Plus besoin de pétrole, plus besoin de nucléaire !

Two 100 hour scientific tests confirm anomalous heat production in Rossi’s E-Cat

A group of Italian and Swedish scientists from Bologna and Uppsala have just published their report on two tests lasting 96 and 116 hours, confirming an anomalous heat production in the energy device known as the E-Cat, developed by the Italian inventor Andrea Rossi.

The report is available for download here and on Arxiv.org.

I have earlier reported extensively on the E-Cat in the Swedish technology magazine Ny Teknik, but since more than a year very little new verified information have been available. This looks different.

The conclusion of the report is that the heat production is orders of magnitude beyond any conventional chemical energy source, beaten only by nuclear based power sources. Yet the scientists have systematically made conservative assumptions in order to base the result on a worst case scenario.

“Even by the most conservative assumptions as to errors in the measurements, the result is still one order of magnitude greater than conventional energy sources.”

In the tests, about 5.6 and 2.6 times the input energy was produced respectively (COP). An hypothesis for the lower value in the second test is that it might be explained by a lower working temperature , on average 302 °C against 438 °C in the first run.

In the second test an identical  dummy reactor without fuel charge was run with the same experimental set-up and found to produce no excess heat.

In their report the scientists also describes a third test when the reaction went out of control and destroyed the reactor. Through the reactor tube made of ceramics and steel they could observe two red heat sources where the fuel charges supposedly were located (see picture above). The heat was so intense that the coils of a number of electric resistances that were being used to start the reaction could be seen as shadows against the glowing red light.

Another observation regards the shape of the rising and falling temperature curve, clearly indicating an active heat source which doesn’t behave as an electric heat source, but instead as an accelerating reaction.

Throughout the tests no significant radiation above ambient background could be detected.

The reactor used in the test was called the E-Cat HT, where HT stands for High Temperature. It’s also known as the Hot Cat and is a development of an earlier model that reached about a 100 degrees Celsius. In both models the fuel charge consists of a small amount of hydrogen loaded nickel powder plus some unknown additives.

The tests were performed in Andrea Rossi’s premises in Ferrara, Italy, in December 2012 and March 2013.

The authors of the report are Giuseppe Levi, physicist, Bologna University, Evelyn Foschi, Bologna, Torbjörn Hartman, Radiation protection responsible at the Svedberg Laboratory, Bo Höistad, professor of nuclear physics, Roland Pettersson, Lecturer in Physical and Analytical Chemistry and Lars Tegnér, physical chemist and former development director at the Swedish Energy Agency, all representing Uppsala University, and Hanno Essén, assistant professor and theoretical physicist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

A longer test of the same device lasting for about six months is planned to be made later this year.

http://matslew.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/two-100-hour-scientific-tests-confirm-anomalous-heat-production-in-rossis-e-cat/

Perón, autre spécialiste pour ruiner son pays durablement…

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez is dead. But chavismo, the military government that he fashioned with the help of Cuba over his 14-year rule, lives on. Restoring democracy in the oil dictatorship won’t be easy, even without the caudillo in the red beret fomenting hatred on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Venezuelans will endure even deeper hardship than they do now.

Any transition to democracy faces two enormous hurdles. The first is the myth that Chávez was on track to make the poor rich and simply ran out of time. Amid a largely uneducated population and with a government skilled in propaganda, class conflict will still be easy to whip up and chavismo will haunt Venezuela for a long time to come.

The second reason is that any election that Vice President Nicolás Maduro calls, as required by the constitution, will be neither free nor fair. It will be merely a formality designed to legitimize the next dictator.

Steve Moore and James Freeman discuss the record level reached by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and whether investors should be fearful. Also, is L.A. doomed? Plus, Hollywood eulogizes Hugo Chavez, but do they know the entire Chavez story?

For anyone who thinks that the passing of Chávez automatically means change, I have two words: Juan Perón. The Argentine also was a military officer who feigned affection for the poor while expanding his power and wealth. He too had a cancer tragedy. His first wife, Eva, famous for her conspicuous consumption and populist flair, died of it at age 33. She was nearly canonized by the mob, and Perón exploited her death until his own passing in 1974.

