person:saddam hussein

  • Tulsi et la Corée du Nord
    http://www.dedefensa.org/article/tulsi-et-la-coree-du-nord

    Tulsi et la Corée du Nord

    Tulsi Gabbard, dont on a déjà parlé comme un membre du monde politique washingtonien aussi rare et aussi remarquable qu’un Ron Paul en son temps, est intéressée par la crise de la Corée du Nord notamment en sa qualité de députée des iles Hawaii. Les îles constituent en effet l’État de l’Union (Guam n’étant pas un État) le plus proche de la Corée du Nord, dont divers experts commencent à apprécier qu’elle serait sur le point d’atteindre ou atteindrait la capacité de développer des missiles balistiques à portée intercontinentale (à têtes nucléaires, certes), donc capables de toucher l’Ouest des USA, et a fortiori bien entendu les Hawaii.

    Il y a eu à Hawaii, il y a deux jours, une fausse “alerte réelle” (du type “ceci n’est pas un exercice”, etc.) annonçant une attaque nord-coréenne par (...)

    • Gabbard : « Nous savons que la Corée du Nord a ces armes nucléaires parce qu’elle a vu comment les Etats-Unis, en Libye par exemple, ont garanti à Kadhafi qu’ils n’allaient pas l’attaquer et qu’en échange de cette promesse il devrait abandonner le développement des armes nucléaires. Il l’a fait, et puis nous avons attaqué la Libye, nous avons renversé Kadhafi et nous avons plongé le pays dans le chaos dont nous voyons aujourd’hui le développement.

       » La Corée du Nord voit ce que nous avons fait en Irak, avec Saddam Hussein, avec les fausses informations sur les armes de destruction massive. Elle voit comment le président Trump cherche à décertifier un accord nucléaire qui a empêché l’Iran de développer ses armes nucléaires, menaçant l’existence même l’existence de l’accord qui a été conclu.

       » Alors oui, nous devons comprendre que la Corée du Nord maintient ces armes nucléaires parce qu’elle pense que c’est sa seule protection pour empêcher que les États-Unis décident de lui faire ce qu’ils ont fait à tant de pays à travers l’histoire. »

  • Normalement, j’évite de reprocher à quelqu’un de ne pas aborder tel sujet quand il évoque tel autre sujet (ne serait-ce que parce que l’argument est assez facilement retournable). Mais avec Filiu, on atteint un tel niveau de grotesque que ça défie l’entendement : Les apprentis-sorciers de la « realpolitik » au Moyen-Orient
    https://theconversation.com/les-apprentis-sorciers-de-la-realpolitik-au-moyen-orient-89817

    Où Filiu se désespère (à nouveau) du prétendu retour à la « realpolitik » de la France sous Macron (alors que, attention tiens-toi bien : « La morale est bel et bien une arme stratégique pour la France »). Après l’exemple de la France travaillant avec Saddam Hussein, il évoque évidemment la Syrie, puis l’Égypte de Sissi. Et même une évocation des récentes manifestations en Iran comme-ça-en-passant :

    La crise en cours en Iran prouve pourtant que les populations ne sauraient durablement être exclues des équations géopolitiques.

    Et là, je plisse les yeux, je lance un rechercher-dans-le-texte… Et non : pas un mot sur les ventes d’armes françaises à l’Arabie séoudite et la guerre au Yémen. J’insiste : je ne relève pas ça pour détourner des autres crimes, mais pour faire remarquer qu’un texte qui dénonce l’hypocrisie d’un « retour » de la realpolitik (qui consisterait à travailler avec des régimes autoritaires qui massacrent des gens, en abandonnant ainsi la posture morale qui nous vaudrait l’admiration des peuples du monde), parvient à ne pas dire un mot de l’un de nos plus gros clients : l’Arabie séoudite.

    Lire par exemple : Comment la France participe à la guerre contre le Yémen (Warda Mohamed & Tony Fortin, septembre 2017) :
    http://orientxxi.info/magazine/comment-la-france-participe-a-la-guerre-contre-le-yemen,1990

    La France ne vend pas d’armes au régime syrien, ni à ma connaissance à l’Iran, mais Filiu cite ces pays dans sa dénonciation de l’indigne realpolitik française, mais rien sur l’un de nos plus gros clients, l’Arabie séoudite, qui utilise pourtant ces armes françaises pour détruire le Yémen ?

    Yep, ça marche comme ça.

  • Jackson Lears · What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking : #Russiagate · LRB 4 January 2018
    https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking
    La pensée unique aux États Unis de plus en plus sectaire et pesante

    Jackson Lears

    American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and dangerous antics of Donald Trump are troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party leadership’s failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign. Bernie Sanders’s challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump’s triumph, revealed the breadth of popular anger at politics as usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington. Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress. Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton’s defeat. Then everything changed.

    A story that had circulated during the campaign without much effect resurfaced: it involved the charge that Russian operatives had hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, revealing embarrassing emails that damaged Clinton’s chances. With stunning speed, a new centrist-liberal orthodoxy came into being, enveloping the major media and the bipartisan Washington establishment. This secular religion has attracted hordes of converts in the first year of the Trump presidency. In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s.

    The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind.

    Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free ‘assessment’ produced last January by a small number of ‘hand-picked’ analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. The claims of the last were made with only ‘moderate’ confidence. The label Intelligence Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself contained this crucial admission: ‘Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.’ Yet the assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for the intelligence agencies, or at least for those ‘hand-picked’ analysts.

    It is not the first time the intelligence agencies have played this role. When I hear the Intelligence Community Assessment cited as a reliable source, I always recall the part played by the New York Times in legitimating CIA reports of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s putative weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the long history of disinformation (a.k.a. ‘fake news’) as a tactic for advancing one administration or another’s political agenda. Once again, the established press is legitimating pronouncements made by the Church Fathers of the national security state. Clapper is among the most vigorous of these. He perjured himself before Congress in 2013, when he denied that the NSA had ‘wittingly’ spied on Americans – a lie for which he has never been held to account. In May 2017, he told NBC’s Chuck Todd that the Russians were highly likely to have colluded with Trump’s campaign because they are ‘almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favour, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique’. The current orthodoxy exempts the Church Fathers from standards imposed on ordinary people, and condemns Russians – above all Putin – as uniquely, ‘almost genetically’ diabolical.

    It’s hard for me to understand how the Democratic Party, which once felt scepticism towards the intelligence agencies, can now embrace the CIA and the FBI as sources of incontrovertible truth. One possible explanation is that Trump’s election has created a permanent emergency in the liberal imagination, based on the belief that the threat he poses is unique and unprecedented. It’s true that Trump’s menace is viscerally real. But the menace posed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was equally real. The damage done by Bush and Cheney – who ravaged the Middle East, legitimated torture and expanded unconstitutional executive power – was truly unprecedented, and probably permanent. Trump does pose an unprecedented threat to undocumented immigrants and Muslim travellers, whose protection is urgent and necessary. But on most issues he is a standard issue Republican. He is perfectly at home with Paul Ryan’s austerity agenda, which involves enormous transfers of wealth to the most privileged Americans. He is as committed as any other Republican to repealing Obama’s Affordable Care Act. During the campaign he posed as an apostate on free trade and an opponent of overseas military intervention, but now that he is in office his free trade views are shifting unpredictably and his foreign policy team is composed of generals with impeccable interventionist credentials.

    Trump is committed to continuing his predecessors’ lavish funding of the already bloated Defence Department, and his Fortress America is a blustering, undisciplined version of Madeleine Albright’s ‘indispensable nation’. Both Trump and Albright assume that the United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena: Trump because it’s the greatest country in the world, Albright because it’s an exceptional force for global good. Nor is there anything unprecedented about Trump’s desire for détente with Russia, which until at least 2012 was the official position of the Democratic Party. What is unprecedented about Trump is his offensive style: contemptuous, bullying, inarticulate, and yet perfectly pitched to appeal to the anger and anxiety of his target audience. His excess has licensed overt racism and proud misogyny among some of his supporters. This is cause for denunciation, but I am less persuaded that it justifies the anti-Russian mania.

    Besides Trump’s supposed uniqueness, there are two other assumptions behind the furore in Washington: the first is that the Russian hack unquestionably occurred, and the second is that the Russians are our implacable enemies. The second provides the emotional charge for the first. Both seem to me problematic. With respect to the first, the hacking charges are unproved and may well remain so. Edward Snowden and others familiar with the NSA say that if long-distance hacking had taken place the agency would have monitored it and could detail its existence without compromising their secret sources and methods. In September, Snowden told Der Spiegel that the NSA ‘probably knows quite well who the invaders were’. And yet ‘it has not presented any evidence, although I suspect it exists. The question is: why not? … I suspect it discovered other attackers in the systems, maybe there were six or seven groups at work.’ He also said in July 2016 that ‘even if the attackers try to obfuscate origin, ‪#XKEYSCORE makes following exfiltrated data easy. I did this personally against Chinese ops.’ The NSA’s capacity to follow hacking to its source is a matter of public record. When the agency investigated pervasive and successful Chinese hacking into US military and defence industry installations, it was able to trace the hacks to the building where they originated, a People’s Liberation Army facility in Shanghai. That information was published in the New York Times, but, this time, the NSA’s failure to provide evidence has gone curiously unremarked. When The Intercept published a story about the NSA’s alleged discovery that Russian military intelligence had attempted to hack into US state and local election systems, the agency’s undocumented assertions about the Russian origins of the hack were allowed to stand as unchallenged fact and quickly became treated as such in the mainstream media.

    Meanwhile, there has been a blizzard of ancillary accusations, including much broader and vaguer charges of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. It remains possible that Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who has been appointed to investigate these allegations, may turn up some compelling evidence of contacts between Trump’s people and various Russians. It would be surprising if an experienced prosecutor empowered to cast a dragnet came up empty-handed, and the arrests have already begun. But what is striking about them is that the charges have nothing to do with Russian interference in the election. There has been much talk about the possibility that the accused may provide damaging evidence against Trump in exchange for lighter sentences, but this is merely speculation. Paul Manafort, at one point Trump’s campaign manager, has pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to register his public relations firm as a foreign agent for the Ukrainian government and concealing his millions of dollars in fees. But all this occurred before the 2016 campaign. George Papadopolous, a foreign policy adviser, has pleaded guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI about his bungling efforts to arrange a meeting between Trump’s people and the Russian government – an opportunity the Trump campaign declined. Mueller’s most recent arrestee, Michael Flynn, the unhinged Islamophobe who was briefly Trump’s national security adviser, has pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about meeting the Russian ambassador in December – weeks after the election. This is the sort of backchannel diplomacy that routinely occurs during the interim between one administration and the next. It is not a sign of collusion.

    So far, after months of ‘bombshells’ that turn out to be duds, there is still no actual evidence for the claim that the Kremlin ordered interference in the American election. Meanwhile serious doubts have surfaced about the technical basis for the hacking claims. Independent observers have argued it is more likely that the emails were leaked from inside, not hacked from outside. On this front, the most persuasive case was made by a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, former employees of the US intelligence agencies who distinguished themselves in 2003 by debunking Colin Powell’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, hours after Powell had presented his pseudo-evidence at the UN. (There are members of VIPS who dissent from the VIPS report’s conclusions, but their arguments are in turn contested by the authors of the report.) The VIPS findings received no attention in major media outlets, except Fox News – which from the centre-left perspective is worse than no attention at all. Mainstream media have dismissed the VIPS report as a conspiracy theory (apparently the Russian hacking story does not count as one). The crucial issue here and elsewhere is the exclusion from public discussion of any critical perspectives on the orthodox narrative, even the perspectives of people with professional credentials and a solid track record.

    Both the DNC hacking story and the one involving the emails of John Podesta, a Clinton campaign operative, involve a shadowy bunch of putatively Russian hackers called Fancy Bear – also known among the technically inclined as APT28. The name Fancy Bear was introduced by Dimitri Alperovitch, the chief technology officer of Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to investigate the theft of their emails. Alperovitch is also a fellow at the Atlantic Council, an anti-Russian Washington think tank. In its report Crowdstrike puts forward close to zero evidence for its claim that those responsible were Russian, let alone for its assertion that they were affiliated with Russian military intelligence. And yet, from this point on, the assumption that this was a Russian cyber operation was unquestioned. When the FBI arrived on the scene, the Bureau either did not request or was refused access to the DNC servers; instead it depended entirely on the Crowdstrike analysis. Crowdstrike, meanwhile, was being forced to retract another claim, that the Russians had successfully hacked the guidance systems of the Ukrainian artillery. The Ukrainian military and the British International Institute for Strategic Studies both contradicted this claim, and Crowdstrike backed down. But its DNC analysis was allowed to stand and even become the basis for the January Intelligence Community Assessment.

    The chatter surrounding the hack would never have acquired such urgency were it not for the accompanying assumption: Russia is a uniquely dangerous adversary, with which we should avoid all contact. Without that belief, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s meetings with Russians in September 2016 would become routine discussions between a senator and foreign officials. Flynn’s post-election conversations with the Russian ambassador would appear unremarkable. Trump’s cronies’ attempts to do business in Russia would become merely sleazy. Donald Trump Jr’s meeting at Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya would be transformed from a melodrama of shady intrigue to a comedy of errors – with the candidate’s son expecting to receive information to use against Clinton but discovering Veselnitskaya only wanted to talk about repealing sanctions and restarting the flow of Russian orphans to the United States. And Putin himself would become just another autocrat, with whom democracies could engage without endorsing.

