Forum

1/ Le complexe militaro-industriel US doit bien fourguer sa marchandise quelque part.

2/ Un manière comme une autre d’imposer la présence US en Europe.

3/ Serait-il possible que ces missiles soient en fait discretement dirigés vers des capitales européennes?

J’ai 62 ans et dans mon coin des Vosges, on avait le choix entre apprendre l’allemand ou l’allemand. Si on n’étais pas heureux il y avait deux alternatives apprendre le deutsch ou arrêter les études.

Alors l’anglais…..!
Ne serait il pas possible dans vos articles d’avoir, même sous forme de notes la traductuin des textes anglais?

Merci d’avance.

Et s’il ne s’agissait finalement et tout simplement que d’une tentative de faire endosser aux peuples “you”, la responsabilité de la déconfiture annoncée.

Encore Francis Fukuyama dans le Guardian du 3 avril.
Et les commentaires des lecteurs, non repris ici, ne sont pas tendres dans l’ensemble. Il agace.

The history at the end of history
Francis Fukuyama

April 3, 2007 10:15 AM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/francis_fukuyama/2007/04/the_history_at_the_end_of_hist.html

Fifteen years ago in my book The End of History and the Last Man I argued that, if a society wanted to be modern, there was no alternative to a market economy and a democratic political system. Not everyone wanted to be modern, of course, and not everyone could put in place the institutions and policies necessary to make democracy and capitalism work, but no alternative system would yield better results.

While the End of History thus was essentially an argument about modernisation, some people have linked my thesis about the end of history to the foreign policy of President George Bush and American strategic hegemony. But anyone who thinks that my ideas constitute the intellectual foundation for the Bush administration’s policies has not been paying attention to what I have been saying since 1992 about democracy and development.

President Bush initially justified intervention in Iraq on the grounds of Saddam’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, the regime’s alleged links to al-Qaida, as well as Iraq’s violation of human rights and lack of democracy. As the first two justifications crumbled in the wake of the 2003 invasion, the administration increasingly emphasised the importance of democracy, both in Iraq and in the broader Middle East, as a rationale for what it was doing.

Bush argued that the desire for freedom and democracy were universal and not culture-bound, and that America would be dedicated to the support of democratic movements “with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Supporters of the war saw their views confirmed in the ink-stained fingers of Iraqi voters who queued up to vote in the various elections held between January and December 2005, in the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, and in the Afghan presidential and parliamentary elections.

Inspiring and hopeful as these events were, the road to liberal democracy in the Middle East is likely to be extremely disappointing in the near to medium term, and the Bush administration’s efforts to build a regional policy around it are heading toward abject failure.

To be sure, the desire to live in a modern society and to be free of tyranny is universal, or nearly so. This is demonstrated by the efforts of millions of people each year to move from the developing to the developed world, where they hope to find the political stability, job opportunities, health care, and education that they lack at home.

But this is different from saying that there is a universal desire to live in a liberal society - that is, a political order characterised by a sphere of individual rights and the rule of law. The desire to live in a liberal democracy is, indeed, something acquired over time, often as a byproduct of successful modernisation.

Moreover, the desire to live in a modern liberal democracy does not translate necessarily into an ability to actually do so. The Bush administration seems to have assumed in its approach to post-Saddam Iraq that both democracy and a market economy were default conditions to which societies would revert once oppressive tyranny was removed, rather than a series of complex, interdependent institutions that had to be painstakingly built over time.

Long before you have a liberal democracy, you have to have a functioning state (something that never disappeared in Germany or Japan after they were defeated in the second world war). This is something that cannot be taken for granted in countries like Iraq.

The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organisation. Following Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a “post-historical” world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.

Finally, I never linked the global emergence of democracy to American agency, and particularly not to the exercise of American military power. Democratic transitions need to be driven by societies that want democracy, and since the latter requires institutions, it is usually a fairly long and drawn out process.

Outside powers like the US can often help in this process by the example they set as politically and economically successful societies. They can also provide funding, advice, technical assistance, and yes, occasionally military force to help the process along. But coercive regime change was never the key to democratic transition.

In cooperation with Project Syndicate/The American Interest, 2007.

En fait, la rédéfinition ou la refondation de l’identité nationale est la meilleure réponse que l’on peut faire face à la globalisation. Dans un monde ouvert, où les réseaux de communication mettent en relation l’ensemble des cultures de la planète il faut, pour éviter de perdre son âme, bien savoir qui l’on est.

Alors que beaucoup et notamment le monde anglo-saxon ne voit de la globalisation que l’aspect économique, il me parait assez évident que le principal enjeu est culturel.

