Foreign Policy - the global magazine of economics, politics, and ideas

How WikiLeaks Blew It - By Joshua E. Keating | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/16/how_wikileaks_blew_it?page=full

Think Again : Obama’s New Deal
Michael Grunwald | Foreign Policy

The president’s Republican critics are dead wrong. The stimulus worked. (…) When it comes to the Recovery Act, the facts are on Obama’s side.

►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/13/think_again_obamas_new_deal
#Obama

The Fog of Civil War - By Stephen Starr | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/07/23/the_fog_of_civil_war

Contrary to reports, the Syrian government is allowing foreign journalists to enter the country. Teams from Fox News and Britain’s ITV television were recently granted 10-day visas to cover Syria from the capital. Many of these journalists are reporting from the bedsides of wounded regime soldiers and have remarked that Syria is, in fact, a divided country and that significant support does exist for the regime. But the limitations on official reporting are manifold. Government minders place restrictions on travel and contact with locals, making it difficult to report anything that does not fit the regime’s narrative.

Embedding with the rebels, who are equally eager to present themselves as victims rather than aggressors, invites similar hurdles in accessing the truth. But the rebels are a complicated bunch. Elizabeth Palmer, a journalist with CBS, recently managed to escape her government minders and go in search of fighters in the Free Syrian Army. When she found them, however, she was promptly told that she would be executed for having Syrian government stamps in her passport. Others covering events in the countryside have reported insurgents to have been a menace.

Why Do They Hate Us ? - By Mona Eltahawy | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/why_do_they_hate_us?page=0,3

“Do you know why they subjected us to virginity tests?” Ibrahim asked me soon after we’d spent hours marching together to mark International Women’s Day in Cairo on March 8. “They want to silence us; they want to chase women back home. But we’re not going anywhere.”

Ne plus se taire = ►http://www.scoop.it/t/blog4burma/p/1978474244/why-do-they-hate-us-by-mona-eltahawy

#femmes

On Assad’s Doorstep
The revolution is finally coming to the once quiet, now tense streets of inner Damascus.
DAMASCUS, Syria — The eyes of the world are on Syria’s outlying towns and villages, where the rebels are organizing and where the bodies are piling up. As the U.N. Security Council prepares to meet to discuss the crisis, U.N. monitors are rushing to the town of Mazraat al-Qubeir to investigate claims that at least 78 civilians were killed in cold blood by President Bashar al-Assad’s militiamen. If true, the attack would be a grim echo to the gruesome massacre in the town of Houla last month.

But as Syria’s periphery descends into chaos, observers may be missing a more subtle deterioration of Assad’s authority at the center of his regime. The Syrian capital of Damascus, whose commercial center has been seen as immune from the nationwide unrest, is increasingly turning on the Assad regime — and widening unrest in the heart of the city now appears to be only a matter of time.
To read more: ►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/07/on_assad_s_doorstep

SenJohnMcCain

Another view on why #Syria is important - Jamie Rubin in @FP_Magazine: “The Real Reason to Intervene in #Syria” ►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/04/the_real_reason_to_intervene_in_syria?page=full

Status Update - By Jonathan Schanzer | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/21/status_update?page=0,0

With the stroke of a pen, a new bill in Congress could slash the number of Palestinian refugees — and open a world of controversy.

The aim of this proposed legislation, Kirk’s office explains, is not to deprive Palestinians who live in poverty of essential services, but to tackle one of the thorniest issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: the “right of return.” The dominant Palestinian narrative is that all of the refugees of the Israeli-Palestinian wars have a right to go back, and that this right is not negotiable. But here’s the rub: By UNRWA’s own count, the number of Palestinians who describe themselves as refugees has skyrocketed from 750,000 in 1950 to 5 million today. As a result, the refugee issue has been an immovable obstacle in round after round of negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

#réfugiés #droit_au_retour #palestiniens

Les arabes haïssent-ils les femmes ? Mona Eltahawy face à la tempête

Article original en anglais: Why do they hate us? : ►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/why_do_they_hate_us

La chroniqueuse égypto-américaine Mona Eltahawy a, à nouveau, suscité la controverse en publiant dans le Foreign Policy Magazine de ce 23 avril 2012, un article traitant de la discrimination envers les femmes au Moyen-Orient intitulé ‘Pourquoi nous haïssent-ils ?‘.

