Desole mais il n'y aura pas de blog pendant quelques semaines jusqu'a ce que je me retrouve un travail sur Houston. Aux USA, si on n'a pas de job, on n'a pas d'appartement, pas d'appartement donc pas d'internet, pas de net, pas de blog. C'est la vie.
The blog will be back within a few weeks, sorry for the inconvenience but i have to focus on getting a job here in Vegas.
See ya
Friday, October 26, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
La couleur rouge - the red color
Trucks dominate the red color in Texas
PS: les temperatures ont change depuis cette journee. On est passe d'un 30 degres il y a quelques jours a un temps pluvieux avec seulement quelques dizaines de degres. C'est bien pour moi, sachant que je viens du Nevada et qu'il y avait seulement 2 saisons dans cet Etat.
French bread "made in the USA"
Here is a french bread from Texas, all hot and ready to be eaten yum yum.
Pasadena
Ca fait 1 semaine qu'il pleut ici au Texas
N'oubliez de cliquer sur la photo pour agrandir l'image.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Not in My White House: French-Style Divorce Unthinkable Here
Voici un article ou il est impensable que les Presidents americains puissent divorcer. Le dernier President americain ayant divorce remonte au XIXieme siecle. De quoi vite oublier les histoires d'amour de JFK, ou bien les pipes de Monica Lewinski, ou bien les maitresses de Giulani. L'Amerique consternee et effaree face a un divorce a la francaise se sent moralement plus hautaine. Cliquez sur le lien, ca vaut le detour.
Inquiry Urged on Hunt Oil Contract in Iraq
By Dave Michaels
The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News
Monday 15 October 2007
Democrats say Bush ties may have led to Iraq oil contract.
Washington - Democratic lawmakers moved Monday toward investigating Hunt Oil's oil exploration contract in Iraq, saying the company's ties to President Bush raised questions about whether it had insider information that helped it reach the deal.
U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, asked Hunt to turn over all Iraq-related communication with the U.S. government by Nov. 2.
The lawmakers also demanded that Ray Hunt, Hunt Oil's chief executive, submit copies of information he may have received about Iraq as a member of Mr. Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
A Hunt spokeswoman said the company would cooperate with the request for "certain limited information."
Spokeswoman Jeanne Phillips said the company's judgment to explore for oil in the Kurdish region of Iraq was made without U.S. government advice.
"As we have stated before, our policy as a company is to act independently when determining where to explore for oil and gas around the world," Ms. Phillips said in a prepared statement.
Mr. Hunt, 64, has not talked about his service on the intelligence board, which meets about six times a year. Its members, all presidential appointees, have security clearances, and much of their work is classified.
Former board members and intelligence experts said its members don't often deal with specific intelligence.
Instead, they focus on broader concerns, such as whether one agency is cooperating with another or how a training program is working.
"Their job is to advise the president about the efficiency of the intelligence systems and where things need to be changed," said Arthur S. Hulnick, a CIA veteran who is now an associate professor of international relations at Boston University.
"It is more management than substantive."
That said, members must study intelligence-gathering efforts if they are expected to judge how the system works, Mr. Hulnick said.
"They clearly have to see it - things like estimates and daily reports, finished intelligence and analyzed intelligence," he said.
Although Mr. Waxman's committee has subpoena power, the lawmakers did not indicate whether they would compel Hunt officials to testify.
"We are in the information-gathering stage," said Natalie Laber, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kucinich. "Before we hold hearings, we gather information."
Mr. Waxman, D-Calif., has held a series of contentious, Iraq-related hearings in recent months, including one at which Democrats grilled Blackwater, the State Department's private security contractor. Members also investigated corruption in the Iraqi government.
Last month, Mr. Bush said he was concerned about Hunt's deal if it jeopardized Iraq's ability to pass a national oil-sharing law. In their letter to Hunt, Mr. Waxman and Mr. Kucinich asserted that Hunt's deal "may have undermined U.S. national policy of working toward the passage of an oil revenue sharing plan."
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's oil minister has called Hunt's deal illegal. Congressional Democrats have jumped into the fray, saying Hunt Oil signed its deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government because it has insider information about the future of Iraq's national oil law.
"Ray Hunt is in a unique position to know what is happening in Iraq," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
Ms. Phillips said Hunt Oil's decision to enter Iraq was based only on information that "was in the public domain."
Hunt Oil and the Kurdistan Regional Government have said that their deal complies with the national constitution and noted that the agreement calls for sharing revenue with other regions of Iraq. They said Mr. Hunt's political relationships were irrelevant to the firm's decision to explore in Iraq.
"The outcome of the deliberations for the national hydrocarbons law will not affect this agreement one way or another," Qubad Talabani, Washington representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said recently.
Afghanistan
In memory of 911, a carpet made in Afghanistan.
J'etais chez un militaire hier au soir et j'ai passe en revue ses tapis, dont celui-la.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Enfin le Texas
Apres 4 jours de route et quelques milliers de kilometres, je me retrouve finalement au Texas. Je suis temporairement dans une ville qui s'appelle Pasadena, juste a cote de Houston. Les changements sont enormes meme a l'interieur des USA. D'abord le climat n'est plus le meme; ici c'est encore chaud et tres humide, il pleut relativement, le paysage desertique a fait place a de l'herbe verte, et c'est tellement plat que vous pouvez promener votre chien a des km sans le perdre de vue. Les gens sont differents aussi, il semblerait a priori qu'il y ait beaucoup plus de gens qui parlent espagnol qu'anglais, et mon Dieu que ces gens sont sympas et accueillant, c'est completement different de Las Vegas. Je ne vais pas du tout regretter mon demenagement, et je me suis mis en quete de chercher du travail aussi vite que possible. J'ai deja quelques contacts, dont un job ou je dois voyager en permanence en avion avec un salaire decent. Les Americains, quand ils demenagent dans une autre ville et qu'ils n'ont pas de travail, ils restent temporairement dans un hotel, paye a la semaine, jusqu'a ce qu'ils trouvent un boulot. C'est donc ce que je fais jusqu'a ce que je me retrouve un travail. Pourvu que je me retrouve un travail rapidement... Un truc pas mal aussi aux USA , au lieu de s'encombrer inutilement de ses affaires materielles, on les depose dans un depot de stock, un storage place comme ils disent en anglais: pour la modique somme de $60 par mois.
Le reve americain continue, 7 ans aux USA sans etre retourne en France, je tiens le coup.
Le reve americain continue, 7 ans aux USA sans etre retourne en France, je tiens le coup.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Le blog reviendra dans quelques semaines
I'll be back within a few weeks, i'm moving to Texas, thanks for the fun.
Turkey mulls cutting military ties with U.S. over genocide vote
( RIA Novosti ) - Turkey is considering the suspension of military cooperation with the U.S. after a House of Representatives committee adopted a resolution classing the 1915 massacre of some 1.5 million Armenians as genocide.
The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed the document on Wednesday despite opposition from President Bush. Turkey is a key NATO ally and a crucial U.S. partner in operations in Iraq.
The Turkish NTV television channel said Turkey's final reaction to the document would be announced after discussions in parliament scheduled for early next week.
NTV said Turkey might restrict U.S. use of a joint air base in Incirlik, close off its air space to U.S. warplanes, and ban Armenian aircraft from flying over its territory. The majority of supplies for U.S. troops in Iraq, including fuel and military hardware, pass through Turkey.
The U.S. resolution has triggered an angry response from Ankara, which insists that the deaths and deportations of Armenians at the end of the Ottoman period were caused by civil war rather than deliberate genocide. However, the majority of Western academics qualify the massacre as genocide.
The Turkish government released a statement on Wednesday condemning the move by the House of Representatives, saying that Ankara could not admit a crime the Turkish people never committed.
The press service of Turkish President Abdullah Gul quoted him as saying that the U.S. resolution was "petty domestic politics rejecting calls to common sense."
Ankara previously froze military cooperation with France after its parliamentarians passed a similar resolution.
Adolf Hitler is believed to have referred to the massacre of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey when speaking of his plans for the massacre of Polish-speaking men, women and children, saying, "Who, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?"
Turkish scholars dispute the authenticity of the quote.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Le terrorisme sexuel
Tanx Datta for this one. Cet email me fut envoye par un copain, ca se passe au Congo et c'est vraiment degoutant qu'autant de gens debiles existent:
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: As sex slaves, yeah. And we are not -- I’m sorry just to talk like this -- we are not talking about normal rapes anymore. We are talking about sexual terrorism, because they destroyed, and they -- you cannot imagine what's going on in Congo. Rape is a taboo, I think, in most of African countries, so the women who accept to go to the hospital or to be registered, it's because they don't have a choice anymore. They have to go and be repaired, because we are talking about new surgery to repair the women, because they’re completely destroyed. And the ones who are just raped without big destruction, they don't talk about rape, because the African -- the Congolese woman, she suffered so much that she can support being raped without telling it, when she doesn't need medical care.
AMY GOODMAN: But the medical care you're talking about is what?
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: Very, very heavy surgery. We have some women, for example , this Panzi Hospital close to Bukavu town.
AMY GOODMAN: Bukavu is where you live?
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: Bukavu, yeah, it's where I live. It’s eastern part of Congo, just at the border of Rwanda, five minutes walking. And we do have a hospital that is very specialized in rape, because of --
AMY GOODMAN: This is the Panzi Hospital?
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: Yeah, Panzi Hospital. And -- I forgot the idea was.
AMY GOODMAN: And the women who come to this hospital, what -- they have been raped, and they have been physically --
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: Destroyed.
AMY GOODMAN: How? What is the operation? What is the -- what is the operation that they go through?
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: The operation -- today we are talking about repair surgery, because these women have to be repaired. They are not just rape like usual rape, but they put hot plastics inside the organs. They put woods, they put bamboos, they put everything --
AMY GOODMAN: Guns?
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: Yeah, guns. They shot inside the women, so they're completely destroyed. We have some survivors in these hospitals since more than three years, so every two months or every three months they have to be re-operated again. And it's impossible, you know, to keep all these women in this hospital. We don't have room anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: They suffer from fistula. Can you explain what that is?
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: I’m not a doctor. It's quite very difficult. But I know that when they have fistula, it’s like, you know, instead of -- it’s everything, urine and things, everything comes out.
AMY GOODMAN: They're completely incontinent.
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: You cannot control. You’re out of control, so these people smell very bad, and they have infections. And they cannot live, you know, in communities. And they have to be repaired by heavy surgery.
AMY GOODMAN: So they can't control their urine or their bowel movement, and so --
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: Not at all. So everything just go out when they're walking, when they're sleeping. It's just --
AMY GOODMAN: They become pariahs in their community.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets
By Joby Warrick
The Washington Post
The Washington Post
Tuesday 09 October 2007
Firm says Administration's handling of video ruined its spying efforts.
A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.
Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.
The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.
"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.
The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.
While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
But privately, some intelligence officials called the incident regrettable, and one official said SITE had been "tremendously helpful" in ferreting out al-Qaeda secrets over time.
The al-Qaeda video aired on Sept. 7 attracted international attention as the first new video message from the group's leader in three years. In it, a dark-bearded bin Laden urges Americans to convert to Islam and predicts failure for the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. The video was aired on hundreds of Western news Web sites nearly a full day before its release by a distribution company linked to al-Qaeda.
Computer logs and records reviewed by The Washington Post support SITE's claim that it snatched the video from al-Qaeda days beforehand. Katz requested that the precise date and details of the acquisition not be made public, saying such disclosures could reveal sensitive details about the company's methods.
SITE - an acronym for the Search for International Terrorist Entities - was established in 2002 with the stated goal of tracking and exposing terrorist groups, according to the company's Web site. Katz, an Iraqi-born Israeli citizen whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein in the 1960s, has made the investigation of terrorist groups a passionate quest.
"We were able to establish sources that provided us with unique and important information into al-Qaeda's hidden world," Katz said. Her company's income is drawn from subscriber fees and contracts.
Katz said she decided to offer an advance copy of the bin Laden video to the White House without charge so officials there could prepare for its eventual release.
She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center.
Administration and intelligence officials would not comment on whether they had obtained the video separately. Katz said Fielding and Bagnal made it clear to her that the White House did not possess a copy at the time she offered hers.
Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. "Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute ... [as] it could harm our investigations."
Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. "It is you who deserves the thanks," he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence director's office.
Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz's e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE's server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.
By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.
Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.
A small number of private intelligence companies compete with SITE in scouring terrorists' networks for information and messages, and some have questioned the company's motives and methods, including the claim that its access to al-Qaeda's network was unique. One competitor, Ben Venzke, founder of IntelCenter, said he questions SITE's decision - as described by Katz - to offer the video to White House policymakers rather than quietly share it with intelligence analysts.
"It is not just about getting the video first," Venzke said. "It is about having the proper methods and procedures in place to make sure that the appropriate intelligence gets to where it needs to go in the intelligence community and elsewhere in order to support ongoing counterterrorism operations."
Monday, October 08, 2007
Lady luck turns on Las Vegas' once-hot home market
Si vous avez achete une maison a Las Vegas (rassurez-vous je n'ai pas fait cette connerie), il va etre tres difficile de la vendre, tout simplement parce-que leur prix est exhorbitant. J'ai vu des cabanes en bois ici se vendre dans les $250,000 quand meme, il ne faut pas delirer. Les investissements des gens de la Californie sont venus a Vegas et ils ont surencheri sur le prix d'achat a l'immobilier, on se trouve maintenant dans une situation ou il n'y a plus d'acheteur. Au final a chaque coin de rue de Las Vegas, vous verrez une maison en vente, et les gens partent de Las Vegas (comme moi) car cette ville est devenue ridiculement chere. Lisez la suite en anglais.
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - People trying to sell their homes in Las Vegas -- one of America's hottest job and property markets over the past decade -- have seen their luck turn dramatically worse this year.
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - People trying to sell their homes in Las Vegas -- one of America's hottest job and property markets over the past decade -- have seen their luck turn dramatically worse this year.
Dana Fillmore was like many of the thousands arriving to the casino capital every month when she moved from Minnesota in 2004 with her husband and two children. In her mid 40s, Fillmore had hoped the find a warmer climate, a house with a swimming pool and place where she could eventually retire.
With no money down, she landed a house with a pool for a $2,100 monthly mortgage. But her marriage collapsed soon after, and her husband, who works in real estate development, had trouble with support payments as his industry slumped, she said, so she is now trying to sell her house.
A Web site designer, Fillmore bought the place in Henderson next to Las Vegas for $329,000 in July 2005, around the peak of the boom. Since listing the house at $317,000 a few months ago, she has dropped the price to $289,000 and is still hoping for her luck to change as she cannot afford to pay the mortgage on an annual salary of $42,000.
"My parents retired to Las Vegas. It's always been a dream of a lot of people in the northern states to move to a southern state," she said wistfully. "I wish now that I never moved."
The promise of a new start and quick riches has made Las Vegas one of America's fastest growing cities for years. Some did become fabulously wealthy from real estate, and in recent years others thought they too could translate rising prices and easy credit into fast bucks.
But no dice for those who bought a few years ago.
"Say they paid half a million. They might be able to sell in the low $400,000s, maybe," said Rita DeSimone, a broker working with Fillmore.
DeSimone said her income is down by half from last year. "Come May, the phone just stopped ringing," she said.
Joy Gillen, 60, a casino supervisor, has had her home on the market for nearly a year and a half. She initially listed the home at $597,000 then $539,900 and since refused to budge, even though she paid only $291,000 for it five years ago.
