1211) Devaneio poetico

Do gênero, "descobertas arqueológicas": por um desses acasos da informatica, descobri, escondido num arquivo anódino, um atentado poetico que devo ter cometido em estado de semi-sonolencia dois ou três anos atras, a propósito de Brasilia...
Nunca é demais registrar, para que não se perca mais uma vez...

A arte de poetar impunemente
É crime da mais alta inteligência
Só perpetra esse crime quem não mente
Nem sofre de sentir qualquer ausência

O próprio crime de viver nesta cidade
Que isola e confunde tanta gente
Só comete quem persegue a impunidade
E consegue viver assim indiferente

PRA (sem data: 2006)

1210) Senado: uma casa de horrores, para The Economist

Acredito que os horrores são todos para nós, que pagamos. Para os senadores e funcionários, aquilo é uma maravilha, um Paraíso, como dizia o finado antropólogo e senador Darcy Ribeiro.

House of horrors
The Economist, 10/07/2009

The president of Brazil's Senate sits in a fine blue leather chair designed by Oscar Niemeyer, a celebrated Brazilian architect. Comfortable it may be, but its occupants have also found it to be an insecure perch. Three senate presidents have been suspended or have resigned because of scandals in the past eight years. Now a fourth, José Sarney, a former president of Brazil and part-time novelist, is teetering.

The Senate has just 81 members but somehow they require almost 10,000 staff to take care of them. Many of these are appointed as favours to senators' friends or political supporters. One former staffer says that his fellow-employees used to say that the senate was like a mother to them. Others liken it to a country club. The benefits of membership include free health insurance for life for all senators and their families, generous pension arrangements and housing allowances. This much was already familiar to Brazilians and, perhaps, not so different from the goings on in many other legislatures around the world.

But the past few months have brought new revelations. The police are investigating some 660 “secret acts” passed since 1995 which have awarded jobs and pay rises to members of staff. Senators have given free air tickets to relatives and claimed housing allowances for houses they did not live in. Senate staff were paid overtime even when the chamber was in recess. The head of the senate administration, Agaciel Maia, was revealed to own a house worth 5m reais ($2.5m) that was registered in his brother's name and thus not declared to the tax authorities.

Lots of senators, more or less across the political spectrum, are at fault. When the leader of the opposition Party of Brazilian Social Democracy went on a jaunt to Paris, for example, the Senate paid his hotel bill. (He says this was a “loan”.) It therefore might seem unfair that Mr Sarney is under pressure to resign.

Yet he cannot plead ignorance of the Senate's workings. This is his third spell as its president. During a previous stint in the blue chair he appointed Mr Maia to his lucrative position. A grandchild of Mr Sarney's received business from the Senate (although he was not its president at the time). Mr Sarney also omitted from his declaration of assets to the federal electoral tribunal a big house he owns in Brasília.

Mr Sarney, who has spent 50 years in public life, is a survivor. He will probably keep his post. He remains a power in the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), a catch-all outfit that is an important part of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's governing coalition. Lula wants Mr Sarney to swing the weight of the PMDB, and its patronage machine, behind Dilma Rousseff, the probable candidate of the ruling Workers' Party in the presidential election next year.

Lula has said that Mr Sarney deserves more respect, and has blamed the press for whipping up scandal. But at a time when the economy is only just emerging from recession, the saga of the “secret acts” has reminded Brazilians that their politicians never impose austerity on themselves. It may also have reminded them of the flaws of some of Lula's allies, and his willingness to shut his eyes to scandal when it suits him.

1209) Que tal, agora, ler sobre piratas?

Também do número corrente da Foreign Affairs:

What to Read on Pirates
Max Boot
Foreign Affairs, May 6, 2009

Summary -- An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on pirates.

To defeat piracy in centuries past, governments pursued a more active defense at sea and a political solution on land. The current piracy epidemic off the coast of East Africa requires many of the same tactics.

Recent attacks off the Horn of Africa have revived interest in piracy. There is a rich literature on the subject focusing primarily on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Today's piracy problems share enough characteristics with their historical precursors to make an understanding of the earlier experiences useful as well as fun.

