The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia

https://www.nytimes.com

  • @rumor
    Rumor CC BY-NC-SA
    2
    @stephane_m
    @ericw
    2

    Opinion | The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez You Don’t Know - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/05/01/multimedia/01delvalle-tcpf/01delvalle-tcpf-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg

    Dans cet article très intéressant (et très élogieux) sur la capacité de AOC à construire des alliances transpartisanes avec des Républicains sur des sujets plutôt techniques mais considérés comme « populaires », je partage ci-dessous l’analyse au sujet de son positionnement sur Gaza, la grosse épine dans le pied de Biden, où l’auteur de l’article voit / espère qu’elle puisse l’aider à rallier les pro-palestiniens et anti-génocide qu’il a déçu.

    On Gaza, too, she has been willing to buck other members of her party to pursue an agenda that a majority of voters support. She was one of the first Democrats to call for a cease-fire; within weeks, nearly 70 percent of Americans said Israel should call one and try to negotiate with Hamas.

    As the war has ground on and the death toll has mounted, it has tested her relationship with the far left. In March, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was accosted by a handful of protesters who demanded that she call Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide. She had already been supportive of the Michigan activists encouraging voters to vote “uncommitted” rather than back the president in their state’s Democratic primary and had been working to persuade Democrats to support a cease-fire. But at the time, she had not yet said that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to genocide. The protesters wanted more.

    Less than three weeks later, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez did accuse Israel of genocide and chastised the White House for providing military aid to the country while it blockaded Gaza. “If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a speech on the House floor, “open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves, while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away.” Last month, she voted against providing additional funding for Israel. Those were unpopular positions in Congress, where unconditional support for the country remains the norm, but they put her in line with a majority of Democratic voters.

    These stances haven’t been enough to quell the doubts from a faction of the left that helped get her elected. Over the past few weeks, some have accused her of caving in to pressure from moderate Democrats on Gaza, noting that she was the only founding member of the Squad to sign a statement saying that while she and the other signees opposed “supplying more offensive weapons that could result in more killings of civilians in Rafah and elsewhere,” they supported “strengthening the Iron Dome and other defense systems.”

    This pattern is, at this point, familiar to close followers of the Squad, whose members are routinely criticized from the left. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has taken much of the heat from leftist activists who see her as a symbol of the contradictions and compromises inherent in the political system. It may not be realistic to expect absolute purity from her; she is, after all, a politician. But these critiques overlook the promise of what she’s doing behind the scenes.

    With six months left before Election Day, Democratic pollsters and strategists are searching for ways for Mr. Biden to win back Muslims and Arab Americans in swing states such as Michigan and Georgia, recent college graduates who hoped to have their student debt forgiven, immigrant-rights activists and Latinos. Some of the betrayal these voters feel was hardly the president’s fault; he was hampered on student loan debt by a federal judiciary stacked with judges sympathetic to conservative legal arguments, and Congress refused to pass the comprehensive immigration bill he supported in 2021, which would have provided legal status to as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants. Still, Mr. Biden has struggled to help voters understand the reasons for these failures.

    A more gifted orator might have been able to make the structural impediments in his way clear to voters, while also putting forth a proactive vision for dismantling the core problems baked into our politics.

    In that, someone like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed Mr. Biden for re-election in 2023, may be able to help. She’s the Democratic Party’s most charismatic politician since Barack Obama and its most ardent populist since Bernie Sanders. Crucially, she can offer voters something more substantial than a hollow rebuke of Trumpism. Last month, when the journalist Mehdi Hasan asked her how she’d respond to “a young progressive or Arab American who says to you, ‘I just can’t vote for Biden again after what he’s enabled in Gaza,’” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said a vote for Mr. Biden didn’t necessarily mean an endorsement of all his policies. “Even in places of stark disagreement, I would rather be organizing under the conditions of Biden as an opponent on an issue than Trump,” she said. It was a shrewd political maneuver, designed to distance herself from Democrats who support Israel unconditionally, while meeting voters — some of whom have lost family members in Gaza — where they are. She was, in effect, acknowledging their pain and attempting to channel their righteous anger into a political movement.

    There are, of course, limits to this strategy. Some on the left see Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Mr. Biden as a betrayal of progressive values, particularly in the wake of the climbing death toll in Gaza. The moderate Republicans who turned out for Mr. Biden in 2020 might shrink from a Democratic Party led by someone they consider an outspoken progressive. But for every moderate or leftist voter lost with a strategy like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s, the Democratic Party may be able to win someone new — from the pool of disillusioned Americans who feel shut out of the political process.

