Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;
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terça-feira, 9 de abril de 2013
Coreia do Norte pede que estrangeiros deixem a Coreia do Sul (e o CSNU nao faz nada?)
Em condições mormais, um país como esse já teria sido objeto de sanções por parte do CSNU e possivelmente expulso da organização.
O que o CSNU está esperando para agir? Uma tragédia?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Pyongyang demande aux étrangers d'évacuer la Corée du Sud
Le Monde.fr avec Reuters | 09.04.2013 à 02h54
L'armée japonaise a été autorisée à détruire tout missile nord-coréen qui menacerait le territoire nippon.
La Corée du Nord a renouvelé mardi 9 avril la menace d'une guerre "thermo-nucléaire" sur la péninsule Coréenne et appelé les étrangers présents sur le territoire sud-coréen à considérer leur départ du pays. "Nous ne souhaitons aucun mal aux étrangers qui se trouvent en Corée du Sud si la guerre éclate", a déclaré un porte-parole du Comité coréen pour la paix dans la région Asie-Pacifique, relayé par l'agence de presse officielle KCNA.
Plus tôt dans la matinée, deux lanceurs de missiles Patriot ont été installés au ministère de la défense japonais au cœur de Tokyo, afin d'intercepter un éventuel missile nord-coréen, a-t-on appris auprès du ministère. D'après la presse japonaise, des missiles similaires vont être déployés sur deux autres sites aux alentours de la capitale nippone.
Des batteries d'intercepteurs seront aussi installées sur l'île d'Okinawa, dans le sud du Japon, a annoncé lundi le ministre de la défense, Itsunori Onodera. Lors d'une émission de télévision, il a précisé qu'Okinawa était "l'endroit le plus approprié pour répondre à toute urgence", ajoutant que des Patriot pourraient désormais être déployés sur cette île "de façon permanente".
Les forces d'autodéfense – nom de l'armée japonaise – ont été autorisées à détruire tout missile nord-coréen qui menacerait le territoire nippon, a indiqué lundi un porte-parole du ministère. Outre les batteries de Patriot, Tokyo a déployé des destroyers équipés du système d'interception Aegis en mer du Japon (appelée mer de l'Est par les Coréens), a précisé ce responsable.
La Corée du Nord a transporté en train, en début de semaine dernière, deux missiles Musudan et les a installés sur des véhicules équipés d'un dispositif de tir, selon Séoul, qui redoute que Pyongyang ne procède à un essai dans les jours à venir. Le Musudan aurait une portée théorique de 3 000 kilomètres, une capacité suffisante pour atteindre la Corée du Sud ou le Japon.
quarta-feira, 13 de fevereiro de 2013
A ONU enfraquecida e a conspiracao do Ocidente malvado... - Kishore Mahbubani
Mas, como muitos intelectuais asiáticos, Kishore Mahbubani acredita na teoria do complô ocidental contra os pobrezinhos asiáticos. Pode até haver algum fundamento histórico nessa história, em vista do colonialismo e do imperialismo desde a era dos descobrimentos, a era de "Vasco da Gama", como escreveu um historiador indiano. Mas, no more; não há nenhum fundamento hoje para essa teoria da conspiração ocidental contra a Ásia. Essa é uma história antiga, que ele desenvolveu em outros livros.
Vejamos agora a sua acusação atual: a de que a ONU é mantida fraca por uma conspiração (ou que seja "interesse") do Ocidente.
Trata-se, simplesmente, de uma mentira, e de uma cegueira.
Os EUA, e outros países ocidentais, foram consistentemente multilateralistas desde o início, com algumas condicionalidades. É evidente que os EUA nunca, jamais cogitariam de submeter suas principais políticas públicas e sobretudo suas estratégias e táticas de segurança nacional para a ONU ou qualquer esquema multilateral porventura existente. Nisso ele pode ter razão. Mas a culpa não é dos EUA apenas, mas sim de todas as grandes potências, sobretudo, e aqui há um grande SOBRETUDO, da União Soviética.