Argentina has never been able to shake peronismo, which replaced the rule of law with governance by a troika of big labor, domestic producers and a corrupt political class. The once-prosperous South American nation is today again ruled by a Peronist president and is sliding again into repression, inflation and povertyIf Venezuela obeys the constitution drafted by Chávez and his followers, it needs to hold a presidential election within the next 30 days. Not that anyone believes the vote will be fair. But if Vice President Maduro, who was named by Chávez as his successor, wants to preserve the patina of a « democracy, » his government has to go through the motions to make him appear legitimate. The sooner the election is held, the easier it will be to tap into the sympathy vote for the dead revolutionary.

As the new president, Mr. Maduro will need all the help he can get. He is often described in press accounts as a former bus driver, but he never spent much time behind the wheel. Instead he graduated quickly to union leader, where he got a taste for power. His big problem is that although he is a passionate ideologue, he is only a mediocre demagogue.He also lacks ties to the military, which is the crucial institution in preserving his power. This explains why he has allowed himself to become so much Havana’s man in Caracas, signaling that he is ready to be more chavista than Chávez. If he stays in power, he is expected to continue sending billions of dollars in oil subsidies to Havana every year.In exchange, Cuba will continue to provide him state security agents and all else he needs to keep the military in line and otherwise support repression in Venezuela. Without Cuba’s help, he will almost certainly be overthrown by a more ambitious student of chavismo.

It is rumored that there is significant resentment among the Venezuelan men in uniform about the outsize power and influence of Havana. As the economy sags, grumbling about Venezuela’s financing of the Castro regime is likely to increase. In that case the pugnacious president of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello, a nationalist who hails from the military and remains close to it, will be Mr. Maduro’s most likely challenger.

This infighting could get ugly, but none of it will help Venezuelans reach the dream of living in a free, prosperous country. No nation can create the wealth necessary to truly make a difference in the lives of the poor without property rights, free markets, sound money and the rule of law. These virtues are incompatible with absolute power. Chávez eliminated them for a reason, and no new dictator is going to voluntarily restore them. It would be like asking him to poison his own whiskey.

Venezuela only got rid of its last dictator (Marcos Pérez Jiménez) when protesters against the tyranny took to the streets. Nothing short of a repeat of that January 1958 moment is likely to change things now. But it is improbable until the economy deteriorates further. In that sense, the bad news is the good news: Food shortages, unemployment and poverty are all worsening, and a recent devaluation has sent the bolívar to new lows in the black market.

Meanwhile, there may not be much the Free World can do to help Venezuela rid itself of the terrible scourge known as chavismo. At a minimum, it could refuse to go along with the charade that the country is still a democracy with free elections. Repeating the lie doesn’t make it any truer.

Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ, 7 mars 2013

L’anti-américanisme de toute obédience ne cesse de se rengorger sur les statistiques de santé défavorables aux Etats-Unis par rapport à l’Europe. Notamment la mortalité infantile plus élevée. Or on sauve plus de bébés en Amérique qu’en Europe, mais les chiffres ne le montrent pas, ou sont déformés, pour une raison simple expliquée ici :

Doctors in the U.S. are much more aggressive than foreign counterparts about trying to save premature babies. Thousands of babies that would have been declared stillborn in other countries and never given a chance at life are saved in the U.S. As a result, the percentage of preterm births in America is exceptionally high—65% higher than in Britain, and about double the rates in Finland and Greece.

Unfortunately, some of the premature babies that American hospitals try to save don’t make it. Their deaths inflate the overall infant mortality rate. But most premature babies are saved, largely because America’s medical research community is exceptionally innovative. There’s a laundry list of modern medical advancements used to treat a premature baby: suction devices to clear the baby’s mouth and lungs of amniotic fluid, miniature catheters to deliver vital fluids and medications, and emergency incubators equipped with sophisticated temperature-regulation technologies.

Thanks to such technologies, the U.S. neonatal mortality rate has dropped to just 5% today from 95% in the 1960s. The Institute of Medicine report ignores one of America’s chief health-care assets: the country’s superiority in medical innovation.

