Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas. Ver também minha página: www.pralmeida.net (em construção).
Os membros do Ministério Público, ao avaliar os recentes escândalos e roubalheiras na Petrobras, assim como os juízes do STF, ao avaliar o caso anterior do Mensalão, não hesitaram ao classificar os envolvidos desta forma: uma associação criminosa.
Eu não hesito em classificar o mesmo grupo que se espalha pelos vários órgãos dirigentes do Brasil sob a mesma designação; o nome disso é máfia.
O ex-presidente Lula durante comício em Campo Limpo Paulista, em São Paulo, antes do primeiro turno (Ivan Pacheco/VEJA.com)
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva afirmou estar com o saco cheio. Imaginem, então, como está o nosso — nós, que somos as vítimas de um tipo de política de que ele é o grande chefe. Ontem, dados os absurdos e descalabros que emanavam dos depoimentos de Paulo Roberto Costa e Alberto Youssef, o Babalorixá de Banânia não quis falar. Deixou para vociferar na plenária do PT, a primeira depois da eleição do dia 5, realizada no Sindicato dos Bancários. E, aí sim, bufou, vociferou cheio de ódio, vermelho como um pimentão. As sobrancelhas estavam arqueadas. Havia ódio em seu rosto. Sabem o que recomendou aos militantes? “Não abaixar a cabeça.” Sim, Lula quer que eles se sintam orgulhosos.
Afirmou sobre a roubalheira na Petrobras: “Todo ano é a mesma coisa. É sempre o mesmo cenário: eles começam a levantar as denúncias, que não precisam ser provadas. É só insinuar que a imprensa já dá destaque. Eu quero dizer para vocês que eu já estou de saco cheio”. Assim seria se assim fosse: a operação Lava Jato não foi deflagrada pela imprensa, senhor Lula, mas pela Polícia Federal — por aquela parte dela que investiga sem perguntar a filiação partidária do investigado. A imprensa também não atuou como Ministério Público nem como Justiça. Tampouco propôs o acordo de delação premiada.
Como? “Levantar denúncias”? Desta vez, Lula, o PT se encalacrou. Paulo Roberto Costa e Alberto Youssef admitem terem cometido os crimes. Alguém acha mesmo que eles atuariam sem a proteção de um esquema político? Lula está bravo porque foi ele próprio quem nomeou Paulo Roberto. E foi adiante com a retórica elegante de sempre: “Daqui a pouco, eles estarão investigando como nós nos portávamos dentro do ventre da nossa mãe”. Deus me livre! Pouco me interessa como o homem se portava no ventre daquela senhora. Mas as sem-vergonhices havidas na Petrobras, ah, isso é assunto meu, seu, de todos nós. O poderoso chefão petista parece não se conformar com isso. Entendo. Ele se acostumou com a ideia de que é dono do Brasil.
Referindo-se ao PSDB, afirmou: “Nós não podemos admitir que um partido bicudo venha nos chamar de corruptos”. Epa! Não é um partido bicudo, Lula! Os parceiros do petismo é que decidiram confessar.
O ex-presidente, gostemos ou não, é um líder político. Essa sua fala é desastrosa para a moralidade pública. Ela serve de sinal verde para a lambança. Sua cara de pau não tem limites. Continua a negar que o mensalão tenha existido, apesar das provas e das confissões de Marcos Valério. Parece que decidiu, agora, fazer o mesmo no caso da Petrobras. Estranha essa reação. Estaria Lula aplicando uma espécie de vacina contra o que virá, numa reação preventiva?
Ah, sim: na plenária, ele disse não entender o resultado pífio do PT em São Paulo. Falou isso ladeado por Alexandre Padilha, Fernando Haddad e Eduardo Suplicy, entre outros… E ele ainda não entendeu? Lula já foi mais inteligente.