    #AOC #Gaza #Démocrates #Biden

    Rumor CC BY-NC-SA
    Écrire un commentaire
    • @rumor
      Rumor CC BY-NC-SA

      After a U.N. official says there is famine in northern Gaza, Israel pushes back.
      ▻https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/05/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas#after-a-un-official-says-there-is-famine-in-northern-

      After one of the strongest indications yet from a United Nations agency that parts of the Gaza Strip are experiencing famine, the Israeli agency that oversees the Palestinian territories pushed back, saying it had “increased its humanitarian effort to flood the Gaza Strip with food, medical equipment and equipment for tents.”

      In an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” which released a portion of it late Friday, Cindy McCain, the director of the U.N.’s World Food Program, said there was a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza. She said her assessment was “based on what we have seen and what we have experienced on the ground.”

      In response on Sunday, the Israeli agency, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, said in a statement that 350 aid trucks, mostly carrying food, were entering the Gaza Strip each day. About 100 of those trucks were reaching northern Gaza, the most isolated and hard-hit area of the territory. It also said April saw a “great surge” in new aid, with more than 6,000 relief trucks entering Gaza, a 28 percent increase from the previous month.

      COGAT also listed several projects to improve conditions in Gaza, including opening the Israeli port of Ashdod for humanitarian aid shipments.

      But aid groups say the amount of shipments arriving is far below what is needed in Gaza, where the authorities say the war with Israel has killed more than 34,000 people, left roughly two million more homeless and destroyed the territory’s infrastructure and economy.

      Ms. McCain, who became head of the World Food Program last year after a stint as an ambassador appointed by President Biden, is the second American official to say there is famine in Gaza. The first was Samantha Power, the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who made her remarks in congressional testimony last month.

      But Ms. McCain’s remarks do not constitute an official declaration, which is a complex bureaucratic process that involves both a U.N. agency, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, and the government of the country where the famine is taking place.

      It is unclear what local authority might have the power to do that in Gaza. Israel’s goal in Gaza is overthrowing its Hamas-backed government, which was not widely recognized before the war and has lost control of most of the enclave since the fighting began.

      Last month, Arif Husain, the chief economist for the World Food Program, said that the increased levels of aid reaching Gaza in recent weeks were a good start but that they were not enough to address the risk of famine.

      He said the arrival of increased amounts of aid “cannot just happen for a day or a week — it has to happen every single day for the foreseeable future.”

      “If we can do this, then we can ease the pain, we can avert famine,” he said.

      Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

      — Liam Stack reporting from Jerusalem

      Rumor CC BY-NC-SA
    Écrire un commentaire
  • Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    1
    @lldur
    1

    Opinion | Student Protest Is an Essential Part of Education - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/opinion/student-protests-columbia-israel.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/30/opinion/00Schmemann/00Schmemann-facebookJumbo.jpg

    The transformation of the protests into a national political football is perhaps inevitable — everyone up to President Richard Nixon sounded off about students in ’68 — but it is still a shame. Because student protests, even at their most disruptive, are at their core an extension of education by other means, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz’s famous definition of war.

    The hallowed notion of a university as a bastion of discourse and learning does not and cannot exclude participation in contemporary debates, which is what students are being prepared to lead. From Vietnam to apartheid to the murder of George Floyd, universities have long been places for open and sometimes fiery debate and inquiry. And whenever universities themselves have been perceived by students to be complicit or wrong in their stances, they have been challenged by their communities of students and teachers. If the university cannot tolerate the heat, it cannot serve its primary mission.
    Sign up for the Israel-Hamas War Briefing. The latest news about the conflict. Get it sent to your inbox.

    The counterargument, of course, is that without decorum and calm, the educational process is disrupted, and so it is proper and necessary for administrations to impose order. But disruption is not the only byproduct; protests can also shape and enhance education: a disproportionate number of those who rose up at Columbia in 1968 went into social service of some sort, fired by the idealism and faith in change that underpinned their protests and by the broader social movement of the ’60s.

    I have a snapshot embedded in my memory of groups of students milling about the grounds, which were littered with the debris of the confrontation, many of them proudly sporting bandages from the injuries inflicted by the violent sweep of the Tactical Patrol Force. Psychedelic music blared from some window, and a lone maintenance man pushed a noisy lawn mower over a surviving patch of grass.

    The sit-ins had been ended, and order was being restored, but something frightening and beautiful had been unleashed, a faith that mere students could do something about what’s wrong with the world or at least were right to try.

    The classic account of Columbia ’68, “The Strawberry Statement,” a wry, punchy diary by an undergraduate, James Simon Kunen, who participated in the protests, captures the confused welter of causes, ideals, frustrations and raw excitement of that spring. “Beyond defining what it wasn’t, it is very difficult to say with certainty what anything meant. But everything must have a meaning, and everyone is free to say what meanings are. At Columbia a lot of students simply did not like their school commandeering a park, and they rather disapproved of their school making war, and they told other students, who told others, and we saw that Columbia is our school and we will have something to say for what it does.”

