À mi-parcours de la cruciale COP26, l’ancien président américain Barack Obama, en déplacement à Glasgow, a regretté lundi le manque d’ambition de la plupart des pays et salué la « colère » de la jeunesse. 

“People were being affected in very immediate and specific ways.”

Former US President, Barack Obama explains how first hand testimony from island nations on the impact of climate change, helped form the Paris Accords .

Follow #COP26 live: https://t.co/eKFGzLJbEl pic.twitter.com/o8rtTRCpLW

— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 8, 2021

Barack Obama appelle à faire plus. La plupart des pays ont manqué d' »ambition » pour mettre en œuvre l’accord de Paris sur le climat, a regretté lundi 8 novembre l’ancien président américain, demandant aux participants à « faire plus » et louant la « colère » de la jeunesse sur la crise climatique.

« La plupart des pays n’ont pas été aussi ambitieux qu’ils auraient dû l’être », a déclaré Barack Obama, invité à s’exprimer devant la COP26 à Glasgow, où il a été accueilli par une ovation debout.

Et même s’il a estimé qu’il y avait eu « des progrès » depuis l’accord de Paris en 2015, « nous n’en avons pas fait assez face à cette crise et nous allons devoir en faire plus », a-t-il lancé. « Nous sommes très loin de là où nous devrions être. »

« Voter comme si votre vie en dépendait »

Comme l’actuel président Joe Biden, il a regretté l’absence des chefs de l’État chinois et russe à la conférence, jugeant que « s’il y a une chose qui devrait transcender nos différences, c’est bien le réchauffement climatique ».

Il a également rendu hommage au mouvement de protestation des jeunes pour le climat et à son égérie suédoise Greta Thunberg, se félicitant qu’il « y (ait) plein de Greta à travers le monde ».

« Vous devez rester en colère, rester frustrés, mais vous devez canaliser cette colère et cette frustration et pousser de plus en plus fort pour obtenir toujours plus, parce que c’est ce qui est nécessaire », a-t-il lancé à l’adresse de la jeunesse.

Il a appelé les jeunes à « voter comme si votre vie en dépendait », même s’ils considèrent la politique avec « cynisme », à « faire pression sur les entreprises » et à chercher à « persuader les gens qui ne sont pas d’accord ou qui sont indifférents ». « Nous ne pouvons pas nous permettre le désespoir », a-t-il insisté.

World Opinions News / France 24 / AFP

L’article À la COP26, Obama appelle la plupart des États à engager des actions plus ambitieuses est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

I have long found memoirs of American politicians to be heavy on humbug and light on new insight, especially those meant to pave the way to the White House, like Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices, Kamala Harris’s The Truths We Hold, Cory Booker’s United, and yes, the best of them, Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope.

Since his political career is now behind him, I hoped the former president was going to be a bit more forthcoming, blunt and daring in his new memoir, The Promised Land.

Seven hundred pages into the book, I had mixed feelings or perhaps I was a bit too generous with my hope. Obama may no longer be as hampered by politics, but he is certainly haunted by legacy.

My first impression when reading The Promised Land is that unlike the sitting president, Donald Trump, who is unable to articulate a thought or finish a sentence, Obama is a gifted writer, as he is a brilliant orator.

In fact, the first few chapters show how his personal narrative, story-telling and exceptional oratory, highlighted in his speeches against the Iraq war and his address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, propelled him to the national political scene. They played a major part in his rise from an Illinois state senator to US senator and then two-term president.

Obama comes across as thoughtful, conciliatory, as well as funny and sarcastic, as if to draw a contrast with his divisive, deceptive, and miserable successor. It is as if the former president remains haunted by the effect of Trump’s victory on his legacy and his attempt to undo everything Obama.PUBLICITÉ

It is indeed telling that he chose to end the book with the killing of Osama bin Laden and his humiliation of Trump at a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Obama may be Trump’s opposite, but not because he embraces Black nationalism the way Trump embraces white nationalism or supremacy. Rather, because he deliberately or instinctively veers towards the middle, always looking for two sides to any issue.

He is the guy directing the traffic, always situating himself at the centre of every argument, between hope and fear, idealism and realism, principles and interests, homeowners and bankers, grieving mothers and army commanders, protesters and police, young advisers and political veterans.

Likewise, internationally, Obama positions himself between the Europeans and the Chinese, say on climate change, between the Palestinians and Israelis, the Arab protesters and allied Arab dictators, almost always rooting for the first while explaining, justifying or even defending the latter.

He carefully juxtaposes writing letters to the grieving families of dead soldiers with his support for a military surge in Afghanistan, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with escalating war efforts.

He readily reconciles the promise and peril of his own first two years in office, commending his administration’s impressive record while blaming himself for the Democratic losses in the 2010 mid-term elections, writing: “… it proved that – whether for lack of talent, cunning, charm or good fortune – I’d failed to rally the nation, as F.D.R. had once done, behind what I knew to be right.

His critics may see his memoir as the recollections of an opportunist, but it actually is one long expose in defence of pragmatism.

