Editorial do NYTimes – Documentos divulgados pelo WikiLeaks
Posted on 27 July 2010 | No responses
Pakistan’s Double Game
There is a lot to be disturbed by in the battlefield reports from Afghanistan released Sunday by WikiLeaks. The close-up details of war are always unsettling, even more so with this war, which was so badly neglected and bungled by President George W. Bush.
But the most alarming of the reports were the ones that described the cynical collusion between Pakistan’s military intelligence service and the Taliban. Despite the billions of dollars the United States has sent in aid to Pakistan since Sept. 11, they offer powerful new evidence that crucial elements of Islamabad’s power structure have been actively helping to direct and support the forces attacking the American-led military coalition.
The time line of the documents from WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing secrets, stops before President Obama put his own military and political strategy into effect last December. Administration officials say they have made progress with Pakistan since, but it is hard to see much evidence of that so far.
Most of the WikiLeaks documents, which were the subject of in-depth coverage in The Times on Monday, cannot be verified. However, they confirm a picture of Pakistani double-dealing that has been building for years.
On a trip to Pakistan last October, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that officials in the Pakistani government knew where Al Qaeda leaders were hiding. Gen. David Petraeus, the new top military commander in Afghanistan, recently acknowledged longstanding ties between Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the ISI, and the “bad guys.”
The Times’s report of the new documents suggests the collusion goes even deeper, that representatives of the ISI have worked with the Taliban to organize networks of militants to fight American soldiers in Afghanistan and hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.
The article painted a chilling picture of the activities of Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul of Pakistan, who ran the ISI from 1987 to 1989, when the agency and the C.I.A. were together arming the Afghan militias fighting Soviet troops. General Gul kept working with those forces, which eventually formed the Taliban.
Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States said the reports were unsubstantiated and “do not reflect the current on-ground realities.” But at this point, denials about links with the militants are simply not credible.
Why would Pakistan play this dangerous game? The ISI has long seen the Afghan Taliban as a proxy force, a way to ensure its influence on the other side of the border and keep India’s influence at bay.
Pakistani officials also privately insist that they have little choice but to hedge their bets given their suspicions that Washington will once again lose interest as it did after the Soviets were ousted from Afghanistan in 1989. And until last year, when the Pakistani Taliban came within 60 miles of Islamabad, the country’s military and intelligence establishment continued to believe it could control the extremists when it needed to.
In recent months, the Obama administration has said and done many of the right things toward building a long-term relationship with Pakistan. It has committed to long-term economic aid. It is encouraging better relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is constantly reminding Pakistani leaders that the extremists, on both sides of the border, pose a mortal threat to Pakistan’s fragile democracy — and their own survival. We don’t know if they’re getting through. We know they have to.
It has been only seven months since Mr. Obama announced his new strategy for Afghanistan, and a few weeks since General Petraeus took command. But Americans are increasingly weary of this costly war. If Mr. Obama cannot persuade Islamabad to cut its ties to, and then aggressively fight, the extremists in Pakistan, there is no hope of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Eu já vi essa história…
Posted on 27 July 2010 | No responses
Ex-inspetor alertou sobre falta de provas para guerra no Iraque
LONDRES (Reuters) – O ex-inspetor de armas da ONU Hans Blix disse nesta terça-feira que alertou em 2003 os Estados Unidos e a Grã-Bretanha sobre sua falta de convicção na existência de armas proibidas no Iraque, o que não dissuadiu Londres e Washington de invadirem o país.
Blix disse a uma comissão de inquérito britânica que o Iraque em 2003 não era uma ameaça ao mundo, e que os anos de anarquia como consequência da invasão podem ter sido piores do que a tirania exercida antes pelo ditador Saddam Hussein.
“O Iraque estava em perigo em 2003? Não estava em perigo. Eles estavam praticamente prostrados (…). Em vez disso o que eles tiveram foi um longo período de anarquia. E uma conclusão que eu tentaria tirar é de que a anarquia pode ser pior que a tirania”, disse ele.
Na época da invasão, os EUA e a Grã-Bretanha argumentavam que o regime de Saddam possuía armas de destruição em massa, que no entanto jamais foram encontradas. O inquérito tem questionado duramente a invasão realizada por norte-americanos e britânicos.
Blix há anos critica a decisão de invadir o Iraque. Ele disse no inquérito que os EUA pareciam “embriagados” com seu poderio militar, e que o cronograma norte-americano estava “fora de sincronia” com o cronograma diplomático, já que sua equipe precisaria de mais tempo para realizar inspeções no Iraque.
“Conversei com o (então) primeiro-ministro (Tony) Blair em 20 de fevereiro de 2003, e disse que ainda achava que havia itens proibidos no Iraque, mas ao mesmo tempo nossa crença na inteligência (informações sobre a existência de armas) havia sido enfraquecida”, disse Blix.
“Eu disse a mesma coisa a Condoleezza Rice (então secretária de Estado dos EUA). Certamente dei alguns alertas de que as coisas haviam mudado”, acrescentou.
Antes da invasão, Blix havia criticado o regime iraquiano pela falta de transparência a respeito de seus programas militares, mas ele alegou que isso não poderia servir como justificativa para a invasão.
