Economic Survey of Brazil
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sábado, 29 de outubro de 2011
OECD: Economic Survey of Brazil
Espaço para 7 bilhoes de pessoas: Veja, especial
Materia de capa da revista Veja desta semana:
http://books.boxnet.com.br/books/impressao.aspx?ID_CLIP=17775338&ID_MESA=607&TP_CLIPPING=I
VEJA / A bomba populacional / 7 bilhões de oportunidades
http://books.boxnet.com.br/books/impressao.aspx?ID_CLIP=17775338&ID_MESA=607&TP_CLIPPING=I
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Seven Billion People, One Planet
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October 26, 2011
The UN estimates that the seven billionth member of the earth's population will be born on October 31. Demographer-in-residence Elizabeth Leahy Madsen explains how we got to that number and where our demographic path might take us from here.
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November 01, 2011 // 3:00pm — 5:00pm
It took only 12 short years for the world's population to grow from six to seven billion. While the "Day of Seven Billion" will receive widespread media coverage, how widely reported – and more important, how well understood – is the impact of this rapid growth on our planet's resources? The Wilson Center, National Geographic, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting discuss population-environment connections.
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Pausa para... la dolce vita (pronto, pronto...): viajando pela Italia
A Gothic Tour of Italy
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Church of Santa Maria delle Anime dell Purgatorio in Naples. More Photos »
By NINA BURLEIGH
The New York Times, October 28, 2011
VISITORS to Italy tend to seek its sunny, Dionysian side — vino, pasta, opera, cinquecento art, George Clooney on a Vespa. But, like a chilly draft on a hot day, Italy’s gothic angle offers intimations of darkness that make a moment on the piazza even more delicious. Consciously or not, anyone sipping prosecco at sunset in Rome or Naples savors an extra spoon of dolce in their vita thanks to the contrast between the beauty of the present and the proximity of catacombs, ruins and sites of ancient suffering.
Multimedia
The original gothic writers were much inspired by the duality in the bel paese. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and other masters of the romantic and horror genres set some of their most famous works in Italy.
“Italy was the Gothic writers’ favorite background,” wrote Massimiliano Demata, a professor at the University of Bari, who has made a study of the form. The country’s baroque portas, ruined castles, eerie reliquaries and catacombs were a gateway to the uncanny, possessing, as he put it, “a labyrinthine and claustrophobic architecture that was the novels’ perfect physical and psychological setting.” Today, these same books can serve as unconventional guidebooks for tourists who tire of the sun and want to explore the country’s macabre past.
For the gothic writers, different locations in Italy piqued different aspects of the imagination. Venice seemed to hold special appeal for those wishing to mine pre-Freudian psychological terror (“The Assignation,” by Poe, takes place near the Bridge of Sighs). Padua, an ancient university town 20 miles from Venice, served as the setting for one of Hawthorne’s creepiest short works, “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” about a mad scientist who experiments with plant poisons and turns his beautiful daughter’s lips into a literal kiss of death for her young student lover.
I decided to start my tour in Otranto, a white, cobbled seaside town on the Adriatic edge of Italy’s boot heel, and the setting for what’s regarded as the first gothic novel, “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole. I had visited the town briefly one summer afternoon with children in tow. Returning in late fall, I found the formerly bustling streets chilly and silent — not as inviting, perhaps, but more in keeping with the intimations of its macabre history that I had been reading about in guidebooks.
I checked into the luxurious nine-room Palazzo Papaleo, and was led upstairs to a spacious suite with a balcony that overlooked the cathedral across a small piazza. The gonging of its bells was so close that, standing on the balcony, I could feel their vibrations. During the two nights I slept there I was apparently the sole guest and had the run of the place. I took my prosecco and my laptop to a common room with vaulted ceiling and big dormer windows with heavy dark velvet drapes. Once in a while I spied an elderly man with an eye patch drifting around the hallways, passing me without a word. He was the only other person sleeping in the building, and turned out to be the owner, the last scion of the noble family that had lived in the palazzo for centuries.
Otranto, I had learned, is literally haunted by an old act of evil: a 15th-century massacre — one in the long and bloody skirmish between Islam and Christianity — that Otrantans commemorate annually to this day. “Local history is filled with blood and darkness,” an Otranto guide and historian, Francesco Calignano, told me, as he led me into the Cathedral of Otranto. The cathedral is known for its complex mosaic floor, which depicts scenes from just about every human myth and legend known to the world circa A.D. 1100, including kabbalah’s tree of life, Confucianism and Puss in Boots.
