922) Homenagem a um amigo historiador

A propósito do falecimento do historiador gaúcho Braz Augusto Aquino Brancato

Carmen Licia e eu, amigos de longa data do Professor Braz Brancato, colegas de pesquisa histórica e espectadores interessados na sua fecunda obra de pesquisador, de docente e de avaliador de cursos de história, gostariamos de deixar nosso testemunho de sentida admiração e de reconhecimento profissional pela grande obra realizada pelo professor Brancato. À Sandra Maria Lubisco Brancato, sua esposa de todas as horas, aos seus filhos, nossas mais sentidas condolências pelo seu passamento e nossa reafirmação de sincero elogio pela seriedade com que ele conduziu suas múltiplas atividades na área da História durante toda a sua vida.

Braz Augusto Aquino Brancato
Ex-embaixador comenta o falecimento de Braz Augusto Aquino Brancato
Rubem Amaral Jr.
Revista de História da Biblioteca Nacional
24.09.2008

Através da coluna "Diálogo com o autor" da Revista de História, recebi a triste notícia do falecimento de meu bom amigo Braz Augusto Aquino Brancato. Conheci-o em Madrid nos idos de 1980, quando ele e sua esposa ali se encontravam fazendo doutorado em História na Universidade Complutense. Desde então, mantivemos regular contato. Anos depois, tive o prazer de hospedá-lo alguns dias em Lisboa e, há alguns meses, recebi sua visita em Brasília, por ocasião de uma reunião da CAPES, órgão de que era consultor.

Resultado de sua tese de doutorado, o livro "Don Pedro I de Brasil, Posible Rey de España" foi prefaciado pelo seu antigo mestre espanhol Professor Emérito Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois e recebeu da banca examinadora a qualificação "Sobresaliente cum laude", a máxima nota. O Instituto Espanhol de Cooperação Ibero-Americana também concedeu-lhe o Primeiro Prêmio de Teses Doutorais em 1984.

Braz era graduado em História e em Direito pela PUCRS, universidade onde lecionou e exerceu diferentes cargos por longos anos, inclusive de Presidente do seu Conselho Editorial e da revista Estudos-Ibero-Americanos, na qual colaborou com numerosos trabalhos. Seu nutrido currículo acadêmico incluía, além das atividades docentes, uma extensa lista de participações em bancas examinadoras, orientação de pós-graduandos, apresentação de trabalhos em congressos, publicação de artigos em diversos órgãos nacionais e estrangeiros, coordenação e edição de obras coletivas e etc.

Além de seu sólido preparo intelectual, era um homem cordial de grande integridade, excelente chefe de família e leal amigo de seus amigos. Com as minhas reiteradas condolências aos familiares, gostaria de deixar esse testemunho de minha estima, admiração e saudade.

921) Perolas do processo de seleçao academica

Apenas para registro, a modo de informaçao, muito postergada, sobre justificativas esfarrapadas das entidades de fomento acadêmico. Compreendo inteiramente que as possibilidades efetivas sejam em número desproporcionalmente menor em relação às demandas realizadas, mas a desculpa não poderia ser mais incoerente e sem sentido.

Oliveira Lima e a diplomacia brasileira
Em julho de 2004, respondendo a iniciativa do Centro de Memória do CNPq, eu encaminhei um projeto, na temática acima descrita, para ser eventualmente acolhido como um livro na Coleção Memória do Saber do CNPq.
Em meados daquele mês, recebi telefonema do vice-presidente do CNPq, dizendo que tinha aprovado o projeto, mas recomendava ampliação do trabalho para outros aspectos que não apenas a diplomacia, com participação de outros estudiosos. Encaminhei coorrespondência a outros pesquisadores, com vistas a verificar a possibilidade dessa ampliação.
Entretanto, por carta de 6 de outubro de 2004, assinada pelo Secretário Executivo da Coleção Memória do Saber, fui informado que meu projeto não tinha sido retido nos 20 projetos selecionados dentre os 137 recebidos.
Esta foi a justificativa:
“Informamos que o seu projeto não foi aprovado, considerando a segunte avaliação dos pareceristas: ‘A proposta é pouco fundamentada, não situando historicamente o personagem”.

Bem, para que cada um possa julgar, efetivamente, que a minha proposta era pouco fundamentada, eu a transcrevo agora, aqui abaixo:

Coleção Memória do Saber do CNPq
Apresentação de Proposta

1. Nome do referencial objeto de estudo:
Oliveira Lima e a diplomacia brasileira

2. Nome do proponente:
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

3. Justificativa da proposta:
Examinar a contribuição de Oliveira Lima, como intelectual diplomata, para o pensamento diplomático, como pesquisador, para o campo da história diplomática, e, como diplomata da ativa, para a formacao de uma agenda de política externa do Brasil.
O trabalho fará uma reflexão sobre a política externa na época de transição do Império para a República e na era do Barão do Rio Branco (e um pouco mais além, até meados dos anos 1920), com base na contribuição de OL, a partir dos principais escritos publicados, no que se refere aos principais problemas de sua época (e que de certa forma ainda são desafios de hoje): diplomacia regional, conteúdo econômico da diplomacia, papel do diplomata, relações com os EUA, Japão, América Latina etc. Poderá terminar por uma reflexão sobre alguém que foi obscurecido por personalidades mais fortes (Barão do Rio Branco) e sobre sua importância para a atual diplomacia brasileira.
O trabalho servirá também para recuperar alguns “papéis perdidos” para os atuais historiadores brasileiros, assim como para o público em geral e para os diplomatas em particular (seleção de textos mais relevantes).

