A Grande Mentira na Alemanha de 1918 e nos EUA de 2020 - Jochen Bittner

Minhas considerações iniciais a um artigo importante. 

Trump — que é um idiota completo e não tem a menor ideia de que está construindo uma estratégia política, pois só quer manter seu eleitorado para tentar novamente em 2024 —, pode estar repetindo, sem ter consciência disso, o famoso mito dos alemães de direita e conservadores em 1918: a mentira da traição pelas costas, por parte de socialistas e do grande capital judeu. Isso alimentou o caminho da vitória dos nazistas em 1932. Trump quer manter o mito e a mentira de que as eleições foram fraudadas em seu desfavor em 2020: 88% dos seus eleitores acreditam que foram roubados. O Grande Mentecapto continua destruindo a democracia americana.

No Brasil, temos um outro Grande Mentecapto que continua repetindo que as eleições foram fraudadas em 2018, as mesmas urnas que deram vitória a FHC, a Lula, a Dilma e a ele. Idiota IRRESPONSÁVEL!

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 

Opinion

1918 Germany Has a Warning for America

Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign recalls one of the most disastrous political lies of the 20th century.

By Jochen Bittner

Contributing Opinion Writer

The New York Times, November 29 2020

 

HAMBURG, Germany — It may well be that Germans have a special inclination to panic at specters from the past, and I admit that this alarmism annoys me at times. Yet watching President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign since Election Day, I can’t help but see a parallel to one of the most dreadful episodes from Germany’s history.

 

One hundred years ago, amid the implosions of Imperial Germany, powerful conservatives who led the country into war refused to accept that they had lost. Their denial gave birth to arguably the most potent and disastrous political lie of the 20th century — the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back myth.

 

Its core claim was that Imperial Germany never lost World War I. Defeat, its proponents said, was declared but not warranted. It was a conspiracy, a con, a capitulation — a grave betrayal that forever stained the nation. That the claim was palpably false didn’t matter. Among a sizable number of Germans, it stirred resentment, humiliation and anger. And the one figure who knew best how to exploit their frustration was Adolf Hitler.

 

Don’t get me wrong: This is not about comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler, which would be absurd. But the Dolchstosslegende provides a warning. It’s tempting to dismiss Mr. Trump’s irrational claim that the election was “rigged” as a laughable last convulsion of his reign or a cynical bid to heighten the market value for the TV personality he might once again intend to become, especially as he appears to be giving up on his effort to overturn the election result.

  

  But that would be a grave error. Instead, the campaign should be seen as what it is: an attempt to elevate “They stole it” to the level of legend, perhaps seeding for the future social polarization and division on a scale America has never seen.

 

In 1918, Germany was staring at defeat. The entry of the United States into the war the year before, and a sequence of successful counterattacks by British and French forces, left German forces demoralized. Navy sailors went on strike. They had no appetite to be butchered in the hopeless yet supposedly holy mission of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the loyal aristocrats who made up the Supreme Army Command.

 

  A starving population joined the strikes and demands for a republic grew. On Nov. 9, 1918, Wilhelm abdicated, and two days later the army leaders signed the armistice. It was too much to bear for many: Military officers, monarchists and right-wingers spread the myth that if it had not been for political sabotage by Social Democrats and Jews back home, the army would never have had to give in.

 

The deceit found willing supporters. “Im Felde unbesiegt” — “undefeated on the battlefield” — was the slogan with which returning soldiers were greeted. Newspapers and postcards depicted German soldiers being stabbed in the back by either evil figures carrying the red flag of socialism or grossly caricatured Jews.

 

By the time of the Treaty of Versailles the following year, the myth was already well established. The harsh conditions imposed by the Allies, including painful reparation payments, burnished the sense of betrayal. It was especially incomprehensible that Germany, in just a couple of years, had gone from one of the world’s most respected nations to its biggest loser.

 

  The startling aspect about the Dolchstosslegende is this: It did not grow weaker after 1918 but stronger. In the face of humiliation and unable or unwilling to cope with the truth, many Germans embarked on a disastrous self-delusion: The nation had been betrayed, but its honor and greatness could never be lost. And those without a sense of national duty and righteousness — the left and even the elected government of the new republic — could never be legitimate custodians of the country.