Os EUA e a Grã-Bretanha tentaram convencer o Conselho de Segurança da ONU a aprovar a invasão do Iraque. Sem sucesso, alegaram que resoluções anteriores do Conselho já justificavam a invasão.
“Quando (Rice) diz que a ação militar simplesmente estava mantendo a autoridade do Conselho de Segurança, isso me parece totalmente absurdo”, declarou Blix.
O sucessor de Blair, Gordon Brown, determinou no ano passado a realização do inquérito para tirar lições da guerra do Iraque. A comissão é presidida pelo ex-servidor público John Chilcot.
UN envoy welcomes African decision to reinforce Somalia mission
Posted on 27 July 2010 | No responses
Published UN News Centre
27 July 2010 –The United Nations envoy to Somalia today welcomed the decision by the African Union (AU) to send an additional 2,000 peacekeepers to the troubled State, saying there was heightened concern across the continent over the consequences of continuing violence in the Horn of Africa country.
“There is definitely a heightened interest and concern by African countries and indications are that more troops will be required,” Augustine Mahiga, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and the head of the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS), told UN Radio.
The decision to boost the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) was made at the African Union (AU) summit that ended today in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. There are currently 6,100 AMISOM soldiers from Uganda and Burundi deployed in Somalia.
The summit was held in the wake of the 11 July twin bomb attacks in Kampala which killed about 70 people. Al Shabaab, a Somali-based militant group which is waging war against the country’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), claimed responsibility for the blasts, saying they were intended to avenge the alleged killing of Somalis by Ugandan troops serving in AMISOM.
“There was also increased international attention on this issue following the bombing in Kampala,” Mr. Mahiga said. He said deployment of the additional troops will be “expeditious.”
“In this deployment, the United Nations is involved in providing logistical support and other necessary requirements for putting the troops on the ground,” said Mr. Mahiga. “There are countries that are ready to lift the troops from the respective countries, mainly the United States and the European Union and Algeria. According to our possibilities in the UN, it could be within the next 30 to 40 days,” he added.
He said the African leaders had also discussed the need to continue improving maternal and child health in the continent as countries strive to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight poverty eradication and social development targets which countries have committed to try to achieve by 2015.
“There was a very far-reaching and rich discussion on maternal health, infant and child mortality and major commitments were made to revive and reaffirm previous commitments that had been made,” Mr. Mahiga said.
Lost in Translation
Posted on 26 July 2010 | No responses
Achei interessantíssimo o texto abaixo, pois sou um amante da linguagem (nada de pretônicas e glides e toda aquela ‘loucura’ que você estuda Vi!!!), da filosofia da linguagem e dos fundamentos que norteiam sua construção.
Então, fugindo um pouco do tema desse espaço, transcrevo abaixo a reportagem que afirma que novas pesquisas cognitivas sugerem que a linguagem influencia profundamente o jeito que as pessoas vêem o mundo.
The Tower of Babel’ by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1563.
New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish
By LERA BORODITSKY*
Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?
Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.
In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.
In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you’d use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you’d use a different form.
Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?
These questions touch on all the major controversies in the study of mind, with important implications for politics, law and religion. Yet very little empirical work had been done on these questions until recently. The idea that language might shape thought was for a long time considered untestable at best and more often simply crazy and wrong. Now, a flurry of new cognitive science research is showing that in fact, language does profoundly influence how we see the world.
The question of whether languages shape the way we think goes back centuries; Charlemagne proclaimed that “to have a second language is to have a second soul.” But the idea went out of favor with scientists when Noam Chomsky’s theories of language gained popularity in the 1960s and ’70s. Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a universal grammar for all human languages—essentially, that languages don’t really differ from one another in significant ways. And because languages didn’t differ from one another, the theory went, it made no sense to ask whether linguistic differences led to differences in thinking.
Use Your Words
Some findings on how language can affect thinking.
Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.
Some indigenous tribes say north, south, east and west, rather than left and right, and as a consequence have great spatial orientation.
The Piraha, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities.
In one study, Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn’t remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: “The vase broke itself,” rather than “John broke the vase.”
The search for linguistic universals yielded interesting data on languages, but after decades of work, not a single proposed universal has withstood scrutiny. Instead, as linguists probed deeper into the world’s languages (7,000 or so, only a fraction of them analyzed), innumerable unpredictable differences emerged.
Of course, just because people talk differently doesn’t necessarily mean they think differently. In the past decade, cognitive scientists have begun to measure not just how people talk, but also how they think, asking whether our understanding of even such fundamental domains of experience as space, time and causality could be constructed by language.
For example, in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, the indigenous languages don’t use terms like “left” and “right.” Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, “There’s an ant on your southwest leg.” To say hello in Pormpuraaw, one asks, “Where are you going?”, and an appropriate response might be, “A long way to the south-southwest. How about you?” If you don’t know which way is which, you literally can’t get past hello.
About a third of the world’s languages (spoken in all kinds of physical environments) rely on absolute directions for space. As a result of this constant linguistic training, speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes. They perform navigational feats scientists once thought were beyond human capabilities. This is a big difference, a fundamentally different way of conceptualizing space, trained by language.
Differences in how people think about space don’t end there. People rely on their spatial knowledge to build many other more complex or abstract representations including time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality and emotions. So if Pormpuraawans think differently about space, do they also think differently about other things, like time?