    That’s the similarity. Just as students then could no longer tolerate the horrific images of a distant war delivered, for the first time, in almost real time by television, so many of today’s students have found the images from Gaza, now transmitted instantly onto their phones, to demand action. And just as students in ’68 insisted that their school sever ties to a government institute doing research for the war, so today’s students demand that Columbia divest from companies profiting from Israel’s invasion of Gaza. And students then and now have found their college administrators deaf to their entreaties.

    #Occupation°_universités #Mouvements_étudiants #1968 #Gaza

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY

    Opinion | Harvey Weinstein and the Limits of ‘She Said, She Said, She Said’ - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/opinion/harvey-weinstein-conviction-me-too.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_2024

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/29/opinion/25opinion-thepoint-bennett-weinstein/25opinion-thepoint-bennett-weinstein-facebookJumbo.jpg

    Those following Mr. Weinstein’s legal battles always knew there was a possibility that his conviction would be thrown out on appeal. But the nature of the decision, and its focus on several women who testified that Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them, even though none of those allegations had led to charges, revealed something that unsettled me.

    Until Thursday, it seemed that we had entered a new age of accountability, legal and social, not just for Mr. Weinstein but also for the abusers who’d come after him. Even as the #MeToo movement fell short in some ways, the Weinstein case felt like a cultural marker — an Arthur’s sword in the stone moment, in which something irreversible happened. The monster of #MeToo had been vanquished, and it changed something about the way we understood vulnerability and power.

    And then, suddenly, it didn’t.

    To be clear, Thursday’s ruling will not spring Mr. Weinstein from behind bars. He already faced an additional 16 years from a separate conviction in California, and he may be sent there to serve out that sentence.

    But in establishing the limits of these so-called prior bad act witnesses — an attempt by the prosecution in the case to show a pattern of coercion — the ruling did something else: It highlighted the striking gap between how we’ve come to believe women inside the courtroom and outside it.

    While Mr. Weinstein’s accusers could, as Ms. Kantor wrote, fill a courtroom — and the women who proclaimed #MeToo in their wake could populate a small country — much of Mr. Weinstein’s appeal rested precisely on the argument that those voices ended up hurting, not helping, the case. As I read and reread the ruling, I realized the same swelling chorus of victims that made it possible for Mr. Weinstein to be held to account in the court of public opinion had somehow saved him in the court of law.

    “What I tell my students is to think about the courtroom as an alternate universe,” said the legal scholar Deborah Tuerkheimer, when I called her to ask if I was crazy not to have seen this coming. A former Manhattan prosecutor and the author of the book “Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers,” she explained that, indeed, there is a tension between the principles of criminal prosecution — which tend to limit a defendant’s “other bad acts” or past behavior — and public perception of a credible allegation.

    It is frustrating, of course, that the very reason there are so many women available to speak out is that the legal system has failed them from the start. In the Weinstein case, many of the accusations were about sexual harassment, which is a civil, not criminal, violation. Others fell beyond the statute of limitations.

    But the legal system is not adequately set up to prosecute people accused of being serial sexual predators like Mr. Weinstein; it is, rightly, supposed to protect innocent people from being judged by their past behavior. (A person who has stolen once is not a lifelong thief, for one.) But sex crimes are more slippery than that, with patterns and power dynamics and less likelihood witnesses. Which can leave prosecutors in a Catch-22: To any casual observer, Mr. Weinstein’s history of accusations of abuse seems as though it should be admissible, and yet it was not.

    #MeToo #Weinstein #Justice

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @rumor
    Rumor CC BY-NC-SA
    1
    @stephane_m
    1

    Even With Gaza Under Siege, Some Are Imagining Its Reconstruction - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/28/business/gaza-economy-rebuilding.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/26/multimedia/00gaza-econ-01-mlkq/00gaza-econ-01-mlkq-facebookJumbo.jpg

    The plan centers on a series of major projects, including a deepwater port, a desalination plant to provide drinking water, an online health care service and a transportation corridor connecting Gaza with the West Bank. A fund for reconstruction and development would oversee future undertakings.

    The most forward-looking components, such as reducing customs barriers to trade and introducing a new currency in place of the Israeli shekel, assume the eventual establishment of Palestinian autonomy, a step that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to resist. He has also brushed aside the prospect that the future governance of Gaza could include a role for the Palestinian Authority, the most obvious potential partner for the reconstruction initiative.