En fait, il est probable que la France soit particulièrement en avance dans ce processus et se pose maintenant les bonnes questions que les autres se posent plus tard (cf les problèmes de laicité qui font maintenant irruption au Royaume Uni)

Et forcément, se faisant, la France essuie les plâtre et parait plus en crise que ses homologues.

Published on Monday, April 2, 2007 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When Myths Take Priority Over Facts

by Jay Bookman

By the time we become adults, we’ve all compiled a personal mythology. These are the stories that tell us how the world works, why things are the way they are and what roles various people and forces might play in that world.

Some of those stories come out of our own experience; others come secondhand, from parents, teachers, religious leaders and even the media. None of the stories offers a completely accurate representation of the world — we’re a pitiful species, smart enough to comprehend the big questions but too stupid to grasp the full answers. But if our personal mythology matches up fairly closely with reality, and if we’re willing to revise those stories as experience dictates, we can make our way in the world.

Nations, businesses and institutions also create and live by mythologies. To cite an example uncomfortably close to home, newspapers have long embraced the mythology — backed by some 500 years of history — that what we do is indispensable to an informed society. That mythology has now been exploded with the arrival of the Internet, pushing the industry into a desperate search for a narrative that better fits the world around us. We are coming to realize that if you ever let your mythology become too distant from how the world really works, you’re in trouble.

The Bush administration is coming to a similar realization, or at least it ought to be. Like newspapers, it has become so devoted to its communal mythology, and so antagonistic to facts that might challenge that mythology, that it has lost its ability to function.

It’s remarkable — everywhere you look, in almost every policy area, you see the same story playing itself out.

Philip Cooney, longtime chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, saw hundreds of scientific reports coming across his desk warning of global warming. That was a problem, because in Republican mythology, global warming is itself a myth.

So Cooney, a man with no scientific background, simply rewrote the reports. He recently told Congress that he saw his job as trying to make science conform to administration policy.

That’s an amazing statement, because it completely reverses rational policy-making. A normal administration would try to make its policy conform to science, not the other way around. But this is not a normal administration.

The same dynamic was at work in the administration’s dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. At least two of the eight — in many ways the two most accomplished — were apparently put on the dismissal list because they weren’t deemed aggressive enough in prosecuting voter fraud by Democrats.

It apparently didn’t matter that no evidence of such fraud existed. Fraud exists because Republican mythology says it exists. After all, how else can you explain the fact that corrupt, weak-willed Democrats occasionally manage to win elections? (In the liberal version of that same story, Diebold voting machines play a key role.)

Then there’s Iraq. It took years for the Bush administration to finally admit that an insurgency had taken hold in that country, because its mythology dictated that an insurgency couldn’t happen. The Iraqis were supposed to greet us with flowers and chocolate, so any evidence to the contrary had to be wrong.

And as conservatives were confronted with stories detailing just how badly the war was going, they turned to the Swiss army knife of conservative narratives, the multipurpose tool used to explain away all facts that seem to contradict any of their cherished mythologies.

The liberal media, they said, just weren’t reporting all the good things happening in Iraq.

When you see people on TV or in print trying to peddle such nonsense, you witnessing either fools and liars. There’s an important distinction.

The fools actually believe what they’re saying; the liars know better, but they also know they have a job to do. When inconvenient facts arise, their job is to spin new stories that somehow bring those facts into the existing mythology. The stories, as we’ve seen, don’t even have to be that plausible.

You find fools and liars in both parties and in every administration. Politics would be impossible without them. The Bush administration is unique only because the liars smart enough to know better are so vastly outnumbered by the fools to whom the stories are not stories at all, but gospel.

They believe wholeheartedly in the nonsense they spout, and they govern by it.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Mondays and Thursdays.

© 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Article printed from http://www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/02/253/