Dont voici la traduction sur Slate.fr : ►http://www.slate.fr/story/54247/printemps-arabe-haine-femmes

Eltahawy y affirme que les sociétés arabes sont fondamentalement misogynes et que les incessantes violences envers les femmes “alimentées par un mélange à la fois de culture et de ‘religion” tendent à se généraliser.

De nombreux journalistes, blogueurs et activistes arabes ont critiqué la manière dont Mona Eltahawy a formulé ses arguments et ont exprimé leur colère face aux images accompagnant l’article - une jeune femme nue, le corps recouvert d’une peinture noire semblable au niqab - arguant que celles-ci constituaient une représentation stéréotypée des femmes arabes.

Voir différentes réactions :
►http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/04/29/106756

Cet article commence à avoir un écho en France, des réactions commencent à poindre... :
Mona El Tahawy et le Monde Arabe imaginaire

►http://www.foulexpress.com/2012/05/mona-el-tahawy-et-le-monde-arabe-imaginaire

Bahrain : Prison Island | Tom Malinowski (Foreign Policy)
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/07/prison_island?page=0,0

The riot police waited for them there. Maybe we should have stood fast, on the notion that police chase those who run. But when Bahrain’s finest suppress demonstrations, they often fire birdshot and tear-gas canisters directly into the crowd. And the magic words “I am an American” have an effective range far shorter than that of a riot gun. So we sprinted away with the scattered marchers down one darkened alley, then another. When it was clear the neighborhood was surrounded, we took shelter in a house. The police broke in and pepper-sprayed our eyes; I spoke the magic words, which seemed to calm matters, though we heard screams coming from other parts of the house. (...) Source: Foreign Policy

THE NEW #ISLAMISTS by Olivier ROY

The following is an excerpt from the book The Islamists Are Coming: Who They Really Are, which will be released on April 18 by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The longstanding debate over whether #Islam and #democracy can coexist has reached a stunning turning point. Since the Arab uprisings began in late 2010, political Islam and democracy have become increasingly interdependent. The debate over whether they are compatible is now virtually obsolete. Neither can now survive without the other.

In Middle Eastern countries undergoing political transitions, the only way for Islamists to maintain their legitimacy is through elections. Their own political culture may still not be democratic, but they are now defined by the new political landscape and forced in turn to redefine themselves — much as the Roman Catholic Church ended up accepting democratic institutions even as its own practices remained oligarchic.

At the same time, democracy will not set down roots in Arab countries in transition without including mainstream Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Ennahda in Tunisia, or Islah in Yemen. The so-called Arab Spring cleared the way for the Islamists. And even if many Islamists do not share the democratic culture of the demonstrators, the Islamists have to take into account the new playing field the demonstrations created.

►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/16/the_new_islamists?page=0,0

The Black Hole of North Korea - By Marcus Noland | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/07/the_black_hole_of_north_korea

Marcus Noland tells of his own difficulties, and those of North Korean experts in general, when dealing with unreliable, misleading, or often just fraudulent DPRK economic data. How you study the numbers of a country who considers them a state secret? Noland guides us on who and what to trust when looking for this data.

The Black Hole of North Korea

What economists can’t tell you about the most isolated country on Earth.

BY MARCUS NOLAND | MARCH 7, 2012

The government of North Korea regards economic statistics as state secrets, which makes the country’s economy difficult to study. I do careful survey research on the North Korean economy by surveying defectors, Chinese enterprises, and South Korean firms. Still, North Korea is so opaque that when I am asked where I get my data, I normally reply, “I make it up.” And I’m only half-joking.