We entered on a raw, late-autumn morning and we were the only people inside. After admiring the beautiful floor, I was led to a truly gothic spectacle: lining shelves on a wall off to the side were 800 human skulls — victims of invading Turks. Mr. Calignano grimaced as he related how bits of the victims’ preserved flesh are still stored in a locked drawer. Once a year in August they are removed and paraded through town streets.
“The Castle of Otranto” was a publishing phenomenon in 1764. Walpole’s short tale describes the supernatural punishment of a usurping Italian feudal prince in a haunted castle packed with what we now consider standard fright stock — secret doors, gloomy tunnels, haunted suits of armor, portraits of ancestors jumping out of their frames. At the time, though, these images were so fresh and shocking that Walpole’s little book became an instant best seller in England.
Modern-day Otranto is a place of seductive pleasures, where a warm afternoon can be passed bathing in azure seas and gorging on nouvelle Italian seafood accompanied by the crisp local Greco di Tufo wine. Sienna Miller has been known to sun herself on the same local beaches where Turkish invaders once stormed the sands waving scimitars on their way to the Castle of Otranto. I paid a few euros and toured the castle’s white corridors alone, seeking signs of Walpole’s ghosts, peering into small, empty, barred rooms, any one of which could have been a dungeon. On the outside, it is a photogenic and perfectly preserved white fortress. But its turrets, gunwales and wide, waterless moat attest to the inhabitants’ defensive terror of the invader hundreds of years ago.
A SHORT flight or a five-hour train trip west across the heel of Italy to Naples allows ample time to dig into the works of a lesser-known gothic master, Ann Radcliffe. She was a reclusive Englishwoman who like Walpole was celebrated in her day for novels, many of which were set in Italy, that pit seemingly supernatural forces of evil, often associated with Catholicism or small-time feudal tyrants, against guileless young women and their brave, thwarted lovers.
Radcliffe’s best-known novel, “The Italian,” takes place in 18th-century Naples. Almost every page contains a castle keep, a shadowy ruin and creepy, robed stalkers from the religious orders. The plot is simple enough: a young nobleman of Naples falls in love with a girl of whom his mother strongly disapproves. The mother hires an evil monk to do away with her, but the monk discovers that the girl is actually his own daughter — the product of an illicit affair.
The novel opens with an Englishman surveying the Naples church of Santa Maria del Pianto, which Radcliffe wrote housed “the very ancient convent of the order of the Black Penitents.”
Contemporary visitors can test Radcliffe’s gothic imagination against the lively reality of the teeming city. The church of Santa Maria del Pianto is still there, but it’s not on any tourist map. When I inquired about it, a woman at a news kiosk in central Naples pointed vaguely in a (wrong) direction, sending me through a giant 19th-century galleria with a roof of delicate glass and worn marble floors. Subsequently, my quest led me down crowded, narrow back streets with balconies festooned with laundry and finally to the doorstep of the Hosteria Toledo, where the proprietors laid out a late Sunday lunch of fried frutti di mare and a tomato and basil pasta. The owner’s brother-in-law, a tour guide, was reached by phone to assure me that the church in Radcliffe’s book was definitely “not one of the great churches of Naples.” It does still exist, but in what is now an organized-crime-infested suburb called Secondigliano. I crossed it off the to-do list, reluctantly.
Radcliffe’s other Neapolitan sites are worth a visit, if only because searching for them allows one to wander the city’s streets, noting the many other gothic charms of Naples that Radcliffe missed.
The book’s lovers, Vivaldi and Ellena, first lay eyes on each other at the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, which still stands in Naples’s historic center — a yellow and gray hulk with an archaeological site underneath it. Across a busy medieval lane is a far spookier, skull-festooned church, built in the 17th century by a cult called the Souls of Purgatory, which dedicated itself to adopting the bones of the dead to pray over and rescue the souls associated with them from eternal oblivion. Presiding over this in the Church of Santa Maria delle Anime dell Purgatorio is an actual crowned skull called “Lucia” and a sculptural masterpiece of a winged skull.
This macabre landmark fronts a fresh vegetable market that resembles a Food & Wine magazine cover, decorated with strings of garlic, peppers and sun-dried tomatoes. Behind it, a huge open-air bazaar dedicated to creating and selling the phallic lucky charms of Naples that look like little red horns, called pulcicorni. Next door is the always mobbed Pizzeria Sorbillo, which serves up Neapolitan pies of legend.
Most of the action in “The Italian” takes place at a ruined castle and monastery in the hills high above the city, where our hero and heroine get locked in dark rooms, are kidnapped and then sent to sadistic Inquisitional court. The Castel San’Elmo still towers over Naples, a hulking brute of a medieval structure, the sides of which form a natural-looking cliff pocked with arches and gun holes and riddled with dark passageways and dungeons within.
