle on where exactly these two species sit on the family tree.

Then about 12 million years ago, the Drake Passage -- the body of water between Antarctica and the southern tip of South America -- fully opened up. This allowed the penguins to swim throughout the Southern Ocean, and spread more widely to sub-Antarctic Islands as well as the warmer coastal regions of South America and Africa.

Today, the flightless birds are still found in Australia and New Zealand -- as well as Antarctica, South America, the South Atlantic, southern Africa, the sub-Antarctic, Indian Ocean islands, and subtropical regions.

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penguins originated in australia and new zealand -- not the antarctic

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Penguins originated in Australia and New Zealand -- not the Antarctic, new study finds

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Penguins didn't originate in Antarctica, a new study found -- they evolved off the coast of Australia and New Zealand, 22 million years ago.

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Movie Poster Image Art / Getty Images / WIRED

In 2019, on the ninetieth anniversary of the creation of the Tintin comic book series, a "posthumous homage" to its author Hergé was published on a French right-wing website. Under the headline "Tintin dealing with our Islam-dominated times", a pun-heavy article proposed an alternative title and short summary for each of the 24 Tintin albums, in a bid to give them a contemporary, far-right revamp.

In a series of racist swipes at Muslim immigrants, Land of Black Gold ( Tintin au pays de l'or noir) was now set in France and titled Land of Black Chador (Tintin au Pays du Tchador Noir); The Black Island ( L'Île Noire) had become Lille Black with Burqas ( Lille Noir de Burqas), a reference to the northern French city of Lille - and so forth.

This kind of content is quite common on the francophone web as far right online communities have shown themselves to be among Tintin's biggest fans.

With stories published over almost 60 years, translations in some 100 languages and hundreds of millions of copies sold worldwide, The Adventures of Tintin is probably the best-known Belgian comic series of all time. In it, the young journalist, his boisterous friend Captain Haddock, and his dog Snowy, travel to exotic countries, solve mysteries, and prevail over baddies. On the internet, the comic has also sparked a wide range of memes and apocryphal images: many of them just seek to be funny or original, with no particular agenda (not to mention a conspicuous amount of pornographic parodies); others rely on Tintin to convey political views and takes on current affairs. Nationalist, xenophobic, anti-muslim and antisemitic blogs and forums are a small but active niche within the French internet. On these platforms, Hergé's creature has in recent years popped up time and again.

A recurring theme of these fringe Tintin memes is the supposed "invasion" of France by non-European migrants. In widely circulated images, selected frames from the character's adventures in the Arab world are repurposed as covers of made-up issues with titles such as Tintin in France, Tintin in Toulouse, or Tintin in Molenbeek - a largely Muslim neighbourhood in Brussels which was home to several perpetrators of the 2015 and 2016 terror attacks in France and Belgium. The not-so-veiled implication is that European streets are increasingly looking like their northern African counterparts. In another frequently shared picture, Tintin in the Congo is turned into The Congo Comes to Tintin's ( Le Congo Chez Tintin) illustrated with a photograph purportedly showing a boat of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

Some have gone to much greater lengths to recruit the red-haired explorer to their xenophobic efforts. The Day Will Come is a seven-page apocryphal story reportedly created in the 1990s by supporters of the National Front, France's main far-right party (now rebranded National Rally). In the album, available on eBay for about €10 (£9), Tintin and Captain Haddock witness France's transformation into an "Islamist colony". After their house is occupied by Arab-looking foreigners (relocated in their living room by the Parisian authorities) and their car gets stolen, Haddock heeds his younger friend's advice and joins the National Front.

The exploitation of the series for far-right messaging is not limited to the immigration issue. A collection of drawings circulating online alter some of the original album covers by replacing the reporter with Dieudonné, a French comedian infamous for multiple convictions on charges of hate speech and anti-semitism. Another fake cover also features Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson as the beloved character professor Calculus. The late Faurisson's "unofficial blog" shared the image and thanked the author, adding the claim that "from a scientific and historical standpoint, revisionism has prevailed".

According to Vincent Bernière, newsroom director at French comic magazine Les Cahiers de la Bande Dessinée which is currently working on a special issue on Hergé, these manipulations are a byproduct of the character's essence. "Tintin is hollow, with no psychological profile; you can easily attach anything you want to him. It's one of the reasons for his success," he says. "The French far right couldn't help but notice."

And right-wingers do not necessarily have to tamper with Tintin's images too much in order to promote their agenda. Rummaging through their forums and blogs, it becomes clear that many participants think that the series's underlying worldview already chimes with theirs.

Some of the material produced by Hergé (pen name of Georges Prosper Remi) and certain aspects of his life are certainly well-suited to please today's fasciosphère. Born in Belgium in 1907, Hergé published Tintin in the Belgian right-wing paper Le Vingtième Siècle and was strongly influenced by the outlet's editor, ultra-conservative abbot Norbert Wallez. He was also close to Léon Degrelle, founder of Belgium's fascist Rex party and a Nazi sympathiser; Hergé never disavowed the friendship, which continued after the war. Certainly, Hergé wasn't as politically naive as Tintin. "In the 1930s he was a rexist [a supporter of the Rex party], there's no doubt about it," says Bernière, who also points out that Hergé worked under German supervision for the paper Le Soir while Belgium was under Nazi occupation.

His first albums bear all the hallmarks of the political environment they were conceived in. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, published in 1930, is an anti-communist propaganda book for children: the Bolsheviks burn bundles of straw inside empty factories so that the smoke can fool visitors about the country's productivity; a poll held at gunpoint inevitably results in the pro-regime list being elected with 100 per cent of the vote. Tintin in the Congo, written the following year, is an anthology of racial and colonial stereotypes. The locals are portrayed as lazy and uneducated, and only young white man Tintin can lift them from their pitiful state. Hergé also pandered to the worst antisemitic prejudices, such as in an early version of the 1942 story The Shooting Star, which featured two grotesquely villainous Jews.

By today's standards, these works have aged terribly, but many far right fans love them. When a new colour edition of In the Land of the Soviets was released in 2017, far-right websites brimmed with enthusiasm. One commentator, after accusing the publishing house of waiting too long "for fear of backlash from the lefties", gloated that children would again "learn very early to hate bolshevism, Lenin and Trotsky, identifying with Tintin".

As for Tintin in the Congo, the book isn't only the source of numerous memes; far-right platforms have also repeatedly jumped into the never-ending debate over the album's racist content. After a Congolese citizen filed a complaint in 2007 demanding the album be banned from sale in Belgium, right-wing forums reacted with fury. Some members insulted the plaintiff with racial slurs, while others lamented the African people's supposed ungratefulness. "Here is what we get for handing them civilisation on a platter, just like in Algeria," reads one post. Many also styled themselves as the standard-bearers of free speech in the battle against political correctness gone mad. As one put it on a white-power platform: "If you take this path, you'll end up burning all pre-1945 literature; obscurantism and witch-hunts are back."

But while Hergé clearly wasn't a man of the left, the fact that the far right is mostly interested in just a couple of albums out of 24 also suggests how shoddy this appropriation attempt is. According to Benoît Peeters, a Tintin specialist who has authored various books on the series and its creator, after his youth Hergé moved towards "what can be defined as a form of liberal humanism". The examples aren't hard to find. In his later adventures, the reporter learns to understand and appreciate other cultures, embarks on a humanitarian trip to Asia, and stands in the way of post-coup violence in Latin America.

Perhaps because of this evolution, Hergé's creature has been borrowed, adapted and used well beyond the far right; the Internet is also full of Tintin memes on issues associated with the left, with many drawings denouncing global warming. Everybody wants Tintin on their side.

Hergé himself did not live long enough to know the digital age, but he would not have been impressed. "He didn't want Tintin to be manipulated for political goals, every time such attempts occurred, he opposed them," says Peeters; the racist apocryphal material would have left him "hurt and shocked".

Today's neo-fascists and xenophobes may be trying to claim Hergé as one of their own, but they can only do so because the cartoonist is no longer around. For Peeters, these unsavoury reinventions are a just a sign of the series's popularity, whose overall values hardly reflect the environment Hergé flirted with in his youth. "Tintin is by no means a prisoner of the far right," he says.

Updated 16.08.2020,10,00 GMT: this article has been amended to correct the date of the Belgian court case against Tintin in the Congo : it started in 2007, not 2008.

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How Tintin became an unlikely poster boy for the far right

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In 2019, on the ninetieth anniversary of the creation of the Tintin comic book series, a "posthumous homage" to its author Hergé was published on a French right-wing website. Under the headline "Tintin dealing with our Islam-dominated times", a pun-heavy article proposed an alternative title and short summary for each of the 24 Tintin albums, in a bid to give them a contemporary, far-right revamp.

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adoption/ autism / rehoming/ vlog

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, anywhere from one percent to 5 percent of the more than 100,000 adoptions in the U.S. each year are legally terminated in what’s called a “dissolution” —
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In the middle of a pandemic and a national reckoning over racial injustice, when the president and multiple other right-wing leaders repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as the “kung flu” or “Wuhan flu,” Myka and James were a privileged white couple who’d given away their Chinese son.
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In adoption message boards, other parents struggling with their adopted children have posted about feeling as though agencies had falsified reports or misled them about the severity of their child’s needs. Experts say that, with intercountry adoption, it’s not that agencies are withholding information — sometimes they simply do not have it

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This article was featured in One Great Story, New York 's reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

The video began like so many others. YouTubers Myka and James Stauffer, in the glow of camera-friendly lighting, staring into the lens. But this time, instead of energetically updating their roughly 1 million subscribers (over 700,000 on Myka's YouTube channel and over 300,000 on the family's vlog, The Stauffer Life) on their "kiddos" or Myka's "mommy morning routine" or vegan-meal ideas, the couple had somber expressions. "This is by far the hardest video James and I have ever publicly had to make," said Myka. Wearing white shirts that matched the linens on the bed where they sat, the Stauffers revealed that they had placed Huxley, their then almost 5-year-old autistic son from China - whose adoption process and life they had documented for more than three years - with "his now new forever family." Myka and James tearfully explained that the extent of Huxley's needs had not been clear when they'd adopted him, that it was never supposed to happen this way, and that they loved him.

Some viewers were sympathetic, but the video, which was posted in late May, also fueled outrage. The Stauffers lost thousands of subscribers, and Facebook and Instagram accounts sprung up demanding "Justice for Huxley" and "Cancel Myka & James Stauffer." Brands that had worked with Myka to promote their products - including Fabletics, Suave, Danimals, and Playtex Baby - distanced themselves. They were even subject to a sheriff's-office investigation after detractors suggested their other children might be endangered. In the kindest light, Myka, now 33, and James, 35, were painted as well-meaning but naïve parents who had gotten in over their heads; in the harshest, they were fame-hungry narcissists who'd exploited a child for clicks and profit only to discard him when caring for him proved too difficult.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, anywhere from one percent to 5 percent of the more than 100,000 adoptions in the U.S. each year are legally terminated in what's called a "dissolution" - making the Stauffers' decision to relinquish custody rare but not unheard of. Had they not shared Huxley's adoption with the world, building an audience from videos about everything from his medical diagnoses to his food anxiety, they would be dealing with a private family tragedy rather than a public scandal. Instead, the Stauffers have been held up as examples of what is wrong with both influencer and adoption culture - and what can happen when a child is caught at the intersection.

Before she was Myka Stauffer, adoption vlogger, she was Myka Bellisari, a nurse and single mother living in Ohio, posting weight-loss videos to her YouTube channel. This was 2012, around the time she met James on OkCupid. After they moved in together in Indianapolis and got pregnant, the couple started The Stauffer Life, where they vlogged about their relationship and growing family. In 2014, they were married, and Myka began a channel using her new last name. With James's support, she quit nursing; by Myka's own telling, his job as an engineer paid "at least three times" what she was making. She began selling clothes on eBay while filming for her channels. Eventually, she said, James convinced her to focus on YouTube full time.

Back then, much of their most-viewed content centered on the couple's quest to get pregnant again. Myka and James, who declined to be interviewed for this story but whose digital footprint spans countless hours of testimonials, showed an early willingness to share deeply personal moments. They were rewarded for it. Clips titled "MY MISCARRIAGE STORY AT 6 WEEKS PREGNANT!!!" and "LIVE PREGNANCY TEST! AM I PREGNANT?!!!" received hundreds of thousands of views, while videos about healthy breakfasts or Myka's favorite things fell flatter. The couple studied YouTube analytics - Myka has called James "an SEO god" - and leaned further into family vlogging.

They came off as a young, attractive couple dedicated to their kids and to each other without losing their sense of humor. Myka, with her ombré highlights, high cheekbones, and considered, casual outfits (her aesthetic might be described as mature-Coachella, Moon Juice-meets-the-mall), poured herself into decorating, cooking, and child-rearing. James was Super Dad, the devoted partner with endless energy for work and family. Myka described him as "the man of my dreams." They seemed equally ambitious, with Myka happily oversharing the details of their life and James more than willing to hold the camera when he wasn't also in front of the lens.

By 2016, Myka was homeschooling - a trend among top family vloggers - and James had started a car-detailing channel, Stauffer Garage, restoring his Honda Civic for early material. With their three kids, the family moved to Ohio. They remained on the lower rung of influencers. Other YouTubers had grown their audiences by sharing family milestones, and, in a 2019 interview, James acknowledged that "peak moments" could increase viewership. New homes play well, as do pregnancy and new babies (many successful family vloggers have four kids or more).

Myka said she'd long wanted to adopt; at one point, she and James talked about having six or seven children, with multiple adoptions, and were specifically interested in a child from Africa. James was more reluctant, she said, and after several conversations, she finally pleaded, "Can you please, please in your heart just consider adoption? Just really genuinely think about it, because it's really important to me." He ultimately agreed, and, later in 2016, the couple posted a video announcing their plans to adopt and their intent to take viewers along with them on their "journey."

Sharing information about a child's adoption before he or she is in the home is frowned upon by adoption experts. "We don't advise it. In fact, we ask them specifically not to do it," says Susan Soonkeum Cox, vice-president of policy and external affairs for Holt International, the agency that has since merged with the World Association for Children and Parents, which the Stauffers said they used to adopt Huxley. Not only can publicizing an adoption jeopardize it, but it's often seen as playing into the stereotype of white families swooping in to "save" foreign children. It "perpetuates the idea of lesser," says Cox, who was adopted from Korea. That notion hasn't stopped other influencers from documenting their process.

Myka began framing the couple's decision as a step they were being called to take, saying she was "so excited to open our hearts and see what the Good Lord has in store for us" - a sentiment frequently echoed by the often white and Christian community of adoption influencers. Adoption, Myka said, was "something that we really want to be part of our story." After speaking with adoption agencies, they decided to focus their search on China. International adoptions to the U.S. have dropped to a fraction of what they were a decade and a half ago, as many countries, including China, have revised their protocols. (For the 2019 fiscal year, the U.S. Department of State reported just 2,971 adoptions to the U.S. from other countries, down from almost 23,000 adoptions in 2004.) China still accounts for more adoptions to the U.S. than any other country, but now almost all adoptees from China to the U.S. are toddler age or older, and many have existing health conditions. If the Stauffers adopted from China, they would almost certainly be choosing a child with special needs.

If anything, my child is not returnable.

Even then, though, there are two categories of adoption: the country's LID or "Log-in Date" program, in which the children have more minor needs, and the Special Focus program, in which the children usually have more challenging conditions. Myka said James was initially interested in going the LID route, but for reasons they didn't make quite clear, they decided to adopt from Special Focus instead. "Let's just say there's 100 conditions. Me and my husband were comfortable with 99 of the conditions, so we were very, very open," Myka told her viewers at the time.

During their search, Myka became active on Facebook groups about adoption. Cynthia Martin, a clinical psychologist who specializes in autism spectrum disorder and is the mother of two adopted daughters from China, says she first encountered Myka in a group specific to parents who either had adopted from China or were interested in doing so. She says Myka "was very vocal" within the group and had reached out to her to ask about various special conditions. Myka also talked about her vlog. "She did ask to be followed, if I wouldn't mind helping her out, that her family was really trying to get this vlog off the ground," Martin recalls. "She framed it as wanting to use it as a way to document their adoption process, similarly to how some other families will blog about things. But those are blogs that are generally geared toward family, friends, people in your close community." The solicitation was off-putting, but Myka persisted. "She would ask families, 'Can you follow me? Can you go and like my videos?' " says Martin. At that point, "myself, as well as other families who I am in touch with through this community, decided, 'We are going to keep our distance now.' "

Myka said she looked through hundreds of photos of children who were available for adoption, but none of them "spoke" to her until she came across the child she and James would rename Huxley. When the agency told her over the phone about suspicions that the child had a brain tumor or cyst, "My heart just stopped. It just stopped. So hard. And I felt crushed," she said.

The Stauffers took Huxley's medical file to their physician for review - a step in the adoption process that agencies recommend, according to Cox. When the doctor assessed the imaging, "her optimism went down significantly," said Myka. "She kind of almost discouraged us from adopting him, saying, 'This is going to be severe. This is going to be a lot. You know, we don't know what unknown elements could be.' " But Myka wasn't deterred. "Without a doubt in our minds, we knew, no matter what state he came to us, that we would love him," she told her subscribers. "If anything, my child is not returnable."

Myka and James asked viewers to invest not only time in Huxley's adoption story but money. In one video, they held a fund-raiser asking their audience to donate $5 for puzzle pieces, which, when put together, would reveal a photo of Huxley. (In a video, Myka said they'd raised $1,900; during the investigation conducted by Ohio's Delaware County Sheriff's Office, one of the Stauffers told officers they'd raised $800 from a GoFundMe. Either number is a small fraction of their adoption costs, which were over $40,000.)

In October 2017, Myka and James, along with their three biological children, traveled to China to pick up Huxley. The accompanying video, which they called Huxley's "Gotcha Day" - a term popular on YouTube but criticized by the adoption community - racked up more than 5.5 million views. Myka and James dedicated it "to all the orphans around the world" and set the video to "You Set My World on Fire," by Sweden's Loving Caliber, an acoustic track with the lyrics "Just tell me you'll stay or take me away / I want you for myself every single day." There is footage of the Stauffers on the plane, Myka applying her makeup at the hotel, and, of course, the family meeting Huxley in person for the first time. The cheerful song plays while Myka and the couple's biological children warmly give Huxley toys and lollipops. It continues to strum on as Huxley, then only 2 and a half, cries and flails in Myka's arms, the camera still fixed on him.

James later described the moment as a turning point. "When we went to China to adopt our son Huxley, we had a lot of people from China, from other countries, and even our followers here, in North America, kind of following along with us, and they were getting really revved up," James said in the 2019 interview. "China definitely was the point where we had a super-loyal fan base following us, and they were always asking, 'Where's the next content? Where's the next piece of this?' " he continued. "We weren't daily at that point. We had slowed down to probably three times a week, and they were asking, 'Hey, can you do daily? Can you do some more content? We want to see how Huxley's doing, how the family is getting along.' It was like, Wow, okay, we have something here, and people are really interested in our journey. "

Huxley quickly became a focus on both Myka's channel and The Stauffer Life. The couple shared tender moments of Huxley growing closer to his new family: bonding with his siblings, celebrating his first Christmas as a Stauffer, dancing and giggling, nuzzling James, playing with toys. "Huxley went from being the little boy that we adopted to becoming our son," she told her viewers three months in.

The couple also prided themselves on showing the more challenging side of parenting and adoption. Myka and James continued to post videos about Huxley's medical prognosis as well as his struggles with the apparent aftereffects of food insecurity (a relatively common issue for adopted and foster children, who may hoard or fixate on food), communication challenges, and meltdowns. Myka spoke regularly about struggling with some of Huxley's behaviors. There were also on-camera moments that would later concern some viewers: In one video, Huxley appeared with his thumb duct-taped, seemingly to prevent him from sucking it (in the sheriff's-office report, one of the Stauffers told a deputy he would suck his thumb so raw "he would have blisters"). In another, Myka followed the child with a camera while he cried, asking him, "Are you done fitting?"

In the first year with Huxley, Myka's channel grew to over 400,000 subscribers, and her brand expanded from family-and-lifestyle vlogger to special-needs-adoption advocate. She started using hashtags popular within the adoption community - and sometimes misused them. Stephanie Drenka, a Dallas-based writer, adoptee, and advocate who used to work with influencers, was dismayed when Myka posted #adopteevoice, a hashtag created by adult adoptees to center adoption stories on those who have experienced it. "She started using it when she was telling the story of Huxley," Drenka said. "And so it's not an adoptee voice." In fact, Huxley struggled to communicate, according to Myka, and in videos appeared to be mostly nonverbal.

The Stauffers' videos of Huxley granted them entry into a more elite tier of family YouTubers, and soon Myka began attracting sponsors. In June 2018, Myka and James filmed with Kendal and Daniel Rich, whose channel, , has over 1 million subscribers. Kendal and Daniel are the parents of five children, including an adopted son with special needs. Their channel showed what might be in store for the Stauffers if they continued chronicling their children's lives: Several of the Riches' videos include thumbnail images of their teen and tween daughters over titles like "Shopping for Her First Bra!"

In marketing their videos, the Riches were perhaps simply chasing the same formula other family vloggers were exploiting. Ruby and Kevin Franke, considered in the top tier of family vloggers with 2.44 million subscribers to their channel, 8 Passengers, earned almost 2 million views on a video titled "My First Shave," which includes an image of their tween daughter on the edge of a bathtub with shaving cream on her bare legs; a video of their son named "Officially Hit PUBERTY," with a description advertising "voice cracking and sprouting," has almost 3 million views. (According to YouTube, the videos do not violate the company's community guidelines.)

Videos with highly dramatic titles about illness and emergencies also tend to perform higher. The Frankes netted 3.1 million views on a video featuring a thumbnail image of one of their children lying on the bathroom floor above the title "sick, But Where's the toilet?!?" The success of these videos may help explain why the Stauffers once chose to make a ten-minute video of themselves crying in a parked vehicle, their kids in the back seat calling for them, while discussing whether a lump in Myka's neck was lymphoma. (It wasn't.)

