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.
Por indicação de Walmyr Buzatto, estou lendo o sample deste estupendo livro:
Laurece Bergreen:
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
(2003 e 2019)
Reproduzo abaixo duas passagens para comprovar, mais uma vez, como as especiarias já foram, mais de 5 séculos atrás, o "petróleo" do mundo, e como os portugueses saíram na frente das navegações e descobertas.
Recomendo também a bela biografia do Fernão de Magalhães por Stefan Zweig, cujo anexo, sobre os custos da expedição de circumnavegação, me induziu a tentar determinar quanto teria custado, aos preços atuais, essa viagem fantástica, equivalente às explorações espaciais atuais.
Nota sobre as inclinações ideológicas das diplomacias do Brasil e da Argentina.
A política externa do peronismo era em grande medida ideológica. Mas a de Milei é muito mais, excessivamente ideológica, apesar de uma sensata chanceler.
A diplomacia petista também é tristemente ideológica, ao preferir alianças com ditaduras antiocidentais, nessa miopia da “nova ordem global”, ao ingresso na OCDE, cujos propósitos têm muito mais a ver com a nossa trajetória de desenvolvimento econômico e político: economia de mercado e democracia.
Quando Brasil e Argentina vão deixar essas errâncias ideológicas de lado e passar a ter diplomacias normalmente pragmáticas e universalistas na política externa? Parece que não é para já.
O alinhamento de Milei aos EUA e Israel, suas críticas ao “comunismo” chinês, são novamente ridículos, como eram as antigas “relações carnais” com os EUA.
A simpatia de Lula por certas ditaduras na região e fora dela é mais do que ridícula, é totalmente contraproducente para a própria inserção global do Brasil e para sua participação equilibrada na agenda global. A visão de que duas grandes autocracias focadas num projeto antiocidental são aliadas naturais de um mirífico “Sul Global” não é apenas equivocada; é também ridícula e contrária a nossos interesses.
Brasil e Argentina se perdem em pequenas confusões ideológicas, que são puramente retóricas. Até quando?
Não se trata da situação no Essequibo: o Itamaraty se engana de objeto.
Se trata de ameaças da Venezuela chavista contra a integridade territorial da Guiana.
E a Celac e o Caricom NÃO SÃO os órgãos mais apropriados para tratar do assunto, ainda que possam contribuir.
Se trata de uma pendência entre dois Estados soberanos e precisa ser tratada em sua dimensão jurídica pela CIJ da ONU.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Assessoria Especial de Comunicação Social
Nota nº 627
29 de dezembro de 2023
Situação em Essequibo
O governo brasileiro acompanha com preocupação os últimos desdobramentos do contencioso em torno da região de Essequibo.
O Brasil considera a “Declaração de Argyle para o Diálogo e a Paz”, assinada por Guiana e Venezuela em 14 de dezembro, sob os auspícios da CELAC e da CARICOM, um marco nos esforços para abordar pacificamente a questão, tendo em mente o espírito de integração que nos move, como uma região de paz, cooperação e solidariedade.
A declaração estabeleceu o compromisso de Guiana e Venezuela de não utilização da força ou da ameaça do uso da força, de respeito ao direito internacional e de comprometimento com a integração regional e a unidade da América Latina e o Caribe. Os dois países concordaram, ademais, em cooperar para evitar incidentes no terreno e medidas unilaterais que possam levar a uma escalada da situação.
O governo brasileiro acredita que demonstrações militares de apoio a qualquer das partes devem ser evitadas, a fim de que o processo de diálogo ora em curso possa produzir resultados, e está convencido de que instituições regionais como a CELAC e a CARICOM são os fóruns apropriados para o tratamento do tema. O Brasil conclama as partes à contenção, ao retorno ao diálogo e ao respeito ao espírito e à letra da Declaração de Argyle.
