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Elle se prépare comme il se doit à Pékin.
Outre donc les sérieuses manoeuvres du SCO, voilà une arme plus fatale encore à la chancelante chose que sont devenus les US(a) depuis que les néocons ont confondus puissance (faite de toute une virtualité de menaces) et réalité à son terme d’une agression qui ne peut être menée:

China threatens ‘nuclear option’ of dollar sales

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 1:41am BST 09/08/2007

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

Blog - Dollar to collapse?

Fistful of dollars - China’s trade surplus reached $26.9bn in June

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China’s “nuclear option” in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

Xia Bin, finance chief at the Development Research Centre (which has cabinet rank), kicked off what now appears to be government policy with a comment last week that Beijing’s foreign reserves should be used as a “bargaining chip” in talks with the US.

“Of course, China doesn’t want any undesirable phenomenon in the global financial order,” he added.

He Fan, an official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, went even further today, letting it be known that Beijing had the power to set off a dollar collapse if it choose to do so.

“China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars. Such a big sum, of which a considerable portion is in US treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency. Russia, Switzerland, and several other countries have reduced the their dollar holdings.

“China is unlikely to follow suit as long as the yuan’s exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar,” he told China Daily.

The threats play into the presidential electoral campaign of Hillary Clinton, who has called for restrictive legislation to prevent America being “held hostage to economic decicions being made in Beijing, Shanghai, or Tokyo”.

She said foreign control over 44pc of the US national debt had left America acutely vulnerable.

Simon Derrick, a currency strategist at the Bank of New York Mellon, said the comments were a message to the US Senate as Capitol Hill prepares legislation for the Autumn session.

“The words are alarming and unambiguous. This carries a clear political threat and could have very serious consequences at a time when the credit markets are already afraid of contagion from the subprime troubles,” he said.

A bill drafted by a group of US senators, and backed by the Senate Finance Committee, calls for trade tariffs against Chinese goods as retaliation for alleged currency manipulation.

The yuan has appreciated 9pc against the dollar over the last two years under a crawling peg but it has failed to halt the rise of China’s trade surplus, which reached $26.9bn in June.

Henry Paulson, the US Tresury Secretary, said any such sanctions would undermine American authority and “could trigger a global cycle of protectionist legislation”.

Mr Paulson is a China expert from his days as head of Goldman Sachs. He has opted for a softer form of diplomacy, but appeared to win few concession from Beijing on a unscheduled trip to China last week aimed at calming the waters.

atimes.com publie une (longue et) magistrale analyse d’Axel Brot, dont voici un extrait:

GERMANY, THE RE-ENGINEERED ALLY

By Axel Brot

(...)

Broken machinery

The American political class seems to have drawn all the wrong conclusions from the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. Its leisurely stroll towards permanent global hegemony just did not happen. Thus, frustration and the craving for revenge have become main drivers of US policies. The events of September 11 focused their common dysfunctionality, but they are not its root cause.

It is from this vantage point that arises the resigned and poignant expectation that the US will permit neither a stable Russia nor a non-cataclysmic accommodation of China’s rise. American politics now have just enough flexibility to negotiate the short-term priorities of whom to put under the pressure of regime-changing demands; but the system is rigged not to reward persuasion or accommodation but toward increasing confrontation, deadline diplomacy, and grandstanding on principles that carry the load of broken credibility.

Notwithstanding the worthy efforts of the Iraq Study Group or the Princeton Project on National Security to get some means-to-ends rationality back into US policies, politics are impaired by the lack of discipline and prudence that come with the reinforcement of the imperial mind-set of official Washington by the media and think tanks.

Unfortunately, this mind-set is not only the defining attribute of the present administration but of both parties - and abundantly so, of the serious contenders for the next US presidency. They are already competing in burning the bridges to a somewhat more patient approach to imperial policies while berating the present administration for its weakness. Different combinations of bombing Iran, breaking Hezbollah, confronting the Russians, sanctioning the Chinese, squeezing the Saudis and Pakistanis, pressuring the Indians into a subordinate relationship, installing an “accountable” dictatorship in Iraq (and/or taking it apart), are on the menu of the main candidates - plus unfettering US “soft power” and hitching the allies more effectively to whatever load is to be pulled.