Esquema provisório de trabalho
Oliveira Lima e a diplomacia brasileira
1. Introdução: por que Oliveira Lima?
(recuperação de seu papel, seus escritos e sua importância para a diplomacia brasileira; principais fontes primárias e secundárias sobre sua obra; a Biblioteca Oliveira Lima da Universidade Católica de Washington: livros e escritos de OL)

Primeira Parte:
Oliveira Lima e sua época
2. Um diplomata belle-époque
(breve resumo da vida e da produção acadêmico-jornalístico-historiográfica de OL, no contexto brasileiro e internacional )
3. Oliveira Lima e a diplomacia brasileira na transição para a República
(itinerário funcional de OL e principais características da diplomacia brasileira entre 1889 e 1902)
4. O acadêmico e o Barão: choque de concepções diplomáticas
(razões e circunstâncias dos desentendimentos e entrechoques: questões pessoais e de definições de política externa)
5. Ascensão e queda do “Dom Quixote Gordo”
(fama intelectual e desencontros funcionais: incidentes de carreira, “desgraça política”, auto-exílio, obscurecimento posterior)

Segunda Parte:
Visões da política externa brasileira: a contribuição de Oliveira Lima
6. O Brasil e o mundo: alianças e preferências continentais
(visão geral das concepções diplomáticas de OL, com base nas suas várias obras publicadas, escritos jornalísticos e papéis pessoais)
7. O Brasil e os Estados Unidos: autonomia e aproximação
(relações americanas, doutrina Monroe, o papel dos EUA no contexto regional e internacional, relações com o Brasil; ver arquivos diplomáticos e os ofícios produzidos por OL)
8. Diplomacia regional: o cone sul e as repúblicas bolivarianas
(a visão de OL das relações platinas e andinas do Brasil, com destaque para a Argentina: visão hegemônico-imperial ou de cooperação regional?, o papel das grandes potências européias e dos EUA nos problemas regionais; corolário Roosevelt à doutrina Monroe)
9. Diplomacia econômica: promoção comercial avant la lettre
(a renovação do papel econômico do diplomata, em complemento ao mandato consular, e as funções de apoio à atividade exportadora pelo MRE)
10. Direito internacional e emergência do multilateralismo
(questões da paz e segurança internacional , meios pacíficos de solução de conflitos: as conferências de paz da Haia, conferências americanas, a opção pelo arbitramento e os problemas do equilíbrio regional)
11. Diplomacia funcional: o diplomata e a modernização do serviço exterior
(críticas de OL à estrutura e funcionamento da diplomacia brasileira: antecipação de mudanças ou irrelevância funcional?)

Terceira Parte:
Duas épocas da política externa brasileira: modernidade de Oliveira Lima?
12. O Brasil e os grandes atores: Europa, Argentina, Estados Unidos, Japão
(as posições de OL são relevantes para a nossa época?)
13. O Brasil e a cooperação regional: do conflito à integração
(da desconfiança à de aliança e integração: OL antecipou algo?)
14. Diplomacia econômica: emergência e afirmação de um estilo diplomático
(das conferências americanas ao multilateralismo econômico contemporâneo)
15. Conclusões: podemos aprender algo com Oliveira Lima, ainda hoje?
(lições, ensinamentos, equívocos de OL; sua utilidade para a diplomacia brasileira na perspectiva do século XXI)

Quarta Parte:
Antologia de Oliveira Lima?
1) Nos Estados Unidos, impressões politicas e sociaes (Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1899; 524 p.) (trechos)
2) Panamericanismo (Monroe – Bolivar – Roosevelt)
(Rio de Janeiro [etc.] H. Garnier, 1907; 342 p.) (trechos)
3) América Latina e América Inglesa: a evolução Brasileira comparada com a Anglo-Americana (Rio de janeiro. Livraria Garnier [1914?] (trechos)
4) “O Panamericanismo e a Liga das Nações” in Boletim da União Pan-Americana,
Washington: ano XX, nº 3, março 1921, p. 154-169 (trechos)

Apêndice:
Cronologia da vida e da obra de OL e etapas da política externa brasileira
Fontes e bibliografia:
Fontes primárias (arquivos diplomáticos, papéis e manuscritos OL, depoimentos da época
Fontes impressas e publicadas (relatórios do MRE, jornais e periódicos contemporâneos)
Obras de Oliveira Lima
Fontes secundárias (obras sobre Oliveira Lima e a diplomacia brasileira)
Obras gerais

4. Programa de trabalho:
(a ser definido em função da aceitação do projeto)

5. Relação de colaboradores e de suas atribuições:
Assistente de pesquisa (a ser definido entre alunos de mestrado)

6. Estimativa de despesas:
1. Remuneração do autor: R$ 3.000,00
2. Assistente de pesquisa, três meses (R$ 1.000,00 por mês = R$ 3.000,00)
3. Secretária-digitadora, um mês: R$ 700,00
4. Pesquisas no Arquivo Diplomático do RJ, passagens e diárias: R$ 2.000,00
Total: R$ 8.700,00

7. Cronograma de atividades:
( a ser definido em função da aceitação do projeto)

8. Curriculum abreviado do autor:
Paulo Roberto de Almeida é doutor em Ciências Sociais pela Universidade de Bruxelas, mestre em Planejamento Econômico pela Universidade de Antuérpia e diplomata de carreira desde 1977. Tem atuado como professor convidado em diversas instituições brasileiras e estrangeiras e é pesquisador autônomo em temas de história diplomática brasileira e de relações econômicas internacionais. Publicou inúmeros trabalhos e diversos livros nessas áreas, com destaque para o processo de integração regional, o multilateralismo econômico e a diplomacia econômica do Brasil (ver principais publicações e outros dados do autor em www.pralmeida.org).

