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;
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quarta-feira, 8 de março de 2017
Quem seria capaz de assinar um manifesto a favor de um criminoso?
Ditaduras e repressao na America Latina:book reviews
by System Administrator
Patrick Iber. Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. 336 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-28604-7.
Reviewed by Stella Krepp (University of Bern)
Published on H-LatAm (March, 2017)
Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz
Patrick Iber’s Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America is a study of the transnational political Left in Latin America. Suitably titled with a quote by Leon Trotsky, who in many ways epitomized the struggle within the political Left in Mexico, it relates how the project of a social democracy failed.
In the past two decades, scholars have called for new ways to write the history of a Latin American Cold War that would allow for Latin American agency and voices.[1] As a result, historians have highlighted the local roots of the conflict; illuminated the inter-American dimension; and examined how Latin Americans colluded, shaped, and resisted the Cold War.[2] However, by and large, scholarship still emphasizes a Cold War paradigm that places US-Latin American relations in the context of anti-communist struggle and US security policies, focusing the attention of Left and Right alike on military interventions, economic influence, and diplomatic relations to the detriment of cultural aspects of international relations.[3] This makes Patrick Iber’s book on the cultural dimension of the Cold War within Latin America a very welcome contribution.
Highlighting the role of intellectuals as “privileged communicators” between the masses and the state (p. 1), Iber directs his focus not at the authoritarian Right but at the fragmented political Left in Latin America, more specifically Mexico, and its struggle regarding “how to bring about a humane socialism that would balance social justice and individual freedom” (p. 3). As Iber recounts, this was far from a united and solidary Left, but a fragmented one, and the major fault lines ran between the advocates of social democracy and proponents of socialism or communism. He advances this argument by studying the three major players in the Cultural Cold War—the Soviet Union, the United States, and Cuba—through their front organizations: the Soviet-sponsored World Peace Council (WPC); the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) financed through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); and the Cuban Casa de las Américas, as each tried to mobilize and instrumentalize culture as a vehicle for its Cold War message and vision of social progress.
Iber convincingly relates how the cultural Cold War was rooted in the pre-Cold War history of the region, starting in the 1930s and 1940s, when exiles from the Spanish Civil War and communist dissidents such as Trotsky himself migrated to Mexico. These exiles carried with them the political divisions and animosities of their home societies. This “international civil war among left-wing intellectuals” acquired a new dynamic with the East-West confrontation after World War II (p. 47).
In chapter 2, Iber focuses on the WPC. Sponsored, supported, and guided by the Soviet Union, the WPC attempted to draft artists into a cultural Cold War through the promotion of “peace.” By the late 1950s, however, its never extensive influence had waned and was replaced by the Casa de las Américas as the defining cultural institution of the radical Left. Chapter 3 deals with the CCF. Backed by the United States and financed by the CIA, the CCF’s official aim was to promote social democracy and to denounce the totalitarian visions of the USSR and later Cuba. In one of the most fascinating accounts of the book, Iber narrates how the CCF nurtured the political Left in Cuba throughout the 1950s, and thus unwittingly enabled the revolution to succeed. In the end, the unmasking of the CCF as CIA-backed in the late 1960s spelled out the end of the reformist project.
The turning point that transformed the political Left was, without doubt, the Cuban Revolution of 1959, a home-grown socialist model that soon replaced the Soviet Union as the reference point in Latin America. Likewise, the Cuban Casa de las Américas became the central institution to spread this socialist vision, a story explored by Iber in chapter 4. However, despite inspiring a generation of the political Left in Latin America, the Cuban Revolution also exacerbated the already existing rift within the Left. Many of the earlier supporters of Fidel Castro were forced into exile or severely punished, and soon the regime drew criticism for its authoritarian streak and political as well as cultural censorship.
Ultimately, as Iber relates, by the 1970s all three utopias had failed and with them the belief that intellectuals and artists could and should play a fundamental role in mediating these social visions. Rather, and this would be a fascinating theme for another book, we see the rise of social scientists and technocrats from the beginning of the 1960s. These utopias failed on many fronts, but particularly because of the inherent contradictions in their political programs. In the case of the CCF, preaching liberalism but stifling dissent showcased the very limited notion of freedom the organization promoted. More important, as political events such as the 1964 military coup in Brazil and the blatantly illegal US intervention in the Dominican Republic of 1965 showed, building a social democratic Left with a benevolent and friendly United States was nigh impossible.
Likewise, by the late 1960s, with Ernesto Guevara dead and his foco theory proven wrong, as well as the Cuban endorsement of the 1968 Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia, the Cuban model lost much of its appeal. In the case of the Casa de las Américas, proclaiming freedom but only within a very restrictive definition of the revolution along the lines of the famous dictum “within the revolution everything; against the revolution, nothing” led to disenchantment among the Left. Ultimately, these visions failed because every organization failed to practice what it preached.