American researchers are responsible for a disproportionate number of breakthrough medicines and procedures. Scientific research conducted in the U.S. contributed to at least 20 of the top 27 diagnostic and therapeutic advances of the last 40 years, according to a 2009 study for the Cato Institute by economist Glen Whitman and physician Raymond Raad. The European Union and Switzerland contributed to just 14 of those breakthroughs.

L’article complet de Sally Pipes :

The federally chartered Institute of Medicine issued a comprehensive report last month on the state of American health. Saying that « Other high-income countries outrank the United States on most measures of health, » the report concluded that the U.S. « is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. »

To fix this state of affairs, the authors called on America’s leaders to consider « policies that countries with superior health status have found useful and that might be adapted for the United States. » But the institute’s report doesn’t tell the whole story. Its key measurements aren’t directly related to the quality of American health care. In truth, health care in the U.S. continues to be the envy of the world.

The study looked at 13 developed countries in Europe, along with Australia, Japan, Canada and the U.S. It found that Americans suffer from higher rates of several diseases—including HIV/AIDS, heart disease and diabetes—and rank near the bottom in some common measurements of public health. Consider life expectancy. The U.S. was ranked last for men—with an average 75.64 years, compared with 79.33 in top-ranked Switzerland—and second-to-last for women—at 80.68 years, compared with 85.98 in top-ranked Japan.

Lower life expectancy is less than ideal, but it’s also not a good measure of a country’s health care. In fact, the study’s lead author, Virginia Commonwealth University Family Medicine Professor Steven Woolf, recently told reporters that life expectancy and other noted health outcomes are determined « by much more than health care. » He added: « Much of our health disadvantage comes from factors outside of the clinical system and outside of what doctors and hospitals can do. » For instance, a comparatively high rate of fatal car accidents and murders in the U.S. diminishes overall life expectancy.

Another major gauge of health is infant mortality. As the report’s authors point out, the U.S. has the highest infant-mortality rate among high-income countries. Again, this isn’t a good indicator of the quality of the American health-care system. The elevated U.S. rate is a function of both the technological advancement of American hospitals and discrepancies in how different countries define a live birth.

Doctors in the U.S. are much more aggressive than foreign counterparts about trying to save premature babies. Thousands of babies that would have been declared stillborn in other countries and never given a chance at life are saved in the U.S. As a result, the percentage of preterm births in America is exceptionally high—65% higher than in Britain, and about double the rates in Finland and Greece.

Unfortunately, some of the premature babies that American hospitals try to save don’t make it. Their deaths inflate the overall infant mortality rate. But most premature babies are saved, largely because America’s medical research community is exceptionally innovative. There’s a laundry list of modern medical advancements used to treat a premature baby: suction devices to clear the baby’s mouth and lungs of amniotic fluid, miniature catheters to deliver vital fluids and medications, and emergency incubators equipped with sophisticated temperature-regulation technologies.

Thanks to such technologies, the U.S. neonatal mortality rate has dropped to just 5% today from 95% in the 1960s. The Institute of Medicine report ignores one of America’s chief health-care assets: the country’s superiority in medical innovation.

American researchers are responsible for a disproportionate number of breakthrough medicines and procedures. Scientific research conducted in the U.S. contributed to at least 20 of the top 27 diagnostic and therapeutic advances of the last 40 years, according to a 2009 study for the Cato Institute by economist Glen Whitman and physician Raymond Raad. The European Union and Switzerland contributed to just 14 of those breakthroughs.

This American strength may soon be diminished by ObamaCare. The law saddles the pharmaceutical industry with $28 billion in new taxes through 2019. As of Jan. 1, medical-device firms must pay a 2.3% tax on sales. The tax is projected to extract as much as $29 billion over 10 years.

That is money that can’t go to research and development. Several top device firms, including Stryker, Zimmer, Welch-Allen and Covidian, have already announced cutbacks in research investments.

Make no mistake—there is plenty of work to be done in improving American health. But the statistics in the Institute of Medicine report don’t reflect flaws in the U.S. health-care system. Sustaining a superior level of medical innovation will do far more to improve Americans’ health than adopting the health-care policies from overseas.

