/06

Et le Canada devint un Etat pétrolier sans scrupules | Andrew Nikiforuk
▻http://www.slate.fr/story/74641/canada-petrole

Un point de vue complet d’Andrew Nikiforuk, journaliste, sur la politique canadienne en matière environnementale.

Le Canada n’est plus aussi poli que la légende le voudrait : le pétrole et l’essence représentent aujourd’hui environ un quart de ses revenus d’exportation. Depuis que le Parti conservateur a remporté la majorité au Parlement en 2011, le gouvernement fédéral a éventré les défenseurs de l’environnement, les nations indigènes, les commissaires européens, et plus généralement, tous ceux qui s’opposent à une production illimitée de pétrole : tous ces antipatriotes aux idées radicales.

Le Canada a aussi muselé les scientifiques qui s’intéressaient au réchauffement climatique et mis fin à tous les financements de projets de recherche environnementale. Plus récemment, il a aussi, à travers deux projets de lois englobant des mesures diverses, fait supprimer les lois environnementales les plus importantes du pays, qui étaient jusque-là très chères à celui-ci.

L’auteur de cette transformation est Stephen #Harper, le Premier ministre de droite du Canada, un chrétien évangélique obsédé par le boulot. Sa base de pouvoir se trouve en Alberta, le ground zero du boum pétrolier du pays. Tout comme Margaret Thatcher qui a fondé la transformation politique de l’Angleterre sur les revenus du pétrole provenant de la mer du Nord, Harper a pour intention de refaire méthodiquement toute l’organisation du pays à l’aide des dollars qu’il extraira directement du sol canadien.

Andrew Nikiforuk sera l’un des personnages de mon prochain #webdoc

#sables_bitumineux #fortmcmoney

Ce que l’on sait de la politique étrangère du Sheikh Tamim : rien.
D’après Lynch, les contraintes (intérieures et régionales) de cette politique sont à peu près nulles donc il fera bien ce qu’il veut. Celui qui sait, lit dans ses pensées

Mysteries of the Emir - By Marc Lynch | Foreign Policy
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/27/mysteries_of_the_emir_power_transfer_qatar?page=full

I, for one, don’t believe we yet know the whole story behind the emir’s decision or the intentions of the new leadership. And in at least one crucial way, what happened in Doha most certainly will not stay in Doha. Given Qatar’s active role in virtually every one of the region’s interlocking problems, from Egypt to Syria to Libya to Yemen to Palestine, the new emir’s choices will matter in ways far less predictable then many seem to believe.

The NSA Can’t Tell the Difference Between an American and a Foreigner - By Shane Harris | Foreign Policy
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/27/the_nsa_cant_tell_the_difference_between_an_american_and_a_foreigner

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/images/nsa_3.jpg

The National Security Agency has said for years that its global surveillance apparatus is only aimed at foreigners, and that ordinary Americans are only captured by accident. There’s only one problem with this long-standing contention, people who’ve worked within the system say: it’s more-or-less technically impossible to keep average Americans out of the surveillance driftnet.

“There is physically no way to ensure that you’re only gathering U.S. person e-mails,” said a telecommunications executive who has implemented U.S. government orders to collect data on foreign targets. “The system doesn’t make any distinction about the nationality” of the individual who sent the message.

While it’s technically true that the NSA is not “targeting” the communications of Americans without a warrant, this is a narrow and legalistic statement. It belies the vast and indiscriminate scooping up of records on Americans’ phone calls, e-mails, and Internet communications that has occurred for more than a decade under the cover of “foreign intelligence” gathering.

First consider global cuisines like Mexican or Chinese. You can find a handful of good cookbooks pretty much anywhere these days. It’s not just that we’re all suckers for guacamole or stir-fry. It’s development economics in practice — a foodie measure of how much these societies have moved toward greater commercialization, large-scale production, and standardization of production processes. Quite simply, it’s the recipe for economic progress.

Consider how cooking evolves: It starts in the home and then eventually spreads to restaurants and on to cookbooks, along the way transforming a recipe from oral tradition to commercialized product. In the home, recipes are often transmitted from grandmother to mother, or from father to son, or simply by watching and participating. I’ve seen this in rural Mexico, for instance, when an older daughter teaches her younger sister how to pat tortillas the right way. When societies get richer, you start to see restaurants, a form of specialization like auto mechanics or tailors…Restaurants require that strangers — other cooks — be taught the process. That means simplifying or standardizing ingredients so they’re easier to work with and, in many cases, available year-round. This, of course, means writing down the recipe. Once a dish reaches these commercial milestones, cookbooks will follow.

▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/24/the_cookbook_theory_of_economics

Why Obama is arming Syria’s rebels: it’s the realism, stupid. | Daniel W. Drezner
▻http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/14/why_obama_is_arming_syrias_rebels_its_the_realism_stupid

To your humble blogger, this is simply the next iteration of the unspoken, brutally realpolitik policy towards Syria that’s been going on for the past two years. To recap, the goal of that policy is to ensnare Iran and Hezbollah into a protracted, resource-draining civil war, with as minimal costs as possible. This is exactly what the last two years have accomplished.... at an appalling toll in lives lost.  

This policy doesn’t require any course correction... so long as rebels are holding their own or winning. A faltering Assad simply forces Iran et al into doubling down and committing even more resources. A faltering rebel movement, on the other hand, does require some external support, lest the Iranians actually win the conflict. In a related matter, arming the rebels also prevents relations with U.S. allies in the region from fraying any further.

So is this the first step towards another U.S.-led war in the region? No. Everything in that Times story, and everything this administration has said and done for the past two years, screams deep reluctance over intervention. Arming the rebels is not the same thing as a no-fly zone or any kind of ground intervention. This is simply the United States engaging in its own form of asymmetric warfare. For the low, low price of aiding and arming the rebels, the U.S. preoccupies all of its adversaries in the Middle East.

Reprise en main de l’opposition syrienne par les Saoudiens (à un moment où les rumeurs sur l’état de santé de l’émir du Qatar vont bon train -voir article dans Le Point et dans The Economist)

Syria Is Now Saudi Arabia’s Problem - By Hassan Hassan | Foreign Policy
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/06/syria_is_now_saudi_arabias_problem

But beyond the supposed military benefits of Qusayr, the battle for the town carried important consequences for the balance of power within the Syrian opposition. Qusayr is arguably the first battle in Syria to be completely sponsored by Saudi Arabia, marking the kingdom’s first foray outside its sphere of influence along the Jordanian border. Riyadh has now taken over Qatar’s role as the rebels’ primary patron: In one sense, the Saudis can also claim a victory in Qusayr, as they have successfully put various rebel forces under the command of their ally in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Chief of Staff Gen. Salim Idriss.

▻http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21579063-rumours-change-top-do-not-include-moves-democracy-democracy-that

Turquie (2 juin 2013)
How Democratic Is Turkey?

Not as democratic as Washington thinks it is

STEVEN A. COOK, MICHAEL KOPLOW, Foreign Policy, 3 June 2013

►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/02/how_democratic_is_turkey?page=full

"It seems strange that the biggest challenge to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authority during more than a decade in power would begin as a small environmental rally, but as thousands of Turks pour into the streets in cities across Turkey, it is clear that something much larger than the destruction of trees in Istanbul’s Gezi Park — an underwhelming patch of green space close to Taksim Square — is driving the unrest.

The ferocity of the protests and police response in Istanbul’s Gezi Park is no doubt a surprise to many in Washington. Turkey, that “excellent model” or “model partner,” is also, as many put it, “more democratic than it was a decade ago.” There is a certain amount of truth to these assertions, though the latter, which is repeated ad nauseum, misrepresents the complex and often contradictory political processes underway in Turkey. Under the AKP and the charismatic Erdogan, unprecedented numbers of Turks have become politically mobilized and prosperous — the Turkish economy tripled in size from 2002 to 2011, and 87 percent of Turks voted in the most recent parliamentary elections, compared with 79 percent in the 2002 election that brought the AKP to power. Yet this mobilization has not come with a concomitant ability to contest politics. In fact, the opposite is the case, paving the way for the AKP to cement its hold on power and turn Turkey into a single-party state. The irony is that the AKP was building an illiberal system just as Washington was holding up Turkey as a model for the post-uprising states of the Arab world."

Isn’t it amusing that the AKP was building an illiberal system just as Washington was holding up #Turkey as a model for the post-uprising states of the Arab world ? ►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/02/how_democratic_is_turkey?page=full #USA #ArabSpring #Democracy