Se a ONU foi mantida fraca, durante a maior parte de sua história, isso é devido às grandes potências em seu conjunto mas principalmente devido à URSS e, desde 1972, à China, que substituiu Taiwan no CSNU. Esta é a principal razão, e o Ocidente é o menor culpado nessa história. Mahbubani não está apenas errado, ele acusa de má fé e isso é indesculpável para um intelectual.
Quanto à conclusão implícita, no sentido contrário, de que uma ONU forte seria melhor para o mundo, e para o desenvolvimento dos países atrasados, tampouco se deve atribuir muita consistência a essa "tese". A ONU é um dinossauro muito caro, e nunca fez nenhum país atrasado avançar no caminho do desenvolvimento, que não tenha sido pelos próprios esforços dos países em causa. Já estamos há seis décadas de assistência oficial ao desenvolvimento e poucos, se algum, países em desevolvimento avançaram em função de programas onusianos. A burocracia onusiana é como esses burocratas keynesianos nacionais, que acham que dinheiro resolve qualquer coisa...
Em todo caso, aceitando ou não minhas críticas, vocês podem ler agora esta matéria, parte de um livro desse intelectual asiático antiocidental.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Globalist Bookshelf
> Global Governance Why the United Nations Is Kept Weak |
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By Kishore Mahbubani | Saturday, February 09, 2013 |
Even during the Cold War, when Moscow and Washington disagreed on pretty much everything, both nations were united in one regard: they actively conspired to keep the UN weak. Unfortunately, writes Kishore Mahbubani in his new book, "The Great Convergence," this state of affairs has persisted long after the Cold War ended — to the great detriment of global development.
dirty little secret is that institutions of global governance are weak today by design, rather than by default. This has long been an open secret, as I know from having lived in New York City, the home of the United Nations, where I served for more than ten years.
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To the best of my knowledge, not one of these senior figures ever acknowledged that it has been a long-standing Western strategy, led primarily by Washington, to keep the UN weak.
Even during the Cold War, when Moscow and Washington disagreed on pretty much everything, both nations were united in one regard. They actively conspired to keep the UN weak.
The United States and the Soviet Union did so through a variety of means. They selected all too pliable secretaries-general, such as Kurt Waldheim. They bullied whoever was secretary-general at a given time into dismissing or sidelining competent or conscientious UN civil servants who had shown any backbone.
They squeezed UN budgets endlessly. And, of course, they planted CIA and KGB spies in all corners of the UN system. All this was well known to anyone who worked within the UN system.
As we move into the era of the great convergence, the world clearly needs stronger "global village" councils. The time has come for the West to begin a fundamental rethink of its long-held policy that it serves long-term Western interests to keep institutions of global governance weak.
Of course, Western strategy has been a bit more nuanced. While it has kept the UN system at large weak, the UN Security Council was kept relatively strong and effective. Why? Because the West has been able, by and large, to control and dominate the UN's most important body.
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This once-intelligent long-term strategy is no longer so intelligent, however. As the West progressively loses relative power within the international system, the inclination is to hold on to past power as much and as long as possible.
With only 12% of the global population and an inevitably declining share of economic and (increasingly) military power, the West's hardcore long-term geopolitical interests will quite naturally switch to delay the unavoidable.
It will move from trying to preserve Western "dominance" to trying to put in long-term safeguards to protect the West's "minority" position in a new global configuration of power.
This game can of course be played for a long time. However, the best way to protect minority rights is actually through strengthening the rule of law and strengthening the institutions that promote it.
This is precisely what most institutions of global governance are designed to do. The time has come for the West to work on strengthening, rather than weakening, these institutions. I hope that we will soon see a major debate in Western capitals on the rapidly diminishing wisdom of sticking with the old policies.
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Predictably, China reacted with a great deal of suspicion to this unsolicited Western advice. It was seen to be a clever, but transparent maneuver by the West to derail or slow down China's economic development.
