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Mostrando postagens com marcador ajuda humanitária. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador ajuda humanitária. Mostrar todas as postagens

sexta-feira, 4 de setembro de 2020

Merkel: a grande estadista europeia e mundial - Ishaan Tharoor, Ruby Mellen (WP)

The Washington Post
Today's WorldView

sábado, 23 de fevereiro de 2019

Ajuda humanitaria internacional a Venezuela - Apoiadores


21 Febrero 2019

Teniendo en cuenta la grave crisis humanitaria e institucional que vive Venezuela damos nuestro expreso apoyo a la solicitud del presidente encargado Juan Guaidó para que la comunidad internacional envíe ayuda humanitaria de modo de paliar la crisis originada en la falta de alimentos, medicinas e infraestructura que sufre el pueblo venezolano. 

Dada la magnitud y connotaciones de tal crisis, expresamos nuestra total solidaridad con los hombres, mujeres y niños venezolanos rehenes de esta terrible situación, dentro del territorio de Venezuela y también con los millones que se vieron obligados a dejar el país. En este sentido, estamos convencidos que la catástrofe que vive Venezuela excede a los venezolanos para convertirse en una situación que afecta a toda América Latina. En este contexto, los abajo firmantes: 

1. Expresamos nuestro beneplácito por el reconocimiento de Juan Guaidó como legítimo presidente encargado de Venezuela por parte de más de 50 países y organismos multilaterales, situación que lo habilita a realizar tal solicitud de ayuda. 

2. Hacemos notar que sus competencias se encuentran sustentadas jurídicamente en el artículo 233 de la Constitución Nacional Bolivariana, toda vez que el segundo mandato presidencial de Nicolás Maduro iniciado el pasado 10 de enero ha sido reconocido como carente de legitimidad por los dos únicos órganos legítimos de Venezuela: la Asamblea Nacional y el Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, en el exilio y por la comunidad internacional. 

3. Celebramos la inmediata respuesta positiva al pedido de ayuda humanitaria del presidente Guaidó por parte de gobiernos e instituciones alrededor del mundo. En particular, expresamos nuestro reconocimiento a aquellos que se han unido al esfuerzo conjunto denominado Coalición Mundial por la Ayuda Humanitaria para Venezuela. También, a todas aquellas instituciones, organizaciones y personas que, abriendo sus brazos con generosidad ayudan, auxilian, reciben y desarrollan iniciativas para mejorar la situación de los venezolanos frente a esta crisis sin precedentes. 

4. Consideramos que la ayuda humanitaria representa la necesidad más grande e inminente del pueblo venezolano y, por lo tanto, debe alcanzar con la mayor celeridad posible a quienes la necesitan. En este sentido, felicitamos a los cientos de miles de voluntarios venezolanos que, arriesgando su integridad física, trabajarán el día 23 de febrero y sucesivos en el corredor humanitario que, desde la ciudad fronteriza de Cúcuta, permitirá hacer llegar las donaciones a los millones de necesitados en todo el territorio de Venezuela. De igual modo, y por el bien de todos los venezolanos, hacemos votos para que la entrega se realice de modo pacífico y ordenado, sin bloqueos ni obstrucciones de ninguna índole. 

5. Señalamos que la doctrina de la Responsabilidad de Proteger, aprobada por consenso en la Cumbre Mundial de las Naciones Unidas de 2005, procede y debe ser aplicada a la situación de Venezuela.   

6. Tenemos presente que las necesidades del pueblo venezolano en términos de escasez de alimentos, medicinas e infraestructura, así como las violaciones a los derechos humanos, represión, encarcelamiento y muerte de opositores por parte del régimen de Maduro fueron expuestas en toda su crudeza en variados informes emitidos por la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos de la OEA, el Alto Comisionado para los Derechos Humanos de la Naciones Unidas, Caritas, Amnesty International y Human Rights Watch, entre otros. 

