O "Farewell Address" de Joe Biden: ameaças vindas de uma oligarquia que quer dominar o país (CNN)

Joe Biden se despede da presidência e dos "fellow Americans" alertando sobre as ameaças representadas pela oligarquia que pretende dominar seu país. 

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

'My eternal thanks ....'

US President Joe Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation on Wednesday in the Oval Office.

Presidents often use their final chance to speak to the American people to warn of dangers ahead.   George Washington’s farewell address in 1796 resonated with the humility of a president who regarded himself as the servant of the people rather than the other way around. He also warned of the dangers posed by partisan politics – in a way that seems remarkably prescient today.   “It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions,” Washington said.   In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower, a former general who helped win World War II, remarked that a vast military was necessary to face down the Soviet Union – but he worried how it would change society and the world.   “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist,” Eisenhower said.

Biden delivers his farewell address from the Oval Office in the White House, in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. Clockwise from left; Biden, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden, Biden's son Hunter Biden and daughter-in-law Melissa Cohen Biden.

And on Wednesday night, in the Oval Office, it was President Joe Biden’s turn to say goodbye.   “My eternal thanks to you, the American people,” the president said from the Oval Office at just after 8 p.m. on the East Coast. “After 50 years of public service, I give you my word. I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands, a nation where the strengths of our institutions and the character of our people matter and must endure.”   Then came his George Washington moment.   “Tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern,” Biden said. He cited “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra wealthy people” and sounded an alarm about “dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.”   No prizes for guessing who he was talking about.   With a clear eye on Donald Trump’s new superfan Elon Musk and the group of tech tycoons gathering around the president-elect, Biden warned that an oligarchy was taking shape in America.    Then he echoed Ike. “I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech industrial complex that can pose real dangers for our country as well,” Biden said. “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling … social media is giving up on fact checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.”

Biden as a newly-elected senator on November 10, 1972. (Guy DeLort/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images)

Biden was resolute, and had a photo of his late son Beau, who died of brain cancer, on the table over his left shoulder.   But the burden of a grueling four-year presidency that is ending in his ninth decade was poignantly evident in his reedy voice and slurring words. If Biden is still up to the work of being president, age robbed him of the power to sell his ideas and to paint the national narrative months ago.

President-elect Donald Trump and Biden debate at CNN's Atlanta studios on June 27, 2024.

As he closed, with his political energy all but exhausted, Biden was like the aged magician Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” alone on the stage when his “charms are all o’erthrown.”   “Now it’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keeper of the flame, may you keep the faith,” Biden told the country.   “I love America. You love it too. God bless you.”   But the reality of what will happen at noon on Monday hovered like a dark cloud over the address.   Biden said his presidency would be a bridge — and it was.   But he didn’t build it to a promised new Democratic generation.   Instead, he’s the president who stayed too long and whose administration thus arched between two terms of a nemesis he once defeated and then let back into power: Donald Trump.

Joe Biden e a imigração: limitações justificam postura de Trump

 CNN While in America

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

'We have to act' June 4, 2024

US President Joe Biden speaks in at the White House on Tuesday.

Just like Europe, America has an immigration problem that's out of control.   So, President Joe Biden has come up with a new idea — try some of Donald Trump’s approaches.   He’s not planning to mount the biggest mass deportation from the United States in history as Trump promises. And he’s not separating child migrants from their parents at the border as his predecessor notoriously did. But he does plan to use presidential power to bypass Congress, like Trump, in order to block most migrants from being able to request asylum after crossing from Mexico illegally, during periods when the border is overwhelmed by the volume of crossings – as it is now.   This move has no chance of actually solving the problem of a swamped asylum system that means many applicants wait months or years for a decision. But in the short-term, the White House hopes it will curb the number of people currently crossing the US-Mexico border. Biden’s move is also sharply political, because everything about immigration is hopelessly politicized in a way that has thwarted every effort to fix immigration laws for decades.   It’s no coincidence that the president acted just three weeks before he’s due to stand opposite Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump at a CNN debate. He badly needed political insulation on immigration, which the ex-president is using as a platform for his campaign again after riding the issue to victory in 2016.   People familiar with Biden’s strategy point out the contrast between the president taking action and the Republicans doing nothing on immigration after the GOP twice blocked the most conservative immigration bill in decades in Congress to keep the issue alive for Trump.   The danger is that Biden simply draws attention to his own failure so far to effectively respond to an issue on which Trump is more trusted by many voters despite his dehumanizing and often racist rhetoric. The president is also again infuriating progressive voters from whom he is already estranged over his Israel policy.   As he rolled out his new measures on Tuesday, Biden insisted that he would rather work for permanent solutions to the immigration overflow with Congress, but that Trump had stopped them. “He didn't want to fix the issue,” Biden said, accusing the GOP presumptive nominee for preferring to use immigration to attack him. “It’s a cynical, an extremely cynical political move.” He also took pains to distinguish himself from Trump’s most extreme policies: “I will not use the US military to go into neighborhoods all across the country to pull millions of people out of their homes and away from their families to put (in) detention camps while awaiting deportation.”   For decades, the hope behind harsh immigration measures has been that they will deter people from coming to the border. But the conditions that people from Central and South America are fleeing – economic blight, gang warfare and the effects of climate change – are so dire that the deterrence factor is often ineffective. And until a fractured Congress finally resolves to act instead of using immigration as a political tool, an asylum system designed for a long-ago era will continue to fail.

