Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;
Meu Twitter: https://twitter.com/PauloAlmeida53
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quinta-feira, 1 de novembro de 2012
A economia politica da integração na AL - P.R. Almeida
quarta-feira, 31 de outubro de 2012
A economia de Adoniran Barbosa: o governo mora no Bras... - Celso Ming
Também não deixa de ser engraçada esta crônica de costumes econômicos do jornalista Celso Ming, um gozador contumaz das trapalhadas deste governo. Também, pudera: os companheiros ajudam, com sua esquizofrenia econômica e sua mania de mentir...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Isso não se faz, Arnesto
Fim do secularismo no Egito? Inicio da ditadura islamica? - Der Spiegel
Nervous on the NileMinorities Fear End of Secularism in Egypt
This was a Friday prayer service held in the western Egyptian port city of Marsa Matrouh on October 19. The words of this closing prayer, taken from a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, seemed quite familiar to Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's new president. A video clip obtained by the US-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows Morsi murmuring the word "amen" as this pious request for the dispersal of the Jews is uttered.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Morsi, has since removed a note concerning the president's visit to Marsa Matrouh from its website, and the daily newspaper al-Ahram has reported that the president must have been "very embarrassed" over the matter. Are such statements enough to dispel the incident?
Fighting to Keep Church and State Apart
Morsi has been in power for four months. In June, with the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi won a narrow victory over a representative of the country's former regime. Many voters supported Morsi only out of fear of a return to the days of dictatorship. But the new president has remained an enigma to his people. Who is this man with an American Ph.D. in engineering, who sometimes presents himself as a democrat and a peacemaker and sometimes as a hard-line Islamist?
The tasks facing Egypt's first freely elected president remain unresolved. Indeed, these are immense economic and social problems that can't simply be waved away. At the same time, precisely the thing that secularists, leftists and Christians have long feared is coming true: Egypt is growing ever more religious.
For the last three weeks, the activists who previously protested against the country's military council and the old regime of Hosni Mubarak have once again been gathering regularly on Cairo's Tahrir Square. Their new opponent is the Muslim Brotherhood, which the demonstrators believe is in the process of establishing a new dictatorship -- but an Islamist one.
The protests are primarily directed against the Islamists' attempts to push a religious constitution on the country. A constitutional council convened by Egypt's parliament has suggested redefining the roles of church and state, with the "rules of Sharia" becoming the basis for the country's laws. This would also entail re-examining and renegotiating the issue of equality between men and women.
The committee is dominated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and by Salafists; the secularists and Christians who once sat on it abandoned it in protest. "Laws like these will land us in the Middle Ages," says Ahmed al-Buraï, a lawyer who stepped down from the committee. "This would be the end of our 200-year-old civil state."
Broken Promises
On October 12, when Morsi's detractors took to Tahrir Square for the first time, buses of Muslim Brotherhood supporters arrived, as well. These bearded men set one of the secularists' platforms on fire, threw stones at their opponents and shouted: "We love you, oh Morsi." More than 150 people were injured.
One Muslim Brotherhood spokesman later claimed that those who committed the violence were not organization members. Instead, he said they were so-called baltagiya, or groups of thugs hired by "dark forces" trying once again to drag the Brotherhood's name through the mud. Yet bloggers have proved that the Islamists had long-established plans to sabotage the event.
Images of protests against the president don't look very good on television, especially not when they are held on the very square that has become the global symbol of the Arab Spring. But although the atmosphere in Egypt is tense, Morsi is doing little to connect with his critics. After his electoral victory, he promised to be the president of "all Egyptians." He even announced his intention to leave the Muslim Brotherhood so as to be able to perform his role neutrally as well as his plan to install women and representatives of the country's Coptic Christian minority in high government positions. So far, nothing has come of those promises.
"He has yet to internalize the idea that the existence of an opposition is an important instrument of democracy," says Amr Hamzawy, a Cairo-based political scientist. "He's well on his way to creating a single-party system, just as it was under Mubarak."
The 'Ikhwanization' of Egypt
Egypt's critical newspapers call this trend "ikhwanization," with "ikhwan" meaning "brothers." The process has seen the president and the Muslim Brotherhood bringing all state-run institutions under their control within a short period of time. This includes state-owned media, where critical editors-in-chief have been replaced with Morsi supporters.
The "Holy Koran," a state-run radio service that has traditionally been moderate in terms of religion, has also become "ikhwanized." It has declared that so-called liberals are nothing more than immoral heretics who have "fallen" from Islam and are bent on the single goal of destroying society, and it has asserted that only the president can lead the country to "true Islam."
In some parts of the country, Egyptians seem to be trying to outdo one another in their displays of piety. A teacher in the Luxor governorate, in southern Egypt, recently cut off the hair of two 12-year-old students after the girls refused to wear headscarves. The incidents sparked protests, and the teacher was transferred to another school.
