avelloso.com

Sexta-feira, Setembro 14, 2001

Airport Insecurity… And Why Manhood Cures Terrorism
Como era de se esperar, o Front Page tem publicado artigos péssimos sobre o atentado terrorista (como o tolo e decepcionante ataque de Myles Kantor a Justin Raimondo e Harry Browne, já devidamente respondido tanto por Raimondo quanto por Browne; e a sua "citação do dia" de hoje, na qual Ann Coulter defende a invasão de todos os países islâmicos, o assassinato de todos os seus presidentes e a conversão à força - um supra-paradoxo - de todos os seus cidadãos), mas há um muito bom, no qual Duncan Maxwell Anderson comenta um aspecto que poucos têm comentado e do qual as empresas aéreas nem querem ouvir falar: a absurda falha de segurança nos aeroportos e aviões, que permitiu que os seqüestros ocorressem.
O plano de ação sugerido pelas empresas é um aumento nas restrições a todos os tipos de "armas" (você logo entenderá as aspas):
"I heard John Lawless, public safety director for Logan Airport, explaining the Sisyphean program by which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hopes to make flying in Boston safe. It includes banning all knives, including plastic ones, from the secure areas of the airport, even at food concessions. That seems likely to make airports more vulnerable, rather than less. Everyone in the perimeter will be sufficiently disarmed that all it will take to hijack a plane is a case of bad breath.
"One might reply that Logan’s security guards (who henceforth will be state policemen) will have weapons. Or that an armed Sky Marshal will be aboard each plane. But consider that guns can be swiped from holsters. In an airport or plane sterilized of all other weaponry, a terrorist with an officer’s Glock becomes the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind — facing a populace armed with plastic spoons.
"I hesitate to say that the logical conclusion is to force all passengers to board planes naked and unconscious, because someone might take me seriously."
Mas sempre que um terrorista violar essas normas de segurança - e quase sempre essa possibilidade existe - ele será senhor de um ambiente em que todos os outros passageiros estão indefesos. A solução, pois, não é a insegurança geral, mas garantir que os passageiros possam defender-se. Anderson argumenta que, nisto como em tudo o mais, a centralização é o problema, não a solução. A solução é simples:
"Rather than seeking the diminishing returns of intensified control over the innocent, surely it would be simpler and safer to use the leverage of freedom to intimidate the guilty:
"Allow any airline passenger to carry any sidearm of his choosing—concealed or unconcealed.
"Anyone who tried to commandeer a plane would find himself surrounded by hostile fire, and enjoy a short career. There might be a risk of injury or death to some innocent passengers from stray shots or cabin punctures. But isn’t that a better risk than that of losing all 300 passengers and thousands of other innocents on the ground?
"But it’s more likely that there would be no in-air firefights at all. If the FAA solemnly announced that passengers were free to carry private firearms, that would end discussion of the plane-hijack option among terrorists, whose greatest fear is to die in humiliating failure.
"Some terrorists would try to think of other approaches to terror, of course. But the spell would be broken. For a small band of lunatics to hold a huge crowd helpless and sear the psyche of the civilized world, the crowd must be unarmed. The whole warped project of the terrorist — using a small piece of technology to make large numbers of people sit still for ideas they would otherwise laugh at — cannot survive the democracy of force."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 5:28 PM

Ideals Are Terrorists' Most Deadly Weapons
Soberbo artigo de Wendy McElroy sobre a característica específica da ação terrorista: a consideração de uma "culpa coletiva" por um determinado ato. Assim como os anarquistas russos punham bombas em restaurantes caros para lutar contra "a burguesia" - já que ninguém que pudesse comer em um restaurante poderia ser inocente - os terroristas árabes consideram "os americanos" em geral como culpados pelas ações malignas de seus políticos:
"The strategy of punishing collective guilt dates back (at least) to Bolshevik activism in pre-Soviet Russia where communist anarchists threw bombs into crowded restaurants on the assumption that only capitalists could afford to eat in such establishments. Anyone who died was a member of the class that oppressed workers. Women, children, the accidental guest, waiters—whoever was in the restaurant was part of the problem and guilty.
"The strategy was called 'propaganda by deed'.
"Similarly, the fanatics who dove into the WTC did not believe they were killing innocent Americans. To them, no such category existed. Average Americans—the woman in a grocery store, the child in grade school, your neighbor mowing his lawn—are collectively responsible for every act of the American government. Each is held personally guilty for the bombing of hospitals in Iraq, the plight of Palestinians ...virtually every global wrong.
"All Americans are guilty simply by being an American. To the terrorists, there were no innocent people in the WTC towers."
Escrevendo na Fox News, é compreensível que ela não comente que exatamente esse tem sido o plano de ação do governo americano, e que a banalização do bombardeio de civis no século XX é um outro aspecto dessa mentalidade terrorista. Mas ela aponta os riscos de que, em sua retaliação, os americanos sejam novamente movidos pela noção de culpa coletiva, e punam árabes inocentes - perpetuando, assim, o ciclo de violência que originou o terrorismo:
"In the justified and healthy rage that will follow the murder of innocent, average Americans, I hope the fury is turned against those who are individually responsible and not against classes of people. Not Arabs in general, nor the innocent, average citizens of other nations. To do so would only perpetuate the vicious cycle from which terrorism was born in the first place."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 5:16 PM