Sobre o significado histórico do atual momento - Joe Biden, Paulo Roberto de Almeida, Anton Gerashchenko

De manhã bem cedo, ao ler um resumo do mais recente pronunciamento público do presidente Joe Biden, eu postei no FB a seguinte observação: 

"Seria justo equiparar a guerra de agressão de Putin contra a Ucrânia aos atentados terroristas do Hamas contra Israel? Biden tem razão em colocar ambos fatos no mesmo plano?

A História estaria mesmo em um de seus momentos decisivos?

"Biden argued that the world was at yet another “inflection point in history,” with the decisions made by global leaders now likely “to determine the future for decades to come.”

Biden por acaso tem razão?

Ucrânia e Gaza na balança?

Qual o significado de um e outro evento?

A retaliação de Israel contra a população civil seria justificável como resposta no plano moral?

Considerações para "filósofos" da História, ou até mesmo historiadores curiosos..."

(Segunda-feira, 23 de outubro de 2023, 7:50hs: 1 h )

Mais tarde, leio na versão estendida do X, a atual feição do antigo Twitter, os seguintes argumentos para reflexão continuada sobre nosso atual momento decisivo na História:

" Anton Gerashchenko

@Gerashchenko_en

Putin has set off a global chain reaction of violence and war. The world is beginning to realize that it will not be possible to "wait it out" until better times, because it is the waiting and prolongation of wars that delays peace and "better times". Moreover, the situation of waiting and unpunished evil worsens the situation around the world. In Ukraine, we have realized a long time ago that we will not return to the state of "before February 24, 2022". And this is not just about Ukraine. It's about the whole world. Now the world is beginning to realize that global, tectonic changes are taking place. A return to the pre-war status quo is impossible. The future of the world in the coming millennia is being decided right now. However, there is no clear understanding of what comes next. If not "as before," then how? What should be the model of the future system? What values will be fundamental? What and who will provide guarantees? We see that emotions prevail now, boosted by social media, which in recent years have become the main source of information and a call to action. Emotions also prevail now because a new cycle of electoral elections in Europe and the United States is approaching, and voters are used to talking to them not in the language of facts but in the language of emotions. Russia is more monolithic here, because Putin has been in power for decades and does not care about domestic voters. He controls the media, social networks, and not only in Russia. Information wars are waged through anonymous accounts that are trusted by readers who are not interested in facts, reputation, or expertise. This is maximized by propaganda, which allocates huge amounts of money to manipulate and distort reality. Manipulated, distorted, unverified, anonymous and irresponsibly disseminated information can be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. We don't go to doctors on an emotional and impulsive basis. We carefully choose the best expert. A professional who has a real long-term reputation. Unfortunately, this is not the case with information. Therefore, the basis of our decisions should be a critical mind. Critical doubt. Common sense. Information hygiene. These times are a test of modern democracy. It is a test of people's maturity and values. It is a test of opinion leaders and politicians. How will this crisis end? Will autocracies and tyrannies win? What will the world look like in the future? Whether we want it or not, it depends on us, among other things. It depends on our actions and our choices. Right here and right now.