    The enormous price tag of any rebuilding is another impediment. The toll of the damage to Gaza’s crucial infrastructure has reached $18.5 billion, according to a recent estimate by the World Bank and the United Nations. Half the population is on the verge of famine, and more than a million people lack homes.
    [...]
    While visions of modern transportation systems may now seem tangential to Gaza’s essential needs, the plan is governed by the assumption that even temporary structures like emergency housing and health care facilities must be thoughtfully placed to avoid squandering future possibilities.

    “Temporary tends to become permanent very quickly,” Mr. Choa said. “Someone says, ‘We’re going to put this big refugee camp right here,’ but that could be exactly where you want to put a wastewater treatment plant or a transit line in the future. You then create an obstacle.”
    [...]
    The ideas that have emerged from the workshops extend into the next quarter-century. These include the erection of a cutting edge soccer stadium and the elevation of the existing soccer team to a more internationally competitive level, and the creation of a strategy to encourage a Palestinian film industry.
    [j’avoue mon scepticisme, voire mon effarement, sur cette affaire de stage]
    The deepwater port would be established on an artificial island built from the nearly 30 million tons of debris and rubble that are expected to cover the territory whenever the conflict is over, with removal anticipated to take as long as a decade.

    The plan proposes the establishment of a degree-granting Technical University of Reconstruction in northern Gaza that would draw students from around the world. They would study strategies to dig out from disaster and spur development, using postwar Gaza as a living laboratory.

    The destruction is so extensive that the usual means of administering aid and overseeing rebuilding will be inadequate, said the World Bank official.

    American government agencies face legal restrictions on working directly with the Palestinian Authority. Other institutions are reluctant to transact with the Palestinian Authority given its reputation for corruption. All of this makes private companies critical elements of the plan, even as they too will grapple with the risks of investing in a highly uncertain climate.
    [inévitablement, le pont aux ânes de la pensée néolibérale]

    While the largest projects require clarity over the future political administration of Gaza, other initiatives, such as those aimed at encouraging small businesses, could begin as soon as military activities cease.

    “I want to focus on how we open the bread store, how we get factories up and running,” said Jim Pickup, chief executive of the Middle East Investment Initiative, a nonprofit that finances development projects. “Every truck that is going to remove rubble is a small business itself, supporting a family.”

    Les #déblais sont à la fois une contrainte, très lourde à gérer et à manipuler, au sens propre, mais aussi une ressource susceptible de générer des revenus par son transport et sa transformation, et une matière première à réutiliser dans ce projet de #port, dont il me semble des entreprises israéliennes ont déjà proposé des visions il y a quelques mois. En tout cas, en 2017, les Israéliens avaient déjà diffusé des images de tels projets : ▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/israel-minister-for-intelligence-promotes-plan-for-gaza-island/2017/06/27/4e30586e-5b30-11e7-aa69-3964a7d55207_video.html
    #urbanisme #reconstruction
    Tout cela est un peu délirant alors qu’on ne sait pas vers quelle gouvernance de Gaza on va, et surtout quelle souveraineté l’entité aura... ce type de projet présuppose d’emblée une forme très forte de dépendance. Sans doute l’idée c’est : le gaz paiera. Je suis surpris que les Emiratis, les Saoudiens et les Qataris ne soient pas mentionnés dans l’article (sauf à l’état de fantasme : « The new initiative has yet to engage with the Gulf countries, Mr. Choa said. »)

    Rumor CC BY-NC-SA
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @gonzo
    gonzo CC BY-NC
    3
    @arno
    @loutre
    @stephane_m
    3

    Campus Protests Over Gaza Intensify Amid Pushback by Universities and Police - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/us/college-protests-spread-austin-dallas.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/24/multimedia/24nat-colleges-spread-fphg/24nat-colleges-spread-fphg-facebookJumbo.jpg

    Ca n’a pas l’air d’intéresser du tout Le Monde qui n’en dit mot ce matin :

    A wave of pro-Palestinian protests spread and intensified on Wednesday as students gathered on campuses around the country, in some cases facing off with the police, in a widening showdown over campus speech and the war in Gaza.

    University administrators from Texas to California moved to clear protesters and prevent encampments from taking hold on their own campuses as they have at Columbia University, deploying police in tense new confrontations that already have led to dozens of arrests.

    At the same time, new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio. Students expressed solidarity with their fellow students at Columbia, and with a pro-Palestinian movement that appeared to be galvanized by the pushback on other campuses and the looming end of the academic year.

