It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, October 09, 2024
'Dangerous': FCC puts DeSantis on notice over threats to prosecute Florida TV stations
Erik De La Garza October 9, 2024 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaking at Lynchburg, Virginia, on April 14, 2023. (Shutterstock.com)
The Federal Communications Commission aimed at Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) Tuesday for his administration’s threats to criminally prosecute Florida television stations if they refuse to stop running a political advertisement supportive of a ballot measure that would expand abortion access in the Sunshine State.
“The right of broadcasters to speak freely is rooted in the First Amendment,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement Tuesday. “Threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government’s views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.”
The war of words erupted in response to a cease-and-desist letter the state Department of Health sent to television stations last week. The warning letter stems from a political ad featuring a woman who was diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago while pregnant with her second child, the Miami Herald reported.
In the ad, the woman says Florida’s six-week abortion ban would have prevented her from receiving a life-saving abortion, according to the publication.
Nearly a week after the state issued its warning, the ad continues to play. Attorneys representing a political action committee sponsoring the abortion ballot measure also issued a defiant legal letter in which they call threats by the DeSantis administration an “unconstitutional state action,” the Florida newspaper noted.
If the advertisement was not taken down within 24 hours, the general counsel for the state agency, John Wilson, said TV stations could face criminal prosecution, adding that “creating, keeping, or maintaining a nuisance injurious to health is a second-degree misdemeanor” under state law, according to the Herald.
The FCC chair said in her statement directed at Florida officials that she had previously spoken out following the presidential debate in September by rejecting calls by Trump to revoke ABC’s license.
Kathleen Culliton October 9, 2024 Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump makes a campaign stop at manufacturer FALK Production in Walker, Michigan, U.S. September 27, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Former President Donald Trump's latest campaign pledge is spurring calls of alarm from critics who say the Republican presidential nominee would send the nation back to the economic dark ages.
Trump told rally-goers Wednesday in Pennsylvania that he would implement tariffs that he claimed would bring the U.S. back to prosperity seen at the turn of the 20th Century.
"That was when our country was the richest it ever was," said Trump. "It was never rich like that...we had so much money we didn't know what to do with it."
Trump promised "pretty stiff tariffs" that he said would flush hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy.
The former president drew a direct correlation to the Gilded Age when affluent businesses earned the name "robber barons" by monopolizing industries and receiving enormous profits.
While proponents argue this was a golden age of capitalism, critics say captains of industry were the pioneers of organized crime, according to Stephen Schneider, Britannica author and criminology professor at Saint Mary's University.
Trump's comments re-ignited an age-old debate Wednesday.
"I've been telling you this--Trump thought our nation was 'great' during the Gilded Age, the Robber Baron years--that's what he wants to bring back," rhetorician Jennifer Mercieca wrote on X.
"Massive wage slavery, factory towns, filthy water & air, no regulations on food or business. His policies only help the ultra rich."
"Tariffs are a tax on all of us," replied Andy Roddick, the former tennis player and major champion.
"Tariffs are a tax on Americans," added political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen. "Everyone in the country would pay more, all because this imbecile doesn’t know basic economics."
Zephyr Teachout, the law professor and Democrat who challenged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014, decried Trump's rhetoric — but also the attacks in response.
"Just because Trump is full of tariff nonsense doesn't mean he should make everyone else nonsensical," Teachout wrote. "Tariffs can be good! Biden's new tariffs were more much more strategic than Trumps. They can also be bad! But the more Trump traps Dems into saying tariffs are bad, he wins."
'Out and out brawl': AOC threatens billionaires playing 'footsie' with Harris ticket
Matthew Chapman October 9, 2024 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Shutterstock)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) took to X on Wednesday with a stark message for billionaires: Just because you support the Democratic ticket, doesn't mean that its policy and hiring choices are for sale.
The controversy stems from Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission under the Biden administration and an outspoken trustbuster who wants to break up tech monopolies.
"Let me make this clear, since billionaires have been trying to play footsie with the ticket: Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl. And that is a promise," wrote Ocasio-Cortez. "She proves this admin fights for working people. It would be terrible leadership to remove her."
Several business executives who generally back the Democratic ticket have expressed reservations over Khan's policy.
Technology and entertainment billionaire Mark Cuban, a surrogate for the Harris campaign, has nudged Harris to choose someone else for FTC chair if elected, saying, "By trying to break up the biggest tech companies, you risk our ability to be the best in artificial intelligence."
Another wealthy executive, Expedia owner Barry Diller, has called Khan a "dope" who opposes "almost anything" business leaders support — and he notably owns companies the FTC is investigating.
All of this comes amid a growing bipartisan skepticism about the power of tech companies and whether their structure is stifling competition in the market.
One of the biggest such debates is playing out in a landmark antitrust trial against Google, which is accused of illegally monopolizing the search engine market by setting up agreements with smartphone manufacturers to default users to their services. A second case against Google running at the same time alleges the tech giant also holds a monopoly on internet advertising, effectively forcing huge numbers of web pages across the internet to change their own content.
Tim Walz appears on World of Warcraft Twitch stream in latest outreach to young voters
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appeared on a Twitch stream of the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft for an unorthodox voter outreach event, reported Wired.
The event, which started at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, was set as of publication time to "include a live feed of Walz’s Arizona speech with Preheat, a Twitch creator, playing the game and providing commentary. Preheat is expected to highlight their connection to the campaign and encourage viewers to make a plan to vote," reported Makena Kelly.
The Harris campaign's presence on the game streaming platform Twitch began around the time of the Democratic National Convention, when their account was created to stream Vice President Kamala Harris' acceptance speech, the report continued.
"Joining Twitch was part of the campaign’s strategy to reach young, disaffected voters, a campaign spokesperson said at the time," with one spokesperson telling Wired, “Our job as the campaign is to break through a historically personalized media landscape, taking the VP and her vision for the future directly to the hardest-to-reach voters and those who will decide this election.”
In recent days, Harris and Walz have been on a whirlwind media tour, including on several unconventional platforms.
One of the most well-publicized of these recent events was Harris' interview on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast with Alexandra Cooper, whose show achieves millions of downloads from a broad cross-section of voters every week.
Former President Donald Trump reacted to that interview by lashing out at Cooper at his campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, proclaiming that she is "dumb."
Trumpet star Marsalis says jazz creates 'balance' in divided world
Renowned American trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis believes the universal language of jazz can bridge divides with a common story of humanity.
Marsalis -- who sat down with AFP in Beijing as he kicked off a series of performances in China -- has charted a decades-long career that has seen him win nine Grammys and tour the world with his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO).
The 62-year-old is a passionate educator, often emphasising the power of jazz as a way to heal social and political woes.
"The art of jazz is the art of achieving balance," Marsalis told AFP.
"There's nothing that the world needs more at this time than to be able to communicate differences of opinion," he added.
Born in 1961 into a family of celebrated musicians, the New Orleans native grew up immersed in the American South's rich cultural heritage.
Marsalis originally intended to pursue classical music as his primary profession, enrolling in New York's prestigious Juilliard School in 1979.