    Sceptical voices, such as those of the VIPS, have been drowned out by a din of disinformation. Flagrantly false stories, like the Washington Post report that the Russians had hacked into the Vermont electrical grid, are published, then retracted 24 hours later. Sometimes – like the stories about Russian interference in the French and German elections – they are not retracted even after they have been discredited. These stories have been thoroughly debunked by French and German intelligence services but continue to hover, poisoning the atmosphere, confusing debate. The claim that the Russians hacked local and state voting systems in the US was refuted by California and Wisconsin election officials, but their comments generated a mere whisper compared with the uproar created by the original story. The rush to publish without sufficient attention to accuracy has become the new normal in journalism. Retraction or correction is almost beside the point: the false accusation has done its work.

    The consequence is a spreading confusion that envelops everything. Epistemological nihilism looms, but some people and institutions have more power than others to define what constitutes an agreed-on reality. To say this is to risk dismissal as the ultimate wing-nut in the lexicon of contemporary Washington: the conspiracy theorist. Still, the fact remains: sometimes powerful people arrange to promote ideas that benefit their common interests. Whether we call this hegemony, conspiracy or merely special privilege hardly matters. What does matter is the power to create what Gramsci called the ‘common sense’ of an entire society. Even if much of that society is indifferent to or suspicious of the official common sense, it still becomes embedded among the tacit assumptions that set the boundaries of ‘responsible opinion’. So the Democratic establishment (along with a few Republicans) and the major media outlets have made ‘Russian meddling’ the common sense of the current moment. What kind of cultural work does this common sense do? What are the consequences of the spectacle the media call (with characteristic originality) ‘Russiagate’?

    The most immediate consequence is that, by finding foreign demons who can be blamed for Trump’s ascendancy, the Democratic leadership have shifted the blame for their defeat away from their own policies without questioning any of their core assumptions. Amid the general recoil from Trump, they can even style themselves dissenters – ‘#the resistance’ was the label Clintonites appropriated within a few days of the election. Mainstream Democrats have begun to use the word ‘progressive’ to apply to a platform that amounts to little more than preserving Obamacare, gesturing towards greater income equality and protecting minorities. This agenda is timid. It has nothing to say about challenging the influence of concentrated capital on policy, reducing the inflated defence budget or withdrawing from overextended foreign commitments; yet without those initiatives, even the mildest egalitarian policies face insuperable obstacles. More genuine insurgencies are in the making, which confront corporate power and connect domestic with foreign policy, but they face an uphill battle against the entrenched money and power of the Democratic leadership – the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and the DNC. Russiagate offers Democratic elites a way to promote party unity against Trump-Putin, while the DNC purges Sanders’s supporters.

    For the DNC, the great value of the Russian hack story is that it focuses attention away from what was actually in their emails. The documents revealed a deeply corrupt organisation, whose pose of impartiality was a sham. Even the reliably pro-Clinton Washington Post has admitted that ‘many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.’ Further evidence of collusion between the Clinton machine and the DNC surfaced recently in a memoir by Donna Brazile, who became interim chair of the DNC after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in the wake of the email revelations. Brazile describes discovering an agreement dated 26 August 2015, which specified (she writes)

    that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics and mailings.

    Before the primaries had even begun, the supposedly neutral DNC – which had been close to insolvency – had been bought by the Clinton campaign.

    Another recent revelation of DNC tactics concerns the origins of the inquiry into Trump’s supposed links to Putin. The story began in April 2016, when the DNC hired a Washington research firm called Fusion GPS to unearth any connections between Trump and Russia. The assignment involved the payment of ‘cash for trash’, as the Clinton campaign liked to say. Fusion GPS eventually produced the trash, a lurid account written by the former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele, based on hearsay purchased from anonymous Russian sources. Amid prostitutes and golden showers, a story emerged: the Russian government had been blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump for years, on the assumption that he would become president some day and serve the Kremlin’s interests. In this fantastic tale, Putin becomes a preternaturally prescient schemer. Like other accusations of collusion, this one has become vaguer over time, adding to the murky atmosphere without ever providing any evidence. The Clinton campaign tried to persuade established media outlets to publicise the Steele dossier, but with uncharacteristic circumspection, they declined to promote what was plainly political trash rather than reliable reporting. Yet the FBI apparently took the Steele dossier seriously enough to include a summary of it in a secret appendix to the Intelligence Community Assessment. Two weeks before the inauguration, James Comey, the director of the FBI, described the dossier to Trump. After Comey’s briefing was leaked to the press, the website Buzzfeed published the dossier in full, producing hilarity and hysteria in the Washington establishment.

    The Steele dossier inhabits a shadowy realm where ideology and intelligence, disinformation and revelation overlap. It is the antechamber to the wider system of epistemological nihilism created by various rival factions in the intelligence community: the ‘tree of smoke’ that, for the novelist Denis Johnson, symbolised CIA operations in Vietnam. I inhaled that smoke myself in 1969-70, when I was a cryptographer with a Top Secret clearance on a US navy ship that carried missiles armed with nuclear warheads – the existence of which the navy denied. I was stripped of my clearance and later honourably discharged when I refused to join the Sealed Authenticator System, which would have authorised the launch of those allegedly non-existent nuclear weapons. The tree of smoke has only grown more complex and elusive since then. Yet the Democratic Party has now embarked on a full-scale rehabilitation of the intelligence community – or at least the part of it that supports the notion of Russian hacking. (We can be sure there is disagreement behind the scenes.) And it is not only the Democratic establishment that is embracing the deep state. Some of the party’s base, believing Trump and Putin to be joined at the hip, has taken to ranting about ‘treason’ like a reconstituted John Birch Society.

    I thought of these ironies when I visited the Tate Modern exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which featured the work of black American artists from the 1960s and 1970s, when intelligence agencies (and agents provocateurs) were spearheading a government crackdown on black militants, draft resisters, deserters and antiwar activists. Amid the paintings, collages and assemblages there was a single Confederate flag, accompanied by grim reminders of the Jim Crow past – a Klansman in full regalia, a black body dangling from a tree. There were also at least half a dozen US flags, juxtaposed in whole or in part with images of contemporary racial oppression that could have occurred anywhere in America: dead black men carted off on stretchers by skeletons in police uniform; a black prisoner tied to a chair, awaiting torture. The point was to contrast the pretensions of ‘the land of the free’ with the practices of the national security state and local police forces. The black artists of that era knew their enemy: black people were not being killed and imprisoned by some nebulous foreign adversary, but by the FBI, the CIA and the police.

    The Democratic Party has now developed a new outlook on the world, a more ambitious partnership between liberal humanitarian interventionists and neoconservative militarists than existed under the cautious Obama. This may be the most disastrous consequence for the Democratic Party of the new anti-Russian orthodoxy: the loss of the opportunity to formulate a more humane and coherent foreign policy. The obsession with Putin has erased any possibility of complexity from the Democratic world picture, creating a void quickly filled by the monochrome fantasies of Hillary Clinton and her exceptionalist allies. For people like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, war is a desirable state of affairs, especially when viewed from the comfort of their keyboards, and the rest of the world – apart from a few bad guys – is filled with populations who want to build societies just like ours: pluralistic, democratic and open for business. This view is difficult to challenge when it cloaks itself in humanitarian sentiment. There is horrific suffering in the world; the US has abundant resources to help relieve it; the moral imperative is clear. There are endless forms of international engagement that do not involve military intervention. But it is the path taken by US policy often enough that one may suspect humanitarian rhetoric is nothing more than window-dressing for a more mundane geopolitics – one that defines the national interest as global and virtually limitless.

    Having come of age during the Vietnam War, a calamitous consequence of that inflated definition of national interest, I have always been attracted to the realist critique of globalism. Realism is a label forever besmirched by association with Henry Kissinger, who used it as a rationale for intervening covertly and overtly in other nations’ affairs. Yet there is a more humane realist tradition, the tradition of George Kennan and William Fulbright, which emphasises the limits of military might, counselling that great power requires great restraint. This tradition challenges the doctrine of regime change under the guise of democracy promotion, which – despite its abysmal failures in Iraq and Libya – retains a baffling legitimacy in official Washington. Russiagate has extended its shelf life.

    We can gauge the corrosive impact of the Democrats’ fixation on Russia by asking what they aren’t talking about when they talk about Russian hacking. For a start, they aren’t talking about interference of other sorts in the election, such as the Republican Party’s many means of disenfranchising minority voters. Nor are they talking about the trillion dollar defence budget that pre-empts the possibility of single-payer healthcare and other urgently needed social programmes; nor about the modernisation of the American nuclear arsenal which Obama began and Trump plans to accelerate, and which raises the risk of the ultimate environmental calamity, nuclear war – a threat made more serious than it has been in decades by America’s combative stance towards Russia. The prospect of impeaching Trump and removing him from office by convicting him of collusion with Russia has created an atmosphere of almost giddy anticipation among leading Democrats, allowing them to forget that the rest of the Republican Party is composed of many politicians far more skilful in Washington’s ways than their president will ever be.

    It is not the Democratic Party that is leading the search for alternatives to the wreckage created by Republican policies: a tax plan that will soak the poor and middle class to benefit the rich; a heedless pursuit of fossil fuels that is already resulting in the contamination of the water supply of the Dakota people; and continued support for police policies of militarisation and mass incarceration. It is local populations that are threatened by oil spills and police beatings, and that is where humane populism survives. A multitude of insurgent groups have begun to use the outrage against Trump as a lever to move the party in egalitarian directions: Justice Democrats, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Socialists of America, as well as a host of local and regional organisations. They recognise that there are far more urgent – and genuine – reasons to oppose Trump than vague allegations of collusion with Russia. They are posing an overdue challenge to the long con of neoliberalism, and the technocratic arrogance that led to Clinton’s defeat in Rust Belt states. Recognising that the current leadership will not bring about significant change, they are seeking funding from outside the DNC. This is the real resistance, as opposed to ‘#theresistance’.

    On certain important issues – such as broadening support for single-payer healthcare, promoting a higher minimum wage or protecting undocumented immigrants from the most flagrant forms of exploitation – these insurgents are winning wide support. Candidates like Paula Jean Swearengin, a coal miner’s daughter from West Virginia who is running in the Democratic primary for nomination to the US Senate, are challenging establishment Democrats who stand cheek by jowl with Republicans in their service to concentrated capital. Swearengin’s opponent is Joe Manchin, whom the Los Angeles Times has compared to Doug Jones, another ‘very conservative’ Democrat who recently won election to the US Senate in Alabama, narrowly defeating a Republican disgraced by accusations of sexual misconduct with 14-year-old girls. I can feel relieved at that result without joining in the collective Democratic ecstasy, which reveals the party’s persistent commitment to politics as usual. Democrat leaders have persuaded themselves (and much of their base) that all the republic needs is a restoration of the status quo ante Trump. They remain oblivious to popular impatience with familiar formulas. Jess King – a Mennonite woman, Bard College MBA and founder of a local non-profit who is running for Congress as a Justice Democrat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania – put it this way: ‘We see a changing political landscape right now that isn’t measured by traditional left to right politics anymore, but bottom to top. In Pennsylvania and many other places around the country we see a grassroots economic populism on the rise, pushing against the political establishment and status quo that have failed so many in our country.’

    Democratic insurgents are also developing a populist critique of the imperial hubris that has sponsored multiple failed crusades, extorted disproportionate sacrifice from the working class and provoked support for Trump, who presented himself (however misleadingly) as an opponent of open-ended interventionism. On foreign policy, the insurgents face an even more entrenched opposition than on domestic policy: a bipartisan consensus aflame with outrage at the threat to democracy supposedly posed by Russian hacking. Still, they may have found a tactical way forward, by focusing on the unequal burden borne by the poor and working class in the promotion and maintenance of American empire.

    This approach animates Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis, a 33-page document whose authors include Norman Solomon, founder of the web-based insurgent lobby RootsAction.org. ‘The Democratic Party’s claims of fighting for “working families” have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people,’ Autopsy announces. But what sets this apart from most progressive critiques is the cogent connection it makes between domestic class politics and foreign policy. For those in the Rust Belt, military service has often seemed the only escape from the shambles created by neoliberal policies; yet the price of escape has been high. As Autopsy notes, ‘the wisdom of continual war’ – what Clinton calls ‘global leadership’ –

    was far clearer to the party’s standard bearer [in 2016] than it was to people in the US communities bearing the brunt of combat deaths, injuries and psychological traumas. After a decade and a half of non-stop warfare, research data from voting patterns suggest that the Clinton campaign’s hawkish stance was a political detriment in working-class communities hard-hit by American casualties from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Francis Shen of the University of Minnesota and Douglas Kriner of Boston University analysed election results in three key states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – and found that ‘even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump.’ Clinton’s record of uncritical commitment to military intervention allowed Trump to have it both ways, playing to jingoist resentment while posing as an opponent of protracted and pointless war. Kriner and Shen conclude that Democrats may want to ‘re-examine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump’s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war’. If the insurgent movements within the Democratic Party begin to formulate an intelligent foreign policy critique, a re-examination may finally occur. And the world may come into sharper focus as a place where American power, like American virtue, is limited. For this Democrat, that is an outcome devoutly to be wished. It’s a long shot, but there is something happening out there.