"I never thought it would ever take so long to sell my house here -- the market was so hot," she said. "I could sell for a cheaper price, but I would shoot myself (financially)."
Nationwide, many real estate markets have turned downward, but the Las Vegas picture is especially pronounced because many speculators in tune with the city's gambling spirit drove up prices and now find themselves forced to sell.
SIDE BY SIDE SALES
Away from the flashing lights of the famed Strip, thousands of signs in front of single- and two-story homes illustrate a glut of available properties, many of which are now vacant. Along one stretch of six homes on Edgeworth Place in south Las Vegas, four show "for sale" signs.
After more than half a year on the market, one house is in the process of being sold after the owner dropped the price from $324,000 to $250,000, broker Doug Helen said: "They literally wanted to get rid of it."
Another owner on the street moved back to his native Singapore because he thought his children could get a better education there, his broker, Betty Chan, said.
The situation has also been tough on builders, who continue to expand into the desert around Las Vegas. Robert Toll, chairman of Toll Brothers, recently told analysts the new home market in Las Vegas rated an "F minus minus."
"What are we doing about it? We are out there with the rest of the builders in Vegas praying. There's not much you can do," he said in August. "You can't advertise your way out of that situation. You just have to wait for the market to come back."
According to the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association, new home sales are down by nearly half between January and August this year compared to the same period in 2006. Existing home sales for the period are down more than 37 percent.
The group's spokeswoman, Monica Caruso, said Las Vegas had about 24,000 existing homes and 6,000 new houses on the market.
In an interview, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said he was "very bullish" about the city's economy but paused when it came to real estate. "We have a bit of a blip as far as our housing market," he said. "Houses over a million are still going fast. It's slow in the $400,000 to $700,000 area."
Many sellers, naturally enough, feel downbeat. Web designer Fillmore is borrowing money from her parents to pay her mortgage. "I'm extremely worried now," she said, adding she may move back to Minnesota. "Vegas has not been lucky for me."
(additional reporting by Alexandria Sage)
State Dem Group Played Hardball to Kill GOP Election System Plan
Le systeme encore une fois .....
By Carla Marinucci
The San Francisco Chronicle
By Carla Marinucci
The San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday 07 October 2007
They called themselves "The Lincoln Brigade."
Even as Democrats feared having to spend as much as $40 million for a bruising, bloody fight expected to drag on for months, this makeshift group of California Democratic operatives needed just weeks to pummel a Republican-funded push for a ballot measure that threatened to change the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.
The ruthlessly effective battle plan of the California Democrats' group raises the specter that, as the 2008 election looms, Republicans may have to confront a far more aggressive Democratic ground game that has revived the old "Clinton war room" philosophy.
"We need to fight back and not be reluctant - that if they come after you with a knife, to pull out a gun," said California Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, former spokesman for President Bill Clinton's White House and Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.
The group took aim at the Presidential Election Reform Act, a proposed California ballot measure that would change the way the state apportions its Electoral College votes and likely benefit the Republican nominee.
After two terms of Republican control of the White House - and angered by what they perceived as a history of electoral "dirty tricks" by GOP strategists such as President Bush's key adviser Karl Rove - the Democrats' response in California could serve as an indication of what lies ahead in the 2008 battle for the White House.
"We ran it like a military operation," says Margie Sullivan, a former chief of staff to three Clinton Cabinet secretaries who was closely involved in the effort. "You had this SWAT team of talented, hyper-engaged people. ... It was: boom, boom, boom."
Lehane and Sullivan are some of the lead players in the group, which includes many former insiders from the Clinton administration. They named their group after the brigade of American volunteers who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
After events such as the 2000 Florida presidential election recount, the 2003 California recall election that ousted Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign against Sen. John Kerry, "Democrats are waking up to reality, " said Doug Boxer, the son of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and a Bay Area consultant who was political director for the effort against the ballot measure.
"It doesn't mean (Democrats are) jettisoning their values system ... but the Clinton administration played hardball on a lot of things, and we'd gotten away from that," Boxer said. "We're back to the Clinton era."
Veteran California Republican strategist Dan Schnur conceded that the recent Democratic effort against the ballot measure was astonishingly effective. But he argued that the result - Republican supporters have for the most part backed away from the measure - may have been due more to the high stakes and a hunger to get back into the White House than brilliant campaign strategy.
"There's an old saying: Nothing concentrates your attention like the prospect of your own destruction," Schnur said. "They correctly identified this as a mortal blow to their Electoral College prospects next year. If they hadn't mobilized with everything they had, they would have been signing their own death warrant."
Interviews with lead players in the effort last week reinforced that scenario: Democrats from local to national levels shifted into gear almost as soon as rumors surfaced in May that Republicans might try to "steal the election" in the Democratic-leaning state with a ballot measure to benefit the GOP nominee.
Instead of the winner-take-all system used in all but two states, the measure provided that 53 of California's 55 electoral colleges votes would go one-by-one to the presidential candidate who wins each of the state's 53 congressional districts.
Analysts said such a change could swing about 20 of California's Electoral College votes - about as many as key states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania - from the Democratic candidate, who would be favored to win the statewide popular vote, to the Republican candidate who could win Republican-dominated congressional districts.
By the time the GOP-backed group called "Californians for Equal Representation," led by attorney Thomas Hiltachk - who has represented Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state GOP - submitted the ballot measure to the state attorney general's office on July 17, the ad-hoc Democratic group was already engaged in a flurry of action.
Lehane had contacted Sullivan and Tom Steyer, a longtime major party donor and lead fundraiser for Kerry who heads San Francisco-based Farallon Capitol.
"He said, 'We've got to stop this - now' ... and immediately kicked in $150,000," Lehane recalled.
They roused a crew of party operatives including Peter Ragone, longtime aide to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who acknowledged that many believed the GOP effort was a longshot.
But "we'd seen that movie before," Ragone said. "We had learned ... that when Republicans start with these shenanigans, you have to hit them hard. Our attitude was: Not in our state."
The goal, Sullivan said, was to "strangle the baby in the cradle" and kill the ballot measure early, rather than let it qualify for the ballot - where it would be much tougher and more expensive to beat.
As the campaign in favor of the measure prepared to circulate the petitions and get the voter signatures needed to qualify it for the ballot, Doug Boxer contacted every major Democratic elected official from mayors to state legislators to California's U.S. senators and urged them to speak publicly against the Electoral College plan.
Steyer and Sullivan hit the phones, rounding up financial backing and commitments from deep-pocketed donors like Nancy Parrish, a leading supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign and Hollywood producer Norman Lear, who put up $50,000. Also at the ready: producer Steven Bing and major Democratic donor and developer Walter Shorenstein, Sullivan said.
Pollster Paul Maslin's early focus groups found that a slim majority of Californians initially backed the Republicans' call for an end to "winner take all," so the Democrats began a daily drumbeat aimed at the media - press conferences, meeting with the state's leading editorial boards and outreach to Internet Web sites and blogs.
The Democrats wanted to "tell our side of the story" additionally through TV and radio ads to erode public support and scare off potential GOP donors, Lehane said.
At one point, "Norman Lear pitched in on a script change," Lehane said. "That made us nervous ... it's was kind of like Picasso giving you advice on painting."
Frank Russo, publisher of the California Progress Report, a popular Democratic Web site, said the strategy achieved "a clarion call that went out to all the troops," prompting netroots activists such as the Courage Campaign and Daily Kos loyalists to pound the issue to the grassroots. "It was like the old Who song: We won't get fooled again," he said.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean flew to San Francisco for a press conference with labor leaders to "make it very clear from the beginning that the new Democratic Party is not going to take it lying down - we still stand and fight," said DNC spokesman Karen Finney.
Editorial boards lined up against the measure. Then came a turning point - Schwarzenegger's public slap at the measure, which he said suggested a "loser mentality" by his party and an attempt to change election rules in the middle of the game.
Democrats still felt they had a big challenge: unmasking the money people behind Hiltachk's group - which by early September had said it had collected 40,000 signatures to put the measure on the June 2008 ballot.
Many of the original backers of the GOP ballot measure also were supporters of GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Then came the news that the single $175,000 contribution to Hiltachk's Sacramento group was from a separate organization run by a Missouri GOP attorney named Charles Hurtt III - another Giuliani donor. But Hurtt's group wouldn't reveal its donors.
Democratic attorney James Harrison announced the party would file a complaint with federal election officials alleging money laundering - and the state's Fair Political Practices Commission acknowledged looking into the issue.
Quickly, the GOP ballot measure drive collapsed. Hiltachk resigned - as did his group's spokesman, Kevin Eckery and the chief fundraiser, Marty Wilson. They said they didn't want to accept money from anonymous donors - and support and funding had dried up for the measure.
In the last week, the money man behind the Missouri group was revealed to be Giuliani policy adviser and top fundraiser, billionaire New York hedge fund executive Paul Singer. That has prompted Harrison to pledge that Democrats will continue demanding answers regarding Giuliani's links to the effort - right into the 2008 primary season.
Eckery, the former spokesman for the ballot measure group, said that while the experience served as "a tune-up for the Clinton machine in California," Democrats shouldn't get overconfident from the result.
"Politics is a contact sport," he said, "and the presidential election is the Super Bowl."
Cast of Characters
Some of the key Lincoln Brigade players and their Clinton connections:
Chris Lehane: former White House spokesman for President Bill Clinton and 2000 spokesman for Al Gore's presidential campaign. Lehane is supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential effort.
Doug Boxer: consultant and son of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California.
Tom Steyer: founder of San Francisco's Farallon Capital Management, one of Sen. Clinton's biggest donors and a leading fundraiser for 2004 John Kerry campaign.
Margie Sullivan: Farallon Capital management analyst, Democratic fundraiser and former chief of staff to three U.S. Cabinet secretaries during the Clinton administration.
Ari Swiller: Democratic fundraiser and "kitchen cabinet" insider of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Hillary Clinton backer.
Peter Ragone: a former aide in the Clinton administration and Gore spokesman. He is former spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Clinton endorser.
Bill Carrick: longtime Democratic strategist for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Paul Maslin: veteran Democratic pollster, formerly for Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and now for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate.
Sean Sullivan: opposition researcher formerly with the San Francisco firm of Averell "Ace" Smith, who is now Hillary Clinton's California campaign manager.
Cuba marks 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara
On aime ou on n'aime pas, aujourd'hui est le 40ieme anniversaire de la mort de Che Guevara.
SANTA CLARA, Cuba (AFP) — Cuba on Monday marked the 40th anniversary of the death of revolutionary icon Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, this Marxist country's most revered figure after its ailing leader Fidel Castro.
The town of Santa Clara some 300 kilometers (186 miles) east of Havana became the official venue for Cuba's homage to Guevara, in a ceremony led by Fidel's brother, acting president Raul Castro.
The event, attended by members of the Guevara family and senior Cuban officials, was held in Santa Clara's Revolution Square at the foot of a giant bronze statue of Guevara, a symbol of the beloved guerrilla fighter's continued exalted stature here.
While Fidel Castro, 81, was not present, he was a palpable presence at the ceremony, which opened with the reading of an homage penned by Castro and published in state-sponsored newspapers here.
In the article, Castro who has been temporarily replaced as head of state by his brother Raul Castro after undergoing stomach surgery in July 2006, hails his late comrade-in-arms Guevara as "a flower torn up prematurely by the stem."
"I bow my head to pay tribute -- with respect and gratitude -- to the exceptional warrior who fell 40 years ago, on October 8th," read the Cuban leader's article, which was read before a crowd in this town.
Loudspeakers also blared a recording dating back to October 3, 1965 of Fidel Castro reading a farewell letter written by Guevara, as the Argentine-born revolutionary prepared to depart for to fight in the guerrilla war in the Congo.
It was in Santa Clara that Guevara, an Argentine-born doctor-turned-guerrilla leader, fought a key battle during the Cuban revolution in 1958, and where his remains are buried.
Guevara met the Castro brothers in Mexico in 1955, and quickly joined their uprising against then Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. By the time the revolution triumphed in January 1959 Guevara was a key player.
Gueveara's Argentine widow Aleida March, 71, attended the event, along with his four children Aleida, Camilo, Celia and Ernesto. Guevara had a daughter with his first wife, a Peruvian revolutionary, both of whom are dead.
Meanwhile in Bolivia, President Evo Morales, a fervent admirer of both Guevara and Fidel Castro, was to lead a ceremony in the southeastern town of Vallegrande, where Guevara's bones were found in a mass grave in 1997.
And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was to hold a ceremony at Pico del Aguila, in western Venezuela, which Guevara visited 55 years ago.
Tributes were to be held throughout Latin America, including a special session of Brazil's senate in Guevara's honor on October 23; ceremonies in Guatemala and Mexico, where he resided for a brief time, and in Nicaragua.
A special memorial also was being prepared in Argentina to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Guevara's birth in June 2008.
Born in the Argentine city of Rosario, Guevara traveled across Latin America in 1952 and 1953 and was shocked to see the economic disparity in the region. His life changed dramatically when he met Castro in Mexico.
Guevara was convinced that violence was necessary to overturn the unjust social order in Latin America. After leading a group of Cuban revolutionaries fighting with Marxist guerrillas in the Congo, Guevara traveled to Bolivia, arriving in late 1966.
Paraguay's secret services knew of Guevara's visit, according to a document uncovered by Paraguayan researcher Martin Almada.
"Che Guevara left Corumba (a Brazilian town on the border with Bolivia) under the false name of Oscar Ferreira," read the document shown to AFP, the first time, he said that such information has surfaced.
Guevara led a small clutch of rebels in Bolivia for 11 months trying to spread revolution, but found little support.
The Bolivian army and two Cuban-American US Central Intelligence Agency agents captured an ill Guevara in the village of La Higuera, and executed him on October 9, 1967. He was 39.
With his death the myth of "Che," the personification of rebellion, was born.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
La fin du dollar
Le Qatar ne trouve plus le dollar seduisant et veut minimiser les risques financiers en diversifiant son portefolio avec d'autres monnaies etrangeres (euro). Les analystes financiers estiment que la diversification du Qatar entrainera un changement dans le Moyen-Orient. Une autre raison autre que le risque finances vient du fait que la globalisation a ouvert ses portes a la Chine et l'Europe dans le Moyen-Orient.
La liste des pays qui veulent minimiser ou changer de monnaie est en train de s'allonger:
- La Syrie: raisons commerciales et geostrategiques
- La Russie qui aligne le rouble avec l'euro depuis 2005
- La Coree du Sud, 4ieme reserve mondiale pour le dollar
- La Chine qui utilise d'autres monnaies pour determiner la valeur du Yuan
- Et probablement l'Iran avec le TSE (Teheran Stock Exchange)
Le 21ieme siecle n'appartient plus au dollar, et bien que les USA peuvent reserver le meme sort de l'Irak a d'autres pays, l'intervention avec leur puissance militaire pourrait paradoxalement inciter d'autres pays a se defaire du dollar dans le systeme monetaire international. Enfin il faut relativiser, car l'OPEC n'est pas encore affectee par ces changements, meme si l'on peut toujours rever.
La liste des pays qui veulent minimiser ou changer de monnaie est en train de s'allonger:
- La Syrie: raisons commerciales et geostrategiques
- La Russie qui aligne le rouble avec l'euro depuis 2005
- La Coree du Sud, 4ieme reserve mondiale pour le dollar
- La Chine qui utilise d'autres monnaies pour determiner la valeur du Yuan
- Et probablement l'Iran avec le TSE (Teheran Stock Exchange)
Le 21ieme siecle n'appartient plus au dollar, et bien que les USA peuvent reserver le meme sort de l'Irak a d'autres pays, l'intervention avec leur puissance militaire pourrait paradoxalement inciter d'autres pays a se defaire du dollar dans le systeme monetaire international. Enfin il faut relativiser, car l'OPEC n'est pas encore affectee par ces changements, meme si l'on peut toujours rever.