Brazil’s election: in face-off with Mantega, Fraga disappointsSamantha Pearson
The Financial Times, 10/10/2014
It was set to be one of the biggest massacres of Brazil’s election. On Thursday night Guido Mantega, finance minister, went head-to-head with Armínio Fraga, the former central banker who will take his job if Aécio Neves wins the presidency this month.
Mantega certainly has some explaining to do. The economy is expected to grow a measly 0.2 per cent this year, according to Brazil’s latest central bank survey. That is less than much of the developed and developing world. On top of that, 12-month inflation last month came in at 6.75 per cent – above the upper limit of the country’s tolerance band and far above the official target of 4.5 per cent. So far, Mantega and the PT party have blamed this all on the global financial crisis… In short, Mantega should have been an easy target. Fraga certainly had the right arguments. The government needs to fix its economic model, combat inflation, raise investment, attract capital, build credibility and reduce unnecessary lending by the state development bank BNDES, he said. Furthermore, the global financial crisis was *five* years ago, he pointed out. All that is music to investors’ ears. Even so, he struggled to get the upper hand on Thursday night. While Mantega spoke as a confident politician, drawing on populist and coherent (albeit somewhat flawed) narratives, Fraga largely responded with the cold pragmatism and technical details of a central banker. As the Brazilian journalist Sérgio Augusto remarked on Twitter: “I had forgotten how bad Armínio Fraga is at interviews and debates. He comes across as everything he isn’t: insecure and false.” After eight years of Mantega as Brazil’s finance minister, investors and business people may welcome a little cold pragmatism. However, it is not these people Fraga has to convince – the vast majority would have picked Fraga over Mantega anyway. Rather, Fraga and the PSDB party need to find a way to get the economic message across to the average Brazilian and to deconstruct the common belief that what is good for the markets is bad for the people and vice-versa. After all, this is not just a cordial economic debate: it’s war – the final battle for control over the world’s second-biggest emerging market and the lives of more than 200m people.
Os companheiros construiram uma republiqueta mafiosa e pretendem legalizar isso nas urnas. Querem legitimar a indignidade e a podridão moral. E ainda teem o cinismo de nos dizer que tudo isso é normal, pois todos praticariam as mesmas patifarias. Homunculos morais, anões éticos, contrafações de políticos.
Apple é a marca mais valiosa do mundo em 2014. Confira o ranking
Levantamento elaborado pela Interbrand mostra ainda que o Facebook foi a marca com maior crescimento este ano. Empresas brasileiras ficaram de fora
Apple foi avaliada em avaliada em US$ 118.863 bilhões (Peter Parks/AFP/VEJA)
A Apple foi considerada a marca mais valiosa do mundo pelo segundo ano consecutivo, avaliada em 118,863 bilhões de dólares. Na sequência, ficaram Google (107,439 bilhões de dólares) e Coca-Cola (81,563 bilhões de dólares). As informações são do levantamento Best Global Brands 2014 realizado pela consultoria de gestão de marcas (branding) Interbrand. O estudo leva em consideração o desempenho financeiro dos produtos ou serviços da marca, o papel que desempenha ao influenciar a escolha do consumidor e força para comandar preços, gerar lealdade ou garantir os lucros da companhia.
O Best Global Brands mostra que o Facebook foi a marca com maior crescimento no mundo em 2014. O valor da marca saltou 86% entre 2013 e 2014, para 14,349 bilhões de dólares, influenciado pela ampliação das operações móveis com a aquisição do WhatsApp e pelo lucro de 1,4 bilhão de dólares no segundo trimestre. Também tiveram fortes valorizações as marcas Audi (27%), Amazon (25%), Volkswagen (23%) e Nissan (23%). Já as marcas DHL, Land Rover, FedEx, Huawei e Hugo Boss (97º) apareceram pela primeira vez no levantamento.