    #USA #cuture #politique

  • Petite histoire de la propagande de guerre 2,les couveuses du Koweit ou quand l’armée de Saddam Hussein « assassinait » les bébés – Histoire, faits, documents et débats
    https://accrobac.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/petite-histoire-de-la-propagande-de-guerre-2les-couveuses-du-kow

    Le 14 octobre 1990, une jeune femme koweïtienne, appelée par les médias « l’infirmière Nayirah », témoigne, les larmes aux yeux, devant une commission du Congrès des États-Unis. L’événement est retransmis rapidement par les télévisions du monde entier
    La jeune fille, coachée selon certaines sources par Michael Deaver, ancien conseiller en communication de Ronald Reagan, s’appelait al-Ṣabaḥ, et était la fille de l’ambassadeur du Koweït à Washington Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah. L’association Citizens for a Free Kuwait, organisée par le gouvernement du Koweït exilé, avait commandé cette campagne à la compagnie de relations publiques Hill & Knowlton (pour la somme de 10 millions de dollars).

    #Iraq #histoire #guerre

  • Tikrit et Nadjaf : le martyr et l’extase – Le Saker Francophone
    http://lesakerfrancophone.fr/tikrit-et-nadjaf-le-martyre-et-lextase

    De Tikrit et Nadjaf, Irak – Rien, absolument rien ne vous prépare à revivre, sur place, le souvenir de ce qui entrera dans l’histoire comme le lieu des pires atrocités de Daech / État islamique en Irak ou en Syrie depuis que ce culte de la mort est entré en force à travers la frontière à l’été 2014 : le massacre de Speicher du 12 juin 2014, quand presque 2000 recrues de l’armée irakienne ont été assassinées à côté et dans un ancien palais de Saddam Hussein situé sur les berges du Tigre, près de Tikrit.

    Pas très gai, mais utile rappel des massacres en #irak

  • Muhammad Bin Salman, de facto leader de l’Arabie... - Laurent Bonnefoy
    https://www.facebook.com/laurent.jeanne.90/posts/10155554889930528?comment_id=10155554961665528&reply_comment_id=1015555518

    Muhammad Bin Salman, de facto leader de l’Arabie Saoudite fascine les grands médias occidentaux et nos dirigeants. C’est à l’évidence une histoire d’amour qui commence et les centaines de millions injectés par le Royaume (via des agences de com’) pour changer son image en Europe et aux Etats-Unis n’y sont sans doute pas pour rien ! Le branding « MBS » marche à plein : France Inter ce matin, le New York Times hier, The Economist il y a deux ans.
    On y lit ou entend des louanges, on relève la difficulté de la tâche relevée par le jeune prince « courageux » (parce que les Saoudiens seraient des « fainéants » ou des « corrompus », ou bien parce que les méchants religieux veillent au grain).
    Quelques historiens pourront sans doute dans quelques années tracer un parallèle avec la fascination qu’exercait Saddam Hussein dans les années 1980 ou Bachar el-Assad au milieu des années 2000. A une différence près, concernant « MBS » et son terrain de jeu macabre yéménite, aux fondements de son règne, les informations sont aujourd’hui pleinement disponibles. Encore faut-il vouloir les voir !

  • The science of spying: how the #CIA secretly recruits academics | News | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/10/the-science-of-spying-how-the-cia-secretly-recruits-academics

    Intelligence from academic conferences can shape policy. It helped persuade the George W Bush administration –mistakenly, as it turned out – that Saddam Hussein was still developing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

    [...]

    Because it was hard to approach the scientists in #Iran, the CIA enticed them to conferences in friendly or neutral countries, a former intelligence officer told me. In consultation with #Israel, the agency would choose a prospect. Then it would set up a conference at a prestigious scientific institute through a cutout, typically a businessman, who would underwrite the symposium with $500,000 to $2m in agency funds.

    #Irak #fabrications #Israël

  • The Latest: Iraq [wants a nuclear reactor] - The Washington Post
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-latest-uae-says-iran-is-main-obstacle-to-arab-peace/2017/09/22/798eead8-9ffb-11e7-b2a7-bc70b6f98089_story.html

    Iraq’s foreign minister is asking nuclear countries for help building a nuclear reactor, saying the country has a right to use nuclear power peacefully as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

    Ibrahim al-Jaafari made the request in his speech Saturday to the U.N. General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting.

    Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein’s previous efforts to build a nuclear reactor were met with an Israeli bombing in 1981 and years of suspicion about his intentions.

    The NPT, which Iraq ratified in 1969, sought to prevent the spread of atomic arms beyond the five original nuclear powers — the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China.

    Al-Jaafari said Saturday that based on this right under the NPT, Iraq calls for help from our “kindred, nuclear countries.

    #Irak #nucléaire_civil #Traité_de_non_Prolifération

  • En direct du monde. À Berlin, les « #urbexer » explorent les lieux abandonnés de la ville
    http://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/en-direct-du-monde/en-direct-du-monde-a-berlin-les-urbexer-explorent-les-lieux-abandonnes-

    On les appelle les « urbexer », une abréviation anglaise pour « explorateurs urbains ». Ce ne sont pas des touristes classiques armés d’un bon vieux guide. Eux préfèrent s’éloigner des chemins balisés. Les « urbexer » visitent des lieux à l’abandon dont l’accès n’est pas vraiment légal. Ces visites de bâtiments délaissés donnent des frissons aux visiteurs et les plongent dans une histoire révolue. Berlin est un paradis pour ces explorateurs urbains.
    […]
    Parmi les endroits les plus prisés, il y a un ancien parc d’attractions de l’Allemagne de l’Est où une grande roue de 45 m tourne parfois encore s’il y a du vent. On y trouve un dinosaure mal en point et les restes de divers manèges. Il y a aussi un symbole de la Guerre froide avec le centre d’écoutes des Américains et des Britanniques au Teufelsberg, sur une colline de Berlin-Ouest, où les grandes oreilles des cinq radars servaient à écouter les pays communistes. L’ancienne ambassade d’Irak, à l’abandon depuis 1991, est aussi très courue avec ses dossiers éparpillés sur le sol ou sa machine à écrire en arabe datant de l’époque de Saddam Hussein.

    Notre ami @klaus nous avait fait visiter le #Teufelsberg, il me semble

  • Gharbi Mustafa • Quand les montagnes pleurent-Kedistan
    http://www.kedistan.net/2017/07/31/gharbi-mustafa-les-montagnes-pleurent

    @Ad Nauseam - Quand les montagnes pleurent est le premier roman de Gharbi Mustafa. Il a été publié en 2013, en anglais, sous le titre When Mountains Weep : Coming of Age in Kurdistan. C’est un roman inspiré de souvenirs de jeunesse au Kurdistan d’Irak à l’époque de Saddam Hussein. Les aventures et mésaventures du (...)

    #Kedistan / #Mediarezo

  • Dans le monde magique du NY Times, les États-Unis ont envahi l’Irak pour en faire la première pierre d’un Moyen-Orient démocratique… : Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over’.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-iraq-iranian-power.html

    When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to topple Saddam Hussein, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a democratic and Western-facing Middle East, and vast amounts of blood and treasure — about 4,500 American lives lost, more than $1 trillion spent — were poured into the cause.

    From Day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a threat, and it could serve as a jumping-off point to spread Iranian influence around the region.

    In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost.

  • Do supporters of #Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo really know what he stands for? | Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong | Opinion | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-winner-liu-xiaobo-chinese-dissident

    Article de 2010, via angry Arab

    Imprisoning Liu was entirely unnecessary. If Liu’s politics were well-known, most people would not favour him for a prize, because he is a champion of war, not peace. He has endorsed the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and he applauded the Vietnam and Korean wars retrospectively in a 2001 essay. All these conflicts have entailed massive violations of human rights. Yet in his article Lessons from the Cold War, Liu argues that “The free world led by the US fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights … The major wars that the US became involved in are all ethically defensible.” During the 2004 US presidential election, Liu warmly praised George Bush for his war effort against Iraq and condemned Democratic party candidate John Kerry for not sufficiently supporting the US’s wars:

    [T]he outstanding achievement made by Bush in anti-terrorism absolutely cannot be erased by Kerry’s slandering … However much risk must be endured in striking down Saddam Hussein, know that no action would lead to a greater risk. This has been proven by the second world war and September 11! No matter what, the war against Saddam Hussein is just! The decision by President Bush is right!

    Liu has also one-sidedly praised Israel’s stance in the Middle East conflict. He places the blame for the Israel/Palestine conflict on Palestinians, who he regards as “often the provocateurs”.

    Liu has also advocated the total westernisation of China. In a 1988 interview he stated that “to choose westernisation is to choose to be human”. He also faulted a television documentary, He Shang, or River Elegy, for not thoroughly criticising Chinese culture and not advocating westernisation enthusiastically enough: “If I were to make this I would show just how wimpy, spineless and fucked-up [weisuo, ruanruo, caodan] the Chinese really are”. Liu considered it most unfortunate that his monolingualism bound him in a dialogue with something “very benighted [yumei] and philistine [yongsu],” the Chinese cultural sphere. Harvard researcher Lin Tongqi noted that an early 1990s book by Liu contains “pungent attacks on the Chinese national character”. In a well-known statement of 1988, Liu said:

    It took Hong Kong 100 years to become what it is. Given the size of China, certainly it would need 300 years of colonisation for it to become like what Hong Kong is today. I even doubt whether 300 years would be enough.

    Affirming this sentiment in Open magazine in 2006, he added that progress in China depends on westernisation and the more westernisation, the more progress. While his supporters excuse Liu’s pro-colonialism as a provocation, it logically aligns with his support for total westernisation and US-led regime changing wars.

  • L‘invitation de Trump au 14 juillet annonce une escalade du #militarisme
    http://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2017/jul2017/trma-j04.shtml

    Les déclarations des gouvernements américain et français avant d’annoncer l’invitation en milieu de semaine, montrent que ce « coup politique et médiatique », selon un commentateur, est avant tout le signal d‘une escalade de la guerre au Moyen-Orient, en particulier en Syrie et d’un engagement militaire accru de la France dans la région. Washington et Paris déclaraient en début de semaine qu‘une nouvelle « attaque chimique » déclencherait une réaction militaire commune de leur part.

    Le porte-parole de la Maison-Blanche Sean Spicer a dit le 27 juin dans des remarques rappelant les « Armes de destruction massives » imputées à Saddam Hussein par l‘administration Bush avant son invasion de l‘Iraq, que si Assad « effectuait un autre assassinat de masse avec des armes chimiques, lui et son armée devraient payer un prix élevé ». L’Elysée annonçait le lendemain que les deux pays « travaillaient à une réponse commune en cas d’attaque chimique en Syrie ».

    « La position du président a été extrêmement claire sur ce point. Il s’agit de la démonstration que l’accord de 2013 sur le démantèlement de l’arsenal chimique syrien, passé sous l’égide de la Russie notamment, est une fois de plus violé délibérément, » a commenté le ministre des Affaires étrangères Jean-Yves Le Drian dans une interview au Monde du 30 juin.

  • Edito d’ABA dont je ne traduis que le titre :

    "Qatar au bord d’une invasion militaire pour faire tomber son régime... La rupture des relations est le début, ainsi que l’imposition d’une tutelle... et l’étouffement politique et économique... La réaction du ministre US des Affaires étrangères est un feu vert qui rappelle l’ambassadeure April Glaspie et sa bizare rencontre avec Saddam Hussein avant l’invasion du Koweït.

    قطر على حافة غزو عسكري لتغيير النظام فيها.. والبداية قطع علاقات.. وفرض “الوصاية”.. والخنق السياسي والاقتصادي.. ورد فعل وزير الخارجية الأمريكي ضوء اخضر يذكرنا بالسفيرة ابريل غلاسبي ولقاءها “المريب” مع صدام حسين قبل غزو الكويت | رأي اليوم
    http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=687097

    Dans l’article, ABA évoque le fait que d’autres "puissances" rejoignent le camp saoudien (manifestement coordonné depuis longtemps), le Yémen "officiel", la Libye de Hatfar et la Jordanie, bien mal en point, et sur laquelle sont exercées de fortes pressions. La ligue des pays arabes pourrait être utilisée à cette fin également : http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=686979

    Al-Jazeera se voit retirer sa licence en Arabie saoudite : http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=687060

    #catastrophe_arabe

    #nuit_torride

  • #Google lance le fact checking sur son moteur de recherche
    http://www.lci.fr/high-tech/google-lance-le-fact-checking-sur-son-moteur-de-recherche-2044304.html

    Le numéro 1 des moteurs de recherche sur internet part en guerre contre les fausses #informations. Concrètement, le système mis en place par Google est restreint aux titres de certaines informations qui ont fait l’objet de vérification par des sites spécialisés comme Snopes et PolitiFact, ou par les équipes de fact-checking de médias généralistes comme le #Washington_Post.

    En 2003, le nucléaire de Saddam Hussein était 100% certain selon le WAPO.

    #farce

  • سورية : مصادر تؤكد أن انفجار معمل لتصنيع المواد الكيماوية والغازات السامه تابع للمجموعات المسلحة وراء حادثة مقتل العشرات في خان شيخون في ادلب.. الجيش السوري ينفي امتلاكه أسلحة كيماوية وروسيا تنفي تنفيذها غارات على المنطقة | رأي اليوم
    http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=650705

    Au risque de passer encore plus pour un dangereux suppôt de Bachar, je relève cette info, donnée à Beyrouth par « une source militaire syrienne » selon laquelle les victimes de Khan Cheikhoun seraient mortes à la suite de l’explosion d’une usine fabriquant des armements chimiques.