7. Nos hacemos eco de tales informes y advertimos que la responsabilidad de tales violaciones se centra en el gobierno ilegítimo que hoy usurpa el poder. Condenamos la metodología de persecución a los opositores, encarcelamiento y toda otra forma de represión y restricción de libertades individuales, a la vez que exhortamos al régimen de Maduro a que libere en forma inmediata todos los presos políticos en Venezuela. 

8. Desde nuestro rol de ciudadanos de América Latina, expresamos nuestro reconocimiento a los gobiernos de Argentina, Canadá, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay y Perú por la denuncia presentada en septiembre de 2018 ante la Corte Penal Internacional para la investigación de crímenes de lesa humanidad y abusos a los derechos humanos perpetrados en Venezuela. Del mismo modo a los sostenidos esfuerzos de la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) y del Grupo de Lima para exponer la grave situación y para definir medidas que allanen el camino hacia la vuelta a la institucionalidad en el país. 

9. De igual modo, instamos a los líderes de los Estados que aún apoyan al régimen ilegítimo de Maduro para que se solidaricen con el sufrimiento del pueblo venezolano y revean su posición, a la luz de la catástrofe humanitaria y de la crisis institucional que vive la nación. 

10. Apoyamos la realización de elecciones libres, democráticas y con control internacional, y el surgimiento de gobernantes que puedan conducir a Venezuela hacia la recuperación de su vida institucional, económica, moral y social. 

Firmantes por orden alfabético, pertenecientes a Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, México, Perú, Uruguay y Venezuela. 

Sergio Abreu, Marcos Aguinis, Miguel Arancibia, Irma Argüello, Karina Banfi, Mariano Bartolomé, Álvaro Bermúdez, Gerardo Bongiovanni, Emiliano Buis, Nelson Bustamente, Roberto Cachanosky, Frank Calzón, Elisa Carrió, George Chaya, Alejandro Corbacho, Alex Chafuen, Franco De Vita, Sergio Duarte, Alejandro Fargosi, Eduardo Feinmann, Catherine Fulop, Lionel Gamarra, Eduardo Gerome, Enrique Ghersi, Rodrigo Goñi, Gustavo Gorriz, Daniel Hadad, Julio Hang, George Harris, Gabriel Iezzi, Horacio Jaunarena, Santiago Kovadloff, Enrique Krauze, Guillermo Laborda, Jorge Lanata, Luis Larrain, Cristian Larroulet, Guillermo Lasso, Martín Litwak, Ricardo López Murphy, Marcelo Longobardi, Plinio A Mendoza, Nacho (Ignacio) Mendoza Donatti, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Juan Negri Malbrán, Paula Oliveto, Oscar Ortiz Antelo, Mariano Penas, Jorge Ramírez, Jaime Ravinet, Camilo Reyes Rodríguez, Daniel Roggero, Marcelo Carlos Romero, Luis Rosales, Daniel Sabsay, Eduardo Sadous, Julio María Sanguinetti, Daniel Santoro, Diego Santos, Fernando Schüler, Gustavo Segré, Cornelia Schmidt- Liermann, Graciela Tufani, Álvaro Vargas Llosa, Ian Vasquez, Marcelo Wechsler, Waldo Wolff, Claudio Zin, siguen las firmas...

domingo, 27 de janeiro de 2019

Israel envia grande ajuda humanitaria ao Brasil, para o desastre de Brumadinho

Bibi envia delegação de Israel em auxílio à Brumadinho com 129 especialistas que chegam neste domingo à noite

O grupo de militares israelenses e especialistas em resgate que estará saindo de Jerusalém neste domingo, 27/01 às 6,00h (hora Brasília), diretamente para Minas Gerais, terá a chefia do embaixador Shelley que estava em Israel acompanhando a visita do Ministro da Ciência e Tecnologia do Brasil.
O grupo será composto por 129 pessoas, sendo 31 mulheres, e é especializado em resgate durante catástrofes com uso de sonares e aparelhagem mais moderna no mundo. Também cães farejadores estarão embarcando para o Brasil.
Uma grande quantidade de material eletrônico e de escavação também será enviado.
Funcionários da embaixada de Israel em Brasília já estão sendo deslocados para Minas Gerais para dar apoio logístico ao grupo que chegará de Israel.
A operação foi coordenada diretamente pelo presidente Bolsonaro e o primeiro-ministro Bibi Netanyahu com apoio do embaixador Shelley.
A comunidade judaica de São Paulo e do Rio estão se mobilizando para enviar ajuda aos refugiados desta terrível catástrofe.
O avião israelense deverá pousar às 21,30h deste domingo em Minas Gerais.