Intriguingly, despite the close ideological and financial links with their backers, Iber shows how these front organizations were not simple instruments of hegemony, but hybrid organizations that allowed artists and activists to shape debates and “localize” the Cold War. Moving through different case studies, Iber demonstrates that distinct cultural and historic contexts mattered, just as much as the people who were involved. With his nuanced analysis, he denounces the view that the United States, and in consequence the CIA, was omnipotent or omnipresent. While the United States and the USSR financed and set the agenda for the cultural front organizations, local branches acquired their own dynamics and controlling staff or artists proved difficult to manage. In the end, the actions of the front organizations often had unintended consequences as the Cuban case aptly highlights. Iber narrates one such example in chapter 6, showing how the CCF successfully “modernized” and incorporated a number of Latin American voices in the Mexican case, while in the 1960s, such attempts yielded few results in Brazil and Argentina. Ultimately, modernization never fully materialized because CIA involvement in the CCF was uncovered in 1966-67.
Iber’s Neither Peace nor Freedom is a thought-provoking book and deserves much praise, so I have only minor quibbles to add. While the trope of Mexican exceptionalism is not helpful, one wonders if what Iber relates is truly a Latin American cultural war or, in essence, actually a Mexican one. While he offers excursions to Brazil, Argentina, and more extensively to Cuba, Mexico remains the pivotal center. Of course there are limits to the archival work historians can aspire to, but I was left wondering, as a non-Mexicanist, if the Mexican case was indicative for the whole region or rather a special case. My own impression is that the Cold War in South America acquired a very distinct trajectory. In sum, it raises the questions how to contextualize Mexican history in broader Latin American history.
This is a carefully crafted and elegantly written book that charts the ebb and flow of the cultural Cold War and simultaneously highlights the local Latin American dimension. The book is meticulously researched, and—no mean feat—an enjoyable read.
Notes
[1]. Gilbert Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds, In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Greg Grandin, “Off the Beach: The United States, Latin America, and the Cold War,” in A Companion to Post-45 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002); and Max Friedman, “Retiring the Puppets, Letting Latin America Back In: Recent Scholarship on United States-Latin American Relations,” Diplomatic History 7, no. 5 (November 2003): 621-636.
[2]. For a good overview on recent scholarship, see Andrew J. Kirkendall, “Cold War Latin America: The State of the Field,” H-Diplo Essay 119, November 14, 2014. See also Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); and Ariel Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977-1984 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Centre of International Studies, 1997).
[3]. Gilbert Joseph, “Toward a New Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations,” in Close Encounters with Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Catherine LeGrand (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 3.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=48095
Citation: Stella Krepp. Review of Iber, Patrick, Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. March, 2017.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=48095
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Carmody on Weld, 'Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala' [review]
by System Administrator
Kirsten Weld. Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala. American Encounters/Global Interactions Series. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. xvi + 335 pp. $26.95 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-8223-7658-3; $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-5602-8; $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-5597-7.
Reviewed by Michelle Carmody (Leiden University)
Published on H-LatAm (March, 2017)
Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz
Michelle Carmody on Kirsten Weld's Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala
In critical studies of archives, it has become commonplace to cite Jacques Derrida’s phrase that “there is no political power without control of the archive ... [and] effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation” (p. 16). Kirsten Weld takes this as a departure point but moves on to examine a related question, namely, what the process of (re)constructing an archive tells us about the political context in which this (re)construction is carried out. She does this by examining the creation of the Archivo Histórico de la Policia Nacional (Historical Archives of the National Police, AHPN) in Guatemala, a collection of documents taken from the police archives where they were “discovered” in a state of decay and disorder and subsequently restored, organized, and rehoused in the internationally funded AHPN. If democratization can be measured by access to the archive, Weld shows how this access came about, and how this process of opening the archive shapes the quality of democracy.
The book is organized in four parts. The first examines the immediate context of the (re)discovery of the documents and the commencement of the project to restore them and create the AHPN. The second returns to the period of repression to look at the construction of the document collection itself, as well as the development of the National Police, the institution that created the documents. Part 3 looks at the role of the construction of the AHPN in sociopolitical processes in the postwar period, focusing on the experiences of those involved in the project. And part 4 concludes the book by evaluating the impact of the completed archival recovery project on the postwar sociopolitical horizon in Guatemala and on other human rights and transitional justice initiatives locally
This is a work of ethnographic history, mixing ethnography of the project to reconstruct an archive in the years 2005-9 with archival work on the creation of the original document collection in the 1960s and 70s. The book illustrates the shifts in values and beliefs on the part of various groups involved in the reconstruction of the archive, from ex-revolutionaries to a younger generation of human rights activists and even police archivists themselves. It charts the way these actors reevaluate their memories and understandings of the revolutionary struggle and the period of state repression, at the same time as they reevaluate their understanding of relations between different groups in society in the post-authoritarian period.