San’Elmo’s view of Naples, with its mint, ocher and rust roofs, church domes and sea, is spectacular. A few hundred yards downhill is the monastery of San Martino, a sumptuous, treasure-filled villa once inhabited by a small group of Carthusian monks who were expelled by Napoleon in 1804 and finally suppressed for good when Italy was unified in 1860.
The monastery’s secluded gardens, fragrant with orange trees, swaying cypress and grape arbors, could have been the setting for the hero’s run-ins with the scheming monk whose cowl, Radcliffe wrote, “threw a shade over the livid paleness of his face, increased its severe character, and gave an effect to his large, melancholy eye which approached horror.” Both castle and monastery are accessible by a funicular that runs down to the historic center, which has lively shopping and fantastic restaurants and bars alongside medieval creepiness.
Don’t miss the small Museo Capella Sansevero, with two anonymous skeletons whose entire circulatory systems are said to have been mysteriously mummified by a mad noble alchemist, and which resemble modernist wire sculptures of human figures. The Classical and X-rated magnificence of the Farnese collection of Roman marbles in the Naples National Archaeological Museum are also worth a visit. Some news kiosks will even helpfully provide a map of “Mysterious Naples” that includes spooky sites beyond even the English gothic imagination.
TRAVELING north from Naples toward Rome, the gothically inclined might want to pass the two-hour train ride reading a little novella by another obscure Victorian lady, Anne Crawford, author of the first vampire story in English. The pastoral vistas of the campagna have provided the setting for countless paintings and photographs commemorating Italy’s Classical beauty, but carved into the rock beneath the fields is an extensive warren of catacombs that once held the remains of millions of pagan and then Christian dead.
Crawford set “A Mystery of the Campagna,” published in 1887, in and above these tombs. Her female vampire, preceding Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 10 years, is named Vespertilia, a tall and slender seductress, clad in “something long and dark” out of which “a pair of white hands gleamed,” says the narrator, a Frenchman who has lost his friend to her charms. She sleeps in the catacombs by day, and by night leads besotted Northern European gentlemen from the innocent frolics of their Grand Tours down the stairs, where “the darkness seemed to rise up and swallow them.”
The catacombs are today a popular tourist site, fenced in and supervised by priests who lead groups of tourists down the yellow stone steps into the gloom, and, in a half-dozen languages, talk about the burial ground for the earliest Christians.
Our tour guide, an Australian priest in a black shirt and white collar, declined to discuss what went on in the catacombs during the thousand years or so between their official end as a Christian burial ground and their reopening in the 19th century. He had even less interest in speculation about vampires.
“This is a sacred place,” he kept reminding his small group, which included a trio of asthmatic Australians who couldn’t stop coughing in the musty, damp air. We trailed him through stony, narrow corridors single file, passing empty rectangular shelves that once held skeletons. I tried to stay in the middle, as there seemed enough shadow in the vaults to hide a wraith or two waiting to clutch a laggard in its cold embrace.
After the hourlong tour in the shelves of the dead, visitors rejoin the living to quaff espresso and snack on cornetti or pizza at any one of a number of friendly cafes along the highway across from the site’s moss-covered brick walls. An extremely life-affirming and wallet-friendly shopping experience can be had at the huge, colorful flea market on Via Sannio at the Porta San Giovanni on the way back into Rome. At a table in the far corner, vendors sell heaps of fine cashmere sweaters and designer-label wool jackets starting at 30 euros.
Rome is rife with gothic locations, and for my trip I took along “The Marble Faun,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne was reaching the end of his career as a master of the psychological and supernatural horrors of Puritan New England, and this novelistic travelogue is not his best. A two-volume compendium of some of the eerie sites, it is a meandering tale of three American artists working in Rome who meet and befriend a real-life satyr, who seems to have been the flesh-and-blood model for a marble statue in the Capitol.
Visitors to the gloriously treasure-packed Capitoline Museums today will find many statues of the faun, associated with Dionysus, who represented the animal in man, simultaneously innocent, sexual and lawless. The faun’s more threatening relative, the satyr, is overtly Luciferian, with horns and cloven hooves. A large satyr of this type glares archly out from a cupboard in the Egyptian courtyard of the museum.
A bus ride or a leisurely stroll across Rome’s historic center leads the traveler to another principal site in “The Marble Faun” — the creepily gorgeous Capuchin Catacombs, where the Hawthorne characters confronted an evil monk.
Decorated in Baroque style with the white bones of 4,000 dead monks, the Capuchin Crypt near the luxurious Via Veneto is today a popular stop on any Rome tour. As macabre as it seems, it’s also a sacred site. No cameras, no hats and no summery garb is allowed. “Tell the Americans, no spaghetti strap trash,” said Alba, the stern receptionist on duty the afternoon I was there, while berating a group of Germans who were ignoring the signs about turning off their cellphones. “Listen,” she exhorted them in English. “The cellphone lines are too strong for the human bones here. They are really delicate.”
