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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/opinion/19brooks.html?src=me&ref=general
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Voir article ci dessous, avec référence à un forum Tocqueville, etc… et tout de même 273commentaires
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The Broken Society
By DAVID BROOKS March 19, 2010 NYTimes

The United States is becoming a broken society. The public has contempt for the political class. Public debt is piling up at an astonishing and unrelenting pace. Middle-class wages have lagged. Unemployment will remain high. It will take years to fully recover from the financial crisis.

This confluence of crises has produced a surge in vehement libertarianism. People are disgusted with Washington. The Tea Party movement rallies against big government, big business and the ruling class in general. Even beyond their ranks, there is a corrosive cynicism about public action.

But there is another way to respond to these problems that is more communitarian and less libertarian. This alternative has been explored most fully by the British writer Phillip Blond.

He grew up in working-class Liverpool. “I lived in the city when it was being eviscerated,” he told The New Statesman. “It was a beautiful city, one of the few in Britain to have a genuinely indigenous culture. And that whole way of life was destroyed.” Industry died. Political power was centralized in London.

Blond argues that over the past generation we have witnessed two revolutions, both of which liberated the individual and decimated local associations. First, there was a revolution from the left: a cultural revolution that displaced traditional manners and mores; a legal revolution that emphasized individual rights instead of responsibilities; a welfare revolution in which social workers displaced mutual aid societies and self-organized associations.

Then there was the market revolution from the right. In the age of deregulation, giant chains like Wal-Mart decimated local shop owners. Global financial markets took over small banks, so that the local knowledge of a town banker was replaced by a manic herd of traders thousands of miles away. Unions withered.

The two revolutions talked the language of individual freedom, but they perversely ended up creating greater centralization. They created an atomized, segmented society and then the state had to come in and attempt to repair the damage.

The free-market revolution didn’t create the pluralistic decentralized economy. It created a centralized financial monoculture, which requires a gigantic government to audit its activities. The effort to liberate individuals from repressive social constraints didn’t produce a flowering of freedom; it weakened families, increased out-of-wedlock births and turned neighbors into strangers. In Britain, you get a country with rising crime, and, as a result, four million security cameras.

In a much-discussed essay in Prospect magazine in February 2009, Blond wrote, “Look at the society we have become: We are a bi-polar nation, a bureaucratic, centralised state that presides dysfunctionally over an increasingly fragmented, disempowered and isolated citizenry.” In a separate essay, he added, “The welfare state and the market state are now two defunct and mutually supporting failures.”

The task today, he argued in a recent speech, is to revive the sector that the two revolutions have mutually decimated: “The project of radical transformative conservatism is nothing less than the restoration and creation of human association, and the elevation of society and the people who form it to their proper central and sovereign station.”

Economically, Blond lays out three big areas of reform: remoralize the market, relocalize the economy and recapitalize the poor. This would mean passing zoning legislation to give small shopkeepers a shot against the retail giants, reducing barriers to entry for new businesses, revitalizing local banks, encouraging employee share ownership, setting up local capital funds so community associations could invest in local enterprises, rewarding savings, cutting regulations that socialize risk and privatize profit, and reducing the subsidies that flow from big government and big business.

To create a civil state, Blond would reduce the power of senior government officials and widen the discretion of front-line civil servants, the people actually working in neighborhoods. He would decentralize power, giving more budget authority to the smallest units of government. He would funnel more services through charities. He would increase investments in infrastructure, so that more places could be vibrant economic hubs. He would rebuild the “village college” so that universities would be more intertwined with the towns around them.

Essentially, Blond would take a political culture that has been oriented around individual choice and replace it with one oriented around relationships and associations. His ideas have made a big splash in Britain over the past year. His think tank, ResPublica, is influential with the Conservative Party. His book, “Red Tory,” is coming out soon. He’s on a small U.S. speaking tour, appearing at Georgetown’s Tocqueville Forum Friday and at Villanova on Monday.

Britain is always going to be more hospitable to communitarian politics than the more libertarian U.S. But people are social creatures here, too. American society has been atomized by the twin revolutions here, too. This country, too, needs a fresh political wind. America, too, is suffering a devastating crisis of authority. The only way to restore trust is from the local community on up.

Voici l’original !

La Chine publie un rapport sur les droits de l’Homme aux Etats-Unis

Publié le 2010-03-12 16:54:12 | French. News. Cn

http://french.news.cn/chine/2010-03/12/c_13208309.htm

La façon dont Freeman fut poussé à démissionner
ne pouvait pas ne pas avoir laissé de traces.

—> http://www.dedefensa.org/article-le_cas_freeman_et_les_relations_israel-usa_06_03_2009.html

Si aujourd’hui Petraeus s’exprime aussi ouvertement c’est peut-être parce qu’il y a peut-être aujourd’hui aux US, un courant d’opinion puissant qui considère qu’il y a un an la ligne rouge a été franchie.