This is the major contribution of Weld’s work: she shows that the synthetic process of creating the archives, reorganizing the documents from a logic of counterinsurgency to a logic of “agency and aperture” (p. 31), can be seen as a parallel for the transformation of society in the postwar period. Part 3, “Archives and Social Reconstruction in Guatemala,” explores this process. In this section, we see how the older generation of project workers struggled to work alongside the police and how the younger generation of activists within the project were confronted with things like working under a professional management structure and accepting foreign funding. Working together on a common goal—the reconstruction of the archives—allowed each of these groups to develop an understanding of each other. This is the synthesis that is produced when Cold War archives were transformed into postwar archives, a process that, she argues, is an example of bottom-up democratization and social reconstruction. Through an ethnographic account of a grassroots project, Weld shows us that transitions are created from the bottom-up, rather than top-down.
An associated argument that Weld makes is that archives and archival surveillance should be integrated into the study of the Cold War. Part 2, “Archives and Counterinsurgency in Guatemala,” looks specifically at the Cold War period and supports this argument by recounting the assistance offered by US development agencies to help the Guatemalan National Police address their poor organizational infrastructure, including their lack of attention to record keeping. In this section, she draws on the archives of the International Cooperation Administration (ICA, the predecessor of USAID) to show that the US saw record keeping as directly contributing to their ability to control subversion. She demonstrates a clear link between this goal, which necessitated a strengthening of the capacity of the security forces and the technical assistance the ICA provided in the realm of record keeping. This is a clearly substantiated and illustrated argument which calls for further consideration of the types of everyday, mundane technical development assistance that was used to wage the Cold War in Latin America and beyond. She shows us that technical assistance, including that of record keeping, functioned as an extremely effective conduit for the transfer of ideas and the reshaping of ideology through the reshaping of practice.
Weld’s purpose in conducting this ethnography was, as she eloquently puts it, “to document the process, not process the documents” (p. 23). This marks her contribution as distinct from the other studies that have emerged in recent years of recovered counterinsurgency and police archives across Latin America. These studies draw on declassified and (re)discovered materials to write new histories of the Cold War and state repression in the region. Her work goes beyond this and sits comfortably alongside Duke’s other critical and reflexive monographs on archives.[1] While most critical work on archives looks at colonial archives, Weld extends these insights into both Cold War archives and postwar archives.
With this book Weld seeks to examine the process by which Guatemalans make sense of both the physical records of the past and of their memories of that past, analyzing this process for traces of articulations about the future. Her ethnography deftly achieves this, while at the same time it demonstrates the applicability of theoretical reflections on archives to new contexts, and expands our critical understanding of the Cold War and of the postwar in Guatemala. This book is therefore recommended for researchers interested in expanding their understanding of either of these two periods—the Cold War or the postwar period—with theoretical insights that can and should be tested in other contexts.
Note
[1]. Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); and Antoinette Burton, ed., Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=48085
Citation: Michelle Carmody. Review of Weld, Kirsten, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. March, 2017.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=48085
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ANN: The Cold War in Latin America: Reviews of New Works
by Casey Lurtz
Continuing our series of collected reviews of new works in Latin American history, I'm happy to bring you a brief special issue on the Cold War in Latin America. As well as new reviews of Kirsten Weld's Paper Cadavers and Patrick Iber's Neither Peace nor Freedom, we have a review of the conference "Traveling Technocrats: Experts and Expertise in Latin America’s Long Cold War" held at Yale in the fall of 2016. I have also included cross-listings of roundtables put together by the H-Diplo network on other relevant works not yet reviewed for H-Latam.
New Reviews
Michelle Carmody on Kirsten Weld, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala (2014)
Stella Krepp on Patrick Iber, Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America (2015)
Timothy W. Lorek and Andra B. Chastain on “Traveling Technocrats: Experts and Expertise in Latin America’s Long Cold War” (2016)
Relevant Roundtables from Other Networks
Thomas C. Field, Jr. From Development to Dictatorship: Bolivia and the Alliance for Progress in the Kennedy Era (2014), roundtable from H-Diplo, March 2015
Michael E. Donoghue, Borderland on the Isthmus: Race, Culture, and the Struggle for the Canal Zone (2014), roundtable from H-Diplo, April 2015
Alan McPherson, The Invaded: How Latin Americans and their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations (2014), roundtable from H-Diplo, July 2015
William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (2014), roundtable from H-Diplo, August 2015
Renata Keller, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (2015), roundtable from H-Diplo, November 2016
segunda-feira, 6 de março de 2017
Dez desafios da politica externa brasileira: livro do Cebri-Konrad Adenauer
Eventos do IPRI no mes de marco 2017: venham todos (em Brasilia...)