Dealing with the preliminaries
Importantíssimas observações de Alan Bock sobre o furor jingoísta e sobre aqueles que apostam em mais centralização e mais estatismo para combater o terrorismo:
"I wonder if the strike on the World Trade Center was intended as an angry, but largely symbolic, gesture against 'globalization' or whether the terrorists really thought that destroying or maiming those two buildings would actually cripple the U.S. economy? For those who think in hierarchical, top-down ways, it might seem feasible, given that so many corporate headquarters and so many top people work in those buildings.
"But I suspect that the largely decentralized market system that we still have in the United States (despite the decades-long efforts of governments of both parties to centralize it and manage it from the top) will prove much more resilient than most observers expect. And sure enough, on Thursday, despite the markets having been closed since Tuesday, more than $2 billion in venture capital was raised for various ventures, while Main Street continued to function remarkably well in the absence of Wall Street.
"As radio commentator and host Lowell Ponte pointed out in his recent column for frontpage.com, decentralization is likely to turn out to be one of our most effective defenses against terrorism. He notes that people used to cluster in castles for defense in the old days, but with the invention of gunpowder and cannon this became counterproductive. Large cities, in this era, are similarly tempting targets. (...)
"As the war progresses, it is virtually inevitable that we will be asked to give up more and more of our freedoms to a centralized state. It is important that at least some of us continually remind our would-be leaders that decentralization, independence and freedom are not only what make this country worth fighting for, but a positive form of defense against foreign domination."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 5:08 PM

This is no pearl harbor
Mostrando pela enésima vez que é o melhor repórter político em Washington, Robert Novak analisa os efeitos desastrosos para a política externa americana (que provavelmente ficará ainda mais vinculada a Israel) do atentado terrorista:
"Stratfor.com, the private intelligence company, reported Tuesday: 'The big winner today, intentionally or not, is the state of Israel.' Whatever distance Bush wanted between U.S. and Israeli policy, it was eliminated by terror. The spectacle on television of Palestinian youths and mothers dancing in the streets of East Jerusalem over the slaughter of Americans will not soon be forgotten. The United States and Israel are brought ever closer in a way that cannot improve long-term U.S. policy objectives."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 5:05 PM

The Jingoes and the Social Reformers
Ao final de um brilhante artigo sobre a relação entre jingoístas e socialistas, Joseph Stromberg faz o seguinte comentário irônico:
"Government would grow, at home and abroad, with each sphere reacting upon and influencing the other. Empire and reform could go hand in hand. The incompatibility of empire with our inherited freedoms at home is nicely illustrated by the Cuban workshop. I leave the larger drawbacks of empire to one side, as it may be illegal to mention them a few days from now."
A referência aos "larger drawbacks" é óbvia, e é interessante a sugestão de que, continando o furor jingoísta, artigos como os que tenho indicado, que explicam que o conflito não é apenas um confronto das forças do bem contra o mal e que condenam a possibilidade de retaliações em larga escala (ou seja, de mais terrorismo), podem ser proibidos nos EUA. Não seria a primeira vez; muitos foram para a cadeia durante a Primeira Guerra por expressar opiniões semelhantes. Essa é a ação civilizatória dos "falcões"...
postado por Alvaro Velloso 5:02 PM

Quinta-feira, Setembro 13, 2001

In the Aftermath of Slaughter
É claro que, apesar das observações que devem ser feitas sobre o curso insano que a política externa americana tem tomado, compreender o que se passou não é justificar a ação dos terroristas. Nas palavras de William Anderson:
"While I agree that the U.S. Government has been meddling too many times for too long in the affairs of too many nations, there can be no justification for what was perpetrated Tuesday. The U.S. Government has done its share of evil, but we should also not forget that the governments of those nations that helped plan this attack are also evil and oppressive, and the people who live under their yoke are not by any means free. Our meddling cannot make them any more free (make them less free, perhaps), but the murder of innocents is simply reprehensible.
"That being said, as I listened to news reports of this slaughter and destruction, I could not help but remember the U.S. bombing of a passenger train in Serbia three years ago, or the slamming of U.S. missiles into hospitals, marketplaces, and the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Those people also were innocents, and they had friends and family just as those who perished in the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.
"For that matter, those who died at Waco and elsewhere at the hands of the U.S. Government also had friends and loved ones, yet the same politicians who call today for war on somebody were the same one to endorse the wholesale killing of innocents at our hands, calling it 'collateral damage'. If we cannot understand the grief of those who died at official U.S. hands, we cannot fully understand the horrible events of September 11. (...)
"My gut reaction when I saw the carnage and saw pictures of Palestinians and Egyptians celebrating was to mutter, "Kill them all." Yet, those people have been muttering the same things about us for many years. We have killed many more of them than they have killed of us. (...)
"I believe that we best express our grief and sorrow by identifying not only with our own but also with those who have been our victims. We think of those who die daily in Baghdad, Jerusalem, or Colombia (in the drug war) and the victims and survivors of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo who were slaughtered wholesale by U.S. bombers not because those places were useful military targets but because our government wanted to show others just how capable of killing we really were."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 1:27 PM

