Juizes, diplomatas, marajás, privilegiados, autos salarios... (enfim, com a nova gramatica, tudo se torna possivel)

Não sei se já são os efeitos da nova orientação de "purtugueis" para alunos brasileiros, mas o fato é que recebi uma consulta, na qual destaco trechos edificantes:

"Tenho 20 anos e estou no 4ª semestre de Direito, e tenho duvidas qual carreira irei exercer, gosto muito do papel desenpenhado pelos diplomatas e juizes, mas é visto que no inicio de carreira de diplomata como 3ª secretário o salario não é tal auto quanto a um de juiz, mas em compensação o diplomata tem diversas imunidades e privilégios que um juiz não tem, e por isso estou em duvida qual das carreiras irei exercer, o salario de um diplomata + as imunidades compensa o que um juiz ganha?"

Não tenho palavras, mas acho que essa vida de professor não compensa...
Melhor ser monge budista numa montanha do Nepal...

Mais uma frase da semana (se eu fosse o Pele, protestaria contra o uso indevido do meu nome...)

Aliás, protestaria e processaria, por ofensa, impropério, associação para delinquir, formação de quadrilha, crimes repetidos, atentado à moral e aos bons costumes, e o que mais couber.
Vejam a frase:

"Estão testando o governo da Dilma. Quiseram me intrigar com ela e não conseguiram. Agora, se o governo entregar a cabeça do Palocci, vai cometer um grande erro. Não dá para pôr o Pelé no banco”, disse Lula...

Isso a propósito de um ministro venal que foi comparado ao Pelé.
Se eu fosse o Pelé interpelaria imediatamente o falastrão na justiça...
Vocês sabem: quem tem imagem, precisa velar por ela, e evitar qualquer associação com malfeitores...

A frase da semana: ativos, propriedades, patrimônio, etc...

Numa semana em que até o FMI teve suas horas de glória, bem mais do que os 15 minutos regulamentares, a frase da semana, que resume, com propriedade, as tribulações de um outro poderoso personagem que ainda não caiu em desgraça política, mas já caiu em desgraça moral, é esta aqui:

"Em relação às acusações, o ministro se defendeu com muita propriedade".

Resume tudo (ainda que não tenhamos, digamos assim, a métrica da propriedade, talvez no plural...).

Qual a medida do seu bem-estar? A OCDE vai lhe dizer...

O Brasil ainda não figura nesse novo indicador da OCDE, mas parece que poderia ser incorporado, se suas estatísticas se harmonizarem com as da OCDE.

Economie
L'OCDE lance un indicateur du bien-être
Le Monde, 25/05/2011

Capture d'écran du site internet de l'OCDE qui permet de calculer l'indicateur de bien-être.

A l'occasion de son cinquantième anniversaire, l'Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE) a présenté, mardi 24 mai, une initiative visant à mesurer le bien-être des habitants des pays riches en vue d'améliorer leur existence. Pour mieux appréhender les conditions de vie des populations de ses 34 pays membres, l'organisation a lancé un indice baptisé "vivre mieux" accompagné d'un site Internet, première traduction concrète du rapport Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi.

En 2009, une commission présidée par le prix Nobel d'économie Joseph Stiglitz avait en effet soumis à Nicolas Sarkozy des pistes pour améliorer la mesure de la croissance économique et corriger les carences de l'indicateur de référence, le produit intérieur brut (PIB), depuis longtemps critiqué. Elle avait prôné la mise en place d'une série d'indicateurs afin de mettre davantage l'accent sur la mesure du "bien-être" dans les statistiques économiques.

L'OCDE a voulu "s'intéresser plus précisément aux gens en mesurant ce qui compte pour eux", détaille Martine Durand, directrice des statistiques de l'organisation. Il ne s'agit pas, par exemple, de calculer les dépenses de santé effectuées par un gouvernement mais d'évaluer l'efficacité d'un système de soins dans tel ou tel pays, a-t-elle souligné. L'indice de l'OCDE permet aux citoyens de ses Etats membres de comparer leur bien-être à partir de onze critères : logement, revenu, travail, communauté, éducation, environnement, gouvernance, santé, bien-être subjectif, sécurité, et conciliation travail-vie privée.

AUSTRALIE ET CANADA BIEN CLASSÉS
Afin de préserver les susceptibilités, l'OCDE ne livre pas son propre classement. Chaque utilisateur peut en revanche accorder aux différentes critères un poids variable en fonction de ce qu'il juge le plus important pour son bien-être et découvrir les pays qui arrivent alors en tête ou en queue de peloton. Dans un grand nombre de domaines, l'Australie et le Canada se retrouvent très bien classés. Mieux en tout cas que la Turquie qui obtient en moyenne un moins bon score.

