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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 6/7/2009, 08:44
Rappel du premier message :
Bonjour Biloulou
Il me semblait que cette nouvelle plairait!
Auteur
Message
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 7/1/2010, 22:08
Biloulou a écrit:
M'enfin, Sylvette, ne vous emportez pas, Arnold a aussi droit au CHANGEment... d'avis !
Droit ou pas, essayez de l'empècher voir. Il est assez baraqué le mec
Un vrai Terminator
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 7/1/2010, 22:15
Bonsoir Zed!
eh oui 62 ans, et apparemment en pleine forme! en plus, j'ai l'impression qu'il n'aime peut-etre pas trop qu'on le prenne pour un, enfin je veux dire, qu'on profite de lui!
Il n'aurait peut-etre pas du, le POTUS.
Je me demande si Paterson de New York va suivre! parce qu'il n'est pas content du tout, du tout non plus.
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Age : 59 Localisation : Longueuil, Québec, Canada, Amérique du nord, planète Terre, du système solaire Galarneau de la voie lactée Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 7/1/2010, 22:27
Peut-être que oui, peut-être que non
(C'est que j'y comprends rien moi au charabia politico-américain... )
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Sujet: 1701 - 7/1/2010, 22:37
Du Deja Vu!
Le POTUS va-t-il prendre la defense de Mr. Reagan? quelque part ca m'etonnerait! entouka, une chose est certaine, Reagan est blanc et ils l'ont bien embarque quand meme! (pour ceux qui a l'epoque insistait sur le cote raciste de l'arrestation du professeur, ami du POTUS)
Reagan grandson arrested; father says he tripped security alarm at home
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- A grandson of former President Reagan was arrested early Thursday at his home in Los Angeles, police said.
Cameron Reagan, 31, was taken into custody by police responding to a house alarm at 12:20 a.m. (3:20 a.m. ET), said Officer Gregory Baek of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Spoiler:
There was a minor amount of force used, Baek said. Reagan was detained for resisting arrest and is being held on $10,000 bail.
A spokeswoman for Reagan's father, Michael, said Cameron Reagan accidentally tripped his security alarm when he came home with four friends.
The silent alarm alerted the police without his realizing it, spokeswoman Kirsten Fedewa said. Cameron Reagan heard a commotion in the front yard of his house -- which was not lit -- and saw people in dark clothing, Fedewa said.
When he asked who they were, they responded "Who are you?" according to Fedewa. When he identified himself and reached for his identification, "they thought he was going for a gun. They tackled and arrested him," Fedewa said.
"Where is the American Civil Liberties Union when Cameron Reagan is tackled in his own driveway?" she said Michael Reagan asked.
Michael Reagan, a conservative commentator, compared the incident to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at his home in July last year.
The incident sparked a national debate about race. President Obama invited Gates, who is black, and the officer who arrested him, who is white, to a "Beer Summit" at the White House.
"I'm waiting for a call from the president. This sounds a lot like what happened to Obama's buddy."
"Cameron drinks Red Stripe," Michael Reagan said.
Resisting arrest is a misdemeanor. Fedewa said she did not know if Cameron Reagan had been drinking at the time of the arrest.
Ronald Reagan was president from 1981 to 1989. A former actor and governor of California, he died in 2004 at age 93. Michael Reagan is his oldest son.
CNN's Richard Allen Greene and Irving Last contributed to this report.
Zed
Nombre de messages : 16907 Age : 59 Localisation : Longueuil, Québec, Canada, Amérique du nord, planète Terre, du système solaire Galarneau de la voie lactée Date d'inscription : 13/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 7/1/2010, 23:35
Sylvette a écrit:
Du Deja Vu!
Le POTUS va-t-il prendre la defense de Mr. Reagan? quelque part ca m'etonnerait! entouka, une chose est certaine, Reagan est blanc et ils l'ont bien embarque quand meme! (pour ceux qui a l'epoque insistait sur le cote raciste de l'arrestation du professeur, ami du POTUS)
Reagan grandson arrested; father says he tripped security alarm at home
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- A grandson of former President Reagan was arrested early Thursday at his home in Los Angeles, police said.
Cameron Reagan, 31, was taken into custody by police responding to a house alarm at 12:20 a.m. (3:20 a.m. ET), said Officer Gregory Baek of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Spoiler:
There was a minor amount of force used, Baek said. Reagan was detained for resisting arrest and is being held on $10,000 bail.
A spokeswoman for Reagan's father, Michael, said Cameron Reagan accidentally tripped his security alarm when he came home with four friends.
The silent alarm alerted the police without his realizing it, spokeswoman Kirsten Fedewa said. Cameron Reagan heard a commotion in the front yard of his house -- which was not lit -- and saw people in dark clothing, Fedewa said.
When he asked who they were, they responded "Who are you?" according to Fedewa. When he identified himself and reached for his identification, "they thought he was going for a gun. They tackled and arrested him," Fedewa said.
"Where is the American Civil Liberties Union when Cameron Reagan is tackled in his own driveway?" she said Michael Reagan asked.
Michael Reagan, a conservative commentator, compared the incident to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at his home in July last year.
The incident sparked a national debate about race. President Obama invited Gates, who is black, and the officer who arrested him, who is white, to a "Beer Summit" at the White House.
"I'm waiting for a call from the president. This sounds a lot like what happened to Obama's buddy."
"Cameron drinks Red Stripe," Michael Reagan said.
Resisting arrest is a misdemeanor. Fedewa said she did not know if Cameron Reagan had been drinking at the time of the arrest.
Ronald Reagan was president from 1981 to 1989. A former actor and governor of California, he died in 2004 at age 93. Michael Reagan is his oldest son.
CNN's Richard Allen Greene and Irving Last contributed to this report.
C'est quoi le POTUS (President Of The Unates State) ???
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 8/1/2010, 06:31
Oui Zed
Pas de mon invention, je ne me serais pas permise
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Sujet: 1705 - 8/1/2010, 10:26
WOW! ca continue
C-SPAN CEO: Obama Used Us as 'Political Football'
FOXNews.com
C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb accused President Obama of using his network as a "political football" during the presidential campaign, citing the president's broken pledge to televise health care reform negotiations on the nonpartisan channel founded to cover Congress.
Spoiler:
C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb accused President Obama of using his network as a "political football" during the presidential campaign, citing the president's broken pledge to televise health care reform negotiations on the nonpartisan channel which is devoted to covering Washington.