Le congrès du GIEC qui s’est récemment tenu à Paris a apporté la preuve de l’origine anthropique du réchauffement climatique et de ses conséquences catastrophiques. Il y a cependant un léger détail qui pose un problème. Ce congrès s’est tenu à huis clos et par conséquent nul ne sait ce qui s’y est dit. Il s’agit là d’une première “scientifique” et il est proprement stupéfiant d’observer qu’aucun organe de presse n’a relevé cette monstruosité.
Quand il y a huis clos, comme dans le jugement d’affaires de viol, c’est parce que l’on veut tenir secrets les faits dont on débat. Une telle attitude est totalement contraire à l’esprit scientifique et elle a pour seule explication la volonté d’empêcher l’expression des opinions contraires. Contrairement à ce qui est régulièrement affirmé, il n’y a pas d’unanimité des scientifiques au sujet de l’origine anthropique du réchauffement et ceux qui tentent de s’exprimer sont muselés, comme Claude Allègre, par exemple, qui s’est récemment vu retirer sa tribune dans l’Express.
Le réchauffement, “évidemment” d’origine humaine, serait prouvé par la seule réduction de surface des calottes polaires. Très bien. Mais pourquoi observe-t-on une diminution analogue des calottes polaires martiennes ? Il est permis de se demander s’il y a réellement un réchauffement. La Terre a connu un très important épisode de refroidissement connu sous le nom de petit âge glaciaire. Celui-ci a duré 400 ans. Le climat a commencé à se réchauffer avant le début de l’ère industrielle et il est donc impossible de l’attribuer à l’activité humaine. Nous ne sommes d’ailleurs pas encore sortis de cet épisode, puisque les températures actuelles sont plus basses qu’au Moyen-Age.
La “réalité” du réchauffement actuel s’appuie sur des statistiques météorologiques de quelques milliers d’observations sur un siècle à partir de 1860. Elles relèvent une augmentation moyenne de 0,6 ± 0,2 °C. La réalité de ce réchauffement est d’ailleurs contestée, puisqu’elle correspond très exactement à la précision de la mesure. Cette augmentation serait-elle avérée qu’elle correspondrait la différence de température moyenne entre Nice et Marseille. Cependant, il est très important de savoir que cette augmentation n’a jamais été confirmée par les millions de relevés effectués depuis 1978. La survie de l’humanité est donc grandement menacée.
Il est fréquemment affirmé que, dans l’histoire climatique de la Terre, les variations de température ont toujours fidèlement suivi les variations de la teneur en CO2 de l’atmosphère. Il est exact que cela a été souvent le cas, à une époque où l’Homme n’existait pas. Mais de 1940 à 1970, on a observé une augmentation de la teneur atmosphérique en CO2, alors que la température a légèrement baissé.

La première conclusion est que l’origine anthropique d’un éventuel réchauffement reste très largement à démontrer. Un réchauffement va-t- il se produire ? Tous les modèles numériques du climat le “démontrent”. Là encore se pose un petit problème. Ces modèles qui prophétisent l’avenir sans pouvoir être contredits, sont incapables de reconstituer, à partir des données actuelles, le climat qui existait il y a un siècle ou deux, de même qu’ils se trompent pour modéliser le climat actuel à partir des données anciennes. La cause en est que le principal gaz à effet de serre, la vapeur d’eau, est pratiquement impossible à modéliser, tout comme l’impact des nuages.

Quant aux conséquences “catastrophiques” de ce réchauffement, il y a là encore largement matière à discussion. Nous avons appris par la presse que les ours blancs étaient menacés de disparition en raison du réchauffement. Or ces animaux existent depuis bien plus longtemps que l’optimum climatique qui date de 8.000 ans B.P. Ils ont donc “survécu” à des calottes polaires pourtant très réduites.
Les effets d’un réchauffement sont loin d’être catastrophiques. Il faut en effet savoir que les températures que nous connaissons sont largement inférieurs à celles qui prévalaient avant l’épisode du petit âge glaciaire. Au Xième siècle, la vigne poussait au Danemark où l’on produisait du vin. Eric le Rouge, qui a colonisé le Groenland, n’a pas vu de glacier sur cette “Terre verte”. Notons au passage que les descendants des premiers colons ont péri à la suite du refroidissement survenu 5 siècles plus tard. Le même Eric le Rouge a débarqué au Canada, dans l’Anse de Meadows où il a découvert de la vigne, d’où le nom de Vinland qu’il a donné au pays.
La catastrophe climatique annoncée ne pouvant pas être la conséquence de la température elle-même, il est constamment avancé que c’est la vitesse du réchauffement à venir qui pose un problème d’adaptation aux espèces dont 20 à 30 % vont disparaître. Ces prévisions sont-elles aussi précises que celles de la météorologie ? Nous savons maintenant que le réchauffement du dernier interglaciaire (comme les précédents) a été brutal, à l’échelle d’une vie humaine. Une seule génération d’hommes de Cro-Magnon a vu la température moyenne passer de 2 à 12° C. Les espèces disparaissent actuellement plus vite qu’elles n’apparaissent et cela est effectivement dû à l’action humaine, mais cela est sans rapport avec la température. Il ne faut pas oublier que pendant des millions d’années, la température moyenne de la Terre a été supérieure de 10 C à la température actuelle.
Il reste à discuter les effets d’un éventuel relèvement du niveau des mers. Il était plus bas de 120 m lors des dernières glaciations et 200 m plus haut avant l’ère glaciaire qui sévit depuis 2 millions d’années. Depuis la fin de la dernière glaciation, le niveau s’est relevé de plus de 100 mètres. L’antique port égyptien de Thônis qui date de 2.800 ans, est immergé sous 10 mètres d’eau et cette immersion est consécutive à la fonte des glaces. L’élévation moyenne du niveau des mers a donc été de 3 à 4 mm par an en moyenne. Le problème est de savoir si cette élévation va se poursuivre et de combien. L’élévation actuellement constatée au cours du 20ième siècle a été de 1 à 2 mm par an. Rien ne permet de prévoir que ce relèvement va s’accélérer, d’autant plus qu’une grande partie de cette élévation est la conséquence du pompage d’eaux fossiles destiné à l’irrigation agricole.

