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Sábado, Dezembro 08, 2001

The Ashcroft Smear
E John Ascroft, o Attorney General americano, fica cada vez mais assustador. Seu comentário, pronunciado numa audiência no senado na qual ninguém ousou criticá-lo com muita veemência, sobre os críticos de suas "medidas de segurança" - que incluem o fim da privacidade do comércio, a criação de tribunais de exceção não sujeitos a recursos e com poderes para condenar à pena de morte por maioria de dois terços, o aumento da supervisão à internet e a conversas telefônicas e a possibilidade de deter estrangeiros em segredo - foi digno de qualquer governante fascista ou comunista:
"We need honest, reasoned debate, and not fear-mongering. To those . . . who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of goodwill to remain silent in the face of evil."
Em outras palavras: quem quer que ouse criticar o governo é uma ameaça à segurança nacional e um terrorista em potencial, porque encoraja as pessoas a olhar seus "líderes" com olhos críticos e não com a veneração que eles exigem!
Poucas vezes nos últimos anos um político foi tão brutalmente explícito sobre a finalidade de todo estatista - a união de sociedade e Estado, com a absorção daquela neste. Ou, como dizia Mussolini: tudo para o Estado, tudo através do Estado, nada contra o Estado.
postado por Alvaro Velloso 1:06 PM

Conductor held over 'terrorism' comment
Estão todos loucos.
Ninguém menos que Pierre Boulez foi detido num lugar absolutamente improvável, um dos países mais livres do mundo, a Suíça! Leiam o inacreditável motivo:
"Pierre Boulez was sleeping in his five star Swiss hotel when police dragged him from bed and informed him he was on their national list of terrorist suspects.
"The 75-year-old, who once conducted the BBC symphony orchestra, had his passport confiscated for three hours before he was free to go.
"Strangely, it was not a case of mistaken identity.
"In the revolutionary 1960s, it seems that Boulez said that opera houses should be blown up, comments which the Swiss felt made him a potential security threat."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 12:56 PM

Robert Fisk: We Are the War Criminals Now
Fisk, sobre o massacre em Mazar-i-Shariff, a hipocrisia da "guerra pela civilização" e o precedente do monstro Winston Churchill:
"Over the past 50 years, we sat on our moral pedestal and lectured the Chinese and the Soviets, the Arabs and the Africans, about human rights. We pronounced on the human-rights crimes of Bosnians and Croatians and Serbs. We put many of them in the dock, just as we did the Nazis at Nuremberg. Thousands of dossiers were produced, describing --in nauseous detail--the secret courts and death squads and torture and extra judicial executions carried out by rogue states and pathological dictators. Quite right too.
"Yet suddenly, after 11 September, we went mad. We bombed Afghan villages into rubble, along with their inhabitants--blaming the insane Taliban and Osama bin Laden for our slaughter--and now we have allowed our gruesome militia allies to execute their prisoners. President George Bush has signed into law a set of secret military courts to try and then liquidate anyone believed to be a 'terrorist murderer' in the eyes of America's awesomely inefficient intelligence services. And make no mistake about it, we are talking here about legally sanctioned American government death squads. They have been created, of course, so that Osama bin Laden and his men should they be caught rather than killed, will have no public defence; just a pseudo trial and a firing squad.
"It's quite clear what has happened. When people with yellow or black or brownish skin, with Communist or Islamic or Nationalist credentials, murder their prisoners or carpet bomb villages to kill their enemies or set up death squad courts, they must be condemned by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and the 'civilised' world. We are the masters of human rights, the Liberals, the great and good who can preach to the impoverished masses. But when our people are murdered--when our glittering buildings are destroyed then we tear up every piece of human rights legislation, send off the B-52s in the direction of the impoverished masses and set out to murder our enemies.
"Winston Churchill took the Bush view of his enemies. In 1945, he preferred the straightforward execution of the Nazi leadership. Yet despite the fact that Hitler's monsters were responsible for at least 50 million deaths--10,000 times greater than the victims of 11 September--the Nazi murderers were given a trial at Nuremberg because US President Truman made a remarkable decision. 'Undiscriminating executions or punishments,' he said, 'without definite findings of guilt fairly arrived at, would not fit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride.'
(...)
"Yes, I know the Taliban were a cruel bunch of bastards. They committed most of their massacres outside Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s. They executed women in the Kabul football stadium. And yes, lets remember that 11 September was a crime against humanity.
"But I have a problem with all this. George Bush says that 'you are either for us or against us' in the war for civilisation against evil. Well, I'm sure not for bin Laden. But I'm not for Bush. I'm actively against the brutal, cynical, lying 'war of civilisation' that he has begun so mendaciously in our name and which has now cost as many lives as the World Trade Centre mass murder."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 12:52 PM