As the couple's YouTube profiles grew, so did their lifestyle. In 2018, the Stauffers bought a home in an upscale suburb of Columbus for $670,000, one with multiple fireplaces, a finished basement with a bar, and a great room with a 20-foot ceiling. A Range Rover and Mercedes began showing up in videos.

Myka and James shared their plans to adopt another child. Myka assured viewers that she and James "are definitely going to be doing updates the entire time, filling you in on literally everything" and encouraged them to follow her on Instagram as well for "private deets." Instead, Myka soon announced that she was pregnant with the couple's fifth child, sharing footage of her taking a pregnancy test and awaiting the results. She cried tears of joy at the sight of two blue lines and filmed herself sharing the news with James by leading him down a trail of hamburger buns and electric tea lights, getting down on one knee, and asking, "Do you accept this pacifier?"

Only weeks later, the couple appeared in front of the camera again, eyes puffy from a different sort of tears. Huxley, they revealed, had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder level three - the most severe form, in which communication challenges can be lifelong. The therapist told them that Huxley's IQ was below average and that he would very likely never go to college. Myka described the news as "really hard to stomach."

"You guys knew when we adopted Huxley from China, they told us that he had a brain tumor, and they said that his IQ was completely up to par - no delays and no issues. So when we get all of this news he doesn't have a brain tumor, which is fantastic, but he does have several issues - ADHD, level-three autism, may live with you for the rest of your life, may never be potty trained. When we heard all of these things, it just hurt. It just hurt," she said, adding that she'd trusted in God, and he had given her "a bit more than I knew what to do with." (In China, toddlers are not routinely screened for autism the way they are in the U.S., says Martin. Even here, the average age of diagnosis is about 3 years and one month - older than Huxley was when he was adopted.)

James told viewers there were a lot of challenges they didn't share on the vlog and that, in China, they'd been told Huxley knew the alphabet and said multiple words already in his native language. "None of that was true," James said. (Holt International says it's prohibited from speaking about the specifics of any adoption.) He added they'd "struggled to vlog" because of their son's behaviors.

Myka doubled down on the point. "We would start to vlog and maybe Huxley will go into a full-blown tantrum, and we don't know how to parent that tantrum, because it's just out of control, and then we're just like, I want to turn the camera off because I'm so sad and I'm not doing a good job," she said.

They placed Huxley in preschool and 30 hours of in-home therapy a week and continued to record their family's story. Myka shared their struggles with various parenting publications and maintained that the challenges were worth the rewards. "My son has taught me to love completely and unconditionally, regardless of circumstances and without exceptions," she wrote for the Bump. The article was accompanied by a photo of Myka gently kissing Huxley in the sunlight, her blonde blowout falling over her shoulders, her son's small hand holding the lapel of her vest.

As the months went on, however, Huxley began to appear less frequently. The Stauffers attempted to explain why the child wasn't as prominent. Myka said he was often having meltdowns, and James made a video that addressed why they sometimes treated Huxley differently. Their adopted son went to bed before their other children, he said, not only because he was developmentally younger and needed to fall asleep earlier but because he required extra attention during the day, and this schedule gave James and Myka time to spend with their other children.

The sheriff's-office report later revealed the extent of the Stauffers' struggles. It detailed how the couple had hired a full-time caregiver for Huxley - which was "very expensive" - to prevent what authorities say one of the Stauffers described as the child's "severe aggression" toward their other children. They said they'd tried to get him additional support, including seven months of applied-behavior-analysis therapy, but that the behaviors - throwing toys, removing registers from the floors, and attempting to hit the other children with them - continued to escalate. Several people who had agreed to watch Huxley quit, one of the Stauffers told the investigator, and Huxley's outbursts were traumatizing for the other kids.

By January of this year, Myka and James decided they needed a break and took a trip to Bali with just their infant son, which they documented on Instagram. In the pictures, they are the image influencers tend to strive for: well traveled, happy, #blessed. Since adopting Huxley, Myka and James's online success had grown substantially. Total earnings are difficult to estimate, but the Stauffers earned from $4,100 to $66,700 from their three channels in April and May 2020, according to analytics site Social Blade, a number that does not include revenue from sponsorships. Myka had hired a manager to handle all the DMs from companies that wanted to work with her.

After their vacation, Myka's namesake channel focused on cleaning and organizing, and she began posting on a new money-centric channel, Cash Crush. In March, she used the hashtags #adoptiontrauma and #reactiveattachmentdisorder (also known as RAD, a rare but treatable disorder that can share symptoms with autism) on an Instagram photo of her holding Huxley.

The new channel wasn't necessarily surprising: Last year, Google began rolling out policy changes affecting family YouTubers, first by disabling comments on content featuring young children - which cut off a crucial line of communication with their audiences - after news outlets reported pedophiles were time-stamping scenes in videos as a virtual Bat-Signal to one another (a child swimming in a bathing suit, for example, or children in the bathtub). In September 2019, the company agreed to pay a $170 million settlement for allegedly violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act - a 1998 law meant to protect children's personal data online. In a complaint filed by the FTC and the New York State Attorney General's Office, YouTube was accused of profiting from ads aimed at children under the age of 13 through the use of cookies without their parents' consent. To comply with the law, YouTube limited the ads on channels and videos specifically aimed at kids. Earlier this year, YouTube deleted 1.4 million videos that violated its child-safety policies. Some family vloggers worried that their content would come under scrutiny next, if not legally, then at least in the eyes of their followers.

Offline that spring, the Stauffers were talking with medical experts and therapists, conversations that would lead them to the possibility of finding a new home for their son. That was never part of the "journey" they had expected to experience, much less share. "There is a part of me that can't imagine how bad it must have felt to lead to that initial conversation where one of them says to the other one, 'Maybe it's not meant to be us,' " says Kelly Raudenbush, who adopted her daughter with special needs from China in 2010 and has since co-founded the Sparrow Fund, an organization that supports adoptive and foster parents. "When do you have that conversation where one of you suggests, 'Maybe we need to say "No more"?' It's got to be horrible."

Followers began asking about the child in the comments on Myka's Instagram. Eventually the questions morphed from inquisitive to concerned to angry. On May 3, the first post on the anonymous Instagram account Justice for Huxley appeared: "Myka, we are very worried about your son ... Deleting IG comments and avoiding questions inquiring about Huxley and his whereabouts is extremely suspicious and worrying. We won't stop until we have #justiceforhuxley."

When the Stauffers finally broke their silence in late May, they said they had initially kept quiet because they didn't want to jeopardize Huxley's transition to his new family. In their video, Myka said that Huxley was thriving in his new home, that he was happy, and that "his new mommy has medical-professional training and is a very good fit." But the optics of their situation were fraught. In the middle of a pandemic and a national reckoning over racial injustice, when the president and multiple other right-wing leaders repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as the "kung flu" or "Wuhan flu," Myka and James were a privileged white couple who'd given away their Chinese son.

They initially tried to address their detractors in the comments section: "Multiple scary things happened inside the home towards our other children, and if these events happened with one of my biological kids, after all the help and after the behaviors we witnessed, sadly we would have no other choice then [ sic] to seek help and get their needs met." They also alleged that Huxley - a preschooler who, in their videos, often signed to communicate basic needs - wanted this decision "100 percent."

Later on Instagram, Myka apologized for "being so naïve" when she'd started the adoption process. "I was not selective or fully equipped or prepared. I received one day of watching at home online video training," she wrote.

In adoption message boards, other parents struggling with their adopted children have posted about feeling as though agencies had falsified reports or misled them about the severity of their child's needs. Experts say that, with intercountry adoption, it's not that agencies are withholding information - sometimes they simply do not have it. "If a 3-year-old is abandoned, you don't necessarily know what happened before that," says Adam Pertman, president and CEO of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency. "Generally speaking, agencies try to get this right and get as much information as they possibly can. That's partly because of the good work that they want to do and partly because they've been sued in the past."

Still, other adoptive parents have described situations that seem to echo the Stauffers' sense of hopelessness. In her memoir The Best of Us, author Joyce Maynard describes adopting two girls from Ethiopia and then, just over a year later, placing them with another family whose mother she met during the adoption process. "With an ignorance that staggers me now - ignorance, and some arrogance, no doubt - I had believed my love would be there like an eternal flame, and that this love of mine could fix whatever had been broken in my daughters' lives." When this proved not to be the case, that the road to attachment would be a long one, she describes it as "the most profound sense of despair I had ever known."

Nightlight Christian Adoptions, one of the few adoption agencies that handle dissolutions, places about five children a year whose adoptive parents want to relinquish custody. For families who have decided to dissolve, "it's extremely emotional, and there can be a lot of guilt and shame," says Katie England, L.M.S.W., Nightlight's executive director of domestic-adoption services. In her experience, parents seeking a dissolution often do so about two to three years in, but England believes that, often, if they had reached out earlier, the dissolution might have been prevented. "One of the biggest misconceptions is that dissolutions happen because the child is bad. Nine times out of ten, it is not the child's behavior. It seems like it's the child's behavior, but it's the child's behavior triggering something in the family." (Debbie Riley, CEO of the Center for Adoption Support and Education, says, in her experience, the most common reason for dissolution is that the parents feel incompetent to manage the child's behaviors.)

Several women have, in recent years, spoken out about dissolving their child's adoption. Most have faced similar online attacks, including a woman I'll call Lauren, who ended her son's adoption after he was diagnosed with a severe medical condition. In her case, she hadn't agreed to adopt a special-needs child; not until she brought her son home and he began missing key developmental milestones did his medical condition become clear. She was a single mother who had adopted in her late 30s because she didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to become a mom. But the child's condition was more than she could handle.

"I was so exhausted," she says. "I was practically living in the hospital with him, and we had been in and out of there for six months. I couldn't function anymore.

I couldn't work. He had seizures; they didn't know what was happening. It felt like his prognosis was pretty poor and he was going to need around-the-clock care." She feared losing her job and her house. "It's an awkward thing to say, but I thought to myself, This is not the reason I entered into adoption, to have this kind of thing happen. You go into it so optimistic."

The hardest part, she says, was losing friends. "They think what I have done is appalling and horrific." In the aftermath of a dissolution, she adds, "you go through this massive loss of grieving your child and then you realize some of your friends have removed you from social media, that they have just dumped you."

Lauren initially decided to speak publicly about her experience to help other adoptive parents who might be struggling and to encourage them to get support. Though she received some compassionate messages, the insults drowned them out. Most of the cruelest comments were from women. "I think fear is behind the hatred," she says. "Those women - and it will be women - they don't want to admit that they would have crumbled. They feel like they would have had the mental willpower to have coped."

In the Stauffers' case, most of the vitriol was aimed at Myka. One Instagram account, Cancel Myka Stauffer, which goes by the handle @mykastauffer.liar, has more than 11,000 followers. An online petition with more than 154,000 supporters demanded that Myka's monetized videos with Huxley be removed from YouTube. Followers appeared angry not only on behalf of Huxley but also because Myka had committed the ultimate influencer sin: ghosting on those who'd become invested in her story right when the plot twisted.

After their announcement, Myka changed her social-media profiles to reflect that she is the mother of four kids, not five, and then deleted content featuring Huxley. The Stauffer Life disappeared as well, including the couple's seven-minute tearful plea. Myka hasn't returned to YouTube, nor has she posted on her Instagram since her apology. The brands she partnered with have fled - and even if they hadn't, there's no new content to sponsor. James, however, is back to sharing videos on Stauffer Garage. His followers aren't there for his family life. They want to see cars being detailed.

The online outrage eventually moved offline. By June 1, local authorities say they had received three tips from people who said they did not personally know the Stauffers, recounting some of what was being discussed on social media - including concerns that Huxley was mistreated. After the sheriff's office opened its investigation, deputies met with the Stauffers in person. One of the Stauffers explained that the duct tape was "just a bad judgment call" and they should have purchased a specific device meant to prevent the child from sucking his thumb so vigorously. They detailed some of what had led them to dissolve the adoption, and authorities looked into Huxley's second adoption - which they deemed to have been conducted legally. One of the Stauffers also said they had received death threats, including one about slitting their children's throats, and told authorities that Huxley's new family feared for its safety as well.

When deputies met with Huxley and his new mother, they reported walking into an office to find the child "sitting on her lap and smiling" and that he "appeared to be very happy and well taken care of." The investigation was closed, but the sheriff's office says it will continue to check in on the Stauffers.

Of course, just because Huxley is no longer living a documented, monetized existence doesn't mean his story has lost its currency. News vloggers, drama vloggers, beauty vloggers, psych vloggers, family vloggers have all weighed in. Even the Rich family, who'd filmed with the Stauffers in 2018, jumped on the bandwagon, posting a key-word-packed video titled "Why I Will Never Give Up My Special Needs Adopted Child! Our response to Myka Stauffer."

Katie Paulson, who has a special-needs son and has covered parenting scandals in the past on her YouTube channel, Without a Crystal Ball, posted her first two videos about the Stauffers on May 27; combined, they have reached over 385,000 views.

"I don't really think I understood the magnitude that people would be interested in this story," she says, "nor did I understand that people would be as outraged as they were." She's since shared at least 20 more videos about the Stauffers.

Paulson, like other YouTubers I spoke with, thinks Myka has a shot at a second chance as an influencer. "Support can be quiet," she says. "Myka still has over 600,000 subscribers. Could she come back? Yes, 100 percent. Would she have people that would still support her? Yes, 100 percent. Would her backlash be ridiculous? A million percent. She would have to decide for herself, Am I willing to face the criticism? "

For now, Myka and James remain quiet, perhaps sensing what any good YouTuber knows - that outrage can be lucrative online, but it also moves quickly toward other targets. By late July, as I interviewed several YouTubers about the Stauffers, another scandal had already taken hold, this time about teen influencer Danielle Cohn. "If you're willing to go down the Danielle Cohn wormhole, it's crazy," one of them told me. Then, as we got off the phone, he went to go make a video about it.

*This article appears in the August 17, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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Why Did These YouTubers Give Away Their Son?

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This article was featured in One Great Story , New York 's reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. The video began like so many others. YouTubers Myka and James Stauffer, in the glow of camera-friendly lighting, staring into the lens.

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A travers le monde notre jeune reporter a souvent été mis en scène dans des parodies politiques marxistes ou liées à des associations ancrées à gauche. Avec l'extrême droite on pourrait penser qu'il y a en comparaison un grand vide ! C'est une apparence car les parodies de " (!!) soit introuvable : Tintin issues de l''extrême droite existent mais sont moins nombreuses et surtout très difficiles à débusquer. Il faut dire que la mission des militants des droites dures est assez risquée. Non seulement il y a la question de l'infraction au droit d'auteur mais en plus ils doivent faire face aux législations qui condamnent les propos racistes ou négationnistes. Pas étonnant que l'un des dessins les plus sordides sur Tintin dans la revue d'extrême droite espagnol " Zyklon B Tintin y est parodié en
Le personnage de Tintin avec ses allures de jeune boy-scout très occidental peut être facilement retourné et parodié à la sauce nationaliste ! C'est un peu comme cela que la branche jeunesse du FN l'a utilisé dans "Le jour viendra". Cette BD clandestine est un pur pirate réalisé dans la grande tradition du genre : impression médiocres, détournements maladroits, etc... Bref tout est dans le contenu et le fond idéologique.
Une autre BD étonnante a été publiée par Minute en 1990 "Tonton au pays de l'Ordure". Plus courte, mais tout aussi radicale que la précédente elle est passée inaperçue à sa sortie (nous étions en pleine guerre du Koweit !). Adolf Hitler.

L'association de sous l'occupation et ses amitiés anciennes. " fut publié clandestinement (90-91). Ce livre écrit par le nazi est raciste, etc... le portrait d' Tintin à l'extrême droite a toujours été très délicate. A l'origine il y a les terribles polémiques sur la jeunesse d' Hergé, son travail au journal Le Soir Hergé a su redresser la tête et devenir le plus grand auteur de l'histoire de la BD. Mais régulièrement ses détracteurs font resurgir ces années douloureuses. L'équation est simple : Hergé est un facho donc Degrelle, se propose de démontrer, "preuves" à l'appui, que Degrelle c'est Tintin ! En couverture il y a même un Tintin habillé en nazi ! Là on touche le fond... Cet ouvrage d'une grande stupidité a été interdit mais quelques copies circulent encore. Les détracteurs d' Hergé est vite tiré du côté des droites dures et on comprend pourquoi les militants d'extrême droite l'ont adopté depuis longtemps.

Avec un tel passé, certains détracteurs n'hésitent pas à placer l'oeuvre entière d' Hergé sous l'emprise d'une idéologie d'extrême droite. Les ouvrages ou articles sur la question sont nombreux. La polémique n'a d'ailleurs pas cessée depuis sa mort. Les quelques mises au point d' Hergé ne changerons rien : " Hergé ne manquent pas par ailleurs de rappeler les relations étroites entretenues un temps avec Degrelle et surtout avec l'abbé Wallez défenseurs d'idées très catholiques, nationalistes et anticommunistes. Bref, si l'on ajoute à tout cela que le Tintin est un facho ... L'épisode le plus dramatique s'est déroulé quelques années après sa mort , lorsque le livre " Tintin mon copain Tintin au pays des soviets est farouchement anti-coco, que le Tintin au Congo Je conviens que moi aussi j'ai cru que l'avenir de l'occident pouvait dépendre de l'ordre nouveau. Pour beaucoup, la démocratie s'était montrée décevante, et l'ordre nouveau apportait un nouvel espoir. Au vu de tout ce qui s'est passé, c'était naturellement une grossière erreur d'avoir pu croire un instant à l'ordre nouveau. " (1973).

Minute 1990

1991 : Forces Nouvelles mettra en couverture l'image d'un Degrelle tintinisé !

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A travers le monde notre jeune reporter a souvent été mis en scène dans des parodies politiques marxistes ou liées à des associations ancrées à gauche. Avec l'extrême droite on pourrait penser qu'il y a en comparaison un grand vide ! C'est une apparence car les parodies de " (!!)

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Bédé belge: Tintin aux prises avec l'islamodernité du XXIème siècle

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est un fox-terrier blanc. En 2020, Tintin opte pour un terrier noir russe : camouflage banlieusard de circonstance à la mâchoire poutinienne heureusement intacte. Le Capitaine Haddock devient Capitaine À Docs vu que la paperasse administrative dirige la Macronie. Vous voulez une démonstration ad hoc ? Qui sera la Castafiore ?

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Stone & Charden - J.S. Bach Populaire (1972)

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[Enquête Numerama] Le Youtubeur français ExperimentBoy (1,16 million d'abonnés) est accusé d'avoir profité de sa notoriété pour faire des avances à des jeunes adolescents, leur avoir envoyé des messages, photos et vidéos sexuelles de lui, et d'en avoir demandé en retour. En juin 2020, un dossier de signalement collectif a été envoyé au Procureur de la République de Lyon, qui s'est saisi de l'affaire, et deux plaintes ont été déposées pour corruption de mineur. Notre enquête montre que le vidéaste a ciblé, entre 2013 et 2019, au moins une dizaine de ses fans, dont plusieurs avaient moins de 15 ans. Des faits d'une ampleur et d'une gravité inédites dans le paysage du YouTube français.

" Il a utilisé sa notoriété pour m'utiliser comme un esclave sexuel à distance. J'avais 13 ans, sans pouvoir consentir à une telle chose. " Tout est parti d'un témoignage, public. Alors que Numerama enquête sur le mouvement #BalanceTonYoutubeur début juillet 2020, Quentin, 17 ans, prend contact avec nous. Puis un autre jeune homme. Puis un troisième. Tous motivés par le même besoin, viscéral : " Il faut que ça cesse. "

L'histoire du YouTubeur ExperimentBoy ressemble à une pelote de laine géante : une fois que l'on commence à tirer sur le bout de ficelle qui dépasse, ce sont des mètres de fil qui déroulent, avec toujours plus de témoignages inquiétants. Certains des faits relatés dans cet article sont sévèrement punis par la loi.

Au total, treize personnes nous ont confirmé individuellement les agissements du vidéaste français Baptiste Mortier-Dumont (M-D.). Certains ont accepté de parler en leur nom propre, d'autres sous couvert d'anonymat. Depuis le mois de juin 2020, plusieurs se sont signalés à la justice. Numerama a pu confirmer qu'une enquête était en cours, et plusieurs victimes ont déjà été entendues.

Cinq victimes étaient des mineurs de moins de 15 ans au moment où Baptiste Mortier-Dumont leur aurait envoyé pour la première fois des invitations à échanger des photos dénudées, des photos de son sexe, ou des propositions de masturbation simultanée. Ces faits s'étendent de 2013 à 2019. Le vidéaste était systématiquement majeur - né en mai 1994, il a aujourd'hui 26 ans. En France, la corruption de mineur est punie de cinq ans d'emprisonnement et de 75 000 euros d'amende, et les peines peuvent être portées à 7 ans de prison et 100 000 euros d'amende " lorsque le mineur a été mis en contact avec l'auteur des faits grâce à l'utilisation, pour la diffusion de messages à destination d'un public non déterminé, d'un réseau de communications électroniques ".

Après plusieurs mois d'enquête, de vérifications et de témoignages, et après avoir eu accès à un grand nombre de conversations, captures d'écran, photos et vidéos, Numerama est en mesure de mettre au jour des faits d'une gravité inédite dans le paysage du YouTube français. Ou comment Baptiste Mortier-Dumont, alias ExperimentBoy, a profité de sa notoriété pour aborder des jeunes garçons, les mettre en confiance puis leur faire des avances, avant de leur envoyer, pour certains, des photos et vidéos de nature sexuelle, et leur en demander en échange. Tout en les enjoignant à se taire.

