Francis
12/08/2007
Oui, j’ai résumé plusieurs articles de “La Chronique Agora” ou Europe2020.org. De nombreux autres sites offrent de bonnes analyses et informations financières et géopolitiques.
Ainsi je ne partage pas cette opinion “... le constat que personne, il y a trois mois encore, ne semblait rien connaître de l’élément technique principal de la crise…” : il y avait depuis trop longtemps un consensu sur l’orage quant à savoir quand et où exactement il tomberait c’est une autre affaire: les différentes inondations relèvent ensuite des particularités des terrains concernés… la suite dans les différents bulletins météoconomiques cités.
Il me semble essentiel que l’éclairage de dedefensa soit différent, c’est bien cela qui m’intéresse: argumenté c’est le moins, original plutôt originel, “anthropologique” sinon rien. A force d’informations “mondaines”, de techniques et de spéculations “scientifiques” nous perdons de vue les fondements, c’est à dire nos limites ... le hasard, le tragique, le doute qui fonde notre la liberté et une distance ou une dérision qui rétablit la responsabilité de l’aventureux lecteur. Souvent insatisfait, dérangé mais toujours intéressé même si le conducteur du récit est surpris du paysage aperçu par ses lecteurs embarqués à l’arrière.
miquet
12/08/2007
Contrairement à ce que vous affirmez dans vos commentaires de la crise bousière en cours, de très nombreux économistes et investisseurs ont vu venir cette crise jour après jour inexorablement depuis des mois et n’ont cessé de mettre en garde le public contre ses effets potentiels.
Ce sont les économistes de l’establishment et les médias MSM qui n’ont soit disant rien vu venir, car ils sont payés pour annoncer que tout va bien dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.
Le virtualisme malheureusement est d’abord économique avant d’être politique ou psychologique…
Vous trouverez des articles quotidiens sur ces questions aux adresses suivantes par exemple:
Périclès
11/08/2007
Cela se précise : le sénateur John Edwards, questionné en direct ne “peut pas” répondre à la question “sait-on si les évènements du 11 Septembre ont été organisés par des étrangers ou par des américains” ?
mortimer
11/08/2007
Ou quand la machine de mort s’emballa pour enfanter le chaos dans l’indifference mortifère. A lire:
Prisons de la CIA: la vérité dépassée
Paru le Vendredi 10 Août 2007
FABIO LO VERSO
International
S’il y a une constante dans le scandale des prisons secrètes de la CIA, c’est l’irritante désinvolture qu’affiche Washington à son encontre. Les ultimes révélations du New Yorker[*] n’ont en rien ébranlé les certitudes des services étasuniens. Encore moins celles de George W. Bush. Le président des Etats-Unis vient de légaliser, par décret, le recours à la torture dans «sa» lutte contre le terrorisme. Il met ainsi ses hommes et leurs mandants à l’abri de toute poursuite, fût-elle fondée sur des preuves. L’impressionnante enquête du prestigieux hebdomadaire arrive peut-être trop tard, elle qui dévoile pour la première fois le menu détaillé des atrocités commises dans les cachots occultes de la CIA en Europe. Avant même son éclosion, la vérité est dépassée par le cynisme.
Sur l’ahurissant dossier du magazine new-yorkais plane aussi une ombre inquiétante: le sentiment que les journalistes ne réécriront peut-être plus les pages du Watergate, retentissante affaire ayant poussé le président Richard Nixon à démissionner en 1974. Pour les Etasuniens, focalisés sur la déroute irakienne et paralysés par la peur du terrorisme, la violation des droits de l’homme ne suscite pas de vagues d’indignation semblables à celles qui ont fait capituler les plus redoutables hommes d’Etat. En Europe, cette question ne semble plus avoir une importance capitale, en dépit de foyers mal éteints ou qui menacent de se rallumer sur ce dossier entre le Vieux et le Nouveau Continent. Difficile d’attendre de la confrontation d’un président allergique aux Conventions de Genève et de pays européens passifs ou complices l’amorce d’un repentir ou d’un simple retour au bon sens. Pourtant, au-delà des ravages de nature éthique, le franchissement de la ligne des droits humains crée un vide juridique dont la nature politique a horreur.
