O que vai transcrito abaixo é da pluma de um economista consultor, Marco Aurélio Garcia -- não confundir, absolutamente, com o assessor presidencial do mesmo nome, mas que não é economista, nem, obviamente, um liberal -- que participava de um debate sobre políticas econômicas no blog do jornalista econômico José Paulo Kupfer, do Estadão, em torno da política monetária do BC e da decisão do Copom de manter a taxa de juros estável, em 28.01.2010, mas com viés de provável alta nos próximos meses.
O Liberalismo Econômico
29/01/2010 - 19:12
Enviado por: Marco Aurélio Garcia
Constantemente acadêmicos utilizam o condenável método de definir pensamentos contrários de acordo com seus interesses. Conceituam liberalismo e neoliberalismo de modo diferente, mas mantêm os mesmos autores como pensadores, Adam Smith (clássico, pai do liberalismo), Friedrich August Von Hayek (austríaco radicado nos USA), Milton Friedman (escola de Chicago). Não consideram que as bases dos pensamentos subsistem (são as mesmas), adequando-se à evolução dos tempos, mas não mudam no essencial. Os limites práticos de aplicação ao mundo real é que divergem (quanto de regulação, etc.).
O Liberalismo pode ser definido como uma doutrina ou corrente de pensamento que defende a liberdade individual (os direitos individuais e civis), a livre iniciativa, o governo democrático (baseado no livre consentimento dos governados e estabelecido com base em eleições livres), a liberdade de expressão, a defesa da concorrência, instituições que obedeçam a lei igual para todos, a transparência, o lucro e o direito de propriedade. O liberalismo nasceu combatendo o direito divino dos reis (e a hereditariedade dos governantes), os privilégios da corte, dos militares e o sistema de religião oficial.
Os liberais acreditam que substituir a ordem natural, espontânea e complexa dos mercados (infinitos interesses pessoais) pelas limitações do planejamento centralizado, dirigido por burocratas de governos (totalitários e autocráticos, onde a corrupção é facilitada), é o caminho do empobrecimento. O pensamento liberal defende e aceita um poder normativo (mais normas e menos poder discricionário de autoridades) e defensor da concorrência e dos interesses dos consumidores (não existe Liberalismo sem concorrência).
RESUMINDO: A MENOR PRESENÇA ESTATAL POSSÍVEL, A MAIOR QUANDO NECESSÁRIA.
O Capitalismo é a economia de livre mercado. O liberalismo é a forma mais evoluída do capitalismo (a menor presença estatal possível). O Capitalismo de estado é uma variante que facilita a corrupção e agrega muito dos pontos negativos do comunismo. O Lucro e a Propriedade Privada são os pilares motivadores da produção e do crescimento econômico. Para que a propriedade privada e o lucro aconteçam é necessário que a economia seja livre. Por isso, o Capitalismo é também chamado de economia liberal ou de livre mercado. O governo intervém para buscar o Bem Comum e evitar desequilíbrios entre os agentes econômicos (através de leis e órgãos reguladores).
A poupança nacional é individual e gerida individualmente. As empresas, para conseguir o lucro e a sobrevivência procuram produzir de acordo com as necessidades e os desejos dos consumidores. Os preços são livres. Utiliza os talentos existentes na população para produzir e dirigir. Em tese utiliza todos os cérebros existentes nos países. Os proprietários, buscando o lucro, buscam também os melhores dirigentes e ganhos constantes de produtividade (desenvolvimento e melhoria contínua é o caminho para a Sobrevivência).
Ao contrário do que escrevem, Milton Friedman defendia a normatização, sabedor que a falta de regras do jogo é o retorno à barbárie. Inclusive em seu livro “Capitalismo e Liberdade” escreve um capítulo cujo título é: “O governo como legislador e árbitro”, e outro “Normas em vez de autoridades”.
É populismo, demagogia ou ignorância escreverem que o capitalismo (ou o liberalismo) prega a eliminação da regulação (alguns chegam a escrever a total eliminação da regulação). O que o liberalismo prega é a redução do poder discricionário dos governantes, é a obediência de todos às regras pré-estabelecidas (enfim regras do jogo estabelecidas e que defendam a concorrência).
sábado, janeiro 30, 2010
quarta-feira, janeiro 27, 2010
566) Friedrich Hayek (1938) - A Planned Economy
What Price a Planned Economy?
by Friedrich A. Hayek
Contemporary Review of London, April 1938
I
The link between classical liberalism and present-day Socialism — often still misnamed liberalism — is undoubtedly the belief that the consummation of individual freedom requires relief from the most pressing economic cares. If this seems attainable only at the price of restricting freedom in economic activity, then that price must be paid; and it may be conceded that most of those who want to restrict private initiative in economic life do so in the hope of creating more freedom in spheres which they value higher.
So successfully has the socialist ideal of freedom — social, economic and political been preached that the old cry of the opponents that socialism means slavery has been completely silenced. Probably the great majority of the socialist intellectuals regard themselves as the true upholders of the great tradition of intellectual and cultural liberty against that threatening monster — the authoritarian Leviathan.
Yet here and there, in the writings of some of the more independent minds of our time who have generally welcomed the universal trend toward collectivism, a note of disquiet can be discerned. The question has forced itself upon them whether some of the shocking developments of the past decades may not be the necessary outcome of the tendencies which they had themselves favored.
There are some elements in the present situation which strongly suggest that this may be so, such as the intellectual past of the authoritarian leaders, and the fact that many of the more advanced socialists openly admit that the attainment of their ends is not possible without a thorough curtailment of individual liberty.
We see that the similarity between many of the most characteristic features of the "fascist" and the "communist" regimes becomes steadily more obvious. Nor is it an accident that in the fascist states a socialist is often regarded as a potential recruit, while the liberal of the old school is recognized as the arch-enemy.
And, above all, the effects of the gradual advance toward collectivism in the countries which still cherish the tradition of liberty in social and political institutions provide ample food for thought. Anyone who has had an opportunity to watch at close range the intellectual evolution of the peoples who eventually succumbed to authoritarianism cannot fail to observe a very similar chain of cause and effect in a much less advanced state proceeding in the countries which are yet free.
Can we be certain that we know exactly where the danger to liberty lies? Was the rise of the fascist regimes really simply an intellectual reaction fomented by those whose privileges were abolished by social progress? Of course the direction of affairs in those countries has been taken out of the hands of the working classes and has been placed in those of a more efficient oligarchy. But have the new rulers not taken over the fundamental ideas and methods and simply turned them to their own ends:
It is astounding that these fateful possibilities which suggest themselves have not yet received more attention. If the suspicion of such a connection should prove correct, it would mean that we are witnessing one of the great tragedies in human history: more and more people being driven by their indignation about the suppression of political and intellectual freedom in some countries to join the forces which make its ultimate suppression inevitable. It would mean that many of the most active and sincere advocates of intellectual freedom are in effect its worst enemies and far more dangerous than its avowed opponents, because they enlist the support of those who would recoil in horror if they understood the ultimate consequences.
II
An attempt will be made here to show why this connection, which experience suggests, must be regarded as of a necessary character — as dictated by the inherent logic of things.
The main point is very simple. It is that the central economic planning which is regarded as necessary to organize economic activity on more rational and efficient lines, presupposes a much more complete agreement on the relative importance of the different ends than actually exists. Therefore, in order to be able to plan the planning authority must impose upon the people that detailed code of values which is lacking.
And imposing here means more than merely reading such a detailed code of values into the vague general formulae on which alone the people are able to agree The people must be made to believe in this particular code of values, since the success or failure of the planning authority will in two different ways depend on whether it succeeds in creating that belief. On the one hand, it will only secure the necessary enthusiastic support if the people believe in the ends which the plan serves; and on the other hand, the outcome will only be regarded as successful if the ends served are generally regarded as the right ones.
A fuller exposition must begin with the problems which arise when a democracy begins to plan.
Planning must be understood here in the wide sense of any deliberate attempt at central direction of economic activity which goes beyond mere general rules that apply equally to all persons, and which tells different people individually what to do and what not to do. The demand for such planning arises because people are promised a greater measure of welfare if industry is consciously organized on rational lines and because it seems obvious that those particular ends which each individual most desires can be achieved by means of planning. But the agreement about the ends of planning is, in the first instance, necessarily confined to some blanket formula like the general welfare, greater equality or justice, etc.
Agreement on such a general formula is, however, not sufficient to determine a concrete plan, even if we take all the technical means as given. Planning always involves a sacrifice of some ends in favor of others, a balancing of costs and results, and this presupposes a complete ranging of the different ends in the order of their importance. To agree on a particular plan requires much more than agreement on some general ethical rule; it requires much more than general adherence to any of the ethical codes which have ever existed; it requires that sort of complete quantitative scale of values which manifests itself in the actual decisions of every individual but on which, in an individualist society, agreement is neither necessary nor present.
This fact — that a measure of agreement which does not exist is required in order to translate the apparent agreement on the desirability to plan into concrete action — has two important consequences.
In the first instance it is responsible for the conspicuous inability of democratic assemblies to carry out what is apparently the expressed will of the people, because it is only when it comes to translate the vague instructions into action that the lack of real agreement manifests itself. Hence the growing dissatisfaction with the "talking shops" which fail to carry out what to the man in the street seems a clear mandate.
III
The second effect of the same cause, which appears wherever a democracy attempts to plan, is the general recognition that if efficient planning is to be done in a particular field, the direction of affairs must be "taken out of politics" and placed in the hands of independent, autonomous bodies. This is usually justified by the technical character of the decisions to be made, for which the members of a democratic assembly are not qualified.
But this excuse does not go to the root of the matter. Alterations in the structure of the civil law are no less technical and no more difficult to appreciate in all their implications; yet nobody would seriously suggest that legislation should here be delegated to a body of experts. The fact is that such legislation will be carried no further than is permitted by true agreement between a majority.
But in the direction of economic activity, say of transport, or industrial planning, the interests to be reconciled are so divergent that no true agreement on a single plan could be reached in a democratic assembly. Hence, in order to be able to extend action beyond the questions on which agreement exists, the decisions are reserved to a few representatives of the most powerful "interests."
But this expedient is not effective enough to placate the dissatisfaction which the impotence of the democracy must create among all friends of extensive planning. The delegation of special decisions to many independent bodies presents in itself a new obstacle to proper coordination of state action in different fields.
The legislature is naturally reluctant to delegate decisions on really vital questions. And the agreement that planning is necessary, together with the inability to agree on a particular plan, must tend to strengthen the demand that the government, or some single person, should be given power to act on their own responsibility. It becomes more and more the accepted belief that if one wants to get things done, the responsible director of affairs must be freed from the fetters of democratic procedure.
Democratic government has fallen into discredit because it has been burdened with tasks for which it is not suited. Here is a fact of the greatest importance which has not yet received adequate recognition. Yet the fundamental position is simply that the probability of agreement of a substantial portion of the population upon a particular course of action decreases as the scope of state activity expands.
There are certain functions of the state on the exercise of which there will be practical unanimity. There will be others on which there will be agreement among a substantial majority. And so on until we come to fields where, although every individual might wish the government to intervene in some direction, there will be almost as many views about how the government should act as there are different persons.
Democratic government worked successfully so long as, by a widely accepted creed, the functions of the state were limited to fields where real agreement among a majority could be achieved. The price we have to pay for a democratic system is the restriction of state action to those fields where agreement can be obtained; and it is the great merit of a liberal society that it reduces the necessity of agreement to a minimum compatible with the diversity of individual opinions which will exist in a free society.
It is often said that democracy will not tolerate capitalism. But if here "capitalism" means a competitive society based on free disposal over private property, the much more important fact is that only capitalism makes democracy possible. And if a democratic people comes under the sway of an anti-capitalistic creed, this means that democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
IV
But if democracy had to abdicate only from the control of economic life, this might still be regarded as a minor evil compared with the advantages expected from planning. Indeed, many of the advocates of planning fully realize — and have resigned themselves to the fact — that if planning is to be effective, democracy in the economic sphere has to go by the board.
But it is a fatal delusion to believe that authoritarian government can be confined to economic matters. The tragic fact is that dictatorial direction cannot remain confined to economic matters but is bound to expand and to become "totalitarian" in the strict sense of the word. The economic dictator will soon find himself forced, even against his wishes, to assume dictatorship over the whole of the political and cultural life of the people.
We have already seen that the planner must not only impose a concrete and detailed scale of values upon the vague and general instructions given by popular clamor, but must also, if he wants to act at all, make the people believe that this imposed code of values is the right one. He is forced to create that unity of purpose which — apart from national crises like war — is absent in a free society. Even more, if he is to be allowed to carry out the plan which he thinks to be the right one, he must retain the popular support, that is, he must at all costs appear successful.
The decision on the relative importance of conflicting aims is necessarily a decision about the relative merits of different groups and individuals. Planning becomes necessarily a planning in favor of some and against others. The problem here is, of course, not that the different people concerned have not the most decided opinions on the relative merits of their respective wishes; it is rather that these opinions are irreconcilable. But the ground on which the more or less arbitrary decision of the authority rests must be made to appear just, to be based on some ultimate ideal in which everybody is supposed to believe.
The inevitable distinction between persons must be made a distinction of rank, most conveniently and naturally based on the degree to which people share and loyally support the creed of the ruler. And it further clarifies the position if to the aristocracy of creed at one end of the scale there corresponds a class of outcasts at the other, whose interests can in all cases be sacrificed to those of the privileged class.
But conformity to the ruling ideas cannot be regarded as a special merit, although those who excel by their devotion to the creed will be rewarded. It must be exacted from everybody. Every doubt in the rightness of the ends aimed at or the methods adopted is apt to diminish loyalty and enthusiasm and must therefore be treated as sabotage.
The creation and enforcement of the common creed and of the belief in the supreme wisdom of the ruler becomes an indispensable instrument for the success of the planned system. The ruthless use of all potential instruments of propaganda and the suppression of every expression of dissent is not an accidental accompaniment of a centrally directed system — it is an essential part of it.
Nor can moral coercion be confined to the acceptance of the ethical code underlying the whole plan. It is in the nature of things that many parts of this code, many parts of the scale of values underlying the plan, can never be explicitly stated. They exist only implicitly in the plan. But this means that every part of the plan, in fact, every action of the government or its agencies, becomes sacrosanct and exempt from criticism.
It is, however, only the expression of criticism that can be forcibly suppressed. But doubts that are never uttered and hesitation that is never voiced have equally insidious effects, even if they dwell only in the minds of the people. Everything which might induce discontent must therefore be kept from them. The basis for comparison with conditions elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve the lot of the people — all these must be suppressed.
Indeed, there is no subject that has not some possible bearing on the estimation in which the government will be held. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced.
That the government which claims to plan economic life soon asserts its totalitarian character is no accident — it can do nothing less if it wants to remain true to the intention of planning. Economic life is not a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the administration of the means for all our different ends. Whoever takes charge of these means must determine which ends shall be served; which values are to be rated higher and which lower — in short, what men should believe and strive for. And man himself becomes little more than a means for the realization of the ideals which may guide the dictator.
It is to be feared that to a great many of our contemporaries this picture, even should they recognize it as true, has lost most of the terror which it would have inspired in our fathers. There were, of course, always many to whom intellectual coercion was only objectionable if it was exercised by others, and who regarded it as beneficial if it was exercised for ends of which they approved.
How many of the exiled intellectuals from the authoritarian countries would be only too ready to apply the intellectual coercion which they condemn in their opponents in order to make the people believe in their own ideals — incidentally another illustration for the close kinship of the fundamental principles of fascism and communism.
But although the liberal age was probably freer from intellectual coercion than any other, the desire to force upon people a creed which is regarded as salutary for them is not a new phenomenon. What is new is the attempt to justify it on the part of the socialist intellectuals of our time.
There is no real freedom of thought in a capitalist society, so it is said, because the opinions and tastes of the masses are inevitably shaped by propaganda, by advertising, by the example of the upper classes and by other environmental factors which relentlessly force the thinking of the people into well-worn grooves. But if, the argument proceeds, the ideals and tastes of the great majority are formed by environmental factors which are under human control, we might as well use this power to turn their thoughts in what we think a desirable direction. That is, from the fact that the great majority have not learned to think independently but accept the ideas which they find ready-made, the conclusion is drawn that a particular group of people — of course, those who advocate this — are justified in assuming to themselves the exclusive power to determine what the people should believe.
VI
It is not my intention to deny that for the great majority of individuals the existence or nonexistence of intellectual freedom makes little difference to their personal happiness; nor to deny that they will be equally happy if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs rather than another, and whether they have grown accustomed to one kind of amusement or another.
That in any society it will be only the comparatively few for whom freedom of thought is of any significance or exists in any real sense is probably only too true. But to deprecate the value of intellectual freedom because it will never give everybody the same opportunity of independent thought is completely to miss the reasons which give intellectual freedom its value. What is essential to make it serve its function as the prime mover of intellectual progress is not that everybody may think or write everything, but that any cause or any idea may be argued by somebody.
So long as dissent is not actually prevented, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propaganda. The social process which we call human reason and which consists of the interaction of individuals possessing different information and different views, sometimes consistent and sometimes conflicting, goes on.
