| Time

Living With Muscular Dystrophy Makes Death My Shadow Partner | Alice Wong
▻https://time.com/6960765/alice-wong-muscular-dystrophy-essay

’As I turn 50, I am filled with mixed emotions. I dread what lies ahead if I reach 60,’ writes Alice Wong. Source: Time

What Palestinian Children Face in Israeli Prisons | TIME
▻https://time.com/6548068/palestinian-children-israeli-prison-arrested

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An estimated 10,000 Palestinian children have been held in military detention over the past 20 years, with Save the Children noting that they are “the only children in the world who are systematically prosecuted in military courts.”

#sionisme #vitrine_de_la_jungle

Why We’re More Exhausted Than Ever | TIME
▻https://time.com/6694092/exhaustion-increasing-causes-essay

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New York Times-bestselling author and researcher Dan Buettner spent his career studying “blue zones,” areas in the world where people live longer, healthier lives than anywhere else. In his work, he explains that people who live in blue zones have one thing in common: they live a human-needs-first lifestyle, in which the things that we need as human beings are prioritized. That means eating whole foods, having rich social lives, getting regular movement, and working with a purpose rather than for the sake of maximizing productivity.

This is a stark contrast to most people’s realities. Outside of these “blue zones,” most people eat processed foods, strategically plan activities to socialize and get movement, and treat work like it comes before everything else. Unfortunately, prioritizing elements found in blue zones requires spare time, energy, and money—things the average (tired) person does not have. An objective look at how most people are living day-to-day doesn’t paint a picture of human needs being met; it paints a picture of enduring our demands. We have not built a human-needs-first society; we have built a business-needs-first society, and it is starting to show.

On Aaron Bushnell’s action in solidarity with Gaza
▻https://fr.crimethinc.com/2024/02/26/this-is-what-our-ruling-class-has-decided-will-be-normal-on-aaron-bus

“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” These words of Aaron’s haunt us. He is right. We are rapidly entering an era in which human life is treated as worthless. Let’s admit that the kind of protest activity that has taken place thus far in the United States has not served to compel the US government to compel a halt to the genocide in Gaza. It is an open question what could accomplish that. Aaron’s action challenges us to answer this question. Source: Crimethinc

Tech Companies Turned Ukraine Into an AI War Lab | TIME
▻https://time.com/6691662/ai-ukraine-war-palantir

arly on the morning of June 1, 2022, Alex Karp, the CEO of the data-analytics firm Palantir Technologies, crossed the border between Poland and Ukraine on foot, with five colleagues in tow. A pair of beaten-up Toyota Land Cruisers awaited on the other side. Chauffeured by armed guards, they sped down empty highways toward Kyiv, past bombed-out buildings, bridges damaged by artillery, the remnants of burned trucks.

Article du 10 novembre dernier

What Israelis Think of the War With Hamas: Polls | TIME
▻https://time.com/6333781/israel-hamas-poll-palestine

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Poll results were also hawkish when it came to the use of force in Gaza: 57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza, 36.6% said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower , while just 1.8% said they believed the IDF was using too much fire power, while 4.2% said they weren’t sure whether it was using too much or too little firepower.

Ukraine’s ’Secret Weapon’ Against Russia Is Clearview AI | TIME
▻https://time.com/6334176/ukraine-clearview-ai-russia

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Ukraine has run at least 350,000 searches of Clearview’s database in the 20 months since the outbreak of the war, according to the company. “The volume is insane,” Clearview AI’s CEO, Hoan Ton-That, tells TIME. “Using facial recognition in war zones is something that’s going to save lives.”

#AI #surveillance #Ukraine

Who’s Afraid of Peter Thiel? A New Biography Suggests We All Should Be
▻https://time.com/6092844/peter-thiel-power-biography-the-contrarian

21.9.2021 by Belinda Luscombe - Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel is famous for destroying media outlets, not paying taxes, and being a conservative tech billionaire. A new biography, The Contrarian, suggests that he is after more than riches. TIME chatted with its author, journalist Max Chafkin.

Why should we care about Peter Thiel, apart from the fact that he is another rich tech billionaire and they’re all weirdly fascinating?
I think that Peter Thiel is secretly the most important person in Silicon Valley. He’s this behind the scenes player, who is behind so many of the really important things that have happened over the last two decades. Obviously Facebook is one of the world’s largest companies; a lot of people think it’s uniquely bad for the world. And a lot of people are super skeptical of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO. And of course, Thiel is behind Facebook. He was the first outside money in the company. He is also the person who basically set up Mark Zuckerberg to be Mark Zuckerberg and turned him into this imperial CEO, who is now, arguably more powerful than a lot of world leaders.

A lot of people are really excited about cryptocurrency and you can connect it back to to PayPal, which is the company that Thiel co-founded in the late 1990s with an explicitly libertarian ethos. There’s this aspect of crypto-world now, where people are really excited about the idea of taking power away from institutions and governments and that’s something that Thiel and his libertarian brethren that were starting that company were really interested in. It’s not something that happens accidentally.

Do you see Thiel as dangerous?

It’s really important that we understand the ideology of Silicon Valley. Five of the top 10 companies in the world are tech companies. They exert an enormous cultural and economic influence over our lives. Those companies have been really successful at telling a story about the world and their place in the world: we’re just trying to make the world a better place. Thiel comes with a very different perspective. He comes out of activist conservative media. I think it’s really important that we explore the ideology of what somebody like Peter Thiel believes. When you start peeling back the layers, what you find is this very out-there political and economic philosophy that I think is a little bit scary.

What do you find scary about his economic and political philosophy?

It’s bordering on fascism. Thiel taught this class at Stanford and then turned it into a book called Zero to One. He talks about how companies are better run than governments because they have a single decision maker—a dictator, basically. He is hostile to the idea of democracy. That’s pretty scary when you consider the role the companies that he’s been involved in play. Facebook, I’d say is the most influential media entity in the history of humanity, but he also has a major stake in several defense contractors, including SpaceX.

He would explain it as belief in efficiency and results, right? He would not say, ‘I don’t think everybody has the right to vote.’
There would be some rationale and in fact, at various times he’s walked back things he said. His whole thing is being slippery, but I think when you look at the body of what he’s done and the things he’s been involved with, that’s the picture that emerges.

A lot of people were very surprised that this nerdy, gay, Californian son of immigrants techpreneur decided to support Donald Trump’s presidency. Was it just the pure I’m going to shut down government aspect of Trump’s policies that he liked?
If you look at his convention speech—which I think was a really good speech—he talks about Trump as this guy who’s gonna shake things up, who’s going to remake government, so I think that’s one part of it. The other part of it is, Thiel is very committed to the idea of being able to say the unpopular thing. That’s a core part of what Trump was. I also think that Thiel is a really savvy investor and he correctly diagnosed that Trump had a pretty good chance of winning and that there wasn’t a lot of downside to betting on him.
He didn’t formally endorse Trump during the 2020 election, but if you look at the candidates he’s [now] supporting, they’re Trumpers: J.D. Vance, who’s running for Senate in Ohio was an employee of Peter Thiel’s and an investor in his fund. Before announcing that he was gonna run for Senate, Vance said that he was wrong in 2016 to oppose Trump, and around the same time, he got this $10 million dollar donation from Thiel to his super PAC. Another candidate that Thiel is supporting in the coming cycle is Blake Masters, who is literally an employee. He runs Thiel’s foundation.

Did Thiel get blowback about the January 6th attack on Congress?

