text:
Biggest conferences coming up for startups in 2017
By Omar Elorfaly - September 5, 2017
What do entrepreneurs do when they finally establish their startup? Do they hibernate in their offices, trying to come up with creative solutions? Roam the streets looking for more investors? Or do they read up on other success stories for inspiration?
While all previously mentioned tactics can yield great success, there is a more exciting and interactive substitute. Startup conferences offer the opportunity for maximum networking while facilitating knowledge sharing among different industry participants.
2017 has already witnessed a load of successful and exciting conferences, including World Domination Summit, Startup+Fest and CEO Space. But the year is still not over, and the best is yet to come.
Pirate Summit (Sep 6-7)
Europe's largest invitation-only event for early-stage startups, set in Cologne, Germany emerges in its 7th iteration. The 2-day event brings together innovators from startups in different industries with venture capitalists and industry leaders.
Besides the frequent "ARRRR!!" shouts, the conference maintains a theme that is much like Burning Man, and coincidently the event's 2015 iteration did in fact hold a Burning Man festival.
Discussion panels, 1-on-1 sessions, and keynotes are all a part of the conference. However, "Walk the Plank" stands out as the most interesting event. It's a competition where entrepreneurs take the stage and proceed to pitch their startup ideas and their visions for the future. Winners of the competition receive a fully-paid trip to London and San Francisco, and pre-arranged meetings with venture capitalists in their respective cities. Pirate summit also adds a financial incentive of $50,000 to spice up the competition.
Disrupt SF (Sep 18-20)
The only non-invitation-only entry on our list goes to one of the most important annual events in the tech startup world. Disrupt SF is hosted by the famous TechCrunch magazine.
The event features the usual array of discussion panels, keynote speakers and meet & greet. The conference also gives a chance for newly-born startups to exhibit their ideas in the event's Startup Alley, as well as a platform where entrepreneurs meet investors, dubbed "CrunchMatch".
Multiple startups credit the event for boosting their business and activity, that includes Mathew Prince, CEO of Cloudfare who reports "We struggled like crazy to get our first hundred customers. Since Disrupt, we sign up about 5000 new customers a day."
While the event is open to ticket-buyers, tickets are $2,995 each.
Summit LA 17 (Nov 3-6)
Probably the biggest and most exclusive entry on our list. The event set in the heart of Los Angeles not only features industry leaders like Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, but also a wide array of leading figures in different fields, like Five-time NBA champion Kobe Bryant and Award-winning author Malcolm Gladwell.
LA 17 goes above-and-beyond with over 40 different entertainment performances by world-renowned musicians, stand up comedians and dancers.
The event is one to not go unnoticed by the whole city, taking over LA's historic Broadway theater, as well as 9 of downtown LA's biggest hotels, including the Intercontinental Hotel, which occupies the west coast's highest tower.
The 4-day extravaganza is 'the' perfect opportunity for networking, and even meeting one's own role models.
The limited invitation-only event is looking for industry leaders, unique figures in thought and innovation. While the event is completely open for invitation holders, attendees are expected to participate in making the event the highlight of the city.
TNW (Dec 12)
The last entry on our list is a 12-year-long success story. The famous tech-focused TNW aims to gather 135 industry thought leaders, including 9 CEOs to discuss the tech journey that led us to today's latest innovations.
With a focus on subjects like AI, blockchain, and machine learning, the event sets up over 220 roundtable sessions covering the current and future applications of technologies.
The success of the event earned it partners of the highest caliber, including IBM, Microsoft, and PWC.
Praise for the invitation-only event is said best by Nir Eyal, Author of How to build habit-forming products, "If there's one event I love returning to, it's TNW. They never cease to surprise me with their attention to detail and their ability to make you feel part of the family. It's a great way of connecting with friends from the industry – both old and new."
Omar Elorfaly
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La politique étrangère des États-Unis est le résultat d'un processus d'élaboration complexe, fait de débats contradictoires tranchés par des arbitrages. D'autre part, le système constitutionnel américain prévoit une distribution précise des pouvoirs (checks and balances), ce qui donne aux différents acteurs (présidence, Congrès, Cour suprême ou société civile) un pouvoir capable d'influer de façon très différenciée sur l'élaboration de la politique étrangère des États-Unis.

Certains fondamentaux de la politique extérieure des États-Unis sont cependant présents depuis leur création. La prise de décision est partagée entre le pouvoir exécutif  et le pouvoir législatif, le Congrès. Les deux subissent l'influence de la société civile (groupes de pression, électorats et think tank).

Les acteurs de la politique étrangère américaine

Compétences du législatif et de l'exécutif
Le secrétaire d'État est à la tête du département d'État des États-Unis. Il est chargé de représenter la diplomatie américaine ; actuellement, Antony Blinken occupe le poste.

Le principe de séparation des pouvoirs voulu par les Pères fondateurs des États-Unis les conduit à tenter de créer « deux branches vigoureuses, actives et combatives en leur octroyant, dans le domaine de la politique étrangère, des rôles significatifs se chevauchant l'un l'autre ».

La constitution fixe en principe au Congrès le rôle prédominant en politique étrangère (article 1 section 8 de la Constitution des États-Unis). Cependant, les pouvoirs du président ont été ré-affirmés à de nombreuses reprises par la Cour suprême, qui dès les années 1930 admettaient par exemple la validité des sole executive agreements, c'est-à-dire d'accords signés par le seul président avec une puissance étrangère, contrairement aux traités qui requièrent l'approbation du Sénat.

En plus des pouvoirs généraux du Congrès s'appliquant aussi à la politique extérieure, il lui appartient en effet : du point de vue diplomatique : réglementer le commerce extérieur, définir et punir les crimes commis en haute mer ; du point de vue militaire : assurer une défense commune, lever et entretenir les armées et déclarer la guerre. En application du mécanisme des poids et contre-poids (check and balance) régissant la séparation des pouvoirs aux États-Unis, le Sénat doit ratifier les traités à la majorité des 2/3 et confirmer les nominations à la majorité simple.

Si le fait que le président soit le symbole de l'unité nationale tend à renforcer son ascendance dans le domaine de la politique étrangère, il demeure que le Congrès a également su reprendre la main dans de nombreuses circonstances (face à Nixon pendant la guerre du Viêtnam, face à Reagan pour sa politique au Nicaragua, etc.) comme pendant de longues périodes (Entre-deux-guerres, après-Viêtnam, etc.). Son pouvoir budgétaire et dans les affaires économiques reste prédominant. Et plus encore, il a parfois refusé de ratifier des traités pourtant signés par le président, et qui s'avéraient déterminant sur la scène internationale (Traité de la SDN par exemple, et malgré les efforts du président Wilson).

Mécanismes de prise de décision

Le rôle du département d'État est de mener la diplomatie officielle des États-Unis. Son budget est relativement faible (1 % du budget fédéral contre 16 % au département de la défense par exemple).
Avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le Département d'État constitue l'administration dominant la politique étrangère. Jusqu'en 1968, il prend encore de l'importance, à mesure de l'accroissement de l'intervention des États-Unis dans les affaires mondiales. À partir de cette date, il est de plus en plus concurrencé par d'autres administrations, notamment le département de la Défense et le conseil de sécurité nationale et connaît une certaine perte d'influence.

Le Département de la Défense des États-Unis a profité de la période de la guerre froide pour devenir un acteur essentiel de la politique étrangère.

Approche géographique

En Europe

Du fait de la Doctrine Monroe, le gouvernement américain ne s'implique pas dans les affaires européennes jusqu'en 1905, date à laquelle le président Theodore Roosevelt offrit sa médiation pour arrêter la guerre russo-japonaise, cela aboutissant au traité de Portsmouth.

Limplication des États-Unis pendant la Première Guerre mondiale commence en 1917 tout en commerçant bien davantage avec les pays de la Triple-Entente qu'avec l'Allemagne impériale et ses alliés (l'Entente emprunte 2,3 milliards de dollars alors que les banques américaines ne prêtent que 26 millions aux puissances centrales). La guerre sous-marine à outrance et les désastreuses initiatives allemandes tels des sabotages d'usines d'armement sur le sol américain et le télégramme Zimmermann font basculer l'opinion publique et le , le congrès des États–Unis déclarent la guerre à l'Allemagne impériale en tant que « puissance associée » à l'Entente.

Indépendance du Kosovo

L'administration Bush reconnaît l'indépendance du Kosovo le , sans l'accord de l'ONU et de son Conseil de sécurité. 64 autres États, la plupart alliés des États-Unis, avaient auparavant fait de même. Cependant, les États-Unis auraient poussé la Slovénie à faire de même, selon la presse slovène, l'Allemagne de Angela Merkel ayant reconnu le Kosovo, ce que dénonce l'ancien chancelier Gerhard Schröder. En avril 2010, l'Argentine déclare qu'elle a résisté aux pressions américaines, qu'ils l'auraient poussé à une reconnaissance du Kosovo. le Kosovo n'est toujours pas reconnu par l'ONU. La décision des États-Unis est soutenue par ses alliés européens, à l'exception de la Grèce et de l'Espagne, la Slovaquie et la Roumanie (pays tous membre de l'OTAN).

Avec la Russie

Souhaitant en début de son mandat remettre à 0 (reset) les relations russo-américaines et rallier Moscou à la cause anti-chinoise, Barack Obama doit néanmoins composer avec le Congrès et les agences fédérales (CIA, Pentagone) partisans d'un endiguement de la Russie et d'un contrôle direct sur les États voisins (Pays baltes, Ukraine, Géorgie) par le biais de l'OTAN. L'affaire Snowden et la révolution ukrainienne de février 2014 compliquent ces relations, la Russie accusant les agences américaines d'avoir joué un rôle déclencheur dans les événements ukrainiens. Quand les régions de l'Est du pays se révoltent contre le pouvoir central, Vladimir Poutine est accusé d'encourager un soulèvement pro-russe. La crise de Crimée et le référendum qui la suit sont sévèrement condamnés par le gouvernement américain, le président russe, de son côté, ne manquant pas de rappeler l'antécédent du Kosovo. Barack Obama décide de répondre par une politique de sanctions économiques imposées à la Russie et suivie par ses alliés européens.