Once given the possibility of dissent there will be dissenters, however small the proportion of people who are capable of independent thought. Only the imposition of an official doctrine which must be accepted and which nobody dare question can stop intellectual progress.
How completely the imposition of a comprehensive authoritarian creed stifles all spirit of independent inquiry; how it destroys the sense for any other meaning of truth than that of conformity with the official doctrine; how differences of opinion in every branch of knowledge become political issues — these must be seen in one of the totalitarian countries to be appreciated.
We must hope that those in the Western world who seem to be ready to sacrifice intellectual freedom because it does not mean the same economic opportunity for all will yet realize what is at stake.
The great danger comes from the fact that we take so much of the inheritance of the liberal age for granted — have come to regard it as the inalienable property of our civilization — that we cannot fully conceive what it would mean if we lost it. Yet freedom and democracy are not free gifts which will remain with us if we only wish.
The time seems to have come when it is once again necessary to become fully conscious of the conditions which make them possible, and to defend these conditions even if they seem to block the path to the achievement of other ideals.
F.A. Hayek (1899–1992) was a founding board member of the Mises Institute. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." See Friedrich A. Hayek's article archives.
This article was originally published in the Contemporary Review of London, April 1938. It was reprinted in American Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 33 (1945), pp. 178–181.
by Friedrich A. Hayek
Contemporary Review of London, April 1938
I
The link between classical liberalism and present-day Socialism — often still misnamed liberalism — is undoubtedly the belief that the consummation of individual freedom requires relief from the most pressing economic cares. If this seems attainable only at the price of restricting freedom in economic activity, then that price must be paid; and it may be conceded that most of those who want to restrict private initiative in economic life do so in the hope of creating more freedom in spheres which they value higher.
So successfully has the socialist ideal of freedom — social, economic and political been preached that the old cry of the opponents that socialism means slavery has been completely silenced. Probably the great majority of the socialist intellectuals regard themselves as the true upholders of the great tradition of intellectual and cultural liberty against that threatening monster — the authoritarian Leviathan.
Yet here and there, in the writings of some of the more independent minds of our time who have generally welcomed the universal trend toward collectivism, a note of disquiet can be discerned. The question has forced itself upon them whether some of the shocking developments of the past decades may not be the necessary outcome of the tendencies which they had themselves favored.
There are some elements in the present situation which strongly suggest that this may be so, such as the intellectual past of the authoritarian leaders, and the fact that many of the more advanced socialists openly admit that the attainment of their ends is not possible without a thorough curtailment of individual liberty.
We see that the similarity between many of the most characteristic features of the "fascist" and the "communist" regimes becomes steadily more obvious. Nor is it an accident that in the fascist states a socialist is often regarded as a potential recruit, while the liberal of the old school is recognized as the arch-enemy.
And, above all, the effects of the gradual advance toward collectivism in the countries which still cherish the tradition of liberty in social and political institutions provide ample food for thought. Anyone who has had an opportunity to watch at close range the intellectual evolution of the peoples who eventually succumbed to authoritarianism cannot fail to observe a very similar chain of cause and effect in a much less advanced state proceeding in the countries which are yet free.
Can we be certain that we know exactly where the danger to liberty lies? Was the rise of the fascist regimes really simply an intellectual reaction fomented by those whose privileges were abolished by social progress? Of course the direction of affairs in those countries has been taken out of the hands of the working classes and has been placed in those of a more efficient oligarchy. But have the new rulers not taken over the fundamental ideas and methods and simply turned them to their own ends:
It is astounding that these fateful possibilities which suggest themselves have not yet received more attention. If the suspicion of such a connection should prove correct, it would mean that we are witnessing one of the great tragedies in human history: more and more people being driven by their indignation about the suppression of political and intellectual freedom in some countries to join the forces which make its ultimate suppression inevitable. It would mean that many of the most active and sincere advocates of intellectual freedom are in effect its worst enemies and far more dangerous than its avowed opponents, because they enlist the support of those who would recoil in horror if they understood the ultimate consequences.
II
An attempt will be made here to show why this connection, which experience suggests, must be regarded as of a necessary character — as dictated by the inherent logic of things.
The main point is very simple. It is that the central economic planning which is regarded as necessary to organize economic activity on more rational and efficient lines, presupposes a much more complete agreement on the relative importance of the different ends than actually exists. Therefore, in order to be able to plan the planning authority must impose upon the people that detailed code of values which is lacking.
And imposing here means more than merely reading such a detailed code of values into the vague general formulae on which alone the people are able to agree The people must be made to believe in this particular code of values, since the success or failure of the planning authority will in two different ways depend on whether it succeeds in creating that belief. On the one hand, it will only secure the necessary enthusiastic support if the people believe in the ends which the plan serves; and on the other hand, the outcome will only be regarded as successful if the ends served are generally regarded as the right ones.
A fuller exposition must begin with the problems which arise when a democracy begins to plan.
Planning must be understood here in the wide sense of any deliberate attempt at central direction of economic activity which goes beyond mere general rules that apply equally to all persons, and which tells different people individually what to do and what not to do. The demand for such planning arises because people are promised a greater measure of welfare if industry is consciously organized on rational lines and because it seems obvious that those particular ends which each individual most desires can be achieved by means of planning. But the agreement about the ends of planning is, in the first instance, necessarily confined to some blanket formula like the general welfare, greater equality or justice, etc.
Agreement on such a general formula is, however, not sufficient to determine a concrete plan, even if we take all the technical means as given. Planning always involves a sacrifice of some ends in favor of others, a balancing of costs and results, and this presupposes a complete ranging of the different ends in the order of their importance. To agree on a particular plan requires much more than agreement on some general ethical rule; it requires much more than general adherence to any of the ethical codes which have ever existed; it requires that sort of complete quantitative scale of values which manifests itself in the actual decisions of every individual but on which, in an individualist society, agreement is neither necessary nor present.
This fact — that a measure of agreement which does not exist is required in order to translate the apparent agreement on the desirability to plan into concrete action — has two important consequences.
In the first instance it is responsible for the conspicuous inability of democratic assemblies to carry out what is apparently the expressed will of the people, because it is only when it comes to translate the vague instructions into action that the lack of real agreement manifests itself. Hence the growing dissatisfaction with the "talking shops" which fail to carry out what to the man in the street seems a clear mandate.
III
The second effect of the same cause, which appears wherever a democracy attempts to plan, is the general recognition that if efficient planning is to be done in a particular field, the direction of affairs must be "taken out of politics" and placed in the hands of independent, autonomous bodies. This is usually justified by the technical character of the decisions to be made, for which the members of a democratic assembly are not qualified.
But this excuse does not go to the root of the matter. Alterations in the structure of the civil law are no less technical and no more difficult to appreciate in all their implications; yet nobody would seriously suggest that legislation should here be delegated to a body of experts. The fact is that such legislation will be carried no further than is permitted by true agreement between a majority.
But in the direction of economic activity, say of transport, or industrial planning, the interests to be reconciled are so divergent that no true agreement on a single plan could be reached in a democratic assembly. Hence, in order to be able to extend action beyond the questions on which agreement exists, the decisions are reserved to a few representatives of the most powerful "interests."
But this expedient is not effective enough to placate the dissatisfaction which the impotence of the democracy must create among all friends of extensive planning. The delegation of special decisions to many independent bodies presents in itself a new obstacle to proper coordination of state action in different fields.
The legislature is naturally reluctant to delegate decisions on really vital questions. And the agreement that planning is necessary, together with the inability to agree on a particular plan, must tend to strengthen the demand that the government, or some single person, should be given power to act on their own responsibility. It becomes more and more the accepted belief that if one wants to get things done, the responsible director of affairs must be freed from the fetters of democratic procedure.
Democratic government has fallen into discredit because it has been burdened with tasks for which it is not suited. Here is a fact of the greatest importance which has not yet received adequate recognition. Yet the fundamental position is simply that the probability of agreement of a substantial portion of the population upon a particular course of action decreases as the scope of state activity expands.
There are certain functions of the state on the exercise of which there will be practical unanimity. There will be others on which there will be agreement among a substantial majority. And so on until we come to fields where, although every individual might wish the government to intervene in some direction, there will be almost as many views about how the government should act as there are different persons.
Democratic government worked successfully so long as, by a widely accepted creed, the functions of the state were limited to fields where real agreement among a majority could be achieved. The price we have to pay for a democratic system is the restriction of state action to those fields where agreement can be obtained; and it is the great merit of a liberal society that it reduces the necessity of agreement to a minimum compatible with the diversity of individual opinions which will exist in a free society.
It is often said that democracy will not tolerate capitalism. But if here "capitalism" means a competitive society based on free disposal over private property, the much more important fact is that only capitalism makes democracy possible. And if a democratic people comes under the sway of an anti-capitalistic creed, this means that democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
IV
But if democracy had to abdicate only from the control of economic life, this might still be regarded as a minor evil compared with the advantages expected from planning. Indeed, many of the advocates of planning fully realize — and have resigned themselves to the fact — that if planning is to be effective, democracy in the economic sphere has to go by the board.
But it is a fatal delusion to believe that authoritarian government can be confined to economic matters. The tragic fact is that dictatorial direction cannot remain confined to economic matters but is bound to expand and to become "totalitarian" in the strict sense of the word. The economic dictator will soon find himself forced, even against his wishes, to assume dictatorship over the whole of the political and cultural life of the people.
We have already seen that the planner must not only impose a concrete and detailed scale of values upon the vague and general instructions given by popular clamor, but must also, if he wants to act at all, make the people believe that this imposed code of values is the right one. He is forced to create that unity of purpose which — apart from national crises like war — is absent in a free society. Even more, if he is to be allowed to carry out the plan which he thinks to be the right one, he must retain the popular support, that is, he must at all costs appear successful.
The decision on the relative importance of conflicting aims is necessarily a decision about the relative merits of different groups and individuals. Planning becomes necessarily a planning in favor of some and against others. The problem here is, of course, not that the different people concerned have not the most decided opinions on the relative merits of their respective wishes; it is rather that these opinions are irreconcilable. But the ground on which the more or less arbitrary decision of the authority rests must be made to appear just, to be based on some ultimate ideal in which everybody is supposed to believe.
The inevitable distinction between persons must be made a distinction of rank, most conveniently and naturally based on the degree to which people share and loyally support the creed of the ruler. And it further clarifies the position if to the aristocracy of creed at one end of the scale there corresponds a class of outcasts at the other, whose interests can in all cases be sacrificed to those of the privileged class.
But conformity to the ruling ideas cannot be regarded as a special merit, although those who excel by their devotion to the creed will be rewarded. It must be exacted from everybody. Every doubt in the rightness of the ends aimed at or the methods adopted is apt to diminish loyalty and enthusiasm and must therefore be treated as sabotage.
The creation and enforcement of the common creed and of the belief in the supreme wisdom of the ruler becomes an indispensable instrument for the success of the planned system. The ruthless use of all potential instruments of propaganda and the suppression of every expression of dissent is not an accidental accompaniment of a centrally directed system — it is an essential part of it.
Nor can moral coercion be confined to the acceptance of the ethical code underlying the whole plan. It is in the nature of things that many parts of this code, many parts of the scale of values underlying the plan, can never be explicitly stated. They exist only implicitly in the plan. But this means that every part of the plan, in fact, every action of the government or its agencies, becomes sacrosanct and exempt from criticism.
It is, however, only the expression of criticism that can be forcibly suppressed. But doubts that are never uttered and hesitation that is never voiced have equally insidious effects, even if they dwell only in the minds of the people. Everything which might induce discontent must therefore be kept from them. The basis for comparison with conditions elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve the lot of the people — all these must be suppressed.
Indeed, there is no subject that has not some possible bearing on the estimation in which the government will be held. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced.
That the government which claims to plan economic life soon asserts its totalitarian character is no accident — it can do nothing less if it wants to remain true to the intention of planning. Economic life is not a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the administration of the means for all our different ends. Whoever takes charge of these means must determine which ends shall be served; which values are to be rated higher and which lower — in short, what men should believe and strive for. And man himself becomes little more than a means for the realization of the ideals which may guide the dictator.
It is to be feared that to a great many of our contemporaries this picture, even should they recognize it as true, has lost most of the terror which it would have inspired in our fathers. There were, of course, always many to whom intellectual coercion was only objectionable if it was exercised by others, and who regarded it as beneficial if it was exercised for ends of which they approved.
How many of the exiled intellectuals from the authoritarian countries would be only too ready to apply the intellectual coercion which they condemn in their opponents in order to make the people believe in their own ideals — incidentally another illustration for the close kinship of the fundamental principles of fascism and communism.
But although the liberal age was probably freer from intellectual coercion than any other, the desire to force upon people a creed which is regarded as salutary for them is not a new phenomenon. What is new is the attempt to justify it on the part of the socialist intellectuals of our time.
There is no real freedom of thought in a capitalist society, so it is said, because the opinions and tastes of the masses are inevitably shaped by propaganda, by advertising, by the example of the upper classes and by other environmental factors which relentlessly force the thinking of the people into well-worn grooves. But if, the argument proceeds, the ideals and tastes of the great majority are formed by environmental factors which are under human control, we might as well use this power to turn their thoughts in what we think a desirable direction. That is, from the fact that the great majority have not learned to think independently but accept the ideas which they find ready-made, the conclusion is drawn that a particular group of people — of course, those who advocate this — are justified in assuming to themselves the exclusive power to determine what the people should believe.
VI
It is not my intention to deny that for the great majority of individuals the existence or nonexistence of intellectual freedom makes little difference to their personal happiness; nor to deny that they will be equally happy if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs rather than another, and whether they have grown accustomed to one kind of amusement or another.
That in any society it will be only the comparatively few for whom freedom of thought is of any significance or exists in any real sense is probably only too true. But to deprecate the value of intellectual freedom because it will never give everybody the same opportunity of independent thought is completely to miss the reasons which give intellectual freedom its value. What is essential to make it serve its function as the prime mover of intellectual progress is not that everybody may think or write everything, but that any cause or any idea may be argued by somebody.
So long as dissent is not actually prevented, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propaganda. The social process which we call human reason and which consists of the interaction of individuals possessing different information and different views, sometimes consistent and sometimes conflicting, goes on.
Once given the possibility of dissent there will be dissenters, however small the proportion of people who are capable of independent thought. Only the imposition of an official doctrine which must be accepted and which nobody dare question can stop intellectual progress.
How completely the imposition of a comprehensive authoritarian creed stifles all spirit of independent inquiry; how it destroys the sense for any other meaning of truth than that of conformity with the official doctrine; how differences of opinion in every branch of knowledge become political issues — these must be seen in one of the totalitarian countries to be appreciated.
We must hope that those in the Western world who seem to be ready to sacrifice intellectual freedom because it does not mean the same economic opportunity for all will yet realize what is at stake.
The great danger comes from the fact that we take so much of the inheritance of the liberal age for granted — have come to regard it as the inalienable property of our civilization — that we cannot fully conceive what it would mean if we lost it. Yet freedom and democracy are not free gifts which will remain with us if we only wish.
The time seems to have come when it is once again necessary to become fully conscious of the conditions which make them possible, and to defend these conditions even if they seem to block the path to the achievement of other ideals.
F.A. Hayek (1899–1992) was a founding board member of the Mises Institute. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." See Friedrich A. Hayek's article archives.