Lamb, speaking on liberal host Bill Press' radio show Wednesday, said Obama had "no right" to assume C-SPAN would cover the talks in the first place. And while he said his network would naturally want to cover the negotiations in full anyway, Lamb expressed disappointment that the White House has not lived up to that commitment.
He said the "only time" the network has been allowed to cover the White House's involvement in the talks was a "one-hour" event in the East Room which he described as a "show-horse" affair.
"We are an independent journalistic institution, and the president, when he was a candidate, had no right to assume that we would cover anything ... That was the first thing. We were used as kind of a political football during the campaign," Lamb said, according to an audio recording of the interview posted on Breitbart.tv but not available on Press's radio show's Web site.
"We obviously would cover these negotiations. ... It's just a gut reaction that if we pay for something, and it's the public's business, we ought to be able to see how it's done," he added.
The comments were the latest shot in the semi-feud between C-SPAN and Democrats in control of the health care talks.
Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate Dec. 30 urging them to open "all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings," to televised coverage on his network. "The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of the sessions LIVE and in their entirety," he wrote.
The request generated tremendous attention, since Obama, as a candidate, repeatedly said he would televise the talks on C-SPAN but has not followed through since then.
Asked about C-SPAN's request, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the president's No. 1 priority is ironing out the differences between the House and Senate bills. But he said Obama does not regret his campaign promises of transparency.
Republicans on the House Rules Committee wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday urging her to grant the C-SPAN request, complaining that the bulk of the negotiations to date have taken place behind closed doors.
"We believe honoring C-SPAN's basic request is the absolute minimum the majority must do on behalf of keeping the American people informed about a process that will affect every health care decision made by every American family, doctor and small business for decades to come," wrote Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the committee, and three other Republicans.
Several Democrats have defended the health care negotiations to date as transparent.
"There's been more hearings, more debates on the House floor, more opportunity for the public to be heard," Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., told Fox News. "I think we're just talking about when you get to the final stage and there has to be some give-and-take between the House and the Senate, it's inevitable that there has to be some private conversations."
But Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., criticized his colleagues over the transparency issue in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
"They said it would be transparent. Why isn't it?" asked Sestak, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. "At times, I find the caucus is a real disappointment. We aren't transparent, not just to the public but at times to the members."
Lamb said he doesn't have his hopes up that any negotiations will be opened to TV cameras.
"I don't have any great expectation," he said. "We're not doing anything more on this. We've asked and the public knows we've asked."
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Sujet: 1706 - 8/1/2010, 13:07
Jack Cafferty? Cafferty de CNN??? WOW!
CNN's Cafferty Rips Obama Openness Pledge As A "Lie"
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Sujet: 1707 - 8/1/2010, 13:12
Gingrich: Obama Administration Is A "Ruthless Machine"
"... This is a ruthless machine that doesn’t care what it says, it cares what it can get away with."
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Sujet: 1708 - 8/1/2010, 14:20
Obamacare ou comment la solution apportee par les Democrates au systeme sante en decuple les problemes.
January 8, 2010
Health Care Tall Tales ByRobert Robb
Spoiler:
Health care reform, as passed by the Senate, does more damage to the federal budget than the country's health care system.
That's not to say that the changes to the health care system are inconsequential.
The Senate health care bill is not socialized medicine or government-run health care. But it does complete the process of transforming health care from principally a private good into a public good, for which government is ultimately responsible.
Low-income health care programs would be expanded. But most working Americans would still get their health care from private insurance companies.
Those insurance companies, however, would be heavily regulated and rendered into something akin to public utilities.
Government would decide what benefits would be offered. Pricing and profits would be severely restricted. All insurance companies would have to accept all applicants and medical underwriting would be prohibited. What consumers would have to pay out-of-pocket would be limited by government. Government would subsidize the purchase of individual policies for those not covered by their employers up to a family income of $88,000.
This structure of delivering health care through private insurance companies regulated much as public utilities is probably unsustainable.
Given the generous subsidies for the purchase of individual insurance policies, employers are likely to gradually ease out of providing that benefit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that eight to nine million Americans will lose their employer-provided health insurance under the Senate bill. I suspect that's a gross underestimate.
The penalties in the bill for employers not providing insurance and individuals not purchasing it are considerably less than the cost of insurance. So, the financial incentive will be for employers not to provide coverage and individuals not to purchase it until they are sick. That's not a cost burden the private insurance utility companies will be able to sustain.
Controlling costs requires telling some people they will not get the treatments they want, or at least not paid for by others. But as public utilities, each denial becomes a potential political issue, with politicians even more emboldened to meddle in the internal decision-making of nominally private insurance companies.
The odds are overwhelming that this public utility model will fail and ultimately give way to a truly national health care system comparable to those in Western Europe and Canada. I have long thought that such a fate was more likely than not. Republicans probably lost their opportunity for the alternative of a robust individual health insurance market by not pushing such reforms earlier last decade, when they had political power, and their failure, even today, to accept the concept of government as an insurer of last-resort for the non-poor.
The health care changes, while consequential, are probably just the grinding of the wheel of history, albeit in the wrong direction. The damage to the federal budget, however, is a matter of irresponsible choice.
In a town that runs on fiction, there is no taller tale in Washington than the claim that this bill will reduce the federal deficit.
With different provisions taking effect at different times, the only way to judge its fiscal impact is as fully implemented. In 2019, CBO estimates that the health care subsidies in the bill will cost nearly $200 billion a year. Supposedly that's offset, but the offsets are hoaxes.
There's $35 billion in taxes on high-value insurance policies that probably won't exist. There's $46 billion in cuts to non-physician Medicare providers Congress won't follow through on. And there's $35 billion in cuts to physicians Congress knows it will restore.
So the bill, as a practical matter, will easily add more than $100 billion a year to the federal deficit. The state of the federal government's finances is the chief worry of the American people at this point, and for good reason. This bill makes them considerably worse.
Robert Robb is a columnist for the Arizona Republic and a RealClearPolitics contributor. Reach him at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com. Read more of his work at robertrobb.com.
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Sujet: 1709 - 8/1/2010, 14:48
The Risk of Catastrophic Victory
Obama is in the midst of one. Can the GOP avert one of their own? By PEGGY NOONAN JANUARY 7, 2010, 6:33 P.M. ET
Passage of the health-care bill will be, for the administration, a catastrophic victory. If it is voted through in time for the State of the Union Address, as President Obama hopes, half the chamber will rise to their feet and cheer. They will be cheering their own demise.