    #syrie

    • Rebel warehouse with chem weapons hit by Syrian airstrike in Idlib – Russian MOD — RT News
      https://www.rt.com/news/383522-syria-idlib-warehouse-strike-chemical

      The Syrian Air Force has destroyed a warehouse in Idlib province where chemical weapons were being produced and stockpiled before being shipped to Iraq, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman said.
      The strike, which was launched midday Tuesday, targeted a major rebel ammunition depot east of the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

      The warehouse was used to both produce and store shells containing toxic gas, Konashenkov said. The shells were delivered to Iraq and repeatedly used there, he added, pointing out that both Iraq and international organizations have confirmed the use of such weapons by militants.

    • Attaque « chimique » en Syrie : la Russie accuse l’aviation syrienne - Le Point
      http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/attaque-chimique-en-syrie-reunion-d-urgence-du-conseil-de-securite-05-04-201

      Attaque « chimique » en Syrie : la Russie accuse l’aviation syrienne
      D’après Moscou, c’est une frappe sur un « grand entrepôt terroriste » contenant des « substances toxiques » qui aurait provoqué la mort d’au moins 72 personnes.

      Voilà, les avions Syriens n’avaient qu’à pas bombarder cet entrepôt où des gens pas criminels pour un sou produisaient des armes chimiques légales.

      Pendant ce temps, on cause pas de Mossoul et des massacres collatéraux et chirurgicaux en cours de civils.

    • Pourquoi toujours accuser Assad alors que les fameux rebelles vrais djihadistes assistés de faux docteurs journalistes demandent le carpet bombing censé liberé ce pays d’un soit disant tyran comme si on oubliait les nombreux mensonges avant les conflits destructions de pays Irak, Yougoslavie, Serbie, Afghanistan, Somalien Soudan, Lybie, et Syrie :
      https://sansapriori.net/2017/04/06/1723-syrie-idlib-cette-etrange-attaque-chimique-qui-rappelle-limposture-de-ghouta/#respond Il serait temps que s’arrête ce jeu de massacre sans fin depuis le 114 septembre 2001 ou selon le real « body-count » au moins 5 000 000 de musulmans, minorités religieuses ou ethniques, sont sacrifié au nom du Pétrole du Gaz et des Pipelines ! AMEN
      Quand à Mossoul malgré l’appel des habitants encore en vie, d’Amnesty International et des pays non alignés se sont des milliers de victimes qui vont grossir les rangs des damnés de la terre, et des mers en tant que réfugiés de guerre, que l’Occident nomme eurphémiquement des « migrants » comme si c’était des oiseaux migrateurs. Les mêmes qui criaient au génocide pour Alep la mouftent pour Mossoul https://sansapriori.net/2016/12/06/1377-alep-mossoul-ou-les-bons-mechants-sont-vus-differemment.

    • Le grand oubli des médias engagés dans le conflit dont l’Arabie Saoudite, Qatar et la France, Usa, Uk c’est que de nombreux terroristes faisaient fabriquer des armes chimiques dans des grottes ou des ancienne usines et dès 2016 vainement la Russie, Syrie ont tenté d’alerter de ce fait découvert quand Alep a été liberé de ces terroristes : https://www.rt.com/news/370653-syria-chemical-aleppo-militants-opcw ou des enfants ont été employés pour servir de petites mains à leur service mais nos médias « no news » ne parlent que d’un seul côté : https://www.rt.com/news/367797-lavrov-chemical-weapons-aleppo A qui profite le crime ? https://www.rt.com/op-edge/383524-syria-idlib-chemical-attack-rebels Facile de savoir puisque les financeurs de cette guerre ou agression contre un pays décident des lignes rouges et donc fabriquent le problème en amont pour prétendre ensuite le résoudre avec des moyens militaires dit « guerres humanitaires » ou R2P !
      Voici un documentaire de 2013 fait par un journaliste (un rare ) qui a enquêté sur les manoeauvres des rebelles financés par les bailleurs de fonds du Qatar ou l’Occident .https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com
      Voici comment nos grandes démocraties (mode ironique) colonisent des pays arabes indépendants en les accusant de crimes que les bailleurs de fonds commettent eux mêmes ..Astucieux ça rappelle les ADM, Charniers de Timisoara, le soit disant génocide lybien qui cachait que Kaddafhi voulait larguer le dollar et établir le dinar africain comme on sait maintenant que Saddam Hussein voulait payer le pétrole en euro au lieu du dollard. l’Histoire se répète sans fin, les peuples oublient les anciens mensonges pour sauter à pieds joints dans les nouveaux .Résultat ? Des millions de morts, déplacés, persécutés, instrumentalisés par les ONG ...

  • The Christian Right’s Origins of Fake News and ’Alternative Facts’ | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/christian-rights-origins-fake-news-and-alternative-facts

    As we’ve moved from an election dominated by fake news to a new Trump administration run on the principle of “alternative facts,” it’s worth taking some time to ponder what seems to be contemporary conservative credulity. We should certainly be reminded of the term “truthiness” that Stephen Colbert invented in October 2005 to capture some of the pronouncements of the George W. Bush administration. As he explained then, truthiness was the truth that “comes from the gut,” not from actual facts—“the truth we want to exist,” that feels right.

    And the way fake news tends to get better reception among conservatives than liberals, even by a two-to-one margin, has also been recognized. (When one fake news creator was interviewed, he explained, “We’ve tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You’ll get debunked within the first two comments, and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.”)

    To see this connection, it bears recalling what it meant to be a Christian “fundamentalist” in the early 20th century. Christian fundamentalism was characterized in particular by its rejection of two theologically disturbing bodies of knowledge that emerged from the 19th century: the theory of evolution, and the historical-critical method of Bible scholarship. While mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches have had considerable success in coming to terms with these expert knowledge consensuses, Christian fundamentalism is defined primarily by its rejection of them.

    The historical-critical method of Bible scholarship meanwhile threatened the idea of scripture as the inerrant, uniform word of God. [...]Fundamentalist Christians rejected these accounts. But more importantly, fundamentalists critiqued the methods, assumptions, and institutions of the expert elites. Fundamentalists questioned the biologists’ and Bible scholars’ suspension of the question of God’s supernatural intervention.

    This alternative knowledge—the forerunner of today’s alternative facts— took the form of creationism and an alternative Bible scholarship demonstrating the Bible’s inerrancy and traditional authorship.

    This alternative educational and media ecosystem of knowledge was galvanized and mobilized when the Christian Right emerged in the late 1970s to influence the Republican Party. There were two long-term consequences for our fake news world. First, theologically and politically conservative Christians learned to distrust the proclamations of the supposedly neutral media establishment, just as they had grown to suspect the methods and conclusions of elite experts like scientists or historians. And second, they learned to seek the truth from alternative sources—whether a church sermon, Christian media (newspapers, books, radio or television shows), or a classroom in a Christian college.

    In the following years, the areas of rejected expert knowledge has grown to include climate change, the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education, and even the supposed link between vaccinations and autism. One could make the argument that even issues that don’t appear to have any religious resonance at all—such as the efficacy of supply-side economic policies, or the idea that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction and ties to Al Qaeda—are likewise successful partly because of this conservative cognitive training in the rejection of mainstream media and the cultivation of other sources of information, like Fox News at first, but also now websites like Breitbart, 4chan, Infowars, and others.

    The goal of “fake news” and “alternative facts” goes beyond providing different data. Their purpose is actually to destroy the notion that there could be impartial news and objective facts. Maria Bustillos calls this endgame “dismediation,” “a form of propaganda that seeks to undermine the medium by which it travels.”

  • Choman Hardi • « Anfal », mort et poésie en enfer
    http://www.kedistan.net/2017/02/23/choman-hardi-poemes-anfal

    Choman Hardi est une poétesse irakienne, peu connue dans les pays francophones… Des poèmes extraits de son livre, ""Considérer les femmes" traduits pour la première fois en français, paraitront en mars prochain. Ces extraits poétiques, parlent d’Anfal. Le génocide kurde, connu sous le nom d’Anfal, ordonné par le régime irakien de Saddam Hussein a eu lieu du 23 février au 6 septembre 1988, détruisant 2000 villages, conduisant à l’élimination de plus de 180 000 civils kurdes (selon les kurdes, 100 000 selon HRW) et obligeant bien davantage à un exode forcé. Source : Kedistan

  • ’State of Jenin’: A Palestinian refugee camp raided by Israeli troops night after night - Israel News -
    Haaretz.com | Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Feb 10, 2017 12:42 PM
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.770743
    http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.770967.1486712382!/image/446912015.JPG_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/446912015.JPG

    After a soldier was wounded in Jenin, the IDF intensified its nighttime raids there. 
And when the Israelis don’t enter this West Bank refugee camp, the Palestinian security forces do.

    This is a type of anxiety that no Israeli civilian is familiar with: nights when sleep is marred by the noise of soldiers moving about, gunshots, armored vehicles outside the window, stun grenades and explosives in an adjacent alley. Night after night. Soldiers who storm the house rowdily, after blowing up the front door. Children who wake up in a fright to the sight of masked, heavily armed figures during dead-of-night kidnappings euphemistically called “arrests.”

    On one occasion during the second intifada, I slept over in the Jenin refugee camp. I’ll never forget the fear that seized me when soldiers raided it. It’s a particularly chilling experience in a densely crowded, yet determined and militant camp like that in Jenin. Last week, raids were carried out there almost every night. After a soldier sustained light to moderate wounds during one, the Israel Defense Forces ratcheted up even more the rate and intensity of its infiltration.

    Residents are convinced that on the night between Jan. 28 and 29, soldiers had come to avenge the wounding of their buddy and teach the camp a lesson it wouldn’t forget. “They came to kill,” people in the battered camp said this week, as they buried another of its sons, Mohammed Abu Khalifa, after he was killed by soldiers’ bullets on Sunday. He was buried in the cemetery of intifada victims at the edge of the camp, which, like Jenin itself, suffers from severe overcrowding.

    The young adults in the camp spend their days sleeping and their nights in wakefulness. They have no reason to get up during the day. They hang out in the meager café on the main street; some of them man observation posts at the camp’s entrances and instantly report every suspicious movement on Facebook. They also post real-time videos when the IDF enters. Facebook is the most widely used means of communication when it comes to warning about everything, including the arrival of Israeli troops. Of the Facebook groups in the camp, the best known is “State of Jenin Camp.”

    The soldiers usually show up at about 2 A.M. in armored vehicles, some of which look like civilian cars. They descend on foot from the hilltop where the houses are, and information about their whereabouts spreads like wildfire. By the time they reach the alleys below, half the camp is awake and young people are waiting for them with stones, pipe bombs and makeshift weapons. In contrast to the second intifada, when we met armed people at almost every street corner, there is hardly any standard-issue weaponry in evidence these days. The army uses tear gas, stun grenades and, of course, live ammunition.

    It’s not only the IDF that executes nocturnal raids. Similar operations are carried out by the forces of the Palestinian Authority, in coordination with the army. When the Israelis arrive, the PA personnel leave. The young people oppose them, too, but less intensely, and the mutual firing of weapons is mainly into the air. No one has been killed in the Palestinian forces’ raids of the past few months.

    In recent weeks, PA troops – who at one time were afraid to enter the camp – arrested 15 to 20 young people, taking them to Jericho for interrogation. The IDF arrested only four people in that period. No one from either group has been released yet.

    The same pattern played itself out last week: Almost every night, Israeli or Palestinian forces were in the camp. Never a dull moment. Last Thursday, an Israeli soldier was wounded. On the two nights that followed, the IDF entered in large numbers. On Saturday night, they didn’t arrest anyone – residents of the camp are convinced that they came not to detain people but to kill: They killed one young person and wounded four others.

    After a year in which no one was killed in the camp, they’re in mourning again here.

    Twenty-year-old Mathin Dabiyeh was in the café at the foot of the hill on that night. Now he hobbles about on crutches at the entrance to his house. At 3:15 A.M., after it was known that soldiers had entered the camp, he began to make his way home. The soldiers appeared opposite him in an alley, he recalls now. There’s no point asking him if he was carrying a pipe bomb or an improvised firearm, as I won’t get a straight answer. The soldiers shot him in the leg and he started to run up the alley, limping. The troops gave chase but he managed to elude them. A neighbor with a moped took him to the hospital just outside the camp’s entrance. The hospital’s ambulances don’t dare enter the camp when the IDF is present, so in most cases the wounded are taken out by local residents.

    The bullet lodged in Dabiyeh’s knee. His friend Aslam, who was wounded together with him, is still hospitalized; he was hit in the stomach. What will Dabiyeh do the next time soldiers enter? “I can’t run now,” he tells us, evasively. He wears a black knitted skullcap. His brother works as a security guard at the Jenin branch of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

    It all took place in the early hours of Sunday morning in the area between the buildings, next to the Queens’ Salon beauty parlor, which is now closed. According to eyewitnesses, IDF snipers positioned themselves on the roof of a house across from the beauty parlor, hiding behind a black plastic water container. The crying of an infant can now be heard from that house, which, like others nearby, is plastered with militant graffiti. The wounded men escaped through an alley at the end of which is an old poster with a photograph of Saddam Hussein. The home of Mohammed Abu Khalifa, who was killed in the incident, is located next to a mosque named for Abdullah Azzam, from the neighboring village of Silat al-Harithiya, who is said to have been a friend of Osama bin Laden.