This article was originally published in the Contemporary Review of London, April 1938. It was reprinted in American Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 33 (1945), pp. 178–181.
terça-feira, janeiro 26, 2010
565) Declaracao de Praga sobre a consciencia europeia e o comunismo
Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism
Prague, Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic
June 3rd, 2008
Bearing in mind the dignified and democratic future of our European home,
* whereas societies that neglect the past have no future,
* whereas Europe will not be united unless it is able to reunite its history, recognize Communism and Nazism as a common legacy and bring about an honest and thorough debate on all the totalitarian crimes of the past century,
* whereas the Communist ideology is directly responsible for crimes against humanity,
* whereas a bad conscience stemming from the Communist past is a heavy burden for the future of Europe and for our children,
* whereas different valuations of the Communist past may still split Europe into "West" and "East",
* whereas European integration was a direct response to wars and violence provoked by totalitarian systems on the continent,
* whereas consciousness of the crimes against humanity committed by the Communist regimes throughout the continent must inform all European minds to the same extent as the Nazi regimes crimes did,
* whereas there are substantial similarities between Nazism and Communism in terms of their horrific and appalling character and their crimes against humanity,
* whereas the crimes of Communism still need to be assessed and judged from the legal, moral and political as well as the historical point of view,
* whereas the crimes were justified in the name of the class struggle theory and the principle of dictatorship of the "proletariat" using terror as a method to preserve the dictatorship,
* whereas Communist ideology has been used as a tool in the hands of empire builders in Europe and in Asia to reach their expansionist goals,
* whereas many of the perpetrators committing crimes in the name of Communism have not yet been brought to justice and their victims have not yet been compensated,
* whereas providing objective comprehensive information about the Communist totalitarian past leading to a deeper understanding and discussion is a necessary condition for sound future integration of all European nations,
* whereas the ultimate reconciliation of all European peoples is not possible without a concentrated and in depth effort to establish the truth and to restore the memory,
* whereas the Communist past of Europe must be dealt with thoroughly both in the academy and among the general public, and future generations should have ready access to information on Communism,
* whereas in different parts of the globe only a few totalitarian Communist regimes survive but, nevertheless, they control about one fifth of the world's population, and by still clinging to power they commit crimes and impose a high cost to the well-being of their people,
* whereas in many countries, even though Communist parties are not in power, they have not distanced themselves publicly from the crimes of Communist regimes nor condemned them,
* whereas Prague is one of the places that lived through the rule of both Nazism and Communism,
believing that millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism have been morally and politically recognized,
we, participants of the Prague Conference "European Conscience and Communism",
* having regard to the European Parliament resolution on the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe on 8 May 1945 of May 12th, 2005,
* having regard to Resolution 1481 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of January 26th, 2006,
* having regard to the resolutions on Communist crimes adopted by a number of national parliaments,
* having regard to the experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa,
* having regard to the experience of Institutes of Memory and memorials in Poland, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the United States, the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania, the museums of occupation in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as the House of Terror in Hungary,
* having regard to present and upcoming presidencies in the EU and the Council of Europe
* having regard to the fact that 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the collapse of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe as well as the mass killings in Romania and the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing,
call for:
1. reaching an all-European understanding that both the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes each to be judged by their own terrible merits to be destructive in their policies of systematically applying extreme forms of terror, suppressing all civic and human liberties, starting aggressive wars and, as an inseparable part of their ideologies, exterminating and deporting whole nations and groups of population; and that as such they should be considered to be the main disasters, which blighted the 20th century,
2. recognition that many crimes committed in the name of Communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity serving as a warning for future generations, in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal,
3. formulation of a common approach regarding crimes of totalitarian regimes, inter alia Communist regimes, and raising a Europe-wide awareness of the Communist crimes in order to clearly define a common attitude towards the crimes of the Communist regimes,
4. introduction of legislation that would enable courts of law to judge and sentence perpetrators of Communist crimes and to compensate victims of Communism,
5. ensuring the principle of equal treatment and non-discrimination of victims of all the totalitarian regimes,
6. European and international pressure for effective condemnation of the past Communist crimes and for efficient fight against ongoing Communist crimes,
7. recognition of Communism as an integral and horrific part of Europe’s common history
8. acceptance of pan-European responsibility for crimes committed by Communism,
9. establishment of 23rd August, the day of signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as a day of remembrance of the victims of both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, in the same way Europe remembers the victims of the Holocaust on January 27th,
10. responsible attitudes of National Parliaments as regards acknowledgement of Communist crimes as crimes against humanity, leading to the appropriate legislation, and to the parliamentary monitoring of such legislation,
11. effective public debate about the commercial and political misuse of Communist symbols,
12. continuation of the European Commission hearings regarding victims of totalitarian regimes, with a view to the compilation of a Commission communication,
13. establishment in European states, which had been ruled by totalitarian Communist regimes, of committees composed of independent experts with the task of collecting and assessing information on violations of human rights under totalitarian Communist regime at national level with a view to collaborating closely with a Council of Europe committee of experts;
14. ensuring a clear international legal framework regarding a free and unrestricted access to the Archives containing the information on the crimes of Communism,
15. establishment of an Institute of European Memory and Conscience which would be both - A) a European research institute for totalitarianism studies, developing scientific and educational projects and providing support to networking of national research institutes specialising in the subject of totalitarian experience, B) and a pan-European museum/memorial of victims of all totalitarian regimes, with an aim to memorialise victims of these regimes and raise awareness of the crimes committed by them,
16. organising of an international conference on the crimes committed by totalitarian Communist regimes with the participation of representatives of governments, parliamentarians, academics, experts and NGOs, with the results to be largely publicised world-wide,
17. adjustment and overhaul of European history textbooks so that children could learn and be warned about Communism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes
18. the all-European extensive and thorough debate of Communist history and legacy,
19. joint commemoration of next year’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the killings in Romania.
We, participants of the Prague Conference "European Conscience and Communism", address all peoples of Europe, all European political institutions including national governments, parliaments, European Parliament, European Commission, Council of Europe and other relevant international bodies, and call on them to embrace the ideas and appeals stipulated in this Prague Declaration and to implement them in practical steps and policies.
Founding Signatories:
Václav Havel, former dissident and President of Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Joachim Gauck, former Federal Commissioner for the Stasi archives, Germany
Göran Lindblad, Vice-president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Member of Parliament, Sweden
Vytautas Landsbergis, Member of the European Parliament, former dissident and President of Lithuania, Lithuania
Jana Hybášková, Member of the European Parliament, Czech Republic
Christopher Beazley, Member of the European Parliament, United Kingdom
Tunne Kelam, Member of the European Parliament, former dissident, Estonia
Jiří Liška, Senator, Vice-chairman of the Senate, Parliament of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Martin Mejstřík, Senator, Parliament of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Jaromír Štětina, Senator, Parliament of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Emanuelis Zingeris, Member of Parliament, Lithuania, Chairman, International commission for the assessment of crimes of the Nazi and Soviet occupation regimes in Lithuania, Lithuania
Tseten Samdup Chhoekyapa, Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Geneva, Tibet, Switzerland
Ivonka Survilla, Exile President of Belorussia, Canada
Zianon Pazniak, Chairman of the People’s National Front of Belorussia, Chairman of the Belorussian Conservative Christian Party, United States
Růžena Krásná, former political prisoner, politician, Czech Republic
Jiří Stránský, former political prisoner, writer, former PEN club chairman, Czech Republic
Václav Vaško, former political prisoner, diplomat, catholic activist, Czech Republic
Alexandr Podrabinek, former dissident and political prisoner, journalist, Russian Federation
Pavel Žáček, Director, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Czech Republic
Miroslav Lehký, Vice-director, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Czech Republic
Łukasz Kamiński, Vice-director, Institue of National Remembrance, Poland
Michael Kißener, professor of history, Johann Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany
Eduard Stehlík, historian, Vice-director, Institute for Military History, Czech Republic
Karel Straka, historian, Institute for Military History, Czech Republic
Jan Urban, journalist, Czech Republic
Jaroslav Hutka, former dissident, songwriter, Czech Republic
Lukáš Pachta, political scientist and writer, Czech Republic
About the Conference
European Conscience and Communism
an international conference held in the Senate, Parliament of the Czech Republic
on June 2-3, 2008
under the auspices of Mr Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic for European Affairs
hosted by the Senate Committe on Education, Science, Culture,
Human Rights and Petitions
organized by
Martin Mejstrik, Senator
and
Jana Hybášková, Member of the European Parliament
The Prague Declaration
on European Conscience and Communism was adopted by the participants of the Conference on June 3, 2008.
The Conference Programme with a list of Speaker Biographies can be downloaded here.
PHOTO GALLERY
Prague, Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic
June 3rd, 2008
Bearing in mind the dignified and democratic future of our European home,
* whereas societies that neglect the past have no future,
* whereas Europe will not be united unless it is able to reunite its history, recognize Communism and Nazism as a common legacy and bring about an honest and thorough debate on all the totalitarian crimes of the past century,
* whereas the Communist ideology is directly responsible for crimes against humanity,
* whereas a bad conscience stemming from the Communist past is a heavy burden for the future of Europe and for our children,
* whereas different valuations of the Communist past may still split Europe into "West" and "East",
* whereas European integration was a direct response to wars and violence provoked by totalitarian systems on the continent,
* whereas consciousness of the crimes against humanity committed by the Communist regimes throughout the continent must inform all European minds to the same extent as the Nazi regimes crimes did,
* whereas there are substantial similarities between Nazism and Communism in terms of their horrific and appalling character and their crimes against humanity,
* whereas the crimes of Communism still need to be assessed and judged from the legal, moral and political as well as the historical point of view,
* whereas the crimes were justified in the name of the class struggle theory and the principle of dictatorship of the "proletariat" using terror as a method to preserve the dictatorship,
* whereas Communist ideology has been used as a tool in the hands of empire builders in Europe and in Asia to reach their expansionist goals,
* whereas many of the perpetrators committing crimes in the name of Communism have not yet been brought to justice and their victims have not yet been compensated,
* whereas providing objective comprehensive information about the Communist totalitarian past leading to a deeper understanding and discussion is a necessary condition for sound future integration of all European nations,
* whereas the ultimate reconciliation of all European peoples is not possible without a concentrated and in depth effort to establish the truth and to restore the memory,
* whereas the Communist past of Europe must be dealt with thoroughly both in the academy and among the general public, and future generations should have ready access to information on Communism,
* whereas in different parts of the globe only a few totalitarian Communist regimes survive but, nevertheless, they control about one fifth of the world's population, and by still clinging to power they commit crimes and impose a high cost to the well-being of their people,
* whereas in many countries, even though Communist parties are not in power, they have not distanced themselves publicly from the crimes of Communist regimes nor condemned them,
* whereas Prague is one of the places that lived through the rule of both Nazism and Communism,
believing that millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism have been morally and politically recognized,
we, participants of the Prague Conference "European Conscience and Communism",
* having regard to the European Parliament resolution on the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe on 8 May 1945 of May 12th, 2005,
* having regard to Resolution 1481 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of January 26th, 2006,
* having regard to the resolutions on Communist crimes adopted by a number of national parliaments,
* having regard to the experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa,
* having regard to the experience of Institutes of Memory and memorials in Poland, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the United States, the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania, the museums of occupation in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as the House of Terror in Hungary,
* having regard to present and upcoming presidencies in the EU and the Council of Europe
* having regard to the fact that 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the collapse of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe as well as the mass killings in Romania and the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing,
call for:
1. reaching an all-European understanding that both the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes each to be judged by their own terrible merits to be destructive in their policies of systematically applying extreme forms of terror, suppressing all civic and human liberties, starting aggressive wars and, as an inseparable part of their ideologies, exterminating and deporting whole nations and groups of population; and that as such they should be considered to be the main disasters, which blighted the 20th century,
2. recognition that many crimes committed in the name of Communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity serving as a warning for future generations, in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal,
3. formulation of a common approach regarding crimes of totalitarian regimes, inter alia Communist regimes, and raising a Europe-wide awareness of the Communist crimes in order to clearly define a common attitude towards the crimes of the Communist regimes,
4. introduction of legislation that would enable courts of law to judge and sentence perpetrators of Communist crimes and to compensate victims of Communism,
5. ensuring the principle of equal treatment and non-discrimination of victims of all the totalitarian regimes,
6. European and international pressure for effective condemnation of the past Communist crimes and for efficient fight against ongoing Communist crimes,
7. recognition of Communism as an integral and horrific part of Europe’s common history
8. acceptance of pan-European responsibility for crimes committed by Communism,
9. establishment of 23rd August, the day of signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as a day of remembrance of the victims of both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, in the same way Europe remembers the victims of the Holocaust on January 27th,
10. responsible attitudes of National Parliaments as regards acknowledgement of Communist crimes as crimes against humanity, leading to the appropriate legislation, and to the parliamentary monitoring of such legislation,
11. effective public debate about the commercial and political misuse of Communist symbols,
12. continuation of the European Commission hearings regarding victims of totalitarian regimes, with a view to the compilation of a Commission communication,
13. establishment in European states, which had been ruled by totalitarian Communist regimes, of committees composed of independent experts with the task of collecting and assessing information on violations of human rights under totalitarian Communist regime at national level with a view to collaborating closely with a Council of Europe committee of experts;
14. ensuring a clear international legal framework regarding a free and unrestricted access to the Archives containing the information on the crimes of Communism,
15. establishment of an Institute of European Memory and Conscience which would be both - A) a European research institute for totalitarianism studies, developing scientific and educational projects and providing support to networking of national research institutes specialising in the subject of totalitarian experience, B) and a pan-European museum/memorial of victims of all totalitarian regimes, with an aim to memorialise victims of these regimes and raise awareness of the crimes committed by them,
16. organising of an international conference on the crimes committed by totalitarian Communist regimes with the participation of representatives of governments, parliamentarians, academics, experts and NGOs, with the results to be largely publicised world-wide,
17. adjustment and overhaul of European history textbooks so that children could learn and be warned about Communism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes
18. the all-European extensive and thorough debate of Communist history and legacy,
19. joint commemoration of next year’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the killings in Romania.
We, participants of the Prague Conference "European Conscience and Communism", address all peoples of Europe, all European political institutions including national governments, parliaments, European Parliament, European Commission, Council of Europe and other relevant international bodies, and call on them to embrace the ideas and appeals stipulated in this Prague Declaration and to implement them in practical steps and policies.
Founding Signatories:
Václav Havel, former dissident and President of Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Joachim Gauck, former Federal Commissioner for the Stasi archives, Germany
Göran Lindblad, Vice-president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Member of Parliament, Sweden
Vytautas Landsbergis, Member of the European Parliament, former dissident and President of Lithuania, Lithuania
Jana Hybášková, Member of the European Parliament, Czech Republic
Christopher Beazley, Member of the European Parliament, United Kingdom
Tunne Kelam, Member of the European Parliament, former dissident, Estonia
Jiří Liška, Senator, Vice-chairman of the Senate, Parliament of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Martin Mejstřík, Senator, Parliament of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Jaromír Štětina, Senator, Parliament of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Emanuelis Zingeris, Member of Parliament, Lithuania, Chairman, International commission for the assessment of crimes of the Nazi and Soviet occupation regimes in Lithuania, Lithuania
Tseten Samdup Chhoekyapa, Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Geneva, Tibet, Switzerland
Ivonka Survilla, Exile President of Belorussia, Canada
Zianon Pazniak, Chairman of the People’s National Front of Belorussia, Chairman of the Belorussian Conservative Christian Party, United States
Růžena Krásná, former political prisoner, politician, Czech Republic
Jiří Stránský, former political prisoner, writer, former PEN club chairman, Czech Republic
Václav Vaško, former political prisoner, diplomat, catholic activist, Czech Republic
Alexandr Podrabinek, former dissident and political prisoner, journalist, Russian Federation
Pavel Žáček, Director, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Czech Republic
Miroslav Lehký, Vice-director, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Czech Republic
Łukasz Kamiński, Vice-director, Institue of National Remembrance, Poland
Michael Kißener, professor of history, Johann Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany
Eduard Stehlík, historian, Vice-director, Institute for Military History, Czech Republic
Karel Straka, historian, Institute for Military History, Czech Republic
Jan Urban, journalist, Czech Republic
Jaroslav Hutka, former dissident, songwriter, Czech Republic
Lukáš Pachta, political scientist and writer, Czech Republic
About the Conference
European Conscience and Communism
an international conference held in the Senate, Parliament of the Czech Republic
on June 2-3, 2008
under the auspices of Mr Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic for European Affairs
hosted by the Senate Committe on Education, Science, Culture,
Human Rights and Petitions
organized by
Martin Mejstrik, Senator
and
Jana Hybášková, Member of the European Parliament
The Prague Declaration
on European Conscience and Communism was adopted by the participants of the Conference on June 3, 2008.
The Conference Programme with a list of Speaker Biographies can be downloaded here.
PHOTO GALLERY
domingo, janeiro 17, 2010
564) Debate economico - Bresser vs Pastore
Déficits, câmbio e crescimento: uma tréplica
Affonso Celso Pastore
O Estado de S. Paulo - 14/03/2010
Na semana passada o professor Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira saudou-me com o que ele acredita que seja uma crítica contundente ao artigo que submeti a este jornal na semana anterior. Aqui vai a minha resposta. Afirmei que "contrariamente à China, o Brasil tem poupanças domésticas baixas, e sempre que a taxa de investimentos aumenta, acelerando o crescimento do PIB, surgem déficits nas contas correntes. O Brasil não é um exportador de capitais, e os investimentos exigem a complementação das poupanças externas, que são importadas por meio dos déficits nas contas correntes".
O professor Bresser contesta a minha afirmação, sustentando que o aumento da poupança externa simplesmente substituiria a poupança interna, com o déficit nas contas correntes se dissipando em um aumento transitório de consumo, sem gerar o aumento de investimentos que é necessário para elevar a taxa de crescimento econômico. Ele gasta metade de seu longo artigo apresentando argumentos que "provariam" ser correta a sua visão sobre a substituição de poupanças, e a outra metade mostrando que, como essa minha interpretação sobre a complementação das poupanças domésticas pelas poupanças externas seria, na sua visão, errada, chego a conclusões também erradas. Esta é a coluna-mestra de toda a sua crítica, e por isso concentro-me apenas nela.
Bresser se alonga detalhando mecanismos de transmissão por meio dos quais supostamente seus resultados seriam obtidos, mas o que me importa neste ponto são suas conclusões. Nas suas palavras, "o pressuposto que o nome "poupança externa" sugere é que o déficit em conta corrente se somaria à poupança interna dos países e, assim, a taxa de investimento (que é decisiva para o desenvolvimento) aumentaria", e conclui que esta proposição "é tão verdadeira quanto a de que a terra é plana... Parece ser verdadeira, mas é falsa".
Ridicularizar as ideias discordantes é uma tática descortês e arrogante. Afirmações falsas são aquelas que são negadas pelos fatos, e não aquelas que seguem o rumo contrário ao do acusador. E o que dizem os fatos?