But he soon reconsidered, landing early partnerships with towering figures in jazz including Art Blakey and Herbie Hancock before embarking on his own career. - Pathways 'to communicate' -
"I draw inspiration from everywhere," said Marsalis.
"It could be from a pretty lady, it could be a poem that I read, it could be the way a person speaks," he added.
"I can write frivolous things that are just happy and then I can write very serious things that are about serious subjects like life and death and prejudice and ignorance.
"I don't feel relegated to one or the other."
Throughout his decades in the limelight, Marsalis has not shied away from using his musician's perspective to shine a light on touchy political issues.
He compared recent tensions between the United States and China to his own childhood experiences.
While growing up, "my brother could not sleep without music on, and I could not sleep with music on. We have to figure out how to achieve balance.
"I don't go to other people's countries to proselytise or tell them what they should be doing.
"I'm a guest, and I come there trying to figure out what it is that we have in common that I can accentuate to ease the pathways for us to communicate."
- 'Crisis of identity' -
Marsalis called the upcoming US presidential election -- a bitterly contested matchup pitting former president Donald Trump against current Vice President Kamala Harris -- "a crisis of identity".
Marsalis has been a vocal critic of racism in the United States, once referring to Trump's call to build a wall on the southern border to keep Mexican immigrants out as "cheap populism".
But he has also encouraged broad-mindedness, angering many in 2017 when he offered to perform at Trump's inauguration following his shock victory.
This year's presidential contest represents "a referendum on the soul of the country," Marsalis told AFP.
The veteran jazzman has a reputation for respecting history and tradition, having once eschewed the introduction of electric sounds in the genre popularised in the 1970s by innovators like Miles Davis.
Marsalis's reverence for the heritage of his craft is deeply personal.
His father -- Ellis Marsalis Jr., also a New Orleans native -- was a prominent jazz pianist and educator. He passed away in 2020 from Covid at the age of 85.
Marsalis says he doesn't have a strong ambition to shape the way history will remember him.
"I'm part of a legacy," he explained.
"My father, he passed away, but I try to live up to what he did and continue things.
"There are going to be other people who will do things, and they'll do significant things.
"The world is a very complicated place."
How foreign operations are manipulating social media to influence you
Foreign influence campaigns, or information operations, have been widespread in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Influence campaigns are large-scale efforts to shift public opinion, push false narratives or change behaviors among a target population. Russia, China, Iran, Israel and other nations have run these campaigns by exploiting social bots, influencers, media companies and generative AI.
At the Indiana University Observatory on Social Media, my colleagues and I study influence campaigns and design technical solutions – algorithms – to detect and counter them. State-of-the-art methods developed in our center use several indicators of this type of online activity, which researchers call inauthentic coordinated behavior. We identify clusters of social media accounts that post in a synchronized fashion, amplify the same groups of users, share identical sets of links, images or hashtags, or perform suspiciously similar sequences of actions.
We have uncovered many examples of coordinated inauthentic behavior. For example, we found accounts that flood the network with tens or hundreds of thousands of posts in a single day. The same campaign can post a message with one account and then have other accounts that its organizers also control “like” and “unlike” it hundreds of times in a short time span. Once the campaign achieves its objective, all these messages can be deleted to evade detection. Using these tricks, foreign governments and their agents can manipulate social media algorithms that determine what is trending and what is engaging to decide what users see in their feeds.
Adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran aren’t the only foreign governments manipulating social media to influence U.S. politics.
Generative AI
One technique increasingly being used is creating and managing armies of fake accounts with generative artificial intelligence. We analyzed 1,420 fake Twitter – now X – accounts that used AI-generated faces for their profile pictures. These accounts were used to spread scams, disseminate spam and amplify coordinated messages, among other activities.
We estimate that at least 10,000 accounts like these were active daily on the platform, and that was before X CEO Elon Musk dramatically cut the platform’s trust and safety teams. We also identified a network of 1,140 bots that used ChatGPT to generate humanlike content to promote fake news websites and cryptocurrency scams.
In addition to posting machine-generated content, harmful comments and stolen images, these bots engaged with each other and with humans through replies and retweets. Current state-of-the-art large language model content detectors are unable to distinguish between AI-enabled social bots and human accounts in the wild. Model misbehavior
The consequences of such operations are difficult to evaluate due to the challenges posed by collectingdata and carrying out ethical experiments that would influence online communities. Therefore it is unclear, for example, whether online influence campaigns can sway election outcomes. Yet, it is vital to understand society’s vulnerability to different manipulation tactics.
In a recent paper, we introduced a social media model called SimSoM that simulates how information spreads through the social network. The model has the key ingredients of platforms such as Instagram, X, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon: an empirical follower network, a feed algorithm, sharing and resharing mechanisms, and metrics for content quality, appeal and engagement.
SimSoM allows researchers to explore scenarios in which the network is manipulated by malicious agents who control inauthentic accounts. These bad actors aim to spread low-quality information, such as disinformation, conspiracy theories, malware or other harmful messages. We can estimate the effects of adversarial manipulation tactics by measuring the quality of information that targeted users are exposed to in the network.
We simulated scenarios to evaluate the effect of three manipulation tactics. First, infiltration: having fake accounts create believable interactions with human users in a target community, getting those users to follow them. Second, deception: having the fake accounts post engaging content, likely to be reshared by the target users. Bots can do this by, for example, leveraging emotional responses and political alignment. Third, flooding: posting high volumes of content.
Our model shows that infiltration is the most effective tactic, reducing the average quality of content in the system by more than 50%. Such harm can be further compounded by flooding the network with low-quality yet appealing content, thus reducing quality by 70%. Curbing coordinated manipulation
We have observed all these tactics in the wild. Of particular concern is that generative AI models can make it much easier and cheaper for malicious agents to create and manage believable accounts. Further, they can use generative AI to interact nonstop with humans and create and post harmful but engaging content on a wide scale. All these capabilities are being used to infiltrate social media users’ networks and flood their feeds with deceptive posts.
These insights suggest that social media platforms should engage in more – not less – content moderation to identify and hinder manipulation campaigns and thereby increase their users’ resilience to the campaigns.
The platforms can do this by making it more difficult for malicious agents to create fake accounts and to post automatically. They can also challenge accounts that post at very high rates to prove that they are human. They can add friction in combination with educational efforts, such as nudging users to reshare accurate information. And they can educate users about their vulnerability to deceptive AI-generated content.
Open-source AI models and data make it possible for malicious agents to build their own generative AI tools. Regulation should therefore target AI content dissemination via social media platforms rather then AI content generation. For instance, before a large number of people can be exposed to some content, a platform could require its creator to prove its accuracy or provenance.
These types of content moderation would protect, rather than censor, free speech in the modern public squares. The right of free speech is not a right of exposure, and since people’s attention is limited, influence operations can be, in effect, a form of censorship by making authentic voices and opinions less visible.
San Francisco (AFP) – Known for its appeal to online renegades, chat platform Discord finds itself in the crosshairs of Turkey and Russia.
Issued on: 09/10/2024 -
Discord loose controls and distributed model has made fans of hackers, gamers, shooter-game fans and folks who simply like the idea of being a bit freer to say or share what they want with others on the platform
Turkey on Wednesday said it was banning Discord under the auspices of protecting young people from abuse.