It is therefore all too easy to see in the current travails of global diplomacy efforts to adapt to the implicit American choice of “either the US or chaos”. But the lessons are not only Iraq and Afghanistan, but the failed attempts of Serbia (1999), Iran (2003) and Syria (ongoing), to bow to US/Western demands while keeping a measure of independence and dignity. In fact, looking at the last 16 years or so, at the fate of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, of the former Yugoslavia, and of Iraq or Afghanistan, they may come to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose even in a military confrontation.

And since the march of empire is tuned to the racial - alias “civilizational” - superiority (of the “Anglosphere”), non-Western elites may interpret this choice as “the US and chaos”. If it is their ambition just to loot their countries and then to set-up shop in one of the Western tax-sheltered playgrounds or to turn into sharecroppers of their countries´ resources, the choice is a good one. If they are at all attentive, reasonably patriotic, and have a measure of pride, they cannot but resist it.

It is, in the last analysis, also a question of self-esteem and a sense of historical accountability. Can elites in their right mind bear to be the butt of a sardonic witticism like the one going around among Anglo-Saxon officials, targeting the Saudi combination of immense corruption and paying immense protection money: the Saudis “prefer to suffocate on their knees instead of dying on their feet”.

But contempt and the lust for chaos (“creative destruction”) have become the coin of the realm. They are heated by fantasies of a global caste society where “The Shield of Achilles”, “Imperial Grunts”, “Left Behind”, and “The Diamond Age” are busy cross-pollinating the imperial imagination. One might add that a Pentagon (Office for Net Assessment) study of the consequences of climate change provides a window into the darkest, survivalist corner of this mind-set and implies, in addition, an answer to the questions “who is the West?” and “who is superfluous?”

The return with a vengeance of the “covert operations approach” to US international policies, therefore, has much more to do with this sinister self-fictionalization than with the nature of threats or the simple availability of the instruments. While for most periods of the Cold War, concerns about exposure, blowback, and provoking war with the Soviets kept it somewhat under control, it has slipped the leash. Everyone who can has gone into business. It is not only the White House that is exceedingly liberal in its use of privateers, frequently retreaded intelligence and military officials who should have been disposed of out of harm’s way.

There is the evolution of a huge gray zone of private “consultancy” enterprises of former government officials who parlay their international contacts with state and sub-state actors, with insurgencies in search of upscale sponsoring, and policy-lobbying groups, as well as their international business contacts - in particular with the energy, financial, arms and security industries - into business and influence. On returning to government service, their pet projects, policies and money-spinners don´t just go into hibernation, they are continued as government policies. The merchandising of imperial policies and the mercantilization of military violence have become the hallmark of this strange combination of militarism and venality. One of the new breed of temporary, parvenu officials demonstrated its bottom-line aspect with the pithy question: “What is the use of empire when you can´t make money out of it?”

On the policy level, the concern about blowback and exposure has all but disappeared, except as a weapon of bureaucratic bloodletting when the hunt for the scapegoat is on. It can only operate as a restraint if a sense of moderation can be imposed and if its consequences have a deterring effect. None of this pertains. US policies, instead, gestate in the world of the much-quoted Melian Dialogue where a sense of impunity and omnipotence have destroyed any regard for prudence. Since the tyro-days of retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord’s rubbing shoulders with the cocaine mafia in order to finance the Nicaraguan Contras, this state of affairs has given a completely new meaning to “unleashing covert operations”, “plausible deniability”, and, of course, to Ronald Reagan´s famous “boys will be boys” mentality.

The more vicious side of the problem, though, exposes the meltdown of the firewalls between the branches of government, between the executive branch and Congress, between public and private, between business and government - in a witches’ brew of projects and interests. And no government agency has the clout or the will to turn off any of the cross-married projects of policy-lobbying, intelligence and black operations that acquired godparents in government, in Congress, or with one of the powerful lobbying outfits.

They may sink, perhaps, below the awareness threshold of the principals, but move they will unstintingly, metamorphosing, mutating and spawning descendents in the fetid swamp of subcontractors, public-private intelligence outfits, mercenaries, fundamentalist missionary organizations, security firms, to reappear someday as “operation in place”, and thus renewing the cycle. The Sudanese troubles are a prime example of how this itinerant ecosystem produces and reproduces ever increasing mayhem in weak states cursed with strategic significance.

But all of that does not even begin to address the destructive effects of its frequent connection to the underworld, of the illicit trade in weapons, raw materials, etc, or to the globally operating crime syndicates and their economic infrastructure.