To find out, my colleague Alice Gaby and I traveled to Australia and gave Pormpuraawans sets of pictures that showed temporal progressions (for example, pictures of a man at different ages, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. When asked to do this, English speakers arrange time from left to right. Hebrew speakers do it from right to left (because Hebrew is written from right to left).
Pormpuraawans, we found, arranged time from east to west. That is, seated facing south, time went left to right. When facing north, right to left. When facing east, toward the body, and so on. Of course, we never told any of our participants which direction they faced. The Pormpuraawans not only knew that already, but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time. And many other ways to organize time exist in the world’s languages. In Mandarin, the future can be below and the past above. In Aymara, spoken in South America, the future is behind and the past in front.
In addition to space and time, languages also shape how we understand causality. For example, English likes to describe events in terms of agents doing things. English speakers tend to say things like “John broke the vase” even for accidents. Speakers of Spanish or Japanese would be more likely to say “the vase broke itself.” Such differences between languages have profound consequences for how their speakers understand events, construct notions of causality and agency, what they remember as eyewitnesses and how much they blame and punish others.
In studies conducted by Caitlin Fausey at Stanford, speakers of English, Spanish and Japanese watched videos of two people popping balloons, breaking eggs and spilling drinks either intentionally or accidentally. Later everyone got a surprise memory test: For each event, can you remember who did it? She discovered a striking cross-linguistic difference in eyewitness memory. Spanish and Japanese speakers did not remember the agents of accidental events as well as did English speakers. Mind you, they remembered the agents of intentional events (for which their language would mention the agent) just fine. But for accidental events, when one wouldn’t normally mention the agent in Spanish or Japanese, they didn’t encode or remember the agent as well.
In another study, English speakers watched the video of Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” (a wonderful nonagentive coinage introduced into the English language by Justin Timberlake), accompanied by one of two written reports. The reports were identical except in the last sentence where one used the agentive phrase “ripped the costume” while the other said “the costume ripped.” Even though everyone watched the same video and witnessed the ripping with their own eyes, language mattered. Not only did people who read “ripped the costume” blame Justin Timberlake more, they also levied a whopping 53% more in fines.
Beyond space, time and causality, patterns in language have been shown to shape many other domains of thought. Russian speakers, who make an extra distinction between light and dark blues in their language, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue. The Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon in Brazil, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities. And Shakespeare, it turns out, was wrong about roses: Roses by many other names (as told to blindfolded subjects) do not smell as sweet.
Patterns in language offer a window on a culture’s dispositions and priorities. For example, English sentence structures focus on agents, and in our criminal-justice system, justice has been done when we’ve found the transgressor and punished him or her accordingly (rather than finding the victims and restituting appropriately, an alternative approach to justice). So does the language shape cultural values, or does the influence go the other way, or both?
Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs. Simply showing that speakers of different languages think differently doesn’t tell us whether it’s language that shapes thought or the other way around. To demonstrate the causal role of language, what’s needed are studies that directly manipulate language and look for effects in cognition.
One of the key advances in recent years has been the demonstration of precisely this causal link. It turns out that if you change how people talk, that changes how they think. If people learn another language, they inadvertently also learn a new way of looking at the world. When bilingual people switch from one language to another, they start thinking differently, too. And if you take away people’s ability to use language in what should be a simple nonlinguistic task, their performance can change dramatically, sometimes making them look no smarter than rats or infants. (For example, in recent studies, MIT students were shown dots on a screen and asked to say how many there were. If they were allowed to count normally, they did great. If they simultaneously did a nonlinguistic task—like banging out rhythms—they still did great. But if they did a verbal task when shown the dots—like repeating the words spoken in a news report—their counting fell apart. In other words, they needed their language skills to count.)
All this new research shows us that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are.
Language is a uniquely human gift. When we study language, we are uncovering in part what makes us human, getting a peek at the very nature of human nature. As we uncover how languages and their speakers differ from one another, we discover that human natures too can differ dramatically, depending on the languages we speak. The next steps are to understand the mechanisms through which languages help us construct the incredibly complex knowledge systems we have. Understanding how knowledge is built will allow us to create ideas that go beyond the currently thinkable. This research cuts right to the fundamental questions we all ask about ourselves. How do we come to be the way we are? Why do we think the way we do? An important part of the answer, it turns out, is in the languages we speak.
*Lera Boroditsky is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and editor in chief of Frontiers in Cultural Psychology.
The G-20’s Dead Ideas
Posted on 25 July 2010 | No responses
Why Fiscal Retrenchment is the Wrong Response to the Crisis
Mark Blyth and Neil K. Shenai
MARK BLYTH is Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University. NEIL K. SHENAI is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Published on Foreign Affairs
One of the most well-known lines in John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory notes how politicians think of themselves as reacting to “events” when they are in fact “usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” The latest G-20 meeting, held last month in Toronto, proves Keynes’ wisdom once again — with a twist. The G-20 meeting ended with a collective endorsement of “growth-friendly fiscal consolidation,” which assumes that if G-20 member states tighten their fiscal belts, states will have to borrow less, pay less interest, and, therefore, will not “crowd-out” private-sector growth. Such a strategy may sound sensible, but it relies on the same fallacy of composition that brought on the banking crisis — that by making individual banks safe, you make the system as a whole safe — only in reverse. That is, although it may make sense for any single state (or firm or household) to clean its balance sheet, if all the G-20 states embark on such a course at once, the results could be disastrous. The whole — Keynes’ critical insight — is not equivalent to the sum of its parts. The finance ministers of the G-20 states seem to believe that by retrenching in the middle of a recession, they will somehow improve their states’ balance sheets and thus return to a period of economic growth. Deflation, in other words, is now good for growth. How did we get here?