Quinta-feira, Dezembro 06, 2001

Cigarette Nazis on the march
Os nazistas antitabagistas têm criado leis restritivas a ponto de proibir o fumo ao ar livre, relata Walter Williams em seu artigo mais recente. E não é só isso: os tributos punitivos têm levado os cigarros a preços impraticáveis. No entanto, lembra Williams, contra a tirania antitabagista, levanta-se uma personagem heróica: o contrabandista.
"Regarding confiscatory taxes, cigarette Nazis are being challenged by one of my heroes – the smuggler. Some states, such as Washington and Michigan, have taxes that make a carton of cigarettes cost as much as $48. Why is the smuggler my hero? It's easy. People want to and have the right to engage in peaceable, mutually agreeable, voluntary exchange, and a third-party – government – tells them no.
"The smuggler thwarts the government's mission of interference. Before we go bad-mouthing smugglers, we might consider that a number of the men we celebrate each Fourth of July, including John Hancock, the first signer of our Declaration of Independence, were smugglers. At that time, it was the British Parliament imposing confiscatory taxes – today it's federal, state and local governments.
"Confiscatory taxes are an abuse of power regardless of what government levies them."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 3:01 PM

The tragic reality of Israel
Artigo de A. N. Wilson sobre os "direitos" do Estado de Israel, cuja conduta tem sido suficiente para decepcionar os mais otimistas, publicado no Evening Standard, de Londres:
"Disillusioned optimists, who hoped that the Palestinians and the Israelis could somehow find a working compromise, nurse bitter feelings against Ariel Sharon for the provocative policy that he has so relentlessly pursued. In yesterday's Mail on Sunday, Gerald Kaufman, a Jew and a lifelong Zionist wrote a courageous denunciation of present Israeli policies. He said that, having visited Israel over 50 times, he never intended to go back, so deep is his revulsion against Sharon's warmongering.
"There are still plenty of hawks in the Western media who take the opposite view. For them, the only way for the Israelis to defend themselves is by constant belligerence.Conrad Black, the recently ennobled peer who owns the Telegraph group of British newspapers, is one of the most vigorous exponents of this idea. He brands as anti-semitic anyone who hopes that the Jews would withdraw from the socalled occupied territories, in accordance with UN resolutions and international law. Black has also said that what critics of Ariel Sharon, are too cowardly to say is that they do not really believe Israel has a right to exist.
"I have reluctantly come to agree that Lord Black is right - not about the cowardice or anti-semitism, but about the state of Israel's 'right
to exist'. Those of us Gentiles who have seen ourselves as friends of Israel over the years, have gradually watched any hope of a peaceful 'solution' being destroyed by the policy of Israeli settlements in land that no international lawyer believes to be theirs. This policy, if pursued by any other nation on earth would be universally condemned and they would be forced to withdraw.
"Until President Bush is prepared to put American ground-troops into the disputed lands and force out the illegal Jewish occupiers, then no one in the world is going to believe in American foreign policy in the Muslim world. What greater act of 'terrorism' can there be than Sharon's policy of invasion, backed up by (American-made) tanks and bombs? Israel is by definition an aggressor, since it is occupying land that was already someone else's homeland. Conrad Black and his allies are right.
"The logic of supporting the Palestinians is to question the very right of the state of Israel to exist. It is to that bitterly sad conclusion that the policy of Ariel Sharon has driven so many of us. Of course we
do not want the Israelis to be 'driven into the sea' (as in the ominous phrase of 1967). But the 1948 experiment, - claiming the 'Israelis' had the 'right' to exist as a state just because a few brave terrorists such as Menachem Begin killed some British army officers - this was lazy thinking, and it was doomed to failure. One now sees that Israel never was a state, and it can only be defended by constant war. Is that what we want?"
postado por Alvaro Velloso 2:57 PM