A beacon, not an empire
Jon Basil Utley escreveu, em junho de 2001:
"Imagine how long the Roman empire would have lasted if there had been a Visigoth or Egyptian lobby pushing its agenda on Roman foreign policy. The Roman Empire resulted in the end of the Roman republic and freedom. The English empire failed when the electoral franchise grew so much that voters could thwart the elites' rule. Still, many conservatives – who argue that the government can't run a nursery – have fallen for the concept that it can run the world.
"Further confusing American interests, there are also elements in Washington that look at real or imagined threats abroad with great favor. The old military-industrial complex has grown to become the overwhelming military-industrial-congressional establishment. Its power is reflected by the difficulty of closing unnecessary bases and the wasteful weapons purchasing process, as evidenced by ordering weapons before they are fully tested, e.g. the ill-fated Osprey helicopter, manufactured in 42 states and congressional districts. Yet we imagine wars without casualties, with exciting 'bang bang' for TV, and with no hurtful consequences for our homeland. Foreigners are not going to oblige us, but more likely will wage wars of terrorism from unknown quarters, possibly even with horrendous biological weapons which are fast being developed."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 1:23 PM

Beware of Allies
Em novembro de 2000, Joseph Sobran escreveu o seguinte:
"Countless people are 'anti-American' in the sense that they don’t want to be ruled or bullied by this country and its allies and clients; but they aren’t anti-American in the sense that they would wish us ill, let alone try to hurt us, if we minded our own business.
"The wisest foreign policy is simply to avoid making enemies. That should be too obvious to need saying, and it used to be this country’s policy. It was called 'neutrality.' But we abandoned it and got into two world wars that created bigger problems than those that caused them.
"After World War I, many Americans drew the appropriate lesson: stay out of foreign wars. They are now censured as 'isolationists.' That’s what you get for having learned from experience.
"But isolationism died at Pearl Harbor, when the foolish Japanese attack gave Franklin Roosevelt his wish by plunging Americans into a war frenzy. So far, fortunately, the 'terrorist' attacks haven’t disturbed our slumbers. Our enemies are real but puny. But our extravagant military supremacy makes war seem a more remote possibility than it really is.
"It’s not so much our enemies as our allies that we should worry about. Some of them want war, and they will never rest until they can provoke our enemies into provoking us."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 1:17 PM