En Amérique latine
Depuis le , l'Amérique latine est une préoccupation majeure de la politique étrangère des États-Unis. La doctrine Monroe de 1823 en fait une zone réservée associant interventionnisme et isolationnisme. Tout acte d'intervention européen vers l'Amérique latine sera considéré comme un acte d'hostilité envers la jeune République. Au cours du , le rôle de « gendarme » de l'Amérique se développe. Il légitime la guerre hispano-américaine de 1898 déclenchée par l'insurrection cubaine contre le colonisateur espagnol ainsi que diverses interventions militaires (Doctrine du Big Stick) jusqu'à la doctrine du bon voisinage de Franklin Roosevelt qui modère celle-ci.

Pendant la guerre froide

Au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la politique étrangère américaine en Amérique latine n'est pas épargnée par l'affrontement avec l'URSS qui justifie d'une manière nouvelle la suprématie américaine. Le pacte de Rio du  stipule : « Toute attaque armée contre un État américain sera considérée comme une attaque contre les autres États américains. » Le , la charte de Bogota crée l'Organisation des États américains (OEA) qui regroupe tous les États du continent sauf le Canada. Dès 1942, l' préparait une certaine coopération militaire américaine, tandis que la coopération policière internationale est organisée par l' de 1957 à 1974. En 1962, Cuba, devenu communiste, est exclu de l'OEA, tandis que le Canada attendra 1980 pour la rejoindre.

Les années 1959-1962 marquent une rupture dans la politique américaine vis-à-vis de l'Amérique latine. Elle doit s'adapter à la présence d'un État pro-soviétique, Cuba, à sa porte. Les relations deviennent vite tendues, malgré la tentative de médiation du président argentin Arturo Frondizi, avec le fiasco du débarquement de la baie des Cochons en avril 1961 puis l'embargo à partir de février 1962. En , la tension monte lors de la crise des missiles, qui marque la limite de la coexistence pacifique entre les deux blocs. La résolution de cette crise conduit à la détente entre les deux superpuissances, cependant, les leçons de cette crise n'ont pas été tirées et le droit d'attaquer un pays possédant l'arme nucléaire reste de mise.

Entre 1961 et 1965, les États-Unis cherchent à se donner une image de générosité en lançant l'Alliance pour le progrès, programme qui fait partie de la doctrine Kennedy, et prévoit 20 milliards de dollars d'aide en 10 ans et le soutien aux réformes agraires. Mais le Congrès rogne les dépenses et l'énergie des Américains est vite absorbée par la guerre du Viêtnam. De plus, ce volet d'aide économique est lié à une coopération militaire renforcée qui dépasse nettement les simples traités bilatéraux d'assistance militaire, signés dans le cadre du  de 1951. À l'exception du Guatemala, où Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán est renversé en 1954 par la CIA, « l'Amérique latine n'est pas », jusqu'à Kennedy, « une zone à haute priorité défensive ». Avec le tournant Kennedy-Mc Namara de 1962, « la sécurité intérieure et la lutte antisubversive se substituent à la politique commune de défense contre une agression extérieure » (A. Rouquié, 1982). L'aide militaire s'institutionnalise davantage, mettant l'accent sur l'anticommunisme et l'« action civique », en vue de « convertir des armées de défense hémisphériques en forces de l'ordre intérieur mobilisées contre la subversion communiste ». Les programmes d'assistance militaire (PAM), dont l'École des Amériques n'était qu'un chaînon, étaient coordonnées par le Southern Command, transféré au Panama en 1963.

Bien que parfois surévaluée, la « diplomatie du relais militaire » a pu servir comme « substitut à l'intervention directe des États-Unis », par exemple lors du renversement de João Goulart au Brésil (1964), soutenu par Washington (opération Brother Sam), ou d'Allende au Chili (1973). En poste à Brasilia, l'ambassadeur Lincoln Gordon reconnaissait alors que l'assistance militaire avait été « un élément important pour influencer dans un sens pro-US les militaires brésiliens ». La dictature brésilienne (1964-85) diffuse en Amérique latine la doctrine de sécurité nationale du Pentagone. L'année suivante, l'occupation de la République dominicaine par les États-Unis, pour réprimer un soulèvement d'officiers progressistes, marque la fin de l'Alliance pour le progrès. L'agent du FBI Dan Mitrione se rend en Uruguay en 1969 pour le compte de l'Office of Public Safety; accusé d'enseigner la torture à la police locale, il est enlevé par les Tupamaros, scène peinte dans le film État de siège (1972) de Costa-Gavras.

Dans les années 1970, malgré la publication, en 1971, des Pentagon Papers, qui conduisent à un , le président Nixon et son conseiller Kissinger poursuivent une politique agressive à l'égard de l'URSS et des régimes assimilés, à tort ou à raison, avec Moscou. Ainsi, beaucoup soupçonnent Washington d'avoir accordé au minimum un blanc-seing à l'opération Condor mise en place par les dictatures latino-américaines à partir de 1976, qui conduit à la disparition forcée de milliers d'opposants dans le cadre de la « guerre sale ». La doctrine Nixon conduit toutefois à un désengagement relatif de la présence militaire américaine à l'étranger, remplacée par un interventionnisme plus discret.

La visite de Richard Nixon en Chine en 1972 est une étape importante dans le processus de normalisation des relations diplomatiques entre les États-Unis et la République populaire de Chine. Il constitue la première visite d'un président des États-Unis dans ce pays qui considérait alors les États-Unis comme l'un de ses principaux adversaires.

Entre 1977 et 1981, le président Jimmy Carter tente de modifier la politique étrangère de son pays. . Il établit un lien entre l'aide américaine et le respect des droits de l'homme dans les pays bénéficiaires provoquant l'exaspération de la junte brésilienne alors au pouvoir. Le , il signe les Traités de Torrijos-Carter organisant le transfert progressif de la souveraineté du canal de Panama au Panama. En 1979, il abandonne le soutien au dictateur du Nicaragua, Somoza, permettant l'accès au pouvoir du Front sandiniste de libération nationale pro-communiste.

Les années de présidence de Ronald Reagan sont marquées par l'opposition résolue à l'expansion communiste dans le Tiers-Monde, la doctrine Kirkpatrick et la doctrine Reagan justifiant ouvertement le soutien aux dictatures militaires. Cela se traduit en Amérique centrale par la volonté d'étouffer le régime sandiniste au Nicaragua (financement de Contras qui aboutit à l'Irangate lors du second mandat de Reagan), par l'encouragement à l'installation d'un régime démocratique au Salvador en pleine guerre civile. Reagan nomme John Negroponte au Honduras, en proie aux escadrons de la mort, tandis que Washington reprend en main l'Opération Charly, par laquelle la junte argentine exportait la doctrine de contre-insurrection à l'Amérique centrale. En 1983, l'invasion de la Grenade renverse le gouvernement marxisant de Maurice Bishop. En 1984, les ports nicaraguayens sont minés. Après une plainte de cet État auprès de la Cour internationale de justice, les États-Unis sont condamnés le  (Nicaragua v. United States.

La guerre des Malouines plonge la diplomatie américaine dans l'embarras. Soit elle est fidèle à la doctrine Monroe et considèrent que les généraux argentins ont eu raison d'envahir les Iles Falklands, reliquat de l'Empire colonial britannique, le  ; soit elle soutient son plus fidèle allié, le Royaume-Uni face à l'agression argentine. Les tentatives de médiation américaines échouent. L'expédition militaire pour reconquérir les Falklands bénéficie d'un soutien logistique américain déterminant.

Depuis la fin de la guerre froide : la « guerre contre la drogue »

Au cours des années 1980, la consommation de stupéfiants devient de plus en plus un enjeu politique important, menant à la « guerre contre la drogue », une politique prohibitionniste stricte, accompagnée de mesures pénales sévères, les peines plancher, qui mènent à une explosion de la population carcérale. Outre l'aspect judiciaire intérieur, cette politique possède aussi un versant extérieur, le trafic de drogues étant contrôlé par différents cartels, dont le Cartel de Medellín. À peine un an après la chute du mur de Berlin, la politique prohibitionniste de Washington fournit le prétexte de l'opération Juste Cause (), une invasion du Panama afin de capturer Manuel Noriega, le dictateur local, inculpé de trafic de stupéfiants, mais ancien allié des États-Unis. Washington met par ailleurs sur pied un programme de surveillance militaire navale destiné à arraisonner les navires transportant de la drogue, qui culmine dans l'édification du Joint InterAgency Task Force-South, réunissant plusieurs forces militaires (États-Unis, Colombie, Venezuela, France, etc.), qui surveille l'Atlantique, les Caraïbes et le Pacifique.

Outre l'intervention militaire directe, les États-Unis frappent aussi de sanctions économiques les États « certifiés », c'est-à-dire qui ne montrent pas leur bonne volonté à lutter contre le trafic de drogue sur leur territoire. C'est le cas de la Colombie dans les années 1990, le président Andrés Pastrana mettant en place, en 1998, avec l'accord de Bill Clinton, le plan Colombie visant à l'éradication des cultures de coca. Celui-ci comprend un volet de coopération militaire et policière, les agents de la DEA en particulier étant présents sur le terrain. La DEA s'oppose parfois à la CIA sur le terrain, ainsi au Pérou: la DEA, qui a connaissance dès 1996 des activités de narcotrafic de Vladimiro Montesinos, le chef des services secrets du président Fujimori, par ailleurs payé par la CIA, l'emporte alors contre l'agence rivale, ce qui marque la chute de Montesinos, causée en partie par son implication dans une vente d'armes à destination des FARC colombiens. Outre la Colombie et le Pérou, les États-Unis sont aussi présents en Bolivie, qui était devenu un important producteur de cocaïne sous la dictature de Luis García Meza Tejada (1980-81).

Cette politique n'est pas sans susciter une certaine opposition des États d'Amérique latine, à l'exception notable du Mexique et de la Colombie. L'Amérique latine soutient en effet que les responsables principaux du trafic de stupéfiants ne sont pas les paysans producteurs, mais les consommateurs du Nord. De plus, certains des États andins considèrent que la feuille de coca fait partie de la culture locale, et refusent l'assimilation de celle-ci à la cocaïne, qui n'en est qu'un produit dérivé. Ainsi, le Pérou et la Bolivie négocient en 1988 un amendement à la Convention contre le trafic illicite de stupéfiants et de substances psychotropes permettant l'usage licite de celle-ci lorsqu'il est traditionnel (art. 14, §2). Le président bolivien Jaime Paz Zamora (1989-1993) lance alors la « diplomatie de la coca », s'opposant à la criminalisation des cultivateurs du Chapare, tout en extradant vers les États-Unis , l'ex-ministre de l'Intérieur de Meza Tejada, inculpé pour trafic de drogue. L'élection en 2005 d'Evo Morales à la présidence bolivienne constitue un nouveau camouflet pour la politique d'éradication de la coca prônée par Washington, tandis qu'au Mexique, la lutte contre les narcotrafiquants, entamée par Bill Clinton et Ernesto Zedillo, bascule en conflit armé dans les années 2000.

