Caricature fête du travail aux États-Unis

Caricature Obama et la Chambre: un peu de respect?

Caricature Obama: planification?

Terrorisme: les américains ont moins peur d'une attaque...

À la veille des commémorations.

"Americans' fear that a terrorist attack in the U.S. could be imminent has retreated from the high level Gallup recorded shortly after al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed at his hiding place in Pakistan on May 1. It is now on the low end of the range seen over the past decade.

Thirty-eight percent of Americans currently believe terrorist acts are very or somewhat likely to occur in the coming weeks, down from 62% in Gallup's May 2 poll, but similar to the 39% recorded in November 2009.

The latest reading is from a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Aug. 11-14, roughly a month prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11, when nearly 3,000 were killed in hijacked plane attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers, as well as in a separate crash of a hijacked commercial jetliner in Pennsylvania.

The same poll finds 36% of Americans feeling very or somewhat worried that they or a family member could become a victim of terrorism. About a quarter of Americans held this concern in April 2000; it then registered highs of 58% and 59% in the first few weeks after 9/11, but has since varied between 28% and 48%."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/149315/Americans-Fear-Terrorism-Near-Low-Point.aspx

Report du discours présidentiel: la Maison Blanche en colère!

Boehner aurait dit oui...

"“It is a big deal that the House said ‘no’ to the president from our end,” a White House source with intimate knowledge of what took place between the House and the president told me Thursday. “This confirms what we all know: They will do anything in the House to muck us up.”

On Wednesday, the White House staff did not know exactly what President Barack Obama was going to say in his major jobs speech, but it knew exactly where and when he was going to say it.

The location would be before a joint session of Congress in the august marble-clad chamber of the House of Representatives. And the speech would be next Wednesday night, when the House returned from vacation, and there would be maximum TV viewership.

The speech would be dignified, sober and important. But the planning turned out to be a mess, a mess that illuminates just how hyper-partisan politics have become on Capitol Hill at exactly the time Obama is calling for bipartisanship.

The White House was well aware the president’s speech would conflict with a planned Republican debate sponsored by POLITICO and NBC to be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The debate would be broadcast live by MSNBC and live-streamed by POLITICO. CNBC and Telemundo will re-air the broadcast.

Yet the White House did not see this as an obstacle. “With all due respect, the POLITICO-MSNBC debate was one that was going on a cable station,” the White House source said. “It was not sacrosanct. We knew they would push it back and then there would be a GOP debate totally trashing the president. So it wasn’t all an upside for us.”

And, at first, things seemed to fall into place.

At about 10 or 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, White House chief of staff Bill Daley called House Speaker John Boehner and asked that a joint session of Congress be assembled the following Wednesday night. The White House viewed Boehner as a political opponent, but not an enemy and the call was cordial, even pro forma considering such a request had never before been refused.

And, according to the White House source, Boehner said “okay” to Daley’s request for the Wednesday evening date. (Asked for comment, Boehner’s press secretary, Brendan Buck, said he had nothing to add to his statement of Wednesday that read in part: “No one in the speaker’s office - not the speaker, not any staff - signed off on the date the White House announced today.”)"

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62505.html

Libye: des liens entre Kadhafi et la CIA

Ce n'est pas nouveau, mais ce seraient des preuves de plus...

"Libyan security agency documents indicate intimate cooperation between Muammar Qadhafi’s ousted regime and British and American intelligence.

While the documents provide new details, reports of such cooperation have surfaced before. Libyan Muslim extremists have tried to kill Qadhafi, and have held senior al-Qaeda positions.

Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, commander of the anti-Qadhafi force that now controls Tripoli, is the former leader of an Islamic group who says he was tortured by CIA agents at a secret prison, then sent to Libya.

Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, which found the documents in a Libyan security agency building, says they indicate American officials were sometimes present during interrogations - something the United States has denied."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62600.html

The iPresident: les gadgets de la Maison Blanche

Le matériel technologique de l'entourage du Président prend une couleur Apple! Dommage qu'on ne trouve pas l'application iLead!