domingo, 5 de março de 2017
Odebrecht-lulopetismo: as conexões financeiras - Revista IstoÉ
Na quarta-feira 1º, Marcelo Odebrecht ficou frente a frente com autoridades do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral. Em depoimento de quatro horas de duração realizado em Curitiba, o empresário, herdeiro da maior empreiteira do País, discorreu sobre as doações de campanha e a relação quase umbilical da empresa, e dele próprio, com partidos e políticos de altíssimo calibre. Suas revelações envolveram um leque de personalidades políticas, mas principalmente a ex-presidente Dilma Rousseff. Ao ministro Herman Benjamin, Odebrecht foi taxativo. Afirmou que pagou R$ 50 milhões em propinas para a campanha de Dilma como contrapartida à votação de uma medida provisória que beneficiou a Braskem, petroquímica controlada pela Odebrecht, disse que a ex-presidente petista tinha total conhecimento dos pagamentos de caixa dois, inclusive no exterior, e ratificou ter sido ela quem indicou o ex-ministro da Fazenda, Guido Mantega, como intermediário dos acertos espúrios, em substituição ao também ex-auxiliar Antonio Palocci. Embora de caráter irrefutável, e obviamente gravíssimo, o conteúdo do depoimento de Odebrecht ao TSE não constitui uma novidade para o leitor de ISTOÉ. Em reportagem de capa sob o título “50 milhões em propinas para a campanha de Dilma”, de 15 de fevereiro deste ano, a revista lançava luz sobre a delação de Marcelo Odebrecht aos integrantes da força-tarefa da Lava Jato e antecipava o que o empreiteiro reitera agora a respeito das negociatas envolvendo a campanha da petista. Na ocasião, em nota virulenta, embebida de cólera, Dilma dizia que a revista praticava “jornalismo de guerra” e acusava a publicação de insinuar, “de maneira vil e irresponsável”, sua participação em atos suspeitos durante a campanha presidencial, o que ela negava.
Na semana passada, no conveniente discurso de Dilma, típico de quem tem culpa no cartório, quem virou irresponsável e “mentiroso” foi Marcelo Odebrecht. Não foi o que o empresário deixou transparecer em seu relato. Com fartura de detalhes, ele contou que o repasse via caixa dois para as campanhas de Dilma Rousseff era regra e os pagamentos registrados na Justiça Eleitoral, uma exceção. Marcelo contabilizou um total de R$ 150 milhões repassados ao PT e calculou que, de cada R$ 5 pagos, R$ 4 não eram registrados. Desses valores, R$ 50 milhões seriam propinas referentes à “compra” de uma medida provisória para a Braskem em 2009: a MP 470, que garantiu benefícios tributários à empresa, braço petroquímico da Odebrecht. A negociação, antecipada com exclusividade por ISTOÉ, começou ainda sob o governo Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva entre Marcelo e o ex-ministro da Fazenda Guido Mantega. Desta vez, o empreiteiro acrescentou um detalhe: apesar de a negociação para o pagamento ter ocorrido por volta de 2010, o PT não precisou usar imediatamente esses recursos. Guardou os R$ 50 milhões para a campanha seguinte, a de 2014.
Marcelo era o interlocutor da Odebrecht com a cúpula do governo petista. Avocava para si as tarefas mais importantes: fazia os acertos e dava o aval para os principais pagamentos de propina. Mas, a despeito de sua importância na hierarquia da República, surpreendeu aos participantes da audiência o tom humilde adotado por Marcelo, conhecido por sua postura altiva e orgulhosa. Em um desabafo recheado de ironia, ele afirmou: “Eu não era o dono do governo, eu era o otário do governo. Eu era o bobo da corte do governo”.
Seu depoimento finalmente esclareceu as suspeitas da Polícia Federal sobre quem eram “italiano” e “Pós Itália”. Segundo Marcelo, seu primeiro interlocutor no governo sobre os repasses era o italiano: o ex-ministro petista Antonio Palocci. Depois, por determinação de Dilma, o assunto passou a ser tratado pelo sucessor: Guido Mantega, ou “Pós Itália”, segundo as anotações apreendidas pela PF. Para ambos, entre 2008 e 2014, a Odebrecht disponibilizou R$ 300 milhões.
Além de Palocci e Mantega, o empresário contou que também tratava diretamente com o marqueteiro João Santana sobre os pagamentos ilícitos. Segundo ele, repasses via caixa dois tinham como destino as contas de João Santana no exterior, como remuneração aos serviços prestados por ele à campanha petista. Detalhe importante: segundo Marcelo Odebrecht, Dilma tinha conhecimento dos pagamentos a Santana no exterior. A maior parte dos repasses era em espécie. O marqueteiro aparecia com o codinome “Feira” nas planilhas da Odebrecht. O fato, em si, não representa novidade para os investigadores. A Lava Jato já havia detectado ao menos US$ 13 milhões em transferências de contas no exterior da Odebrecht a uma das contas ligadas a João Santana na Suíça.