When a Coptic Christian tried to order a beer in a suburb of Cairo last week, the waiter reacted violently. The government plans to massively restrict the consumption of alcohol, a move whose effects will also be felt by members of the country's Christian minority. Especially in Upper Egypt and in Alexandria, where religious tensions already existed under Hosni Mubarak, thousands of Christians are believed to have applied for visas for the United States and European countries.
The Men Behind the President
What has become of Morsi's promise to be an impartial president? "The boundaries between the office of the president and the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood aren't defined," says Hamzawy, the political scientist, in an understated way.
Many Egyptians believe Morsi is still taking his cues from two men in particular. One is Mohammed Badie, a 69-year-old professor of veterinary science and the man to whom all members of the movement swear lifelong loyalty as the Brotherhood's "supreme guide."
The other, Khairat el-Shater, was initially the Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate, but he was disqualified before the election on account of having once been imprisoned for money-laundering -- although this was admittedly under Mubarak, who used his justice system to sideline political opponents. Shater, a millionaire with good connections to the Gulf states, is considered an important financial backer of the Muslim Brotherhood and is believed to have been Morsi's direct superior within the organization.
Mubarak left his successor a country deeply in debt, where millions of people are unemployed and a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. For years, salaries were constantly kept low and unions were suppressed.
Keeping Egypt from national bankruptcy will eventually require unpopular decisions, such as cuts to gas and bread subsidies. But, so far, Morsi has decided to wait it out. The only area where he has been active is a different one entirely: In a television address last week, Morsi announced a new religious campaign that will see an army of preachers fan out through the country "spreading the true word among the people." It's a re-education measure that may yet help to dislodge Western ideas from people's heads -- such as the absurd belief that religion is a private matter.
Ah, esse capitalismo monopolista internacional, tao perverso, tao concentrador, tao contrario a inovacao...
Confirma tudo o que eles esperam do capitalismo concentrador, perverso, monopólico, logo eles que adoram um partido exclusivo, dominante hegemônico.
Parece que o capitalismo vai ficar agora parado nessas 147 supercorporações que dominam o mundo, e que se reunem de noite, secretamente, para complotar contra o nosso bem estar, para preservar o seu monopólio justamente nesse número mágico de 147.
E elas ainda estão concentradas no hemisfério Norte...
Não é o que se espera de qualquer boa teoria conspiratória?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
O pequeno grupo está estreitamente interligado através das diretorias corporativas e constitui uma rede de poder que poderia ser vulnerável ao colapso e propensa ao “risco sistemico”, segundo diversas opiniões. OProject Censored (Projeto Censurado, em tradução livre) da Universidade Estadual de Sonoma, na Califórnia, EUA, desclassificou esta notícia e sua repercussão foi sepultada pelos meios de comunicação norte-americanos. Mas Peter Phillips, professor de sociologia naquela universidade, ex-diretor do Projeto Censurado e atual presidente da Fundação Media Freedom/Project Censored, fez referência a ela em seu trabalho The Global 1%: Exposing the Transnational Ruling Class (O Um Por Cento Global: Exposição da Classe Dominante Transnacional), assinado com Kimberly Soeiro e publicado em projectcensored.org.
Os autores do estudo são Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder e Stefano Battiston, pesquisadores da Universidade de Zurich (Suíça), os quais publicaram seu trabalho a 26 de outubro 2011, sob o título A Rede de Controle Corporativo Global (The Network of Global Corporate Control) na revista científica plosone.org.
– Se uma empresa sofre uma angústia, esta se propaga – disse Glattfelder.
BRASA: ajuda de pesquisa a jovens estudantes
Highest priority will be given to applicants who are outstanding college seniors, recent college graduates applying to graduate programs in Brazilian studies or in Latin American studies with the intent of focusing on Brazil, or new graduate students already focusing on Brazil.
Students from all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are eligible. In exceptional cases, applications from the natural sciences will be given consideration (for example, someone in environmental sciences who is writing a dissertation on the Amazon or pollution in São Paulo and who plans to continue research on Brazil).
Preference will be given to those applicants who have little or no in-country experience in Brazil. A student requesting funding to undertake an exploratory research trip should present evidence at the time of the application that he/she has achieved at least an intermediate level of competence in the Portuguese language sufficient to carry out the proposed research.
An applicant seeking support to undertake language studies should present evidence that after returning to the US, he/she intends to continue studying Portuguese and plans to engage in research on Brazil.
Successful applicants may combine BIS with other grants, scholarships, or awards, as long as he/she specifies clearly how the funds are going to be spent (for example, the BRASA scholarship might be used to cover travel costs, while a grant from another source could be used for living expenses, etc.).