USraeli-Sponsored Sectarianism and “Creative Destruction” Must be Defeated in Palestine
Voici le commentaire d'un copain internaute palestinien:
By Tony Sayegh
After inflicting horrors of biblical proportions on Iraq, including the killing of over 2 million Iraqis in the last dozen years, and creating the largest refugee exodus since the Palestinian Nakba, the evil brains behind USraeli policies are moving to replicate the same horrors in Palestine and in Lebanon.
Just as the U.S. Senate passed a resolution, with an overwhelming majority, calling for the partitioning of Iraq, we see a de-facto partitioning of occupied Palestine at the behest of USrael. That partitioning is being implemented with the full, wholehearted participation of USrael’s stooge, Mahmoud Abbas and his mercenary forces.
Just as sectarian killing and ethnic cleansing in Iraq started with the implementation of the “Salvador option” by forming USraeli-created, financed, armed, trained and directed death squads, the American General Keith Dayton has been overseeing the creation of comparable death squads in Palestine. The same U.S. Congress demanding the partitioning of Iraq has approved close to $50 millions for the arming and training of these Palestinian death squads.
The policy of “creative destruction” is being intensified inside the Gaza Strip simultaneously with the criminal total siege on 1.5 million Palestinians living there. Death squads loyal to Abbas and his warlords in the Green Zone in Ramallah have been intensifying their campaign of terror inside Gaza. The car bomb has been introduced to spread random killing and mayhem. Some Abbas loyalists have been caught planting bombs and others were killed while rigging a car bomb.
The stooge Abbas is carrying out this policy to destabilize Hamas and to restore his fetid and corrupt control over the Gaza Strip. However, the USraeli objective is far more sinister. Having prevented the emergence of a Palestinian state, the USraeli objective is to destroy the Palestinians as a society, culture and people. By making living conditions unbearable, conditions for “voluntary” immigration are created. Analogous to the millions of Iraqi refugees, the goal is to depopulate what is left of Palestine to solve the “Palestinian problem” once and for all.
This campaign of terror inside Gaza entered a new and dangerous phase yesterday when a 30-year old Palestinian Christian was killed. He owned and operated a book store which sold bibles and religious publications. The sinister plan had an obvious goal, which is to blame Hamas for the killing and to ignite Muslim-Christian strife in Palestine, similar to that which was successfully ignited in Iraq.
To its credit, Hamas denounced this heinous crime and pledged to pursue those responsible. It is no accident that this murder took place at the same time that car bombs and other explosions were detonated in Gaza. The forces behind these murderous acts are the same death squads which receive instructions from Abbas and his boss, General Keith Dayton.
Muslim-Christian relations in Palestine have always been excellent and they must remain that way. The Palestinians are politically sophisticated and too alert to allow such destructive sectarianism to spread. All Palestinians are in the same boat, and Christians are not suffering any less in Palestine under the occupation than their Muslim brothers and neighbors. Palestinian Christians, by and large, have been determined patriots who fought and continue to fight for the rights of all Palestinians. The leaders of several Palestinian resistance movements as well as some of the best-known writers and thinkers have been Christians.
It is imperative that all Palestinians stand together to expose and to defeat these sinister plans. Media outlets bear special responsibility: They should be very careful about what they publish. Stories that inflame the situation and are obviously planted for that purpose should be rejected. All have to rise to the required level of responsibility. We are all targeted and either we stand together or we become the refugees of even a bigger Nakba.
By Tony Sayegh
After inflicting horrors of biblical proportions on Iraq, including the killing of over 2 million Iraqis in the last dozen years, and creating the largest refugee exodus since the Palestinian Nakba, the evil brains behind USraeli policies are moving to replicate the same horrors in Palestine and in Lebanon.
Just as the U.S. Senate passed a resolution, with an overwhelming majority, calling for the partitioning of Iraq, we see a de-facto partitioning of occupied Palestine at the behest of USrael. That partitioning is being implemented with the full, wholehearted participation of USrael’s stooge, Mahmoud Abbas and his mercenary forces.
Just as sectarian killing and ethnic cleansing in Iraq started with the implementation of the “Salvador option” by forming USraeli-created, financed, armed, trained and directed death squads, the American General Keith Dayton has been overseeing the creation of comparable death squads in Palestine. The same U.S. Congress demanding the partitioning of Iraq has approved close to $50 millions for the arming and training of these Palestinian death squads.
The policy of “creative destruction” is being intensified inside the Gaza Strip simultaneously with the criminal total siege on 1.5 million Palestinians living there. Death squads loyal to Abbas and his warlords in the Green Zone in Ramallah have been intensifying their campaign of terror inside Gaza. The car bomb has been introduced to spread random killing and mayhem. Some Abbas loyalists have been caught planting bombs and others were killed while rigging a car bomb.
The stooge Abbas is carrying out this policy to destabilize Hamas and to restore his fetid and corrupt control over the Gaza Strip. However, the USraeli objective is far more sinister. Having prevented the emergence of a Palestinian state, the USraeli objective is to destroy the Palestinians as a society, culture and people. By making living conditions unbearable, conditions for “voluntary” immigration are created. Analogous to the millions of Iraqi refugees, the goal is to depopulate what is left of Palestine to solve the “Palestinian problem” once and for all.
This campaign of terror inside Gaza entered a new and dangerous phase yesterday when a 30-year old Palestinian Christian was killed. He owned and operated a book store which sold bibles and religious publications. The sinister plan had an obvious goal, which is to blame Hamas for the killing and to ignite Muslim-Christian strife in Palestine, similar to that which was successfully ignited in Iraq.
To its credit, Hamas denounced this heinous crime and pledged to pursue those responsible. It is no accident that this murder took place at the same time that car bombs and other explosions were detonated in Gaza. The forces behind these murderous acts are the same death squads which receive instructions from Abbas and his boss, General Keith Dayton.
Muslim-Christian relations in Palestine have always been excellent and they must remain that way. The Palestinians are politically sophisticated and too alert to allow such destructive sectarianism to spread. All Palestinians are in the same boat, and Christians are not suffering any less in Palestine under the occupation than their Muslim brothers and neighbors. Palestinian Christians, by and large, have been determined patriots who fought and continue to fight for the rights of all Palestinians. The leaders of several Palestinian resistance movements as well as some of the best-known writers and thinkers have been Christians.
It is imperative that all Palestinians stand together to expose and to defeat these sinister plans. Media outlets bear special responsibility: They should be very careful about what they publish. Stories that inflame the situation and are obviously planted for that purpose should be rejected. All have to rise to the required level of responsibility. We are all targeted and either we stand together or we become the refugees of even a bigger Nakba.
Enhanced Interrogation Methods? No, The Word Is "Torture"
Il faut arreter de differencier les tortures, la torture mentale est un acte desespere aussi absurde que la torture physiqye:
I am sick to death of all the pussyfooting around the subject that has occupied the media for the duration of this premeditated, illegal war of terror that we the people of the United States have allowed to be waged against the people of Iraq, in our name, for the last several years.
No matter how much lipstick and rouge we smear on the face of this war no matter how we attempt to dress up the evil and bestial acts that have been performed in its unholy name, it still has the hideous countenance of an evil swine from hell.
It is an illegal war, begun and conducted under false pretenses, by a group of criminal liars and thieves in the United States Government, abetted by a cowardly congress who abrogated their constitutional duties in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds and furthered by a complaisant press that ignored their obligation to remain independent from government, from their sponsors and report the facts.
The members of the completely rogue executive department acted in their own self interest in a quest for personal power and wealth, in concert with the usual domestic and international corporate pirates who, in the depths of their insatiable greed, continually amplify human conflict to their own ends and bring poverty, war, suffering and death down upon the world.
There is no such animal as extraordinary rendition, nor do I know of the existence of any beasts called enhanced interrogation methods.
The first is kidnapping, it is illegal, a felony and the second word is torture, its meaning is clear:
NOUN:
1. Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion.
2. An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain.
2. Excruciating physical or mental pain; agony: the torture of waiting in suspense.
3. Something causing severe pain or anguish.
Torture is illegal in this country, a felonious act, it is illegal in the world at large, according to several conventions that we are legally bound by. Anyone committing torture, causing it to be committed, directing its commission, or training others in its techniques is guilty, guilty of war crimes, of crimes against humanity and crimes against "Nature's God.
The people who lied us into this war are not statesmen, nor are they patriots acting out of a misguided love of country, as I have heard in some quarters. They are murderers, murderers, modern day Nazis or Fascists if you prefer, cold dispassionate sociopaths, heinous criminals, without conscience, without mercy, without humanity.
I read in the press and heard in the media yesterday and this morning of the "murky legal territory" in which the "private contractors" operate in Iraq and the murky area of law in which our dedicated public servants must operate as they determine just how far they can go in the extreme physical abuse of human beings before they stray in to a "gray area."
Bullshit, I think that when a lying pig of a lawyer like David Addington describes a "murky legal area" it means that he thinks he can get away with it. The legal situation in Iraq was intentionally designed to protect the mercenary scum that we send there to perform high priced serial murders as they fulfill bloated contracts to protect our criminal leadership, thieving diplomats and cowardly congressmen.
I believe that the actions of following people must be investigated and, if warranted by the evidence, tried in criminal courts, and if convicted, face the full consequences of both US and International law:
George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Scooter Libby, John Hannah, David Wurmser, Andrew Natsios, Dan Bartlett, Mitch Daniels, George Tenet, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, David Addington
There are more, in every corner of the executive, the congress, among the highest levels of the military as well as the intelligence community, various think tanks, news organizations, public and private corporations and other NGOs.
This is a cancer that must be quickly, loudly and publicly removed from the heart of America.
Enough.
Bob Higgins
Pelosis Says She Wasn't Brief On Secret '05 Torture Memo
Earlier this week, after the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration gave the CIA secret approval in 2005 to use harsh interrogation techniques, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino asserted that members of Congress had been “fully briefed” on the secret opinions.
On Fox News Sunday today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who as minority leader in 2005 would have been informed of the most highly classified information, said that she had not been briefed “about the secret memos” in 2005:
CHRIS WALLACE: You were never briefed about these secret memos in 2005?
NANCY PELOSI: No, not about the secret memos.
Watch it:
30 ans de prison pour avoir vole un donut
10/07/2007
FARMINGTON, MO. — Shoplifters at Country Mart tend to favor cold medicines and packaged meats. They used to steal cigarettes, too, until tobacco was moved behind the counter. But the doughnuts were never a target for thieves.
Country Mart's doughnuts — fried fresh daily in the store — sell for just 52 cents each. That is why the "shoplifters will be prosecuted" signs are displayed in aisle 4 with the pricey pain and allergy pills, and not in aisle 5 beside the glass doughnut case with its tiger tails, jelly-filleds and eclairs.
Then one man's sweet tooth got the better of him. He stole a doughnut. A single doughnut.
Authorities called it strong-arm robbery. The "doughnut man," as the suspect is now known, faces five to 15 years in prison for his crime. And Farmington, a town of 14,000 people about 70 miles south of St. Louis, has been buzzing about it ever since.
"That someone would take just a single doughnut, not something very expensive or extravagant, that's unique," supermarket assistant manager Gary Komar said, smiling.
Scott A. Masters, 41, is accused of shoplifting the pastry and pushing a store worker who tried to stop him. The worker was unhurt. But with that shove, his shoplifting turned into a strong-arm robbery. Masters, who appeared in court Friday, is stunned. The prosecutor shows no signs of backing down. In fact, because Masters has a prior record, he could get a sentence of 30 years to life.
China oil imports soar; refinery pact with Chad
La Chine part a la conquete du monde pour etancher ses besoins petroliers:
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- China's net imports of crude oil in the first eight months of 2007 soared more than 18% as demand for petroleum products to fuel the country's fast-growing economy continued to increase.
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- China's net imports of crude oil in the first eight months of 2007 soared more than 18% as demand for petroleum products to fuel the country's fast-growing economy continued to increase.
China brought in 110.4 million tons of crude oil while exporting exported 2.18 million tons, according to a Sunday report from official news agency Xinhua, citing data from the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
Meanwhile, domestic output of crude hit 124.7 million tons in the same period, up 1.3%. Refined oil imports hit 24.28 million tons, exceeding exports by 14 million tons. China produced 39.9 million tons of gasoline, up 8.8%, 7.68 million tons of kerosene, up 17.5% and 81.5 million tons of diesel oil, a 6.3% rise, Xinhau said.
China is now the world's second largest consumer of oil, after the U.S.
Earlier, the news agency reported that the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is planning to invest in a joint venture refinery in the African nation of Chad. A subsidiary of CNPC has signed an agreement with the Chadian government to jointly invest in the refinery, to be built north of N'Djamena, the capital.
The Chinese will be in charge of all engineering construction and use their own design specifications, manufacturing standards and equipment. CNPC is not yet saying how much it will invest or when. Land-locked Chad has been producing oil since 2003 and has found 13 oil fields to date but has no refineries and has to import gasoline and other petroleum products
U.S. commander says Iran stoking Iraq violence
Ils ont en train de preparer psychologiquement le Americains pour partir en guerre contre l'Iran:
By Dean Yates
EAST OF BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) - The U.S. military commander in Iraq has stepped up accusations that Iran was stoking violence in Iraq and said Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad was a member of the Revolutionary Guards Qods force.
Washington accuses the force, the elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, of inciting bloodshed in Iraq and of training and equipping militias who have attacked U.S. troops.
General David Petraeus, speaking at a U.S. military base about 30 km (20 miles) from the Iranian border on Saturday, said Iran was giving advanced weaponry to militias in Iraq.
"They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers," Petraeus told a small group of reporters when asked if the Iranian government was responsible for killing U.S. troops.
"There is no question about the connection between Iran and these components, (the) attacks that have killed our soldiers."
In August President George W. Bush, already at odds with Iran over its nuclear program, said attacks on U.S. troops with Iranian-supplied weapons were increasing and he had told commanders in Iraq to "confront Tehran's murderous activities".
Since then, U.S. military officers have repeatedly presented what they say is evidence of Iranian-produced arms, including the particularly deadly explosively formed projectile (EFP) bombs, being used against U.S. soldiers.
"The ambassador is a Qods force member," Petraeus said of Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, Iran's envoy to Baghdad.Saturday, October 06, 2007
The End of Las Vegas
By Kevin Capp
The room beamed with good intentions and positive thinking. So many ideas and innovations. You just had to believe.
On Aug. 27, inside the Dialogue Center at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, the much-hyped $250 million beacon of alternative energy possibility, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid told the small group of concerned citizens and green business people in attendance that the time had come for Nevada to go renewable and lead the nation toward a clean energy future.
"What we need to do is stop using fossil fuel," Reid told the audience. "But people need to be incentivized to do this."
To that end, and to his credit, Reid has been doing a lot more than doling out platitudes. In a torrent of press releases, he has announced his opposition to three proposed coal plants; hailed a decision by the Bureau of Land Management to lease 123,000 acres of Nevada land for geothermal exploration; sung the praises of a Senate energy bill that he says will ramp down our oil use and ramp up renewable use; and, most recently, highlighted a report that shows coal is an unpopular energy source as a means to push the Silver State into a leadership position on all things renewable. (His only flaws seem to be a decidedly non-green coddling of a politically supportive Nevada mining industry, and helping developer Harvey Whittemore build a giant suburb in the middle of nowhere.)