It is only logical that the selection of policy-making personnel seems now to follow the Israeli, Italian, and Japanese model, moving ever deeper into the world of clan loyalties (the neo-conservatives are only the most self-consciously “family-oriented” clan) where the distinction between loyalty to office and loyalty to clan disappears completely at the level of deputy assistant secretary.

And it is starting to infect Germany. Not only because many corners of the German foreign intelligence apparatus are, by design and tradition, bespoke to US and Israeli intelligence, and its political control mechanisms are slick even by Western standards. It is the osmosis of bad habits via the demands of Western solidarity.

In a moment of unguarded candor, the Berlin correspondent of the conservative Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung bemoaned the unrestrained recruiting of journalists and NGO representatives by German intelligence as far worse than spying on journalists to plug leaks. This comment illuminated for a short moment one of the rooms in the sub-basement of German foreign policy.

Of even greater salience for the shape of things to come is the introduction into Germany of the linkage of intelligence and business, and of both to covert operations. A story is floating around in the international media that the former head of German intelligence and current member of parliament Bernd Schmidbauer is allegedly the facilitator for an Israeli intelligence agent turned businessman who is deeply involved in Israeli projects in Iraqi Kurdistan. Using Schmidbauer’s contacts among the leadership of the Iraqi Kurds, the Israeli agent reportedly secured land contracts worth many millions of dollars to give the Kurds a greater share of the (disappeared) billions from the oil-for-food account.

It is probably just an interesting, albeit rather disingenuous cover-story. But whatever the details, it is a fact that Schmidbauer is using his former office for that kind of purpose, and that is the message. And it is hard to judge what is worse: Schmidbauer involved in Israeli shenanigans that connect covert operations to business profits; or a private venture doing the same.

More immediate, however, are concerns that German soldiers are already being sent into open-ended missions in potentially casualty-rich intervention environments - environments where American (British and Israeli) policies have publicly, contemptuously, and irreversibly debauched 100 years’ worth of international law that tried to regulate the use of military violence. The German allies are running a kind of social-Darwinian selection experiment in their militaries, to weed out the conscience-ridden, the susceptible, and the whistle-blowers and to breed back the mind-set of colonial warfare against “enemy populations”, with all the repercussions on civil society that this entails.

The resulting mercenary habits and “warrior ethics” - moral inhibitions restrained in favor of racial contempt as part of unit bonding - cannot but infect and then corrode and turn the once restrained professional soldiers into the “citizen-soldiers” of a parliamentary army. The more they are committed to operations in the “war on terror”, the more they will encounter the desperate hate of those who have been exposed to the American ways of pacification.

In other words: there is fear that German forces will absorb this mentality by participating in these society-destroying operations whose results can already be seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine - and in future campaigns that have the potential to deteriorate into annihilation warfare. The fear is not far-fetched: one might look at the doctrinal evolution with regard to warfare in the “global ghettos” or, by way of example, scrutinize the strategies considered and the fervor for a war against Iran.

Those with legal training and some historical awareness cannot but see parallels between what is happening now and the judicial and propaganda preparations during the run-up to the German attack on Soviet Russia: imprinting on the soldiers’ minds that they are going to confront a sub-human, vicious, cruel, and cunning enemy; then denying whole categories of enemy (... suite sur atimes.com)

ecoute un peu voir dedefensa que j’aime bien;

1rst je t’ai soutenu €€€ depuis le début (tu trouveras ça par paypal, sous navimalines ou ailleurs).

2 tu me passionnes par ta ligne éditoriale : l’analyse clinique autant qu’autocritique, qui fonde le diagnostic clinique (le monde anglosaxon se fend, l’americaniste pète les plombs).

3 tu m’énerves néanmoins à ne pas choisir qui doit faire le contre-pouvoir : la politique celle des citoyens et élus ou bien le commerce et ses profits érigés au rang d’outils d’indépendance nationaux? les 2 mon colonel?

4 je te cherche en vain dans le forum, dis-donc tu es sûr que nous t’avons bien compris ou alors que que tu te fais bien comprendre ou sinon t’ai-je moi-même bien compris… En outre non non, sarko n’est pas admirable ni sauvable par ton maistre, quand il dit rupture le résultat n’est pas que people mais n’est pas non plus autre chose que renouer avec avant le pire.