Quarta-feira, Setembro 12, 2001

Notas e observações alheias sobre o atentado nos EUA
Não comentei nada sobre o ataque terrorista aos EUA ontem porque, em casos como este, creio ser sempre melhor esperar o calor do momento passar e não fazer comentários baseados na emoção (como muitos perfeitamente idiotas que tenho lido), e sim numa reflexão cuidadosa a respeito dos fatos. Meus comentários deverão sair amanhã no Indivíduo, e eu ia tratar de outros assuntos aqui hoje, mas, dada a grande quantidade de e-mails que tenho recebido sobre este assunto, concluí que tratar de outros assuntos agora simplesmente não despertaria a atenção dos leitores.
Ontem, por volta de uma hora da tarde, com todas as redes de TV cobrindo o tema ao vivo, um amigo comentou no telefone que nenhuma delas apresentava fato nenhum, só comentários. Mas havia - e há - poucos fatos a apresentar e, a esta altura, eles já são amplamente conhecidos. Apresento, pois, links (com trechos principais) para mais comentários, tirados principalmente dos dois melhores sites de comentários da internet (LewRockwell.com e AntiWar.com), esperando com isso não aumentar a quantidade de tagarelice, mas trazer alguma sanidade aos debates
The Unknown Enemy - Joseph Sobran
"But, as I write, hours after the attacks, we don’t know who is at war with us. We may never know. Who has reason to hate this country? Only a few hundred million people – Arabs, Muslims, Serbs, and numerous others whose countries have been hit by U.S. bombers.
"Imagine hating a country so much that you were willing to cross an ocean and carry out an elaborate revenge against its people, killing yourself in the process. This is something far more than the sort of ideological anti-Americanism that leads student mobs to throw stones at U.S. embassies abroad; that’s kid stuff. This is an obsessive, fanatical, soul-consuming hatred.
"Foreigners aren’t quite real to Americans, and most Americans are unaware of how profoundly their government antagonizes much of the human race. We are easy-going people who generally have no idea how bullying we seem to foreigners. Until now, we have had no experience of what the U.S. Government has so often inflicted on others. Now, at least, we have an inkling of what it feels like. (...)
"Your bitterest enemy may have his reasons for hating your guts. You may not think they are good or sufficient reasons, but you’d better take them into account. If he has any brains, he may find a way to hurt you.
"The United States is now a global empire that wants to think of itself as a universal benefactor, and is nonplussed when foreigners don’t see it that way. None of the earlier empires of this world, as far as I know, shared this delusion; the Romans, the Mongols, the British, the Russians and Soviets didn’t expect to rule and to be loved at the same time. Why do we?"
Reaping the whirlwind - Gene Callahan
"For many people, Tuesday morning was like waking to find you were on the set of a disaster movie. The images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, of the twin towers collapsing, of panic in the streets of Manhattan, all had a dream-like unreality to them. It was only on finding that someone you knew might be involved – killed, injured, trapped in the melee – that the reality of what was occurring would hit like a punch in the stomach.
"But this movie set is an all-too-familiar scene to people around the world, outside the borders of our country. We have seen their faces as they searched the rubble for the bodies of their family members, or as they huddled in squalid refugee camps. We have flipped on CNN and watched our government bombing their cities as though we were watching the latest Stallone flick. This was the kind of thing that happened to people far away, with too many consonants in their names or, for God's sake, towels on their heads.
"But those feelings of terror were felt by real people, not extras hired for the filming of American Hegemony II. Those things can happen to you, too. You may find yourself, dizzy with despair and grief, watching rescue workers dig through a pile of stone, looking for someone you love. You may wonder if you will see your children again, or find yourself explaining to them how death may suddenly rain from the sky.
"Today's events should bring home a simple, clear message: It is time to stop the madness. It is time to refuse to lend any support to the ravaging of innocent lives in the world-domination games of the power-mad. It is time for the citizens of every nation to tell their governments that their military power exists only to defend them, and not to make the citizens of other nations behave the way some 'leaders' feel they ought."
Democrats should not fight fire with fire - Simon Jenkins
"America and its allies have 'taken up the white man’s burden' with honest intent. They have done so aware of Kipling’s feared reward, 'the blame of those ye better,/ The hate of those ye guard'. The wrong turns of Western policy in the Middle East may help to explain yesterday’s slaughter. They in no way excuse it. Nobody should want to see America terrorised into isolationism.
"To seek revenge would be senseless. America showed after attacks on its East African embassies in 1998 that it regards revenge as a legitimate weapon in its geopolitical arsenal. The bombing of Afghanistan was ineffective. That of Sudan was illegal and militarily indefensible. Revenge is not the response of a sophisticated political community. America above all should know Thomas Paine’s plea, to 'lay the axe to the root and teach governments humanity . . . sanguinary punishments corrupt mankind'.
"To react to an atrocity by abandoning the customary self-control of democracy is to help the terrorist to do his work. He wants America to behave as the regional bully of local demonology. To extend further America’s Middle East economic santions, isolation and military aggression offers succour to the terrorist. These policies have not hastened the spread of democracy or stability through the region. They have, if anything, done the reverse. They should be replaced with policies of engagement, trade, friendship and contact.
"The message of yesterday’s incident is that, for all its horror, it does not and must not be allowed to matter. It is a human disaster, an outrage, an atrocity, an unleashing of the madness of which the world will never be rid. But it is not politically significant. It does not tilt the balance of world power one inch. It is not an act of war. America’s leadership of the West is not diminished by it. The cause of democracy is not damaged, unless we choose to let it be damaged."
When will we learn? - Harry Browne
"Our foreign policy has been insane for decades. It was only a matter of time until Americans would have to suffer personally for it. It is a terrible tragedy of life that the innocent so often have to suffer for the sins of the guilty.
"When will we learn that we can't allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?
"President Bush has authorized continued bombing of innocent people in Iraq. President Clinton bombed innocent people in the Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Serbia. President Bush Senior invaded Iraq and Panama. President Reagan bombed innocent people in Libya and invaded Grenada. And on and on it goes.
"Did we think the people who lost their families and friends and property in all that destruction would love America for what happened?"
American Interventionism & the Terrorist Threat - Jon Basil Utley
"In short, one almost never hears in Washington from either Party that foreigners might have legitimate grievances against us. Half a million dead children in Iraq, Palestinian teenagers raging against American-supplied tanks, Serbs without electricity and running water or diseased or ruined and jobless from our bombing, assorted Moslems who blame America for their dictatorships and misery, Colombians with relatives killed by those aided by America. The list of potential enemies grows and grows. Even Basque terrorists now look at America as their enemy after President Bush, during his recent visit, casually promised to aid Spain's government with electronic surveillance. They all now have reason to do us harm, they all want America out of their countries, 'out of their faces', in street language. It’s not rocket science.