Spoiler:
If health care does not pass, it will also be a disaster, but only for the administration, not the country. Critics will say, "You didn't even waste our time successfully."
What a blunder this thing has been, win or lose, what a miscalculation on the part of the president.
The administration misjudged the mood and the moment. Mr. Obama ran, won, was sworn in and began his work under the spirit of 2008—expansive, part dreamy and part hubristic. But as soon as he was inaugurated ,the president ran into the spirit of 2009—more dug in, more anxious, more bottom-line—and didn't notice. At the exact moment the public was announcing it worried about jobs first and debt and deficits second, the administration decided to devote its first year to health care, which no one was talking about. The great recession changed everything, but not right away.
In a way Mr. Obama made the same mistake President Bush did on immigration, producing a big, mammoth, comprehensive bill when the public mood was for small, discrete steps in what might reasonably seem the right direction.
The public in 2009 would have been happy to see a simple bill that mandated insurance companies offer coverage without respect to previous medical conditions. The administration could have had that—and the victory of it—last winter.
Instead, they were greedy for glory.
It was not worth it—not worth the town-hall uprisings and the bleeding of centrist support, not worth the rebranding of the president from center-left leader to leftist leader, not worth the proof it provided that the public's concerns and the administration's are not the same, not worth a wasted first year that should have been given to two things and two things only: economic matters and national security.
Those were not only the two topics on the public's mind the past 10 months, they were precisely the issues that presented themselves in screaming headlines at the end of the year: unemployment and the national-security breakdowns that led to the Christmas bomb plot and, earlier, the Fort Hood massacre. "That's two strikes," said the president's national security adviser, James Jones, to USA Today's Susan Page. Left unsaid: Three and you're out.
Just as bad, or worse, the president's focus on health care allowed the public to infer that his mind was not focused on our security. He'd frittered his attention on issues that were secondary and tertiary—climate change, health care—while al Qaeda moved, and the system stuttered. A lack of focus breeds bureaucratic complacency, complacency gives rise to slovenliness, slovenliness results in what was said in the report issued Thursday: that, faced with clear evidence of coming danger, the government failed, as they're saying on TV, to "connect the dots." Dots? They were boulders.
Chad Crowe
I am wondering if the Obama administration thinks it vaguely dishonorable to be popular. If you mention to Obama staffers that they really have to be concerned about the polls, they look at you with a certain . . . not disdain but patience, as if you don't understand the purpose of politics.That purpose, they believe, is to move the governed toward greater justice. Just so, but in democracy you do this by garnering and galvanizing public support. But they think it's weaselly to be well thought of.
In politics you must tend to the garden. The garden is the constituency, in Mr. Obama's case the country. No great endeavor is possible without its backing. In a modern presidency especially you have to know this, because there will be times when history throws you a crisis, and to address it you may have to do an unpopular thing. A president in those circumstances must use all the goodwill he's built up over the months and years to get through that moment and survive doing what he thinks is right. Mr. Obama acts as if he doesn't know this. He hasn't built up popularity to use on a rainy day. If he had, he'd be getting through the Christmas plot drama better than he is
The Obama people have taken to pointing out how their guy doesn't govern by the polls. This is all too believable. The Bush people, too, used to bang away about how he didn't govern by the polls.
They both added unneeded stress to the past 10 years, and it is understandable if many of us now think, "Oh for a president who'd govern by the polls."
If Mr. Obama is extremely lucky—and we're not sure he's a lucky man anymore—he will get a Republican Congress in 2010, and they will do for him what Newt Gingrich did for Bill Clinton: right his ship, give him a foil, guide him while allowing him to look as if he's resisting, bend him while allowing him to look strong.
Which gets us to the Republicans. The question isn't whether they'll win seats in the House and Senate this year, and the question isn't even how many. The question is whether the party will be worthy of victory, whether it learned from its losses in 2006 and '08, whether it deserves leadership. Whether Republicans are a worthy alternative. Whether, in short, they are serious.
I spoke a few weeks ago with a respected Republican congressman who told me with some excitement of a bill he's put forward to address the growth of entitlements and long-term government spending. We only have three or four years to get it right, he said. He made a strong case. I asked if his party was doing anything to get behind the bill, and he got the blanched look people get when they're trying to keep their faces from betraying anything. Not really, he said. Then he shrugged. "They're waiting for the Democrats to destroy themselves."
This isn't news, really, but it was startling to hear a successful Republican political practitioner say it.
Republican political professionals in Washington assume a coming victory. They do not see that 2010 could be a catastrophic victory for them. If they seize back power without clear purpose, if they are not serious, if they do the lazy and cynical thing by just sitting back and letting the Democrats lose, three bad things will happen. They will contribute to the air of cynicism in which our citizens marinate. Their lack of seriousness will be discerned by the Republican base, whose enthusiasm and generosity will be blunted. And the Republicans themselves will be left unable to lead when their time comes, because operating cynically will allow the public to view them cynically, which will lessen the chance they will be able to do anything constructive.
In this sense, the cynical view—we can sit back and wait—is naive. The idealistic view—we must stand for things and move on them now—is shrewder.
Political professionals are pugilistic, and often see politics in terms of fight movies: "Rocky," "Raging Bull." They should be thinking now of a different one, of Tom Hanks at the end of "Saving Private Ryan." "Earn this," he said to the man whose life he'd helped save.
Earn this. Be worthy of it. Be serious.
I like her!
Ceci dit les Republicains avaient annonce avoir d'autres propositions que celle des Democrates, on ne leur a meme pas donne la chance de les presenter. J'en avais parle ici a l'epoque.
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Sujet: 1710 - 8/1/2010, 14:58
Pour tous et pour Biloulou en particulier
JANUARY 8, 2010, 8:50 A.M. ET
Virgin Moves Into Retail Banking
By MARIETTA CAUCHI And DIGBY LARNER Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Friday took a step into U.K. retail banking as his Virgin Money business said it had offered to buy regional lender Church House Trust in a deal worth £12.28 million ($19.6 million).
Spoiler:
Virgin is one of a number of companies that see opportunities for fresh entrants in the U.K. banking sector after the financial crisis left many of the traditional players with tarnished reputations.
Richard Branson
"The acquisition of Church House Trust will provide the platform from which Virgin Money will develop a retail banking business in the U.K. -- offering a full range of products to consumers under the Virgin Money brand," Virgin said.
