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.

Mostrando postagens com marcador ecologistas. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador ecologistas. Mostrar todas as postagens

domingo, 10 de novembro de 2013

Um grupo de assholes, na pratica: os neomalthusianos anti-OGMs

Assholes, como certos ecologistas idiotas, inimigos, por princípio (não por pesquisa científica, ou reflexões mais inteligentes) das sementes geneticamente modificadas, ou OMG-GMO, existem em todos os países, ou até no plano internacional, multinacional, transnacional, multilateral, etc.
São uma dessas pragas que de vez em quando afetam a Humanidade (como certas seitas lucrativas pretensamente religiosas) e se disseminam erraticamente, de acordo com uma das leis fundamentais da estupidez humana, que pode afetar inclusive alguns Prêmio Nobel, como já tinha sido detectado anos atrás pelo historiador medievista italiano Carlo Maria Cipolla. 
O Greenpeace, por exemplo, é uma organização profundamente asshole, com dezenas, centenas, milhares de assholes que ficam lutando contra os OGMs, junto com esses cretinos fundamentais, e bandidos consumados, do MST.
Enfim, abaixo uma crítica recente publicada nessa revista inteligente que se chama The New Yorker contra um filme asshole que eu evidentemente nunca vou ver. 
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

“OMG GMO” SMDH


I recently watched “OMG GMO,” Jeremy Seifert’s aggressively uninformed “documentary” about the corporate duplicity and governmental callousness that he says drives the production of genetically engineered crops—which are, in his view, such barely concealed poisons that he actually dressed his children in full hazmat gear before letting them enter a field of genetically modified corn. Seifert explained his research process in an interview with Nathanael Johnson of Grist: “I didn’t really dig too deep into the scientific aspect.”
Fair enough. Normally, I would ignore anyone who would say that while publicizing his movie. But Seifert has been abetted by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the patron saint of internally inconsistent scientific assertions, and Seifert’s message of fear and illiteracy has now been placed before millions of television viewers.
Seifert asserts that the scientific verdict is still out on the safety of G.M. foods—which I guess it is, unless you consult actual scientists. He fails to do that. Instead, he claims that the World Health Organization is one of many groups that question the safety of genetically engineered products. However, the W.H.O. has been consistent in its position on G.M.O.s: “No effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of G.M. foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.” Britain’s Royal Society of Medicine was even more declarative: “Foods derived from G.M. crops have been consumed by hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than fifteen years with no reported ill effects (or legal cases related to human health) despite many of the consumers coming from that most litigious of countries the U.S.A.” In addition to the W.H.O. and Royal Society, scientific organizations from around the world, including the European Commission and, in the United States, the National Academy of Sciences, have strongly endorsed the safety of G.M. foods. I could cite quotes from a dozen other countries. But let’s leave the overkill to Mr. Seifert.
What else can you call it when a man sends his children into a field of genetically modified corn wearing gas masks? The director has few qualms about using his kids to make a point: early in the film, we watch him at a kitchen table with his boys, who are happily eating some Breyers ice cream. Seifert asks if they like it. They reply in the affirmative. “Even if it’s genetically modified, do you still like it?” he went on. His sons, neither of whom was older than ten, looked at him like he was a loon. Then he delivered the coup de grâce. “But, years and years from now, it might hurt you.” Nobody can really argue with that assertion. As a matter of fact, next Tuesday every person who has ever consumed a genetically modified product might drop dead. I can’t say it won’t happen, because you can’t prove what doesn’t exist. You can only look at the data, something that Seifert refuses to do.
As Ferris Jabr pointed out in extremely thoughtful review in Scientific American, Seifert’s intellectual laziness is profound. “Instead of using his children like marionettes for ludicrous theatrics, Seifert could have, I don’t know, done some actual research,” Jabr wrote. If he had, Seifert would have found that the toxin Bt, which is engineered into genetically modified corn, kills certain pests but poses no harm to people—which is why organic farmers have been spraying insecticide containing the Bt bacterium on their crops for years. Seifert also missed that Bt corn is actually sprayed less than conventional corn, and that the pesticide used, glyphosate, is hundreds of times less toxic than atrazine, the chemical it largely replaces. There have been more than six hundred studies published that address the relative risk of genetically engineered products; he might have read a few. Instead, Seifert relies heavily on research published, last year, by Gilles-Eric Séralini, which has been widely denounced throughout the world for its lack of statistical rigor, poor study design, and small number of controls.
Seifert even manages to mangle the points worth stressing. He says that weeds have become resistant to glyphosate; that is, to some degree, true. It is also true of every other pesticide or drug ever used. It is explained by a process called evolution. People with H.I.V. or tuberculosis, for example, take cocktails of medications; if they took only a single drug, the bugs would become resistant to it soon enough. That doesn’t mean there is nothing to be done about resistance or pests—or that it isn’t a problem. But better farming practices, like rotating crops and using cover crops, would help. So would lessening the practice of monoculture—planting a single crop, such as ten thousand acres of corn, and nothing else—which poses an equal danger to conventional and engineered products.
By themselves, genetically engineered crops will not end hunger or improve health or bolster the economies of struggling countries. They won’t save the sight of millions or fortify their bones. But they will certainly help. First, though, we have to adopt reality as our principal narrative. For people like Jeremy Seifert, that may be too much to ask. 