Le vrai danger qui menace l’humanité n’est pas le “réchauffement”, mais la survenue de la prochaine glaciation qui devrait survenir “prochainement”, puisque la durée de l’interglaciaire que nous vivons est déjà supérieure à celle des interglaciaires précédents. Les données astronomiques laissent penser qu’elle pourrait intervenir d’ici un demi-siècle. N’oublions pas que le refroidissement qu’ont connu les USA de 1940 à 1970 faisait craindre que la nouvelle glaciation n’ait débuté à cette époque. En effet, une glaciation transformerait rapidement tous nos ports en stations de basse altitude et ferait disparaître d’énormes surfaces habitables et cultivables, imposant des transferts de populations gigantesques (Canada, USA, Europe, Russie, Chine et Japon).

Nous vivons depuis les années 1960 une révolution épistémologique: remplacement progressif des organisations/schémas/pensées verticaux (fortement hiérarchisés) par des organisations/schémas/pensées horizontaux (fortement spécifiés). Révolution parce que la structure du monde s’en trouve bouleversée: réification généralisée, versant ombre, renouveau éblouissant de la pensée scientifique, versant lumière. Dans ces conflits qui sourdent des entrailles de l’humanité, la victoire reviendra probablement à celui qui aura l’agilité psychologique lui donnant conscience de ce basculement de la pensée.

Claude Animo

Bonjour,
Un bon article, avec quelques formules aux quelles j\‘adhère.
Du coup, je vous mets en \“sujet\” le titre d\‘u article que j\‘ai écrit, il y a 2 ans.
A bientôt, peut-être à ^paris
Michel Tibon-Cornillot

Si Mr Sarkozy était écarté de la présidence, il pourrait s’exhiber fructueusement dans un cirque,
en se présentant comme le roi des caméléons.

Les Français qui se sont montrés tellement lucides devant le piège que leur avait tendu Me Giscard, sous forme d’un traité pour une constitution, pourraient fort bien penser que les mues de l’animal sarkozien auraient beaucoup de chances
de continuer, une fois la présidence acquise.

Le karcher de p’tit Nico est remisé, pour l’instant, dans le placard, mais pourrait
fort bien en ressortir après l’élection.

Faisons confiance à la sagesse populaire
(et non pas populiste, SVP).

Solana calls for EU-level debate on missile shield

29.03.2007 - 17:41 CET | By Andrew Rettman

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS -

EU states should hold a joint debate on US plans to install a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, the EU’s top man on foreign policy, Javier Solana, told MEPs in Brussels on Thursday (29 March), in a lively meeting that opened the question of EU treaty limitations on national sovereignty in defence.

“The EU is not a defence alliance, we all know this, but it does have an external security policy and it can and should debate this subject,” Mr Solana said in a prelude to a potential formal debate among EU heads of state or foreign ministers in future. “I think that’s what most political leaders in the EU want,” he added, noting the US plan could “affect” EU-Russia relations.

“We’re not calling for people to take a decision on the subject, but it would be a mistake not to talk about it,” he added, tiptoeing through Title V of the EU treaty on the limits of EU competency on security issues. “On security matters, the Treaty allocates sovereignty to member states. But that sovereignty has to be compatible with our general interests in security.”

Article 17 of the treaty states the EU “shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy” of member states. But articles 11 and 16 also state that EU countries “shall refrain from any action which is contrary to the interests of the union or likely to impair its effectiveness as a cohesive force” as well as obliging members to “inform and consult” each other on defence plans.

Thursday’s debate comes in the context of the Czech Republic the day earlier opening formal negotiations with the US on the details of the radar bases the country is to host. US president George Bush also spoke with Russia’s Vladimir Putin by telephone on Wednesday to offer to hold detailed talks on the scheme, amid Russian complaints it has not been properly consulted so far.

Polish conservative MEP and the head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Jacek Saryusz-Wolksi, backed Mr Solana’s idea, saying “we [the EU] do not have the competency to decide on missile defence, but we do have competency to discuss missile defence.” He invited Mr Solana and NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to debate the issue in his committee on 7 May.

German conservative MEP and the former head of the foreign affairs committee, Elmar Brok, also supported Mr Solana’s plan. “People clamour for solidarity in the energy sector. But we have to show solidarity in other areas as well and have a clear common position,” he said.