A Chinese policymaker told me that China finally accepted the policy advice when it was given to them by an independent UN agency, the UNDP. No wonder then that, when the Chinese government finally decided to organize a global seminar to address this issue, its partner of choice was the UNDP.
Trust is an essential commodity as we go about restructuring the global system to handle new global challenges. We should try to retain as much as possible all the trust that the UN has accumulated in our world.
One very direct policy consequence of all this is that the time has come for the United States to terminate its zero-budget policies and to invest in the UN constructively.
If it were to do so, the impact on the American economy and the U.S. federal budget would be truly inconsequential.
Just consider that the budget of the New York City Fire Department, which serves one city, was $1.73 billion in 2011. In contrast, the budget for the UN's core functions — the Secretariat operations in New York, Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and five Regional Commissions, which serve the whole world — is $1.74 billion a year.
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But adamantly clinging to zero-budget growth policies for the entire UN is not the answer.
Editor's note: This essay is adapted from The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World (PublicAffairs) by Kishore Mahbubani. Published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 2013 by Kishore Mahbubani.
segunda-feira, 4 de junho de 2012
Siria: mais espaco para o "dialogo"
O governo daquele país já encontrou os seus representantes para o diálogo:
Europe, the United States and perhaps even Kofi Annan are slowly realizing that there will be no compromise with Syrian President Bashar Assad, because there can be no compromise with Assad. Now that more than 10,000 people have died and tens of thousands have been tortured, the phase in which protesters were still staging peaceful demonstrations, and in which negotiations, transitional governments and compromises were possible is irrevocably over.
When the regime was still able to negotiate its own exit, it didn't want to. Now it no longer has that option, because any sign of weakness would lead to its overthrow.
This realization hasn't been triggered by the fact that the regime is massacring civilians to save itself. Similar bloodbaths have already taken place in the past. In April of last year, more than 60 people disappeared without a trace in Homs, after government troops had mowed down a group of peaceful protesters. In January, several families in a southeastern Homs neighborhood were massacred in a way that resembled the Houla killings. And when the Bab Amr neighborhood was captured by regime troops several weeks later, after having been almost destroyed by artillery fire, witnesses said that there were mass executions of those who hadn't fled.
'The Evidence is Clear'
What was different this time was that on Saturday morning, only hours after the killing frenzy, a team of UN observers managed to reach Houla, where they saw and counted the bodies, heard what the survivors had to say and saw the tracks the tanks had made. "The evidence is clear -- it is not murky," said German UN Ambassador Peter Wittig. "There is a clear government footprint in those killings." Whereas earlier massacres were only documented in reports by the Syrian opposition and video recordings that could not be corroborated, this was a different situation.
By failing, the UN mission appears finally to be having an impact. The roughly 300 unarmed observers cannot possibly monitor a nonexistent cease-fire, during which more than 2,000 people had been killed by the end of last week. The UN observers cannot prevent what is happening, but they can prevent it from being covered up. This isn't much, and for angry Syrians who burned images of Annan, it's far too little. "We called the observers during the massacre," a man from Houla who calls himself Abu Emad was quoted as saying, "but they refused to come and stop the murders. Damn then, and damn the entire mission!"
The observers eventually arrived. They were too late, but they came.
According to the overwhelmingly consistent statements of survivors and investigations by the UN observers, as well as the independent organization Human Rights Watch, people from several Houla neighborhoods demonstrated peacefully for the overthrow of the government around noon on May 25, after Friday prayers. Suddenly they came under fire, first from tanks and then from heavy artillery guns. Other witnesses said that soldiers had fired directly at demonstrators first.
After that, armed rebels with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) set out to attack the Assad troops' bases outside Houla. It is unclear whether they retreated when they came under fire from the tanks or were hiding in the difficult terrain, but only a few men remained in the Taldou neighborhood when the heavy shelling stopped in the afternoon and the armed men arrived.