9. Estimativa do número de páginas (texto e ilustrações):
350 a 400 pp. (poucas ilustrações)

Brasília, 7 de julho de 2004

920) Hayek sobre as limitações humanas na antecipação do futuro

O filósofo austriaco e prêmio Nobel de economia Friedrich Hayek já figura neste blog, em posição preeminente (ver coluna da direita) sobre a melhor atitude a se adotar em relação aos dogmaas humanos. Agora ele comparece com uma seleção de frases coletadas pelo economista brasileiro Rodrigo Constantino a propósito da liberdade humana e a visão de futuro.

"Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong."

"To make the best available knowledge at any given moment the compulsory standard for all future endeavor may well be the most certain way to prevent new knowledge from emerging."

"Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom."

"Our freedom is threatened in many fields because of the fact that we are much too ready to leave the decision to the expert or to accept too uncritically his opinion about a problem of which he knows intimately only one little aspect."

"It is his concern with the impersonal process of society in which more knowledge is utilized than any one individual or organized group of human beings can possess that puts the economists in constant opposition to the ambitions of other specialists who demand powers of control because they feel that their particular knowledge is not given sufficient consideration."

"Most of the advantages of social life, especially in its more advanced forms which we call 'civilization', rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of."

"It would be an error to believe that, to achieve a higher civilization, we have merely to put into effect the ideas now guiding us; if we are to advance, we must leave room for a continuous revision of our present conceptions and ideals which will be necessitated by further experience."

"Liberty is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable."

"Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen."

919) Livre acesso a periodicos academicos

Um diretorio de revistas acadêmicas de livre acesso
http://www.doaj.org/

Welcome to the Directory of Open Access Journals.
This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
There are now 3611 journals in the directory.
Currently 1249 journals are searchable at article level.
As of today 208.720 articles are included in the DOAJ service.

Subjects:
Agriculture and Food Sciences
Arts and Architecture
Biology and Life Sciences
Business and Economics
Chemistry
Earth and Environmental Sciences
General Works
Health Sciences
History and Archaeology
Languages and Literatures
Law and Political Science
Mathematics and Statistics
Philosophy and Religion
Physics and Astronomy
Science General
Social Sciences
Technology and Engineering

918) Indigenismo: uma utopia ingenua, e talvez perigosa, ou pelo menos equivocada...

Um excelente artigo de um sociólogo latino-americano, vivendo nos EUA, sobre o indigenismo (ou talvez fosse o caso de dizer: sobre a ideologia indigenista).
Acredito que o presidente boliviano Evo Morales faria bem em ler este artigo, mas acredito também que ele não iria gostar...

Reflections from Latin America
Indigenism and Economics
Ibsen Martinez*
September 1, 2008

In some of my articles on Latin America I have used the word "indigenism".
Last April, I received a courteous e-mail from my editor. I cannot resist quoting an excerpt:
As an ordinary American, I don't know very well what it ['indigenism'] means or connotes. It's apparently a term that has come to have a lot of connotations in Latin America. To a native English-speaking reader like myself trying to make sense of it, the word 'indigenous' suggests native peoples—that is, the people who inhabited Latin America before the Spanish explorers ever arrived there. A word like 'indigenism' might suggest that they—the people who lived there before the Spanish ever arrived—should have greater influence in modern politics. But obviously the fact that there is a new word also suggests that maybe the word means something more complex and modern—for example, that there is a modern culture, perhaps intertwined, involving both the originally-indigenous peoples and whatever influences have occurred since.

I looked the word up in several English dictionaries and all I could find was "indigenous", "indigenizing" or even "indigenization". Obviously, "indigenism", at least as I have used it in my past columns, is an ambiguous cognate meaning something complex and modern, as my editor suggests. Something that has many connotations in our region, too. And something that runs deep in the minds of millions of ordinary Latin Americans in many countries like Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay and the Andean countries of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.
All together, they have a population of more than 300 million people. And in each one of these countries various forms of indigenism thrive with disparate consequences for their economies.
Instead of a single paragraph, I decided to write a full article on indigenismo. I thought that it might help me get a better grasp of one of the most perplexing Spanish words currently used throughout Latin America by politicians, scholars, journalists, talk-show hosts and, at times, even by truly indigenous persons. I shall try to delve as best as I can into what indigenismo entails when it comes down to Latin American economic matters.
The VOX General Dictionary of Spanish defines indigenismo as
1. The study and extolling of the ancient cultural traits of autochthonous peoples of [Latin] America that have become part of the local European civilization,
2. Political doctrine aimed at vindicating both indigenous and mestizo people's rights
3. Any Spanish American idiomatic expression that appropriates any indigenous word's common usage.