Maiores informações:

 

quarta-feira, 27 de dezembro de 2017

Presidente Hoover: mal afamado pela Depressao, mas um grande benfeitor humanitario


Delanceyplace.com End of Year Selections: Terrible Presidents
Today's encore selection -- from One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson. Herbert Hoover went from a spectacular career in mining to international acclaim and celebrity in a war relief effort to derision and blame for the Great Depression:

"Fortunately, America had a figure of rocklike calm -- a kind of super­man, a term that he was not embarrassed to apply to himself in private correspondence -- to whom it could turn in times of crisis such as [the Mississippi flood of 1927]. His name was Herbert Hoover. Soon he would be the most derided presi­dent of his time -- quite an achievement for someone elected in the same decade as Warren G. Harding -- but in the spring of 1927 he was, and by a very wide margin, the world's most trusted man. He was also, curiously, perhaps the least likable hero America has ever produced. The summer of 1927 would make him a little more of both.

"Herbert Clark Hoover was born in 1874 thirty miles west of the Missis­sippi (he would be the first president from west of that symbolically weighty boundary) in the hamlet of West Branch, Iowa, in a tiny white cottage, which still stands. His parents, devout Quakers, died tragically early -- his father of rheumatic fever when little Bert was just six, his mother of typhoid fever three years later -- and he was sent to live with an uncle and aunt in Oregon. ...

"Though he never finished high school -- his uncle, disregarding his brightness, sent him to work as an office boy in Salem, Oregon, instead­ -- Hoover nurtured a fierce ambition to better himself. In 1891, at age sev­enteen, he passed the entrance examinations for the brand-new Leland Stanford Junior University (or just Stanford as we now know it), which then was a free school. As a member of Stanford's first-ever class, he studied geology and also met there his future wife, Lou Henry, who by chance was also from Iowa. (They would marry in 1899.) Upon graduat­ing, Hoover took the only job he could find, in a gold mine in Nevada City, California, loading and pushing an ore cart ten hours a day seven days a week for 20 cents an hour -- a meager salary even then. That this was the permanent lot for his fellow miners seems never to have troubled him. Hoover was a great believer in -- and a living embodiment of -- the notion of personal responsibility.

In 1897, still in his early twenties, Hoover was hired by a large and venerable British mining company, Bewick, Moreing and Co., and for the next decade traveled the world ceaselessly as its chief engineer and troubleshooter -- to Burma, China, Australia, India, Egypt, and wher­ever else the company's mineralogical interests demanded. ... After a decade in the field, Hoover was brought back to London and made a partner in Bewick, Moreing. ...

"He would very probably have passed his life in wealthy anonymity but for a sudden change in circumstances that thrust him unexpectedly into the limelight. When war broke out in 1914, Hoover, as a prominent American, was called on to help evacuate other Americans stranded in Europe -- there were, remarkably, over 120,000 of them --and he per­formed that duty with such efficiency and distinction that he was asked to take on the much greater challenge of heading the new Commission for Relief in Belgium.


Hoover walks with Polish children

"Belgium was overwhelmed by war, its farms destroyed, its factories shut, its foodstocks seized by the Germans. Eight million Belgians were in real peril of starving. Hoover managed to find and distribute $1.8 million worth of food a week, every week, for two and a half years -- 2.5 million tons of it altogether -- and to deliver it to people who would otherwise have gone unfed. The achievement can hardly be overstated. It was the greatest relief effort ever undertaken on earth, and it made him, deserv­edly, an international hero. By 1917, it was reckoned that Hoover had saved more lives than any other person in history. One enthusiast called him 'the greatest humanitarian since Jesus Christ,' which of course is about as generous as a compliment can get. The label stuck. He became to the world the Great Humanitarian.