On the morning of December 29, Russia launched the most massive aerial attack on Ukraine to date using various types of strike drones and missiles. In total, the enemy used 158 aerial attack assets. It directed them towards industrial, military, and civilian objects, including critical infrastructure. “Everything was flying, except, for maybe, "Kalibr." There were "Kinzhals," ballistic missiles, S-300, and cruise missiles... "Shahed" drones were also used.” - Yuriy Ihnat, the Spokesperson of the Ukrainian Air Force, said.
According to the updated information, during the morning aerial attack, Ukraine's air defense destroyed 88 Kh-101/Kh-555/Kh-55 cruise missiles and 27 strike drones of the Shahed-136/131 type.
Ukrainian rescuers from the State Emergency Service have saved 53 people, with 8 of them rescued from under the rubble. As of 6:30 p.m. there were reports of 30 fatalities and more than 160 injuries due to Russia's morning mass strike on Ukrainian territory.
As of 17:30, at least 8 people were reported killed, and another 13 people were reported injured as result of the morning rocket strike on the city of Zaporizhzhia. Search and rescue at the sites of Russian missile impacts continues.
Due to the Russian missile impacts in Dnipro, 6 people have died, and another 30 have been injured, including a 1.5-year-old child. In Dnipro, a fire broke out in a maternity hospital after the attack. Patients and staff, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, were unharmed. In addition to the damaged shopping center and maternity hospital, one private house in the city has been completely destroyed. Eight administrative buildings are damaged, along with at least two dozen multi-story buildings and several cars.Bottom of Form
Eight injured individuals were rescued and the bodies of nine deceased persons were recovered from the rubble of a warehouse building in the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv.
As a result of a Russian missile hitting the residential sector of the city of Smila in Cherkasy Oblast, nine people were injured, including a child. According to preliminary information, 51 buildings have been damaged.
In Lviv, based on the latest information, 30 individuals, including two children, were injured following the Russian rocket attack.
In the city of Konotop in Sumy Oblast, four civilians were injured by Russian shelling, and numerous residential and administrative buildings sustained significant damage.
Between five and eight in the morning on December 29, Kharkiv was subjected to three waves of missile strikes by Russia. Three individuals lost their lives, and 13 sustained injuries, with 11 of them admitted to hospitals. Among those hospitalized, three are in critical condition, while others are in a moderately severe state. The city's infrastructure, including a hospital, polyclinic, school, over a dozen residential buildings, a "Nova Poshta" branch, and industrial facilities, suffered damage.
During the drone attack in Odesa, debris from a downed drone fell onto a multi-story building, causing a fire. Twenty-three people were evacuated from the high-rise, five were rescued, and six individuals were injured, including two children. Two fatalities were confirmed. Additionally, under the debris of a three-story residential building, which also caught fire, a deceased woman was found, and four people were injured.
Centre for Defence Strategies (CDS) is a Ukrainian security think tank. We operate since 2020. We publish this brief daily. If you would like to subscribe, please send us an email at cds.dailybrief@gmail.com
The CDC Daily Brief is produced with the support of the Kyiv School of Economics
"Nos casamos e descobrimos o mundo nos anos 70-80-90."
Aventuramo-nos nos anos 80-90-2000.
Nos estabilizamos nos anos 2000.
"Ficamos mais sábios na década de 2010."
E seguimos firmes em 2020.
"Acontece que vivemos OITO décadas diferentes..."
"DOIS séculos diferentes..."
DOIS milênios diferentes...
“Passamos do telefone com operadora para chamadas de longa distância para as videochamadas para qualquer lugar do mundo, passamos dos slides para o YouTube, dos discos de vinil para a música online, das cartas manuscritas para o e-mail e WhatsApp”.
"Desde partidas ao vivo no rádio até a TV em preto e branco e depois para a TV HD."
Fomos ao Videoclube e agora vemos Netflix.
'Conhecemos os primeiros computadores, cartões perfurados, disquetes e agora temos gigabytes e megabytes em mãos no celular ou IPad."
