31.3.11
The Butterfly and the Boiling Point
Charting the wild winds of change in 2011.
Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.
Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its ebullience, its bravery, its hope, and its solidarity. Some of these things pass. »
Cidades não estão prontas para as mudanças climáticas “Nas próximas décadas, as mudanças climáticas irão fazer com que centenas de milhões de pessoas fiquem cada vez mais vulneráveis a enchentes, deslizamentos de terra e outros desastres naturais. Esta é a previsão que fazemos baseados na melhor ciência que temos disponível”, alerta relatório da ONU.
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30.3.11
Lula’s Brazil
Contrary to a well-known English dictum, stoical if self-exonerating, all political lives do not end in failure. In postwar Europe, it is enough to think of Adenauer or De Gasperi, or perhaps even more impressively, Franco. But it is true that, in democratic conditions, to be more popular at the close than at the outset of a prolonged period in office is rare. Rarer still – indeed, virtually unheard of – is for such popularity to reflect, not appeasement or moderation, but a radicalisation in government. Today, there is only one ruler in the world who can claim this achievement, the former worker who in January stepped down as president of Brazil, enjoying the approval of 80 per cent of its citizens. By any criterion, Luiz Inácio da Silva is the most successful politician of his time. More
UM PAÍS SEM SOLUÇÕES À VISTA
Mais grave que um país sem dinheiro e sem crédito é um país sem soluções á vista:todos são responsáveis a começar pelo governo que deve ser julgado mas também o presidente e a própria oposição que não mobiliza os portugueses para fazer frente à bancarrota em que o país vive à espera [por quanto tempo?] de condições [que condições?]de pedir ajuda.
29.3.11
When the current economic crisis hit, the Obama campaign blew away Bush and McCain by promising hope, change, and a solution that would overcome this crisis and prevent future crises. Likewise some governments in Europe came to power based on public fear reacting to the global meltdown. Ongoing crisis, mass economic pain, and deepening public anger keep shifting political winds.
Within six months of Barrack Obama's election, those winds had changed again. His liberal campaign rhetoric had hit a wall. What humbled Obama was the determination of business interests to shift onto others the costs of the crisis and of the government's response, namely its hugely expensive bailout of major corporations especially in finance. We watched and learned who was really in charge of how this economic crisis would be "managed."
There would not be a 2011 rise in the federal income tax rate from 35 to 39% for the richest Americans (even though it had been 91 % in the 1960s). There would be no legal or other requirement that corporate beneficiaries use their bailout billions in economically and socially useful ways (rather than only for their private profits). There would be no federal employment program no matter how high the US unemployment rate went or how long workers remained unemployed. There would be no real program to lift wages or otherwise offset millions of homeowners' inability to make mortgage payments even if that re-tanked the housing market (the double dip downward in that crucial industry is now under way).
US governments at all levels dared not raise taxes on businesses or the rich even as their general tax revenues fell because of unemployment and consequent reductions in incomes and consumers' expenditures. The federal government also slowed its borrowing. Reduced taxes plus reduced borrowings cut funds all governments had to spend. Political leaders mostly responded by curtailing employees (worsening unemployment) and social services. Federal officials justified no more borrowing by pointing to the trillions added to the national debt since 2007 to finance Washington's "crisis-response" program. State and local officials just restated the usual homilies about "living within our means" as if doing so would alleviate the problems caused by the economic crisis.
The truth is that business interests prefer cuts in social programs to further government borrowing. They fear public resentment over paying higher taxes so governments can pay more interest to the owners of government bonds. Resentment can grow into active political resistance. After all, the public wants its taxes to fund programs that help people rather than flow to government creditors. There's the problem. Uncle Sam's creditors include US businesses and the richest US citizens who used the money they did not pay in taxes to lend to the government instead.
So the US economy continues to impose crisis conditions on the mass of citizens. The "recovery" is limited to banks, larger corporations, and those with significant holdings of stocks and bonds. The latter had "recovered" as banks and larger corporations "parked" their bailout moneys in stock markets (rather than investing them in production since mass purchasing power in the US remained hobbled and looked likely to remain so indefinitely). Rage at continued economic suffering (high unemployment, home foreclosures, etc.), mass exclusion from "recovery," and spectacles of the richest citizens resuming huge salaries and bonuses brought public anger to the boiling point. Its target was especially whoever was in office. Obama, associated Democrats, and many incumbent politicians suffered the consequences in the 2010 elections.