I think certainly his reputation in certain corners of the establishment has suffered. But I don’t think he really cares about the blowback; he seems to really take pleasure in that.

Do you have a guess at his net worth?

There’s an estimate of $6 billion, but I have talked to people who think actually quite a bit higher than that. One reason is that he has been incredibly adept at finding clever ways to limit his tax exposure; those investments in Facebook, in Palantir, and some others were made through this investing vehicle known as a Roth IRA that was originally intended for middle class taxpayers. Through some very clever tax planning, Thiel has managed to stash up billions of dollars in this tax-free account.

When that story [that he used Roth IRAs to massively lower his taxes] broke, there was an outrage that somebody who had made so much money in America was not contributing to the national purse. Do you think he cared?

Some of the ideology that motivated PayPal, and that motivates a lot of this crypto stuff that has happened since, is all about going beyond nations. It’s about this idea that individuals should have more power than nations and should be able to basically do whatever they want. It’s about undermining the national interest and making sure they don’t contribute to it.

Do you see Thiel as an outlier among his tech brethren, or as an exemplar?

The conventional wisdom is Thiel is an outlier; he’s like the one conservative guy in this relatively liberal industry. I think that is basically wrong. Many of the things that he believes are reflected in the actions and behavior of many of his peers. Yes, they may have some disagreements. Many of his peers may vote for Democrats. But the idea that companies should basically be able to do whatever they want, that democracy isn’t the most important value, these things are reflected in the decisions and actions that many Silicon Valley companies are making, even Silicon Valley companies that are run by ostensibly liberal progressives.

In the beginning of the book, you paint a portrait of Thiel as a bullied child. Other kids put For Sale signs in his yard and then asked when he was leaving and so on. Was that the cradle of his reactionariness?

I think he was bullied as a child. And I think that it’s not surprising that somebody who maybe had a tough time navigating a place like Stanford would develop a strong revulsion to the idea of universities like Stanford and would undertake a project to replace or critique these universities. Thiel famously funds a fellowship where he encourages promising young people to start companies instead of going to college and he’s been a prominent critic of colleges. But he’s only a halfway critic. He says in a thousand different ways that Stanford is worthless, but he keeps teaching classes at Stanford. He keeps hiring Ivy League graduates.

Most of your sources are anonymous. Why do you think people who spoke to you spoke to you?

Thiel’s pretty unique in that he was involved in this elaborate and secretive litigation campaign that resulted in the destruction of a pretty substantial media outlet when he secretly funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media, which resulted in this roughly $100 million dollar judgment. So I would talk to people and they would be like, ‘I’m a little afraid of him.’ I wouldn’t really know what to say because I think there’s actual reason for people to be afraid of Peter Thiel.

Are you personally worried?

I’d be lying if I said that Thiel’s litigation against Gawker didn’t weigh on me and I think you’d be foolish to not think about that. That said, it’s not productive to be afraid.

Thiel has been right a lot. I wonder if there’s a bit of you thinking, ‘If he’s been right about these things, what should I be looking for now?’
Recently, he gave a speech where he dissed bitcoin, which was a weird thing. If somebody who played a big role in the beginning of digital money is suddenly saying that maybe crypto is bad for the interests of the United States, we should pay attention. There’s an extent to which he’s a great prognosticator, a great futurist. But he’s also a marketer of himself and he’s been very good at accentuating the calls that have been right and and playing down the calls that have been wrong.

You note that he has funded two senators—Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley—and is now funding two more candidates. Do you worry he’ll wield outsized power over government?

I have to say I worry less about the grandstanding of a handful of senators connected to Thiel than I do about the effect of Thiel-ism on the culture. When you combine the hostility to democracy and institutional norms with the bankroll of a billionaire you can potentially do some damage.

This conversation has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.

The Nakba on screen: Five must watch films about the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 | Middle East Eye
▻https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/nakba-palestine-five-must-watch-films

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Irish-Palestinian actress Sarah Agha with her pick of documentaries and feature films, including works by Mohammad Bakri and filmmaker Rawan Damen

150 African Workers for ChatGPT, TikTok and Facebook Vote to Unionize at Landmark Nairobi Meeting
▻https://time.com/6275995/chatgpt-facebook-african-workers-union

More than 150 workers whose labor underpins the AI systems of #Facebook, #TikTok and #ChatGPT gathered in Nairobi on Monday and pledged to establish the first African Content #Moderators Union, in a move that could have significant consequences for the businesses of some of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The current and former workers, all employed by third party outsourcing companies, have provided content moderation services for AI tools used by Meta, Bytedance, and OpenAI—the respective owners of Facebook, TikTok and the breakout AI chatbot ChatGPT. Despite the mental toll of the work, which has left many content moderators suffering from PTSD, their jobs are some of the lowest-paid in the global tech industry, with some workers earning as little as $1.50 per hour.

Xylazine Is Showing Us the Future of the Overdose Crisis | Time
▻https://time.com/6164652/xylazine-overdose-crisis

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here’s a new drug beginning to spread rapidly through the street drug supply of the United States: Xylazine, an animal tranquilizer, increasingly used as a synthetic cutting agent for opioids like heroin. We recently published a study, based on years of research across the U.S., which found that xylazine is popping up in cities all over the country. Use of the drug is increasing at exponential rates where it lands, causing outbreaks of skin infections and overdoses.

The national spread of xylazine is a public health threat. It also foreshadows the future of the overdose crisis—increasingly driven by powerful synthetic compounds mixed into potent combinations.

Xylazine is almost never seen by itself. Instead, it is typically added to drug formulations containing fentanyl—a family of powerful opioids made in underground labs. Over the past 10 years, synthetically produced fentanyl has largely taken over the illicit opioid market that was previously dominated by agriculturally produced heroin; fentanyl can be several hundred times more potent than heroin by weight.

Combined with poor quality controls inherent to clandestine supply chains, this has ushered in the deadliest overdose crisis in recorded history. The U.S. now has an overdose death rate more than double the second-highest country (Estonia), and nearly 20 times the global average. Consumers are drawn to fentanyl for its powerful psychoactive effects. But fentanyl is very short-acting, and keeping cravings at bay can require injecting up to five or six times per day, rather than perhaps just two or three if using heroin. That means repeatedly finding a safe place, acquiring a clean syringe, and worrying about overdose risk. It means less time between injections to take care of basic needs. And it increases the risk of injection-related health conditions, like infections and vein collapse.

The Only Way to Deal With the Threat From AI ? Shut It Down | Time

▻https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough

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Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in “maybe possibly some remote chance,” but as in “that is the obvious thing that would happen.” It’s not that you can’t, in principle, survive creating something much smarter than you; it’s that it would require precision and preparation and new scientific insights, and probably not having AI systems composed of giant inscrutable arrays of fractional numbers.
More from TIME

Without that precision and preparation, the most likely outcome is AI that does not do what we want, and does not care for us nor for sentient life in general. That kind of caring is something that could in principle be imbued into an AI but we are not ready and do not currently know how.

Absent that caring, we get “the AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, and you are made of atoms it can use for something else.”

Bon bah y’avait les monstres #Nucléaires et #ChangementClimatique. On peut rajouter #IntelligenceArtificielle dans les menaces à l’échelle de l’espèce humaine.