All three entries are essentially correct, but I would also point out that indigenism was primarily an opinion current favorable to the autochthonous peoples that attained great influence as far back as the 16th century. Thus, it is not a modern concept.
Yet, this ancient humanist-inspired current, however diffuse, has been permanent ever since the first contacts between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of South America to this day. Columbus' first idealized depictions of the population he had just met this side of the Atlantic clearly deserve to be held as the earliest products of Latin American indigenism.
First conceived and nurtured by Catholic priests during the colonial era, indigenism has survived through all the stages of Latin American history. It was kept alive after the Independence by countless associations dedicated to protect the indios and it cannot distinctly be identified with any particular social class.
Of course, indigenism drags the burden of the conquistadores's bad conscience as well as that of the criollos—white settlers of Spanish descent—and mestizos in face of the aboriginal populations' backwardness and sufferings. Indigenism, however, has seldom placated that everlasting bad conscience.
Furthernore, indigenism is also a literary, artistic and political movement that began developing itself during the second half of the 19th century in many of our newly-born "republics". It those times it was clear to many intellectuals and politicians that, even after independence, segregation of the indios from the mainstream society hindered the foundation of true nations.
One of the paradoxes involved in Latin American indigenism lies in the fact that, more often than not, it has been a white meditation on the indio, usually written in the conqueror's language, Spanish.
Subcomandante Marcos, the witty and masked leader of the zapatista guerilla in Chiapas, Mexico, is an apt example of this paradox: he is a sociologist of white upper middle-class origins and a prolific indigenista essayist, too. From another point of view, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa affirms in his book Archaic Utopia (1996) that current Latin American indigenism, such as the one represented by Marcos, is still mostly a "European mythologizing" of Rousseau's "good savage". Still, ever since independence from Spain was attained, indigenism has posed some very difficult questions to our societies.
How to eliminate ethnic and cultural differences that kept the various constituents of the population apart—the indios, the white creole elite, and the mestizo—so that they could merge in a society that could truly be called a nation? How to absorb the aboriginal otherness into the fabric of a nationality? At the same time, how to assert any common national identity based exclusively on aboriginal values and mores?
These are just a few of the contradictions indigenism tried to solve during the 19th and 20th centuries. But if there is something that remains clear it is that the 21st century's Latin American indigenism is tightly connected with all forms of nationalist radical populism. Henri Favre, a respected French expert on the subject, goes as far as saying that "indigenism is the most privileged form of nationalism in Latin America".1
In a sense, Latin American ongoing indigenism is the flip side of globalization. In terms of its application to history, it attempts to invent an aboriginal "collectivist tradition" and retain it as something essentially different from other cultures and societies, to build a estate-oriented, populist ideology on such a tradition.
To be true, today there are as many indigenist currents in Latin American as there are countries where the indigenous population is significantly large.
The Mexican revolution ( 1910-1920) was the great period of intellectual and artistic indigenism in Latin America. The Mexican muralist movement, embodied in the works of José Clemente Orozco or Diego Rivera, became, in the eyes of many other Latin American artists, something worthy of imitation. The same can be said of the various literary indigenista trends—in essays, novels and poetry—that spread out in Latin America during the first half of the 20th century. But it was radical politics what cleared the way to transform indigenism in a major political force throughout the region.
1927 was a good year for both the New York Yankees and political indigenism in Latin America. José Carlos Mariátegui, a brilliant Peruvian Marxist writer, began publishing a series of essays asserting, for the first time in Latin American intellectual history, that indigenism should be inseparable from socialism.
According to Mariátegui, only a Marxist-oriented collectivism could successfully replace feudal and capitalist societies in the Andean countries —Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia—and bring justice and welfare to the descendants of the ancient Incan Empire.
Neither [European] civilizaton nor the white man's alphabet—he wrote—will upbring the indigenous soul. The myth, the idea of a socialist revolution will. The indio's only hope must be revolutionary.
The Marxist perspective that Latin American indigenism acquired ever since misrepresents pre-Hispanic indigenous communities as collective and philanthropic "good savage" societies. Furthermore, it posits the impossibility of founding democratic and liberal institutions on "feudal and neocolonial economies".
To deny Spanish atrocities during the Conquest period would be as loathsome as denying the Holocaust. But it is just as deceitful to describe pre-Hispanic societies as egalitarian Utopias.
Yet, more than eighty years after Mariátegui's book was first published, a diversity of indigenisms thrives throughout the continent. Certainly, it is more nuanced in those countries where mestizaje—a Spanish word that refers to peoples of mixed race—is a distinctive trait of their societies, such as Colombia or Venezuela. Miscegenation, it would seem, attenuates segregationism and scolds racist attitudes.
Though there have been Mayan Indians guerrillas in Guatemala, especially active during the 1980s, the end of the Cold War extinguished them the same way as it put an end to all Central American civil wars. The Zapatista irregulars in Chiapas, Mexico, might still attract scores of radical U.S. and European tourists, but it never posed a credible threat to Mexican democratic institutions.
Today, indigenism is a major political force only in the Andean countries, a 3 million square-Km region once called Tahuantinsuyo, the greatest and oldest empire ever developed in pre-Hispanic America.
This Incan Empire, as it was also known, was headquartered in the now Peruvian city of Cuzco. Its Pacific coastline stretched for more that 5000 km. When the Spaniards first arrived during the early 15th century, the Incan Empire extended over what now is Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. At the height of its might, during the 13th century, it comprised large expanses of what now are Colombia and Northern Chile and Argentina. This only fact would explain why indigenism in the Andean countries has morphed into a force that simply will not go away and must be reckoned with.
Nobody can deny that president Evo Morales, who is the first indigenous ruler of after 500 hundred years of Bolivian history, represents a majority of his country's indigenous population.
According to a 2001 official census, 45 percent out of a total of some 8 million inhabitants consider themselves to be pueblos originarios—native peoples. They all sit on South America's second-biggest gas reserves. Yet, excepting Haiti, Bolivia is undeniably one of the most unequal countries in Latin America.
Mr. Morales is intent in having a new constitution approved via referendum. His "indigenous constitution", as it is called, vindicates the same fictional ancient forms of pre-Hispanic collectivism that, according to Mariátegui, chastized personal profit and produced wealth for all.
The irony of it is that a majority of followers of Mr. Morales simply cannot imagine that Tahuantinsuyo was in fact a ruthless theocracy, a tyrannical regime with an economy based on slave work. Furthermore, they reject the idea that integrating into a globalized world economy should not necessarily imply bowing to any foreign imperialism.
Should Mr. Morales go his way, his constitution would only strengthen presidential powers and embed a state-led socialist economy.
For all its philanthropic ideals, indigenism has only made it more difficult to attain true economic growth and it has done so just when the Andean countries should be going through the best of its times.