Ms. Pipes is president, CEO and fellow in health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is « The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare » (Regnery, 2012).

A version of this article appeared February 5, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Those Misleading World Health Rankings.

So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets. Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that’s too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast. Make it Cleveland, or Des Moines.

The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming “We love you,” too drunk on his celebrity to understand this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. No, no, a filmmaker would say; too crass, too blunt. Make them sober, middle-aged midwesterners, shocked at first, but then quiet and respectful.

The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: “And obviously our hearts are broken . . . ” Yeah, it’s totally obvious.

And he’s even more drunk on his celebrity than the fanbois, so in his slapdashery he winds up comparing the sacrifice of a diplomat lynched by a pack of savages with the enthusiasm of his own campaign bobbysoxers. No, no, says the Broadway director; that’s too crude, too ham-fisted. How about the crowd is cheering and distracted, but he’s the president, he understands the gravity of the hour, and he’s the greatest orator of his generation, so he’s thought about what he’s going to say, and it takes a few moments but his words are so moving that they still the cheers of the fanbois, and at the end there’s complete silence and a few muffled sobs, and even in party-town they understand the sacrifice and loss of their compatriots on the other side of the world.

But no, that would be an utterly fantastical America. In the real America, the president is too busy to attend the security briefing on the morning after a national debacle, but he does have time to do Letterman and appear on a hip-hop radio show hosted by “The Pimp with a Limp.” In the real State Department, the U.S. embassy in Cairo is guarded by Marines with no ammunition, but they do enjoy the soft-power muscle of a Foreign Service officer, one Lloyd Schwartz, tweeting frenziedly into cyberspace (including a whole chain directed at my own Twitter handle, for some reason) about how America deplores insensitive people who are so insensitively insensitive that they don’t respectfully respect all religions equally respectfully and sensitively, even as the raging mob is pouring through the gates.
When it comes to a flailing, blundering superpower, I am generally wary of ascribing to malevolence what is more often sheer stupidity and incompetence. For example, we’re told that, because the consulate in Benghazi was designated as an “interim facility,” it did not warrant the level of security and protection that, say, an embassy in Scandinavia would have. This seems all too plausible — that security decisions are made not by individual human judgment but according to whichever rule-book sub-clause at the Federal Agency of Bureaucratic Facilities Regulation it happens to fall under. However, the very next day the embassy in Yemen, which is a permanent facility, was also overrun, as was the embassy in Tunisia the day after. Look, these are tough crowds, as the president might say at Caesar’s Palace. But we spend more money on these joints than anybody else, and they’re as easy to overrun as the Belgian consulate.

As I say, I’m inclined to be generous, and put some of this down to the natural torpor and ineptitude of government. But Hillary Clinton and General Martin Dempsey are guilty of something worse, in the secretary of state’s weirdly obsessive remarks about an obscure film supposedly disrespectful of Mohammed and the chairman of the joint chiefs’ telephone call to a private citizen asking him if he could please ease up on the old Islamophobia.

Forget the free-speech arguments. In this case, as Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey well know, the film has even less to do with anything than did the Danish cartoons or the schoolteacher’s teddy bear or any of the other innumerable grievances of Islam. The 400-strong assault force in Benghazi showed up with RPGs and mortars: That’s not a spontaneous movie protest; that’s an act of war, and better planned and executed than the dying superpower’s response to it. Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey are, to put it mildly, misleading the American people when they suggest otherwise.

One can understand why they might do this, given the fiasco in Libya. The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a “safe house,” and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for ten hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they’ve investigated Mitt Romney’s press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press.
For whatever reason, Secretary Clinton chose to double down on misleading the American people. “Libyans carried Chris’s body to the hospital,” said Mrs. Clinton. That’s one way of putting it. The photographs at the Arab TV network al-Mayadeen show Chris Stevens’s body being dragged through the streets, while the locals take souvenir photographs on their cell phones. A man in a red striped shirt photographs the dead-eyed ambassador from above; another immediately behind his head moves the splayed arm and holds his cell-phone camera an inch from the ambassador’s nose. Some years ago, I had occasion to assist in moving the body of a dead man: We did not stop to take photographs en route. Even allowing for cultural differences, this looks less like “carrying Chris’s body to the hospital” and more like barbarians gleefully feasting on the spoils of savagery.