Au Moyen-Orient

La politique étrangère des États-Unis dans la région est marquée par l'alliance stratégique avec l'Arabie saoudite concrétisée par le Pacte du Quincy (1945), qui en échange d'un accès au pétrole, engage les États-Unis à protéger militairement la dynastie des Saoud. Cette alliance se révèlera d'autant plus durable que le pays se présente comme un allié de poids face à la montée des nationalismes arabes dans les années 1950-1960 soutenus par l'Union soviétique. Cette proximité se poursuit dans la lutte organisée contre l'Union soviétique dans le conflit afghan pendant laquelle la dynastie saoudienne finance les moudjahid afghans et exporte sa doctrine religieuse sous la forme du salafisme.

L'Arabie saoudite prend ses distances avec son allié américain au début des années 2010, en réponse à la non-intervention militaire du pays pendant la guerre civile syrienne et au rapprochement irano-américain qui fait suite à l'élection d'Hassan Rohani à la présidence de la République islamique. En conséquence, l'Arabie saoudite refuse son siège obtenu par l'élection du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU de 2013.

Les relations entre les États-Unis et Israël sont également un facteur important dans la politique étrangère du gouvernement des États-Unis au Moyen-Orient depuis 1948. Les États-Unis maintiennent avec Israël une relation de proximité et de soutien via une aide financière annuelle et des accords militaires. En dépit de cette très grande proximité, les relations entre Barack Obama et Benyamin Netanyahou sont marquées par de très fortes tensions entre les deux hommes. Fin , malgré son influence, le lobby sioniste AIPAC échoue à convaincre le président américain d'engager des frappes en Syrie.

Ces tensions entre les deux États se manifestent notamment durant l'été 2014, lors de l'opération Bordure Protectrice. L'administration Obama est exaspérée, bien qu'elle soutienne publiquement Israël, et elle appelle à un cessez-le-feu. Néanmoins, Le Congrès américain de son côté vote dans une majorité écrasante (395 à 8) plus d'argent pour aider l'armée israélienne.

Le 13 avril 2021, l'administration du président américain Joe Biden a procédé à plus de 23 milliards de ventes d'armes, y compris des avions avancés F-35 et des drones armés aux ÉAU. Le 16 avril 2021, cependant, deux sénateurs démocrates, Dianne Feinstein et Bob Menendez, ont présenté un projet de loi qui pourrait empêcher les États-Unis de vendre des jets de combat F-35 aux Émirats arabes unis.

Selon la nouvelle politique, la porte est ouverte aux ventes de drones militaires aux Émirats arabes unis et à d'autres pays autoritaires. Ce, alors même qu'en juillet 2020, les démocrates progressistes du Sénat avaient présenté une législation pour renverser la décision de l'administration Trump qui souhaitait assouplir les restrictions vieilles de plusieurs décennies sur les exportations de drones militaires.

Selon une analyse des documents FARA, plus de deux douzaines d'entreprises de lobbying représentaient des clients émiratis entre 2020 et 2021. En outre, le nouveau rapport de Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft en 2022 ont trouvé que les clients émiratis ont dépensé plus de 64 millions de dollars pour des entreprises de lobbying au cours de la même période. Par ailleurs, le rapport a aussi constaté que les 25 entreprises de lobbying et les agents étrangers enregistrés représentant des intérêts des ÉAU avaient donné plus de 500 000 $ aux membres du Congrès qui ont été contactés au nom de leurs clients émiratis. Selon le renseignement américain, bien qu'il soit un allié politique proche, les ÉAU ont tenté de manipuler le système politique américain.

En Asie centrale et du sud-est

Le soutien des moudjahidines afghans lors de la guerre d'Afghanistan (« programme afghan » de la CIA, 1979-1992) se révèle en Asie centrale à double tranchant, cette politique étant accusée d'avoir favorisé l'islamisme. Les États-Unis s'engagent militairement sur le terrain après les attentats du 11 septembre 2001, George W. Bush déclarant la « guerre contre le terrorisme », une guerre mondiale, ne s'opposant pas à un État mais à des organisations terroristes, et n'ayant pas de terme prévisible. Ils envahissent d'abord l'Afghanistan, puis l'Irak, faussement accusé de poursuivre illégalement un programme nucléaire. Le conflit afghan déborde dans les régions tribales du Pakistan, les États-Unis soutenant, notamment à l'aide de drones, l'armée pakistanaise dans le conflit armé du Nord-Ouest du Pakistan. À l'automne 2009, l'administration Obama parvient à faire voter par le Congrès un plan quinquennal d'aide au Pakistan, doté d'un budget de 7,5 milliards de dollars. Assortie de conditions importantes, Washington devant superviser aussi bien l'usage des fonds que les nominations au sein de l'armée pakistanaise, la proposition d'aide fait cependant l'objet de contestations importantes par le gouvernement de Raza Gilani et les militaires pakistanais.

Le tournant majeur de l'ère Obama est la primeur donnée à la zone Asie-Pacifique dans la nouvelle politique étrangère du pays. Cette politique répond à plusieurs buts : l'endiguement de la Chine face à un système d'alliances bilatérales et la concentration des Forces armées en Asie pour étouffer le pays. Pour cela, les États-Unis disposent d'installations militaires en Corée du Sud, au Japon, en Thaïlande et à Singapour.

Le pays nord-américain a également des relations avec Taïwan, bien que celles-ci ne soient pas officielles au vu de la situation géopolitique avec la Chine.

En Afrique
Si les États-Unis n'ont pas été une puissance colonisatrice, ils sont intervenus à plusieurs reprises dans les pays du continent noir. À partir début du , les Américains ont lutté contre la traite négrière.

L'Afrique subsaharienne a été pratiquement absente de la politique extérieure des États-Unis durant le  et la première moitié du .

Guerre froide
À partir de 1945, tant Washington que Moscou soutiennent la décolonisation, au nom du « droit des peuples à disposer d'eux-mêmes ». En Afrique, les États-Unis est longtemps quelque peu réticente à intervenir sur la base du respect des « zones d'influence » des partenaires européens (Royaume-Uni, France, Portugal, Belgique). Mais, face au risque de prise de contrôle du continent par l'URSS, les États-Unis se substituent aux petites puissances pour gérer la décolonisation. Ainsi, Washington intervient au Congo en 1960 et finit par soutenir le général Mobutu qui, pourtant, n'était pas son favori au départ et qui grâce à un soutien militaire et l'aide financière arrivera à reconstruire le pays en trois ans (1966-1969). Dans le sud, en Angola, en Namibie et au Mozambique, les Américains interviennent très indirectement, via l'Afrique du Sud, et à partir de 1975 quand le Portugal se désengage de ses anciennes colonies, ces pays basculent dans le camp du Bloc de l'Est et soutiennent les mouvements armées d'opposition comme l'Union nationale pour l'indépendance totale de l'Angola.

Dans un contexte de retrait des petites puissances, l'action américaine repose sur le principe d'opposition à l'URSS. John Fitzgerald Kennedy instaure une "politique africaine", mais, fondamentalement, il s'agit là plus d'une politique antisoviétique que d'une véritable politique africaine. L'Afrique, à l'instar des autres régions du monde, n'est alors qu'un terrain d'affrontement. En outre, les intérêts économiques y sont relativement modestes, sauf dans quelques cas, comme en Afrique du Sud (en raison de la richesse minérale du pays) ou en Angola (où la richesse pétrolière intéresse l'entreprise américaine Gulf Oil).

Après l'indépendance, en 1975, de l'Angola, qui bascule dans la guerre civile, elle soutient l'UNITA contre le MPLA, lui-même .

L'opération Restore Hope lancée en 1993 en Somalie pour le compte des Nations unies est un fiasco total, et conduit Washington à un moindre interventionnisme dans les années suivantes.

Depuis la fin de la guerre froide
L'attentats des ambassades américaines de Dar-es-Salaam et de Nairobi en 1998 marque l'émergence de la menace islamiste pour les États-Unis et les années 2000 voient un intérêt accru de ce pays pour le continent noir sur les plans économiques (pétrole dans le golfe de Guinée), humanitaire (programme contre le SIDA President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief et sécuritaire (mise en place du United States Africa Command en 2008, lutte contre la piraterie autour de la Corne de l'Afrique et le terrorisme dans la corne de l'Afrique et le Sahel).

Avec la fin de la guerre froide, l'axe majeur de la politique extérieure des États-Unis a été la propagation du modèle américain de capitalisme libéral. Sous l'appellation générique de consensus de Washington, le Trésor américain et le Fonds monétaire international (FMI) ont mis en œuvre un programme de libéralisation et de privatisation à l'échelle internationale, qui fut parfois imposé aux pays endettés et donc vulnérables d'Afrique et d'Amérique latine.

Le développement économique rapide de la Chine a fait de celle-ci un adversaire majeur des États-Unis. En 2011, Barack Obama annonce faire de l'Asie la priorité de la politique américaine. Dans un discours donné en 2015, il déclare : « La Chine veut écrire les règles pour la région du monde qui connait la croissance la plus rapide. Pourquoi-la laisserait-on faire ? Nous devrions écrire ces règles ». L'administration Trump poursuit cette orientation et déclenche à partir de 2018 une « guerre commerciale » contre la Chine.

Politique économique

À la sortie de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, l'économie américaine renforce sa place de première du monde face à celle de l'Europe, épuisée par ce conflit, et devient le centre de l'économie mondiale. Les accords de Bretton Woods élaborés durant ce conflit créent le Fonds monétaire international et la banque mondiale, dont les sièges se situent dans la capitale fédérale des États-Unis.