    Narrow steps lead to a small, stark house, which is almost bursting with people. The last day of Mohammed’s life was his 19th birthday. In the evening he celebrated here with friends. There was a power outage, an almost-daily occurrence, so his friends played music from their cellphones. They drank juice. This is what a birthday party here looks like.

    The dead boy’s uncle, Jumaa Abu Jebal, who lost a leg in the IDF’s invasion of the camp in 2002, and his mother, Fatma, greeted us on our visit this past Monday. Mohammed dropped out of school in the 11th grade and began working with his father at his garage. After his friends left that night, we are told, he went to fix a car that had broken down in the camp. That was at about 10 P.M.

    An hour later or so, he returned home and went to sleep, his mother relates. At 2 A.M., friends knocked on the door. They came to summon him, after learning that soldiers were in the camp. Mohammed’s father forbade him to go out, but around 3, after his father went back to sleep, the teen snuck out of the house. That act cost him his life.

    His mother heard shots at about 3:30 – the shots that killed her son, a few dozen meters from his home. She learned from a Facebook post that Mohammed had been wounded – that’s how parents find out about their children’s fate here. She tried to get to the hospital, but was forced back home by the shooting. It wasn’t until 5:45 A.M., after the last of the troops had left the camp, that she could leave. Mohammed died before she and her husband reached the hospital; he had been struck by three bullets in the chest and one in the stomach.

    A week earlier, Israeli troops had entered this house in search of Mohammed’s uncle, Jumaa, who lives on the upper floor. A Shin Bet security service agent ordered the amputee to get dressed, but he wasn’t arrested. Jumaa is a Hamas activist.

    “This is the last time I’m coming here. The next time I’ll send a drone to liquidate you,” the Shin Bet man told Jumaa, who replied, “If you have anything [on me], take me.” To which “Captain Haroun,” as the agent styles himself, retorted, “You know what people around you are doing.”

    Jumaa, an affable, smiling man who’s married to an Israeli Arab woman from Haifa and speaks broken Hebrew from his years in an Israeli prison, is certain the Shin Bet man was referring to his nephew Mohammed.

    The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated this week, in response to a query from Haaretz: “On Jan. 29, explosive devices were thrown at IDF soldiers during activity in the Jenin refugee camp. The force responded with gunfire at those who were throwing the devices, as a result of which one of them was killed. The IDF enters the refugee camp in accordance with operational needs and with the aim of preventing terrorist activity in the area.”

    Not far from the house of mourning, on a wall in another home, is a photograph of Majd Lahlouh, who was shot to death after going out to confront soldiers in the camp in August 2013, at the age of 22. Beneath the photo lies his cousin of 23, Izak Lahlouh. He, too, was wounded that night last month, by a bullet that hit an artery his leg. He was told in the hospital that if his evacuation had been delayed by another few minutes, he would have died from loss of blood. Now he’s bedridden, keeping warm with blankets and watching television, with crutches by his side.

  • Serving the Leviathan | Jacobin
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/iran-rafsanjani-ahmadinejad-khamenei-reform

    Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the chairman of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, died of a heart attack on January 8, 2017. Various factions immediately tried to claim this “pillar of the revolution” in the name of their competing political objectives. The wily politician would have surely recognized this technique of marshaling the spirits of the dead to score points for short-term political gain.

    Temperate “principalists” (usulgarayan), technocratic conservatives (eʿtedaliyyun), and reformists (eslahtalaban) — that is, much of the Iranian political class — saw something in the elderly statesman’s legacy worth appropriating. In this way, his death mirrors his life: during his sixty-plus years of political activity, he became many things to many people, while his ultimate objectives often remained opaque, if not virtually impossible to discern.

    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others often painted this postrevolutionary pragmatist as a corrupt and arrogant patrician who had cast aside revolutionary austerity in favor of decadent opulence. The accusation resonated far beyond Ahmadinejad’s supporters, aligning with popular slogans that denounced the two-time president as “Akbar Shah” (meaning King Akbar, Great Shah) and compelling ordinary citizens to scrawl dozd (thief) on many of his campaign posters during the 2005 presidential campaign. He was also known to many as “the shark” (kuseh) on account of his inability to grow a fully fledged beard, though others felt it described his political modus operandi to a tee.

    By 2009, however, he seemed to have aligned himself with the Green Movement, drawing closer to the reformists he once opposed. His intermittent criticisms of the Ahmadinejad government endeared him to many, who began to see him as one of the few establishment voices willing to openly defy the administration and by extension, his old ally, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He became inextricably linked with the trope of “moderation,” a powerful idea in a country on the precipice, especially after the UN imposed sanctions of 2006.

    Many others remained skeptical, however, unable to forget his reputation as an arch-Machiavellian. They recycled urban legends about his family’s wealth, reinforcing his image as a power-obsessed wheeler-and-dealer.
    Resisting the Shah

    Born in 1934, Akbar Hashemi Bahremani grew up on his family’s small farm in the village of Bahreman in the Nuq district of Rafsanjan, Kerman province. At the behest of his father, he studied in a traditional maktab, but was still expected to help tend to the animals and orchards in a region renowned for its prized pistachio. His paternal uncle was a cleric who often took to the village pulpit, and at the age of fourteen, he left for Qom to study at the Shiʿi seminary, the chief center of Islamic learning in Iran.

    Through the Maraʿshi brothers (Akhavan-e Maraʿshi), Kazem and Mehdi, fellow Rafsanjanis, with whom he lived for a number of years, Akbar quickly came to know Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini, then a relatively junior mojtahed and esteemed teacher of philosophy and mysticism. In Rafsanjani’s memoir, The Period of Struggle, he recalls how he was immediately captivated by the “majesty” of Khomeini’s visage and demeanor. Thus began an extremely close and fruitful relationship that would last the remainder of Khomeini’s lifetime. Indeed, Rafsanjani’s final resting place is alongside his political and spiritual patron.

    In Qom, Rafsanjani rapidly got involved in political life and activism and found himself attracted to the militant Devotees of Islam (Fadaʾiyan-e Islam), led by Seyyed Mojtaba Mirlowhi, better known as Navvab-e Safavi or “Prince of the Safavids,” whose meetings he would attend at every opportunity. The group tried to convince the Qom seminary to agitate for a strict and unforgiving nomocratic order, but with little success. Under the guidance of Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi, the overwhelming majority of the Qom seminary rejected the message of the Fadaʾiyan, at one point running them out of town.

    Rafsanjani was studying in Qom during the years of anticolonial fervor after Prime Minister Mosaddeq nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (BP). He encountered Mosaddeq’s one-time clerical ally, Ayatollah Seyyed Abolqasem Kashani, who became one of the Fadaʾiyan’s initial patrons. Kashani eventually turned on Mosaddeq, and, in August 1953, a joint CIA-MI6 orchestrated coup d’état ousted the prime minister.

    After the revolution, even while expressing his support for the national movement, Rafsanjani blamed Mosaddeq’s National Front and the communist Tudeh Party for their role in weakening the seminary during this period. But he still recalled with pride how the former prime minister contributed to printing and distributing his translation of The Journey of Palestine, a translation of a popular book on Palestine written in Arabic by Akram Zwayter, a Jordanian ambassador to Tehran. Published in semi-illicit form in 1961, this book marked the beginning of a long career in which he became the most prolific statesman-cum-author of the postrevolutionary era.

    In 1955, Navvab was executed by firing squad, but vestiges of the Fadaʾiyan persisted, creating a vital network of clerical and lay activists in the country’s mosques and bazaars. Rafsanjani became an important organizer inside the country, following Khomeni’s exile in 1964. In January 1965, he was arrested by the Shah’s infamous secret police, SAVAK, for his role in the assassination of the pro-American premier, Hassan ʿAli Mansur. Later recollections by members of the Islamic Coalition Society have since admitted it was Rafsanjani who supplied the weapon. From 1958 until the revolution he was arrested on several occasions. He persisted in his activism despite the abuse and torture he suffered at the hands of the SAVAK, publishing illegal periodicals and distributing Khomeini’s communiqués from Najaf. It was also in 1958 that he married ʿEffat Maraʿshi, the daughter of a fellow cleric from Rafsanjan. His companion of almost sixty years, she would come to exude a formidable matriarchal presence on the Iranian political scene throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

    Rafsanjani also managed to travel to the United States and Japan during these years. Many regard the latter as especially formative for his worldview and proclivity toward the seemingly indigenous, albeit technologically advanced, version of modernization he would seek to exact during his own time in power. He also penned a volume on the nationalist icon Amir Kabir (who died in 1852), who tried to streamline the Qajar court’s expenditures, consolidating the weak Iranian state in Tehran while importing technical and military know-how. That Rafsanjani died on the anniversary of Amir Kabir’s murder has only fueled the flood of hagiographies.
    Internal Divisions

    On February 5, 1979, Rafsanjani made his first public appearance facing the world’s media with Khomeini during Mehdi Bazargan’s introduction as prime minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government. He began his government apprenticeship as deputy interior minister, and soon found common ground with another junior minister, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who held the same role in defense. More importantly, Rafsanjani also served on the revolutionary council, a secretive body dominated by clerics loyal to Khomeini that was created in lieu of a legislative branch of state.

    Rafsanjani and Khamenei were on a pilgrimage to Mecca when they learned that radical students, who called themselves the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line, had overrun the United States embassy on November 4, 1979. They had by this time become leading officials of the Islamic Republic Party (IRP), and Bazargan’s resignation thrust both men into the limelight. Rafsanjani took over the interior ministry and organized the first presidential elections of 1980. In the spring of that year, he was elected to the Majlis (parliament) and became speaker, a post he turned into a personal stronghold for most of the following decade.

    Rafsanjani remained steadfastly loyal to Khomeini and led the clerical front that ultimately marginalized competing revolutionary organizations in the early 1980s. But their relationship was not always easy. Together with Khamenei, Rafsanjani lobbied Khomeini to allow clerical candidates into the first presidential election; his mentor’s refusal paved the way for the victory of layman Abolhasan Bani-Sadr. Only after much of the IRP leadership was killed in the Hafte Tir bombing did Khomeini relent and allow Khamenei to run for president in the summer of 1980.

    They also seem to have disagreed about the war with Iraq. According to various sources, including Khomeini’s son Ahmad, the Grand Ayatollah wanted to bring the conflict to an end after taking back the southwestern city of Khorramshahr in April 1982, but Rafsanjani, among others, prevailed on him to prepare an offensive into Iraqi territory.

    As the 1980s progressed, Rafsanjani’s role within the state system far surpassed his formal title of parliamentary speaker. In international settings, he was treated like the state’s foremost figure. The West — including the Reagan administration — relied on him to end kidnappings in Lebanon, and he became known as the real power behind the scenes.

    By 1985, the fervent anti-Americanism he had previously displayed gave way to the realization that a tactical accommodation with the “Great Satan” was necessary. In a risky and ultimately unsuccessful move, he agreed to hold talks with a delegation led by national security adviser Robert McFarlane, which surreptitiously visited Tehran in October 1986 with much-needed weapons for the war effort. The Iran-Contra revelations severely embarrassed both Reagan and Rafsanjani, and the whole affair had major repercussions for the domestic scene. Nevertheless, two decades later, the Rafsanjani clan published a book including the delegation’s fake passports and the inscribed Bible Reagan gave to Rafsanjani to underscore the cooperation between these erstwhile adversaries.

    Rafsanjani was at the heart of several crucial developments during the last years of Khomeini’s life. Many believe he took part in the efforts lead by Ahmad Khomeini and minister of intelligence, Mohammad Reyshahri, to persuade the revolutionary leader to withdraw his support for his designated successor, Hossein ʿAli Montazeri. He certainly had motivation: Montazeri’s relative and close associate, Seyyed Mehdi Hashemi, and his people were responsible for leaking the details of McFarlane’s visit. In early 1988, Rafsanjani had to navigate a major internal crisis when Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi resigned and noted — in a secret letter to Khamenei — that other figures, including Rafsanjani, had gravely eroded his authority.

    That same year, the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing almost three hundred civilians. Rafsanjani gloomily indicated during a Friday prayer speech that the tragedy was not an accident and warned that the United States would now intensify its involvement in the Iran-Iraq conflict. This likely contributed to Khomeini’s acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 598, which initiated the ceasefire between the two countries and which he famously compared to drinking a “poisoned chalice.”
    Consolidation

    Following the Iran-Iraq War and the death of the revolutionary patriarch in June 1989, many wondered if the revolutionary state and its institutions could survive without the uniquely charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini. Even before his death, the ruling establishment proved vulnerable as militant groups such as the People’s Mojahedin Organization and the Forqan, which opposed the political clerisy’s ascent, had assassinated several senior figures in the regime. Khamenei and Rafsanjani both survived attempts on their lives in this period, ensuring that these two friends would decisively shape the post-Khomeini political order.

    Rafsanjani played a key role in elevating Khamenei as Khomeini’s successor, but the more intimate details of his lobbying have yet to be fully revealed. It occurred as the Iranian elite was reeling, both politically and emotionally. Khomeini’s death came after a period of incapacitation, but it nevertheless caught senior state figures unprepared. As a result, the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body in charge of selecting and supervising the guardian jurist (vali-ye faqih), had to decide how best to handle the succession. Rafsanjani took to the podium and declared that Khomeini had stated his preference for Khamenei, despite his lack of clerical rank and authority. The latter was not an Ayatollah, let alone a marjaʿ al-taqlid (source of emulation or Grand Ayatollah).