"Two things accounted for Hoover's glorious reputation: he executed his duties with tireless efficiency and dispatch, and he made sure that no one anywhere was ever unaware of his accomplishments. Myron Her­rick, America's avuncular ambassador in Paris, performed similar heroic feats in occupied France without receiving any thanks from posterity, but only because he didn't seek them. Hoover by contrast was meticu­lous in ensuring that every positive act associated with him was inflated to maximum importance and covered with a press release."

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One Summer: America, 1927
Author: Bill Bryson 
Copyright 2013 by Bill Bryson
Pages: 53-56

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domingo, 29 de outubro de 2017

O Imperio benevolente: book review sobre ajuda humanitaria nos EUA: Stephen R. Porter

Little on Stephen R. Porter, 'Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed' [review]

by System Administrator

Stephen R. Porter. Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 296 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-4856-2.
Reviewed by Branden Little (Weber State University)
Published on H-Diplo (October, 2017)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach
There’s No Place Like Home: Refugees and Their Discontents
Few historical studies could be more applicable to today’s political turmoil than Stephen R. Porter’s Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed. Porter’s monograph examines the myriad responses of Americans to refugee populations in the twentieth century and beyond. Benevolent Empire features seven chapter-length case studies that explore refugee-related developments from the era of the First World War to the aftermath of Vietnam. Special emphasis is placed on Jewish resettlement to the United States in the 1930s, the relocation of displaced Europeans after the Second World War, Hungarian refugee programs in the mid-1950s, and Cuban asylum seekers in the decades thereafter. The epilogue pushes the story to the cusp of the present-day Syrian cataclysm.
Porter persuasively demonstrates that favorable admissions policies have provided no panacea to distressed populations seeking new homes in the United States. Resettlement in American communities proved extraordinarily complicated. In many instances, Americans eagerly exploited new immigrants who were unwittingly trapped in sharecropping and other forms of servitude. Depressed labor markets that offered no substantive opportunities for employment further undermined refugees’ integration and bids for self-sufficiency. America’s mistreatment of the very peoples US officials and aid workers purported to be helping elicited justifiable criticisms. Sharp attacks on US policy and practices resulted. Critics included the peoples transplanted to the United States, other “displaced persons” who were abandoned in camps in Europe once American interest in their relocation waned, and foreign governments keen to indict as a sham American claims to being a beacon of liberty.
This chronicle of unpleasantries raises the question: in what ways can such ugliness be construed as benevolent? Porter makes a compelling case that the moniker “benevolent empire” fits because, promises and pitfalls aside, Americans energetically endeavored to extend mercy to the dispossessed. More than one million refugees entered the United States in the period Porter investigates. Many more millions of displaced persons overseas also received emergency aid services from a mixture of US and private American agencies. Certainly millions of dispossessed peoples would have perished without receiving American aid.
The “imperial” edifice that undergirds Porter’s Benevolent Empire comprised the swirling constellation of private- and state-initiated activity that attempted to reduce suffering in war-ravaged lands. American humanitarians customarily prioritized the projection of relief and reconstruction initiatives into a beleaguered nation. Resettlement in the United States, however, did not necessarily eliminate a refugee’s hardships. Benevolent Empire reveals that the Americans who mobilized to mitigate the misery of the dispossessed inadequately appreciated the complexities involved in fully transplanting refugees into American life. American aid organizations, moreover, expected that once a refugee had entered the United States and settled in a particular community the humanitarian duty to help had mostly ended.
The universal condition of many dispossessed peoples was one of enduring distress despite the relative tranquility of American life compared to existence in many refugees’ fractured homelands. Benevolence, therefore, was at best a palliative measure. The American dream did not universally extend to all refugees who relocated to the United States. Porter documents that some refugees (in camps overseas as well as those living in the United States) became so dismayed with American hostility and ineptitude that they returned home even when faced with persecution. Dozens of despondent victims committed suicide.