Sous l'influence du consensus de Washington, fortement soutenu par le département du Trésor, des réformes néolibérales sont imposées à la plupart des pays d'Amérique latine. L'Accord de libre-échange nord-américain (ALENA) entre en vigueur le , regroupant le Canada, les États-Unis et le Mexique. L'ALENA conduit à l'installation de maquiladoras à la frontière américano-mexicaine et à l'émigration de millions de travailleurs mexicains . Celle-ci est cependant restreinte dès le mandat de George H. W. Bush, la signature de l'ALENA en 1989 s'étant accompagnés de la sécurisation voire de la militarisation de la Tortilla Border, qui culmine dans la construction d'une barrière grillagée séparant les deux pays, alors que de plus en plus de voix s'élèvent aux États-Unis contre l'immigration hispanique, en partie sous l'influence de discours xénophobes. Au Mexique, l'ALÉNA est contesté le jour même de son entrée en vigueur par la création de l'Armée zapatiste de libération nationale (EZLN), dirigée au Chiapas par la figure charismatique du sous-commandant Marcos, soutenu par le mouvement alter-mondialiste.

L'économie du Mexique décolle et le pays se démocratise peu à peu. Succès pour les uns, tandis qu'il aggrave les inégalités selon les autres, l'ALÉNA est suivi d'une succession d'accords bilatéraux de libre échange avec différents pays d'Amérique latine et du monde (African Growth and Opportunity Act de 2000, traité avec le Chili en 2003, avec l'Australie en 2004, avec la Colombie en 2006, avec le Maroc) tandis que l'accord de Marrakech () clôt les négociations du GATT et instituent l'Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC). L'opposition altermondialiste parvient toutefois à interrompre la négociation secrète de l'Accord multilatéral sur l'investissement (AMI) en 1998; dix ans plus tard, les États-Unis sont à la pointe des négociations opaques concernant l'Accord commercial anti-contrefaçon (ACAC), qui vise à aller au-delà des dispositions de l'ADPIC sur la propriété intellectuelle.

Ces accords bilatéraux sont complétés par l'ALÉAC (Accord de libre-échange entre l'Amérique centrale, les États-Unis d'Amérique et la République dominicaine), approuvé par le Sénat américain en 2005. Par ailleurs, en contrepartie avec la politique d'éradication de la coca, Washington accepte d'inclure des clauses de préférence régionale dans certains de ses accords avec les États andins (Andean Trade Preference Act de 1991, remplacé par l'Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act de 2002).

La politique de sanctions décidée par les États-Unis à l'égard de certains pays constitue un levier de puissance économique. Au cours des années 2010, les entreprises européennes ont dû payer aux États-Unis plus de 40 milliards de dollars d'amendes pour avoir maintenu des transactions avec des pays placés sous embargos par les États-Unis (Cuba, Iran, etc). D'après le journaliste économique Jean-Michel Quatrepoint, les sanctions sont considérablement plus sévères pour les entreprises européennes que pour les entreprises américaines et visent dans certains cas, notamment en raison des puissants efforts de lobbying déployés par les entreprises américaines, à éliminer la concurrence européenne. En outre, cette politique permet à terme aux États-Unis de se réserver certains marchés.

Articles connexes

 Politique étrangère de Xi Jinping

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Articles connexes
 Catégorie:Relations bilatérales des États-Unis
 Politique des États-Unis
 United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (Comité du Sénat des Affaires étrangères)
 Liste des doctrines géopolitiques
 Gestion de la perception

Bibliographie
 Alexandre Andorra et Thomas Snégaroff, Géopolitique de la Russie, PUF, 2016.
 Charles-Philippe David, Louis Balthazar, Justin Vaïsse, La politique étrangère des États-Unis : fondements, acteurs, formulation, Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 2003.  [lire en ligne] (table et introduction)
 Charles-Philippe David, Au sein de la Maison-Blanche - La formulation de la politique étrangère des États-Unis, Presses de l'Université Laval, Sainte Foy, 2004.
 Thierry Garcin, « Les contradictions de la politique étrangère américaine durant la crise iraquienne », AFRI, vol. V, 2004.
 Stanley Hoffmann, Gulliver empêtré – Essai sur la politique étrangère des États-Unis, Le Seuil, 1971.
 John Ikenberry (ed.), American Foreign Policy : Theoretical Essays, , Longman, 2002.* William Karel, Documentaire 2000 : Les Hommes de la Maison Blanche, Les Mercredis de l'Histoire, Arte.
 Denis Lacorne, Justin Vaïsse (dir.), La Présidence impériale - De Franklin D. Roosevelt à George W. Bush, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2007.
 Vincent Michelot, L'Empereur de la Maison-Blanche, Paris, Armand Colin, 2004.

 Marie-Cécile Naves, Géopolitique des États-Unis: 40 fiches illustrées pour comprendre le monde, Eyrolles, 2018.
 Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, Hamlet en Irak, Paris, CNRS éditions, 2007.

Liens externes

  US International Relations
 Politique américaine, revue de langue française entièrement consacrée à l'analyse des enjeux intérieurs et de la politique étrangère des États-Unis.
 Regard sur les États-Unis : Dossier consacré à la politique étrangère des États-Unis

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Port Angeles protesters demand closure of border camps
Peninsula Daily News
Protesters stand in front of the Port Angeles office of U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer on Tuesday in opposition to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection practice of separating children from their refugee families at the U.S. border. The Close the Camps rally, part of a national effort organized by moveon.org, drew about 50 people to the intersection of Fifth and Peabody streets. Link here
Immigration protesters throng Port Hadlock
Port Townsend Leader
All four corners of the intersection between Highway 116 and Irondale Road in Port Hadlock were packed with more than 250 protestors June 22, hoisting signs and shouting slogans to express their objections to the Trump administration's policies toward detaining illegal migrant families.
Although President Trump signed an executive order June 20 to end the separation of children from their parents who entered the United States illegally, the protest organized by the Jefferson County Immigrant Rights Advocates still proceeded as scheduled, with JCIRA Board Chair Libby Palmer distributing fliers explaining why they still found the President's policies unacceptable.
"There are still more than 2,300 children who have already been separate from their families, and haven't seen their mothers in weeks," Palmer said, who noted the executive order does not state what steps those families might take to be reunited. "The fact that I don't even know how long it's been, for so many of these kids, makes me cringe inside.
Palmer likewise criticized the executive order for leaving the administration's "zero tolerance" policy toward illegal migrants intact, and pointed out loopholes in its language, which could allow migrant children to be separated from their parents again after 20 days, or if "available resources" do not exist to detain them together.
To read more click here
Port Townsend group protests for immigrant rights
Peninsula Daily News
PORT TOWNSEND — A group of 55 men and women stood with signs Tuesday to bring awareness to an immigration issue facing parents and children at the southern border of the United States.
Members of the Jefferson County Immigrant Rights Advocates (JCIRA) gathered at the intersection of Sims Way and Kearney Street waving signs and banners — emblazoned with such sentiments as "Keep families together" and "Taking children is a crime." They yelled slogans and applauded when some of the drivers passing by responded positively with a honk and a wave. To read more click here.
Immigrant advocates hope for safety, security for all families
PORT TOWNSEND — When Morris and Ruth Goldstein crossed the border, they had little in the way of documents. What these immigrants did have: hope for a better life than what they'd been through in Poland and Russia.
And so they went on to find work and home, raising a family in these United States. Morris regularly sent blankets and other supplies back to his Polish Jewish brethren in Eastern Europe, in hopes of helping those who hadn't yet gotten out of a hostile place.
Ruth and Morris' American family includes daughter Libby Palmer of Port Townsend. She seeks to carry on her late parents' work, nearly 100 years after they arrived on Ellis Island, N.Y.
In a Port Townsend cafe on a recent afternoon, Palmer explained her hopes for her community: that parents and children live here together in peace and safety, as she does.
Palmer is a cofounder of the Jefferson County Immigrants Rights Advocates — JCIRA — which despite its name seeks to help migrants in Clallam County as well.
The registered nonprofit organization, which sprang from discussions after the first Women's March in Port Townsend in 2017, offers support to people fleeing gang violence, domestic abuse and grinding poverty in their homelands of Mexico and Central America.
For Palmer and her fellow advocates, JCIRA is a way to connect, human to human, with her neighbors — outside the rhetoric swirling around national immigration policy. To read more click here
Signs of the times: Posted info offers immigrant support
Free, low-cost help available, thanks to local advocates
May 9, 2018
Port Townsend Leader
Libby Palmer, Katie Franco and other members of the nonprofit Jefferson County Immigrant Rights Advocates (JCIRA) want people to know legal help for immigrants is available in Port Townsend.
To get the word out about the availability of legal assistance, signs were posted on 11 Jefferson Transit buses in April. The signs, in both English and Spanish, are aimed at spreading the word that volunteer Department of Justice–accredited representatives from the Kitsap Immigrant Assistance Center can help local immigrants with most immigration matters, for free or low cost.
"Immigrants can have an initial interview for either no cost at all or for only $30. At that interview, they'll get an estimate of possible future application fees. All helpers are trained volunteers, and no fee is charged for their services," said Palmer. To read full article click here
PT protesters picket detention center
September 6, 2017
Fifty protesters from Port Townsend and Seattle visited the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma Sept. 3 to show their support for immigrant detainees.
The 20 Port Townsend protesters included members of the Jefferson County Immigrant Rights Advocates (JCIRA), Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and First Presbyterian Church, according to JCIRA chair Libby Palmer.
Palmer estimated 15 people from a Seattle church group and 10 from the Northwest Detention Center Resistance group also took part in the two-hour sign-holding protest organized by JCIRA.
"We talked to families as they went in to visit their family members and friends, and talked to them as they left, walking to their cars," Palmer said. "We were all emotionally affected by the stories we heard behind each individual's detention there."
The Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) is a immigration prison located on the tidal flats at the port of Tacoma. Opened in 2004, the NWDC is privately owned and operated by The GEO Group Inc. for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The NWDC's current capacity is 1,575, "making it one of the largest immigration prisons in the United States, and the largest on the West Coast," in Palmer's words. To read full article click here
Immigrant Legal Services trains reps for PT
What began as a health district program for immigrants in Kitsap County 13 years ago is currently training three people to serve as legal representatives for immigrants in Port Townsend.
The July 28 Jefferson County Coordinated Community Response meeting hosted Ray Garrido, legal services director of the Kitsap Immigrant Assistance Center's Immigration Legal Services.
Garrido recalled how 2004 saw both the start of the program and the loss of its funding, which led to volunteers conducting it as a mobile program, meeting in open church rooms and sites such as the Bremerton YWCA.
Garrido was an (ESL) tutor in English as a second language when he first encountered the group in 2009, and he soon became a troubleshooter who responded to a broad variety of immigrants' needs, from how to pay bills and read letters to navigating landlord/tenant disputes. To read full article click here
Dozens gather in Port Townsend for protest against raids, deportation
PORT TOWNSEND — More than 60 people gathered outside the Port Townsend post office to show support for immigrants and to protest President Donald Trump's campaign promises of a border wall and the deportation of undocumented immigrants.
"It was done spontaneously, which is what made it so amazing," said Libby Palmer, one of the women who organized the protest.
Palmer said she was upset by the reports of recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that has led to the arrests of more than 600 people across the county. To read more click here