Virgin Money has been keen to set up a small bank that it can grow organically and through acquisitions since Mr. Branson tried, but failed, to take over Northern Rock, the U.K. bank that collapsed in 2007. Virgin Group was a preferred bidder for the business but was left out in the cold when the U.K. government said none of the rescue plans put forward for the bank provided taxpayers with enough guarantees. The bank was nationalized.
Last October, Virgin Money applied to the U.K. Financial Services Authority to become a bank and, at the same time, made an application to buy Church House Trust. It will likely use its new asset as a platform to expand, with its eye on several targets in the sector as it continues to restructure.
Both Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Lloyds Banking Group PLC, in which the government now owns stakes of 84% and 43% respectively, are having to shed assets following a European Commission ruling. And the British government is also looking for buyers for Northern Rock.
Bryan Sanderson, former chairman of Northern Rock, was at one point reported to be considering joining the board of a Virgin-owned bank.
"Research conducted by Virgin Money over the past two years has shown consistently that there is a clear consumer demand for Virgin Money to enter the banking market," Virgin said. "The research demonstrates that Virgin Money would be both a trusted deposit taker and mortgage lender."
Virgin Money currently has over 2.5 million customers and offers payment cards, savings and investment products, general insurance and life assurance in the U.K. Following the latest acquisition, Virgin Money will have a Tier 1 capital ratio above 35% and plans to inject £37.3 million of new capital into Church House Trust.
Write to Digby Larner at digby.larner@dowjones.com
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 8/1/2010, 15:02
Mauvaise nouvelle pour les Americains, l'economie a perdu 85 000 postes. Le taux de chomage est toujours a 10%.
Le POTUS va enfin s'y atteler.
Economy loses 85K jobs, unemployment rate steady
By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER The Associated Press Friday, January 8, 2010; 8:57 AM WASHINGTON -- The economy lost more jobs than expected in December while the unemployment rate held steady at 10 percent, as a sluggish economic recovery has yet to revive hiring among the nation's employers.
Spoiler:
The Labor Department said Friday that employers cut 85,000 jobs last month, worse than the 8,000 drop analysts expected.
A sharp drop in the labor force, a sign more of the jobless are giving up on their search for work, kept the unemployment rate at the same rate as in November. Once people stop looking for jobs, they are no longer counted among the unemployed.
When discouraged workers and part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs are included, the so-called "underemployment" rate in December rose to 17.3 percent, from 17.2 percent in October. That's just below a revised figure of 17.4 percent in October, the highest on records dating from 1994.
Revisions to the previous two months' data showed the economy actually generated 4,000 jobs in November, the first gain in nearly two years. But the revisions showed it also lost 16,000 more jobs than previously estimated in October.
The report caps a disastrous year for U.S. workers. Employers cut 4.2 million jobs in 2009, and the unemployment rate averaged 9.3 percent. That's compared to an average of 5.8 percent in 2008 and 4.6 percent in 2007. The economy has lost more than 8 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.
Most economists worry that 2010 won't be much better. Federal Reserve officials, in a meeting last month, anticipated that unemployment will decline "only gradually," according to minutes of the meeting released earlier this week. The Fed and most private economists expect the unemployment rate will remain above 9 percent through the end of this year.
If jobs remain scarce, consumer confidence and spending could flag, potentially slowing the economic recovery. Many analysts estimate the economy grew by 4 percent or more at an annual rate in the October-December quarter, after 2.2 percent growth in the third quarter.
But the economy will need to grow faster than that to bring down the unemployment rate. And the concern is that much of the recovery stems from temporary factors, such as government stimulus efforts and businesses rebuilding inventories.
Other figures from the government's report were mixed: the average work week remained unchanged at 33.2 hours, near October's record low of 33. Most economists hoped that would increase, as employers are likely to add hours for their current employees before hiring new workers.
On the positive side, there was a big jump in temporary hiring of 46,500, bringing the total increase in temporary employment to 166,000 since July. Companies also customarily bring on temporary workers before adding permanent ones.
Job losses remained widespread: manufacturing lost 27,000 jobs and construction shed 53,000, while retailers, the leisure and hospitality industries and government also cut workers.
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Sujet: 1712 - 8/1/2010, 16:02
Obama's Year One: Contra Robert Kagan
President Obama’s policies toward Afghanistan and Iran—or lack thereof—have received more attention than any other issues during his first year in office. And with good reason. An American defeat in Afghanistan would throw an already dangerous region further into turmoil and severely damage America’s reputation for reliability around the world. Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would bring about a substantial shift in the regional power balance against the United States and its allies, spark a new round of global proliferation, provide a significant boost to the forces of Islamic radicalism, and bring the United States that much further under the shadow of nuclear terrorism.
Spoiler:
If Obama’s policies were to produce a geopolitical doubleheader—defeat in Afghanistan and a nuclear-armed Iran—his historical legacy could wind up being a good deal worse than that of his predecessor. If he manages to make progress in Afghanistan and finds some way to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he will be remembered for saving the world from a dire situation.
Less noticed amidst these crises, however, has been a broader shift in American foreign policy that could have equally great and possibly longer-lasting implications. The Obama presidency may mark the beginning of a new era in American foreign policy and be seen as the moment when the United States finally turned away from the grand strategy it adopted after World War II and assumed a different relationship to the rest of the world.
The old strategy, which survived for six decades, rested on three pillars: military and economic primacy, what Truman-era strategists called a “preponderance of power,” especially in Europe and East Asia; a global network of formal military and political alliances, mostly though not exclusively with fellow democracies; and an open trading and financial system. The idea, as Averell Harriman explained back in 1947, was to create “a balance of power preponderantly in favor of the free countries.” Nations outside the liberal order were to be checked and, in time, transformed, as George F. Kennan suggested in his Long Telegram and as Paul Nitze’s famous strategy document, NSC-68, reiterated. The goal, expressed by Harry Truman in 1947, was first to strengthen “freedom-loving nations” and then to “create the conditions that will lead eventually to personal freedom and happiness for all mankind.”
It is often said that Bill Clinton was the first post–Cold War president, but in many ways the Clinton presidency was devoted to completing the mission as set out by the architects of America’s post–World War II strategy. The National Security Strategy Document of 1996, as Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier observe in America Between the Wars, used the words “democracy” or “democratic” more than 130 times. As Clinton’s term ended, American foreign policy rested on the same three pillars as in the days of Truman and Acheson: the primacy of America, now cast as the “indispensable nation”; an expanding alliance of democratic nations; and an open economic order operating in line with the “Washington consensus.”