terça-feira, 8 de outubro de 2013

Neomalthusianos ecologicos podem acabar com o reinado dos companheiros- Jorge Hori

O título é meu, mas o resto é desse excelente analista político, que me foi apresentado por meu amigo Mauricio David.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Ruptura definitiva
Blog do Jorge Hori, 7/10/2013
O que mais está assustando os petistas não foi apenas a coligação de Marina Silva com Eduardo Campos, mas o seu discurso. Ressentida, revoltada e indignada apesar da fala leve e mansa do seu discurso.
O grande golpe perpetrado por Lula e pelo PT, percebendo as falhas de Marina Silva e seus adeptos ou simpatizantes na coleta das assinaturas foi valer-se da lei para tirá-la do jogo.
Deixando de ser candidata, a maioria dos seus quase 20 milhões de eleitores votaria preferencialmente em Dilma e uma grande parte não votaria em Aécio Neves ou em qualquer outro candidato do PSDB. 
Petista de carteirinha não vota em tucano de jeito algum. E uma grande parte dos eleitores marinistas eram oriundos do PT. 
Sem Marina Silva na disputa voltariam a votar no PT, propiciando a Dilma uma vitória no primeiro turno. Se, porventura, a eleição fosse para o segundo turno, Eduardo Campos também voltaria à aliança com o PT, deixando Aécio Neves isolado.
De qualquer forma sem Marina Silva na disputa, a reeleição de Dilma estaria assegurada.

Mas o golpe petista, acabou resultando num "tiro no pé".

Marina Silva levou ao "pé da letra" a famosa frase que teria sido proferida por Getúlio Vargas que já aqui usamos: "para os amigos tudo, para os inimigos o rigor da lei".

Percebeu a sua ingenuidade no processo de coleta das assinaturas, porque não aceitou os alertas de que os cartórios estavam tendo atividades suspeitas. Preferiu acreditar na lisura e na seriedade dos Cartórios Eleitorais, da mesma forma que foram defendidos por Carmem Lúcia.

Mas ao perceber a efetividade do golpe, aceitou-o como uma guerra não declarada e manifestou-a publicamente.

O seu discurso é de ruptura definitiva com o PT. Entendeu que foi tratada como inimiga e como inimiga agora que destruir o contendor. Sentiu-se traida na confiança.

Engajou-se no movimento "chega de PT", aliando-se a Eduardo Campos e, indiretamente, com Aécio Neves.

Quer acabar com a hegemonia do PT e o chavismo.

O seu discurso sublminar aos marineiros é "não votem mais no PT": ele é nosso inimigo.

Ou para não ser tão radical: "ele nos trata como inimigos". 

É só ver as manifestações colocadas na rede social. Que não tem a diplomacia ou educação de Marina.

Apesar disso muitos continuarão votando no PT, por tradição e sedução. 

E  Marina aliando-se a Eduardo Campos oferece uma alternativa a quem não quer votar em Aécio Neves, um tucano.

Sem os votos de grande parte dos marineiros, principalmente os jovens Dilma terá grande dificuldade de vencer no primeiro turno, embora possa ter mais votos que cada um dos demais individualmente.

Indo para o segundo turno terá que enfrentar a aliança dos "chega de PT", que terá maior possibilidade de vitória.