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In a rare appearance on a non-showbiz outlet, President Obama, winging it on Telemundo, told his host that Egypt was neither an ally nor an enemy. I can understand why it can be difficult to figure out, but here’s an easy way to tell: Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole “sensitive” papers revealing the names of Libyans who’ve cooperated with the United States. Oh, well. As the president would say, obviously our hearts are with you.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the local doctor who fingered bin Laden to the Americans sits in jail. In other words, while America’s clod vice president staggers around pimping limply that only Obama had the guts to take the toughest decision anyone’s ever had to take, the poor schlub who actually did have the guts, who actually took the tough decision in a part of the world where taking tough decisions can get you killed, languishes in a cell because Washington would not lift a finger to help him.

Like I said, no novelist would contrast Chris Stevens on the streets of Benghazi and Barack Obama on stage in Vegas. Too crude, too telling, too devastating.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn

Suite à notre précédent billet sur les funestes conséquences de l’abandon du Sabbat pour les relations judéo-chrétiennes …

Et à l’heure où les personnes comme les biens marqués juifs continuent dans nos contrées à subir comme ailleurs leur lot de violence presque ordinaire …

Pendant que, sous l’étiquette antisioniste, l’antisémitisme s’offre à nouveau en France la vitrine électorale des législatives …

Retour, toujours avec le chercheur franco-américain Jacques Doukhan, sur l’impact négatif que peuvent avoir, pour lesdites relations, certains symboles chrétiens tels que la croix.

Mais aussi la différence entre le Sabbat qui en tant qu’objet du quatrième commandement n’a rien perdu de sa normativité et les autres fêtes juives qui, bien qu’ayant perdu avec la destruction du Temple et la venue du Messie leur caractère obligatoire, peuvent néanmoins conserver un intérêt pédagogique notamment pour les juifs chrétiens …

Comme, avec la création de l’Etat d’Israël et même Auszchwitz, la possibilité d’un dialogue renouvelé entre l’Eglise et la Synagogue …

France vs Turquie au Moyen-Orient

This rivalry is nothing new. Since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, France and Turkey have competed for dominance in the Middle East. France’s rise as a Mediterranean power has been an inverse function of Turkish decline around the same sea. As the Ottoman Empire gradually collapsed, France acquired Algeria, Tunisia and, temporarily, Egypt. The French took one final bite from the dying empire by securing control over Syria and Lebanon after World War I.

This rivalry subsided in the 20th century, when Turkey became an inward-looking nation state. During the era of decolonization, France lost political control of lands extending from Morocco in the west to Syria in the east. Paris, however, maintained economic and political clout in the region by supporting large French businesses, which established lucrative ties with the region’s rulers. Even Turkey once looked to France as a model: when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey in 1923, he championed the French model of hard secularism, which stipulates freedom from religion in government, politics and education.

While France has dominated much of the region over the past two centuries, that is now changing. And if Turkey plays its cards right, it could match France’s influence or even become the dominant power in the region.

L’article :

AS Egyptians and Tunisians vote to replace ousted despots and the Syrian government teeters on the brink, two old imperial powers are competing to exert their political influence over Arab countries in upheaval. And they are not America and Russia. After years of cold-war competition over the Middle East and North Africa, it is now France and Turkey that are vying for lucrative business ties and the chance to mold a new generation of leaders in lands that they once controlled.

This rivalry is nothing new. Since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, France and Turkey have competed for dominance in the Middle East. France’s rise as a Mediterranean power has been an inverse function of Turkish decline around the same sea. As the Ottoman Empire gradually collapsed, France acquired Algeria, Tunisia and, temporarily, Egypt. The French took one final bite from the dying empire by securing control over Syria and Lebanon after World War I.

This rivalry subsided in the 20th century, when Turkey became an inward-looking nation state. During the era of decolonization, France lost political control of lands extending from Morocco in the west to Syria in the east. Paris, however, maintained economic and political clout in the region by supporting large French businesses, which established lucrative ties with the region’s rulers. Even Turkey once looked to France as a model: when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey in 1923, he championed the French model of hard secularism, which stipulates freedom from religion in government, politics and education.