Obama and his foreign policy team have apparently rejected two of the main pillars of this post–World War II strategy. Instead of attempting to perpetuate American primacy, they are seeking to manage what they regard as America’s unavoidable decline relative to other great powers. They see themselves as the architects of the “post-American” world. Although they will not say so publicly, in private they are fairly open about their policy of managed decline. In dealings with China, especially, administration officials believe they are playing from a hopelessly weak hand. Instead of trying to reverse the decline of American power, however, they are reorienting American foreign policy to adjust to it.
The new strategy requires, in their view, accommodating the world’s rising powers, principally China and Russia, rather than attempting to contain the ambitions of those powers. Their accommodation consists in granting China and Russia what rising powers always want: greater respect for their political systems at home and greater hegemony within their respective regions.
This accommodation in turn has required a certain distancing from the post–World War II allies. Increasing cooperation with the two great powers would be difficult if not impossible if the United States remained committed to the old alliances which were, after all, originally designed to contain them—NATO in the case of Russia, and, in the case of China, the bilateral alliances with Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, and the new strategic partnership with India. Despite paying lip service to “multilateralism,” the Obama administration does not intend to build its foreign policy around these alliances, which some officials regard as relics of the Cold War. The administration seeks instead to create a new “international architecture” with a global consortium of powers—the G-20 world.
This might seem like realism to some, because accommodating allegedly stronger powers is a hallmark of realist foreign policy. Henry Kissinger practiced it in the years of Vietnam and détente, when the United States seemed weak and the Soviet Union strong. But there is also in this approach a remarkable idealism about the way the world works that Kissinger would never have endorsed. The Obama administration’s core assumption, oft-repeated by the president and his advisers, is that the great powers today share common interests. Relations among them need “no longer be seen as a zero sum game,” Obama has argued. The Obama Doctrine is about “win-win” and “getting to ‘yes.’” The new “mission” of the United States, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is to be the great convener of nations, gathering the powers to further common interests and seek common solutions to the world’s problems. It is on this basis that the administration has sought to “reset” relations with Russia, embark on a new policy of “strategic reassurance” with China, and in general seek what Clinton has called a “new era of engagement based on common interests, shared values, and mutual respect.” Administration officials play down the idea that great powers have clashing interests that might hamper cooperation. This extends to the question of ideology, where the administration either denies or makes light of the possibility that autocratic powers may have fundamentally different perceptions of their interests than democracies.
The new American posture they propose is increasingly one of neutrality. In order to be the world’s “convener,” after all, the United States cannot play favorites, either between allies and adversaries, or between democrats and tyrants. A common feature of the administration’s first year, not surprisingly, has been the slighting of traditional allies in an effort to seek better ties and cooperation with erstwhile and future competitors or adversaries. In Europe, American relations with Poland and the Czech Republic, and by extension other Eastern European nations, suffered when the administration canceled a missile defense deployment in deference to Russian demands. In the Middle East, relations with Israel have suffered as a result of the Obama administration’s pressure on the question of settlements, which was aimed at gaining better cooperation from the Palestinians and their Arab supporters. In Asia, relations with India, Japan, and Taiwan have suffered as a result of the administration’s accommodating policy of “strategic reassurance” to China. In Latin America, Obama’s apparent desire to improve relations with Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela and Raúl Castro’s Cuba have created insecurity among close allies like Colombia and anti-Chávez forces in Honduras and elsewhere.
The problem is that while the administration may not believe great- power relations need to be “zero-sum,” the reality is that throughout the world’s contested regions, an American tilt toward former adversaries unavoidably comes at the expense of friends. If an aggrieved Russia demands that the West respect a sphere of influence in its old imperial domain, there is no “win-win” solution. Either Russian influence grows, and the ability of neighboring powers to resist it weakens. Or Russian ambitions for a sphere of special interest are checked, and Russia is unhappy. In Asia, the United States is either going to continue playing the role of balancer against Chinese power, or it is not. And if it is not, then American alliances in the region must suffer.
For a United States bent on “problem solving” with Russia and China, the easiest solution may be to accede to their desires, compelling those in their presumed spheres of influence to accede as well.
This cannot help but alter America’s relations with its allies.
As it happens, the vast majority of those allies happen to be democracies, while the great powers being accommodated happen to be autocracies. The Obama administration’s apparent eschewing of the democracy agenda is not just a matter of abandoning the allegedly idealistic notion of democracy promotion in failed or transition states. It is not choosing not to promote democracy in Egypt or Pakistan or Afghanistan. And it is not just about whether to continue to press Russia and China for reform—which was part of the old post–World War II strategy, continued under post–Cold War administrations. The Obama administration’s new approach raises the question of whether the United States will continue to favor democracies, including allied democracies, in their disputes with the great-power autocracies, or whether the United States will now begin to adopt a more neutral posture in an effort to get to “yes” with the great autocratic powers. In this new mode, the United States may be unhinging itself from the alliance structures it had erected in the post–World War II strategy.
In fact, as part of its recalibration of American strategy, the Obama administration has inevitably de-emphasized the importance of democracy in the hierarchy of American interests. Most have assumed this is a reaction to George W. Bush’s rhetorical support for democracy promotion, allegedly discredited by the Iraq War. This may be part of the explanation. But the Obama administration’s de-emphasis of democracy should also be understood as the direct consequence of its new geopolitical strategy—a sign of America’s new international neutrality.
As part of what the Obama administration calls the “new era of engagement,” the United States has also moved toward a more disinterested posture in the struggle between autocratic governments and their political opponents. This has certainly been the case in Iran, where the Obama administration has gone out of its way to avoid doing anything that could be construed as sympathizing with the Iranian opposition against the autocratic clerical regime. Indeed, Obama’s strategy toward Iran has placed the United States objectively on the side of the government’s efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, rather than in league with the opposition’s efforts to prolong the crisis. Engagement with Tehran has meant a studious disengagement from the regime’s opponents. The same has been true in its dealings with China. Only in the case of Russia has the administration continued to voice some support for civil opposition figures. But increasingly autocratic trends in Russia have not been allowed to get in the way of the “reset.”