Obama claims to draw inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, and the most revered American presidents, like Abraham Lincoln and Franklyn Roosevelt, who presided over two of the toughest periods of US history.

Whether he will go down in history as one of these transformative leaders is too early to judge. But Obama seems to suggest that his success to get elected, not once but twice, as the first Black president is in and by itself a transformative event for America.

To his credit, Obama comes across, again unlike his successor, as someone humbled by experience and bruised by the democratic reality.

He recognises that the president can change a few US policies while in office, but cannot transform its political culture. He also acknowledges that he lacked the political experience and the political allies, considering he went from a freshman senator to leading presidential candidate within just two years.

Likewise, his knowledge of the world was limited to his childhood in Indonesia and university friendships with international students. Obama hoped that what he lacked in experience he could make up for in hard work and fresh new ideas.

But within two years, the mood in the country had shifted towards the right, deepening the social, political and racial divisions in America.

Likewise, the foreign policy establishment or the Blob, proved powerful, tenacious and set in its ways. He says he came to end the war mindset but found himself constantly undermined by both the military and the civilian establishment, including members of his cabinet.

Obama blames himself for not being forceful enough, dare I say, like Trump. He specifically regrets not having the foresight to push the Democrats to do away with the filibuster – a tactic used to prevent a bill from being voted on – that allowed Republican senators to undermine or even block his agenda with a mere 40 percent of the seats.

But it was not only the Republicans. Obama acknowledges that America suffers from a deeper cultural and racial malady under a dominant (white) political culture that feels threatened by multiculturalism and is hostile to immigrants and foreigners.

Paradoxically, some of the most insightful passages about America’s political culture in the book are the ones he says he thought of but never uttered during his time at the White House.

For example, he writes how the drop in his popularity in the polls after calling a policeman’s attack on a Black man in Boston “stupid”, reminded him “that the basis of our nation’s social order had never been simply about consent; that it was also about centuries of state-sponsored violence by whites against Black and brown people.

Or, how the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill showed, “We Americans love cheap gas and our big cars more than we care about the environment.”

Obama also had more than a few insightful things to say about his predecessor’s blunders in the Middle East, Saudi, Emirati and Israeli warnings and hostility towards the Arab Spring, the domestic repercussion of disagreement with Israel, the reasons for the stalled Middle East “peace process”, and much more.

But that would have to wait for another day.

Marwan BisharaSenior political analyst at Al Jazeera.Bishara was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs.

L’article Obama’s (not so) promising land est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

Former US President Barack Obama has announced the publication date of the first half of his memoirs.

Mr Obama – the first black president and husband of Michelle Obama – said the book would « try to provide an honest account of my presidency ».

There’s no feeling like finishing a book, and I’m proud of this one. In A Promised Land, I try to provide an honest accounting of my presidency, the forces we grapple with as a nation, and how we can heal our divisions and make democracy work for everybody. pic.twitter.com/T1QSZVDvOm

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 17, 2020

A Promised Land is set for release on 17 November, just two weeks after the US presidential election.

The Democratic leader won two elections and served as president between 2009 and 2017.

Joe Biden – his vice-president for those two terms – is challenging Mr Obama’s successor, Republican leader Donald Trump, for the presidency on 3 November.

« There’s no feeling like finishing a book, and I’m proud of this one, » Mr Obama wrote on Twitter.

The 768-page memoir will be simultaneously issued in 25 languages, according to publisher Penguin Random House.

There’s no feeling like finishing a book, and I’m proud of this one. In A Promised Land, I try to provide an honest accounting of my presidency, the forces we grapple with as a nation, and how we can heal our divisions and make democracy work for everybody. pic.twitter.com/T1QSZVDvOm

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 17, 2020

Mr Obama writes about the response to the global financial crisis, his landmark healthcare reform legislation known as the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, and the 2011 US raid in Pakistan that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

The 44th president of the US has written three previous books, including Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope as well as the children’s book Of Thee I Sing.

His wife, lawyer and former First Lady Michelle Obama, has published her own memoir. Within five months of publication, Becoming had sold more than 10 million copies.

Mr Obama may struggle to outshine his wife, but this would not be the first time spouses have bested presidents. Both Nancy Reagan and Betty Ford’s memoirs outsold their husbands’ works.

President Ronald Reagan however may not have minded. His work, An American Life, was ghost written by the journalist Robert Lindsey. At the book’s launch Mr Reagan said: « I hear it’s a terrific book. One of these days I’m going to read it myself. »

There were rumours in the 19th century that the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant by the post-Civil War president was in fact penned by the famous US writer Mark Twain, whose company published the work.

Mr Twain however denied the allegation, and editors of Mr Grant’s papers have dismissed the claim as « completely baseless », as much of what was published still survives as notes handwritten by Mr Grant himself.

President Grant’s 584-page tome eventually became one of the highest-selling books of the 19th century.

But for those looking for a lighter read, the record for shortest memoir goes to President Calvin Coolidge. The famously laconic leader’s work is a succinct 247 pages.

World Opinions – bbc.com

L’article Barack Obama: Former president announces memoir release date est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.