The crypt is tiny and claustrophobic, and the bones’ sickly sweet smell fills a dimly lighted passageway winding past eight gated displays with arabesques of thousands of bones arranged by type — fingers, patellas, femurs, knuckles, skulls — in lacy flowers, garlands, clocks or urns, attached to walls and ceiling. In the final room, the message posted on the floor near the roses strewn by worshipers, in five languages, reminds happy tourists to drink deeply from the cup of Italy’s joys now, as the eternal shadow looms: “What you are now we used to be. What we are now you will be.”
Back upstairs and on the streets of Rome, the pleasures of Italy are immediate and accessible, but also complex. Without the darkness, the country might be as bland asSweden. Looking at Italy through the gothic lens deepens our appreciation of the pain, suffering and death that is, along with love, ease and light, also man’s lot. The hellward pull of Thanatos on Italy’s Eros, the artful dance between these archetypal opposites, is surely one of Italy’s great enchantments.
A Walk on the Dark Side
Otranto
LODGING
The luxurious, nine-room Palazzo Papaleo overlooks the cathedral. It’s a block from the beach, and a few doors away from some of the best restaurants. (Via Rondachi, 1; 39-083-802-108; hotelpalazzopapaleo.com; from 162 euros, about $218 at $1.35 to the euro.)
FOOD
There is ambrosial food at Peccato del Vino (39-0836-801-488; eccatodivino.com). For local favorites try La Pignata (Via Garibaldi, 7; 39-0836-01284).
GUIDES
Francesco Calignano (Francesco.calignano@yahoo.it)
Naples
LODGING
Chiaja Hotel de Charme, in a former bordello, is found through a walled courtyard and up an arched staircase. This small hotel offers the bare minimum — clean, small rooms with bathrooms — but is well situated, just off the main Via Toledo strip, walking distance to the medieval quarter, the Farnese Collection, shopping and food. (Via Chiaia, 216; 39-081-415-555; from 50 euros.)
FOOD
Hosteria Toledo run by the Preziosa family. On Sunday afternoons, anyone can walk in without reservations and grab a table alongside jolly family groups sharing a leisurely and delicious meal of fresh seafood and pasta. Try the dry local wine called Greco di Tufo. (Vico Giardinetto a Toledo, 9; 39-081-421-257; hosteriatoledo.it.)
Pizzeria Sorbillo, where the lines are long, is said to offer the “best pizza in Naples,” and is absolutely worth the wait. (Via dei Tribunali, 38; 39-081-033-1009; sorbillo.eu/.)
Augustus: the black-suited waiters can’t keep up with demand from patrons selecting colorful sweets from the glass case below the bar at this sweet shop. (Via Toledo, 47; 39-081-551-3540.)
SHOPPING
Via Toledo is home to excellent shops, and also to sidewalk offerings of excellent fake designer purses that are bundled up every time a police car goes past. A short bus ride to the Mercato di Pugliano on Via Pugliano in the Ercolano neighborhood takes you to what is reputedly Italy’s favorite vintage market. The shop called Old Star supposedly has a secret stash upstairs that customers in the know must ask to see.
GUIDES
For superior tours of Umbria and southern Italy, contact Anne Robichaud of Anne’s Italy (annesitaly.com).
Rome
LODGING
Locanda Carmel, in Trastevere, which I like as a base of operations, is a block from the tram that runs over the river to Piazza Argentina, from which there is easy walking or a bus to all the main Roman sites. (Via Goffredo Mameli, 11; 39-06-580-9921;hotelcarmel.it; from 50 euros.)
Hotel Aldrovandi, near the Villa Borghese, is high-end and has a beautiful pool — a requirement in summertime. (Via Ulisse Aldrovandi, 15; aldrovandi.com; 39-06-322-3993; from 287 euros.)
FOOD
Ai Spagheteria offers basic pasta and pizza in Trastevere, moderately priced. (Piazza di San Cosimato, 57-60; 39-06-580-0450; aispaghettari.it.)
Otello alla Concordia serves fantastic food, with outdoor and indoor seating tucked in an alley near the Spanish Steps. I have never had a bad meal here. (Via della Croce, 81; 39-06-679-1178; otello-alla-concordia.it.)
A piada da semana: capitalismo imaginativo...
Só podia ser no site do impagável Diplô, o maior repositório atual de besteirol acadêmico que podemos imaginar:
E tem também esta aqui, que não é bem piada, e sim filme de terror; quem resiste um filme de 8 horas sobre "Das Kapital".