    Khamenei’s accession unfolded in tandem with major constitutional amendments and changes in the revolutionary state’s institutional structure. The position of vali-ye faqih (often referred to nowadays as the “supreme leader”) was radically revised. No longer was his capacity to act as a source of emulation for the faithful, namely the criterion of marjaʿiyyat a prerequisite for the office. Instead, Khamenei had an “absolute mandate” to rule. At the same time, the office of prime minister was abolished, leaving a directly elected president, which Rafsanjani promptly assumed. These moves quickly consolidated power between the longstanding allies.

    At this moment, Rafsanjani was at the peak of his powers. Many have speculated that he placed his ally in this role because he was counting on Khamenei’s lack of religious credentials and limited influence among the clergy, to keep him relatively weak. Arguably, it was a calculation that would come back to haunt him in the last decade of his life.

    His two presidential terms have become associated with the period of the nation’s reconstruction. In the first few years, his partnership with Khamenei proved most efficacious. First in the 1990 Assembly of Experts’ elections — but most decisively in the 1992 Majles elections — they used the guardian council’s arrogation of the prerogative to supervise elections and thereby disqualify candidates to rapidly marginalize the so-called Islamic left, which included groups like the Association of Combatant Clerics, the so-called Imam’s Line, and the Mojahedin Organization of the Islamic Revolution. All of whose members had been Ayatollah Khomeini’s stalwart supporters and advocated for anti-imperialism and a radical foreign policy, state control of the economy, and the egalitarian redistribution of wealth.

    In response to the country’s very real internal and external economic and political challenges, Rafsanjani and Khamenei conspired to cast aside the Left. Thus, in 1992, they either saw disqualified or campaigned against a raft of sitting MPs and left-leaning regime loyalists, including Behzad Nabavi, Asadollah Bayat, Hadi Ghaffari, Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, and the infamous Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali. In fact, only 20 percent of incumbents earned reelection that year.

    Consequently, the traditional right dominated the Fourth Majles, adding to the duo’s firm grip on the intelligence and security apparatuses, the state institutions regulating the Shiʿi clergy, the levers of economic power and patronage — including the ministry of petroleum — and a vast network of religious endowments. Despite starting from a position of weakness, Khamenei began to strengthen his hold on economic and military power. In Rafsanjani’s second term, a mild rivalry started to color their relationship.

    With the Left on the sidelines, Rafsanjani pursued what amounted to a neoliberal agenda of privatization and structural adjustment. He also created a regional détente with the Gulf states, above all Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which had bankrolled Saddam Hussein’s war effort with US support. Journalist Mohammad Quchani approvingly called Rafsanjani’s tenure the era of “depoliticization,” where “expertise” firmly supplanted “commitment.” Technocratic competency and state-directed economic liberalization without corresponding political reforms became the order of the day. Saʿid Hajjarian — a former intelligence officer who became a preeminent reformist strategist — recalled a meeting with Rafsanjani in which the president disdainfully shrugged off the very notion of political development, a euphemism for “democratization.”

    But after ejecting much of the Islamic left from the ranks of government, Rafsanjani was himself forced to cede primacy over the cultural and intellectual spheres to the traditional right. His brother Mohammad had to give up his long-standing control of state radio and television, while the future president Mohammed Khatami publicly resigned from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, replaced by arch-conservative Ali Larijani (who has since joined the ranks of centrist principalists).

    The traditional right’s own predominantly mercantilist interests often conflicted with Rafsanjani’s efforts at economic liberalization. As a result, he had to pursue a more modest reform program. Resistance from below also appeared. In 1992, a tentative subsidy reform on foodstuffs and energy — which would only be implemented, ironically, under the Ahmadinejad government — coincided with inflation hovering around 50 percent, leading to tumultuous provincial bread riots.

    Moreover, the privatizations that did take place were far from straightforward. Selling shares to para-statal and quasi-statal organizations sparked allegations of crony capitalism and corruption that the Fourth Majles eventually had to redress through legislation, even if the issue was never satisfactorily resolved. Moreover, one of Rafsanjani’s key allies, Gholam Hossein Karbaschi — mayor of Tehran from 1989 to 1998 — played a crucial role in the capital city’s “urban renewal.” He sold off state-owned land below market value to the connected and well-heeled and exempted large developers from zoning laws, creating a speculative real-estate boom in which certain segments of the political and economic elite were seen to massively profit.

    Rafsanjani also helped create the Islamic Free University, which provided higher education to hundreds of thousands of students unable to enter the state system because of the competitive national examinations. Nevertheless, the university has been criticized for introducing market logic into education and thus exacerbating existing class divisions.

    As Kaveh Ehsani writes, the Rafsanjani administration had decided that “the Islamic Republic needed to first create its own loyal, Islamic (but neoliberal) middle class.” Rafsanjani, however, ultimately failed to develop an entrepreneurial class that could fully implement his neoliberal agenda. Attempts to do so — particularly through his half-hearted wooing of expatriate businessmen who had fled on the eve of the Islamic Republic — were largely met with scorn. The Executives of Reconstruction Party, heavily populated by the president’s kin, including his outspoken daughter Faʾezeh, would belatedly attempt to consolidate this new technocratic order in 1996.

    Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was invited by the government as a quid pro quo for its services during the war, to help reconstruct the country’s severely depleted infrastructure. Khamenei shrewdly capitalized on this development to augment his institutional power.

    This period also saw a slew of intellectuals, writers, and activists assassinated, arrested, and/or tortured. The long list even extends into the Khatami era and includes ʿAli Akbar Saʿidi Sirjani, Faraj Sarkuhi, Shapur Bakhtiar — the Shah’s last prime minister, who had tried to oust the Islamic Republic with Saddam Hussein’s support — and Sadeq Sharafkandi, secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran. These killings have been strongly linked to the Iranian security apparatus, but the extent of Rafsanjani’s involvement remains unclear. Regardless, his objective of consolidating the regime he had been instrumental in building extended — with or without his direct participation — into neutralizing, by any means, dissenting and subversive voices.
    Between the Establishment and Reform

    When Mohammad Khatami became president in the June 1997 elections, many observers — including Rafsanjani — were surprised. In fact, the departing president would eventually admit that he had voted for Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri, the establishment candidate. Nor was he temperamentally disposed to the ethos of the emerging “reformist” camp, which rallied around Khatami. Their emphasis on political, rather than economic, change and openness in the media and intellectual spheres starkly contrasted with the ambitions and priorities of his own administration.

    In fact, between 1997 and 2001, the former president tilted more toward the conservatives, when the right wing became concerned the reformist coalition was taking control of the chief reins of government. In 2000, Rafsanjani ran for parliament in Tehran and sparked a major political crisis. He initially did not rank among the first thirty seats, but was reinstated after a known dissident was disqualified. The media waged a campaign against what they regarded as brazen interference, and Rafsanjani relinquished his seat at a high cost to the Khatami front.

    Entrenched as leader of the expediency council — a body whose influence grew in periods of mediation between parliament and the guardian council — Rafsanjani effectively helped stymie the reformist-dominated Sixth Majles, repeatedly kicking key reforms into the long grass. As a result, the public grew disenchanted with the reformers, seeing them as incapable of implementing their program.

    In 2005, Rafsanjani once again ran for president, arguing that only he could fix a deadlocked political system. His quixotic campaign used roller-skating young women to hand out posters to bemused drivers in Tehran. But Ahmadinejad’s insurgent candidacy derailed his plans and forced an unprecedented run-off. Rafsanjani scrambled and succeeded in winning the support of many moderates, dissidents, and artists, including the late ʿAbbas Kiarostami, who warned of a Chirac-Le Pen scenario.

    When the veteran candidate appeared at Tehran University to this end, he responded to students chanting the name of Akbar Ganji — an imprisoned journalist and public intellectual, who had famously characterized Rafsanjani as Iran’s very own Cardinal Richelieu — by saying conditions in prisons today were far better than under the Shah’s regime. In his final televised campaign interview, he unpersuasively apologized for not holding events outside Tehran in what appeared to be a last-ditch pledge to improve the plight of the neglected provinces.

    His defeat — which he half-heartedly attributed to security forces’ interference — effectively aligned him with the reformist camp he had previously been at odds with. By 2006, he recognized that Ahmadinejad threatened both the Iranian state and the fragile détente with the West that he and Khatami had laboriously engineered. For the last decade of his life, he would repeatedly call for moderation, speaking out against excesses and cautiously supporting Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the 2009 elections.

    Despite warning Khamenei about possible tampering on the eve of the vote and using his Friday prayer address to call for the release of scores of reformists in July 2009, Rafsanjani managed to keep his place within the state apparatus. Rather than directly challenge Khamenei — as Mousavi and Karroubi would — he retained his position as head of the expediency council.

    During the second Ahmadinejad administration, Rafsanajani stayed in the media spotlight, published his much-anticipated annual volumes of political diaries, and continued to lobby at the regime’s highest levels. Despite having few obvious cards to play, Rafsanjani drew on his myriad relationships across ministries, economic institutions, political factions, the bazaar, the clergy, and even the IRGC. He also compelled his son, Mehdi, to return home and face a jail sentence so that opponents couldn’t use the charge that his child was abroad and in the pay of foreigners against him politically.
    Transformation or Rebranding?

    In 2013, after remaining on the fence until the last hours of the registration window, Rafsanjani announced his bid for president without securing the customary approval from Khamenei, who rebuffed his attempts to discuss the matter. The guardian council rejected him on health grounds, paving the way for his protégé Hassan Rouhani, whom Rafsanjani had persuaded not to drop out, to carry the centrist ticket and win in the first round.

    Even in his final years, after he had lost many of the institutional levers he had once wielded so dexterously, Rafsanjani managed to interject himself at crucial political moments and tilt the balance of forces in one direction or another. These interventions were not without significance or merit. His continued support for Rouhani and the nuclear accord with the P5+1 helped alleviate the atmosphere of securitization, economic distress, and growing militarization that had characterized the Ahmadinejad years. When he decried the Western sanctions that “had broken the back” of the nation, he belittled the conservative attempts to portray the accord as a sellout.

    In recent years, prominent intellectuals like Akbar Ganji and Sadeq Zibakalam have debated whether Rafsanjani’s apparent “conversion” to reform represented a truly genuine transformation or another example of his essential Machiavellianism. But a more pertinent question would be what opportunities for contestation and increasing democratic accountability and pluralism were engendered as a result of his interventions and the unforeseen repercussions of elite competition and cleavage.

    On the one hand, his role as mediator between the ruling establishment and the reformists in these final years played an important part in assuaging the contradictions between popular expectations and the reality of regime governance. Since the late 1990s elite competition has taken place on the terrain of electoral and constitutional politics, and Iran’s sizeable urban population and middle classes were periodically summoned to provide momentum to their own mediated demands. A process that also harbored the potential for sparking deeper political transformation, and a renegotiation of the social contract defining the relationship of government and the governed.

    In the short term, reforms included resolving the nuclear impasse; returning to competent, technocratic economic management; lowering inflation and youth unemployment; releasing Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Zahra Rahnavard; and loosening political and cultural restrictions.

    But in the long term, the reformist horizon strove for something like a new constitutional settlement that would place the supreme leader under close supervision — if not call for his direct election — hold the security apparatuses accountable, and reverse the guardian council’s powers over elections. Reformist activists, as well as political currents with negligible official representation, saw Rafsanjani’s funeral procession as one more opportunity to articulate these manifold demands, proving even his posthumous relevance to the political balance of power.

    Rafsanjani initiated a deeply personal form of statecraft, one that could not bring about a structured perestroika, but did enable the Islamic Republic to survive crises and challenges. Rafsanjani and Khamenei’s chief objective had always preserving the regime they helped build. The question of how to achieve this — and their material and institutional stake in it — rankled their relationship in later life and still divides the country.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar_Hashemi_Rafsanjani

    #Iran #politique #islam

  • Une fin de règne sans gloire pour Barak Obama. Un Nobel qui a fait la guerre à la paix. - RipouxBlique des CumulardsVentrusGrosQ
    http://slisel.over-blog.com/2017/01/une-fin-de-regne-sans-gloire-pour-barak-obama.un-nobel-qui-a-fait-

    « La paix n’est pas l’absence de guerre, c’est une vertu, un état d’esprit, une volonté de bienveillance, de confiance, de justice. »

    Baruch Spinoza, philosophe (1632 – 1677)

     

    Ça y est, le président Obama s’en va laissant Donald Trump prendre en charge le pouvoir ! Avant de revenir sur la dernière partie de la présidence, à savoir l’engagement sans retenue de Obama pour l’élection de Hillary Clinton, nous allons à notre façon donner un point de vue parmi tant d’autres de citoyens lambda appartenant à ce continent des ténèbres qu’est l’Afrique et cher à Hegel, mais aussi à cette espérance religieuse diabolisée car instrumentalisée du fait de ses dirigeants complaisants avec l’Empire qui les adoube et d’où ils tirent leurs seules légitimités pour le plus grand malheur de leur peuple.

    Souvenons-nous de l’espoir suscité par la candidature de Obama, sa venue était vue comme une bénédiction du ciel après les années de feu, de sang, de malheur des deux mandatures de George Walker Bush. Le discours de rupture d’Obama, et même sa nomination, nous faisait espérer- grands naïfs que nous sommes- le retour de l’american way of life, celle d’Armstrong marchant sur la Lune, celle des pères fondateurs de la démocratie et de la liberté. Cette Amérique qui a pris le pari d’élire un Afro-Américain consacrant ainsi le rêve de Martin Luther King « I have a dream… ».