Yes, the man's got ideas.
So did the folks at the meeting. They talked about all the usual, obvious solutions. We should harness the power of the sun; use soybeans and fry grease to run the cars; create a hydrogen economy; and all the other stuff Americans have been hearing about of late to lower those nasty emissions destroying Mother Earth. Best part is: We'll get to continue living the same way -- tooling around in our cars, relaxing in our air-conditioned homes. Only now we'll finally be treating our old Momma with some respect while we do it.
Green smoke
Many energy experts say this a dangerous myth, one that will prevent us from adapting to a monumental change with no historical parallels. While it's surely imperative we clean up our act in the name of preserving our planet, a potentially even bigger issue than that of global climate change is staring us down: an oil shortage. These critics say the American way of life as we know it is on the wane. They say our addiction to fossil fuels and all of the glorious achievements that accompanied our discovery of oil back in the mid-18th century have convinced us that the way we live is an inalienable right that will continue on into eternity. Because we have technology. Because we have ingenuity. Because we're Americans.
Fact is, none of that matters in the face of geology, experts say. Oil is a finite, fast-diminishing and, perhaps more importantly, unique resource that no amount of so-called alternatives can replace. Even if they could, we may already be too late to put together a plan.
"The renewables are not ready," says Jan Lundberg, an oil industry analyst. "They are not going to deliver energy the way cheap oil used to."
James Howard Kunstler, one of the most prominent speakers and prolific writers on the impending oil crisis, says of the push by Reid and other politicians to switch out energy sources: "What they are doing right now is blowing green smoke up the public's ass."
What's more, the issue isn't necessarily whether we run out of oil, but what happens when shortages throw the cost of energy into a schizophrenic tizzy of price spikes punctuated by brief, illusory drops, says Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over. Many credit him with being one of the first intellectuals to bring this issue to public light. "It's going to go up in a stair-step fashion, because oil usage is seasonal. March, April next year, we'll probably see softer prices. But softer in comparison to what? A few years ago, a soft price was $20."
Now oil hovers around $80 a barrel, a jump from around $60 earlier this year. "Reflect on what this is going to mean to the airlines and tourism in Las Vegas," says Kunstler. "You're going to be dealing with an increasingly tapped-out public. They're simply going to have a lot less money to toss into the casinos."
The endgame is even more frightening, surreal and just plain unimaginable. As oil peaks and prices soar, these experts say it will mean nothing less than the end of our air-conditioned, central-heated, car- and airplane-dependent neon metropolis, and it's coming soon, green revolution be damned.
A Peak Oil Primer
"As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented." -- from "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management," a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, published February 2005
Although it's written in the sterile language of bureaucrats, the Hirsch Report -- named for its lead author, veteran energy analyst Robert L. Hirsch -- nevertheless paints a dark portrait of a world in disarray, if we don't act soon enough to wean ourselves off oil. While the term may sound like the name of some exotic religion, peak oil is a fairly straightforward concept that belies its devastating consequences for industrialized nations, which depend on access to cheap oil for almost every aspect of daily life, from getting to work on time to locating the ingredients grandma needs to make her famous apple pie.
Consider: Nevada, with its relatively small population of 2.5 million people, consumed almost two million barrels of petroleum in 2004 for asphalt and road oil alone, according to the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy. That's a fraction of the more than 48 million barrels Nevada gobbled up that year for everything from jet fuel to gas for cars. With growth, our demand will only increase.
Because it means the point at which all of the world's reserves are depleted by half, global peak oil spells doom for meeting that demand by creating an unstoppable downward trend in the amount we can pump into our bigger-is-better economy.
However, as the Hirsch Report notes, "It is important to recognize that oil production peaking is not 'running out.'" Indeed, even after peak, there will still be oil left. The problem isn't total depletion so much as it is the turbulent ride toward it.
Predicting when this will happen is tough going for myriad reasons. For example, no politician -- including President George W. Bush, who once employed energy-investment banker and peak oil expert Matthew Simmons as an advisor-- wants to tell his constituency that life as they know it is kaput. And no oil company exec wants to admit to shareholders they're invested in an industry in decline, especially as it earns record profits.
Despite such problems and others on the geopolitical stage (the Saudis, for example, closely guard their most sensitive state secret: how much oil they have left), experts have constructed a plausible window of time when peak might occur, which doesn't bode well for Vegas. According to the Hirsch Report, "Even the most optimistic forecasts suggest that world oil peaking will occur in less than 25 years." There are others who say it's already happened.
Peak oil commentator Heinberg points to the latest figures released by the International Energy Agency, which shows the global production of liquids dropped by 854,000 barrels per day from August 2006 to August 2007. In addition, we're pumping out 1.53 million barrels per day less than the all-time high of 86.13 million extracted in July 2006.
Translation: The sun may have already set on our ability to meet world demand.
This is not good.
Running that close to the bone means any systemic shock -- a hurricane that damages drilling platforms in the gulf, a terrorist attack on oil pipelines in Nigeria, an unexpected cold snap in the northeast -- could cause prices to skyrocket, impacting everything from costs at the pump to costs at the grocery store. What's worse, the less oil we have, the less it takes to zap the price upward.
It's an inevitable part of peaking, says Byron King, formerly a geologist with Gulf Oil and now an energy and natural resources analyst with Agora Financial. "We've built an entire industrial civilization around [oil]," he says. "Now the question is: Can we transform it fast enough?"
The room beamed with good intentions and positive thinking. So many ideas and innovations. You just had to believe.
On Aug. 27, inside the Dialogue Center at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, the much-hyped $250 million beacon of alternative energy possibility, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid told the small group of concerned citizens and green business people in attendance that the time had come for Nevada to go renewable and lead the nation toward a clean energy future.
"What we need to do is stop using fossil fuel," Reid told the audience. "But people need to be incentivized to do this."
To that end, and to his credit, Reid has been doing a lot more than doling out platitudes. In a torrent of press releases, he has announced his opposition to three proposed coal plants; hailed a decision by the Bureau of Land Management to lease 123,000 acres of Nevada land for geothermal exploration; sung the praises of a Senate energy bill that he says will ramp down our oil use and ramp up renewable use; and, most recently, highlighted a report that shows coal is an unpopular energy source as a means to push the Silver State into a leadership position on all things renewable. (His only flaws seem to be a decidedly non-green coddling of a politically supportive Nevada mining industry, and helping developer Harvey Whittemore build a giant suburb in the middle of nowhere.)
Yes, the man's got ideas.
So did the folks at the meeting. They talked about all the usual, obvious solutions. We should harness the power of the sun; use soybeans and fry grease to run the cars; create a hydrogen economy; and all the other stuff Americans have been hearing about of late to lower those nasty emissions destroying Mother Earth. Best part is: We'll get to continue living the same way -- tooling around in our cars, relaxing in our air-conditioned homes. Only now we'll finally be treating our old Momma with some respect while we do it.
Green smoke
Many energy experts say this a dangerous myth, one that will prevent us from adapting to a monumental change with no historical parallels. While it's surely imperative we clean up our act in the name of preserving our planet, a potentially even bigger issue than that of global climate change is staring us down: an oil shortage. These critics say the American way of life as we know it is on the wane. They say our addiction to fossil fuels and all of the glorious achievements that accompanied our discovery of oil back in the mid-18th century have convinced us that the way we live is an inalienable right that will continue on into eternity. Because we have technology. Because we have ingenuity. Because we're Americans.
Fact is, none of that matters in the face of geology, experts say. Oil is a finite, fast-diminishing and, perhaps more importantly, unique resource that no amount of so-called alternatives can replace. Even if they could, we may already be too late to put together a plan.
"The renewables are not ready," says Jan Lundberg, an oil industry analyst. "They are not going to deliver energy the way cheap oil used to."
James Howard Kunstler, one of the most prominent speakers and prolific writers on the impending oil crisis, says of the push by Reid and other politicians to switch out energy sources: "What they are doing right now is blowing green smoke up the public's ass."
What's more, the issue isn't necessarily whether we run out of oil, but what happens when shortages throw the cost of energy into a schizophrenic tizzy of price spikes punctuated by brief, illusory drops, says Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over. Many credit him with being one of the first intellectuals to bring this issue to public light. "It's going to go up in a stair-step fashion, because oil usage is seasonal. March, April next year, we'll probably see softer prices. But softer in comparison to what? A few years ago, a soft price was $20."
Now oil hovers around $80 a barrel, a jump from around $60 earlier this year. "Reflect on what this is going to mean to the airlines and tourism in Las Vegas," says Kunstler. "You're going to be dealing with an increasingly tapped-out public. They're simply going to have a lot less money to toss into the casinos."
The endgame is even more frightening, surreal and just plain unimaginable. As oil peaks and prices soar, these experts say it will mean nothing less than the end of our air-conditioned, central-heated, car- and airplane-dependent neon metropolis, and it's coming soon, green revolution be damned.
A Peak Oil Primer
"As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented." -- from "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management," a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, published February 2005
Although it's written in the sterile language of bureaucrats, the Hirsch Report -- named for its lead author, veteran energy analyst Robert L. Hirsch -- nevertheless paints a dark portrait of a world in disarray, if we don't act soon enough to wean ourselves off oil. While the term may sound like the name of some exotic religion, peak oil is a fairly straightforward concept that belies its devastating consequences for industrialized nations, which depend on access to cheap oil for almost every aspect of daily life, from getting to work on time to locating the ingredients grandma needs to make her famous apple pie.
Consider: Nevada, with its relatively small population of 2.5 million people, consumed almost two million barrels of petroleum in 2004 for asphalt and road oil alone, according to the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy. That's a fraction of the more than 48 million barrels Nevada gobbled up that year for everything from jet fuel to gas for cars. With growth, our demand will only increase.
Because it means the point at which all of the world's reserves are depleted by half, global peak oil spells doom for meeting that demand by creating an unstoppable downward trend in the amount we can pump into our bigger-is-better economy.
However, as the Hirsch Report notes, "It is important to recognize that oil production peaking is not 'running out.'" Indeed, even after peak, there will still be oil left. The problem isn't total depletion so much as it is the turbulent ride toward it.
Predicting when this will happen is tough going for myriad reasons. For example, no politician -- including President George W. Bush, who once employed energy-investment banker and peak oil expert Matthew Simmons as an advisor-- wants to tell his constituency that life as they know it is kaput. And no oil company exec wants to admit to shareholders they're invested in an industry in decline, especially as it earns record profits.
Despite such problems and others on the geopolitical stage (the Saudis, for example, closely guard their most sensitive state secret: how much oil they have left), experts have constructed a plausible window of time when peak might occur, which doesn't bode well for Vegas. According to the Hirsch Report, "Even the most optimistic forecasts suggest that world oil peaking will occur in less than 25 years." There are others who say it's already happened.
Peak oil commentator Heinberg points to the latest figures released by the International Energy Agency, which shows the global production of liquids dropped by 854,000 barrels per day from August 2006 to August 2007. In addition, we're pumping out 1.53 million barrels per day less than the all-time high of 86.13 million extracted in July 2006.
Translation: The sun may have already set on our ability to meet world demand.
This is not good.
Running that close to the bone means any systemic shock -- a hurricane that damages drilling platforms in the gulf, a terrorist attack on oil pipelines in Nigeria, an unexpected cold snap in the northeast -- could cause prices to skyrocket, impacting everything from costs at the pump to costs at the grocery store. What's worse, the less oil we have, the less it takes to zap the price upward.
It's an inevitable part of peaking, says Byron King, formerly a geologist with Gulf Oil and now an energy and natural resources analyst with Agora Financial. "We've built an entire industrial civilization around [oil]," he says. "Now the question is: Can we transform it fast enough?"
Reveil
Reveil en beaute, mal aux cheveux, envie de vomir, et je peux encore sentir les buees d'alcool sur mon T-shirt. Je dormirai bien encore 1 jour.
The Ghost of highway 61
Vive le capitalisme et merci d'avoir participe et voici quelques offrandes, dix dollars:
Friday, October 05, 2007
"The American Empire already collapsed..."
Manuel de Diéguez is interviewed by the Iranian Embassy in Paris , March 17, 2007:
On June 4, 2007 Le Figaro published an interview of President Putin, full of common sense and measure. The demonization of Russia has now reached global proportions. But will Europe, herself made into a vassal, accept that the American anti-missile system to be installed in Poland and in the Czech Republic may function in automatic concert with the nuclear arsenal of the United States? Will Europe, even humiliated, accept that, for the first time, US-nuclear power is installed on its soil? Will Europe, even domesticated, accept that the world's political balance will be turned around with the purpose of the definitive military subjugation of Copernicus' Continent to a foreign empire, while we are not even being threatened by anybody? Will an 'enslaved' Europe now require of Vladimir Putin to help it break its chains? Now that's the only real question.
Because this actually is about a desperate attempt by the United States to recover the theo-political world-hegemony which their crusader spirit appeared to promise them before the international shipwreck of the democratic messianism they launched in Iraq.
The US is very effectively supported in its attempts at re-conquest of European opinion by the complicity of the French press, starting with Le Figaro, which took care not to publish the essential message of Mr. Vladimir Putin to the Old World:
Question: Why do the Americans try to realize their plans with so much tenacity if they are so obviously without real object?
Mr. Putin: Perhaps we are bringing Russia and Europe closer together, and the Americans try to stop it. If this were the case, it would be one more [US] mistake.
Question: Do you plan to install a similar system [an anti-missile shield] in Cuba and Venezuela?
Mr. Putin: Not only it is not our intention, on the contrary, we even dismantled our bases in Cuba. The Americans, however, build some of theirs in Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union, our policy assumed a very different character. We want neither confrontation, nor bases under our nose. The current Russian system relies mainly on political decisions [instead of military options].
The censure by Le Figaro is not innocent: it is linked obviously to the article of the new President of CRIF, Mr. Richard Prasquier, in Le Monde, May 31, 2007: "Iran, the proliferating nuclear power", which tries to divide Europeans by emphasising that the imaginary threat by Iran would relate to Europe.
The Old World is thus under an absolute moral obligation to find again its sovereignty, which will require forming a sufficiently dissuasive Euro-Russian axis to stop the planetary expansion of a military empire, whose close cooperation with Israel constitutes for the moment the central thrust.
- Le savoir et l'action. L'Europe vassalisée face à l'Iran révolté, ler septembre 2005
Admittedly, the degree of vassalisation under the sword of "Freedom" to which the Old World is currently resigned will make it difficult to French diplomacy to assume leadership of a reinvigorating Europe. How to dissuade Germany from again wearing the leader's helmet amongst the nations who are extremely satisfied with their attire?
But, fortunately, it is more than 40 years since our country expelled the troops of the new occupants of Europe from our territory. (De Gaulle expelled the US troops and bases from France, a feat that was not repeated by any European state - ISH). If we don't play -- even if we are alone, the card of refusal of submission, we would betray not only our history, but the spirit of Europe. It is a matter of resurrection, or death of a civilization.
II
On March 17, 2007, the Iranian television recorded an interview with me whose content thus does not present anything secret. Following recent resumption of a dialogue, suspended for 27 years, between the United States and Iran, I consider the time proper to publish this interview, because this debate places from now on the simi-anthropology [implying ape origin of man] at the heart of rational reflection on international politics.
Since an American anti-missile shield is being built in Poland for the purpose of in-flight destruction of Iranian thermonuclear bombs as ghost-like as that available to the current owners of artificial apocalypse, it will become increasingly difficult not to realize that 3 monotheist theologies are built on the model of mythological dissuasion, illustrated by the thermonuclear weapon.
