/2015

The Man on the Operating Table | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/03/the-man-on-the-operating-table-msf-hospital-kunduz-afghanistan-us-air

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/20151010_quilty_msf_knz_afg_0271.jpg

The main part of the Médecins Sans Frontières Kunduz Trauma Center had faired far worse. Little remained after the deadly strikes carried out by a U.S. AC-130 gunship over the course of an hour. In the weeks after the attack, investigators determined that at least 30 staff and patients had died on Oct. 3. Initially, Afghan commandos claimed they had requested the airstrike after coming under fire from Taliban fighters in the hospital compound. Afghan government officials echoed this account, while a dozen eyewitnesses I spoke to refuted it. A U.S. military investigation released on Nov. 25 admitted human error and technical failures resulted in the “tragic but avoidable accident.”

The climate of war: violence, warfare, and climatic reductionism
▻http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.352/abstract

The fashion for reducing war to climate has had a remarkable resurgence in recent years stimulated in part by the proclivities of funding agencies and the priorities of national governments. Not least is this the case with national security agencies. As the British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, put it in 2007 in her presentation to the UN Security Council first-ever debate on the impact of climate change: the consequences of climate change “reach to the very heart of the security agenda.” A few years earlier in their report to the United States Department of Defense, on abrupt climate change and “Its implications for United States National Security,” Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall insisted that in the near future “disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.” Once the preserve of classical thinkers, Enlightenment philosophers, and turn-of-the-century geo-historians, “the allure of a naïve climatic determinism is now seducing” − in Mike Hulme’s words − “those hard-nosed and most unsentimental of people… the military and their advisors.” And it is seducing other publicists too. Drawing on the neo-Malthusian analyses of Thomas Homer-Dixon, whom he credited with officiating at the marriage of “military-conflict studies and the study of the physical environment”, Robert Kaplan announced that “We all must learn to think like Victorians… Geographical determinists must be seated at the same honored table as liberal humanists.” This reductionist impulse, however, has not met with universal approval.

A team of research ecologists based mostly at Colorado State University, for example, has challenged the suggestion that warming has increased the risk of civil war in Africa. They argue that attributing such causal powers to climate “oversimplifies systems affected by many geopolitical and social factors.” And they point out that “unrelated geopolitical trends” − most notably decolonization and the legacy of the Cold War − which “perturbed the political and social landscape of the African continent” tend to be ignored in climate reductionist agendas. Halvard Buhaug, a political scientist at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, together with colleagues also have serious reservations about what might be called climatic supremacism. Reworking a range of models used by advocates of climate’s determining role in civil wars, Buhaug contends that “Climate variability is a poor predictor of armed conflict” and that civil wars in Africa are far better explained by such conditions as “prevalent ethnopolitical exclusion, poor national economy, and the collapse of the Cold War system.” The prehistory of a particular violent episode is relevant too for, as he puts it, “recent violence may affect the likelihood of a new conflict breaking out”.

Empirical inquiries like these, which challenge the assumption that climate and climate change are prime causes of violence, raise troubling concerns about the ease with which an ideology of climate reductionism has infiltrated its way into national security consciousness. Critics of this determinist turn, and particularly of the Malthusian assumption that increased environmental scarcity and migration “weaken states” and “cause conflicts and violence”, express grave concerns about the lack of attention devoted to ascertaining “the ways that environmental violence reflects or masks other forms of social struggle” and about the too comfortable means by which “forms of technological engineering… reduce “solutions” to matters of purely technical concern.” For one thing such scenarios take outbreaks of violence as merely the natural consequence of social evolutionary adaptation. Climate reductionism thus facilitates the sense that war can be readily “naturalized and depoliticized” in markedly similar ways to earlier climatic readings of the American Civil War. As one group of researchers observe: “Some studies in environmental security are in danger of promulgating a modern form of environmental determinism by suggesting that climate conditions directly and dominantly influence the propensity for violence among individuals, communities and states.” When analysts “neglect the complex political calculus of governance” and the remarkable ways in which human societies actually do cope with challenging environments, they reach “conclusions that are little different from those ascribing poverty to latitudinal location or lessened individual productivity to hot climates, as was common in European and American scholarship about a century ago.”

#climat #réductionnisme_climatique

Top State Department Official: Saudis Finally Get That #Yemen Is a Problem
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/28/top-state-department-official-saudis-finally-get-that-yemen-is-a-prob

Anne Patterson, the assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday that “there are some hopeful signs” that Riyadh is intent on bringing the conflict to a close.

“Most Saudis understand this can’t go on much longer because it’s going to turn the Yemeni population against them and because they’re going to be responsible for rebuilding the country,” she said.