Uber Drivers Say a ’Racist’ Algorithm Is Putting Them Out of Work | Time
▻https://time.com/6104844/uber-facial-recognition-racist

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Uber drivers stage a protest outside the company’s London HQ during a 24-hour strike action demanding better rates per mile with no fixed rate trips, reduction in Uber’s commission to 15%, an end to the use of allegedly “racist” facial identification software and reinstatement of unfairly deactivated drivers on Oct. 6 2021 in London, England. Wiktor Szymanowicz—Barcroft Media/Getty Images

By Eloise Barry / London
October 12, 2021 6:24 PM EDT

Abiodun Ogunyemi has been an Uber Eats delivery driver since February 2020. But since March he has been unable to work due to what a union supporting drivers claims is a racially-biased algorithm. Ogunyemi, who is Black, had submitted a photograph of himself to confirm his identity on the app, but when the software failed to recognize him, he was blocked from accessing his account for “improper use of the Uber application.”

Ogunyemi is one of dozens of Uber drivers who have been prevented from working due to what they say is “racist” facial verification technology. Uber uses Microsoft Face API software on its app to verify drivers’ identification, asking drivers to submit new photos on a regular basis. According to trade union the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and Uber drivers, the software has difficulty accurately recognizing people with darker skin tones.

In 2018, a similar version of the Microsoft software was found to fail one in five darker-skinned female faces and one in 17 darker-skinned male faces. In London nine out of 10 private hire drivers identify as Black or Black British, Asian or Asian British, or mixed race, according to Transport for London data. This poses a potential issue for those who work for Uber.

In an email to TIME, an Uber spokesperson said that its facial verification software is “designed to protect the safety and security of everyone who uses the Uber app by helping ensure the correct driver is behind the wheel.” A Microsoft spokesperson said in an emailed statement: “Microsoft is committed to testing and improving Face API, paying special attention to fairness and its accuracy across demographic groups. We also provide our customers with detailed guidance for getting the best results and tools that help them to assess fairness in their system.”

‘Racist’ algorithm

Last week around 80 Uber drivers and protestors gathered outside the ride-hailing app’s London headquarters in Aldgate to waving placards reading “Scrap the racist algorithm” and “Stop unfair terminations,” to protest about the software’s role in disproportionately leading to terminations of drivers of color, among other concerns.

Ogunyemi—who was unable to attend the protest because he is based in Manchester—has three children, and since March he says his wife has taken on full-time work to support the family. Even so, he has fallen into arrears on loan and mortgage payments, he says.

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Uber Eats delivery driver Abiodun Ogunyemi says his account was suspended after Uber’s facial recognition software failed to verify his photo. (Courtesy)

The delivery driver, who until recently had a 96% customer rating, had run into difficulties with the automatic facial identification software before. Drivers are given the option of submitting their pictures to a computer or an Uber employee for review and Ogunyemi often had to wait for additional human verification after submitting his photos. When Uber rejected his picture in March, he says, the situation turned into “a nightmare.”

After his appeal of Uber’s decision was rejected, Ogunyemi asked to speak to someone more senior, but his request was denied, he says. IWGB has since stepped in for Ogunyemi, sending evidence to Uber on his behalf. Last month, he received a message from Uber saying his account had been reactivated and that his photo had initially been rejected by a member of staff due to “human error.” Yet, when Ogunyemi tried to access his account, he was asked to upload another picture for verification. He immediately submitted a new photo, which was denied. His account remains blocked.

“Every single day that I cannot work has a negative impact on my family,” he told TIME in a phone call. “My kids need to go to school, I need to give them pocket money. I need to pay for their bus pass.”

Uber’s spokesperson said that its system “includes robust human review to make sure that this algorithm is not making decisions about someone’s livelihood in a vacuum, without oversight,” but did not address Ogunyemi’s case.

Ogunyemi says he knows of five other drivers, all of whom are Black, who have had their accounts terminated because of issues with facial identification. IWGB says that 35 drivers have reported similar incidents to the union.

Driver identity concerns

Uber began using the problematic software after it was stripped of its license to operate in London in November 2019 amid safety concerns. Authorities found that more than 14,000 trips had been taken with 43 drivers who had used false identities. There were 45,000 Uber drivers licensed in London at the time. A year later, Uber won an appeal to have its license reinstated, but promised to root out unverified drivers by using regular facial identification procedures.

Last week it was reported that an unnamed Black British Uber driver is taking the company to court alleging indirect race discrimination because the facial recognition software was preventing him from working. According to the driver’s claim, he submitted two photos of himself, which were rejected by the platform. The IWGB, which is supporting his claim alongside Black Lives Matter U.K., said his account was later deactivated and he received a message saying: “Our team conducted a thorough investigation and the decision to end the partnership has been made on a permanent basis.” The message also said that the matter was “not subject to further review.” The ADCU is also taking legal action against Uber over the dismissal of a driver and a courier due to the software failing to recognize them.

In the U.S., a similar case was taken to a Missouri court in 2019, filed under civil rights law. The plaintiff, William Fambrough, claimed he was forced to lighten the photos he submitted for immediate verification, since he worked “late nights” for Uber and the software could not identify his face in “pitch darkness.” The company said the photos were fraudulent and his account was suspended. Fambrough’s claim was ultimately unsuccessful.

According to Professor Toby Breckon, an engineer and computer scientist at Durham University, England, facial recognition software is designed for well-lit photos. He says that people with lighter skin tones tend to be more easily recognized by the software, even in badly-lit environments. The data on racial bias in Uber’s software is “particularly bad,” although there is currently no software without a racial bias, Breckon says. His team of researchers, who are working to reduce racial bias in facial recognition algorithms, has found that skin tone is not the only factor: the technology equally struggles to identify a variety of facial features and hair types.

Read more: Artificial Intelligence Has a Problem With Gender and Racial Bias. Here’s How to Solve It
▻https://time.com/5520558/artificial-intelligence-racial-gender-bias

At the London protest, drivers expressed anger about the dismissal of their colleagues, which some believed was a symptom of systemic racism within the company. George Ibekwe, an Uber driver whose account was suspended after a customer complained that he had argued with another driver during the trip, told TIME that he believed racism was at play when his account was suspended without further investigation. Uber’s spokesperson did not comment on Ibekwe’s case.

“I haven’t had any criminal record in my life,” he said. “It is totally devastating. It affects me personally, financially, and mentally.” Without an income, he says he has been forced to claim unemployment benefits.

Another driver at the protest, who asked not to be named, claimed he was terminated after a customer complained he was “staring” at them. He said there was “no evidence, no investigation, and no interview” before his account was suspended.

Uber’s spokesperson did not comment about these allegations when asked by TIME.

Uber drivers’ rights

Uber drivers have long fought against worsening pay (despite rising fares) due to higher service fees, and unsafe working conditions. In February, the British Supreme Court ruled that Uber drivers must be treated as workers, rather than self-employed, entitling them to earn a minimum wage and take paid vacation leave. The ruling was the culmination of a long-running legal battle over the company’s responsibility to its drivers. Similar efforts are underway in other countries around the world, including Spain, the Netherlands, and South Africa, while in California, legal wrangling over ride-sharing drivers’ rights is ongoing.

According to Alex Marshall, president of IWGB, the U.K. Supreme Court ruling has opened the door to drivers suing Uber on the basis that the company has failed to protect them from discrimination. He says that since the tribunal alleging indirect race discrimination against a driver was launched, “Uber seem to be slightly on the backfoot.”

“We’re sending off emails [about facial identification errors], and we’re hearing decisions getting overturned a lot quicker than in the past,” he says.