A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates. By Captain Charles Johnson. Lyons Press, 2002.

This is the ur-text for piracy studies -- the one that started it all. As Charles Johnson's introduction notes, his work, which went through several editions, consists of profiles "of these desperadoes, who were the terror of the trading part of the world." A General History was originally published in London in 1724, just three years after the death of Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart), one of its most notorious subjects. No one knows who the author was. It was once assumed that Captain Johnson was a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe; now there is speculation that the author was a pirate himself, or at least an experienced seaman who met a number of pirates. In any case, he was well informed, and although some of his claims are fanciful (there was no such place as Libertalia, a supposed pirate haven), most have stood the test of subsequent historical research. Some of his most famous passages concern Captain Teach, who "assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there a long time."

Captain Blood. By Rafael Sabatini. Penguin Classics, 2003.
Captain Blood. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Warner Brothers, 1935.

The influence of Johnson's A General History can be seen in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, both of which helped lock in place popular images of pirates. Another student of Johnson's was Rafael Sabatini, an Anglo-Italian historical novelist whose most famous books were The Sea-Hawk (1915), Scaramouche (1921), and Captain Blood (1922). The last remains one of the greatest historical swashbucklers, in a class with The Three Musketeers, The Prisoner of Zenda, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Sabatini's hero, Peter Blood -- loosely based on the privateer Sir Henry Morgan -- is a surgeon accidentally caught up in the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion against King James II of England. He is convicted of treason and sent to work as a plantation slave in Barbados. When Spanish privateers suddenly attack the town where he is toiling, Blood escapes, seizes the privateers' ship, and becomes a successful pirate himself. Needless to say, his reputation is redeemed in the end, his "odyssey" (the book's original subtitle) resulting in social and legal vindication for this hero forced by circumstances to operate outside the law. To get all the twists and turns along the way, read the book -- or watch the 1935 movie version, which introduced American audiences to a pair of talented young newcomers named Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.

Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates. By Charles Cordingly. Harcourt Brace, 1995.

If there were a chair of piratology at an eminent university, Charles Cordingly would be a good candidate to fill it. A former curator at the National Maritime Museum, in Greenwich, England, he has written several books on the subject, of which Under the Black Flag serves as the best introduction. Not a comprehensive history, it is instead a thematic study of the most famous pirates of all time -- the ones who haunted the Spanish Main from roughly 1650 to 1725. Cordingly discusses both popular culture and the historical reality behind it. If you wonder whether pirates really had peg legs and made treasure maps, he will provide the answers (yes and no, respectively). This is the place to go to learn the distinctions among pirates, privateers, and corsairs, how pirate societies organized themselves, and whether there were female pirates.

The Pirate Wars. By Peter Earle. St. Martin's Press, 2003.

A former professor at the London School of Economics, Peter Earle is another leading contemporary expert on the history of piracy. In this book, he provides an invaluable overview of the various pirate communities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and how they were eradicated. Although there is a good deal here on the Caribbean pirates, Earle also addresses the Barbary pirates (more properly, the Barbary privateers) and the "Red Sea men," who preyed on Indian Ocean shipping belonging to European and Asian merchants. (The only major groups missing are the East Asian pirates, who operated around the Malay Archipelago and southern China.) Earle's account is clear and easy to follow, and he incorporates the latest academic studies, in particular the valuable work of the University of Pittsburgh historian Marcus Rediker, author of several more specialized books and articles on the subject (such as Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age). What was the secret to defeating pirates? Different strategies were employed in different areas and at different times, but there is no escaping the brutality of anti-pirate measures. As Earle notes, between 1716 and 1726 alone, English authorities hanged at least 400 pirates, "a colossal number even in an age notorious for its love of the gallows."