- Le dissuadeur dissuadé, Esprit, novembre-décembre 1980
- Critique de la dissuasion, Esprit, juin 1979
- La crédibilité de la dissuasion nucléaire, Esprit, novembre 1977
The psychoanalysis of the biblical idol unloads to historical science, so that the sacred genocide by the Flood and the eternity of infernal tortures appear finally as documents awaiting their anthropological interpretation.
Iranians: You have published a twenty-odd works with the largest publishers, numerous articles in the columns of Le Monde and some 80 essays in magazines. At the day following the attack of 11 September 2001, you decided to express yourself on the Internet, convinced that this mode of communication will forge an alliance of a new type between the basic reflection of the philosopher and the hot political news. You gave it an intellectual passion, which illustrates, in your eyes, the opportunities that only the Internet will be able to disclose to anthropological reflection on the policy of tomorrow. You argue that, given that the brain of our species is divided between reality and the dream world, it is a matter of learning how to interpret, in the anthropological sense, that fundamental dichotomy of the sacred. You are also cofounder of Encyclopaedia Universalis, in which you have steered the philosophy of sciences in a direction now shared by analysts of the unconsciously theological foundations of traditional physics. Your critical anthropology throws light on the psychological foundations of the concept of "theory of nature". Can you explain that to us in a way accessible to the general public?
Manuel de Diéguez: Of course. Everyone understands that politics is history in action. If you look further into the notion "politic", you discover that physics is like applied politics to the behaviour of matter. Fortunately this can be shown clearly to be sufficiently constant and regular to be foreseeable and therefore exploitable. But then, a more thorough knowledge of man appears the key to the science of the cosmos. To learn how to decipher the current human-primate species, it is necessary to observe the functioning of its skull by reading the great writers and philosophers. But Shakespeare, Cervantes or Swift are, actually, contemplative of our species and its brain and therefore truly philosophical. In this way, they initiate us to politics and a true reading of history.
Iranians: No reflective policy is possible without a thorough knowledge of history. But you invoke the "political insanity" of America.
M.deD.: Don Quixote is insane, Lady Macbeth sinks in madness, Gulliver observes the madness and the folly of the Yahoos, Molière goes into psychoanalysis of the obsessive madness of L'Avare. It is enough to say that the highest literature and philosophical anthropology have joined to observe the madness of mankind, but also the magnitude of spiritual madness, which makes of Zarathoustra a brother of Jean of the Cross. Unamuno associates the genius of Don Quichotte's madness with the sacrifice of Christ. The Spanish soul is a large initiator of the spiritual resources of Madness, and France is a Don Quixote of freedom to the eyes of the whole world.
It is a question of bringing to the Occident some of Cervantes' or Shakespeare's thoughts on madness and on Madness. To do so, it should be demonstrated that we cannot stop the progress of the history of human dignity. It is for this reason that Iran also has the right to have the nuclear weapon just like the eight big insane countries now in possession of that unusable bomb. The war is not a mutual suicide pact. It is absurd to prohibit gesticulation about the nuclear weapon to the remaining part of the universe. All this show sends us back to the madness of the simian-anthropos worthy of the pen of Kafka, that other brilliant visionary of madness.
Iranians: The Iranian atomic bomb is thus the occasion, in your eyes, to illustrate the capacity of the philosopher-anthropologist of today to initiate the general involvement (of mankind) in the secrets of international politics.
M.deD.: Yes, with the proviso of looking further into the concept of politics so that the eye of historical science may metamorphose politics into a formidable scanner of the anthropological secrets of mankind.
Iranians: So, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, known to fear the Iranian bomb as it would threaten Israel, is a case of political naivety?
M.deD.: Not at all, that relates to political 'tartuffism' [calculated sanctimony for profit, from Molière's Tartuffe character], a highly calculated hypocrisy. Mr. Sarkozy is no 'simple of spirit'.
Iranians: Under these conditions, how would you define the top priority of international politics?
M.deD.: To liberate Europe, politically and militarily turned into a vassal by the US since 1945, that's what appears to me the essential imperative of today, that of the real France, i.e. that of Don Quixote. But the Italian people also start to open one eye and the German people are very close to opening both. Even the Parliaments of the Länder begin to question the duration of the American occupation. It is a slope of politics on which one stops with difficulty. Admittedly, it has been 60 years that the people of Europe have blindfolded themselves. But there will be a German de Gaulle, a Spanish de Gaulle, an Italian de Gaulle. You see that the political spirit is a big folly: it'll go to the point of teaching true history at the school of madness of the prophets. Nevertheless, politics are initially a business of common sense. In face of the warlike expansion of an empire, there remain only 2 possible logics: that of submission and that of combat. Even the existence of the yoke of NATO strikes European civilization by disinheritance.
Iranians: What about, from the viewpoint of the anthropologist of politics, the alliance between the United States and Israel?
M.deD.: There is an obvious contradiction between the public law of democracies which recognizes to all people on Earth the right to dispose for themselves and the precipitated and bellicose return to Judea of the Jewish Diaspora scattered on all the continents since the destruction of Jerusalem on 70 AD. This exceptional occurrence raises an anthropological problem, entirely unknown to political science and world-historical science, namely that of how does work the brain of a species divided between realities and theologised terrestrial worlds. Is it legitimate to drive off its soil a population, which has been occupying this soil for several centuries before Moses? Moreover, starting from the 7th century, the original population started to adore a third God, whose doctrines are bi-phased on as all gods known as unique, and therefore necessarily incompatible with the "revelation" which forms the basis of the orthodoxy of its 2 predecessors. Only decades of suffering will inform us about the outcome of this incredible experimental illustration of theo-politics, of which I have tried to postulate the anthropological foundations for more than 30 years.
It happens that this problem is from now on narrowly connected to that of Europe occupied by NATO. Plato explains in The Republic that a defeated generation generates necessarily 2 generations of blind men, but that the third generation will no less necessarily awake. It is thus inevitable that one day Europe will drive out the American garrisons from its territory. Under these conditions, how should it be successful to implant a theological brain over another in the Middle-East - that of Jahve over that of Allah? Modern historical science and geopolitics still miss the anthropological science of the relations which descendants of a furry ape maintain with the imaginary characters who wander in their brains and whom Isaiah called idols. Do you believe that if the United States did not present itself as back-up troops of the god of liberty, whose genes are those of the Gospels to 99%, a giant aircraft carrier of the US Navy would be anchored in, the middle of the Mediterranean since 60 years? This anchor place is still called Italy, but only for the form, since only the Italians born between 1920 and 1930 still have their eyes sufficiently open to be surprised about this state of affairs. But the Italians born around 1970 will relearn to open them wide again. The future belongs to them.
Iranians: You have terrible formulas on the "European servitude", like this one: "Our mirror reflects to us our effigy of tartuffic [sanctimonious] torturers".
M.deD.: How can a torturer appear tartuffic? The psychoanalysis of the torturer has remained in infancy. It was only one black hole in great literature, despite Kafka's The Penal Colony. But with Jonathan Littell's Benevolent Ones, with the Balzacs, Stendhals and Prousts of tomorrow, if they are born, they will open the psychoanalysis of the torturer. You see, with a little psychology, one can open peoples' eyes to the secrets of chancelleries. Definitely, literary genius is the engine of knowledge of mankind. The genius of Littell is to paint us a torturer as the banal and universal character of Mr. Homais, because the real tartuffism is visceral and unconscious. But this topic would take us too far.
Iranians: How would you define the ideology?
M.deD.: The ideology is the hypocritical bulwark, which prevents us from going down into the anthropological depths of the Creator and his satanic dose of good conscience. Take the account of the Flood. The first exploit of this idol is nothing other than genocide on the planetary scale. But see how this torturer puts himself into embarrassment, and that at the school of his own tartuffism, which does not fail to trap him neatly in return; because he needs to save from drowning samples of his creation, as failing that, how would he go on writing his own history? He believed to be avenged once and for all, and there he is, captive once more, just as a thermonuclear giant, who has become hostage to his own devices. Then this awkward-one gives himself a son in flesh and bone. But how to make him a god armed with a skeleton, some muscles, a liver and internal organs, like Mars or Poseidon? How to supplant his rivals while having a digestive tract? What a fool, this first Sanctimonious hypocrite of torture! Islam took care not to give birth to Mahomet from the entrails of a woman fertilized by a divinity, like Leda or Proserpine. By refusing incarnation of the signs, and thus of symbolism, Islam gained 15 centuries advance over Christianity. Also, since nearly 3 centuries, the Occident of science and reason endeavours to see Jesus as a great prophet. That is taught by the Quran.
Iranians: What do you mean by what you call the theopolitical science? Is the flag a theopolitical object?
M.deD.: Even the catholic Church teaches that a ciborium is not a sacred object, because the spiritual does not play hide-and-seek with atoms of silver or iron. France does not play at who loses wins with the fabric of a flag, because it is pagan to think that the spiritual would substantify itself.
That means that candidates for the presidential election should know that one asks them to symbolize the true France and true France doesn't incarnate itself, because it is a marching sign, like prophet Jesus or prophet Mahomet are marching signs. Theopolicy returns to the knowledge of unconscious "spiritual" of politics and history; the "spiritual" adjective applies to the signs and symbols, not to the material things.
Iranians: Does the Vatican still have a role to play?
M.deD.: Institutionalised theology is dead. The future of God is "poetic", provided one rediscovers that poetry is a spiritual demiurge. I treated this subject in my Essay on the poetic future of God, Plon 1965. I show there that Bossuet, Pascal, Chateaubriand and Claudel share the same doctrinal theology, but that they are recognisable to their "true God", that of their voice, which are 4 different gods.
Iranians: Is the weight of Judaism excessive in the West?
M.deD.: Ex-president Carter published a political text, which caused great noise and in which he denounces the policy of apartheid that Israel practises on a large scale by parking the Palestinians in gigantic concentration camps, which are called Gaza and the West Bank. Jimmy Carter has for a long time based himself on the theology of Kierkegaard, this Protestant priest and philosopher of the individual who studied the question of the relations of the "grace of God" with the fate of evil - which brings us to asking America how it can be that it believes herself to be God's Chosen, whereas it does behave as "Satan of the world". You'll notice that the UN, however subjected to America's "redemptiveness" and "evangelising", has condemned the Israeli wall of apartheid. So you see that politics are, actually, théopolitics in the sense that it is more and more obliged to study the theological unconscious of politics.
Kierkegaard fought all his life against Hegelian dialectics, which substitutes the epics of the concept of "freedom" instead of the becoming of the real individual, therefore a crusade of a warlike ideology against a theology of the breath, therefore a messianism of the ideals of 1789 with the listening of the "spirit". Carter wrote this book because he is the only president of the United States who learned politics by listening to a philosophical culture, which enabled him to understand that messianised American democracy is the expression of the fall of the modern world into Hegelianism with the help of the myths of "freedom" and "justice". These abstractions substitute the sword of the "democratic verb" for absolute individualism of "grace". The anthropological intelligence of history and politics go down into the entrails of the philosophical thought of the West.
Iranians: And what if Mr. Sarkozy gains the election?
M.deD.: The Congress of Versailles of February 23, 2007 introduced into the French Constitution 2 new articles. These are about reform of the fundamental law, which allows France, by a vote of the French National Assembly and the Senate, constituting for the circumstance a high Court of Justice, to solemnly relieve of his post a president who would sell off the sovereignty of France. I studied the legitimacy of these articles in constitutional law. Their political reach seems to me revolutionary in a democracy.
- See: "La constitution du 23 février 2007 et la défense de la souveraineté nationale, 15 mars 2007" ( The Constitution of February 23, 2007 and the defence of national sovereignty, March 15, 2007) on www.dieguez-philosophe.com .
All that answers the possibility according to which Sarkozy, if he were elected president of the Republic, would turn France into a vassal of the United States of America. But the real France is from now on its guard.
Iranians: What is your point of view on immigration and the place this question takes in the presidential campaign?
M.deD.: Immigration is a cultural question. It is a question of knowing whether the intellectual elite of the West is still fertilising and whether, on its side, Islam is able to give birth to a philosophy and thought, which would inspire Europe in return. We are far from it. For the moment, the overwhelming un-culture of an exhausted secularity prevents formation of a French philosophical elite able to demonstrate that Islam has, actually, taken a great advance on Christianity, because Mohamed's religion is not founded on the pagan myth of the incarnation of a symbolic system. If the France of Cartesius would not awaken herself in the true heritage of Darwin and Freud, it would also not be able to give birth to a philosophical elite within French Islam; and the country would not know a second renaissance, which would deepen our humanism, which has become superficial. Will Islam become the detonator of a new dash of European reason and thinking? Were the tired God of Christian theologians to become the symbolic support of the true poetry of humanity, we would listen to the voices of the signified people whom we call prophets. One of them, called Isaiah, said to God, in whom he had disguised his own genius: "I abhor your sacrifices and your hands full of blood on my forecourts." Again politics, again history!
Iranians: You always rejected Marxism, but how to manage social injustice?
M.deD.: As soon as the Berlin Wall had fallen Jean-Paul II disturbed the happy choir of those who praised the newfound capitalism, because at its origin Christianity is a religion of the poor and that it has failed each time that it made itself the prey of the oriental capitalism, that of the throne and gilded glitter of the Vatican. What Jean-Paul II condemned, was not the struggle of Marxism against poverty, but the myth of the advent of a proletarian "kingdom of God", because the Church itself had had to give it up it after less than one century of learning about the laws which govern the real politics and history. Since then, the simian-anthropos is torn between the paradisiacal Utopia and warlike brutality.
Iranians: You evoke the simian ascent of man. Are you the creator of the concept of simianthropology?
M.deD.: Yes, in Une histoire de l'intelligence (A History of Intelligenc), Fayard 1986) and before, in La Caverne (The Cave) Gallimard, bibl. of ideas, 1974. I observe that Darwin did not lead the internal logic of the concept of evolution of the species to its natural and therefore inevitable conclusion; because if we incarnate only one stage of the advent of our brain, we must acknowledge our current cerebral incompletion - what a Church that would still be alive should greet like a blessing from the sky, since, for 20 centuries, all Christian mystics have concentrated on knowing the limitations [Dutch eindigheid] of the human being. Pascal made the idol say: "The more it rises, the more I lower it; the more it lowers, the more I raise it ". Critical anthropology throws its light on the school of lowering mankind to the level of a semi-animal, but because only one eye opened on the semi-animal nature of humanity really sees the idol as it is, i.e. in its specific animal nature. Because the idol does not rest in the carved wood, but in a trans-animal look at the wooden god; and how would the wooden substance of the idol be able to give that look on it? The saints see the wooden god, which is called the Church.
Iranians: Isn't the sterility by which Western reason from now on seems to be marked a disease caused by European imperialism, and this disease isn't it a disease "to the death ", as Kierkegaard said?
M.deD.: There never was great civilisation, which didn't spread and which didn't impose its radiation by other means than by the force of weapons. If Alexander had not launched the Greeks to attack Asia, there wouldn't have been an universalisation of Greek civilisation, if Rome had not carried the iron and the fire beyond its borders, there wouldn't have been a civilisation of written law and of a global heritage of the Athenian genius. The war brings to the winner economic prosperity, and after that potentially a blossoming culture. This is why it should be kept in mind that, in the eyes of the United States, 1945 isn't the year of the liberation of Europe, but that of their own military triumph on a global scale, of which they say themselves that it carried them to a power higher than that of the Roman empire, higher than that of the reign of Charles the Fifth, higher than that of Napoleon's empire, higher than that of the British Commonwealth, a triumph which for a long time enabled them to impose the dollar as the only reserve currency of the world. Today, it's also by weapons that the American empire perishes under our eyes and its descent into the abyss will be sealed by its defeat in Iraq. Why has this global shipwreck become inevitable, if not because Russia & China are from now on able to prevent an American empire, which is already secretly desperate and out of breath, from defying one last time the fatality of its death by an ultimate rush on the oil of Iran and Sudan? But it is too late for going on with the military expansion of the empire on a global scale.