Mas um episódio contado por Marcelo chamou atenção e serviu como a demonstração cabal do envolvimento de Dilma Rousseff. Trata-se de um encontro com ela no México no qual o empresário lhe avisou que os pagamentos feitos ao marqueteiro estariam “contaminados” porque partiram de contas que a Odebrecht usava para pagar propina. Ou seja: Dilma sabia do que estava acontecendo, ao contrário do que sempre negou com veemência.
CONEXÃO CERVEJA
Outra negociata antecipada em reportagem de capa de ISTOÉ, de agosto de 2015, foi confirmada por Marcelo Odebrecht em seu depoimento ao TSE. A chamada “Conexão-Cerveja”. Ao detalhar o esquema de caixa dois petista, o empresário afirmou que a empreiteira terceirizou repasses por meio da cervejaria Itaipava, do grupo Petrópolis. Em 2014, a campanha de Dilma havia recebido R$ 17,5 milhões de maneira oficial somente da cervejaria. Também à Justiça Eleitoral, Benedicto Junior, ex-presidente da Odebrecht Infraestrutura, atestou que a doação da Itaipava era “caixa dois travestido de caixa um”.
Apesar de a negociação ter ocorrido entre 2009 e 2010, os R$ 50 milhões foram usados por Dilma na campanha de 2014
Um dos articuladores do esquema Itaipava, o ex-presidente Lula não atravessou incólume o depoimento, embora o ex-presidente não fosse objeto da ação. Ao TSE, Marcelo disse que a Odebrecht detinha forte influência no governo, principalmente depois que o PT chegou ao Palácio do Planalto, em 2003, ano em que Lula assumiu seu primeiro mandato. Marcelo Odebrecht acrescentou ainda que a empreiteira auxiliou campanhas no exterior nas quais o partido de Lula e Dilma tinha interesse. Os repasses ocorreram fora do País.
O depoimento de Marcelo Odebrecht ocorreu por determinação do ministro do TSE Herman Benjamin para fundamentar a ação que aponta irregularidades na chapa de Dilma Rousseff e seu vice Michel Temer em 2014. Por isso mesmo, o empresário respondeu a perguntas sobre um jantar que participou no Palácio do Jaburu com o então vice-presidente Michel Temer em 2014, no qual teria havido o acerto de doação de R$ 10 milhões para o PMDB. Suas declarações, porém, isentaram o presidente Temer. Marcelo disse que não tratou de valores com o peemedebista e afirmou que a doação havia sido discutida pelo diretor de relações institucionais da Odebrecht, Cláudio Melo Filho, com um intermediário de Temer, o hoje ministro da Casa Civil, Eliseu Padilha. Segundo Marcelo, o encontro com Temer foi apenas um “shake hands” (apertar de mãos), uma confraternização, e ele não forneceu maiores detalhes sobre a operacionalização do pagamento. Marcelo Odebrecht também foi instado a comentar sobre eventuais pagamentos às campanhas de Aécio Neves (PSDB) e de Eduardo Campos/Marina Silva (PSB) em 2014. Mais uma vez, o empreiteiro não se alongou. Limitou-se a dizer, por exemplo, que Aécio pediu R$ 15 milhões para a campanha. Após ser preso na Lava Jato, contudo, Odebrecht disse ter sido informado que o aporte financeiro acabou não se concretizando. Em seu relato, o empresário ainda afirmou só se recordar de doações oficiais para o tucano, ao contrário do que ocorreu em relação à campanha de Dilma.
Para o Ministério Público Eleitoral, a campanha de Dilma lavou dinheiro nas gráficas VTPB, Focal e Red Seg
Não é a primeira vez que a situação de Dilma Rousseff se complica no TSE. Peritos da corte eleitoral chegaram à conclusão de que três gráficas que receberam pagamento do PT não haviam prestado qualquer tipo de serviço à campanha, conforme antecipou a edição de ISTOÉ do dia 8 de julho de 2016. O caso está sendo investigado.
Para o Ministério Público Eleitoral, a campanha da petista lavou dinheiro nas gráficas VTPB, Focal e Red Seg. Juntas, elas receberam uma fortuna da campanha de Dilma em 2014: R$ 52 milhões. Aos poucos, a ex-presidente petista é destronada do pedestal que ela mesma criou.
O euro-ceticismo britanico em perspectiva histórica - book review
Greetings Paulo Almeida,
New items have been posted in H-Diplo.
Table of Contents
Haeussler on Grob-Fitzgibbon, 'Continental Drift: Britain and Europe from the End of Empire to the Rise of Euroscepticism'[review]
Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon.Continental Drift: Britain and Europe from the End of Empire to the Rise of Euroscepticism.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 601 pp. $39.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-107-07126-1.