Others seem less than half-serious. Last month, the South Korean news agency Yonhap ran a story about a report from a major South Korean think tank stating that North Korea’s GDP grew 4.7 percent in 2011. That think tank, the Hyundai Research Institute, used a combination of United Nations infant mortality data for 198 countries over the 2000-2008 period and North Korean crop data to estimate annual North Korean per capita income. While infant mortality and food availability correlate with income, one cannot meaningfully estimate year-to-year income changes with these two pieces of information alone.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About #Drones - By Micah Zenko | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/10_things_you_didnt_know_about_drones?page=0,0

Over the past decade, there have been some 300 drone strikes outside the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Of these attacks, 95 percent occurred in Pakistan, with the rest in Yemen and Somalia; cumulatively, they have killed more than 2,000 suspected militants and an unknown number of civilians.

#armement

Flu Season - by Laurie Garrett | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/05/flu_season?page=full

When flu scientist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus University in Rotterdam announced in September that he had made a highly contagious, supervirulent form of the bird-flu virus, a long chain of political events unfolded, mostly out of the public eye.

#h5n1 #grippe #bioterrorisme #armement #biologique

La nouvelle fabrication de Nicholas Blanford est particulièrement grotesque (mais c’est pour ça qu’on l’aime) : il prétend avoir découvert ce que ni la Finul pendant des années, ni Israël à coup de bombes intelligentes, n’ont jamais réussi à trouver, un bunker secret du Hezbollah. Et c’est comme les maisons des célébrités de Beverly Hills : il suffit d’acheter la carte à l’office de tourisme du bled d’à côté.

A Secure, Undisclosed Location - By Nicholas Blanford | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/11/a_secure_undisclosed_location?page=0,1

After several false leads, I acquired a set of map coordinates marking the locations of Hezbollah bunkers and rocket firing posts near the village of Alma Shaab. Punching the coordinates into a handheld GPS device, I headed into a former Hezbollah security pocket accompanied by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an intrepid war correspondent for The Guardian and a photographer for the Getty agency.

We had walked along the track at the bottom of the valley for about ten minutes when the arrow on the GPS began to rotate to the right. We left the track and, once beneath the canopy of dense foliage, noticed numerous thin trails made by Hezbollah militants crisscrossing the hillside. Steps of rock-hard sandbags helped overcome the steeper sections. We scanned the footpath carefully, not only for cluster bombs but also for possible booby traps. Hezbollah had rigged some simple IEDs consisting of trip wires attached to blocks of TNT around some of their old positions to deter snoopers

After a five-minute climb, my GPS informed us that we had reached our destination. But there was no bunker entrance to be seen, just outcrops of rock, thickets of thorn bushes, scrub oak, and tree roots snaking across the bedrock beneath a carpet of dead leaves and dried twigs. Thinking the GPS must be off by a few feet, I moved away to examine the surrounding area for the entrance. But it was Ghaith who found it.

Foreign Policy publie une série de photos consacrée au musée/mémorial de la Résistance libanaise.

Le texte introductif semble bien parti.

The Tourist Park of God - An FP Slide Show | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/11/mleeta_lebanon_tourist_complex

All countries have different ways of commemorating their battles. From memorials to museums, part of moving on from war is defining the narrative surrounding it. That was Hezbollah’s logic, at least, in opening a “tourist complex” in May 2010, displaying its own weapons and those left behind by Israel after the country’s pullout from south Lebanon in 2000.

Mais immédiatement, ça tourne à la parodie grotesque.

– Le titre, d’abord, « The Tourist Park of God », totalement insultant.
– Immédiatement doublé de la mention en page 2 :

The international press has dubbed the Mleeta complex Hezbollah’s “Disneyland.”