A day earlier, Russia's telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor announced that Discord was being "restricted" due to violation of requirements pertaining to "preventing the use of messaging for terrorist and extremist purposes". Gamer chat
San Francisco-based Discord was created in 2015 primarily as a platform for people to chat while playing video games, but it has also become a home for folks disenchanted with social media stalwarts like Facebook, Instagram or X, formerly Twitter.
Discord allows communities to set up something called servers, which are virtual spaces where users can chat, share media, and connect with other users who share similar interests.
The platform allows voice and video calls along with text messaging, and sharing of media in exchanges that can be private or done openly in virtual communities. Free to speak
Similar loosely run forums exist at Reddit, with most of the groups connecting over benign topics like hobbies or games, but always with a tinge of being free from censors that some believe hold too much sway over posts at Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.
An attraction of Discord is that the system is "distributed" from the perspective of how software and data are hosted online, meaning no central entity has complete control over it.
Discord has 150 million users around the world, according to internal data.
The leading Discord server as of April of this year was one dedicated to artificial intelligence powered text-to-image tool Midjourney with some 20 million users, according to Statista.
Discord revenue sources include partnerships and subscriptions for premium features.
After recent controversies, Discord has held firm that user safety is a priority and that content violating its policies can get people banned or servers shut down. Not playing nice
Discord was thrust into the headlines when a trove of sensitive US documents about the war in Ukraine ended up in a chat room on the site in early 2023.
It was not seen as a surprise that hackers and soldiers inclined to play shooter games might be comfortable sharing top secret information on Discord, known for loose control and anonymity.
Discord previously landed in hot water for playing a role in a 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Virginia which erupted in violence and left one person dead.
The FBI found Discord chats where a white supremacist leader seemed to encourage violence at the event, and Discord said afterward that it banned servers promoting neo-Nazi ideology.
Discord has also been accused of being used to share child pornography and by predators to communicate with minors.
In a move akin to kicking Lenin out of Moscow's Red Square, the mayor of Belgrade wants to rid the Serbian capital of the tomb of Tito, the socialist leader who held Yugoslavia together for decades.
Nationalist Aleksandar Sapic wants to send Tito -- the wartime resistance leader who liberated the country from the Nazis -- back to his native Croatia despite his tomb in the Museum of Yugoslavia attracting 120,000 visitors a year.
Sapic insists Tito has to go if Serbia is to "move away from communism", and wants to turn his mausoleum into a museum of Serbian history.
"The communist regime has literally brought nothing good to the Serbian people," said the mayor, who instead wants to put up a statue to a controversial Chetnik leader who fought against Tito during World War II.
The call has reopened bitter disputes over the bloody German occupation when two rival resistance groups fought the Nazis, though many Chetnik groups ended up cooperating with the Axis forces.
Tito's communist Partisans finally prevailed over the royalist and nationalist Chetniks, whose leader Dragoljub Mihailovic was executed in 1946 for war crimes and collaboration with the Nazis.
Serbia's nationalist government later rehabilitated the Chetniks with a 2003 law giving the two movements equal status. Mihailovic's convictions were overturned in 2015, with judges dismissing his original trial as "political".
Yugo nostalgia
A man carrying the Yugoslav flag visits the tomb of its late leader Tito in the Serbian capital Belgrade
The mayor has so far only floated the idea of removing the tomb, with the Croatian village of Kumrovec -- where Tito was born Josip Broz in 1892 -- already applying to take his remains if Belgrade no longer wants them.
Several towns and cities in Bosnia and Montenegro are also keen to have him in a sign of the nostalgia that still surrounds Tito in the former Yugoslavia, which collapsed a decade after his death in 1980 in a series of bloody wars.
Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vucic -- the founder of Sapic's party -- is less keen to see Tito go, however, saying the tomb is part of the country's heritage.
Historian Milovan Pisarri told AFP that the mayor's controversial move was another step in a long ideological battle over the disputed legacy of World War II.
"It's simply a continuation of what started around 20 years ago, when this new nationalist ideology entered institutions and succeeded in turning a collaborator into an anti-fascist," he said, referring to Mihailovic.
A Tito admirer shows his tattoo of the late Yugoslav leader
Sapic has already asked permission to put to a statue of the Chetnik leader near one of Belgrade's main squares and also wants to remove the tombs of four communist partisans from the city's largest park.
But Mihailovic's grandson Vojislav, an MP for the opposition monarchist party, dismissed Sapic's efforts as "insincere" and "manipulative", accusing the ruling party of using his ancestor for political gain.
"While I fully support the idea [of a statue], I question their true intentions," said Mihailovic, who -- like many Serbs -- regards Tito as a dictator.
Even today, his grandfather's face adorns T-shirts and walls in Belgrade. The Chetnik movement enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as Yugoslavia collapsed in the 1990s, with some Serbian paramilitary groups adopting Chetnik nicknames, symbols and their signature long beards. History 'can't be erased'
Tito's tomb is not the only symbol of the former Yugoslavia under threat in Serbia's capital.
The renowned Yugoslavia Hotel -- once a source of national pride -- is soon to make way for a luxurious new skyscraper on the banks of the Danube complete with a casino and dock.
Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is also planning to build another luxury hotel on the site of the former Yugoslav army headquarters, which was badly damaged in the 1999 NATO bombing of Belgrade.
Its Brutalist design was meant to evoke a canyon on the River Sutjeska where the Partisans made a key breakthrough against German forces in 1943.
In the latest surreal twist in the culture war, the mayor said he also wants to change the color of Belgrade's new buses from "socialist" red to the blue of the mediaeval Nemanjic dynasty.
For Pisarri, the changes are nothing short of an attempt to erase all trace of Yugoslavia and everything it represented. "But Yugoslavia cannot be erased from people's memory," the historian insisted.
'Painful year for Médecins du monde': Medical staff now victim of Gaza war amid immense suffering
Issued on: 09/10/2024
In war-torn Gaza, the few remaining hospitals and clinics that remain open have been hit hard by a lack of supplies, with humanitarian aid into the territory restricted. Médecins du Monde Country Director and Field Coordinator Mahmoud Isleem joins FRANCE 24's François Picard, describing the "hard conditions" their medical staff faces trying to provide emergency medical and mental health services to the entire community: "Since the start of the war on the 7th of October, we lost our installations in Gaza, our operations were displaced several times, we lost our colleague, three were critically injured. Our staff providing medical services, nowadays in Gaza, are part of the community who are victims of war."
One year later, Israeli hostage family learns of loss
BIBI'S WAR NEVER WAS ABOUT THE HOSTAGES
Tel Aviv (AFP) – After a year of desperately hoping for positive news or a sign of life, the family of Israeli hostage Idan Shtivi has learnt he was killed on October 7, 2023, the first day of Hamas's attack.
"We thought he was alive for a year," Idan's brother, Omri, told AFP. "I just wish I could have hugged him one last time."
After 12 months of daring to hope, Omri's dreams of a reunion were shattered on Sunday when the Israeli army informed the family that 28-year-old Idan had been killed during his abduction at the Nova Festival which was targeted by Hamas militants.