Notes:
1 Henri Favre, L'Indigenisme, Presses Universitaires de France, Col. Que sais-je?, Paris, 1996.

* Ibsen Martinez is a columnist, journalist, and award-winning playwright from Caracas, Venezuela. His writings have appeared in El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Letras Libres, Madrid, and El Pais in Madrid. Since 1995, he has written a weekly column for El Nacional.

For more articles by Ibsen Martinez, see the Archive.
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917) O investimento direto estrangeiro no crescimento: um estudo sobre os EUA

Com alguma caução para as diferenças estruturais entre as duas economias, esse estudo sobre o papel do IED na economia americana pode servir para alguma inferência indireta sobre seu papel na economia brasileira, supondo-se que algumas relações econômicas em nível microeconômico permaneçam válidas independentemente das dimensões ou características macroeconômicas do país focado.

Working Paper
Policy Liberalization and FDI Growth, 1982 to 2006 [pdf]
Matthew Adler and Gary Clyde Hufbauer

Global economic expansion over the last three decades has been remarkable. While nominal world GDP has increased four times, world trade flows have grown more than six-fold, and the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown by roughly 20 times since 1980. The sources of global trade and investment growth are well known—general economic expansion, policy liberalization, and better communications and technology—but the impact of each source is unclear.

Adler and Hufbauer attempt to uncover the contribution of policy liberalization to the rising ratios of US inward and outward FDI stocks to GDP over the last three decades. Drawing on stylized facts and an unorthodox calculation method the authors estimate that roughly 30 percent of US inward FDI stock growth and 18 percent of US outward FDI stock growth between 1982 and 2006 can be attributed to policy liberalization. In total, and as a conservative measure, US inward and outward FDI stock growth between 1982 and 2006 contributed roughly $234 billion annually to the level of US real GDP in 2006. Of this annual gain, roughly $77 billion results from the expected rate of FDI stock growth (as a simple consequence of GDP growth); $48 billion is attributable to FDI stock growth from policy liberalization; and $112 billion is attributable to FDI stock growth from "everything else"—a combination of market forces and technological change.

>> Read full working paper [pdf]

>> See also Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Development?

916) Ambicoes nucleares do Brasil: uma analise a partir dos EUA

Brazil's Nuclear Ambitions: Worrisome?
Council on Hemispheric Affairs

On Thursday, July 31, Brazilian authorities gave the final go ahead to the civilian nuclear power company, Electronuclear, to continue construction of the country's third nuclear power plant. Though the decision to revitalize the 22-year-old nuclear reactor, Angra 3, came late last year, plans were finalized in July by the government's environmental regulatory agency. Electronuclear, a subsidiary of the state-owned energy firm Electrobras, plans to begin construction in February.

Brazilian officials must constantly address the country's still inadequate supply of energy if they hope to see Brazil continue on the path to becoming a superpower. For this reason, together with several major new discoveries of oil deposits off Brazil's coastline, a confident President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hails the developing nuclear initiative as one that could ensure an increased supply of energy to the population. However, there are grave political and economic implications of any turn to nuclear energy that he is taking, that should not be overlooked or minimized.

For Full Article Click Here

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Elizabeth Reavey.

915) Um novo conceito de busca na internet: www.cuil.com

Muitos já sabem da nova ferramenta de busca disponível na internet: www.cuil.com
Ele tem um conceito diferente de busca, com ferramentas mais direcionadas para o que interessa no conceito, ou nos termos selecionados, aparentemente de forma relacional, não por meio do volume bruto de consultas, como parece ser o sistema do Google.
Fiz um pequeno teste, colocando meu próprio nome, entre aspas, como referência básica e os resultados podem ser resumidos como segue:

Cuil: o retorno foi de apenas 3,659
Google: o retorno foi de 29.600, obviamente com muitos homônimos e muitas repetições.

O que parece distinguir o Cuil é o cuidado com a informação substantiva, em si, não a busca por terceiros. Obviamente, também neste sistema, a ferramenta direcionou para outros "PRAs", ou até a "Paulos" isolados, mas de modo geral, as referências são consistentes, como estes exemplos (alguns desconhecidos até para mim) podem permitir constatar:

1) UW Press - : Envisioning Brazil: A Guide to Brazilian...
Marshall C. Eakin, professor of history at Vanderbilt University and the executive director of the Brazilian Studies Association, is the author and editor of several books, including Tropical Capitalism: The Industrialization of Belo Horizonte and Brazil: The Once and Future Country. Paulo Roberto de Almeida is...

2) Table of contents for Envisioning Brazil
Geography Cyrus B. Dawsey III xxx Part Three Counterpoints: Brazilian Studies in Britain and France 13. The British Contribution to the Study of Brazil Leslie Bethell xxx 14. Comparative Development of the Study of Brazil in the United States and France Edward A. Riedinger xxx Part Four Bibliographic and Reference...

