O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

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Mostrando postagens com marcador autocracia vs democracia. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador autocracia vs democracia. Mostrar todas as postagens

quinta-feira, 30 de outubro de 2014

A China seria um Estado autocratico?: canadenses de Toronto dizem que sim...

Sinosphere
Toronto School District Cancels Plans for Confucius Institute
By AUSTIN RAMZY
Canada’s largest school district moved to terminate its agreement with the institute, which would have offered after-school Chinese language and culture classes, over concerns about China’s human rights record and restrictions on academic freedom.

Parece que tem gente que não concorda em manter relações as usual...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Toronto School District Cancels Plans for Confucius Institute

Photo
In early 2011, Hu Jintao, left, who was president of China at the time, visited a Confucius Institute at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School in Chicago. The program has entered partnerships with hundreds of schools and universities around the world.Credit Pool photo by Chris Walker
The Toronto District School Board’s vote to cancel plans for a Confucius Institute marks the latest setback for China’s language- and culture-based soft-power initiative.
Canada’s largest school district moved on Wednesday to terminate its agreement with the institute, which would have offered after-school Chinese language and culture classes, over concerns about China’s human rights record and restrictions on academic freedom.
The decision followed months of debate, with groups including Tibetan exiles and members of the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China, arguing that the program be stopped on grounds that it would give the Chinese government undue influence over local education. Others, including members of the local Chinese community, argued in favor of the language-learning opportunities the program would have provided and said politics would not play a part.
The board’s decision seemed likely after a committee of its members voted earlier this month to recommend that the district end the agreement. Its Chinese partner, the Hunan Provincial Department of Education, moved last week to sever the deal after Toronto board members’ intentions became clear, The Toronto Star reported.
The nonprofit Confucius Institutes have been set up under the direction of the Hanban, which is affiliated with China’s Ministry of Education. The 10-year-old program has opened 465 institutes and more than 700 smaller Confucius Classrooms around the world. In recent years, it has seen increasing resistance from partner schools, particularly in the United States and Canada, over concerns that the institutes restrict discussion of issues considered sensitive by the Chinese government.
The Toronto decision follows an Oct. 1 move by Pennsylvania State University to end its Confucius Institute partnership. Penn State’s decision came less than a week after the University of Chicago said it was suspending negotiations over the renewal of its Confucius Institute, citing an interview with the Hanban’s director general, Xu Lin, in which she touted her tough negotiating style.
Concerns about Confucius Institutes have run particularly strong in Canada. McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, ended its program last year after a former teaching assistant filed a human rights complaint alleging that the Confucius Institute discriminated against her belief in Falun Gong. The University of Sherbrooke in Quebec also ended its Confucius Institute agreement last year.
This summer, the American Association of University Professors issued a letter calling on schools to cut ties with Confucius Institutes or revise their agreements, saying they “function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom.”
In a commentary on Thursday, the state-run China Daily newspaper accused opponents of Confucius Institutes of having “a deep bias against China.”

terça-feira, 22 de julho de 2014

David democratico vs Golias autocratico: a pequena Macau querliberdades, contra a grande China opressora

No final, a liberdade sempre vence, e o próprio povo chinês vai aprender com os minúsculos territórios da Hong Kong e Macau que a democracia também precisa ser imposta aos autocratas de Beijing.
A opressão tem seus dias contados, daí o desespero dos totalitários em conter os movimentos por liberdades democráticas nos dois territórios.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Macau Raises Its Political Voice

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Continue reading the main story

 

Democratic activists in Macau, a Chinese territory, are planning an unofficial referendum next month about holding direct elections for its chief executive. Beijing says Macau — a Portuguese colony handed back to China in 1999 — has no legal authority to hold a referendum, and dismisses any vote as meaningless. But the territory’s newly awakened democratic force is not something Beijing can just wish away.
Macau’s universal suffrage movement follows the unofficial referendum in Hong Kong last month that called for the right to freely elect that city’s chief executive. Some 800,000 people voted, and hundreds of thousands took to the streets calling for democracy.
Macau, like Hong Kong, enjoys a high degree of autonomy, including freedom of speech and press as well as a capitalist economy, under China’s policy of “one country, two systems.” Macau’s chief executive, though, is elected by a commission of 400 people, most of whom are Beijing loyalists. The proposed referendum will ask Macau residents whether universal suffrage should be adopted for the 2019 chief executive election, and whether they have confidence in the current chief executive, Fernando Chui, who is expected to be re-elected by the commission in August for another five-year term.
Macau’s 600,000 residents were politically quiet until recently. Then, in May, 20,000 people protested Mr. Chui’s attempt to legislate a lavish retirement package for top officials and immunity from criminal persecution for the chief executive for any misdeeds committed while in office. What began as a protest against Mr. Chui quickly shaped into a larger democratic movement challenging China.
Beijing promised at the time of the British handover of Hong Kong to preserve “one country, two systems” for 50 years, which leaves 33 more years. During this time, the richer southeastern coastal regions of China are likely to become more like Hong Kong and Macau economically, socially and in political aspiration. Beijing should be thinking about how to accommodate these long-term trends instead of conjuring ways to suppress today’s dissent in the two specially administered cities.

