Lambrechts Francis
03/09/2006
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/NYT_Frank_Rich_on_Donald_Rumsfelds_0902.html
New York Times columnist Frank Rich slams “Donald Rumsfeld’s dance with the Nazis” in a recent speech as particularly “brazen” coming from a Defense Secretary who was once photographed shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.
... Rich continues. “Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of ‘Defeatocrats’ but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.”
... Here’s how brazen Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?
Lambrechts Francis
03/09/2006
http://bib1.ulb.ac.be/index.php?id=854 * * * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Pirenne
L’œuvre du professeur Henri Pirenne est tombée dans le domaine public cette année. ... l’illustre historien belge ... plus de septante ans après sa disparition, toujours au centre du débat historique. ... Au cours des années 2006 et 2007, la totalité des chapitres de monographie, articles, comptes-rendus et rapports sera numérisée.
Lambrechts Francis
03/09/2006
http://www.samefacts.com/archives/language_and_usage_/2006/09/englishwinglish_dictionary_updated.php
alternative energy sources : /n. phr./ 1. New locations to drill for gas and oil. 2. Coal mines.
climate change : /n. phr./ Progress toward the blessed day when the blue states are swallowed by the oceans.
growth : /n./ 1. The justification for tax cuts for the rich. 2. What happens to the national debt when policy is made according to Definition #1.
laziness : /n./ When the poor are not working.
leisure time : /n./ When the wealthy are not working.
Et ma préférée : woman : /n./ 1. Person who can be trusted to raise a child but can’t be trusted to decide whether or not she wishes to have a child in the first place. 2. Person who must have all decisions regarding her reproductive functions made by men with whom she wouldn’t want to have sex in the first place.
Lambrechts Francis
03/09/2006
Les Etats-Unis perdent plus de 227 milliards de litres d’eau—tous les jours—à cause d’infrastructures usées, défectueuses ou insuffisantes. C’est écologiquement inadmissible… et dans un monde où l’eau se fait de plus en plus rare, ça devient aussi économiquement insoutenable.
D’après la Société américaine des ingénieurs de travaux publics, les Etats-Unis devront verser “près de 1 000 milliards de dollars en investissements essentiels dans le domaine de l’eau potable et des eaux usées au cours des deux prochaines décennies”
Bruno Hanzen
03/09/2006
Commentaire entendu dans la bouche d’un cadre d’EADS: cette opération doit aussi être vue comme un accès à la matière grise russe dans les domaines scientifiques et techniques.
Convalescent
03/09/2006
Ria Novosti 01/09/2006 à propos des confessions de Gunther Grass:
[...comme pour dire: moi, votre maître à penser, j’ai été là-bas, mais je suis prêt aujourd’hui à exposer ma réputation d’écrivain allemand aux critiques de l’Europe entière, et c’est à vous de juger ce que nous sommes, nous les Allemands, si vous êtes prêts à accepter notre repentir ou si nous resterons à jamais des monstres à vos yeux.
Günter Grass a demandé pardon, mais il ne s’agit pas d’une doléance primitive, car il ne se croit pas coupable de quoi que ce soit. Ses arguments exposés dans l’interview sont très fragiles, il ne pourra jamais se justifier, comme l’Allemagne ne pourra jamais justifier ses propres crimes. Willy Brandt ne plaidait pas innocent quand il s’est agenouillé pour demander pardon. Günter Grass, lui, ne se repent pas, il ne veut pas s’agenouiller et il fait partie, à cet égard, des millions d’Allemands qui ont fait la guerre parce que c’était leur devoir.]
Voilà une étrange mise en parrallèle: celle des situations de Gunther Grass, écrivain allemand (et tout ce qu’on pourra supputer sur ses engagements précoce et tardif) et celui de Willy Brandt, représentant officiel du peuple allemand post-2ième guere mondiale (et tout ce qu’on pourra supputer aussi).
Comme une supercherie.
Le texte complet: http://fr.rian.ru/analysis/20060901/53389642.html
Radisson
01/09/2006
Cela a-t-il un lien ? Le salaire des présidents des entreprises liées à l’industrie de l’armement a doublé depuis 9/11.