Sociólogo polonês não crê no colapso do sistema, alerta que seu parasitismo é incessante e sugere que para superá-lo é preciso ser mais imaginativo que ele.
E tem também esta aqui, que não é bem piada, e sim filme de terror; quem resiste um filme de 8 horas sobre "Das Kapital".
Filme de cineasta alemão debate O Capital inspirado por Eisenstein, e sugere, em 8 horas, roteiros para repensar marxismo.
Pronto, acho que a cota das piadas semanais já está preenchida.
Voltemos a nossas obrigações costumeiras...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Pausa para... poesia - Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Também já fui brasileiro
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Eu também já fui brasileiro
moreno como vocês.
Ponteei viola, guiei forde
e aprendi na mesa dos bares
que o nacionalismo é uma virtude.
Mas há uma hora em que os bares se fecham
e todas as virtudes se negam.
Eu também já fui poeta.
Bastava olhar para mulher,
pensava logo nas estrelas
e outros substantivos celestes.
Mas eram tantas, o céu tamanho,
minha poesia perturbou-se.
Eu também já tive meu ritmo.
Fazia isso, dizia aquilo.
E meus amigos me queriam,
meus inimigos me odiavam.
Eu irônico deslizava
satisfeito de ter meu ritmo.
Mas acabei confundindo tudo.
Hoje não deslizo mais não,
não sou irônico mais não,
não tenho ritmo mais não.
==========
Se ouso acrescentar meu dedo de prosa,
neste caso de poesia, aqui vai:
Eu também já fui idealista-romântico,
Entusiasmado com as grandes causas.
batalhador quixotesco, certo das minhas verdades.
A vida, as leituras, a observação e as experiências
se encarregaram de consertar muitas ilusões.
Hoje sou um realista-cético. Ponto, novo texto...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
sexta-feira, 28 de outubro de 2011
Presentes inconvenientes: rapadura a quem nao tem dentes...
Sou apenas o que transcreve...
Que maldade!
A presidente Dilma mandou a Lula, em seu aniversário, dois livros de presente. É mais ou menos como dar de presente a Jô Soares uma temporada no spa. |
Troca de prisioneiros entre Israel e Egito
Israel e Egito trocam prisioneiros sob acordo mediado pelos EUA
Reuters, 28/10/2011
JERUSALÉM/TABA, Egito - O Egito libertou um americano-israelense que estava detido como um suposto espião e Israel liberou 25 egípcios em uma troca de prisioneiros nesta quinta-feira que irá aliviar as tensões entre os novos governantes do Cairo e os Estados Unidos e Israel.
Ilan Grapel, de 27 anos, viajou para Israel acompanhado por dois enviados israelenses nomeados pelo primeiro-ministro israelense, Benjamin Netanyahu, com quem ele se reuniu no final do dia. Sorrindo, ele abraçou sua mãe, que o esperava na pista do aeroporto de Tel Aviv.
Os egípcios libertados cruzaram por terra até o deserto do Sinai, alguns deles de joelhos em uma oração de agradecimento. “Eu não posso descrever meus sentimentos hoje”, afirmou um dos egípcios libertados, Fayez Abdel Hamid, a repórteres.
O Egito prendeu Grapel em junho sob suspeita de que ele estava fora para recrutar agentes e monitorar eventos na revolta que derrubou Hosni Mubarak, um aliado de Israel e dos Estados Unidos.
O Egito prendeu Grapel em junho sob suspeita de que ele estava fora para recrutar agentes e monitorar eventos na revolta que derrubou Hosni Mubarak, um aliado de Israel e dos Estados Unidos.
Israel negou que Grapel, que emigrara de Nova York em 2005 e foi ferido como um paraquedista israelense na guerra do Líbano em 2006, era um espião. Suas ligações com Israel eram aparentes em sua página no Facebook, que continha fotos dele com o uniforme militar israelense.
Estudante de direito nos Estados Unidos, Grapel trabalhava para o Serviço de Refugiados de Saint Andrew, uma agência não-governamental, quando foi detido.
Os Estados Unidos, que concedem bilhões de dólares em ajuda militar ao Exército que agora dirige o Egito, haviam exigido a libertação de Grapel. Ele foi libertado três semanas depois que o secretário de Defesa dos EUA, Leon Panetta, visitou o Egito.
O acordo de troca mediado pelos EUA foi atingido pouco depois de um acordo diplomático mais amplo mediado pelo Egito entre Israel e o grupo islâmico Hamas que possibilitou a libertação do soldado israelense Gilad Shalit em troca de mais de 1.000 prisioneiros palestinos.