    Le capital de confiance et d’espoir des damnés de la Terre était immense, d’autant qu’à tort ou à raison, nous Africains nous nous sentions rétablis dans notre dignité après deux siècles d’esclavage. Ce fut d’autant plus beau que malgré les dénégations d’Obama affirmant qu’il est chrétien, beaucoup d’entre les naïfs que nous sommes pensaient à tort qu’un président qui a dans sa famille des parents musulmans ne peut que développer de l’empathie avec l’Islam.

    Ceci nous fut confirmé par le fameux discours du Caire Salem Alikoum., « Je vous salue »

    Il parle à cette occasion de « nouveau départ » pour qualifier la relation que l’administration qu’il dirige veut développer entre son pays et le monde arabo-musulman. Le président a su choisir trois bonnes citations du Coran, des allusions à l’âge d’or de l’islam et à sa contribution scientifique dont a pu bénéficier l’Occident ; il a réaffirmé très fortement la liberté de conscience en faveur des musulmans aux États-Unis, et plus généralement Obama aura apporté à la sensibilité inquiète du monde musulman, les apaisements que celui-ci attendait depuis longtemps.

    Dans ce qui suit nous allons montrer les faits les plus saillants vus encore une fois du Sud, nous survolerons rapidement l’aspect économique et l’obamacare qui est en passe d’être détricoté avant même la fin du mandat d’Obama et les meurtres racistes qui ont augmenté.

    Bref inventaire de l’héritage d’Obama ayant consensus en Occident

    Obama c’est avant tout le verbe et la verve. Retour sur trois paroles qui ont marqué l’opinion lors des années de présidence de Barack Obama. « Oui nous pouvons » : « « Yes we can. » Le slogan choisi pour la campagne de Barack Obama en 2008 est indissociable de sa présidence. Il a eu deux significations : celui d’une Amérique qui veut en finir avec les années Bush et celui d’une communauté afro-américaine qui voit pour la première fois un président métis s’installer à la Maison-Blanche. « L’audace d’espérer. » « L’espoir face aux difficultés, l’espoir face à l’incertitude, avait-il martelé. L’audace d’espérer est le plus grand don que Dieu nous a donné. » « Je parie que demain, vous rejetterez la peur, et choisirez l’espoir. » « L’Amérique que j’aime. » L’Amérique qui se dessine dans les discours de Barack Obama est celle qui aurait assumé ses divergences politiques et assimilé ses différentes communautés. « Il n’y a pas d’Amérique blanche, ou d’Amérique noire, d’Amérique asiatique ou latino. Mais les États-Unis d’Amérique. » (1).

    Les avis divergent sur l’héritage de la présidence de Barack Obama. La Tribune de Genève dresse un bilan avec quelques témoignages : « Grâce à l’Obamacare, 20 millions d’Américains qui n’avaient pas d’assurance-maladie ont pu s’en offrir une. Barack Obama n’a toutefois jamais réussi à vendre à ses concitoyens cette réforme qui les oblige à contracter une assurance-maladie, et les républicains ont entamé l’abrogation de la loi la semaine dernière. En matière d’environnement, M. Obama a soutenu l’accord de Paris sur le climat en 2015. Il a aussi protégé 141 millions d’hectares de terres et de mers contre leur exploitation à des fins énergétiques, tout en réduisant de moitié l’importation de pétrole des Etats-Unis. » (2)

    Le lynchage d’El Gueddafi

    A la suite des printemps arabes mis en oeuvre par les officines occidentales, les pays occidentaux pensaient rechaper le Monde arabe à moindre frais d’une façon soft. Ainsi, le président Obama a laissé faire Hillary Clinton en l’occurrence dans cette mise à mort voulue par Sarkozy conseillé par Bernard-Henry Lévy et Cameron. Pour Hillary Clinton, l’élimination du « dictateur » El Gueddafi qui eut pour épitaphe – Je suis venu, j’ai vu, il est mort » fut son plus grand succès et devait la qualifier pour la présidence grâce au succès de sa « stratégie de changement de régime ». Ses emails révélés par le FBI sont la preuve de cette attente. Hillary avait adopté avec enthousiasme la politique des néoconservateurs et des interventionnistes libéraux prônant le renversement de gouvernements qui manquaient de respect pour la seule superpuissance, nation exceptionnelle, indispensable et unique leader du monde.

    La mort de Ben Laden : la promesse tenue, gage de la réélection

    Une autre prouesse à l’actif d’Obama, le meurtre en direct de Ben Laden à la télévision américaine et sous les yeux ravis du président des Etats-Unis et des principaux membres de son gouvernement tombés en extase a été un « bon point » pour le deuxième mandat. la traque d’Oussama Ben Laden a été autant une mission des différents présidents de Bill Clinton en passant par George W. Bush « Je veux Ben Laden mort ou vif » jusqu’à Barack Obama.Annonçant la mort de l’ennemi numéro un des Etats-Unis, il déclare : « Peu de temps après ma prise de fonction, j’ai demandé au directeur de la CIA de faire de la mort ou de l’appréhension de Ben Laden notre première priorité dans la lutte contre Al Qaïda. » Obama clamera qu’il est celui qui a éliminé la menace. Ben Laden sera jeté à la mer.

    Politique étrangère : Syrie, Libye

    « Le récent déplacement du président américain à La Havane lit-on sur cette contribution de Ouest France a bien sûr couronné de succès l’ouverture des États-Unis vers Cuba. Obama peut également s’attribuer une partie du mérite quant à l’accord nucléaire avec l’Iran. Pourtant, le bilan d’Obama en matière de politique étrangère est loin de faire l’unanimité. En atteste le débat suscité par le très long entretien accordé par le président à la revue The Atlantic dans son édition de mars. Concernant la Syrie, le fait marquant reste la décision de la Maison-Blanche de ne pas intervenir militairement en août 2013. Obama revendique cette décision, au prétexte que « les États-Unis ne peuvent pas tout ». Revenant en détail sur l’intervention en Libye en 2011, Obama déclare « qu’il faisait peut-être trop confiance aux Européens « pour faire le suivi de cette intervention ». Et de mentionner la défaite de Nicolas Sarkozy à la présidentielle de 2012. Bref, un fiasco qui fait aujourd’hui de la Libye l’un des terreaux du djihadisme salafiste. Barack Obama accuse les Européens et les pays arabes d’être des free-riders (profiteurs), relayant hélas le discours de certains candidats républicains, comme Donald Trump qui appelle au désengagement de l’Amérique face aux « coûts énormes » de l’Alliance transatlantique. Très critique vis-à-vis de l’Arabie saoudite, Obama demande à celle-ci de « partager le Moyen-Orient » avec son ennemi iranien. (..) Barack Obama témoigne d’un grand intérêt pour l’Asie-Pacifique depuis l’invention du terme « pivot asiatique » au début de sa présidence. Selon lui, c’est dans cette région que se trouvent les intérêts des États-Unis, et c’est là que se trouve le concurrent – ou partenaire ? – principal : la Chine. » (3)

    Trois bombes par heure dans le monde en 2016

    Pour un président de paix, il y eut plus de guerres plus d’armes vendues. Un rapport du Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) a montré que Washington a bombardé la Syrie, le Pakistan, l’Afghanistan, la Libye, le Yémen ainsi que la Somalie en 2016. Pas moins de 26 171 bombes ont été larguées. 72 par jour. Trois par heure. Les frappes militaires américaines ont été nombreuses en 2016. Très nombreuses. Le toujours président des Etats-Unis avait fait du désengagement militaire de son pays une promesse de campagne, pourtant, le think tank basé à New York nous apprend que Washington a bombardé au moins sept nations en 2016 : la Syrie, l’Irak, le Pakistan, l’Afghanistan, la Libye, le Yémen et la Somalie. Sans surprise, la très grande majorité des bombardements américains ont concerné la Syrie et l’Irak. 24 287 bombes y ont été larguées selon les comptes du CFR. (…) En 2008, alors qu’il menait campagne il avait assuré que lorsqu’il deviendrait commandant en chef des forces armées, il « fixerait un nouvel objectif dès le premier jour » : la fin de la guerre en Irak. « Je mettrai un terme à cette guerre en Irak de manière responsable et terminerai la lutte contre al-Qaïda et les Taliban en Afghanistan. » (4)

    Les Etats Unis champion des ventes d’arme

    S’agissant du carburant des guerres, la fabrication et la vente des armes, tout va bien Selon l’organisme suédois Sipri, le marché des armes est florissant. En 2014, les dépenses militaires mondiales se sont élevées à 1 776 milliards de dollars, ce qui représente 2,3% du produit intérieur brut mondial et environ 245 dollars par habitant En 2015, les 100 principales entreprises productrices d’armement dans le monde ont affiché globalement un chiffre d’affaires de 356,7 milliards USD réalisés dans les contrats d’armement (sur un chiffre d’affaires total de 1 118,1 milliards USD), Les Etats Unis , interviennent en moyenne pour 30 % des ventes. (5)

    Là encore, il y eut un désenchantement des partisans de la paix. Pratiquement tous les pays européens, mais aussi la Russie, la Chine et Israël ont alimenté les guerres certaines fois en vendant des armes aux deux belligérants ! A croire le niveau des vies des occidentaux dépend du nombre d’armes vendues en clair du nombre de morts , de blessés et de désolation de pays vulnérables et misérables qui, certaines fois n’ont pas d’argent pour nourrir leurs peuples, mais trouvent toujours moyen de s’endetter pour se battre contre d’autres miséreux ou pour tenir en respect leurs peuples dans des gouvernances interminables où le mot alternance n’a aucun sens. Dans ces pays, il n’y a que le darwinisme providentiel ou l’émeute fomentées bien souvent par les pays occidentaux pour leurs propres intérêts pour arriver à l’alternance généralement aussi catastrophique… Dans ces pays le lobby de l’armement dirige d’une façon invisible le pays . Aux Etats Unis un seul président, Eisenhower, eut le mérite d’avertir le peuple américain contre le danger de la mainmise sur le pouvoir du complexe militaro-industriel.

    Dans ce contexte pour juger du niveau des armes vendues , Nadia Prupis parlant de ce marché de la mort écrit :

    « Les États-Unis ont vendu plus d’armes que n’importe quel autre pays en 2015, malgré une baisse du commerce mondial des armes, selon un nouveau rapport du Congrès. Avec 40 milliards de dollars, les États-Unis ont signé plus de la moitié de tous les accords d’armement l’an dernier et plus du double du pays en deuxième place, la France, à 15 milliards de dollars. Les ventes d’armes américaines comprenaient des bombes, des missiles, des chars blindés, des hélicoptères d’attaque Apache, des chasseurs F-15 et autres articles (…) » (5).

    On l’aura compris les dirigeants arabes sont aux premiers loges pour acheter les armes. Nadia Prupis écrit :

    « Les principaux acheteurs, quant à eux, étaient le Qatar, l’Égypte, et l’Arabie saoudite, Beaucoup de ces armes ont été utilisées pour aider la coalition menée par l’Arabie saoudite et soutenue par les États-Unis à combattre les rebelles au Yémen, entraînant des pertes civiles élevées. Le Guardian note que les résultats concordent avec une autre étude récente, qui concluait que l’administration Obama avait approuvé pour plus de 278 milliards de dollars de vente d’armes en huit ans, soit plus du double de l’administration Bush, 128,6 milliards de dollars. » (6)

    La journaliste bien connue, Diana Johnstone décrit la paranoïa qui sévit à la fois dans le parti démocrate, mais aussi au sein de l’Administration actuelle qui accélère les mesures de rétorsion contre la Russie pour les rendre irréversibles, tels que l’expulsion de 35 diplomates fin décembre et l’accélération du déploiement des troupes américaines en Pologne à la frontière avec la Russie.

    « L’impertinence de Vladimir Poutine, écrit-elle, ouvertement en faveur d’un « monde multipolaire », l’a hissé à la première place dans la liste des méchants. Il est promu « dictateur » et « menace existentielle » aux yeux de la nation exceptionnelle, cible numéro un du changement de régime. Hillary Clinton et ses partisans politiques et médiatiques s’accordent pour attribuer sa défaite à un complot mené par Vladimir Poutine visant à changer le régime aux Etats-Unis. Jamais à Washington n’a-t-on vu un parti au pouvoir si incapable d’accepter l’alternance, si vindicatif, si avide de trouver des boucs émissaires, si prêt à violer toutes les bienséances démocratiques et diplomatiques, si prêt à pratiquer la politique de la terre brûlée, même aux dépens de ces « valeurs » dont il se proclame le défenseur indispensable, à commencer par la liberté d’expression ? » (7)

    La folie de fin de règne à Washington : la phobie de Poutine

    S’agissant de la comédie visant à impliquer Poutine dans l’ingérence dans les élections, les Etats-Unis qui ont déclenché 200 guerres en 240 ans d’existence n’ont jamais cessé d’interférer quand leurs intérêts étaient en jeu. : « Tout Washington est scandalisé, tandis que les membres du Congrès rivalisent entre eux pour diaboliser la Russie à cause de sa supposée ingérence dans la récente élection présidentielle américaine. « Toute intervention étrangère dans nos élections est absolument inacceptable », a déclaré Paul Ryan, le président de la Chambre des représentants. Cet éclat de vertueuse indignation serait plus facile à gober si les Etats-Unis n’avaient pas eux-mêmes pris l’habitude chronique d’intervenir dans les élections à l’étranger. Sur une période d’un peu plus d’un siècle, les leaders américains ont utilisé toute une variété d’outils pour influencer les électeurs dans des pays étrangers. Nous avons choisi des candidats, les avons conseillés, financé leurs partis, conçu leurs campagnes, corrompu les médias pour les soutenir et menacé ou calomnié leurs rivaux ».(8)

    Une appréciation rendant compte de ce désamour graduel nous est donné par une diplomate russe : « La politique étrangère de l’administration Barack Obama au cours des huit années de la présidence d’Obama « suscite l’aversion du monde entier », a déclaré la porte-parole du ministère russe des Affaires étrangères, Maria Zaéskharova. « Je pense que cet homme [Obama] et son équipe – naturellement, parlant de l’homme, nous entendons l’équipe qui s’est révélée mauvaise pour tous sur la scène mondiale », Selon la diplomate russe, du point de vue moral, on peut blâmer l’équipe d’Obama d’avoir commis un « crime » car il a démontré que « le plus fort a des droits illimités à faire le mal ». (9)

    En définitive rien de nouveau sous le soleil ! Tous les président américains à partir de la chute du mur de Berlin furent frappés d’hubris , une sorte de messianisme de la certitude de la « Destinée Manifeste » qui leur donne mission de régenter le monde. Cela a commencer avec Georges Bush père qui parlait déjà après avoir laminé l’armée irakienne en 1991, du nouvel ordre mondial vertueux étant la seule hyper-puissance selon le bon mot de Hubert Védrine et ayant sonné d’après Francis Fukuyama, l’idéologue du Pentagone, la fin de l’histoire et annoncé un âge d’or qui allait durer mille ans.