This is to say that occupied Europe will shake the yoke of NATO as soon as the American empire will have been overcome by a general revolt of its vassals. All the remainder is only a vain chattering, because it is quite impossible that a continent that for a certain period has been occupied by a foreign army does not one day find again one day its sovereignty. But has the America of Attila, of Tamerlane, of Genghis Khan, of democracy really been civilizator in this manner? When Jonathan Littell looks deep down until dizziness overcomes us into the notion of barbarism, when he writes that a great writer is a diver, who never stops going deeper down into the black and "blacker that the black ", he demands for French nationality. Perhaps he knows that civilisation is a poet, perhaps he knows that any poet will seek Eurydice in hell, perchance he knows that a culture is like an Eurydice transfigured by the flute of Orpheus.
This is also to say that that all civilisations aren't equal between them. If it were prohibited to distinguish truth from forgery in the name of a brain-less multiculturalism, there would be no more civilisation, since the wizard who believes that the spirit of its ancestors hides under the bark of trees would become the equal of the poet of "Subida al monte Carmelo" (Ascent of Mount Carmel, Poem by John of the Cross). "The eyes of Ezekiel are open", it is said in the Scripture. Civilisation is a poet who does not cease opening the eyes of Ezekiel.
Iranians: In this context, do you believe that the israel-palestinian conflict is an incurable disease?
M.deD.: When everyone will have understood that Israel will never agree to return to the borders of 1967 and when vassalized Europe cannot pretend any more to think it will, this State will have an appointment with Kierkegaard, who will say to him: "You were sick of your false justice. Now you must decide if this disease is fatal."
Plus que 6 jours
Bon un petit billet personnel pour une fois. Je n'ai plus que 6 jours avant de partir de Las Vegas et franchement je ne regretterai pas cette ville du tout. Ca faisait 5 ans que j'etais dans cette ville, et il etait temps d'aller voir autre chose qu'une ville de papier carton mache, ville qui pense seulement a l'argent et rien d'autre.
Habituellement quand je demenage j'emmene tout avec moi (un demenagement coute dans les $3500 minimum) et cette fois je ne vais pas me prendre la tete, je vends tout ce que j'ai (canape, teles, lit, meubles ... etc) et je me louerai une remorque pour atteler ma maigre fortune, les ordis evidemment, quelques habits, et les produits de beaute de madame. En 7 ans c'est fou ce que j'ai empile comme junk ici, et j'aurai prefere les garder plutot que de m'en separer - car on m 'a appris en France a ne pas gaspiller les choses - et j'ai travaille dur pour acheter ces produits - mais mes moyens financiers ne me le permettent plus.
Prochaine destination: du cote de Houston au Texas et si possible a la campagne, si j'arrive a trouver une maison, avec un petit lopin de terre pour faire du jardinage. J'ai deja habite au Texas (a Dallas) et c'est bien sympa la-bas, les gens sont amicaux, l'economie marche bien la-bas, et la nourriture (texmex) est super bonne, et il semblerait que le Texas soit encore bon marche a comparer de Las Vegas. Bon le Texas c'est plat, tres tres plat comme territoire, avec des tornades et des inondations, mais il n'y a pas un seul coin aux USA ou il n'y a pas de danger, alors je ferai avec. Vivre ailleurs que Vegas est une bonne idee. Las Vegas a toujours ete une ville de transition pour les gens: les gens ne restent jamais longtemps dans cette ville, et ils partent pour d'autres aventures. Il y quand meme 2500 km de distance a faire, et je compte les faire en 2 ou 3 jours.
Habituellement quand je demenage j'emmene tout avec moi (un demenagement coute dans les $3500 minimum) et cette fois je ne vais pas me prendre la tete, je vends tout ce que j'ai (canape, teles, lit, meubles ... etc) et je me louerai une remorque pour atteler ma maigre fortune, les ordis evidemment, quelques habits, et les produits de beaute de madame. En 7 ans c'est fou ce que j'ai empile comme junk ici, et j'aurai prefere les garder plutot que de m'en separer - car on m 'a appris en France a ne pas gaspiller les choses - et j'ai travaille dur pour acheter ces produits - mais mes moyens financiers ne me le permettent plus.
Prochaine destination: du cote de Houston au Texas et si possible a la campagne, si j'arrive a trouver une maison, avec un petit lopin de terre pour faire du jardinage. J'ai deja habite au Texas (a Dallas) et c'est bien sympa la-bas, les gens sont amicaux, l'economie marche bien la-bas, et la nourriture (texmex) est super bonne, et il semblerait que le Texas soit encore bon marche a comparer de Las Vegas. Bon le Texas c'est plat, tres tres plat comme territoire, avec des tornades et des inondations, mais il n'y a pas un seul coin aux USA ou il n'y a pas de danger, alors je ferai avec. Vivre ailleurs que Vegas est une bonne idee. Las Vegas a toujours ete une ville de transition pour les gens: les gens ne restent jamais longtemps dans cette ville, et ils partent pour d'autres aventures. Il y quand meme 2500 km de distance a faire, et je compte les faire en 2 ou 3 jours.
Iraq PM says 'unfit' Blackwater must go
BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Wednesday that Blackwater should leave the country because of the mountain of evidence against the under-fire US security firm.
His comments came amid growing anger among Iraqis that "above-the-law" security contractors are continuing to operate in Iraq while Blackwater is being probed over a deadly shooting 17 days ago.
"I believe the abundance of evidence against it makes it unfit to stay in Iraq," Maliki told a televised press conference in Baghdad.
A New York Times report on Wednesday citing witnesses, Iraqi investigators and a US official said that as many as 17 people were killed and 24 wounded when Blackwater employees opened fire in central Baghdad on September 16.
Blackwater maintains its men were legitimately responding to an ambush while protecting a US State Department convoy but they are accused of firing into crowded Nisoor Square indiscriminately.
Immediately after the incident, in which at least 10 people were confirmed killed, Maliki said Washington should replace Blackwater forthwith.
He later backed down and agreed to await the outcome of investigations.
A member of the Shiite ruling coalition, Amira al-Baldawi, told AFP: "Some foreign companies believe they are above the Iraqi law."
Baghdad lawyer Hassan Shaaban said the firm should have been shut down at least until investigators had finished their work.
"This company should halt its work until investigations are over," he said. "There should have been an investigation into the Nisoor Square event before a decision was taken to say if they should continue working in Iraq or not."
Three investigations have been called by the US State Department, whose staff Blackwater was protecting during the shootings, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for a "360-degree" look at the events.
The US Defence Department, which also employs hired guns from Blackwater to protect a number of its personnel, has launched a fourth inquiry.
"As far as the law is concerned, if the probes prove they are responsible for the incident they should be expelled in accordance with Iraqi law," said Hassan.
"They are not an army neither US armed forces. They merely present company services and consequently any violation on the land of Iraq should be subject to the Iraqi judiciary."
Blackwater boss, ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince, denied at a hearing before Congress on Tuesday that his staff ran riot like "cowboys" after a Congressional report suggested the company's security teams in Iraq are out of control.
A committee report found that Blackwater, which protects US diplomats and visiting dignitaries, had been involved in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, and accused it of covering up fatal shootings involving its staff.
In one incident cited by the committee, a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed a guard of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi.
His comments came amid growing anger among Iraqis that "above-the-law" security contractors are continuing to operate in Iraq while Blackwater is being probed over a deadly shooting 17 days ago.
"I believe the abundance of evidence against it makes it unfit to stay in Iraq," Maliki told a televised press conference in Baghdad.
A New York Times report on Wednesday citing witnesses, Iraqi investigators and a US official said that as many as 17 people were killed and 24 wounded when Blackwater employees opened fire in central Baghdad on September 16.
Blackwater maintains its men were legitimately responding to an ambush while protecting a US State Department convoy but they are accused of firing into crowded Nisoor Square indiscriminately.
Immediately after the incident, in which at least 10 people were confirmed killed, Maliki said Washington should replace Blackwater forthwith.
He later backed down and agreed to await the outcome of investigations.
A member of the Shiite ruling coalition, Amira al-Baldawi, told AFP: "Some foreign companies believe they are above the Iraqi law."
Baghdad lawyer Hassan Shaaban said the firm should have been shut down at least until investigators had finished their work.
"This company should halt its work until investigations are over," he said. "There should have been an investigation into the Nisoor Square event before a decision was taken to say if they should continue working in Iraq or not."
Three investigations have been called by the US State Department, whose staff Blackwater was protecting during the shootings, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for a "360-degree" look at the events.
The US Defence Department, which also employs hired guns from Blackwater to protect a number of its personnel, has launched a fourth inquiry.
"As far as the law is concerned, if the probes prove they are responsible for the incident they should be expelled in accordance with Iraqi law," said Hassan.
"They are not an army neither US armed forces. They merely present company services and consequently any violation on the land of Iraq should be subject to the Iraqi judiciary."
Blackwater boss, ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince, denied at a hearing before Congress on Tuesday that his staff ran riot like "cowboys" after a Congressional report suggested the company's security teams in Iraq are out of control.
A committee report found that Blackwater, which protects US diplomats and visiting dignitaries, had been involved in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, and accused it of covering up fatal shootings involving its staff.
In one incident cited by the committee, a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed a guard of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
بيان مثقفي العراق حول قرار مجلس الشيوخ الامريكي بشأن مؤامرة التقسي
تواصلا مع التخبط الامريكي في العراق ، والفشل الذريع الذي منيت به سياسات الاحتلال بهدف تركيع العراقيين وفرض حالة الامر الواقع عليهم ، وفي اطار البحث عن سبل لانقاذ ماء الوجه خرج علينا مجلس الشيوخ الامريكي بقرار يدعو فيه الى تقسيم العراق على اساس طائفي وعرقي، مع الابقاء على حكومة مركزية ضعيفة.. وهذا القرار في حقيقته قد اخرج من بين الملفات القديمة للصهاينة في امريكا والغرب، ملف التقسيم الذي اعدت خرائطه قبل اربعة عقود من الزمن.. وكان يلوح به في وجه العراق كلما اختار هذا البلد سياساته الحرة المعبرة عن مصالحه العليا، ووقف بعناد بوجه المشروع الصهيوني التوسعي في المنطقة، ورفض هيمنة شركات النفط الاحتكارية..ا
تقسيم العراق خطة غربية – امريكية، دعت اليها اسرائيل عبر المنظمات الصهيونية منذ اواخر الخمسينيات وتحديدا بعد ثورة الرابع عشر من تموز/1958 هدفه اخراج العراق من دائرة الصراع العربي الصهيوني، فقد شكل العراق قلقا طبيعيا للصهاينة بعد ان اتضح ان العقيدة العسكرية العراقية مبنية على ان العدو الاول للعراق هو الكيان الصهيوني...وكان التقسيم فكرة وخارطة حاضرة دائما في العقل الامريكي المتصهين ولدى مراكز الدراسات والابحاث التي تدور في فلكه، ويمكن القول دون تردد ان الهدف الرئيسي من غزو العراق واحتلاله هو تقسيم البلد وتفتييت مجتمعه وتحويله الى دويلات لامراء الحرب العشائريين والطائفيين..وان امريكا انساقت في غزوها للعراق وراء رغبات اللوبي اليهودي فالغزو لم يعبر عن مصلحة امريكية حقيقية بقدر ما عبر عن رغبة ومصلحة صهيونية.ا
ورغم ان قرار مجلس الشيوخ غير ملزم، الا ان مناقشته وفضحه امر ضروري لان معظم القرارات والمشاريع الجائرة التي نفذت على الضد من مصالح الشعوب تبدا هكذا. المشرعون الامريكيون يجهلون جغرافية العراق، ونسيجه الاجتماعي، ويجهلون اكثر تاريخ هذا البلد، ونشك انهم يعرفون ان حضارة وادي الرافدين هي اقدم حضارة انسانية، وان ابناء هذا الوادي هم من علموا الانسان الكتابة ونشك ان هؤلاء المشرعين درسوا تاريخ بغداد عندما كانت مركزا للاشعاع الثقافي والعلمي ومنارة الدنيا وقبلة العلماء والادباء والمؤرخين والفقهاء ايام الدولة العربية – الاسلامية العباسية.ا
ويجهل ان المجتمع العراقي نسيج واحد من المحال تفتيته وان سائر المحاولات التي جرت خلال قرون من الحكم الاستعماري العثماني والفارسي وبعدهما الانكليزي بهدف اللعب على تنوعه المذهبي او العرقي باءت بالفشل وخرج المستعمرون خاليي الوفاض، وظل العراق واحدا وظل شعبه امينا على عروبته.. ونجزم ان الامريكيين الساعين خلف هذا المشروع الذين احبطوا وضاقوا ذرعا بتورط قواتهم في العراق وفشلها وتكبدها الخسائر الجسيمة على ايدي مقاومته الباسلة، لم يتأملوا جيدا خارطته، يابسته، انهاره، موارده، تجمعاته السكانية، واصولها، لانهم لو درسوا هذا، وكان عليهم ان يفعلوا ذلك قبل الغزو، لتوصلوا الى نتيجة مؤداها ان الغزو ليس خيارا صائبا مثلما ان التقسيم فكرة بائسة تصلح لان تظل في نطاق المؤامرة و العبث ليس الا..ا
ولذلك فنحن نقول للامريكيين ان يذهبوا الى الحل الاسهل الذي يحفظ لهم ماء الوجه، حل الانسحاب الكامل، والتوصل مع قوى المقاومة والمعارضة الوطنية الى برنامج لحل سياسي جذري بديل للعملية السياسية الجارية والتي انتجت كل هذه المآسي.. لان التقسيم، هذه المؤامرة القديمة_ الجديدة ، مستحيل. وان شعبنا يرفضه ويدين البعض ممن مهد لمثل هذه المشاريع، اما الاصوات التي تسرع اصحابها في كردستان العراق للترحيب به، فأنها لا تعبرعن مصالح شعبنا الكردي، بل عن مصالح اصحابها الفئوية الذاتية فضلا عن رد "الجميل " لمن حرض على غزو العراق واحتلاله...ا
ان مثقفي العراق يقفون بقوة وصلابة ضد هذا القرار ويدعون قوى شعبنا وهيئاته وشخصياته الى الوحدة في اطار وطني قادر على وأد هذه المؤامرة وانقاذ العراق من حالة التدهور الكارثي الذي يعانيه. كما ويدعون ابناء العروبة في كل مكان الى الحذر من ان المشروع سيمتد الى باقي اقطار الوطن العربي..ا
تقسيم العراق خطة غربية – امريكية، دعت اليها اسرائيل عبر المنظمات الصهيونية منذ اواخر الخمسينيات وتحديدا بعد ثورة الرابع عشر من تموز/1958 هدفه اخراج العراق من دائرة الصراع العربي الصهيوني، فقد شكل العراق قلقا طبيعيا للصهاينة بعد ان اتضح ان العقيدة العسكرية العراقية مبنية على ان العدو الاول للعراق هو الكيان الصهيوني...وكان التقسيم فكرة وخارطة حاضرة دائما في العقل الامريكي المتصهين ولدى مراكز الدراسات والابحاث التي تدور في فلكه، ويمكن القول دون تردد ان الهدف الرئيسي من غزو العراق واحتلاله هو تقسيم البلد وتفتييت مجتمعه وتحويله الى دويلات لامراء الحرب العشائريين والطائفيين..وان امريكا انساقت في غزوها للعراق وراء رغبات اللوبي اليهودي فالغزو لم يعبر عن مصلحة امريكية حقيقية بقدر ما عبر عن رغبة ومصلحة صهيونية.ا
ورغم ان قرار مجلس الشيوخ غير ملزم، الا ان مناقشته وفضحه امر ضروري لان معظم القرارات والمشاريع الجائرة التي نفذت على الضد من مصالح الشعوب تبدا هكذا. المشرعون الامريكيون يجهلون جغرافية العراق، ونسيجه الاجتماعي، ويجهلون اكثر تاريخ هذا البلد، ونشك انهم يعرفون ان حضارة وادي الرافدين هي اقدم حضارة انسانية، وان ابناء هذا الوادي هم من علموا الانسان الكتابة ونشك ان هؤلاء المشرعين درسوا تاريخ بغداد عندما كانت مركزا للاشعاع الثقافي والعلمي ومنارة الدنيا وقبلة العلماء والادباء والمؤرخين والفقهاء ايام الدولة العربية – الاسلامية العباسية.ا
ويجهل ان المجتمع العراقي نسيج واحد من المحال تفتيته وان سائر المحاولات التي جرت خلال قرون من الحكم الاستعماري العثماني والفارسي وبعدهما الانكليزي بهدف اللعب على تنوعه المذهبي او العرقي باءت بالفشل وخرج المستعمرون خاليي الوفاض، وظل العراق واحدا وظل شعبه امينا على عروبته.. ونجزم ان الامريكيين الساعين خلف هذا المشروع الذين احبطوا وضاقوا ذرعا بتورط قواتهم في العراق وفشلها وتكبدها الخسائر الجسيمة على ايدي مقاومته الباسلة، لم يتأملوا جيدا خارطته، يابسته، انهاره، موارده، تجمعاته السكانية، واصولها، لانهم لو درسوا هذا، وكان عليهم ان يفعلوا ذلك قبل الغزو، لتوصلوا الى نتيجة مؤداها ان الغزو ليس خيارا صائبا مثلما ان التقسيم فكرة بائسة تصلح لان تظل في نطاق المؤامرة و العبث ليس الا..ا
ولذلك فنحن نقول للامريكيين ان يذهبوا الى الحل الاسهل الذي يحفظ لهم ماء الوجه، حل الانسحاب الكامل، والتوصل مع قوى المقاومة والمعارضة الوطنية الى برنامج لحل سياسي جذري بديل للعملية السياسية الجارية والتي انتجت كل هذه المآسي.. لان التقسيم، هذه المؤامرة القديمة_ الجديدة ، مستحيل. وان شعبنا يرفضه ويدين البعض ممن مهد لمثل هذه المشاريع، اما الاصوات التي تسرع اصحابها في كردستان العراق للترحيب به، فأنها لا تعبرعن مصالح شعبنا الكردي، بل عن مصالح اصحابها الفئوية الذاتية فضلا عن رد "الجميل " لمن حرض على غزو العراق واحتلاله...ا
ان مثقفي العراق يقفون بقوة وصلابة ضد هذا القرار ويدعون قوى شعبنا وهيئاته وشخصياته الى الوحدة في اطار وطني قادر على وأد هذه المؤامرة وانقاذ العراق من حالة التدهور الكارثي الذي يعانيه. كما ويدعون ابناء العروبة في كل مكان الى الحذر من ان المشروع سيمتد الى باقي اقطار الوطن العربي..ا
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
التـراجـع الإقـتـصـادي فـي الولايـات المـتحـدة الأمريـكـيـة و تـدميـره كـتدميـر الـقنـبـلـة الـدريـة
الـجريـدة MSM تـدَعــي بـأن كـل شــيء هــو عــلى مـا يـًــرام فـي الـولايـات الـمـتحـدة الأمريـكـيـة، بـأنـنـا لـسـنــا في إنـهــيــار أو تـراجــع إقـتصــادي. و لـكــن هـنــاك عـلامــات تـؤكـد لـنـا عكس ﻨ لـك.