    Protesters on several campuses said their demands included divestment by their universities from companies connected to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, disclosure of those and other investments and a recognition of the continuing right to protest without punishment.

    gonzo CC BY-NC
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY

    Opinion | How ‘The Squad’ and Like-Minded Progressives Have Changed Their Party - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/opinion/progressives-democratic-party-aoc.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/23/opinion/23gay/23gay-facebookJumbo.jpg

    Ah si Jean-Luc Mélenchon pouvait s’inspirer d’Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez...

    When the far-left politicians Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley were first elected to Congress roughly half a decade ago, many moderate Democrats saw their unapologetically progressive vision for America as an albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party.

    That certainly seemed to be the view of Democratic leaders, who seemed intent on making “the squad,” as the progressive caucus is known, a group of permanent outsiders.

    “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the House, told Maureen Dowd in 2019. “But they didn’t have any following,” Ms. Pelosi said of the squad. “They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.” At the time, Ms. Pelosi was bristling from criticism the progressive members had levied against her over her support for a funding bill the progressives said failed to protect migrant children, a major issue during the Trump presidency.

    Five years later, Ms. Pelosi has stepped down from the leadership position she long held. The House progressive caucus has grown to nearly 100 members and has become a significant force within the party. The progressives have outlasted not only Ms. Pelosi, but also moderate Democrats who once led the party, like Representative Steny Hoyer, who has also bowed out of his role leading House Democrats. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the new minority leader, isn’t a member of the progressive caucus. (He left the caucus when he became leader of the House Democrats.) But he has been far friendlier to the group’s members and their agenda than his predecessor, Ms. Pelosi, a nod to the blossoming role of progressive politics within the Democratic Party and its voter base.

    And in recent months, the insurgent group of unapologetic leftists has gained even more sway within the Democratic Party. Some of this is clearly a reaction to the extremism of Trumpism and far-right House Republicans. But the progressives have gained power in Washington amid rising anger over the U.S. role in Gaza.

    For the first time in decades, possibly since the anti-Vietnam War and environmental movements, the left wing has led the center of the Democratic Party in a new political direction on a major issue — one sharply critical of the Israeli government, impatient with the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and increasingly willing to use American leverage to curb Israel’s military plans.

    #Politique #USA #Alexandria_Ocasio_Cortez

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    1
    @olaf
    1

    F.T.C. Bans Noncompete Clauses - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/business/noncompete-clause-ban.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/23/multimedia/23noncompete-pbcl/23noncompete-pbcl-facebookJumbo.jpg

    The rule would prohibit companies from limiting their employees’ ability to work for rivals, a change that could increase competition and boost wages.
    Listen to this article · 0:49 min Learn more

    J. Edward Moreno

    By J. Edward Moreno
    April 23, 2024, 3:42 p.m. ET

    The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday banned employers from limiting their workers’ abilities to work for rivals, a sweeping change that the agency says could help raise wages and increase competition among businesses.

    The move bars contracts known as noncompetes, which prevent workers from leaving for a competitor for a certain amount of time, in most circumstances. The agency has said the proposal would raise wages and increase competition.

    The proposal was approved by the agency in a 3-2 vote. Commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Andrew N. Ferguson, two Republicans, voted against the measure.

    This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

    #Droit_travail #FTC #Lina_Khan #Action

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY

    U.S. Moves to Bar Noncompete Agreements in Labor Contracts - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/business/economy/ftc-noncompete.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/01/05/multimedia/05noncompete-1-1-173c/05noncompete-1-1-173c-facebookJumbo.jpg?year=2023&h=549&w=1050&s=2873d997393158c49ce0bf65aa276e71987f91dd4bf7ecc9e0fa0dc0d1b2fa6d&k=ZQJBKqZ0VN

    A sweeping proposal by the Federal Trade Commission would block companies from limiting their employees’ ability to work for a rival.

    The exterior of the Federal Trade Commission’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
    The F.T.C. said a ban on noncompete clauses could increase wages by nearly $300 billion a year across the economy.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
    Noam Scheiber

    By Noam Scheiber
    Jan. 5, 2023

    In a far-reaching move that could raise wages and increase competition among businesses, the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday unveiled a rule that would block companies from limiting their employees’ ability to work for a rival.

    The proposed rule would ban provisions of labor contracts known as noncompete agreements, which prevent workers from leaving for a competitor or starting a competing business for months or years after their employment, often within a certain geographic area. The agreements have applied to workers as varied as sandwich makers, hairstylists, doctors and software engineers.

    Studies show that noncompetes, which appear to directly affect roughly 20 percent to 45 percent of U.S. workers in the private sector, hold down pay because job switching is one of the more reliable ways of securing a raise. Many economists believe they help explain why pay for middle-income workers has stagnated in recent decades.

    Other studies show that noncompetes protect established companies from start-ups, reducing competition within industries. The arrangements may also harm productivity by making it hard for companies to hire workers who best fit their needs.