terça-feira, 1 de julho de 2014

Tian An-Mein em Hong Kong? O pequeno David democrata contra o gigante tirano Golias?

Os jovens de Hong Kong, muitas das vezes filhos daqueles chineses do continente que fugiram anos atrás, décadas antes, da ditadura e da miséria comunista, não se sentem chineses. Eles querem ser, querem preservar o que são: livres, democratas, autônomos, capitalistas de verdade.
Será que a pequena ilha é que vai transformar o imenso e democraticamente atrasado continente que fica atrás?
Não sabemos ainda. A História dá muitas voltas e nunca se repete.
Mas, certas coisas são imutáveis: a sede pela liberdade do ser humano, por exemplo.
Em todo caso, esses jovens começam bem...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Huge Crowds Turn Out for Hong Kong Pro-Democracy March
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A huge throng of people, mostly young, took to Hong Kong’s streets Tuesday, defying Beijing’s dwindling tolerance for challenges to its control.

HONG KONG — Hundreds of thousands of people held one of the largest marches in Hong Kong’s history on Tuesday to demand greater democracy, defying intermittent tropical downpours and Beijing’s dwindling tolerance for challenges to its control.
A nearly solid river of protesters — most of them young — poured out of Victoria Park through the afternoon and into the evening, heading for the heart of the city. The sea of protesters showed their determination by waiting unflinchingly and with barely a complaint for hours under a succession of deluges just for their chance to walk through the skyscraper-lined canyons of downtown Hong Kong, carrying banners calling for the introduction of full democracy and “Say No to Communist China.”


Enquanto isso, do outro lado da cerca, mas na mesma pequena ilha:

By MICHAEL FORSYTHE

Two people who turned out for a pro-Beijing rally in Hong Kong said they were paid to attend the event.

terça-feira, 31 de dezembro de 2013

Democracy deficit in emerging countries: the role of Brazil - an abridged version of an extended paper by Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Apenas o resumo de um trabalho bem mais amplo, que ainda vai ser publicado:

Democracy Deficit in Emerging Countries: Undemocratic trends in Latin America and the role of Brazil: a very short presentation”, Hartford, 12 October 2013, 3 p. Abridged version of the paper n. 2510, prepared for the Conference “Promoting Democracy: What Role for the Emerging Powers?”, organized by the Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), the International Development Research Centre (IRDC), and the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, 15-16 October 2013).

Democracy Deficit in Emerging Countries:
Undemocratic trends in Latin America and the role of Brazil
(A very short presentation of the paper)

Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Ph.D. in Social Sciences, M.A. in Economic Development, Brazilian career diplomat; professor of International Political Economy at the University Center of Brasilia (Uniceub); currently Deputy Consul of Brazil in Hartford, CT-USA; Website: www.pralmeida.org.
Conference Promoting Democracy: What Role for the Emerging Powers?
(University of Ottawa, 15-16 October 2013)

            (... Intro...)
            My paper probably runs contrary sense to expected arguments, which the organizers perhaps would hope to be in favor of a stronger participation of emerging countries in the general movement towards higher degrees of democratization around the world. No, I do not buy this thesis, which would be a kind of late-Fukuyama optimistic view on the march of History: I do not think emerging countries are becoming more democratic, or pushing the world systems towards more democratic forms of governance, only because they have a stronger stake in the globalization process and in the economic interdependence, in general. For me, it all depends on the equilibrium of political forces at domestic level, and the type of ideologies and political doctrines that are at the core of hegemonic party that controls the State. States are an abstract notion to encompass the polity in its actual functioning. Government is a more concrete reality, because it arises from electoral choices – such as those being made in Brazil and India, for instance – or it derives from previous revolutionary process, and hold the monopoly of power – like in China, for example – or it simply is the result of powerful forces and movements which are capable of control the main leverages of political power: usually the levers of the main economic riches (like in Russia).
China and Russia are, palpably, the most visible undemocratic powers, both internally, against their own constituencies, and in multilateral organizations, where they act as restraints whenever the UN Security Council is discussing “responsibility to protect” initiatives against nasty dictators somewhere in the world. India and Brazil, for their side, arguably “big democratic emerging economies”, have not notably distinguished themselves as ardent and irreproachable defenders of democratic values and principles in their respective foreign policies; at national level, their low-quality democracy and large-scale, politically tolerated corrupt practices in domestic politics, offer no good examples for strengthening democracy in other countries.