Reviewed by Mathias Haeussler (University of Cambridge)
Published on H-Diplo (March, 2017)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach
British Euroscepticism has puzzled even the most well-informed observers, including various US secretaries of state. Dean Acheson’s remark in the early 1960s that Britain had “lost an Empire and not yet found a role” has acquired particular prominence, but George W. Ball in fact offered an even less flattering judgment in his memoirs. Britain had “not yet adjusted to reality,” he wrote in 1982, “no longer an empire, it was now merely an island nation on which the sun not only set, but set every evening—provided one could see it for the rain.”[1] Both of these judgments fit neatly into a familiar picture of Britain’s postwar elite caught up in imperial nostalgia, failing to confront the harsh new realities of being a medium-sized European power. Yet, while the link between the end of empire and the rise of Euroscepticism has frequently been evoked in the public debate, there has not been any systematic attempt by historians to connect these two seemingly separate yet distinctly intertwined phenomena. This is precisely what Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, former professor of history at the University of Arkansas and now Foreign Service officer for the US Department of State, sets out to do in his timely study Continental Drift: Britain and Europe from the End of Empire to the Rise of Euroscepticism.
The book’s main argument is clear and appealing, if somewhat familiar: it was the experience of decolonization and declining international influence that stimulated the rise of British Euroscepticism. In the late 1940s, Grob-Fitzgibbon argues, “politicians, civil servants and the public at large viewed British identity as both an imperial one and a European one,” since they saw “no contradiction between being an imperial power, part of the English-speaking Atlantic world and a European nation” (p. 6). Indeed, as the book rightly points out, from the seventeenth century onward “to be European was to be imperial” (p. 8). Yet, as Britain’s retreat from empire during the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the establishment and consolidation of the European Economic Community (EEC) on the continent, these two strands of British identity were increasingly seen as incompatible or even contradictory, triggering a “Euroscepticism ... that became impossible to separate from nostalgic neo-imperialism” (p. 7). Aptly enough, the book’s seventeen chapters are therefore divided into two main parts: the first part (“Imperial Europeans”) covers the period from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the founding of the EEC in March 1957; the second part then looks at the rise of post-imperial Eurosceptics from the late 1950s onward to the mid-1990s.
Rather than focusing exclusively on the interrelations between decolonization and European integration, Grob-Fitzgibbon seeks to offer a broader overview of postwar British foreign policy, embedding the “European story” firmly within the wider contexts of Anglo-American relations, decolonization, and the Cold War. In so doing, the book offers a wide-ranging narrative history, focusing mainly on the thoughts and actions of key political actors—an approach particularly effective when Grob-Fitzgibbon explicitly seeks to uncover the interrelations of the two seemingly separate areas of Europe and empire in the mind-sets and “mental maps” of British politicians and officials. With regard to the late 1940s, for example, he skillfully shows how Winston Churchill’s and Ernest Bevin’s views on the European (and German) question were remarkably similar, thereby also revealing the many different ideas and schemes for postwar European cooperation that were floating around at the time. Combined with Grob-Fitzgibbon’s skilled writing and hand for the amusing historical detail, the book makes for an entertaining and vivid read; its use of biographical case studies to reveal the importance of cultural narratives and ideas is particularly effective. Indeed, the methodological set-up is not entirely dissimilar to Hugo Young’s critically acclaimed and highly influential 1998 study This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair—which, surprisingly, is not listed in the bibliography.
The downside of such a broad approach to the topic, however, is that Grob-Fitzgibbon does not really follow through the main theme of interrelations between Europe and empire consistently. Instead, the reader is presented with a much more general narrative of Britain’s postwar relationship with European integration, many parts of which already are well known to scholars of postwar British history and bear little direct relevance to the (post)imperial dimension. To be sure, the book makes excellent observations and arguments in those instances where links between empire and Europe are discussed explicitly. The divergent attitudes toward the proposed European Defence Community between British and Commonwealth leaders in the early 1950s, for example, are highly interesting, as is Grob-Fitzgibbon’s analysis of the ideological assumptions behind Margaret Thatcher’s infamous Bruges speech in 1988. Other sections, by contrast, are less strong. Most of the discussion of Britain’s first application to the EEC in 1961-63, for example, retells much of the well-known evolution of British policy from “Plan G” to the Free Trade Area proposal and then to the eventual application in August 1961. Similarly, the Thatcher chapters get buried in lengthy discussions of economic policies, the fallouts over Britain’s contributions to the European Community (EC) budget, and simply intra-party politics. In this regard, it does not help that the book’s narrative relies mainly on primary sources: while it makes for a lively and engaging read, many stories and events will already be familiar to readers of previous works on “Britain and Europe,” some notable ones of which are missing from the bibliography.[2]
Given that most of the book offers a much more general history of British attitudes toward European integration since 1945, it is also surprising that its main argument then attributes so much importance to the role of post-imperial mind-sets in shaping British policy. An almost causal—and somewhat deterministic—link between the end of empire and rise of Euroscepticism is assumed from the very beginning, drawing mainly on the prominence of such ideas in contemporary British political discourse. Yet it is by no means certain that these two phenomena were in fact as inextricably and necessarily intertwined as the introduction postulates. Numerous historians have in recent years investigated the various historical junctions and turning points where different roads could have been taken—roads that may well have led to very different outcomes both at the time and for subsequent British attitudes toward Europe.[3] The same applies to the alleged importance of “empire” in the minds of British politicians and policymakers. While imperial legacies certainly shaped perceptions of Britain’s past and future international role, several works in recent years have revealed how the actual policymaking process toward European integration was in fact a highly elaborate process shaped by myriad other international, domestic, political, and economic factors as well.[4] Indeed, another prominent historian of the British Empire, Bernard Porter, has recently claimed that there were “no logical reasons why ex-imperialists had to be anti-European,” suggesting at least “a dozen other possible explanations too.”[5] None of the explanations that follow necessarily contradict Grob-Fitzgibbon’s central thesis, but closer engagement with at least some of them might have made for a more balanced argument—one that pays greater attention to the role of contingency and agency, as well as to the ways in which post-imperial narratives frequently interacted and clashed with various other competing narratives floating around at the time.