    The F.T.C. proposal is the latest in a series of aggressive and sometimes unorthodox moves to rein in the power of large companies under the agency’s chair, Lina Khan.

    President Biden hailed the proposal on Thursday, saying that noncompete clauses “are designed simply to lower people’s wages.”

    “These agreements block millions of retail workers, construction workers and other working folks from taking a better job, getting better pay and benefits, in the same field,” he said at a cabinet meeting.

    #Droit_travail #FTC #Lina_Khan #Projet

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    1
    @monolecte
    1

    Opinion | The Beginning of the End for PFAS, or ‘Forever Chemicals’ - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/opinion/pfas-cancer-forever-chemicals.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/20/opinion/20blackburn/20blackburn-facebookJumbo.jpg

    The E.P.A.’s move this month to regulate PFAS is a significant next step, but even in places where the groundwater is not highly contaminated, we will all still be exposed to unregulated PFAS without further government action. The chemicals are used in a staggering number of consumer products, including carpet, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn, yoga pants, bags and toiletries like dental floss, shampoo and cosmetics. They are still key ingredients in some firefighting foams; many fire departments still use these foams in emergencies like chemical plant fires. And in Texas, thousands of pounds of PFAS are being shot into the ground to lubricate drill bits for fracking.

    We already know that high levels of exposure to PFAS have been linked to disastrous health impacts like birth defects, liver damage and many kinds of cancer. Yet the rate at which PFAS are being released into the environment far outpaces toxicologists’ ability to study their consequences for human health. Some 31 percent of groundwater samples in places with no known source of PFAS have shown contamination levels that exceed E.P.A. limits. And in some locations with established sources, like military and industrial sites, the levels of PFAS are far higher than the standard set by the new rule.

    We now need a federal ban on firefighting foams containing PFAS and regulations that are enforceable by law to limit not just specific compounds in our water, but the whole class of highly pervasive chemicals. Mandates should identify the historical sources of pollution to hold industries accountable and avoid further straining the communities exposed to PFAS with the additional cost of their cleanup. On Friday, the E.P.A. helpfully put two PFAS compounds under its Superfund authority, shifting accountability for cleanup from taxpayers to polluters.

    #PFAS #Pollution

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • Écrire un commentaire
  • @biggrizzly
    BigGrizzly CC BY-NC-SA
    4
    @ericw
    @vazi
    @olaf
    @arno
    4

    Biden says he’s ’considering’ wrapping up Julian Assange prosecution - Washington Times
    ▻https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/10/biden-says-hes-considering-wrapping-up-julian-assa

    President Biden said Wednesday that his administration is mulling whether to end the prosecution of Julian Assange, the controversial WikiLeaks founder who is facing criminal charges for publishing thousands of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables.

    #opportunisme_crasse mais #bonne_nouvelle potentielle malgré tout

    BigGrizzly CC BY-NC-SA
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY

    Boeing Engine Cover on Southwest Plane Falls Off - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/business/southwest-boeing-engine-takeoff.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/08/multimedia/08xp-southwest-promo-jzlq/08xp-southwest-promo-jzlq-facebookJumbo.jpg

    Les déboires de Boeing sont un condensé de ce que propose le néolibéralisme qui sacrifie la maintenance et la sécurité aux impératifs de rendement et de rentabilité.

    The plane returned safely to Denver on Sunday after the crew reported that the cover came apart during takeoff and struck a wing flap. No injuries were reported.

    #Boeing #Neolibéralisme

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @monolecte
    Monolecte 😷🤬 CC BY-NC-SA
    1
    @ericw
    1

    How to Clean Your Cast Iron. Plus, More Kitchen Questions, Answered. - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/dining/kitchen-myths.html?smtyp=cur

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/10/dining/10Cooking-Myths-Cover-Sub/10Cooking-Myths-Cover-Sub-facebookJumbo-v6.jpg

    Apart from the best way to cook rice, nothing gets cooking-science types more riled up than cast-iron pans. If you haven’t cooked in one, you might wonder what all the fuss is about, both on the cooking and the cleaning front.

    For cooking, cast iron has a great weight and a porous surface — slightly rough, compared with smooth stainless steel or a nonstick coating — that makes it ideal for searing. The surface absorbs oil, which hardens over heat and over time into a shiny, nearly nonstick patina. This process is called seasoning, not in the sense of adding salt to taste but in the sense of developing a well-used, trusted tool.

    I have been told that a truly well-seasoned cast-iron pan can cook an omelet without sticking, but I am too chicken to try. I have also been told that the best way to clean my skillet is to boil it, to bury it in the sand, and to never wash it at all. None of these seem like practical options.