Entre os destaques deste ano está o setor de tecnologia, com treze empresas entre as marcas mais valiosas do mundo como Microsoft (quinto lugar), Samsung (sétimo lugar) e Intel (décimo segundo lugar). “O setor de tecnologia é a categoria mais valiosa no Best Global Brands 2014. Marcas que têm um legado e já foram líderes buscam evoluir para acompanhar as mudanças do mercado”, informa em comunicado a Interbrand.
Brasil – As empresas brasileiras ficaram de fora do levantamento. A Interbrand explica que as marcas nacionais possuem valor financeiro, mas não possuem presença global. Mesmo assim, a expectativa é de que as marcas nacionais apareçam entre as cem mais valiosas do mundo nos próximos anos. “Cada vez mais as marcas líderes no Brasil estão buscando um posicionamento global. Movimentos significativos estão sendo feitos no sentido de buscar novos mercados e seus direcionamentos estratégicos estão, mais do que nunca, conectados com as necessidades dos consumidores em todo o mundo, tornando a presença de uma marca brasileira entre as Best Global Brands uma questão de tempo”, afirma a diretora executiva da Interbrand Brasil, Daniella Giavina-Bianchi.
Alguém prestou atenção a isto, no meio das terríveis notícias que nos chegam do Estado Islâmico?
Pois é. Os irmãos Castro só não decapitam -- embora o façam, analigamente, pela censura -- mas continyam a matar de fone e de desespero os pibres cubanos, que se arruscam em frágeis embarcações para chegar aos EUA.
Os seus aliados brasileiros já viveram numa ilha-prisão com rações de campo de concentração?
The number of Cubans attempting the voyage to the United States has nearly doubled in the past two years, putting the spotlight on the growing frustration with a post-Fidel Cuba.
The New York Times, October 10, 2014, Friday
MIAMI — In an unexpected echo of the refugee crisis from two decades ago, a rising tide of Cubans in rickety, cobbled-together boats is fleeing the island and showing up in the waters off Florida.
Leonardo Heredia, a 24-year-old Cuban baker, for example, tried and failed to reach the shores of Florida eight times.
Last week, he and 21 friends from his Havana neighborhood gathered the combined know-how from their respective botched migrations and made a boat using a Toyota motor, scrap stainless steel and plastic foam. Guided by a pocket-size Garmin GPS, they finally made it to Florida on Mr. Heredia’s ninth attempt.
“Things that were bad in Cuba are now worse,” Mr. Heredia said. “If there was more money in Cuba to pay for the trips, everyone would go.”
Mr. Heredia is one of about 25,000 Cubans who arrived by land and sea in the United States without travel visas in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, according to government figures. He, like many others, is also an unexpected throwback to a time that experts thought had long passed: the era when Cubans boarded homemade vessels built from old car parts and inner tubes, hoping for calm seas and favorable winds. As the number of Cubans attempting the voyage nearly doubled in the past two years, the number of vessels unfit for the dangerous 90-mile crossing also climbed.
Not since the rafter crisis of 1994 has the United States received so many Cuban migrants. The increase highlights the consequences of a United States immigration policy that gives preferential treatment to Cubans and recent reforms on the island that loosened travel restrictions, and it puts a harsh spotlight on the growing frustration of a post-Fidel Castro Cuba.
More Cubans took to the sea last year than in any year since 2008, when Raúl Castro officially took power and the nation hummed with anticipation. Some experts fear that the recent spike in migration could be a harbinger of a mass exodus, and they caution that the unseaworthy vessels have already left a trail of deaths.
“I believe there is a silent massive exodus,” said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, an exile leader in Miami who has helped families of those who died at sea. “We are back to those times, like in 1994, when people built little floating devices and took to the ocean, whether they had relatives here or not.”
Although the number migrating by sea hardly compares with the summer of 1994, Mr. Sánchez said the number of illegal and legal Cuban immigrants combined has now surpassed the number of those who arrived during the crisis 20 years ago.
The United States Coast Guard spotted 3,722 Cubans in the past year, almost double the number who were intercepted in 2012. Under the migration accord signed after the 1994 crisis, those captured at sea are sent back to Cuba. Those who reach land get to stay, which the Cuban government has long argued draws many people into making the dangerous voyage.