"Right now, we have training missions in 60 to 70 nations, usually teaching counterinsurgency. Even Albanian guerrillas have now been trained by U.S. Special Forces. The military likes training missions because they build relationships with foreign junior officers all over the world. The Pentagon seems to have a clear field to determine which nations it wants to work with. But many nations also have those who are resisting local governments' tyranny, who then see American forces as their enemies. American ambassadors, I was told in Peru last March, don't have authority over assorted semiautonomous agencies – mainly military, FBI and drug war personnel – and often don't even know what those agencies are doing in the nations where they are stationed."
The Unending War Comes Home - Ryan McMaken
"What is needed now is a long hard look at the way that the United States conducts its affairs abroad. Senator Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has uttered some of the few intelligible words in this aftermath by encouraging a pause to think about the need for a reasonable response and to refuse to surrender American liberty to calls for an all-out war against terrorism.
"Naturally, the fact that the United States has perpetrated many crimes against foreign nations does not mean that innocent American civilians deserved to die, nor does it diminish the barbarity of these terrorist acts. What should be remembered, however, is that these acts are in response to equally barbarous acts perpetrated by the United States against innocent civilians abroad, and if we are serious about avoiding escalating terrorist war, we must refuse to cow to whatever the defense industry and the Congress demand to keep their war-happy interest groups content.
"Much has been made of this attack as being a 'second Pearl Harbor' and the governor of Colorado even used the tired old line about awakening a sleeping giant. The problem is that the giant has not been sleeping at all, but has been fully exercising its power, and it now finally beginning to feel the effects of wielding that power."
Reflections on the World Trade Center attack - Bob Murphy
"Soon enough, the conventional wisdom had been established, and every guest repeated some variant of two themes. 'No one could have imagined this.' Sure they could have. The people who plotted the attack had no problem imagining it. Are they smarter than the strategic wizards in the Pentagon?
“'This is an attack on our democracy'. No it isn’t. I don’t see people flying planes into Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower, and England and France are democracies, last I checked. This is an attack on the United States and its global empire."
The price of empire - Alan Bock
"Chalmers Johnson points out one more phenomenon that makes such attacks, especially suicide attacks, feasible.
"What we have seen – perhaps most notably in the Middle East but elsewhere as well – is a loss of hope among wide swaths of people. It is not too difficult to understand that a lot of Palestinians have lost hope that anything positive is likely to happen in their lifetimes. It is also becoming more the case that Israelis are losing hope also.
"When people have no hope or see no possibility of a decent life for themselves and their children, then war and even suicide become less unthinkable, less unlikely. Insofar as increasing numbers of people have lost hope for the future, perhaps we will see more people willing to engage in what most of see as incredibly desperate acts of violence and terrorism.
"I hope Chalmers Johnson is wrong about that one. But there is little question now that the United States has begun to pay the price in bloodshed at home for the arrogance and breastbeating of our almost breathtakingly ignorant foreign policy leaders. One may hate those consequences, but until we begin to recognize that retaliation against innocents is among the consequences of our foreign policy, we will make little progress either in understanding September 11 or avoiding more attacks in the future."
Bin Laden comes home to roost - Michael Moran
"As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
"What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation."
No shield could stop it. So what of 'Star Wars' now? - Stephen Castle
"Yesterday's attacks on New York and Washington provided deadly proof of the power and sophistication of the world's most determined terrorists. But it also illustrated how America's defence and security establishment has focused on the wrong strategy.
"Since taking office, President George Bush has given enthusiastic backing to the pet project of the the Pentagon hawks who see the solution to American's security problems in a missile defence shield. Only this, the Pentagon has insisted, can guarantee US security in the modern world where rogue states may want to wage war on America.
"How wrong they look even before the first prototype of the American missile shield has been conceived. (...)
"Within Nato, where the issue has been highly contentious, America has insisted to its allies that there is a potential threat from rogue states and that this must be studied.
"But after the demolition of New York's twin towers by a civilian airline, apparently piloted by suicide bombers, and the devastating and almost simultaneous attack on the Pentagon in Washington, the shape of the international security threat suddenly looks rather different."
Imperial paralysis - Justin Raimondo
"Indeed, the whole point of being a superpower is that you don't have to be embarrassed about anything: you brazenly disregard moral principle, and go right ahead and bomb a Sudanese aspirin factory to get a presidential sex scandal off the front pages. The arbitrary and often deadly exercise of overwhelming military force is what being a superpower is all about.
"[David] Horowitz would ascribe this to Clinton's personal evil, and dismiss any more systematic critical analysis of our role in the world as simple 'anti-Americanism'. But the real anti-Americans are those who would sacrifice thousands more of their fellow citizens in defense of a policy and a mindset that is pure hubris. Talk about blaming America first: Horowitz spends most of his piece attacking those 'soft' Americans who have 'been so eager to cash in on "peace dividends" that it has stripped itself of even prudent defenses'. Oh, how dare those selfish soft Americans try to get some of their hard-earned tax dollars back from a thieving federal government. Horowitz's big solution is – yawn – a missile defense 'to protect against even worse terrorist acts in the future.' Yeah, but what about the sort of attacks we have just experienced – a bunch of knife-wielding terrorists who commandeer a plane and ram it into the biggest, most visible symbols of American military and financial preeminence? What he doesn't want to admit is that there is no defense against such acts – short of abolishing the Constitution and instituting martial law, that is.
"'America is in denial that much of the world hates us', rants Horowitz, 'and will continue to hate us. Because we are prosperous, and democratic and free'. But the US government is perfectly well aware that large sections of the globe have no love for the US government, and yet this has not had the slightest effect on US foreign policy. The whole Arab world is united in its opposition to our mindlessly pro-Israel stance – including the Saudi and Kuwaiti regimes that we prop up with our troops and treasure – but that has not altered our position one iota, no matter who occupies the White House. It is so typical of the paranoid and reflexively defensive Horowitz to inveigh against all those terrible foreigners who supposedly hate us because we're so wonderful. But I wouldn't count on either prosperity or freedom if the war Horowitz and Kagan would so dearly love to see declared and fought should ever come to pass. For the only way we can 'win' such a battle is to lose the very values that we want to defend in the first place."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 6:26 PM