Cette démonstration de puissance d’un Israël se posant en censeur de la politique US et se manifestant contre leur intérêt a été interprétée comme un acte antiaméricain puisque le lobby s’en prenait à un homme très respecté qui pouvait incarner les vertus initiales, perdues de vue aujourd’hui, de l’Amérique d’antan.

En quelque sorte, dans cette approche, c’est Israël qui empêche les US de retrouver leur âge d’or. Pour moi, cette affaire a représenté un tournant dans les relations US-Israël et il y a encore des conséquences à en attendre.

Le gouvernement danois devrait peut-être attendre avant de fixer son choix !

104 Hornet cloués au sol suite à la détection de fissures.

Sur NavyTimes [en] : http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/03/navy_hornets_grounding_031210w/

Sur Ria-Novosti [fr] : http://fr.rian.ru/defense/20100313/186239614.html

have gone through the material posted in this site. very rich information is available.One should join this site and become regular viewer! Excellent efforts done by the administrator. actually i was looking for mcse if you find please post me

Ils recueillent depuis presque 40 ans l’or noir de la Mer du Nord. (Imaginez ce pactole de royalties pétrolières en France.)
Ils décident souverainement de leur politique monétaire, budgétaire et nous assomment sans arrêt de leurs vertus libérales.
La City leur assure un empire financier dans un archipel de paradis fiscaux ceinturant l’europe.

Résultat : un déficit national historique, le “quantitative easing” (la planche à billet) et une livre coulante (plutôt que flottante… sans même accroitre leurs exportations), des secteurs immobiliers et bancaires en quasi déroute, des scandales de corruption politique de dimension grecque (normal entre marins louvoyants parmis leurs îles de trésors fiscaux ou maffieux) ... jusqu’à se mettre à la merci des agences de notation anglo-saxonne !

Et maintenant ... alors que le baril de pétrole est à la moitié de son record de juillet 2008 le prix à la pompe atteint des records ! Ils accusent la baisse de la Livre (le coeur de leur politique monétaire ?!) et un goulot au raffinage (ça alors ... une occasion ratée pour Dunkerque, à quelques km pourtant).

Bref un exploit de première grandeur dans le royaume du Souverainisme, mais tout ira mieux dans l’avenir grâce au génie National ... quoique la hausse du taux d’émigration ?

UK Petrol Prices to Hit Record High As Stealth Inflation Rages http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article17944.html

dirait que c’est une crise classique de surproduction liée à la libéralisation des échanges. On a pressuré le salarié ce qui a généré d’énormes bénéfices concentrés dans peu de mains. Mais surtout, on a tué l’acheteur puisque qu’en fin de compte, l’acheteur est le salarié.

Une autre vue d’un economiste…

La crise Americaine doit, a mon avis, imperativement etre analysee a travers ce que nous a montre l’histoire et la-dessus je suis en parfait accord avec vous.
Cependant, je ne pense pas que les USA puissent etre reduits a un simple etat “contractuel”, c’est “tout simplement” un Etat regalien (car clairement fonde sur une volontee populaire—si je vous ai bien compris) en mode Empire. Le probleme classique de l’Empire, extremement bien decrit dans “War, Peace, War” de P. Turcheon, est qu’ au fur et a mesure de son expansion il perd, lentement, ce qu’Ibn Khaldoun appella l’Asabiya, la cohesion sociale (ou plutot l’indice de cohesion sociale).
L’expansion continuelle et l’envie de tout maitriser eloignent l’Empire de plus en plus des ideaux qui l’ont forge et, avec le temps, ce goufre devient si grand que l’Empire croule.

Finalement, je tiens a remarquer que si la plupart des economistes modernes sont des abrutis, entiches de theories econometriques neo-Keynesiennes a la noix (oui, ils m’enervent…), nous ne sommes pas tous comme ca. Certains parmis nous pensent encore que l’etude des comportements humains n’est pas toujours reductible a une serie d’equations (et heureusement, sinon je serais chomeur!)

PS: desole je n’ai pas d’accents sur ce clavier.

après l’avertissement des 614m$ de bonus retiré, Gates passe à la manière forte avec Lockheed:

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=58317

le contrat JSF devrait passer sous un mode de prix fixe et non plus de cost-plus. Si cela se fait (et on peut faire confiance à lockheed pour résister) ca nous promet des larmes de crocodiles dans quelques années pour avoir une rallonge, style airbus avec son A400M.

The great American debate recommences

Mar. 13, 2010 By LOUISE W. KNIGHT History News Service http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/03/13/2037075/history-government.html

This country began with a fierce debate, and it does not appear to be over. The folks rallying to the Tea Party campaign espouse a program that goes right back to the Articles of Confederation. Whatever we think of it, the movement is as American as apple pie. And its followers think so too, calling themselves “patriots” rather than Republicans or Democrats.
Mark Skoda, the president of a Tea Party PAC, recently summed up what he calls their first principles: “less government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, states’ rights and national security.”