All of this might seem to have the flavor of a new realism in American foreign policy. But, again, Obama’s approach derives from an idealistic premise: that the United States can approach the world as a disinterested promoter of the common good, that its interests do not clash with those of the other great powers, and that better relations can be had if the United States demonstrates its good intentions to other powers. During the Cold War, Obama officials argue, the United States used its power to take sides. Now the Obama administration seeks to be a friend to all. Obama’s foreign policy increasingly seems to rest on the supposition that other nations will act on the basis of what they perceive to be the goodwill, good intentions, moral purity, and disinterestedness of the United States. If other nations have refused to cooperate with the United States, it is because they perceive the United States as somehow against them, which, of course, it was. Obama is working to change that perception. From the outreach to Iran and the Muslim world, to the call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, to the desire for a “reset” in relations with Russia, the central point of Obama’s diplomacy is that America is now different. It is better. It is no longer choosing sides. And, therefore, it is time for other nations to cooperate.
Obama believes that his own story is a powerful foreign policy tool in this regard, that drawing attention to what makes him different, not only from Bush but from all past American presidents, will lead the world to take a fresh look at America and its policies and make new diplomatic settlements possible. He hopes that by displaying earnestness to change American practices, he can build an image of greater moral purity, and that this in turn will produce diplomatic triumphs that have hitherto eluded us.
The last president who sincerely pursued this approach was Woodrow Wilson. He, too, believed that the display of evident goodwill and desire for peace, uncorrupted by the base motives of national interest or ambition, gave him the special moral authority to sway other nations. His gifts to persuade, however, proved ephemeral. Not only the nations of Europe but his own United States proved more self-interested and less amenable to moral appeals. We will see whether Obama fares better. But, so far, the signs are not promising.
Indeed, as one watches the Obama administration launch its “new era of engagement,” one wonders whether the Obama team can ever acknowledge that it has failed. And if it does acknowledge it, what then? Will the administration then realize that the world cannot so easily be made anew, that the old challenges remain, and that the best strategy may be closer to that which was pursued by so many presidents of different political inclinations since World War II: America as the world’s “indispensable nation”? The question then will be not how to manage American decline, but how to prevent it.
Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams.
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 8/1/2010, 18:16
Chapeau pour le choix du POTUS! 2 responsables qui realisent parfaitement le probleme!
Et il ne leur etait reellement pas venu a l'esprit que la strategie des bombes humaines puisse etre utilisee ailleurs qu'au Moyen Orient? Bon, c'est vrai la derniere fois, le gars avait mis l'explosif dans sa chaussure au lieu de son slip. Ca sange tout.... Incroyable!
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Sujet: 1714 - 9/1/2010, 07:37
... meme a San Francisco!!! (bon, peut-etre pas pour les memes raisons que la droite! )
Lies, Half-truths and Contradictions: Obama said health care talks would be on C-SPAN...but they're not
We're dusting off the Lies, Half-truths and Contradictions hammer to pound President Obama for breaking a campaign promise to televise the health care bill talks on C-SPAN.
We want to watch Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate czar Harry Reid try to merge their respective bills. We're waiting for it to show up on C-SPAN, and really, there's only so much "Washington Journal" a soul can take before wanting to peel his eyeballs out.
Yeah, yeah, there's been plenty of debate on the House and Senate floors and in various Hill committees (broadcast yes on yawwwwwwwwwn, C-SPAN). But as Comrade Lochhead told us the other day, C-SPAN wants the O to make good on his promise to cable-cast the health care sausage making.
He said it a bunch of times. In a debate nearly two years ago in LA, the O said broadcasting the crafting of health care policy would keep everybody honest. He'd repeat variations of this on the stump throughout the campaign:
"Not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN," said candidate O back then in this very state.
Hasn't really happened. We haven't seen the most grisly parts of the sausage-making.
Other than a dog-and-pony show or two early in the process, President O has kept the show PG-13. Deals with the drug companies and hospitals to cut costs were made out of C-SPAN's earshot. And that's not what he promised at a town hall in Virginia, Aug. 21, 2008:
"Insurance companies, drug companies — they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."
Sadly, to fill this void in promised health care negotiation programming, C-SPAN has aired countless hours of mixed martial arts matches, lingerie fashion shows and snuff films....or so we've heard.
So what does the Administration have to say about this? Here's some fine video of O mouthpiece Robert Gibbs not answering the question:
J'avais bien dit que ca n'allait pas s'arranger pour Gibbs!
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Sujet: 1715 - 9/1/2010, 16:41
Hey Lawrence!
En fait... il n'y a rien de drole surtout pas en ce qui concerne la securite de notre pays.
O'Reilly
------- Rasmussen
Date ............... Presidential Approval Index - Strongly Appr - Strongly Disappr - Total Appr - Total Disappr
01/09/2010
-17
26%
43%
46%
53%
01/08/2010
-14
27%
41%
46%
54%
01/07/2010
-12
27%
39%
48%
52%
01/06/2010
-10
29%
39%
49%
51%
01/05/2010
-13
27%
40%
49%
51%
01/04/2010
-15
26%
41%
47%
52%
01/03/2010
No Polling
01/02/2010
No Polling
01/01/2010
No Polling
----------
01/22/2009
+30
44%
14%
64%
29%
01/21/2009
+28
44%
16%
65%
30%
When tracking President Obama’s job approval on a daily basis, people sometimes get so caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations that they miss the bigger picture. To look at the longer-term trends, Rasmussen Reports compiles the numbers on a full-month basis, and the results can be seen in the graphics below.
The president’s Approval Index ratings fell three points in December following two-point declines in both October and November.
Looking back, the president’s honeymoon ended quickly before his ratings stabilized from March through May. They tumbled in June and July as the health care debate began before stabilizing again over the summer. Public attitudes towards the health care legislation have hardened in recent months, with most voters opposed to the work being done in Congress.
As Congress has drawn closer to achieving the president’s goals on health care, unemployment also has been rising, and Obama’s ratings have reflected the turmoil.
The number who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s performance inched up a point to 41% in December. The number who Strongly Approved fell two more points to 26%. That leads to a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15, a new low for Obama.
Also in December, the president’s total approval dropped two points to 46%. His total disapproval gained a point to 53%. It’s worth noting that the Approval Index ratings have generally proven to be a good leading indicator of the president’s overall approval ratings.
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 9/1/2010, 19:19
Citation :
En fait... il n'y a rien de drole surtout pas en ce qui concerne la securite de notre pays.
O'Reilly
Tout à fait vrai!
Falafel O'Reilly... suivi de Cheney et Palin!
C'est pas drôle, c'est pathétique!
Biloulou
Nombre de messages : 54566 Localisation : Jardins suspendus sur la Woluwe - Belgique Date d'inscription : 27/10/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 9/1/2010, 20:27
Salut, Pétard le Pathétique !