Despite not having his body, the family has begun commemorations and is receiving a stream of visitors for the traditional week of mourning, known as "shiva," in accordance with Jewish customs.
A large white tent has been set up outside their sea-side apartment in Tel Aviv. Portraits of Idan have been hung up, accompanied by the words: "A soul of light, love and selflessness."
Omri told AFP that authorities had presented "medical" evidence showing that his brother was among the more than 370 festival goers massacred at the Nova music event where over 40 were taken hostage.
"Idan was a student. He went to dance and never came back," said a visibly emotional Omri, 32, recounting his brother’s heroic actions during the attack, based on eyewitness accounts.
- "Save me!"
For the past year, Omri, his father Eli and other family members have been in the public eye, campaigning for the release of the hostages held in Gaza.
In late August, alongside other families of hostages, they shouted into Gaza through loudspeakers near the border.
"Idan! If you can hear us, we’re here. We’re not giving up," his father cried that day before running toward the Gaza fence with family members, shouting: "We’re coming," only to be stopped by soldiers.
In the family's tent outside their apartment, a government minister, a well-known TV presenter, army officers, and most notably, other hostage families gathered.
"This is something that has brought us all together: we, the hostage families, have become one big family," said Shelly Shem-Tov, who wore a T-shirt bearing the photo of her son Omer, also abducted from the Nova Festival.
"Throughout the year, we've lost so many hostages whom we didn't personally know, but we know their families. They've become like our own family, and it's so painful," she added.
The lives of these families changed forever on October 7, 2023 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures that include hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.
Of the 251 people abducted that day, 97 are still being held in Gaza, and 34 have been declared dead by the Israeli army.
In retaliation for the attack, Israel launched a military offensive that has killed 42,010 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations has described as credible.
"It's not right that civilians who went to dance at a festival are still being held captive in Gaza," added Shelly Shem-Tov. "It's not just one day after another. It's been a whole year that feels like an endless day.
"We're very, very tired," she said. "But we have no choice. We must keep shouting. I am Omer's voice, crying out: 'Save me! Save me!'"
Mossad chief pushing to link any Lebanon ceasefire deal with hostage release (report)
Issued on: 09/10/2024 -
03:58
Mossad chief David Barnea has told his US counterpart that any ceasefire deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon must also include the release of the hostages being held in Hamas, according to Israeli media. The strategy is aimed at getting Iran and Hezbollah — who have indicated they are open to a ceasefire in the north — to exert additional pressure on Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar to agree to a deal in Gaza that has proved elusive for many months. FRANCE 24's Irris Makler reports from Jerusalem.
'A casino in every kitchen': Brazil's online gambling craze
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Fernanda, a cleaner from Rio de Janeiro, lists off the items she sold to feed her online gambling addiction, one of millions of Brazilians caught in a betting craze that has swept the nation.
Issued on: 10/10/2024 -
Brazil allowed sports betting in 2018 on the condition it was properly regulated and that the proceeds were taxed
"I lost everything," said the 34-year-old, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. "I sold my TV, my washing machine, everything in my home."
Six years after Brazil legalized online sports betting, Latin America's biggest economy is battling what Finance Minister Fernando Haddad has called a "pandemic," prompting the government to tighten the screws on the sector.
Brazil's central bank estimates that 24 million out of Brazil's 212 million inhabitants, roughly one in nine people, bet online on sporting events or on games like Aviator, Fernanda's favorite, where players gamble on the flight of a virtual airplane.
Online gambling "is going to empty Brazilians' fridges," warned Joao Pedro Nascimento, president of Brazil's securities regulator (CVM).
Sports betting sites now sponsor most of Brazil's major football clubs and flood TV channels and social networks with advertisements featuring stars like Real Madrid striker Vinicius Junior.
But in recent months they have come under growing scrutiny, with experts warning of the risk to users' mental health and finances, and reports emerging of money laundering by gambling sites. Poor families hooked
In a recent bombshell report the central bank revealed that five million beneficiaries of the state's Bolsa Familia allowance for poor families -- one in four of all recipients -- had spent a total of three billion reais (around $540 million) on betting sites in August.
"Many poor people run into debt while trying to earn money with betting. We will have to regulate (the sector). Otherwise we will soon have a casino in every kitchen," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in late September.
Casinos and other gambling venues have been banned in Brazil since 1941.
The turning point came in 2018 when sports betting was allowed on the condition it was properly regulated and that the proceeds were taxed.
Six years later and the regulations, such as a ban on underage gambling have yet to go into effect, with the measures only set to be implemented in January.
Meanwhile, several hundred betting sites -- most of them based abroad -- operate in a sort of gambling wild west, imposing no rules and paying no taxes.
The Brazilian government recently published a list of around 200 betting sites that have been licensed to operate after agreeing to the new regulations.
Around 2,000 others sites will be blocked from Friday. World Cup explosion
Hermano Tavares runs a treatment program for compulsive gamblers at Sao Paulo university hospital.
The number of patients he receives has risen sharply since 2018 but he said the real "explosion" in numbers took place after the 2022 football World Cup.
"It's one of the most dangerous addictions after crack cocaine," Andre Rolim, a 39-year-old recovering gambler told AFP.
Rolim, an engineer who grew up in a wealthy family in the northeastern city of Fortaleza, ran up huge debts from betting and found himself having suicidal thoughts before entering treatment.
The National Association of Games and Lotteries, which represents some of the big gambling sites, defended the sector in a statement to AFP, insisting that "only a small proportion of all players... around 1-1.5 percent" become hooked.
It admitted however that the addiction was "extremely harmful" to those concerned and their families, and said it was in discussions with NGOs about developing prevention strategies.
Fernanda's savior was her sister, who, she said, "grabbed my phone from my hands" and confiscated it to force her to stop betting.
"Without my family I would never have come through this," she acknowledged.
'Denying my potential': women at Japan's top university call out gender imbalance
Tokyo (AFP) – Chika Ezure faced gender bias from her own family when deciding to do a master's degree at Japan's top-ranked university. After arriving on campus, she realised the resistance she faced as a woman was commonplace.
Issued on: 10/10/2024
Just one in 10 researchers at the prestigious University of Tokyo are women, and one in five students
She was surrounded by men: just one in 10 researchers at the prestigious University of Tokyo are women, and one in five students.
The figures are stark but perhaps not surprising in a nation where women leaders are rare in business and politics -- including just two out of 20 ministers in the new Cabinet.
But faculty members who have had enough recently launched a poster campaign highlighting sexist remarks made to female scholars, calling out the university's gender imbalance.
"I prefer cute, silly girls over smart ones" and "you're a girl, so local college is good enough" were among the comments, described as "headwinds" by the campaigners.
"My parents said to me, 'what's the point of a girl going to graduate school?'" the 23-year-old told AFP, describing their reaction as "very disappointing".
"But they say boys should definitely take the opportunity. I have a brother, and I was shocked to discover it's him they want to invest in," she said. "It's not fair."
At the University of Hong Kong, 55 percent of students are women. The rate is 48 percent at the National University of Singapore, and 42 percent at Seoul National University.