    The prohibition against soap comes from a time when all soap was made with lye, which could eat through a patina in minutes. And it’s true that most of the time, soap is unnecessary. Most of your cleaning power should come from hot water and gentle scrubbing or brushing, the way cast-iron pots like Chinese woks and Indian kadai are traditionally cleaned.

    Monolecte 😷🤬 CC BY-NC-SA
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY

    Opinion | The Point: Conversations and insights about the moment. - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/02/opinion/thepoint#avian-flu-cows-outbreak

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/26/opinion/The-Point-Promo-Image/The-Point-Promo-Image-facebookJumbo.png

    The discovery of the country’s second human case of H5N1 avian flu, found in a Texas dairy farm worker following an outbreak among cows, is worrying and requires prompt and vigorous action.

    While officials have so far said the possibility of cow-to-cow transmission “cannot be ruled out,” I think we can go further than that.

    The geography of the outbreak — sick cows in Texas, Idaho, Michigan, Ohio and New Mexico — strongly suggests cows are infecting each other as they move around various farms. The most likely scenario seems to be that a new strain of H5N1 is spreading among cows, rather than the cows being individually infected by sick birds.

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/02/multimedia/02opinion-thepoint-tufekci-birdflu-vmtb/02opinion-thepoint-tufekci-birdflu-vmtb-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

    Avian flu is not known to transmit well among mammals, including humans, and until now, almost all known cases of H5N1 in humans were people in extended close contact with sick birds. But a cow outbreak — something unexpected, as cows aren’t highly prone to get this — along with likely transmission between cows, means we need to quickly require testing of all dairy workers on affected farms as well as their close contacts, and sample cows in all the dairy farms around the country.

    It is possible — and much easier — to contain an early outbreak when an emergent virus isn’t yet adapted to a new host and perhaps not as transmissible. If it gets out and establishes a foothold, then all bets are off. With fatality rates estimated up to 50 percent among humans, H5N1 is not something to gamble with.

    Additionally, H5N1 was found in the unpasteurized milk of sick cows. Unpasteurized milk, already a bad idea, would be additionally dangerous to consume right now.

    Public officials need to get on top of this quickly, and transparently, telling us the uncertainties as well as their actions.

    The government needs to gear up to potentially mass-produce vaccines quickly (which we have against H5N1, though they take time to produce) and ensure early supplies for frontline and health care workers.

    It’s possible that worst-case scenarios aren’t going to come true — yet. But evolution is exactly how viruses get to do things they couldn’t do before, and letting this deadly one have time to explore the landscape in a potential new host is a disastrously bad idea.

    #H5N1 #Zeynep_Tufekci #contagion #Santé_publique

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY

    John Sinclair, 82, Dies; Counterculture Activist Who Led a ‘Guitar Army’ - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/us/john-sinclair-dead.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/07/multimedia/03Sinclair--04-qwmz-print1/03Sinclair--04-qwmz-facebookJumbo.jpg

    They gave him ten for two
    What else can the bastards do ?

    John Sinclair, a counterculture activist whose nearly 10-year prison sentence for sharing joints with an undercover police officer was cut short after John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang about his plight at a protest rally, died on Tuesday in Detroit. He was 82.

    His publicist, Matt Lee, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure.

    As the leader of the White Panther Party in the late 1960s, Mr. Sinclair spoke of assembling a “guitar army” to wage “total assault” on racists, capitalism and the criminalization of marijuana. “We are a whole new people with a whole new vision of the world,” he wrote in his book “Guitar Army” (1972), “a vision which is diametrically opposed to the blind greed and control which have driven our immediate predecessors in Euro-Amerika to try to gobble up the whole planet and turn it into one big supermarket.”

    He also managed the incendiary Detroit rock band the MC5. Their lyrics — “I’m sick and tired of paying these dues/And I’m finally getting hip to the American ruse” — were a kind of ballad for the cause.

    Malheureusement, l’histoire a donné tort à son très beau programme :

    “We thought,” Mr. Sinclair wrote in “Guitar Army,” “that political organization and political theory were things of the past which had no relevance to the contemporary situation, that whatever happened would have to happen spontaneously if it was going to mean anything at all, and that all we had to do was to keep pumping out our propaganda as hard as we could and then just wait for the right moment to present itself, at which time there would be a huge apocalyptic flash and the future of the world would be settled in a matter of days.”

    Le monde n’a malheureusement pas autant changé que cela, et la nécessité de faire voter des lois protectrices reste d’actualité, et pour cela les activistes ont besoin de relais institutionnels. C’est la contradiction de la période qui a suivi l’espoir des années 1960 et 1970 (mais aussi la désespérance de l’ère Mitterrand, qui a montré que sans les activistes, le pouvoir restait bien gentiment derrière les déjà puissants).