The richest chapters in Benevolent Empire interweave in-depth biographical treatments of refugees, humanitarian activists, and American officials. Porter’s narrative illuminates fascinating details, for example, about such obscure figures as James Becker, a Jewish American graduate of Cornell University. Becker served as a US soldier in the First World War, participated in Herbert C. Hoover’s postwar American Relief Administration, and then joined the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). As Becker was confronted by atrocity—chiefly pogroms in the Ukraine—his altruism evaporated and he yearned for revenge. Porter notes that Becker returned to the United States in the 1920s but drops the storyline. One wishes Porter’s biography of Becker’s “benevolence” would have continued. Becker’s later service on the JDC’s national council in the 1940s-50s easily could have been tied to the later periods in Benevolent Empire.
Awakened to the humanitarian catastrophe triggered by the First World War, American society and the US government invested extensively in relief and reconstruction. After the war, the federal government relied on private agencies to prescreen refugee dossiers and sponsor refugees by financing their resettlement. Porter establishes that American interest in helping overseas victims of war and discrimination never seriously waned despite virulent xenophobia and popular disenchantment with global affairs in the 1920s-30s. Once the welfare state enlarged during the New Deal and in the Second World War, the appetite of government to regulate private charitable activities enlarged substantially. Increasingly in the aftermath of the Second World War the state arrogated the power to perform humanitarian functions.
The decades-long pattern of refugee aid that Porter portrays is one in which a multitude of private agencies initiated relief projects that government institutions eventually absorbed or regulated. Porter observes that the federal government vigorously encouraged the centralization of relief services by ever larger and more powerful agencies—public and private. He aptly describes the ascendancy of government and its collusion with powerful relief organizations as “regulatory Darwinism” (p. 85). This bias toward wielding federal power through regulatory control, however, undercut the variety of relief initiatives that Americans traditionally embraced. Greater efficiencies and economies of scale resulted from this process, but it also weakened the American public’s activist sensibility, which was accustomed to providing limited aid to the downtrodden with little government support.
Porter uncovers shocking developments in the ostensibly humanitarian US Displaced Persons Program developed in the late 1940s. Avaricious scheming by southern planters ensured that Latvian refugees would be admitted to the United States as sharecroppers. A refugee’s debt peonage in the Mississippi Delta was soon replicated in other farmlands across the United States. Farmers actively sought cheap foreign labor and shielded their reputation from criticism through the benevolent guise of helping the victims of war. Porter highlights an audacious resident of Milwaukee and president of the Latvian Association of Wisconsin, Lauma Kasak, who raised money to purchase the freedom of several hundred immigrant sharecroppers trapped in Mississippi. Porter discovered headstones with Latvian surnames in a local Mississippi cemetery where the sharecroppers labored. Clearly some unfortunate souls never escaped this form of agrarian bondage. Even as it illuminates the underbelly of American humanitarianism, Benevolent Empire does not deeply penetrate the motivations of the Americans who endeavored to acquire European refugees as “stoop laborers” and domestic servants (p. 119). It is unlikely that the paternalistic American sponsors of refugee resettlement thought they were doing their wards any injustices.
Unsurprisingly, even as the Soviet Union blasted the United States for mistreating minorities, it remained silent about its own oppressive, long-term captivity of hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers. Another scholar, Andrew E. Barshay established in The Gods Left First: The Captivity and Repatriation of Japanese POWs in Northeast Asia, 1945-1956 (2013) that the Soviet Union’s punitive forced labor of Japanese veterans continued upwards of a decade after Japan surrendered. The vulnerability of certain populations to the abuses by others in positions of preponderant power constitutes the common theme in Porter’s and Barshay’s investigations of this tumultuous postwar era. Resettlement in new lands and repatriation to homelands remained chronic challenges for millions of peoples whose experience with war did not simply end in 1945.