All three lead the ranking tables in their country or territory.
'This has to end'
Gender bias begins early in Japanese education, Ezure said.
A cram school teacher once told her "girls don't need to be good at maths" and she ended up focusing on humanities, despite later becoming interested in programming.
"I felt disempowered. I'm not sure if they were just trying to be kind, but I felt they were denying my potential."
Japan ranks lowest from the OECD countries for the number of women enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and maths bachelor's programmes
The University of Tokyo poster campaign was based on a survey with nearly 700 staff and students, male and female.
"I read stories from students still scarred by these negative words, who had to change their career path because of them," said Asuka Ando, a project researcher at the university's office for gender equity.
"I thought, 'this has to end'."
The posters have sparked discussion online, with many commenters supporting the idea but some saying women do not apply for top universities, or are just not that clever.
Manaka Nagai, a French language major at Sophia University, said the University of Tokyo campaign made her realise that some remarks can be a double-edged sword.
"I used to think comments such as 'you can bring your female perspective' were positive," instead of highlighting the stereotypical differences between the genders, she said.
The situation at other Japanese universities is mixed -- but some with a more equal gender balance do not have a strong focus on science subjects.
Japan ranks lowest in 2022 data from the OECD group of developed countries for the number of women students enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics bachelor's programmes.
That is despite Japanese schoolgirls' performance in science and maths being among the highest of the OECD countries. Test manipulation
A scandal erupted in 2018 when the private Tokyo Medical University admitted it had deliberately lowered the entry test scores of women applicants.
The bar was raised because faculty members thought women doctors cannot work long hours, an internal probe found.
A scandal erupted in 2018 when the private Tokyo Medical University admitted it had deliberately lowered the entry test scores of women applicants
A government investigation prompted by the revelations found three other institutions had kept women out in similar ways.
Hiyori Sahara, a 20-year-old student at Tokyo University of Agriculture, told AFP she "takes it as a compliment" when people are surprised that she studies science.
"They don't mean it in a negative sense -- it's just that there are more men" in the sector, she said.
But during her schooldays, Sahara picked up on a more subtle bias.
"In my advanced high school classes, the teachers were mostly men and they often prioritised boys, picking them to answer questions," she said.
Japan is trying to improve its gender gap in leadership positions, with the country placed 118th out of 146 in the 2024 World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap report.
"There are many hurdles" to overcome, said Ginko Kawano, a professor in charge of gender equality promotion at Kyushu University.
If children are regularly exposed to gender-biased remarks, there is a risk they will internalise "the idea that girls do not have to study or go to university", she said.
Kawano called the poster campaign "groundbreaking".
"It's a message to women that they don't have to see such comments as normal," she said.
Argentina MPs back Milei's veto of university funding
Buenos Aires (AFP) – Argentine lawmakers on Wednesday upheld President Javier Milei's veto of funding increases for public universities, handing him a key victory in his months-long standoff with teachers and students.
Milei last week vetoed a law approved by the Senate that envisaged regular funding increases for public universities, whose budgets have been slashed by the libertarian president.
The law also provided for university teachers and other staff to receive pay increases to offset the effects of perennially high inflation, which stood at 236 percent in August.
Members of the lower house of Congress ratified the veto by a narrow margin, even though hundreds of thousands of Argentines took to the streets over the past six months in support of the country's cherished fee-free public universities.
Wednesday's vote marks the second major win in a month for self-described "anarcho-capitalist" President Milei, who came to power in December vowing to take a chainsaw to public spending.
Lawmakers on September 11 had already ratified his veto of an increase in pensions.
Unions representing teachers and non-teaching staff at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) announced they would go on strike Thursday over the "shameful" vote by Congress members, which they said "put the future of a whole country on the line".
Tensions ran high outside Congress, where hundreds of demonstrators, including students and pensioners, staged a protest under a heavy police presence.
"You can't veto our future," read a placard held by one of the demonstrators.
"Education means a lot to me. It means equality of opportunity," Camila Flores, a 20-year-old psychology student at UBA, which has produced five Nobel laureates, told AFP.
The opposition needed a two-thirds majority of members of both houses of Congress to reject Milei's veto but fell short by six votes in the lower Chamber of Deputies. 'Waking a sleeping giant'
Around 80 percent of all Argentines who attend higher-level education enroll in the public university system, which Milei has criticised as a hotbed of Socialist indoctrination.
Opposition senator Martin Lousteau accused Congress after the vote of "turning its back on a society that, across the country, has made it clear it is in favour of public university education."
"They have awakened a sleeping giant," Ilana Yablonovsky, a 27-year-old literature student who has joined a sit-in at UBA's philosophy and literature faculty, told AFP.
"This is not the end, it is the beginning," she vowed.
Milei is on a mission to erase Argentina's budget deficit.
The government's draft 2025 budget proposes giving universities half of what they say they need to operate.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Human Capital attempted to appease the universities, announcing a 6.8 percent increase in teachers' salaries.
Teachers' unions rejected the raise as insufficient.
Milei's dose of shock therapy for Argentina's long-ailing economy has had mixed results.
While inflation and the budget deficit have fallen, his tough austerity measures have been blamed for a dramatic increase in poverty levels.
A video recording shows high-ranking Republican elected officials threatening to pull federal funding from universities and strip their official accreditation as punishment for campus protests.
House majority leader Steve Scalise met last week in Washington with the powerful pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and The Guardian reviewed video showing him describe how Republicans would coordinate with a second Donald Trump administration to attack universities that allow pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses.
“Your accreditation is on the line,” Scalise says in the Oct. 1 video. “You’re not playing games anymore, or else you’re not a school any more.”
Scalise and fellow GOP congressman Pat Fallon, of Texas, attended the event, which was billed as a discussion on the spread of antisemitism since the start of the Gaza conflict a year ago, but much of the discourse was on how to quash criticism of Israel's military operation in Gaza, and The Guardian noted "there was no attempt during the hour-long conversation to distinguish hatred of Jews from pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli government sentiments."
“We’re looking at federal money, the federal grants that go through the science committee, student loans," Scalise said. "You have a lot of jurisdiction as president, with all of these different agencies that are involving billions of dollars, some cases a billion alone going to one school."
Scalise singled out three universities – Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University – that have been roiled by campus protests over the Gaza war, which began Oct. 7, when Hamas killed 1,200 people inside Israel and took 250 hostage and then set off an Israeli offensive that destroyed much of the Palestinian territory and killed nearly 42,000 people.
“You start siding with a terrorist organization, and you think that’s mainstream," Scalise said, "because all your friends are in this little bubble, and I don’t know who you’re talking to – you’re sure not talking to normal people any more."
UN Security Council members warn Israel over laws curbing UNRWA
United Nations (United States) (AFP) – Members of the United Nations Security council warned Israel on Wednesday against proceeding with a law aimed at curbing the UN's Palestinian refugees agency.
Israel has long been at odds with the agency known as UNRWA and alleged that some of its employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks that triggered the war in Gaza.
The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, approved two bills on Sunday essentially aimed at ending UNRWA's activity and privileges in Israel. These bills were quickly condemned by UN chief Antonio Guterres.
