Leiam a íntegra em: http://pensadordelamancha.blogspot.com/2013/04/consideracoes-acerca-do-conceito-de.html
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.
domingo, 28 de abril de 2013
Neopopulismo na América Latina - um ensaio de Ricardo Velez-Rodriguez
Leiam a íntegra em: http://pensadordelamancha.blogspot.com/2013/04/consideracoes-acerca-do-conceito-de.html
Afeganistao: um diplomata (parcialmente) sincero
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
DIPLOMATIC MEMO
Departing French Envoy Has Frank Words on Afghanistan
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
The New York Times, April 28, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan — It is always hard to gauge what diplomats really think unless one of their cables ends up on WikiLeaks, but every once in a while, the barriers fall and a bit of truth slips into public view.
That is especially true in Afghanistan, where diplomats painstakingly weigh every word against political goals back home.
The positive spin from the Americans has been running especially hard the last few weeks, as Congressional committees in Washington focus on spending bills and the Obama administration, trying to secure money for a few more years here, talks up the country’s progress. The same is going on at the European Union, where the tone has been sterner than in the past, but still glosses predictions of Afghanistan’s future with upbeat words like “promise” and “potential.”
Despite that, one of those rare truth-telling moments came at a farewell cocktail party last week hosted by the departing French ambassador to Kabul: Bernard Bajolet, who is leaving to head France’s Direction Génerale de la Sécurité Extérieure, its foreign intelligence service.
After the white-coated staff passed the third round of hors d’oeuvres, Mr. Bajolet took the lectern and laid out a picture of how France — a country plagued by a slow economy, waning public support for the Afghan endeavor and demands from other foreign conflicts, including Syria and North Africa — looked at Afghanistan.
While it is certainly easier for France to be a critic from the sidelines than countries whose troops are still fighting in Afghanistan, the country can claim to have done its part. It lost more troops than all but three other countries before withdrawing its last combat forces in the fall.
The room, filled with diplomats, some senior soldiers and a number of Afghan dignitaries, went deadly quiet. When Mr. Bajolet finished, there was restrained applause — and sober expressions. One diplomat raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly; another said, “No holding back there.”
So what did he say?
That the Afghan project is on thin ice and that, collectively, the West was responsible for a chunk of what went wrong, though much of the rest the Afghans were responsible for. That the West had done a good job of fighting terrorism, but that most of that was done on Pakistani soil, not on the Afghan side of the border. And that without fundamental changes in how Afghanistan did business, the Afghan government, and by extension the West’s investment in it, would come to little.
His tone was neither shrill nor reproachful. It was matter-of-fact.
“I still cannot understand how we, the international community, and the Afghan government have managed to arrive at a situation in which everything is coming together in 2014 — elections, new president, economic transition, military transition and all this — whereas the negotiations for the peace process have not really started,” Mr. Bajolet said in his opening comments.
He was echoing a point shared privately by other diplomats, that 2014 was likely to be “a perfect storm” of political and military upheaval coinciding with the formal close of the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan.
As for the success of the fight on the ground, which American leaders routinely describe now as being “Afghan-led,” Mr. Bajolet sounded dubious. “We do not have enough distance to make an objective assessment,” he said, “but in any case, I think it crucial that the Afghan highest leadership take more visible and obvious ownership for their army.”
His tone — the sober, troubled observations of a diplomat closing a chapter — could hardly have been more different from that taken by the new shift of American officials charged with making it work in Afghanistan: in particular, with that of Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the new American commanding general here. This week, General Dunford sent out a news release cheering on Afghanistan’s progress, noting some positive-leaning statistics and praising the Afghan Army’s abilities.
“Very soon, the A.N.S.F. will be responsible for security nationwide” General Dunford said, referring to the Afghan National Security Forces. “They are steadily gaining in confidence, competence, and commitment.”
At his farewell party, Mr. Bajolet wound up his realpolitik with a brisk analysis of what Afghanistan’s government needed to do: cut corruption, which discourages investment, deal with drugs and become fiscally self-reliant. It must increase its revenues instead of letting politicians divert them, he said.
Several diplomats in the room could be seen nodding as he said that drugs caused “more casualties than terrorism” in Russia, Europe and the Balkans and that Western governments would be hard-put to make the case for continued spending on Afghanistan if it remains the world’s largest heroin supplier.
The biggest contrast with the American and British line was Mr. Bajolet’s riff on sovereignty, which has become the political watchword of the moment. The Americans and the international community are giving sovereignty back to Afghanistan. Afghanistan argues frequently that it is a sovereign nation. President Hamid Karzai, in the debate over taking charge of the Bagram prison, repeatedly said that Afghanistan had a sovereign responsibility to its prisoners.