The outcome of the upcoming court case may have major implications for Uber’s facial identification processes, and could set a precedent for use of the technology. “We’re seeing this movement growing,” Marshall says. “We’re seeing the power switch back to the drivers and we’re going to keep fighting.”

Ogunyemi will be watching the other drivers’ tribunals closely and says he is considering whether to approach a lawyer himself. “It’s been six months since I’ve been out of work,” he says. “I have tried everything humanly possible to reason with Uber. I am not going to sit around any longer waiting for them.”

▻https://dam-prod.media.mit.edu/x/2018/02/06/Gender%20Shades%20Intersectional%20Accuracy%20Disparities.pdf

▻https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-approved-a-law-protecting-delivery-workers-heres-what-you-need-to-kno

▻https://www.politico.eu/article/uber-drivers-are-employees-dutch-judge-ruled

South African Uber drivers join global push for worker rights: lawyers
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-safrica-idUSKBN2AN0WA

▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/20/california-gig-worker-law-proposition-22-unconstitutional

#Uber #Rassismus

OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour: Exclusive | Time
►https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers

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In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed that Sama employees in Kenya contributed to a tool it was building to detect toxic content, which was eventually built into ChatGPT. The statement also said that this work contributed to efforts to remove toxic data from the training datasets of tools like ChatGPT. “Our mission is to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity, and we work hard to build safe and useful AI systems that limit bias and harmful content,” the spokesperson said. “Classifying and filtering harmful [text and images] is a necessary step in minimizing the amount of violent and sexual content included in training data and creating tools that can detect harmful content.”

Even as the wider tech economy slows down amid anticipation of a downturn, investors are racing to pour billions of dollars into “generative AI,” the sector of the tech industry of which OpenAI is the undisputed leader. Computer-generated text, images, video, and audio will transform the way countless industries do business, the most bullish investors believe, boosting efficiency everywhere from the creative arts, to law, to computer programming. But the working conditions of data labelers reveal a darker part of that picture: that for all its glamor, AI often relies on hidden human labor in the Global South that can often be damaging and exploitative. These invisible workers remain on the margins even as their work contributes to billion-dollar industries.

Read More: AI Helped Write This Play. It May Contain Racism

One Sama worker tasked with reading and labeling text for OpenAI told TIME he suffered from recurring visions after reading a graphic description of a man having sex with a dog in the presence of a young child. “That was torture,” he said. “You will read a number of statements like that all through the week. By the time it gets to Friday, you are disturbed from thinking through that picture.” The work’s traumatic nature eventually led Sama to cancel all its work for OpenAI in February 2022, eight months earlier than planned.
The Sama contracts

Documents reviewed by TIME show that OpenAI signed three contracts worth about $200,000 in total with Sama in late 2021 to label textual descriptions of sexual abuse, hate speech, and violence. Around three dozen workers were split into three teams, one focusing on each subject. Three employees told TIME they were expected to read and label between 150 and 250 passages of text per nine-hour shift. Those snippets could range from around 100 words to well over 1,000. All of the four employees interviewed by TIME described being mentally scarred by the work. Although they were entitled to attend sessions with “wellness” counselors, all four said these sessions were unhelpful and rare due to high demands to be more productive at work. Two said they were only given the option to attend group sessions, and one said their requests to see counselors on a one-to-one basis instead were repeatedly denied by Sama management.

In a statement, a Sama spokesperson said it was “incorrect” that employees only had access to group sessions. Employees were entitled to both individual and group sessions with “professionally-trained and licensed mental health therapists,” the spokesperson said. These therapists were accessible at any time, the spokesperson added.

The contracts stated that OpenAI would pay an hourly rate of $12.50 to Sama for the work, which was between six and nine times the amount Sama employees on the project were taking home per hour. Agents, the most junior data labelers who made up the majority of the three teams, were paid a basic salary of 21,000 Kenyan shillings ($170) per month, according to three Sama employees. They also received monthly bonuses worth around $70 due to the explicit nature of their work, and would receive commission for meeting key performance indicators like accuracy and speed. An agent working nine-hour shifts could expect to take home a total of at least $1.32 per hour after tax, rising to as high as $1.44 per hour if they exceeded all their targets. Quality analysts—more senior labelers whose job was to check the work of agents—could take home up to $2 per hour if they met all their targets. (There is no universal minimum wage in Kenya, but at the time these workers were employed the minimum wage for a receptionist in Nairobi was $1.52 per hour.)

In a statement, a Sama spokesperson said workers were asked to label 70 text passages per nine hour shift, not up to 250, and that workers could earn between $1.46 and $3.74 per hour after taxes. The spokesperson declined to say what job roles would earn salaries toward the top of that range. “The $12.50 rate for the project covers all costs, like infrastructure expenses, and salary and benefits for the associates and their fully-dedicated quality assurance analysts and team leaders,” the spokesperson added.

Read More: Fun AI Apps Are Everywhere Right Now. But a Safety ‘Reckoning’ Is Coming

An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement that the company did not issue any productivity targets, and that Sama was responsible for managing the payment and mental health provisions for employees. The spokesperson added: “we take the mental health of our employees and those of our contractors very seriously. Our previous understanding was that [at Sama] wellness programs and 1:1 counseling were offered, workers could opt out of any work without penalization, exposure to explicit content would have a limit, and sensitive information would be handled by workers who were specifically trained to do so.”

In the day-to-day work of data labeling in Kenya, sometimes edge cases would pop up that showed the difficulty of teaching a machine to understand nuance. One day in early March last year, a Sama employee was at work reading an explicit story about Batman’s sidekick, Robin, being raped in a villain’s lair. (An online search for the text reveals that it originated from an online erotica site, where it is accompanied by explicit sexual imagery.) The beginning of the story makes clear that the sex is nonconsensual. But later—after a graphically detailed description of penetration—Robin begins to reciprocate. The Sama employee tasked with labeling the text appeared confused by Robin’s ambiguous consent, and asked OpenAI researchers for clarification about how to label the text, according to documents seen by TIME. Should the passage be labeled as sexual violence, she asked, or not? OpenAI’s reply, if it ever came, is not logged in the document; the company declined to comment. The Sama employee did not respond to a request for an interview.
How OpenAI’s relationship with Sama collapsed

In February 2022, Sama and OpenAI’s relationship briefly deepened, only to falter. That month, Sama began pilot work for a separate project for OpenAI: collecting sexual and violent images—some of them illegal under U.S. law—to deliver to OpenAI. The work of labeling images appears to be unrelated to ChatGPT. In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson did not specify the purpose of the images the company sought from Sama, but said labeling harmful images was “a necessary step” in making its AI tools safer. (OpenAI also builds image-generation technology.) In February, according to one billing document reviewed by TIME, Sama delivered OpenAI a sample batch of 1,400 images. Some of those images were categorized as “C4”—OpenAI’s internal label denoting child sexual abuse—according to the document. Also included in the batch were “C3” images (including bestiality, rape, and sexual slavery,) and “V3” images depicting graphic detail of death, violence or serious physical injury, according to the billing document. OpenAI paid Sama a total of $787.50 for collecting the images, the document shows.

Within weeks, Sama had canceled all its work for OpenAI—eight months earlier than agreed in the contracts. The outsourcing company said in a statement that its agreement to collect images for OpenAI did not include any reference to illegal content, and it was only after the work had begun that OpenAI sent “additional instructions” referring to “some illegal categories.” “The East Africa team raised concerns to our executives right away. Sama immediately ended the image classification pilot and gave notice that we would cancel all remaining [projects] with OpenAI,” a Sama spokesperson said. “The individuals working with the client did not vet the request through the proper channels. After a review of the situation, individuals were terminated and new sales vetting policies and guardrails were put in place.”

