Um dos editores da Gazeta do Povo, um jornal legitimamente de direita e desavergonhadamente defensora e promotora do psicopata no poder, tenta provar que ele tinha razão ao recomendar o uso da Cloroquina, como se ele fosse um cientista ou tivesse acesso a informações supostamente científicas aqui relatadas para recomendar o seu uso preventivo.
Como meu blog é de debate e informação, posto a nota do editor de Ideias da Gazeta do Povo.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
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Nearly 20 of our fellow experts and national security professionals — whose digital signatures appear at the end of this op-ed — agree: The war in Ukraine has reached a decisive moment and that vital U.S. interests are at stake.
Long before the Kremlin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, we have — from senior positions in the U.S. government and military — followed Moscow’s foreign policy and the grave dangers it presents to the United States and our allies. We have carefully watched Moscow’s major offensive since February and the response of the Biden administration and its allies and partners. We have maintained close touch with Ukrainian, U.S. and European officials. Two of us just returned from meetings with Ukraine’s defense and military leaders.
Although the Biden administration has successfully rallied U.S. allies and provided substantial military assistance, including this month, to Ukraine’s valiant armed forces, it has failed to produce a satisfactory strategic narrative which enables governments to maintain public support for the NATO engagement over the long term.
By providing aid sufficient to produce a stalemate, but not enough to roll back Russian territorial gains, the Biden administration may be unintentionally seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. Out of an over-abundance of caution about provoking Russian escalation (conventional as well as nuclear), we are in effect ceding the initiative to Russian President Vladimir Putin and reducing the pressure on Moscow to halt its aggression and get serious about negotiations.
Moscow’s imperialist war against the people of Ukraine is not just a moral outrage — a campaign of genocide aimed at erasing the Ukrainian nation from the map — but a clear danger to U.S. security and prosperity.
American principles and interests demand the strongest possible response, one sufficient to force the Russians as much as possible back to pre-February lines and to impose costs heavy enough to deter Russia from invading a third time. With Russian forces struggling to regroup in the east and stave off Ukrainian efforts to retake Kherson in the south, now is the time for Ukraine’s allies to pull out all the stops by providing Ukraine the means it needs to prevail. Dragging out the conflict through so-called strategic pauses will do nothing but allow Putin to regroup, recover and inflict more damage in Ukraine and beyond.
But so far, neither the administration nor European allies have succeeded in making clear why this is important to the United States and the West. It is important because Putin is pursuing a revisionist foreign policy designed to upend the rules-based security system that has ensured American and global stability and enabled prosperity since the end of World War II. Putin’s aggressive designs do not end in Ukraine. As Russian officials have repeatedly made clear, if Russia wins in Ukraine, our Baltic NATO allies are at risk, as are other allies residing in the neighborhood.
Prudent policy today identifies tomorrow’s risk and seeks the right place and time to deal with that risk. For the U.S. and NATO, that time is now — and the place is Ukraine, a large country whose population understands that its choice is either defeating Putin or losing their independence and even their existence as a distinct, Western-oriented nation.
With the necessary weapons and economic aid, Ukraine can defeat Russia.
If it succeeds, our soldiers are less likely to have to risk their lives protecting U.S. treaty allies whom Russia also threatens.
What does defeat for Putin look like? The survival of Ukraine as a secure, independent, and economically viable country. That means a Ukraine with defensible borders that include Odesa and a substantial portion of the Black Sea coast, as well as a strong, well-armed military and a real end to hostilities. That should ideally include the return to Ukrainian control of all territories seized since Feb. 24 and, ultimately, the lands stolen in 2014, including Crimea. Such a peace is only possible when Putin realizes he is soundly defeated and can no longer achieve his objectives of dominating Ukraine or any other nation by force.
Such a plan would also condemn millions of Ukrainians to live under a regime that has committed numerous war crimes, whose senior officials and media have called for de-Ukrainianization of Ukraine, which is already being subjected to forced Russification, including the illegal and involuntary deportation of nearly 400,000 Ukrainian children to Russia for adoption. These measures have prompted a growing number of scholars to describe Russian policy as genocide.
Moscow’s plan now is to make as many gains on the battlefield as possible; to conduct sham referendums in the newly occupied Ukrainian territory as a prelude to their annexation; to undermine unity in the West’s support for Ukraine by cutting off gas supplies going into the winter; and to blockade Ukrainian ports to produce destabilizing food shortages in the Global South designed to blow back on the West. For all of these purposes, Moscow needs time. Which means the United States and its allies must keep the pressure on Moscow.
The Biden administration should move more quickly and strategically, in meeting Ukrainian requests for weapons systems. And when it decides to send more advanced weapons, like HIMARS artillery, it should send them in larger quantities that maximize their impact on the battlefield.
Ukraine needs long-range fires to disrupt the Russian offensive, including Russian resupply, fuel, and ammunition stocks. That means the U.S. should send ATACMS munitions, fired by HIMARS with the 300km range necessary to strike Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine, including occupied Crimea. And Ukraine needs constant resupply of ammunition and spare parts for artillery platforms supplied from various countries, some of which are not interchangeable. These systems are constantly in use, which makes maintenance and spare parts resupply critical. How and where these tasks are accomplished and the logistics infrastructure to quickly get the equipment back where it can be of greatest use can also make a huge difference.
Beyond this, Ukraine needs more short- and medium-range air defense to counter Russian air and missile attacks. An increasing problem is the need to deploy adequate countermeasures to hamper the growing prevalence of Russian-produced drones and new ones it is trying to procure from Iran.
It is to Putin’s advantage to threaten nuclear war, but not to initiate it. And we have seen the Kremlin make nuclear threats that proved hollow — for instance in connection with Finland and Sweden joining NATO. If we allow Putin to intimidate us from providing the weapons Ukraine needs to stop Russian revisionism, what happens when he waves his nuclear wand over the Baltic states? And why would the administration assume that Putin would not dare do that with Estonia or Poland if the tactic worked for him in Ukraine?
The stakes are clear for us, our allies, and Ukraine. We should not fool ourselves. We may think that each day we delay providing Ukraine the weapons it needs to win, we are avoiding a confrontation with the Kremlin. To the contrary, we are merely increasing the probability that we will face that danger on less favorable grounds. The smart and prudent move is to stop Putin’s aggressive designs in Ukraine, and to do so now, when it will make a difference.
General Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.); 17th Supreme Allied Commander Europe and distinguished professor, Sam Nunn School, Georgia Institute of Technology
Debra Cagan, former State and Defense Department official;distinguished energy fellow, Transatlantic Leadership Network
Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, former under secretary of state for global affairs
Ambassador Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Finland and Turkey;former under secretary of defense for policy
Ambassador Daniel Fried, former assistant secretary of state for Europe;Weiser Family distinguished fellow, Atlantic Council
Ambassador John Herbst, former Ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan; senior director, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council
Ambassador John Kornblum, former ambassador to Germany
David Kramer, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor
Robert McConnell, former assistant attorney general; co-founder, US-Ukraine Foundation
Ambassador Stephen Sestanovich, former ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union; senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations;professor, Columbia University
Ambassador William Taylor, former ambassador to Ukraine
Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, former NATO deputy secretary general; former assistant secretary of defense; former ambassador to Russia and NATO
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, former ambassador to Ukraine
Institutional affiliations are for purposes of identification only.
Parece que o “golpe” está sendo furiosamente preparado pelos malucos bolsonaristas. O xerife Xandão vai ter de entrar em ação antes do fatídico 7 de setembro do bicentenário. Leiam esta longa reportagem do Estadão.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
“Radicalização cresce no Telegram e grupos bolsonaristas pedem até ‘contragolpe’ no STF
Estudo revela troca de mensagens com desinformação sobre a covid-19 e existência de um suposto complô para fraudar a eleição, além de estratégias para escapar de monitoramento na plataforma
Redação, Estadão, 17 de agosto de 2022 | 12h26
A radicalização nos grupos de apoiadores do presidente Jair Bolsonaro (PL) no Telegram aumenta na medida em que a eleição se aproxima. Usuários do aplicativo de troca de mensagens chegam a pedir um “contragolpe” das Forças Armadas contra o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), além de adotar estratégias para escapar da moderação e do monitoramento de conteúdos na plataforma.
O relatório Democracia Digital, elaborado por pesquisadores da Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) e da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), mostra a intensificação dos ataques à Corte desde junho, quando se tornaram mais frequentes as convocações para os atos de 7 de Setembro. Bolsonaro tem chamado reiteradamente apoiadores a participar das manifestações.
Logo do Telegram aparece em cima de teclado e à frente de tela escura que exibe códigos binários na cor verde
No Telegram, o Estadão detectou mensagens em grupos bolsonaristas que estimulam apoiadores do presidente a irem às ruas com faixas nas quais defendam a convocação das Forças Armadas para a elaboração de uma nova Constituição que criminalize o comunismo. Foto: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
No ano passado, o feriado da Independência ficou marcado pelo discurso inflamado do presidente contra ministros do Supremo, em São Paulo. Em junho deste ano, os pedidos de apoio ao voto impresso – principal pauta dos protestos de 2021 –, diminuíram significativamente para dar lugar a discursos de incitação a um golpe de Estado.
“Percebe-se um forte esforço para fomentar a percepção de ameaça e de vitimização, que justifica a necessidade de ação imediata”, diz o relatório Democracia Digital. O presidente é um defensor do voto impresso e, mesmo sem apresentar provas, põe sob suspeita o sistema de votação eletrônica, ao afirmar que as urnas são passíveis de fraude. Bolsonaro tem se recusado, ainda, a dizer se reconhecerá o resultado do pleito, caso seja derrotado.
Print de conversa do Telegram detectado pelo Estadão. Ministro Alexandre de Moraes é constantemente menciona em grupos. Foto: Reprodução
O levantamento analisou conteúdos publicados entre o primeiro dia de janeiro e o último de junho deste ano. Foram mais de 6,4 milhões de mensagens coletadas em 156 grupos – onde é possível discutir assuntos entre usuários – e 479 canais do Telegram – que funcionam como listas de transmissão. Foram capturadas, ainda, 641 mil imagens no aplicativo. Segundo pesquisa Mobile Time/Opinion Box de fevereiro deste ano, o Telegram está instalado em 60% dos smartphones no Brasil. Em junho, se tornou o 4º aplicativo mais popular do Brasil em presença na homescreen (tela inicial do dispositivo).
Os pesquisadores desenvolveram um filtro para mensagens de texto com menção a termos específicos. Das 112.636 mensagens publicadas nesse formato em 145 grupos e 349 canais analisados, destacam-se desinformação sobre a covid-19 e a existência de um suposto complô para fraudar a eleição e impedir a vitória de Bolsonaro.
“O número de mensagens que estão aparecendo sobre o 7 de Setembro desde o início deste ano é muito maior do que no ano passado”, diz Leonardo Nascimento, um dos coordenadores da pesquisa, produzida em parceria com Letícia Maria Cesarino e Paulo Fonseca.
Convocação
No Telegram, o Estadão detectou mensagens em grupos bolsonaristas que estimulam apoiadores do presidente a irem às ruas com faixas nas quais defendam a convocação das Forças Armadas para a elaboração de uma nova Constituição que criminalize o comunismo. Uma delas pede a destituição dos ministros do STF, com exceção de Kássio Nunes Marques e André Mendonça, ambos indicados por Bolsonaro.
As mensagens de convocação justificam que o Exército precisa executar um “contragolpe” para impedir que o PT e o Supremo deem um golpe de Estado por meio de uma fraude eleitoral. Hoje, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, petista e ex-presidente, lidera as pesquisas de intenções de voto na corrida pelo Palácio do Planalto.
Print de conversa do Telegram detectado pelo Estadão. Grupos bolsonaristas afirmam que o STF já deu um golpe. Foto: Reprodução
Uma das mensagens afirma, ainda, que o País estaria em marcha para um “golpe nas eleições”. “É isso mesmo? Será que ninguém percebe que um Poder há muito tempo já arregaçou com a nossa Constituição e não está nem aí com as quatros linhas?”, questiona, em referência à expressão futebolística usada por Bolsonaro de que ele atua dentro das regras constitucionais. “(O dia) 7 de Setembro será nossa última chance”, diz o texto.
A professora de Comunicação, Mídia e Democracia da Universidade de Glasgow Patrícia Rossini diz que grupos políticos muito ativos e radicalizados seguem a lógica de transmissão do conteúdo para outros círculos, a fim de furar as bolhas do mundo digital. “São mensagens fortes e preocupantes do ponto de vista do ataque à democracia que podem chegar a grupos de família, amigos de confiança, que a maioria dos brasileiros está em pelo menos um”, afirma.
Estratégias
Em março deste ano, o ministro do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), Alexandre de Moraes, chegou a determinar a suspensão “completa e integral” do aplicativo de troca de mensagens russo, por descumprimento de medidas judiciais anteriores, que exigiam ações como o bloqueio de perfis ligados ao blogueiro bolsonarista Allan do Santos. Após a plataforma cumprir as medidas que haviam sido ordenadas, Moraes revogou a suspensão.
O aplicativo firmou um memorando de entendimento com o Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), em abril. Das medidas tomadas para conter a disseminação de notícias falsas, o Telegram passou a monitorar diária e manualmente os cem canais mais populares do Brasil. Segundo a empresa, eles são responsáveis por 95% de todas as visualizações de mensagens públicas do aplicativo no País.
No entanto, para driblar a moderação, há grupos que cifram as mensagens, mostra o relatório. O “supergrupo B-38 oficial”, um dos principais aglomerados de apoiadores de Bolsonaro no Telegram, já foi suspenso em maio deste ano até que moderadores removessem um conteúdo ilegal. Desde que retomou as atividades no dia seguinte, usa um recurso automático de remoção das mensagens após 24 horas.
O estudo detectou também que há grupos que mudaram de nome mais de uma vez, realizaram eventos de apagamento de milhares de mensagens e restringiram o acesso, tornando-os privados e apenas possível de acessá-los por convite.
Outra ação adotada foi o uso de substituição de palavras-chave por códigos. Em vez de escrever STF, urnas eletrônicas ou até nomes de ministros com letras do alfabeto latino, usuários optam por mudar o S por $ e o A por 4, por exemplo. Com isso, os conteúdos ficam mais difíceis de serem encontrados em buscas ou por moderadores da plataforma. O mesmo recurso é usado por usuários do YouTube – site de exibição de vídeos – para fugir da moderação automática de conteúdo.
Recirculação
O YouTube lidera, em termos de links, os endereços divulgados no Telegram para redirecionar a outro conteúdo. Foram mais de 530 mil links gerados que levaram à rede.
Para Leonardo Nascimento, da UFBA, essa recirculação mostra que o desafio imposto pela desinformação é multiplataforma. “O problema não é o Telegram, mas o ecossistema de desinformação”, disse.
“Esforços individuais de plataformas específicas não vão resolver o problema da desinformação. É preciso esforços multiplataformas, com especialistas do governo e da academia analisando e, se possível, de maneira transnacional.”
O analista de dados do Rooted in Trust Brazil e pesquisador do Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia em Democracia Digital (INCT.DD) João Guilherme dos Santos vê facilidades na distribuição de desinformação quando o Telegram atua com o WhatsApp ou replica conteúdos do YouTube. “É muito importante entender o Telegram não como algo isolado, mas como uma peça, uma engrenagem dentro de uma arma”, diz.
Procurado, o Telegram não respondeu até a publicação desta reportagem. /Levy Teles e Gustavo Queiroz
Tudo o que sabemos sobre: TelegramEleições 2022fake newsgolpe militardemocraciaJair Bolsonaro”
Finalizo (PRA):
Parece que o Brasil está prestes a cair sob o comunismo, mas uma tropa de abnegados seguidores do capitão vai salvar o país desta desgraça.
Retifico minha avaliação: não é mais apenas um fenômeno, mas tampouco é um movimento, no sentido clássico da palavra. Trata-se de uma loucura generalizada entre os mais extremados adoradores do “mito”, disseminada de forma errática em difeentes plataformas — com destaque para o Telegram - e que deveria culminar nessa catarse coletiva do 7/09.
Aux armes, citoyens, literalmente e para ambos os lados…
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Meu editor da LVM, Pedro Henrique Alves, ademais de ter um faro incrivel para revisar um texto proposto, ainda fez um press-release elogioso para anunciar a próxima publicação de meu mais recente livro.
“Paulo Roberto de Almeida, além de diplomata e um destacado intelectual brasileiro, tem a capacidade ímpar de sintetizar as ideias e fatos históricos das vidas dos principais personagens brasileiros com esmero e elegância.
Em Construtores da nação: projetos para o Brasil de Cairu a Merquior, tais características ficam ainda mais evidentes. Para aqueles que amam a história nacional, é quase unânime a percepção de que faltava uma síntese competente das ideias e projetos para o Brasil dos principais pensadores nacionais.
Visconde de Cairu realmente tinha ideias liberais para o Brasil, ou isso era um mito? O que foi Monteiro Lobato para além de sua já conhecida capacidade literária? O que foi o liberalismo social de Merquior?
Em breve, esta obra estará disponível em nossas lojas parceiras. Fique atento e não perca essa oportunidade.”
#paulorobertodealmeida #monteirolobato #construtoresdanacao #viscondedemaua #merquior #projetosdobrasil #projetos #historianacional #historiadobrasil
https://www.instagram.com/p/ChYAbYupvE_/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=
European Journal of International Law, August 17, 2022
June 2022 was marked by a critical event in South-North relations: Belgium returning a tooth to Congo. As trivial as it may sound, the return of the gold-crowned tooth ends a quarrel of 62 years between the former colonial and colonized peoples regarding the murder of the anti-colonial leader Patrice Lumumba. More than that, the declaration that accompanied the act was the first satisfactory Belgian apology acknowledging unlawful conduct, ending a cycle of over 20 years of insufficient declarations about Lumumba’s death. It characterizes the circumstances of Lumumba’s killing as a human rights violation, signaling a potential new trend for future apologetic declarations.
Apologies and International Law
Apologetic declarations became popular after the end of the Cold War, mainly addressing injustices perpetrated in the course of the Second World War. Their emergence is attributed to the incorporation of human rights language in transnational relations, described by Baxi (2008) as ‘grammar of governance’ and by Barkan (2000) as the ‘moralization’ of international relations. The phenomenon is characterized by the standardization of human rights as the moral guidance for States’ behavior or, in practice, rhetoric. States are constantly monitored by their peers on the matter, creating relations based on performative activism and guilt over violations (Barkan 2000). In legal terms, the numerical growth of declarations led to the establishment of criteria for identifying their remedial value, differentiating legal apologies from moral apologies (see Salvioli 2021; IAtHR, Escher, §243; El Mozote, §357; Guerrilha do Araguaia, §277). According to these sources, satisfactory legal apologies are endowed with (i) publicity, (ii) acknowledgment of the harm, (iii) recognition of legal responsibility for the facts, and (iv) an expression of remorse. The measure promotes symbolic redress, acknowledgment of the harm, and most importantly, the public recognition of victims’ narrative and its penetration into the intersubjectively constructed history (UN Special Rapporteur 2019; see also Halbwachs 1980). Further, they fulfill the collective dimensions of the substantial right to truth (Van Boven 1993).
When not satisfying the criteria, apologetic declarations may assume three other forms – non-apologies, expressions of regret, and moral apologies. Non-apologies merely acknowledge events not addressed in the past, recognizing their occurrence, for example, Queen Elizabeth’s declaration concerning the Amritsar massacre. Expressions of regret convey remorse but exclude the recognition of liability and do not include an acknowledgment of harm, for example, the British declaration in the Mau Mau case. On this occasion, the UK demonstrated remorse for the event and acknowledged the harm, but expressly denied liability, and did not adopt any idioms pleading for forgiveness (e.g. ‘we apologize’, ‘we are sorry for our past actions’). If it had included the latter, the statement could be considered a moral apology. Like legal apologies, moral apologies encompass remorse, liability, publicity, and acknowledgment of harm. However, rather than accepting legal liability, the interlocutor restricts their responsibility to the moral realm, rejecting the existence of binding substantive norms and reparatory duties.
Due to their semantic vagueness, expressions of regret and moral apologies have been widely adopted by States addressing colonialism, allowing States to benefit from the performative guilt while excepting themselves from the consequences of legal apologies. The choice is enabled by the power imbalance existing between the Global North and South, which allows for the limitation of declarations to performative activism. Out of the declarations related to colonialism issued after Britain first approached the matter in 1995, only six complied with all criteria of legal apologies: the maiden British apologies to the Maoris, the Dutch 2011, 2013, and 2022 apologies for the Indonesian War, and the Belgian 2019 and apologies to ‘Métis’ children and 2022 for Lumumba’s death. Both the Dutch and the latest Belgian apologies were motivated by Court decisions resulting from victim activism.
Belgian apologies in context
In total, Belgium has addressed its colonial past in the Congo in five different statements: in 2002, in 2019, in 2020, and twice in 2022. Its first-ever apologetic statement, as with its latest, was directed toward Patrice Lumumba’s family, after 40 years of systematically denying responsibility for his death. Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of independent Congo. His mandate, however, lasted only ten turbulent weeks. In 1961, he was brutally murdered by Belgian law enforcement. In the 2002 declaration, the State’s late admission of the facts, instead of apologizing for the conduct, merely expressed condolences for the victim’s feelings (see Goffman 1971), as an expression of regret and, hence, exempted Belgium from responsibility over the result. Its underwhelming nature was further aggravated by the adoption of a ‘bad apple’ argument when attributing the injustice to ‘some Belgian actors at the time’, rather than the colonial regime or State machinery as a whole.
Responding to the declaration, anti-colonial movements surfaced in Belgium and in its former colonies. In 2004, for example, the ‘Bold Ostenders’ caught the media’s attention by damaging a monument celebrating Leopold II, severing the hand from the statue of an enslaved Congolese man in a symbolic reference to a common practice of the colonial regime. The activists promised to return the hand if Belgium duly apologized for the Congo’s colonization. The promise was fulfilled only in 2019, after Belgium’s second apologetic declaration. Although apparently accepted by the Ostenders, nevertheless, the statement limited its object to the treatment of Métis children in colonial Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. The overall Belgian posture continued to be the omission or, worse, praise of colonialism. In 2010, Louis Michel, former Belgian foreign minister and at the time member of the European Parliament, publicly commended Leopold II and denied the horrors of Congo’s colonization, portraying the conduct as development assistance to an ‘uncivilized’ people.
From 2020 onwards, the number of protests against Belgium’s silence grew, influenced by the anti-racist wave triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement. Soon after, in the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s independence, King Filip addressed the demands in an expression of regret towards Leopold II’s colonization of the Congo between 1885 and 1908. Nevertheless, continuing in some respects the Belgian State’s previous posture, his letter also affirmed that Belgium and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s common history is ‘made up of common achievements’, reinforcing a positive and hence misleading reading of colonialism. A few months later, Lumumba’s daughter wrote him a letter requesting her father’s remains, endorsed by a national juge d’instruction. After this decision, the State’s declarations changed significantly, including elements capable of strengthening their reconciliatory and reparatory efficiency, e.g. concomitant measures and wider assumptions of liability.
The return of the tooth
In 2022, Belgium issued two declarations on its colonial injustices: the first as an expression of regret for the Congo’s colonization in its entirety, and the second, a legal apology for Belgian colonialism and Lumumba’s death, marking a radical shift in Belgium’s approach towards its past. The latter was accompanied by measures like the return of the tooth – the only remaining body part – to the family. This followed the common practice of enforced disappearance cases, redressing the violent character of the part’s apprehension as a prize. Further, these actions were accompanied by a funeral ceremony in the presence of the victim’s family, and the parliamentary approval of a bilateral treaty on the restitution of cultural propriety.
The latter statement’s text, detrimentally and echoing most past declarations, purposedly pointed out the ‘moral’ character of Belgium’s responsibility. Nonetheless, it paradoxically adopted a significantly more condemnatory language in describing the colonial past, becoming the first-ever apologetic declaration to acknowledge colonial injustices as human rights violations. Resembling qualifications, such as ‘crimes against humanity’, appeared four times in prior statements: in the British 2006 statement on the transatlantic slave trade, the 2004 and 2021 German declarations on the Namo and Herrero case, and the 2011 Dutch declaration regarding the Indonesian war. Nevertheless, ‘human rights’ have been traditionally avoided as a classification as a form of evading the assumption of contemporary legal responsibility and, thus, the emergence of reparatory duties. The resistance is reinforced by the legal uncertainty on the application of the international legal system to the colonial past, commonly supported by the intertemporal principle (see Von Arnauld 2020).
Both in its legal and social aspects, such measures go some way toward reversing traditional policies of ‘colonial amnesia’ (Fletcher 2012, Stahn 2020). The phenomenon is described by Fletcher (2012) as the systemic forgetfulness and omission of the colonial atrocities in narrations of the past, i.e. the oblivion or diminishing of colonial injustices in celebrations of Northern countries’ ‘development’. By recognizing the illegality of colonial injustices, Belgium’s statement rejects the Eurocentric reading of human rights law according to which colonialism is legitimized by the law applicable at the time of the facts and, hence, cannot be condemned nor given redress. Politically, it factually acknowledges the Northern violence towards the South, subverting the colonial amnesia pattern. The precedent raises hope over a reversal of the trend of merely rhetorical apologetic declarations regarding colonial injustice.
Bruna Gonçalves is an Incoming Special Doctoral Fellow at the Law Department of the European University Institute (EUI), in Florence. In 2022, she graduated Cum Laude from Leiden University’s Advanced LLM in European and International Human Rights Law, which she attended as a Leiden Excellence Scholar (LExS) Awardee. Her LLM thesis addressed the technical aspects of redress for colonial injustice, a topic also approached in her pending thesis at her Alma Mater, Universidade de São Paulo (USP) LLM in Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory. She obtained Summa Cum Laude honors for her LLB degree from USP in 2020 and has received an honorable mention for her thesis. She is proficient in Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish.
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As Europe burns, Europeans search for firewood
The European Union is on pace for a record fire season. Waves of extreme heat, compounded by widespread drought conditions, provoked a summer of devastating blazes. According to the European Forest Fire Information System, about 1.6 million acres of land — equivalent to an area more than eight times the size of New York City — burned across the continent so far this year. That figure is 56 percent higher than a previous record set in 2017 and double the annual average calculated between 2006 and 2021, according to the E.U. agency. Spain, Romania and Portugal were among the worst hit E.U. countries; thousands of people died amid soaring temperatures. Last week in the southwestern Gironde region of France, home to Bordeaux’s famous vineyards, hundreds of firefighters from across the European Union rushed in to help combat a wildfire sweeping through thousands of hectares of pine woods. “It’s really a dragon spitting its fire,” a local mayor told my colleagues. “It’s devouring the forest.” The ongoing drought in many parts of Europe is both a cause and effect of the continent’s extremely hot summer, as my colleagues at The Post’s Capital Weather Gang explained: “The hotter weather dries out the landscape, which dries the atmosphere, in turn making the air easier to heat up. That cycle is extremely difficult to break, particularly when the overarching weather pattern favors ridging, or the establishment of broad high pressure, over Europe. That high pressure ‘heat dome’ deflects inclement weather, including rain, to the north, allowing Europe to bake beneath inescapable sunshine and anomalous warmth.” Analysts expect these conditions to only worsen in summers to come. A report from the European Commission, the executive wing of the European Union, warned that “climate change is aggravating the situation, making countries more prone to wildfires and increasing the intensity of such events.” There is a parallel, more immediate crisis also building up in Europe.The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a major set of sanctions on Russian exports and forced E.U. governments to push forward plans to wean themselves off Russian gas. But the transformation in European energy consumption won’t come fast enough for this winter, and countries across the continent are bracing for surging heating costs. “The winter is coming, and we don’t know how cold it will be, but what we know for sure that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will continue to play his dirty games,” Jozef Sikela, the Czech Republic’s minister of industry and trade, said last month following meetings in Brussels. On Tuesday, Russian state gas company Gazprom warned that European gas prices could rise a further 60 percent tomore than $4,000 per 1,000 cubic meters, as it reckons with Western sanctions and diminished exports. The company reduced supplies to only 20 percent of the capacity of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs through the Baltic Sea to terminals in Germany. Already, the price of gas in Europe is roughly four times what it was last year. Industrial output has been badly affected. E.U. governments have committed to a voluntary 15 percent reductions in their use of natural gas ahead of the winter. Many have mandated a slate of energy-saving measures while also trying to offer subsidies to help defray costs for households. Local authorities have asked ordinary citizens to do their part — the Dutch, for example, have been urged to limit showers to five minutes and forswear using air conditioning or clothes dryers. Meanwhile, the energy emergency has forced major rethinks in policy, as well. On Tuesday, German officials said they are planning to delay shuttering their nation’s last three remaining nuclear power plants. Bracing for winter, no matter the current summer heat, Europeans are also taking a more rustic approach. As Bloomberg News’s Javier Blas noted recently, there’s been a remarkable spike in German Google searches for firewood. That’s hardly an anomaly. In Belgium and the Netherlands, prices for firewood have in some instances doubled. In war-torn Ukraine, municipalities are sawing down trees in preparation for the uncertainty that war and the biting cold may bring. In Hungary, whose illiberal ruling government bucked the European trend and negotiated an increase in Russian gas imports, authorities have also loosened logging restrictions in a bid to boost firewood stocks. That decision triggered protests in Budapest last week, as thousands marched against measures they viewed as harmful for the environment. “This is our common future,” a protester named Fanni Fodor told Reuters. “We all feel the effects of the climate change on our skins and cutting down trees will only make it worse.” Climate change, of course, is not ancillary to the energy crisis gripping Europe. Drought and high temperatures have depleted the continent’s rivers, to costly effect. “The energy crisis is being exacerbated by very low water levels at key waypoints on Europe’s rivers that are making it difficult for diesel, coal and other commodities to be transported through the continent,” reported Bloomberg News. “Utilities could end up using more gas as an alternative.” Even as the summer reminded many Europeans of the shared dangers posed by climate change, a cold winter and skyrocketing heating bills may provoke new divisions. Governments in the short term are racing toward stocking up on whatever fossil fuels they can, as prices for coal and natural gas surge. Jason Bordoff, an American energy expert and former White House adviser to Barack Obama, told New York Times opinion writer David Wallace-Wells that while European governments prepare for the winter, their energy stores may prove to be insufficient. “There are going to have to be efforts taken to curb demand as well and to prepare for the possibility of really severe energy rationing this winter,” Bordoff said. “I think now you’re seeing — in terms of the efforts toward efficiency and rationing — some countries are more willing than others. If things become really severe this winter, I fear that you could see European countries start to look out for themselves rather than one another.” | |||||||||||||||||
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