Displaced persons put into sharp relief the intimate relationship of civil and human rights to the ideological struggles of the Cold War. Benevolent Empire thus builds on the pioneering scholarship of Mary L. Dudziak (Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy [2000]) and Thomas Borstelmann (The Cold War and the Color Line [2009]) by connecting refugee rights advocacy to geopolitics. Porter shows that American programs for refugee aid overseas and resettlement in the United States affected America’s international reputation and relations. Done well, relief and resettlement could enhance America’s stature; done poorly, America’s image suffered—at least temporarily. Demonstrating little introspection and willingness to recalibrate programs for resettlement to address chronic problems, US government and private agencies continued to facilitate the relocation of the dispossessed. And apparently unwitting refugees remained convinced that starting a new life in America was a worthwhile endeavor to pursue.
A central feature in Porter’s, Dudziak’s, and Borstelmann’s studies is the contested definitions of citizenship. At precisely the same time that the United States admitted European refugees to the United States with the assumption they would be put on a pathway to full citizenship, the federal government energetically suppressed aspirations for Puerto Rican independence, while also denying full voting rights to the island’s inhabitants who were nonetheless US citizens. Yet just a few years later, in 1959, statehood was conferred on Hawaii, another American island possession. The rights of citizens within the “Greater United States,” as Daniel Immerwahr has recently dubbed these insular territories, varied considerably.[1]
Oftentimes the express limitations on rights emanated from racial discrimination in the continental United States toward peoples perceived as inferior. Porter emphasizes that even Europeans, including Hungarian revolutionaries who were branded as ardent anti-Communist heroes, were often treated no better by American society than most other minorities in the 1950s. Disadvantaged “second-class” Americans were incapable of wielding power effectively—this was, of course, a major theme of Martin Luther King Jr.’s crusade for economic justice. All chronically “dispossessed” Americans encountered hardships. Refugees, however, have been routinely left out of the standard civil rights narrative. Porter helps to establish their place in this important story. Despite the wide array of resettlement initiatives for refugees, Benevolent Empire intimates that many of the transplanted peoples simply enlarged the ranks of minorities and the poor. And as they competed for scarce social welfare benefits and charitable aid with other longstanding claimants, the refugees discovered blatant hostility. Clearly there were serious stress fractures in the foundation that comprised America’s Benevolent Empire.
Benevolent Empire interweaves a vast and growing literature on humanitarian relief, the international dimensions of American civil rights reform, immigration, and American political development. It would serve advanced undergraduate and graduate students well in any number of courses on these themes, in addition to American foreign relations and “America and the World” seminars. The book repeatedly demonstrates that there is no easy differentiation between domestic and foreign relations. Global affairs were always of intimate interest to Americans, Porter correctly insists.
Porter’s well-crafted study underscores the common feature of the refugee experience: misery. Customarily uprooted by violence, a refugee may remain vulnerable even after being transplanted by a benevolent empire. Undeniably many Americans wanted to help the dispossessed and downtrodden. The question of what constitutes genuine help endures.
Benevolent Empire should stand as a potent reminder that refugee resettlement and aid proved exceedingly difficult to orchestrate. In his epilogue, Porter sagely warns that the seemingly intractable problems associated with mass migrations from North Africa and the Middle East today cannot easily be solved. Relocation alone, he has shown, is no comprehensive solution to alleviating a refugee’s distress; humane resettlement has required expansive commitments that were rarely envisioned by communities that accepted newcomers. If there is any moral in Porter’s account, it would be the imperative need to more fully awaken the humanitarian sensibility among host-nation populations to admit extensive and long-lasting responsibilities for those unfortunate peoples whose homelands have been torn asunder.
Note
[1]. Daniel Immerwahr, “The Greater United States: Territory and Empire in U.S. History,” Diplomatic History 40, no. 3 (2016): 373-391.
Citation: Branden Little. Review of Stephen R. Porter, Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. October, 2017.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=48454
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