Olhemos para as séries da formação bruta de capital fixo (os investimentos), e das exportações líquidas de bens e serviços (os saldos nas contas correntes). No eixo horizontal do diagrama de dispersão, no gráfico ao lado, estão as exportações líquidas medidas em proporção ao PIB (os saldos nas contas correntes), e no eixo vertical estão as taxas de investimento, também expressas em proporção ao PIB, e medidas a preços constantes do ano 2000.
Os dados foram extraídos das contas nacionais brasileiras calculadas pelo IBGE. É visível a olho nu que quando as taxas de investimento são elevadas, próximas de 18% do PIB, como ocorreu no período entre 1997 e 1998, chegamos a déficits nas contas correntes, e quando as taxas de investimento são baixas, em torno de 14% ou 15% do PIB, como ocorreu entre 2002 e 2006, por exemplo, temos superávits nas contas correntes.
Diz o provérbio chinês que "uma imagem vale mais do que mil palavras". Se o prof. Bresser tivesse razão, de que o aumento da poupança externa se dissiparia em pura e simples elevação do consumo das famílias, impedindo o aumento do investimento, a correlação negativa mostrada no gráfico não existiria, e as taxas de investimento seriam independentes dos saldos nas contas correntes expressos em proporção ao PIB.
Os dados claramente negam a sua proposição. Mas não negam a minha de que as poupanças domésticas no Brasil são insuficientes para financiar investimentos maiores, e requerem a contribuição das poupanças externas, que crescem com a elevação dos investimentos.
Ao ignorar o fato demonstrado no gráfico acima que os investimentos requerem a contribuição das poupanças externas, postulando que os déficits nas contas correntes apenas são usados para financiar acréscimos de consumo, Bresser lança a sua crítica aos ingressos de capitais.
Neste ponto ele assume uma posição extremamente radical, rebelando-se contra os próprios investimentos estrangeiros diretos, argumentando que em nada contribuiriam para o desenvolvimento, porque financiam apenas o crescimento do consumo. Ele quase chega a dizer que o País estará melhor se rejeitar qualquer tipo de ingressos de capitais.
Como nos ensina a filosofia de ciência de Karl Popper, proposições científicas não são aquelas feitas por cientistas, mas aquelas que não são negadas pelos fatos. "Matéria atrai matéria na razão direta das massas e na razão inversa do quadrado das distâncias" não se tornou parte da física por ser uma proposição enunciada por um cientista do calibre de Isaac Newton, mas simplesmente porque nunca foi negada pelos fatos.
Mas há pessoas que divergem dessa postura, e diante de fatos negando suas "teorias" preferem ignorá-los. Afinal, elas resistem em abandonar uma "bela teoria" porque um "mero fato" a nega. Quando isto ocorre preferem desprezar os fatos, apegando-se apenas à sua retórica. Não é o meu caso. Pelo menos posso dormir tranquilo, tendo a certeza de que afinal a terra não é plana, poupando-me do risco de cair no abismo quando me movimentar sobre ela.
Affonso Celso Pastore
O Estado de S. Paulo - 14/03/2010
Na semana passada o professor Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira saudou-me com o que ele acredita que seja uma crítica contundente ao artigo que submeti a este jornal na semana anterior. Aqui vai a minha resposta. Afirmei que "contrariamente à China, o Brasil tem poupanças domésticas baixas, e sempre que a taxa de investimentos aumenta, acelerando o crescimento do PIB, surgem déficits nas contas correntes. O Brasil não é um exportador de capitais, e os investimentos exigem a complementação das poupanças externas, que são importadas por meio dos déficits nas contas correntes".
O professor Bresser contesta a minha afirmação, sustentando que o aumento da poupança externa simplesmente substituiria a poupança interna, com o déficit nas contas correntes se dissipando em um aumento transitório de consumo, sem gerar o aumento de investimentos que é necessário para elevar a taxa de crescimento econômico. Ele gasta metade de seu longo artigo apresentando argumentos que "provariam" ser correta a sua visão sobre a substituição de poupanças, e a outra metade mostrando que, como essa minha interpretação sobre a complementação das poupanças domésticas pelas poupanças externas seria, na sua visão, errada, chego a conclusões também erradas. Esta é a coluna-mestra de toda a sua crítica, e por isso concentro-me apenas nela.
Bresser se alonga detalhando mecanismos de transmissão por meio dos quais supostamente seus resultados seriam obtidos, mas o que me importa neste ponto são suas conclusões. Nas suas palavras, "o pressuposto que o nome "poupança externa" sugere é que o déficit em conta corrente se somaria à poupança interna dos países e, assim, a taxa de investimento (que é decisiva para o desenvolvimento) aumentaria", e conclui que esta proposição "é tão verdadeira quanto a de que a terra é plana... Parece ser verdadeira, mas é falsa".
Ridicularizar as ideias discordantes é uma tática descortês e arrogante. Afirmações falsas são aquelas que são negadas pelos fatos, e não aquelas que seguem o rumo contrário ao do acusador. E o que dizem os fatos?
Olhemos para as séries da formação bruta de capital fixo (os investimentos), e das exportações líquidas de bens e serviços (os saldos nas contas correntes). No eixo horizontal do diagrama de dispersão, no gráfico ao lado, estão as exportações líquidas medidas em proporção ao PIB (os saldos nas contas correntes), e no eixo vertical estão as taxas de investimento, também expressas em proporção ao PIB, e medidas a preços constantes do ano 2000.
Os dados foram extraídos das contas nacionais brasileiras calculadas pelo IBGE. É visível a olho nu que quando as taxas de investimento são elevadas, próximas de 18% do PIB, como ocorreu no período entre 1997 e 1998, chegamos a déficits nas contas correntes, e quando as taxas de investimento são baixas, em torno de 14% ou 15% do PIB, como ocorreu entre 2002 e 2006, por exemplo, temos superávits nas contas correntes.
Diz o provérbio chinês que "uma imagem vale mais do que mil palavras". Se o prof. Bresser tivesse razão, de que o aumento da poupança externa se dissiparia em pura e simples elevação do consumo das famílias, impedindo o aumento do investimento, a correlação negativa mostrada no gráfico não existiria, e as taxas de investimento seriam independentes dos saldos nas contas correntes expressos em proporção ao PIB.
Os dados claramente negam a sua proposição. Mas não negam a minha de que as poupanças domésticas no Brasil são insuficientes para financiar investimentos maiores, e requerem a contribuição das poupanças externas, que crescem com a elevação dos investimentos.
Ao ignorar o fato demonstrado no gráfico acima que os investimentos requerem a contribuição das poupanças externas, postulando que os déficits nas contas correntes apenas são usados para financiar acréscimos de consumo, Bresser lança a sua crítica aos ingressos de capitais.
Neste ponto ele assume uma posição extremamente radical, rebelando-se contra os próprios investimentos estrangeiros diretos, argumentando que em nada contribuiriam para o desenvolvimento, porque financiam apenas o crescimento do consumo. Ele quase chega a dizer que o País estará melhor se rejeitar qualquer tipo de ingressos de capitais.
Como nos ensina a filosofia de ciência de Karl Popper, proposições científicas não são aquelas feitas por cientistas, mas aquelas que não são negadas pelos fatos. "Matéria atrai matéria na razão direta das massas e na razão inversa do quadrado das distâncias" não se tornou parte da física por ser uma proposição enunciada por um cientista do calibre de Isaac Newton, mas simplesmente porque nunca foi negada pelos fatos.
Mas há pessoas que divergem dessa postura, e diante de fatos negando suas "teorias" preferem ignorá-los. Afinal, elas resistem em abandonar uma "bela teoria" porque um "mero fato" a nega. Quando isto ocorre preferem desprezar os fatos, apegando-se apenas à sua retórica. Não é o meu caso. Pelo menos posso dormir tranquilo, tendo a certeza de que afinal a terra não é plana, poupando-me do risco de cair no abismo quando me movimentar sobre ela.
563) Comer na Espanha - Janer Cristaldo
MELHOR COMER EM MADRI
Janer Cristaldo
Domingo, Janeiro 10, 2010
Semana passada, comentei a entrevista concedida à Veja por Rogério Fasano, um dos papas da gastronomia em São Paulo. Comentei também seus sofismas, ao tentar justificar porque cobra 27 reais por um pãzinho com manteiga. Reagiu uma de minhas interlocutoras: “se tu és pão-duro ou pobre, não vai no Fasano, simples!”
Bueno, rico não sou. Mas para pobre também não sirvo. Pão-duro muito menos. Poderia ir tranqüilamente ao Fasano, sem que isso fizesse mossa em meu orçamento. Ocorre que quando vou a um restaurante, vou para comer, beber, conversar e confraternizar com amigos. Não para ser visto. Jamais vou só a um bom restaurante, isto me soa a egoísmo. Quando estou sem companhia, vou a um restaurante trivial, desde que honesto. Em São Paulo – e não só em São Paulo – ocorre um fenômeno típico de nouveaux-riches. A certos restaurantes, badalados por jornalistas venais, as pessoas vão não exatamente para comer, mas para demonstrar status. Vão para serem vistas. É uma gentalha que gosta de exibir fortuna e poder. Eu posso pagar 16 mil reais por um vinho. Logo, eu sou lindo, divino, maravilhoso.
Dez euros é o que se paga hoje, tanto em Madri como em Paris, por menus executivos em centenas de restaurantes. Entrada, prato principal e sobremesa. Eventualmente, mais meia jarra de vinho. Conforme a casa, o vinho pode ser muito bom. Na rede Museo del Jamón, na Espanha, estes almoços costumam ser ótimos. Se você não conhece o pedaço, pode até se dar mal. Conhecendo um pouco, pode comer muito bem. Dez euros, hoje, igual a 25 reais. Ou seja, pelo preço do pãozinho com manteiga do Fasano, você está muito bem servido em Paris ou Madri.
Eu até poderia pagar 16 mil reais por um vinho. (Se um dia pagar, por favor, socorram-me: é que mergulhei nas trevas da insânia). Ocorre que com esta grana passo um mês em Paris ou Madri, passagem e hotéis incluídos, degustando os bons Riojas e Cahors da vida. Com mais uma garrafa de vinho, levo uma parceira junto. Não consigo ver nada que justifique pagar dez mil dólares por um vinho – a não ser a vaidade –, quando se pode degustar bons vinhos por cem ou cento e poucos reais. Já estive em um restaurante em Verona, na Itália, onde um vinho custava quinze mil dólares. Só o que faltava!
Essa vaidade não cultivo. Conversava eu outro dia com a mulher do proprietário do mais antigo restaurante de São Paulo, o Carlino. Ela não conseguia entender como, em uma mesa de cinco ou seis pessoas, havia quem brigasse para pagar uma conta de 60 mil reais. Ora, não é difícil de entender. Ninguém paga do próprio bolso. Pagam com as malsinadas verbas de representação, recebidas a título de mordomia e ainda por cima dedutíveis no IR. Isto é, pagam com dinheiro do contribuinte.
Que mais não seja, me sentiria muito mal tendo a meu lado um Lula, Sarney, Delfim Netto ou Zé Dirceu, Greenhalg ou Genoíno. Estes senhores, em nome da moral pública, deveriam ter a entrada proibida até mesmo em botecos de esquina. Fosse eu restaurador, essa gentinha seria barrada na porta. Semana passada, convidei um casal de amigos para um vinho no Terraço Itália. Fomos barrados no elevador, ele estava de bermudas. Fosse um deputado daqueles de dinheiro na cueca, certamente seria recebido com honras. Talvez até mesmo com bermudas.
Não vejo porque pagar uma fortuna num restaurante metido à besta no Brasil, quando por um terço ou menos do preço posso pagar uma excelente refeição regada a bom vinho na Europa. Em novembro passado, entre outros, revisitei um de meus diletos em Madri, El Espejo. Ambiente solene, sofisticado, tem mais de século. Os espelhos refletem as imagens ao infinito. Refeição para duas pessoas, com um excelente Marqués de Riscal e um chinchón para rebater: 84,51 euros. 42 euros por cabeça. 105 reais. 3,8 pãezinhos com manteiga do Fasano.
Esse foi um dos cafés que jamais me permitiu ir até a Biblioteca Nacional, em meus dias de Madri. O outro foi o Gijón, também centenário, a uns 200 metros do El Espejo, onde se come e se bebe por menos ainda. Ambos ficam no Paseo de Recoletos e a biblioteca fica do outro lado. Nunca consegui atravessar o Paseo. Saía da universidade com minhas amigas latinas, a las tres del mediodía, rumo à biblioteca. A meio caminho, éramos interceptados por um dos dois cafés. Vinho da casa quase a preço de água. As pesquisas que se lixassem.
No solene Comedor d'El Rey, sala do Café Oriente onde Juan Carlos recebe de vez em quando os estadistas que o visitam, em uma cave do século XVI, com talheres e baixelas de prata e copos de cristal, almocei com a Primeira-Namorada. Dois pratos, um bom Penedès, mais dois Carlos III para finalizar os trabalhos. 84,20 euros. De novo, 3,8 pãezinhos com manteiga do Fasano.
No Sobrino de Botín, tido como o mais antigo restaurante do mundo (fundado em 1725), comemos um soberbo cochinillo e um cordero lechal, mais um bom Rioja e de novo um chinchón para rematar. Custo: 75,75 euros. No Salamanca, na Barceloneta, o mais reputado restaurante de frutos do mar de Barcelona, comemos os dois, com vinho mais aperitivos, por 72,26 euros. No Caracoles, outra casa centenária de Barcelona, comemos e bebemos a gosto por 61 euros. No belíssimo Méson de Cándido, em Segovia (dois séculos), junto aos arcos do aqueduto, pelo mesmo passadio, pagamos 89,76 euros. Este foi o almoço mais caro que paguei na Espanha. 226 reais para dois. 113 por cabeça. Quatro pãezinhos com manteiga no Fasano.
Se você é mais chegado à água do que ao sangue das uvas, pode reduzir estes custos à metade. Ou talvez menos. O que pesa em uma refeição não é o que se come, mas o que se bebe. Ora, se posso comer muito bem na Espanha por esses preços, em restaurantes centenários, não vejo porque freqüentar um restaurante de novos ricos aqui em São Paulo, pagando o triplo ou mais.
Para quem quiser dar um vistaço... Aliás, serve como sugestão a eventuais viajores. Não diria que são restaurantes baratos. Como falei, se pode comer bem por dez euros. Ou seja, 25 reais. Mas caros também não são. Não se pode considerar caro um restaurante sofisticado onde se pode comer e beber muito bem por cem reais. Além do mais, o salário mínimo na Espanha é hoje 663 euros. Ou seja, 1578 reais. É bom também lembrar que raros são os espanhóis que recebem salário mínimo. De modo geral, recebem muito mais. A comer num Fasano da vida, melhor reservar seus trocados para voar até Madri – ou Paris, ou Roma – e curtir restaurantes seculares, bons vinhos e culinária milenar. A preços humanos.
Em Madri:
Oriente - http://www.cafedeoriente.es
El Espejo - http://www.restauranteelespejo.com/
Sobrino de Botín - http://www.botin.es/web/index.php
Meson de Cándido - http://www.mesondecandido.es/
Em Barcelona:
Los Caracoles - http://www.loscaracoles.es/
Salamanca - http://www.gruposilvestre.com/salamanca.htm
Janer Cristaldo
Domingo, Janeiro 10, 2010
Semana passada, comentei a entrevista concedida à Veja por Rogério Fasano, um dos papas da gastronomia em São Paulo. Comentei também seus sofismas, ao tentar justificar porque cobra 27 reais por um pãzinho com manteiga. Reagiu uma de minhas interlocutoras: “se tu és pão-duro ou pobre, não vai no Fasano, simples!”
Bueno, rico não sou. Mas para pobre também não sirvo. Pão-duro muito menos. Poderia ir tranqüilamente ao Fasano, sem que isso fizesse mossa em meu orçamento. Ocorre que quando vou a um restaurante, vou para comer, beber, conversar e confraternizar com amigos. Não para ser visto. Jamais vou só a um bom restaurante, isto me soa a egoísmo. Quando estou sem companhia, vou a um restaurante trivial, desde que honesto. Em São Paulo – e não só em São Paulo – ocorre um fenômeno típico de nouveaux-riches. A certos restaurantes, badalados por jornalistas venais, as pessoas vão não exatamente para comer, mas para demonstrar status. Vão para serem vistas. É uma gentalha que gosta de exibir fortuna e poder. Eu posso pagar 16 mil reais por um vinho. Logo, eu sou lindo, divino, maravilhoso.
Dez euros é o que se paga hoje, tanto em Madri como em Paris, por menus executivos em centenas de restaurantes. Entrada, prato principal e sobremesa. Eventualmente, mais meia jarra de vinho. Conforme a casa, o vinho pode ser muito bom. Na rede Museo del Jamón, na Espanha, estes almoços costumam ser ótimos. Se você não conhece o pedaço, pode até se dar mal. Conhecendo um pouco, pode comer muito bem. Dez euros, hoje, igual a 25 reais. Ou seja, pelo preço do pãozinho com manteiga do Fasano, você está muito bem servido em Paris ou Madri.