Usamos shorts durante toda a infância e depois calças compridas, oxfords, bermudas, etc.
"Evitamos paralisia infantil, meningite, gripe H1N1 e agora COVID-19."
Andamos de patins, triciclos, inventamos carros, bicicletas, ciclomotores, carros a gasolina ou diesel e agora andamos em híbridos ou 100% elétricos.
"Sim, passamos por muita coisa, mas que vida maravilhosa tivemos!"
Eles poderiam nos descrever como “exennials”; pessoas que nasceram naquele mundo dos anos 50, que tiveram uma infância analógica e uma idade adulta digital.
"Somos uma espécie de Yaheseen-it-all."
Nossa geração literalmente viveu e testemunhou mais do que qualquer outra em todas as dimensões da vida.
É a nossa geração que literalmente se adaptou à “MUDANÇA”.
Uma salva de palmas a todos os integrantes de uma geração muito especial, que será ÚNICA." Mensagem preciosa e muito verdadeira
🏹🏹 *O TEMPO NÃO PARA*
_"A vida é uma tarefa que nos propusemos a fazer em casa._. Quando você olha... já é sexta-feira; quando se olha... acabou o mês, quando se olha... acabou o ano; quando se olha... 50, 60 e 70 anos se passaram!_
_Quando você olha... não sabemos mais onde estão nossos amigos._
_Quando você olha... perdemos o amor da nossa vida e agora, não dá mais para voltar.
*O dia é hoje!*
*NÃO TEMOS MAIS IDADE DE ADIAR NADA.*
Espero que você tenha tempo para ler e depois compartilhar esta mensagem... ou então deixe para
*Depois* e você verá que nunca a compartilhará!
Sempre juntos
Sempre unidos
sempre irmãos
Sempre amigos
Passe para seus dez melhores amigos e para "eu" se eu estiver entre eles e você verá como nem todos respondem. Porque deixam para depois...
Solzhenitsyn’s account of applied ideology at work in the totalitarian experiment that was the Soviet Union still remains relevant to readers today.
Many thanks to Spencer A. Klavan, David P. Deavel, and Jessica Hooten Wilson for their deeply thoughtful and suggestive responses to my forum essay on Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, a piece occasioned by the 50th anniversary of the publication of that great work. Together, their essays highlight important themes of that work that will resonate as long as human beings remain open to the life of the soul and are confronted, as they inevitably will be, by pernicious ideological challenges to liberty and human dignity.
Among its other contributions, David Deavel’s essay provides an illuminating reflection on the sheer scale or magnitude of Solzhenitsyn’s account of applied ideology at work in the totalitarian experiment that was the Soviet Union. The Gulag Archipelago is indeed a massive if compellingly readable book. Deavel is exactly on the mark when he writes that the book’s “vast amount of detail is essential to the overall effect,” at once dramatic and palpable, that it has on the hearts and minds of its readers.
For example, Solzhenitsyn’s detailed accounts of a series of show trials during the Leninist and Stalinist periods of Soviet rule painstakingly showcase the utter degradation of law under Soviet rule. In doing so, they artfully illustrate the sheer “surreality” of what substitutes for law in an essentially lawless society. If Solzhenitsyn pointedly criticized the excessive legalism of the Western democracies in his 1978 Harvard Address, in The GulagArchipelago he more fundamentally shows how lawlessness degrades the human soul and makes decent political life impossible. It is a far graver evil than small-minded legalism.
The very last lines of The Gulag Archipelago, completed in 1968 during the Brezhnev period of Soviet rule, read, “For a half century and more the enormous state has towered over us, girded with hoops of steel. The hoops are still there. There is no law.” Or as Solzhenitsyn says in an arresting chapter in the third volume of Gulag entitled “Why Did We Stand For It?”:
The goal of human evolution is not freedom for the sake of freedom. Nor is it the building of an ideal polity. What matter, of course, are the moral foundations of society. But that is in the long run; what about the beginning? What about the first step?