Less than two years ago, the world’s financial institutions pleaded for a taxpayer-funded bailout of the global financial system, arguing that allowing the largest banks and most globalized firms to fail would lead to a prolonged depression. They got what they wanted: according to the IMF, the 34 states that it classifies as “advanced economies” spent approximately 55 percent of their respective GDPs on capital injections, liability guarantees, and outright purchases of bad assets from the major banks.
Although these dramatic measures may have been distasteful to some, they seem to have worked. The global economy avoided a second Great Depression. Between March 2009, when markets began to rebound, and the present day, average global asset prices have rebounded and the appetite of institutional investors for economic risk has steadily grown.
But even the most Herculean efforts of finance ministers and central bankers could not prevent the financial-market contagion from spilling over into the real economy. Credit tightened, investment fell, and unemployment rose across the world. Here, too, policymakers had a response. Nearly every advanced industrialized country in the world embarked on a policy of Keynesian stimulus to buoy their national economies against prolonged recession and deflation. As Robert Skidelsky, the British economic historian, has put it, “the Master” has returned, pushing aside many of the fiscally conservative tenets of the Washington consensus, which drove IMF and World Bank policy on economic crises for decades.
There was a cost to this Keynesian victory, however. Government finances suffered, with fiscal deficits soaring across Europe and North America. As Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff recently found, this should not have come as a surprise, since banking crises are almost always followed by sovereign debt crises, or at least prolonged periods of fiscal stress and lost output. When the private-sector firms clean up their balance sheets by reducing debt and stockpiling cash, the public sector takes on debt, partly through automatic stabilizers such as unemployment benefits and partly through discretionary spending, including fiscal-stimulus projects. Now, with the real economy suffering, the taxpayer is saving and reducing debt rather than spending, resulting in increasing deficits and fiscal stress on the public side of the ledger.
The global financial crisis has thus taken an ironic turn. The same large multinational financial firms that sought government bailouts are now shocked and surprised by the spending of “profligate” governments. Indeed, these actors are now speculating against the very governments who brought them back to life by shorting their debt. As a consequence, governments across Europe are adopting austerity measures to outflank the positions of these speculators.
Academic commentators such as N. Gregory Mankiw [1] and Jeffrey Sachs [2] are championing these moves, and both have called for the G-20 to focus on balancing budgets and on “pro-growth” austerity. They point to persistently high unemployment and stagnant output as proof of the failure of current policies. Similarly, former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan recently declared that the lack of a rise in the cost of servicing long-term U.S. debt is “regrettable,” since “it is fostering a sense of complacency that can have dire consequences.” But does the blame for persistent unemployment and bloated government finances indeed lie with politicians who fell for Keynesian proscriptions? And, more fundamentally, are austerity policies the right course for the G-20 states?
First, in order to say that the global stimulus policy has failed, it is necessary to consider the counterfactual of no fiscal stimulus at all. There is already a natural experiment of this case: the countries of Eastern Europe that decided not to inject large amounts of liquidity into their national economies. For example, in May 2009, as the United States and Western European countries were consciously expanding public deficits, Latvian President Valdis Zatlers set his government on course for “severe budget stabilization measures” and several “structural reforms,” many of which resemble what the G20 is wishing upon itself today. Yet Latvian GDP fell more than 17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, while unemployment grew to more than 16 percent, and government finances — the theoretical beneficiary of all this belt-tightening — collapsed because of falling tax revenue. These results were replicated from Estonia to Romania with even worse results, suggesting that the G-20 member states should perhaps be careful what they wish for.
Second, financial markets are social phenomena, which means that economic performance is as much determined by market participants’ beliefs as it is by fundamental indicators or textbook policy. In the parlance of technical traders, prices can move on “momentum,” whereby disequilibrating price movements compound one other, further driving market prices away from their true worth — a dynamic that is visible in sovereign debt markets today.
Imagine, for example, a case in which a number of creditors believe that a certain state is likely to become insolvent in the next few months. The state’s creditors would demand more collateral, or yield, for holding the debt, thereby worsening the cash position of the state. Eventually, the pressure from speculators would cause the state to run out of cash, thereby creating the very situation that investors feared — but from which they would also profit through the short selling of bonds. Such a scenario feels eerily like 1991, when George Soros famously made $1 billion in profit by short selling the British pound. And just like in 1991, central banks are following the wrong lesson: rather than calling speculators on their positions, European governments appear to have caved to the pressure and favor austerity over demand management.
