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Kurt et Johanna Ganthaler, des retraités italiens, n’avaient finalement pas pu embarquer la semaine dernière dans l’avion d’Air France qui s’est abîmé dans l’Océan Atlantique et qui a fait 228 morts. Ils s’étaient présentés à l’enregistrement quelques minutes trop tard.

Le couple avait finalement pu prendre un vol à destination de Munich et décidé de rejoindre l’Italie par la route. Ils ont été victime d’un grave accident pendant leur trajet, rapporte le quotidien Alto Adige, qui révèle l’histoire aujourd’hui. La femme est morte sur le coup. Le mari est lui hospitalisé dans un état grave.

Miraculée de l’AF447, elle meurt peu après, Lefigaro.fr 11/06/2009
http://ricerca.quotidianiespresso.it/altoadige/archivio/altoadige/2009/06/10/AM2AZ_AM201.html

J’aime bien l’expression “réduire à tout prix le budget du Pentagone”.

Je pense que les dépenses de recherche/développement militaires vont se poursuivre sans problèmes, car elles sont vitales pour la maintien de la dominance US.
Voyez mon article concernant le paln stratégique 2009 de la Darpa
http://www.admiroutes.asso.fr/larevue/2009/97/edito2.htm

http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2009/06/11/les-mercenaires-mettent-le-cap-sur-l-afghanistan_1205617_3216.html

par Rémy Ourdan, Extraits :

L’administration Obama n’a pas indiqué ses intentions face à la privatisation de la guerre. En Irak en 2007, le nombre de contractuels, mercenaires et autres, par rapport aux soldats en uniforme, a atteint le ratio de 1 pour 1. Du jamais-vu dans l’histoire des guerres. Et un problème pour la démocratie, puisque les contrats sont souvent opaques et que ces hommes échappent à la fois aux justices nationales et à la justice militaire. Ce n’est pas seulement la loi du plus fort, c’est la guerre en toute impunité. (...)

“Il n’y aura pas de retour en arrière, pense un officier américain. A moins d’augmenter considérablement les budgets de la défense, l’administration Obama ne pourra pas renationaliser la guerre. Pourtant ces types ne nous posent que des problèmes. Outre qu’ils gagnent dix fois plus d’argent que nos soldats, ils ne sont soumis à aucune de nos règles. Ils n’ont ni commandement ni sanction. Nous essayons de rallier la population alors qu’eux s’en foutent. Ils viennent gagner des dollars et ils repartent.” (...)

“Plus il y a de la guerre, plus il y a du mercenariat, se réjouit “Bob”, un mercenaire britannique parlant sous couvert d’anonymat. La nouveauté est qu’après le 11-Septembre, nos activités sont devenues ultralégales. On n’a jamais gagné autant d’argent. C’est un âge d’or.”  (...)  “Bob” admet que les intérêts de ses employeurs diffèrent de ceux de l’OTAN : “Les armées américaine et britannique et les autres sont ici pour gagner une guerre. Pour nous, plus la situation sécuritaire se détériore, mieux c’est.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13969

The Yekaterinburg Turning Point, by Prof. Michael Hudson

They simply want to discuss mutual aid – but in a way that has no role for the United States, NATO or the US dollar as a vehicle for trade. US diplomats may well ask what this really means, if not a move to make US hegemony obsolete. That is what a multipolar world means, after all.
For starters, in 2005 the SCO asked Washington to set a timeline to withdraw from its military bases in Central Asia.
Two years later the SCO countries formally aligned themselves with the former CIS republics belonging to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), established in 2002 as a counterweight to NATO. (...)

What may prove to be the last rites of American hegemony began already in April at the G-20 conference, and became even more explicit at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 5, when Mr. Medvedev called for China, Russia and India to “build an increasingly multipolar world order.”

What this means in plain English is:
We have reached our limit in subsidizing the United States’ military encirclement of Eurasia while also allowing the US to appropriate our exports, companies, stocks and real estate in exchange for paper money of questionable worth.