"Neoliberalismo"
Ninguém é tão eloqüente ao negar que o governo tucano seja liberal quanto o próprio presidente, que ontem estava nos jornais lembrando que seu governo tem trabalhado por "metas sociais" e que, a rigor, o Brasil é um dos países mais socialistas da América Latina - o único, por exemplo, a ter um Ministério do Planejamento, com todos os ecos stalinistas do termo.
Sobre neoliberalismo, há uma ótima carta no Globo de hoje, assinada pelo sr. Heitor de Paola:
"Na edição de hoje (5/12) fica claro que o governo FH não é mesmo liberal, como os liberais de verdade já sabiam há muito. Neoliberalismo é um termo sem sentido, usado pelas esquerdas contra governos social-democratas, envergonhadamente privatizantes, como o atual. Infelizmente, é a opção menos ruim para os eleitores liberais. Um governo liberal não teria mantido a petrossauro estatal, nem o Banco do Brasil, nem a Caixa Econômica."
O que é realmente preocupante é que, se a social-democracia já é infernal, "as esquerdas" a que o sr. de Paola se refere prometem coisa pior - como demonstra a visita de Lula à ilha-presídio de Fidel. Eis o que disse o cientista político Paulo Moura, um dos fundadores do PT, ao bravo jornalista Diego Casagrande:
"Um partido de esquerda que administra o Estado num regime capitalista, em princípio, é social-democrata. Mas o PT abriga dentro de si, uma parcela muito grande de grupos políticos que não romperam com a tradição ortodoxa do marxismo revolucionário; que não têm compromisso explícito com o Estado Democrático de Direito, e que não aceitam conviver com a economia de mercado. São comunistas enrustidos. No RS esses grupos radicais são maioria e controlam o governo Olívio. No PT nacional eles foram maioria em 1994, e hoje são minoria, mas controlam quase 50% do partido. Podem voltar a controlá-lo conforme as conjunturas permitirem."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 2:44 PM