domingo, 20 de maio de 2012

Brasil ajuda Coreia do Norte: certo, um pais que precisa...

Pensei que se tratasse de uma ajuda emergencial, por alguma grande catástrofe, algum desastre humanitário, mas parece que não é: se trata de ajuda normal, constante, regular, para países que exibem carências alimentares.
Faz sentido! A Coreia do Norte exibe vários tipos de carências, inclusive a alimentar, que deve ser dramática "a nível de" população. Mas isso ocorre há anos, e não sei se os companheiros refletiram sobre isso: o socialismo, como um todo, é um caso emergencial, de UTI, uma enorme catástrofe humanitária, talvez até civilizacional. Finalmente, os companheiros precisam de aliados, pois nem os socialistas reformistas europeus são tão anti-imperialistas e anti-hegemônicos como deveriam; afinal de contas eles estão na OTAN e continuam a aplicar políticas neoliberais.
Nada como um bom socialismo, puro e duro, sobretudo isso, duro...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Coreia do Sul critica ajuda brasileira a vizinho do norte


Jornal do Brasil, 19/05/2012
O diretor-geral do departamento para a América Latina do Ministério das Relações Exteriores da Coreia do Sul, Jang Keun-ho, criticou a ajuda humanitária que o Brasil vem dando ao seu vizinho do norte. Em entrevista ao jornal Folha de S.Paulo, o diplomata reconheceu que a atitude do Brasil de enviar alimentos à Coreia do Norte é boa, mas pode ter um efeito negativo. 
O governo sul-coreano teme que o vizinho, com quem está tecnicamente em guerra, use as doações para ganhar fôlego e continuar seu programa nuclear.
A Coreia do Norte vive uma crise humanitária, e o Brasil já enviou 16 mil toneladas de alimento ao país, número que deve chegar a 21 mil toneladas nos próximos meses, segundo a Folha de S.Paulo. A Coreia do Norte já enfrentou crises de alimentos, e o governo americano interrompeu a ajuda humanitária ao país depois que o governo lançou um foguete em abril. O temor é que o lançamento tenha sido o teste de um míssil. 
De acordo com a Folha, o Itamaraty afirma que a doação de alimentos é regulamentada por uma lei de junho do ano passado, que prevê a ajuda a países com carências alimentares.
Tags: ajuda, brasil, coreias, crise, nuclear 

terça-feira, 8 de março de 2011

Libia: dificuldades da "no-fly zone" - Georges Friedman (Stratfor)

Mais complicado do que parece...

How a Libyan No-fly Zone Could Backfire
By George Friedman
Stratfor, March 8, 2011

Calls are growing for a no-fly zone over Libya, but a power or coalition of powers willing to enforce one remains elusive.

In evaluating such calls, it is useful to remember that in war, Murphy’s Law always lurks. What can go wrong will go wrong, in Libya as in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Complications to Airstrikes
It has been pointed out that a no-fly zone is not an antiseptic act. In order to protect the aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone, one must begin by suppressing enemy air defenses. This in turn poses an intelligence problem. Precisely what are Libyan air defenses and where are they located? It is possible to assert that Libya has no effective air defenses and that an SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) attack is therefore unnecessary. But that makes assumptions that cannot be demonstrated without testing, and the test is dangerous. At the same time, collecting definitive intelligence on air defenses is not as easy as it might appear — particularly as the opposition and thieves alike have managed to capture heavy weapons and armored vehicles, meaning that air defense assets are on the move and under uncertain control.

Therefore, a no-fly zone would begin with airstrikes on known air defense sites. But it would likely continue with sustained patrols by SEAD aircraft armed with anti-radiation missiles poised to rapidly confront any subsequent threat that pops up. Keeping those aircraft on station for an extended period of time would be necessary, along with an unknown number of strikes. It is uncertain where the radars and missiles are located, and those airstrikes would not be without error. When search radars and especially targeting radars are turned on, the response must be instantaneous, while the radar is radiating (and therefore vulnerable) and before it can engage. That means there will be no opportunity to determine whether the sites are located in residential areas or close to public facilities such as schools or hospitals.

Previous regimes, hoping to garner international support, have deliberately placed their systems near such facilities to force what the international media would consider an atrocity. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi does not seem like someone who would hesitate to cause civilian casualties for political advantage. Thus, the imposition of a no-fly zone could rapidly deteriorate into condemnations for killing civilians of those enforcing the zone ostensibly for humanitarian purposes. Indeed, attacks on air defenses could cause substantial casualties, turning a humanitarian action into one of considerable consequence in both humanitarian and political terms.