In Europe too, the costs of capitalism's crisis and corporate bailouts by governments were shifted onto the general population (it's "austerity" there). Just as business demands for that shift bent Obama to their will here, they bent Prime Ministers there, including official "socialists" such as Papandreou in Greece and Socrates in Portugal. It seemed everywhere that business and the rich would be able to achieve stunning results. Their thirty-year profit binge (1977-2007) and mixtures of tax cuts, low taxes, and state subsidies for corporations and the rich would remain unquestioned and untapped. Their disastrous speculations with those profits, the gross irresponsibility in how banks invested depositors' money, and the widening gaps between the very rich and everyone else would fade from public awareness and from most politicians' concerns.
But now, as the economic crisis continues for majorities in the US and Europe, current office-holders are held accountable for government layoffs and service reductions. As those austerity policies further damage standards of living and fail to overcome economic suffering, public anger refocuses upon the current incumbents. Political leaders executing the business strategy of socializing the costs of the crisis find themselves in trouble. Governor Walker in Wisconsin faces a far stronger opposition than anyone foresaw. Ohio conservative Republican state senator, Bill Seitz, mobilizes fellow Republicans to shrink the state's austerity program fearing "voter backlash."
Portugal's socialist government collapsed a few days ago. All other political parties refused to support its latest installment of the austerity program imposed on the Portuguese people. Recent massive protests against austerity and strikes for higher wages made their points. Continued association with business's austerity strategy is becoming too costly for more politicians. They must find new faces, forms, or excuses to continue austerity; otherwise they will suffer (and some will join) swings toward very different anti-crisis policies.
Such policies could shift the burden and costs of overcoming crisis onto the larger corporations and the richest citizens. Indeed, such policies might well go further and change the system that keeps bringing us these crises and breaking its defenders' promises to prevent more crises. To the extent that they significantly alleviate the burdens of austerity, such policies might win the time and political space to achieve larger goals.
Banding Together for the Common Good
by: Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers | Serialized Book
A corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.
- William Jennings Bryan, address to the Ohio 1912 Constitutional Convention
In the beginning, there were people.
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El final del Gobierno Sócrates
Del principio al final, invirtieron la realidad. La política de derechas, concebida y ejecutada para el beneficio del gran capital, que ha endeudado y arruinado al país
The Collapse of Globalization
The uprisings in the Middle East, the unrest that is tearing apart nations such as the Ivory Coast, the bubbling discontent in Greece, Ireland and Britain and the labor disputes in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio presage the collapse of globalization. They presage a world where vital resources, including food and water, jobs and security, are becoming scarcer and harder to obtain. They presage growing misery for hundreds of millions of people who find themselves trapped in failed states, suffering escalating violence and crippling poverty. »
ÁLIBI:ONDE ESTAVA O PSD?
Prova de Inocência:Onde estava o PSD enquanto tudo acontecia?
"Tudo Pode Acontecer", parece o título de mais uma cantiguinha!
28.3.11
Siria: máxima alerta de riesgo de conflicto
Siria se halla en lo que muy rápidamente se está convirtiendo en un momento decisivo para sus dirigentes. Sólo hay dos opciones. Una entraña una iniciativa política, tan inmediata como inevitablemente arriesgada, que pueda convencer al pueblo sirio de que el régimen está dispuesto a emprender un cambio espectacular. La otra entraña una escalada de la represión, con todas las probabilidades de terminar en un final sangriento e ignominioso. Ya la confrontación que se desarrolla en la ciudad meridional de Deraa no da el menor signo de aquietarse, a despecho de algunas concesiones del régimen, de las fuertes medidas de seguridad y de las crecientes bajas registradas. Por ahora, eso queda en una tragedia geográficamente aislada. Pero constituye también un ominoso precedente con amplias resonancias populares que pronto podría repetirse en cualquier otro sitio.
Bahrein, Libia y las intervenciones foráneas en la primavera revolucionaria árabe
“La elección a la que tenemos que enfrentarnos quienes queremos actuar en solidaridad con el pueblo libio no pasa por no hacer nada, abandonando al pueblo libio a su propio destino, o hacer algo, concediendo a poderosas fuerzas foráneas la determinación de lo que vaya a ser ese algo.”