Quarta-feira, Dezembro 05, 2001

Políticos dos sonhos?
Sempre que ouço falar em "grande político", em "brilhante administrador", em "líder inovador", corro para proteger minha carteira. Como diz H. L. Mencken, um bom político é um contra-senso, como um ladrão honesto.
A classe política nada mais é do que a classe de exploradores, de parasitas, daqueles que, não importa quão nobres suas intenções, acabam contribuindo para piorar a vida de todos, para restringir a liberdade e para deteriorar as relações sociais espontâneas.
Em conseqüência, se se pode falar de "bom político", é apenas em relação àquele que seja menos político - como diz o Tao Te King, o melhor governante é aquele que não governa.
O que dizer, portanto, da lista de "grandes líderes" - que formariam o "governo ideal" - elaborada pela revista World Link, do World Economic Forum (uma dessas ONGs globalistas que pregam legislações mundiais para antender a "preocupações sociais" como problemas ambientais, digital divide, inclusão racial etc.)? Tomemos alguns nomes selecionados pela revista:
- Kofi Annan, escolhido por pregar que sejam dados ainda mais (!) recursos para a AIDS e por promover, junto aos empresários, a adesão a preocupações ambientais e "padrões trabalhistas";
- Rudolph Mussol... perdão, Giuliani, escolhido porque sua onipresença na mídia deu aos nova-iorquinos a "liderança" de que eles precisavam num momento de crise;
- Göran Persson, escolhido graças ao seu programa dos três Es: "environment, employment and enlargement", todos promovidos pelo mega-estado europeu, e porque, no plano doméstico, seu governo fez da Suécia o país com o welfare state mais gastador do mundo: "Sweden’s leader is attempting to encourage entrepreneurship while maintaining the generous social welfare system. During his tenure, investment in r&d has continued to rise so that, as a percentage of GDP, Sweden now spends more than any other country in the world, according to the European Commission’s Innovation Scoreboard.";
- Jan Pronk (ministro do meio ambiente da Holanda), escolhido por seu papel decisivo na aprovação do acordo de Kyoto;
- José Serra, por sua "willingness to go against big pharma" (felizmente a revista não mencionou as cruzadas antitabagistas do ministro).
Juntem essas pessoas num mesmo país e eu estarei no exílio vinte minutos depois. Esse "governo ideal" seria um verdadeiro inferno socialista, com um Estado gigantesco ultra-regulador, onde nenhuma pessoa normal agüentaria viver por mais de vinte minutos!
Pior ainda: é o domínio desse tipo de gente sobre o mundo inteiro que hoje se promove como o grande objetivo político do mundo ocidental, com os tais "instrumentos de governança global" de que o nosso presidente tanto gosta de falar.
PS - Justiça seja feita, há pelo menos dois bons nomes na lista da revista: Colin Powell, o secretário de Estado americano que mantém seu ceticismo de grandes aventuras imperialistas e traz algum bom senso aos falcões da administração Bush, e Mart Laar, que adotou medidas de redução de impostos, privatização e redução da inflação na Estônia.
postado por Alvaro Velloso 5:07 PM

The Case for Old Ideas
Joseph Sobran, brilhante como sempre, sobre o preconceito moderno contra o passado e suas nefastas conseqüências:
"One of the distinctive traits of the modern mind is its insuperable prejudice against the past. The very word 'modern' has become a term of praise. The Old is Bad, the New is Good. We mustn’t listen to the Old; it has nothing to teach us. So the modern man, living in fear of being 'behind the times,' prefers any new intellectual fad to actually reading the ancient Aristotle or the medieval Aquinas.
"C.S. Lewis used to urge his students at Oxford and Cambridge to read all the old books they could – not because the old authors were always right, but because they at least made different errors from those of modern thinkers. By studying ancient and medieval writers, Lewis knew, the student could achieve a certain detachment from the pressures of the present; he could see his own environment, the modern world, with fresh eyes.
"That mental detachment is one of the greatest blessings an education can bestow. Without it, we are doomed to be manipulated by all the worst forces of the modern world. We live in an age of politics and its handmaiden, state propaganda. We can’t isolate ourselves from these things, which relentlessly seek to control the masses of people and to reduce all of us to passive mass-men. In defense of our own humanity, we desperately need to breed the internal resource of the independent mind. This is the task of a lifetime, not just a four-year curriculum.
"Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four remains the great parable of the modern society in which the individual becomes a mere product of the state. That individual is so thoroughly conditioned by state propaganda that he accepts even its self-contradictions without question and feels only the emotions it demands at a given moment.
"The book’s lesson is that when your mind is a vacuum, the state will fill it. With what? With New Ideas, of course."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 4:43 PM