That said, let me present how my paper was organized. I firstly have some considerations of a truly academic nature about the two types of democratic regimes; for one side, the ones that derive from the formal institutional organization, that is the classical tripartition of powers, which reveals a conception of democracy based mainly on its superstructure shape; and, at the other side, those which take ground on the democratic mores of the society, as arising, for example, from village level like in the old Anglo-Saxon approach, that was transplanted to the United States with the first colonizers. But we can leave that apart, because is only trivia for the academia.
After I make a very brief description of Brazilian path towards a low-quality democratic system, after many decades of oligarchic or military regimes. That’s no more Political Science, but just History, to put the current regime in the context of the many changes the Brazilian polity endured in the last half century. Next section is also context, but a current one: the rising of the so-called new Left in Latin America; some observers divide this persistent tribe of true believers in socialism in two bunches: the carnivore type, that is Bolivarians and the like; and the herbivorous Left, who was running some moderate distributive countries such as Chile, Uruguay and even Brazil. In fact, they are all committed with the defense of old Stalinists such as the Castro brothers in the last totalitarian dictatorship in Latin America, and they all take their political guidelines from the São Paulo Forum, a Cuban-ruled forum of Leftist and Stalinist parties that is firmly committed with the monopoly of power in those countries.
As for Brazil, the real picture is worse than the one publicized by international media, that is, a progressive out-of-the-people popular leader, the trade unionist Lula, who is preserving democracy and at the same time conducting the world’s greatest and most important income redistribution program, embodied in the Bolsa Familia, together with his phantasmagoric participative budget and other “social inclusive” measures.
In fact, it is not immediately visible, but it can be demonstrated, as I have done in my paper, that Lula and the PT government are, essentially, a neo-Bolshevik group, or an amalgam of various leftist and sectarian sects, who are substantially engaged in, and committed to, the monopolization of power in Brazil. They have conducted a very systematic work of submission of the two other independent powers: either by literally buying individual parliamentarians, or entire party ranks (and that is the origin of the worst corruption case in the history of Brazil, the Mensalão, or monthly allowances, in exchange of political alignment); or by nominating sympathetic judges to the Supreme Court: they are doing that since the beginning, but accelerating the trend with the final judgment of the case (after more than 8 years). They also try very hard to control the media, convening national media conferences, with the excuse of the “democratization of the press”, and have created many State-controlled agencies, which are submerged by party militants and fellow-travellers. There are thousands of them, everywhere.
Let’s not be duped: Brazil is not, of course, a undemocratic country, but it is very much a under-democratic polity, with plenty of privileges for the few, lots of pork-barrel in the parliament, and a corporatist state-of-mind, that serves pretty much the almost fascist-like manipulation of the governance by PT and its apparatchiks. Brazilian people, in general, love the State, they are always demanding more public services, they all want to become public officials, profiting from the high wages of the public sector – in average, six times more than the equivalent functions in the private sector – and they are unconscious accomplices in the overall dominance exerted by bureaucrats over the nation. The dirigisme, the hyper-centralization, and the State-induction of so many areas of the economy combines with the mandarins and the maharajahs in control of strategic levers of the State to lead Brazil to a situation of low savings, low investments, very low productivity gains, insufficient innovation, and, in consequence, mediocre growth and distorted development. The quality of public education is appalling, and, as in many other sectors, it is impossible to fix it, due to the resistance of trade union mafias which opposes any kind of meritocracy, and fight only for the most complete isonomy rules.
At the regional and international level, PT government has given support to the worst dictatorships in the world, beginning with Cuba and Venezuela, and going to China and others. It has also been a sympathetic ally of the many offenders of human rights everywhere. Their notion of diplomatic alliances is that Brazil has to be aligned with anti-hegemonic emerging powers, in their language “anti-imperialist” forces, which in the practice is a disguised word for plain anti-Americanism in every area.
That’s all. Many thanks...