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Tom Kleinschnitz to return as Moffat County tourism director
Tom Kleinschnitz
CRAIG — Moffat County Tourism Association celebrated some merry news this holiday season when it learned former Director Tom Kleinschnitz has agreed to an offer to return to his post in the new year.
Kleinschnitz served as director for one year and resigned in September, in large part, due to the lack of a competitive salary and benefits package, which made it difficult to justify permanent relocation to Moffat County from Grand Junction.
But, after several months of soul-searching, the MCTA board opted to draw from its reserves to create a better-funded position with benefits provided through the county, offering the new and improved position to Kleinschnitz before considering other applicants.
"We're really, really excited. He was the right guy for the right job when we had him," said Board President Shannon Moore. "I think it's a great time for him to come back. He's got the knowledge base of the position; I think he's going to be able to hit the ground running and it will be fantastic for our community."
Under Kleinschnitz' direction, MCTA focused on creating new and more modern marketing materials for the county, including rebuilding the website and creating a promotional video and a new comprehensive brochure to replace outdated single-subject brochures.
"He's not a procrastinator. He knows we need to jump ahead and get on top to things get things done," Moore said. "He's also been in tourism industry forever. He's operated in Moffat County for a lot of years, so he knows the landscape. He knows the attributes we have to sell."
The decision to leave this fall was tough for Kleinschnitz. As owner of Adventure Bound River Expeditions, he began running support for river trips for the company in Moffat County more than 45 years ago.
"It's part of my life story," he said. "It really is where I started my work. … It's the beginning of when I left my friends in Denver and came up to the great expanse of Moffat County. Just being away for this short period of time, you realize where you belong."
Kleinschnitz' exact start date is yet to be determined, but Moore is hopeful he can resume his post in January.
MCTA has been caught in the crosshairs in recent months, as county officials have sought to merge MCTA with Craig/Moffat Economic Development Partnership and the Local Marketing District. The merger proposal led to a recent mass resignation from the LMD board, but Moore said MCTA has now essentially been removed from the discussion.
"MCTA has sort of been taken off that table for a couple reasons. One reason is, we'd have to have a ghost board outside of the merged board. It just didn't make sense, for a lot of reasons," Moore said. "Regardless of the actual merger, Tom's able to really work with the other organizations, so, even though (merging) isn't the plan at this time, I think he can operate really well within the other organizations, and we can still all be very cohesive."
Kleinschnitz and his wife considered the decision thoroughly before answering yes, he said. With so much potential to realize for Moffat County's tourism economy, he is eager to pick up where he left off.
"It's really to make the Moffat County Tourism Association a success story," he said. "It's really rallying people around believing in themselves. That's what creates great tourism is having a community that knows it's a great destination."
Dozens of people turned out to get answers from the Moffat County School District Board of Education during a community town hall held on July 16 at the former East Elementary School.
Workshop in Craig to address sage grouse habitat issues for land owners
Keep detours in mind as Craig intersection closes July 23 for roadwork
The 'hemp gold rush': A look at the Routt County businesses leading the charge


text:
RSF – Reporters Sans Frontières
Congo - Reporter threatened by Pointe-Noire authorities
Reporters Without Borders is very worried about the threats to Christian Perrin, a freelance journalist based in the Republic of Congo's second biggest city, Pointe-Noire, and urges the civilian authorities and military to stop trying to intimidate Perrin and other journalists.
Perrin has for days been the target of grave threats from Pointe-Noire's prefect, police chief, mayor and other officials, and today he was summoned to the city's law courts.
The threats began when Perrin, whose reporting is widely followed, covered opposition demonstrations in late September and again on 17 October, when the police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in Pointe-Noire. He had also been the target of intimidation in the past.
He was the victim of an apparent kidnap attempt while driving his car on 20 October. Masked men in police uniforms ordered him to pull over but he managed to drive away. Since then, he and his family have been the target of several kidnap and death threats by the local authorities.
"We call on the Congolese authorities to stop trying to intimidate the media," Reporters Without Borders editor in chief Virginie Dangles said. "Journalists must be able to work freely, especially during an election period."
The political climate is very tense as a result of a referendum on a controversial new constitution on 25 October. Radio France Internationale's local FM retransmission signal and the Internet were disconnected on 20 October as a major opposition protest was being organized.
Ghys Fortuné Bemba Dombe, a journalist with the Brazza News website, was arrested yesterday and is still being held. In a recent article, he accused President Denis Sassou Nguesso of using mercenaries to attack the new constitution's opponents.
The Republic of Congo is ranked 107th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.
Pointe-Noire: Journalist, der über jüngste Demonstrationen der Opposition berichtet hatte, erhält Drohungen
http://en.rsf.org/congo-reporter-threatened-by-pointe-27-10-2015,48487.html


When you are organised, there are few surprises. But sometimes life delivers a little something.
On that business trip for the Day Job, it turns out that the Rosebank hotel where I am staying offers free drinks and snacks between 5pm and 7pm. So it's red wine and nuts on the patio on a very pleasant Jozi evening for me. At home in Cape Town, it's lashing down with rain, so I'm told by my informants there. Now the hot snacks just arrived. What a nice place.


"Shannon [Williams] has a fantastic way of meeting us where we are and clearly articulating the steps to make our vision a reality. Not only is Shannon's expertise in development and fundraising to be commended, her instincts are always right on. We are big fans of Armstrong McGuire and their ability to help nonprofits reach a higher level of service to the community."