#arabie_saoudite #Etats-Unis #crimes #impunité

Saudi Arabia Bans National Geographic Cover Featuring Pope Francis | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/08/saudi-arabia-bans-national-geographic-cover-featuring-pope-francis

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/ngarabic.jpg

Saudi censors might have also seen dangerous implications for the Wahhabi state in how National Geographic framed its coverage, as the cover referred to Francis leading a “quiet revolution” to reform the Catholic Church.

“#modéré” #Arabie_saoudite #censure #phobie #effroi

This Map Shows the Global Impact of China’s Dramatic Currency Devaluation | Foreign Policy

▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/13/this-map-shows-the-global-impact-of-chinas-currency-devaluation-renmi

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-12-56-12-pm-2.png

he plunge in the value of China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB), is shaking world markets, and almost no major index is untouched by the ripple effect.

On Aug. 11, the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, allowed the RMB to descend further and faster than at any time since 1994. Monetary authorities insisted the Aug. 11 drop, which caused the RMB to fall by 1.9 percent against the U.S. dollar, would be neither “persistent” nor “substantial,” but the RMB’s value has taken a further dive in subsequent days. The currency has fallen because traders on the free market appeared to believe the RMB was overvalued and that Chinese authorities were determined to let the market have a bigger say in its valuation. The move also makes Chinese exports cheaper, a competitive advantage for China that arrives at a convenient time, when domestic equities have taken a beating and the country’s massive economy shows signs of further stalling.

#cartographie #chine #économie

The Untold Story of the U.S. and Cuba’s Middleman | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/03/the-untold-story-of-the-u-s-and-cubas-middleman

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-03-at-2-49-03-pm.png

On the day the United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic ties after a half-century of acrimony, the scene at the newly opened Cuban Embassy in Washington was euphoric. A boisterous band played the Cuban national anthem as a three-man honor guard marched onto the front lawn and mounted the island nation’s flag. Five hundred dignitaries, including senior U.S. diplomats, a large visiting Cuban delegation, and U.S. lawmakers filled the nearly century-old mansion. Even Hollywood B-lister Danny Glover made an appearance.

But on that same day in mid-July, less than two miles away, another historic milestone occurred without a single reporter or media photographer to document it. In silence, the Swiss ambassador to the United States, Martin Dahinden, took out a screwdriver and removed a small golden plate from the Swiss Embassy that identified the Swiss government as the “protecting power” of Cuban interests in the United States.

With a few turns of the screw, Switzerland was out of a job after 54 years of playing the middleman between Havana and Washington — the longest stretch of time that the Swiss government, and perhaps any government in history, has represented the interests of a foreign power in another country. Due to the resumption of diplomatic ties, Cuba and the United States no longer need Switzerland to communicate with each other, ending an assignment the Swiss formally accepted in 1961 when President Dwight Eisenhower cut off ties with Fidel Castro’s communist regime.

http://www.trabajadores.cu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/embajada-de-cuba-en-washington8-580x339.jpg

photo sur
Cuba – Estados Unidos: Siete claves para entender lo que está pasando ▻http://www.trabajadores.cu/20150520/cuba-estados-unidos-siete-claves-para-entender-lo-que-esta-pasando

En Allemagne, les violences se multiplient contre les foyers de réfugiés, cibles des néo-nazis
▻http://www.bastamag.net/En-Allemagne-des-neonazis-recensent-sur-le-net-les-foyers-de-demandeurs-d-

La page a entretemps été supprimée par Google. Mais elle est restée assez longtemps en ligne pour choquer l’Allemagne. Début juillet, des néonazis ont posté sur la toile une google map qui recensait très précisément, avec adresses et nombre d’habitants, les centres d’hébergement de demandeurs d’asile à travers tout le pays. La démarche a d’autant plus inquiété que les attaques contre les foyers d’accueil de réfugiés se multiplient depuis plusieurs mois en Allemagne. Le 15 juillet encore, un futur centre (...)

En bref

/ #Droites_extrêmes, #Europe, #Discriminations, #Migrations

The Enemy You Know and the Ally You Don’t | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/23/the-enemy-you-know-and-the-ally-you-dont-arm-sunni-militias-iraq

Quelques uns des hommes politiques irakiens sunnites parmi les plus importants- ceux-la même qui font aujourd’hui du lobbying auprès des Etats-Unis pour que leurs milices obtiennent des armes- auraient collaboré en 2009 avec l’ISIS,

Newly declassified documents from the Islamic State’s predecessor, captured during a U.S.-Iraqi raid in 2010 and published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, suggest that some of Iraq’s most prominent Sunni politicians collaborated with the Islamic State’s predecessor in 2009, when the group faced its darkest hour. Some of these senior figures may have worked with the Islamic State to benefit themselves, some to benefit the Sunnis, and some to weaken the hand of the Kurds in Iraq’s ethnically mixed areas in the country’s north. While the threat of the Islamic State has moved these dynamics to the back burner today, they will likely reemerge if and when the security environment improves. And now some of these same politicians are lobbying the United States to send money and weapons to the militias from their territories.