It is likely that France, Germany, and the United Kingdom will move to cut their deficits dramatically, which will lead to a rise in eurozone unemployment, a decrease in the purchase of U.S. exports, and a faltering of global economic recovery. Falling economic growth in the G-20 states will further lower consumption and increase unemployment. Meanwhile, the financial sector will see its equity holdings shrink and its balance sheets worsen once again. Such a scenario makes it quite possible that these same financial institutions will argue that the stimulus was not big enough and should be tried again — but now from a more leveraged position. To see a glimpse of such a future, look at Japan: seesawing between spending and retrenchment cost Japan 15 years of growth and employment between 1990 and 2005, when Japan’s economic policymakers were swayed by exactly the same sort of arguments that are ascendant in the G-20 today.
There is no silver bullet to avoid the macroeconomic fallout associated with financial crises. The question, then, is where (and by whom) this pain will be felt. So far, it appears that although the financial sector was largely responsible for creating the $2 trillion in losses since the crisis began, it is determined to avoid paying for it. Instead, the taxpayers that paid to bail these firms out are now being doubly taxed as government services are cut in the name of “growth-friendly fiscal consolidation,” in the words of the G-20. What lies ahead, then, is a harmful populism that allies U.S. Tea Party activists with Greek public-sector unions.
In sum, both of the following statements are true: countercyclical spending worsens government finances, and austerity compounds an already miserable unemployment situation. But cutting spending in the middle of a recession is no solution — especially when market participants conflate stimulus spending with bailouts of the financial system. Refilling a $2 trillion hole in the global financial architecture does not have the same effect on demand as, say, a $2 trillion stimulus package spent on brick-and-mortar projects. Such a conflation damns fiscal stimulus to ineffectiveness — even though a large portion of the stimulus is yet to be spent in the United States and abroad and almost all of the debt accrued since the crisis comes from tax-revenue losses and bailout costs.
It is a shame that many of the most powerful ideas of dead economists are the most fallacious. The Great Depression proved that supply does not create its own demand. The mortgage debacle showed that good and bad money can co-exist quite happily. Although the idea of “austerity” may have the immediate ring of virtue, in the long term it is a vice. Keynes was indeed right, but with a twist. It is not the ideas of dead economists we have to worry about, but rather the dead ideas of very much alive ones.
Israel impide entrar en Gaza a un grupo de diputados socialistas españoles
Posted on 25 July 2010 | No responses
“Estamos indignados. Consideramos un error que Israel trate de ocultar la situación en la región. No somos ninguna flotilla, sino parlamentarios españoles”
EFE – Jesusalén – 25/07/2010
Las autoridades de Israel no han autorizado la entrada hoy en Gaza de un grupo de cuatro diputados socialistas españoles, entre ellos los catalanes Jordi Pedret y Meritxell Cabezón, que pretendía visitar la franja palestina. Según Fátima Aburto, que forma parte de la delegación, las autoridades israelíes comunicaron su decisión a través del Consulado General español en Jerusalén, sin ofrecer explicación alguna.
“Estamos indignados. Consideramos un error que Israel trate de ocultar la situación en la región. Nosotros no somos ninguna flotilla, sino parlamntarios españoles que hemos venido en coordinación con la UNRWA”, (agencia de Naciones Unidas para los refugiados palestinos), ha subrayado Aburto. La diputada socialista entiende que “si tienen que ocultar la verdad es porque algo muy malo hay detrás” y considera que el que no les dejen entrar en el territorio palestino “es bastante sospechoso”.
En su muro de Facebook de Aburto se puede leer: “Ya esta! No nos permiten entrar en Gaza porque ‘han tomado una decisión definitiva’ [sic] El interrumpo del Congreso de los Diputados trabajamos para la solución de dos estados, por una paz justa y por la seguridad de la zona. Es un inmenso error crear sospechas y enemigos donde no los hay, una ofensa a los representantes… de un país amigo”.
La delegación -que pertenece al llamado Intergrupo Parlamentario por Palestina y está integrada también por los diputados José Antonio Peres Tápies, Jordi Pedret y Meritxell Cabezón-, aprovechará su viaje para visitar proyectos de cooperación en el territorio palestino de Cisjorania. Pedret, coordinador del Intergrupo y diputado del PSC, explicó que la delegación “seguirá con el programa visitando los proyectos de la UNRWA fuera de Gaza y tendrá también encuentros con movimientos sociales y con palestinos e israelíes que trabajan por la paz”.
Los diputados, que llegaron ayer a Israel y permanecerán hasta el jueves en la región, se desplazará con ese objetivo a ciudades cisjordanas como Ramala, Belén y Hebrón. En esa última ciudad, única de Cisjordania con colonos judíos, los parlamentarios españoles irán acompañados por miembros de la organización “Breaking the Silence” (Rompiendo el Silencio), formada por ex militares y militares en la reserva israelíes y que denuncia los abusos del Ejército de Israel en los territorios ocupados palestinos. Israel autoriza con cuentagotas la visita a Gaza de políticos occidentales que pretenden conocer sobre el terreno la situación en la franja palestina.
La última personalidad occidental que ha visitado ese territorio, sometido desde hace tres años a un bloqueo por parte de Israel, fue a mediados del presente mes la Alta Representante de Política Exterior y de Seguridad de la UE, la británica Catherine Ashton.