9:51 AM · Oct 22, 2023

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406.6K" 

Brasil se distancia de Declaração sobre democracia para amenizar a acusação comtra a Rússia - Janaina Figueiredo (O Globo)

 Por divergências sobre Rússia, Brasil não assinará declaração da Cúpula pela Democracia de Biden

Fontes do governo Lula confirmaram que a razão principal é o foco dado à guerra na Ucrânia e defesa que ONU é melhor local para debater tema

Por Janaína Figueiredo — Buenos Aires

O Globo, 30/03/2023 12h30

O governo brasileiro decidiu não aderir à declaração final da Cúpula pela Democracia, evento promovido pelo governo americano pelo terceiro ano seguido e que se encerra nesta quinta-feira. Segundo confirmaram fontes diplomáticas, o governo Lula não concorda com o foco dado à guerra na Ucrânia e com a "utilização" da cúpula para condenar a Rússia.

Para o Brasil, o âmbito para tratar do conflito são as Nações Unidas, tanto a Assembleia Geral como o Conselho de Segurança, nos quais o país ocupa atualmente uma vaga rotativa. Em carta enviada aos organizadores da cúpula em Washington, à qual O GLOBO teve acesso, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva afirma que "atravessamos um momento de ameaça de uma nova guerra fria e da inevitabilidade de um conflito armado. Todos sabem os custos que a primeira guerra teve em gastos com armas em detrimento de investimentos sociais. A bandeira da defesa da democracia não pode ser utilizada para erguer muros nem criar divisões. Defender a democracia é lutar pela paz. O diálogo político é o melhor caminho para a construção de consensos”.

Lula não gravou um vídeo pelo quadro de pneumonia, e, anteriormente, informaram que não poderia participar virtualmente, como a grande maioria dos chefes de Estado, porque a data coincidia com a viagem à China.

Já a declaração final da cúpula lamenta "as consequências humanitárias da agressão da Federação Russa contra a Ucrânia, incluindo os ataques contínuos contra infra-estrutura crítica em toda a Ucrânia com consequências devastadoras para os civis, e expressamos nossa grande preocupação com o alto número de vítimas civis, incluindo mulheres e crianças, o número de deslocados internos e refugiados que precisam de ajuda humanitária assistência e violações e abusos cometidos contra crianças. Estamos profundamente preocupados com o impacto adverso da guerra na segurança alimentar global, energia, segurança e proteção nuclear e o ambiente".

Num trecho destinado diretamente ao presidente russo, Vladimir Putin, a declaração diz apoiar "fortemente a responsabilização pelos crimes mais graves sob o direito internacional cometidos no território da Ucrânia através de investigações apropriadas, justas e independentes e processos penais em nível nacional ou internacional, e garantir justiça para todas as vítimas e prevenção de crimes futuros".

Outros países, como a Índia, sócio do Brasil e da Rússia nos Brics (grupo também integrado por China e África do Sul), vão assinar a declaração, mas fazendo uma reserva sobre os pontos em que se menciona a guerra na Ucrânia. Apesar das pressões de americanos e europeus, o Brasil, afirmaram fontes diplomáticas, mantém sua decisão e sua tradição histórica de sustentar suas posições no direito internacional e, neste caso, na Carta das Nações Unidas.

Na ONU, o Brasil condenou o ataque da Rússia à Ucrânia, que violou o princípio da integridade territorial. Mas, também na ONU, o governo brasileiro se opôs a medidas unilaterais, como sanções e envios de armas à Ucrânia, pois considera que este tipo de decisões deve ser adotada por votação no Conselho de Segurança, do qual Rússia faz parte. O Brasil também foi contra a expulsão da Rússia de organismos internacionais como a Organização Internacional do Trabalho (OIT), entre outros, promovida por americanos e europeus.

Esta semana, os aliados do governo de Volodymyr Zelensky se irritaram pela decisão do Brasil de apoiar uma proposta da Rússia no Conselho de Segurança, na qual era defendida a abertura de uma investigação sobre a explosão, em setembro do ano passado, nos oleodutos Nord Stream 1 e 2, no Mar Báltico, construídos para transportar gás russo para a Europa. A proposta foi apoiada apenas por Rússia, China e Brasil, e outros 12 países se abstiveram. Segundo fontes brasileiras, o texto apresentado pela Rússia pedida apenas a abertura de uma investigação no âmbito da ONU, algo que o Brasil não teria por que não respaldar. Outras investigações estão sendo realizadas por países de forma individual, mas o governo de Vladimir Putin pede uma apuração que possa ser considerada imparcial.

Em sua participação na cúpula, Zelensky assegurou que “deveríamos nos desfazer da ilusão de que nos associar-mos ao mal pode trazer algo de liberdade”.