6 dedefensa, tu pourrais quand même parler de qui avait fait placer les explosifs dans les tours, merdalor, sinon quoi? tu pourrais dire sans rond de jambes quoi penser de cet abbas de mes2? tu pourrais cesser oui ou non de trouver bolton gentillement modéré s’il est fielleux,ça ça fait bouillir aïeaëaë ????? et si tu étais un poil plus clair ça desservirait ton dessein que t’as? tu pourrais clarifier???

7 heureusement malgré tout que tu es là, pour alimenter, avec d’autres, le fleuve de la compréhension.
alors merci dedefensa

a senior U.S. intelligence official having recently said that, “The British have basically been defeated in the south.”

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/07/warmy107.xml

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601401_2.html?sub=AR

La production électrique irakienne est proche de l’effondrement:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1649918,00.html

“habitués de la gratuité d’Internet” Depuis quand ? Car, outre l’achat du matériel, qui est coûteux, il y a l’abonnement, qui varie selon les serveurs et l’accès à l’adsl, sans parler de l’abonnement à Télécom et EdF. Mais je suppose que vous voulez parler des sites et des blogs, dont la plupart sont effectivement d’accès gratuit. Sinon, merci pour le choix de vos sujets, que je trouve fort interressant, et que je fais connaitre autour de moi.

Nombre de sites et de blogs francophones se penchent sur les faits et les gestes de et à partir de l’Amérique. Parfois anécdotique mais non moins rafraîchissant comme point de vue, je trouve, sans doute, parce qu’émanant le plus souvent d’immigrés. 

Florilège:

insidetheusa.net

losangelescomunidad.blogspot.com

http://www.frenchmorning.com/ny/

guillemette.typepad.com/guillemette/

Bonjour,
je me demandais pourquoi vous avez lancé la campagne en plein période estivale? Même les lecteurs de dedefensa vont en vacance :-)

Comme Marie-Claude, je me demande si vous devez pas ajouter la paiement par compte bancaire… ça faciliterait pour certains!

bonne récolte et j’espère que Mister Murdoch ne vous rachètera pas ;-)

bav,
Ali

Ron Paul Warns (Again) of White House Using ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ Incident to Launch Iran War

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2007/08/05/ron-paul-warns-white-house-using-gulf-tonkin-incident-launch.html

http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=144&a=3054

Un record meme pour DeDefensa

L’affaire Valerie Plame, du nom de cet agent secret dont l’identité a été dévoilée à la presse par des membres de l’administration de G.W.Bush, a été enclenchée à la demande de la CIA à la mi-2003 saisissant le département de la justice qui a lancé une poursuite judiciaire. Le dénouement de l’affaire a été la condamnation de Lewis Libby, chef de cabinet de D.Cheney, pour obstruction et parjure. Une partie de la peine a été annulée par G.W.bush. Les détails et les rebondissements de cette affaire, se déroulant sur 4 ans, sont dignes d’Hollywood qui,du coup, n’a pas hésité à en acheter les droits d’adaptation à l’interessée. Et ce n’est pas fini.

sources:

http://www.20minutes.fr/article/171493/Monde-La-plainte-de-Valerie-Plame-rejetee.php

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/19/cia.leak/index.html#cnnSTCOther1