Les embarrassantes libertés que Washington s’accorde pour «protéger son peuple» entraînent un sérieux dérèglement de la gouvernance mondiale. Elles écrasent les protestations des Nations Unies, paralysées par les rapports de forces et les rivalités de puissances, et accentuent de ce fait les tensions géostratégiques. Qui doit jouer le rôle de pilote dans le règlement des crises internationales? Avec la guerre d’Irak, la force militaire l’a emporté sur la diplomatie. Avec la légalisation de la torture, les clignotants passent au rouge vif, car il y a en jeu l’intégrité physique et psychique de la personne, domaine autrement plus intouchable que les conventions sur les conflits armés. Publiée au moment où les prétendants à la présidence des Etats-Unis s’échauffent, les pages du New Yorker évoquent, en filigrane, l’enjeu crucial de la campagne électorale. Si les républicains gardent le contrôle de la Maison-Blanche, le prochain président ne manquera pas de poursuivre la politique de son prédécesseur. Si les démocrates placent leur candidat, personne ne peut garantir qu’il s’engagera à démanteler les lois liberticides héritées de l’ère Bush. Plus qu’une enquête, l’hebdomadaire étasunien signe presque un aveu d’impuissance.
[*]http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer
Source:http://www.lecourrier.ch/index.php?name=NewsPaper&file=article&sid=437137&layout=article,latruite
Tatanka
11/08/2007
Et pourtant depuis plusieurs mois, un site “Europe2020.org” a donné la chronologie et les étapes de la crise systèmique qui nous affecte. En particulier cette crise de l’été 2007. Et ce n’est pas fini…
Francis
11/08/2007
La mise en scène du pouvoir américain sous l’œil d’un photographe de guerre.
... Dans l’attente, il place son appareil hors champ et tourne le dos au président. Que reste-t-il du pouvoir lorsqu’il n’est plus regardé ? Voilà en un sens la question qui guide ses pas et ses vues.
... Les yeux dans les yeux, Morris parvient alors à capter dans l’assistance le regard de la sujétion, révélée, soulignée par les apparats du moment.
Cette Amérique, est-elle encore un instant la sienne ? Citoyenne, elle voue à son chef et à la nation les dévotions d’une religion. Dans l’absolue certitude de soi, pour cette Amérique-là, il n’y a d’autre qu’elle-même : My America.
My America, par Christopher Morris, Steidl éditeur. ( http://www.courrierinternational.com/article.asp?obj_id=62503 ) par Pascal Philippe
Rakk
10/08/2007
A lire absoluement,des soldats US témoignent. Les récits font froids dans le dos.
extrait:
Le caporal Josh Middleton, 23 ans, a servi à Bagdad et à Mossoul avec la 82ème division aéroportée, de décembre 2004 à mars 2005. Il a expliqué que des soldats de 20 ans étaient passés des brimades de l’entraînement « se faire engueuler chaque jour si leur fusil était sale » - aux rues irakiennes, où ils risquent leur vie. « Beaucoup de gars partageait l’idée, vous savez, que si ces gens ne parlent pas anglais et ont la peau plus foncée, ils ne sont pas aussi humains que nous, alors nous pouvons faire ce que nous voulons », dit-il. (...)
Tu quoque
09/08/2007
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.
miquet
09/08/2007
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)
python
08/08/2007
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
gilles
08/08/2007
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
Rakk
07/08/2007
La production électrique irakienne est proche de l’effondrement:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1649918,00.html
Delcuse
07/08/2007
“habitués de la gratuité dInternet” 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.
mortimer
07/08/2007
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/
Ali
06/08/2007
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
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