For the past 10 years, sophisticated smuggling networks were responsible for the vast majority of Cuban migration. A crackdown by the American authorities and a lack of financing available to Cubans on the island have shifted the migration method back to what it was two decades ago, when images of desperate people aboard floating wooden planks gave Cuban migrants the “rafters” moniker.
“We have seen vessels made out of Styrofoam and some made out of inner tubes,” said Cmdr. Timothy Cronin, deputy chief of enforcement for the Coast Guard’s Miami district. “These vessels have no navigation equipment, no lifesaving equipment. They rarely have life jackets with them. They are really unsafe.”
About 20 percent of the vessels used in 2008 were homemade, but this past year, 87 percent of the migrants spotted at sea were riding rustic boats that the passengers had built themselves, Coast Guard statistics show.
Julio Sánchez, 38, a welder from Havana who traveled with Mr. Heredia, said most Cubans do not have the money to pay smugglers, and are instead forced to spend months gathering supplies for their journey.
“In our group, some people gave ideas, some gave money and some gave labor,” Mr. Sánchez said. The trip from a port east of Havana to an obscure Florida key cost them a total of $5,000, a fraction of the $200,000 or more that smugglers would have charged such a large group.
Experts said the recession cut the flow of financing for such journeys, because it was Miami relatives who made the payments. Many of the people arriving now — like those in Mr. Sánchez’s group — have no family in the United States to help pay.
“If I had to save $10,000 with my monthly salary of $17, I would not get here until I was 80 or 90 years old,” said Yannio La O, 31, an elementary school wrestling coach who arrived in Miami last week after a shipwreck landed him in Mexico.
He and 31 others departed from Manzanillo, in southern Cuba, in late August on a boat they built over the course of three months. They ran into engine trouble, and the food they brought was contaminated by a sealant they carried aboard to patch holes in the hull. They spent 24 days lost at sea.
“Every day at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m., somebody died,” Mr. La O said.
Nine people, including a pregnant woman, died and were thrown overboard, and six more got on inner tubes and disappeared before the Mexican Navy rescued the survivors, Mr. Sánchez said. Two more died at shore. Mr. La O said he survived by drinking urine and spearing fish.
Their deaths came as the United States Coast Guard found four bodiesfloating in the water 23 miles east of Hollywood, Fla. Their relatives in Miami identified their corpses by their tattoos and scars.
Mr. La O became one of the more than 22,500 Cubans who arrived in the United States by land last fiscal year — most of them in Texas. That is nearly double the number who did so in 2012.
Some of those migrants flew to Mexico and then requested entry at the Texas border. Relaxed travel rules in Cuba now allow people to exit the country more freely, a change that experts say plays a part in the surge in Southwest border arrivals. Other people, like Mr. La O, made the first leg of the journey by sea to Central America or Mexico.
Ted Henken, a Cuba scholar at Baruch College in New York, said Washington should be worried about the increase in migration, because it demonstrates that Cuba’s recent economic reforms have failed to help the majority of Cubans, making the nation vulnerable to a catastrophic event.
“If some triggering event or series of events were to happen, like with the Venezuela aid or major unrest, or a hurricane, we could have another ‘balsero’ crisis or Mariel,” Mr. Henken said, using the Spanish word for “rafter” and noting the 1980 boatlift.
A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Michael Flanagan, the deputy chief patrol agent for the United States Border Patrol’s Miami sector, said good weather, particularly the lack of hurricanes in recent years, has played a part in facilitating travel. Although the 91 percent increase in Cuban landings was “significant and it has our attention,” he said, it was not “remarkable.”
“Even if half the people who leave from Cuba do not survive, that means half of them did,” Mr. La O said, speaking from his grandmother’s house in Miami, where he arrived last week. “I would tell anyone in Cuba to come. It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”