Eli Avidar, um ex-diplomata que chefiou a missão de Israel no Catar, afirmou que garantir a libertação de prisioneiros egípcios poderia ajudar os novos líderes do Cairo nacionalmente.
“O governo egípcio precisa disso para o seu prestígio”, disse ele na televisão israelense.
Israel é amplamente impopular no Egito, que assinou um tratado de paz com seu vizinho do norte em 1979.
Cooperacao tecnica brasileira - The Guardian
Brazil can blaze a new trail in international co-operation
Jonathan Glennie
The Guardian, 28 0ctober 2011
By pursuing an aid strategy based on mutual benefit, Brazil can consolidate its newfound place in the international spotlight
It is a good time to be a Brazilian on the international stage. Brazil
has the eighth largest economy in the world, and the "traditional
donors" want to know what the country is thinking. In fact, with an aid
programme of under $1bn (according to official estimates), it commands
far more interest than it probably should. Why? Because Brazil is the
future. When leaders in poor countries sit down to plan their way out of
poverty, they don't look to emulate Britain. They say: "We want to be
an emerging economy, like Brazil."
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Economic Survey of Brazil,
which was published on Wednesday, confirms this advance in terms of
economic growth and poverty reduction (although the much-lauded
reduction in inequality can be overstated, coming as it does in one of
the world's most unequal countries).
In the space of a decade, Brazil has transformed its international
presence. Its international development strategy is part of that.
According to This is Africa,
trade between Brazil and Africa has grown from $5bn in 2003 to more
than $20bn in 2010 (over a third of which is with one country, Nigeria).
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose vision defined this bold
declaration of international relevance, established 17 new embassies in
Africa and visited 23 countries on the continent.
Marco Farani, the director of the Brazilian aid agency, is well
aware of the political and economic benefits of Brazil's new positioning
as a player in the international development field, but insists the
body's motives are pure. "I have never been told to work in a country
for strategic reasons," he said in a debate in Parliament on Monday, organised by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the All Party Group on Overseas Development (Apgood).
Farani is the leader of a growing team – under his tenure, staff
numbers have risen from 70 to 160 – but, far from worrying about
Brazil's status as new kids on the block, his attitude to strategy is
relaxed. "We don't have a strategy", he states proudly. Farani's
preference is to respond to requests for support rather than engaging in
comprehensive strategic planning. "There will come a time when we will
be richer and more rigid and perhaps then less creative, more boring,"
he says.
On monitoring and evaluation, he favours intuition over rigorous
analysis for now. "Everywhere I go on my country visits, people tell me
how much they like what we are doing," he says. With other countries,
one might assume such expressions of goodwill stemmed from a desire to
maintain good relations; in the case of Brazil, it's just possible
they're sincere.
Eventually, Brazil will need to become more strategic and engage in
the more rigorous elements of impact assessment that denote a
professional outfit accountable to citizens (downwards) and the
international community (upwards). The OECD is helping the country to
record its data better, but Brazil is determined to do things its own
way.
The main difference between Brazil (and other emerging powers) and
traditional donors is that they still have to fight extreme poverty at
home. Brazil has tens of millions of very poor people. The UK's
Department for International Development (DfID) has led the way in
recent years in insisting all aid must pass the simple test of primarily
benefitting the poorest. Perhaps Brazil should embed this poverty focus
as well, but with a twist, based on the idea of mutual benefit. Not
only should the poorest in the partner country benefit from
international co-operation, but also the domestic poor. Solidarity and
accountability should exist not only between governments, but between
peoples.
The Brazilian NGO community already understands the potential of
this new internationalist vision. Building on years of leadership,
symbolised by the groundbreaking World Social Forums that started in
Porto Alegre in 2001, some in Brazilian civil society want to become world players, competing with the big northern NGOs in shaping the international debate, not just the domestic one.
Brazil continues to receive about 0.025% of its annual income in
aid, as it has for the past two decades. This is roughly the same amount
as its own aid programme. According to traditional, post-colonial aid
dynamics, there is little sense in both giving and receiving aid. But
this conception is being recast. It makes perfect sense in the new era
to give and receive aid – it is part of mutuality. As if to underscore
the point, Farani gave as his examples agricultural co-operation support
to Japan (the third richest country in the world) and Ghana.
Again, civil society organisations are keen to ensure that foreign
money continues to help fund their activities. Issues of inequality,
environmental degradation and land rights remain complex issues in
Brazil, and the international community must continue to play a crucial
part in supporting just outcomes for the poorest in Brazil.