"Now, due to popular demand by aides, the White House is moving to incorporate Apple devices into its daily routine. Last month, the information technology office launched a pilot program for the Executive Office of the President that allows Apple-loving staffers to access their official email accounts on their iPads and iPhones through a secure connection, a White House official told POLITICO. The pilot program is expected to run through mid-fall, the official said.

Obama aides, who found themselves in a stodgy PC world when they moved into the West Wing more than two years ago, said the program is part of an effort to update White House technology. It’s difficult to convince federal information technology departments to allow new devices to connect to a government network, mostly because of security concerns, so the pilot program represents a significant step in opening up its network to the high-tech world.

Aides stressed that the program does not favor any company’s products over another and includes devices powered by Google’s Android software. A wide range of equipment is still used: Dell computers are scattered throughout the West Wing, and many staffers rely on BlackBerrys.

Still, the efforts partly reflect Obama’s affinity for the brand. Last month, when Obama left to play a round of golf at Andrews Air Force Base, he carried his iPad. And when he appeared at the White House Twitter town hall in July, he used a MacBook Pro, although the Apple symbol was covered with the presidential seal. He also has an iPod.

“He’s president at a time when Apple is at its high point, so of course the administration is going to reflect that,” a former White House official said. “Mac is considered youthful and the president is still considered somewhat youthful.”

In a way, the administration is bringing the Mac back. Obama supporters drew an early 2008 primary contrast with Hillary Clinton by casting the former first lady as an obsolete PC and Obama as the fresh new Mac. The narrative was cemented in a 75-second Web video, compiled by an Obama fan, that cast Clinton as “Big Brother” in homage to Apple’s groundbreaking “1984” ad.

“On January 14th, the Democratic Primary will begin. And you’ll see why 2008 won’t be like 1984,” the ad concludes.

“It’s more of what they did the first time around [during the campaign],” said Micah Sifry, who co-founded the Personal Democracy Forum, an organization that analyzes technology and politics. “They want Obama to be seen as cool and with it and as up-to-date as they can.”

For Obama, Apple is not a bad brand to embrace in a weak economy. The company is, after all, one of the country’s biggest economic success stories. In early August, Apple briefly surpassed ExxonMobil as the nation’s most valuable publicly traded company, in terms of market capitalization. The most recent quarter was its best ever, with profits reaching $7.31 billion, up 125 percent from the same period in 2010."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62590.html

The iPresident: les gadgest

9/11: réflexion sur les commémorations

J'aime bien cet article dans le NY Times. En voici un bon extrait, mais il mérite assurément une lecture complète.

"Moreover, they stress that commemorations here and abroad should “emphasize the positive.” The implication is made that at one time “fear” was the response to Sept. 11; now “resilience” is. And resilience implies a kind of firm passivity. This is strange, because anyone who has spent time undressing in snaking airport lines before undergoing the kinds of screenings once associated with convicted felons knows full well that this has little to do with resilience.

The memos almost treat Sept. 11 as if it weren’t Sept. 11. It is certainly not about Islamist extremism or the jihadist proclamations by its aspirants. It isn’t even really about us. We are told: “We honor all victims of terrorism, in every nation of the world. We honor and celebrate the resilience of individuals, families and communities on every continent, whether in New York or Nairobi, Bali or Belfast, Mumbai or Manila, or Lahore or London.” (Is it just an accident of alliteration that crucial cities torn by terror have been omitted, because that would have required acknowledging that Jerusalem or Tel Aviv faces something similar?)

Indeed, so anxious is the White House to filter out any historical aspects of Sept. 11 that it proclaims this anniversary “the third official National Day of Service and Remembrance.” It should be used to encourage “service projects” and a “spirit of unity.” Through such demonstrations, the memos affirm, our communities can withstand “whatever dangers may come — be they terrorist attacks or natural disasters.”

If that is the sense the national leadership finds in that day, why should we expect much more from cultural commemorations than miscellany, euphemism, self-effacement and self-blame?

But what might such commemorations look like if approached with more clarity? Some aspects would stay very much the same: this week’s miscellany, after all, is partly a reflection of the world that has provoked our enemies. For the Sept. 11 attacks were not just inspired by Islamist extremism. There are similarities in the motivations behind diverse acts of recent terror, including those of Timothy J. McVeigh, the bomber of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, and Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber. They all involved a disgust with modernity in the West and tried, in different ways, to destroy its culture and institutions. Democratic culture might seem innocuous to us, but it assaults fundamentalisms with its variety, unpredictability, contradiction, dissipation and possibility."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/arts/design/911-memorials-many-perspectives-few-answers.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

9/11: propagande à colorier?