3) Relações Brasil-Estados Unidos : assimetrias e...
All about Relações Brasil-Estados Unidos : assimetrias e convergências by Paulo Roberto de Almeida (org. ). LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers.

4) Environment: Brazilians See Plot to Steal Amazonian...
Diplomat Paulo Roberto de Almeida, then serving at the Brazilian embassy in Washington, drew up a report about the fraud, available (in Portuguese) at www.pralmeida.org. There, the Web site www.brasil.iwarp.com is identified as the origin of the rumors. The site's slogan, "Brasil, ame-o ou deixe-o" (Brazil, love...

5) EconPapers: Políticas de Integração Regional no...
By Paulo Roberto de Almeida; Abstract: Presentation and analysis of the regional diplomacy of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva s government (2003-2006), with a. EconPapers Home About EconPapers. Working Papers Journal Articles Books and Chapters Software Components. Authors. JEL codes New Economics Papers. Advanced Search...

(e assim por diante)

Segundo artigo publicado no Financial Times, e reproduzido no Valor Econômico em 29 de julho último, o novo sistema de buscas contaria com um número de páginas indexadas três vezes superior ao do Google. O novo mecanismo classifica as buscas por seu conteúdo, não por sua popularidade, o que parece ser relevante para pesquisadores, como eu, que estão atrás de conteúdo, e no Google se deparam com zillhões de referências, nem todas pertinentes.

Curioso que o sistema vai buscar coisas aparentemente perdidas em listas de discussões, como esta participação minha numa lista de historia economica, da qual nem me lembrava mais:

HES: Re: QUERY--All pre-1936 economists were laissez faire
Paulo Roberto de Almeida pralmeida at mac.com
Fri Jan 26 14:02:30 EST 2007

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Paul Johnson's Modern Times also gives special emphasys to the
dirigisme of Herbert Hoover (an almost Saint Simonien "ingenieur
social") and early technocratism during the twenties. He dismisses
the so called laissez-faire of this period, pointing to early signs
of state interventionism, much before the rise of proto-forms of
keynesianism.
So, cloks have to be turned back almost ten years, before the
official start of keynesian policies in middle thirties.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

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A conferir: www.cuil.com

914) O Brasil na presidencia pro-tempore do Mercosul: segundo semestre de 2008

Presidência Pro Tempore do Brasil no Mercosul
Mensagem do Ministro das Relações Exteriores, Embaixador Celso Amorim

O Brasil assumiu, no mês de julho, a Presidência Pro Tempore do Mercosul. Temos pela frente um semestre de muito trabalho para, em conjunto com nossos sócios, consolidarmos as conquistas recentes do Bloco e avançarmos nos temas mais importantes para o processo de integração.

O Mercosul permitiu aos nossos cidadãos se conhecerem melhor e se sentirem cada vez mais partes de um projeto comum de integração, que, nas palavras do Presidente Lula, “nos faz mais fortes, respeitados e independentes”. Ao facilitar os fluxos de comércio e de investimentos e a circulação de pessoas entre seus Estados Partes, o Mercosul contribuiu de maneira notável para a consolidação da democracia e da paz na região. Trata-se de um projeto complexo e ambicioso. Por isso mesmo, há, ainda, muitos desafios a enfrentar.

No campo econômico-comercial, pretendemos, durante a PPTB, continuar aperfeiçoando a União Aduaneira. Atuaremos para fortalecer a Tarifa Externa Comum e incrementar ainda mais o comércio intrazona. Daremos continuidade aos esforços de promoção da integração produtiva. Há significativo espaço para que nossas empresas estabeleçam conexões e parcerias em nível regional. Pretendemos, nesse contexto, desenvolver as normas que permitirão o pleno funcionamento, no futuro próximo, do Fundo de Apoio a Pequenas e Médias Empresas. O tratamento das assimetrias permanecerá uma prioridade de nossa atuação e permeará todas as nossas iniciativas.

As questões sociais também receberão especial atenção. Buscaremos aprimorar a coordenação nas áreas de educação, cultura, saúde, trabalho, meio ambiente, direitos humanos, para citar apenas alguns setores da maior importância para nossas sociedades. Graças ao processo de integração, as autoridades dos Estados Partes dialogam, hoje, com grande freqüência e intensidade. Essa troca de experiências reforça a aproximação entre nossas sociedades.

Seguiremos apoiando os trabalhos do Parlamento do Mercosul, importante espaço para o fortalecimento da institucionalidade democrática do Bloco.

Agiremos, igualmente, na esfera do “Mercosul Cidadão”, que tem influência direta na vida daqueles que residem e trabalham nos Estados Partes. Facilitar o trânsito entre as fronteiras e reduzir os entraves para a circulação das pessoas são ações fundamentais para que o Mercosul seja visto como uma realidade concreta e positiva por todos os habitantes da região.