Poles and Czechs bristle
Polish and Czech deputies who are also members of the two states’ main ruling parties, Law and Justice and ODS, respectively, bristled at the idea they are putting EU security in danger, however.

The US, Polish and Czech line on the missile defence scheme is that it is far too small to affect Russia’s nuclear deterrent, that it will protect the wider EU from any missiles fired by rogue states like Iran, and that it cements the EU-US alliance.

“The danger is that a number of EU states are adopting the Russian view…relying on false arguments to divide the European Union,” Law and Justice deputy Konrad Szymanski said. “I’m surprised that former chancellor Schroeder’s SPD party is parroting the arguments of Vladimir Putin. It would make more sense for it to follow the arguments of the United Kingdom and Poland.”

The SPD reference is linked to German SPD foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has criticised the US plan. Mr Schroeder, an intimate friend of Putin who became an employee of Russian energy firm Gazprom, is a deeply disliked figure in Poland. Mr Steinmeier, the former cabinet chief of Mr Schroeder, is seen by Warsaw as a Schroeder proxy in Berlin’s grand coalition government.

Other Polish MEPs were during Thursday’s debate talking of anti-American “hysteria” and “demagoguery.”

“We all know this is not against Russia and Russia knows this as well,” Czech ODS member Jan Zahradil said. “The implementation of the missile shield will strengthen the trans-Atlantic alliance, and I hope this is not the [real] Russian concern. The EU does have its limits in terms of national security and this is one of those limits,” he added.

Several conservative EPP-ED group members also expressed fears about the missile shield, but it was left to the European socialists, liberals and greens to really hammer against the Warsaw-Prague line. “How about a dialogue about not deploying these systems?” German socialist group leader Martin Schulz asked, calling for the $58 billion price tag to be spent on poverty eradication instead.

US could split EU
Romanian socialist Adrian Severin called for a political climate in which the US and Russia can work in a “global partnership” for peace, in ideas similar to Russian analyst Sergei Karaganov’s concept of an “effective coalition of powerful and responsible nations” to act as world policemen alongside the UN. Lithuanian socialist Justas Paleckis urged an EU, NATO and Russia-wide debate.

“The message we are sending to the Russians is we are engaging in a new arms race,” ALDE leader and British deputy Graham Watson said, with some MEPs turning the Polish argument on its head by accusing the US of trying to split Europe by promoting defence unilateralism in a conversation reminiscent of the 1980s when Europe saw itself caught in a tug-of-war between the then two superpowers.

“There is a big risk of us being exploited,” Belgian liberal MEP Annemie Neyts said. “We might end up being split up by the two superpowers.” French green group leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit added that “if this is supposed to be against Iran it’s totally ridiculous. If Iran wanted to attack us, they have suicide attackers to do that with…once again the Americans are deciding unilaterally what a part of Europe needs.”

Does EU have a foreign policy?
The debate reinforced the idea the EU has no common foreign policy today despite the limited “Common Foreign and Security Policy” provisions of the EU treaty. The notion that the lack of firm legal basis for foreign cooperation has been aggravated by 2004 enlargement was also fortified, amid classic political divisions of Russia-friendly EU states such as Germany, France and Italy and the pro-US, Russia-wary club of the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Mr Solana tried to quash this line of thinking however, pointing to his own intervention in an Arab League summit in Riyadh on Wednesday, where he plied the EU line on Palestine and Lebanon.

The EU foreign policy chief also spoke on the critical issue of Iran nuclear enrichment, not only on behalf of Europe, but also on behalf of the five permanent members of the UN security council - the US, the UK, France, Russia and China - as well as Germany.

“I have just returned from Riyadh and I wish some of you had been there with me. When we are there in these meetings, we count, we really count,” he said. “Never before in our common history has something like this taken place,” he said on his job as an envoy for the five UN powers.

“Whatever is the fate of the constitutional treaty, you are our foreign minister,” Poland’s Mr Saryusz-Wolski remarked.

Raining On The ABM Parade

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Raining_On_The_ABM_Parade_999.html

If you thought the United States had a secure, state-of-the-art ballistic missile defense shield deployed around Fort Greely, Alaska, that could have shot down any North Korean ICBM during the crisis last July, think again.

Pyongyang’s attempt to test fire an ambitious Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile failed and the ambitious giant rocket exploded not long after take-off. But at least it got off the ground. The much-vaunted Ground-based Midcourse Interceptors, or GBIs, around Fort Greely never even got that far.

For this week, the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO—a non-government U.S. watchdog body founded in 1981—reported that several of the key interceptors could never even have been launched, not because of North Korea sabotage, or sabotage by anyone else, but because of rain.

The POGO report is quite extraordinary and will be quoted from at considerable length to assure our readers we are not hyping it, or exaggerating its conclusions in any way.