===================

Abstract of the paper:

After an introductory discussion of the various meanings of democracy and its institutionalization in historical cases, the paper focuses on the case of Brazil in the regional context. After experiencing vigorous democratic dynamics, following the transition from military regime in mid-80s, Brazil seems to have witnessed a reversal of the previous democratic trend. Since the inauguration of Lula’s administration, in the early 2000s, the new elite of the Workers’ Party (PT) has aligned the government with the so-called Bolivarian countries in Latin America. In politics, the PT has revealed itself to be tolerant of the habits of the old oligarchies (clientelism, patrimonialism, corruption); economically, it has stimulated the old practices of Colbert, dirigisme, and displayed a preference for state-driven initiatives and controls (instead of autonomous agencies). Some analysts even raise the specter of corporate fascism, which is more evident in Bolivarian Venezuela; others suggest that a new unholy alliance is uniting Lula’s Brazil with its old and new best friends in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and even Argentina (not forgetting some of their undemocratic cousins in other continents). Lula’s foreign policy confirmed a clear departure from Brazil’s traditional defense of human rights and democratic values, as reconstructed after the long undemocratic military interregnum by statesmen such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The PT’s South-South activism and infantile “anti-imperialism”, moreover, is directly at odds with, and opposed to, the more prudent orientation of professional diplomacy. Not only does it not reinforce democracy inside Brazil, but it also shows no determination to promote democracy abroad (a fact clearly revealed by votes on the UN Human Rights Commission, for instance). The weak democratic credentials of the new Gramscian nomenklatura currently in power in Brazil offer scant prospects for a vigorous promotion of democracy in most of South America. 
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
 [Hartford, October 12, 2013] 

quinta-feira, 27 de junho de 2013

O pacto do eu sozinho: ou, eu falo e voces ouvem; nada mais sintomatico...

De fato, nada mais sintomático do que isto:
"Sem ser interrompida durante 35 minutos..."
Será que já estamos em monocracia e não sabemos?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Por Vera Rosa
Estado de S.Paulo, 26/06/2013

Em reunião com dirigentes de cinco centrais sindicais, nesta quarta-feira, a presidente Dilma Rousseff disse que “não existe tarifa zero” no transporte coletivo, detalhou os planos para conter a onda de protestos no País e afirmou estar disposta a entrar em campo para pôr os pingos nos ‘is’ nessa luta política. “O meu governo vai disputar a voz das ruas”, afirmou Dilma aos sindicalistas.
Sem ser interrompida durante 35 minutos, ela disse respeitar as manifestações, mas admitiu temer a ação de grupos com outros interesses que não os de movimentos pacíficos. Ao citar a redução do preço das passagens de ônibus, metrô e trens metropolitanos nas principais capitais, Dilma disse que o transporte gratuito é inviável. “Não existe tarifa zero: ou se paga passagem ou se paga imposto”, insistiu.
A presidente pediu apoio aos sindicalistas para a proposta de convocação de um plebiscito, com o objetivo de ouvir o que a população quer mudar no sistema político. A ideia rachou o movimento sindical. A presidente também não conseguiu convencer os dirigentes a suspender a greve geral marcada para 11 de julho e muitos deles deixaram o Palácio do Planalto sem esconder a irritação com o que chamaram de “reunião para inglês ver”.
“O controle da inflação é primordial. Mas a consulta popular para fazermos avançar a reforma política também é”, argumentou Dilma, de acordo com relatos dos participantes do encontro. Para a presidente, é preciso bater nessa tecla agora para que as mudanças entrem em vigor na eleição de 2014, quando ela disputará o segundo mandato.
Dilma e a cúpula do PT defendem o financiamento público de campanha, sob o argumento de que essa é a melhor forma de coibir o abuso do poder econômico. O problema é que não há consenso em torno da proposta nem mesmo na base aliada do governo no Congresso. “A corrupção é um crime hediondo e nós precisamos enfrentar isso”, afirmou Dilma, ao lembrar um dos pontos do pacto lançado pelo Planalto em resposta à onda de protestos.
Acuado pelas manifestações, o Senado aprovou na noite desta quarta-feira o projeto que transforma a corrupção em crime hediondo. O texto, agora, seguirá para a Câmara.
Ao levantar essa bandeira, o PT também quer construir uma agenda positiva num momento em que os réus petistas do mensalão aguardam julgamento de seus recursos, por parte do Supremo Tribunal Federal, na tentativa de diminuir suas penas. Embora dirigentes e parlamentares do PT estejam insatisfeitos com a “centralização” do governo Dilma, a intenção do partido é virar a página da crise e definir uma estratégia para se reaproximar dos movimentos sociais.