    #John_Sinclair #Contre-culture #Activisme

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    Écrire un commentaire
  • @hlc
    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY

    Opinion | Who’s to Blame for Those Kate Middleton Conspiracies? |Conversations and insights about the moment. - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/opinion/thepoint#kate-middleton-russia-interference

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/26/opinion/The-Point-Promo-Image/The-Point-Promo-Image-facebookJumbo.png

    Par Zeyneo Tufekci

    Who’s to Blame for Those Kate Middleton Conspiracies?

    A British government source, reportedly, told the British newspaper The Telegraph that “hostile state actors” — China, Russia and Iran — are “fueling disinformation about the Princess of Wales to destabilize the nation.” British morning shows promptly picked up the story, comparing it to election interference.

    It’s certainly possible that countries with a history of online conspiracy mongering played some role in amplifying the most salacious rumors about Catherine, the Princess of Wales. But it’s also undeniable that large numbers of people — and celebrities and newspapers and everything else — were intensely interested in the princess’s whereabouts.

    The claim about foreign bots and the Princess of Wales is just the latest of similar claims of foreign interference or social media manipulation made without convincing public evidence. Young people are dissatisfied with President Biden’s policies over the Israel-Hamas war? Blame TikTok. Consumer sentiment soured amid high inflation and housing prices? Must be social media!

    If our institutions turn foreign meddling on social media into the new “the dog ate my homework,” it will become an easy excuse to ignore public dissatisfaction with divisive policies. And how will such claims be believable when they actually involve consequential foreign meddling in elections?

    There is nothing mysterious about the Kate Middleton rumors and conspiracies. She completely disappeared from view amid conflicting claims about her whereabouts. Then photo agencies conceded that the one photo the palace released of her and her children was doctored. Because the royals cultivate a headline-grabbing parasocial relationship with the public, the topic merged with the global water cooler chat online and rumors ran wild.

    But there is a lesson. Kensington Palace is the latest institution to discover that lying to the public will make people suspicious. Mistrust will swirl on social media, as valid questions and bonkers conspiracies percolate.

    It was true for the pandemic and for the war in Gaza. It’s true in the royals’ case, too. Western institutions should first worry about shoring up their own behavior. Then they can talk about meddling — with evidence, please.

    #Zeynep_Tufekci #C_est_la_faute_aux_rezosociaux

    Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier CC BY
    • @arno
      ARNO* ART LIBRE

      Je suis arrivé à cet âge où il y a des théories du complot sur une certaine Kate Middleton, mais je ne le savais pas, et je m’en fous.

      Avant, c’était les vedettes secondaires qui font la couverture du journal télé vendu à la caisse du supermarché : ça fait bien 25 ans qu’à chaque fois je me demande « mais qui est cette personne ? ». Je vois que maintenant, j’arrive même à passer à côté des théories du complot des interwebz.

      ARNO* ART LIBRE
    Écrire un commentaire
  • Écrire un commentaire
  • @kassem
    Kassem CC BY-NC-SA
    5
    @ericw
    @biggrizzly
    @gonzo
    @monolecte
    @arno
    5

    Viols inventés, suite

    Israeli Soldier’s Video Undercuts Medic’s Account of Sexual Assault - The New York Times
    ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/world/middleeast/video-sexual-assault-israel-kibbutz-hamas.html

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/22/multimedia/22beeri-paramedic-hmlj/22beeri-paramedic-hmlj-facebookJumbo.jpg

    New video has surfaced that undercuts the account of an Israeli military paramedic who said two teenagers killed in the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7 were sexually assaulted.

    The unnamed paramedic, from an Israeli commando unit, was among dozens of people interviewed for a Dec. 28 article by The New York Times that examined sexual violence on Oct. 7. He said he discovered the bodies of two partially clothed teenage girls in a home in Kibbutz Be’eri that bore signs of sexual violence.

    The Associated Press, CNN and The Washington Post reported similar accounts from a military paramedic who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    But footage taken by an Israeli soldier who was in Be’eri on Oct. 7, which was viewed by leading community members in February and by The Times this month, shows the bodies of three female victims, fully clothed and with no apparent signs of sexual violence, at a home where many residents had believed the assaults occurred.

    Though it is unclear if the medic was referring to the same scene, residents said that in no other home in Be’eri were two teenage girls killed, and they concluded from the video that the girls had not been sexually assaulted.

    Nili Bar Sinai, a member of a group from the kibbutz that looked into claims of sexual assault at the house, said, “This story is false.”

    Kassem CC BY-NC-SA
    Écrire un commentaire