Why Greece Should Reject the Latest Offer from Its Creditors | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/12/why-greece-should-reject-the-latest-offer-from-its-creditors-germany-

Reform — Greece sorely needs it. Cash — the government is running desperately short of it. So it is time for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to do what’s best for Greece and accept its creditors’ reform demands in exchange for much-needed cash. That is how the Greek situation is usually framed. It is utterly misleading.
[…]
Why would Eurozone authorities be so cruel and foolish? Because they don’t really care about the welfare of ordinary Greeks. They aren’t even that bothered about whether the Greek government pays back the money that they forced European taxpayers to lend to it, ostensibly out of solidarity, but actually to bail out French and German banks and investors. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other Eurozone policymakers just don’t want to admit that they made a terrible mistake in 2010 and have lied about it since. So they want to be seen as standing up for Eurozone taxpayers’ interests, and they want Greeks to put up and shut up until Merkel and her minions are comfortably in retirement and it is someone else’s problem.
[…]
The creditors’ insistence on reform is also disingenuous. Greece has been run by the institutions known as the Troika — the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF — since May 2010. They have had every opportunity to insist on the reforms they are now demanding. Yet they kept on funding Greece because all they cared about was the fiscal targets (and wage cuts to boost “competitiveness”). The sudden focus on reform is primarily about forcing Tsipras to break the promises that got him elected in January.

L’auteur, Philippe Legrain, est présenté ainsi par FP

Philippe Legrain, who was economic advisor to the president of the European Commission from 2011 to 2014, is a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics’ European Institute and the author of European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess — and How to Put Them Right.

**********************************************

Article plus ou moins repris sur _Libération

Grèce : face à Bruxelles et au FMI, le « dilemme du prisonnier » - Libération
▻http://www.liberation.fr/monde/2015/06/12/grece-face-a-bruxelles-et-au-fmi-le-dilemme-du-prisonnier_1328228

Alors que le FMI a claqué jeudi la porte des négociations avec la Grèce, l’intransigeance et la cacophonie des créanciers placent Athènes face à un choix insoutenable.

How Azerbaijan and Its Lobbyists Spin Congress | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/11/how-azerbaijan-and-its-lobbyists-spin-congress

For years, Azerbaijan has papered over its dismal human rights record by presenting itself to the United States as a loyal partner in the “war on terror,” a stalwart friend to Israel, and an important energy supplier. In addition to traditional diplomacy, it has advanced these messages through aggressive lobbying in the think-tank world, in state legislatures, and in the halls of Congress. Mandatory filings by the Azerbaijan government and its U.S. lobbyists reveal that, in total, it and its proxies spent at least $4 million to this end in 2014 alone. (In 2013, when Azerbaijan spent only $2.3 million, it was still among the top 10 foreign governments buying influence in Washington, according to the Sunlight Foundation.) This February, the Azerbaijani embassy increased the monthly retainer of its main lobbyist, the Podesta Group, from $50,000 to $75,000. The Podesta Group’s filings reveal hundreds of contacts with congressional offices, executive branch agencies, members of the media, and think tanks.
[…]
The Azerbaijan America Alliance is run by Anar Mammadov, the son of the country’s transportation minister, notorious for his corrupt dealings and outrageous exploits. His reputation, however, hasn’t prevented Dan Burton, a former House member from Indiana, from working for him as the Alliance’s chairman, praising the Azeri government in print, and giving remarks at celebrations of the former President’s birthday (thinly disguised as a faux “national holiday”). The Alliance is also closely involved with the House’s Azerbaijan Caucus, a group of over 60 legislators it considers friendly. In May, the Washington Post published a damning exposé of an all-expenses-paid trip ten members of Congress took to Azerbaijan in 2013. The trip was secretly funded by SOCAR, the country’s state-run oil company. Of the ten members who went on the trip, eight are members of the Azerbaijan Caucus. Neither of the caucus’s co-chairs — Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) — responded to requests for comment.
[…]
This week, Azerbaijan is hosting the first European Games, a major new international sporting event it’s promoting with gusto. Such glittery spectacles — like the Eurovision contest in 2012 and the Formula 1 Grand Prix next year — are meant to showcase the country as a modern, developed member of the international community. To make sure this message isn’t marred by inconvenient references to political prisoners, the government barred both Amnesty International and the Guardian from entering at the last minute. And just last week, a new FARA filing by the Podesta Group revealed that it will be providing one month of additional advice to Azerbaijan about its “online engagements.” Maran Turner of Freedom Now speculates that this is intended to counteract the negative press Azerbaijan is receiving in the run-up to the games. So if you see any trending stories about how America’s best friend in the Caucasus is making a name for itself in sport, treat them with appropriate skepticism — and remind your congressmen and women to do the same.