“A significant portion of the U.S. missile defense capability was wiped out during the summer of 2006 because torrential rains caused ground-based interceptor silos to be damaged by flood waters,” POGO said in a statement.

“Boeing, the contractor that is at least partly responsible for failing to protect the silos, will most likely still receive an estimated $38 million to repair the silos and a $100 million no-bid contract to build more silos. Boeing would also receive a $7 million award fee added to the contract,” the group said.

POGO noted that “the flooding occurred during a three-week period between the end of June and early July 2006 when Ft. Greely received several inches of rain. Ft. Greely and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California house the nation’s only Missile Defense Agency interceptor missiles.”

“The flooding damaged 25 percent of the U.S. interceptor missiles’ launch capability. These silos house the interceptor missiles that would be used to attempt to intercept a missile aimed at the United States. No interceptors were in the flooded silos,” the group’s report said.

POGO also reported that the flooding debacle had set off a fierce row between the U.S. military and Boeing, the prime contractor for building the Fort Greely interceptor fields.

“Insiders report that Boeing, the lead contractor responsible for building the fields disputes its role in the disaster,” the POGO report said. “Boeing argues that NORTHCOM, the U.S. military command responsible for defending North America, is primarily responsible because it ordered Boeing to stop working on the interceptor fields in case the missiles were needed to respond to a North Korean missile launch. “

POGO said “Boeing’s internal assessment shows that one of the missile fields has seven flooded interceptor silos—with up to 63 feet of water in one silo and 50 feet in another.

The group noted that so far Fort Greely houses 26 launch silos and that “as of Feb. 7, 2007, 13 interceptors had been installed.”

POGO noted another aspect of the dispute between Boeing and NORTHCOM. The giant contractor claims it was going ahead with plans to protect the silos from falling rain,” sources told the group.

“However, these same sources say it is questions whether the silos could have handled the rainfall anyway because they are poorly designed. In addition, an environmental impact study of the facilities at Fort Greely notes there is “little rainfall in the region,” the watchdog body said

POGO noted that the annual bill for the GBI program currently runs at around $9 billion a year.

Seven Silo Interface Vaults, or SIVs, beside the silos housing the GBIs were also flooded, “two of them by as much as 15 feet of water,” the POGO report said. It noted that the SIVs are essential to the successful maintenance and operational capabilities of the ABMs.

“Boeing’s internal assessment reports that three SIVs must have all electronic and mechanical systems replaced. Four other SIVs have partial damage. One SIV was so damaged that it shifted vertically in the ground like a house shifting off its foundation,” POGO said.

The POGO report throws remarkable new light on the recent surprise request by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, or MBA, for funding “to build an entirely new missile field of 20 missiles, along with associated support facilities,” as the POGO report puts it.

We had previously reported, without comment, this request in our companion BMD Watch column. The POGO report suggests that the real reason for the new missile field was “to avoid the problem of working near missiles in undamaged silos. Also it is not cost effective to refurbish the damaged silos and SIVs.”

Readers of these columns will recall this is not the first time we have monitored reports of the failure of crucial, state-of-the-art anti-ballistic missile interceptor systems because the concrete silos housing them could not keep out something as common, old-fashioned and low-tech as plain water.

In February 2005, an ABM interceptor failed to ignite and launch from a silo on the Pacific island of Kwajalein in an MDA test to intercept an ICBM in flight. One of the three lateral seismic support arms holding for the interceptor in the silo did not completely retract because some salt water had got into the bottom of the silo after it had been modified to accept the operational booster configuration and corroded a hinge mechanism on the support arm.

Source: United Press International

Solana calls for EU-level debate on missile shield
29.03.2007 - 17:41 CET | By Andrew Rettman
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU states should hold a joint debate on US plans to install a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, the EU’s top man on foreign policy, Javier Solana, told MEPs in Brussels on Thursday (29 March), in a lively meeting that opened the question of EU treaty limitations on national sovereignty in defence.

“The EU is not a defence alliance, we all know this, but it does have an external security policy and it can and should debate this subject,” Mr Solana said in a prelude to a potential formal debate among EU heads of state or foreign ministers in future. “I think that’s what most political leaders in the EU want,” he added, noting the US plan could “affect” EU-Russia relations.

“We’re not calling for people to take a decision on the subject, but it would be a mistake not to talk about it,” he added, tiptoeing through Title V of the EU treaty on the limits of EU competency on security issues. “On security matters, the Treaty allocates sovereignty to member states. But that sovereignty has to be compatible with our general interests in security.”

Article 17 of the treaty states the EU “shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy” of member states. But articles 11 and 16 also state that EU countries “shall refrain from any action which is contrary to the interests of the union or likely to impair its effectiveness as a cohesive force” as well as obliging members to “inform and consult” each other on defence plans.