 

In this way, the myth was not just the sharp wedge that drove the Weimar Republic apart. It was also at the heart of Nazi propaganda, and instrumental in justifying violence against opponents. The key to Hitler’s success was that, by 1933, a considerable part of the German electorate had put the ideas embodied in the myth — honor, greatness, national pride — above democracy.

 

The Germans were so worn down by the lost war, unemployment and international humiliation that they fell prey to the promises of a “Führer” who cracked down hard on anyone perceived as “traitors,” leftists and Jews above all. The stab-in-the-back myth was central to it all. When Hitler became chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter wrote that “irrepressible pride goes through the millions” who fought so long to “undo the shame of 9 November 1918.”

 

Germany’s first democracy fell. Without a basic consensus built on a shared reality, society split into groups of ardent, uncompromising partisans. And in an atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, the notion that dissenters were threats to the nation steadily took hold.

 

Alarmingly, that seems to be exactly what is happening in the United States today. According to the Pew Research Center, 89 percent of Trump supporters believe that a Joe Biden presidency would do “lasting harm to the U.S.,” while 90 percent of Biden supporters think the reverse. And while the question of which news media to trust has long split America, now even the largely unmoderated Twitter is regarded as partisan. Since the election, millions of Trump supporters have installed the alternative social media app Parler. Filter bubbles are turning into filter networks.

 

In such a landscape of social fragmentation, Mr. Trump’s baseless accusations about electoral fraud could do serious harm. A staggering 88 percent of Trump voters believe that the election result is illegitimate, according to a YouGov poll. A myth of betrayal and injustice is well underway.

 

It took another war and decades of reappraisal for the Dolchstosslegende to be exposed as a disastrous, fatal fallacy. If it has any worth today, it is in the lessons it can teach other nations. First among them: Beware the beginnings.

 

Jochen Bittner (@JochenBittner) is a co-head of the debate section for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a contributing opinion writer.

 

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

 

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

 

Quem são os eleitores de Trump? Um testemunho familiar: livro de J. D. Vance, a saga dos eleitores de Trump

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis 

J. D. Vance 

 Resumindo: são os brancos pobres do interior, trabalhadores com pouca educação formal, que se acomodaram nos trabalhos manuais da segunda revolução industrial e que viram esses empregos desaparecer com o ingresso na grande divisão internacional do trabalho de economias emergentes dinâmicas, sobretudo da Ásia (leia-se China, o bode expiatório preferido de Trump). 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 J. D. Vance: 

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis  

 From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class through the author’s own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town. Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck. 

 The Vance family story began with hope in postwar America. J.D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. 

But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country. 

 FROM THE INSIDE FLAP 

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a probing look at the struggles of America's white working class through the author's own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town. Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis--that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. 

In HillbillyElegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck. The Vance family story began with hope in postwar America. J.D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love" and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country. -- Institute of Family Studies

Ricos sempre ficam mais ricos? Tem esse risco? SIM! Cabe expropriá-los? Não! - FMI e Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 Ricos tendem a ficar mais ricos? SIM, SIM. Riqueza, especialmente financeira, traz retornos mais altos, inclusive por economias de escala, por melhores oportunidades de grandes investimentos e por melhor aconselhamento por especialistas refinados.

O Piketty está certo, portanto, com suas digressões sobre a concentração de capital? NÃO, NÃO. Que existe concentração de renda é um fato, pelos fatores apontados acima.

Mas está certo em querer PUNIR os que ficam absurdamente mais ricos, investindo a sua fortuna? NÃO e NÃO. Se esses super-ricos se tornaram hiper-ricos pela simples multiplicação da sua fortuna, sem tornar os pobres mais pobres, não existe NENHUMA RAZÃO para o governo pretender over-taxar essa riqueza para distribuir entre os pobres, pois o mais provável de ocorrer é que o governo vai gastar esse dinheiro com o próprio governo e com os Mandarins do Estado, em lugar de reduzir a pobreza (a não ser que investissem tudo na capacitação educacional de famílias desfavorecidas).