His implicit question was, what does that really mean?
“We should be lucid: a country that depends almost entirely on the international community for the salaries of its soldiers and policemen, for most of its investments and partly on it for its current civil expenditure, cannot be really independent.”
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Alice Mantega no Pais das Maravilhas: editorial do Estadao sobre a economia brasileira
O Brasil pintado de rosa
Editorial O Estado de S.Paulo, 28.04.2013
Com produção em alta, inflação em queda, finanças públicas em ordem e contas externas bem sólidas, o Brasil vai bem, no mundo imaginário do Ministério da Fazenda, retratado na edição de março do boletim Economia Brasileira em Perspectiva. Nesse universo de fantasia, o único fator de perturbação é a crise internacional.
Sem ela, a situação do País seria ainda mais brilhante. Mas essa história feliz se desfaz quando se examinam com alguma atenção os números divulgados pelas próprias fontes oficiais. Exemplo: com um buraco de US$ 67 bilhões, o Brasil exibiu nos 12 meses terminados em março o pior resultado das contas externas desde 2002. O rombo acumulado nas transações correntes com o exterior chegou a 2,93% do PIB. As transações correntes englobam a balança comercial, a conta de serviços e as transferências unilaterais. No boletim da vida cor-de-rosa, os resultados são "estáveis" e facilmente financiáveis com investimentos estrangeiros diretos.
Os fatos desmentiram essa última afirmação nos 12 meses terminados em março, quando aqueles investimentos somaram US$ 63,6 bilhões. Foi necessário, portanto, completar com outros recursos, provavelmente mais especulativos, a cobertura do buraco.
A realidade conflita com a avaliação do Ministério da Fazenda em muitos outros pontos. O comércio vai mal, as importações têm crescido bem mais que as exportações e o País continua muito dependente das exportações de commodities para a China e outros mercados emergentes - uma tendência resultante dos erros cometidos pela diplomacia comercial petista a partir de 2003.
No mundo imaginário do Ministério da Fazenda, a economia brasileira retomou com firmeza o crescimento, depois de dois anos de fiasco. O fracasso de 2011 e 2012 é atribuído, naturalmente, às más condições internacionais. Como de costume, evita-se um tema delicado e incômodo: o desempenho muito melhor de outras economias em desenvolvimento. A nova fase de prosperidade brasileira, segundo o boletim, será sustentada por investimentos crescentes. Em 2012, o governo e o setor privado investiram o equivalente a 18,1% do PIB. A proporção havia chegado a 19,5% em 2010.
Para 2013 o Ministério projeta um número maior que o de 2012, sem bater, no entanto, em 20% do valor do produto interno. A projeção indica uma trajetória de alta contínua até 24% do PIB em 2018. Nesse momento, o País estará investindo, talvez, o necessário para um crescimento sustentável de uns 5% ao ano ou pouco mais. A aplicação de recursos em máquinas, equipamentos, construções privadas e infraestrutura continuará, portanto, muito abaixo do volume necessário por vários anos. Isso é uma confissão de impotência feita com palavras de otimismo e de confiança.
A embromação fica mais evidente quando se apresentam detalhes das grandes vitórias da política econômica. Segundo o relatório, já se aplicaram R$ 328,2 bilhões nos projetos do PAC 2, tendo sido concluídos 46,4% das ações previstas. Como de costume, a realização mais vistosa foi a destinação de dinheiro ao programa Minha Casa, Minha Vida - R$ 188,1 bilhões, ou 57,3% do total empregado.
Estimular a construção habitacional pode ser muito bom, mas investimentos planejados para aumentar a produtividade e a competitividade da economia nacional pertencem a categorias muito diferentes. Em energia, por exemplo, foram gastos apenas R$ 108,1 bilhões. Em transportes, míseros R$ 27,7 bilhões, apenas 8,4% dos R$ 328,2 bilhões aplicados no PAC 2. Nada mais natural, portanto, que as dificuldades para levar aos portos a soja destinada à exportação.
Quanto às contas públicas, aparecem no boletim como em ótimas condições. Não há uma palavra, é claro, sobre a contabilidade criativa para o fechamento das contas fiscais nem sobre o mal disfarçado endividamento do Tesouro para apoiar os bancos públicos. Muito menos uma palavra sobre o uso desse dinheiro para financiar empresas escolhidas para ser campeãs nacionais nem sobre a quebra de várias dessas favoritas da corte.
Deterioracao na frente externa por razoes eminentemente internas
Editorial econômico O Estado de S.Paulo, 28 de abril de 2013
Duas notícias recentes deram um sinal de alarme sobre as exportações brasileiras: a recusa do governo chinês ao desembarque da soja de um navio proveniente do Brasil, por considerar excessivo o custo do transporte; e a forte queda das exportações de bens manufaturados.