فـي لاس فيغـاس هـنـاك من يـبـيــع سـيــارتـه (لإرتـفــاع سـعــر الـبـنـزيـن) و ĩخــرين من يـبيـعون حـتى مـنـازلهـم.
عـدد الـنـاس اللـﻨيـن يـعيـشـون في الشـارع مُــؤثـرجـدا : عـادة هـؤلاء يتـركزون فـي وسـط المـديـنـة ولـكـن مـنـد أسـابيـع نـلاحـظ أنـاس يـنـامـون في كـل أمـاكـن شـوارع الـمـديـنـة. أكـيـدا تـحسـن
الجـو- سـقـوط الـحـرارة مـن 45 درجـة إلى 20 درجـة – يـحُـث الـنـاس عـلى الخـروج مـن
أمـاكـن الـتـعـاون الإجتـمـاعي – و لكن أبـدا لـم أرى كـل هـﻨا الـفـقـر الواضــح فـي هـﻨه الـمـديـنـة.
لاس فـيـغـاس لـم تـعـد لاس فـيـغـاس، مـديـنـة الأثـريـاء و الٌـهـو الـفـاسـد.
هـﻨه الـقنـبـلـة الـﻨ ريـة هـي الـتـراجع الإقـتـصـادي، أيـن الـنـاس هـم لا شـيء بـدون عـمـل. يـمـكنكـم
الـهـلاك في نـيـفـادا بـد ون أي مـسـاعدة.
يـمـكـن إيــجـاد الـمــال للـﻨ هـاب إلى الـحرب فـي هـﻨا الـبلاد، و أبـدا كـفـايـة مـن الـمال للـمـسـاعـدة كـل الـفـقـراء.
الأزمـة الإقـتـصـاديـة هـي مٌـتعـمـدة : الإنـفـجـار الإقـتــصـادي للسـنـوات الـخـمـس الأواخـر
تأثــربـتـضـخــم لـم يًـلاحـظ أبـدا فـيـمـا قـبــل. ثـمــن الـمـنـازل ضُــرب فـي 4 :
مـنـزل مـبـني باللــوح غـيـر مـكمــول أو قـديــم و مًـحـطــم، قـيـمـتـه حـوالـي 200.000 دولار هـنــا، أو لا يـمـكن الـعـمــل بـأقــل مـن 18 دولار للـســاعـة لـتـسـديـد الـفـواتــر.
الـبـعـض لاحـظ إنـفـجـار إقـتصـادي و لـكـن الـكثـيــر مـنـا لاحـظـوا تـضـخـم.
ثـمـن الـعـقـاري صُـعـد بـسـرعـة خـارفقـة و نـتيـجتة عـلى ﻨ لك عـدم التـوازن الإقتـصـادي : لـشـراء منـزل فـي لاس فـيـغـاس، يـحـق لـكـم عـدم الإعلان عن الـرجـع و يـُمكـنـكم أيـضـا شـراء مـنزل بـدون بـطـاقـة الـهـويـة الأمـريـكيـة.
لـقـد تـمَ إخـتـراع طـلـب للـسـوق الـعـقـاري لتـغـيير الأسـعـار مـا بيـن الـعـرض و الـطـلـب،
والمـسـتـهـلك وحـده يـتحـمـل نتـائج هـﻨه الـعـمليـات : بـعـض إمـضـاء عـقـد الإكـتسـاب الـعـقـاري،
تـعـويـض الـسـلـفيـة يـتـضـاعـف أويـتضـاعف ثـلاث مـرات لـو لـم يـتـم قـراءة الـعـقـد بشـكـل جيـد مـن طـرف الـشـاري و هـﻨا مـا يـفـعـلـه 90 ٪ مـن الأمـريـكـييـن في كـل الأحـوال.
الأزمـة إراديـة و لـكـن مـن الـصـعب الـسـيـطـرة عـلى الـنـتائج.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Let's try partitioning the US
October 02, 2007, 00:12
As if they haven't done enough damage bombing and invading a country on false pretences, destroying its culture and leaving it a charred shell of its former self, they - American lawmakers who gave President George W. Bush authority to go to war - now want to divide Iraq up into easily manageable bite size entities.
Isn't Iraq supposed to be a sovereign nation with an elected government? If so, then why is the US Senate attempting to meddle in its affairs by overwhelmingly passing a resolution calling for the country's partition into three, which is tantamount to ethnic cleansing? Not to put too fine a point the shape of Iraq to come isn't their business.
Moreover, even if they had a stake in the country they are responsible for destroying, which they certainly do not, American senators who may or may not have enjoyed a two-day jaunt to Baghdad's Green Zone are not qualified to be the deciders.
The Iraqi government was quick to put a damper on the proposal. Its spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh said "It's the Iraqis who decide these sorts of issues, no-one else".
According to a recent ABC/BBC poll a mere nine per cent of Iraqis favour the break-up of their country.
The Arab League was equally condemnatory. Its Iraq representative Ali Al Garush called upon Arab nations to stand by the Iraqi people in their opposition to the proposal.
Secretary-General of the GCC Abdul Rahman Al Attiyah said partition would make the situation in Iraq more difficult and complicated. Official statements from Syria and Iran were even more scathing.
With so much Iraqi and regional hostility against the plan what are those 75 senators that voted in favour of it thinking? It was Democratic Senator Joseph Biden a presidential hopeful who initiated the vote.
Biden explained his rationale during a news conference. He maintains his proposal offers a way to bring home American troops while leaving behind a stable Iraq. It's evident that his thinking is based on a series of false premises.
First of all the future of Iraq should not be designed around a convenient exit for US troops. Biden and his fellows should understand a simple principle. American troops are the interlopers not the Iraqi people, who have suffered enough already.
Secondly, the partitioning of Iraq into a loose federation of Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish states will not bring stability as he suggests. There would have to be a massive displacement of people, many of whom would end up impoverished or homeless.
Such a division would also lead to friction over natural resources. For instance, Biden's plan calls for just 20 per cent of oil revenues going to Sunnis, who already feel hard done by after losing the political influence they once enjoyed. There is also the question of which mini-state would control oil-rich Kirkuk, an ethnically-mixed city strongly coveted by the Kurds.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that such insular states would not be mutually hostile, further exacerbating existing ethnic tensions.
Thirdly, although many Kurds are amenable to complete autonomy, their neighbours are most definitely not. If a Kurdish state became a reality it's probable that Turkey would invade.
Turkey fears that such an entity would unduly influence its own Kurdish population, which has its own separatist ambitions. Iran also has strong objections.
Fourth, such a break-up would stand as a worrying precedent for vulnerable countries in the region with multi-ethnic populations.
Either Biden is completely clueless and is unaware of the havoc such a breakup of Iraq would wreak, or he harbours a more sinister agenda.
Rendered toothless
If Iraq were to be broken into three, the nation would be rendered toothless for all time in the same way the former Yugoslavia is today.
The US would then have an excuse to stay around in some force "to protect" such tiny fledgling states from each other and from their neighbours. In fact, it would consolidate complete domination of their oil because such small entities would no longer have a voice.
The biggest winner from the partitioning of Iraq would be Israel, whose officials and journalists have long advocated such division.
On the Shalom TV website there is an interview with Joe Biden who refers to Israel as the "single greatest strength America has in the Middle East" and proclaims with pride "I am a Zionist". We should believe him.
Here's a suggestion for the Arab world. How about a vote on the break-up of America?
How about giving California back to Mexico, returning Hawaii to its indigenous islanders and Alaska to the Eskimos and Indians?
Let's restrict Caucasians to the East and West coasts, and package-up a few states in between for African Americans and Latinos. And while we're about it, let's invite foreign conglomerates to buy up the country's oil, gas and timber.
Outrageous ethnic cleansing that might be but that's exactly what Biden and friends think they have the right to do in Iraq. Surely if such uninformed nose-poking is good enough for Washington, it's equally appropriate for the rest of us.
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com. Response to this article may be considered for publication
Greenspan didn't see danger of subprimes
Finalement il y a qqn qui a compris que le systeme financier aux USA etait corrompu: le marche de l'immobilier aux USA fut cree artificiellement en gonflant la demande, c'est a dire en donnant acces a un plus grand eventail de gens, mais cela s'est fait au profit d'une augmentation des prix dans les emprunts immobiliers, et aujourd'hui on se retrouve dans une crise insolvable de l'immobilier ou les banques sont en train de faire faillite aux USA car peu de personnes sont capables de rembourser de tels emprunts:
In an interview to be televised Sunday, Greenspan said he was aware of subprime lending practices where home buyers got low initial rates only to see them later jacked up, causing severe payment shock. But he said he didn't initially realize the harm they could do.
"While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late," he said in a CBS 60 Minutes interview. "I really didn't get it until very late in 2005 and 2006."
An excerpt of the interview was released Thursday.
A meltdown in the subprime-mortgage market has rocked Wall Street. Foreclosures and late payments have soared and lenders have gone out of business.
Nervous financial institutions tightened credit standards, making it harder for even more-creditworthy borrowers to get financing. This has increased chances the economy will slide into a recession.
Greenspan, who ran the central bank for more than 18 years, left in 2006. His successor, Ben Bernanke, has had to deal with a credit and financial crisis stemming from the subprime-mortgage mess.
When he was at the helm, Greenspan maintained there was little the Fed could do about the subprime situation.
One of the Fed's governors, however, had raised a red flag about questionable lending practices.
"Well, it was nothing to look into particularly because we knew there was a number of such practices going on, but it's very difficult for banking regulators to deal with that," Greenspan said.
Some blamed Greenspan's interest-rate policies for feeding the housing frenzy. Sales had hit record highs, and house prices galloped from 2001 to 2005. Then, the market fell into a deep slump.
The Greenspan Fed from early 2001 to the summer of 2003 had slashed interest rates to their lowest level in decades.
It was done to rescue the economy from the blows of the bursting of the stock- market bubble, the 2001 recession, the terrorist attacks and a wave of accounting scandals that shook Wall Street.
Critics say the Fed kept rates too low for too long, encouraging a Wild West mentality in housing.
Greenspan, however, defended the institution's actions.
"They are mistaken," he said of the critics. "It was our job to unfreeze the American banking system if we wanted the economy to function. This required that we keep rates modestly low."
Meanwhile, some believe that Greenspan would have acted more aggressively than Bernanke in dealing with the current financial crisis.
"I'm not sure that's true," Greenspan said. "I think (Bernanke) is doing an excellent job."
Greenspan has written a book, looking back on his life. The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World will be released Monday.
Jeannine Aversa
Associated Press
Sept. 14, 2007 12:00 AM
In an interview to be televised Sunday, Greenspan said he was aware of subprime lending practices where home buyers got low initial rates only to see them later jacked up, causing severe payment shock. But he said he didn't initially realize the harm they could do.
"While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late," he said in a CBS 60 Minutes interview. "I really didn't get it until very late in 2005 and 2006."
An excerpt of the interview was released Thursday.
A meltdown in the subprime-mortgage market has rocked Wall Street. Foreclosures and late payments have soared and lenders have gone out of business.
Nervous financial institutions tightened credit standards, making it harder for even more-creditworthy borrowers to get financing. This has increased chances the economy will slide into a recession.