Thursday’s debate comes in the context of the Czech Republic the day earlier opening formal negotiations with the US on the details of the radar bases the country is to host. US president George Bush also spoke with Russia’s Vladimir Putin by telephone on Wednesday to offer to hold detailed talks on the scheme, amid Russian complaints it has not been properly consulted so far.

Polish conservative MEP and the head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Jacek Saryusz-Wolksi, backed Mr Solana’s idea, saying “we [the EU] do not have the competency to decide on missile defence, but we do have competency to discuss missile defence.” He invited Mr Solana and NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to debate the issue in his committee on 7 May.

German conservative MEP and the former head of the foreign affairs committee, Elmar Brok, also supported Mr Solana’s plan. “People clamour for solidarity in the energy sector. But we have to show solidarity in other areas as well and have a clear common position,” he said.

Poles and Czechs bristle
Polish and Czech deputies who are also members of the two states’ main ruling parties, Law and Justice and ODS, respectively, bristled at the idea they are putting EU security in danger, however.

The US, Polish and Czech line on the missile defence scheme is that it is far too small to affect Russia’s nuclear deterrent, that it will protect the wider EU from any missiles fired by rogue states like Iran, and that it cements the EU-US alliance.

“The danger is that a number of EU states are adopting the Russian view…relying on false arguments to divide the European Union,” Law and Justice deputy Konrad Szymanski said. “I’m surprised that former chancellor Schroeder’s SPD party is parroting the arguments of Vladimir Putin. It would make more sense for it to follow the arguments of the United Kingdom and Poland.”

The SPD reference is linked to German SPD foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has criticised the US plan. Mr Schroeder, an intimate friend of Putin who became an employee of Russian energy firm Gazprom, is a deeply disliked figure in Poland. Mr Steinmeier, the former cabinet chief of Mr Schroeder, is seen by Warsaw as a Schroeder proxy in Berlin’s grand coalition government.

Other Polish MEPs were during Thursday’s debate talking of anti-American “hysteria” and “demagoguery.”

“We all know this is not against Russia and Russia knows this as well,” Czech ODS member Jan Zahradil said. “The implementation of the missile shield will strengthen the trans-Atlantic alliance, and I hope this is not the [real] Russian concern. The EU does have its limits in terms of national security and this is one of those limits,” he added.

Several conservative EPP-ED group members also expressed fears about the missile shield, but it was left to the European socialists, liberals and greens to really hammer against the Warsaw-Prague line. “How about a dialogue about not deploying these systems?” German socialist group leader Martin Schulz asked, calling for the $58 billion price tag to be spent on poverty eradication instead.

US could split EU
Romanian socialist Adrian Severin called for a political climate in which the US and Russia can work in a “global partnership” for peace, in ideas similar to Russian analyst Sergei Karaganov’s concept of an “effective coalition of powerful and responsible nations” to act as world policemen alongside the UN. Lithuanian socialist Justas Paleckis urged an EU, NATO and Russia-wide debate.

“The message we are sending to the Russians is we are engaging in a new arms race,” ALDE leader and British deputy Graham Watson said, with some MEPs turning the Polish argument on its head by accusing the US of trying to split Europe by promoting defence unilateralism in a conversation reminiscent of the 1980s when Europe saw itself caught in a tug-of-war between the then two superpowers.

“There is a big risk of us being exploited,” Belgian liberal MEP Annemie Neyts said. “We might end up being split up by the two superpowers.” French green group leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit added that “if this is supposed to be against Iran it’s totally ridiculous. If Iran wanted to attack us, they have suicide attackers to do that with…once again the Americans are deciding unilaterally what a part of Europe needs.”

Does EU have a foreign policy?
The debate reinforced the idea the EU has no common foreign policy today despite the limited “Common Foreign and Security Policy” provisions of the EU treaty. The notion that the lack of firm legal basis for foreign cooperation has been aggravated by 2004 enlargement was also fortified, amid classic political divisions of Russia-friendly EU states such as Germany, France and Italy and the pro-US, Russia-wary club of the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Mr Solana tried to quash this line of thinking however, pointing to his own intervention in an Arab League summit in Riyadh on Wednesday, where he plied the EU line on Palestine and Lebanon.

The EU foreign policy chief also spoke on the critical issue of Iran nuclear enrichment, not only on behalf of Europe, but also on behalf of the five permanent members of the UN security council - the US, the UK, France, Russia and China - as well as Germany.

“I have just returned from Riyadh and I wish some of you had been there with me. When we are there in these meetings, we count, we really count,” he said. “Never before in our common history has something like this taken place,” he said on his job as an envoy for the five UN powers.