Cet indicateur se veut également une opportunité pour les citoyens d'exprimer auprès des gouvernements leurs principales préoccupations, fait valoir l'OCDE. "Cela permettra de comprendre quelles sont les priorités des gens par sexe, âge et par pays", souligne Anthony Gooch, directeur de la communication de l'organisation. En France par exemple, le fait d'avoir un emploi et d'être en bonne santé sont considérés comme les facteurs de bien-être les plus importants. L'OCDE espère bientôt ouvrir l'indicateur, qui doit être affiné dans les mois à venir, à d'autres pays que les plus développés, en premier lieu des émergents comme le Brésil.

Yo, el Supremo (um pouco menos agora...): agora vem?

Aparentemente sim, vamos ter de fazer salamaleques. Atenção Protocolo: adaptar para uma hora e meia de atraso...

Presidente da Venezuela remarca visita oficial ao Brasil
DCI, 25/05/2011

O presidente da Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, ligou ontem para a presidente Dilma Rousseff e remarcou sua vinda oficial ao Brasil para o dia 6 de junho. A visita, cancelada, seria no último dia 10, mesmo dia que o Instituto Internacional de Estudos Estratégicos divulgou relatório denunciando que ele havia prometido enviar, em 2007, US$ 300 milhões às Forças Armadas Revolucionárias da Colômbia (Farc). Só no ano passado, a relação comercial entre Brasil e Venezuela envolveu US$ 4,6 bilhões. Em geral, o Brasil exporta para a Venezuela alimentos, frango desossado e carne bovina, enquanto os venezuelanos vendem para os brasileiros essencialmente, petróleo e derivados.

Iris Chang e o massacre de Nanquim: uma trajetoria no horror

Eu já tinha ouvido falar do livro de Iris Chang muito antes de ir para a China, e de visitar o memorial ao massacre japonês contra a população da antiga capital imperial de Nanquim (ou Nanjing), uma história horripilante que a jornalista americana de origem chinesa conta com uma riqueza de detalhes nunca antes igualada na literatura de língua inglesa. Infelizmente, vítima de depressão e de mau aconselhamento médico, Iris Chang se suicidou.
Sua mãe presta uma homenagem neste livro agora publicado nos EUA.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

BOOKSHELF
Hard Work, True Grit
By MARY KISSEL
The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2011

Remembering the author of 'The Rape of Nanking.'

The Woman Who Could Not Forget
By Ying-Ying Chang
Pegasus, 426 pages, $29.95

Iris Chang, born March 28, 1968, was raised like many other children of her generation. Her parents relied on Dr. Spock for child-rearing advice, encouraged a love of reading, made sure that she spent time with her grandparents, and provided a loving home for her and her brother, Michael. One photograph shows the family on a trip to Yellowstone National Park, all grins, as a geyser blows behind them. Iris went on to marry and have a son. She became a writer and in 1997 published the book that made her famous, "The Rape of Nanking," about the atrocities committed in that city by Japanese soldiers during World War II. Then, in 2004, at the age of 36, she committed suicide with a handgun.

Iris's sudden death was the catalyst for "The Woman Who Could Not Forget," a biographical memoir written by her mother, Ying-Ying Chang, who says she had to set the record straight and "present Iris" as "only we, her family, knew her." But the book is less a tale of a renowned author's vertiginous spiral into depression than it is a mother's poignant tribute to a Chinese-American girl who achieved success through her own intelligence, hard work and grit, but also with the extraordinary support of those closest to her.

In her parents, Iris had excellent role models. Ying-Ying was born in China in 1940, and her childhood was "full of fears, worries, pains, and frights," as her parents struggled to keep her and her brother safe while the country collapsed into civil war. Her family emigrated to Taiwan, and Ying-Ying eventually made her way to America and married a fellow Harvard Ph.D. student, Shau-Jin (a tale she doesn't relate in the book). The two were doing postdoctoral work at Princeton University—Ying-Ying in biological chemistry, Shau-Jin in physics—when Iris was born.