Que retiendront les jeunes enfants du 11 septembre après avoir colorié, et lu, ce petit livre intitulé “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom”?

"“We Shall Never Forget 9/11” is not, sadly enough, the first coloring book of its kind. FEMA produced the ill-fated “A Scary Thing Happened,” which depicted a variety of disasters and prominently featured images of the World Trade Center on fire. That title was removed from circulation a few years ago after widespread criticism. (When the Daily News went out for a man-on-the-street reaction, one father from Manhattan summed things up by saying, “I feel like I should punch the person who did this in the face.”) But the new book, from Really Big Coloring Books, Inc., may be the first to focus exclusively on the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. “The book was created with honesty, integrity, reverence, respect and does not shy away from the truth,” the publisher says on its Web site. “In this book you will see what happens to a terrorist who orders others to bomb our peace loving wonderful nation.” They add that parental guidance is suggested.
Should parents be worried about the graphic images, the underlying messages, or both? The publishers identify the book as a “graphic coloring novel,” which, as far as I can tell, means smaller pictures to color and a whole lot of text on each page. Above bin Laden’s startled face, there are four long paragraphs on the mission to hunt down and kill him, followed by a paragraph of editorializing:
Children, the truth is, these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating radical Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE. We must be prepared to know and understand the truth. America is FREE. Ask your mother and father, your teacher, your preacher what this really means. What does it mean to be FREE? Why are we a FREE people? We are free to think, free to be honest, free to write, free to live as we wish. We are America. America does not hate other people in the world, but we love the world in which we live and will defend our way of life.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has decried the book, saying that it maligns Muslims by never failing to pair them with words like “extremist” and “terrorist.” “All these caricatures could paint into the mind of a young person that perhaps all Muslims may be somewhat responsible for 9/11 or that Muslims themselves might be an enemy or a fifth column within the United States of America,” C.A.I.R. executive director Dawud Walid said in an interview. The publisher, Wayne Bell, responded by saying that, “He calls the book disgusting … but he should call the people in the book, the 19 terrorists, Osama bin Laden, he should call him disgusting. This is history. It is absolutely factual.”
Most of the coloring books in the Really Big Coloring Books, Inc., catalogue are fairly innocuous. There are a lot of religious ones (I wonder how I would color God!) and there’s standard coloring-book fare, like butterflies and zoo animals. And they aren’t entirely conservative—they’ve got one on President Obama. But they made headlines last year when they put out “The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids,” which features a group of children engaging in commerce and harvesting what appears to be a money tree. Bell received death threats for that one, one saying that the letter-writer wanted to put him in a “chloroform headlock.”"

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/09/911-coloring-book.html

Le problème d'Obama? Personne ne le craint!

Roland Martin de CNN supporte généralement les initiatives de Barack Obama...

"The White House loves to trumpet that one of President Barack Obama's greatest virtues is that he operates above the fray, choosing not to waste time with the political battles in the trenches.
"No Drama Obama" is what we heard during the 2008 presidential campaign -- that his cool, calm demeanor is his biggest asset. But as I look at how the GOP forced the president's hand on extending the Bush tax cuts; created political hay out of the debt ceiling, helping lead the nation to lose its AAA credit rating; and committed the gross disrespect of rebuffing the president's request to speak to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, it's fair to ask: When will this president strike back and exert some presidential muscle?
There is no doubt that President Obama has taken an aggressive position in going after al-Qaeda. We have taken out far more of the terror group's leaders than under President George W. Bush, including killing Osama bin Laden and the group's No. 2 leader. Even the hawkest of hawks can't complain about his decisions in Libya and Afghanistan.
But the 2012 election will not be decided on foreign policy. The economy will trump all that, and on that note, President Obama looks like a man with all the trappings of the most powerful position in the world, but one who uses little to none of the power.""

Pour la suite:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/02/martin.obama.power/index.html?hpt=po_bn1