The Barbary Corsairs. By Stanley Lane-Poole. T. Fisher Unwin, 1890.
Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs. By Gardner Weld Allen. Houghton Mifflin, 1905.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of books about the United States' wars on Muslim "pirates" (really privateers), waged against Tripoli from 1801 to 1805 and against Algiers in 1815. New narratives have come out from such authors as Gregory Fremont-Barnes, Frank Lambert, Frederick Leiner, Joshua E. London, Ian Toll, Joseph Wheelan, and Richard Zacks. Nevertheless, these two accounts, published more than a century ago and available for free on Google Books, remain classics worth reading. Stanley Lane-Poole presents the general background of the Barbary States and their sea-raiding, focusing in particular on the Barbarossa brothers, who became known as the scourges of Christian Europe in the sixteenth century. Gardner Allen devotes his attention to the wars fought against the Barbary States by the early American Republic. One of the highlights is the story of how young Stephen Decatur led a small crew of Americans into Tripoli harbor in 1804 to destroy the captured USS Philadelphia beneath the guns of the enemy. It reads like something out of a Patrick O'Brian novel, but it really happened.

Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas. By John S. Burnett. Plume, 2003.

There aren't a lot of books on modern piracy. John Burnett's volume is already a bit dated but is probably the best primer on the subject. A former reporter and congressional staffer, Burnett is a veteran sailor whose own sloop was briefly seized by pirates in 1992 off the coast of Indonesia. The hijackers took a pair of binoculars and a carton of Marlboros before leaving. The incident sparked Burnett's interest in the subject, so he traveled aboard a pair of oil tankers transiting the pirate-infested Malacca Strait and spent time with the Royal Malaysian Marine Police, observing its attempts to nab pirates. Somalian pirates were not a big threat when he was writing, so the book does not cover them. But Burnett's reporting shows why cargo vessels were and remain vulnerable: the automation of vessels has reduced crew levels dramatically, civilian ships have no significant defenses, and owners instruct crews not to resist attacks. Local naval forces that are supposed to protect shipping, meanwhile, either lack the resources to cover vast stretches of ocean or, as in the case of Somalia, simply do not exist. No wonder piracy remains a flourishing business.

MAX BOOT is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

1208) Uma selecao de leituras sobre Estados e mercados

Reading Lists
What to Read on States and Markets
Mark Blyth
Professor of International Political Economy
at Brown University
Foreign Affairs, July 1, 2009

Summary:
An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on states and markets.

As governments around the world have responded to the global economic crisis, questions about the appropriate relationships between states and markets are once again a matter of intense public and policy debate. As the discussion proceeds, the subject's long history is worth bearing in mind. The canonical authors one might think to start with --Adam Smith and Karl Marx -- are not actually all that helpful. Smith's writings on the state should be read against his indictment of the mercantilist system, not in relation to the modern world, and Marx's writings on the state, despite some notable epigrams, are also not particularly relevant to the contemporary era. The texts that follow, in contrast, offer readers a deep historical and theoretical understanding of the relationship between states and markets over time.

Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990. By Charles Tilly. Basil Blackwell, 1990.

Going back a thousand years, Charles Tilly describes how European societies developed differently by relying on various combinations of coercion (force) and capital (cash). He distinguishes between coercion-intensive empires, capital-intensive cities and city states, and a third, hybrid option, "capitalized coercion," which generated the modern nation states that ultimately survived. Countries such as Britain and France, he argues, sought to enhance the fiscal capacity of their states in response to competitive pressures, and in doing so, they built a set of institutions (the modern state) that transformed society's class structures and paved the way for capitalist development.

The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph. By Albert O. Hirschman. Princeton University Press, 1977.

Possibly the most beautiful and enjoyable book in all of political economy, Albert Hirschman's The Passions and the Interests is a tour de force that takes readers from St. Augustine and Machiavelli to the French physiocrats and the Scottish Enlightenment. Along the way, Hirschman shows that the idea that markets are "natural" was put forward not as a description of reality but rather as a political argument in their favor. He also details how the invention of capitalism depended on the creation of a new type of political actor -- an individual liberal subject who was the product of a liberal state. This is magical stuff -- Foucault without the long words and in less than 120 pages.