Terça-feira, Setembro 11, 2001

Resurrecting the imperial presidency?
Dadas as estruturas desenvolvidas pelo welfare state, faz alguma diferença real se o político no poder é conservador ou progressista? Parece-me que não. Não apenas pelos tratados internacionais socialistas, não apenas por pressões da ONU, do FMI, da UNESCO etc., não apenas porque a tendência de toda burocracia, uma vez estabelecida, é aumentar o próprio poder e porque políticos naturalmente resistem a diminuir a própria área de atuação, mas também porque as próprias políticas do welfare state, responsáveis pelo gigantismo socialista contemporâneo, tendem a perpetuar-se na legislação, de forma que simplesmente não existem instrumentos ordinários para derrubá-las. No Brasil, por exemplo, todos os requisitos do socialismo estão consagrados na Constituição; um presidente liberal, se realmente quisesse adotar um governo liberal, provavelmente teria de escrever outra (Fernando Henrique, com as tímidas reformas, conseguiu ao menos reduzir o socialismo constitucional).
Mesmo nos Estados Unidos, um presidente que se elegeu com uma plataforma moderada de governo limitado, tem aumentado o Estado e prosseguido com as políticas socialistas que herdou de seu antecessor. Alan Bock lista algumas:
"President Bush has continued President Clinton's inept and unfocused foreign policy in the Balkans despite what sounded like campaign promises to begin the process of pulling U.S. troops out of that morass. It seems that the interests of the permanent bureaucracies trump what the American people thought they were voting for.
"President Bush has had the Justice Department – headed, remember, by the staunchly conservative critic of affirmative action John Ashcroft – enter the fray over the Adarand case, in which the Supreme Court a few years ago asked the feds to retool their program of racial preferences for highway contractors. The president had said during the campaign that he was opposed to 'quotas', but looked kindly on 'affirmative access', whatever those weasel words mean. In practice, they mean defending 'liberal' racial-quota programs even after the Supreme Court has declared them unconstitutional.
"Despite yesterday's decision not to seek the breakup of Microsoft – a goal nobody expected it to achieve anyway – the Justice Department is still aggressively pursuing the meritless and harmful case against the software company. Why – especially in a softening economy that has in part been damaged by this very case and its fallout? Is it strictly loyalty to the institution, even to the policies adopted when the other party ran the place? Is it cowardliness in the face of a possible news cycle of criticism if Justice simply dropped the case? Is it utter and complete economic ignorance?
"Hard to say.
"In response to special-interest pressure the administration decided to impose a 19.3 percent tariff on softwood lumber imported from Canada – and to make the tariff retroactive to mid-May. Weren't Republicans opposed to retroactive taxes – or was that only to retroactive taxes proposed by Democrats? For that matter, weren't Republicans supposed to be free traders?
"This overweening concern for 'continuity' and for defending the institutional interests of offices and departments they were supposed to reform is all too typical of our Republicrat oligarchs. One might hope for institutional reform some legislation that would reduce the power of the presidency or departments of the executive branch that have gotten too big for their britches.
"But 'comity' and 'civility' – not to mention the fact that all the scoundrels in Washington feel more akin to one another than to the ordinary people whose interests they are supposed to be representing – probably make that hope unrealistic."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 1:20 PM