El foco de la “primavera árabe” se ha desplazado de los exitosos levantamientos populares en Túnez y Egipto al triste desarrollo de los acontecimientos en Bahrein y Libia. Mientras las fuerzas militares británicas, francesas y estadounidenses van tomando “todas las medidas necesarias” para derribar al régimen de Gadafi, tropas de la Fuerza del Escudo de la Península del Consejo de Cooperación del Golfo (CCG) siguen “estabilizando” al régimen de al-Khalifa, amenazado por un levantamiento democrático en Bahrein. Las discrepancias entre la intervención a favor de la estabilidad del régimen en Bahrein y la intervención para cambiar el régimen en Libia se ven subrayadas por el hecho de que quienes intervienen en ambos casos son los mismos. Los Estados miembros del CCG y de la Liga Árabe que han enviado sus tropas en apoyo de la monarquía de Bahrein son los mismos Estados que se han ofrecido a participar en una campaña militar contra la Jamahiriya en Libia. Análogamente, las potencias occidentales que han apelado al principio de la “responsabilidad de proteger” como justificación para intervenir en Libia son los mismos Estados que han llamado a la “abstención” en Bahrein. En ambos casos, y a despecho de las diferencias de naturaleza y contexto de los distintos levantamientos, los regímenes autoritarios están atacando brutalmente a la población civil por la vía del empleo de fuerza letal, arrestos, detenciones y desapariciones. En ambos casos, y a despecho de las diferentes justificaciones ofrecidas y de las distinta naturaleza de cada intervención, la lógica subyacente a las acciones de las potencias occidentales y árabes es una y la misma.
Los británicos tienen la fama -por lo menos entre ellos- de no ser muy combativos. Y podemos decir que están en lo cierto si los comparamos con los movimientos sindicales de Francia o la respuesta ciudadana de Grecia. En el Reino Unido cuesta mucho convocar una movilización seria capaz de llamar a la acción a sus ciudadanos. Al TUC (Trade Unions Congress), la federación sindical británica que representa a la mayoría de sindicatos del país (58 en total), le costó casi un año convocar la gran marcha del 26 de marzo para protestar contra los ingentes recortes que el gobierno de la coalición entre Conservadores y Liberales-Demócratas está llevando a cabo. La manifestación que se vivió en Londres el pasado sábado fue una de las mayores manifestaciones que se recuerdan en el Reino Unido, con una asistencia que se mueve entre las 250.000 personas y el medio millón. Tan sólo la superan las movilizaciones del 2003 en contra de la guerra, mientras que sobrepasan a las movilizaciones contra el Poll Tax celebradas en 1990 que acabaron por minar la reputación de Margaret Thatcher, que abandonó el gobierno en noviembre de ese mismo año. En el aire queda la propuesta de convocar una huelga general en el sector público, como piden algunos partidos de izquierda tales como el Socialist Workers Party.
 Mientras más se agudiza la crisis en la periferia de la zona euro, mayor es la impresión de que sus principales causantes se han propuesto convertirse, sin práctica oposición, en sus grandes beneficiarios. La gran finanza no sólo no ha sido objeto de controles y sanciones efectivos, sino que ha visto reforzado su poder, convirtiéndose en una auténtica espada de Damocles que pende sobre el erario público, los ahorradores y las clases populares en general. En ese contexto, la admisión a trámite en la Audiencia Nacional de la querella penal contras las agencias de calificación de deuda impulsada por el Observatorio DESC, ATTAC y otras organizaciones sociales supone una pequeña grieta en este panorama sombrío. Por vez primera, Moody’s, Standard & Poors y Fitch deberán responder ante un tribunal español por la alteración del precio de la deuda pública y por la utilización ilegítima de información cualificada en beneficio propio (arts. 284 y 285 del Código Penal). Esta iniciativa debería verse, desde luego, como un intento de poner coto a la impunidad de los más fuertes, cuando la mayoría de instituciones públicas se ha rendido a la impotencia o ha optado por la complicidad. Pero también como la respuesta ante un modus operandi que, de no detenerse, acabará por arrasar no sólo con los endebles cimientos democráticos de nuestras sociedades sino también los derechos básicos de la mayoría de la población. |
Para impedir uma nova crise alimentar Os países e regiões que enfrentam fome precisam de maior margem de manobra para proteger a produção local de alimentos, prevenir o dumping e estabilizar o abastecimento. Parte desta margem para definir políticas é hoje minada pelas regras da Organização Mundial de Comércio. Os estoques de alimentos precisam ser vistos de novo como ferramentas essenciais, tanto para enfrentar emergências quanto para estabilizar os preços e o abastecimento, para os agricultores e os consumidores. A concentração fundiária precisa ser interrompida. O artigo é de Jim Harkness.