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times. Karl Polanyi. Beacon Press, 1944.

If Hirschman presents capitalism as a "revolutionary ideology" tied to a specific form of state, Karl Polanyi's classic shows how the development of markets has been a political project pioneered by the state (as opposed to something that emerged in opposition to it). "Laissez faire was planned," he writes. "Planning was not." The creation of markets, that is, has been a violent process involving the wrenching of society from its traditional norms and institutions -- a process that has generated a natural reaction of society against the market itself ("planning"). The limited liberal state has spread the market, Polanyi argues, but its very success has called forth other sorts of states charged with protecting the society that markets have dislocated: fascist, communist, and social democratic.

Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective. By Ha-Joon Chang. Anthem Press, 2000.

Economists since David Ricardo have seen states that practice free trade (rather than trade controlled by the state) as the engine of development in the global economy. Ha-Joon Chang disagrees. He develops Friedrich List's mercantilist idea that free trade between equally developed and differentially factored states may be welfare improving, but free trade between unequally developed states locks in the advantages of the more developed ones, thus "kicking away the ladder" from those beneath. Drawing on extensive data from the nineteenth century, Chang shows how the United States had the highest tariffs in the world during its period of exceptional growth; how the United Kingdom's practice of free trade was selective at best; and how the much-trumpeted Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 effectively halted French industrialization for 50 years.

Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. By Peter Evans. Princeton University Press, 1995.

In the modern era, only some poor countries have managed to achieve strong, continued economic growth and development. Those that have succeeded (primarily in East Asia and, more recently, South Asia) are outnumbered by also-rans (in Latin America) and chronic cases of underdevelopment (in sub-Saharan Africa). Peter Evans argues that the explanation for this pattern lies in the difference sorts of states countries have been saddled with or acquired. Where the state has "embedded autonomy" -- that is, where it can rise above societal interests and implement long-term projects but remains embedded in society's networks and information flows -- it can foster growth and development. Such "developmental" states avoid klepto-patrimonialism, corrupt clientelism, and stagnation. The take-home lesson is that certain kinds of state can be developmental hindrances but other kinds can help promote growth and development.

States and the Reemergence of Global Finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s. By Eric Helleiner. Cornell University Press, 1994.

Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance. By Rawi Abdelal. Harvard University Press, 2007.

Eric Helleiner gives the clearest historical account of how the world moved from restricted capital flows in the 1950s to open and integrated financial markets by the 1980s. He takes readers through the emergence of the "embedded liberal order," the challenges it faced in the 1960s, and its denouement in the 1970s and 1980s. Combining economic and political analysis, Helleiner shows how the neoliberal order that has emerged is not a turnaway from the state but rather dependent on the state for its deployment and operation. Privatization, deregulation, and openness, he argues, mark less the withdrawal of the state than its redeployment in support of a pro-market position. Rawi Abdelal's book builds upon Helleiner's, explaining why the neoliberal order took the form it did. For Abdelal, what is most striking about the current open financial order is the number of rules it has. Far from seeing a "flat" world where economic forces run roughshod over powerless governments, Abdelal sees a rule-governed world where globalization has a French, not an American, accent. He argues that a group of French politicians operating within the "more state than market" institutions of the European Union, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the IMF constructed the rules for global capital, institutionalizing on a global level the types of practices usually associated with the state on sovereign and domestic levels.

One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth. By Dani Rodrik. Princeton University Press, 2007.

Neoclassical economists are known for their distrust of the state. It is a surprise, then, for a leading member of the club to come out in favor of the legitimacy of "national policy choices" and admit the utility of industrial policy. Dani Rodrik's book thus marks a watershed in mainstream economic thinking about the role of the state in generating growth and development. Rodrik's main argument is that good growth policies are always context specific, dependent on local knowledge, and implemented by conscious reform rather than happy accident. Laissez faire, accordingly, makes little sense as a general policy package. The world may be globalized, but political actors need to choose and act within that world to maximize their own communities' prosperity -- something that might involve a much greater role for the state than is often admitted in mainstream policy circles.

Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. By Giovanni Arrighi. Verso, 2007.

Finally, for something completely different, one might try Giovanni Arrighi's Adam Smith in Beijing. It can be read as a warning to the United States that the flowering of finance heralds the end of global dominance, as an analysis of the rise of China, and even as a political geography of late capitalism. Indeed, it is all three. But where the book truly excels is how Arrighi puts China rather than the West at the heart of his developmental narrative. His basic claim is that the East Asian state system has led to something different from the type of predatory and destructive capitalism found in European history, where capitalists took over the state and remade it in their image. Add all the markets you want to a country, he says, and it still won't amount to capitalism so long as it lacks the dominance, intellectually and materially, of a capitalist class. The relationship between state and market in China, he claims, where the state "rules" and the capitalist merely "earns," points to a system outside the familiar categories of communist, capitalist, liberal democratic, and so forth. The book is macro-historical sociology on the order of Tilly that places the other readings in a political context.

1207) Sobre curriculos maquiados (você sabe de quem...)

O jornalista gaúcho Políbio Braga, em sua newsletter de 8.07.2009, volta a tratar do problema do curriculo criativo da ministra-chefe da Casa Civil, com acusações ao próprio CNPq e ao sistema Lattes. Veja o que ele escreveu:

Unicamp cria novo campo de informação para livrar a cara de Dilma

Durante três anos o site da Casa Civil disponibilizou informações mentirosas sobre as graduações universitárias da ministra Dilma Roussef.
. Acontece que há 10 dias a revista Piauí pesquisou o currículo da ministra e constatou o seguinte sobre o currículo:
- Ela não é mestre em economia.
- Ela não é doutora em economia.
. O jornalista Gustavo Mackluf foi até a Unicamp e flagrou os dois pega-ratões.
. Isto é muito feio.
. A ministra da Casa Civil levou 48 horas para reconhecer a mentira e mandou corrigir o site.

. Mas coisas mais estranhas começaram a ocorrer depois do episódio. É que o Sistema de Cadastramento de Currículos Lattes e a Unicamp resolveram salvar a cara da ministra e acabam de criar um novo campo, informando os alunos que fizeram mestrado e doutorado “incompleto”. É o caso de Dilma Roussef. Esta informação é exclusiva.
. O artigo 171 do Código Penal caiu em completo desuso no Brasil.
CLIQUE AQUI para examinar a “novidade” da Unicamp e do Sistema Lattes, como também a nova página do site da Casa Civil.

Clicar leva o CV Lattes da ministra:

Dilma Vana Rousseff

Possui graduação em Ciências Econômicas pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (1977). Foi aluna de mestrado e doutorado em Ciências Econômicas da UNICAMP, onde concluiu os respectivos créditos. Atualmente é ministra chefe da Casa Civil da Presidencia da República.
(Texto informado pelo autor)

Última atualização do currículo em 06/07/2009
Endereço para acessar este CV:
http://lattes.cnpq.br/1357261451494509

Formação acadêmica/Titulação

1998 incompleto
Doutorado em Ciência Econômica.
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, UNICAMP, Brasil.
Título: --, Orientador: João Manoel Cardoso de Mello.
Ano de interrupção: 1999
Grande área: Ciências Sociais Aplicadas / Área: Economia / Subárea: Economia Monetária e Fiscal / Especialidade: Teoria Monetária e Financeira.

1978 - incompleto
Mestrado em Ciência Econômica.
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, UNICAMP, Brasil.
Título: ----, Orientador: ----.
Ano de interrupção: 1983

1974 - 1977
Graduação em Ciências Econômicas. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, UFRGS, Brasil.

1206) Pesquisa cientifica sobre a falta de sono

Bem, agora pelo menos eu fico sabendo o que vai me acontecer se eu continuar trabalhando noite adentro, enganando o sono e dormindo pouco.
Ou talvez já tenha acontecido...
Se com os ratos 78 genes foram modificados, minha conta já deve ter passado de 200 genes.
Vou pedir para contar...