O governo chinês considera que o frete, incluindo o ferroviário, as despesas rodoviárias e portuárias, mais o custo do transporte marítimo tornam o preço da soja brasileira mais alto que o dos concorrentes. E queixa-se dos atrasos constantes na chegada dos navios. Como o Brasil tornou-se o maior fornecedor de soja para a China, é possível que os chineses busquem um pretexto para reduzir os contratos de importação, numa fase em que sua economia cresce menos. Mas é essencialmente a soja brasileira que recusam.
Por ora, o problema é pontual, mas pode se generalizar. Diante disso, o governo brasileiro pôs em marcha um grande número de novos projetos, o que não nos parece uma abordagem feliz do problema. Melhor seria concentrar esforços numa só ferrovia e num só frete, escolhendo os meios que melhor respondam às necessidades geográficas e aos clientes mais importantes - no caso, a China, que importa soja e minério de ferro. Caberia, também, estimular importações provenientes, por exemplo, do Japão, aproveitando o frete de retorno, a custos reduzidos.
O problema da queda das exportações de manufaturados não é novo. Decorre da política de estímulo ao consumo doméstico, ao qual se acrescentou uma taxa de câmbio até há pouco muito valorizada. Não estamos seguros de que a taxa de câmbio tenha encontrado o seu valor real, dada a deterioração das perspectivas das contas correntes. Os dois fatores estimularam os produtores locais a recorrer às importações de componentes, mais baratos que os produzidos no Brasil, iniciando um processo de desindustrialização que nos afasta do comércio internacional.
Reconquistar o mercado externo não será fácil. A indústria terá de oferecer produtos com grande carga inovadora. O governo teria de assumir um papel mais importante no financiamento da pesquisa e da inovação, para que não predomine a exportação de commodities, cujos preços estão fora da nossa alçada, dependem do mercado internacional e de São Pedro, que pode oferecer chuva ou seca para a produção agrícola.
Será, ainda, indispensável um grande e rápido esforço para recuperar e melhorar a infraestrutura logística.
Ajuda alimentar dos EUA: uma hipocrisia parcialmente corrigida
EDITORIAL
Food Aid Reform
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The New York Times, April 27, 2013
Food aid is one of the most important tools of American foreign policy. Since the mid-1950s, the United States has spent nearly $2 billion annually to feed the world’s poor, saving millions of lives. But the process is so rigid and outdated that many more people who could be helped still go hungry. Reforms proposed by President Obama will go a long way toward fixing that problem and should be promptly enacted by Congress.
Under current law, a vast majority of international food aid must be purchased from American farmers through the Department of Agriculture and shipped overseas in American-flagged vessels. This has been a boon for domestic farmers and shippers, but more than 30 studies in the last decade have concluded that the system is inefficient, costly and even harmful to the very communities in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere that Washington purports to help.
The United States is the only donor that still gives food rather than cash, including to some humanitarian groups who sell the food in overseas markets and use the proceeds for development projects. Some experts say the sale of American commodities in developing countries often drives down local market prices and discourages local food production, which runs counter to the goal of encouraging self-sufficiency.
Under a proposal in Mr. Obama’s new budget, nearly half the $1.5 billion requested for food aid in 2014 could instead be used to buy food in bulk in countries in need or to provide individual recipients with vouchers or debit cards for local food purchases. Food bought locally is cheaper — 50 percent less in some cases — and saves shipping costs that consume as much as 16 percent of the food aid budget. American officials say the reforms could hasten the delivery of lifesaving aid by as much as 14 weeks and feed many more people.
Although international aid groups have endorsed the changes, there is opposition from the farm and shipping lobbies that have scuttled previous reforms. The food aid budget should not be a backdoor subsidy for domestic producers; and even under the new approach, 55 percent of food aid dollars would still be used to purchase and ship American commodities. When budgets are tight, every program must be scrutinized for maximum return. Mr. Obama’s proposed reforms will feed more people for the same amount the United States spends now. There is no excuse for not putting them into effect.
Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »
P
The End of Affirmative Action? - The Economist
Governments should be colour-blind
Confusao Sem Fronteiras, sem coordenacao, sem direcao, sem visao - Assim e' se lhe parece...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Notícias de 24/04/2013
PROGRAMA CIÊNCIA SEM FRONTEIRAS
Folha de S. Paulo – Mercadante nega problemas em programa de bolsas
O Globo – Portugal deixa de ser destino do Ciência Sem Fronteiras
O Estado de S. Paulo - Sobram bolsas para brasileiros em Harvard e MIT
O Estado
de S. Paulo - País ainda envia poucos estudantes a
melhor do mundo
sábado, 27 de abril de 2013
A historia do samba, em ingles - Marc A. Hertzman (Columbia University)
Description
About The Author(s)
Marc A. Hertzman is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures and Director of the Center for Brazilian Studies at Columbia University.Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil
- Author(s): Marc A. Hertzman
- Published: 2013
- Pages: 392
- Illustrations: 1 map, 16 figures
De serie (ja famosa): "Eu so' queria entender..."
Quem entender me explica, tá?
Lula: nada esta' tao ruim que nao possa piorar: corrupcao
Empresa de inteligência dos EUA sugere que Lula recebeu propina por caças franceses Rafale
As quatro liberdades de Franklin D. Roosevelt - Jeffrey Scott Demsky
FOUR FREEDOMS - Jeffrey Scott Demsky
There are, however, some misconceptions that skew our understanding of the speech. The “Four Freedoms” were not an ecumenical expression of goodwill. Rather, the rhetoric served a calculated political purpose. At the time of his remarks, the Second World War engulfed Europe and the Far East. Although the U.S. remained uninvolved with the struggle, President Roosevelt stated that he did not expect Americans to remain “neutral in their thoughts.”[4] Such interventionist prodding, however, concerned some onlookers. Only one generation earlier, the country’s involvement in the First World War had unloosed serious disagreements.[5] Many of these questions remained unsettled into the early 1940s. Against this backdrop, President Roosevelt’s globalist tilt irked members of such powerful isolationist organizations as the “America First Committee.”[6] His calls also met with criticism from prominent commentators such as Joseph Kennedy, Charles Lindbergh, and Henry Ford who thought it best for the U.S. to accommodate, rather than oppose, the fascist powers.[7]
President Roosevelt recognized that in order to enact his international agenda, he needed first to inspire public support. This was the parochial ambition that motivated his expansive “Four Freedoms” declaration.[8] In the months prior to his proclamation, the president had signaled his intentions in additional ways. He selected Frank Knox and Henry Stimson, both outspoken critics of isolationism, to lead the Navy and War Departments. He signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, establishing the first peacetime draft in U.S. History. In December 1940, one month before laying out his “Four Freedoms,” Roosevelt delivered his so-called “arsenal of democracy” speech imploring Americans to embrace as their own the European fight against Nazism.[9]
In the months that followed his “Four Freedoms” remarks, the president intensified his efforts. He prodded Congress to replace its Neutrality Acts with legislation that came to be known as the Lend Lease programs. He brought Denmark, Iceland, and Greenland under the American security umbrella, and authorized the U.S. Navy to engage German vessels. That August, Roosevelt took his most significant foreign policy action by signing the Atlantic Charter with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.[10] This eight-point document established American common cause with the British and restated verbatim language that first appeared in the “Four Freedoms.”[11]
In December 1941, after the Japanese Empire’s unexpected attack against Pearl Harbor, many Americans credited Roosevelt’s prescience. It was at this point that the “Four Freedoms” enjoyed a swift acceleration from mere political rhetoric into an exposition of grand strategy.
Franklin Roosevelt’s activist calls accomplished no less than the toppling of George Washington’s long-standing maxim to avoid diplomatic alliances.[12] Subsequent American presidents, from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush, have found in the “Four Freedoms” a sturdy foundation upon which to unwind their own interventionist doctrines. The “Four Freedoms” also influenced the narrative of twentieth-century global history. Portions of Roosevelt’s canon appear verbatim in both the preamble to the United Nation’s Charter as well as its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[13] During the Cold War, the ideology connected member nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Such resilience betrays a larger and often misunderstood conclusion. Since its January 1941 appearance, the “Four Freedoms” declaration evolved from an abstract speech into a practical policy framework. During the twentieth century’s second half, it became an unquestioned set of foreign policy premises that justified wide-ranging American military actions. While most observers continue to think of the doctrine in terms of its wartime applications, the “Four Freedoms” irrevocably altered the scope and thrust of American diplomatic behaviors.[14]
JEFFREY SCOTT DEMSKY (San Bernardino Valley College)
Bibliography
Benjamin Alpers, Dictators, Democracy and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s-1950s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Frank Donovan. Mr. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms: The Story Behind the United Nations Charter. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966.
David Kennedy. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Stuart Murray and James McCabe. Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms: Images That Inspire A Nation. Stockbridge, MA: Berkshire House, 1993.
Marcus G. Raskin and Robert Spero. The Four Freedoms Under Siege: The Clear and Present Danger from Our National Security State. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007.
David F. Schmitz. The Triumph of Internationalism: Franklin D. Roosevelt and a World in Crisis, 1933-1941. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007.
Sumner Welles. The World of the Four Freedoms. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943.