At the root of the global financial crisis, he concluded, is that the United States makes too little and spends too much. Especially upsetting is its military spending, such as the stepped-up US military aid to Georgia announced just last week, the NATO missile shield in Eastern Europe and the US buildup in the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia. (...)     

The sticking point with all these countries is the US ability to print unlimited amounts of dollars. Overspending by US consumers on imports in excess of exports, US buy-outs of foreign companies and real estate, and the dollars that the Pentagon spends abroad all end up in foreign central banks. (...)

The main political issue confronting the world’s central banks is therefore how to avoid adding yet more dollars to their reserves and thereby financing yet further US deficit spending – including military spending on their borders? (...)

For starters, the six SCO countries and BRIC countries intend to trade in their own currencies so as to get the benefit of mutual credit that the United States until now has monopolized for itself. (...)

In addition to avoiding financing the US buyout of their own industry and the US military encirclement of the globe, China, Russia and other countries no doubt would like to get the same kind of free ride that America has been getting. (...) The United States is now the world’s largest debtor yet has avoided the pain of “structural adjustments” imposed on other debtor economies.  (...)
The United States tells debtor economies to sell off their public utilities and natural resources, raise their interest rates and increase taxes while gutting their social safety nets to squeeze out money to pay creditors. (...)
In this respect the US has not really given China and other payments-surplus nations much alternative but to find a way to avoid further dollar buildups. To date, China’s attempts to diversify its dollar holdings beyond Treasury bonds have not proved very successful. (...)

Foreigners see the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization as Washington surrogates in a financial system backed by American military bases and aircraft carriers encircling the globe. But this military domination is a vestige of an American empire no longer able to rule by economic strength. (...)

The problem is how to constrain its behavior. Yu Yongding, a former Chinese central bank advisor now with China’s Academy of Sciences, suggested that US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner be advised that the United States should “save” first and foremost by cutting back its military budget. (...)

At present it is foreign savings, not those of Americans that are financing the US budget deficit by buying most Treasury bonds. (...) Since the 13th century, war has been a dominating factor in the balance of payments of leading nations – and of their national debts. Government bond financing consists mainly of war debts, as normal peacetime budgets tend to be balanced. This links the war budget directly to the balance of payments and exchange rates. (...) 

Why should China see its profitable companies sold for yet more freely-created US dollars, which the central bank must use to buy low-yielding US Treasury bills or lose yet further money on Wall Street?       

To avoid this quandary it is necessary to reverse the philosophy of open capital markets that the world has held ever since Bretton Woods in 1944. (...)

An era therefore is coming to an end.
In the face of continued US overspending, de-dollarization threatens to force countries to return to the kind of dual exchange rates common between World Wars I and II: one exchange rate for commodity trade, another for capital movements and investments, at least from dollar-area economies. (...)

governments are attempting to hasten what Chalmers Johnson has called “the sorrows of empire” in his book by that name – the bankruptcy of the US financial-military world order. If China, Russia and their non-aligned allies have their way, the United States will no longer live off the savings of others (in the form of its own recycled dollars) nor have the money for unlimited military expenditures and adventures. 

US officials wanted to attend the Yekaterinburg meeting as observers. They were told No. It is a word that Americans will hear much more in the future. 

(NB : “dual exchange rates” ... pas si simple

... En Belgique, a existé entre 1945 et 1990 un double marché des changes, sorte de mécanisme tobin extrêmement sophistiqué car fluctuant au jour le jour.

Ce système partageait le marché des changes en deux volets.

Le premier volet concernait les opérations de change à une fin commerciale c-à-d liées à une exportation ou une importation. Sur ce marché réglementé, la Banque nationale intervenait pour faire respecter le cours de change.
Le second volet concernait les autres opérations. Le marché était non réglementé et s’y échangeaient des devises à des fins non commerciales. Sur ce marché, le cours fluctuait en fonction de l’offre et la demande.

La dévaluation belge de 1982, l’approche de l’UEM et la frontière poreuse entre les deux marchés engendrant des frais administratifs importants ont mis fin au dispositif. (...)

Extrait de http://www.france.attac.org/spip.php?article154
)