Who EU Calling a Terrorist?
Claro que os socialistas de plantão na UE não poderiam ficar atrás dos americanos nas restrições às liberdades individuais - e estão prestes a criar uma legislação que classifica qualquer protesto político como terrorismo e que permite a criação de bancos de dados sobre "suspeitos" de "perturbação da paz pública":
"The European legislation in question is a proposal on combating terrorism that the EU Council of Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs is scheduled to discuss later this week.
"The proposal defines terrorism as, 'offenses intentionally committed by an individual or a group against one or more countries, their institutions or people, with the aim of intimidating them and seriously altering or destroying the political, economic, or social structures of a country.'
"If endorsed, EU member states will be obligated to incorporate the definition into their own laws. Six member countries already have special anti-terror laws, and critics fear the EU proposal could dramatically expand their application under the proposed definition.
"Jan Fermon, a lawyer from Brussels who helped draft the appeal, is concerned that the EU is using the Sept. 11 attack as an excuse to pass proposals designed to quash political dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism.
"'Most of these proposals have no relation to terrorism,' Fermon said, 'but the EU is now using 9-11 to get them passed without criticism.
"'The main concern is that the definition is so broad that it includes all kinds of lawful protest. Trade union activity, anti-globalization protest, all of it can be criminalized under the legislation.'
"As a matter that relates to domestic security, the proposal -- called a 'framework decision' -- does not require approval from the European Parliament.
"The concern in Europe mirrors developments in the U.S., where civil liberties groups are worried about an expansion in the definition of terrorism, an increase in surveillance power for law enforcement, and the prospect of military trials for accused terrorists.
"While the debates on terror and civil liberties in Europe have been similar to those in the U.S., the situation is not exactly parallel, according to Sarah Andrews, a researcher at the Electronic Privacy and Information Center in Washington D.C.
"'In some respects, they're going further than the U.S.,' Andrews said. 'The data retention proposals, and things like keeping data on those suspected of public disturbance' have not been proposed in the United States, she said."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 4:41 PM