I believe Brazil should learn from DfID and the other successful aid
agencies, but not emulate them, influencing the debate at international
development fora but without getting sidetracked into the technocratic
results mantra. In short, Brazil must blaze a new trail in international
co-operation. Not that Farani needs much encouragement to do that. We
will know in a few years how successful he has been.O sucesso do protecionismo no Brasil: Manoilesco traduzido
Desde meu primeiro livro publicado, O Mercosul no contexto regional e internacional (1993), eu refletia sobre o vigor da ideia protecionista no Brasil, com base neste livro de um economista romeno:
Mihaïl Manoïlescu:
Théorie du Protectionnisme et de l’échange international
(Paris: Marcel Giard, 1929)
Manoïlesco sempre foi muito apreciado, sobretudo a partir da propagação de suas ideias por Roberto Simonsen, criador do Centro das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo, que o fez traduzir e publicar no Brasil desde 1931.
Agora essa tradução é republicada no Brasil, com as mesmas justificativas e entusiasmo:
Reproduzo alguns extratos editoriais, para um breve conhecimento do conteúdo do livro.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
============
Permito-me agora reproduzir alguns trechos de um livro meu, ainda não publicado, sobre o processo de integração regional:
(...)
Mihaïl Manoïlescu:
Théorie du Protectionnisme et de l’échange international
(Paris: Marcel Giard, 1929)
Manoïlesco sempre foi muito apreciado, sobretudo a partir da propagação de suas ideias por Roberto Simonsen, criador do Centro das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo, que o fez traduzir e publicar no Brasil desde 1931.
Agora essa tradução é republicada no Brasil, com as mesmas justificativas e entusiasmo:
Teoria do Protecionismo e da Permuta Internacional
Mihaïl Manoïlesco
Tradução: Centro das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo (edição de 1931)
(Rio de Janeiro: Capax Dei, 2011, 250 p.; ISBN: 978-85-98059-18-1)
Da orelha do livro: (Armando Brasil)
A reedição do livro de Mihaïl Manoïlesco se reveste de grande
importância para a revitalização de uma corrente de pensamento favorável à
defesa das forças produtivas nacionais, em especial da indústria, que submetida
ao impacto da dinâmica predatória da globalização financeira, vê sua
participação no PIB regredir aos níveis de 1940. Para se reverter esta
tendência destruidora, não basta apontar como causas o “custo Brasil” e o
câmbio valorizado. É preciso ir além e buscar os mecanismos necessários à
defesa da indústria nacional, com ênfase especial nos setores de alta
tecnologia e fabricantes de bens de capital. No livro, Manoïlesco demonstra
esta necessidade com sólidos argumentos extraídos da observação do mundo real,
construindo sua teoria a partir deles – ao contrário da prática habitual dos
teóricos do liberalismo econômico.
As ideias discutidas no livro se tornam, hoje, ainda mais necessárias,
em função do processo de integração física e econômica dos países da América do
Sul, o que exigirá uma recorrência obrigatória ao intervencionismo e à proteção
conjunta dos mercados envolvidos na criação de um espaço econômico comum.
Apresentação do editor: (Lorenzo Carrasco,
RJ, fevereiro de 2011)
(...) O livro foi publicado em um momento crucial da crise econômica que
desembocou na Grande Depressão da década de 1930, tendo desfrutado de grande
influência na formação do pensamento industrial e das ideias favoráveis à
proteção das forças de trabalho nacionais contra as ideologias livrecambistas
da época. (...)
Hoje, igualmente, acreditamos que a sua republicação poderá representar
uma contribuição para o enriquecimento dos debates que, novamente, se travam no
País sobre a necessidade de adoção de medidas protetoras das atividades
produtivas nacionais, em especial dos setores industriais submetidos à
concorrência depredadora da produção estrangeira vinculada aos aspectos mais
contestáveis da globalização financeira.
(...)
... Manoïlesco estende a todas as nações o direito ao processo de
industrialização, independente do seu estágio de desenvolvimento. (...) A
oportunidade para se dar tal passo se oferece com a crise terminal do projeto
hegemônico da globalização financeira, com o necessário retorno ao protagonismo
do Estado nacional soberano e a recuperação das suas capacidade plenas de
regulamentação e fomento econômico.
Na essência, as propostas de Manoïlesco mantêm a sua vigência, sendo,
pois, necessário que se estabeleçam linhas de defesa comercial nos moldes
sugeridos por ele. Para o Brasil, isto implica, também, em estendê-las no
âmbito do Mercosul, dentro do empenho de aprofundamento da integração física e
econômica da América do Sul.
Por esses motivos, a Capax Dei Editorial relança a obra de Manoïlesco,
com o mesmo propósito e como uma sequência de Cartas da Economia Nacional Contra o Livre Comércio (2009), que
reuniu obras capitais de Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List e Henry Carey,
expoentes do chamado Sistema de Economia Nacional, lançado em sequência à
eclosão da crise financeira de 2008.