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Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 10/1/2010, 00:19
Petard, le pathetique canard, ca lui va assez bien.
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Sujet: 1719 - 10/1/2010, 00:47
Time For Some To Slip Noose Of ObamaCare
By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON AND ANDY WICKERSHAM[/url]Posted 01/08/2010 06:29 PM ET
It's painfully obvious the American people don't want ObamaCare and equally obvious that the Democrats, especially President Obama, don't particularly care.
Spoiler:
The Democrats feel inoculated against voter dissatisfaction because they've bought into their own wishful narrative: that voters punished them in 1994 because they failed to pass HillaryCare, not because they tried. Thus, the thinking goes, the way to get voters to forgive them for ObamaCare is to pass it.
They better hope they're right, because there are an abundance of Democrats occupying red-state seats in Congress who appear to be living on borrowed time.
But the surprise announcements by Sens. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota that they won't seek reelection suggest that even Democrats are starting to doubt their own rosy claims about 1994 — with good reason.
To examine what really happened in 1994, we separated the congressional Democrats into ideological thirds (more conservative, typical, and most liberal), using American Conservative Union (ACU) ratings. We then analyzed how each group fared in seeking reelection over the last 20 years.
In most years, the more conservative Democrats — who generally run in the most competitive districts — fared the worst. The more conservative Democrats lost 56% more often than typical (middle third) Democrats — except in 1994. That year, the typical Democrats lost 67% more often than their more conservative Democratic colleagues.
So, voters clearly went comparatively easy on the Democrats who — with pressure from Republicans — didn't support HillaryCare and led to its defeat. And that was even without a congressional floor vote on HillaryCare.
This time, voters will be even better informed. If history is any guide, they'll likely spare those who vote against the final version of ObamaCare, while reserving their wrath for its supporters.
And as voters look to take out their frustrations on ObamaCare supporters, they'll find a surprisingly large number of representatives who beg the question of how they ever got elected to Congress in the first place — given how little their views have in common with their constituents' views.
Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, up for reelection in 2012, represents a state that has backed the Republican candidate by double-digit margins in 10 straight presidential elections, a feat matched only by Utah and Idaho — and not matched in reverse by any state on the Left.
Yet, on a scale of 0 to 100 (with 100 being most conservative), Nelson's lifetime ACU rating is on the liberal side of the divide: 47. Following his initial vote in favor of ObamaCare, a Rasmussen poll now shows Nelson down 31 percentage points. Sen. Kent Conrad (up for reelection in 2012) hails from North Dakota, where Republicans have won by an average of 20 points in the last 10 presidential elections — higher even than the 16-point average by which Massachusetts has gone Democratic.
But Conrad isn't remotely moderate, with a lifetime ACU rating of 20. In 2008, he actually managed to achieve a rating of 0.
Between Conrad, the retiring Dorgan and the state's lone House member, Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota's congressional delegation has so far matched the Massachusetts delegation's feat of supporting ObamaCare unanimously.
But North Dakota is hardly the only state whose representatives don't represent their constituents' views. Indiana's Evan Bayh (2010), Montana's Jon Tester (2012), and Virginia's Jim Webb (2012) all hail from states that have voted Republican in nine of the last 10 presidential elections. Bayh's lifetime ACU rating is just 21, Tester's 16, and Webb's 12. Each is closer to Barbara Boxer (3) than to Arlen Specter (44).
Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln, Florida's Bill Nelson, Colorado's Michael Bennet, Ohio's Sherrod Brown, Missouri's Claire McCaskill, and of course Nevada's Harry Reid, have all initially voted for ObamaCare and are all up for reelection by 2012, and they have an average lifetime ACU rating of 20.
In the House, voters in Indiana and Arizona have backed Republicans by an average of 15% or more the last 10 presidential elections. Yet a majority of each of these red-state's House delegations has voted for ObamaCare.
And Congress isn't the only place in Washington to find someone whose views greatly differ from those of the voters. A man with a lifetime ACU rating of 10 — well shy of Harry Reid's tally of 19 — lives just down the street, at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Yet evidence from 1994 suggests that, regardless of their votes to date, there's a way out for Democrats: Vote against the final version of ObamaCare. Or, they can follow the lead of Dodd and Dorgan — and prove there truly is something worse than a politician who only cares about getting reelected.
• Anderson, director of the Benjamin Rush Society, is senior fellow in health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute. •Wickersham is a writer and consultant.
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Sujet: 1720 - 10/1/2010, 00:55
Obama Becoming More ‘Transparent’ Every Day Peter Wehner - 01.08.2010 - 8:46 AM
Sometimes in the life of a politician, a particular moment, word, or act defines them — and badly damages them. This much-viewed montage of comments by Barack Obama, repeatedly promising that he would allow C-SPAN to broadcast health-care negotiations, may well qualify. The reason is that it requires no commentary or interpretation by others; it is Barack Obama in his own words — words we now know to be false, cynical, and (quite literally) unbelievable. My hunch is that this episode will do considerable harm to Obama’s standing with the public, in part because it annihilates what had been at the core of the Obama campaign and the Obama appeal: the belief that he embodied a new, uplifting kind of politics; that transparency would be a watchword of his presidency; that he would “turn the page” on the practice of cynical politics. It is not simply that the negotiations will not appear on C-SPAN; it is that the process itself has been a model of payoffs and backroom deals, of dishonest arguments and false claims, of secrecy and cynicism.
Spoiler:
It’s important to recall that Obama was not elected because of his record or personal achievements or the power of his ideas; by those standards, Obama offered very little. His appeal was to the aesthetic side of politics; his supporters spoke of him, and at times Obama spoke of himself, in almost mythical terms. He would not only govern well, they believed; he would transform the way politics was practiced. Mr. Obama was so good, so pure, so very nearly perfect that, as one liberal person I correspond with wrote me, our country did not deserve him. (I responded that I agreed our country did not deserve Obama as president — but for the opposite reasons.)
It turns out it was all an elaborate, beautifully packaged, wonderfully choreographed, and deeply dishonest game. Before this concern was inchoate; now, thanks to the “these negotiations will be on C-SPAN” video, it is metastasizing. (It cannot be reassuring to the White House that Jon Stewart ridiculed Obama last night on his program; see the link to “Stealth Care Reform” here.)