Abortion rights a United Nations problem
Os direitos humanos ao aborto estão sendo objetos de acaloradas discussões na conferência da ONU sobre... direitos das crianças! Não se trata, no entanto, do direito de cada criança de não ser abortada, mas do direito das adolescentes de abortar seus filhos indesejados. Como se vê, algumas crianças têm mais direitos que outras.
O trecho polêmico é o parágrafo 35:
"But the stickler is several lines in paragraph 35, which contain the words 'reproductive health services'. 'Services', in U.N. parlance, means abortion, and Bush administration negotiators are not allowing it.
"'This is a document about children and we don't need to be talking about abortion in a conference about children,' said William Steiger, special assistant for international affairs to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson."
As discussões envolvem os suspeitos habituais: os EUA (em tempos de Bush) e o Vaticano de um lado; a União Européia e... o Brasil (!!) de outro:
"At one point, U.S. negotiators said they would allow the 'reproductive health services' language into the document if it is accompanied by a footnote that the phrase cannot refer to abortion rights. Their offer was rejected by European and Latin American delegates.
"'The EU [European Union] and Rio [Latin American] delegates are not negotiating in good faith,' Mr. Ruse said yesterday. 'They'll spend an entire morning negotiating one paragraph, and then they'll reject it. The longer they drag this on, the greater the likelihood they will tire people out and get what they want'."
Pronto: agora você sabe o que seus "representantes" na conferência da ONU sobre direitos da criança estão fazendo. Lembre-se disso na próxima vez que ler uma matéria na imprensa brasileira demonizando os EUA por se recusarem a assinar o tratado de "direitos das crianças".
postado por Alvaro Velloso 1:04 PM

Vatican allows Scrolls change
Claro que é impossível comentar o assunto à distância, mas não me parece bom presságio a decisão do Vaticano de modificar a Bíblia por causa dos manuscritos do Mar Morto, com a finalidade de calar os "teóricos da conspiração" que dizem que o Vaticano esconde os manuscritos porque eles seriam contrários ao cristianismo (à moda do ridículo filme "Stigmata"). Contrários ou não, não me parece que há provas suficientes a respeito dos manuscritos para que, com base neles, se introduzam modificações no texto bíblico; é esperar para ver (e, se for o caso, evitar a "Bíblia de Jerusalém").
"THE Vatican is to abandon decades of secrecy and obstruction to allow changes in the Bible based on revelations in the Dead Sea Scrolls, more than half a century after they were discovered.
The extent of the changes is expected to be disclosed this month, but the revised version of the New Jerusalem Bible will take five years to complete.The scrolls have been the subject of controversy between Jewish and Roman Catholic scholars since they were found in caves at Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in 1947. The Vatican has been accused of keeping them secret for fear that they would undermine Christianity. (...)
"Father Gianluigi Boschi, a Dominican theologian at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome and a leading expert on the scrolls, said the recent growth in scroll scholarship and the publication of previously inaccessible scrolls meant that some of the changes would be radical. He is to address a conference on the changes this month.
"Father Boschi said that the project would link 'the whole picture of the origins of Christianity' to the findings at Qumran. He declined to say which passages would be modified, but predicted that the changes would be “surprising and innovative”. It was time to end to 'the extraordinary scenarios put about by conspiracy theorists who claim that the Vatican has manoeuvred to hide the truth about the Dead Sea Scrolls'.
"Several of the intact scrolls, preserved in terracotta jars at Qumran by an ascetic sect called the Essenes, are now kept at the purpose-built Israeli Shrine of the Book. Many of the other texts and tens of thousands of scroll fragments were bought with the aid of Vatican funds and have been under the control of Dominican scholars at the Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem since the 1950s.
"The failure to publish more than a fraction of the Ecole Biblique scrolls led the Oxford biblical scholar Geza Vermes to call it 'the academic scandal of the 20th century'.
"Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review in Washington and author of Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, said that 'unbiased Catholic experts' were now in the forefront of scroll scholarship. He said it was hard to imagine what the scrolls could contain that could undermine Christianity.
"Minor adjustments have already been made to the Jerusalem Bible in the light of the two scrolls versions of the Book of Isaiah."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 12:56 PM

Segunda-feira, Setembro 10, 2001

Dumb Laws
"In Fort Madison, Iowa, the fire department is required to practice fire fighting for fifteen minutes before attending a fire."
"Sunshine is guaranteed to the masses." (Lei estadual californiana)
"You cannot buy any alcohol after 8pm or on Sundays." (Lei estadual de Connecticut)
"All lollipops are banned." (Lei estadual de Washington)
"A law to reduce crime states: 'It is mandatory for a motorist with criminal intentions to stop at the city limits and telephone the chief of police as he is entering the town'." (idem)
"Between the hours of 8AM and 8PM, 70% of music on the radio must be by French artists." (Lei federal francesa)
"All English males over the age 14 are to carry out 2 or so hours of longbow practice a week supervised by the local clergy." (Lei federal inglesa)
"It is illegal to be drunk on Licensed Premises (in a pub or bar)." (idem)
"Every office must have a view of the sky, however small." (Lei federal alemã)
Essas e outras leis inteiramente imbecis são catalogadas no site "Dumb laws". A epígrafe do site diz tudo o que há a comentar: "Big government. Small brains. Dumb laws."
Infelizmente, seus autores não descobriram o Brasil. Seria uma fonte inesgotável.
postado por Alvaro Velloso 4:54 PM