text:
Ann Neumann No. 30
Taking Liberties
Cults and capitalism
© Paula Searing
Like the slow-motion collapse of most empires, the end of Chuck Dederich's sprawling rehabilitation-cum-alternative lifestyle community, Synanon, began with an unforgivable—and some say uncharacteristic—act of hypocrisy. Dederich was playing The Game, the confrontational group therapy method that he'd devised in the late 1950s, which involved twelve or more people, their chairs in a circle, taking cracks at one another for hours on end. The rules of The Game were simple: anything went—yelling, foul language, accusations, insinuations, and other verbal abuse—except physical violence. "Talk dirty and live clean," Dederich said. Only in 1973, when Dederich was treated to too much of his own talking cure, he snapped, and the once high-flying Synanon experiment sank into the standard script of scandal-battered culthood. Apostate members publicized charges of psychological abuse, financial impropriety, a string of violent assaults, and unhinged guru megalomania. The media, ever attuned to stories of spiritual hubris run amok, made Synanon a byword for faddish West Coast New Age nuttery.
In reality, though, Synanon represented a pivotal moment in America's restless quest for spiritual self-understanding: the juncture at which the promise of psychic liberation dead-ended into abject rites of submission before the delusions of a charismatic leader—or if you prefer, when Keynesian optimism bowed to neoliberal protocols of behavioral control.
Dederich's Game, in its way, was a perfect exercise in austere self-discipline in an age of mounting psychic and economic squalor. The focused, personalized vitriol, the way it tore down all participants until they were emotionally resigned, the belief that lashing out in session would prevent doing so in life—these boot-camp-style rituals of self-reflection were the key to Synanon's success. Synanon grew up alongside several kindred movements seeking to systematize enlightenment via heightened personal self-control, from Scientology and est (a.k.a. Erhard Seminar Training) to the secessionist, authoritarian spiritual communities run by Dederich-lite figures such as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Frederick Lenz (a.k.a. Rama or Atmananda). With its browbeating swagger, Synanon quickly attracted a following—recovering junkies, along with hippies, disillusioned middle-class moms, unfulfilled professionals, and splashy celebrities—who came like the pious to Mass.
And like other movements peddling the promise of a wholly revamped inner life, Synanon had a scrappy, against-the-odds success story of its own to underline its unique transformative power. Dederich developed The Game after Alcoholics Anonymous dried him up and spat him out into rough-and-tumble Ocean Park, California. He was a white man of forty-five, unemployed, twice divorced, and disfigured by meningitis, the right side of his face sagging like an old couch—a cross between Tiresias and a beefy mob boss. And he was as zealous about staying clean as any new convert, badgering whoever wandered into his shabby flat, most often hopeless junkies, into accepting the "tough love" therapeutic approach he was pioneering. He called it the Tender Loving Care club, and later, with a new facility in Santa Monica and an increasing number of believers with nowhere else to go, Synanon.
The Game became the basis of the Synanon empire, which by 1973 had grown from a meager group of down-and-outers, sustained by Dederich's monthly $33 unemployment check, into a multimillion-dollar, multi-compound, multimedia sensation. There were around 1,500 residents in more than four states, a jazz album named for the group, and even a 1965 movie starring Eartha Kitt (playing Dederich's third wife, Bettye, who was African American; the organization was adamantly interracial). Celebrities like Milton Berle, Jane Fonda, Buckminster Fuller, and labor activist Cesar Chavez all stopped by. Transfixed by the promise of ruined lives turned upstandingly productive, corporate philanthropists sent donations rolling in like perfect barrel waves on the sunny Santa Monica beach. In 1968 Synanon was grossing a little more than $1 million a year; by 1976 annual profits had grown to more than $8 million, and the organization's total assets were valued at roughly $30 million.
It's no surprise that Dederich's seemingly democratic self-help methods became increasingly hierarchical over the years. Residents who relapsed into drug use were routinely punished with shaved heads. Later, baldness was the style of all members. Children of Synanon followers were shuffled off to a separate secure facility, often kept from their parents for weeks at a time. When Dederich declared all Synanon facilities smoke-free—thereby banishing the one respectable addiction that recovering drunks and junkies could still pursue—150 members fled. And then, while playing The Game, a female Synanonite began insulting Dederich—supposedly fair game. But this time, incensed, Dederich rose from his chair, walked across the circle, and dumped a root beer on her head. Everyone gasped. Synanon's commitment to nonviolence was over, and the "longest-lasting utopian community constructed in the twentieth-century," as Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth called Dederich's project, began to buckle.
Dederich's particular method of seeking self-liberation through self-examination is wedged smack into the middle of the evolutionary trajectory of our current therapeutic culture. The modern American saga of better living through self-discovery stretches roughly from the turn of the twentieth century until today. Of course, the deeper roots of self-cultivation reach back to European soil—the liberalization of the Catholic Church; the rapid spread of Protestantism, mysticism, and evangelicalism; and the rise of science-based rationalism and mind-body dualism. But their manifestation in the crowded spiritual marketplace of the postwar world is what Timothy Aubry and Trysh Travis call, in their 2015 book, Rethinking Therapeutic Culture, "an especially American phenomenon."
Self-improvement, self-reliance, and the pursuit of happiness, we've come to believe, are not only American rights, but every citizen's obligation. Only with attention and effort can we improve our emotional, physical, interpersonal, and economic selves—the conventional limits of genetics, family influences, ethnic loyalties, and social class be damned. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and countless other founding apostles of self-made spiritual repose made the new republic over in this singularly hopeful image. Modern capitalism refined their handiwork into a marketplace of just-in-time self-reinvention, which, significantly, caught on in American mass culture at a moment when more traditional forms of solidarity in the workplace, the university, and the conduct of national politics were sputtering to a halt in the so-called age of stagflation.
The ground for the cult efflorescence of the seventies had been prepared by various antinomian psychic pioneers earlier in the twentieth century. During the early 1900s, mystical movements—theosophy and Mind Cure, for instance—were scorned by traditional denominations even as they themselves turned "away from a stern and demanding God the Father and towards a personal and loving Jesus," as Aubry and Travis observe. Economic abundance and the anxieties of urbanization primed Americans' sense of mental health for the arrival of Freud's psychotherapy. By the time World War II veterans returned from Europe, "mental hygiene" was a national concern; the National Institute of Mental Health was founded, right on schedule, in 1949. "Shell-shocked combat veterans, neurotic housewives, and maladjusted youth alike sought help from—or were remanded to—the newly legitimate counseling professions," Aubry and Travis write. Our psychological health seemed "elusive yet achievable."
Out of this indefatigable quest emerged the liberation movements of the 1960s and '70s, with minority populations loudly advocating for new social orders that supported individual rights, equality, and freedom. The self was at the very center of this new social construct—and Americans were obligated to peer deep inside. But as communes, New Age practices, and other alternative lifestyle groups commanded a growing share of cultural influence, a backlash was brewing. "The interior, inner life—for which the home served as both metaphor and sanctuary—thus acquired a heightened value, even as perceived threats from the outside created a sense of its fragility," Aubry and Travis note. "In a reinforcing loop, the perception of the domestic/interior as besieged increased its relative importance, both to the individuals and to the culture writ large." Even as some religious groups denounced this version of self-liberation, they presided over an elaboration of it, focusing on personal relationships with Jesus, an ethos of therapeutic psychic repair, and promises of happiness and financial well-being. Any failure to live up to the spiritual values of their faith community meant that believers were failing to see their true selves—and as a result, failing their God, their families, and their nation.
Synanon quickly attracted a following who came like the pious to Mass.
The legacy of this backlash, which found its most potent expression in the "family values" platform and legislation that now enjoys widespread rhetorical influence on both the left and the right, is a continued nostalgia for a family unit that never really was: a powerful lingering desire for "God the Father" to be on top. Nonetheless, the "reinforcing loop," our adherence to fictitious, sacralized family structure, hasn't stopped therapeutic self-care from becoming the patriotic duty of every responsible citizen. Even Mad Men's Don Draper went to the mountain.
Today, with the glut of self-help books, social media confessions, illusory tabloid intimacy, and self-care methods and advice, it may seem that the therapeutic need has always been with us. But not so. "These beliefs . . . may pass as 'natural,'" but "they are in fact historically specific and therefore neither eternal nor inescapable," write Aubry and Travis. We are conditioned to treat our psyche's "improper functioning as the primary source of society's ills and see its balance and well-being as the ultimate goal of our strivings on this earth."
Dederich wasn't the only guru of the seventies brandishing a playbook of therapeutic buzzwords and the promise of utopian freedom; the decade abounded with "cults," alternative lifestyle groups, and rehabilitation communities. Synanon served in many respects as the results-driven poster community for this scene. Its appearance of overwhelming rehabilitation success afforded a rare (if fleeting) vision of therapeutic self-care in perfect harmony with the broader market culture. Not only were these kids recovering—they were working! But Dederich's increasingly erratic and violent behavior soon squandered much of the public's good will. Close observers of Synanon's sprawling communities were growing alarmed. Strangely, though, the money continued to roll in. And increasingly, juvenile courts were sending troubled kids to Dederich's gates.
The Kids Aren't All Right
For more than two decades, Synanon had worked its life-changing magic on recovering addicts and other lost souls without recourse to violence. But Dederich's soda-dumping incident, internal tensions, and an influx of young kids signaled the advent of a new, harsher era of in-house discipline. Keeping the kids in line proved easier when you smacked them around. Writes George Pendle at Cabinet, "Unlike the other residents, many of these children had no wish to change their ways, and in the past, this 'Punk Squad,' as they became known, would have proved impossible to control. But unfortunately for them, Dederich had shown that the gloves were now off."
Synanon's posture of extreme austerity also extended to the procreative. Dederich, with his hands on the purse strings, decided that members' children were too expensive; revenue was king, and compound-bred bambinos weren't subsidized like the punks that wrung-out parents and witless courts were dropping off. He declared it was time for all males to undergo vasectomies and all pregnant women to get abortions. Some members accepted readily, while others had to be "gamed into" compliance, worn down by the emotional battering of Dederich's model of group coercion. When his wife Bettye died in 1977, Dederich began accepting applications for a new one. He liked this ingenious arrangement and decided that all Synanon couples should separate every three years and switch partners. Any residual pretense of nonviolence was permanently retired when Dederich organized the "Imperial Marines," a militia-like group that intimidated Synanon's neighbors and local officials, and armed them with $300,000 worth of guns and ammo. Dederich was listing into full crackpot mode.
When a self-styled cult-buster, Paul Morantz—a California lawyer who'd made a career out of suing shady organizations like the Moonies, est, and Scientology—won a $300,000 judgment against Synanon in a civil suit alleging the group had kidnapped and brainwashed a young woman, Dederich went berserk. Shortly after, Morantz opened his mailbox and discovered a four-foot-long de-rattled rattlesnake, which bit him. He almost died. A former Synanon board member's dog was found dead, swinging from a rope. Then, a tiny local newspaper, the Point Reyes Light, won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of columns on Synanon's alarming drift into violence, thuggery, and authoritarian lunacy. Dederich's power unraveled. In 1978, when news broke that nine hundred members of Jim Jones's Peoples Temple had killed themselves in Jonestown, Guyana, a veil was lifted from the public's eyes. Police soon raided Synanon's compounds, and Dederich's gig was finally up.
Dederich, who died at the age of eighty-three in 1997, may have been forever discredited, but his controlling vision and his methods have lived on, in part because of our persistent belief that discipline delivers reform, in part because Dederich's methods have proven lucrative, and lastly because the prior two reasons have stifled any innovative social services that might otherwise have developed. The use of punishment as therapy is "widespread among the hundreds of 'emotional growth boarding schools,' wilderness camps, and 'tough love' antidrug programs that make up the billion-dollar teen residential treatment industry," journalist Maia Szalavitz writes. Szalavitz has traced the genealogy of Synanon, which opened its first teen boot camps in the mid-seventies, in the operational DNA of countless organizations still active today, many of which have been accused of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. "Creating situations in which the severe treatment of powerless people is rewarded inevitably yields abuse," Szalavitz writes. "This is especially true when punishment is viewed as a healing process."
The People Business
For all the freak-show coercion and physical violence Dederich unleashed on thousands of members, Synanon is still best understood not as a perversion of religious ideology (a cult) but as a calculated and successful business model—an example of savvy modern capitalism. "The image of Synanon that reached the public was of a poverty-stricken courageous group of individuals who were freeing themselves from the horror of drug addiction through new therapeutic techniques and self-help," Richard Ofshe wrote in 1976. While this image brought in celebrity participants and countless donations from sympathizers, "doing good things for people" was only one part of the Synanon empire. In a book chapter titled "Synanon: The People Business," Ofshe noted that the work of the Synanon Foundation, getting heroin users clean and into The Game, was only possible because of Synanon Industries, the organization's business arm, which operated gas stations, manufactured and distributed merchandise (such as Synanon-branded pens, rulers, and T-shirts), and begged and bartered for tax-deductible goods.
Synanon Industries also gave the Foundation's reformed addicts a productive role: they were dedicated workers, and many were sent out into society as salespeople spreading the Synanon mission. All members were required to hold full-time jobs, either in the compounds, in Synanon manufacturing areas, or outside the organization (these "life-stylers," who held non-Synanon jobs, were required to dump much of their earnings back into the group). Synanon Industries, a profit-generating powerhouse, was the second-largest promotional merchandise distribution company in the United States in the seventies. As George Pendle writes, "Founded to get people off junk, Synanon was now creating it."
There was never egalitarianism in Synanon, despite the communal living and the free-for-all tenor of the group's therapy sessions. Dederich was in charge, and he and his handpicked leadership caste decided who played what roles in the organization—decisions that had far-reaching practical and material ramifications for each group member. "Synanon's therapeutic ideology focuses on behavior rather than underlying cognitive structures," Ofshe wrote. Translated into the prerogatives of the company-as-cult model pioneered by Dederich, acceptable behavior always and everywhere meant rising from the sloughs of addiction into service as a productive member of society.
How did we get from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" to Oprah Winfrey's "spiritual capitalism"?
This ingenious melding of self-administered personal redemption and the marketing directives of modern capitalism marks Synanon as an instructional missing link in the American therapeutic narrative. How did we get from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" to Oprah Winfrey's "spiritual capitalism"? On the face of things, the 1970s offered seemingly innovative ways for disaffected believers to escape the pressures of modern capitalism, but these same movements also provided extreme and dangerous examples that reinforced and normalized the coercions of capitalism. Just as Synanon became one of the nation's largest hubs of promotional merchandise, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, known for importing ginseng tea and trinkets, bulked up into a financial and media empire bestriding the globe. Similarly, the Church of Scientology has exploited both its tax-exempt status as a religious nonprofit and a far-flung corps of de facto slave laborers to create a model of capitalist enterprise free of taxation and labor costs.
Meanwhile, the belief that the inner workings of the market economy are a font of holy saving mysteries has migrated from the shambolic beachfront flats of Synanon into the cultural mainstream. Yesterday's shaved heads are today's scented candles. As Kathryn Lofton writes in Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, "Every product of Winfrey's empire combines spiritual counsel with practical encouragement, inner awakening with capitalist pragmatism." Somewhere, the excitable ghost of Chuck Dederich is looking down and smiling.
Sucking Out of the Seventies
For several decades, practical wisdom—and a procession of academics like Robert Bellah and Christopher Lasch—has been telling us that therapeutic culture has made us a sniveling, navel-gazing, neurotic, and narcissistic populace, too preoccupied with our own mental self-inventories and material wealth to fulfill our national promise or obligations. "Narcissism is inescapably part of the critique of therapeutic culture," writes academic Elizabeth Lunbeck. She summarizes Lasch's 1978 book, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, and the popular analysis at the time, thusly:
Self-indulgence had displaced self-control, nurturing "a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire." The ascendancy of a commitment to "psychic self-improvement"—evident in the appearance and flourishing of a range of new consciousness movements and their allied therapies—was tearing apart a once robust social fabric, prompting a mass retreat to interiority and what journalist Tom Wolfe, in an essay that christened the 1970s the "Me Decade," skewered as a culturally sanctioned, unceasing "analysis of self."
This critique of seventies-era cultural excess and therapy-inclined capitalism has continued to this day. The castigation of narcissism, however, has done little to wrest the yoga mats and herbal teapots from our tremulous hands. Nor has it convinced us to put down our self-chronicling digital devices.
However, there's another way to consider the history of the self-help cults of Synanon's era. Rather than trace the triumph of the therapeutic back to crumbling religions—namely, the Protestant work ethic that, in Oprah's parlance, teaches us to "behave our way to success"—we might well descry the strange discipline of self-reinvention in the founding ethos of modern capitalism. As any day trader will tell you, it's a myth that economic forces are data-driven, rational vectors of a triumphant secularism that has delivered us beyond the pale of ghosts, spirits, and the numinous. It's likewise a secular wish-fulfillment fantasy that the unscientific specters of belief are outmoded primitive superstitions, all smartly dispatched by cresting modernity.
To rethink the realignment of belief systems that has given rise to modern capitalism, sociologist Courtney Bender has argued, we need to look again at Max Weber's celebrated 1905 essay "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." Before the modern era, Weber tells us, very few Western souls were possessed by the spirit of capitalism: i.e., the love of money for its own sake and the self-justifying pursuit of all things profitable. And until the early modern era, Protestants were too humble to practice what we would call conspicuous consumption. The accumulation of wealth wasn't what the early Protestants, like the Lutherans and Calvinists, were about. But the "sacralization of work" certainly was.
In an otherwise radically unknowable scheme of individual salvation, humility and diligent labor proved that one was "worthy of God's grace." But once Protestants' "deferred gratification" and "self-monitoring" got applied to money practices—"accounting measures in the counting house, the shop floor, and (not incidentally) the pew," Bender writes—the calculating and soulless conduct of capitalism got a new, more spiritual lease on life. "Once these conditions had solidified, the spirit of capitalism was effectively unleashed on everyone," Bender observes. "The Protestant ethic was no longer needed to keep it going . . . the aberrant and occasional spirit of capitalism had become the spirit of the system. It came to possess all men by virtue of their participation within capitalism."
It's only reasonable to ask: Just what, if not the Protestant ethic, is the spirit that now animates our devoted efforts to buy our way into keener therapeutic insights? What propels New York Times columnist David Brooks's focus on self-reliance and doomsday warnings about the sad decline of the American character, or pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell's prescriptive litany of success mantras and market-expanding behaviors? In short, it's the robust spirit of capitalism that represents the next phase in postmodernism's quest for a reenchanted world.
What compelled Dederich's followers to make themselves better through Synanon's contrived regimen of ritual self-inspection? A lack of other options, certainly. A dearth of affordable and nonjudgmental health services, definitely. Community-oriented systems of mutual care, like mental health services and adequate financial support for those outside the workforce, were woefully inadequate (and still are). But this, too, compelled the seekers of the 1970s: the suddenly crisis-prone profile of capitalism conspired to transport Americans into an exceptionally nonfunctional vision of Weber's "iron cage" of bureaucracy—one that was fast shedding the vital material compensations of job security, union protections, and welfare-state income supports. As a result, many lost souls who were desperate to find freedom outside the iron cage's confines were sucked into experimental communities like Synanon.
"This is the first day of the rest of your life," Dederich constantly, enthusiastically reminded his huddled junkie masses and world-weary groupies yearning to be free. But Dederich's ambitions quickly devolved into a coercive trap, proffering neither true liberation nor true rehabilitation. Today, a multibillion-dollar battery of talk shows, infomercials, rehab facilities, self-help seminars, and prosperity preachers offers a softer-focus version of the Synanon gospel. And we can't yet fully intuit just what captivity narrative will spring into place after its own market failure becomes too obvious to ignore.
Ann Neumann is the author of The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America.
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A new short story by Carmen Petaccio.
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text:
Histoire de l'art, Etudes
Roger Fry and Italian Art
Paul Holberton Publishing
AD ILISSUM
Caroline Elam
A revelatory examination of Roger Fry's fascinating but relatively little-known writings on his first love, Italian art. Drawing on articles, lectures and a wealth of new documentary material – letters, diaries and notebooks – it shows how fresh and readable his writings are, and how pioneering his approach remains.
Roger Fry (1866–1934) is best known as a champion of Post-Impressionism and a pioneer of Modernist art criticism. But his first love was early Italian painting, on which he became a recognized authority, publishing a monograph on Giovanni Bellini in 1899. Even after the Post-Impressionist exhibitions in 1910 and 1912 and the foundation of the Omega Workshops, Fry continued to write and lecture on Italian art right up until his death. He looked at modernism through Quattrocento eyes rather than the other way around, as is often wrongly assumed. It is impossible not to be struck by how fresh and immediately readable his writings are, how pioneering in some ways his approach remains. His work on Italian art modifies the received view of him as a pure formalist. Apart from a famous article on Giotto which Fry republished in Vision and Design (1920), the writings on Italian art are relatively little known, and a selection of the best of them is republished here, thus introducing an important aspect of Fry's many-sided work to a new audience.
The first part of the book sets Fry's writing on Italian art into context by combining intellectual biography with the history of art history, art criticism and art institutions. It draws on new documentary material, including Fry's travel notebooks, which contain sketches and brilliant observations taken down in front of works of art. By exploring the whole range of Fry's published and unpublished writings, the author is able to refute erroneous received ideas – that he was uninterested in colour, for example. The influence of his Italian lectures and publications on such figures as E.M. Forster, Kenneth Clark and Michael Baxandall is also examined.
The second part consists of writings by Fry – each with an introductory text by the author and fully illustrated in colour. Included in this volume are some of the unpublished lectures that his biographer Virginia Woolf suggested would make a fascinating book of extracts. Four long pieces are of outstanding interest – on Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Baldovinetti and Piero di Cosimo, all artists whose critical status was radically re-examined in the twentieth century.
Fry had a close and lifelong connection with The Burlington Magazine, as co-founder, contributor, saviour-fundraiser, editor (1909-1919) and adviser. Roger Fry and Italian Art is appropriately the first in a series of books on art history to be published by The Burlington Magazine and Ad Ilissvm in association - to be announced in due course.
Découvrir la librairie La Bailleuloise