While France has dominated much of the region over the past two centuries, that is now changing. And if Turkey plays its cards right, it could match France’s influence or even become the dominant power in the region.

In the last decade, Turkey has witnessed record-breaking economic growth. It is no longer a poor country desperately seeking accession to the European Union. It has a $1.1 trillion economy, a powerful army and aspirations to shape the region in its image. As political turmoil paralyzes North Africa, Syria and Iraq, and economic meltdown devastates much of Mediterranean Europe, Turkey and France have largely been spared. And their growing rivalry is one reason France has objected to Turkey’s bid for European Union membership.

Taken together with France’s efforts to create a European-Mediterranean Union, which Nicolas Sarkozy conceived in 2008 as a way to place France at the helm of the Mediterranean world, one thing has become obvious to the Turks: Paris won’t allow Turkey into the European Union or let it become a powerful player in a French-led Mediterranean region.

Turkey’s newly activist foreign policy has therefore shifted away from Europe. The ruling Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., is now cultivating ties with former Ottoman lands that were ignored for much of the 20th century. Of the 33 new Turkish diplomatic missions opened in the past decade, 18 are in Muslim and African countries.

This has resulted in new commercial and political ties, often at the expense of Turkey’s ties with Europe. In 1999, the European Union accounted for over 56 percent of Turkish trade; in 2011, it was just 41 percent. Over the same period, Islamic countries’ share of Turkish trade climbed to 20 percent from 12 percent.

New trade patterns have led to the emergence of a more socially conservative business elite based in central Turkey, which derives strength from trading beyond Europe and is using its new wealth to push for a redefinition of Turkey’s traditional approach to secularism. Since 2002, Ataturk’s French-inspired model has collapsed; the A.K.P. and its allies have instead promoted a softer form of secularism that allows for more religious expression in government, politics and education. This has made the Turkish model appealing to Arab countries, which for the most part regard French-style secularism as anathema.

Although both countries once coddled dictators — Mr. Sarkozy allowed Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to occupy central Paris and pitch a tent near the Élysée Palace in 2007, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accepted the Qaddafi international prize in 2010 — Turkey threw its support behind the Arab revolts early on, winning fans across the region.

Until it backed Libya’s rebels last year, France had bet on the enduring nature of dictatorships and never forged ties with the democratic forces opposing them; Turkey did so, perhaps unwittingly, by expanding its soft power into Arab countries, building business networks and founding state-of-the-art high schools, run by the Sufi Islam-inspired Gulen movement, to educate the future Arab elite. Now, the Arab Spring is providing Turkey with an unprecedented opportunity to spread its influence further in newly free Arab societies.

As France’s business ties with the old secular elite fray, its influence is waning. It remains a military and cultural power, and will continue to attract Arab elites, even Islamist ones, seeking weapons and luxury goods. However, France will find it hard to market its brand of secularism across the region or match Turkey’s grass-roots business networks, especially in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, where Turkey already has significant clout.

EVEN so, the road ahead will be rocky. Turkey ruled the Arab Middle East until World War I, and it must now be careful about how its messages are perceived there. Arabs might be drawn to fellow Muslims, but like the French, the Turks are former imperial masters. Arabs are pressing for democracy, and if Turkey behaves like a new imperial power, this approach will backfire. At a recent conference at Zirve University, a gleaming private school in Gaziantep financed by the local businesses that have made Turkey a regional economic powerhouse, Arab liberals and Islamists from various countries disagreed on most matters but agreed on one thing: that Turkey is welcome in the Middle East but should not dominate it.

In September, when Mr. Erdogan landed at Cairo’s new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies), he was warmly met by joyous millions, mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood. However, he soon upset his pious hosts by preaching about the importance of a secular government that provides freedom of religion, using the Turkish word “laiklik” — derived from the French word for secularism. In Arabic, this term loosely translates as “irreligious.” Mr. Erdogan’s message may have been partly lost in translation, yet the incident illustrates the limits of Turkey’s influence in countries that are far more socially conservative than it is.