Greenspan, who ran the central bank for more than 18 years, left in 2006. His successor, Ben Bernanke, has had to deal with a credit and financial crisis stemming from the subprime-mortgage mess.
When he was at the helm, Greenspan maintained there was little the Fed could do about the subprime situation.
One of the Fed's governors, however, had raised a red flag about questionable lending practices.
"Well, it was nothing to look into particularly because we knew there was a number of such practices going on, but it's very difficult for banking regulators to deal with that," Greenspan said.
Some blamed Greenspan's interest-rate policies for feeding the housing frenzy. Sales had hit record highs, and house prices galloped from 2001 to 2005. Then, the market fell into a deep slump.
The Greenspan Fed from early 2001 to the summer of 2003 had slashed interest rates to their lowest level in decades.
It was done to rescue the economy from the blows of the bursting of the stock- market bubble, the 2001 recession, the terrorist attacks and a wave of accounting scandals that shook Wall Street.
Critics say the Fed kept rates too low for too long, encouraging a Wild West mentality in housing.
Greenspan, however, defended the institution's actions.
"They are mistaken," he said of the critics. "It was our job to unfreeze the American banking system if we wanted the economy to function. This required that we keep rates modestly low."
Meanwhile, some believe that Greenspan would have acted more aggressively than Bernanke in dealing with the current financial crisis.
"I'm not sure that's true," Greenspan said. "I think (Bernanke) is doing an excellent job."
Greenspan has written a book, looking back on his life. The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World will be released Monday.
Monday, October 01, 2007
LIBERTY: PAID FOR BY THE POOR SINCE 1776
Il a fallu plus de 120,000 contributions personnelles pour avoir le socle de la statue de la liberte qui a coute dans les 100,000 dollars a l'epoque, soit a peine 1 dollar par personne. A lire attentivement car rien n'a change aux USA entre 1776 et 2007.
- - - - - - - - - - 
Literally and figuratively it turns out.
I heard an interesting factoid this morning while having my coffee. I was watching the travel channel, which I do frequently. Not being of an income bracket to afford actual travel, my travel channel viewing allows me to get a sense of other countries that I can’t (yet) afford to visit in person. Sigh.
But I digress. The first part of the show was set in NYC, featuring a bunch of fancy hotels (massage, boutique cocktails, bla bla bla). Then they turned to the Statue of Liberty - the most famous and recognized symbol of liberty in the history of the world.
And here’s the fact that made me realize how little has changed in our promised land since the statue was conceived and built. It’s worth noting that these facts had not been mentioned to me previously in my 44 years on our little sphere.
Here’s what happened: The nation of France was responsible for the construction, shipment and assembly of the statue in America. The U.S. was to pay for the pedestal on which it would stand.
From the U.S. Parks Department on the French fundraising effort:
Someone with the Franco-American Union had an inspiration: They would hold a lottery. Since very few contributions were coming from France’s moneyed elite, the idea of engaging the public’s attention with a lottery was a brilliant one. The prizes were highly coveted and valuable, including two works by Bartholdi himself (the statue’s sculptor).
Additional funds were raised in a manner worthy of contemporary merchandising techniques: a signed and numbered collection of clay models of the statue were sold in France and America. By the end of 1879, about 250,000 francs (approximately $750,000 U.S.) had been raised for the statue’s construction. Enough, most people thought, to complete the work.
While the statue was nearing completion in France, little was happening on the American side. The American press continued to be critical of the project, especially of its cost. They couldn’t understand why the pedestal should cost as much as the statue itself. Congress rejected a bill appropriating $100,000 for the base. New York approved a grant of $50,000, but the expenditure was vetoed by the governor.
Many Americans outside of New York considered it New York’s statue. “Let New York pay for it,” they said, while America’s newly rich, self-made millionaires were saying and contributing nothing. The American half of the Franco-American Union, led by William M. Evarts, held the usual fund-raising events, but public apathy was almost as monumental as the statue itself.
By 1884, after years of fund-raising, only $182,491 had been collected and $179,624 had been spent. It took the intervention of Joseph Pulitzer and the power of the media to make a difference.
Joseph Pulitzer (yes, that Pulitzer) was a Hungarian immigrant who fought in the Civil War, became a successful journalist and married a wealthy woman. In 1883, he bought a financial newspaper called the World; he already owned the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When he heard that the Statue of Liberty was about to die from lack of funds, he saw his chance to take advantage of three distinct opportunities: to raise funds for the statue, to increase his newspaper’s circulation and to blast the rich for their selfishness.
Pulitzer set the fund-raising goal of the World at $100,000. In its pages he taunted the rich (thereby increasing the paper’s appeal among working-class people) and firmly planted the notion that the statue was a monument not just for New York City but, indeed, for all of America.
Perhaps Pulitzer’s cleverest ploy was the promise to publish the name of every single contributor in the pages of the World, no matter how small the contribution. The editorial that opened the fund-raising campaign set its tone. He wrote: “The World is the people’s paper and it now appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money [for the statue’s pedestal].” The statue, he said, was paid for by “the masses of the French people. Let us respond in like manner. Let us not wait for the millionaires to give this money. It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America, but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America.” The circulation of the World increased by almost 50,000 copies.
African American newspapers joined in the effort, encouraging their readers to contribute to a monument that would, in part, commemorate the end of slavery. So the money poured in, as single-dollar donations from grandmothers and pennies from the piggybanks of schoolchildren.
On June 15, 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived at Bedloe’s Island inside 214 wooden packing crates. On August 11, 1885, the front page of the World proclaimed, “ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!” The goal had been reached, and slightly exceeded, thanks to more than 120,000 individual contributions.
That’s right. More than 120,000 donations to raise $100,000. That makes the average contribution less than one dollar. Apparently the lumber barons and railroad magnates just couldn’t spare it.
When I heard this tidbit this morning, I couldn’t help but think that not much has changed in America since it began. The poor do the majority of fighting and dying for liberty, from the Revolutionary War to today’s Iraq. The wealthy elite dye their fingers purple and have their photos taken in self-tribute for the liberty bought with other people’s lives.
When I moved to NYC in 1992, all I could think of was getting to see the actual Statue of Liberty in person. As a kid, I thought all the greatness of America was expressed in that single statue. I had pictures of the statue and NY harbor in my ViewMaster, and clicked like a mad thing to see Lady Liberty from every angle. I couldn’t look at it without imagining what it must have felt like for the people who left poverty and tyranny and risked their lives and livelihoods to get here, and were greeted after that long voyage by that remarkable presence. The first time I laid eyes on it in person, I cried unashamedly, and god bless them, my NY friends just looked at me and smiled. They didn’t laugh.
I know that I’ve rambled some in this story. But hearing that there was a time when the future of Lady Liberty was in doubt just made me go a little bit mad I think.
And I can’t help but feel that the future of liberty is again in doubt. Will she survive the wealthy bandits that lead our country now? Apparently, the protection of liberty will always be up to us, the people.
Good night and Good Luck, America.
Blackwater vire 122 employes
Le contracteur prive de securite BlackWater a vire plus de 122 employes ces 3 dernies annees, sur des problemes allant de la mauvaise utilisation d'une arme a des problemes de drogue ou d'alcool.
Ce total represente un septieme de la capacite des effectifs des employes travaillant chez blackwater en Irak et souleve des doutes indeniables sur la qualite de ces gens travailant pour cette societe. Pire encore, depuis 2005 il y a eu plus de 195 incidents de tir soit a peu pres 1.4 accident par semaine, et dans plus de 80% des cas les gardes de blackwater (escalation de force) ont tire en premier alors que leur principale mission en theorie est d'assurer la defense des contracteurs ...
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Ce total represente un septieme de la capacite des effectifs des employes travaillant chez blackwater en Irak et souleve des doutes indeniables sur la qualite de ces gens travailant pour cette societe. Pire encore, depuis 2005 il y a eu plus de 195 incidents de tir soit a peu pres 1.4 accident par semaine, et dans plus de 80% des cas les gardes de blackwater (escalation de force) ont tire en premier alors que leur principale mission en theorie est d'assurer la defense des contracteurs ...
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La recession aux USA aussi devastateur que la bombe atomique
La presse MSM nous dit que tout va bien aux USA, qu'on n'est pas encore dans une recession ou une depression economique. Et pourtant il y a des signes qui ne trompent pas:
Sur Las Vegas dans chaque coin de rue il y a des gens qui vendent leur voiture (trop chere l'essence) ou bien d'autres personnes qui vendent leur maison. Le nombre de gens a la rue est impressionnant: habituellement ils sont concentres dans le downtown de Las Vegas, et depuis quelques semaines il y a des gens qui dorment un peu partout dans la rue, dans chaque coin de rue. Evidemment l'adoucisssement du climat - on est passe de 45 degres a 20 degres - incite les gens a sortir des batiments d'aide sociale - mais jamais je n'avais vu autant de pauvrete si visible dans cette ville.
Las Vegas n'est plus Las Vegas, ville de riches et de debauche. En quelques semaines on dirait qu'une bombe atomique est passee ici, detruisant le paysage economique et le mode de vie de ses habitants. Certains batiments sont meme vides ici, d'autres personnes sont litteralement partis de Las Vegas pour aller chercher du boulot ailleurs, laissant dans leur poubelle des signes de richesse qu'ils ne pouvaient pas emporter avec eux.
Cette bombe atomique c'est la recession economique, ou les gens ne sont plus rien sans travail. Vous pouvez crever la bouche ouverte au Nevada et personne ne viendra a votre aide. Il y a aura toujours de l'argent pour partir en guerre dans ce pays, il n'y aura jamais assez d'argent pour aider tous les pauvres. La crise economique est volontaire: le boom economique des 5 dernieres annees a vu une inflation jamais engendree jusqu'auparavant. Le prix des maisons a multiplie par 4: une maison delabree en bois coute dans les 200.000 dollars ici, ou bien vous ne pouvez pas travailler pour moins de 18 dollars de l'heure pour simplement payer vos factures.
Certains ont vu un boom economique alors que la plupart d'entre nous ont vu une inflation.
Le prix de l'immobilier a grimper en fleche en consequence de la deregulation economique: pour acheter une maison a Las Vegas, vous avez le droit de ne pas declarer vos revenus (no stated income) et vous pouvez meme acheter une maison sans une carte d'identite americaine. La demande du marche immobilier fut creer artificiellement pour changer les prix entre l'offre et la demande, et en echange de ces lois c'est le consommateur qui en fera les frais: apres avoir signe son contrat d'acquisition immobiliere, le remboursement de l'emprunt peut doubler voire tripler si le consommateur n'a pas pris soin de bien lire son contrat, et c'est ce que font plus de 90% des Americains de toute facon. La crise est voulue mais les consequences ne seront jamais maitrisees.
Sur Las Vegas dans chaque coin de rue il y a des gens qui vendent leur voiture (trop chere l'essence) ou bien d'autres personnes qui vendent leur maison. Le nombre de gens a la rue est impressionnant: habituellement ils sont concentres dans le downtown de Las Vegas, et depuis quelques semaines il y a des gens qui dorment un peu partout dans la rue, dans chaque coin de rue. Evidemment l'adoucisssement du climat - on est passe de 45 degres a 20 degres - incite les gens a sortir des batiments d'aide sociale - mais jamais je n'avais vu autant de pauvrete si visible dans cette ville.
Las Vegas n'est plus Las Vegas, ville de riches et de debauche. En quelques semaines on dirait qu'une bombe atomique est passee ici, detruisant le paysage economique et le mode de vie de ses habitants. Certains batiments sont meme vides ici, d'autres personnes sont litteralement partis de Las Vegas pour aller chercher du boulot ailleurs, laissant dans leur poubelle des signes de richesse qu'ils ne pouvaient pas emporter avec eux.
Cette bombe atomique c'est la recession economique, ou les gens ne sont plus rien sans travail. Vous pouvez crever la bouche ouverte au Nevada et personne ne viendra a votre aide. Il y a aura toujours de l'argent pour partir en guerre dans ce pays, il n'y aura jamais assez d'argent pour aider tous les pauvres. La crise economique est volontaire: le boom economique des 5 dernieres annees a vu une inflation jamais engendree jusqu'auparavant. Le prix des maisons a multiplie par 4: une maison delabree en bois coute dans les 200.000 dollars ici, ou bien vous ne pouvez pas travailler pour moins de 18 dollars de l'heure pour simplement payer vos factures.
Certains ont vu un boom economique alors que la plupart d'entre nous ont vu une inflation.
Le prix de l'immobilier a grimper en fleche en consequence de la deregulation economique: pour acheter une maison a Las Vegas, vous avez le droit de ne pas declarer vos revenus (no stated income) et vous pouvez meme acheter une maison sans une carte d'identite americaine. La demande du marche immobilier fut creer artificiellement pour changer les prix entre l'offre et la demande, et en echange de ces lois c'est le consommateur qui en fera les frais: apres avoir signe son contrat d'acquisition immobiliere, le remboursement de l'emprunt peut doubler voire tripler si le consommateur n'a pas pris soin de bien lire son contrat, et c'est ce que font plus de 90% des Americains de toute facon. La crise est voulue mais les consequences ne seront jamais maitrisees.
Congress Quietly Approves Billions More for Iraq War
By John Nichols
The Nation
The Nation
The Senate agreed on Thursday to increase the federal debt limit by $850 billion - from $8.965 trillion to $9.815 trillion - and then proceeded to approve a stop-gap spending bill that gives the Bush White House at least $9 billion in new funding for its war in Iraq.
Additionally, the administration has been given emergency authority to tap further into a $70 billion "bridge fund" to provide new infusions of money for the occupation while the Congress works on appropriations bills for the Department of Defense and other agencies.
Translation: Under the guise of a stop-gap spending bill that is simply supposed to keep the government running until a long-delayed appropriations process is completed - probably in November - the Congress has just approved a massive increase in war funding.
The move was backed by every senator who cast a vote, save one.
Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, the maverick Democrat who has led the fight to end the war and bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, was on the losing end of the 94-1 vote. (The five senators who did not vote, all presidential candidates who are more involved in campaigning than governing, were Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Republicans John McCain and Sam Brownback.)
Said Feingold, "I am disappointed that we are about to begin the 2008 fiscal year without having enacted any of the appropriations bills for that year. I am even more disappointed that we voted on a continuing resolution that provides tens of billions of dollars to continue the misguided war in Iraq but does not include any language to bring that war to a close. We need to keep the federal government operating and make sure our brave troops get all the equipment and supplies they need, but we should not be giving the President a blank check to continue a war that is hurting our national security."
In the House, the continuing resolution passed by a vote of 404 to 14, with 14 other members not voting.
The "no" votes in the House, all cast by anti-war members, came from one Republican, Ron Paul of Texas, and 13 Democrats: Oregon's Earl Blumenauer, Missouri's William Clay, Minnesota's Keith Ellison, California's Bob Filner, Massachusetts' Barney Frank, New York's Maurice Hinchey, Ohio's Dennis Kucinich, Washington's Jim McDermott, New Jersey's Donald Payne, California's Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson and Lynn Woolsey.
That means that, of the 2008 presidential candidates, only Republican Paul and Democrat Kucinich voted against giving the Bush administration a dramatic - if not particularly well publicized - infusion of new money for the war.
"Each year this war is getting more and more costly - both in the amount of money spent and in the number of lives lost. Now this Congress is providing more funds so the administration can continue down a path of destruction and chaos," said Kucinich, who noted the essential role of House and Senate Democratic leaders, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in passing the continuing resolution. "The Democratic leadership in Congress needs to take a stand against this President and say they will not give him any more money. That is the only way to end this war and bring our troops home."
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