For all their limits from a “higher” point of view, rule of law and political freedom turn out to be invaluable prerequisites for allowing human beings the right to breathe freely and to live humanly tolerable lives.
Deavel is also particularly illuminating about what constitutes the “personal voice of Solzhenitsyn,” including his remarkable capacity in The Gulag Archipelago to take aim at his own personal flaws, failings, and misjudgments. As Deavel aptly puts it, “there is nothing of the moral braggart” in Solzhenitsyn’s self-presentation in the book. The Russian writer knows that he, too, could have succumbed to temptation and have become one of the dreaded bluecaps, or secret police “interrogators,” if an inner voice, the voice of conscience, had not pointed him in a very different direction. Solzhenitsyn’s eventual affirmation of the palpable reality of Divine Providence was rooted in such pitiless but humanizing self-examination. It should be noted that Solzhenitsyn’s fiercest critics, including the mendacious agents of the Soviet party-state and secret police, almost always used and abused such self-critical accounts provided by Solzhenitsyn himself in Gulag.
Let me add that Deavel’s article ends on an admirably high note. He reminds us that however valuable, even precious, they may be, “legal and political freedom” constitute “a trial of our free will just as much as bad circumstances,” such as the “gulag’s absurdities.” And Deavel helpfully recapitulates those “sparks of the spirit” I had referred to in my article: Moral judgment, humility, freedom, and free will guided by conscience that ultimately defers to the benign, if corrective, judgment of God. And I would add noble self-respect, genuine care for the health of one’s soul.
In his article, Spencer Klavan also eloquently reminds us of the peril of succumbing to false confidence in man as the measure of all things: As he notes, Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 Templeton Lecture makes clear the deadly consequences for the individual soul and collective life of “forgetting God,” of succumbing to the false allure of “anthropocentricity” as Solzhenitsyn called it in the Harvard Address. When men confuse themselves for gods they become little more than beasts, as the twin totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, Nazism and communism, so vividly and chillingly illustrate. Klavan also convincingly demonstrates how the ideological Manicheanism of old persists in higher education and among demi-educated activists who now justify new slaughters and repression in the name of “decolonialization” and a fevered hatred for our rich patrimony that is Western civilization. The deepest lessons of the totalitarian episode remain unknown and unacknowledged. The age of ideology is far from over. We are not only at the risk of “forgetting” old crimes but of renewing the ideological Lie that was at their foundation.
Solzhenitsyn respected honest classical liberals who acknowledged hard truths about Communist totalitarianism.
I thank Jessica Hooten Wilson for reminding us all of the humane presence and enduring contributions of the late Edward E. Ericson, Jr., who co-edited The Solzhenitsyn Reader with me, and who in cooperation with Solzhenitsyn gave us the great gift that is the authorized abridgment of The Gulag Archipelago. That judicious version of the work makes its key insights available to the reading public in a concise 500 pages.
I welcome Wilson’s reminder that Solzhenitsyn is not only a great Russian writer but someone who belongs to “world literature” in Goethe’s noble and elevated sense of that term. Solzhenitsyn speaks to the way of the cross born by his own people in the twentieth century even as he contributes to our “universal literary inheritance.” To which one can only say “Amen.”
I would add that Solzhenitsyn not only rebuked the illusions of Russian ultra-nationalists who confused authentic patriotism with expansive empire (a point made well by Wilson) but also the small-minded Ukrainian nationalists or ultra-nationalists who continue to blame the implacable crimes of communism on ”Muscovites” or “Russians” instead of the inhuman universalist ideology that warred on the legitimate national aspirations of both Russians and Ukrainians. As Solzhenitsyn wrote in Rebuilding Russia, Communism was the common enemy of both great peoples, one that brought a murderous ideology-induced famine to the Volga region of Russia in 1921–22 that cost five million lives and an even more murderous one to the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the North Caucasus in 1932–33.
To these crimes, one can add the fierce and cruel repression of religion, of free intellectual life, and the independent peasantry that characterized Communist totalitarianism. These were not Russian crimes per se, Solzhenitsyn rightly insisted, but a byproduct of an ideological mentality that warred unrelentingly on free initiative and the human spirit. “As common victims of the communist-imposed collectivization forced upon us by whip and bullet, have we not been bonded by this common bloody suffering?” Solzhenitsyn asked in Rebuilding Russia. Prescient words of wisdom as two once intertwined peoples sink into fratricidal strife that deeply pained the half-Ukrainian Solzhenitsyn (on his mother’s side).
And lastly, why lament, as Wilson seems to do, that many, even most, of Solzhenitsyn’s admirers today tend to be conservative-minded? For better or worse, conservatives are more sensitive to the dangers of “forgetting God,” the evils of what the late Roger Scruton called “the culture of repudiation,” and the sheer ugliness of any identification of Evil with a capital E with specific groups that are said to be intrinsically or ontologically evil (a false and deadly identification that connects the woke with older forms of totalitarianism). To their credit, conservatives have been more openly and consistently anti-totalitarian than those on the Left.
Of course, it is a mistake to politicize Solzhenitsyn in any narrow partisan sense. He certainly has much to say to rebuke the kind of faux “conservative” who has undue confidence in modern “Progress” or the promise of an unlimited materialist cornucopia. Solzhenitsyn respected honest classical liberals who acknowledged hard truths about Communist totalitarianism. But he did not hesitate to take aim at “progressives” who felt a “kinship” with Communism, whatever its murderous pretensions and deeds. They have shown themselves to be appallingly slow to learn the most elementary truths. As Solzhenitsyn wrote about them near the end of The Gulag Archipelago:
All you freedom-loving ”left-wing” thinkers in the West! You left laborites! You progressive American, German, and French students! As far as you are concerned, none of this amounts to much. As far as you are concerned, this whole book of mine is a waste of effort. You may suddenly understand it all someday—but only when you yourselves hear ‘hands behind your backs there’ and step ashore on our Archipelago.
One must ask: Has all that much changed in these last fifty years regarding “progressivist” illusions regarding the totalitarian temptation?
Daniel J. Mahoney is Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, Senior Writer at Law and Liberty, and professor emeritus at Assumption University. He has written extensively on Solzhenitsyn, including The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth about a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker, which has been available in paperback from St. Augustine’s Press since 2020. He is presently completing a book entitled The Persistence of the Ideological Lie, to be published by Encounter Books.
O Itamaraty JAMAIS soltou uma nota lamentando a perda de vidas humanas em decorrência dos ataques terroristas da Rússia.
POR QUE ISTO?
Provavelmente não terei respostas, nem do Itamaraty, nem da Presidência.
Não sei como classificar essa abjeção moral.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
From Foreign Policy, Dec 29, 2023:
At least 30 people were killed and more than 160 people injured in Ukraine on Friday in what Kyiv called the biggest missile bombardment since Russia began its all-out invasion of the country in February 2022. Russia struck the cities of Kyiv, Odessa, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Lviv using “nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal” and hit homes and a maternity hospital, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC.
Ukraine’s air defenses were overwhelmed by the attacks, and an Air Force spokesperson said Kyiv had never seen so many types of missiles used at once. The United Nations humanitarian envoy for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said the attacks constituted “another unacceptable example of the horrifying reality” that Ukrainians face. U.S. President Joe Biden also condemned the attacks, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin “must be stopped.”
“The enemy is attacking our border territories, including in the west,” Yuriy Ihnat, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Force, said on national television. “This is another signal for our partners to strengthen the Ukrainian air defense.” Additional U.S. lethal and economic aid to Ukraine is still tied up in Congress. Republicans are demanding a deal on tougher U.S.-Mexico border security, including putting tougher asylum claims in place and boosting border enforcement, in exchange for aid to Ukraine.