Killers Went From House to House
The men, some in civilian clothing and others dressed in army uniforms, went from house to house, reported survivors like 11-year-old Ali, who told CBS News: "They came to our house at night. First they took out my father and then my oldest brother. My mother shouted: Why are you doing this? Then they shot both of them, and after that my mother. Then one of the men came in with a flashlight and saw my sister Rasha. He shot her in the head." Ali hid with his two little brothers. The man saw them and shot the brothers, but he missed Ali.
Other survivors who hid or played dead consistently gave the same accounts: The men combed through house after house and room after room, killing everyone, some with knives and some with guns. The massacre continued until the morning hours. When the UN observers arrived, they found nothing but corpses in the villages controlled by regime forces. The survivors had fled to neighborhoods held by the FSA, where they placed the bodies they had recovered on mats in the mosques before filming and burying them.
The regime in Damascus could not deny that the massacre had taken place. But Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi, parroting the government's standard position, promptly blamed the killings on "armed terrorists" and "Islamists." The Russian government, which had blocked every Security Council resolution condemning Syria, launched into a bizarre attempt to apportion the blame. The regime was apparently responsible for the assault by tanks and mortars, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. But the brutish murders, said Alexey Puchkov, chairman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, "were definitely committed by the other side."
Igor Pankin, Russia's deputy UN ambassador, agreed: "We cannot imagine that it is in the Syrian regime's interest to sabotage Special Envoy Kofi Annan's visit to Damascus." And he is right in one respect. In PR terms, a massacre of children cannot be helpful to the Assad regime. But he was wrong in another sense, inadvertently putting his finger on Russia's growing frustration with its ally: Syria's leadership is no longer taking decisions that would make sense for a government hoping to reach a political solution to the crisis.
Violence the Only Option For Keeping Power
By gradually concentrating power in the hands of the Alawite minority, to which the Assad clan belongs, the regime is fomenting a religious war against the Sunni majority, the very conflict it claims it wants to prevent. Now Assad has backed himself into a corner from which he believes there is only way out: victory. This is why the latest proposal from Berlin and Washington to attempt the "Yemeni solution," which would be to depose Assad but keep the regime in power, will not work. The regime is relying solely on violence, accompanied by an outrageous propaganda narrative that blames foreign terrorists and al-Qaida for the uprising.
This conspiratorial obsession is nothing new. Starting in 2003, the intelligence services began secretly organizing the transfer of jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Kuwait across the Syrian border into Iraq, to deter the Americans from seeking regime change in Damascus as well. At the same time, the regime painted itself as a bulwark in the fight against al-Qaida. Foreigners who were later arrested reported how they had been kept in Syrian intelligence camps in Homs while waiting to be transferred into Iraq.
The attacks on several Scandinavian embassies in Damascus after the Danish cartoon controversy in early 2006 were blamed on an Islamist mob, but as it turned out, the regime had planted Islamists in the crowd. As a precaution, it also removed the guards from in front of a general's house next to the Norwegian Embassy. Although there was no evidence that the regime was behind the major bombing attacks in Damascus, Aleppo and Deir al-Zor in recent months, they had several strange elements in common: The bombers had immense quantities of explosives, which they easily managed to get through all government checkpoints, and they detonated most of their bombs in front of empty buildings. When the regime published its death tolls after the first attack on Dec. 23, they included the names of men who had already died elsewhere. During the ostentatious burial service at the Umayyad Mosque, signs attached to many of the coffins read "anonymous martyr." On May 9, just before a bomb exploded near the convoy of UN observer mission chief Robert Mood, the vehicles were detained at a military checkpoint just long enough so that they would be nearby at the time of detonation.
Conspiratorial violence is part of the Syrian regime's approach to survival, a paranoid trait that ties in with its history. When the current president's father Hafez Assad, a retired general in the Syrian air force, staged a coldly brilliant coup in November 1970, he brought his family, his clan and, ultimately, the Alawite minority into power after centuries of oppression. From then on, the Alawites defended their position at all costs, despite their relatively small share of the overall population.