Airstrikes vs. Ground Operations
The more important question is what exactly a no-fly zone would achieve. Certainly, it would ground Gadhafi’s air force, but it would not come close to ending the fighting nor erode Gadhafi’s other substantial advantages. His forces appear to be better organized and trained than his opponents, who are politically divided and far less organized. Not long ago, Gadhafi largely was written off, but he has more than held his own — and he has held his own through the employment of ground combat forces. What remains of his air force has been used for limited harassment, so the imposition of a no-fly zone would not change the military situation on the ground. Even with a no-fly zone, Gadhafi would still be difficult for the rebels to defeat, and Gadhafi might still defeat the rebels.

The attractiveness of the no-fly zone in Iraq was that it provided the political illusion that steps were being taken, without creating substantial risks, or for that matter, actually doing substantial damage to Saddam Hussein’s control over Iraq. The no-fly zone remained in place for about 12 years without forcing change in Saddam’s policies, let alone regime change. The same is likely to be true in Libya. The no-fly zone is a low-risk action with little ability to change the military reality that creates an impression of decisive action. It does, as we argue, have a substantial downside, in that it entails costs and risks — including a high likelihood of at least some civilian casualties — without clear benefit or meaningful impact. The magnitude of the potential civilian toll is unknown, but its likelihood, oddly, is not in the hands of those imposing the no-fly zone, but in the hands of Gadhafi. Add to this human error and other failures inherent in war, and the outcome becomes unclear.

A more significant action would be intervention on the ground, an invasion of Libya designed to destroy Gadhafi’s military and force regime change. This would require a substantial force — and it should be remembered from Iraq that it would require a substantial occupation force to stabilize and build a new regime to govern Libya. Unlike in Egypt, Gadhafi is the regime, and sectarian elements that have been kept in check under his regime already are coming to the fore. The ability of the country to provide and administer basic government functions is also unknown. And it must also be borne in mind that Gadhafi clearly has substantial support as well as opposition. His supporters will not go without a fight and could choose to wage some form of post-invasion resistance, as in Iraq. Thus, while the initial costs in terms of casualties might be low, the long-term costs might be much higher.

It should also be remembered that the same international community that condemned Saddam Hussein as a brutal dictator quite easily turned to condemn the United States both for deposing him and for the steps its military took in trying to deal with the subsequent insurgency. It is not difficult to imagine a situation where there is extended Libyan resistance to the occupying force followed by international condemnation of the counterinsurgency effort.

Having toppled a regime, it is difficult to simply leave. The idea that this would be a quick, surgical and short-term invasion is certainly one scenario, but it is neither certain nor even the most likely scenario. In the same sense, the casualties caused by the no-fly zone would be unknown. The difference is that while a no-fly zone could be terminated easily, it is unlikely that it would have any impact on ground operations. An invasion would certainly have a substantial impact but would not be terminable.

Stopping a civil war is viable if it can be done without increasing casualties beyond what they might be if the war ran its course. The no-fly zone likely does that, without ending the civil war. If properly resourced, the invasion option could end the civil war, but it opens the door to extended low-intensity conflict.

The National Interest
It is difficult to perceive the U.S. national interest in Libya. The interests of some European countries, like Italy, are more substantial, but it is not clear that they are prepared to undertake the burden without the United States.

We would argue that war as a humanitarian action should be undertaken only with the clear understanding that in the end it might cause more suffering than the civil war. It should also be undertaken with the clear understanding that the inhabitants might prove less than grateful, and the rest of the world would not applaud nearly as much as might be liked — and would be faster to condemn the occupier when things went wrong. Indeed, the recently formed opposition council based out of Benghazi — the same group that is leading the calls from eastern Libya for foreign airstrikes against Gadhafi’s air force — has explicitly warned against any military intervention involving troops on the ground.

In the end, the use of force must have the national interest in mind. And the historical record of armed humanitarian interventions is mixed at best.