— Os inimigos da democracia devem perder, e somente isso pode ser a verdadeira base da segurança da democracia — disse o presidente ucraniano.

Na mesma carta enviada ao governo americano, Lula diz que "as instituições democráticas precisam ser capazes de resistir a atentados violentos, a campanhas de desinformação e a discursos de ódio, que frequentemente se valem das redes sociais. Estamos diante de um desafio civilizatório, da mesma forma que a superação das guerras, da crise climática, da fome e da desigualdade no planeta”.

A Cúpula liderada por Biden gera controvérsias, entre outros motivos, por excluir países da região, entre eles Venezuela, Nicarágua e Cuba, e temas considerados importantes pelo Brasil, como a situação da Palestina. O presidente americano prometeu um fundo de US$ 690 milhões para promover a democracia no mundo, e afirmou que “a História mundial está diante de um ponto de inflexão, no qual as decisões que forem tomadas afetarão as décadas seguintes”.

Procurado no fim da manhã desta quinta-feira, o Itamaraty não respondeu oficialmente aos questionamentos do GLOBO até o momento.

https://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2023/03/por-divergencias-sobre-russia-brasil-nao-assinara-declaracao-da-cupula-pela-democracia-de-biden.ghtml

Joe Biden, State of the Union: déjà vu all over again - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose (CNN)

 

February 8, 2023       Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

'The State of our Union is ....'

Biden arrives back at the White House on Monday after spending the weekend at Camp David where he worked on his speech for the 2023 State of the Union.

If President Joe Biden were truly honest in his annual televised address, he might have said something like this: “The State of our Union is divided, politically, culturally and between the uber rich and everyone else; it’s worried about a possible recession; self-estranged over guns; and slipping deeper into confrontation with two nuclear superpowers. And it really doesn’t want to see another election contest between myself and Donald Trump.” But of course, the theatrics of the State of the Union address and his own political requirements mean that Biden -- between incessant standing ovations from his own side of the House chamber -- must proclaim America stronger than ever. The rituals that play out year after year, after the House Sergeant at Arms bellows “Mr Speaker, the President of the United States” beg the question of whether the huge attention given to these addresses is over the top. Presidents are actually only required by the Constitution to deliver to Congress information on the state of the union from “time to time.” Presidents for generations only delivered written updates to Congress, until Woodrow Wilson decided to reinstate the in-person address in 1913. Later in the television age, savvy commanders-in-chief understood the huge opportunity of a captive audience of millions of viewers at home. The State of the Union address has become a bit of a political cliche — but it still offers a rare chance for a President to speak to the nation in prime-time across all TV networks without interruption or questions from pesky journalists. With the splintering of media in the 21st century, the White House typically streams the speech online and swamps social media with soundbites. It remains a big event — though viewing figures will pale in comparison to the numbers of Americans tuning into the other annual winter ritual — the Super Bowl on Sunday. Given America's politically fractured condition, it'd be asking too much for the State of the Union address to unite the nation. Especially this year, for the first time in his presidency, Biden will be in a House chamber run by Republicans, following the party’s narrow win in the midterm elections last year. Pundits are framing this State of the Union as the unofficial kick off of Biden’s reelection campaign. He is expected to tout his quite impressive legislative record, send a message of US resolve toward Russia over the war in Ukraine and to China following last week’s spy balloon crisis, and to subtly make the point that if many Americans are still feeling uncertain and hurting economically, things would be far worse under the Republican Party. One reason why Presidents like the State of the Union: It's one moment in the year when they can bask in the ceremony of their office and are shown the respect that is fleeting in bitter modern day politics. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised his side will live up to the dignity of the occasion and avoid political stunts that could play into Democratic characterizations of the “Make America Great Again” crowd as unhinged extremists. He's also promised not to tear up his paper copy of Biden's speech -- as former Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi once did after one of Trump's addresses. That’s great, though this is the same McCarthy who in 2021 voted not to certify the president's election victory over false voter fraud claims, so he may not be one to talk about respecting America’s political institutions.  Biden will also have to confront a dubious distinction — as the first 80-year-old to deliver a State of the Union address — and so is under pressure to show vigor and coherence as he asks Americans to begin to think about handing him another term.    While much of the State of the Union hoopla seems hackneyed, it does serve an important, and unseen function. As draft after draft is passed between the White House and government departments, for weeks before the big night, an administration gets to assess what it has done and where it needs to go next. It’s a rare chance to regroup and tighten focus amid the rush of events, crises and political kerfuffles that can easily consume a presidency.