Washington's envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Wednesday that the United States was "following with deep concern the Israeli legislative proposal that could alter UNRWA's legal status."
She said it risked "hindering its ability to communicate with Israeli officials and removing privileges and immunities afforded to UN organizations and personnel around the globe."
Algeria, which along with Slovenia called the emergency Security Council meeting on the crisis in the Palestinian territories, said "for years, the Israeli authorities has made clear its desire, its will to dismantle UNRWA."
"It symbolizes the Palestinian refugees and their inviolable rights. We reiterate that the rights of Palestinian refugees are not subject to statutes of limitation," said Amar Bendjama, ambassador of non-permanent Security Council member Algeria. UN's 'greatest success'?
All UN Security Council members that spoke were unanimous in calling for Israel to respect UNRWA's work and to protect its staff.
"Senior Israeli officials have described destroying UNRWA as a war goal," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned the Security Council, noting that 226 UNRWA personnel have been killed in 12 months.
"Legislation to end our operations is ready for final adoption by the Israeli Knesset.
"It seeks to ban UNRWA's presence and operations in the territory of Israel, revoking its privileges and immunities, in violation of international law.
"If the bills are adopted, the consequences will be severe. Operationally, the entire humanitarian response in Gaza -- which rests on UNRWA's infrastructure -- may disintegrate."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that he had written to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning the legislation "could prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory."
The Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour told the Security Council that "we totally support UNRWA and what Lazzarini said and take it very seriously, and honor what is a very indispensable organization that should be protected by all means."
"It is the greatest success story in the history of the United Nations," Mansour said.
UNRWA was created in 1949 to support Palestinian refugees across several countries.
An internal probe published in August found that nine employees "may have been involved in the armed attacks of 7 October" on Israel.
"Yes we work with UN agencies," Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told the security council.
"We are willing and able to work on the ground.
"Compare our efforts to the failures of UNRWA... UNRWA Gaza has allowed Hams to infiltrate its ranks.
Youth facing unprecedented wave of violence, UN envoy warns
United Nations (United States) (AFP) – Young people are facing an unprecedented wave of violence and sexual abuse driven by war, climate change, hunger, and displacement, the UN's special representative on violence against children has warned.
Issued on: 10/10/2024 -
Najat Maalla M'jid is the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children
"Children are not responsible for war. They are not responsible for climate crisis. And they are paying a huge (price)," said Najat Maalla M'jid, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children.
"Violence against children has reached unprecedented levels, caused by multifaceted and interconnected crises," she said.
M'jid, a pediatrician from Morocco, will on Thursday present a damning report to a UN meeting showing that brutal violence against children is rife, and that technology is facilitating crimes against young people as never before.
"Ending violence is possible, and it makes economic sense," M'jid told AFP, stressing that many people globally are committed to ending the scourge.
"The problem is how we can support them, to put all these (solutions) at scale."
But the situation is dire, her stark report shows.
Over 450 million children lived in conflict zones as of the end of 2022, 40 percent of the 120 million displaced people at the end of April were children, and 333 million children live in extreme poverty.
That is compounded by more than 1 billion children who are at high risk of being affected by climate change, which M'jid calls a risk multiplier.
Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among 15-19 year olds, with 46,000 people between the ages of 10 and 19 taking their lives every year. 'Parents of the future'
Child marriage is a widespread scourge, M'jid warns, with as many as 640 million victims of the practice.
As many as 370 million women and girls were subject to rape or other sexual violence during their childhood, according to a separate report by Unicef.
M'jid warned that with fighting and lawlessness becoming embedded in several societies globally, such as Sudan and Haiti, 'violence becomes normal'
"Children could be victim of child exploitation, online or offline. They could be victims of child labor, of slavery, of many things... also of children in armed conflict," M'jid said.
She warned that with fighting and lawlessness becoming embedded in several societies globally, such as Sudan and Haiti, "violence becomes normal."
"When your children are experiencing violence since their early childhood, seeing only that... how are you going to deal with all this?"
Violence against children has a ripple effect, damaging their mental health, impairing their education and stymying their productivity later in life, the report argues.
"Even if you look at it from the perspective of the cost, it is 11 percent of the national GDP in some countries," M'jid warned.
The solution lies in a coordinated approach to public spending, involvement of business and civil society, and engaging children themselves, she said.
But squeezed budgets and the rise of conservative policies on sexual health and reproductive rights risk holding back efforts to combat violence against children, M'jid warned.
"The issue of the far-right wing and conservatism in many countries will also set back some forms of action regarding sexual reproductive health (and) gender issues," M'jid said.
"We are facing a very difficult moment," she added.
"These children will be the parents of the future generation."
Paris (AFP) – Wild populations of monitored animal species have plummeted over 70 percent in the last half-century, according to the latest edition of a landmark assessment by WWF published on Thursday.
Issued on: 10/10/2024 -
The report found that populations under review had fallen 73 percent since 1970, mostly due to human pressures
Featuring data from 35,000 populations of more than 5,000 species of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, the WWF Living Planet Index shows accelerating declines across the globe.
In biodiversity-rich regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean, the figure for animal population loss is as high as 95 percent.
The report tracks trends in the abundance of a large number of species, not individual animal numbers.
It found that populations under review had fallen 73 percent since 1970, mostly due to human pressures.
The index has become an international reference and arrives just ahead of the next UN summit on biodiversity, which will spotlight the issue when it opens in Colombia later this month.
"The picture we are painting is incredibly concerning," said Kirsten Schuijt, Director General of WWF International, at a press briefing. Tipping points
"This is not just about wildlife, it's about the essential ecosystems that sustain human life," said Daudi Sumba, chief conservation officer at WWF.
The report reiterates the need to simultaneously confront the "interconnected" crises of climate change and nature destruction, and warned of major "tipping points" approaching certain ecosystems.
"The changes could be irreversible, with devastating consequences for humanity," he said, using the example of deforestation in the Amazon, which could "shift this critical ecosystem from a carbon sink to a carbon source."
"Habitat degradation and loss, driven primarily by our food system, is the most reported threat in each region, followed by overexploitation, invasive species and disease," the report said.
Other threats include climate change, in particular in Latin America and the Caribbean, and pollution, notably in North America, Asia and the Pacific. 'Incredibly concerning'
The biggest decline is found in populations of freshwater species, followed by terrestrial and marine vertebrates.
"We have emptied the oceans of 40 percent of their biomass," said Yann Laurans of WWF France.
Continent by continent, the average decline reached 95 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, followed by Africa, down 76 percent, and then Asia and the Pacific, which declined 60 percent.
The reduction in populations is "less spectacular" in Europe, Central Asia and North America.
Some populations have stabilised or even expanded thanks to conservation efforts and the reintroduction of species, the report said.
The European bison, for example, disappeared in the wild in 1927 but in 2020 numbered 6,800 thanks to large-scale breeding and successful reintroduction, mainly in protected areas.
While calling the overall picture "incredibly concerning," Schuijt added: "The good news is that we're not yet past the point of no return."