Efeitos genéticos da falta de sono

Ratos privados de sono por 96 horas mostram alterações em 78 genes, segundo estudo realizado por pesquisadores do Instituto do Sono da Unifesp. Trabalho foi publicado na Behaviourial Brain Research

Qual é a extensão das modificações moleculares ocorridas no cérebro depois de quatro dias e quatro noites sem dormir? E até que ponto um descanso de 24 horas pode reverter essas mudanças? Essas questões foram abordadas por um estudo feito na Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp) com o objetivo de investigar as bases biológicas dos distúrbios de sono.

De acordo com o estudo, ratos privados por 96 horas do sono REM -- fase que ocorre, em humanos, predominantemente na segunda metade da noite e que cientistas acreditam estar relacionada às funções cognitivas como atenção e memória, entre outras funções -- apresentaram modificações em apenas 78 genes transcritos. Depois de 24 horas de descanso, 62% dos genes tiveram sua expressão normalizada. O estudo foi publicado na revista Behaviourial Brain Research.

A pesquisa foi feita no Instituto do Sono, um dos Centros de Pesquisa, Inovação e Difusão (Cepids) da Fapesp. Os autores do artigo foram Camila Guindalini, Monica Andersen, Tathiana Alvarenga, Kil Sun Lee e o coordenador do instituto, Sergio Tufik.

O modelo experimental gerou muita informação sobre a reação dos animais em termos de comportamento, capacidade de atenção, modificações hormonais e dados neuroquímicos. (...)
"Sabemos que depois de 96 horas de privação de sono REM o animal não pode voltar à situação normal após o rebote. Ele pode demorar até dez dias para recuperar as condições anteriores. Um outro trabalho, por exemplo, mostrava que fêmeas privadas do sono por 96 horas, durante uma fase específica do ciclo estral, tinham o ciclo interrompido por dez dias", afirmou a pesquisadora.
(...)
Esse tipo de modelo experimental foi aplicado a humanos também, segundo Camila. "Temos estudos nos quais monitoramos, por polissonografia, pessoas privadas do sono REM durante 96 horas. Também estudamos pessoas sob privação total de sono durante 48 horas."

O artigo To what extent is sleep rebound effective in reversing the effects of paradoxical sleep deprivation on gene expression in the brain?, de Camila Guindalini e outros, pode ser lido em http://www.sono.org.br
(Fábio de Castro, Agência Fapesp, 8/7)

=========

Bem, agora já estou avisado...

1205) Sobre a mentira no Brasil

A cultura da mentira
por João Luiz Mauad
08 de junho de 2007

Resumo: No Brasil, políticos e servidores públicos, por mais fortes que sejam as acusações e as evidências contra eles, sequer se dignam a afastar-se dos cargos durante as investigações e processos, enquanto seus superiores, correligionários e, em vários casos, até mesmo os seus opositores, agem como se nada houvesse.
© 2007 MidiaSemMascara.org

As virtudes morais são produto do hábito. (Aristóteles)

Corrupção na administração pública há em toda parte, mesmo em países desenvolvidos, com leis estáveis e instituições fortes. O que difere é a intensidade, que varia em função do nível de intervencionismo do Estado na vida social e, principalmente, da reação da sociedade diante do problema. Enquanto nações que dispõem de controles institucionais rígidos, leis transparentes e, acima de tudo, têm a verdade como um valor supremo tendem a cobrar dos seus representantes atitudes enérgicas contra a bandalheira e não se deixam engabelar com facilidade, outras, como a nossa, demonstram excessiva leniência diante da questão, permitindo que a corrupção consuma a incrível porção de 12% do PIB.

O nível de tolerância das sociedades em relação ao problema da corrupção pode ser medido não apenas pelos índices de impunidade, que em países como o nosso chegam perto da totalidade, mas também pelas reações dos criminosos quando “fisgados” pela lei. Recentemente, dois cidadãos japoneses cometeram suicídio, antes mesmo de serem julgados, porque julgaram que não poderiam conviver com tamanha desonra. Há alguns anos, um funcionário público norte-americano deu um tiro na própria boca, em frente às câmeras de TV, porque, flagrado num caso de corrupção, simplesmente “não suportava mais olhar nos olhos dos filhos”. Exemplos semelhantes, mesmo que não tão trágicos, abundam.