Cet axe idiot est particulièrement étonnant, puisque :
– en évoquant « les différentes façons de commémorer les batailles », le billet introductif amène à penser illico au Mémorial de Caen ; dans mon souvenir (j’étais ado), les photos du Foreign Policy ramenées du Sud Liban sont curieusement similaires à ce que j’ai vu près des plages du Débarquement ;
– vraiment, tu regardes les photos publiées, et rigoureusement aucune n’évoque Disneyland ou un « parc touristique de Dieu ». La ressemblance avec n’importe quel musée français de la Première ou de la seconde guerre mondiale est assez frappante (est-ce à Caen que j’ai vu une reconstitution de tranchée de Verdun ?).

Et on arrive à la légende de l’écran 11 :

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/111110_11pk.jpg

The helmets of Israeli soldiers killed while fighting Hezbollah militants are displayed next to a tombstone bearing the Star of David.

Non, ça n’est pas une simple « étoile de David », c’est le logo des « Forces de défense israéliennes » (« Tsahal », c’est même écrit en toutes lettres sous l’écusson : צבא ההגנה לישראל‎‎). Ça n’est donc pas une tombe juive qui est figurée, mais un symbole assez transparent : la tombe de l’armée d’occupation israélienne. Le même ici :
►http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6d/Idf_logo4.png/150px-Idf_logo4.png
►http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces

Cette dernière mention est caractéristique de ces couvertures parodiques de ce mémorial, dans lesquelles l’incompétence le dispute à la mauvaise foi.

Europe’s Facebook Fascists - By Jamie Bartlett | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/08/europe_s_new_right?page=0,0

A few months ago, I clicked a Facebook “like” for the band Fleetwood Mac. Ever since, my Facebook sidebar has been tempting me with advertisements about albums and T-shirts of a similar hue. Advertisers, having picked up my musical taste, are able to target me with personalized ads based on my online behavior and demographic. Annoyingly, they are usually right.

Return of the Renditioned - By Katherine Hawkins | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/07/return_of_the_renditioned?page=0,7

For all its condemnation of President Bashar al-Assad’s human rights record, the United States appears to have had few qualms about sending terrorism suspects to Damascus. Although Almalki, Arar, and El-Maati have been released, seven prisoners whom the United States rendered to Syria remain missing. In interviews with journalist Stephen Grey, Almalki named six of them as his fellow prisoners in the underground cells at the Palestine Branch.

[...]

The U.S. and Syrian governments are unlikely to answer any questions about the detainees’ rendition or their current whereabouts. If Assad’s regime falls, perhaps activists or journalists will find the answers in a binder labeled “CIA” in one of the mukhabarat’s many offices. Until then, they remain missing.

The New Geopolitics of Food | Lester R. Brown (Foreign Policy)
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_new_geopolitics_of_food

From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars.

The New Geopolitics of Food - By Lester R. Brown | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_new_geopolitics_of_food

the world is losing its ability to soften the effect of shortages. In response to previous price surges, the United States, the world’s largest grain producer, was effectively able to steer the world away from potential catastrophe. (...) We can’t do that anymore; the safety cushion is gone.
That’s why the food crisis of 2011 is for real, and why it may bring with it yet more bread riots cum political revolutions. What if the upheavals that greeted dictators Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya (a country that imports 90 percent of its grain) are not the end of the story, but the beginning of it?

#alimentation #spéculation #sécurité_alimentaire #cdp

How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis - By Frederick Kaufman | Foreign Policy
►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_created_the_food_crisis

But Goldman’s index perverted the symmetry of this system. The structure of the GSCI paid no heed to the centuries-old buy-sell/sell-buy patterns. This newfangled derivative product was “long only,” which meant the product was constructed to buy commodities, and only buy. At the bottom of this “long-only” strategy lay an intent to transform an investment in commodities (previously the purview of specialists) into something that looked a great deal like an investment in a stock — the kind of asset class wherein anyone could park their money and let it accrue for decades (along the lines of General Electric or Apple). Once the commodity market had been made to look more like the stock market, bankers could expect new influxes of ready cash. But the long-only strategy possessed a flaw, at least for those of us who eat. The GSCI did not include a mechanism to sell or “short” a commodity.

#sécurité_alimentaire #commodities