She pointed to global efforts including a breakthrough pact landed at the last UN meeting on biodiversity in 2022 to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030 from pollution, degradation and climate change.
But she warned, "all of these agreements have checkpoints in 2030 that are in danger of being missed."
Several scientific studies published by the journal Nature have accused WWF of methodological biases in its index that lead to an exaggerated extent of the decline of animals.
"We remain really confident of its robustness," said Andrew Terry of the Zoological Society of London at a press briefing, highlighting the use of a "range of indicators, looking at extinction risk, biodiversity and ecosystem health to really broaden that picture".
The London-born son of a Greek-Cypriot father and a Singaporean mother started playing chess when he was just four, rising to the rank of master at 13.
"That's what got me into AI in the first place, playing chess from a young age and thinking and trying to improve my own thought processes," the 48-year-old told journalists after sharing the Nobel prize in chemistry with two other scientists on Wednesday.
It was the second Nobel award in as many days involving artificial intelligence (AI), and Hassabis followed Tuesday's chemistry laureates in warning that the technology they had championed can also "be used for harm".
But rather than doom and gloom warnings of AI apocalypse, the CEO of Google's DeepMind lab described himself as a "cautious optimist".
"I've worked on this my whole life because I believe it's going to be the most beneficial technology to humanity -- but with something that powerful and that transformative, it comes with risks," he said. Dabbling in video games
Hassabis finished high school in north London at the age of 16, and took a gap year to work on video games, co-designing 1994's "Theme Park".
In his 20s, Hassabis won the "pentamind" -- a London event that combines the results of bridge, chess, Go, Mastermind and Scrabble -- five times.
"I would actually encourage kids to play games, but not just to play them... the most important thing is to try and make them," Hassabis said.
He then studied neuroscience at University College London, hoping to learn more about the human brain with the aim of improving nascent AI.
In 2007, the journal Science listed his research among the top 10 breakthroughs of the year.
He co-founded the firm DeepMind in 2010, which then focused on using artificial neural networks -- which are loosely based on the human brain and underpin AI -- to beat humans at board and video games.
Google bought the company four years later.
Demis Hassabis was among three scientists to win Wednesday's chemistry Nobel
In 2016, DeepMind became known around the world when its AI-driven computer programme AlphaZero beat the world's top player of the ancient Chinese board game Go.
A year later, AlphaZero beat the world champion chess programme Stockfish, showing it was not a one-game wonder. It also conquered some retro video games.
The point was not to have fun or win games, but to broaden out the capability of AI.
"It's those kinds of learning techniques that have ended up fuelling the modern AI renaissance," Hassabis said. Protein power
Hassabis then turned the power he had been building towards proteins.
These are the building blocks of life, which take the information from DNA's blueprint and turn a cell into something specific, such as a brain cell or muscle cell -- or most anything else.
By the late 1960s, chemists knew that the sequence of 20 amino acids that make up proteins should allow them to predict the three-dimensional structure they would twist and fold into.
But for half a century, no one could accurately predict these 3D structures. There was even a biannual competition dubbed the "protein olympics" for chemists to try their hand.
In 2018, Hassabis and his AlphaFold entered the competition.
Two years later, it did so well that the 50-year-old problem was considered solved.
Around 30,000 scientific papers have now cited AlphaFold, according to DeepMind's John Jumper, who shared Wednesday's Nobel win along with US biochemist David Baker.
"AlphaFold has already been used by more than two million researchers to advance critical work, from enzyme design to drug discovery," Hassabis said.
Could the shocking Pelicot rape trial help to finally change French attitudes to sexual violence?
Katherine Butler, associate editor, Europe Wed 9 October 2024 The story of Gisèle Pelicot has mobilised people in France.Photograph: Berzane Nasser/ABACA/REX/Shutterstock
It is the trial that has shaken France to its core, and shocked the world.
Dominique Pelicot, a retired estate agent, is accused of drugging his wife Gisèle and recruiting other men online over nine years to sexually assault her at their home. Pelicot has admitted rape. Fifty other men are on trial for alleged rape alongside him.
But it is Gisèle Pelicot, the victim, who has for many people become the focus of this horrifying story. Thousands have turned out in towns and cities across France to demonstrate in solidarity with her and against “rape culture” in France. Last week, Le Monde published a joint “letter” to Gisèle from four members of parliament, calling her “heroic” and demanding a parliamentary debate on how French law defines rape. Her courage has made her a “feminist icon”, the New York Times said.
Gisèle Pelicot has chosen to refuse the anonymity usually granted in rape cases, and attends the trial sessions in Avignon, in order – she says – to shift the shame and humiliation often faced by victims of sexual violence on to the alleged perpetrators.
Angelique Chrisafis, the Guardian’s France correspondent, has reported on such unspeakably violent events as the Bataclan massacre in 2015 and the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice in 2016. Yet, covering the Pelicot case stood out, she told me, because of the scale of the sexual violence, and because such a trial would normally be held behind closed doors away from the media.
That this case is being heard in public is at Gisèle’s insistence. Why has she fought so hard to have potentially traumatising evidence aired this way?
“Gisèle Pelicot wanted the trial to be public to draw attention to the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse,” Angelique said. “That’s why she called for the lifting of restrictions on the screening of video evidence in the trial. Her lawyer said the ‘shock wave’ of this public trial and public video evidence was necessary to show the true horror of rape. He said for Pelicot herself: ‘It is too late. The harm is done. But if these hearings, through being publicised, help prevent other women from having to go through this, then she will find meaning in her suffering’.”
Angelique, whose podcast Today in Focus interview on the case is worth a listen, explained that the trial is also highly unusual because it can’t rely on the victim’s evidence.
“In most rape trials, the alleged rape would be detailed by the victim’s word against the word of the alleged attacker. But in this case, the victim has no word on what happened because she was drugged and comatose with no recollection. Instead, the main defendant, Dominique Pelicot, has admitted rape and meticulously kept video evidence. It is that video evidence which is crucial – without it there wouldn’t be a trial. So often, in other rape cases, there is no such video evidence.”
The court proceedings have highlighted confusion over what constitutes consent and raised questions about online chatrooms and pornography. Gisèle Pelicot has told the court that she could not have consented as she was in a comatose state.
“Some of the men on trial with Pelicot accept that what they did was rape and have apologised in court. But many argue that they didn’t intend to commit rape, saying they thought Gisèle was pretending to be asleep and that they were pressured into it,” Angelique said. “The courtroom testimony has highlighted how society in general has not yet got a clear understanding of consent. The trial has opened a debate on whether to more explicitly spell out the active need for consent within the law on rape in France.”
***
Ordinary men, monstrous crimes
Could Gisèle Pelicot’s conduct and the extensive media coverage of the case mark a turning point for attitudes in France, and perhaps elsewhere?
“Many French writers have said this case marks the end of a stereotype of the ‘monster’ rapist - or the notion that rapes are only carried out by strangers,” Angelique said. “Instead it has highlighted the dangers women face in their own homes and within marriages or relationships. Some of the accused men had notable jobs in society such as local councillor, nurse, prison warden or journalist.”