Eu até poderia pagar 16 mil reais por um vinho. (Se um dia pagar, por favor, socorram-me: é que mergulhei nas trevas da insânia). Ocorre que com esta grana passo um mês em Paris ou Madri, passagem e hotéis incluídos, degustando os bons Riojas e Cahors da vida. Com mais uma garrafa de vinho, levo uma parceira junto. Não consigo ver nada que justifique pagar dez mil dólares por um vinho – a não ser a vaidade –, quando se pode degustar bons vinhos por cem ou cento e poucos reais. Já estive em um restaurante em Verona, na Itália, onde um vinho custava quinze mil dólares. Só o que faltava!
Essa vaidade não cultivo. Conversava eu outro dia com a mulher do proprietário do mais antigo restaurante de São Paulo, o Carlino. Ela não conseguia entender como, em uma mesa de cinco ou seis pessoas, havia quem brigasse para pagar uma conta de 60 mil reais. Ora, não é difícil de entender. Ninguém paga do próprio bolso. Pagam com as malsinadas verbas de representação, recebidas a título de mordomia e ainda por cima dedutíveis no IR. Isto é, pagam com dinheiro do contribuinte.
Que mais não seja, me sentiria muito mal tendo a meu lado um Lula, Sarney, Delfim Netto ou Zé Dirceu, Greenhalg ou Genoíno. Estes senhores, em nome da moral pública, deveriam ter a entrada proibida até mesmo em botecos de esquina. Fosse eu restaurador, essa gentinha seria barrada na porta. Semana passada, convidei um casal de amigos para um vinho no Terraço Itália. Fomos barrados no elevador, ele estava de bermudas. Fosse um deputado daqueles de dinheiro na cueca, certamente seria recebido com honras. Talvez até mesmo com bermudas.
Não vejo porque pagar uma fortuna num restaurante metido à besta no Brasil, quando por um terço ou menos do preço posso pagar uma excelente refeição regada a bom vinho na Europa. Em novembro passado, entre outros, revisitei um de meus diletos em Madri, El Espejo. Ambiente solene, sofisticado, tem mais de século. Os espelhos refletem as imagens ao infinito. Refeição para duas pessoas, com um excelente Marqués de Riscal e um chinchón para rebater: 84,51 euros. 42 euros por cabeça. 105 reais. 3,8 pãezinhos com manteiga do Fasano.
Esse foi um dos cafés que jamais me permitiu ir até a Biblioteca Nacional, em meus dias de Madri. O outro foi o Gijón, também centenário, a uns 200 metros do El Espejo, onde se come e se bebe por menos ainda. Ambos ficam no Paseo de Recoletos e a biblioteca fica do outro lado. Nunca consegui atravessar o Paseo. Saía da universidade com minhas amigas latinas, a las tres del mediodía, rumo à biblioteca. A meio caminho, éramos interceptados por um dos dois cafés. Vinho da casa quase a preço de água. As pesquisas que se lixassem.
No solene Comedor d'El Rey, sala do Café Oriente onde Juan Carlos recebe de vez em quando os estadistas que o visitam, em uma cave do século XVI, com talheres e baixelas de prata e copos de cristal, almocei com a Primeira-Namorada. Dois pratos, um bom Penedès, mais dois Carlos III para finalizar os trabalhos. 84,20 euros. De novo, 3,8 pãezinhos com manteiga do Fasano.
No Sobrino de Botín, tido como o mais antigo restaurante do mundo (fundado em 1725), comemos um soberbo cochinillo e um cordero lechal, mais um bom Rioja e de novo um chinchón para rematar. Custo: 75,75 euros. No Salamanca, na Barceloneta, o mais reputado restaurante de frutos do mar de Barcelona, comemos os dois, com vinho mais aperitivos, por 72,26 euros. No Caracoles, outra casa centenária de Barcelona, comemos e bebemos a gosto por 61 euros. No belíssimo Méson de Cándido, em Segovia (dois séculos), junto aos arcos do aqueduto, pelo mesmo passadio, pagamos 89,76 euros. Este foi o almoço mais caro que paguei na Espanha. 226 reais para dois. 113 por cabeça. Quatro pãezinhos com manteiga no Fasano.
Se você é mais chegado à água do que ao sangue das uvas, pode reduzir estes custos à metade. Ou talvez menos. O que pesa em uma refeição não é o que se come, mas o que se bebe. Ora, se posso comer muito bem na Espanha por esses preços, em restaurantes centenários, não vejo porque freqüentar um restaurante de novos ricos aqui em São Paulo, pagando o triplo ou mais.
Para quem quiser dar um vistaço... Aliás, serve como sugestão a eventuais viajores. Não diria que são restaurantes baratos. Como falei, se pode comer bem por dez euros. Ou seja, 25 reais. Mas caros também não são. Não se pode considerar caro um restaurante sofisticado onde se pode comer e beber muito bem por cem reais. Além do mais, o salário mínimo na Espanha é hoje 663 euros. Ou seja, 1578 reais. É bom também lembrar que raros são os espanhóis que recebem salário mínimo. De modo geral, recebem muito mais. A comer num Fasano da vida, melhor reservar seus trocados para voar até Madri – ou Paris, ou Roma – e curtir restaurantes seculares, bons vinhos e culinária milenar. A preços humanos.
Em Madri:
Oriente - http://www.cafedeoriente.es
El Espejo - http://www.restauranteelespejo.com/
Sobrino de Botín - http://www.botin.es/web/index.php
Meson de Cándido - http://www.mesondecandido.es/
Em Barcelona:
Los Caracoles - http://www.loscaracoles.es/
Salamanca - http://www.gruposilvestre.com/salamanca.htm
terça-feira, janeiro 12, 2010
562) Politicas sociais no Brasil: continuidades
ENTREVISTA DA 2ª - CLAUDIO SALM
Essa conversa de herança maldita é pura bobagem
MARCIO AITH - DA REPORTAGEM LOCAL
Folha de S.Paulo, 11.01.2010
Para economista, Lula é continuidade de FHC, com o que tem de bom e de ruim
O economista e professor Claudio Salmdá entrevista em seu apartamento, no Rio de Janeiro
O ECONOMISTA Claudio Salm diz que a evolução dos indicadores sociais no Brasil não é conquista de um único partido ou de um único presidente. Segundo ele, o país está melhor por uma sucessão de fatores que não obedece ao calendário ou à lógica eleitoral. Entre eles, a consolidação de uma mesma política social, a queda na taxa de natalidade e o fim de um duro ciclo estrutural de crescimento sem emprego, que durou até 2000.
Com base em dados do IBGE desde 1996, Salm constata uma progressão contínua na qualidade de vida dos mais pobres. Mas, por meio de outros indicadores, diz que serviços universais, como educação e saúde, pioraram. Aos 67 anos, Salm graduou-se pela Universidade Federal do Rio, fez pós-graduação no Chile e doutorado na Unicamp. Sua tese, Escola e Trabalho, foi publicada pela editora Brasiliense em 1982.
FOLHA - Quais são os indícios de que, entre os governos FHC e Lula, houve continuidade, e não ruptura, nas políticas sociais?
CLAUDIO SALM - Do ponto de vista da política econômica já sabemos que não houve qualquer ruptura, como o próprio Lula havia anunciado que não haveria, em 2002, na famosa Carta aos Brasileiros. Eu diria até que, em alguns aspectos, como o da política monetária, Lula é mais conservador que FHC. Conservador no sentido do excessivo cuidado em relação à banca. Quanto à política social, é só conferir os números. O período Lula é uma continuidade do período FHC, com tudo o que tem de bom e de ruim. Houve uma progressão contínua na qualidade de vida dos 25% de brasileiros mais pobres. Desde 1996, vários indicadores melhoram mais ou menos no mesmo ritmo: acesso às redes de água e esgoto, coleta direta de lixo, iluminação elétrica, posse de telefone, máquina de lavar. Essa conversa de herança maldita é pura bobagem.
FOLHA - Mas, vistos assim, de forma panorâmica, os indicadores sociais sempre melhoram. É possível dizer que FHC também não rompeu com Itamar, que não rompeu com Collor e assim vai.
SALM - Não é bem assim. Há inflexões importantes, fatores demográficos, ciclos, crises, políticas acertadas, políticas equivocadas. Uma reforma que tornasse nossa arrecadação tributária mais justa poderia ser uma inflexão de grande alcance social.
FOLHA - Cite indicadores que pioraram ao longo da história.
SALM - São muitos. A década de 80 foi desastrosa para o mercado de trabalho, trazendo graves consequências para o nível e a qualidade do emprego: informalidade e a interrupção de uma longa trajetória de crescimento do trabalho assalariado com carteira assinada. Outro exemplo é o salário mínimo. Ele ainda está abaixo do que era sob a Presidência JK [1956-61], embora tenha aumentado 50% no governo FHC e outro tanto no governo Lula. Aliás, a recuperação do salário mínimo começou para valer a partir de 1995, quando FHC deu um aumento de cerca de 40% com a inflação já debelada.
FOLHA - Qual foi o papel da demografia no processo de melhoria dos indicadores sociais?
SALM - No Brasil, uma herança bendita foi a queda na fecundidade a partir de meados dos anos 60. A transição demográfica no Brasil foi das mais intensas. Como a queda na natalidade foi muito mais acentuada entre os mais pobres do que entre os mais ricos, o aumento da renda foi maior justamente entre os pobres. Além disso, a crescente proporção de idosos tem sido mais que compensada pelo menor número de filhos. Como mais de 80% dos idosos recebem benefícios previdenciários, eles não são dependentes como as crianças, mas, com o perdão do economicismo rude, um ativo valioso.
FOLHA - Voltando ao Lula, como se pode afirmar que não houve ruptura se o gasto social aumentou em termos absolutos e relativos?
SALM - Eu diria que continuou aumentando. A expansão do gasto público social foi uma medida acertada. Mas a redução recente da desigualdade se deve mais a outros fatores, como a volta do emprego formal, o aumento do salário mínimo e o fim de um ciclo.
FOLHA - Que ciclo é esse?
SALM - A abertura abrupta no início da década de 90 levou a fortes e rápidas transformações estruturais, especialmente na indústria. Surgiu pela primeira vez entre nós, como um grave problema, o desemprego aberto. Foi nessa época que ganhou força a ideia do crescimento sem emprego, justamente por causa da rápida modernização da indústria. As grandes transformações tecnológicas, a matança de pequenas empresas, a racionalização, tudo isso durou até os anos 90. Findo esse processo, as coisas se arrumaram e o crescimento voltou a ser altamente promotor do emprego. É impressionante a correlação entre crescimento e geração de emprego dos anos 2000 para cá. O crescimento recente voltou a gerar empregos para os segmentos pouco qualificados, o que foi mais importante do que o Bolsa Família para explicar a melhora da distribuição de renda.
FOLHA - Não se deve a Lula criação de empregos formais? Afinal, FHC defendia a superação do getulismo.
SALM - Não vejo nada de errado nesse aspecto do getulismo. Errado é querer desregulamentar o mercado de trabalho num país como o nosso, com enorme excedente de mão de obra de baixa qualificação. O governo do PT ensaiou, mas acabou não comprando a ideia da urgência da reforma trabalhista. Deixou isso de lado. O crescimento é a grande variável na geração de emprego e não a flexibilização trabalhista. Quem pensava assim, acertou.
FOLHA - 32 milhões de brasileiros ingressaram no conjunto das classes A, B e C sob Lula. Isso não é ruptura?
SALM - No mesmo período houve diminuição da pobreza e melhoria da distribuição de renda em quase toda a América Latina. É verdade que, no Brasil, foi ainda mais rápido. Isto já vinha do governo FHC, quando o IDH aumentou e a população pobre caiu 10%. O processo aqui foi favorecido pelo maior crescimento. Durante FHC o PIB anual cresceu em média 2,3%; durante Lula, 3,9%. Isso não é ruptura, mas ciclo econômico, como já tivemos tantos. Não podemos esquecer que a estabilidade do Real também reduziu a pobreza e o desemprego.
FOLHA - E o papel do Bolsa Família?
SALM - Programas sociais de transferência de renda são, sim, fundamentais para reduzir a miséria absoluta. Ainda mais quando cumprem com condicionalidades, como a exigência de frequência à escola. Ninguém seria louco de eliminá-los. O Bolsa Família não deixou de ser uma continuidade: juntou o Bolsa Escola e o Bolsa Alimentação, que vinham do governo anterior. O Bolsa Família também pode funcionar, indiretamente, para elevar os rendimentos do trabalho. Quem recebe o benefício tem melhores condições para resistir a uma diária aviltante. Mas não é tudo o que parece quanto à distribuição de renda. Nesse sentido, mais importante foram o crescimento do emprego e a recuperação do salário mínimo. O gasto público social aumentou? Ótimo. Mas, simultaneamente a isso, as políticas sociais universais, como educação e saúde, ficaram para trás.
FOLHA - Em dez anos, o número de alunos em universidades saltou de 2 milhões para 4 milhões. Esse aumento não o sensibiliza?
SALM - Para falar a verdade, pouco. Formou-se no Brasil um ciclo nefasto, que começa na falta de atendimento de creche e de pré-escola e acaba em gigantescas universidades privadas que estão mais para escolões do que para universidades. A coisa funciona assim: como o percentual de crianças com atendimento adequado na educação infantil é mínimo, elas já chegam ao ensino fundamental com deficiências. Aí avançam rapidamente, com o artifício da progressão continuada ou do ciclo básico, mecanismos que escamoteiam a repetência. Quando sai do ensino fundamental, não sabe nem falar, nem articular direito. Não avançamos na implantação do horário integral. Tampouco avançamos na melhoria do ensino médio. No governo FHC os alunos no ensino público federal aumentaram em torno de 50%. Sob Lula, o ritmo caiu pela metade.
FOLHA - É melhor ter ou não ter o que o senhor chama de escolões?
SALM - É melhor tê-los. Mas melhor ainda seria dar qualidade ao ensino fundamental e assegurar a passagem dos egressos ao ensino médio. Se isso ocorresse, a maioria das vagas no mercado de trabalho hoje ocupadas por quem tem diploma universitário poderia ser preenchida por quem tem o nível médio. Estamos transferindo para as universidades, com tremendo gasto de recursos, o ensino que poderia ser oferecido no nível médio.
FOLHA - Quais são os indícios de que a saúde piorou?
SALM - A população nunca reclamou tanto, o que é um indício importante. Não há muitos indicadores de acompanhamento confiáveis, mas alguma coisa existe. A relação entre internações e habitantes, no SUS, vem caindo desde o governo Itamar. Parece uma coisa boa. Só que essa relação aumenta nos hospitais privados. A relação entre exames e consultas não se alterou no sistema público. Já no atendimento privado, aumentou. No Rio, os médicos dizem que as mortes evitáveis nos hospitais vêm aumentando, inclusive nas UPAs (Unidades de Pronto Atendimento, da prefeitura atual), por causa da precariedade das conexões com os hospitais do SUS. Estamos claramente diante de um subfinanciamento do SUS, como diagnostica a médica Lígia Bahia. Só não piorou ainda mais por conta da vinculação dos recursos para a Saúde, com a Emenda 29, iniciativa do Serra. O aumento e a diversificação da oferta dos remédios genéricos estagnou com o Lula, quando a Anvisa foi loteada.
FOLHA - O senhor é filiado a algum partido político? É tucano?
SALM - Nem tucano nem filiado a partido político. Votei no José Serra para presidente em 2002 e colaborei na campanha dele, mas não fiquei triste com a vitória do Lula.
FOLHA - Como o senhor avalia as duas experiências de governo?
SALM - As condições econômicas, especialmente no front externo até a eclosão da crise mundial, foram muito mais favoráveis a Lula que a FHC. O importante para mim é que a onda neoliberal não conseguiu acabar com os avanços social-democratas da Constituição de 88. O principal mérito de ambos, até aqui, é o respeito pela democracia. Na economia, vejo, como os principais problemas dos dois, a facilidade com que permitiram, ou promoveram, a apreciação cambial, os juros mais altos do mundo e o descaso, nos dois períodos, com o investimento público que está num nível baixíssimo, um dos mais baixos do mundo. Nessas áreas a continuidade foi incrível.
Essa conversa de herança maldita é pura bobagem
MARCIO AITH - DA REPORTAGEM LOCAL
Folha de S.Paulo, 11.01.2010
Para economista, Lula é continuidade de FHC, com o que tem de bom e de ruim
O economista e professor Claudio Salmdá entrevista em seu apartamento, no Rio de Janeiro
O ECONOMISTA Claudio Salm diz que a evolução dos indicadores sociais no Brasil não é conquista de um único partido ou de um único presidente. Segundo ele, o país está melhor por uma sucessão de fatores que não obedece ao calendário ou à lógica eleitoral. Entre eles, a consolidação de uma mesma política social, a queda na taxa de natalidade e o fim de um duro ciclo estrutural de crescimento sem emprego, que durou até 2000.
Com base em dados do IBGE desde 1996, Salm constata uma progressão contínua na qualidade de vida dos mais pobres. Mas, por meio de outros indicadores, diz que serviços universais, como educação e saúde, pioraram. Aos 67 anos, Salm graduou-se pela Universidade Federal do Rio, fez pós-graduação no Chile e doutorado na Unicamp. Sua tese, Escola e Trabalho, foi publicada pela editora Brasiliense em 1982.