Overall, the book offers a vivid, well-written, and entertaining general narrative of British attitudes toward European integration since 1945. But it does not really deliver on its central promise to explain “how the British evolved from being a nation of imperial Europeans to one of post-imperial Eurosceptics” (p. 7). A tighter focus on the specific connections between Europe and empire, as well as closer engagement with previous works on British policies toward European integration, might have helped to turn this into a more focused and thus ultimately more compelling book. Nonetheless, many of Grob-Fitzgibbon’s arguments are intriguing and suggestive; they may well provide a fresh impetus for future research on Britain’s postwar relationship with Europe and the wider world.
Notes
[1]. George W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs(New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1982), 209.
[2]. Indeed, there have been entire books written about the development of this historiography. See Oliver Daddow, Britain and Europe since 1945: Historiographical Perspectives on Integration (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). For an excellent brief overview, see James Ellison, “Britain and Europe,” in A Companion to Contemporary Britain 1939-2000, ed. Paul Addison and Harriet Jones (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 517-538. Notable omissions on the late 1940s, for example, include Anne Deighton, The Impossible Peace: Britain, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1947(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); William Hitchcock, France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Stability in Europe, 1945-1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); and John W. Young, Britain, France and the Unity of Europe 1945-1951(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984).
[3]. Regarding the first application, for example, Anne Deighton and Piers Ludlow, “‘A Conditional Application’: British Management of the First Attempt to Seek Membership of the EEC, 1961-3,” in Building Postwar Europe: National Decision-Makers and European Institutions, 1948-63, ed. Anne Deighton (Basingstoke: Macmillian Press, 1995), 107-122; and Mathias Haeussler, “The Popular Press and Ideas of Europe: The Daily Mirror, the Daily Express, and Britain's First Application to Join the EEC, 1961-63,” Twentieth Century British History 25, no. 1 (March 2014): 108-131.
[4]. The most authoritative and extensive study remains Alan S. Milward, The United Kingdom and the European Community, vol. 1, The Rise and Fall of a National Strategy, 1945-63(London: Psychology Press, 2000). See also John W. Young, Britain and European Unity, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), or James R. V. Ellison, “Accepting the Inevitable: Britain and European Integration,” in British Foreign Policy 1955-64: Contracting Options, ed. Wolfram Kaiser and Gillian Staerck (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 171-190.
[5]. Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 301, 300.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=47309
Citation: Mathias Haeussler. Review of Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin, Continental Drift: Britain and Europe from the End of Empire to the Rise of Euroscepticism. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. March, 2017.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=47309
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sábado, 4 de março de 2017
Brasil em desmanche - General Rocha Paiva
O Estado de S.Paulo, 1 Março 2017
O poder da esquerda e da liderança política fisiológica é fator de atraso e falência moral
Uma causa longínqua, mas decisiva, do desmanche do Brasil é o seu sistema de ensino deficiente na transmissão de conhecimentos, no desenvolvimento da cultura, na formação cívica do cidadão, na valorização da História e das tradições, o que enfraquece o patriotismo, e na conscientização de princípios morais e éticos, fatores de fortalecimento da sociedade. Essas deficiências facilitaram a implantação e expansão no País da crise de valores, nos anos 1960-1970, que contaminou a instituição da família globalmente e abalou sociedades imaturas como a brasileira.