A year after Iris's birth, the family moved to the Midwest, where Ying-Ying and Shau-Jin began teaching at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. As her mother tells it, Iris was a "sensitive" child who was "shy" in public but "very talkative and often dominated the entire conversation" at home. On trips to the local library, she would check out "at least ten books at a time." She took up piano and started winning writing competitions. "She had a tendency to obsess over the things she was interested in or working on," Ying-Ying recalls. In high school, Iris took a liking to computers, volunteered at the local hospital and started her own magazine. She was accepted to several universities, including Cornell and the University of Chicago, but her parents advised her to go to the University of Illinois instead, because "to be home might be better for her." She complied.

That decision is one of the few instances in the book where her parents seemed to have much sway over Iris, although the strong bond between mother and daughter is clear in the myriad of warm correspondences Ying-Ying cites in the book. "She always initiated things by herself," Ying-Ying writes—a trait that the family supported and even reveled in. The Changs encouraged Iris to develop marketable skills and not to rely on anyone else to support her financially, although she married her college sweetheart in her early 20s. Ying-Ying reminded her: "As my mother used to say to me, the success in one's life was dependent on 70% hard work and only 30% talent or genetic makeup."

And Iris worked. She interned at Newsweek and freelanced for the New York Times but had trouble getting a job in the run-up to college graduation. She took an internship with the Associated Press but soon left to take another one at the Chicago Tribune—and then the newspaper declined to hire her full-time. With her parents' support, Iris returned briefly to the University of Illinois before winning an assistantship in John Hopkins's writing program.

An adviser there encouraged her to get in touch with Susan Rabiner, a HarperCollins book editor, who would give Iris her first book topic, a biography of Tsien Hsue-sen, the father of China's missile and space program. But the book advance was modest, and for a while Iris delivered pizzas to make ends meet.

"The Rape of Nanking" had its genesis in the tales her parents told her of her maternal grandparents, who barely escaped the Japanese onslaught in 1937. Iris attended a 1994 conference on this "most atrocious chapter in history," Ying-Ying says, and realized that there wasn't a good English-language book on the subject. Iris holed up at the National Archives in Washington, trawled through Yale's library and traveled to China to interview survivors. She discovered an eyewitness's diary—a German Nazi, John Rabe—that added significantly to the historical record of the slaughter. All the while, Ying-Ying and Shau-Jin helped her with translations and, once Iris began writing, "gave up our nights and weekends to read her manuscript."

The book was a remarkable success for such a harrowing subject, and Iris soon got to work on another project, "The Chinese in America," which was published in 2003. The young author was in demand for television interviews, bookstore appearances and speaking engagements. It was on one of her trips that Iris had a breakdown, in a Kentucky hotel, was hospitalized and diagnosed with, as Ying-Ying describes it, "'brief reactive psychosis,' due to stress conditions such as lack of sleep and food."

Ying-Ying attributes her daughter's slide into depression to side effects from antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs and poor medical advice. A few months after her breakdown, Iris Chang was dead. Her mother devotes only a few chapters to this period of illness and despair. Perhaps that's best. "The Woman Who Could Not Forget" ultimately isn't a sad story, but rather a celebration of Iris's remarkable life.

Ms. Kissel is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

Forum Brasil-Europa: 15-16 de junho de 2011, Brasilia

Uma excelente oportunidade para se informar, para se formar, eventualmente para se deformar, também, embora esta última hipótese seja mais difícil...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

XVIII Forum Brasil-Europa
15 e 16 de junho de 2011, Brasília

A Fundação Konrad Adenauer, em parceria com o Grupo Parlamentar Brasil-União Europeia e o Instituto de Relações Internacionais da Universidade de Brasília (Irel-UnB), sob o suporte da Delegação da União Europeia no Brasil, busca refletir sobre os desafios atuais para a construção de uma agenda comum entre Brasil e União Europeia. Neste sentido, o XVIII Fórum Brasil-Europa apresentará questões políticas do Brasil e de países europeus no âmbito da crise financeira internacional, dos novos mecanismos de governança global e para a cooperação em setores específicos, como energia, meio ambiente e infraestrutura.

Os organizadores convidam para este evento, que contará com a presença de parlamentares brasileiros e europeus, diplomatas, membros de instituições internacionais e destacados pesquisadores.

O evento acontecerá nos dias 15 e 16 de junho de 2011, Brasília/DF ( no dia 15/06: Auditório Nereu Ramos, Câmara dos Deputados e no dia 16/06: Salão Brooklin, Hotel Manhattan Plaza).

Para consultar o programa, clique aqui

As inscrições devem ser feitas por e-mail, encaminhando uma mensagem com nome completo, cargo e instituição para Daniel.Edler@kas.de