The application cover page (download form);
(1) A two-page prospectus (double spaced, 12-point font);
(2) A two-page résumé or CV;
(3) A budget specifying how the $1500 will be spent;
(4) In the case of undergraduates or recent college graduates, a letter of intent to study Brazil in graduate school;
(5) If applying for exploratory research, include a two-page bibliography on the subject of study, and present evidence that the applicant has achieved at least an intermediate level of competence in Portuguese (competence can be demonstrated by a transcript or a letter from a university instructor of Portuguese);
(6) If applying for Portuguese language study, the name of the school should be specified;
(7) Proof of membership in BRASA;
(8) Two letters of recommendation from professors; and
(9) Copies of undergraduate and graduate transcripts.
In order to be considered for the scholarship, the two-page prospectus should:
(1) Clearly and coherently outline the project’s engagement with Brazil;
(2) Demonstrate as precisely as possible the feasibility of the proposed project (exploratory research or language study) and how it will contribute to the student’s academic development;
(3) Briefly discuss the role the work undertaken in Brazil will play in shaping the applicant’s future course of academic study (for instance, it could be the seed project for a larger grant application, provide the basis of a paper prepared for presentation at a BRASA conference, or serve as the foundation for future research on Brazil).
BRASA
223 International Studies Building
910 South Fifth Street
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign
Illinois 61820
217-333-8248 (tel)217-244-7333 (fax)
Email: brasa-illinois@illinois.edu
Cooperacao Sul-Sul = autoservidao voluntaria?
Antes porém uma informação sobre o que eu penso desse tipo de auto-castração voluntária que praticam certos governos em nome de não se sabe bem qual causa, qual excelência, qual aproveitamento máximo das possibilidades de cooperação existentes no mundo.
Suponho que ninguém tenha nada contra a cooperação triangular, a quadrangular, a pentagonal, a sexagonal, a octogonal, a plurilateral e a multilateral, todas são possíveis e bem vindas. Suponho, igualmente, que a descentralizada pode ser útil em alguns casos, em outros se recomendaria algo mais centralizado, e quem sabe até unilateral e unidirecional. Ou seja, tudo é possível em matéria de cooperação, inclusive porque, como diz o velho ditado, a cavalo dado não se olham os dentes. Quem recebe, se não fica preguiçoso com os donativos generosos, pode aprender algo e ficar até agradecido, supondo-se que aquilo não vicie o cidadão.
Agora, francamente, cooperação sul-sul em nome do que, exatamente? O Sul é melhor do que o Norte, tem mais tecnologia, mais recursos, superou o Norte, tem soluções geniais para os nossos problemas? Se esse for o caso, não tenho nada contra, mas tenho uma pequena desconfiança que não seja bem o caso, e que uma cooperação com viseiras geográficas seja, além de canhestra, redutora e simplista, basicamente estúpida, se for considerada como a forma ideal de cooperação.
Dito isto, eis o que escrevi a respeito:
terça-feira, 30 de outubro de 2012
Uma Brasa intelectual: congressos dos estudiosos do Brasil
Anuario nao-neoliberal da integracao alternativa na América Latina
Os autores, típicos acadêmicos armados bem mais de conceitos do que de estudos empíricos, se preocupam em saber, e hesitam em encontrar o termo exato, se a nova integração deve ser chamada de pós-neoliberal, pós-hegemônica, ou pós-liberal.
Quando os acadêmicos se enredam nos conceitos, em lugar de se ocupar de uma análise objetiva dos dados da realidade, já se pode desconfiar que não haverá nada de muito útil, ou simplesmente realista, nesse alinhamento de grandes palavras -- hegemonia, dominação, capitalismo, concertação política e quejandos -- para, finalmente, desvendar muito pouco dos experimentos em curso, aliás considerados bem vindos, pelos autores, mesmo se eles distanciam o continente da integração produtiva, da rede de investimentos diretos estrangeiros, da liberalização dos fluxos financeiros, que constituem as marcas desse processo na Ásia-Pacífico, em contraste com os nítidos retrocessos observados no continente.
Enfim, pode ser que entre os leitores deste blog se encontrem true believers na maravilha da integração bolivariana, obviamente alternativa ao comercialismo neoliberal, por isso vai a recomendação recebida por email.
Aproveito para informar que acabo de concluir a redação de um livro sobre a integração regional, que deve ser publicado até março de 2013, pela Editora Saraiva. Depois falarei mais sobre ele.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Estimad@,
Tenemos el agrado de hacerles llegar el Anuario de la Integración Regional de América Latina y el Gran Caribe 2012 - El regionalismo “post–liberal” en América Latina y el Caribe: Nuevos actores, nuevos temas, nuevos desafíos, coordinado por Andrés Serbin, Laneydi Martínez y Haroldo Ramanzini Júnior.
Prezados colegas,
Temos o prazer de enviar o Anuario de la Integración Regional de América Latina y el Gran Caribe 2012 - O regionalismo pós - liberal na América Latina e no Caribe: novos atores, novos temas e novos desafios - organizado por Andrés Serbin, Laneydi Martinez e Haroldo Ramanzini Júnior.
El mismo esta disponible en versión digital accediendo al siguiente link:
O mesmo está disponível em versão digital no seguinte link:
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