« PATRIOTISME ECONOMIQUE »…
Patriotisme, voilà bien un mot passé de mode. Tentative de « come back », sortie des cartons, coup de plumeau, et accolé à « économique », coucou, le revoilà… Bof… Pas de quoi se mettre au « garde à vous »…
Restons dans un premier temps sur son sens originel : il n’est pas contestable que nous ayons eu à souffrir de diverses visions hégémoniques et de divers impérialismes plus ou moins belliqueux, souvent plus que moins… 1870, 1914, 1939… Bien sur, il ne faut pas oublier… Evidemment, en s’arrachant de la barrière temporelle, avec empathie, pleurons sur le malheur de ces générations… Mais comment sommes-nous sortis de cette haine à répétition ? Comment cette chronique d’une haine séculaire a-t-elle trouvé son épilogue ? Par la construction européenne ! Qui s’en plaindra ? Saluons les femmes et les hommes politiques, de gauche comme de droite, de ce côté du Rhin comme de l’autre qui depuis maintenant 60 ans œuvrent en ce sens. 60 ans de paix à l’intérieur de l’éxagone… Qui s’en plaindra ? Un peu d’histoire : A partir de Vespasien, au premier siècle de N.E., la Gaule, en s’engageant profondément dans le monde romain a connu un siècle de paix. Qui pourrait ne pas souhaiter la même chose aujourd’hui ?
Revenons à notre sujet : Si je dis à mes enfants de ne pas fumer tout en ayant une « clope au bec », je ne suis pas crédible… Patriotisme économique : n’est-ce pas quelque part un peu la même chose ? Car en même temps les exportations françaises sont souhaitées et encouragées tout comme le sont les investissements étrangers sur notre territoire. Si l’on souhaite voir se développer ce double mouvement et aussi nos productions achetées à l’extérieur du pays, il est difficile de tenir la position qui consiste à dire à l’étranger « achètes mes produits mais moi, je n’achèterai pas les tiens »… Il risque fort lui aussi de vouloir se replier… Et il n’y aurait au final à ce petit jeu que des perdants…
Là aussi, la construction européenne est à envisager ! Un exemple (que j’ai rencontré en tant qu’Administrateur URSSAF) : les entreprises françaises de fonderie ont du il y a 10 / 15 ans abandonner les fours thermiques trop polluants au profit de coûteux fours électriques. Aujourd’hui, elles sont gravement menacées par la concurrence des « Pays de l’est » qui sont héritiers de la culture soviétique : La pollution on s’en fou ! Les fours thermiques y sont toujours en activité… Il s’agit là (aussi…) d’une scandaleuse concurrence déloyale. Mais ce n’est pas avec moins d’Europe qu’elle disparaîtra et que ces fours deviendront propres, c’est au contraire avec plus d’Europe sociale, plus d’Europe syndicale, plus d’Europe environnementale !
 
Il est légitime d’affectionner le village, la ville où l’on est né. Mais cette tendresse ne se double pas d’un regard négatif envers ceux se trouvent à l’autre extrémité du pays, ni d’une intention de les spolier. Et, fort logiquement, nous ne souhaitons pas non plus être victime de tels agissements. De la même façon il est légitime d’aimer la France et la culture française. Cela n’est pas contradictoire avec le fait d’avoir une conscience européenne car l’Europe n’est pas un reniement de soi-même mais un élargissement, un enrichissement. Sans courir après des fantasmes (pensons au flop de l’Espéranto) il est temps de mettre de côté les discours à sens unique, et le patriotisme économique en relève, pour penser européen !  Pas pour parler de « patriotisme économique européen » car l’Europe n’est pas une patrie. Mais une mosaïque de. Il ‘agirait plutôt de protectionnisme élevé au niveau de l’Europe.
COLPIN Didier

Une petite question: pourquoi ne pas mentionner votre n° de compte bancaire aussi? Je ne suis pas enthousiaste des paiements par carte via Internet, et peut-être certains de vos lecteurs n’ont-ils pas de carte de crédit, et il faut vraiment chercher pour trouver un numéro de compte où on peut effectuer un virement ordinaire. Comme je suis sensible à votre appel, j’ai fait l’effort, mais je pense que vous devriez tenir compte du fait que le paiement par carte/Internet n’est pas autant dans les moeurs en Europe que chez nos amis d’Outre-Atlantique…et pour des raisons parfois très valables!

Il semble que l’implosion des US s’accélère.

Les première retombées arrivent en Europe : faillite bancaire en Teutonie réunifiée et en Italie, mais tout va très bien en France ... sauf les sicav monétaires “dynamiques” de chez Oddo, BNP et AXA qui tiraient leur “dynamisme” des produits dérivés US, particulièrement de la tranche dite “des déchets toxiques”

L’aspect bourse / finance sera sans doute le plus commenté, mais pas l’aspect monnétaire,le plus important, voire déterminant.

Du côté US, Cheney va prendre la Maison-Blanche pendant les vacances. Une procédure de destitution semble engagée :
http://www.solidariteetprogres.org/spip/sp_article-breve.php3?id_article=3167

Il y a longtemps que cela me fait penser à :

” Dallas ton univers impitoy-â a-ble “

Pas bien sûr dans l’aspect démêlées familiales des JR, Bob et autres Sue-helen, mais en ce qui concerne la partie de cartes “pétrolière” ça y ressemble beaucoup !