Tal cenário foi explorado pela esquerda socialista, a partir dos anos 1960, permitindo-lhe o progressivo domínio do sistema de ensino brasileiro. Os partidos e movimentos dessa ideologia acabaram por dominar, também, o meio artístico e parte da mídia. Com os formadores de opinião nas mãos, promoveram a satanização da maioria conservadora, falsamente acusada de radical, regressista e avessa a anseios da população carente. Na verdade, “o conservadorismo não é contrário às mudanças, como se costuma supor, mas entende o progresso útil como proveniente do saber anterior e acumulado e, portanto, plantado nas virtudes e nos valores do passado” (Rohmann, Chris, O Livro das Ideias, Rio de Janeiro, Editora Campus, 2000, pág. 79).
A democracia não se sustenta em nações sem consciência cívica, Justiça legítima e eficaz, onde o Estado não provê as necessidades básicas à população e é gerido por lideranças desacreditadas. A esquerda socialista estava no poder desde 1994, primeiro a fabianista e depois a marxista, em parceria com lideranças patrimonialistas. Ambas são responsáveis por desacreditar a nascente democracia brasileira e afundar o País no mar de lama que sufoca a Nação. Com sua ultrapassada visão de Estado, governo e sociedade, os socialistas ditaram rumos desastrosos na busca do Estado de bem-estar social, num país que não alcançou o nível de riqueza capaz de sustentá-lo e mantê-lo em desenvolvimento. Imagine se tomassem o poder nos anos 1960.
A crise brasileira está no limite do suportável. A continuar o ritmo de deterioração política, econômica, moral e social, a tendência será o advento de rebeliões generalizadas, comprometendo a unidade política do País. Esse contexto é o resultado de mais de uma década de danosas políticas populistas eleitoreiras, de gestão econômica irresponsável e insustentável e da estratégia de corrupção para perpetuar o PT no poder.
O presidente da República e o PMDB foram parceiros da liderança petista e por isso também são responsabilizados pela crise nacional. Assim, embora o impeachment de Dilma Rousseff fosse o melhor para o País, e o processo tenha sido legal, era possível antever as dificuldades para o sucessor superar os óbices e recolocar o Brasil nos eixos.
Hoje, o Estado não cumpre o papel que lhe delega a Nação de garantir sua segurança, desenvolvimento e bem-estar. Na segurança pública a situação é de pré-anomia, pois o Estado não demonstra autoridade nem capacidade de controlar todo o território nacional, tampouco de exercer o comando e a disciplina sobre órgãos de segurança da população. A demora em controlar as revoltas em presídios das Regiões Norte e Nordeste e o motim da PM do Espírito Santo revelam leniência, indecisão e falta de vontade ou autoridade dos governos federal e estaduais. A mistura dessas fraquezas com o não atendimento das necessidades básicas da população é um estopim para a disseminação de revoltas capazes de provocar o caos político-social e comprometer a segurança nacional.
A efetiva reabilitação do Brasil, em todos os setores afetados, demandará mais de uma década, mas o ponto de partida e os alicerces da recuperação estão na economia. Será fundamental haver evidências seguras de reabilitação, nos próximos meses, para as tensões se amenizarem. Com isso o governo terá fôlego para encaminhar as soluções para os problemas dos setores político e social.
É justo reconhecer que o governo busca implementar medidas necessárias à recuperação econômica, mas precisa convencer a sociedade a aceitar sacrifícios. Ela concordaria em arcar com um pesado ônus para ajudar o Brasil a sair do abismo desde que o andar de cima apertasse, e muito, o próprio cinto. Porém a liderança nacional, nos três Poderes da União, não entende que o exemplo vem de cima e é a base moral da autoridade. Nos altos escalões do serviço público, da União e dos Estados, existem megassalários turbinados por benesses complementares, cuja legalidade sem legitimidade afronta a justiça. A socialização equilibrada desse custo é a única forma de legitimar sacrifícios impostos a uma sociedade sem reservas para cortar.
A deterioração da economia nos próximos meses geraria cenários de conflitos, pois as tensões sociais se agravariam, escalando para revoltas em diversas regiões e ameaçando os Poderes constitucionais e a unidade nacional. O Executivo sem a confiança da Nação, leniente, tímido e sem força política, ao lado de um Legislativo desacreditado e descomprometido e de um Judiciário dividido, terá sérias dificuldades para pacificar o País com base no arcabouço legal vigente. Para aquilatar o nível de violência desses conflitos basta lembrar que a unidade nacional é cláusula pétrea para as Forças Armadas.
A Nação precisa entender que o poder da esquerda socialista, ideologia liberticida e fracassada, e da nossa liderança política fisiológica é fator de atraso e falência moral. Elas afundaram o Brasil, promoveram a quebra de valores morais e do princípio da autoridade, bases da paz social, incentivaram a indisciplina no serviço público e fraturaram a coesão nacional. Como deter o desmanche do País, dentro das normas legais, com a Nação sujeita à forte influência socialista e sob o poder de lideranças fisiológicas tão difíceis de expelir?
*General da reserva, ex-comandante e professor emérito da Escola de Comando e Estado-Maior do Exército
Brasileiro: um povo passivo demais...
03 Mar 2017