Turkey may have the upper hand in soft power, but France has more hard power, as the recent war in Libya and its veto power at the United Nations make clear. And despite Turkey’s phenomenal growth since 2002, the French economy is over twice the size of Turkey’s, and France is still dominant in North Africa.

Turkey’s relative stability at a time when the region is in upheaval is attracting investment from less-stable neighbors like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Ultimately, political stability and regional clout are Turkey’s hard cash, and its economic growth will depend on both.

If Turkey wants to become a true beacon of democracy in the Middle East, its new constitution must provide broader individual rights for the country’s citizens, including the Kurds. It will also need to fulfill Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s vision of a “no problems” foreign policy. This means moving past the 2010 flotilla episode to rebuild strong ties with Israel and getting along with the Greek Cypriots who live on the southern part of the divided island of Cyprus (Turkish Cypriots control the north). The conflict there has lasted for decades; poorer Turkish Cypriots want a loose federation and the Greek Cypriot majority wants a strong central government.

The recent discovery of natural gas off the south coast of Cyprus is a major opportunity. Turkey could rise above the fray by proposing unification of the island in exchange for an agreement to share gas revenues. Such a deal, coupled with improved Turkish-Israeli ties, could facilitate cooperation in extracting even larger gas deposits off Israel’s coast; Turkey is the most logical destination for a pipeline from there to foreign markets.

Turkey will rise as a regional power only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy and builds strong ties with all its neighbors. This is Mr. Erdogan’s challenge as he tries to undo Napoleon’s legacy.

L’Union Américaine ?

It’s a languid morning in Peoria, as a husband and wife are having breakfast. “You’re sure you don’t want eggs and bacon?” the wife asks. “Oh, no, I prefer these croissants,” the husband replies. “They have a lovely je ne sais quoi.”

He dips the croissant into his café au-lait and chews it with zest. “What do you want to do this evening?” he asks. “Now that we’re only working 35 hours a week, we have so much more time. You want to go to the new Bond film?”

“I’d rather go to a subtitled art film,” she suggests. “Or watch a pretentious intellectual television show.”

“I hear Kim Kardashian is launching a reality TV show where she discusses philosophy and global politics with Bernard-Henri Lévy,” he muses. “Oh, chérie, that reminds me, let’s take advantage of the new pétanque channel and host a super-boules party.”

“Parfait! And we must work out our vacation, now that we can take all of August off. Instead of a weekend watching ultimate fighting in Vegas, let’s go on a monthlong wine country tour.”

“How romantic!” he exclaims. “I used to worry about getting sick on the road. But now that we have universal health care, no problem!”

Dunkirk marked the end of Britain’s war and the beginning of an uneasy peace with Hitler. By 1952 Britain and Germany have divided Africa. Britain’s colonies are ailing, whereas the German territories are ruled by a demonic warlord, Walter Hochburg, who is building a network of indestructible autobahns while at the same time cleansing the area of Africans.

« Reading The Afrika Reich is a bit like watching a movie made from elements of James Bond,Schindler’s List, and Die Hard. »
Réponse de l’auteur lui-même sur le blog.

Parmi les livres de l’année, selon The Economist

The Rat That Roared
By Christopher Hitchens
The Wall Street Journal | February 6, 2003

To say that the history of human emancipation would be incomplete without the French would be to commit a fatal understatement. The Encyclopedists, the proclaimers of Les Droites de l’Homme, the generous ally of the American revolution . . . the spark of 1789 and 1848 and 1871, can be found all the way from the first political measure to abolish slavery, through Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, to the gallantry of Jean Moulin and the maquis resistance. French ideas and French heroes have animated the struggle for liberty throughout modern times.