Il y a de ces coïncidences parfois…
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?session=dae.20028971.1145477267.REaYk8Oa9dUAAGn798w&modele=jdc_34
Mura
01/09/2006
Les affiches Wanted! étaient toujours visibles ces dernières années en Bosnie où la tête de Radovan Karadzic et du général Mladic a été mise à prix. Cela montre au passage que les Etats-Unis considèrent l’Est européen et l’Eurasie comme une sorte de Far West, on peut même dire de “Far East”... Mais ils ont déjà de gros problèmes en Serbie, en Slovaquie, en Ukraine. Sans parler de leur reflux en Asie centrale face à l’alliance géopolitique de la Russie et de la Chine.
Lambrechts Francis
01/09/2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/ ( Keith Olbermann )
... Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.
That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s—questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.
It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.
It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.
It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience—needed to be dismissed.
The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.
Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.
That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.
Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill. ...
( NB etc., Rumsfeld ‘clone batard’ de Chamberlain ! )
Lambrechts Francis
01/09/2006
http://www.courrierinternational.com/article.asp?obj_id=65718 ( Benoît XVI se rapproche des créationnistes américains, Anne Collet )
... De nombreux signes précurseurs indiquent en effet que le pape cherche à rapprocher l’Eglise catholique de la théorie du “dessein intelligent” de Dieu. Le dernier en date est le séminaire que Benoît XVI organise dans sa résidence d’été, à Castel Gandolfo, où il rassemblera autour de lui, à huis clos, une quarantaine de penseurs qui ont été pour la plupart ses élèves du temps où il enseignait à Munich.
“Le pape Benoît XVI prend ainsi à contre-pied les positions de son prédécesseur Jean-Paul II qui, en 1996, avait estimé que les théories de Darwin étaient plus qu’une hypothèse”, remarque le quotidien britannique The Guardian.
... ‘La Repubblica’, qui précise que le débat a été relancé par le très conservateur cardinal de Vienne Christoph Schönborn, qui fut l’élève de Ratzinger en 1972 et qui, “il y a un an, rejetait les thèses de Darwin dans les colonnes du New York Times”. Dans son article publié à l’époque par le quotidien new-yorkais, “le cardinal de Vienne apportait son soutien à l’enseignement de la théorie du “dessein intelligent” dans les écoles américaines. Il s’était alors attiré les critiques du père George Coyne, le directeur de l’Observatoire du Vatican. Or, le 19 août dernier, l’astronome du pape a été remplacé sans explications”, rapporte The Guardian.
Lambrechts Francis
31/08/2006
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2006/082806PALAST.shtml
New Orleans ... Katrina killed no one in this town. In fact, Katrina missed the city completely, going wide to the east. ( *** )
It wasn’t the hurricane that drowned, suffocated, de-hydrated and starved 1,500 people that week. The killing was done by a deadly duo: a failed emergency evacuation plan combined with faulty levees.
... Van Heerden isn’t the typical whistleblower I usually deal with. This is no minor player. He’s the Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. ( LSU )
... Funny thing about the murderously failed plan for the evacuation of New Orleans: no one can find it ( *** ) ... you have to have copies of it. Lots of copies—in fire houses and in hospitals and ... Secret evacuation plans don’t work.
... Apparently, the IEM/FEMA crew didn’t know that 127,000 people in the city didn’t have cars. But Dr. van Heerden knew that. It was his calculation. LSU knew where these no-car people were—they mapped it—and how to get them out.
Dr. van Heerden offered this life-saving info to FEMA. They wouldn’t touch it. Then, a state official told him to shut up, back off or there would be consequences for van Heerden’s position. This official now works for IEM.
... Van Heerden is supposed to keep his mouth shut. He won’t. The deaths weigh on him. “I wasn’t going to listen to those sort of threats, to let them shut me down.”
... Back at LSU, van Heerden astonished me with the most serious charge of all. While showing me huge maps of the flooding, he told me the White House had withheld the information that, in fact, the levees were about to burst and by Tuesday at dawn the city, and more than a thousand people, would drown.
Lambrechts Francis
31/08/2006
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/08/31/blinded_by_a_concept/
THE FAILURE OF Israel to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept.
One of those weaknesses is that ... the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause. ...
Another weakness ... is that it relies on military action and rules out political approaches ... it separates ``us” from ``them” and denies that our actions help shape their behavior.
A third weakness is that the war-on-terror concept ... fails to distinguish among Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq. Yet all these terrorist manifestations, being different, require different responses.