O encontro de Dilma com os sindicalistas acabou tenso porque ela levantou e foi embora depois que todos os inscritos externaram sua opinião sobre os problemas do País. “Foi mais uma reunião para ouvir os planos mirabolantes da presidente. Saímos daqui como sempre saímos: sem encaminhamento de nenhuma das nossas reivindicações”, criticou o deputado Paulo Pereira da Silva (PDT-SP), presidente da Força Sindical.

sexta-feira, 16 de dezembro de 2011

A "democracia" dos companheiros... farsa permanente...

Sim, eu sei que tem masoquistas frequentando este blog, gente que não pode consentir que alguém não seja adesista à causa da justiça social e da igualdade no ócio (ops, esta é só para os que trabalham em certos cargos de confiança).
Essa gente não consegue ler algo que não seja adesão, consentimento, complacência com o monte de bobagens que eles cometem todos os dias, todas as horas, todos os minutos.
Por isso, ficam nervosos quando lêem coisas discrepantes com os slogans que proclamam com a imprensa vendida, a seu favor claro (pois não conseguem ter uma imprensa que lhes seja favorável de graça, salvo a dos militantes que não sabem escrever...).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

La OEA aprueba las recomendaciones para mejorar la eficacia de la Carta Democrática

José Miguel Insulza, secretario general de la OEA.
Infolatam/Efe
Washington, 15 de diciembre de 2011
Las claves
  • El informe, elaborado a petición de la Asamblea General que la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) celebró en junio pasado en El Salvador, sugiere formas para "mejorar la capacidad preventiva" del organismo y cumplir así uno de los mandatos clave de la Carta: la protección y preservación de la democracia.
El Consejo Permanente de la OEA aprobó un informe con recomendaciones para mejorar la eficacia de la Carta Democrática Interamericana, que van desde que el secretario general pueda actuar “de oficio” cuando haya una crisis a la creación de la figura del relator especial.
El informe, elaborado a petición de la Asamblea General que laOrganización de Estados Americanos (OEA) celebró en junio pasado en El Salvador, sugiere formas para “mejorar la capacidad preventiva” del organismo y cumplir así uno de los mandatos clave de la Carta: la protección y preservación de la democracia.
Entre esas sugerencias está la de que el secretario general de la OEA pueda actuar “de oficio”, es decir, sin el consentimiento o autorización previa del gobierno afectado por una situación de crisis como la que se produjo en Honduras con el golpe de Estado de 2009.
La otra opción sería la de crear una especie de Relator Especial, Ombudsman o Alto Comisionado con “tareas políticas y diplomáticas preventivas”.
Después de la sesión del Consejo, en un encuentro en su despacho en Washington con un reducido grupo de medios, entre ellos Efe, el actual secretario general de la OEA, José Miguel Insulza, se mostró más partidario de ampliar las competencias de su cargo que de la creación de la figura del Relator Especial.
Es “difícil” que una figura nueva “sea aprobada en el corto plazo por los países”, por lo que es “más fácil crear más atribuciones para el secretario general”, argumentó Insulza.
Recordó que la Carta Democrática establece una limitación importante a la labor del secretario general: cuando ve una amenaza a la democracia solo puede actuar con el consentimiento o autorización del país afectado.
Por ello, Insulza propuso analizar la fórmula de una “invitación permanente”, que ya algunos países aplican para la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) pero a la que otros, como Venezuela, se oponen rotundamente porque les parece una injerencia en asuntos internos.
Precisamente Venezuela quería dar más relieve en el informe a los conceptos de “participación del pueblo” y a la “democracia directa”, lo que motivó el rechazo de países como Estados Unidos y Canadá, así como la conformación de un grupo de trabajo que discutió varias horas a puerta cerrada la redacción final del texto.
La delegación de Venezuela proponía incluir en el informe un párrafo con la idea de que se ha “superado la noción de la democracia electoral”, algo que no gustó a Insulza, quien intervino varias veces en el Consejo para expresar su discrepancia “con vehemencia”.