FOLHA - Quais são os indícios de que, entre os governos FHC e Lula, houve continuidade, e não ruptura, nas políticas sociais?
CLAUDIO SALM - Do ponto de vista da política econômica já sabemos que não houve qualquer ruptura, como o próprio Lula havia anunciado que não haveria, em 2002, na famosa Carta aos Brasileiros. Eu diria até que, em alguns aspectos, como o da política monetária, Lula é mais conservador que FHC. Conservador no sentido do excessivo cuidado em relação à banca. Quanto à política social, é só conferir os números. O período Lula é uma continuidade do período FHC, com tudo o que tem de bom e de ruim. Houve uma progressão contínua na qualidade de vida dos 25% de brasileiros mais pobres. Desde 1996, vários indicadores melhoram mais ou menos no mesmo ritmo: acesso às redes de água e esgoto, coleta direta de lixo, iluminação elétrica, posse de telefone, máquina de lavar. Essa conversa de herança maldita é pura bobagem.
FOLHA - Mas, vistos assim, de forma panorâmica, os indicadores sociais sempre melhoram. É possível dizer que FHC também não rompeu com Itamar, que não rompeu com Collor e assim vai.
SALM - Não é bem assim. Há inflexões importantes, fatores demográficos, ciclos, crises, políticas acertadas, políticas equivocadas. Uma reforma que tornasse nossa arrecadação tributária mais justa poderia ser uma inflexão de grande alcance social.
FOLHA - Cite indicadores que pioraram ao longo da história.
SALM - São muitos. A década de 80 foi desastrosa para o mercado de trabalho, trazendo graves consequências para o nível e a qualidade do emprego: informalidade e a interrupção de uma longa trajetória de crescimento do trabalho assalariado com carteira assinada. Outro exemplo é o salário mínimo. Ele ainda está abaixo do que era sob a Presidência JK [1956-61], embora tenha aumentado 50% no governo FHC e outro tanto no governo Lula. Aliás, a recuperação do salário mínimo começou para valer a partir de 1995, quando FHC deu um aumento de cerca de 40% com a inflação já debelada.
FOLHA - Qual foi o papel da demografia no processo de melhoria dos indicadores sociais?
SALM - No Brasil, uma herança bendita foi a queda na fecundidade a partir de meados dos anos 60. A transição demográfica no Brasil foi das mais intensas. Como a queda na natalidade foi muito mais acentuada entre os mais pobres do que entre os mais ricos, o aumento da renda foi maior justamente entre os pobres. Além disso, a crescente proporção de idosos tem sido mais que compensada pelo menor número de filhos. Como mais de 80% dos idosos recebem benefícios previdenciários, eles não são dependentes como as crianças, mas, com o perdão do economicismo rude, um ativo valioso.
FOLHA - Voltando ao Lula, como se pode afirmar que não houve ruptura se o gasto social aumentou em termos absolutos e relativos?
SALM - Eu diria que continuou aumentando. A expansão do gasto público social foi uma medida acertada. Mas a redução recente da desigualdade se deve mais a outros fatores, como a volta do emprego formal, o aumento do salário mínimo e o fim de um ciclo.
FOLHA - Que ciclo é esse?
SALM - A abertura abrupta no início da década de 90 levou a fortes e rápidas transformações estruturais, especialmente na indústria. Surgiu pela primeira vez entre nós, como um grave problema, o desemprego aberto. Foi nessa época que ganhou força a ideia do crescimento sem emprego, justamente por causa da rápida modernização da indústria. As grandes transformações tecnológicas, a matança de pequenas empresas, a racionalização, tudo isso durou até os anos 90. Findo esse processo, as coisas se arrumaram e o crescimento voltou a ser altamente promotor do emprego. É impressionante a correlação entre crescimento e geração de emprego dos anos 2000 para cá. O crescimento recente voltou a gerar empregos para os segmentos pouco qualificados, o que foi mais importante do que o Bolsa Família para explicar a melhora da distribuição de renda.
FOLHA - Não se deve a Lula criação de empregos formais? Afinal, FHC defendia a superação do getulismo.
SALM - Não vejo nada de errado nesse aspecto do getulismo. Errado é querer desregulamentar o mercado de trabalho num país como o nosso, com enorme excedente de mão de obra de baixa qualificação. O governo do PT ensaiou, mas acabou não comprando a ideia da urgência da reforma trabalhista. Deixou isso de lado. O crescimento é a grande variável na geração de emprego e não a flexibilização trabalhista. Quem pensava assim, acertou.
FOLHA - 32 milhões de brasileiros ingressaram no conjunto das classes A, B e C sob Lula. Isso não é ruptura?
SALM - No mesmo período houve diminuição da pobreza e melhoria da distribuição de renda em quase toda a América Latina. É verdade que, no Brasil, foi ainda mais rápido. Isto já vinha do governo FHC, quando o IDH aumentou e a população pobre caiu 10%. O processo aqui foi favorecido pelo maior crescimento. Durante FHC o PIB anual cresceu em média 2,3%; durante Lula, 3,9%. Isso não é ruptura, mas ciclo econômico, como já tivemos tantos. Não podemos esquecer que a estabilidade do Real também reduziu a pobreza e o desemprego.
FOLHA - E o papel do Bolsa Família?
SALM - Programas sociais de transferência de renda são, sim, fundamentais para reduzir a miséria absoluta. Ainda mais quando cumprem com condicionalidades, como a exigência de frequência à escola. Ninguém seria louco de eliminá-los. O Bolsa Família não deixou de ser uma continuidade: juntou o Bolsa Escola e o Bolsa Alimentação, que vinham do governo anterior. O Bolsa Família também pode funcionar, indiretamente, para elevar os rendimentos do trabalho. Quem recebe o benefício tem melhores condições para resistir a uma diária aviltante. Mas não é tudo o que parece quanto à distribuição de renda. Nesse sentido, mais importante foram o crescimento do emprego e a recuperação do salário mínimo. O gasto público social aumentou? Ótimo. Mas, simultaneamente a isso, as políticas sociais universais, como educação e saúde, ficaram para trás.
FOLHA - Em dez anos, o número de alunos em universidades saltou de 2 milhões para 4 milhões. Esse aumento não o sensibiliza?
SALM - Para falar a verdade, pouco. Formou-se no Brasil um ciclo nefasto, que começa na falta de atendimento de creche e de pré-escola e acaba em gigantescas universidades privadas que estão mais para escolões do que para universidades. A coisa funciona assim: como o percentual de crianças com atendimento adequado na educação infantil é mínimo, elas já chegam ao ensino fundamental com deficiências. Aí avançam rapidamente, com o artifício da progressão continuada ou do ciclo básico, mecanismos que escamoteiam a repetência. Quando sai do ensino fundamental, não sabe nem falar, nem articular direito. Não avançamos na implantação do horário integral. Tampouco avançamos na melhoria do ensino médio. No governo FHC os alunos no ensino público federal aumentaram em torno de 50%. Sob Lula, o ritmo caiu pela metade.
FOLHA - É melhor ter ou não ter o que o senhor chama de escolões?
SALM - É melhor tê-los. Mas melhor ainda seria dar qualidade ao ensino fundamental e assegurar a passagem dos egressos ao ensino médio. Se isso ocorresse, a maioria das vagas no mercado de trabalho hoje ocupadas por quem tem diploma universitário poderia ser preenchida por quem tem o nível médio. Estamos transferindo para as universidades, com tremendo gasto de recursos, o ensino que poderia ser oferecido no nível médio.
FOLHA - Quais são os indícios de que a saúde piorou?
SALM - A população nunca reclamou tanto, o que é um indício importante. Não há muitos indicadores de acompanhamento confiáveis, mas alguma coisa existe. A relação entre internações e habitantes, no SUS, vem caindo desde o governo Itamar. Parece uma coisa boa. Só que essa relação aumenta nos hospitais privados. A relação entre exames e consultas não se alterou no sistema público. Já no atendimento privado, aumentou. No Rio, os médicos dizem que as mortes evitáveis nos hospitais vêm aumentando, inclusive nas UPAs (Unidades de Pronto Atendimento, da prefeitura atual), por causa da precariedade das conexões com os hospitais do SUS. Estamos claramente diante de um subfinanciamento do SUS, como diagnostica a médica Lígia Bahia. Só não piorou ainda mais por conta da vinculação dos recursos para a Saúde, com a Emenda 29, iniciativa do Serra. O aumento e a diversificação da oferta dos remédios genéricos estagnou com o Lula, quando a Anvisa foi loteada.
FOLHA - O senhor é filiado a algum partido político? É tucano?
SALM - Nem tucano nem filiado a partido político. Votei no José Serra para presidente em 2002 e colaborei na campanha dele, mas não fiquei triste com a vitória do Lula.
FOLHA - Como o senhor avalia as duas experiências de governo?
SALM - As condições econômicas, especialmente no front externo até a eclosão da crise mundial, foram muito mais favoráveis a Lula que a FHC. O importante para mim é que a onda neoliberal não conseguiu acabar com os avanços social-democratas da Constituição de 88. O principal mérito de ambos, até aqui, é o respeito pela democracia. Na economia, vejo, como os principais problemas dos dois, a facilidade com que permitiram, ou promoveram, a apreciação cambial, os juros mais altos do mundo e o descaso, nos dois períodos, com o investimento público que está num nível baixíssimo, um dos mais baixos do mundo. Nessas áreas a continuidade foi incrível.
sábado, janeiro 09, 2010
561) Time travel: not so fast, or backward, quick...
Green.view
Beyond Hades
The Economist, January 7th 2010
A proposal to extend geological time into the era before the Earth existed
TIME travel is normally fixed in both direction and speed: forward only, and no more or less than twenty four hours a day. Part of the thrill of a new year is the sense of this stately progress leaping, just a little, as a year ticks over in a second. When two digits tick by at once the thrill expands further as the grain gets coarser. Dividing history into ten-year chunks on the basis of the last-but-one digit is arbitrary, but knowing that it will be thus divided, despite the senselessness of so doing, gives the 09 to 10 transition and its ilk added relish. Something new, or at least different, has begun.
Given that time travel moves only forward, it might seem that this would be the only way new periods can be added to history. Not so, though, if you are a geologist or Earth scientist. For them the past offers billions of years of room for redefinition and subdivision, with the beginnings and endings of various geological periods and subperiods tussled over continuously. A recent paper goes further, offering the possibility of adding periods where there were previously none: of extending the Earth’s history, not further into the future, but further into the past.
To appreciate this, a quick recap of the Earth’s origins. About 4.6 billion years ago a large cloud of gas, probably shocked by a nearby supernova, fell in on itself, forming grains of dust and, rather more spectacularly, a star. In the disk of gas and dust around this nascent sun smaller objects coalesced into larger ones, encountering each other with ever greater violence as they became ever larger. Near the end of this process a Mars-sized object crashed into a Venus-sized object, in the process creating the Earth (which is larger than Venus) and the Moon (which is smaller than Mars). This knockabout phase lasted only a few tens of millions of years, though the orbits of the planets, especially the big ones further from the sun, did not settle down until a few hundreds of millions of years later.
At present, the Earth’s geological history does not deal with this period well, for the simple reason that geologists deal mostly with rocks, and rocks older than about 3.8 billion years are rare indeed. Rocks from 3.8 billion years ago to 2.5 billion years ago are assigned to the Earth’s earliest geological eon, the Archaean. Anything earlier—a few lumps of Greenland and Canada, and rock-residues preserved now only as inclusions in larger, later, rocks—are referred to as belonging to the Hadean, an informal and ill-defined but useful and evocative term.
The new proposal suggests not just that the Hadean should be formalised, but also that a new aeon, the Chaotian, should be recognised as extending extend further back in time than the Earth itself. The Chaotian would begin with the beginning of the cloud’s collapse, be punctuated in the middle with the ignition of the sun and come to an end with the collision that created the Earth-moon doublet in its sort of modern form. In a fit of further distinctions, the authors—Colin Goldblatt, a young researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Centre, and three older colleagues with considerable previous form in the framing of provocative hypotheses—suggest the Nephelean and Erebrean for the periods before the sun’s ignition, the Hyperitian and Titanomachean for those after.
Other than demonstrating that there are scientists abroad with classical educations, lively imaginations and a little spare time on their hands, what would such a seemingly silly extension of geological history to the pre-rock, pre-planet era actually achieve? Two things. One, which the authors themselves put forward, is that given the increasing amount of serious and informative science being done with respect to the early history of the Earth and the solar system—not least in the context of observations of other systems round other stars—an agreed vocabulary with which to discuss the timing of various events and transitions would be helpful. A second is that if the solar system is to be considered a system, in the sense of something more than the sum of its parts, it needs a system-wide timescale that stretches back to its beginning, and into which the timescales of the various planets can be pieced as they become better understood. To use the Earth’s geology, which is the best understood of that of any planet, as the basis for this is as good a solution as any.
Following on from that, and of less specialist interest, is the degree to which such thinking expands people’s conceptions of their planet and its place in the scheme of things. The Earth is not an isolated lump of rock, a system unto itself; it is the result of events that created it, and of processes that extend far beyond its physical limits. It is sprinkled with dust older than the sun, constantly pulled this way and that by tides while occasionally smacked about by comets and asteroids. Most crucially, it is shot through with the energy of the sun, energy which drives the planet’s winds and rivers, stirs its oceans and brings life to its plants and all who eat them—and thus accounts for almost all of what is available in the renewable energy business. To see the Earth and its properties in the cosmic contex of the processes that have formed and sustained them, rather than just as lumps of stuff, is salutory—whether looking billions of years back or a decade or so into the future.
sexta-feira, janeiro 08, 2010
560) Jihadism - The Threat Continues - Stratfor
Jihadism in 2010: The Threat Continues
By Scott Stewart
Global Security and Intelligence Report
STRATFOR, January 6, 2010
For the past several years, STRATFOR has published an annual forecast on al Qaeda and the jihadist movement. Since our first jihadist forecast in January 2006, we have focused heavily on the devolution of jihadism from a phenomenon primarily involving the core al Qaeda group to one based mainly on the wider jihadist movement and the devolving, decentralized threat it poses.
The central theme of last year’s forecast was that al Qaeda was an important force on the ideological battlefield, but that the efforts of the United States and its allies had marginalized the group on the physical battlefield and kept it bottled up in a limited geographic area. Because of this, we forecast that the most significant threat in terms of physical attacks stemmed from regional jihadist franchises and grassroots operatives and not the al Qaeda core. We also wrote that we believed the threat posed by such attacks would remain tactical and not rise to the level of a strategic threat. To reflect this reality, we even dropped al Qaeda from the title of our annual forecast and simply named it Jihadism in 2009: The Trends Continue.
The past year proved to be very busy in terms of attacks and thwarted plots emanating from jihadist actors. But, as forecast, the primary militants involved in carrying out these terrorist plots were almost exclusively from regional jihadist groups and grassroots operatives, and not militants dispatched by the al Qaeda core. We anticipate that this dynamic will continue, and if anything, the trend will be for some regional franchise groups to become even more involved in transnational attacks, thus further usurping the position of al Qaeda prime at the vanguard of jihadism on the physical battlefield.
A Note on ‘Al Qaeda’
As a quick reminder, STRATFOR views what most people refer to as “al Qaeda” as a global jihadist network rather than a monolithic entity. This network consists of three distinct entities. The first is a core vanguard organization, which we frequently refer to as al Qaeda prime or the al Qaeda core. The al Qaeda core is comprised of Osama bin Laden and his small circle of close, trusted associates, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri. Due to intense pressure by the U.S. government and its allies, this core group has been reduced in size since 9/11 and remains relatively small because of operational security concerns. This insular group is laying low in Pakistan near the Afghan border and comprises only a small portion of the larger jihadist universe.
The second layer of the network is composed of local or regional terrorist or insurgent groups that have adopted jihadist ideology. Some of these groups have publicly claimed allegiance to bin Laden and the al Qaeda core and become what we refer to as franchise groups, like al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) or al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Other groups may adopt some or all of al Qaeda’s jihadist ideology and cooperate with the core group, but they will maintain their independence for a variety of reasons. Such groups include the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami (HUJI). Indeed, in the case of some larger organizations such as LeT, some of the group’s factions may actually oppose close cooperation with al Qaeda.
The third and broadest layer of the network is the grassroots jihadist movement, that is, people inspired by the al Qaeda core and the franchise groups but who may have little or no actual connection to these groups.
As we move down this hierarchy, we also move down in operational capability and expertise in what we call terrorist tradecraft — the set of skills required to conduct a terrorist attack. The operatives belonging to the al Qaeda core are generally better trained than their regional counterparts, and both of these layers tend to be far better trained than the grassroots operatives. Indeed, many grassroots operatives travel to places like Pakistan and Yemen in order to seek training from these other groups.
The Internet has long proved to be an important tool for these groups to reach out to potential grassroots operatives. Jihadist chat rooms and Web sites provide indoctrination in jihadist ideology and also serve as a means for aspiring jihadists to make contact with like-minded individuals and even the jihadist groups themselves.