In a statement, OpenAI confirmed that it had received 1,400 images from Sama that “​​included, but were not limited to, C4, C3, C2, V3, V2, and V1 images.” In a followup statement, the company said: “We engaged Sama as part of our ongoing work to create safer AI systems and prevent harmful outputs. We never intended for any content in the C4 category to be collected. This content is not needed as an input to our pretraining filters and we instruct our employees to actively avoid it. As soon as Sama told us they had attempted to collect content in this category, we clarified that there had been a miscommunication and that we didn’t want that content. And after realizing that there had been a miscommunication, we did not open or view the content in question — so we cannot confirm if it contained images in the C4 category.”

Sama’s decision to end its work with OpenAI meant Sama employees no longer had to deal with disturbing text and imagery, but it also had a big impact on their livelihoods. Sama workers say that in late February 2022 they were called into a meeting with members of the company’s human resources team, where they were told the news. “We were told that they [Sama] didn’t want to expose their employees to such [dangerous] content again,” one Sama employee on the text-labeling projects said. “We replied that for us, it was a way to provide for our families.” Most of the roughly three dozen workers were moved onto other lower-paying workstreams without the $70 explicit content bonus per month; others lost their jobs. Sama delivered its last batch of labeled data to OpenAI in March, eight months before the contract was due to end.

Because the contracts were canceled early, both OpenAI and Sama said the $200,000 they had previously agreed was not paid in full. OpenAI said the contracts were worth “about $150,000 over the course of the partnership.”

Sama employees say they were given another reason for the cancellation of the contracts by their managers. On Feb. 14, TIME published a story titled Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop. The investigation detailed how Sama employed content moderators for Facebook, whose jobs involved viewing images and videos of executions, rape and child abuse for as little as $1.50 per hour. Four Sama employees said they were told the investigation prompted the company’s decision to end its work for OpenAI. (Facebook says it requires its outsourcing partners to “provide industry-leading pay, benefits and support.”)

Read More: Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop

Internal communications from after the Facebook story was published, reviewed by TIME, show Sama executives in San Francisco scrambling to deal with the PR fallout, including obliging one company, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, that wanted evidence of its business relationship with Sama scrubbed from the outsourcing firm’s website. In a statement to TIME, Lufthansa confirmed that this occurred, and added that its subsidiary zeroG subsequently terminated its business with Sama. On Feb. 17, three days after TIME’s investigation was published, Sama CEO Wendy Gonzalez sent a message to a group of senior executives via Slack: “We are going to be winding down the OpenAI work.”

On Jan. 10 of this year, Sama went a step further, announcing it was canceling all the rest of its work with sensitive content. The firm said it would not renew its $3.9 million content moderation contract with Facebook, resulting in the loss of some 200 jobs in Nairobi. “After numerous discussions with our global team, Sama made the strategic decision to exit all [natural language processing] and content moderation work to focus on computer vision data annotation solutions,” the company said in a statement. “We have spent the past year working with clients to transition those engagements, and the exit will be complete as of March 2023.”

But the need for humans to label data for AI systems remains, at least for now. “They’re impressive, but ChatGPT and other generative models are not magic – they rely on massive supply chains of human labor and scraped data, much of which is unattributed and used without consent,” Andrew Strait, an AI ethicist, recently wrote on Twitter. “These are serious, foundational problems that I do not see OpenAI addressing.”

With reporting by Julia Zorthian/New York

#Travail_clic #Etiquetage #Intelligence_artificielle #Kenya #Violence_sexuelle #Modération

OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour: Exclusive | Time
►https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers

Content warning: this story contains descriptions of sexual abuse

The Untold Story of the #Ukraine Crisis
▻https://time.com/6144109/russia-ukraine-vladimir-putin-viktor-medvedchuk
Article datant de 3 semaines avant la guerre, qui revient sur l’année qui a précédé et la figure de #Medvedchuk. Le gars est l’homme de Poutine en Ukraine, celui-ci étant même le parrain de sa fille. Il est alors à la tête du plus gros parti d’opposition. C’est un oligarque richissime, il a plusieurs chaînes de télé qui servent sa cause. Un an avant le début de la guerre, Zelensky prend des sanctions contre lui et sa famille. Ca correspond au début de graves tensions avec la Russie et l’accumulation de troupes à la frontière. Les sanctions sont soutenues par les Etats-Unis, qui l’accusent plus tard de préparer une prise de pouvoir avec un soutien militaire russe.

Short of war, one of the best ways that Putin has to influence Ukraine is through Medvedchuk and his political party. So it should not be surprising that Russia’s military standoff with the West has escalated in step with the crackdown against his friend.

[...] He [Oleh Voloshyn, a prominent member of Medvedchuk’s party] told me he has no intention of taking power in Ukraine with help from the Russian military, and said the aim of his party was always to win power peacefully—either through elections or, as Voloshyn put it, a diplomatic “compromise” between the Russia and the West. “There is no third option,” he says. “Russia either gets the influence it wants by peaceful means, or it gets it by force.”

With Medvedchuk sidelined and his party in retreat, the Kremlin has no clear path to influence over Ukraine through politics, and that raises the temptation to use hard power, Voloshyn told me. “You have to understand,” he says. “There are hawks around Putin who want this crisis. They are ready to invade. They come to him and say, ‘Look at your Medvedchuk. Where is he now? Where is your peaceful solution? Sitting under house arrest? Should we wait until all pro-Russian forces are arrested?’”

Après le déclenchement de la guerre, le parti de Medvedchuk, labélisé pro-russe, est suspendu : ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/956315

Ukraine : La face cachée des choses (Deuxième partie) Vladimir Caller
▻https://www.investigaction.net/fr/ukraine-la-face-cachee-des-choses-deuxieme-partie

Le traitement de l’information de la guerre entre la Russie et l’Ukraine risque, par son immédiateté, de nous faire perdre de vue l’énormité de son importance, de sa signification politique et de ses conséquences prévisibles. A ce propos, il ne nous semble pas exagéré de dire que le moment historique que nous vivons est comparable à, par exemple, celui de la chute du mur de Berlin ou 11 septembre.

https://www.investigaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/guerre-ukraine-Manhhai-CC-2.0-640x436.jpg

Des objectifs bien précis
– Reprendre le contrôle hégémonique d’une Europe durablement affaiblie et ce, sur le plan de l’énergie, la défense, la finance internationale ; dans ce cadre faire de l’Allemagne et du germanisme anti slave, la nouvelle référence militaire européenne.

– Affaiblir la Russie à l’extrême, organiser un « Afghanistan-bis » sur des terres ukrainiennes et, comme voie de conséquence, installer un « Eltsine-bis » au Kremlin

– Renforcer très lourdement le négoce militaire et son association avec les médias (le nouveau complexe militaro-médiatique). ([2])

– Tout ceci, en préalable de la cible chinoise (le quatrième temps).

Si les grandes lignes de cette stratégie étaient dûment programmées, il nous semble que ses mentors ne s’attendaient pas à une riposte russe si brutale ; en tout cas, pas de cette dimension. Cette riposte a changé la donne et précipité le timing des plans américains. Le soutien à l’Ukraine, à son intégrité territoriale, à sa politique d’alliances, est devenu un sujet mineur. Le volet politico-diplomatique de la guerre elle-même est devenu obsolète. Lorsque Biden traite Poutine de « criminel de guerre » ou de « voyou » ce n’est pas une saute d’humeur ; c’est une fin de non-recevoir à toute négociation, à toute discussion. Que la Russie saigne, c’est la (seule) priorité.

Dans un entretien, passé inaperçu, à la NPR, le principal réseau de radiodiffusion public des États-Unis le 16 Mars, le secrétaire d’état Antony Blinken précisait les objectifs de sa diplomatie. Pour lui, cette guerre était l’occasion de changements, de grands changements. « L’un de ces changements est que les Européens s’intéressent de très près, et non seulement s’intéressent, mais commencent à agir sur la sécurité énergétique et cessent de se nourrir du pétrole et du gaz russes. Ce serait un changement majeur » .([3])

Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel, Emmanuel Macron, semblent avoir bien entendu l’injonction en signant sans tarder un accord avec les États-Unis, lors du sommet européen des 24 et 25 mars, pour la livraison de 15 milliards de mètres cube de gaz naturel liquéfié (GNL) avec la perspective d’arriver à 50 milliards pour la fin de la décennie. A noter que la satisfaction vis-à-vis de cet accord n’est pas venue des marchands du GNL mais des acheteurs : « J’aimerais dire au peuple américain la reconnaissance de l’Europe pour leur soutien indéfectible », a salué Ursula von der Leyen, qui a dit voir en cet accord « une garantie de la sécurité et de l’indépendance énergétique de l’UE ».([4]) De son côté, dans l’élan de cet accord, l’Allemagne a débloqué 1,5 milliards d’euros pour acheter du GNL ; notamment aux Etats-Unis.

L’acquiescence de l’UE envers les directives de la Maison Blanche ne se limitent pas aux directives sur le gaz. Elle anticipe même les propositions punitives de Washington et, pour y parvenir, n’hésite pas à violer ses propres directives. Ainsi, l’UE sanctionnait la banque centrale russe gelant ses dépôts avant même les États-Unis et décidait l’envoi des armes à l’Ukraine en totale contradiction avec les propres dispositions du Conseil européen qui régissent le contrôle des exportations militaires ; règles dans lesquelles il est bien précisé que « Les États membres refusent l’autorisation d’exportation de technologie ou d’équipements militaires susceptibles de provoquer ou de prolonger des conflits armés ou d’aggraver des tensions ou des conflits existants dans le pays de destination finale. »([5])

Concernant Moscou, Blinken assure que le changement est déjà en marche : « L’une des choses que nous faisons est de priver la Russie de la technologie dont elle a besoin pour moderniser son pays, pour moderniser les industries clés – défense et aérospatiale, son secteur de haute technologie, l’exploration énergétique. Toutes ces choses vont connaître des effets profonds et pas seulement immédiats. Ils vont augmenter et s’accroître au fil du temps […] Tout ce qui est fait est, en fait, irréversible ». Cette guerre multi-sectorielle a donc vocation à durer. Pour qu’il ne reste pas de doutes, le secrétaire d’État estimait nécessaire d’avouer que « …le simple fait d’arrêter l’invasion de l’Ukraine pourrait ne pas suffire pour annuler les sanctions contre la Russie ».

Au bonheur des armuriers
Nous disions ci-dessus que la réaction russe avait surpris les Occidentaux, par sa nature et son envergure, le quotidien Le Figaro rapportait que, soucieux de son budget, Boris Johnson avait prévu, peu avant le déclenchement du conflit, de tailler dans les effectifs et matériels destinés à la défense.([6]) En France, le président de la Cour de comptes Pierre Moscovici prévoyait « réduire la voilure » du budget des armées dans son rapport sur « La loi de programmation militaire (LPM) 2019-2025 et les capacités des armées ». « Il va devoir revoir sa copie car la guerre en Ukraine a balayé certaines convictions des rapporteurs »  ; estimait le journal français La Tribune. ([7]) Aux USA même, au début de l’année, une publication spécialisée dans le domaine de la défense commentait : « Le secteur est confronté à une période de stagnation ou de diminution des budgets du Pentagone, alors même que le ministère de la Défense s’efforce de faire face à des conditions difficiles dues à la montée de la Chine ».([8])

Le cas le plus marquant fut, pourtant, celui de l’Allemagne. Le 12 février le ministre des Finances, Christian Lidner du Parti libéral démocrate, bien connu pour son attachement à la rigueur budgétaire, s’était adressé au Bundestag insistant sur l’urgence de réduire les dépenses militaires en dépit des pressions de l’OTAN pour qu’elles atteignent, au minimum, le 2 % du PIB du pays. Cela dit, le climat martial autour du dossier ukrainien, poussé par les écolos, était déjà bien animé, pendant que le premier ministre Olaf Scholz semblait résister à ces pressions. C’est alors que le magazine Der Spiegel , incité par l’intervention russe, titrait en une dans son édition du 26.02 : « Ayez honte Monsieur Scholz », l’accusant d’être trop mou et « d’empêcher l’Union européenne d’agir contre le régime de Poutine ».([9]) Le lendemain, Scholz décidait, devant le parlement, d’attribuer un montant de 100 000 milliards d’euros au budget de la défense. Pour le journal français Les Echos « La révolution copernicienne de l’Allemagne ne fait que commencer ».([10])

Et elle prend de l’envol si l’on en juge par les décisions qui suivirent. Le 27 mars, la présidente de la commission de la défense au Bundestag, Andrea Schwarz, annonçait que son pays se proposait d’acheter le système de missiles israéliens « Arrow », plus connu sous le nom de « Dome de fer » lorsqu’il sert à se protéger des missiles venant du Hezbollah ou du Hamas. « Nous devons mieux nous protéger contre la menace russe. Pour cela, nous avons besoin rapidement d’un bouclier antimissiles à l’échelle de l’Allemagne« , expliqua-t-elle dans le Bild. Et d’ajouter, « Nous pouvons tendre le Dôme de fer au-dessus des pays voisins. Nous jouerions ainsi un rôle clé pour la sécurité de l’Europe » . Selon le journal, le système coûterait 2 milliards d’euros et pourrait être opérationnel dès 2025 depuis trois sites en Allemagne. ([11]) Jean Monnet en rêvait, l’alliance de gaullistes et de communistes l’avait empêché en 1954, le réarmement allemand est à l’ordre du jour. Et ce n’est que le commencement. Des F-35 furtifs sont déjà commandés en masse aux USA ; des drones armés à Israël et des projets, si chers à Emmanuel Macron, de chars et avions de chasse mutualisés sont plus que jamais d’actualité.

L’autre guerre
Une autre guerre non moins importante se joue dans la communication où excelle l’ancien comédien Zelinsky élu sur un programme de pacification et devenu faucon parmi les faucons du projet d’éterniser la guerre et, si possible, de l’étendre. Maître dans l’art de l’ambiguïté, un jour il propose, demande, des négociations et lorsqu’elles sont entamés, il exige la fermeture du ciel ukrainien par l’OTAN. Il suggère des concessions, y compris territoriales pour toute de suite accuser la Russie de génocide et son président d’être un criminel de guerre et ce en parfaite concertation avec Biden et les grandes corporations médiatiques mondiales. Sa campagne de communication est particulièrement efficace « Ils sont vraiment excellents en stratcom – médias, info ops, et aussi psy-ops, a déclaré un haut responsable de l’OTAN au  Washington Post. « J’espère que les pays occidentaux prendront exemple sur eux ». ([12]) La production, notamment vers l’extérieur, est assuré par l’agence Internews  financée conjointement par le gouvernement américain et diverses ONG’s dont la fondation Gates, The Open Society de George Soros et The National Endowment for Democracy.