Chávez e Uribe no confronto final…
Posted on 25 July 2010 | No responses
Por Frank Jack Daniel
CARACAS (Reuters) – O relacionamento mais rebelde da América Latina está acabando com muito estardalhaço, e as consequências do último confronto entre o presidente da Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, e o presidente da Colômbia, Álvaro Uribe, que está para deixar o cargo, poderão deixar uma marca duradoura nas relações regionais.
Depois de oito anos de disputas com o socialista Chávez, o aliado dos EUA, Uribe chegará ao fim do seu segundo mandato no dia 7 de agosto, deixando um legado bilateral de diplomacia estremecida, relações comerciais rompidas e um conflito em relação aos acampamentos da guerrilha colombiana na Venezuela, que vai pairar sobre a América Latina durante anos.
Chávez rompeu relações com a Colômbia na quinta-feira, depois que o enviado de Bogotá junto à OEA fez um veemente ataque à Venezuela, por supostamente abrigar 1.500 rebeldes colombianos esquerdistas.
Chávez, um crítico feroz dos EUA, disse que a acusação da Colômbia foi um pretexto para uma possível invasão da Venezuela, com o apoio dos EUA.
“Culpo Uribe, doente de tanto ódio, ele irá direto para a lixeira da história”, disse Chávez.
Ex-militar, Chávez sempre negou apoiar as Forças Armadas Revolucionárias da Colômbia, ou rebeldes da FARC, apesar da insistência da Colômbia em dizer que relatórios da sua inteligência mostram ligações claras.
Mês que vem, Uribe passa a presidência ao ex-ministro de defesa, Juan Manuel Santos, um companheiro de idéias conservadoras, que pretende melhorar as relações com a Venezuela, para recuperar os milhões de dólares que foram perdidos no comércio bilateral.
É possível que isso aconteça assim que Santos assuma o poder, já que as economias dos dois países sofreram com a perda de quase 7 bilhões de dólares anuais.
Mas o enviado de Uribe, Luis Alfonso Hoyos, mostrou fotos e mapas de supostos acampamentos da FARC na Venezuela, no Conselho Permanente da OEA, enquanto pedia veementemente que uma comissão internacional seja formada para checar a veracidade das informações, uma ação que busca fazer pressão internacional sobre Chávez.
“Mesmo que Santos consiga começar uma nova etapa nas relações entre os dois países, caçar as FARC no território Venezuelano será um problema, que a partir de agora passará a ser uma prioridade estratégica dos colombianos”, disse Robert Munks, diretor da Jane’s Country Risk para as Américas.
CORTE CRIMINAL
Uribe vem ameaçando há tempos levar Chávez à Corte Criminal de Haia pelo seu apoio ao ‘terrorismo’, e agora está fazendo movimentos nessa direção.
“Primeiro Uribe precisa tentar usar todas as medidas legais contra Chávez, inclusive a OEA, antes de chegar à Haia”, disseram em uma nota, analistas Venezuelanos da Global Source Partners.
“Esses objetivos explicam a veemência com que Hoyos apresentou as provas contra Chavez e listou os tratados internacionais violados pelo governo venezuelano.”
Chávez, herdeiro de Fidel Castro do cargo de principal problema dos EUA na América Latina, e Uribe, um conservador que aceita ajuda militar de Washington, jamais poderiam ser bons vizinhos.
Surpreendentemente, eles conseguiram superar suas diferenças durante anos, depois que Uribe tomou posse em 2002 e firmaram relações comerciais nas quais fazendas e fábricas colombianas exportavam seus bens para a Venezuela.
Tudo mudou em março de 2008, quando um bombardeio colombiano em um acampamento guerrilheiro no Equador matou um alto comandante das FARC e mais de outras 20 pessoas.
O Equador cortou relações com Bogotá depois do ataque e Chávez mandou tanques até a fronteira da Venezuela com a Colômbia. Praticamente todos os países sul americanos condenaram o ataque.
No ano passado, as relações pioraram ainda mais, depois que a Colômbia fez um acordo permitindo que os soldados dos EUA tenham acesso às suas bases militares para lutar contra os rebeldes e as drogas. Chávez ordenou que as relações comerciais fossem interrompidas.
Agora, apesar de dizer que tem provas concretas da presença da guerrilha na Venezuela, escolheu o caminho da diplomacia barulhenta, em vez de uma ação militar –um sinal de que a Colômbia possa estar cautelosa em relação à resposta de Chavez a qualquer ataque.
Mas Uribe também espera conseguir isolar Chávez, se convencer os outros governos sul americanos que a Venezuela apoia o ‘terrorismo’ e representa uma ameaça à região.
Um encontro do bloco regional Unasul (União das Nações Sul Americanas), que acontecerá nos próximos dias, será o primeiro teste para saber se essa estratégia vai funcionar. A Colômbia conta com o apoio dos governos conservadores do Chile e do Peru, mas a região ainda é dominada por líderes com maiores afinidades com Chávez.
“Um jogo internacional jogado por aliados venezuelanos e colombianos começou. Os amigos da Venezuela, principalmente, o Brasil e a república Dominicana, provavelmente trabalharão para restabelecer a normalidade”, disse a Global Source Partners.