text:
Q: MySQL Calculate percentage change of sales between years based on SUM and GROUP BY I have a data warehouse where the SELECT (and SUM) query has the following output.
+------+-----------+-------------+------------+
| YEAR | ITEM TYPE | TOTAL_ITEMS | TOTAL_COST |
+------+-----------+-------------+------------+
| 2009 | TYPE-1    |          19 |        330 |
| 2009 | TYPE-2    |           1 |         10 |
| 2009 | TYPE-3    |          11 |        190 |
| 2010 | TYPE-1    |          11 |        220 |
| 2010 | TYPE-2    |           7 |        230 |
| 2010 | TYPE-3    |           3 |        360 |
+------+-----------+-------------+------------+

My question is how to create a new column where to calculate the total cost difference between 2009 and 2010 (where 2009 is as a base) in percentage.
So the output will be something like this:
  +------+-----------+-------------+------------+----------+----------+
| YEAR | ITEM TYPE | TOTAL_ITEMS | TOTAL_COST | ItemDiff | CostDiff |
+------+-----------+-------------+------------+----------+----------+
| 2009 | TYPE-1    |          19 |        330 | 0%       | 0        |
| 2009 | TYPE-2    |           1 |         10 | 0%       | 0        |
| 2009 | TYPE-3    |          11 |        190 | 0%       | 0        |
| 2010 | TYPE-1    |          11 |        220 | -42.11%  | -33.33%  |
| 2010 | TYPE-2    |           7 |        230 | 1000%    | 2200%    |
| 2010 | TYPE-3    |           3 |        360 | -72.73%  | 80.47%   |
+------+-----------+-------------+------------+----------+----------+

The ITEM TYPE is a category which is composed from several items with different prices. I need to calculate changes per category not per item.
The query I've got so far is
SELECT
  date_dim.year,
  item_dim.item_type,
  SUM(fact.total_item)TotalItems,
  SUM(fact.total_cost) AS TotalCost
FROM fact
  INNER JOIN date_dim
    ON fact.date_key = date_dim.date_key
  INNER JOIN item_dim
    ON fact.item_key = item_dim.item_key
WHERE date_dim.year BETWEEN 2009 AND 2011
GROUP BY date_dim.year,
         item_dim.item_type

Please have a look at the following fiddle where the schema and the query are already built.

http://sqlfiddle.com/#!9/8e53c0/2

Here is the simplified ERD...
ERD
Thank you in advance for any help...