“Whatever is the fate of the constitutional treaty, you are our foreign minister,” Poland’s Mr Saryusz-Wolski remarked.
© EUobserver.com 2007
Printed from EUobserver.com 30.03.2007
——
EU tries to ease Russian fears over US missile project
02.03.2007 - 09:21 CET | By Helena Spongenberg
The EU has no plans to participate in a US anti-missile system but its member states are free to join, the bloc’s foreign and security affairs chief said on Thursday (2 march) in an attempt to ease Russian concerns over the project.

“We are not as Europeans concerned to establish a mechanism of that type,” said Javier Solana, according to news agency AP. “This is for every country to decide.”

Mr Solana was attending an informal EU defence ministers meeting in the German city of Wiesbaden on Thursday where US plans to build an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic were discussed.

Washington has asked Warsaw and Prague, two of its strongest allies, to host a system aimed at intercepting ballistic missiles fired from, for example, Iran or North Korea - a plan which has been endorsed by key Polish and Czech politicians.

But the move has sparked strong criticism from Russia, with president Vladimir Putin telling a Munich security conference last month that the system would “completely neutralise’’ the deterrence threat posed by Russia’s own nuclear missiles.

Moscow may develop an “asymmetric response” of its own to “overcome’’ such systems, he added.

Mr Solana countered these fears on Thursday. “Poland and the Czech Republic don’t present a threat to anybody,” he said, according to German agency DPA.

While it was “questionable” whether the EU faced any security threat today, the situation could change in the future, he added.

“We must do our utmost…to have good, solid relations with Russia,” said Mr Solana, adding that the international community needed to discuss issues like Iran’s nuclear programme and Middle East violence with Moscow.

He also insisted that since Mr Putin’s speech “the situation is much more calm” adding, “I don’t think we have to dramatize that.”

EU states reduce troops in Bosnia
At the meeting in Wiesbaden, the 27 defence ministers also brought forward a move to cut their peacekeeping troops in Bosnia from 6,500 to around 2,500 this year, as security in the former hotspot has improved.

“As a first step, we want to withdraw around 3,500 soldiers, then watch what happens before we move on,” said German defence minister Franz-Josef Jung, who hosted the gathering, reports Deutsche Welle.

“The situation in Bosnia is way better. Security is going very well,” said Mr Solana, but he added that “politically there are still a lot of things to do.”

He also urged Bosnia to continue with its police reforms.

http://euobserver.com/13/23611

“Il est toujours possible que la thèse des “complotistes” soit fondée et que la capture des 15 Britanniques n’est que la préparation d’un casus belli pour attaquer l’Irak. “

Petit lapsus scriptae,  apparamment tout le monde aura compris que c’est Iran qu’il fallait lire et non Irak

Ce petit détail étant signalé.

Sur cette affaire.
Pourrait elle être une provoc pour un Casus Belli .(remarquez,cela vaut mieux qu’un nouvel attentat sur le sol U.S comme Zbignew B. a “semblé” chercher à nous en prévenir)
Mais si c’est une provocation organisée ,alors la façon dont les Britanniques vont réagir en négociant ou, pas ? En faisant semblant, un peu ou beaucoup ?etc… Bref tout cela devrait permettre une lecture dans un sens ou l’autre
donc ,on y verra plus clair dans quelques temps !

“cela revient presque à un aveu des Britanniques qu’ils ont déjà violé “intentionnellement” les eaux territoriales iraniennes”

Je crois que “eaux territoriales iraniennes” mériterait aussi des guillemets…

Il ne me semble pas que l’Iran et l’Irak ait jamais pu passer un accord officiel sur le partage des aux à cet endroit là...
On pourrait peut être appliquer le “droit international” (mais basé sur des accords auxquels l’Iran n’est pas partie) et tenter de marquer ainsi une “frontière” qui serait à l’avantage des britanniques. Mais il faudrait d’abord être assuré que ceux-ci disent la vérité quand à l’emplacement de leurs soldats, ce qui me paraît sujet à caution, l’actuelle administration britannique n’ayant pas jusque là fait la preuve de son honneteté, notamment en Irak, bien au contraire.

Enfin,il faudrait reconnaître un droit pour les britanniques à faire évoluer des militaires dans cette zone. Bien que l’occupation ait été “reconnu” par des instances internationales, il n’en reste pas moins que l’agression US et britanniques en Irak reste ce qu’elle a toujours été, une guerre d’agression, elle aussi prévue par les lois internationales…

Il est aberrant de voir les médias et institutions prendre immédiatement partie pour le camp britannique, compte tenu des données de l’espèce: les britanniques ont violé le droit international en agressant et occupant l’Irak, et demandent maintenant l’application du droit international pour récupérer leurs soldats…