Se os mega-bilionários ficam trilionários investindo a sua fortuna – ou seja, correndo riscos – e não roubando nada dos pobres, não existe NENHUM MOTIVO para que o governo queira mudar as regras apenas para arrancar mais dinheiro dos extra-ricos. O mais provável é que estes façam melhores investimentos, criando empregos e distribuindo renda, do que os governos. Todo o resto é apenas inveja e raiva do CAPITAL, como esses socialistas franceses.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

How the Rich Get Richer

IMF Blog, November 30, 2020

By Davide Malacrino

Wealth begets wealth. This simple concept of privilege has added to growing discontent with inequality that has escalated under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A paper co-authored this year by economists from the IMF and other institutions confirms that wealthier people are more likely to earn higher returns on their investments. It also shows that the children of wealthy people, while likely to inherit that wealth, aren’t necessarily going to make the same high returns on investments.

Detailed data on wealth are extremely rare, but 12-years of tax records (2004-2015) from Norway have opened a new window into wealth accumulation for individuals and their offspring. The Nordic country has a wealth tax that requires assets to be reported by employers, banks and other third parties in order to reduce errors from self-reporting. The data, which are made public under certain conditions, also make it possible to match parents with their children.

The data show that an individual in the 75^th percentile of wealth distribution who invested $1 in 2004 would have yielded $1.50 by the end of 2015—a return of 50 percent. A person in the top 0.1 percent would have yielded $2.40 on the same invested dollar—a return of 140 percent.

Another significant finding: High returns both bring individuals to the top of the wealth scale and prevent them from leaving it. Controlling for age, parental background and earnings, moving from the 10^th percentile to 90^th percentile of wealth distribution increases the probability of making it to the top 1 percent by 1.2 percentage points compared to an average probability of 0.89 percent.

Why do rich people earn high returns? Conventional wisdom suggests that richer individuals put more of their assets toward high risk investments, which can result in higher returns. But our research finds that wealthy people often earn a higher return even on more conservative investments. Richer individuals enjoy pure “returns to scale” to their wealth. Specifically, for given portfolio allocation, individuals who are wealthier are more likely to get higher risk-adjusted returns, possibly because they have access to exclusive investment opportunities or better wealth managers. Financial sophistication, financial information, and entrepreneurial talent are also important. These characteristics make the returns to wealth persistent over time. This research is the first to quantify this mechanism and show that it is likely to matter empirically.

Do high returns persist across generations? The answer is a qualified yes. Wealth has a high degree of intergenerational correlation, but there are important differences in how returns to wealth accrue across generations. The children of the richest are likely to be very rich, but unlikely to get as high returns from this wealth as their parents did. This suggests that while money is perfectly inheritable, exceptional talent is not.

Mini-reflexão sobre as tarefas à frente - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Mini-reflexão sobre as tarefas à frente

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Uma constatação, olhando para a frente: precisamos escapar da camisa-de-força mental na qual fomos encerrados em 2013, na qual nos aprofundamos entre 2016 e 2018, e da qual estamos recém nos libertando em 2020. 

 Cabe romper definitivamente os grilhões políticos em 2022. 

 Para tal, é preciso superar a camisa-de-força do bolsopetismo, na qual dois psicopatas querem continuar nos encerrando, cada qual puxando para um lado. 

 Não se pode chegar a 2022 com esse falso dilema da esquerda contra a direita, pois não é isso que a maioria do eleitorado quer. 

E não é o Centrão, que só tem oportunista da velha política, que vai ser o instrumento da superação. A construção de uma coalizão da sensatez, rejeitando as mentiras e o sectarismo do bolsopetismo, é a tarefa mais relevante do próximo ano e meio. Que não sejamos desviados dessa tarefa pelas ambições mesquinhas dos oportunistas conhecidos, alguns candidatos nas últimas quatro ou cinco eleições presidenciais. 

A tarefa mais importante, na verdade, é a educação política do eleitorado, numa conjuntura política ainda dominada pelos efeitos da pandemia e da recessão econômica (que precede a pandemia e tem outros vetores do que ela).

Seremos capazes? 

Sou moderadamente pessimista: o patrimonialismo, sob novas roupagens, a baixa educação geral e sobretudo a corrupção política são os grandes desafios de um Brasil completamente destacado do mundo. Me avisem se eu estiver errado, até 2022. 

 Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Brasília, 30/11/2020

Mini-reflexão à margem das eleições intermediárias - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 Mini-reflexão à margem das eleições intermediárias

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Agora que o PT foi amplamente derrotado, de Norte a Sul, quantos bolsonaristas não ideológicos — isto é, os que apoiavam o capitão menos por convicção e mais por oposição, rejeição, medo ou ódio da esquerda — não se sentirão mal representados por um capitão tosco, ignorante, negacionista, que envergonha o Brasil no mundo, como aliás no próprio Brasil?

Tenho a impressão que muitos largarão esse lastro nauseabundo, jogando-o ao pequeno mar dos fanáticos, para seguir viagem no oceano da política de forma mais leve e menos angustiada com alguma paúra ideológica.

Quem ganhou, nas recentes eleições, não foi a direita, ou o conservadorismo, contra uma esquerda supostamente única, e sim a sensatez e o foco nos problemas reais das cidades, contra as divagações abstratas e vazias, de direita ou de esquerda.

Acredito que o número de eleitores “bolsonaristas” diminuirá significativamente daqui até 2022, inclusive porque o capitão não corre nenhum risco de melhorar. Ele continuará obtuso e fanático como sempre foi, envergonhando o Brasil e os brasileiros cada vez que pode, inclusive ao inventar inimigos imaginários: o voto eletrônico, o comunismo, as ONGs estrangeiras, etc.

Outro derrotado foi o projeto de poder de alguns caciques evangélicos.

Acreditem: o eleitorado brasileiro, na sua aparente baixa educação política, é menos ingênuo do que se supõe. 

E não é o conservadorismo que prevalece, e sim o bom-senso.

Quanto à esquerda, sim, ela continuará existindo e presente, enquanto o Brasil continuar com pobreza e concentração de renda de um lado, e crenças ingênuas no distributivismo estatal de outro.

O que faz falta, sim, tanto na esquerda quanto na direita, são estadistas. Esse, sim, será um artigo faltante no mercado da política enquanto nossas elites continuarem medíocres, predatórias e incompetentes.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 30/11/2020

Quo Vadis, Argentina? - César Chelala, Alberto Luis Zuppi (The Globalist, November 29, 2020)

 Quo Vadis, Argentina?

Why is Argentina in such a sorry state, economically, politically and socially?

By César Chelala and Alberto Luis Zuppi

 

The Globalist, November 29, 2020

Seventy years after the end of World War II, the world still wonders how, after 1932, Germany could have so blindly followed Adolf Hitler, an uneducated corporal turned populist dictator.

After all, at the time it was a technological marvel, as well as the country that had produced artists such as Hesse, Goethe, Dürer, Novalis, Bach and Wagner.

Driven by Hitler’s and his supporters’ extremely pernicious ideology, all of Germany soon fell into a deadly spiral.

Argentina’s longtime downward spiral

In terms of the self-destructive mechanisms which a nation can hoist upon itself and which can lead it to the road to national self-destruction, the same pattern is now present in Argentina.

At the beginning of the 20th century, in economic terms Argentina was fifth among the most developed countries in the world. Today that is a depressing memory.

Perverse politics yields national corrosion

The steady decline since seems all the more perplexing as Argentina continues to boast fertile land, some of the best meat and wines in the world as well as a significant production of soy and wheat.

In addition to natural resources, Argentina has a highly educated population, including several Nobel Prize winners.

This prompts the question: What happened to the country? Why is Argentina in such a sorry state, economically, politically and socially?

Who destroyed Argentine democracy?

Of course, one could argue that it was the military dictatorship years(1976-1983) that destroyed the country’s democracy.

But is that really the cause of why Argentines consistently vote for leaders who promise everything, only to deliver nothing? And why do they generally vote for politicians who continue to destroy the country’s economy and reputation?

What is driving the country into the abyss?

Argentina’s contemporary failure cannot be understood without Peronism, a movement based on the ideas and legacy of Argentina’s former President Juan Perón (1946–1952, 1952–1955, 1973–1974).

Peron led a leftist populist movement not to be mixed up politically with the hard-right Chilean military regime under Pinochet.

Evidently, some Argentinians still believe in the miracle powers of whoever the Peronist leader is.

For that reason, they are utterly convinced that the country’s saviors will be the Peronists — even though, especially given the latter-day Peronists’ track record, this hope must be considered completely irrational at this juncture.

Promising the moon, delivering self-enrichment

It should matter to Argentines claiming to care about the advance of the “common people” that corruption under Peronist governments is a most predictable pattern.

The incredible scandals perpetrated during former president Cristina Kirchner’s government should have taught the Peronist masses something.

But it is not to be. They continue to opt for magical thinking over logic and therefore continue to believe in Peronists leaders.

Not a good legacy even back when

Although Juan Perón promoted some greatly needed social reforms benefitting the proletariat, many Argentines forget that the regime collapsed into a corrupt populist government.

To sustain itself in power, ideally perpetually, that government created a vast social group depending on government handouts and lacking the impetus toward employment and critical thinking.

This process began to play itself out in the 1990s. As would be expected, the subsequent damage to the country’s social fabric has been immense.

Germans have learned their lesson

The main difference between Germany post-1933 and Argentina in the 21st century is that Germany has learned from its grave errors at the time and focused on dealing with the subsequent socio-political trauma.

In Argentina, meanwhile, we repeat the same mistakes ad infinitum, to the point where we wonder if there is any exit from this Borgesian labyrinth.

Macri’s presidency

With the election in 2015 of former president Mauricio Macri, there was a period of hope for a break from Peronism.

Unfortunately, the bubble of optimism burst as Macri’s administration proved as inept as his Peronist predecessors. He was arrogant and blind to the people’s needs.

In all likelihood, he never realized that he held the key to the door out of the labyrinth.

Although Macri’s presidency established a semblance of normalcy in the country, including a renewed respect for the country’s institutions.

That respect has once again disappeared now that Cristina Kirchner formally serves as Argentina’s Vice President.

Purging the judicial system

Cristina Kirchner is using her influence over President Alberto Fernández to persecute her political adversaries and to purge the judicial system of all judges who do not have the authority — and the courage — to investigate her misdeeds.

It is tragic that Argentina has returned, yet again, to another incompetent and corrupt Peronist president, plus a revengeful Vice President.

Should Argentina have loved British imperialism?

Some Argentines say that the worst Argentine mistake was repealing the British invasions of the country (1806-1807). Had we let them win, perhaps Argentina would now be a prosperous country like Australia or New Zealand. Or so the tale goes.

Instead, Argentines still face the abyss. Only God knows whether we will be eventually able to rise above it and resume our path as part of the group of prosperous nations in the world.

Itamaraty e Bolsonaro deveriam ser condenados, processados, indiciados, rejeitados por TRAIÇÃO À PÁTRIA - eleição do DG da OMPI

Difícil aceitar, mas é verdade. O Bolsonaro e seu patético chanceler, também chamado de chanceler templário, sub-chanceler, barata de igreja, e chanceler acidental, que é um perfeito capacho do Trump, preferem apoiar o candidato dos americanos do que um brasileiro, um técnico, que por acaso já era técnico do INPI sob os governos Lula e Dilma, e que trabalha na OMPI desde então.

TRAIDORES DA PÁTRIA, como diriam os militares...

9 things to know about Antony Blinken, the next US secretary of state

 Politico, Bruxelas – 26.11.2020

9 things to know about Antony Blinken, the next US secretary of state

What Europe needs to know about Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of state.

David M. Herszenhorn and Rym Momtaz

 

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Monday nominated his longtime aide, Antony Blinken, as secretary of state. But who is he and what will his relationship with Europe be like?

 

Here are nine things to know about him:

 

1. Europeanist, multilateralist, internationalist

Tony Blinken’s ties to Europe are lifelong, deep and personal — and he is a fierce believer in the transatlantic alliance. “Put simply, the world is safer for the American people when we have friends, partners and allies,” Blinken said in 2016. He has described Europe as “a vital partner” and has dismissed the Trump administration’s plans to remove U.S. troops from Germany as “foolish, it’s spiteful, and it’s a strategic loser. It weakens NATO, it helps Vladimir Putin, and it harms Germany, our most important ally in Europe.” On every major foreign policy issue — terrorism, climate, pandemics, trade, China, the Iran nuclear deal — he has a recurring mantra: the U.S. should work with its allies and within international treaties and organizations. Blinken also views U.S. leadership in multilateral institutions as essential. “There is a premium still, and in some ways even more than before, on American engagement, on American leadership,” Blinken said earlier this year.

 

2. Francophone and -phile

Blinken speaks impeccable French, with just the slightest hint of an accent. The future top diplomat moved to Paris as a child after his parents divorced and his mother, Judith, married Polish-American Holocaust survivor and powerhouse lawyer Samuel Pisar. Much to the delight of French policymakers, journalists and all other ardent torchbearers of “francophonie,” Blinken is no “Omelette du Fromage Man” but the Real Cassoulet. He has given multiple interviews in comfortable, eloquent French. Blinken attended École Jeannine Manuel, a bilingual school in Paris — the same one attended by another Obama administration alumnus, Robert Malley. Blinken’s half-sister, Leah Pisar, now living in New York, also has a home in France, and heads the board of the Aladdin Project, a Paris-based nonprofit organization promoting multicultural understanding. As an undergraduate student at Harvard, Blinken even wrote a dispatch for the student newspaper, The Crimson, on the 1981 historic landslide by the Socialist Party in the parliamentary elections, defeating the party of then-President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, whom his stepfather knew well. Blinken wrote with earnestness, but his sense of geographic distances fell short, way short. The Rue de Solférino is a short street, some two-and-a-half kilometers from the Eiffel Tower, not near the famous landmark and not long and winding. Hopefully, the State Department now has GPS.

 

3. Six years in the U.S. Senate

Blinken spent a six-year term in the Senate — as one of Biden’s top aides. Like many of Biden’s closest advisers, Blinken’s first job with the future president was on Capitol Hill. He went to work for Biden in 2002 as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden was the senior Democrat on the committee from 1997 until he became vice president in 2009. Those years give Blinken strong ties to other close Biden advisers who worked in the Senate, including Brian McKeon, who would go on to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy; and Avril Haines, who would later serve as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and deputy national security adviser at the White House. Biden’s closest adviser in the Senate, longtime chief of staff Ted Kaufman, is leading the presidential transition.

 

4. A tale of two Tonys

Blinken’s close buddy was the Biden campaign’s point-man in Europe. When Blinken was about 5 years old, he met another Tony: Anthony Luzzatto Gardner, the son of one of his mother’s closest friends, Danielle Luzzatto Gardner. The families lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where the boys went to different prep schools — Blinken to Dalton, and Gardner to St. Bernard’s. But their lives would go on to follow parallel paths and the family friendship has now endured for more than a half-century. While Blinken moved to France, Gardner spent a lot of time in his mother’s native Italy. Both ended up attending Harvard as undergraduates, and later Columbia Law School, where Gardner’s father, Richard, was a professor and Blinken was one of his top students. In the mid-1990s, Blinken and Tony Gardner worked at the National Security Council together under President Bill Clinton. Clinton appointed Gardner’s father as ambassador to Spain, and Blinken’s father, Donald Blinken, as ambassador to Hungary. (Richard Gardner previously served as ambassador to Italy for President Jimmy Carter.)The careers of Tony and Tony crossed again during the Obama administration, when Blinken served as a top adviser to Biden and then as deputy secretary of state, and Gardner served as ambassador to the European Union.

 

5. Public service as family business

Government service is the Blinken family business. He met his future wife, Evan Ryan, in 1995 when he was working at the White House as a speechwriter on the National Security Council, and she was a scheduler for First Lady Hillary Clinton. Ryan went on to work for Clinton during her campaign for Senate, and later worked for Biden when he was vice president as assistant for intergovernmental affairs and, from 2013 to 2017, as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. Hillary Clinton was a guest at the Blinken-Ryan wedding in 2002, and Blinken gave a toast thanking the 40 million Americans who voted for Bill Clinton because the election led to the marriage (Blinken and Ryan now have two very young children, which his Obama administration colleague, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, noted could make the couple an inspiration to working parents). Blinken’s half-sister, Leah Pisar, also worked at the State Department and as communications director at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. Blinken’s uncle, meanwhile, served as U.S. ambassador to Belgium, at the same time that Blinken’s father was ambassador to Hungary. And Blinken’s stepfather was an adviser to President John F. Kennedy as well as French presidents.

 

6. Jewish roots, European conscience

Blinken was born to Jewish parents, and his late stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was a Holocaust survivor who wrote a memoir, “Of Blood and Hope,” about how he survived the Nazis, including time at the death camps of Majdanek, Auschwitz and Dachau. In a 2013 interview with the Washington Post, Pisar, who went on to become an international power lawyer and confidante of French presidents, described how Blinken as a teenager in Paris had asked to hear about his experiences during the war. “He wanted to know,” Pisar told the Post. “He took in what had happened to me when I was his age, and I think it impressed him and it gave him another dimension, another look at the world and what can happen here. When he has to worry today about poison gas in Syria, he almost inevitably thinks about the gas with which my entire family was eliminated.”After Pisar’s death in 2015, Biden said his memoir should be “required reading. It stands as a strong reminder for every generation of our ongoing obligation to never forget.”

 

7. Interventionist

In his roles in the NSC under Obama and as deputy secretary of state, Blinken advocated for more robust U.S. involvement in the Syria conflict, and notably broke with his boss, Biden, to support the armed intervention in Libya. He was also a close aide to Biden when the then-senator supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He continues to believe that diplomacy needs to be “supplemented by deterrence” and “force can be a necessary adjunct to effective diplomacy. In Syria, we rightly sought to avoid another Iraq by not doing too much, but we made the opposite error of doing too little.”

 

8. Playing guitar and soccer

Blinken plays the guitar — “mostly blues and rock. Not good enough for bluegrass,” as he tweeted in October — and he likes to jam. In his younger days, he sometimes played jazz gigs. “Patience” and “Lip Service” might be subliminal hints at the kind of foreign policy Blinken will promote if he is confirmed as secretary of state, and they are also the titles of his band’s two singles released on Spotify. He even had “Follow ABlinken on Spotify” at the end of his Twitter bio before updating it Monday. “Lip Service” is manifestly about an unlucky evening encounter, with lyrics such as “and then I came onto you but you said let’s just be friends/baby, baby lip service tonight.”

Years ago, Blinken used to play football — the European kind — every Sunday in Washington with some of his closest friends in foreign policy, including now Congressman Tom Malinowski, Robert Malley, former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Philip Gordon, and others. Here’s photographic proof of their (sweaty) exploits, trophies and all.

 

9. It’s Antony like the triumvir

If you write about U.S. foreign policy, beware of spellcheck from here on out: It’s Antony — without an H — Blinken, like the Roman triumvir, Marcus Antonius, paramour of Cleopatra and protagonist of the Shakespeare play. He also has a middle initial — J for John — if you go in for that kind of thing. His friends call him Tony. And presumably, upon confirmation, Mr. Secretary will do just fine as well.

 

Exoneração do IPRI no Carnaval de 2019: manifestações de leitores - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

No dia 4 de março de 2019, uma segunda-feira de Carnaval, fui acordado por um telefonema irado, do chefe de gabinete do chanceler acidental – ou sub-chanceler, como prefere Josias de Souza –, reclamando que o dito sub-encarregado do Itamaraty tinha ficado nervoso pela postagem que eu havia feito, poucas horas antes (já na madrugada do mesmo dia), colocando um artiguinho medíocre que ele havia escrito para responder a uma palestra do embaixador Rubens Ricupero sobre a política externa em geral (na Casa das Garças, em 25 de fevereiro) e um artigo do ex-chanceler e ex-presidente FHC, naquele domingo, sobre o caso da Venezuela em particular. O chanceler acidental – que um dos leitores, abaixo, chama de "barata de igreja", ficou provavelmente descontente que seu artiguinho ofensivo tenha sido confrontado com duas peças mais consistentes.

Em todo caso, eu estava hoje preparando um outro trabalho, este aqui: 

3804. “Planejamento estratégico da diplomacia brasileira: o papel do IPRI”, Brasília, 28 novembro 2020, 17 p. Notas para servir de debate no quadro de convite formulado por Antonio Cottas Freitas, do Instituto Diplomacia para Democracia, realizado em formato online em 12/12/2020. Divulgado na plataforma Academia.edu (link: https://www.academia.edu/44595418/3804_Planejamento_estrategico_da_diplomacia_brasileira_o_papel_do_IPRI_2020_) e no blog Diplomatizzando (link: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2020/11/planejamento-estrategico-da-diplomacia.html).

quando tive de novamente citar minha exoneração, informada imediatamente no mesmo dia, nesta postagem, que recebeu os comentários que transcrevo abaixo: 

423. “Nota sobre minha exoneração como diretor do IPRI”, Brasília, 4 março 2019, 1 p. Explicando o que se passou. Divulgado no blog Diplomatizzando (4/03/2019; link: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2019/03/nota-sobre-minha-exoneracao-como.html), no Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks/posts/2347578208638949). 

 Na verdade, eu já esperava ser exonerado desde o dia 1o. de janeiro, e estava estranhando que demorasse tanto.

Mas, os comentários foram, em sua maior parte, extremamente gratificantes.