Terça-feira, Dezembro 04, 2001

White Man’s Burden
Num artigo impressionante, Brian Dunaway comenta as diversas manifestações de neocolonialismo em revistas e think tanks neoconservadores nos EUA. Ele ressalta, por exemplo, que Max Boot, no Wall Street Journal, afirmou que os atentados terroristas aconteceram não por excesso de intervencionismo americano, mas por sua falta; que Jonah Goldberg, editor do site da National Review, publicou ano passado um plano para recolonização da África, e que agora muitos parecem dispostos a adotar esse plano não para a África, mas para a Ásia; que Paul Johnson, contrariando as próprias brilhantes observações sobre a tragédia da engenharia social, retratadas em seu livro "Modern Times", tem pregado que algumas nações não têm maturidade suficiente para governar a si mesmas, e precisariam de um poder soberano que as tutelasse até que elas atingissem a maturidade - um novo colonialismo que poderia ser posto em operação até mesmo em países europeus:
'The new order "would be empowered not merely to impose order by force, but to assume political functions. They would in effect be possessed of sovereign powers." I guess there are some pretty stringent requirements in acquiring membership in that club of "sovereign powers." Incidentally, Johnson’s "not merely to impose order by force" sounds a lot like Brother Jonah’s "not merely an armed invasion." Has Mr. Johnson been tutoring Brother Jonah? This is what I'm afraid is so.
'He reminds us that "in the 1980s … Western powers showed a renewed willingness to use force in what they believed to be right." This force was demonstrated by England and America against the colossi of the Falklands and Grenada, respectively. But, I suppose it’s time to think a little bigger.
'Like Goldberg, Johnson doesn’t want anyone to think he’s racist, so he assures his audience that "the new colonialism is not just about white men running the affairs of nonwhite countries but can involve intervention in Europe …" Well thank heavens for that! Indeed, like Boot, Johnson holds up the "direct military intervention in the internal affairs of the former Yugoslavia" as the epitome of success.
'Johnson reassures us that "Happily, the civilized powers need not get stuck in the old colonial quagmire, because they have the example of the trusteeship system before them." Trust us, it’s all worked out now.
'"Trusteeship," he tells us, "was a notion derived from English common law in which a child was made a ward of the court until attaining the age of 21." This harkens a commandment that our new colonialists would do well to heed: "Thou shalt not provoke your children to anger."
'Johnson’s vision is that "their mandate would usually be of limited duration – 5, 10, 20 years, for example – and subject to supervision by the Security Council; and their ultimate object would be to take constitutional measures to insure a return to effective self government with all deliberate speed." It’s not that I don’t trust that they’ll do some quite smashing things on their little excursions, it’s just the "all deliberate speed" part of which I’m a little wary, especially when Johnson throws out lengths of time like "20 years." He continues, "The trustees should not plan to withdraw until they are reasonably certain that the return to independence will be successful this time. So the mandate may last 50 years, or 100." Say what? 50, 100? That’s not colonialism – that’s more like a high colonic! And if we employ a typical MCM (for those not familiar, that’s Mission Creep Multiplier) of 10, then we can be out of there in only one millennium.'
Diante desse tipo de retórica, é alguma surpresa que os americanos sejam odiados no resto do mundo? Não há algo de perigosamente insano nesse tipo de gente que parece convencida de que a própria missão é ensinar o resto do mundo a comportar-se adequadamente?
A situação tende a piorar, porque esse tipo de neoconservador está em alta em Washington, concentrando suas forças num ataque ao Iraque - e daí para o restante do mundo árabe. Segundo Bob Novak, Bush ainda não decidiu se autorizará ou não o ataque e a ampliação da guerra, mas é certo que, com os recentes atentados em Israel, a pressão dos neoconservadores será redobrada - porque, no final das contas, os neoconservadores são pouco mais do que a versão americana do Likud, e estão prontos a apoiar qualquer ação militar em defesa de Israel. Nas palavras de Eric Margolis:
"Last week, bin Laden's holy war syndrome seemed to infect the White House. Bush proclaimed a new jihad against Saddam Hussein, warning Iraq was next on his hit list. Saddam was moved into the terrorist column by Bush for allegedly planning to produce weapons of mass destruction to threaten his neighbours. The president forgot to mention Israel and India, who have also threatened their neighbours with nukes. While Bush was preaching a new crusade against Iraq, other high administration officials were warning that Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Somalia and even Pakistan might be added to Bush's jihad list. A decade ago, this would have been called warmongering. Now, the frightful Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. are being used to justify all sorts of adventures abroad, and the curtailment of civil rights and free speech at home.
"Bush's anti-Muslim crusading policy is being advocated by a group of Dr. Strangeloves, hardline 'neo-conservatives' - the Washington chapter of Ariel Sharon's far-right Likud party. They want to use America to destroy all of Israel's enemies and block peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
"Sensible Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the administration's sharpest mind, Secretary of State Colin Powell, are trying to restrain the Sharonistas, who seem dangerously close to convincing Bush to launch a crusade against much of the 1.2-billion-person Islamic world. They failed with clever Bill Clinton, but are succeeding with the unworldly Bush.
"America's European, Asian and Muslim allies are horrified by the dire threats emanating from Washington, but so far no one has dared to publicly break ranks and tell the president to holster his sixguns and simmer down. America is not refighting World War II."
Em outro artigo interessante, Scott McConnell afirma que a retórica imperialista e - sim - genocida está cada vez mais disseminada entre as classes falantes americanas, e faz a seguinte advertência, extremamente relevante e pertinente:
"One can hear the beginning of murmurs for fresh blood – for campaigns directed not against those who plotted and abetted the 9-11 terror, but against all Arabs, even all Muslims. They are, so far, only murmurs. But they come not from the America's patriotic working class or vast middle class, but from the society's highly educated elite. Were they ever to be translated into American policy, they would set this country on a course that in another time and place led those in charge of a nation similarly filled with a belief in its own destiny and the need for strong measures to be put on trial at Nuremberg."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 11:58 AM