One of the most precious qualities a president is granted by citizenry is trust, the belief that even if one disagrees with the president, his word is good, his integrity intact. When that is squandered — whether in drips and drabs or because of a single incident — there is often no way to get it back. And then, almost in the blink of an eye, things change. Without him realizing it, Mr. Obama may be reaching that point with the American public. They don’t like to be played for fools.
The health-care debate has involved pushing through massive, extremely unpopular, and incoherent legislation. In the process Mr. Obama has shattered the most appealing aspects of his image. The direct and collateral political damage of this entire enterprise on Mr. Obama and his party will be almost incalculable.
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Sujet: 1721 - 10/1/2010, 01:52
Breaking News 6.5-Magnitude Earthquake Hits Northern California
EddieCochran Admin
Nombre de messages : 12768 Age : 64 Localisation : Countat da Nissa Date d'inscription : 03/11/2008
Sujet: Re: Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise 10/1/2010, 02:05
Sylvette a écrit:
Breaking News 6.5-Magnitude Earthquake Hits Northern California
Et Notre Johnny est-il indemme ? Rassurez-nous Chère Sylvette que je salue avec Grace qui est à mes côtés.
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Sujet: 1723 - 10/1/2010, 02:13
Killing freedom and cartoonists By Christopher Caldwell
Published: January 8 2010 23:08 | Last updated: January 8 2010 23:08
A 28-year-old Somali Islamist allegedly tried to murder the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard with an axe on New Year’s night. It was Mr Westergaard who drew the most controversial of the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad commissioned by the Arhus-based daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005. His was the one showing a bearded man in a turban shaped like a bomb. Publication of the cartoons led, months later, to riots across the Muslim world. Danish embassies were burned in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. More than 200 people died.
Spoiler:
The threats against Mr Westergaard, who is 74, have not abated since. He has had to move house nine times. In October, US authorities arrested two Muslim radicals in Chicago who had allegedly planned to kill him and Flemming Rose, the Jyllands-Posten editor who commissioned the cartoons.
The suspects had already travelled to Denmark, allegedly to case the newspaper’s offices. Danish authorities have acted to protect Mr Westergaard from other credible death threats. They fitted out his bathroom as a fortified bunker, complete with steel door and a panic-button connection to the local police, a detail that probably saved his life last week. The assailant hacked at the door to no avail as Mr Westergaard’s five-year-old granddaughter looked on. Mr Westergaard expects the threats to persist for the rest of his life. That doesn’t seem to have dented his forthright disposition. “What will happen in the long run,” he told a radio interviewer last year, “is that our culture – the materialistic, superior culture – will of course win out.”
But the constancy of the threats against Mr Westergaard points to a serious challenge to free societies, and shows that we may still underestimate the significance of the Danish cartoon crisis. Mere criminals are not, as a rule, bent on harrying their victims to the grave. The man who attacked Mr Westergaard at New Year also seems to be in it for the long haul. He is a father of three who holds a Danish residence permit and has been in the country for 12 years. But he has been linked by Denmark’s intelligence service to both the East African branch of al-Qaeda and the violent Somali youth movement al-Shabaab. The attack on Mr Westergaard was not primarily a crime. It was an act of political violence. The aim, as best we can tell, was not to take Mr Westergaard’s money but to enforce “justice” in a way that would alter society’s rules and people’s behaviour.
A state’s authority rests, as Max Weber said, on a monopoly of violence. In matters of free speech about religion in Denmark, the government monopoly on violence has been broken. There is another player in the market, declaring that cartoons perceived as anti-Islamic are punishable by death. A pattern of political violence against ordinary citizens is something western Europe has not experienced in more than half a century. Some people describe radical Islam as a kind of totalitarianism, or “Islamofascism”. That is an oversimplification. Even if he had contact with al-Qaeda, Mr Westergaard’s would-be assassin was probably working as an individual.
But this power to intimidate, though informal, is potentially decisive. It is the same power exercised by those who threaten journalists in Russia, those who kill policemen in Mexico, or the Ku Klux Klan in the US south of a century ago. Such acts make law. It is remarkable how few people they have to harm to do so. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, was not just mouthing a cliché when he described the attack on Mr Westergaard as “an attack on our open society”. Once a competing source of predictable violence emerges in an open society, government must do something to stop it.
The concepts of “minority” and “majority”, which have for decades provided well-meaning western governments with their main way of understanding justice, are of no help in such a task. Obviously, only a minority of Danish Muslims, and an even smaller minority of Danes as a whole, are violent radical Islamists. But even if that minority is infinitesimal, it is big enough. As long as it can make a credible threat to deal out death to those who disrespect Islam, it can give Islam a privileged status among Denmark’s religions.
For all the mayhem and controversy it has occasioned, publication of the Danish cartoons has turned out to be as revealing an exercise as Mr Rose said it would be. Artists talk about “testing the boundaries” of expression, but they are often fake or obsolete boundaries, things that people wanted passionately to keep hushed up, say, 50 years ago, but don’t really care much about now, such as sex.
But Mr Rose hit a real taboo, one backed up by violence. He thus revealed a terrible problem.
Political violence is aimed at promoting a cause – in this case, special consideration for Islam. If a country cannot stop the violence directly, then the public will demand that it stop the violence indirectly, by thwarting the cause the violence serves. The rise of Geert Wilders’s party in the Netherlands, the referendum to ban minarets in Switzerland, the proposed ban on burkas in France – these are all desperate measures to declare that Islam is not the first religion of Europe.
“This is a war,” the mainstream French weekly L’Express editorialised in the wake of the attempt on Mr Westergaard’s life. “To flee this conflict would be to buy tranquillity today at an exorbitant price in blood tomorrow.” It concluded: “Banning every kind of full-body cover [the burka] in our public spaces is a necessity.” This is not the non-sequitur it appears to be.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
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Sujet: 1724 - 10/1/2010, 02:18
Bonne Nuit, Eddie.
En ce qui concerne Johnny, aucune idee et, si je ne lui souhaite aucun mal, sa bonne sante me preoccupe peu, tres peu.
Ceci dit, il me semble avoir lu qu'il revenait a la vie quelque part dans la region de L.A.? Je me trompe?
Dernière édition par Sylvette le 10/1/2010, 02:34, édité 1 fois
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Les Cohortes Célestes ont le devoir et le regret de vous informer que Libres Propos est entré en sommeil. Ce forum convivial et sympathique reste uniquement accessible en lecture seule. Prenez plaisir à le consulter.
Merci de votre compréhension.
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