Ukrainian PM Blasts Separatists : ‘We Will Never Talk to Terrorists’ | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/10/ukrainian-pm-blasts-russian-separatists-we-will-never-talk-to-terrori

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk rejected criticisms from Russia on Wednesday that the embattled government in Kiev is failing to work toward reconciliation with separatist leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk.

Using particularly blunt language, the Ukrainian leader said Russia’s calls for reconciliation are disingenuous and that pro-Moscow separatists were unfit for negotiations at this stage in the conflict. “My government will never talk to terrorists” until they are “behind bars or sitting in a prison cell,” he told a small group of reporters in Washington on Wednesday. “Russia wants us to establish a direct contact with the terrorists. We will never talk to terrorists.”

Quelqu’un pourrait-il rappeler à A. Iatseniouk que les accords de Minsk (v. I comme v. II) ont été signés par :
• la représentante de l’OSCE : Heidi Tagliavini
• l’ancien président ukrainien, représentant l’Ukraine : Leonid Koutchma
• l’ambassadeur de Russie en Ukraine : Mikhaïl Zourabov
• le premier ministre de la République populaire de Donetsk, Aleksandr Zakhartchenko et le président de la République populaire de Luhansk, Igor Plotniski

Ah, d’ailleurs, mais ça n’a certainement aucun lien avec ce qui précède, Mme H. Tagliavini a annoncé la semaine dernière qu’elle se retirait de son rôle d’intermédiaire dans ces négociations. ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/378073

Situation Report: B-1 Bombers to Australia; (…) | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/14/situation-report-b-1-bombers-to-australia-carter-appoints-his-guys-is

Well, that’s news. Washington has big plans for stationing advanced weaponry in Australia, senior Defense Department officials say, in what would be a military first for the two close allies.

During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, the Defense Department’s Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs David Shear said that in addition to the movement of U.S. Marines and Army units around the region, “we will be placing additional Air Force assets in Australia as well, including B-1 bombers and surveillance aircraft.”

Saudi Arabia’s American-Backed War in Yemen Went Really Badly Today
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/09/saudi_arabias_american_backed_war_in_yemen_went_really_badly_today

Neither of those goals currently appears achievable. Instead of being halted, the Houthi rebels, whom Saudi Arabia claims are backed by Iran, have gained territory. On Thursday, they took the city of Ataq, a Sunni stronghold. Local residents told Reuters that the city’s security forces and tribal chiefs helped the Houthis enter the city.

Meanwhile, fighting continues in the city of Aden, a city of about 800,000 on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. The city, a port on the southern coast, is currently the scene of street-to-street fighting, and humanitarian agencies report having difficulties delivering aid. International shipping companies are steering clear of Yemeni ports — terrible news for a place that imports about 90 percent of its food and which faces a looming water crisis. “It’s nearly catastrophic,” Marie Claire Feghali, the International Committee of the Red Cross spokeswoman in Yemen, told Reuters.

Amid this fighting, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terrorist group’s Yemen affiliate, is making territorial gains. On Thursday, the group seized government offices in al-Siddah district, which had previously been controlled by the Houthis. Last week, AQAP, which U.S. spies consider to be al Qaeda’s most dangerous offshoot, seized the port city of Mukalla.

Les #Etats-Unis vont faciliter la vente de #drones armés à leurs alliés
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2015/02/18/washington-autorise-la-vente-de-drones-armes-a-ses-allies_4578465_3222.html

La principale condition de vente est qu’ils soient utilisés en violation du #droit_international.

La diplomatie américaine souligne que :

« Les Etats-Unis (...) ont pour responsabilité de s’assurer que les ventes, transferts et utilisations à l’international d’UAS d’origine américaine correspondent aux intérêts de la sécurité nationale américaine et à ceux en matière de politique étrangère. »

Ukrainian Brides May Solve China’s Gender Gap, Chinese Media Claims | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/28/ukrainian-brides-may-solve-chinas-gender-gap-chinese-media-claims

“Their economy is depressed but beautiful women are running rampant,” the state-run Beijing News reported Jan. 22 in a story suggesting that Ukrainian women could be the solution to China’s woman shortage. The piece, illustrated with charts, bubbles, and cartoon illustrations of lonely Chinese men, was a breezy attempt to make light of China’s missing women and the severe gender imbalance caused by couples aborting female fetuses in favor of boys. So widespread is the practice that it has badly skewed the country’s sex ratio: The global average is around 105 boys born for every 100 girls; but in China last year, just over 115 boys were born for every 100 girls.

Une solution « humoristique » au #féminicide en action en Chine : un rapport de masculinité de 115 garçons pour 100 filles.