There is of course another France — the France of Petain and Poujade and Vichy and of the filthy colonial tactics pursued in Algeria and Indochina. Sometimes the U.S. has been in excellent harmony with the first France — as when Thomas Paine was given the key of the Bastille to bring to Washington, and as when Lafayette and Rochambeau made France the « oldest ally. » Sometimes American policy has been inferior to that of many French people — one might instance Roosevelt’s detestation of de Gaulle. The Eisenhower-Dulles administration encouraged the French in a course of folly in Vietnam, and went so far as to inherit it. Kennedy showed a guarded sympathy for Algerian independence, at a time when France was too arrogant to listen to his advice. So it goes. Lord Palmerston was probably right when he said that a nation can have no permanent allies, only permanent interests. It is not to be expected that any proud, historic country can be automatically counted « in. »

However, the conduct of Jacques Chirac can hardly be analyzed in these terms. Here is a man who had to run for re-election last year in order to preserve his immunity from prosecution, on charges of corruption that were grave. Here is a man who helped Saddam Hussein build a nuclear reactor and who knew very well what he wanted it for. Here is a man at the head of France who is, in effect, openly for sale. He puts me in mind of the banker in Flaubert’s « L’Education Sentimentale »: a man so habituated to corruption that he would happily pay for the pleasure of selling himself.

Here, also, is a positive monster of conceit. He and his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, have unctuously said that « force is always the last resort. » Vraiment? This was not the view of the French establishment when troops were sent to Rwanda to try and rescue the client-regime that had just unleashed ethnocide against the Tutsi. It is not, one presumes, the view of the French generals who currently treat the people and nation of Cote d’Ivoire as their fief. It was not the view of those who ordered the destruction of an unarmed ship, the Rainbow Warrior, as it lay at anchor in a New Zealand harbor after protesting the French official practice of conducting atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific. (I am aware that some of these outrages were conducted when the French Socialist Party was in power, but in no case did Mr. Chirac express anything other than patriotic enthusiasm. If there is a truly « unilateralist » government on the Security Council, it is France.)

We are all aware of the fact that French companies and the French state are owed immense sums of money by Saddam Hussein. We all very much hope that no private gifts to any French political figures have been made by the Iraqi Baath Party, even though such scruple on either side would be anomalous to say the very least. Is it possible that there is any more to it than that? The future government in Baghdad may very well not consider itself responsible for paying Saddam’s debts. Does this alone condition the Chirac response to a fin de regime in Iraq?

Alas, no. Recent days brought tidings of an official invitation to Paris, for Robert Mugabe. The President-for-life of Zimbabwe may have many charms, but spare cash is not among them. His treasury is as empty as the stomachs of his people. No, when the plumed parade brings Mugabe up the Champs Elysees, the only satisfaction for Mr. Chirac will be the sound of a petty slap in the face to Tony Blair, who has recently tried to abridge Mugabe’s freedom to travel. Thus we are forced to think that French diplomacy, as well as being for sale or for hire, is chiefly preoccupied with extracting advantage and prestige from the difficulties of its allies.

This can and should be distinguished from the policy of Germany. Berlin does not have a neutralist constitution, like Japan or Switzerland. But it has a strong presumption against military intervention outside its own border and Herr Schroeder, however cheaply he plays this card, is still playing a hand one may respect. One does not find German statesmen positively encouraging the delinquents of the globe, in order to reap opportunist advantages and to excite local chauvinism.

Mr. Chirac’s party is « Gaullist. » Charles de Gaulle had a colossal ego, but he felt himself compelled at a crucial moment to represent une certaine idee de la France, at a time when that nation had been betrayed into serfdom and shame by its political and military establishment. He was later adroit in extracting his country from its vicious policy in North Africa, and gave good advice to the U.S. about avoiding the same blunder in Indochina. His concern for French glory and tradition sometimes led him into error, as with his bombastic statements about « Quebec libre. » But — and this is disclosed in a fine study of the man, « A Demain de Gaulle, » by the former French leftist Regis Debray — he always refused to take seriously the claims of the Soviet Union to own Poland and Hungary and the Czech lands and Eastern Germany. He didn’t believe it would or could last: He had a sense of history.

To the permanent interests of France, he insisted on attaching une certain idee de la liberte as well. He would have nodded approvingly at Vaclav Havel’s statement — his last as Czech president — speaking boldly about the rights of the people of Iraq. And one likes to think that he would have had a fine contempt for his pygmy successor, the vain and posturing and venal man who, attempting to act the part of a balding Joan of Arc in drag, is making France into the abject procurer for Saddam. This is a case of the rat that tried to roar.