Colômbia diz que não é mais refém comercial da Venezuela
Posted on 25 July 2010 | No responses
BOGOTÁ (Reuters) – A Colômbia disse nesta sexta-feira que a decisão da Venezuela de romper relações diplomáticas não terá nenhum impacto adicional sobre a economia, e que os comerciantes da zona de fronteira terão direito a um programa de ajuda.
O comércio entre os dois países despencou de cerca de 6,1 bilhões de dólares em 2008 para 4 bilhões em 2009 por causa de restrições impostas pela Venezuela como retaliação por um acordo militar entre Bogotá e Washington.
Na quinta-feira, o presidente da Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, anunciou o rompimento total das relações devido às acusações colombianas de que ele seria tolerante com a presença de guerrilheiros de esquerda no território da Venezuela.
A decisão provocou alarme entre comerciantes da zona fronteiriça.
“Em julho do ano passado perdemos o comércio, já não somos reféns do comércio, já não nos podem chantagear dizendo que vão fechar a fronteira e o comércio”, disse o ministro colombiano de Comércio, Indústria e Turismo, Luis Guillermo Plata.
Ele anunciou medidas especiais para aliviar a situação de comerciantes e industriais na região. “Vamos fazer uma feira nacional em Cúcuta (cidade fronteiriça com a Venezuela) para que a Colômbia compre (da) Colômbia.”
Analistas estimaram que o rompimento do comércio com a Venezuela representará uma redução anual de 1 ponto percentual no Produto Interno Bruto (PIB).
Mas a Colômbia demonstrou capacidade para se recuperar do impacto, diversificando seus mercados. De janeiro a maio deste ano, suas exportações subiram 26,6 por cento em relação ao mesmo período do ano anterior, chegando a 16,1 bilhões de dólares.
Nesta sexta-feira, o Banco Central elevou sua previsão de crescimento econômico, da faixa de 2 a 4 por cento para 3,5 a 5,5 por cento. A nova estimativa já incorpora uma queda de 1,2 bilhão de dólares nas exportações colombianas para a Venezuela neste ano.
Será que uma guerra se aproxima?
Posted on 24 July 2010 | No responses
Coreia do Norte fala em “guerra sagrada” contra EUA e o Sul
SEUL (Reuters) – A Coreia do Norte disse nesta sexta-feira que vai iniciar uma “guerra sagrada” contra os Estados Unidos e a Coreia do Sul “a qualquer momento necessário”, valendo-se do seu arsenal nuclear como forma de dissuasão contra os “temerários” exercícios militares dos dois países.
A poderosa Comissão Nacional de Defesa norte-coreana voltou a negar em nota que o país tenha sido responsável pelo naufrágio de uma corveta sul-coreana em março, e que poderia ter de retaliar contra Estados Unidos e Coreia do Sul, que iniciam no domingo exercícios militares no mar Amarelo.
“O Exército e o povo da RPDC (República Popular Democrática da Coreia, nome oficial do país) vão começar uma guerra sagrada retaliatória contra os imperialistas dos EUA e as forças títeres sul-coreanas (que estão) deliberadamente empurrando a situação para a beira da guerra”, disse a comissão em nota divulgada no sábado (pela hora local, tarde de sexta em Brasília).
A nota foi parte da ofensiva verbal de Pyongyang contra uma recente investigação promovida pela Coreia do Sul que apontou a responsabilidade norte-coreana no naufrágio, que matou 46 marinheiros.
Graças à ajuda da China, a Coreia do Norte conseguiu escapar a uma reprimenda do Conselho de Segurança da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU), que condenou o incidente sem citar diretamente Pyongyang.
Os EUA rejeitaram a proposta da Coreia do Norte para a retomada de negociações multilaterais, e na quarta-feira anunciaram novas sanções contra os líderes comunistas do país.
Nesta sexta-feira, o porta-voz do Departamento de Estado norte-americano, P.J. Crowley, disse que os EUA não estavam interessados em uma guerra retórica com Pyongyang. “O que precisamos da Coreia do Norte são palavras menos provocativas e mais ações construtivas”.
Durante um fórum multilateral nesta semana no Vietnã, a Coreia do Norte ameaçou reações físicas contra os exercícios militares planejados pelos EUA e a Coreia do Sul.
Corte de Haia julga independência do Kosovo legal
Posted on 24 July 2010 | No responses
Por Swissinfo
A Corte Internacional de Justiça de Haia, na Holanda, julgou nesta quinta-feira (22/7) que a proclamação unilateral de independência do Kosovo, em 2008, é conforme ao direito internacional.
A decisão não é compulsória, mas vai certamente estimular outros países a reconhecer o Estado independente. A Suíça foi um dos primeiros entre os 69 países que já reconheceram o Kosovo.
“Nenhuma lei internacional proibia ao Kosovo de declarar sua independência” em 17 de fevereiro de 2008. Como justificou hoje o presidente da Corte Internacional de Justiça (CIJ), Hisahi Owada, “não há norma no direito internacional que não permita declarações de independência.”
Depois da abertura das audiências, no início de dezembro de 2009, a CIJ consultou a Sérvia, o Kosovo e mais vinte e nove Estados, entre eles os Estados Unidos e a Rússia.