Estamos confiantes que, durante a Presidência brasileira, daremos a contribuição necessária para que o Mercosul continue a ser motivo de orgulho para todos nós ao promover a solidariedade, a prosperidade, a justiça social e a democracia em todos os países da região.

http://www.mercosul.gov.br/

===========

Salamaleques diplomáticos à parte, que são inevitáveis nesse tipo de documento, referências sempre otimistas quanto ao futuro do desenolvimento econômico e social na região e a seus progressos "democráticos", que tambem percorrem todo discurso nessa área, vamos deixar de lado tudo o que é "fortalecer", "consolidar", "avançar" e
outros verbos ativos desse tipo que apenas rendem homenagem ao déjà vu, ao lugar comum e ao more of the same.
De tudo o que vejo, as duas únicas coisas que se pretende empreender, mesmo, e fazer avançar, são estas aqui:

"Pretendemos, nesse contexto, desenvolver as normas que permitirão o pleno funcionamento, no futuro próximo, do Fundo de Apoio a Pequenas e Médias Empresas. O tratamento das assimetrias permanecerá uma prioridade de nossa atuação e permeará todas as nossas iniciativas."

Ou seja, o Mercosul confirma uma vocação, reforçada na presente administração, de pretender resolver problemas econômicos não pela via do mercado, da abertura e da competição, mas pela via da atuação estatal, da distribuição governamental de recursos públicos, do dirigismo econômico. Acredito, pessoalmente, que esse tipo de atuação represente uma gota d'agua no oceano de "necessidades" e que o melhor a fazer, para os governos, seria reforçar as externalidades positivas -- infra-estrutura, comunicação, capacitação educacional, ambiente de negocios, de modo geral -- que possam permitir a atuação facilitada das empresas privadas, as únicas, finalmente, que criam oportunidades de emprego e que geram, portanto, renda e riqueza na região e fora dela. Governos apenas reciclam recursos que eles capturam na esfera privada, e ao faze-lo nem sempre agem de modo eficiente ou imparcial.

913) Uma homenagem a um lutador contra o totalitarismo: Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Dois textos em homenagem a um simples escritor, mas um dos mais poderosos do século XX: primeiro Christopher Hitchens, depois o The Economist.

The Man Who Kept On Writing
Alexander Solzhenitsyn lived as if there were such a thing as human dignity.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 4, 2008

Every now and then it happens. The state or the system encounters an individual who, bafflingly, maddeningly, absurdly, cannot be broken. Should they manage to survive, such heroes have a good chance of outliving the state or the system that so grossly underestimated them. Examples are rather precious and relatively few, and they include Nelson Mandela refusing an offer to be released from jail (unless and until all other political detainees were also freed) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn having to be deported from his country of birth against his will, even though he had become—and had been before—a prisoner there.

Two words will always be indissolubly connected to the name of Alexander Isayevich: the acronym GULAG (for the initials of the Stalinist system of penitentiary camps that dotted the Soviet landscape like a pattern of hellish islands) and the terse, harsh word Zek, to describe the starved and overworked inhabitants of this archipelago of the new serfdom. In an especially vivid chapter of his anatomy of that ghastly system, Solzhenitsyn parodied Marxist-Leninist theories of self-determination to argue that the Zeks were indeed a nation unto themselves. In his electrifying first book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he did in a way delineate the borders and customs of an undiscovered country with a doomed and unknown citizenry. He became an anthropologist of the totalitarian in a way not understood since David Rousset's L'Univers Concentrationnaire. If you are interested in historical irony, you might care to notice that any one chapter of Ivan Denisovich, published in Novy Mir during the Khrushchev de-Stalinization, easily surpassed in its impact any number of books and tracts that had taken "Socialist Realism" as their watchword. The whole point about "realism"—real realism—is that it needs no identifying prefix. Solzhenitsyn's work demonstrates this for all time.

To have fought his way into Hitler's East Prussia as a proud Red Army soldier in the harshest war on record, to have been arrested and incarcerated for a chance indiscretion, to have served a full sentence of servitude and been released on the very day that Stalin died, and then to have developed cancer and known the whole rigor and misery of a Soviet-era isolation hospital—what could you fear after that? The bullying of Leonid Brezhnev's KGB and the hate campaigns of the hack-ridden Soviet press must have seemed like contemptible fleabites by comparison. But it seems that Solzhenitsyn did have a worry or a dread, not that he himself would be harmed but that none of his work would ever see print. Nonetheless—and this is the point to which I call your attention—he kept on writing. The Communist Party's goons could have torn it up or confiscated or burned it—as they did sometimes—but he continued putting it down on paper and keeping a bottom drawer filled for posterity. This is a kind of fortitude for which we do not have any facile name. The simplest way of phrasing it is to say that Solzhenitsyn lived "as if." Barely deigning to notice the sniggering, pick-nose bullies who followed him and harassed him, he carried on "as if" he were a free citizen, "as if" he had the right to study his own country's history, "as if" there were such a thing as human dignity.

And, once he succeeded in getting The Gulag Archipelago into print, even in pirate editions overseas, it became obvious that something terminal had happened to the edifice of Soviet power.

Of course, one cannot have everything. Nelson Mandela has been soft on Daniel arap Moi, Fidel Castro, Muammar Qaddafi, and Robert Mugabe, and soft on them even when he doesn't need them anymore as temporary allies in a difficult struggle. When Solzhenitsyn came to the United States, he was turned away from the White House, on Henry Kissinger's advice, by President Gerald Ford. But, rather than denounce this Republican collusion with Brezhnev, he emptied the vials of his wrath over Americans who liked rock music. The ayatollahlike tones of his notorious Harvard lecture (as I called them at the time) turned out not to be misleading. As time went by, he metamorphosed more and more into a classic Russian Orthodox chauvinist, whose work became more wordy and propagandistic and—shall we be polite?—idiosyncratic with every passing year.