Bashar Assad tried to preserve the illusion of a country that supposedly promotes reforms. Several months ago, he held a referendum to end decades of Baath Party control, and a few weeks ago he held bogus parliamentary elections. With the Houla massacre, however, all pretense at reform has evaporated again.
Murderous 'Ghosts'
What happened in Houla followed the pattern of earlier attacks like the one in Homs. First, the target is bombarded with tanks and artillery from a great distance. Then the regular troops move in and drive out or shoot the last remaining rebels. Finally, the regime sends in its helpers, the Shabiha ("ghosts"), over which it has less and less control.
What were once gangs of thugs and smugglers from the hills around Latakia, the home turf of the Assad clan, have turned into an army of irregular troops numbering in the thousands. The gangs are backed by the beneficiaries of the regime, those who profit the most from Syria's façade of a market economy, and who now have the most to lose. It's a Faustian bargain. As long as they are loyal to Assad, they are permitted to murder, loot and rape, as was the case in Houla, where the Shabiha came from neighboring villages to the south.
The Shabiha are criminals and day laborers, mostly Alawites, but also Kurds with the PKK terrorist group, members of Sunni clans from Aleppo loyal to the regime, and some Christians. The Shabiha are the shadow force of a regime that no longer trusts its own army, but instead has created a monster that is taking on a life of its own, undermining the Syrian government long before it suffers a military defeat.
Months ago, the author and dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh, who is in hiding in Damascus, wrote: "The current heads of the security services may very well reform themselves into a mafia-type organization after the collapse of the regime and continue to practice the violence, theft and discrimination at which they are so adept." Syria could eventually be controlled by marauding gangs, driven by greed and the fear of reprisal, which becomes more justified with each new wave of killings.
terça-feira, 8 de maio de 2012
Quantas pessoas trabalham na ONU: O DOBRO...
Pois eu acho que é o dobro, o dobro de todos os números nos quais se possa pensar.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
segunda-feira, 19 de março de 2012
O Sexto Membro Permanente: o Brasil e a criação da ONU - livro de Eugenio Vargas Garcia
O sexto membro permanente: o Brasil e a Criação da ONU
de Eugênio Vargas Garcia
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Apresentação:
Na aurora da modernidade, a formação dos Estados nacionais foi a solução que a Europa encontrou para pôr fim a guerras religiosas que já duravam mais de cem anos. O maior teórico dessa transição foi Hobbes: para terminar com a guerra de todos contra todos era necessário instituir um poder de novo tipo, o Leviatã. Em vez de tentar impor algum princípio religioso ou moral, ele deveria situar-se acima das partes em litígio e legitimar-se apenas pela capacidade de garantir a paz, estabelecendo regras mínimas de convivência.
César Benjamin
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Trecho do Prefácio:
Gelson Fonseca Júnior
quinta-feira, 1 de março de 2012
Tropecando no proprio discurso: sobre a Siria, claro...
La valse-hésitation du Brésil sur la Syrie d’Al-Assad
sexta-feira, 17 de fevereiro de 2012
RAP: Esgotar todos os recursos verbais antes que se consiga atingir um numero razoavel de mortos...
Segurança coletiva
Maria Luiza Viotti |
O Globo - 16/02/2012 |
A defesa do diálogo e da solução pacífica de controvérsias é uma das tradições - no discurso e na prática - da política externa brasileira. Para o Brasil, o uso da força pela comunidade internacional deve ser sempre o último recurso, depois de esgotadas todas as possibilidades da diplomacia e de uma solução negociada. Ações militares implicam elevados custos em vidas humanas, além de outras graves consequências, políticas e econômicas.
Temos insistido em que a ONU priorize ações preventivas e esforços de mediação. Aplaudimos a iniciativa do secretário-geral Ban Ki-moon de estabelecer 2012 como o ano da prevenção.