Russia admitted earlier this week that Ukraine damaged one of this Black Sea warships. After Friday’s bombardment, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson simply said Moscow had hit “all the designated military targets.” But it wasn’t only Ukrainian air space that was involved: Poland has said that it believes a Russian missile entered Polish airspace for nearly three minutes before entering Ukraine. Polish President Andrzej Duda called an emergency security meeting; he later said there was “no threat at the moment.”
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke with his Polish counterpart, Jacek Siewiera, on Friday to articulate “United States’ solidarity with Poland, our close NATO ally, as it deals with reports of a missile temporarily entering Polish airspace,” according to the White House. Sullivan also promised Poland technical assistance.
Recebo de um amigo, Pedro Scuro, sociólogo como eu, esta homenagem a um grande intelectual: Vamireh Chacon.
Convivi com ele durante breve tempo, enquanto ele foi meu colega no Ceub. Depois das reuniões dos professores, eu sempre o levava de carro para o Hotel onde ele morava em Brasilia, e o convidei para eventos no Itamaraty, quando fui chefe do IPRI. Ele me retinha no carro durante meia hora falando justamente dos grandes nomes da sociologia, especialmente alemã, com os quais havia convivido.
Grande intelectual.
O primeiro livro que li dele foi História das Ideias Socialistas no Brasil, ainda nos anos 1960.
--------------------------- Paulo Roberto de Almeida
==================
Em 29 de dez. de 2023, à(s) 22:07, Pedro Scuro, escreveu:
Perdi hoje um grande amigo, pois somente agora à tarde soube que o havia perdido, em setembro. Há meses eu lhe escrevia comentando ou pedindo orientação sobre as coisas que nos uniam, mas ele não respondia.
Conhecemo-nos em Bonn, eu recém saído do DOI-CODI e ele regressando de um encontro com um ilustre sociólogo alemão. Leandro Konder nos apresentou e de imediato fomos unidos pelo processo dinâmico próprio da nossa arte e que nos faz, se formos conservadores, como o Vamireh, tender a uma meta subversiva, que persiste em se exprimir não importa quais sejam as intenções do sociólogo.
Anos depois, há muito sem ver meu amigo, tentei explicar essa pulsão que nos unia escrevendo que a Sociologia não é ideologia, não expressa nenhuma relação espontânea com a sociedade, não se deixa balizar por interesses, certezas, dúvidas pessoais ou institucionais nem por preconceitos que deformam a realidade.
Por isso Vamireh, que além de jurista e sociólogo foi um intelectual extraordinário, era conservador e subversivo, porém não literalmente, genuinamente, sem exageros.
Descanse em paz, seguiremos sempre nos encontrando, através de sua obra (e a de Sir Gilberto Freyre, que ele me ensinou a admirar).
Você deve ter dele a mesma imagem que eu: espontâneo, vivo, alegre, com a sociologia correndo nas veias. Ele não era jurista e cientista político? Era, no sentido das funções do Direito serem eminentemente políticas porque, de um lado, o Direito se empenha para tornar os tais segmentos hegemônicos uma totalidade coerente e homogênea, enquanto que, por outro lado, produz e reproduz um conformismo generalizado, necessário para que os mesmos segmentos atendam a seus próprios interesses e alcancem seus objetivos, mesmo que sejam propósitos ilícitos e contrários à democracia.
Vamireh Chacon de Albuquerque Nascimento (Recife, 1 de fevereiro de 1934- 18 de setembro de 2023) foi um cientista político, professor, pesquisador na área do Direito e escritor brasileiro.
1957 - 1959: Doutorado em direito, na Faculdade de Direito do Recife, com a tese "Introdução ao problema da sociologia do direito" (1959), sob a orientação de Arnóbio Graça.