Já em Pindorama, pelo menos desde o suicídio de Getúlio Vargas, a coisa funciona de forma diferente. Políticos e servidores públicos, por mais fortes que sejam as acusações e as evidências contra eles, sequer se dignam a afastar-se dos cargos durante as investigações e processos, enquanto seus superiores, correligionários e, em vários casos, até mesmo os seus opositores, numa clara demonstração de corporativismo, agem como se nada houvesse. Honra, probidade, dignidade e vergonha na cara são valores há muito aposentados pelo relativismo moral que impera por aqui.

Ninguém assume coisa alguma. Ninguém jamais confessa nada. Sempre há uma boa desculpa, uma estória mirabolante a justificar qualquer coisa, por mais estranha e inverossímil que possa parecer. Inventam-se álibis, desculpas esfarrapadas e enredos os mais diversos para escapar da justiça. E o pior de tudo é que, na maioria das vezes, tais estratégias dão certo.

Ao contrário das nações que desenvolveram sociedades avançadas, fundadas em padrões morais onde prevalece a verdade, nossas instituições (formais e informais) foram estabelecidas sobre uma cultura da mentira. Aqui, todo mundo está mentindo até prova em contrário. As leis são estabelecidas na presunção de que somos todos mentirosos e apenas eventualmente dizemos a verdade. Alguns exemplos de procedimentos burocráticos, ou mesmo processuais, que só existem no Brasil e em alguns outros poucos lugares, dão bem a noção da coisa.

Certa vez tentei explicar a um inglês o que vem a ser uma cópia autenticada em cartório e o porquê da sua exigência ser tão disseminada por essas plagas. Parecia uma conversa de surdos. Meu interlocutor não entendia que as pessoas pudessem desconfiar da autenticidade de um documento antes mesmo que este lhes fosse apresentado. Sequer lhe passava pela cabeça que a palavra do portador ou responsável não bastasse. É claro que nem tentei explicar o nosso famigerado “reconhecimento de firma”, que recentemente evoluiu para “reconhecimento de firma por autenticidade”.

Ora, a mim pelo menos parece evidente que, se a verdade deve ser sempre provada e comprovada, ela passa a ser vista como exceção, não como regra. A mentira, por outro lado, é aceita como um hábito, uma tradição impregnada na cultura. Esse costume é tão disseminado que foi absorvido pela própria lei nos processos judiciários. Diferentemente do que ocorre em muitos países, onde o crime de perjúrio é gravíssimo e, quase sempre, funciona de forma a aumentar a penalidade do réu, por aqui a mentira dita em juízo não costuma trazer conseqüências. Muito pelo contrário, sua utilização é, em muitos casos, tida como perfeitamente legítima.

Diga-me com sinceridade, estimado leitor, há algo mais patético do que aqueles inquéritos parlamentares, transmitidos ao vivo pela TV, em que testemunhas e réus respondem às perguntas protegidos por uma liminar da justiça concedendo-lhes o “direito” de omitir a verdade? Quem não se lembra, por exemplo, do jeito cínico, beirando o escárnio, de diversos depoentes perante as inúmeras CPI's do Congresso, todos devidamente autorizados a mentir?

Aristóteles já dizia que as virtudes morais não são produzidas no ser humano pela natureza, mas são produto do hábito. O comportamento humano, por seu turno, é bastante influenciado por estímulos exteriores. Desde cedo, o homem aprende reagindo a incentivos produzidos pelos ambientes natural e social. Se o meio é propício à mentira, se o engodo é incentivado pela própria cadeia institucional, se não criamos as condições necessárias para que a verdade seja a regra e não a exceção, nada adianta chorar sobre o leite derramado.

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