Como afirmou a presidente Dilma Rousseff em seu discurso na abertura da Assembleia Geral, "o mundo sofre, hoje, as dolorosas consequências de intervenções que agravaram os conflitos, possibilitando a infiltração do terrorismo onde ele não existia, inaugurando novos ciclos de violência, multiplicando os números de vítimas civis. Muito se fala sobre a responsabilidade de proteger, pouco se fala sobre a responsabilidade ao proteger. São conceitos que precisam amadurecer juntos".
O conceito da "responsabilidade de proteger" acaba de completar dez anos desde sua primeira formulação. Foi desenvolvido com o propósito legítimo de evitar que populações sejam vítimas de genocídio, limpeza étnica, crimes de guerra e contra a humanidade.
A recente intervenção armada na Líbia, com a justificativa de proteção de civis, demonstrou a necessidade de aperfeiçoá-lo. Causaram preocupação a extensão da força empregada, a incapacidade de se combinar e calibrar a ação militar com a diplomacia, a interpretação questionável do mandato conferido pelo Conselho de Segurança e a falta de acompanhamento pelo próprio Conselho das ações empreendidas em nome de todos os membros da ONU. Invocou-se a "responsabilidade de proteger", mas faltou "responsabilidade ao proteger".
O Brasil apresentou, em novembro, ao Conselho de Segurança, o conceito de "responsabilidade ao proteger" com os seguintes elementos: a valorização da prevenção e dos meios pacíficos de solução de controvérsias; a excepcionalidade do emprego de meios coercitivos, especialmente o uso da força; a obrigação de que a ação militar não cause danos maiores do que aqueles que tenciona evitar; a observância rigorosa dos mandatos; a importância da proporcionalidade e de limites para o emprego da força, nas circunstâncias excepcionais em que for necessário contemplar o seu uso; e a necessidade de monitoramento e avaliação da implementação das resoluções.
A proposta brasileira tem recebido apoio de muitos países, ONGs e acadêmicos. A missão do Brasil junto à ONU já realizou um amplo debate com embaixadores de 25 países de todas as regiões do mundo e estudiosos do tema. A percepção compartilhada pela grande maioria foi a de que a iniciativa brasileira deu início a uma discussão que se tornou crucial após o episódio da Líbia. Em seminário recente organizado pela Stanley Foundation, com as principais autoridades mundiais no assunto, a iniciativa brasileira foi um dos elementos centrais dos debates, tendo sido bem acolhida e objeto de menção muito positiva por parte do secretário-geral da ONU.
Encorajado pela receptividade ao conceito da "responsabilidade ao proteger", o Brasil deverá organizar um debate na ONU a ser presidido pelo ministro Antonio de Aguiar Patriota.
O apelo político à prevenção, à moderação e à ação criteriosa no exercício da segurança coletiva, por meio da "responsabilidade ao proteger", segue a tradição da diplomacia brasileira. Temos credibilidade para promover esse debate na ONU porque nosso discurso em favor da paz é amparado por atuação que vai além da retórica e valoriza, na prática, a diplomacia e o diálogo. Pretendemos, de forma franca e construtiva, levar adiante esse debate indispensável, com o objetivo de contribuir para o aperfeiçoamento da ação da ONU e para sua maior eficácia na promoção da paz e da segurança internacionais.
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sábado, 28 de janeiro de 2012
Siria: nossos aliados nos Brics...
Posted: 28 Jan 2012 08:52 AM PST
O Conselho de Segurança da ONU reuniu-se na sexta-feira para discutir uma proposta de resolução contra o governo da Síria, acusado de reprimir violentamente manifestações pelo país. Com apoio de líderes da Liga Árabe, diplomatas da Grã-Bretanha, França e Alemanha redigiram uma proposta de resolução que pede que o presidente sírio, Bashar al-Assad, deixe o poder.
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Outra não deve ser a posição da China...
Maravilha das maravilhas...
Vamos encontrar explicações aceitáveis para nossa abstenção, por certo...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida