752) O problema nuclear iraniano

The Iranian Nuclear Challenge
Gareth Evans
Address by Gareth Evans, President, International Crisis Group, to The Greens
European Free Alliance Conference on Iran: Alternatives to Escalation
European Parliament, Brussels, 4 July 2007

The Urgent Need to Meet the Nuclear Challenge
Over the last decade, there has been a serious, and dangerous, loss of momentum and direction in disarmament and non-proliferation efforts. Stocks of nuclear weapons held by the nuclear weapons states remain extraordinarily and alarmingly high - some 30,000 in all, of which around 12,000 are still actively deployed - with no serious moves in sight to diminish them significantly, and Britain's apparent determination to replace the Trident system indicating that it is no more serious than any of the other weapons states about moving to meet their own side of the grand NPT bargain, to move steadily toward absolute nuclear disarmament.

India and Pakistan have joined the ranks of nuclear weapons states, and like Israel doing so outside the framework of the NPT; North Korea, after building its capability while in the NPT and subject to its constraints, has withdrawn from the treaty, and now has the fissile material to manufacture perhaps a dozen nuclear weapons. Treaty making and implementation has stalled and there is fear of a new wave of proliferation, with Iran widely seen (accurately or otherwise) as being in the vanguard: determined to acquire full fuel cycle capability, as it is technically able to do while remaining a member in good standing of the NPT, and clearly wanting, at the very least, to keep open the option of stepping across the line out of the NPT and into weaponisation when it has the capacity to do so, precipitating in the process a rush by others in the region to follow suit.

2005 saw two loud wake-up calls in the failure of the NPT Review Conference, and the inability of the World Summit in September to agree on a single line about any WMD issue - despite the recommendations coming to it from the High Level Panel (of which I was a member) and many others to commit to a raft of measures designed to give the NPT and associated measures new life and teeth ( including, e.g., attaching some penalties to withdrawal from the Treaty, having stronger verification measures, developing international means for guaranteeing the external supply of fissile material to civilian users; and putting some real heat on the nuclear weapons states to get serious about disarmament) .

We know what needs to be done. The Blix Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, which reported last year (and of which I was also a member) has set out the agenda as clearly as it has ever been done, grouping its recommendations into four sets:

o First, agree on general principles of action - in particular that disarmament and non-proliferation are best pursued through a cooperative rules-based international order, applied and enforced not unilaterally but through effective multilateral institutions; and that states, individually and collectively, should consistently pursue policies designed to ensure that no state feels a need to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
o Second, work toward outlawing all weapons of mass destruction once and for all - including through the progressive extension of nuclear weapons free zones (most urgently in the Middle East). The general objective here is not as impossibly romantic as it seems to a lot of people (as even extreme realists like Henry Kissinger now seem prepared to acknowledge) . As the Blix Commission put it in two of the most important passages in the whole report,

- Weapons of mass destruction cannot be uninvented. But they can be outlawed, as biological and chemical weapons already have been, and their use made unthinkable. Compliance, verification and enforcement rules can, with the requisite will, be effectively applied.

and, repeating the mantra first spelt out in the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons a decade earlier:

- So long as any state has nuclear weapons others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain, there is a high risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. And any such use would be catastrophic.

o Third, reduce the danger of present arsenals - in particular through better security of stockpiles; diminishing the role of nuclear weapons by no-first-use pledges, assurances not to use them against non-nuclear weapons states, and by not developing nuclear weapons for new tasks; and prohibiting the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, and phasing out the production of highly-enriched uranium.
o Fourth, prevent a new wave of proliferation - above all by reviving the fundamental commitments of all NPT parties: the five nuclear weapon states parties to negotiate towards nuclear disarmament and the non-nuclear weapon states, while retaining the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, to refrain from developing nuclear weapons, and in particular to explore international arrangements for an assurance of supply of enriched uranium fuel, and for the disposal of spent fuel, to reduce incentives for national facilities and diminish proliferation risks.
Of course the Blix Commission was not unconscious of the argument - very familiar to a Greens audience - that the 'atoms for peace' principle is unsustainable, and that civil nuclear energy production (whatever its superficial attractions in an age of anxiety about the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming) inevitably will reinforce and make ever harder to control the move toward wider nuclear weapons possession.

But we felt that recognizing and accommodating the demand for civilian nuclear capability was the only possible way the NPT could be held together - and, as it must be, strengthened - in the present environment , and that it would be Quixotic in the extreme to tilt at this windmill while trying to hold together a broad based international consensus in favour of drawing an absolute red line against anything in the nature of weaponisation.

Alternatives to Domestic Fissile Material Production within the NPT System

Leaving aside for present purposes the position of those who are not prepared to support any role for any kind of civil nuclear energy, the optimal non-proliferation solution would be for all fissile material production, and all spent fuel disposal, to be internationalized and fully controlled so as to make impossible any diversion for weapons production purposes.

This remains a dream for many of us, and innumerable efforts have been made over the years, in the IAEA and elsewhere, to get a serious debate started and serious steps put in train, to achieve just that - and other speakers on this panel will no doubt be referring to that effort. Let me refer briefly to just two of the proposals which have been floated.

o International Fuel Bank
Under one of them there would be a moratorium on the construction of new facilities for the enrichment of uranium or reprocessing to allow time for a scheme to be worked out for the multinational control of all such facilities, wherever located.
States complying with non-proliferation commitments would be then able to turn to an international fuel bank, assured that they could buy low-enriched nuclear fuel at market prices. There would be an international framework of agreed rules in which both producers and consumers would have a say on rights of purchase.

Many problems still have to be overcome, however, before this could be workable, for example:

- the unresolved question (certainly asked by Iran and others) as to who exactly would decide whether a country is fulfilling its non-proliferation commitments and thus be entitled to purchase enriched uranium); and

- the fact that there has been no sign of US buy in, not least because it has plans for additional capacity and doesn't like moratorium, and because it is not happy to even contemplate the internationalisatio n of its own production. (See WMDC Report, pp 74-5)

o Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
Another proposal - 'GNEP' - has been advanced by the US itself last year and discussed with governments in London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing New Delhi and Tokyo. Under it a small number of states would produce enriched uranium and 'lease' it to states, and then take back the spent fuel - which would then be reprocessed by a new process which would recover uranium and plutonium in a form that would be unusable in weapons, and could be used in special reactors that would be built only in these fuel-producing states, with a drastically smaller remaining volume of waste. The general idea is to encourage rather than oblige other states to use this system - though if they joined in they would have to undertake to do no enrichment or reprocessing of their own.

There are technical doubts as to whether the proposed new recovery process will work, and political doubts as to whether the return of spent fuel to the 'leasing' states will prove acceptable, but the basic problem with this approach is that it adds a visible new inequality - between fuel cycle and user states - to the existing NPT inequality between nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear- weapon states. The deeper the cooperation between the fuel cycle states the more it would look like a cartel of the powerful. (See WMDC Report pp 75-6).

The Iran Impasse and How to Get Out of It

It is obvious that neither the international fuel bank nor GNEP solutions are going to be available within any kind of time frame that could possibly help resolve the current Iran problem - and that neither of them, even a fully internationalised fuel bank, is likely to be particularly attractive to Tehran anyway.

Nor does it appear that Iran is in any kind of mood to accept a 'guaranteed' supply from some other particular offshore source, along the lines proposed by Russia, in return for foregoing its fuel-cycle ambitions and agreeing to indefinitely relinquish whatever right as it has under the NPT to enrich uranium - even in the context of all the sanctions and threatened sanctions that are now on the table, and incentives (including restored relations with the US) that could be put back on the table.

Some are confident that sanctions - particularly the backdoor variety that the US, and Europeans under American pressure, are capable of applying through the banking system, to choke off both trade and investment finance - will ultimately force the Iranians to cave in, but that is not a confidence that we in the International Crisis Group share. Our reading is that, while the potential impact of these kind of measures can never be understated (and were probably decisive, e.g., in South Africa against the apartheid regime) in Iran just too many factors are pulling the other way, including,

- Iran's sense of national pride, consciousness of its history, and deeply rooted ideology of independence, which cuts across other internal political and cultural divisions, and makes it deeply reluctant to be seen to be pushed around

- Associated with this the sense that Iran is a major, not minor, league player, not least in its own region, and entitled to have the kind of capability that goes with that

- The widespread sense that the West is trying to prevent Iran from having access to scientific progress, patronising it, to keep it in dependence and tutelage

- The sense that the international community's heart is not really in a full-scale sanctions squeeze - that Russia (although it has gone along with the UNSC so far), China and the great majority of NPT countries don't really believe that they are at present acting outside the letter or even spirit of the NPT in rushing to acquire full fuel-cycle capability.

Add to all that the Iranians' current perception that military strike action is a non-starter in the present environment - with, except for a few fringe dwellers, the clear thinking in both the US and Israel that the negatives would far outweigh the positives - and you have all the makings of a full-scale impasse.

Crisis Group has long been arguing that a new approach is needed which goes back to basics - which focuses on strategy rather than immediate tactics - by redrawing the red line.

What matters, from a non-proliferation perspective, is not whether Iran has full enrichment capability, but nuclear weapons. What should ultimately concern Israel, Iran's neighbours, and a world deeply anxious to avoid further nuclear breakout, is not whether Iran has the capacity to make weapons-grade uranium, but whether it actually makes it and puts it into deliverable bombs. While it may well be too late to stop Iran acquiring its own fissile material, and the technological capacity to enrich it to weapons grade, it is certainly not too late to halt it acquiring nuclear weapons.

To achieve this will require a different diplomatic strategy from that presently favoured by the EU and US. It means abandoning the 'zero enrichment' goal in favour of a 'delayed limited enrichment' plan. Under this:

o the wider international community would explicitly accept that Iran can enrich domestically for peaceful nuclear energy purposes;

o in return Iran would agree to phasing in over an extended period of years that enrichment program, with major limitations on its initial size and scope, and a very highly intrusive inspections regime - not just the Additional Protocol to which it has already signed up, which is significantly more intrusive than the basic safeguards regime, but (because of the doubts which have arisen - and are in fact widely shared by other NPT parties - about its reporting lapses and general lack of transparency in the past) specially negotiated 'Additional Protocol Plus' measures which would enable inspectors to have a rather more exact knowledge of what Iran was doing across a broader range of areas relevant to weapons capability; and

o there would be both incentives - in the form of security guarantees, progressive lifting of existing sanctions, moves toward diplomatic normalisation and the like - and strong disincentives to ensure that the agreement stuck. In particular, Iran would be disciplined by knowing that if at any stage it made any move at all toward weaponisation - through the production of weapons-grade fissile material, or any hardware in which to put it - all hell would break loose. A full range of economic sanctions would take immediate effect (including finance and investment sanctions fully supported by the Europeans as well as the US), and military options would not be off the table.

There are three advantages to this strategic approach, if the U.S. and EU could swallow their reservations:

o It is not inconsistent with what we know about Iran's actual nuclear intentions. While there is every reason to believe that right across the political and social spectrum there is as an absolute determination to acquire full fuel cycle capability - and as such to be seen as being in the league of those countries capable of becoming nuclear weapons states if they so chose - there is also every reason to believe that no decision has been made to acquire weapons, and there is a very clear understanding of the huge risks that Iran would be running by so doing: not only the possibility of the balance of calculation changing toward a military strike in the US and Israel, but the real prospect of the Sunni neighbourhood reacting in kind.

o The approach proposed would spread the process out over time. If made clear to the Iranians, it would make much more achievable what has so far been unachievable, viz a suspension right now of enrichment-related activity right now to enable detailed negotiations to take place. And not only would those negotiations themselves take time, they would involve the phasing in over time of the various levels of capacity involved. And this in turn would allow time and space for a more moderate political dynamic to take hold in Iran. The internal political scene is multi-textured, multi-layered and always hard to read and predict, but if a new environment can be created of engagement and cooperation with the West, rather than demonisation and isolation by it, there are many analysts inside and outside the country who believe that a completely different mood than that now represented by Ahmadi-nejad is there for the taking, with all that flows from that in terms of security cooperation.

o But the greatest benefit is that it would command genuinely universal buy-in, first from all those NPT signatories who are wedded to the basic NPT bargain and presently totally reluctant to acknowledge any limitation on full 'peaceful use' capability, and, secondly, and very importantly, from Russia and China, who are likely to go on being extremely reluctant Security Council enforcers of the present 'zero enrichment' strategy, but who are totally willing to be very tough indeed when it comes to Iran actually weaponising, with all that that implies for destabilising the neighbourhood and changing global power balances.

Crisis Group published an early version of this plan 18 months ago, and we know from many consultations since that it has extremely wide appeal as a fallback if the present diplomatic strategy runs into the sand, as now seems very likely.

The obvious downside from the West's point of view - which will be repeated over and over as this debate continues - is that, although stretching out the process, 'delayed limited enrichment' would permit Tehran to eventually achieve full fuel cycle capability, with the risk in turn of weapons acquisition when that happens. But the reality of Iran having that choice, sooner rather than later, and with minimal inspection and supervision along the way, now stares us in the face.

Nobody wants to see the present diplomatic impasse slide into the kind of situation where the West's unwillingness to compromise strengthens its opponent's extremists to the point that their country walks away from the NPT, shrugs off any kind of international monitoring, produces a large stock of weapons-grade material and ultimately takes the risk of building its own bomb. We have been there and done that with North Korea. Although there has at last been a major breakthrough in the six party talks, it is still going to be nightmarishly difficult to wholly recover the ground which has been lost to Pyongyang through earlier Western obduracy.

If the present diplomatic strategy is going nowhere but downhill, the only rational response is a new one which may be ideal for no-one but has attractions for everyone. If all diplomacy fails, the alternative course of military action is simply too horrible to contemplate.

751) Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional: 50 anos

Um anúncio a ser comemorado:

Uma marca histórica: RBPI, volume 50, No.1 (junho de 2007)

Nós temos a alegria de anuncia o lançamento do número 1 do Volume 50 (1/2007) da Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, que é publicada pela IBRI desde 1958.
É importante ressaltar que esta é uma edição histórica, marcando o início das comemorações do cinquentenário da Revista. Afinal, a publicação ininterrupta de uma revista por cinquenta anos é um feito extraordinário, tanto para a realidade brasileira e latino-americana, quanto sob qualquer outro ponto de vista. Para o meio acadêmico especializado em Relações Internacionais no Brasil e na América Latina, a auspiciosa sobrevivência por tanto tempo de um veículo científico é prova do seu amadurecimento. Para o IBRI, a publicação da RBPI e a repercussão científica do seu patrimônio de idéias e de debate, se transformou em uma imensa responsabilidade e em missão empreendida com coragem, determinação e bom senso.

Desde a sua fundação em 1958, no calor das grandes inovações diplomáticas do governo Juscelino Kubitschek, a RBPI tem sido no Brasil um dos veículos preferenciais do debate científico de alto nível e, mais do que isso, um vetor da reflexão sobre os caminhos da modernização e das escolhas internacionais do país. Acompanhou e repercutiu nas dezenas de edições que antecederam a marca histórica que comemoramos hoje as grandes transformações da política e da economia, como o arrefecimento da Guerra Fria e o seu fim, o surgimento de novos temas na agenda internacional (como direitos humanos e meio-ambiente), o lançamento e a crise de processos de integração regional, o despertar e o ocaso de potências.

Nos orgulhamos do patrimônio cultural que é representando pela RBPI, publicação de marcou e que ainda marca de tantos modos o debate político e acadêmico sobre Relações Internacionais em geral e em especial, dos temas importantes para a inserção internacional do Brasil.

750) Um retrato do atual ambiente universitário?

Provavelmente sim, hélas!
Vejam a crônica bem-humorada, mas nem por isso menos verdadeiro, de meu colega acadêmico de Santa Catarina sobre os ares do nosso tempo, um Zeitgeist elementar, quando não vulgar...

CAMPUS AVANÇADO DA IDEOLOGIA
por Orlando Tambosi

O Brasil virou mesmo um país de mentes pasteurizadas pela ideologia. Cinco anos de governo lulo-petista bastaram para que tudo fosse virado pelo avesso. Se você defende as liberdades e a democracia, é tachado de "direitista" ou "conservador" (quando as defendia durante a ditadura, era considerado de "esquerda"). Se você defende a ciência, é logo carimbado de "positivista", membro dessa tribo antiquada que acredita na existência de fatos objetivos e, ainda mais absurdo, que tais fatos sejam acessíveis e explicáveis por teorias independentes dos observadores. E se leva a lógica a sério, então, você é um "reacionário" consumado, vítima do raciocínio "burguês".

Isto não acontece no bar da esquina, claro, mas dentro das universidades, particularmente nas ciências humanas/sociais. Seus alunos já vêm ideologicamente embalados do segundo grau, mas ao invés de desenvolverem um pensamento crítico e racionalista, recebem nos campi nova tintura ideológica. Ali, professor "legal" é aquele que reforça as convicções do alunado, não aquele que o incomoda com reflexão. E há muitos mestres, nesse teatrinho, que jamais contrariam aquilo que a platéia espera.

Onde impera o relativismo, tanto no campo cognitivo quanto na esfera dos valores, o mundo passa a ser aquilo que a hermenêutica pós-moderna diz que é. A grama das praças, por exemplo, pode ser vermelha, dependendo apenas do ponto de vista do sujeito. As palavras já não se referem à realidade, mas são a própria realidade - e nada existe fora da linguagem!

Se há dissenso em relação à racionalidade e às ciências, há consenso em torno de algumas pautas, a começar pelo ecologismo, que é quase uma nova religião. Não ouse duvidar que o maldito "ser humano" seja o único responsável pelo "Aquecimento Global", esta entidade com que os novos apocalípticos ameaçam o planeta. Não ouse contestar que a "globalização" seja uma invenção do imperialismo para dominar e a "periferia". E nem ouse negar que "outro mundo é possível", bem além da "lógica capitalista" e das "leis do mercado". Sobretudo, veja no Estado dirigente e regulador o justiceiro das classes populares, o remédio eficaz para todos os males do "neoliberalismo". Defenda sempre mais Estado, nunca menos.

Por fim, considere calunioso aquilo que o escritor Mário Vargas Llosa, obviamente um liberal, definiu como "idiotice latino-americana". Essa idiotice "postiça, deliberada e de livre-escolha", diz ele, "é adotada conscientemente por preguiça intelectual, apatia ética e oportunismo civil. É ideológica e política, mas acima de tudo frívola, pois revela uma abdicação da faculdade de pensar por conta própria, de cotejar as palavras com os fatos que pretendem descrever, de questionar a retórica que faz as vezes de pensamento. Ela é a beatice da moda reinante, o deixar-se levar sempre pela corrente, a religião do estereótipo e do lugar-comum."

http://otambosi.blogspot.com
Publicado em 27/06/2007

749) De embustes e trapaças...

Não haveria mal, com certeza. Caso algumas mentiras fossem contadas, caso algumas moedas fossem escamoteadas e depois aparecessem magicamente, que mal poderia haver? Todo mundo gosta de embustes e embusteiros. É por isso que camponeses quase famintos abrem mão de seus suados salários quando saltimbancos e ciganos chegam às suas aldeias. Todo mundo gosta de ser enganado, mas apenas quando consentem com o embuste.

“Das Verdadeiras e Reveladoras Memórias de Alonzo Alferonda”, personagem secundário do romance histórico ambientado na Amsterdã de meados do século XVII, O Mercador de Café (The Coffee Trader; tradução de Alexandre Raposo; Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2004, 384 p.; transcrito da página 371), de David Liss, romancista americano (www.davidliss.com).

Na continuidade da leitura desse romance, e mais próximo do final, deparei com a passagem acima transcrita da obra de David Liss, e achei-a perfeitamente apropriada ao momento que vivemos hoje no Brasil, ou talvez em outras épocas também. Eu sempre achei inacreditável como tantas pessoas aceitam ser enganadas, por discursos mentirosos que soam manifestamente falsos e demagógicos, e acho que sempre atribui esse tipo de comportamento à ignorância dos incautos e despreparados. Talvez não seja exatamente assim, como diz o agiota Alferonda.
É certo que a população humilde, aquela que sempre dá os seus votos para os mesmos embusteiros de sempre, consente em ser enganada, pois espera ser retribuída de alguma forma, antes ou depois das eleições, com alguma compensação material, uma promessa de emprego, uma ajuda financeira, qualquer coisa, sim, como diria a canção do poeta. Considerando a miséria material na qual vivem boa parte dos eleitores, pode ser um comportamente racional essa busca de uma satisfação imediata mesmo na perspectiva altamente enganadora de uma promessa vã, de um aceno com algum benefício futuro, coisas, enfim que eles sabem objetivamente que não serão cumpridas, ou pelo menos não em sua inteireza. Trata-se de um jogo, no qual os eleitores pobres adivinham e sabem que aquele político demagogo e falastrão os está enganando de verdade, mas, ainda assim, eles fingem que acreditam nele, temporariamente, caso a promessa se materialize de alguma forma, ou pelo menos parte dela: um asfalto aqui, um posto de saúde acolá, guarda na esquina para afastar os verdadeiros ladrões – talvez não tão perniciosos quanto os que assaltam apenas armados de canetas e armações clandestinas –, enfim, uma ajudazinha temporária para tornar a vida normal um pouco menos miserável do que ela já, normalmente. Afinal de contas, só existe o período eleitoral para acomodar esse tipo de barganha, quando a população humilde tem algo precioso para o demagogo contumaz, o seu voto absolutamente necessário.
Tudo isso é compreensível e esperado e não deveria nos chocar o mais da conta. Mas, o que dizer de senhores senadores, pessoas de posses, algumas cultivadas – outras nem tanto –, indivíduos calejados ao longo de uma vida inteira de espertezas políticas, muitos ex-governadores e prefeitos, ou até presidentes, o que dizer desses ilustres senhores – algumas senhoras também – que gostam de ser enganados, pedem para ser enganados, consentem voluntariamente em deixar-se seduzir pela mais hedionda mentira, pela mais aberta desfaçatez, pela falcatrua tão evidente que até um garoto de colégio saberia que não pode haver essa coisa de “boi voador”.
Pois é, no lugar de camponeses famintos que se divertem com ciganos e magicos de feira barata, temos membros da elite política do país que não apenas consentem mas são coniventes com a fraude, o embuste, a mentira e a hipocrisia. Eles são coniventes com o crime, para sermos mais exatos, pois é disso que estamos falando. Quanto um membro da honorável sociedade vê a fortuna do seu ilustre colega multiplicar-se de forma inacreditável, como se o dinheiro brotasse em árvores, ele apenas fica admirado da esperteza do colega, e trata de descobrir uma maneira de também enriquecer assim tão rapidamente.
Como pergunta Alferonda: que mal pode haver em algumas moedas mudarem de mão, aparecerem magicamente? Que coisa tão horrível pode haver em se buscar a recompensa por tão nobres e necessários serviços prestados à nação, aos mais humildes em primeiro lugar, que não protestam de modo apropriado frente ao embuste que eles sabem existir em suas ações? Por que tanta reação dos moralistas, quando o que se faz é aquilo que sempre se fez, ainda que de maneira mais discreta em outros tempos?
Também acho que não há nada de surpreendente nisso tudo. Mas, não sei por que não consigo evitar a manifestação de um sentimento que estranhamente me acompanha desde uns tempos para cá:
Asco...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida
(www.pralmeida.org; pralmeida@mac.com)
Brasília, 1760: 125 junho 2007, 2 p.

