Agrégateur de flux

The Ebola pandemic is a crisis of global proportion and of global concern. It is locally concentrated and requires responses on a local scale with a global scope. Its projected trajectory is the subject of volatile predictions, confused communication, imperilled responses and, increasingly, panic. It is at once a health crisis, with severe economic repercussions, and a threat to peace and security, espe­cially in the region and even beyond.
The response to the Ebola pandemic should be twofold.

• The immediate crisis must be brought under control. We propose a set of short-term actions that are based on a much stronger commitment and co­ordination by the international community. Above all, these are geared towards establishing an acknow­ledged and legitimate global health leadership structure: based in the United Nations system and supported by key global players such as the United States and the European Union.

• In order to overcome the current Ebola outbreak with a view towards drawing conclusions to prevent another such crisis, international actors need to reflect on the structural aspects undergirding this crisis. Three elements of such a response need to be recognised. First, the Ebola pandemic is a global crisis; in addition to the individual impacts of infection, a global pandemic can easily lead to a panic in which health, social, economic and political costs are impossible to quantify. Second, it is a health crisis not only for those infected with and affected by the Ebola virus, but also for the most affected region - in health, economic and security terms (as people seek health care apart from Ebola treatment). Third, Ebola poses a health, economic and security crisis for the West Africa region and beyond: its spread threatens the fragile gains made in the post-conflict societies of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The broader West Africa region and the Sahel are characterised by fragile social cohesion, as people struggle to sustain livelihoods curtailed by quarantines, fear and falling trade while authorities work to maintain and manage socio-political tensions.

The current Ebola crisis illustrates the shortcomings of the way international cooperation is organised. In rising to the challenge of a committed, coordinated response, the following points must be acknowledged.

• Ebola's eruption into densely populated urban areas reinforces the vital necessity of functioning local, national and global health systems. Zoonoses are likely to multiply; learning to predict and prepare for them is vital.

• It makes it clear that weak and fragile local systems, especially in a post-conflict setting, pose not only a local hazard but a global threat.

• Current crisis response mechanisms of the international community are neither effective nor adequate. To a large extent, the situation is caused by chronic underfunding of the core functions of leading international institutions.

• There are urgent opportunities that the international community should take advantage of to improve the workings of the (global) health sector, e.g. compre­hensively supporting health systems' development

The Brazilian Aeronautics Command, COMAER, has signed a contract to acquire 36 Gripen NG fighter aircraft for the Brazilian Air Force for around SEK 39.3 billion ($5.4 billion). The contract, which consists of 28 single-seat aircraft and eight two-seaters, was signed after Dilma Rousse

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Not long after I arrived I write a post about the digital tools I was thinking about using for my studies. I thought it would be interesting to look back 8 months on and see which I found useful, which were replaced by something else, which didn’t deliver and which new ones I picked up along the way.

First I’ll look at the ones I mentioned in the original post.

1. Evernote

I’m still using it, but not as much as I thought. But it’s really useful to have a note-taking service, and I do use the widget on my desktop to clip links, or take little notes while I”m working on my laptop.

2. Flipboard

Dear me, I love this tool. Not only does it make reading social content so much more pleasurable than most interfaces, but it is a fantastic content curation tool. I’ve been using it to curate content for the company where I am working, as well as putting together magazines on several issues of  interest to me.

3. Mendeley/Zotero

I mentioned Mendeley as a reference management tool, but in the end I went with Zotero. It has a Firefox add-on so that when you download the pdf of an article, you download it directly into the service. Then you can search all articles by title, content and author, read the articles and generate references. It’s difficult to over-estimate the importance of generating references, in terms of what a time-saver it is for essays, and I have found that Google Scholar’s references just aren’t reliable.

4. Wunderlist/Trello

I do love Wunderlist, but I haven’t used it as much as I have been using Trello, and actually good old pen and paper. But as an online tool, Trello has helped me in all sorts of ways. It’s great for keeping a note of what you need to do and with the upgrade you get for inviting new people and tweeting about the serivce, you can add calendar reminders and various other useful enhancements. Trello really comes into its own for project work: we used it for our (winning!) team at start-up weekend and in our final project management class it was a great way for us to keep in touch as a team when the group was physically broken up. I’ve had a go at other management tools like Asana and Knotable, but Trello seems to have got a great balance of simple and effective.

5. Dropbox

Dropbox has remained a staple for me. It integrates into my Finder window so it’s a seamless part of my set up, and it also makes it easy to share content with others. Definitely a gold star service.

6. Scrivener

I haven’t really had call to use this yet, though it may come into its own with my research project next semester.

So those were the ones I thought I would use a lot. I was right about some, not about others. So which were the ones I hadn’t thought of that I use?

7. Google

Another set of services that in spite of myself I really couldn’t have got here without. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides have all been invaluable for the various group projects we have had to do across a number of subjects, plus presentations in Google Slides seem to avoid incompatability problems. They are not full versions of their equivalents in Office or the Mac Suite, but for collaborative working, there really isn’t anything like them.

8. GoodReader

One more to add to the ‘indispensable’ list. Goodreader is a document reader which I have on my iPad, allowing me to make notes, either free-hand or typed, highlight sections and generally read the many many articles that are part and parcel of a social science Masters. It links to Dropbox, so I can access whatever I save in there.

9. Meetup

Not really a digital tool, but something that has been pretty central to my life in Melbourne, Meetup has been a wonderful way to connect with a range of interesting events and people, from startups to music fans to my favourites, the monthly French-speaking meetup. Chouette!

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Interviewé dans L'Orient-Le Jour par le spécialiste de la Turquie et journaliste Jihad Naoufal, édition du 20/10/2014: "Selon Julien Théron, politologue spécialiste de la géopolitique des conflits et enseignant à l'Université de Versailles, l'attitude de la Turquie face au problème de … Lire la suite →

Participant au débat de France 24 English – Débat animé par François Picard, avec le diplomate américain William Jordan, l'universitaire turc Akin Unver et le représentant de Stop the war Jim Brann, France 24, 20/10/2014, 19h10-20h Voir le débat sur … Lire la suite →

Participant au débat de France 24 English – Débat animé par François Picard, avec le journaliste Allan Kaval, l'universitaire kurde Cengis Gunes et le conseiller turc Kadir Ustun, France 24, 20/10/2014, 19h10-20h On Sunday, the Pentagon announced weapons and medical … Lire la suite →

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Participant au débat de France 24 English – Débat animé par François Picard, avec le général français Dominique Trinquand, le négociateur politique américain Ali Khedery, et l’ancienne porte-parole de la Coalition nationale syrienne Emma Suleyman, France 24, 23/09/2014, 19h10-20h Voir … Lire la suite →

Les sanctions occidentales pèsent lourdement sur l'économie russe mais elles n'affectent pas la combativité de Vladimir Poutine. Depuis le début de la crise ukrainienne, le maître du Kremlin a vu sa popularité atteindre de nouveaux records à plus de 80%... Pierre Rousselin http://blog.lefigaro.fr/geopolitique/pierre-rousselin.html

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