Amostra do pensamento de Manoïlesco:
Primeira Parte – Os Fatos
(...)
...esta noção do lucro nacional é capital.
Constitui uma frisante antítese em relação à noção do lucro individual.
De fato, na produção de uma mercadoria, o lucro nacional é representado
por tudo quanto uma indústria qualquer produz como valor novo, exceção feita da
matéria prima, do combustível, etc. que ela emprega. (p. 28)
(...)
O lucro do capitalista é uma coisa de superfície; só o lucro nacional é
uma coisa profunda.
Entre os dois lucros, não existe a menor coincidência... (p. 29)
... tanto quanto os EUA, os países latino-americanos foram seduzidos desde
muito cedo pela literatura econômica protecionista, a começar pelo próprio
Hamilton, pelo alemão Friedrich List – que havia visitado os EUA nos anos 20 do
século XIX, e que depois publicou seu livro sobre a defesa da “indústria
infante” – e diversos outros opositores teóricos e práticos da teoria
ricardiana do comércio internacional (entre eles os americanos Henry Clay e
Henry Carey, defensores do chamado American System, ou seja a proteção
da indústria infante e o protecionismo comercial). List foi o grande inspirador
de seu principal seguidor no século XX, o romeno Mihail Manoilescu, autor de uma muita comentada
(quanto mal interpretada) “teoria do protecionismo”, lida (e seguida) por
muitos industriais brasileiros da primeira metade do século XX, que o fizeram
traduzir e publicar no Brasil.
Existe, é claro, muita controvérsia
na literatura especializada, em especial na historiografia econômica, sobre o
papel do protecionismo comercial na industrialização dos EUA. O fato é que
aquele país não se teria tornado o gigante industrial que já era no final do
século XIX apenas com base numa política comercial protecionista, quando outras
variáveis estiveram em jogo para construir uma base econômica sólida,
competitiva no plano mundial (inclusive com uma mão-de-obra relativamente mais
cara do que os concorrentes), baseada sobretudo na flexibilidade do sistema, na
dimensão do seu mercado interno e na inovação tecnológica e ausência de
barreiras à competição entre os agentes privados; os latino-americanos, que
praticaram um protecionismo comercial quase tão (ou mais) extensivo quanto o
dos EUA, não lograram desenvolver nenhuma indústria significativa, provando
mais uma vez que o “rabo” comercial não consegue abanar sozinho o “cachorro” do
desenvolvimento, na ausência de outras políticas favoráveis e de estímulos
apropriados a serem dados pelo próprio mercado, não por governos inconstantes.
No que se refere, por sua vez, a
Mihail Manoilescu, ele foi o autor de uma obra famosa na primeira metade do
século XX, Théorie du Protectionnisme et
de l’échange international (Paris: Marcel Giard, 1929), traduzida e
publicada no Brasil sob iniciativa do industrial Roberto Simonsen, um dos
fundadores do Centro das Indústrias de São Paulo, nessa mesma época. Cabe
esclarecer que o economista romeno não advogava simplesmente um protecionismo
defensivo ou retaliatório, nem pretendia fechar a economia às vantagens do
comércio internacional: Manoilescu pretendia, mais bem, demonstrar que valia a
pena praticar um pouco de protecionismo sempre e quando o país se capacitava
para mudar sua pauta de exportação para produtos de maior valor agregado, isto
é, necessariamente industriais. Suas teses, assim como as de List, tiveram
largo acolhimento nas faculdades de economia da América Latina, desde sempre,
aliás.
Autores latino-americanos beberam nessas fontes e formularam suas próprias “contribuições” à teoria do comércio internacional, como o argentino Raul Prebisch, que propôs uma “teoria da deterioração dos termos de intercâmbio”, prevendo uma espécie de maldição permanente para os exportadores compulsórios de matérias-primas, como os países da região; daí a necessidade de implementação de políticas “listianas” de promoção da indústria nacional, eventualmente passando também pela integração regional. Prebisch formou, direta ou indiretamente, gerações de economistas latino-americanos, todos eles convencidos de que a teoria das vantagens comparativas ricardiana só poderia favorecer os países já industrializados, condenando todos os demais a serem eternos exportadores de matérias primas. O atual defensor mais conhecido das teses de List e de Manoilescu é o economista coreano de Cambridge, Ha-Joon Chang, que se esforça por provar que os países avançados também estão empenhados em “chutar a escada” – uma expressão que ele foi buscar em List – para impedir que os países em desenvolvimento os sigam no processo de industrialização, uma tese tão absurda – pelo seu evidente caráter “conspiratório” – quanto efetivamente impossível de ser implementada no plano prático.
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