Essa decisão é unicamente consultiva e será submetida à Assembleia Geral das Nações Unidas em setembro. De qualquer maneira, a decisão é vista como uma posição favorável ao reconhecimento do Kosovo já que, na maioria dos casos, os julgamentos da corte costumam ser aceitos.
A posição tomada, dois anos e meio (outubro de 2008) depois que o governo sérvio solicitou à CIJ julgar a declaração de independência, reconhece o Kosovo independente. Ela também encoraja a adesão do novo Estado às instituições internacionais.
A decisão da corte era bastante esperada pela comunidade internacional, em particular pelos 69 países que haviam reconhecido a independência do Kosovo. Esse grupo inclui os Estados Unidos e 22 dos 27 membros da União Europeia. A Suíça foi um dos primeiros países a reconhecer a independência do pequeno Estado, dez dias apenas após a sua declaração.
Agora é possível que outros países também considerem a ex-província sérvia de maioria albanesa como um Estado independente.
Independência frágil
Em março de 2007, no Conselho de Segurança da ONU, americanos e europeus já apoiavam o plano de independência do Kosovo, enquanto a Rússia se opunha. Porém, foi apenas um ano mais tarde, em 17 de fevereiro de 2008, que o Parlamento do Kosovo proclamou a independência do país.
A pedido de Belgrado, a CIJ foi solicitada a julgar a legitimidade da independência e sua conformidade com o direito internacional. Segundo a Sérvia, a independência do Kosovo viola o princípio da soberania e da integridade territorial inscrita na Carta das Nações Unidas. E seu reconhecimento criaria um precedente para outros países onde existem movimentos independentistas.
Hoje o CIJ refutou os argumentos de Belgrado. Quanto à questão do precedente, ela já havia sido descartada por inúmeros países, que lembram que o Kosovo é um caso único, depois de vários fracassos de negociações com a Sérvia. Eles lembram também as violências em massa cometidas pelo poder sérvio no início dos anos 1990.
De fato, em 1998 as forças militares enviadas pelo presidente iugoslavo Slobodan Milosevic com o intuito de reprimir o Exército de liberação do Kosovo, ocasionaram a morte de milhares de albaneses que constituem 90% da população do enclave. Os conflitos provocaram o deslocamento de centenas de milhares de kosovares.
Concluído por uma série de bombardeios promovidos por forças da OTAN para obrigar as forças sérvias a se retirar, esse conflito selou as tensões entre as duas populações principais do Kosovo.
Desde então, nenhum compromisso foi encontrado entre sérvios e albaneses. Após esse episódio sangrento, milhares de sérvios sofreram represálias por parte de separatistas albaneses. Inúmeras revoltas anti-sérvias foram desencadeadas, especialmente em 2004, tendo como resultado centenas de feridos.
Suíça também envolvida
A posição tomada pela CIJ também é positiva para a Suíça, um dos primeiros países a reconhecer a independência do Kosovo. Ela inaugurou, em 2008, sua embaixada em Prístina. Mas desde 2005, a ministra suíça das Relações Exteriores, Micheline Calmy-Rey, havia levantado em Belgrado e Prístina a possibilidade de independência do Kosovo.
Após o anúncio de independência, Pascal Couchepin, na época presidente da Confederação Helvética, declarou à imprensa que a “clarificação do status do Kosovo era uma condição para a estabilidade e desenvolvimento econômico e político da região dos Bálcãs.”
A Suíça, que mantém uma relação especial com essa região e, sobretudo com o Kosovo, está certamente safisfeita com a tomada de posição do CIJ, sobretudo frente a considerável população de imigrantes do Kosovo que vive no país, muitos deles refugiados políticos perseguidos pela Sérvia. A Suíça. portanto, tem grande interesse na estabilização política e econômica do pequeno Estado.
CORTE INTERNACIONAL DE JUSTIÇA
O Tribunal Internacional de Justiça ou Corte Internacional de Justiça é o principal órgão judiciário da Organização das Nações Unidas. Tem sede em Haia, nos Países Baixos. Por isso, também costuma ser denominada como Corte da Haia ou Tribunal da Haia. Sua sede é o Palácio da Paz.
Foi instituído pelo artigo 92 da Carta das Nações Unidas: « A Corte Internacional de Justiça constitui o órgão judiciário principal das Nações Unidas. Funciona de acordo com um Estatuto estabelecido com base no Estatuto da Corte Permanente de Justiça Internacional e anexado à presente Carta da qual faz parte integrante.”
KOSOVO
O Kosovo é um território disputado na península balcânica correspondente, grosso modo, à região conhecida como Dardânia na Antiguidade.
O território fez parte dos impérios Romano, Bizantino, Búlgaro, Sérvio e Otomano e, no século XX, passou às mãos do Reino da Sérvia, do Império Italiano e da Iugoslávia.
Após a falha das negociações internacionais para atingir um consenso sobre o estado constititucional aceitável, o governo provisório de Kosovo declarou-se unilateralmente um país independente da Sérvia em 17 de Fevereiro de 2008, sendo reconhecido no dia seguinte pelos Estados Unidos e alguns países europeus, como a França, Portugal e a Alemanha; porém, o “país” ainda é reivindicado pela Sérvia e não recebeu o reconhecimento de outros países como a Rússia e Espanha. (Wikipédia em português)
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