2009 Forecast Review
Overall, our 2009 forecast was fairly accurate. As noted above, we wrote that the United States would continue its operations to decapitate the al Qaeda core and that this would cause the group to be marginalized from the physical jihad, and that has happened.
While we missed forecasting the resurgence of jihadist militant groups in Yemen and Somalia in 2008, in our 2009 forecast we covered these two countries carefully. We wrote that the al Qaeda franchises in Yemen had taken a hit in 2008 but that they could recover in 2009 given the opportunity. Indeed, the groups received a significant boost when they merged into a single group that also incorporated the remnants of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, which had been forced by Saudi security to flee the country. We closely followed this new group, which named itself al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and STRATFOR was the first organization we know of to discuss the threat AQAP posed to civil aviation when we raised this subject on Sept. 2 and elaborated on it Sept. 16, in an analysis titled Convergence: The Challenge of Aviation Security. That threat manifested itself in the attempt to destroy an airliner traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 — an operation that very nearly succeeded.
Regarding Somalia, we have also been closely following al Shabaab and the other jihadist groups there, such as Hizbul Islam. Al Shabaab publicly pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden in September 2009 and therefore has formally joined the ranks of al Qaeda’s regional franchise groups. However, as we forecast last January, while the instability present in Somalia provides al Shabaab the opportunity to flourish, the factionalization of the country (including the jihadist groups operating there) has also served to keep al Shabaab from dominating the other actors and assuming control of the country.
We also forecast that, while Iraq had been relatively quiet in 2008, the level of violence there could surge in 2009 due to the Awakening Councils being taken off the U.S. payroll and having their control transferred to the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, which might not pay them and integrate them into the armed forces. Indeed, since August, we have seen three waves of major coordinated attacks against Iraqi ministry buildings in Baghdad linked to the al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq. Since this violence is tied to the political situation in Iraq, and there is a clear correlation between the funds being cut to the Awakening Councils and these attacks, we anticipate that this violence will continue through the parliamentary elections in March. The attacks could even continue after that, if the Sunni powers in Iraq deem that their interests are not being addressed appropriately.
As in 2008, we paid close attention in 2009 to the situation in Pakistan. This not only was because Pakistan is the home of the al Qaeda core’s leadership but also because of the threat that the TTP and the other jihadist groups in the country posed to the stability of the nuclear-armed state. As we watched Pakistan for signs that it was becoming a failed state, we noted that the government was actually making considerable headway in its fight against its jihadist insurgency. Indeed, by late in the year, the Pakistanis had launched not only a successful offensive in Swat and the adjacent districts but also an offensive into South Waziristan, the heart of the TTP’s territory.
We also forecast that the bulk of the attacks worldwide in 2009 would be conducted by regional jihadist franchise groups and, to a lesser extent, grassroots jihadists, rather than the al Qaeda core, which was correct.
In relation to attacks against the United States, we wrote that we did not see a strategic threat to the United States from the jihadists, but that the threat of simple attacks against soft targets remained in 2009. We said we had been surprised that there were no such attacks in 2008 but that, given the vulnerabilities that existed and the ease with which such attacks could be conducted, we believed they were certainly possible. During 2009, we did see simple attacks by grassroots operatives in Little Rock, Arkansas, and at Fort Hood, Texas, along with several other grassroots plots thwarted by authorities.
Forecast for 2010
In the coming year we believe that, globally, we will see many of the trends continue from last year. We believe that the al Qaeda core will continue to be marginalized on the physical battlefield and struggle to remain relevant on the ideological battlefield. The regional jihadist franchise groups will continue to be at the vanguard of the physical battle, and the grassroots operatives will remain a persistent, though lower-level, threat.
One thing we noticed in recent months was that the regional groups were becoming more transnational in their attacks, with AQAP involved in the attack on Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in Saudi Arabia as well as the trans-Atlantic airliner bombing plot on Christmas Day. Additionally, we saw HUJI planning an attack against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper and cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in Denmark, and on Jan. 1, 2010, a Somali man reportedly associated with al Shabaab broke into Westergaard’s home armed with an axe and knife and allegedly tried to kill him. We believe that in 2010 we will see more examples of regional groups like al Shabaab and AQAP reaching out to become more transnational, perhaps even conducting attacks in the United States and Europe.
We also believe that, due to the open nature of the U.S. and European societies and the ease of conducting attacks against them, we will see more grassroots plots, if not successful attacks, in the United States and Europe in the coming year. The concept behind AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi’s article calling for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets may be gaining popularity among grassroots jihadists. Certainly, the above-mentioned attack in Denmark involving an axe and knife was simple in nature. It could also have been deadly had the cartoonist not had a panic room within his residence. We will be watching for more simple attacks.
As far as targets, we believe that they will remain largely the same for 2010. Soft targets such as hotels will continue to be popular, since most jihadists lack the ability to attack hard targets outside of conflict zones. However, jihadists have demonstrated a continuing fixation on attacking commercial aviation targets, and we can anticipate additional plots and attacks focusing on aircraft.
Regionally, we will be watching for the following:
* Pakistan: Can the United States find and kill the al Qaeda core’s leadership? A Pakistani official told the Chinese Xinhua news agency on Jan. 4 that terrorism will come to an end in Pakistan in 2010, but we are not nearly so optimistic. Even though the military has made good progress in its South Waziristan offensive, most of the militants moved to other areas of Pakistan rather than engage in frontal combat with Pakistan’s army. The area along the border with Pakistan is rugged and has proved hard to pacify for hundreds of years. We don’t think the Pakistanis will be able to bring the area under control in only one year. Clearly, the Pakistanis have made progress, but they are not out of the woods. The TTP has launched a number of attacks in the Punjabi core of Pakistan (including Karachi) and we see no end to this violence in 2010.
* Afghanistan: We will continue to closely monitor jihadist actors in this war-torn country. Our forecast for this conflict is included in our Annual Forecast 2010, published on Jan. 4.
* Yemen: We will be watching closely to see if AQAP will follow the normal jihadist group lifespan of making a big splash, coming to the notice of the world and then being hit heavily by the host government with U.S. support. This pattern was exhibited a few years back by AQAP’s Saudi al Qaeda brethren, and judging by the operations in Yemen over the past month, it looks like 2010 might be a tough year for the group. It is important to note that the strikes against the group on Dec. 17 and Dec. 24 predated the Christmas bombing attempt, and the pressure on them will undoubtedly be ratcheted up considerably in the wake of that attack. Even as the memory of the Christmas Day attack begins to fade in the media and political circles, the focus on Yemen will continue in the counterterrorism community.
* Indonesia: Can Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad find an effective leader to guide it back from the edge of destruction after the death of Noordin Mohammad Top and the deaths or captures of several of his top lieutenants? Or will the Indonesians be able to enjoy further success against the group’s surviving members?
* North Africa: Will AQIM continue to shy away from the al Qaeda core’s targeting philosophy and essentially function as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat with a different name in Algeria? Or will AQIM shift back toward al Qaeda’s philosophy of attacking the far enemy and using suicide bombers and large vehicle bombs? In Mauritania, Niger and Mali, will the AQIM-affiliated cells there be able to progress beyond amateurish attacks and petty banditry to become a credible militant organization?
* Somalia: We believe the factionalism in Somalia and within the jihadist community there will continue to hamper al Shabaab. The questions we will be looking to answer are: Will al Shabaab be able to gain significant control of areas of the country that can be used to harbor and train foreign militants? And, will the group decide to use its contacts within the Somali diaspora to conduct attacks in East Africa, South Africa, Australia, Europe and the United States? We believe that al Shabaab is on its way to becoming a transnational player and that 2010 may well be the year that it breaks out and then draws international attention like AQAP has done in recent months.
* India: We anticipate that Kashmiri jihadist groups will continue to plan attacks against India in an effort to stir-up communal violence in that country and stoke tensions between India and Pakistan — and provide a breather to the jihadist groups being pressured by the government of Pakistan.
As long as the ideology of jihadism survives, the jihadists will be able to recruit new militants and their war against the world will continue. The battle will oscillate between periods of high and low intensity as regional groups rise in power and are taken down. We don’t believe jihadists pose a strategic geopolitical threat on a global, or even regional, scale, but they will certainly continue to launch attacks and kill people in 2010.
By Scott Stewart
Global Security and Intelligence Report
STRATFOR, January 6, 2010
For the past several years, STRATFOR has published an annual forecast on al Qaeda and the jihadist movement. Since our first jihadist forecast in January 2006, we have focused heavily on the devolution of jihadism from a phenomenon primarily involving the core al Qaeda group to one based mainly on the wider jihadist movement and the devolving, decentralized threat it poses.
The central theme of last year’s forecast was that al Qaeda was an important force on the ideological battlefield, but that the efforts of the United States and its allies had marginalized the group on the physical battlefield and kept it bottled up in a limited geographic area. Because of this, we forecast that the most significant threat in terms of physical attacks stemmed from regional jihadist franchises and grassroots operatives and not the al Qaeda core. We also wrote that we believed the threat posed by such attacks would remain tactical and not rise to the level of a strategic threat. To reflect this reality, we even dropped al Qaeda from the title of our annual forecast and simply named it Jihadism in 2009: The Trends Continue.
The past year proved to be very busy in terms of attacks and thwarted plots emanating from jihadist actors. But, as forecast, the primary militants involved in carrying out these terrorist plots were almost exclusively from regional jihadist groups and grassroots operatives, and not militants dispatched by the al Qaeda core. We anticipate that this dynamic will continue, and if anything, the trend will be for some regional franchise groups to become even more involved in transnational attacks, thus further usurping the position of al Qaeda prime at the vanguard of jihadism on the physical battlefield.
A Note on ‘Al Qaeda’
As a quick reminder, STRATFOR views what most people refer to as “al Qaeda” as a global jihadist network rather than a monolithic entity. This network consists of three distinct entities. The first is a core vanguard organization, which we frequently refer to as al Qaeda prime or the al Qaeda core. The al Qaeda core is comprised of Osama bin Laden and his small circle of close, trusted associates, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri. Due to intense pressure by the U.S. government and its allies, this core group has been reduced in size since 9/11 and remains relatively small because of operational security concerns. This insular group is laying low in Pakistan near the Afghan border and comprises only a small portion of the larger jihadist universe.
The second layer of the network is composed of local or regional terrorist or insurgent groups that have adopted jihadist ideology. Some of these groups have publicly claimed allegiance to bin Laden and the al Qaeda core and become what we refer to as franchise groups, like al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) or al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Other groups may adopt some or all of al Qaeda’s jihadist ideology and cooperate with the core group, but they will maintain their independence for a variety of reasons. Such groups include the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami (HUJI). Indeed, in the case of some larger organizations such as LeT, some of the group’s factions may actually oppose close cooperation with al Qaeda.
The third and broadest layer of the network is the grassroots jihadist movement, that is, people inspired by the al Qaeda core and the franchise groups but who may have little or no actual connection to these groups.
As we move down this hierarchy, we also move down in operational capability and expertise in what we call terrorist tradecraft — the set of skills required to conduct a terrorist attack. The operatives belonging to the al Qaeda core are generally better trained than their regional counterparts, and both of these layers tend to be far better trained than the grassroots operatives. Indeed, many grassroots operatives travel to places like Pakistan and Yemen in order to seek training from these other groups.
The Internet has long proved to be an important tool for these groups to reach out to potential grassroots operatives. Jihadist chat rooms and Web sites provide indoctrination in jihadist ideology and also serve as a means for aspiring jihadists to make contact with like-minded individuals and even the jihadist groups themselves.
2009 Forecast Review
Overall, our 2009 forecast was fairly accurate. As noted above, we wrote that the United States would continue its operations to decapitate the al Qaeda core and that this would cause the group to be marginalized from the physical jihad, and that has happened.
While we missed forecasting the resurgence of jihadist militant groups in Yemen and Somalia in 2008, in our 2009 forecast we covered these two countries carefully. We wrote that the al Qaeda franchises in Yemen had taken a hit in 2008 but that they could recover in 2009 given the opportunity. Indeed, the groups received a significant boost when they merged into a single group that also incorporated the remnants of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, which had been forced by Saudi security to flee the country. We closely followed this new group, which named itself al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and STRATFOR was the first organization we know of to discuss the threat AQAP posed to civil aviation when we raised this subject on Sept. 2 and elaborated on it Sept. 16, in an analysis titled Convergence: The Challenge of Aviation Security. That threat manifested itself in the attempt to destroy an airliner traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 — an operation that very nearly succeeded.
Regarding Somalia, we have also been closely following al Shabaab and the other jihadist groups there, such as Hizbul Islam. Al Shabaab publicly pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden in September 2009 and therefore has formally joined the ranks of al Qaeda’s regional franchise groups. However, as we forecast last January, while the instability present in Somalia provides al Shabaab the opportunity to flourish, the factionalization of the country (including the jihadist groups operating there) has also served to keep al Shabaab from dominating the other actors and assuming control of the country.
We also forecast that, while Iraq had been relatively quiet in 2008, the level of violence there could surge in 2009 due to the Awakening Councils being taken off the U.S. payroll and having their control transferred to the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, which might not pay them and integrate them into the armed forces. Indeed, since August, we have seen three waves of major coordinated attacks against Iraqi ministry buildings in Baghdad linked to the al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq. Since this violence is tied to the political situation in Iraq, and there is a clear correlation between the funds being cut to the Awakening Councils and these attacks, we anticipate that this violence will continue through the parliamentary elections in March. The attacks could even continue after that, if the Sunni powers in Iraq deem that their interests are not being addressed appropriately.
As in 2008, we paid close attention in 2009 to the situation in Pakistan. This not only was because Pakistan is the home of the al Qaeda core’s leadership but also because of the threat that the TTP and the other jihadist groups in the country posed to the stability of the nuclear-armed state. As we watched Pakistan for signs that it was becoming a failed state, we noted that the government was actually making considerable headway in its fight against its jihadist insurgency. Indeed, by late in the year, the Pakistanis had launched not only a successful offensive in Swat and the adjacent districts but also an offensive into South Waziristan, the heart of the TTP’s territory.
We also forecast that the bulk of the attacks worldwide in 2009 would be conducted by regional jihadist franchise groups and, to a lesser extent, grassroots jihadists, rather than the al Qaeda core, which was correct.
In relation to attacks against the United States, we wrote that we did not see a strategic threat to the United States from the jihadists, but that the threat of simple attacks against soft targets remained in 2009. We said we had been surprised that there were no such attacks in 2008 but that, given the vulnerabilities that existed and the ease with which such attacks could be conducted, we believed they were certainly possible. During 2009, we did see simple attacks by grassroots operatives in Little Rock, Arkansas, and at Fort Hood, Texas, along with several other grassroots plots thwarted by authorities.
Forecast for 2010
In the coming year we believe that, globally, we will see many of the trends continue from last year. We believe that the al Qaeda core will continue to be marginalized on the physical battlefield and struggle to remain relevant on the ideological battlefield. The regional jihadist franchise groups will continue to be at the vanguard of the physical battle, and the grassroots operatives will remain a persistent, though lower-level, threat.
One thing we noticed in recent months was that the regional groups were becoming more transnational in their attacks, with AQAP involved in the attack on Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in Saudi Arabia as well as the trans-Atlantic airliner bombing plot on Christmas Day. Additionally, we saw HUJI planning an attack against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper and cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in Denmark, and on Jan. 1, 2010, a Somali man reportedly associated with al Shabaab broke into Westergaard’s home armed with an axe and knife and allegedly tried to kill him. We believe that in 2010 we will see more examples of regional groups like al Shabaab and AQAP reaching out to become more transnational, perhaps even conducting attacks in the United States and Europe.
We also believe that, due to the open nature of the U.S. and European societies and the ease of conducting attacks against them, we will see more grassroots plots, if not successful attacks, in the United States and Europe in the coming year. The concept behind AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi’s article calling for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets may be gaining popularity among grassroots jihadists. Certainly, the above-mentioned attack in Denmark involving an axe and knife was simple in nature. It could also have been deadly had the cartoonist not had a panic room within his residence. We will be watching for more simple attacks.
As far as targets, we believe that they will remain largely the same for 2010. Soft targets such as hotels will continue to be popular, since most jihadists lack the ability to attack hard targets outside of conflict zones. However, jihadists have demonstrated a continuing fixation on attacking commercial aviation targets, and we can anticipate additional plots and attacks focusing on aircraft.
Regionally, we will be watching for the following:
* Pakistan: Can the United States find and kill the al Qaeda core’s leadership? A Pakistani official told the Chinese Xinhua news agency on Jan. 4 that terrorism will come to an end in Pakistan in 2010, but we are not nearly so optimistic. Even though the military has made good progress in its South Waziristan offensive, most of the militants moved to other areas of Pakistan rather than engage in frontal combat with Pakistan’s army. The area along the border with Pakistan is rugged and has proved hard to pacify for hundreds of years. We don’t think the Pakistanis will be able to bring the area under control in only one year. Clearly, the Pakistanis have made progress, but they are not out of the woods. The TTP has launched a number of attacks in the Punjabi core of Pakistan (including Karachi) and we see no end to this violence in 2010.