... Looking back, it is easy to see where Israeli policy went wrong. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should have gone out of its way to strengthen him and his reformist team. ... Nevertheless, Abbas was able to forge an agreement ... It was to foil this agreement that the military branch of Hamas, run from Damascus, engaged in the provocation that brought a heavy-handed response from Israel—which in turn incited Hezbollah to further provocation, opening a second front. That is how extremists play off against each other to destroy any chance of political progress.
Israel has been a participant in this game, and President Bush bought into this flawed policy, uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to the escalation of violence. The process has advanced to the point where Israel’s unquestioned military superiority is no longer sufficient to overcome the negative consequences of its policy.
Israel is now more endangered in its existence than it was at the time of the Oslo Agreement on peace. Similarly, the United States has become less safe since Bush declared war on terror ...
... There are strong voices arguing that Israel must never negotiate from a position of weakness. They are wrong. Israel’s position is liable to become weaker the longer it persists on its present course.
... Given how strong the US-Israeli relationship is, it would help Israel to achieve its own legitimate aims if the US government were not blinded by the war-on-terror concept.
Lambrechts Francis
31/08/2006
U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.
The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone ...etc… “to help the coalition forces understand “the communications environment.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083003011_pf.html
Jomini
31/08/2006
L’article de Ria-Novosti in French :
http://fr.rian.ru/world/20060331/45051921.html
Stassen
31/08/2006
Rumsfeld Assails Critics of War Policy
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 30, 2006; A06
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned yesterday that “moral and intellectual confusion” over the Iraq war and the broader anti-terrorism effort could sap American willpower and divide the country, and he urged renewed resolve to confront extremists waging “a new type of fascism.”
Drawing parallels to efforts by some nations to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II, Rumsfeld said it would be “folly” for the United States to ignore the rising dangers posed by a new enemy that he called “serious, lethal and relentless.”
In a pointed attack on the news media and critics of President Bush’s war and national security policies, Rumsfeld declared: “Any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.”
Rumsfeld spoke at the American Legion’s national convention in Salt Lake City as part of a coordinated defense of Bush leading up to the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Reviving images of the president’s response to the strike on the World Trade Center in New York, Rumsfeld said, “He remains the same man who stood atop the rubble of Lower Manhattan, with a bullhorn, vowing to fight back.”
With polls showing that a majority of Americans believe it was a mistake for the United States to invade Iraq and with many Democrats calling for a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops, Rumsfeld called the Iraq war the “epicenter” of the struggle against terrorism. Last week, Bush said that setting a timetable for a troop withdrawal would embolden the enemy and cause chaos in Iraq and throughout the region.
Congressional Democrats angrily responded to Rumsfeld’s remarks. “There is no confusion among military experts, bipartisan members of Congress and the overwhelming majority of the American people about the need to change course in Iraq,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). “The only person confused about how to best protect this country is Don Rumsfeld, which is why he must go.”
Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he took exception to what he considered the implication that critics of the administration’s military policies are unpatriotic. He noted that there are “scores of patriotic Americans of both parties who are highly critical” of Rumsfeld’s handling of the Defense Department.
Rumsfeld obliquely acknowledged mistakes and setbacks in Iraq, quoting the French statesman Georges Clemenceau as calling all wars “a series of catastrophes that results in victory.” Moreover, in a reference to recent charges of war crimes against U.S. troops in Iraq, Rumsfeld said that “in every army, there are occasionally bad actors—the ones who dominate the headlines today—who don’t live up to the standards of their oath and of our country.”
Rumsfeld stressed that it is misguided for Americans to fall into self-blame and to “return to the destructive view that America—not the enemy—is the real source of the world’s trouble.” He blamed the U.S. media for spreading “myths and distortions . . . about our troops and about our country.”
He said a database search of U.S. newspapers produced 10 times as many mentions of a soldier punished for misconduct at Abu Ghraib prison than of Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, a Medal of Honor recipient.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, addressing the same audience later, sounded similar themes. “The dream of some, that we could avoid this conflict, that we did not have to take sides in this battle in the Middle East, that dream was demolished on September the 11th,” Rice said.
Rice said in a radio interview that “we cannot fall prey to pessimism about how this will all come out,” adding that “the really devastating problem for the world would be if America loses its will.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/29/AR2006082900585_pf.html
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William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
From washingtonpost
Rumsfeld’s Enemy: It’s Us
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delivered a fire-and-brimstone speech at the American Legion’s annual convention yesterday (http://www.defenselink.mil/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1033)—after acknowledging young soldiers serving in Iraq and giving the boy scouts a shout-out, the secretary wove an elaborate picture of an enemy made up of terrorists, morally misguided Westerners, disagreeable military strategists, and a cynical news media.