His most recent book, Two Hundred Years Together, purported to be a candid examination of the fraught condition of Russian-Jewish relations—a theme that he had found it difficult to repress in some of his earlier work. He denied that this inquiry had anything in common with the ancient Russian-nationalist dislike of the cosmopolitan (and sometimes Bolshevik-inclined) Jew, and one must give him the benefit of any doubt here. However, when taken together with his partisanship for Slobodan Milosevic and the holy Serb cause, his exaltation of the reborn (and newly state-sponsored) Russian Orthodox Church, and his late-blooming admiration of the cold-eyed Vladimir Putin, the resulting mixture of attitudes and prejudices puts one in mind more of Dostoyevsky than of Tolstoy. Having denounced "cruel" NATO behavior in the Balkans, without ever saying one word about the behavior of Russian soldiers in Chechnya, Solzhenitsyn spent some of his final days in wasteful diatribes against those Ukrainian nationalists who were, rightly or wrongly, attempting to have their own Soviet-era horrors classified as "genocide."

Dostoyevsky even at his most chauvinistic was worth a hundred Mikhail Sholokhovs or Maxim Gorkys, and Solzhenitsyn set a new standard for the courage by which a Russian author could confront the permafrost of the Russian system. "A great writer," as he put it in The First Circle, "is, so to speak, a secret government in his country." The echo of Shelley's remark about poets being the "unacknowledged legislators of the world" may or may not be deliberate. But it serves to remind us that writers, however much they may disown the idea, are nonetheless ultimately responsible for the political influence that they do choose to exert. Therein lies the germ of tragedy.


An icon of his age
The Economist,Aug 4th 2008

The death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn gives Russia a chance to reflect on authoritarianism

PROPHETS are without honour in their own country—at least until they die. For most of his adult life in the Soviet Union, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was persecuted. In exile in the West from 1974, his gloomy philippics and increasingly turgid prose aroused more bafflement than appreciation. After he returned to Russia in 1994, he was welcomed but then ignored.

His death is a chance to make amends, although whether a Russia that is increasingly nostalgic for its totalitarian past will chose to take it is another matter. In an online poll (admittedly wildly unscientific) taken in recent weeks, the totalitarian leader Joseph Stalin is a front-runner for the title of greatest Russian. It was criticism of Stalin, expressed privately in a letter to a friend, that landed Mr Solzhenitsyn with an eight-year sentence in the camps. It counted for little that he was a twice-decorated artillery officer, on the front-line of the Red Army's triumph over Nazi Germany.

Having experienced the crimes of Stalinism at first hand, he exposed them in both fiction and factual form. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", published in 1962, gave Soviet citizens their first opportunity to read about the brutality, squalor, humiliation and fear of daily life in a prison camp, all told in the matter-of-fact style of a Russian folk tale. "The Gulag Archipelago" described the system, its tortures, rules and subculture, in relentless, gruesome, encyclopedic form. Modern scholars, able to research the subject with a freedom that Mr Solzhenitsyn could never have dreamed of, say it is astonishingly accurate.

His other books are more patchy. Although he detested the ravages of communist rule on Russian language and culture, the clunky techniques of Socialist Realism are all too visible in works such as "The Cancer Ward". His later works are mostly panoramic histories of Russia in the past century that most readers found impenetrable. His latest work, a lengthy series of reflections on Jewish-Russian relations, prompted charges of anti-semitism that he furiously denied.

Mr Solzhenitsyn was a loyal communist in his youth. As a young man, he dreamed of writing a history of the Russian revolution, oblivious to the Stalinist terror going on around him. As a bright, young maths student, he once said he could easily have ended up being recruited by the NKVD, the secret police, to perpetrate terror. Instead he became its most potent critic. His political awakening came from long talks in prison with Arnold Susi, an Estonian lawyer jailed for being a minister in a non-communist government. That friendship survived for many years after both men were released.

As well as the gulag, Mr Solzhenitsyn's titanic willpower triumphed over other adversaries: cancer, censorship and Soviet bureaucratic intimidation. In 1970 he won the Nobel prize for literature, but declined to accept it in person for fear that he would not be allowed to return to the Soviet Union. But by 1974, the Soviet authorities had had enough: he was bundled onto a plane to West Germany, to spend two decades abroad. Those in the West who had championed his cause were disconcerted to find that he saw the capitalist system as little better than communism. He denounced materialism and moral emptiness, and lived in increasing seclusion in a remote corner of New England.

As communism collapsed, his books, once read only in flimsy, blurred carbon copies, could all be published legally inside the Soviet Union. But he detested the man who brought that about: Boris Yeltsin, the first freely-elected leader in Russia's history, spurning his offer of a state decoration. He could not, he said accept honours from a man who had brought misery on his people.

To the consternation of some of his supporters, he did accept an award from the ex-KGB officer who became Mr Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin. He even seemed to downplay Mr Putin's role in the KGB, saying that every country needed an intelligence service. Yet, although he praised the self-respect and stability that Russia had regained under Mr Putin, he remained deeply critical of its politics and the corruption and greed that capitalism had exposed and fuelled.

That message, often delivered in sententious, near messianic tones, had little appeal. A television programme consisting largely of all but unwatchable monologues lingered painfully on the airwaves and then died, unlamented. Few read his books.

But his death is a chance for Russia's rulers to say what they think about totalitarianism. Was the collapse of the Soviet Union the "geopolitical catastrophe" of the last century? Or is the real disaster the failure of an independent Russia to cast off the chains of authoritarianism and empire? If Russia's new president, Dmitry Medvedev, goes beyond simply offering condolences to the Solzhenitsyn family, his thoughts on that would be eagerly awaited.