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;
Meu Twitter: https://twitter.com/PauloAlmeida53
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks
domingo, 12 de maio de 2013
Dia das maes: tres vivas para a adocao (Washington Post)
segunda-feira, 2 de agosto de 2010
O aquecimento global existe, ao que parece -- Editorial do WP
Resta saber o que pretendem fazer os partidários da tese: todo esforço de contenção será rigorosamente inútil, ao que parece. Antes de se inverterem as tendências, talvez tenhamos, naturalmente, algum desaquecimento global.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
The truth about global warming
Editorial - Washington Post
Monday, August 2, 2010
IN A DEPRESSING case of irony by juxtaposition, the death of climate change legislation in the Senate has been followed by the appearance of two government reports in the past week that underscore the overwhelming scientific case for global warming -- and go out of the way to repudiate skeptics.
First came a report on global climate from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which confirmed that the 2000s were by far the warmest decade in the instrumental record -- as were, in their turns, the 1980s and the 1990s. Unlike year-to-year fluctuations, these 10-year shifts are statistically significant. Further, the report notes that it derived its conclusions from an array of data sources -- not just the land-surface readings that doubters challenge -- from ocean heat uptake to melting land ice to sea level rise.
"If the land surface records were systematically flawed and the globe had not really warmed, then it would be almost impossible to explain the concurrent changes in this wide range of indicators produced by many independent groups," the report said. "The warming of the climate system is unequivocal." The gases most likely responsible for that warming, such as carbon dioxide, continue to accumulate.
Second was a strongly worded response from the Environmental Protection Agency to petitions that it revoke its finding that "climate change is real, is occurring due to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities and threatens human health and environment." As with much climate-change skepticism, the petitions were based "on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy," EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said. Among other things, the agency reviewed every document from the "Climategate" e-mail hack at a respected British climate research unit. The EPA found what four other independent studies did: that the e-mails contained some "candid" language but nothing that seriously discredits the scientific consensus on global warming.
Perhaps it is still too much to hope that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II will call off his misguided investigation of climate scientist Michael Mann, which seems to be based on the e-mail affair. Many climate-change skeptics will simply dismiss these reports as more evidence of a sprawling conspiracy instead of what they really are: yet more affirmation of the risks humanity runs if it continues to pump carbon into the atmosphere.
terça-feira, 20 de julho de 2010
Top Secret America - Washington Post
A Secret America: a Washington Post Investigation
Watch the Intro
Read the Stories
See the Map
Explore Connections
Find Companies
Search the Data
"Top Secret America" is a project nearly two years in the making that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Read More
More than a dozen Washington Post journalists spent two years developing Top Secret America
See the details
TSA INDEX:
Part 1: July 19, 2010
* A hidden world, growing beyond control
Part 2: July 20,2010
* National Security Inc.
Latest Headlines
Types of top-secret work
Methodology and credits
A note on this project
Frontline video
segunda-feira, 19 de julho de 2010
Estados Unidos: a quarta guerra mundial (contra o terrorismo)
News Alert: THE WASHINGTON POST LAUNCHES 'TOP SECRET AMERICA'
05:41 AM EDT Monday, July 19, 2010
--------------------
The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies duplicate work.
Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin spent two years on their investigation, and the resulting series begins this morning at washingtonpost.com/topsecretamerica.
Visit the site for an innovative online reading experience, accompanied by a searchable database of government organizations and corporate contractors that do top-secret work; details on what that work entails; and the cities and states where that work is done.
For more information, visit washingtonpost.com:
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/QJTXP3/E5APH/1OLNOJ/0X7XP9/9QUWL/4O/t
quarta-feira, 21 de abril de 2010
2054) Iran e seguranca nuclear: ofensiva diplomatica contra as sancoes
Iran seeks to persuade Security Council not to back tough nuclear sanctions
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
TEHRAN -- Facing increasing momentum behind a U.S.-backed bid for new sanctions against it, Iran is launching a broad diplomatic offensive aimed at persuading as many U.N. Security Council members as possible to oppose tougher punishment for its nuclear program.
Iran wants to focus on reviving stalled talks about a nuclear fuel swap to build trust on all sides, according to politicians and diplomats in Tehran. But leaders of Western nations say that unless Iran alters its conditions for the deal, they will refuse to discuss it again. Under the arrangement, aimed at breaking an impasse over Iran's uranium-enrichment efforts, Tehran would exchange the bulk of its low-enriched uranium for more highly enriched fuel for a research reactor that produces medical isotopes.
As Iranian diplomats fly around the world to discuss the swap, they are lobbying some of the Security Council's rotating members to vote against a fourth round of sanctions proposed by the United States, officials said.
The Obama administration is seeking unanimous support for further Security Council sanctions against Iran. Three previous rounds of sanctions were accepted by all members, except in 2008, when Indonesia abstained. This time, Iran is actively working to get more Security Council members to oppose the U.S. initiative.
"In the coming 10 days, the Islamic republic's delegations will travel to the capitals of Russia, China, Lebanon and Uganda to pursue talks," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said. "Other countries will be visited in the near future." He said that "nuclear issues" will be on the agenda.
ad_icon
Iran also plans to try to rally support during an international conference to review the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In Tehran's view, the gathering, scheduled for May in New York, is shaping up as a confrontation between nuclear powers and developing nations.
Iran's official stance is that the U.N. sanctions are not effective. But unofficially, any vote against a new sanctions resolution would be welcomed as a great diplomatic victory.
"The groups we are sending out will be focusing on the correct implementation of the NPT, the disarmament trend and fuel-swap issues," said Kazem Jalali, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee. "Naturally, our explanations during the trips will have a positive effect against the efforts by the United States in trying to impose new sanctions."
To start its diplomatic offensive, Iran held a nuclear disarmament conference last weekend that several Security Council members attended. The meeting, with its motto of "nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none," focused on what Iran and other developing nations call "double standards" and "discriminatory elements" in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Participants in the Tehran conference shared complaints that world powers are using proliferation fears as a reason to prevent developing nations from establishing independent nuclear energy programs.
Iran's diplomatic effort seems especially aimed at developing nations such as Brazil, Nigeria and Turkey, which hold rotating seats on the 15-member Security Council. Iran is also betting that council members Lebanon -- which has a government that includes members of Iran-backed Hezbollah -- and Uganda might vote against new sanctions or abstain.
As a part of the campaign, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will begin a two-day state visit Friday to Uganda, where he is expected to promise help in building an oil refinery.
Brazil and Turkey already have said they are wary of imposing additional punishment on Tehran. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, visiting Iran on Tuesday, announced that his country is ready to mediate on the uranium swap proposal and other nuclear issues.
The U.N.-backed arrangement, proposed in October, was the subject of promising initial negotiations. But it was soon shelved after Iran repeatedly changed its conditions, saying the exchange should take place on Iranian soil and demanding more Western security guarantees.
With Western nations insisting that the swap occur outside Iran, Turkey offered last year to act as a neutral location for the exchange, but Tehran was not interested, diplomats said.
Asked Tuesday about the proposal, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters, "The venue of any fuel swap will be in Iran."
Special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie contributed to this report.