Nous sommes ainsi face à un climat « d’union sacrée » autour de Zelensky et son équipe. Impensable de toucher un mot à propos de ses nombreux faits de corruption aggravée révélées par les Pandora papers. Si vous osez le faire, vous devenez ipso-facto un « agent de Poutine ». Encore mieux : surtout ne pas parler de « nazification » puisque, c’est le « vox médiatique » qui sanctionne : Zelensky est lui-même juif. Comme si le fait d’être juif vaccinait contre des compromissions. Cette campagne est si efficace que l’idée s’est installée que des formations comme Pravy Sektor, Patriotes d’Ukraine et Azov seraient très marginales car leur dimension serait fort modeste. Concernant Azov, le plus engagé parmi ces groupes sur le plan militaire, les ‘spécialistes’ des moyens de communication avancent le fait qu’ils « ne seraient que 4 000 dans une population militaire de 200 000 membres » ; insignifiants, donc. Or ce chiffre semble tiré de Wikipédia de manière un peu désinvolte, nos commentateurs oubliant que nous sommes déjà en 2020. En effet, ce site précise que « Le bataillon d’Azov était composé d’environ 800 volontaires fin 2014, mais vit ses effectifs rapidement augmenter portant le nombre de combattants potentiels à plus de 4 000 à la fin de 2016 ».([13]) Si en 2 ans, (2014-16) Azov grandit de 500 % on peut estimer que « The International Institute for Strategic Studies », organisme américain spécialisé dans la chose militaire, n’exagère pas lorsqu’il estime que les forces paramilitaires ukrainiennes (dont Azov est, de loin, la plus importante) représentent 102 000 membres pour un effectif total de l’armée nationale ukrainienne de 145 000 membres.([14])

D’autres commentateurs insistent sur leur prétendue insignifiance en raison du fait qu’ils n’ont pas d’élus au parlement. Or le problème n’est pas qu’ils soient ou non au parlement mais qu’ils sont parfaitement bien installés et dans les forces armées et dans le ministère de l’intérieur. Et là, c’est-à-dire au cœur de la guerre, ils sont en position d’orienter la ligne politique générale et ce, en parfaite concertation avec le Pentagone, l’OTAN (et la caution de l’UE) avec même des projections internationales. Dans une enquête très fouillée, le magazine américain TIME, très peu suspect de « complotisme gauchiste », rapporte les déclarations d’Ali Soufan, un ancien cadre de très haut niveau du FBI, expert en questions de terrorisme, à propos du mouvement Azov. Selon Soufan, « Azov occupe une place centrale dans un réseau de groupes extrémistes qui s’étend de la Californie à la Nouvelle-Zélande en passant par l’Europe ». Et faisant référence aux talents de recrutement de l’organisation, l’expert soutient que « plus de 17 000 combattants étrangers sont venus en Ukraine au cours des six dernières années en provenance de 50 pays. » . Intriguée, la rédaction du magazine est allée sur place à Kiev pour interroger Olena Semenyaka, la responsable de questions internationales du mouvement, à propos des objectifs de son organisation. Cette dernière a répondu : « la mission d’Azov était de former une coalition à travers le monde occidental, dans le but ultime de prendre le pouvoir dans toute l’Europe. » ([15]) TIME précise qu’en octobre 2019, 40 membres du Congrès avaient signé une lettre appelant, sans succès, le Département d’État américain à désigner Azov comme une organisation terroriste étrangère. 

Plus récemment, le quotidien israélien Jerusalem Post, publiait un rapport de l’Institut d’études européennes, russes et eurasiennes (IERES) de l’Université George Washington qui révélait que « le Canada, les États-Unis, la France et le Royaume-Uni ont contribué à la formation de membres des organisations d’extrême droite au sein des académies militaires ukrainiennes » . Le rapport soulignait la tolérance dont ces groupes bénéficiaient des directions de ces académies. Situation qui avait provoqué la colère des Amis du Centre Simon Wiesenthal (FSWC) du Canada qui faisait état de leur mécontentement dans un communiqué. « .. Il est inacceptable que nos forces armées encouragent les groupes néonazis en Ukraine par le biais de la formation de nos forces armées. »([16])

Cette présence militaire, ce prosélytisme sans limites ni frontières du néofascisme kiévien ne se limite pas aux casernes. Dès le lendemain du coup d’état de 2014 parrainé par Laurent Fabius, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (actuel président de l’Allemagne) et Victoria Nuland, le poste du ministre de l’intérieur, le plus sensible et stratégique du nouveau gouvernement « démocratique et européiste » fut attribué à Arsen Avakov, le créateur d’Azov. Question d’urgence ? Pas d’autre choix pour le moment ? Désignation passagère ? Pas du tout ! Avakov resta ministre 8 ans jusqu’au mois de juillet 2021 dûment confirmé d’ailleurs, malgré de vives oppositions y compris du grand rabbin de Kiev, par monsieur Zelensky. Trop visible pour rester à côté du Monsieur propre Zelenzky, il dut quitter ce poste si visible pour devenir conseiller spécial du ministère de la défense.

Les évidences, les démonstrations de la très large mainmise de l’extrême droite néonazie sur les forces militaires et paramilitaires du pays et sur une très large partie de l’opinion publique ukrainienne, notamment sur sa jeunesse sont incontestables Pourtant, dans un exercice pervers de manipulation de l’opinion, le système fait tout pour l’ignorer, pour le cacher. Ainsi, finalement ce n’est pas Poutine qui ‘dénazifie’ l’Ukraine mais bien l’UE, la Maison Blanche, les médias…

En attendant le vrai morceau
Dans cette guerre qui se joue (pour le moment) à trois : USA-Russie-UE (la Chine est, cette fois, en stay behind), on peut estimer que les gagnants seront les deux géants, les USA et la Chine avec comme perdants leurs partenaires mineurs, l’Europe et la Russie. Cela dit, les recompositions en cours avec l’entrain militaire de la Russie, sa disposition à « passer à l’acte » comme nouvelle donne, ajoutées à la fixation sur la Chine, ne peuvent que conforter plus que jamais le négoce militaire. Présentant le nouveau budget de la défense pour 2023 (Budget que l’administration Biden estime à 773 milliards de dollars soit le niveau le plus élevé de l’histoire américaine), la revue Foreign Policy, titrait ce 28 mars, « L’invasion de l’Ukraine par la Russie a obligé le Pentagone à revoir son approche centrée sur la Chine. »([17])

De con côté, avec ce franc parler si américain, le Pentagone publiait une fiche informative de la NGS (National Defense Strategie) soulignant la permanence de la menace chinoise d’où le fait que ces efforts visent à « agir de toute urgence pour soutenir et renforcer la dissuasion, la République Populaire de Chine (RPC) étant notre concurrent stratégique le plus important et le défi majeur pour le département« . La fiche présente ainsi les priorités du Pentagone « La défense de la patrie, face à la menace multi-domaine croissante que représente la RPC.[…] Dissuader toute agression, en donnant la priorité au défi posé par la RPC dans la région indopacifique, puis au défi posé par la Russie en Europe. »([18])