A: Here is a query how to achieve that:
Using MySQL Common Table Expression (This doesn't run on sqlfiddle)
WITH summary_table AS
  (SELECT
    substr(date_dim.year,1,4) year,
    item_dim.item_type,
    SUM(fact.total_item) TotalItems,
    SUM(fact.total_cost) AS TotalCost
  FROM fact
    INNER JOIN date_dim
      ON fact.date_key = date_dim.date_key
    INNER JOIN item_dim
      ON fact.item_key = item_dim.item_key
  WHERE date_dim.year BETWEEN 2009 AND 2011
  GROUP BY date_dim.year,
           item_dim.item_type)
  SELECT
     A.*,
     CASE WHEN (A.TotalItems IS NULL OR B.TotalItems IS NULL OR B.TotalItems=0) THEN 0 ELSE
       (A.TotalItems - B.TotalItems)*100/B.TotalItems END AS ItemDiff,
     CASE WHEN (A.TotalCost IS NULL OR B.TotalCost IS NULL OR B.TotalCost=0) THEN 0 ELSE
        (A.TotalCost - B.TotalCost)*100/B.TotalCost END AS CostDiff
  FROM summary_table A LEFT JOIN summary_table B
   ON A.YEAR=(B.YEAR+1) AND A.ITEM_TYPE=B.ITEM_TYPE;

Without CTE (See demo on SQL Fiddle)
SELECT
     A.*,
     CASE WHEN (A.TotalItems IS NULL OR B.TotalItems IS NULL OR B.TotalItems=0) THEN 0 ELSE
       (A.TotalItems - B.TotalItems)*100/B.TotalItems END AS ItemDiff,
     CASE WHEN (A.TotalCost IS NULL OR B.TotalCost IS NULL OR B.TotalCost=0) THEN 0 ELSE
        (A.TotalCost - B.TotalCost)*100/B.TotalCost END AS CostDiff
FROM (SELECT
    substr(date_dim.year,1,4) year,
    item_dim.item_type,
    SUM(fact.total_item)TotalItems,
    SUM(fact.total_cost) AS TotalCost
  FROM fact
    INNER JOIN date_dim
      ON fact.date_key = date_dim.date_key
    INNER JOIN item_dim
      ON fact.item_key = item_dim.item_key
  WHERE date_dim.year BETWEEN 2009 AND 2011
  GROUP BY date_dim.year,
           item_dim.item_type) A LEFT JOIN (SELECT
    substr(date_dim.year,1,4) year,
    item_dim.item_type,
    SUM(fact.total_item)TotalItems,
    SUM(fact.total_cost) AS TotalCost
  FROM fact
    INNER JOIN date_dim
      ON fact.date_key = date_dim.date_key
    INNER JOIN item_dim
      ON fact.item_key = item_dim.item_key
  WHERE date_dim.year BETWEEN 2009 AND 2011
  GROUP BY date_dim.year,
           item_dim.item_type) B
ON A.YEAR=(B.YEAR+1) AND A.ITEM_TYPE=B.ITEM_TYPE;

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


For subway conductor James Mitchell, it all started on a downtown R train some nine years ago. He says he needed to use the bathroom, so he held the train at the City Hall station, and used the facilities in a dispatcher's office.
He said it took no more than four minutes, but he soon had two disciplinary claims filed against him – neither one for the brief stop.
"The Transit Authority cannot discipline an employee for using the bathroom, so what they do, they manufacture a rule violation," said Mitchell.
While those charges were dropped, it was not the end of his trouble. Mitchell was diagnosed with irritable bowl syndrome, and over the past nine years, he's stopped his train several times to use the bathroom.
Click here for the complete text & video report.
This comes as no surprise to me considering who we are dealing with here. I've seen it first hand how the MTA likes to try & drum up charges against their employees in an attempt to bully or terminate them. I can recall a number of incidents involving my father who is an almost 30 year veteran of driving buses for the MTA. From what I notice, they tend to give more trouble to veterans than others with less seniority. I feel this comes from the agency's attempt to hire younger workers who will take the abuse as compared to veteran's who know their rights.
While I can understand a case being made for riders not having to wait for a restroom visit, I will side with human nature. Does one really think that Mr. Mitchell wants to cause even a slight delay because of his need to use the restroom? The answer is obviously no & if he could control it he would but sometimes that decision is out of our hands. I feel his lawyer makes an excellent point as your typical rider shenanigans like door holding will lead to more delays than a rare bathroom visit.
Stories like this just further hammer home why I am glad I did not follow in my father & grandfather's footsteps in working as a bus driver or for the MTA overall.
I am currently an MTA employee (train operator) and I was out sick with an eye injury for eight days. In order for me to return to duty I had to see their quack doctors. I provided medical documentation of my injury and I was still made to go to a hearing regarding the absence from work (my sick time is in good standing). I am tired of the harrassment, working conditions, and intimidation tactics. I have less than two years on the job and it is taking its toll on me physically and emotionally.
I wish the economy was in better shape. I would be be out of the door but I have a family that needs to be provided for.
I have been bullied by my employer for eight years. who can i contact to report them?


We've got good news for Google Classroom users! We just launched an addition to our existing Google Single Sign-On integration, giving you the option to import classes directly from Google Classroom into My BrainPOP.
Selecting and importing a class will automatically create student accounts that are ready for single sign-on. Students can then log in through their Google launcher menu and get started using BrainPOP – saving and submitting work as they go along. All class management can be completed within Google Classroom and then updated in My BrainPOP at any time. Existing My BrainPOP classes and accounts can be linked to Google Apps in order to keep previous student work done within BrainPOP.
GAFE domain admins can install the BrainPOP app from the Google Apps Marketplace. This integration is available for school- and district-wide BrainPOP subscribers. Check out our Getting Started page for more information and guides!
As always, feel free to get in touch with any questions or feedback you may have.
Filed as: General, Getting Started, Google Apps for Education, My BrainPOP, None, What's New?


text:
Q: Where is the documentation for the chrome extension API tab method, "getSelected"? So I'm creating my first chrome extension and was extremely confused for a while as I could not figure out how to grab the url of the currently open tab, until some research pointed me in the direction of chrome.tabs.getSelected(). The problem is, I cannot find anything in the API docs on this method. I've even found links to where it's supposed to be (http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/tabs.html#method-getSelected) but it's not there. Am I missing something? Is this method deprecated and supposed to be replaced with something else?

A: chrome.tabs.getSelected was removed in release 16.

The methods getAllInWindow() and getSelected() have been deprecated. To get details about all tabs in the specified window, use chrome.tabs.query() with the argument {'windowId': windowID}. To get the tab that is selected in the specified window, use chrome.tabs.query() with the argument {'active': true}.

The documentation for chrome.tabs.query is here.

A: you should switch
chrome.tabs.getSelected(null, function(tab){...});

with
chrome.tabs.query({currentWindow:true,active:true}, function(tabs){tab=tabs[0];...});

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Former 'Survivor' Producer Who Killed Wife in Mexico Back in California After Serving 7 1/2 Years
Beresford-Redman served 7 ½ years of a 12-year sentence
Published at 8:23 am on September 11, 2019
A former reality TV show producer is home in Southern California after serving a little more than half of his prison sentence in Mexico for killing his wife while on vacation in 2010.
Bruce Beresford-Redman, whose credits include "Survivor" and "Pimp My Ride," was back in Gardena on Tuesday after his release from prison on June 20, NBC Los Angeles reported.
Beresford-Redman reported his wife Mónica missing in April 2010 while the couple and their two children were celebrating her 42nd birthday with a vacation at the luxury Moon Palace Resort in Cancun. Her body was found in a sewer, and an autopsy found she had been strangled.
Police in Mexico said other hotel guests reported hearing screams coming from the couple's hotel room, where investigators said they discovered blood. Investigators also said they had found Beresford-Redman had recently had an extramarital affair.
The TV producer was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He served about seven and a half years, including time already served.


What a Coaching Legend Can Teach Businesses about Process Improvement | BVI | Business Valuation Inc.
The late John Wooden, arguably the greatest basketball coach of all time, famously taught his players the proper method for putting on their socks and tying their shoes during the first practice of every season. Surely, a coach focused on such minutia in practice would resemble a whirling dervish on the sidelines during a game, barking out plays and providing instruction every second. To the contrary, Coach Wooden was the picture of calm, knowing his team was prepared to execute. The "Wizard of Westwood" coached his U.C.L.A. Bruins to a staggering 10 national championships in a 12-year period beginning in 1964. Wooden generously shared his recipe for success. An examination of a few of his more famous quotes demonstrates that any business can use the same principles to succeed.
Coach Wooden prepared his team with disciplined practice sessions during which his players repeatedly drilled in fundamentals until the fundamental became second nature. As game pressure mounted, the Bruin's opponents panicked while Wooden's Bruin teams simply executed what they learned in practice. In the business world, the best organizations perform in the same way as those championship teams. By preparing in a way that makes the fundamental process second nature, world class organizations ensure quality performance in periods of peak demand.
Instilling second nature fundamentals in your organization can be achieved through the disciplines of process improvement. The steps are simple: 1) define the key value drivers for your customers; 2) examine the current state of organizational performance through measurement and process mapping; 3) redesign the most critical underperforming current processes as necessary to ensure the delivery of value with minimum waste; 4) implement the redesigned process; 5) measure the results; and 6) go back to step one if the results are not satisfactory.
The steps must be executed with honesty. Improvement is not possible without first knowing what needs to be improved. Seek input from all levels of the organization. Ask customers for feedback. Measure and analyze the results. Always ask the question, "Will this change improve the delivery of value to our customers?" If the answer is "no", determine why and redesign. Repeat the entire improvement process if necessary. The steps are simple but require considerable discipline. It's the same discipline Coach Wooden demanded from his teams and that spawned unprecedented success.
A slow economy presents the perfect opportunity for companies to capitalize on this improvement process. As economic conditions improve, and demand for goods and services increase, organizations that haven't taken the time to prepare will scramble to react. Those that honestly prepared, by examining and redesigning processes, will execute with confidence and control. Organizations that effectively facilitate this process will become best-in-class whether in manufacturing, distribution, retail, professional services, or even in the business of winning basketball games.
William (Bill) D. Sorenson, MBA is a Senior Analyst with Business Valuation, Inc., a Jacksonville, FL-based firm that provides valuation, litigation support and advisory services to businesses and professionals throughout the Southeast. He leads the firm's Rapid Process Improvement activities and is a Certified Lean Expert. He can be reached at (904) 356-7600 or bsorenson@bvijax.com.