There’s an irony here, though. The Tea Party-ers lustily cheer at every mention of the U.S. Constitution yet their principles were most fiercely embodied not in our current Constitution, but in the Articles of Confederation.

Remember those? The same month that Congress was debating a declaration of independence, a committee was drafting the articles. Its purpose was to form a new government, which it called the United States of America.
The states completed ratification of the articles in 1781. Eight years later the Constitution supplanted the articles and brought to an end the political institution that Tea Party members now seem intent on reviving.

The articles allowed the new central government—solely a legislative body—to make war but not to tax or regulate interstate commerce. States, nervous about losing their independence, had designed a weak government intentionally. That was why it was called a confederacy.

(The Southern states, equally determined to protect states’ rights, created another one 80 years later.)

The first confederacy failed. Unable to tax, it struggled to raise money from the states to finance the Continental Army; after the war ended, it could not help states floundering with war debts.
By 1786, it was clear to many that the confederation needed to be replaced by something stronger, a federation.

The second constitution, the one we live under now, became law in 1788. It gave the central government powers to tax and to regulate interstate commerce and created a national government that for the first time had executive and judicial branches. Many Americans, known as the Antifederalists, had their doubts about the new constitution.

Their spiritual descendants are the Tea Party-ers. Like the Antifederalists, the Tea Party folks are fiercely distrustful of the national government, especially its power to tax, even though they completely trust its power to defend the nation. They also dislike the two-party political system created in Washington’s first administration. Sarah Palin recently declared her disapproval of both the Republican and Democratic parties in her speech to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and sparked an explosion of approval from her audience.

Today’s defenders of the Constitution are the progressives. Led by President Barack Obama, they believe that the national government should not only protect the nation from attack, promote interstate commerce and protect individual rights but also solve national problems through federal legislation—from building infrastructure to promote economic growth to making the schools better to protecting workers from unjust employment practices. It is not surprising that the Tea Party-ers hate Obama. He embodies the Antifederalists’ worst fears.

What is perhaps most interesting about the Tea Party-ers is that they have no interest in the socially divisive cultural issues—abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia—that have so dominated our recent national political debate. That is refreshing.

Instead, these Americans have returned to the oldest argument arising from this nation’s founding—what should the role of the national government be? Should it help Americans who are struggling or should it not? Should we maintain (and even strengthen, as through health reform) the progressive apparatus of laws and programs that keep the unemployed, the poor and the elderly sick, and even all citizens, from suffering, and increase total federal tax revenues to pay for it, or should we deconstruct that apparatus and reduce those revenues?

This is the debate we should be having. May it recommence!

Le JSF vu par l’humour britannique

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0jgZKV4N_A

Grandiose !

merci pour votre analyse des mandats SARKOZY OBAMA .
une remarque: pouvait-il en être autrement au regard de l’état des sociétés qui les ont respectivement élus.
La société française en élisant SARKOZY n’a -t-elle pas exprimée son angoisse identitaire à travers un personnage qui en résume de façon insolente la problématique?
Quant à OBAMA le personnage est à lui seul la narrative de l’obsession néo-con, un métis portant dans son prénon toute la problématique de la guerre contre le terrorisme.
Comment de tels personnages peuvent-ils embrasser et résoudre les éléments essentiels de leur fonction . ils ne sont rein d’autre que des images. Quand donc une image a -t-elle eu le pouvoir de gouverner?

les bonnes nouvelles s’accumulent encore et toujours pour le JSF :
-le 11/03/2010, le GAO publie un nouveau rapport sur ce thème:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10520t.pdf

quelques passages valent le détour, l’audit a commencé en mai 2009, et le rapport dit ceci:
“Total estimated acquisition costs have increased $46 billion and development extended 2 ½ years, compared to the program baseline approved in 2007”

donc pour résumer le programme a été décalé de 2 années et demi sur une durée d’environ deux années et demi de déroulement, ca promet pour la suite.

- cette publication a attiré quelques sympathiques commentaires outre atlantique:
Outre Bill Sweetman, on notera surtout celle de Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

“This raises great concern, not only about the potential for a Nunn-McCurdy breach now, but for continuing problems with the JSF program….. We cannot sacrifice other important acquisitions in the DOD investment portfolio to pay for this capability.”

effectivement l’impensable devient pensable.

Donc Bird and Fortune avaient raison trois ans en avance voir ici http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6h8i8wrajA à 3mn30.
Même les comiques ont eu connaissance du problème.

Si la France et ses alliés européens au sein de l’Agence spatiale européenne avaient 2 sous de visées stratégiques, la coopération spatiale avec la Russie devrait devenir une priorité. La Chine entend être bientôt sur la Lune, l’Amérique (Nasa) semble sur le recul. Il serait donc temps de relancer un grand programme russo-européen,  lanceurs de Nlle génération, capsules habitables, orbiteurs, satellites divers.