Iranian Village Shapes a Model of Democracy
Em Lazoor, no Irã, os habitantes descobriram uma verdade secular que em tempos de governo global anda esquecida: democracia, para dar certo, tem de ser local e em uma pequena extensão territorial. A cidade fez uma espécie de semi-secessão, e sua relação com o governo central é a mais tênue possível. O resultado é que, sendo agora governada por pessoas conhecidas e próximas do restante da população, a cidade está prosperando:
"Here, in contrast to most other places in Iran, grass-roots democracy is flourishing. Young and old, men and women decide together how to run their affairs, and no one overrules them.
"Three hours and 75 miles west, in Iran's capital, Tehran, reformist politicians and religious conservatives are battling over how to govern the country -- as an authoritarian theocracy, a liberal democracy, or some combination of the two. Youths testing the limits of social freedoms are being flogged in public, political dissidents are being jailed and liberal newspapers are being closed.
"But in Lazoor, the people run the show, and ideology has yielded to practicality and the common craving for a better life. Two years after winning permission to form a local government, and after participating in classes to encourage local decision-making, success here is measured not only in how the town looks -- and the changes are substantial -- but in how the residents feel.
"'The most important impact is that people are really self-confident, and they have started to believe in themselves,' said community leader Ali Esfandiar. 'We are capable of finding solutions for every problem.'
"That approach has infected the entire town, transforming Lazoor's system of government, the local economy, long-standing social customs and personal attitudes, and the management and protection of the environment, which is critical in any farming community. Private aid officials say that the way Lazoor has solidified local democracy and decision-making, boosted the influence and self-esteem of women, empowered the young and created job opportunities could be a model for developing and managing three-quarters of Iran's rural areas -- helping stem the flight of young people to cities. (...)
"The 3,000 residents elect their leaders and tax themselves. In the last two years, they have analyzed their problems, from the low status of women to seasonal flooding, and they have devised and implemented solutions, from sensitivity exercises for men to the construction of mountainside terraces to control erosion. More than 1,000 townspeople labored nine months to build 42 dams to control floods that regularly devastated the village. (...)
"State banking officials were so impressed with the town's industriousness -- and so swayed by the lobbying of local leaders -- that they recently opened Lazoor's first bank branch, so people no longer had to travel 30 miles to pay their utility bills. In less than a month, the bank manager said, residents had opened about 300 personal savings accounts, and he had approved several hundred small loans, ranging from $600 to $1,200."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 4:42 PM

Reparações
Sugestão politicamente incorreta de Alan Cabal para os negros americanos que desejam reparações financeiras pela escravidão: mandá-los de volta para sua amada África. A proposta ainda tem, diz Cabal, o atrativo adicional de reforçar a adorada imagem dos EUA como uma megapotência militar pronta para invadir qualquer país do mundo, o que agradaria aos defensores do "imperialismo benevolente":
"Sudan has been engaged in the slave trade since time immemorial. Specifically, Sudan has been trafficking in African slaves from the days of our Founding Fathers right up until the present moment. No one disputes this fact. Even Al Sharpton has testified on this, at great personal risk.
"So let’s launch a good old-fashioned war of conquest against the Sudanese: bomb the living shit out of them without warning (preferably in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve), send in the Marines and hand the entire country over to those African-Americans who desire a land of their own. This would be a marvelous gesture, at once reinforcing the image of America as an almighty irrational force, eliminating the notorious Sudanese traffic in human flesh, and providing 40 acres, if not a mule, for those Americans whose ancestors were dragged here in chains and whose suffering in this land cries to heaven for release. The vision of Khartoum burnt to a cinder in a monsoon of napalm would inspire the whole world and restore our great Republic to her former dignity, positioning America once again as the Light of the World. We could install Al Sharpton as our plenipotentiary there until such time as elections may be held, thus sparing his purse the insult of a run for the presidency in 2004.
"This is an idea whose time has arrived, and it would surely restore some of the good old-fashioned joy to the holiday season. Notify your congressperson and lend me your support."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 4:32 PM

Israel alarmed by military service revolt
Sensacional: heróicos jovens israelenses estão protestando contra duas formas de tirania - a escravização dos jovens pelo Estado através do alistamento obrigatório e a opressão dos palestinos através das políticas de invasão e ocupação de terras.
"Sixty-two teenagers from across Israel were at the centre of an intense and angry national debate last week after they sent a letter to the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, saying that they would refuse to do military service because of their objection to government policies. The members of the group, aged 16 to 18, said that their consciences would not allow them to serve in an army which was perpetuating a 'racist and oppressive occupation'.
"'We strongly oppose the trampling of human rights being carried out by the state of Israel,' the letter said. 'The confiscation of land, arrests, executions without trial, destruction of houses, closure, torture, and preventing residents from receiving medical treatment are only some of the crimes being committed by the state of Israel, in direct contravention of the international agreements that it has signed'. (...)
"Hagai Matar, 17, one of the initiators of the original protest letter, has received death threats since the letter was released to the media last week but he insists he will not be cowed. 'While most young people in Israel still consider it a natural thing to do to join the army, more and more are starting to ask questions. Generally we are more aware of what is going on in the world and teenagers are exploring other options. They are saying, I could go to university and make money so why should I waste three years and risk my life for an occupation I don't support'."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 4:27 PM