748) Diplomaticas: um novo grupo de noticias e discussao

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747) Mais um pouco de "cancioneiro" português: Sergio Godinho

Os Conquistadores
Sérgio Godinho

Lá vais tu, caravela, lá vais
e a mão que ainda me acena do cais
dará a esta outra mão a coragem
de em frente, em frente seguir viagem,

Será que existe mesmo o Levante?
Haverá quem um dia nos cante?
ando às ordens do nosso infante,
e cá vou fazendo os possíveis

Ó ei, deita a mão a este remo
além, são só paragens do demo
quem sabe, é só um abismo suspenso
só vendo, mas o nevoeiro é denso

Será que existe mesmo o Levante?
Haverá quem um dia nos cante?
ando às ordens do nosso infante
e cá vou fazendo os possíveis

Mas parai, trago notícias horríveis
parai com tudo,
já avisto os nossos conquistadores

Vêm num bote de madeira talhado em caravela
com um soldado de madeira a fingir de sentinela
com uma espada de madeira proferindo sentenças
enterrada que ela foi no coração doutras crenças
enterrada que ela foi, sua sombra era uma cruz
exigindo aos que morriam que gritassem: Jesus!
com um caixilho de madeira imortalizando o saque
colorindo na vitória as armas brancas do ataque
até que povos massacrados foram dizendo: Basta
até que a mesa do Comércio ainda posta e já gasta
acabou como jangada para evacuar fugitivos
da fogueira incendiada pelos outrora cativos
e debandou à nossa costa a transbordar de remorsos
mas a rejeitar a culpa e ainda a pedir reforços.


Sérgio Godinho é uma espécie de Chico Buarque de Portugal. Eu prefiro o Sérgio ao Chico no quesito "casamento entre literatura e história". É claro que o Chico também é muito bom nisto mas creio que o Sérgio o supere... talvez a diferença esteja no tipo de público a que cada um se dirige. Eu diria que os portugueses (as portuguesas são insuperáveis!) cultos são muito mais cultos do que os brasileiros cultos... e certamente são também mais arrogantes e pedantes. Mas basta a gente encarar que eles ficam mansinhos de gaiola...
(Comentário de Maria do Espirito Santo Gontijo, BH-MG)

746) Pausa para a cultura: uma bela poesia...

Na verdade uma composição, que eu diria histórico-literária.
Vejam vocês mesmos:

Os Demónios de Alcácer-Quibir
Sérgio Godinho

O D. Sebastião foi para Alcácer Quibir
de lança na mão, a investir, a investir,
com o cavalo atulhado de livros de história
e guitarras de fado para cantar vitória.

O D. Sebastião já tinha hipotecado
toda a nação por dez reis de mel coado
para comprar soldados, lanças, armaduras,
para comprar o V das vitórias futuras.

O D. Sebastião era um belo pedante
foi mandar vir para uma terra distante
pôs-se a discursar: isto aqui é só meu
vamos lá trabalhar que quem manda sou eu.

Mas o mouro é que conhecia o deserto
de trás para diante e de longe e de perto
o mouro é que sabia que o deserto queima e abrasa
o mouro é que jogava em casa.

E o D. Sebastião levou tantas na pinha
que ao voltar cá encontrou a vizinha
espanhola sentada na cama, deitada no trono
e o país mudado de dono.

E o D. Sebastião acabou na moirama
um bebé chorão sem regaço nem mama
a beber, a contar tim por tim tim
a explicar, a morrer, sim, mas devagar

E apanhou tal dose do tal nevoeiro
que a tuberculose o mandou para o galheiro
fez-se um funeral com princesas e reis
e etcetera e tal, Viva Portugal.