    On sait comment cette histoire est en train de se dérouler , car nous eûmes après Bill Clinton qui s’illustra par le dépeçage des balkans avec la complicité de l’Europe et notamment de l’Allemagne Ce sera aussi la presque décennie du pétrole contre nourriture, une histoire abjecte dont l’épilogue fut la mort de 500.000 enfants prix à payer – pas cher- selon Madeleine Albright pour faire partir Saddam Hussein qui n’est parti que plus tard. Il a fallu l’avènement de Georges Walker Bush pour que la sentence s sentence « to be hanged by the neck until you are dead » se réalise un matin de janvier de l’aid el adha en guise de sacrifice,’ il y a dix ans sous la gouvernance d’un certain Paul Bremer gouverneur d’un Irak en miettes Ces présidents venaient avec leurs certitudes gravées dans l’arbre ,bouleverser des équilibres sociologiques culturels et cultuels plusieurs fois millénaires en y semant le chaos constructeur selon Condolezza Rice

    La présidence Obama ne fut pas différente sauf que nous avons cru en ses promesses de désengagement de l’Irak, de l’Afghanistan. Nous seulement ne se fit pas, mais sous l’ère Obama fut inaugurée la terrible guerre des drones reapers et autres ; Pour ne pas risquer la mort des GI’S rien de plus simple : Une salle climatisée du fin fond du Texas, un contrôle par satellite et une décision de mort par drone interposé. Il suffit alors au soldat de jouer au joystick pendant qu’à des milliers de kms de là c’est la mort, le deuil la désolation des vies brisées des pays en miettes. Non content de tout cela après l’épisode Bin Laden, deux conflits marquent l’ère Obama, la Syrie vidée de sa sève ,plusieurs milliers de morts et de blessés, la destruction honteuse de la Lybie avec deux vassaux le tandem Sarkozy – Hollande et David Cameron dont les prouesses envers les faibles aboutirent au lynchage de Kadhafi. Enfin la tolérance envers l’Arabie Saoudite pour causes de contrats d’armements et de pétrole s’avère être une complicité dans la mort silencieuse du peuple yéménite

    L’Occident s’est empressé de décerner le prix Nobel de la paix à Barack Obama pour la promesse d’une paix qui n’est jamais arrivée. Peut-être que le Comité Nobel ne sera plus aussi chaud pour l’octroi de ce prix ? De plus s’agissant justement de la paix du monde, les années Bush ont traumatisé le monde, mais on ne s’attendait à rien de bon. Avec Obama nous avons cru à ses promesses qui comme dit Jacques Chirac n’engagent que les naïfs que nous sommes. A la place nous découvrons en fait « l’american way of war »… de l’empire qui tarde à comprendre que tout le monde aura à gagner avec un monde multipolaire. Peut être là encore un vœu pieux avec le nouveau président Trump avec son obsession protectionniste.

    Professeur Chems Eddine Chitour

    Ecole Polytechnique Alger

     

    1.http://www.la-croix.com/Monde/Ameriques/Trois-grandes-paroles-Barack-Obama-2017-01-15-1200817339

    2. http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2017/01/16/bilan-d-obama-le-paradoxe-americain_5063393_3222.html#ShE0hJ4U2o3afToz.99

    3.http://www.ouest-france.fr/debats/point-de-vue/politique-etrangere-le-bilan-discute-dobama-4149159

    4.http://reseauinternational.net/les-etats-unis-ont-largue-lequivalent-de-trois-bombes-par-heure-dans-le-monde-en-2016/#EYWYhUfTrZXxOtOX.995.

    5.http://www.grip.org/fr/node/1942

    6.Nadia Prupis http://lesakerfrancophone.fr/alors-que-le-commerce-mondial-declinait-la-vente-darmes-etasunien

    7.https://francais.rt.com/opinions/31994-folie-fin-regne-washington

    8.http://www.mondialisation.ca/usa-nous-intervenons-dans-les-elections-dautres-pays-depuis-plus-dun-siecle/5568909

    9. ttp ://lesakerfrancophone.fr/le-monde-entier-est-degoute-par-la-politique-etrangere-de-ladministration-obama

     

     Article de référence :

    http://www.lexpressiondz.com/chroniques/analyses_du_professeur _chitour/258595-un-nobel-qui-a-fait-la-guerre-a-la-paix.html

    La source originale de cet article est Mondialisation.ca
    Copyright © Chems Eddine Chitour, Mondialisation.ca, 2017

  • America urged Saddam Hussein to attack Assad in Syria | Daily Mail Online
    By Thomas Burrows for MailOnline
    Published: 20 January 2017
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4140190/America-urged-Saddam-attack-Assad-Syria.html

    America urged Saddam Hussein to attack Hafez al-Assad’s Syria because of the closure of Iraq’s oil pipeline, a secret 1983 intelligence report has revealed.

    A report, by former senior CIA official Graham Fuller, said the US should consider ’urging Iraq to take the war to Syria’, noting that Saddam was ’fighting for his life’ in the Iran-Iraq campaign.

    Through the closure of the pipeline, Mr Fuller said Syria had a ’hammerlock’ on US interests in both Lebanon and in the Gulf.(...)

    #Pipelinistan

  • U.S. military aid is fueling big ambitions for Syria’s leftist Kurdish militia
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-military-aid-is-fueling-big-ambitions-for-syrias-leftist-kurdish-militia/2017/01/07/6e457866-c79f-11e6-acda-59924caa2450_story.html

    Toujours aussi fantastiques les #MSM étasuniens : pour calmer les craintes et des Turcs et des Arabes quant aux gains territoriaux des Kurdes (qui vont au-delà des zones traditionnellement kurdes), les Étasuniens arment des forces comprenant des Arabes dit l’article, mais en même temps les Etasuniens reconnaissent que lesdites forces sont largement dominées par les Kurdes....

    To assuage Turkish concerns and avert tensions between Arabs and Kurds, the U.S. military is channeling weapons and ammunition to an umbrella organization called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes Arab fighters as well as the Kurds. The goal, the U.S. military says, is to build an Arab force capable of taking and holding Arab cities such as Raqqa, thereby diluting the influence of the Kurdish fighters.

    [...]

    U.S. officials acknowledge, however, that the Kurds constitute more than three-quarters of the SDF coalition and are leading the fight on the front lines, making them the biggest beneficiary of U.S. military assistance.

    • L’entente turco-russe compromet les desseins autonomistes des Kurdes de Syrie
      http://www.france24.com/fr/20170108-kurdes-syrie-turquie-russie-erdogan-autonomie-manbij-al-bab-ypg-r

      Après Al-Bab, c’est à 50 km à l’Est de là, dans la ville de Manbij, ancien bastion de l’EI désormais contrôlé par les milices kurdes, qu’est établi le prochain objectif de l’offensive turque « Bouclier de l’Euphrate ». Le président turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan, nouvel allié de Vladimir Poutine, a fait le serment de la reprendre aux Kurdes et de les repousser vers le Sud, loin de la frontière, de l’autre côté de l’Euphrate. Avec un nouveau feu vert russe ?

      « En #Syrie, la #Turquie s’est enlisée dans la tourbière d’al-Bab »
      https://fr.sputniknews.com/international/201701091029504957-syrie-turquie-al-bab

      Les projets d’Ankara de lancer une offensive à Manbidj sont irréalistes. Dans une interview à Sputnik, un responsable du Parti de l’union démocratique kurde a commenté l’opération turque en Syrie et a évoqué entre autres l’opération de libération de Raqqa.

      [...]

      Et de pointer de bonnes relations du PYD et de la Russie, pays qui accueille un bureau de représentation des Kurdes syriens.

    • Trois articles publiés dans le même journal de référence montrent que les histoires de « piratages » se suivent et se ressemblent chaque fois qu’une grande puissance décide qu’un pays ou un autre est devenu son « ennemi ».

      1. D’Erich Lichtblau, journaliste du New York Times : L’augmentation des attaques électroniques met en danger la sécurité des États-Unis.
      Publié le 17 janvier 2003, le pays était l’Irak et le leader était Saddam Hussein.
      . . . . . .
      2. De Nicole Perlroth, journaliste du NYT : Attaques de cyberespionnage liées à des pirates
      Publié le 29 mai 2014, le pays était l’Iran.
      . . . . . .
      3. D’Erich Lichtblau, journaliste du NYT : Les systèmes informatiques de la Campagne de Clinton seraient piratés par .
      Publié le 29 juillet 2016, le pays était la Russie et le leader était Vladimir Poutine.

      . . . . . .
      Source : https://www.legrandsoir.info/l-ennemi-du-jour-se-rend-toujours-coupable-de-piratage.html

    • @kassem merci de l’info le conflit n’est pas près de se tarir hélas cette immense et belle région va encore souffrir comme leurs peuples...Algérie tentative du Mak dr provoquer des troubles ; http://www.afrique-asie.fr/menu/maghreb/10704-les-internautes-font-echec-aux-tentatives-d-importer-le-printemps BHL avait lancé aux algériens qu’eux aussi auraient droit à un « printemps arabe » (un hiver nucléaire quand on voit le Lybie et Syrie) et par facebook les algériens ont bloqué ces troubles ..Du jamais vu ..

    • @bce_106_6 tout a fait cousu de fil blanc, et les Usa avaient aussi accusé la Chine, et la Corée du Nord avant de se rétracter..Ils osent tout ils ont tant perdu la face avec la chute de Clinton face a Trump qui ne pensait pas être élu Les médias mainstream ont perdu la bataille sinon la guerre .

    • The Battle for al-Bab Is Bringing U.S.-Turkish Tensions to a Head
      Fabrice Balanche | January 9, 2017
      http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-battle-for-al-bab-is-bringing-u.s.-turkish-tensions-to-a-he

      Helping Erdogan take the city could greatly decrease the civilian death toll and preserve U.S.-Turkish cooperation in Syria, but Washington will still need to decide what to do with the Kurds, its other key ally against the Islamic State.

      On January 5, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to close Incirlik Air Base to the international coalition against the Islamic State, citing the lack of U.S. support for his efforts to take the IS-held Syrian city of al-Bab. That battle will likely force Washington to make some hard choices about which ally is most important in the anti-IS campaign — Turkey or the Kurds.
      AL-BAB PROVING MORE DIFFICULT THAN JARABULUS

      Since November 14, the Turkish army and allied Syrian rebel forces have been advancing on al-Bab. By December 10, they had entered the city’s western suburbs, seizing Sheikh Aqil hill on December 20. Turkish forces likely assumed that this position would allow them to put IS under fire and compel the group to flee, much like it did during the battle for Jarabulus.

  • Irak : tous les anciens baathistes ne sont pas avec Daech | Causeur
    http://www.causeur.fr/irak-iran-baath-etat-islamique-33437.html

    Le discours d’Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri en date du 15 mai, dans lequel il dément sa mort et s’en prend à Daech, est révélateur de ces clivages. Il illustre combien les baathistes, dans l’après-2003, sont restés divisés face à la succession des événements. Cet enregistrement permet de surcroît de nuancer la thèse selon laquelle les baathistes auraient incarné les têtes pensantes de Daech. Cette thèse est en partie fondée, surtout en ce qui concerne les membres des anciennes forces paramilitaires du régime et des mukhabarat (services de renseignement), mais tous les baathistes ne se sont pas rangés sous la bannière des djihadistes et ont même fait les frais de leur ultraviolence au cours de règlements de compte particulièrement sanglants dans le camp sunnite. Ce qui est frappant, en revanche, c’est l’obsession alimentée par la classe politique au sujet de ces anciens personnels du régime et la trace omniprésente laissée par le parti Baath dans le débat politique, synonyme de toutes les paranoïas et de toutes les craintes. Al-Douri a ainsi été présenté comme le « cerveau » de l’État islamique par le gouverneur de Salahaddin ; avant cela, Washington avait longtemps nourri l’idée d’une insurrection sunnite orchestrée de longue date par Saddam Hussein.