Rumsfeld stated there could be no appeasing the enemy and any “any moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.”
The “who” Rumsfeld is talking about is himself.
Rumsfeld is the “who” that is right, and everyone who disagrees is not only wrong, but a danger to freedom.
Within minutes of the conclusion of Rumsfeld’s speech yesterday, I received an e-mail from Thayer C. Scott, the secretary’s speechwriter, serving up talking points.
The Defense Department then took the unusual step, usually reserved for its broadsides against Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, of issuing a statement saying that the Associated Press coverage of Rumsfeld’s Salt Lake City remarks mischaracterized them.
Either Rumsfeld has delivered one of the most important speeches of the modern era, or he’s gone crazy.
I think the latter, not just because I think the secretary is wrong on his intellectual characterization of terrorism, and not just because he is wrong about the media and its intentions, and not because he is so pugnacious, or because he has been wrong so many times before.
Rumsfeld is so wrong about America. His use of World War I history and the specter of fascism and appeasement, and his argument about moral weakness or even treason in any who oppose him, is not only polarizing but ineffective in provoking debate and discussion about the proper course this country must take to “fight” terrorism.
This is not the first time that Rumsfeld has shown himself to be so out of touch, so contemptuous of America. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense has displayed a contempt from long before 9/11 for anyone who disagrees with him, particularly in his initial wars against those in the uniformed military.
Moreover, Rumsfeld’s declaration of war yesterday follows from his basic view that the Defense Department has to do it all: He has created an intelligence bureaucracy because he is distrustful and contemptuous of the CIA and all others. He has built up a secret army and covert capabilities in special operations forces because he wants to control and to rely only upon his own warriors. He has created a homeland security apparatus that looks over the shoulder of the Department of Homeland Security and is the ultimate arbiter of security. He has created his own FBI in the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), and fought to ensure that the NSA stays under Pentagon control. He has created his own law and his own human rights policy. He has subverted Congress through unexamined supplemental budgets and super-secret programs.
Even as a military strategist, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld pushed a losing strategy in Afghanistan. This is not just because he went to war with an initially small force. After all, the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda began just weeks after 9/11 and that was what could be mobilized in that short period. The tragic error was that Rumsfeld continued to think that the terrorist threat existed in the form of a small army to be routed by his fabulous “transformed” warriors.
It is Rumsfeld who declared “mission accomplished” long before President Bush stepped on to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Rumsfeld has been wrong in fighting and too quick to declare victory thereafter.
Rumsfeld declared victory in Afghanistan, in addition, because he was twitching to move on to the next enemy, and the next and the next. But even when the weaknesses and problems became apparent about how the Afghanistan war had been fought, Rumsfeld still pushed an identical military strategy in Iraq, brushing aside any criticism as naïve and appeasing and out of touch with the new gathering storm of weapons of mass destruction.
And even as Iraq has become one of the biggest hornets’ nests in history, the secretary has convinced himself over and over that progress is being made and victory is just around the corner. America, Rumsfeld says, is not to blame, conflating a just war with a preemptive American strike. America is not to blame and therefore Rumsfeld is not to blame: no missteps, no errors of judgment. The secretary just wants his soldiers to believe now that he anticipated all along that the enemy was totalitarian and fascist and that Iraq was part of the big plan.
If I were the conspiratorial type, I’d say Rumsfeld was a particular menace to America because in his view of a monolithic and totalitarian terrorist enemy, and in his analysis of the weakness of American society, he can only come to the messianic conclusion that he indeed needs to takeover the country in order to save it. And this might even be worth speculating about were it the case that Rumsfeld reflected the views of those in the military leadership, or were it the case that Rumsfeld could actually engineer such a coup.
But alas, the secretary would get the intelligence wrong, employ too few troops and send tank columns on thunder runs through Manhattan and Hollywood, prematurely declaring victory and then being befuddled about the American desire to recover and preserve its way of life, which is not the Rumsfeld way.
“Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America—not the enemy—is the real source of the worlds troubles?,” Rumsfeld asked yesterday.
This has got an easy answer: World troubles? Rumsfeld is the source of troubles much closer to home.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/08/rumsfelds_declaration_of_war_o.html#more
By William M. Arkin | August 30, 2006; 8:01 AM ET
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