27.3.11
Todo el poder para los que se equivocaron
Los jefes de Moody's salen de la crisis global con sueldos récord
Los ejecutivos de la agencia cobran un bonus por ayudar a "restaurar la confianza" en la economía
Las agencias de 'rating' son en parte responsables de la crisis financiera.
Los bancos son culpables y deben hacer frente a sus responsabilidadesLa reciente crisis financiera internacional emergió en verano de 2007 cuando los productos con los que negociaba y especulaba la banca demostraron carecer de valor. Durante los años anteriores el sistema
26.3.11
25.3.11
For the first time since John F. Kennedy, the USA has a charismatic leader to the point of being popular in other lands, becoming a reference for the electorates of different countries. And, because of his path and ethnic culture, Obama through that his image has an obvious penetration in the Brazilian public opinion.
The American diplomacy strategists operate with this certainty. They are manipulating that symbolic projection with coherence to their interests. There are two axioms in politics that may explain this modus operandi. One of them is to "divide to reign or to conquer", and the other is the "going deep to grass roots popularity of a politician's" image, accentuating an imaginary representation and not the real or factual projection.
In the action of dividing to reign, the Department of State focus is the rapprochement of the Brazilian diplomatic agenda to the western hemisphere. This obviously implicates a slow removal from Latin America centered theories. It can be explained with an analysis of President Obama's speech, eulogizing our country in the discursive actions and projecting Brazilian leadership in the Continent. At the same time, the United States has a shy position about recommending the seventh larger economy in the world for a permanent United Nations Security Council seat. In this subject, Washington acted in an identical way, dividing G 20 leaders and specially BRIC countries, putting India and Brazil in opposite positions.
Going back to Obama's tour, his imaginary penetration in Brazil can be explained by a special combination of an upper class super education basis (as a political scientist and lawyer with very good oratory skills) with the image of an experienced community organizer in Chicago ghettos. The mirror effect works. While he enchanted the Brazilians in Rio and Brasília, the coalition (with NATO leadership) attacked loyalist Muammar El-Khadafi targets in the Libyan territory. It is possible to build a popular character in other societies without passing through media gatekeepers and their way of manufacturing consent. This administration has the know-how to speak directly with the people of other countries without "paying taxes" to local media conglomerate. That's why Obama has given little or any attention for the Latin-American media (leaders in media business) and put all the emphasis in White House propaganda apparatus, including live blogs and the broadcast through internet, diffusing a big part of President's public agenda.
A possible characterization of the passage of Obama for Brazil is the exercise of the diplomacy through putting emphasis in people and exalting similarities in both countries path. Barack Hussein said that USA and Brazil are huge "new" western countries with powerful states, composed for a multi-ethnic population and with a slavery common past. This seems very sympathetic and pleased residents of the world largest afro-descending nation. Brazilians self-esteem arose in the heights after that. Here comes the second characterization, which analyzes Obama as the great Imperial Power public relationships, attracting the attentions for this inclination. This tactical maneuver created a game of mirrors among what audiences are seeing: a nice and high educated USA president, and the typical Imperialist way, promoting a "humanitarian bombing", attacking a dictator until recently tolerated.
In George W. Bush times, anti-imperialist positions were easy to spread and to be explained. The son of Reagan's former vice-president is less qualified and worse as political operator. When Bush Jr. has come to São Paulo to accomplish a calendar with Lula, in November of 2005, the chaos was formed in the largest Brazilian city. Jeb Bush's brother's cortege interrupted Down Town traffic in a working day and had against itself a protest action with great proportions. For Latin America social fighters, 11/05/2005 was an unforgettable day. Now, in the last summer days at the southern hemisphere, the couple Michele and Obama, two former students of Ivy League universities like Bush Jr., generated a different sensation with the visit of a US President. Sunday, March 20 begun with a visit to City of God (Cidade de Deus, a huge mix of slum and project in Rio's west zone) and ended with a creative speech to a VIP audience in the Theatro Municipal. After that, in Brazil, Obama became a brilliant star.
Barack Hussein Obama II is capable of many feats. A well trained Public Relations and propagandist professional, he could execute a typical hearts and minds operation, enchanting all kind of audiences, from the bottom to the top of social pyramid. The "old school" psychological operation was so well done that almost nobody in Brazil noticed the maneuver.
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