O golpe do PT tornou uma vitória de Dilma que parecia certa, com o afastamento de Marina Silva do jogo, em mais problemática.

Terá que cuidar muito da sua reação e dos lances seguintes, para arrumar os estragos e não piorar a situação.
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A strategic response

The Brazilian electoral-political framework is not easy to be understood by foreigners.

The Workers' Party (PT) has been in power since 2003, with the election of a trade unionist, Lula, that even outside the formal power since January 2011, is still the main leader of the PT and governs its actions.

The PT was formed out of opposition to the military dictatorship, along with the then MDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement). From it, by splitting, arose PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party).

Lula, after two terms, successfully led the election of Dilma Rousseff, and also repeated the feat managing to elect an almost electorally unknown as Mayor of the City of São Paulo, and intends to repeat the miracle in the next election for Governor of the State of São Paulo.
There’s a gossip that he may have said “If I wish I can make even a pole elect”…

His main goal now is to have Rousseff reelected, to maintain political hegemony for another 4 years, after which he, personally survive and if there is no other strong candidate of the PT, will run for election. In Brazil there is possibility of reelection for another term and there is no impediment for a former president to run again.

But over and above this, his goal under personal idiosyncrasy is to avoid that the PSDB, former ally against the military dictatorship, return to power.

There are no major programmatic differences between the two parties, but in the way to participate in the elections and how to conduct government.
There is a deep hatred of the historical “petistas”, against the former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to have delayed the conquest of power by the PT. They still think that FHC betrayed them and took the place that should be of Lula in 1996, when he was first elected, defeating Lula.
Even having defeated the PSDB candidate in 2002, the deadly hatred continues, despite this party being always divided and not having a strong candidate to face the current President.

DilmaRousseffwas living in a tranquil perspective of re-election, based on the votes of the poor that PT benefits from social programs, but two facts undermined her position: the resurgence of inflation, which the people call the “carestia” (sort of "famine" - rising of prices of what one has to buy) and then large demonstrations in the streets of major cities, initiated by angry young people, but that mobilized the urban middle class.

The poorest were only as the spectators, but all have an obligation to vote. This is the trump card of the PT, which has greater ability to affect the hearts and minds of the poorestvoters.

But in the midst of these demonstrations the people found a third figure, characterized by honesty and distune with the set of Brazilian politicians, almost all "tail stuck" and defenders of the status quo and their privileges:
Marina Silva, a former rubber tapper, advocate of environmental causes and Evangelical, a PT member from its beginning, believing in the innovative and ethical propositions of the party. When it abandonedits ethical proposals, she left the party and in the last elections in 2010, reached 20 million votes.

By becoming an alternative to the presidential election she was seen as a PT enemy, and Lula acted to derail her candidacy.
Taking advantage of amateurism in mounting her party, the “Rede” (Network), Lula maneuvered so that the Regional Electoral Registrars retain the confirmation of registration forms in the party, and got the Electoral Court reject, on grounds of legal bureaucracy, the record of her new party.

She was left with two basic options: join another party to keep her candidacy for president, in this case preferably the PPS (Popular Socialist Party), former Brazilian Communist Party, still leftist, but allied to the opposition to the Government. Or quitting the application while maintaining a programmatic coherence and continue the struggle to legalize her party, became clandestine.

That was the main hope of the PT, taking her out of the electoral race, so as not to disturb the re-election of Rousseff.

But surprisingly, she adopted a third way, more threatening to Dilma: she  teamed up with one of the alternative candidates against re-election of Rousseff, Eduardo Campos, Governor of the State of Pernambuco and president of his party, the PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party).

Until recently a member of the governing coalition, the PSB dissented with PT and aims to be an alternative to the dichotomy PT x PSDB.

Marina Silva entirely shuffled the framework of electoral competition, and was a strategic move to counterattack the PT moves to derail her candidacy.
No longer will be presidential candidate, but strengthens an alternative candidate.
She did exactly what the PT did not want and did not desire.
Treated as "enemy" by PT she hit back.

But the game continues and there is still exactly one year to the elections.


Anyway, the positions on the chess board changed and Rousseff now has two strong opponents, Campos, PSD, and AécioNeves, PSDB, that will play combined, but in different fronts, with a common goal: wear out Roussef’s popularity.