" Je pouvais faire ce qu'il voulait "

" Je passe sur ton profil par hasard ". Le 27 avril 2017, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont envoie ce premier tweet, public, à Quentin, avec son compte officiel certifié. Le jeune garçon n'en revient pas : c'est la première fois que son Youtubeur préféré lui parle. " C'est du rêve là ? ! " lui répond-il. Sur son profil public, Quentin utilise un petit algorithme qui met à jour en permanence sa biographie Twitter. Elle annonce la couleur sans détour : " Je suis né il y a 13a, 345j. Gay et fier de l'être. " (on en retrouve les traces sur WayBack Machine)

Moins de 48 heures plus tard, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont, alors âgé de 22 ans, l'invitera à se masturber simultanément sur Skype.

" On a commencé à discuter, très rapidement il m'a demandé si j'étais partant pour jouer un peu avec lui. " Numerama a pu avoir accès à de nombreuses preuves de ces échanges, vidéo et par écrit, qui montrent comment le Youtubeur a fréquemment encouragé le jeune mineur de moins de 15 ans à participer à des ébats sexuels virtuels, lui faisait des avances et envoyait des vidéos de son sexe en érection, parfois en train de se masturber jusqu'à l'orgasme. Ces échanges ont duré neuf mois.

" On s'envoyait des vidéos quand je revenais du collège ", nous raconte Quentin, qui a fêté ses 17 ans en mai 2020, et qui accepte aujourd'hui de prendre la parole en son nom propre. " Je pouvais faire ce qu'il voulait. Il me demandait de faire des choses, me montrait ce qu'il faisait. Il me conseillait d'acheter certains objets sexuels, ce que j'ai fait. " Lorsque le jeune garçon demande à son idole pourquoi il a pris contact avec lui, celui-ci aurait répondu qu'il l'avait simplement " vu liker ses tweets " ou répondre à ses gazouillis publics. " J'avais un arc-en-ciel dans ma bio Twitter, il s'est sûrement dit : 'Tiens, une bonne prise.' ", constate l'adolescent.

" Quentin était un des plus exposés ", confirme Flavien*, qui a longtemps été proche de Baptiste M-D., et qui nous dit l'avoir vu " échanger beaucoup de messages " avec le jeune garçon. " Ce qu'il s'est passé avec Quentin, ça s'est aussi passé avec moi très jeune, en 2013-2014. À l'époque, je ne voyais pas le problème ", nous relate celui qui aura par la suite une relation officielle de quelques mois avec le Youtubeur.

" Si je peux pas avoir ta confiance totale ça sera fini aussi vite que c'est arrivé "

À la convention Maker Faire de Paris du 9 au 11 juin 2017, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont est l'une des célébrités les plus attendues. " Véritable star pour les plus jeunes ce Youtubeur aux 600 000 abonnés a réalisé plusieurs expériences détonantes ", peut-on lire sur le site officiel de l'événement, qui rassemble chaque année des milliers de " makers " (des passionnés de construction, de bricolages ou d'expériences hors du commun) venus présenter des projets.

Ce week-end, alors qu'il échange des vidéos sexuelles depuis plusieurs semaines avec son idole, Quentin fait le déplacement avec son père, pour rencontrer Baptiste. " Il n'y a rien eu d'explicite, une main par-ci par-là, c'est tout ", se souvient le jeune homme. Au cours de l'événement, dont il reviendra avec un autographe, une photo est prise par une personne externe : on voit Baptiste à côté d'une grande réplique du personnage BB8 de Star Wars. Quentin est à l'arrière.

Dans une conversation privée sur Discord ( une plateforme qui permet de discuter par écrit ou à l'oral à distance), dont Numerama a vérifié l'authenticité, Baptiste renverra cette image à Quentin, le 19 octobre 2017, accompagnée de commentaires sur son physique : " Cette petite bouche qui donne envie de... " puis " d'en écarter les lèvres avec mon gland, tout doucement ", envoie-t-il au garçon de 14 ans. Baptiste a alors 23 ans.

Quentin en a gardé les captures d'écran, et les a même publiées sur Twitter en 2020. Depuis, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont a supprimé de la conversation les messages qu'il pouvait : les siens. Dans une petite partie de leur discussion sur Discord, il ne reste plus, aujourd'hui, que les réponses de l'adolescent (à droite, ci-dessous).

Les échanges de ce type ont continué jusqu'à l'été 2018. " Je me sentais obligé de le faire, pour ne pas le décevoir ", nous confie aujourd'hui Quentin. " Je me disais que si je ne le faisais pas, il n'allait plus me parler. "

En juin 2020, le jeune homme se décide à publier quelques captures d'écran de ses échanges avec Baptiste Mortier-Dumont et de dénoncer ses agissements. Il participe également à la constitution d'un dossier envoyé en juin 2020 au Procureur de la République de Lyon, réalisé en commun avec plusieurs autres victimes. Le dossier regroupe plusieurs témoignages, preuves écrites et vidéo. Le Procureur s'en est saisi. Le 5 août 2020, Quentin a déposé plainte pour corruption de mineur - plainte que Numerama a pu consulter.

Contacté par Numerama, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont a nié tous les faits relatés par la voix de son avocat, comme nous le détaillons à la fin de cet article.

" N'en parle pas à d'autres "

Dès le 27 avril 2017, on observe, dans des conversations Skype dont Numerama a vérifié l'authenticité, que Baptiste M-D. s'inquiète des possibles retombées négatives si le garçon, alors âgé de 13 ans, venait à parler. Il lui fait même comprendre à demi-mot les conséquences s'il venait à raconter à d'autres personnes ce qu'ils font ensemble : " Sauf si ça éclate et que ça te met dans la merde tout comme moi (...) Je ne veux pas t'agresser en disant tout ça, mais faut que tu en sois conscient... (...) Et je comprends bien que tu sois tout content, mais si je peux pas avoir ta confiance totale ça sera fini aussi vite que c'est arrivé. "

Quelques minutes plus tôt, le Youtubeur enjoignait aussi : " N'en parle pas à d'autres (...) C'est pas un jeu non plus, et non pas qu'il y ait quoi que ce soit de mal, juste que j'existe publiquement, donc c'est compliqué. "

L'idole des jeunes

Baptiste Mortier-Dumont a raison sur ce point : avec son million d'abonnés YouTube en 2020, ses 40 000 followers sur Twitter et Instagram, l'homme de 26 ans est une personnalité publique, qui dispose d'une influence importante au sein de la communauté YouTube française.

Actif sur la plateforme depuis octobre 2012, il a publié plus de 140 vidéos d'expériences surprenantes (piéger une bouteille de coca, faire exploser des micro-ondes, casser un verre avec du son) inspirées par ses idoles du programme MythBusters. Son public : " les 13-24 ans à 80 % en France ", rapporte France 3 dans un reportage de 2019. En 2016, il est invité par l'agence spatiale française (CNES) pour tourner une vidéo en apesanteur. En novembre 2019, le " jeune savant un peu fou ", comme le décrit un reportage de France 2 en 2017, a reçu un trophée de la part de YouTube, qu'obtiennent les vidéastes qui ont passé la barre symbolique du million d'abonnés.

Il cumule 100 millions de vues sur ses vidéos, et continue d'en publier près d'une par mois, ainsi que d'autres sur String Theory, dont il est partenaire. Le Youtubeur est encore actif : sa dernière vidéo, publiée le 23 juillet 2020, a engrangé 700 000 vues en une semaine.

" Quand on devient connu, on est un personnage public. Donc il faut avoir une image publique. C'est chiant, parce que même si on est sympa et qu'on veut partager sa vie ou quoi, on ne peut pas ", confiait-il en 2014 dans une vidéo sur sa chaîne. Pourtant, dès ses débuts, le Français, qui habitait chez sa mère dans le Var avant de déménager récemment en Lorraine, a cultivé une grande proximité avec ses fans. Ils sont très nombreux à avoir pu discuter avec lui au fil des années, comme on peut encore l'observer en remontant ses nombreux échanges publics sur Twitter depuis 2013.

À l'extérieur, le Youtubeur est décrit comme un jeune homme affable, souvent de bonne humeur, un peu " foufou ", passionné par son métier et ses expériences scientifiques déjantées. Au sein de sa communauté toutefois, ses sautes d'humeur sont connues : " Il pouvait s'énerver rapidement ", décrit un ancien fan. Sur Twitter, il parle très souvent de lui, se plaint régulièrement de ne pas bien dormir.

Sur Ask.fm, il évoque ses problèmes avec ses parents, qui sont divorcés depuis une dizaine d'années. Sur cette dernière plateforme, où des anonymes peuvent envoyer des questions à quelqu'un, il est d'ailleurs interrogé sur sa relation " possessive avec ses amis ", il répond : " Disons que c'est la plus précieuse des choses que je recherche, et que ça me transforme totalement quand il se passe des trucs avec des gens en qui j'ai confiance et que j'aime, je tiens tellement à rencontrer des gens passionnés comme moi... Dans ces moments je suis tout simplement pas moi-même... :'(. "

Sa propension à multiplier les blagues graveleuses et les références érotiques est également connue de ceux qui ont échangé par écrit avec lui. " C'est quelqu'un qui est obsédé en continu ", lance l'un de nos témoins. " Le sexe était un des principaux sujets de conversation ", confirme un autre.

À l'automne 2017, il a créé un salon Discord " professionnel ", à son nom (ExperimentBoy Officiel), spécifiquement pour les fans de sa chaîne YouTube : les internautes s'y rendent comme sur un forum, où ils peuvent échanger entre eux ou avec leur star lorsqu'elle s'y connecte. Il suffit de s'y connecter, comme Numerama a pu le faire, pour observer le nombre de blagues à caractère pornographique qu'ExperimentBoy y a publié, notamment en 2019. Aujourd'hui encore, en 2020, des centaines d'internautes s'y connectent tous les jours.

" J'avais l'impression d'être spécial "

C'est néanmoins dans les échanges privés que le comportement de Baptiste Mortier-Dumont se transforme véritablement, où les demandes sexuelles se font plus pressantes. Quentin savait qu'il n'était pas le seul à avoir reçu des avances de son Youtubeur préféré, mais il n'envisageait pas qu'il puisse y en avoir autant d'autres. Numerama a pu retrouver neuf adolescents, entre 11 et 17 ans au moment des faits, avec qui Baptiste Mortier-Dumont a discuté, entre 2012 et 2018, et à qui il aurait demandé d'échanger des vidéos personnelles à caractère pornographique, se montrant souvent très insistant. Certains ont refusé, d'autres ont mis le doigt dans l'engrenage.

C'est le cas de Pierre*, qui souhaite rester anonyme dans notre enquête, mais qui a partagé toutes les informations qui suivent au Procureur de la République de Lyon, dans le signalement réalisé en juin 2020.

" T'es en pyjama dans ta chambre, c'est encore l'époque où il faut éteindre la lumière quand les parents passent. "

" J'avais l'impression d'être spécial, car il prend le temps de discuter avec toi ", confie Pierre, qui avait 13 ans lorsqu'il a commencé à interagir avec Baptiste Mortier-Dumont en 2013. D'abord sur Twitter, ensuite sur Google Hangouts et sur Skype, puis sur WhatsApp et Telegram. " Il voulait qu'on s'envoie des nudes, mais je n'avais pas de téléphone qui filmait à l'époque. " Le garçon est contraint de passer par un appareil photo numérique et d'envoyer des images par mail. " Il m'expliquait comment me masturber, me donnait des conseils ", continue-t-il. " Je ne captais pas l'aspect malsain du truc. T'es en pyjama dans ta chambre, c'est encore l'époque où il faut éteindre la lumière quand les parents passent. " Baptiste M-D. lui aurait notamment expliqué comment se servir de MEGA, une plateforme d'hébergement de fichiers, pour lui transférer les images. Lorsque Pierre a 14 ans, Baptiste en a vingt. " C'était tous les soirs ", commente-t-il amèrement. " Chaque conversation lancée, sur Skype ou Hangouts, avait pour but de diverger vers un truc sexuel. "

Cette relation toxique s'est étendue sur quatre années. Aujourd'hui, Pierre a conservé d'innombrables vidéos, photos et captures d'écran à caractère pornographique que le Youtubeur lui envoyait de lui, et que Numerama a pu consulter. " Parfois je me demande combien de gens il y avait en même temps. Et à combien de jeunes il a fait croire qu'ils étaient si spéciaux ", ajoute-t-il. " Je me dis qu'il a pu faire ça à la chaîne ", abonde Maxime*, un autre jeune homme qui avait 14 ans et 11 mois lors de ses premiers échanges avec Baptiste M-D., comme nous avons pu le vérifier.

" Tu peux avoir confiance en moi, je ne vais pas te faire de mal "

De la dizaine de témoins avec lesquels Numerama s'est entretenue, dont beaucoup ne se connaissaient pas et n'avaient jamais échangé, émanent des descriptions extrêmement semblables. Le modus operandi du Youtubeur semble bien rodé, avec des approches similaires. D'abord, la phase de discussion classique, et la flatterie. " Il m'a dit : 'Ah, enfin quelqu'un de mature, pas un fanboy qui m'adule', raconte Maxime. " Connaître quelqu'un de nouveau comme ça, et pas un gamin (trop) fanboy ou timide, c'est super ", envoie-t-il aussi à Thomas* en 2018.

Les conversations se déplacent ensuite virtuellement, de plateforme en plateforme. Des échanges sur Twitter ou sur sa chaîne Discord publique, puis une invitation à discuter en privé, sur Hangouts, la messagerie de Google, ou sur Skype, très prisée au début des années 2010. Avant de basculer, pour certains, sur Telegram, la messagerie chiffrée qui dispose d'un mode " secret chat " que Baptiste M-D. affectionne particulièrement. " Tu ne peux pas screen [faire de capture d'écran, ndlr], et si tu supprimes, ça supprime chez l'autre ", a-t-il dit à plusieurs de ses interlocuteurs dans différentes conversations que nous avons vues. En réalité, il est possible de prendre une capture d'écran dans cette application, mais l'interlocuteur reçoit alors une notification. " Dans tous les cas, j'envoie jamais visage + corps ", y explique-t-il aussi.

" Hétéro, bi ou gay ? " : la phase de " test "

" Il m'a demandé si j'étais hétéro, bi ou gay ", raconte Paul. Plusieurs des victimes présumées se souviennent de questions équivalentes, au cours de discussions où Baptiste M-D. essayait de les amener à parler de sexualité, de masturbation, et d'échanger des photos et vidéos de leurs pratiques. " L'amour n'a pas de sexe ", assure-t-il même publiquement en 2013.

Dans un autre échange avec un jeune homme de 17 ans que Numerama a vu, Baptiste parlera également de ceux qu'ils appellent des " hétéros extrémistes " qui se " disent choqués dès qu'un mot est un peu gentil venant d'un mec. "

" Je dois rester prudent avec ma notoriété "

Erwan* abonde : " En tant que fanboy, je rêvais d'être pote avec lui, mais il me faisait culpabiliser : si je ne fais rien avec lui, on ne pourra pas devenir autant amis. " Ce dernier fait partie des garçons avec qui Baptiste Mortier-Dumont a commencé à parler lorsqu'il avait moins de 15 ans. Dès le début, ExprimentBoy sait que le garçon est jeune. Le 1er novembre 2016, Erwan a 14 ans et 3 mois. Le Youtubeur, qui a 22 ans, lui dit par message Facebook : " Tu veux pas avoir 4 ans de plus et habiter dans le sud ? " avant de lui mentionner qu'il aimerait " l'adopter en petit frère ", mais qu'il ne peut pas, car " il y a toujours la distance et la différence d'âge qui sont compliquées ". Erwan lui dit qu'il ne comprend pas bien, car il n'y a " pas d'âge pour être proche ". Le Youtubeur abonde : " Tu as tout à fait raison, c'est exactement ce que je vis avec certaines personnes. Après dans mon cas, c'est compliqué, je dois rester prudent avec ma notoriété, et les petits malins qui sortiraient ça de leur contexte. "

Au fil des échanges, les sous-entendus sont de plus en plus évidents : " T'as pas l'air d'un coincé, dans tous les cas ", " Je cherche pas des potes, mais surtout des amis très proches... " " Si tu cernes à quel point je suis prêt à être open et proche d'un ami de confiance, tu comprends pourquoi c'est délicat pour moi... " " Je suis quelqu'un de très proche, alors avec ceux que tu connais bien et qui ont le même âge ça va, dans ton cas c'est plus délicat tu te doutes bien. Ça peut faire vieux pervers même si j'ai que 22 ans. "

Au moins trois témoins, qui avaient entre 13 et 15 ans au moment des faits, nous ont confirmé que le Youtubeur leur avait proposé de venir chez lui, dans le Var, pour réaliser des expériences scientifiques ou tourner des vidéos pour sa chaîne. L'un d'entre eux nous explique même qu'il aurait proposé d'écrire une lettre à ses parents, en tant qu'ExperimentBoy, pour les convaincre de laisser leur fils y aller, " pour la science ". Quentin aussi nous confirmera qu'il lui aurait également proposé de venir chez lui, dans le Var : " Mes parents ont refusé catégoriquement ", souffle-t-il, soulagé. Sur Twitter, le 4 juin 2013, le vidéaste publie un message s'attristant du fait que des parents " bloquent " ses invitations.

" Il a peut être repéré que j'étais un peu fragile "

Les interlocuteurs ciblés par Baptiste Mortier-Dumont ont des profils similaires : des jeunes garçons qui se décrivent comme ayant été " naïfs " ou " mal dans leur peau " dans leur enfance. " Il a peut-être repéré que j'étais un peu fragile ", avance Jason* qui se décrit comme un garçon " très sensible ", particulièrement au moment où, en juin 2018, son Youtubeur préféré l'a abordé directement en message privé sur Discord. L'échange, que Numerama a consulté, débute par un seul caractère : un emoji cœur rouge. Il a 16 ans et 11 mois à l'époque, mais dit au vidéaste qu'il en a 17. " Ah bah ça va, j'ai 24 et je fais toujours 18, j'ai mes chances ? " lui envoie Baptiste après seulement quelques échanges. Jason rentre dans le jeu. Rapidement, le Youtubeur lui demande des photos nues et lui propose de lui en envoyer. " À deux, c'est bien ", lui envoie-t-il après avoir partagé une combinaison d'emojis pour représenter l'éjaculation masculine. " Yes, but remember my age ", lui répond Jason en anglais. " Roooh ", répond le Youtubeur.

Pendant quelques semaines, ils s'échangent des images de leur sexe, dans des conversations Telegram que le jeune homme a conservées. " Ensuite, il ne s'est plus rien passé de particulier. Puis, j'ai regardé à nouveau ces conversations, et je me suis rendu compte qu'il y avait un problème. Je me suis rendu compte que j'étais une victime. " Il a décidé de porter plainte contre le Youtubeur en juin 2020, pour corruption de mineur. Numerama a vérifié que la plainte a bien été enregistrée et que les autorités en ont pris connaissance.

Deux garçons de moins de 13 ans

D'autres garçons qui ont subi ces avances déplacées étaient beaucoup plus jeunes que Jason. " J'étais harcelé à l'école ", nous décrit aujourd'hui François*, qui est entré en contact avec Baptiste par Twitter à l'été 2013, alors qu'il n'avait que 11 ans. Nous avons retrouvé plusieurs messages qui montrent que le Youtubeur avait pleinement conscience que le garçon était à l'école primaire au moment où ils se sont écrits pour la première fois. " Pour moi, c'était une sorte de coup de foudre. Il me disait de lui faire confiance, je lui racontais mes tracas à l'école, je me suis très vite attaché. C'était la première fois qu'un ami me montrait de l'affection. Il a compris que je n'avais aucune notion de ce qu'était l'amitié, et il m'a inventé une définition de l'amitié qui lui correspondait, pour que je tombe dedans. "

Le Youtubeur, alors âgé de 19 ans, aurait commencé à lui envoyer des photos de lui, souvent torse nu. " On parlait beaucoup de découverte de soi, de sujets intimes, de masturbation ", nous dit François. Puis l'escalade : " Alors que je rentre de vacances, je découvre il m'a envoyé trois photos par mail, de lui entièrement nu dans sa piscine ", des images qu'il dit avoir supprimées dans la foulée pour ne pas que ses parents ne les trouvent. Baptiste M-D. lui aurait demandé des photos en retour, " ce que j'ai fait ", nous confie-t-il. Plus d'un an plus tard, alors que le Youtubeur lui aurait envoyé à nouveau des photos dénudées, François lui aurait demandé de supprimer toutes les images de lui. Pour prouver sa bonne foi, Baptiste M-D. aurait alors lancé un partage d'écran de son ordinateur afin de détruire " en direct " le dossier qu'il avait de François, qu'il aurait gardé sur un compte MEGA.

Autre témoignage, même tranche d'âge ; celle où la puberté n'a pas encore débuté. Il s'agit cette fois de Louis, un jeune Belge de 18 ans qui essaye depuis six ans de faire entendre son histoire. Depuis 2014, il partage régulièrement des captures d'écran de messages que lui aurait envoyés Baptiste alors qu'il n'avait que 12 ans. " J'étais fan de ses vidéos et il a fini par répondre à une mention sur Twitter ", nous narre-t-il par écrit. Nous avons pu retrouver de nombreuses traces publiques de leurs échanges entre 2013 et début 2014. " Il s'est vite inventé un rôle de grand-frère protecteur, mais ça a vite tourné au malsain en terme de mots utilisés, de tournures de phrases " (sic). Dans un échange par message privé du 1er février 2014 qui circule encore en ligne, on peut lire : " Rêve de te caresser le ventre " puis " Je t'aime ! "

Dans un autre, il lui aurait écrit " Imagine qu'on est allongé au chaud tous les deux et que je passe une main dans tes cheveux. Et de l'autre je te masse le ventre délicatement (...) Des petites caresses et massages, tout doucement, en respirant profondément (...) Je viens poser ma bouche sur ton pitit ventre pour lui faire des bisous tout doux. " Louis assure avoir pris ces captures d'écran lui-même, mais avoir " tout supprimé " depuis, afin d'avancer.

À l'époque, ses accusations publiques sont utilisées et retournées contre lui par le YouTubeur lui-même, qui le traite publiquement de " pourri gâté ", ainsi que ses fans.

" Il m'a immédiatement bloqué dès que je lui ai fait part du fait que ses messages devenaient un peu malsains (...) Il y a pas mal de gens qui ne voulaient pas y croire ", regrette Louis. Un faux compte parodique est même créé en mars 2014 pour décrédibiliser le garçon et tourner en ridicule ses accusations. " Je préférais oublier ça et avoir la paix, parce que ça m'avait un peu intimidé, du haut de mes 12 ans ", nous raconte-t-il.

Dans la sphère des proches du Youtubeur, plusieurs se souviennent d'avoir entendu parler de l'histoire de Louis, et certains regrettent de ne pas lui avoir donné plus de crédibilité à l'époque. " Il y avait cette histoire d'enfant belge, Baptiste en parlait parfois, il me jurait que tout était faux ", nous confie un Youtubeur qui souhaite rester anonyme.

Quelques années plus tard, Baptiste évoque pourtant lui-même ces événements auprès de Mickaël*, son petit-ami de l'époque. Il nie ce qu'il lui est reproché, mais lui confirme l'existence, sur le web, de " traces d'échanges " publics entre lui et cet enfant, qu'il " voulait faire supprimer ", raconte Mickaël à Numerama. Le Youtubeur se serait plaint d'être " harcelé " sur Twitter par des internautes qui partageaient régulièrement les captures d'écran en question, afin de lui rappeler ces messages problématiques. Contacté sur ce point, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont n'a pas apporté de réponse. Comme pour les autres questions, son avocat nous a fait savoir qu'il niait tous les faits reprochés.

À l'époque, Twitter ne permettait pas aussi facilement de faire des recherches dans ses propres tweets. Le Youtubeur aurait souhaité faire disparaître ses vieux gazouillis pour " effacer toutes ses traces d'échange public avec cette personne ", nous explique son ex. " Étant donné que je n'étais pas trop mauvais en informatique, il m'a demandé si je pouvais lui filer un coup de main pour nettoyer son compte Twitter de ça. Je pensais l'avoir fait, mais j'ai réussi à retrouver des tweets qui traitent du sujet il y a quelques jours. " Numerama a également pu retrouver des tweets publics envoyés par Baptiste M-D. à Louis lorsqu'il avait 12 ans.

" Ça m'a détruit moralement "

Aujourd'hui, les témoins qui osent prendre la parole partagent une volonté d'agir dans l'espoir de faire cesser les agissements du Youtubeur, qui bénéficie toujours d'une immense notoriété, notamment auprès des jeunes adolescents. " En 2019, il m'a dit qu'il parlait avec un garçon de 13 ou 14 ans ", nous assure une source qui était encore en contact avec lui au printemps 2020. " Je lui ai dit que ce n'était pas bien, il m'a dit qu'il avait arrêté. Je ne sais pas s'il l'a vraiment fait. " Contacté sur ce point, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont n'a pas apporté de réponse.

Si certains disent avoir réussi à " passer outre " et à se reconstruire, d'autres gardent des séquelles indélébiles. " Ça m'a détruit moralement ", nous relate François, qui dit avoir craint pendant des années que les images qu'il aurait envoyées alors qu'il n'avait que 12 ans ne fassent l'objet de " revenge porn ", persuadé que Baptiste M-D. aurait tout conservé. " Dans ces cas-là, on blâme souvent la victime ", ajoute-t-il. " Cet éveil sexuel, on l'a eu par lui ", regrette aussi Pierre, qui a conscience d'avoir été " extrêmement dépendant " du Youtubeur qu'il admirait, et qui avait l'ascendant psychologique sur lui sur tous les aspects, que ce soit en termes d'âge ou de notoriété.

Certains, comme Erwan, disent également craindre les réactions du Youtubeur, qu'ils savent être en possession d'armes à feu et d'explosifs - on peut d'ailleurs le voir, dans certaines vidéos, organiser de nombreux feux d'artifice impressionnants en Belgique (il a obtenu sa licence d'artificier en janvier 2019). Dans une vidéo confidentielle que Numerama a visionnée, on le voit en effet s'entraîner à tirer dans un jardin avec un pistolet à silencieux. Sur son Discord, il a aussi fait mention, en janvier 2019, de son " fusil à pompe ", et s'est vanté d'avoir acheté une carabine semi-automatique après avoir vendu une " Tikka CTR ", une carabine qu'ExperimentBoy avait déjà montrée à certains de ses interlocuteurs, comme nous le confirme Quentin. " C'est quelqu'un d'énervé et d'armé ", abonde Pierre, qui dit avoir " peur de se mettre en danger et qu'il n'y ait aucune conséquence. "

Le Youtubeur a commencé à supprimer des messages dans de nombreuses discussions privées depuis le mois de juin 2020, date à laquelle plusieurs témoignages ont commencé à être diffusés sur Twitter. " Je ne peux plus discuter avec lui ", nous confirme un jeune homme de 18 ans avec qui il échangeait encore des photos en mai 2020 sur Telegram. " Il a bloqué notre conversation Telegram ", confirme aussi Quentin, qui a aussi constaté la disparition de certains messages dans leurs conversations privées sur Discord.

Sur Twitter, des gazouillis disparaissent régulièrement de son compte - un a été supprimé le 13 août, puis sept tweets le 14 août, encore un le 16, et deux le 17 août. Il ne nous a pas été possible de savoir quels messages ont été effacés.

Les réponses d'ExperimentBoy

À ce jour, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont n'a diffusé qu'un message concernant les accusations de corruption de mineur et les publications de captures d'écran sur Twitter : un tweet du 15 juin 2020 dans lequel il assure qu'il est victime d'une " tentative de déstabilisation " et qu'il portera l'affaire devant " les juridictions compétentes ".

Contacté le 18 août 2020 par Numerama, le Youtubeur ne nous a pas répondu lui-même, mais par la voix de son avocat, par téléphone d'abord, puis par mail. Il explique par écrit que Baptiste Mortier-Dumont " réitère les termes de son tweet de juin 2020 et s'inscrit donc en faux face aux accusations diffamantes, relayées dans votre mail de ce jour ", sans indiquer précisément quelles accusations sont concernées.

Lorsque nous avons demandé par téléphone si Baptiste Mortier-Dumont comptait répondre aux points précis abordés par mail (une douzaine de questions), son avocat nous a répondu au téléphone par la négative. Nous avons alors souligné que notre enquête serait publiée d'ici le lendemain. Une heure plus tard, par mail, il nous a envoyé par mail : " Outre l'atteinte manifeste à la présomption d'innocence, Monsieur Mortier-Dumont déplore une enquête dont le timing (position du mis en cause sollicité immédiatement avant la publication de l'article) laisse présumer - avant lecture même de l'article un positionnement partial " et a précisé que le vidéaste " n'hésitera pas à poursuivre tout auteur de propos à caractère diffamatoire / ou attentatoires à la présomption d'innocence. "

Nous avons pris la décision d'attendre tout de même le lendemain, puis de publier cette enquête.
* Les prénoms suivis d'un astérisque ont été modifiés Vous souhaitez nous contacter ou partager des témoignages ? Écrivez-nous à tips@numerama.com (possibilité de demander à nous contacter sur Signal ou Telegram).

Crédit photo de la une : YouTube/Experimentboy

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" Il faut que ça cesse " : enquête sur ExperimentBoy, Youtubeur accusé de corruption de mineurs

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Enquête Numerama] Le Youtubeur français ExperimentBoy (1,16 million d'abonnés) est accusé d'avoir profité de sa notoriété pour faire des avances à des jeunes adolescents, leur avoir envoyé des messages, photos et vidéos sexuelles de lui, et d'en avoir demandé en retour.

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Le box-office chinois : un enjeu financier énorme

Par peur de se voir refuser l'entrée sur le marché chinois, " flatter le gouvernement chinois " est devenu une incitation puissante pour décrocher de meilleures dates de sorties et disposer d'une plus grande mise en avant, d'après l'association. Et pour cause, comme l'explique le rapport, aujourd'hui, des sorties de studio majeures telles que Avengers : Endgame (Marvel Studios, 2019), Spider-Man : Far from home (Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios et Pascal Pictures, 2019) ou Fast & Furious : Hobbs and Shaw (Seven BucksProduction et Chris Morgan Productions, 2019) ont fait plus de recettes en Chine qu'aux Etats-Unis.

Les dirigeants des studios ne veulent désormais plus prendre le risque de voir leur film se faire refuser leur visa par le département de propagande du Parti communiste, chargé d'examiner les films étrangers. Mais pour cela, il faut correspondre aux attentes du système de censure chinois, l'un des plus répressifs au monde.

Eviter les sujets tabous et flatter la Chine

L'association PEN America prend en exemple plusieurs films américains, notamment ceux réalisés par Disney. Le rapport évoque les " censeurs présents tout au long du tournage du film Iron Man 3 " réalisé en 2013, et qui sont à l'origine de scènes, rajoutées dans la version chinoise, dans lesquelles les médecins chinois travaillent d'arrache-pied pour sauver la vie d'Iron Man.

En haut, la version originale du film de Top Gun avec les drapeaux japonais et taïwanais, en bas la version chinoise du film

Dans Doctor Strange, réalisé en 2016, le personnage asiatique avait été interprété par l'actrice Tilda Swinton. Le réalisateur C.Robert Cargill a avoué avoir " blanchi le personnage " et peu insisté sur les origines de cette héroïne, tibétaine dans les bandes dessinées qui ont inspiré le film, pour passer la censure chinoise. Dans Top Gun, le rapport évoque " la disparition mystérieuse du drapeau taïwanais sur une veste de vol, présent pourtant sur la version originale du film en 1986 ". En 2013, les dirigeants de Paramount Studios ont fait modifier le dialogue d'une scène de World War Z, où les personnages affirmaient que le virus à l'origine de l'épidémie de zombies venait de Chine. Très récemment, c'est l'actrice principale du film Mulan qui a mit en péril la sortie du prochain Disney en prenant position contre la répression policière chinoise à Hong Kong.

Une auto-censure devenue la norme

Plus de " méchants Chinois " mais des " sauveurs qui viennent à la rescousse " dans les films américains : c'est en tout cas ce que prédit l'organisation PEN America qui constate depuis plusieurs années ce tournant hollywoodien dans des films comme Gravity (2013), Arrival (2016) ou encore 2012 (2009).

L'organisation PEN America évoque avec inquiétude l'impact de l'intérêt financier sur l'écriture des narrations et la liberté d'expression des studios américains, " l'approche d'Hollywood consistant à céder aux diktats chinois crée une norme pour le reste du monde ". L'association demande aux productions américaines de stopper l'auto-censure, et de travailler uniquement en post production sur des versions spécifiques à la Chine s'il le faut, mais sans impacter la sortie mondiale. Aussi, l'organisation milite pour que la transparence soit faite autour des modifications imposées par les censeurs chinois. " De telles informations contribueraient grandement à rendre visible ce phénomène, à éclairer les contours de la censure de Pékin et à donner aux professionnels du cinéma et aux laïcs une meilleure compréhension des lignes rouges - réduisant ainsi l'incertitude qui autorise l'autocensure. "
SUR LE MÊME SUJET :> Sang, poker... La Chine intensifie la censure sur les jeux vidéo
> La Chine contre les jeux vidéo : " L'objectif est de discipliner les cyber-dépendants "

> Un faux tuto maquillage pour contourner la censure chinoise

> " En Chine, les femmes célibataires surdiplômées sont considérées comme périmées "
Illustration de une : Unsplash.
> Intelligence artificielle : la " victoire " de la Chine est-elle inéluctable ?

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Hollywood accusé " d'auto-censure " pour séduire le marché chinois

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Romane Mugnier Scènes coupées, intrigues changées, dialogues modifiés... De grands réalisateurs américains ont choisi de se censurer pour pouvoir être diffusés en Chine, d'après le rapport d'une association américaine.

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Les Emirats arabes unis reconaissent Israël

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Les Emirats arabes unis reconaissent Israël

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Que prévoit l’accord entre Israël et les Émirats arabes unis ?
Le président américain, Donald Trump, a annoncé hier soir avoir réussi à faire aboutir un accord entre Israël et les Émirats arabes unis visant à normaliser les relations diplomatiques entre les deux pays. À travers ce texte, baptisé « Accord Abraham », les deux pays promettent d’ouvrir des ambassades l’un chez l’autre, de mettre en place des vols directs entre leurs territoires et de signer plusieurs accords bilatéraux portant sur le tourisme, la sécurité, la santé ou l’environnement. Le communiqué commun aux trois pays précise qu’Israël va aussi « suspendre » sa déclaration de souveraineté sur plusieurs zones de Cisjordanie prévue dans le plan de paix présenté en janvier par Donald Trump. Le Premier ministre israélien, Benjamin Netanyahou, a cependant déclaré hier soir ne pas avoir « renoncé » à cette annexion. Ce rapprochement a lieu alors qu’Israël comme les Émirats arabes unis cherchent à réduire l’influence de l’Iran au Proche-Orient.

Comment réagissent les dirigeants palestiniens ?
Les dirigeants palestiniens ont aussitôt rejeté cet accord. Le Hamas, l’organisation politique et militaire qui contrôle la bande de Gaza, a dénoncé un « coup de poignard dans le dos » de la part des Émirats arabes unis, tandis que l’Autorité palestinienne, qui administre la Cisjordanie, a estimé qu’il s’agissait « d’une trahison de Jérusalem et de la cause palestinienne ». L’Autorité palestinienne a rappelé son ambassdeur préset à Abou Dhabi , la capitale des Émirats arabes unis, et a réclamé à la Ligue arabe, qui réunit 22 États arabes, et à l’Organisation de la coopération islamique, de se réunir de manière urgente afin de dénoncer cet accord. Cet accord contrevient à un plan proposé par la Ligue arabe en 2002 et auquel les Émirats arabes unis avaient adhéré. Ce plan prévoyait une reconnaissance d’Israël en échange de son retrait des territoires occupés depuis 1967 et de la création d’un État palestinien avec Jérusalem-Est pour capitale.

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The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally behind the hack and leak operation that published stolen Democratic Party emails, and that WikiLeaks — the website that published them — played a key role and "very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort."

The Trump campaign sought to take advantage of those leaks by asking for advance notice of the WikiLeaks disclosures, crafting public relations strategies around them, and even encouraging "further theft of information and continued leaks."

This took place at critical moments of the 2016 campaign, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded.

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Former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort passed internal Trump campaign information to a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 election, a new bipartisan Senate report concludes.

The findings draw a direct line between the president's former campaign chairman and Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign.

Manafort, who was later convicted for financial fraud crimes, briefed Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik on the campaign's polling data and how the Trump campaign sought to beat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

Manafort's connection with Kilimnik was a "grave counterintelligence threat," the report reads, adding that they found evidence the Russian intelligence officer may have been linked to the Russian government's efforts to hack and leak Democratic Party emails.

The findings are part of the Senate Intelligence Committee's fifth and final bipartisan report investigating Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. This volume is primarily focused on counterintelligence threats, and the wide range of Russian attempts to influence both the Trump campaign and the election itself.

The report builds on the Mueller investigation - and while it was consistent in fact goes further than the Mueller Report.

The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally behind the hack and leak operation that published stolen Democratic Party emails, and that WikiLeaks - the website that published them - played a key role and "very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort."

The Trump campaign sought to take advantage of those leaks by asking for advance notice of the WikiLeaks disclosures, crafting PR strategies around them, and even encouraging "further theft of information and continued leaks."

This took place at critical moments of the 2016 campaign, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded.

For example, when the Trump campaign was made aware that The Washington Post would be publishing a copy of the now-infamous Access Hollywood tapes, word got to Trump confidante Roger Stone - who tried to get a message to WikiLeaks through an intermediary so that it would publish hacked Democratic Party emails immediately.

WikiLeaks ultimately published stolen emails approximately 30 minutes after the Access Hollywood story was put online.

The Trump campaign responded to the report by saying it was evidence that "there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign," adding its contention that the "Russia Collusion Hoax is the greatest political scandal in the history of this country."

The report also finds fault with the FBI: with regards to the hacking of Democratic Party emails, the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that it did not act aggressively enough to warn the Democratic National Committee about the hacking operation.

But it also says that the DNC did not take these warnings seriously enough, and that there was poor communication on both sides.

The report also faults the FBI for giving "unjustified credence" to the information in the Steele Dossier, a compendium of reporting from a former British intelligence officer. The dossier, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded, "lacked rigor and transparency about the quality of the sourcing."

Following the Mueller Report, the fifth and final volume of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian interference puts something of a lid on years of probes into the issue.

From this, there is a bipartisan consensus about the nature of the Russian threat. Both sides agree that the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election - and are calling for action to protect campaigns from foreign interference in future campaigns.

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Senate Report: Former Trump Aide Paul Manafort Shared Campaign Info With Russia

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Former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort passed internal Trump campaign information to a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 election, a new bipartisan Senate report concludes. The findings draw a direct line between the president's former campaign chairman and Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign.

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Et donc elle fut remerciée par un maroquin. C'était après sa sortie lunaire devant la commission Covid de l'Assemblée nationale. Elle vomissait contre les médecins coupables de n'avoir pas stocké de masques tandis que les divers ministres de la Santé qui se sont succédé après elle avaient laissé disparaître le stock pandémique national.

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As even his base starts to desert him after protests over a rigged election were met with brutality, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko's 26-year grip on power may be slipping.

President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko has ruled Belarus for 26 years, backed by an expansive, brutal and unwaveringly loyal security apparatus. Credit... Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

MINSK, Belarus - In an age of ascendant strongman leaders, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus is suddenly looking surprisingly weak.

As protests against his rule have grown and intensified over the last week, the man known as "Europe's last dictator" turned in desperation on Monday to the once reliably loyal workers at a tractor factory. But instead of being showered with their support, he was shouted down with chants of "Go away! Go away!"

Until he claimed a landslide victory on Aug. 9 in a fraud-tainted election, few leaders appeared stronger and more secure than Mr. Lukashenko, a former state farm director who has ruled Belarus for 26 years, backed by an expansive, brutal and unwaveringly loyal security apparatus.

Now, in scenes recalling the popular uprising that came out of nowhere to topple Romania's seemingly invincible dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, the Belarus capital of Minsk, long known for its cowed calm and order, has shed decades of fear and raised its voice with a simple, insistent demand: The dictator must go.

"At the moment, the only issue that matters to us is the president," said Sergei Drilevsky, the leader of a strike committee at the Minsk Tractor Works. Calls for a new election, the release of protesters detained last week and other demands all flow from the need to address "the dictator's attempts to stay in power," he said.

Image

Workers protesting against Mr. Lukashenko outside the Minsk Wheel Tractor Plant on Monday. Credit... Sergei Grits/Associated Press

But Mr. Putin, while anxious to avoid Belarus going the way of Ukraine and embracing the West, has so far shown little interest in throwing Mr. Lukashenko a lifeline. He did promise help if Belarus should be attacked by foreign armies. But that possibility is considered so unlikely that, despite claims by Mr. Lukashenko of NATO forces gathering on the border, Mr. Putin provided scant real comfort.

Mr. Lukashenko's enemies are domestic, not NATO tanks and troops. This was made abundantly clear on Sunday when hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the capital, the biggest protest in the history of Belarus.

In what looked like a sign of increasing desperation, Mr. Lukashenko said on Monday, in remarks to a huddle of workers at the tractor factory, that a new election could be possible after the adoption of a new constitution. Just a few minutes earlier, in a speech at the factory, he had said the opposite: "We had elections. Until you kill me, there will not be any more elections."

Unlike protesters in Ukraine, who in 2014 waved European Union flags and cursed Mr. Putin as they toppled their own president, Belarusian demonstrators are not fighting to join Europe and reject Russia. They are waving the red and white banner that Mr. Lukashenko scrapped as the national flag and that has become a symbol of opposition to him.

Nearly everyone in Belarus speaks Russian, not Belarusian, a related Slavic language that is rarely heard outside villages. While some Ukrainian nationalists sided with the Nazis during World War II, Belarusians resisted Hitler's army with such ferocity that a quarter of the population died, making what was then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic the biggest Soviet victim of the war.

Mr. Putin, who last month engineered what was widely viewed as a rigged vote to prolong his rule until 2036, is no more open to free and fair elections than Mr. Lukashenko.

But Mr. Putin "would dump Lukashenko immediately if he was sure that people he thinks are friendly to Russia were ready to take over," said Dmitri Trenin, the head of the Moscow Carnegie Center and an expert on Russian foreign affairs. A military intervention by Russia to save Mr. Lukashenko, he added, would "lead to an utter and complete disaster. Everyone understands that."

But there is still anxiety in Europe that Mr. Putin could foment such a disaster.

"Putin will not let Belarus go," said Ulrich Speck, an analyst with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. "He went to war for Ukraine, and he'll do the same for Belarus if necessary. I can't see him accepting Belarus turning away and becoming a democracy and turning to the West. It's too essential to his own rule at home.''

Like Russia, the European Union has been caught by surprise by events in Belarus and is unsure how to respond, mindful that its strong support for protesters in Ukraine in 2014 deeply alarmed Moscow and helped turn Ukraine's internal political struggles into a dangerous geopolitical confrontation.

In a video statement on Monday, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the main opposition candidate in the presidential election, put herself forward as an interim leader until new elections can be held. But she is likely to be viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin since she has spent the last week sheltering in Lithuania, the NATO member to which she was forced to flee last week.

Mr. Lukashenko has sought to present himself as the only leader who can halt turmoil that he said is "no longer just a threat to Belarus" but Russia, too.

But the leader of Belarus "was never really pro-Russian and was always just using Russia" as a supplier of cut-price oil and natural gas, said Mr. Trenin, the head of the Moscow Carnegie Center.

The spectacle of mass protests in Minsk certainly alarms the Kremlin. Since Mr. Putin came to power 20 years ago, he has had an aversion to so-called color revolutions, popular uprisings in former Soviet lands that Russia has always seen as the work of Western intelligence agencies, rather than the result of any genuine local grievances.

Adding to this alarm have been weeks of protests in the Russian Far East, where protesters in the city of Khabarovsk have, of late, sometimes waved the red and white flag of the Belarusian opposition. "Belarus, we are with you," a group of Khabarovsk protesters chanted last week.

Mr. Lukashenko has worked hard to play on the Kremlin's phobias, claiming variously that the unrest in Belarus has been orchestrated by Poland, a member of NATO; by Ukraine; by the Russian opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny; and by Open Russia, an organization financed by the self-exiled Russian oligarch and longstanding Kremlin critic, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Vladimir Solovyev, a talk-show host who often channels the Kremlin's views, on Saturday broadcast video footage that clearly contradicted claims by Mr. Lukashenko's government that a protester killed last week had died from self-inflicted wounds after an "unidentified explosive device" blew up in his hands. The footage indicated that he was actually shot by the security forces.

"There was no explosive device. This is a total lie," said Mr. Solovyev. He also questioned the veracity of stories put out by the opposition.

Workers at the factory visited by Mr. Lukashenko on Monday gave their own verdict on whether what their president says is true. "Liar, Liar," they shouted.

Ivan Nechepurenko reported from Minsk, Belarus, and Andrew Higgins from Moscow. Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Brussels and Oleg Matsnev from Moscow.

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No Longer Cowed, Belarus Has Message for Once-Mighty Dictator: 'Go Away!'

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As even his base starts to desert him after protests over a rigged election were met with brutality, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko's 26-year grip on power may be slipping. MINSK, Belarus - In an age of ascendant strongman leaders, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus is suddenly looking surprisingly weak.

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U.K. First Socially-Distanced Concert Held in Newcastle

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Koh Lanta est le meilleur moyen de régler la question des Roms

Baiser la reine des neiges ça nous fait un bien fou

J'ai quitté le cocon familial, les Balkany, j'en avais marre

Quatre doigts le cul, on aime, on partagee

etc.

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HUMOUR DE MAUVAIS GOÛT - Blanc manger coco

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Tweets by davenewworld_2

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°°° prout

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You could easily miss it amid the romp and revelry that surrounds Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, as he leaps from his cheetah-drawn chariot after clapping eyes on the beautiful Ariadne: that tiny detail that transforms Titian's passionate painting of love-at-first-sight into something a little less fragrant.
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The work, inspired by a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses, depicts the instant Bacchus's boisterous posse happens upon a heartbroken Ariadne, abandoned by her lover Theseus on the island of Naxos, and has long been cherished for its sensuous portrayal of 'the way in which the world seems to come to a stop at the moment when people fall for each other,' as the art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon has described it.

Smack dab in the centre of his canvas, Titian has carefully, if curiously, positioned a caper flower, whose ivory petals and radiant bristle of exploding stamens are rendered with meticulous botanical detail. Follow the trajectory of the caper's strangely overextended pistil and it catches in its stigma's crosshairs the floating crotch of Bacchus, who, blasted from his seat, is frozen forever in mid-air, in what is surely among the most ungainly poses in all of art history.

A mischievous levitation

That the Latin name for the caper flower, Capparis spinosa, is related to the Italian word capriolare (meaning 'to jump in the air'), is a droll enough visual/verbal play to suggest that Titian is intentionally teasing us with the placement of the prickly perennial plant directly under the bouncing Bacchus. But it is the plant's medicinal use, since antiquity, as a natural carminative (or remedy for excessive flatulence) that reveals the artist is truly letting rip with some mischievous fun. In the context of Titian's carefully deployed caper, Bacchus's explosive propulsion from his seat appears more wittily, if crudely, choreographed by Titian, who demystifies the lovestruck levitation by providing us with a more down-to-earth explanation for the cheeky lift-off. In Titian's retelling of Ovid's myth, Bacchus has been hoisted by his own pungent petard, as Shakespeare, who likewise loved toilet humour, might have said.

Famously fond of flatulence himself, Shakespeare couldn't resist squeezing potty puns into his plays. Hanging in the air behind the phrase 'thereby hangs a tail', from Othello, for example, is the lingering whiff of broken wind. Rather than crude blemishes that besmirch his plays' achievement, however, such coarse scents attest to Shakespeare's full range of observation, his depth of sensitivity to every clench and contour of being here. They show that, in capturing all of life, Shakespeare holds nothing back (or in) and that his works embrace all of human experience - the serious and the silly, the melodious and discordant, the fragrant and the foul.

So too with Titian. The 16th-Century Venetian master's Bacchus and Ariadne, commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso I d'Este, for display in the Camerino d'Alabastro, a private room of his palazzo, is widely revered as an explosion of intense emotion through bold colour. The rich, rippling crimson of Bacchus's drapery and the lush ultramarine of Ariadne's cloak seem magicked from a purity of pigments powderised by the gods themselves. But what truly makes the scene so urgent and powerful is its heightened awareness of all the textures of this, the world we share with those mythic beings - a realm of rich hues, musical merriment, drunken delirium, and, yes, appalling pongs.

If you doubt that Titian in his day would have been alive to the importance of an odiferous dimension to Ovid's vision, compare the painter's visual portrayal of Bacchus and his half-cut crew with a verbal illustration of the same rambunctious retinue by his exact contemporary, François Rabelais. The fifth and final book of the French Renaissance writer's magnum opus, The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, describes at length the discovery in a temple of a mosaic that features Bacchus and his gang. "The satyrs, captains, sergeants, and corporals of companies, sounding the orgies with cornets, in a furious manner went round the army," Rabelais writes, melting the artwork into language, "skipping, capering, bounding, jerking, farting, flying out at heels, kicking and prancing like mad..."

Mapping Rabelais's verbal description onto Titian's canvas, one sees that the elements are all there - the skipping and bounding, the jerking and kicking, the flying at the heels and prancing like mad, and, indeed, even the capering and farting. In order to follow the trajectory of the caper's distended pistil to the buoyant bottom of Bacchus, our gaze must first bisect the legs and groin of an impish satyr, just above the flower, who glances knowingly our way. Given the satyr is often linked with flatulence in classical literature (Sophocles said they 'boasted of their farting power'), the interposition of one here is telling.

Once detected, a leitmotif of broken wind rumples the work's fabric and even begins to envelope the painting's leading lady herself. In the traditional interpretation of the story that Titian is telling, Ariadne, who has been watching the ship of the lover who abandoned her disappear, is taken by surprise by the arrival of Bacchus and his reprobate posse. Caught off-guard by Bacchus's beauty, so the story goes, she pivots clumsily to meet his gaze. But it is the inelegant backward fumble of Ariadne's left hand, which seems to have gathered a fistful of cheek in its awkward rotation, that suddenly waylays our eye. In the lewd light of the ripening trope of whiffiness, the upward waft of a twisting ribbon of fragrant rose fabric that rises from Ariadne's posterior is impossible to unsee. The gags are everywhere. Titian's painting is more than merely an elevated and exquisite mediation on the flex and fire of infatuation, it's a rude and rawdy whoopee-cushion for the eyes.

Am I alone in suspecting there may be as-yet undetected layers of sensory play in Titian's paintings - that they are indeed intended to engage each and every one our faculties? "When you look at Titian's paintings, he appeals to your sense of touch, especially, but also your sense of hearing and smell," says Matthias Wivel, Senior Curator at London's National Gallery, who has organised Titian: Love, Death, Desire, its current exhibition devoted to a series of six late works that the Venetian master created in the 1550s and 60s. "He's very keen on activating all your senses and it's just more immediate when it's visual than when you read it in Ovid, I think. But it's a very similar effect in that it activates our senses."
A prototype for his genius
Titian: Love, Death, Desire, summons a suite of canvases that the artist referred to as his 'poesie', for the lyrical quality he believed they shared with classical verse. The show offers a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see together in one place such masterworks as Danaë, Venus and Adonis, Perseus and Andromeda, Diana and Actaeon, Diana and Callisto, and The Rape of Europa. Not even Titian himself would have ever seen them all side-by-side. Bacchus and Ariadne, painted decades earlier when a young Titian was still establishing his reputation, is not a part of this display of mature achievement. But it hangs in a nearby gallery as part of the museum's permanent collection and shines a focused light on these later works as a kind of prototype for their intensity, ambition, and scale.

"Even though there are about 30 years separating them", Wivel says, describing the relationship between Bacchus and Ariadne and the half dozen mature paintings that comprise the show "a lot of what you see in the poesie is already there in Bacchus and Ariadne: the way he paints, the way he appeals to our senses, the way he uses tactility. When you see them next to each other your first reaction is to say that there is quite a big difference in how they're rendered. But when you get closer, you can see how absolutely logical that development is - how it's really it's a development of the same approach. It's not radically different. There's a natural evolution of his style."

Though Titian may not tuck a caper flower, with all its complexities of ambiguous aroma, into every one of his works, these later paintings repay close attention for their own overlooked details that enrich the tapestry of the stories they weave. "You notice all kinds of small things", Wivel says, of the advantage of having these canvases gathered together side-by-side, "how they form an overall thematic unit in a way. It's sort of obvious but it's not just that they're all stories from Ovid or they all deal with dramatic twists of fate and eroticism and so on. The way they become a meditation on nature for me has been very strong." This is "Titian at his best", Wivel says. What is it, exactly, that he feels Titian brings to the telling of Ovid that continues to resonate age after age? Again the analogy is to Shakespeare: "they're interested in many of the same things, because they're interested in emotion, " Wivel insists. "They're interested in the things that make us human - that we can't quite define or control."

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The hidden toilet humour in a Titian masterpiece

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You could easily miss it amid the romp and revelry that surrounds Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, as he leaps from his cheetah-drawn chariot after clapping eyes on the beautiful Ariadne: that tiny detail that transforms Titian's passionate painting of love-at-first-sight into something a little less fragrant.

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Woman freaks out after winning $11 on HQ Trivia [FULL ORIGINAL]

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The new pop sound of North Africa
(podcast, 59 min)
North African music receives very little coverage in the United States. There are no high-profile mixes of recent Tunisian underground dance music from hip DJs, and no young Algerian musicians with major distribution deals in the U.S. So we decided to explore what exactly is going on today in this part of the world. We trace the origins of some of the region’s most interesting current music to the banlieues of Paris, like raï ’n’b--a new autotuned and synth-heavy offshoot of raï. We also explore the Gnawa reggae movement, which finds common ground between Sufi trance and the message of Marley. Returning to familiar traditions, we present a live recording of Kabyle mandoleplayer Hamid Ouchène from Montreal’s Nuits d’Afrique festival, backed by a group of Montreal-based musicians with origins throughout the African continent. We next turn to the North African metal scene that developed during Algeria’s civil conflict to meld Berber folk music with black metal. Finally, we check out the new chaabi revival.

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North African music receives very little coverage in the United States. There are no high-profile mixes of recent Tunisian underground dance music from hip DJs, and no young Algerian musicians with major distribution deals in the U.S. So we decided to explore what exactly is going on today in this part of the world. We trace the origins of some of the region's most interesting current music to the banlieues of Paris, like raï 'n'b--a new autotuned and synth-heavy offshoot of raï. We also explore the Gnawa reggae movement, which finds common ground between Sufi trance and the message of Marley. Returning to familiar traditions, we present a live recording of Kabyle mandoleplayer Hamid Ouchène from Montreal's Nuits d'Afrique festival, backed by a group of Montreal-based musicians with origins throughout the African continent. We next turn to the North African metal scene that developed during Algeria's civil conflict to meld Berber folk music with black metal. Finally, we check out the new chaabi revival. Produced by Jesse Brent.
[APWW #692]
[Originally aired in 2014]

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Borderless Sounds - The New North Africa

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North African music receives very little coverage in the United States. There are no high-profile mixes of recent Tunisian underground dance music from hip DJs, and no young Algerian musicians with major distribution deals in the U.S. So we decided to explore what exactly is going on today in this part of the world.

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HQ Trivia's failed mutiny against their CEO

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Recomposing the soundscape of the intensive care unit

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Recomposing the soundscape of the intensive care unit

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There is no single continuous “blip” of a monitored heartbeat threatening to end in the stereotypical screaming flat line. It is more a continual fidgeting of sound, a representation of the chaotic systems of a body responding to clinical adjustments in a recursive, non-linear dance toward wellness or death.

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Official Soviet press releases announcing the launch of the satellite on 4 October 1957 pointedly publicized its radio signal frequency of 20-40 MHz-well within the range of amateur radio enthusiasts. Newspapers published timetables of its passage, and TV and radio stations and hams around the world lay in wait for Sputnik's crackly beep, produced by a spherical body weighing 83.5 kilograms and flinging through near-space at 18,000 miles per hour.[1]

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With no precedence for an electronic beep broadcast internationally, there was a lot of scope for interpretation. Life magazine described it as "an eerie, intermittent croak" that "sounded like a cricket with a cold."[2] Very much an other. Douglas Edwards declared on CBS television news: "Until two days ago, that sound had never been heard on this earth. Suddenly, it has become as much a part of twentieth-century life as the whirr from your vacuum cleaner."[3] And even with historical hindsight in a context of cultural commentary, Sputnik 's ambiguous tone might still divide a room. Is it joyous, whooping through its laps of honor, the first leg of the space race won? Or is it frail and panicked, the sound of a finite soul staring into infinity? Compare this to the electronic sounds routinely heard now: the encouraging click of activated virtual "buttons," the approving bleep of a computing task achieved, the blooping displeasure of a device mishandled or inopportunely activated. They relay their messages succinctly. Since that first tentative transmission, electronic signals have become confident managers of their milieu.

I am not entrusted with any especially dangerous equipment. And I seldom find myself in situations where I must act precipitously. The machine feedback that chivies, encourages, assures, and warns me is more associable with friendly, non-urgent utterances. The "ping" of the college's communal microwave is a "hey you" that prevents me inadvertently hogging it in the precious lunch hour; the beepette of our television turning on a tiny "hoorah" to mark the commencement of entertainments. These ersatz exclamations ease the passage through or mark the difference between routine activities of a multitasking brain and body. They are minor contributions to the comfort and convenience of the comparatively rich. But recently I have, unsurprisingly, been thinking about hospitals, about life-saving beeps. I have been imagining the sound of overloaded intensive care units and their equipment alarms. And I have been worrying about their unequal distribution, and about what it means that the BBC hospital drama series Holby City owns more working ventilators than some entire countries.[6] And I have been remembering how, on first entering an intensive care unit, the beeps and hums are literally alarming. While the hospital soundscape does not shatter with the yelps and screams of security systems or reversing lorries, anything that stands in for the (comparatively) silent running of a body is disquieting.

In the days before the pandemic, you could visit intensive care units (ICUs) and observe their composition of intersecting forms and movements, the medical team tending your loved one like an ecosystem, nudging drug levels here, reducing mechanical dependency there. The nurses, doctors, housekeeping staff, porters, and consultants rotate in shift patterns that phase with one another. Friends and relatives appear and reappear in erratic emotional states, like motifs and variations. Critical turning points-an organ failing, an operation succeeding-provide large-scale dramatic structure. And all the while these alarms, their rhythms and pitches layering experimentally. There is no single continuous "blip" of a monitored heartbeat threatening to end in the stereotypical screaming flat line. It is more a continual fidgeting of sound, a representation of the chaotic systems of a body responding to clinical adjustments in a recursive, non-linear dance toward wellness or death.

After a week of sitting beside an intubated loved one, it becomes like birdsong, a fact of nature in this strange, still, pale glade.

Give it longer than a week, and ask questions with as much objectivity as you can muster, and meanings emerge from these cryptic, busted melodies. Note the fluxing functionality of organs or the passing of a limit-of pulse rate or oxygen levels in the blood. Know that drug X has run out again. An infection has taken hold. If your sibling is also a nurse, and understands the relationship between beep and medical staff action (and hasn't misread the appropriateness of visitor intervention in that relationship), then you might start to relay certain alerts via improvised sign language to the staff member at the workstation visible through the window. You can become part of the conversation.

A year on, I found recorded snippets of the ICU soundscape among my phone's voice memos, collected to remind me of a month that had seemed to be both dissociated from the rest of life and the cold slate that lay beneath everything. Listening back, it struck me how soft the timbre was, how my pictorial interpretation would be curve-cornered and feather-edged, not hard and spiked like the classic digital alarm that punctures sleep. Hospital beeps are burred and protrude from an undergrowth of buzzes, whirrs, and clicks. They gather into short melodies, some more archly "contemporary" than others. I asked composer Matt Rogers to perform a deliberately conventional Western musical reading of my four snippets:

A pattern of three pitches on a regular pulse, followed by a gap of one pulse unit and then two more pitches, all a G quarter-tone sharp, concluding with a pause, with the whole phrase then repeated once. If we assume that the rhythm of the pitches represents an even subdivision of the whole phrase, including the pause, then time signature-wise the phrase sounds like it thinks it's in a 4, except in strict time it's more like 17/16 than 16/16. That is, the repeat of the phrase begins a fraction late.

A single, short, E quarter-tone sharp, repeated at a rate that describes a pulse of about 40 beats per minute. This overlaps with the end of a phrase from clip no. 1. The interval between the two pitches is a major sixth.

A pattern of three pitches on a regular pulse across a tritone pitch interval: F three-quarters sharp to C quarter-sharp back to F three-quarters sharp. The phrase occurs twice in the recording with a gap of about ten seconds between the end of the first instance and the beginning of the second. It could be considered that each instance of the phrase is independent of the other or that the gap is part of the phrase. Assuming the latter, and that the pulse of the pitches represents an even subdivision of the whole phrase, including the pause, then the phrase is about fifteen beats long at a tempo of 86 beats per minute. The tritone interval can be considered the sum of two minor thirds, implying a diminished chord, which in the Western tonal system often functions as instability, ambiguity, and transition. It's unsettled. It also features a lot in heavy metal. Historically, the tritone was dubbed diabolus in musica, controversial in church music, hard to sing, and generally considered distasteful.

A pitch dyad, or pair of simultaneous pitches, iterated twice on a fast, regular pulse. The pitches of the dyad are A and G; a major second which has a more "open" feel than the pitch content of clips 1-3, lacking any major or minor component and implying the open intervals of fourths and fifths. Inferring meter from the pulse of the dyads, we arrive at a phrase of seven beats at a tempo of about 158 beats per minute, with the dyad pulse representing the even subdivision of a single beat, the other beats being rests.

On the issue of tuning, while clip 4 is in equal temperament (where A4 = 440 Hz), clips 1, 2 and 3 are all closer to a temperament of A4 = 446 Hz. They are micro-tonally sharper. This difference of temperament in the whole soundscape could be a source of tensions for some (or indeed, stimulating for others). It might be torturous for anyone with perfect pitch.

Interestingly, taking together the pitches that are of the same temperament-G, E, F#, C-you have a lot of the characteristics of the scale referred to as the acoustic scale, Lydian dominant, or Lydian flat seven scale. These are also to be found in the opening phrase of the theme tune to the cartoon The Jetsons. (Add the pitch of the fourth clip, in the same temperament, and you end up with the opening phrase of the theme tune of The Simpsons.)

Despite the soft edges, then, there is much here to unsettle ears habituated to Western music norms: a "distasteful" chord, different tuning between machines, irregular temporal patterning.[7] This is not easy listening. What's more, ICU alarms are copious. Nurses must process hundreds in a single shift.[8] Often there are too many to remember or identify or differentiate between. And one alarm can potentially mask another. Then there are the huge number of "false" alarms that don't require clinical intervention, but which are difficult to adjust, and so are often disabled entirely, which presents fresh issues. Add to this the lack of standardization between device manufacturers, and poor mapping between the urgency of a situation and the perceived urgency of its corresponding alarm, and the result is, hermeneutically speaking, a horrid garble.[9]

This is not a novel state of affairs in sectors that have developed over time through the efforts of many people with disparate outlooks, capacities, experiences, and expectations. Take the railway in the UK. In 1865, after three decades of laissez-faire free-market pioneering, there were 366 authorized railway companies in Great Britain, each operating with their own agendas, procedures, and even rail gauges.[10] It wasn't until statutory amalgamation in 1923 that the railway was consolidated from 120 companies into four. Add to this nationalization in 1948, the notorious "reshaping" of the railway-with vast cuts to stations, lines, and services-in 1963, and reprivatization in stages between 1985 and 1997, and you have a network today that is noticeably more unwieldy than that of, say, Belgium, which was government-built and -owned, and designed coherently, from the off. The ICU finds itself in a state analogous to the British railways. Infusion pump, feeding pump, warm air generator, suction pump, heart-rate monitor, electronic patient record, oxygen supply, ventilator, normothermia system-potentially all made by different manufacturers without consultation on coherent overall design or even regulatory standardization on such things as pitch tuning. And this latter point is not merely an aesthetic concern. Research suggests that in the absence of consciousness, many patients process sound automatically and implicitly and can distinguish between the sounds of human, animal, tool, and musical instruments in the environment.[11] What anguish, then, if one such patient were a musician with perfect pitch?

This is not to suggest that the biomedical machine industry is negligent or incompetent. Thought has certainly gone into the timbre of individual ICU alarms, and there are sound design companies out there who have been hired by a handful of biomedical machine brands. But in the industry more generally, the effects of sound tend to be considered as just one element within the issue of "human factors" in the working environment.[12] To compare across industry boundaries, for the last ten years the Swedish truck and bus manufacturer Scania has employed an in-house sound designer, Stefan Larsson, to develop driver-vehicle interaction sounds using synths and music-industry software, and to evaluate them, in consultation with users, in driving simulators. The company is currently working on a system by which these sounds can self-adapt in response to ambient noise. This is understood as part of the brand, certainly, but also of vehicle functionality. To be fair to the biomedical machinery industry, though, they compare favorably to the many machines and devices that seem to have had their beeps plonked in them without much thought at all. There are some that are unpleasant to the point of unusability. But on the upside, it is within these contingent electronic soundscapes that strange serendipities can occur. My composer companion has encountered supermarket barcode scanners playing "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a reversing truck issuing a phrase from Mendelsohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, and a fragment of Beethoven's Für Elise performed by the closing doors of a London Underground train. And while on the subject of supermarket checkouts with differently pitched beeps, he asks: If these checkouts were made by the same manufacturer, how are their beeps different in tone? We agree that some beeps drop in pitch when the device's batteries are running out, but these supermarket tills are powered by mains electricity. I can only surmise that factory-made sound chips are programmed and manufactured in such a way that they fall somewhere between digital cookie-cutter duplication and the infinite variability of a hand-thrown pot.

Sonic branding is big business. Should you be interested, you could commission the composition of a long-form anthem, a sonic logo, or the sounds your product emits during user operation. Computer and video game companies lavish much time, effort, and money on the second and third of these. For a canonic commission, there is the Windows 95 start-up sound designed by Brian Eno. A more guerilla affair was Jim Reekes's Apple computer start-up chime, which he snuck onto a new Mac model without permission circa 1992.[13] Interestingly, the sound he was so driven to replace was "absolutely the most inharmonic dissonant sound you could make"-a tritone. There are many other, less substantiated stories out there: that one-eighth of the bits of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game were taken up by the SEGA sonic logo; that the first note in the Intel logo comprises twenty sounds, one of which is an anvil being hit; that the first Facebook messenger "ding" was an F major seventh, which comprises the pitches F, A, C, and E.[14] But what becomes clear is that an increasing amount of thought and resources is channeled into the electronic soundscape. As interfaces disappear into the "internet of things," sound will become an increasingly vital means of activation and affirmation.

These sounds will be lavishly fashioned. And before this they will have been explained to the corporate client. Reekes describes wanting to reassociate the computer booting up with a "palate cleanser," a "refreshing" sound: "a big fat C major chord with a lot of thick rich sonic textures" comprising "a bunch of strings" and a "chiffy sound, like you get with a bamboo flute." Other sounds suggest tension resolution or a waking up, a gentle rub on the back, a breath, excitement, a sense of community. The description of sound is a craft in itself. (I am reminded of the pronouncements of wine tasters. "Tarpaulin edged in lace" is an old favorite.) There is shorthand for most things, and in the sonic design sector less artful stereotypical sounds participate in circular hermeneutic hardening processes: the brass sound selected to signify "success" because the heroic is represented by trumpeting. (I am all for the communalizing effect of clichés, but it should always be remembered that a trumpet can also be played comically, schmaltzily, or pathetically.) But a discussion of ICU alarms would be less straightforward, since their emotional association and informational content is complexly ambivalent. I would love to attend a meeting between a UX designer and a healthcare technologist intent on squaring the circle of alarm fatigue.

INPRAF will also lobby for standardization within the biomedical equipment industry, insisting that every machine's pitched beeps are tuned to the same temperament. And we would proffer a development plan whereby different timbres of alarm are consistently mapped onto specific types of machines and different urgencies of response required. This standardization would be rolled out across all hospitals in all countries so that staff moving between appointments would no longer have to relearn a whole new set of sounds and their meanings.

Like so many sound and video makers, we will absorb the beeps into a cozy, amniotic digital layering of buzzes, hums, and drones. And we will have the brilliant idea of tailoring this for each patient. We will explore the possibilities of scraping home environments for calming, familiar sounds: of strip lights, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, traffic. We will build up a library of ambient samples, from which the patient selects a personal mix (or a loved one will choose, if the patient is already unconscious on entering the ICU). This montage will be incrementally altered by a recursive monitoring and compositional system that responds to the patient's fluxing biophysical state. But eventually a patient will be found for whom all mixes send them into a downward trajectory. Someone will point out that not everyone has a home life they can associate with calm, or even with safety. And not everyone has a home.

And so, working ever backwards through time, we will eventually find ourselves at the birth of the universe. We will hear the Planck telescope's recording (made audible by a fifty-octave compression) of primordial soundwaves that "shook this infant universe, triggered by minute, or 'quantum,' fluctuations happening just moments after the big bang."[19] We will know this is perfect. We will carpet the ICU ward and line its walls with the hissy hum. And through these natal sighs of the heavens, the alarms will surge like satellites.

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The Devil's Chord or a Tap on the Shoulder? | Sally O'Reilly

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Official Soviet press releases announcing the launch of the satellite on 4 October 1957 pointedly publicized its radio signal frequency of 20-40 MHz-well within the range of amateur radio enthusiasts.

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The rise and fall of HQ Trivia
(podcast, 8 episods, 5 hours :/)

The live trivia app HQ Trivia was once the obsession of the internet, garnering millions of players and an international spotlight. But then it all went wrong. From the Ringer Podcast Network, Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia is an exploration of the spectacular rise and fall of the massively popular app, reported and hosted by Alyssa Bereznak.

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Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia

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Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia on The Ringer

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Kevin The Dog Visits Clearwater Marine Aquarium

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Selon l’OMS, 28 projets de vaccin sont au stade des essais cliniques, c’est-à-dire qu’ils ont déjà été testés en laboratoire et qu’ils le sont désormais sur des humains.
Six sont dans leur phase finale (phase 3). Durant cette phase, le projet de vaccin doit être testé sur plusieurs milliers de volontaires.
Parmi ces six projets se trouvent le laboratoire américain Moderna, le chinois Sinopharm et le britannique AstraZeneca. L’Allemagne, la France, l’Italie et les Pays-Bas, réunis au sein d’une alliance créée début juin, ont conclu un accord avec ce dernier pour garantir à l’Union européenne 400 millions de doses.

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scammers / dating site
(long format, 35min)

This is the other way that social media has changed the romance scam racket. To a con man, your Facebook page provides an invaluable cheat sheet: a years’ long record of your interests, values and personality, including the organizations you care about, the politics you subscribe to, your hobbies and favourite TV shows. So suddenly you’re not just meeting some guy—you’re meeting a fellow right-of-centre Christian and outdoor enthusiast who also loves dogs or basket weaving or your favourite country song.

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Like most middle-aged women dipping a toe back into the dating scene, Jodi got on Tinder because her friend convinced her to. They were hanging out, drinking wine. It was a few weeks into 2018 and Jodi hadn't been on a date in more than 23 years. Having recently gotten out of a difficult marriage, she was in the process of moving on with her life-she had bought a new house and lost a bunch of weight. When she wasn't stressing over her long-term financial security, she was feeling optimistic and open to new possibilities. Her profile mentioned her love of camping and kayaking and included a link to her favourite country song: "Meant to Be."

The first guy she met was nice, if not exactly her dream man, and things petered out after a couple dates. She remembers swiping right on Andy's profile a few days later-he was totally her type in a baseball hat, with a little bit of scruff and good teeth. ("I always look at teeth," says Jodi, who is now 50 and works as a health information analyst.) She was sitting in her home office in West Kelowna, B.C., when she got a message from him: "I like your profile." Turns out they had the same favourite song, which felt promising. They met at Starbucks that afternoon and engaged in the typical first date chit-chat. She talked about her career, her dog. Andy told her that he was moving back home to Canada after having spent the last decade in Vietnam. He was an engineer on offshore oil rigs and had apparently done well for himself. Now he wanted to slow down, do some travelling, enjoy this stage of life with someone who wanted the same things. He was figuring out where he wanted to settle down and buy a house, which is why he was in Kelowna. He told her his name was actually Andre; Jodi started calling him Dre.

Their second date was a movie the very next day. On date three, he came to her place for dinner and they talked for hours about their similar life experiences. He had also gotten out of a troubled marriage, and had grown up with parents who were addicts. They discovered they both hated seafood and loved Mexican. He showed her photos of his fancy condo in Vietnam and his KTM motorcycle. That night, sitting together in her living room, Dre told Jodi he was falling for her. Big time. "Everything he said was exactly what I wanted to hear," says Jodi (who asked us not to print her last name). Dre was super affectionate-something she hadn't experienced in years. The first time he went to hold her hand, she was caught off guard, and when she explained that her ex had never done so, he said-wait for it-that he would never let hers go. He met her mom and some of her friends and everyone thought he was wonderful. One of her closest friends has a daughter on the autism spectrum who is generally non-communicative, but Dre was able to bring her out of her shell. "I remember my heart just exploding," Jodi says. "That was the moment where I thought to myself, 'Wow, I think I might really love this guy.' "

They started to plan their life together. Dre would have to go back to Vietnam to get his money, much of which, he explained, was in gold bars. They would go together, he said-sort of like a honeymoon. First, though, he was going to take a job delivering water to oil rigs in Edmonton. It would just be a few weeks, and the money was great, he told Jodi. Then he asked if he could borrow $500, so he could pay for the recertification required to take the job. Jodi wasn't totally comfortable with the idea, but Dre had a story about how he couldn't access his own funds and he promised to pay her back. A single gold bar was worth three times that much, and he had dozens. "I'm doing this for our future," he said. And at the time, she believed him.

Romance scams are on the rise. If you happen to be a single woman over 40 with a social media account or dating profile, you probably know that already. Recently I was chatting with a friend who fits that description; she told me that weeding out scammers is just another reality of dating these days, right up there with fielding dick pics. ("There are the gross guys who want to turn you into a blow-up doll," she said. "And there are the 'nice' ones who just want you to send them money.") If she's exaggerating, it's only by a bit. Of course, con men (and women) have been faking love for financial gain for centuries. But like many forms of fraudsters, phony Romeos are thriving in the digital era, where you don't even have to meet your mark in person-or live on the same continent-to take them for all they're worth. According to the most recent numbers from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), romance fraud cost Canadians $26.7 million in 2018-that's more than any other form of fraud in terms of monetary losses. It's also an extremely low estimate: The CAFC and the FBI believe that only between five and 15 percent of fraud victims contact the authorities, meaning the actual damage is far greater, both from a financial and psychological perspective.

"People have so much shame around being conned," says Lisanne Roy Beauchamp, a spokesperson for the CAFC. Unlike a lot of crime, she says, the attitude with fraud is often less "you were victimized" and more "you fell victim." Given the highly personal nature of romance scams, it makes sense that this particular subclass of scamee may experience the stigma most acutely. Admit it: If you don't have a personal experience with these types of crimes, you probably harbour some unflattering opinions about the women who fall for them. They must not be very smart or are extremely reckless or just so desperate for a man that they're willing to overlook the obvious. In reality, this is not the case, says Monica Whitty, a psychologist at the University of Melbourne, who has published papers on romance scams and cyber security. "Those myths are actually part of the problem," she says, since they can create a false sense of imperviousness.

Under the right circumstances, almost anyone can fall prey to romance fraud, but the most common victims are well-educated women in their late 40s, 50s and 60s. (The FBI estimates that 82 percent of victims are female, but that number may be off since it's possible men are even less likely to report.) They tend to be trustworthy, prone to impulsivity, community-minded and, yes, romantic.

Consider the hugely popular Dirty John podcast (and follow-up TV series), a true story that brought a lot of attention to this type of crime in 2017 and 2018. The victim was the founder of a successful interior design firm. She was close with her daughters until her scammer, John Meehan, took steps to isolate her. "What people don't understand is how the victims in these scams are manipulated and groomed. For the criminals, this is their job and they are extremely good at it," says Roy Beauchamp. In most cases a fraudster will start with "love bombing," either online or in person. The technique-flooding a person with affection and attention to fast-track intimacy and build dependence-is also used in cult recruitment strategies. Mirroring-reflecting a person's experiences, likes and dislikes-is another effective tool for creating the illusion of having found one's "other half."

This is the other way that social media has changed the romance scam racket. To a con man, your Facebook page provides an invaluable cheat sheet: a years' long record of your interests, values and personality, including the organizations you care about, the politics you subscribe to, your hobbies and favourite TV shows. So suddenly you're not just meeting some guy-you're meeting a fellow right-of-centre Christian and outdoor enthusiast who also loves dogs or basket weaving or your favourite country song.

Jodi and Dre had been dating for a month when he left to take the job in Edmonton. He told her he would miss her every moment he was gone. A few days later, he called to say he'd had chest pains, and a doctor told him he should return to Kelowna to recover. Looking back, Jodi believes this was just another layer of manipulation. "My dad died of a heart attack, so he knew that was a thing for me," she says. Dre came back and planted himself on her couch. Everything would be fine with the job, he assured her. He had subcontracted the first part to one of his guys, and was still earning a cut. When he returned to Edmonton about a week later, he was in touch constantly, inundating Jodi with emailed copies of invoices and time sheets and getting her to input the information into an Excel document. Which is exactly what these guys do, says Whitty. "From a psychological perspective, we've only got so many cognitive resources to process new information." By flooding a victim's brain with random (and useless) details, scammers create a scenario where you're more likely to miss what might otherwise read as red flags.

Shortly before Jodi was expecting Dre back in Kelowna, he called to say he was in trouble over unpaid back taxes. He had a big cheque to cash from the Edmonton job-a little more than $49,000-but if he put it in his account, the government would claim it. Without the money, he couldn't pay his subcontractors. They wouldn't be able to go on their trip. There was one possible solution, he said-not immediately, and almost like it had just occurred to him. Maybe he could have his employer make the cheque out to Jodi, and they could deposit it into her account instead. Jodi questioned whether this was legal; Dre's answer was that pretty soon their names would be on the same cheques anyway. Wasn't that what she wanted, too?

They were on FaceTime when Dre e-deposited the cheque into Jodi's business account, and got her to transfer him $19,500. To this day, she doesn't understand why her bank didn't put a hold on such a large deposit. She doesn't remember anything looking suspicious, but she admits she may have been distracted.

It was the Easter long weekend, and that same afternoon, Jodi was flying to Vegas for a wedding. For three days, she spent time with old friends and family, danced and got tipsy. And, of course, she told everyone about her new boyfriend, who was taking her on a trip to Vietnam in two weeks. (She had already booked the time off work.) "People said I was glowing," she recalls. After she got home, she drove to the grocery store. Dre would be back in a few hours, and she wanted to have dinner ready. At the checkout, her debit card was declined. A second card didn't work, either. She called a friend who agreed to send her some money. While Jodi waited, she started connecting the dots. And her stomach started to sink. When she got home, she sat down at the computer and brought up her banking information, which confirmed what she already suspected. Dre's cheque had bounced, leaving her nearly $20,000 in overdraft. Between that and the money she had lent him for work expenses and accommodations, she was out $45,000. Her dream man was a con man. And he was gone.

On the same Easter 2018 weekend that Jodi was in Vegas, Rosey (who asked that we use a pseudonym for safety reasons) was boarding a train in Vancouver. The 48-year-old nurse and wellness professional met "Andre" in the bar car one night, while having a drink with some women she had met on board. He was confident and gregarious-he talked about working on oil rigs in Asia, and how he had made a fortune on some well-timed real estate investments. Now, he wanted to enjoy life. The group hung out a lot during the four-day train ride, and when they got off in Toronto everyone exchanged emails and phone numbers. Rosey was visiting family who lived in southern Ontario. The next day she got a text from Andre. He was just a short drive away, he said, as if the whole thing was a happy coincidence-maybe they should get together for a coffee? They met at a Starbucks in the lobby of the Sheraton where he said he was staying.

Rosey was going through a rough patch in her marriage at the time. She was also in the middle of a career change and had travelled to Ontario to visit her aunt and uncle after her cousin had died tragically. Andre had his own sob story about how his parents were addicts, how he lived on his own as a teenager. They were walking around downtown when he got his wallet out and showed Rosey his driver's licence photo, which he said he hated. Later, as he was getting out of her car, he started slapping at his pockets. Wouldn't you know it, the wallet was missing! His ID, credit cards and thousands in cash were gone, he said. This was a big problem, because the rest of his money was in Vietnam. He would have to cancel his cards, file a report with the police and figure out where he was going to stay for the night. That was the first time Rosey lent Andre money, paying for his hotel room before driving back to her family's place.

Over the next few days, Andre made a big production of talking on the phone with the police. He said he would have to go back to Toronto to sort things out with his bank; Rosey lent him money for the bus. Two nights later, she went to the casino with her brother, and won $5,200 on the slots. Andre called shortly after and she told him about her winnings. He was calling, he said, because he had decided to come back to see her. "I can't stop thinking about you," he said. When he "got back" (because it's possible he never left), they headed to a nearby jazz bar. He told her that he had never met anyone like her before. He loved the way her mind worked. He understood that she was going through a tough time, but what if he could make her troubles disappear? He offered to pay off her half of the mortgage so that they could get away. He had a boat that was just sitting in the Caribbean. She could work from her laptop while they lived like one of those couples in a Freedom 55 commercial. As they toasted her windfall, Rosey allowed herself to imagine the life Andre was describing-even if she was the one paying for their drinks.

Rosey and Andre spent three days and two nights together in southern Ontario, all on her dime. When she returned to B.C., he texted her several times a day. He would come to see her soon, but first he needed to fly to Singapore to meet with his accountant and then to Vietnam to get his gold. She wired him funds to pay for his travel visa. She paid for his bus fare from Toronto to Montreal-he had to fly out of Montreal, he explained, because the flights out of Toronto went through the U.S., and he wasn't allowed into the States because he had taken the rap for his ex's DUI charge. He always had a detailed story and the receipts to back it up. Later, he texted her photos "from Vietnam"-one of his condo, another of a bed covered in stacks of American bills. He had her money and would be home soon. At this point, Rosey had lost a little under $7,000.

She gets that this all sounds crazy. "I can't even explain it. It's like you want to take care of him because you believe he's going to be taking care of you later. I was confused, but I was intrigued." Looking back, she says the experience was "like being in a trance." That is more or less an accurate assessment, says Whitty. "Part of being in a trance is being focused purely on one thing, which is why romance scammers work to isolate their victims." They also seek out individuals who are already isolated. A Federal Trade Commission survey from 2013 found that participants who had experienced trauma-a death, a divorce, a stressful career incident-in the previous 24 months were more than two-and-a-half times as likely to have experienced fraud than those who had not. Rosey was dealing with all three.

It was only once she was back in B.C. that her brain started to sort everything out. One night she had a dream and woke up with a very strong sense of what was going on. She texted Andre: "I know what you're up to. I've figured you out." The number was out of service; his WhatsApp had disappeared. Along with any other traces of the man she thought she knew.

So who is Marcel Andre Vautour? According to his driver's licence (or one of his driver's licences), he was born on September 25, 1975. He has at least three siblings, none of whom responded to messages I sent them. Between 2001 and 2008, he was in a common-law relationship with a woman with whom he has three kids; she claims Vautour destroyed her credit by making purchases on her cards and opening cellphone accounts in her name. It's likely the hard-knocks back story he gives his victims is largely an invention. According to a friend who knew Vautour in grade school, he grew up with a pool in his backyard.

Police records on Vautour go back at least 24 years. While romance scams appear to be his specialty, other allegations and charges against him include credit card fraud, identity theft, possession of goods obtained by crime over $5,000, obtaining by false pretense and auto theft. He has mostly escaped prosecution, but in 2005 he did receive a suspended sentence of one year's probation in Quebec for credit card fraud. In 2009, he served a six-month conditional sentence in Victoria, followed by two and a half years of probation, for fraud. There are (or have been) arrest warrants for him in Quebec, Winnipeg and New Brunswick-and it's likely there are more.

The fact that romance fraud is almost never handled federally plays a key role in how scammers like Vautour are able to evade capture by skipping from one jurisdiction to another. Explaining why they do what they do is a little more difficult. Obviously there is the financial motivation, but despite what we see in the movies, your run-of-the-mill grifter is not living like Leo in Catch Me If You Can. "Think of these individuals as having a parasitic lifestyle-when they have a gracious host, they do well. Otherwise, they may be experiencing adversity," says Simon Sherry, a psychology professor at Dalhousie University who studies various forms of personality disorder. Vautour seems to fit the description: When he isn't scamming, he's often holed up in hostels or the Salvation Army. His victims say he has faked illness just to stay overnight at a hospital. They also say he is extremely good at fixing things, including cars and electrical systems. Which begs the question: Why not earn a good living as a mechanic or an electrician? "That's assuming there is a choice being made," says Sherry, who has no specific knowledge of Vautour. In general, he says such individuals exhibit traits like remorselessness, social deviance and an unwarranted sense of superiority from an early age. "There is often this sense of, 'What kind of a sucker would work nine-to-five?'" he says.

In a lot of ways, con men like Vautour and Dirty John 's John Meehan are relics, even outliers, in the new scammer economy that takes place almost exclusively online. According to the CAFC and the RCMP, the majority of the complaints they hear relate to mass-market romance scams: fraudsters who play a numbers game, sending out thousands of messages a day on social media and dating sites-to see who bites. Often attached to larger criminal organizations, they use scripts and work in groups so that the dashing military officer or rare gems trader you think you're dating is actually a bunch of different people who specialize in various stages of the con: the initial contact, the seduction, the big ask. In most cases, the relationship will escalate quickly and then suddenly there is an emergency: your guy is stuck at the border, his sister needs surgery. The CAFC gets reports all the time from women who head to the airport to meet the love of their life, only to return home humiliated-and cleaned out. And still a scam may continue; the guy will make up an excuse for why he didn't arrive, or he will admit that yes, this started off as a scam, but now it's true love. Concerned relatives and friends often call the CAFC, saying that the victim can't or won't believe what seems obvious-which simply reflects the power of the manipulation.

For Jodi and Rosey, finding each other was an important step in breaking the spell. The two women met on Facebook after Rosey came across an account Vautour had created while he was with Jodi. After exchanging messages, they started talking on the phone and found that the similarities in their stories were glaring. Both had heard tall tales about gold bars and fancy homes, both had seen the same photo of the bed covered in American cash. It was surreal and also therapeutic, says Jodi. "It's one thing to tell yourself that it wasn't your fault-these guys are predators. But meeting Rosey it was like, 'Okay, here is a smart, capable woman who fell for the same thing.'" Investigating Vautour became their shared passion project. They would check in every few days, giving each other assignments: Jodi traced the phony cheque that he had deposited into her account. Rosey spoke with members of Vautour's family in Quebec and New Brunswick. They learned a lot about their scammer, but nothing about his whereabouts. "We had almost given up," says Rosey. "And then we heard from Andréa."

Andréa Speranza is a 50-year-old divorcée who reminds me of a no-nonsense Toni Collette character. When she met Vautour at a Tim Hortons in Halifax (three months after he had scammed Jodi and Rosey), he was going by March Hebert. She wasn't looking for a man at the time, and she certainly didn't need one. Andréa is a fire captain (one of the first women to hold the position in Halifax) who, in 2006, founded Camp Courage, a program that encourages teenage girls to consider careers as first responders. She loves dogs and paddleboarding and corny movies-information I learned from speaking with her, but it's also readily available online, if you happened to be looking.

It was her friend who first started chatting with Vautour that day in Timmy's. He mentioned that he was a big outdoors guy and had recently bought 300 acres nearby (but not too nearby) in Digby, where he was building a facility for at-risk youth. "By the time he left, my friend was like, 'Oh my god, could this guy be any more perfect for you?'" Andréa remembers.

They ran into each other a few days later at a local park and campground-a community hangout where Vautour was living. He showed her his fancy trailer (which was not actually his fancy trailer), and said he was staying there to help out his stepmom (who was not actually his stepmom). Andréa obviously didn't know this at the time, and everyone at the park was constantly smiling and waving at him. "Of course, I'm thinking he must be a good guy."

Their first date was a walk in the park; Vautour casually mentioned that his Crohn's disease sometimes held him back from physical activity. He was extremely attentive and an amazing listener. About a month in, he asked her if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. (Andréa said she wasn't much into labels, but quietly felt excited about the future.) When Vautour said he had a medical emergency relating to his Crohn's, she lent him $1,500, then $500 more when it turned out the medication he needed was more expensive than he thought; then another $2,000 for a second dose. He couldn't access his own money, he said, because his backpack had been stolen. He claimed he spent a day in the hospital recovering from the emergency, but Andréa was working a 24-hour shift at the time so she had no way of knowing.

They both worked a lot. Most days Vautour would text photos to demonstrate the progress he was making in Digby. They would have dinner at her place and he would constantly be taking calls from contractors. "He would be on the phone arguing about the price of a telephone pole!" she says, laughing now at the brazen specificity of his deceit. Andréa has been reading a lot since she learned the truth about Vautour. Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers taught her about truth default theory, which is essentially the fact that humans are programmed to believe that other people are telling the truth, particularly if they happen to be idealistic and moral themselves. Looking back, she sees how the stolen backpack and the unproven medical claims were warning signs, but in the moment her brain just didn't go there. "What seems crazier-the idea that he had his backpack stolen or that every single thing he ever told me was a lie?"

When Andréa thinks back on the things Vautour used to say to her, she feels sick. 'You're my soulmate,' 'I can't take my eyes off you,' 'I've never wanted anyone more.' Which again, in hindsight, feels a little scripted. But she wasn't the only one he sucked in. During their relationship, she took Vautour to a number of work events and parties. Everyone seemed to really like him. Even more than that, she says, people were thrilled that she was in a relationship: "They seemed excited, almost relieved, to see me paired off."

Their relationship lasted for just over five months. During this time, Andréa gave Vautour about $5,000, most of it for medication. The last time she saw him, he was going to Toronto to pick up his dog, Cowboy, from his ex. (Andréa paid for his train and accommodations.) From Toronto, he emailed her a link to the hotel he wanted to stay at; it came from an email address under a name Andréa didn't recognize: March Vautour. Unsure of what this might mean, she started typing variations of Vautour's name into Facebook, ultimately landing on a picture of her boyfriend with a single word written across it: BEWARE!

"I've heard from women in similar situations at least six times just in the past month," says Suzanne Edmundson, a private investigator in Vancouver. The number of calls she gets about romance scams has tripled over the last few years, both in terms of inquiries and actual cases she takes on. The reason for the distinction is that a lot of the time, there is nothing she can do. Telling people there's no recourse is horrible, she says-especially because they're often bawling and have lost their life savings. "The way I see it, these people have been lied to enough."

The scams where Edmundson is able to help tend to be the ones like those involving Vautour, where there has been an actual in-person relationship, albeit a fraudulent one. If the scammer has used a real name (or has a lot of online aliases), she can run a background check and hopefully find a criminal record and track them to an address-perhaps even locate assets. Then, their victims can serve them with a small claims charge. This may or may not cover the full extent of the loss-in Ontario, for example, small claims max out at $35,000-but it's often the best of the three available options, the other two being civil or criminal charges. Victims of romance fraud can (and should) make a complaint with the police, but actual criminal charges are rare. Numerous victims and experts I spoke with say that just getting the authorities to take a complaint seriously can be a challenge. "I can't tell you how many of the women I talk to have been laughed off the phone," says Edmundson.

When Rosey went to the police, she was told that yes, Marcel Andre Vautour was a fraudster with a lengthy record of complaints. But, since she had sent him the money while they were dating, proving criminal activity would be difficult. "With a lot of cops, there is the idea that romance fraud is more of a civil matter-a dispute between two people, rather than a criminal violation," says Lisa Teryl, a senior civil litigator in Halifax, who has consulted with Andréa.

But this doesn't really add up. If I donated $10,000 to a phony charity, the fact that I was duped wouldn't change the fact that a crime had been committed. Why doesn't the same logic apply here? A representative from the RCMP told me that in cases where there has been a personal relationship between a victim and a fraudster, it often comes down to "he said-she said"-which does a good job of demonstrating the mentality that Vautour's victims are up against. Sergeant Guy-Paul Larocque, RCMP acting officer in charge of the CAFC, says that in instances where there is "enough meat," there is the possibility of obtaining a nation-wide warrant or even launching a federal task force. Is there a threshold for the amount of money lost or the number of victims impacted that might qualify as sufficiently meaty, I ask. He says these matters are looked at on a case-by-case basis.

The paradox is glaring: In order to get charges taken seriously, there must be proof of significant damages and multiple offences. But proving that would likely require federal coordination, which only happens when a crime is taken seriously. It's not just romance scams that come against this hurdle (our legal system is weighted toward jurisdictional governance for all kinds of reasons). And yet, says Teryl, "if this guy was going across the country robbing banks, I'm pretty confident we'd see a more coordinated response."

The difference, she says, lies at least partly in a historically patriarchal justice system where domestic crimes (read: crimes against women) have often been discounted. Less than 40 years ago, it wasn't considered legally possible for a person to be raped by their spouse, and even today, emotional pain and suffering don't get the attention they warrant.

After realizing she had lost her life savings, Jodi spent several weeks in a downward spiral of depression and self-medication. She lost income and feared for her safety. "I wasn't sure if I was going to survive," she says. (Some victims of romance fraud don't. In 2018, a woman in Delta, B.C., died by suicide after she was defrauded of almost one million dollars in an online romance scam that rolled out over two years.) Victims who have been intimate with their scammer must also contend with the feeling of having been sexually violated. Currently, Canadian courts hold a narrow view of the kind of fraud that would override consent; romance scams don't meet the courts' criteria. The issue is one of slippery slope. People inflate and lie about their income, background and marital status all the time in intimate encounters, so where do you draw the line?

Which is a legitimate concern, says Janine Benedet, a law professor at the University of British Columbia who specializes in criminal sexual offences. Still, she wonders whether other biases may be at play when assessing the credibility of romance scam victims: "When women make a claim where proving the crime requires that we believe them, there is a historic pattern of skepticism and of questioning their motives."

Like sexual assault victims, the victims of romance scams often feel blamed for their perceived participation. Rosey says she was humiliated and dismissed by police in a way that felt gender specific: "You're hoping you're going to be able to get some justice and essentially what you hear back is, well, you shouldn't have been wearing that short skirt."

It was Andréa's idea to take their manhunt public. In March 2019, she launched "Stop the March Madness Campaign!," an online publicity blitz with three objectives: to raise awareness about the prominence of romance fraud, to provide support and community to victims and, of course, to catch the dirtbag who did this to them. They got a few tips from women who had been out with Vautour in Toronto, but nothing particularly useful-until they heard from Nikola. The 28-year-old backpacker was visiting Toronto from the Czech Republic on a 12-month work visa and first met "Marc" at a hostel in North York in March 2019. She remembers wondering why a helicopter pilot with a substantial military pension would have chosen such a modest living situation; but everyone there seemed to know and like him, and he told her he was just not a flashy guy. Nikola and Vautour were never a couple; instead he said he could get her a well-paying job working as his assistant. When she mentioned her plan to drive to B.C., Vautour showed her a photo of his beach house in White Rock that he had been meaning to get back to, and offered to come along for the ride. After giving her a (fake) contract, he suggested Nikola get a Canadian credit card and went along to the bank posing as her new employer. Over the next three weeks, Vautour racked up $5,000 in charges on Nikola's card and stole another $500 by depositing an empty envelope into her bank account.

Soon after they arrived in B.C. together, Vautour had to leave; an emergency, he said. By the time Nikola realized what had happened, she was alone and broke. She spent a few nights on the streets before getting a job at a hostel in Victoria. When she told her new boss what had happened, the woman said that Vautour had worked at the same hostel two years ago. They kicked him out in December 2017 after he was caught stealing from a guest. A few weeks later, he met Jodi.

For Nikola, connecting with Vautour's other victims was the only thing that got her through that terrible time. "I went to the police and they basically kicked me out of the room," she says. "Rosey and the other women gave me a lot of support." And she gave them a good tip: Vautour had bought himself a fancy backpack with her credit card and, knowing him, he would try to sell it. Rosey went onto Kijiji and there was the identical backpack, for sale by a guy in Nanaimo named Marc.

This was in June 2019; by then I had been researching this story for a few months. I was at my mom's 70th birthday party when I got a text from Jodi: "WE'VE GOT HIM!!! FINALLY!!! WE'RE GOING TO GET THIS GUY!!!" She was in Nanaimo, having made the six-hour journey from Kelowna. Her new boyfriend, Vince, was with her and they checked into a hotel before setting off on their mission. Rosey was also en route.

Jodi and Vince started passing out flyers left over from the "Stop the March Madness Campaign!" They focussed on the types of locations Vautour liked to frequent. At Tim Hortons, a worker said Vautour had been in just a few hours ago. Next, Jodi went to put up posters in the library (where Vautour often went to use the internet), while Vince waited outside. Killing time, he showed a flyer to the guy standing beside him, who responded, "Oh yeah, sure-that's Marc." He was living just a few blocks away at the Salvation Army.

At this point, Jodi had spent more than a year fantasizing about coming face to face with the guy who nearly ruined her life. "I wasn't looking for an apology or anything. I just wanted him to see that he hadn't broken me," she says. Just as she and Vince walked through the door at the Salvation Army, she spotted Vautour walking out in the other direction. "Hey, Dre," she said, cornering him in the reception area. At first, it seemed like he was trying to place her. And then he looked scared. She told him he owed her a lot of money and he (of course) had a story: He had been messed up on drugs when they were together, he barely remembered anything. He was finally getting clean and would pay her back, he said, before getting buzzed into a secure area of the shelter. Jodi called 911. She says a Salvation Army employee told her there were no alternative exits, but according to the police report on the incident, Vautour most likely escaped via a back door. Jodi believes he jumped two stories out of a window. Either way, by the time police got there, Vautour had vanished.

Running on a mix of shock and adrenaline, Jodi barely remembers what happened next. Back at the hotel, she was lying down when she heard a knock; it was Rosey. "I think we just hugged for two or three minutes straight," says Jodi. It was the first time they'd met in person.

That day in June was the last time Jodi, Rosey, Andréa or Nikola have seen or heard anything about Vautour. They are still in touch with each other and with a community of people (12 in total, so far) who allege that Vautour defrauded them. They would rather not think about what happened, but decided to share their stories in the hopes of drawing attention to what they see as an overlooked crime.

Nikola is still working at the hostel in Victoria, using her earnings to pay down some of her debt each month.

Jodi has been with Vince for 18 months now. She is working through her trust issues and doing her best to put the heartbreak behind her. That day in Nanaimo, when she saw Vautour, her heart was pumping pure ice. But sometimes, she'll come across a photo of the two of them and she'll feel a sudden rush of affection. "It's only for a second. I have to knock myself in the head and remind myself of who he really is." That part is worse than losing the money, although not as bad as the shame.

Andréa has taken a self-defence course and installed a new security system at her home. For a woman who runs into burning buildings every day, the vulnerability has been the hardest thing to accept. I remind her of how she said everyone was so happy to see her paired up. "That's what society wants to see," she says.

Rosey is back together with her husband. When she came clean about what happened, it was a moment of reckoning for their relationship. She doesn't blame anyone but Vautour, but says that maybe if she had felt listened to in her marriage, she wouldn't have been so susceptible to his charms. It's a good point and maybe a key thread to this entire story. Yes, romance scammers are master manipulators who target, groom and exploit innocent victims. But our culture has its own role to play. "Invisible woman syndrome" describes the phenomenon wherein women are ignored after they reach a certain age-by potential employers, by suitors, by bartenders. No longer imbued with youth or fertility or ( as Amy Schumer would say) "f-ckability," we have ceased to serve our biological purpose and are deemed less valuable. And then along comes a person who sees you and appreciates you and promises to make all of your dreams come true. Who wouldn't want to believe in that?

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Like most middle-aged women dipping a toe back into the dating scene, Jodi got on Tinder because her friend convinced her to. They were hanging out, drinking wine. It was a few weeks into 2018 and Jodi hadn't been on a date in more than 23 years.

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Boys State is a week-long all-boys politics camp that smacks of old-school, communist-fearing American nationalism. It was founded by the American Legion in 1935 to, as they put it on their website, “counter the socialism-inspired Young Pioneer Camps”–children’s programs in the 1920s and '30s run by Communist-tied groups that taught American kids about, well, Communism.
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What Boys State is about, really, is not just the fact that America is run by boys–that's plain enough to see. Moss and Baines are interested in the kind of boys, specifically, who rise to power and why. I remember them vividly. I remember the chanting–huddles of boys with their arms on each other’s shoulders, yelling for candidates we’d only met a few days prior. I recall impossibly confident speeches, kids on the stump pitching themselves through spittle-covered lips, their cheeks covered in pock-marks and acne, yelling about the tenets of a constitution that, at age 17, I still barely even understood. For these boys–the winners, the boys in the film–Boys State was a place where they really come into their own. For me, Boys State was where I realized the kind of man I never wanted to be.
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The whole thing is a game. And if you choose to play it, you play to win.
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In Boys State, at least one of the four main subjects seems totally compelled by that goal. René Otero, a Chicago-born teenager and seemingly one of the few Black participants at the entire camp, is first introduced delivering an impressive speech about prison reform at an election for his party’s State Chairman position. This young man, in rhetoric alone, seems years ahead of the many manic, over-stimulated teens we meet throughout the film. But while it’s clear Otero has strong left-leaning motives, the kid is spread thin by the partisan politics of the competition, later saying, “[I’m] just going to be palatable and congenial to what the body wants. I’m going to vote for everything...I’m going to keep my job. If it’s the last thing I do.” By the week’s end, Otero is publicly shamed for a political maneuver deemed too partisan by his opponents–not to mention almost being impeached before facing a wave of racist memes on an Instagram account that’s shared and publicized by his rival party.

Otero isn’t the only subject in the film whose initial convictions are pulverized by the two-party system, though.
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I got my first hemorrhoid at Boys State. It was the end of my Junior year, and I'd been selected to represent my high school at the hallowed-albeit not widely-known-student government camp run by the veterans' organization American Legion. There, in a dorm room at Rider University in Central New Jersey, I can recall the hot air from my box fan blowing as I unfurled sheet after sheet of toilet paper, wiping vigorously at an itch that had spread around the diameter of my rear-end like a colony of fire ants. It was the summer of 2008, I was 17, I had been assigned the role of "councilman," and I really had no idea what to do about a hemorrhoid. I'd never had one before. But there it was, a confusing little gob of discomfort and irritation that, despite my best efforts, would just not go away. I don't often think about my first hemorrhoid. But like everything about my week at Boys State, it's not something I'd ever forget.

Boys State is a week-long all-boys politics camp that smacks of old-school, communist-fearing American nationalism. It was founded by the American Legion in 1935 to, as they put it on their website, "counter the socialism-inspired Young Pioneer Camps"-children's programs in the 1920s and '30s run by Communist-tied groups that taught American kids about, well, Communism. Teaching an alternate form of government to our nation's youth wasn't exactly hunky-dory in the Red Scare era. A daughter of one of the founders of Boys State once said in an that when her father found out the Young Pioneer Camps were "basically the Communists," he got inspired to "get the Legion to get involved in a program to teach our government to the students." 85 years later, Boys State is still going strong, with programs in every U.S. State except Hawaii. Take that, Commies.

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Not every Boys State program operates the same way. At the one I attended, eleventh grade boys were chosen to represent NJ high schools at the camp based on their "leadership, character, scholarship, loyalty and service in their schools and community." There, students were taught to organize and operate their own state government. You wake up at the crack of dawn to march with your fellow statesmen, sit through long seminars full of patriotic government decorum, vye for fake political seats, debate, legislate. The whole program culminates in the election of a "governor." I spent most of my time wandering around listlessly, playing ultimate frisbee with the other losers, and trying in vain not to embarrass myself in front of the women of the Italian exchange program who were, for some reason, housed on the same campus as us that week. The unofficial instruction was to say "Ciao bella" when we marched past them.

The program, though not my time in it, is the subject of a documentary from A24 that premiers August 14 on Apple TV+ after winning the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year. Directed by Jesse Moss and Amanda Baines, the film follows the eventful and at-times melodramatic campaigns of four boys who turn out to be major players in their mock-state government in Texas. The razor-edge campaign film presents an eventful, action-packed version of Boys State that is nothing like what I experienced in 2008. But it nonetheless sent me reeling; I felt a phantom itch of my first hemorrhoid as I watched the loudest, most confident boys in the room rise to prominence while the rest of the mumbling, pimple-faced wimps stood awkwardly in sweat-stained t-shirts on the sidelines.

If Moss and Baines had made this documentary the year I went to Boys State, there's no way I would have been in it: The film only concerns itself with the most successful boys at a Texas camp. Usually in a documentary, this kind of stiltedness in presentation would be a flaw. But the limited perspective in Boys State is actually the film's greatest stroke of commentary. By only spending time with the most successful kids on campus, the documentary becomes an incisive microcosm of the American way of law.

What Boys State is about, really, is not just the fact that America is run by boys-that's plain enough to see. Moss and Baines are interested in the kind of boys, specifically, who rise to power and why. I remember them vividly. I remember the chanting-huddles of boys with their arms on each other's shoulders, yelling for candidates we'd only met a few days prior. I recall impossibly confident speeches, kids on the stump pitching themselves through spittle-covered lips, their cheeks covered in pock-marks and acne, yelling about the tenets of a constitution that, at age 17, I still barely even understood. For these boys-the winners, the boys in the film-Boys State was a place where they really come into their own. For me, Boys State was where I realized the kind of man I never wanted to be.

I always loved my older brother's Boys State shirt. It was a plain white T-shirt with the American Legion Boys State logo on the left breast and a dark blue ring around the collar. Vince used to wear it all the time. He'd have it on above his bathing suit at the boardwalk, or under his Vans track jacket when he came home from dates with his high school girlfriend. I always wanted one for myself. Wearing it wouldn't just prove that I'd been selected out of all the guys in my class to represent our high school at some far-off college for a week-but it would also show that I was as accomplished as my cool older brother. And as the track captain, homecoming champ, and saxophone prodigy, Vince left behind some pretty big Birkenstocks to fill.

I was never a summer camp kid; my older brothers and I rarely ever so much as went on a weekend trip with our friends. In fact, I had a history of calling my mom and asking her to pick me up from sleepovers in the middle of the night. I really had no idea what Boys State was-I just wanted the cool shirt. So you can imagine my surprise when I arrived at the campus to find what resembled a kind of political boot camp for kids who competed in regional debate tournaments. American flags blazed high, there was marching, and the welcome ceremony was full of booming, patriotic decorum. Unlike Vince, who was selected along with a group of his five closest friends, I arrived as one of only two kids chosen from my class. My classmate and I were separated immediately, then placed into rival political parties. We were all sectioned off into little dormitory "cities," jostled along by camp counselors-alumni who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, had chosen to volunteer their summers, year after year, to teach state government to teenagers. One of the counselors, at the end of our week there, requested that we roast him. It was strange.

The documentary becomes an incisive microcosm of the American way of law.

After a long first day of orientation seminars and ice breakers, I unpacked the wads of pamphlets about the arduous journey ahead, laying down on the hard blue dorm-issued mattress opposite a boy named Max. I looked out through the cross-slats of my box fan to the field that seemed to stretch on infinitely outside my window in the college dorm. For the first time in my life, far away from my family, friends, and hometown, I was completely alone. All for a damn t-shirt like Vince's.

The kids in the film are in it for way more than a t-shirt. They arrive with strong political convictions, and their week starts on a fever pitch-right away, all four students are dead-set on campaigning their way to victory. But they soon find that convictions alone will not bring them gain, at least, not in the two-party system cherished by Boys State. It's going to require a certain amount of selling out, in addition to blind confidence.

Both parties at Boys State-the Federalists and the Nationalists-start with no tenets, no platform, only a rulebook inspired by how the real state government parties operate. So it's up to the kids to decide their political philosophies. This leaves the young men fighting to the bone over party beliefs that they'd developed only days, or some cases, hours prior. Early on in Boys State we meet Steven Garza, the resolute son of a Mexican immigrant family who seems intent on leading an holistic campaign, and says, "I'm a Nationalist. What that means yet, I don't know." He goes on to explain that, despite the fact that the party does not yet have a platform, he's already prepared to cast his full support. "But at the same time," he continues, "there's 600 Nationalists and 600 Federalists. I'm going to need some of the Federalist vote." Already, he's willing to drop his convictions to win.

Why? Why sell yourself to a fake government camp where the elected positions have no actual power, where it's all just for play? These are kids who already have formidable resumes for their college applications; winning the Governor seat at Boys State isn't going to secure them the spot at Yale. At Boys State, though, it's not power, really, that you're trying to gain. The whole thing is a game. And if you choose to play it, you play to win.

According to my profile on the American Legion website, I was designated a Federalist in 2008, something I had such a dim memory of that I had to look it up. To quote Garza, what that meant, I have no idea. I do recall, however, somehow becoming elected "councilman" of my city, and feeling compelled to indulge in some form of political back-patting to help a new friend of mine who'd just been elected "Police Chief." I'm not sure why I did it. But I was initiated in the game at Boys State, and I felt the need to play it.

The whole thing is a game. And if you choose to play it, you play to win.

I don't recall ever attending any "congressional hearings." Perhaps I was too busy guzzling the melted, milky white soft serve from the dining hall which streamed out of the ice cream machine like lukewarm paint thinner. The four young men of Boys State, however, play the game of partisan politics quite well. So well, in fact, that the election in the film ends up being about as exciting and complicated as famous campaign documentaries like The War Room or Primary, both of which seem very influential for Moss and Baines here.

Perhaps you'd hope that, given the opportunity, the boys of the next generation would build a more inclusive, more empathetic form of government. In Boys State, at least one of the four main subjects seems totally compelled by that goal. René Otero, a Chicago-born teenager and seemingly one of the few Black participants at the entire camp, is first introduced delivering an impressive speech about prison reform at an election for his party's State Chairman position. This young man, in rhetoric alone, seems years ahead of the many manic, over-stimulated teens we meet throughout the film. But while it's clear Otero has strong left-leaning motives, the kid is spread thin by the partisan politics of the competition, later saying, "[I'm] just going to be palatable and congenial to what the body wants. I'm going to vote for everything...I'm going to keep my job. If it's the last thing I do." By the week's end, Otero is publicly shamed for a political maneuver deemed too partisan by his opponents-not to mention almost being impeached before facing a wave of racist memes on an Instagram account that's shared and publicized by his rival party.

Otero isn't the only subject in the film whose initial convictions are pulverized by the two-party system, though. We also meet Ben Feinstein, an ambitious self-proclaimed "politics junkie" and bi-lateral amputee who rushes into the program hungry for the governorship, only to be swayed into taking a lesser role as party chairman. Robert Macgougall is first presented as the farthest-right of the four. But we soon discover that shaggy-haired teen has pro-choice beliefs-this all changes, of course, when Macdougall sees the opportunity of aligning himself with his anti-abortion party. And then there's Garza, who faces a reckoning when his opponents discover a picture of him leading a March for Life rally. He eventually shies away from his morals about gun control, instead adopting a more bi-partisan rhetoric. Go figure.

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Boys State is a tidy narrative. You never see a camera crew on screen, the shots are steady and focused, and the whole thing, at times, seems too good to be true, like it was planned out in a writer's room. But I think that's just the point. Moss and Baines didn't capture my experience at Boy State, but they nonetheless presented the feeling of being a useless participant, one of the thousand nameless kids in white t-shirts just watching this surreal Lord of the Flies experiment play out in front of their eyes. It's all there-the flailing for attention, the yelling, the push-up contests, the militaristic flag-waving, the awkward embraces, the sweaty high fives, the arguments with kids you'll likely never again see in your life, the longing for companionship with strange young men, many of whom, until this point, have never even left their hometowns.

What's stuck with me after over ten years-other than the fact that if you put two box fans next to each other, back to back, they cancel each other out, resulting in an endless vacuum that blows inward and ends up benefitting no one-is the feeling of being different than other men. I think it was the first time I really felt that way, a notion that I've come to accept as a normal part of my life today. I almost never feel as though I am like other men, especially when I'm in large groups of them. I don't think it's true; of course everyone feels isolated from time to time, it's part of being human. I think Boys State made me feel this way. Not because the boys there alienated me, but because, after suffocating in all the testosterone, perhaps I decided that I did not want to be like them, no way.

By the time my week at Boys State was over, I was so anxious to go home, so deflated by the sleep deprivation and the constant worship of a country that I knew almost nothing about, that I could barely stand up. I remember having a piece of hot dog logged in the back of my throat all day, just feeling it in there for hours and hours during the steaming-hot final ceremonies in the campus gymnasium. I could've grabbed a tissue, I could've gone to the bathroom or something. But I was exhausted. And when I finally got out onto the wood chips, out it came. Not through my mouth-but through my nose. The next thing I remember is drifting off to a deep, deep sleep in my parents' car on the ride home.

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Boys State, the Subject of an Outstanding New Documentary, Was One of the Strangest Weeks of My Life

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I got my first hemorrhoid at Boys State. It was the end of my Junior year, and I'd been selected to represent my high school at the hallowed-albeit not widely-known-student government camp run by the veterans' organization American Legion.

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L'AOC (appellation d'origine contrôlée) est un label français qui désigne, depuis 1935, un produit dont toutes les étapes de production sont réalisées selon un savoir-faire reconnu et dans une zone géographique déterminée. Le roquefort fut le premier fromage labellisé.

Depuis 2009, l'AOP (appellation d'origine protégée) est un label européen, identifiable par son logo rouge et or. Il reprend les mêmes critères que l'AOC, étendus au territoire de l'UE, et lui confère la protection de sa dénomination.

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Brie de Melun ou de Meaux ? Les deux villes rivales de Seine-et-Marne se disputent la paternité du « roi des fromages », un titre gagné lors du Congrès de Vienne, en 1814. Au nord, Meaux, la cité épiscopale ; au sud, Melun, la préfecture, séparées par l'interminable nationale 4, se disputent l'histoire et la renommée mondiale du fromage parisien. La voilà, la légende du brie, celle qui se transmet encore et toujours au plus profond du département. De Gaulle avait prévenu : « Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays où il existe 258 variétés de fromages ? »

Marie-Béatrice Baudet, Le Monde 16 août 2017

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Avec 28,1 kg par habitant et par an, le Danemark est le premier pays consommateur de fromage, devant l'Islande, la Finlande et la France (#4). La Chine consomme 100 grammes de fromage par an et par habitant, et se trouve en fin de peloton des consommateurs de fromage dans le monde

La France n'est pas le plus gros producteur de fromage au monde, mais le troisième..Les Etats-Unis, talonnés par l'Allemagne, occupent la première place du classement mondial.

L'Allemagne est le premier pays importateur de fromages français, devant le Royaume-Uni et la Belgique.

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Quien puede matar a un nino?
(Les révoltés de l'an 2000) 1971
au ciné

notamment 5 premières minutes d'intro d'un mauvais goût absolu

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world music quizzzzzz

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Can you tell what kind of song you're listening to?

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"Contrairement aux médias indépendants, les médias liés à un État utilisent fréquemment leur couverture de l'actualité à des fins politiques", expliquait Twitter dans un communiqué le 6 août pour expliquer sa dernière mesure contre les infox et les interférences étrangères. Le réseau social annonçait la création d'un nouveau label pour signaler les comptes gouvernementaux ainsi que les comptes de certains médias : quelques heures plus tard, les pages de RT (ex Russia Today), Sputnik et CCTV Français (chaîne chinoise) se voyaient affublées d'une nouvelle mention "Média affilié à un État" avec le nom du pays en question.

Les sites d'information susceptibles d'être étiquetés sont ceux sur lesquels l'État exerce un contrôle éditorial par le biais de ressources financières ou de pressions politiques, ou un contrôle sur la production et la distribution, selon Twitter. En revanche, les médias bénéficiant de subventions publiques, mais jouissant d'une indépendance éditoriale, tels que NPR (États-Unis), la BBC (Royaume-Uni), France Médias Monde, France Télévisions ou Radio France ne sont pas concernés, explique la plateforme. Un "deux poids, deux mesures" immédiatement condamné par les médias ciblés et par la diplomatie chinoise et russe. En France, Emmanuel Macron avait qualifié Sputnik et RT France d'organes de propagande peu après son élection en 2017 mais trois ans plus tard, ces marques ont réussi à s'imposer dans le paysage médiatique français.

Entretien avec Kevin Limonier, maître de conférence en études slaves et en géographie à l'université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, également directeur-adjoint du centre GEODE et directeur scientifique de l'observatoire du cyberespace russophone, structure de recherche dédiée à l'analyse des espaces numériques post-soviétiques.

Kevin Limonier est l'auteur de Ru.net: géopolitique du cyberespace russophone, paru en 2018 aux éditions L'Inventaire.

Twitter a-t-il raison de faire une distinction entre des médias comme RT, Sputnik ou CCTV, qui ne seraient pas indépendants éditorialement, et d'autres comme la BBC, NPR ou Radio France qui sont pourtant financés aussi par la puissance publique ?
En prenant cette décision, Twitter fait de la politique et ses dirigeants le savent très bien. Ils s'attendaient évidemment à toutes les critiques qu'ils reçoivent aujourd'hui sur le traitement de faveur qu'ils accorderaient aux médias occidentaux : pourquoi signaler RT, Sputnik et pas France Médias Monde (la holding qui détient France 24, TV5 Monde et RFI) par exemple ? Twitter donne l'argument de l'indépendance éditoriale, en plus de celui du financement, mais comment peut-on qualifier, quantifier, cette indépendance ? C'est très compliqué.

La décision de dire si tel ou tel média est indépendant ou non est donc un choix éminemment politique mais c'est un chemin que Twitter a décidé de prendre. Ce n'est d'ailleurs pas tout à fait surprenant puisque récemment, la plateforme a aussi décidé de signaler, bloquer ou retirer des publications du président Trump. Twitter essaye aujourd'hui de faire figure de réseau social à la pointe de la lutte contre la désinformation à quelques mois de l'élection présidentielle américaine. Sans doute aussi pour se positionner en creux de Facebook, qui est souvent accusé d'inaction ou de ne pas en faire assez.
Y a-t-il des critères objectifs qui permettent de faire une distinction entre des "médias publics occidentaux" indépendants et des "médias affiliés à un État" qui ne le seraient pas ? À part le fait que ces derniers sont adossés à des pays qui ne sont pas des démocraties.
C'est tout le problème. Vous pouvez imaginer tout un tas de critères mais ces critères sont forcément subjectifs. En soi, la subjectivité n'est pas un problème : si vous décidez effectivement d'assumer que vous défendez un certain nombre de valeurs, une certaine conception du vrai, du bien, du mal et que vous ne vous positionnez pas dans un relativisme total, on peut l'entendre. Cette conception est d'ailleurs profondément ancrée dans la culture des grandes sociétés de la Silicon Valley qui ont souvent tendance à régenter un certain nombre de choses qui sortent de leur périmètre. Mais effectivement, ce débat risque d'être infini parce qu'il y a autant d'arguments en faveur d'un tel positionnement que d'arguments en sa défaveur, suivant que vous défendez des médias comme RT et Sputnik ou pas. Twitter décide de faire de la politique, pour le meilleur comme pour le pire.
Sur le papier, RT ou Sputnik sont d'ailleurs des médias français employant des salariés français, avec des syndicats de journalistes, une charte de déontologie et une autorisation d'émettre délivrée par le CSA (pour RT car c'est une chaîne de télévision)... Ils cochent à peu près toutes les cases de médias réputés indépendants.
Bien sûr et ils ont été pensés comme cela. D'ailleurs, RT et Sputnik se défendront d'être des organes à la solde du Kremlin et la réalité est effectivement un petit peu plus compliquée que cette simple caricature.

Mais encore une fois, il s'agit d'un positionnement politique de la part de Twitter et d'ailleurs on peut s'étonner que des médias comme RT et Sputnik soient signalés parce qu'ils sont sponsorisés par des États autoritaires alors qu'une chaîne comme AJ ne l'est absolument pas. C'est pourtant un média avec un positionnement politique extrêmement fort et lié à des intérêts étatiques, en l'occurrence ceux du Qatar. Donc, où est ce qu'on place le curseur ? C'est une vraie question aujourd'hui et je doute qu'un réseau social puisse un jour trouver une solution satisfaisante.
Conférence de presse commune entre Vladimir Poutine et Emmanuel Macron le 29 mai 2017 à Versailles où le président français qualifie RT France et Sputnik d'organes de propagande. Pour autant, est ce qu'on peut dire que ces médias sont similaires à France 24, RFI ou encore à la BBC ?
Non car leur histoire et leur genèse n'ont rien à voir. Les raisons pour lesquelles ils ont été créés sont très différentes : Sputnik est quand même l'héritier d'une longue tradition soviétique d'information qui remonte à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, puisqu'il a pris la suite du Service international de RIA Novosti, mais également de La Voix de la Russie qui était un peu la descendante de Radio Moscou (radio de l'État soviétique puis russe émettant à l'étranger).

Il s'agit donc de médias ayant une proximité extrêmement forte avec les vues de la diplomatie russe, avec des mécanismes de gestion interne qui, effectivement, sont très éloignés de France Médias Monde, puisque Sputnik dépend d'une holding, "Rossia Sevodnia", et RT d'une structure appelée TV Novosti, qui ont des liens extrêmement étroits avec le pouvoir (Rossia, Sevodnia, "Russie d'Aujourd'hui", est l'organisme de communication officiel de la Russie à l'étranger, créé en 2013 par un décret de Vladimir Poutine, et qui regroupe l'ancienne agence de presse RIA Novosti et l'ancienne radio La Voix de la Russie).

Mais ce ne sont pas tant ces liens avec le pouvoir qui sont problématiques que la mainmise qu'exercent sur ces médias un certain nombre de personnages, comme Margarita Simonian, qui a accompagné le développement de RT depuis ses débuts, ou le rôle joué par Dimitri Kissilev, qui sont des gens réputés extrêmement proches de la ligne officielle défendue par la diplomatie russe et par le Kremlin. Donc, on a affaire à des instruments qui sont effectivement très proches des instruments du soft power. Et la comparaison est très compliquée parce qu'il s'agit ici d'utiliser des médias comme outils de diplomatie publique, mais dans des contextes gouvernementaux et des cultures politiques qui n'ont absolument rien à voir. Vous ne pouvez pas comparer la culture gouvernementale française aujourd'hui à la culture gouvernementale russe. Tout simplement parce que l'histoire est excessivement différente.

Mais je pense que la décision de Twitter vient aplanir ces différences-là et vient tout mettre sur le même plan, ce qui peut être extrêmement problématique car on en vient à assimiler des médias comme France 24 et RT ou Sputnik, alors qu'effectivement, les racines et les mécanismes de gouvernance sont très différents.

Vous considérez que la décision de Twitter gomme les différences entre ces médias plutôt que de les accentuer ?
Pour moi, cela aplanit les différences et la décision de Twitter risque d'être contre-productive. Car le réseau crée une catégorie de "média affilié à un État" et juge que certains sont indépendants et d'autres non, ce qui va, à mon avis, immanquablement être souligné dans le débat par les Russes qui vont dénoncer un "deux poids, deux mesures" avec un traitement différent pour eux par rapport aux Américains, aux Anglais ou aux Français. Et en creux, cela permet d'alimenter l'argument selon lequel les médias russes sont tout à fait au même niveau que leurs homologues occidentaux, ce qui est à la fois vrai et faux.

C'est une décision à double tranchant car elle va donner beaucoup de grain à moudre aux médias russes pour alimenter leur discours où ils se présentent sur un pied d'égalité avec les grandes centrales médiatiques occidentales. C'est d'ailleurs une prophétie autoréalisatrice : plus ils vont le raconter et plus ce sera perçu comme tel.
Et quand Emmanuel Macron ou la République en marche refusent de laisser entrer des journalistes de RT ou Sputnik à une conférence de presse en disant que ce sont des organes de propagande du pouvoir russe, c'est également discutable ?
C'est une décision politique forte de dire cela mais je pense que la réalité est plus compliquée. Personnellement, je n'utilise pas le terme de propagande car je ne suis pas un responsable politique mais un chercheur. Je préfère celui de manœuvre informationnelle et celui d'influence informationnelle parce que, du point de vue de la diplomatie russe, du point de vue des intérêts de la Russie, RT et Sputnik sont là pour procéder à une sorte de rééquilibrage des discours et des narratifs qui sont perçus à Moscou comme ayant été très largement en faveur des Occidentaux ces dernières années. On peut être d'accord ou pas avec ce genre d'affirmation mais le fait est que RT et Sputnik sont issus d'une culture d'"information combattante". Ils sont le produit de 20 ans de mutisme de la Russie sur la scène internationale, voire, comme certains le disent, d'humiliation. Depuis leur création en 2005 pour RT et en 2014 pour Sputnik, ils visent à accompagner le narratif officiel russe pour faire en sorte que celui ci soit au moins aussi audible que les narratifs des Occidentaux. Après, on peut les critiquer, dire qu'ils propagent des informations fausses ou vraies, les traiter de propagandistes ou pas mais le fait est que ces médias remplissent un objectif stratégique qui est considéré par beaucoup de gens comme un objectif totalement légitime. Et là, on est dans une guerre d'idées et de valeurs.

Pour rappel, #RTFrance est une chaîne française, composée de journalistes français, qui a signé une convention avec le CSA, dispose d'une charte de déontologie, de syndicats de journalistes et d'un comité d'éthique. #libertédelapresse
- Xenia Fedorova (@xfedorova) August 6, 2020
Réaction de Xenia Fedorova, présidente et directrice de l'information de la chaîne RT France, après l'annonce par Twitter d'une mesure pour signaler certains médias étrangers. Ces médias ont-ils réussi leur objectif qui était de se respectabiliser et d'apparaître en France et en Occident comme des médias "comme les autres" ?
Il faut bien distinguer la situation des médias russes dans l'espace francophone des médias russes dans l'espace anglophone. Ce sont deux situations différentes. Dans l'espace francophone, je dirais qu'ils ont clairement réussi leur pari de respectabilisation. Et d'ailleurs, cela se voit dans l'infléchissement de la ligne éditoriale de ces deux médias qui, depuis quelques années, sont beaucoup moins combatifs, beaucoup moins vindicatifs et sont beaucoup plus dans le traitement "hard news" d'une chaîne classique d'information en continu. Ils n'ont plus besoin d'en faire des tonnes comme ils faisaient au début pour acquérir un nouveau public. Et aujourd'hui, on voit bien que les narratifs qui sont produits par Sputnik sont des informations que vous pourriez, dans la plupart des cas, retrouver à peu près partout. Ce qui n'empêche pas d'ailleurs que ces informations, ensuite, alimentent un certain nombre de discours politiques que certains diront complotistes, que d'autres diront d'extrême droite, d'extrême gauche, etc. Mais aujourd'hui, le positionnement de RT et Sputnik montre qu'ils ont acquis une certaine respectabilité, qu'ils se sont d'une certaine manière embourgeoisés et qu'ils font partie du paysage médiatique français et tiennent un rôle, notamment grâce à la crise des "gilets jaunes" qui les a beaucoup fait connaître, grâce aussi au fait qu'Emmanuel Macron en a parlé. Parce qu'au moment où le président français fait son discours avec Vladimir Poutine sur RT et Sputnik, beaucoup de gens ne les connaissaient pas et il leur a fait une publicité monstrueuse.

Et puis vous avez les médias russes dans l'espace anglophone où l'on est sur quelque chose de beaucoup plus vindicatif, de beaucoup plus combatif, qui est aussi lié aux relations beaucoup plus problématiques que la Grande-Bretagne et les États-Unis entretiennent en ce moment avec la Russie. Par exemple, Sputnik en anglais, qui vise notamment le marché américain, est une véritable machine à fake news. Pour le coup, ils font un boulot de fabrication de rumeurs, de monter en épingle des affaires, ce que Sputnik France ne fait plus et n'a pas beaucoup fait dans son histoire, parce que la stratégie est différente et parce que la diplomatie russe est traditionnellement beaucoup moins virulente envers la France qu'envers les pays anglo-saxons qui sont véritablement vus comme des adversaires. La France est aussi considérée comme une adversaire mais également comme un pays avec lequel on peut discuter et s'entendre.
Sujet diffusé sur RT France après l'annonce de Twitter qui étiquette la chaîne et réduit sa portée sur le réseau social.
Je pense que leur notoriété est faite en France et que la décision prise par Twitter aurait dû être prise il y a trois, quatre ou cinq ans, à l'époque où effectivement, le public ne connaissait pas ces médias. Aujourd'hui, cela revient vraiment à essayer de dévier le cours d'un fleuve en jetant des cailloux dedans.

Et d'ailleurs, cette annonce de Twitter est totalement tournée en dérision sur le site de RT en français, avec un éditorialiste qui se moque ouvertement de cette décision car ils n'attendent que ça ! D'être mis au ban, d'être marqués à la culotte. C'est comme cela qu'ils se sont fait leur réputation et c'est ainsi qu'ils vont continuer à exister. D'ailleurs, leurs cris d'orfraie leur font une bonne campagne de pub à peu de frais ; la preuve, on vient de passer un quart d'heure à en discuter et ils n'ont pas déboursé un centime !

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RT, Sputnik, CCTV... Ces "organes de propagande" qui réussissent à se respectabiliser

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Twitter a décidé de signaler les médias étrangers affiliés aux États russes et chinois dans un nouvel effort de lutte contre la désinformation et les ingérences. Mais la distinction avec les médias occidentaux n'est pas si évidente et pourrait être contreproductive selon le chercheur Kevin Limonier.