• Aboard a Cargo Colossus - NYTimes.com

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/business/international/aboard-a-cargo-colossus-maersks-new-container-ships.html?partner=rss&emc=rs

    Ça date d’octobre 2014, j’avais raté cet article - A mettre au dossier des méga-navires (ces bateaux si gros qu’ils ne passent pas le canal de Panama et ne rentre pas certains des ports actuels...)

    A helicopter appeared in the sky over the North Sea.

    It was 7 a.m. on a Wednesday this summer, and the helicopter circled in a wide arc before hovering above a ship traveling south at about 15 knots. At more than 1,300 feet long, the ship, the Mary Maersk, was hard to miss. It is longer than the Eiffel Tower is high, and the Mary and its sister ships are the biggest container ships in the world.

    Feet appeared first from the helicopter, then a pair of Levi’s, and gradually a man was lowered by rope onto the ship’s deck. His job was to pilot the ship down a narrow dredged channel in the Weser River, toward the port of Bremerhaven, Germany.

    #transport_maritime #mer #container #transport

  • Egypte « La répression est pire que durant les périodes les plus sombres du règne Moubarak » : le NYT remet en cause l’aide militaire de 1,3 milliard de dollars versée annuellement sans conditions par les États-Unis

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/opinion/sunday/reining-in-egypts-military-aid.html?_r=1

    Egyptian leaders have come to see the annual $1.3 billion American military aid package as an entitlement they are due in perpetuity for having signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979. The United States has done little to disabuse them of that notion. It’s time it does. Failing to make significant cuts to the program later this year, when the Obama administration will confront tough choices regarding Egypt’s future, would be indefensible. Since Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took control in Egypt though a military coup in July 2013, the country has returned to its authoritarian moorings by jailing political opponents, silencing critics and vilifying peaceful Islamists.

    In the coming months, however, the administration will have two opportunities to correct its course and signal that it can no longer condone brutality.

    First, Washington must stop allowing Egypt to place military hardware orders under a preferential system called cash flow finance. Available only to Israel and Egypt, the mechanism works much like a credit card, permitting the countries to place orders under the assumption that Congress will eventually appropriate enough funds to cover them. It will take years to wean Egypt off cash flow finance, since orders can take years to process, but doing so now will help untangle contractual and legislative knots in the future.

    Second, Secretary of State John Kerry has to certify to Congress that Egypt is on a path to democracy as a condition for delivering several items of military aid that are in the pipeline. Congress insisted on such certification when it appropriated Egypt’s military aid package last year. Failing to do so by the end of the year would halt the delivery of roughly $650 million worth of American tanks and fighter planes. The only reasonable answer from Mr. Kerry is no.

    Egypt values American military hardware, and continued cooperation is in the interest of both countries. The onus is on Cairo to earn it.