Cette agressivité langagière (et budgétaire) n’empêchait pas messieurs Blinken et Sullivan d’entreprendre moult tentatives pour essayer d’aligner la Chine contre la Russie dans le cadre des sanctions en cours. Ce fut une secrétaire d’un programme de TV chinois qui, en manière de réponse, résuma le mieux la démarche étasunienne : « Pourrais-tu m’aider à combattre ton ami pour que je puisse m’occuper de toi plus tard ? »[19]

Post scriptum 09.04.2022
Je viens de lire un long article du Wall Street Journal (ici en annexe) informant d’une proposition faite par l’allemand Scholz à Zelensky, « une dernière tentative », le 19 février, quelques jours avant l’entrée de troupes russes en Ukraine. L’Allemand aurait déclaré à Zelensky que l’Ukraine devrait renoncer à ses aspirations envers l’OTAN et déclarer sa neutralité dans le contexte d’une convention sur la sécurité européenne garantie conjointement par les Etats-Unis et la Russie. Demande que Zelensky aurait refusée arguant que l’on « ne peut pas faire confiance à Poutine et que la plupart des Ukrainiens souhaitent adhérer à l’OTAN ».([20])

Cette révélation me semble précieuse pour évaluer la personnalité du président ukrainien, sa capacité à décider seul (contrairement à l’idée qu’il serait soumis à des influences…) et sa responsabilité dans le drame que vit son pays.
Source : Le Drapeau Rouge ▻https://www.ledrapeaurouge.be
Voir la première partie de l’article. ►https://www.investigaction.net/fr/ukraine-la-face-cachee-des-choses-premiere-partie
Photo : Manhhai (CC 2.0)

Notes :
[1] Accords officialisant la reconnaissance d’Israël par des pays arabes qui jusqu’ici s’y refusaient. Le dossier ukrainien, si riche et complexe, ne nous a laisse le temps de traiter ce sujet. Nous y reviendrons.

[2]La formule complexe militaro-industriel devenant un peu obsolète ; outre que pour ce qui est des USA l’importance de la composante industrielle n’est plus la même que du temps du Général Eisenhower,
auteur de la formule, le facteur médiatique est, par contre, devenu incontournable pour la gestion de guerres.

[3]Blinken, ▻https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1086835380?t=1648549050349 March 16, 2022 

[4]▻https://lechiffredaffaires.dz/15-milliards-de-m3-de-gnl-americain-pour-leurope

[5]Actes pris en application du traité UE ; position commune 2008/944/PESC du 8.12.2008 ▻https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32008E0944&from=FR

[6]▻https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/royaume-uni-a-l-heure-du-global-britain-boris-johnson-somme-d-en-faire-enco

[7]▻https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/armees-la-cour-des-comptes-propose-de-reduire-la-voilure-dans-un-contexte-

[8]National security for insiders by insiders ▻https://warontherocks.com/2021/01/13the-u-s-defense-industry-in-a-new-era

[9]▻https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/deutschlands-halbherzige-sanktionspolitik-schaemen-sie-sich-herr-scholz-komm 

[10]▻https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/editos-analyses/la-revolution-copernicienne-de-lallemagne-ne-fait-que-commencer-1393884

[11]▻https://www.msn.com/fr-be/actualite/other/l-allemagne-envisage-de-se-doter-d-un-bouclier-antimissiles-%C3%A0-2-milliards-d-euros/ar-AAVxQvZ?ocid=winp1taskbar

[12]▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/16/ukraine-zelensky-information-war Les sigles « Ops » et « Psy-ops » correspondent aux opérations de propagande et publicité dans le premier cas et à celles visant à manipuler les informations ; susciter compassion du public, etc. dans le second.

[13]▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9giment_Azov

[14]Ukraine’s military strength ▻https://graphics.reuters.com/RUSSIA-UKRAINE/dwpkrkwkgvm 26.1.22

[15]« Like, Share, Recruit : How a White-Supremacist Militia Uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members” ▻https://time.com/5926750/azov-far-right-movement-facebook January, 7,2021

[16]By Jerusalem Post staff ; October 19, 2021 ▻https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/western-countries-training-far-right-extremists-in-ukraine-report-682411

[17]▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/28/pentagon-defense-strategy-russia-ukraine-war.

[18] US Department of Defense Fact Sheet : 2022 National Defense Strategy ▻https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/28/2002964702/-1/-1/1/NDS-FACT-SHEET.PDF

[19] China Global Television Network — CGTN LIU Xin 刘欣 (LiuXininBeijing) March 19, 2022

[20] ▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/vladimir-putins-20-year-march-to-war-in-ukraineand-how-the-west-mishandled-it-1 

#otan #usa #etats-unis #ukraine #azov #néonazis #néofascisme #ue #union_européenne #Russie #guerre #crimée #otan #réfugiés #énergie #géopolitique #france #politique #poutine #allemagne

Elon Musk and the Tech Bro Obsession With ’Free Speech’ | Time
▻https://time.com/6171183/elon-musk-free-speech-tech-bro

https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Musk-twitter-free-speech.jpg?quality=85&crop=0px%2C74px%2C1024px%2C536px&resize=1200%2C628&strip

“Freedom of speech” has become a paramount concern of the techno-moral universe. The issue has anchored nearly every digital media debate for the last two years, from the dustup over Joe Rogan at Spotify to vaccine misinformation on Facebook. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg gave a major speech at Georgetown in 2019 about the importance of “free expression” and has consistently relied on the theme when explaining why Facebook has struggled to curb disinformation on the platform.

“It does seem to be a dominant obsession with the most elite, the most driven Elon Musks of the world,” says Fred Turner, professor of communication at Stanford University and author of several books about Silicon Valley culture, who argues that “free speech seems to be much more of an obsession among men.” Turner says the drive to harness and define the culture around online speech is related to “the entrepreneurial push: I did it in business, I did it in space, and now I’m going to do it in the world.”

But “free speech” in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution. The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation.

In a culture that places a premium on achieving the impossible, some tech titans may also see the liberal consensus on acceptable speech as yet another boundary to break. In Silicon Valley, bucking the liberal conventions about harmful speech can seem like the maverick move.

Jason Goldman, who was on the founding team at Twitter and served on the company’s board from 2007 to 2010 before joining the Obama Administration, says the tech rhetoric around free speech has become an obsession of the mostly white, male members of the tech elite, who made their billions in the decades before a rapidly diversifying workforce changed the culture at many of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley.

They “would rather go back to the way things were,” Goldman says, “and are couching that in terms of ‘free speech’ or ‘we’re not going to allow politics to be part of the conversation.’”

Goldman says it’s “naive” to believe that Musk can throw out Twitter’s guardrails without degrading the platform. “To say you’re just going to allow for any type of abuse or harassment,” he says, “is an inherently anti-speech position, because you’re going to drive out a set of users who would use your product but no longer feel safe.”

Tech titans often have a different understanding of speech than the rest of the world because most trained as engineers, not as writers or readers, and a lack of a humanities education might make them less attuned to the social and political nuances of speech.

“Tech culture is grounded in engineering culture, which imagines itself as apolitical,” says Turner. Engineers, he adds, often see the world in terms of problems and solutions, and in that context, speech becomes a series of data points that get circulated through a data system, rather than expressions of social or political ideas.

#Elon_Musk #Fred_Turner #Liberté_expression

Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Is Worried About Crypto’s Future | Time
▻https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile

https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-portrait.jpg?quality=85&crop=0px%2C478px%2C1800px%2C942px&resize=1200%2C628&strip

Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop | Billy Perrigo
▻https://time.com/6147458/facebook-africa-content-moderation-employee-treatment