Some media have labelled Dominique Pelicot “the monster of Avignon”. But among those people who have turned out to demonstrate on behalf of Gisèle or to applaud her in court, many are appalled by the apparently “normal” profile of the accused men. This is why chants include: “We are all Gisèle,” and “Rapist we see you, victim we believe you.” Angelique noted graffiti in Avignon that read: “Ordinary men, horrible crimes.” In Marseille a banner read: “Shame must change sides,” echoing Gisèle Pelicot’s own words.
And could the case ultimately change how victims of sexual violence are perceived?
“An important aspect of this trial and the feminist icon status of Gisèle Pelicot is that she can be seen in many ways as an irreproachable victim: a grandmother who had no knowledge of the attacks she was subjected to.”
“Yet, as happens with many rape victims in court, some defence lawyers have still questioned her sexuality in court and asked if the men might not have thought she was looking for sexual encounters.”
Angelique added: “Gisèle has said she felt humiliated and under attack in court. That this trial is being held in public has allowed more people to experience how a rape trial is conducted.”
One woman who came to court in support of Gisèle told Angelique that the case was “so beyond comprehension” that she needed to understand it. Her conclusion? “Things have to change.”
Pelicot trial: French court hears how mass rape went undetected for years
Relatives of Gisèle Pelicot, the woman at the heart of a mass rape trial that has shaken France, testified in court on Tuesday about the deterioration they witnessed in Pelicot’s health throughout her almost decade-long ordeal, and the failure to determine its cause. Their accounts shed light on the widespread ignorance of drug-facilitated abuse that allowed the victim’s ordeal to go undetected for years.
Issued on: 09/10/2024 -
Gisèle Pelicot arrives at the courthouse in Avignon on October 3, 2024, for the trial of her former husband and 50 other men accused of raping her while she was unconscious.
Pelicot’s former husband Dominique, 71, is standing trial in the city of Avignon, along with 50 other men, accused of drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her in a case that has stunned the nation and made headlines around the world.
The affaire Mazan, after the small town in Provence where the couple lived, has been described as many things at once: a trial of warped masculinity and patriarchal domination, of societal indifference to the abuse suffered by women, and of French laws on sexual crimes that critics say omit the notion of consent.
The chilling case has also prompted soul-searching among health workers in France, highlighting doctors’ struggle to detect the signs of drug-facilitated abuse – known in France as “chemical submission”.
“But we didn’t think of it,” added the bespectacled doctor, 76, one of several medical practitioners who prescribed an anti-anxiety drug known as Temesta to Gisèle Pelicot, telling the court that “she suffered from bouts of anxiety and had trouble sleeping”. A common drug
After previously testing a variety of drugs and sleeping pills, Dominique Pelicot began administering Temesta to his wife in 2015, acting on the advice of a nurse he met online. The drugs put his wife into a deep sleep, allowing him to sexually abuse her without her realising.
The pensioner himself had been prescribed Temesta for several years, the court learned on Tuesday, telling his doctor he was experiencing financial difficulties and suffering from anxiety. Prescribing Temesta for patients who suffer from sleep disorders or anxiety is extremely common in France, to the point that pharmacies frequently run out of the drug.
Once he had honed his method, Dominique Pelicot contacted dozens of strangers on the Coco.fr dating website and invited them to rape his sedated wife. To ensure that she remained inert, he gradually increased the doses, to between three and ten tablets a day, which he crushed into her food and drink.
There were warning signs, such as the day Gisèle Pelicot noticed that her beer was a dubious shade of green, but little to suggest the extent of the scheme. In all, nearly 780 Temesta tablets were prescribed by various doctors until 2020, the year Dominique Pelicot was arrested.
The 71-year-old has admitted inviting strangers into their home to rape her. Most of his co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to rape charges, some claiming they believed Gisèle Pelicot was consenting or that her husband’s consent was sufficient. ‘She sounded in a daze’
Throughout her ordeal, the toll on Gisèle Pelicot’s health did not go unnoticed by doctors and relatives, though they failed to understand its cause. Taking the witness stand on Tuesday, her son-in-law Pierre Peyronnet spoke of the family’s concern about her rapidly deteriorating health and of the difficulty in reaching out to her.
“We found it very difficult to get her on the phone, and most of the time it was [Dominique] who answered, explaining that Gisèle was asleep, even in the middle of the day,” Peyronnet told the court. “It sounded plausible because she did a lot, especially looking after the children,” the 52-year-old said.
When they were finally able to speak to her, she “often spoke incoherently and sounded in a daze”, Peyronnet added, accusing his father-in-law of deliberately misleading them.
“We believed [Dominique Pelicot's] perverse argument that it was our fault that her health was deteriorating,” he said. “We even discussed making her come to see us less often, so that she wouldn’t wear herself out. I now understand that the aim was to keep her under his thumb.”
Gisèle Pelicot consulted a host of doctors over such mystifying symptoms as memory loss and momentary absences, as well as gynecological conditions that included an inflamed cervix. Her husband feigned surprise, taunting her with suggestions she may be having an extra-marital affair.
Consumed by anxiety, Gisèle Pelicot ceased to drive her car or travel alone. Her husband was only caught after three women reported him to the police for trying to use his camera to film up their skirts in a grocery store. Training doctors to detect ‘chemical submission’
When quizzed about doctors’ failure to piece things together, Joël Pelicot, the brother of the accused, told the court that in medicine, “you only find what you look for – and you only look for what you know”.
In a recent interview with Le Monde, gynaecologist Ghada Hatem, the founder of a pioneering medical facility that caters to women who are vulnerable or victims of abuse, acknowledged that even she knew very little about domestic “chemical submission” before hearing of the Pelicot case.
Since then, special courses on the subject have been set up at the Maison des femmes she founded and at similar facilities, designed to train medical workers to detect the symptoms experienced by victims of drug-facilitated abuse.
In 2022, police registered more than 2,000 complaints involving allegations of “chemical submission”, an increase of 69% on the previous year. However, it is estimated that only 10% of victims lodge a complaint.
The subject made waves in parliament last year when lawmaker Sandrine Josso accused a French senator of spiking her drink with the intent of sexually abusing her. Josso, who led a government-appointed commission on “chemical submission”, told FRANCE 24 last month that she was paying close attention to the Pelicot trial, voicing hopes that it would help raise awareness of what she described as a “blind spot” in the fight against sexual violence.
Gisèle Pelicot, who refused to hold the trial behind closed doors, has herself emerged as a champion of the cause, stating at the start of the proceedings that she would "speak out so that no other woman has to endure chemical submission”.
For a year, Omri Shtivi campaigned for the release of his brother Idan and the other Israeli hostages in Gaza but now he has been told by the army that his brother died on the day of the Hamas attack © JACK GUEZ / AFP/File%22,%22id%22:%225535ce5c-cd7e-11ed-854c-005056bf30b7%22%7D/EN_20241009_201558_201955_CS.jpg)
Staff at the University of Tokyo launched a poster campaign to call out gender bias on campus © Richard A. Brooks / AFP
A court sketch showing Joël Pelicot (centre), the brother of the main suspect in the mass rape trial that has shaken France, at the hearing in Avignon on October 8, 2024. © Benoît Peyrucq, AFP