* Afghanistan: We will continue to closely monitor jihadist actors in this war-torn country. Our forecast for this conflict is included in our Annual Forecast 2010, published on Jan. 4.
* Yemen: We will be watching closely to see if AQAP will follow the normal jihadist group lifespan of making a big splash, coming to the notice of the world and then being hit heavily by the host government with U.S. support. This pattern was exhibited a few years back by AQAP’s Saudi al Qaeda brethren, and judging by the operations in Yemen over the past month, it looks like 2010 might be a tough year for the group. It is important to note that the strikes against the group on Dec. 17 and Dec. 24 predated the Christmas bombing attempt, and the pressure on them will undoubtedly be ratcheted up considerably in the wake of that attack. Even as the memory of the Christmas Day attack begins to fade in the media and political circles, the focus on Yemen will continue in the counterterrorism community.
* Indonesia: Can Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad find an effective leader to guide it back from the edge of destruction after the death of Noordin Mohammad Top and the deaths or captures of several of his top lieutenants? Or will the Indonesians be able to enjoy further success against the group’s surviving members?
* North Africa: Will AQIM continue to shy away from the al Qaeda core’s targeting philosophy and essentially function as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat with a different name in Algeria? Or will AQIM shift back toward al Qaeda’s philosophy of attacking the far enemy and using suicide bombers and large vehicle bombs? In Mauritania, Niger and Mali, will the AQIM-affiliated cells there be able to progress beyond amateurish attacks and petty banditry to become a credible militant organization?
* Somalia: We believe the factionalism in Somalia and within the jihadist community there will continue to hamper al Shabaab. The questions we will be looking to answer are: Will al Shabaab be able to gain significant control of areas of the country that can be used to harbor and train foreign militants? And, will the group decide to use its contacts within the Somali diaspora to conduct attacks in East Africa, South Africa, Australia, Europe and the United States? We believe that al Shabaab is on its way to becoming a transnational player and that 2010 may well be the year that it breaks out and then draws international attention like AQAP has done in recent months.
* India: We anticipate that Kashmiri jihadist groups will continue to plan attacks against India in an effort to stir-up communal violence in that country and stoke tensions between India and Pakistan — and provide a breather to the jihadist groups being pressured by the government of Pakistan.
As long as the ideology of jihadism survives, the jihadists will be able to recruit new militants and their war against the world will continue. The battle will oscillate between periods of high and low intensity as regional groups rise in power and are taken down. We don’t believe jihadists pose a strategic geopolitical threat on a global, or even regional, scale, but they will certainly continue to launch attacks and kill people in 2010.
quinta-feira, janeiro 07, 2010
559) Chavez-Ahmadinejad, Venezuela-Iran, all against the Empire
The Chavezjad Doctrine: Between Myth and Speculation
By Michael Shifter
Poder, January 5, 2010
Una versión de este articulo en español está disponible aquí.
Hugo Chavez, a skilled provocateur, has over the course of his eleven-year rule in Venezuela forged political alliances with an array of governments that share his zeal for needling and defying the United States. Chavez’s political strategy, after all, is based on accumulating power, and despite its considerable difficulties and relative decline, the US remains the world’s preeminent power. Given that Latin America (not to mention Venezuela) is too small a player for his outsized ambitions, Chavez has naturally sought to make friends across the globe -- if for no other purpose than to irk Washington. No alliance has been as satisfying for Chavez in this regard as the one he has developed with Iran, which has grown especially close since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005.
The Venezuela-Iran relationship predates both Ahmadinejad and Chavez, going as far back as the 1960s, when both governments were founding members of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). Yet it was after major changes in each country’s political situations—the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Chavez’s ascension to power via the ballot box two decades later—that shared interests beyond the oil market gained saliency. Iran and Venezuela began to take advantage of their prized resource not only to become relevant players on the world stage, but also to support the shared goal of curtailing US influence across the globe. At present, there is not much daylight between the geo-political goals being pursued by Chavez and Ahmadinejad. Their common enemy is the US, and each president’s posture towards America could well result in reckless conduct.
The key question is whether the Venezuela-Iran relationship can best be understood as merely a political alliance –that is, a byproduct of self-interested jockeying and rapidly shifting poles of power in the world --or rather as something more sinister meriting an energetic response from the United States and other governments concerned about peace and security in the Americas. Apart from irritating Washington, what does Venezuela gain from the alliance? And what are the possible benefits for Iran in its global strategy?
An Unclear Relationship
Such questions are not easy to answer. Much of the Venezuela-Iran relationship remains obscure, making it the subject of endless speculation and myth. Suspicions abound, for example, about the purpose of the weekly flights between Caracas and Tehran -- there is even some scuttlebutt circulating about training of Hezbollah in the state of Zulia – but such rumors are unsubstantiated and seem a bit far-fetched.
What is known – indeed, what both leaders proudly tout – is that Chavez and Ahmadinejad have frequently visited each other in recent years, and that the two governments have signed myriad cooperative agreements for future economic projects. Few doubt that Chavez is the principal point of entry to Latin America for the Ahmadinejad regime, as he has seemingly facilitated Iranian visits and incipient economic relationships with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) members such as Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Iran is also seeking to extend its presence and influence throughout areas of the region that remain more removed from Chavez’s sphere of influence, like Brazil and even Colombia (hardly a Chavez ally these days). Ahmadinejad made a highly publicized and controversial visit to Brazil on November 23 (see side box), which served as Iran’s formal introduction to South America’s strongest power and as Lula’s clear message to Washington that when it comes to foreign policy, Brazil will meet with whomever it wishes. But Chavez, not Lula, is Ahmadinejad’s principal interlocutor in the hemisphere -- and their ideological affinity is the most pronounced.
Nuisance and Threat
The catch is that while Chavez is seen largely as a nuisance by the international community, Ahmadinejad is regarded as a threat because he is believed to be actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program and simultaneously obstructing U.N. demands for inspections of Iranian facilities. His repeated denial of the Holocaust, virulent remarks against Israel, support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and the systematic crackdown on the Iranian opposition after the contested outcome of the June elections testify to the nefarious character of the regime. In this sense, Chavez comes off as the moderate one in the relationship. While Venezuela’s own authoritarian tendencies are troubling, the political system can best be characterized as oppressive rather than outright repressive like Iran’s. Rhetorically, however, the similarities are striking, and the congruity in views was clear during Ahmadinejad’s latest visit to Caracas on November 27. With the Iranian president at his side, Chavez praised him as an “anti-imperialist gladiator” and denounced Israel as the “murderous arm of the Yankee empire.”
Ahmadinejad's Visit Heats Up Brazil
* The Iranian government captured its biggest prize yet in Latin America with the visit of President Ahmadinejad to Brazil in late November...
As a measure of the concern in Washington about risks associated in the relationship between Venezuela and Iran, the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere convened an unprecedented hearing precisely on this subject on October 27, 2009. As the committee’s chairman Eliot Engel (Democrat/New York) noted, “given the nature of the regime, it can be assumed it (Iran) is up to no good in the region.” While worried about Iran’s “record of deceit, especially on the nuclear program,” Engel conceded that much is unknown about the Venezuela-Iran relationship.
The hearing came six weeks after a special briefing at the Washington-based Brookings Institution by New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau entitled, “The Link Between Iran and Venezuela: A Crisis in the Making?” For most in the audience who were aware of the bilateral relationship, Morgenthau covered familiar ground, particularly highlighting questions about possible money laundering operations to support terrorist groups in the Middle East. Though the reports were not new, the fact that they were presented by someone of Morgenthau’s stature and reputation lent the issue greater seriousness. For many observers, possible money laundering by Iran within the Venezuelan banking system, though unsubstantiated, has a ring of plausibility, as the practice is an unfortunate but widespread problem throughout much of the Americas.
And at a State Department briefing on Latin America on December 11, 2009, Secretary of State Clinton issued the Obama administration’s toughest warning yet of Iran’s relationships in the region, especially with Venezuela and Bolivia. “And I think that if people want to flirt with Iran,” Clinton cautioned, “they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them.” Unsurprisingly, those stern words provoked a reaction from Chavez three days later at an ALBA meeting in Havana, in which he dismissed such “threats” as being part of an “imperial offensive.”
Aside from opportunities for grandstanding and symbolic gestures, what does Chavez get from the relationship? The short answer is, apparently, not too much. True, Chavez’s alliance with Ahmadinejad gives him yet another reason to thumb his nose at the US with great glee, but it is doubtful that he derives many other benefits from the partnership. Trade between the two countries is notably modest (at roughly $52 million in 2008) and the array of economic projects begun by the two presidents, ranging from dairy sales to automobile production, have reportedly turned out to be more of a liability than an asset. (The same can be said in Nicaragua, where promises made by the Iranian regime for enhanced investment have reportedly not been met.) Nor is the relationship with Iran likely to yield economic dividends for Chavez in other sectors, although it does enable him to keep oil prices high (which helps at least in the short term).
An alliance with Ahmadinejad also does not strengthen Chavez’s claim that his government is working on behalf of global peace. In actuality, it hurts Chavez’s relationships with potential allies in Europe and even in Latin America that are worried about Iran’s nuclear aims. And it is not even clear that the relationship helps Chavez politically at home. Venezuelan and Iranian cultures could not be further apart. The two governments do currently share an antipathy for the United States (though, curiously, rather warm feelings historically in their respective regions towards what Chavez calls the “empire”), but Ahmadinejad is like a fish out of water in Venezuela, where he does not seem to arouse a lot of excitement even among core Chavez supporters.
For Ahmadinejad, the benefits of the relationship seem a bit clearer. Befriending Chavez opens the way for Iran’s entry into the Western Hemisphere, thus irritating Washington and projecting a more global presence. It also helps Iran overcome its status as an international pariah and gain a measure of legitimacy in a region regarded as mostly democratic. Still, while Venezuela may offer Iran some hospitable terrain to pursue its strategic objectives, it is hard to argue that Venezuela is fundamental to Iran’s foreign policy agenda. Whatever geopolitical aims Iran may have are at best only marginally advanced by the alliance with Venezuela. The economic advantages of the relationship for Iran are even more elusive.
What Does Iran Want?
Much of the recent conjecture about the relationship centers on the possibility that Iran is searching for uranium deposits in Venezuela, and that there is some collaboration between the two governments on developing nuclear weapon capabilities. No convincing evidence about such work has been revealed, however, and in light of Venezuela’s mounting difficulties in carrying out elementary governmental functions, it is questionable whether the country has the technical capacity or wherewithal to pursue such a sophisticated undertaking. Still, given the sensitivity of the issue, strict vigilance by the US and others in the international community is called for, and is doubtless being practiced to the extent it is possible.
Also of considerable concern is whether Iran-supported terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are receiving any type of assistance, either financial or logistical, for possible operations in the Western Hemisphere. This possibility is presumably being closely followed, especially given the claims in some reports that these groups are building a presence in a number of Western Hemisphere countries. It is also the case, though, that these types of groups are part of global networks with extensive reach, so any Latin American links they may have are not necessarily limited to Venezuela.
Nevertheless, there are two factors to bear in mind when assessing possible terrorist involvement in the region. The first is the still-murky relationship that exists between Chavez’s government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a terrorist group that continues to wage a decades-long battle to topple the Colombian government. While the “smoking gun” linking Chavez to the FARC may not exist, there are many hints of collaboration between the two. Ample reporting has documented FARC use of Venezuelan territory for shelter from Colombian forces, and computer files belonging to former FARC leader Raul Reyes (authenticated by INTERPOL) uncovered after the Colombian military raid in Ecuadoran territory on March 1, 2008, suggested that Chavez provided financial support to the group. Chavez has not exactly hidden his sympathies, either; the monument in a Caracas barrio dedicated to FARC founder Manuel “Tirofijo” Marulanda would be hard to imagine without his blessing. Especially in view of the progressive deterioration in relations between Chavez and Colombian president Alvaro Uribe – with Chavez's increasingly bellicose declarations about “preparing for war” – it is unlikely that the Venezuelan president will distance himself from the most significant insurgency in the Western Hemisphere anytime soon.
The second important factor is Iran’s track record in the Americas, which is a cause for concern. Iran and Hezbollah are believed to be complicit in the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) in 1994, which resulted in 115 deaths and more than 500 injured. A report by Argentina’s justice ministry on the AMIA bombing identified several high-level Iranian officials and a Hezbollah operative as the attack’s material and operational authors.
These questions involving terrorism are one reason why any relationship between Venezuela and Iran is of concern to the US. Barack Obama famously said in his inaugural speech on January 20, 2009 that the United States “will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” but so far Venezuela’s relationship with Iran has changed little from the moments of enormous confrontation and heightened tension under the previous presidency of George W. Bush. The content and tone of the declarations made by Chavez and Ahmadinejad in Caracas in late November 2009 were strikingly similar to those made when the US was under an administration distinguished by its military unilateralism, disposition for regime change, and alarms about the “axis of evil” (which, of course, included Iran).
It is true that with Obama the tone of the discourse coming from Washington has markedly moderated, and the image of the United States is far more favorable than it had been. But though the ambassadors removed from Caracas and then Washington at the end of the Bush administration have now returned to their respective posts, there is scant cooperation, or even communication, between the two governments. Aside from the continuing irritation about Iran’s relationship with Venezuela, the policy differences between Washington and Caracas are tough to bridge, particularly on the Honduras crisis and the US-Colombia pact for access to military bases. Prospects for a rapprochement any time soon seem nil.
The Tension Continues
The degree to which the US-Iran relationship has once again become highly problematic and conflictive is also noteworthy. The Ahmadinejad government’s initial receptivity to the Obama administration’s suggestion to make its nuclear program open to international scrutiny appeared to augur a possible thaw, but that overture has sadly proved fruitless. Iran has in fact become more defiant than ever, determined to proceed vigorously with its nuclear program, no matter how much international opinion is aligned against it. In a vote by the United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA on November 26, 2009, a statement sharply rebuking Iran was supported overwhelmingly, even by Russia and China, with only three governments backing Tehran – Malaysia, Cuba, and Venezuela. The varying levels of concern in Washington with the political alliance between Venezuela and Iran should be seen within the context of the overall deteriorating relationship between Washington and Tehran.
Of course, from all accounts, Iran and Venezuela currently have their hands full, not only in their wider regions of the Middle East and Latin America respectively, but, perhaps most crucially on the domestic fronts. Such circumstances make a robust relationship very difficult. Chavez and Ahmadinejad's chief priority is the perpetuation of power at home, without which it will be virtually impossible to deepen ties across the globe. The Ahmadinejad government has its share of economic problems and mounting dissent and opposition, as reflected in street protests following the election. Iranian experts note signs of fissures within the country’s governing structure.
In a similar way, Venezuela is facing growing problems and vulnerabilities that are likely to consume the attention of the Chavez government. These include uncontrolled criminality, high inflation, decaying infrastructure, water shortages and electricity rationing. Iran can offer little help in addressing such deterioration. The responses will have to come from within Chavez’s model of governance and the pillars that have supported him for more than a decade in pursuit of the Bolivarian Revolution.
But as the banking crisis in early December clearly showed, some of these pillars – the so-called “Bolibourgeoise”, for example – are displaying signs of discontent with the current regime that risk producing important cracks within Chavismo. When such "seeds of decay" acquire a dynamic of their own they become harder and harder to reverse, no matter how seductive the rhetoric or bold the provocations.
By Michael Shifter
Poder, January 5, 2010
Una versión de este articulo en español está disponible aquí.
Hugo Chavez, a skilled provocateur, has over the course of his eleven-year rule in Venezuela forged political alliances with an array of governments that share his zeal for needling and defying the United States. Chavez’s political strategy, after all, is based on accumulating power, and despite its considerable difficulties and relative decline, the US remains the world’s preeminent power. Given that Latin America (not to mention Venezuela) is too small a player for his outsized ambitions, Chavez has naturally sought to make friends across the globe -- if for no other purpose than to irk Washington. No alliance has been as satisfying for Chavez in this regard as the one he has developed with Iran, which has grown especially close since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005.
The Venezuela-Iran relationship predates both Ahmadinejad and Chavez, going as far back as the 1960s, when both governments were founding members of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). Yet it was after major changes in each country’s political situations—the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Chavez’s ascension to power via the ballot box two decades later—that shared interests beyond the oil market gained saliency. Iran and Venezuela began to take advantage of their prized resource not only to become relevant players on the world stage, but also to support the shared goal of curtailing US influence across the globe. At present, there is not much daylight between the geo-political goals being pursued by Chavez and Ahmadinejad. Their common enemy is the US, and each president’s posture towards America could well result in reckless conduct.
The key question is whether the Venezuela-Iran relationship can best be understood as merely a political alliance –that is, a byproduct of self-interested jockeying and rapidly shifting poles of power in the world --or rather as something more sinister meriting an energetic response from the United States and other governments concerned about peace and security in the Americas. Apart from irritating Washington, what does Venezuela gain from the alliance? And what are the possible benefits for Iran in its global strategy?
An Unclear Relationship
Such questions are not easy to answer. Much of the Venezuela-Iran relationship remains obscure, making it the subject of endless speculation and myth. Suspicions abound, for example, about the purpose of the weekly flights between Caracas and Tehran -- there is even some scuttlebutt circulating about training of Hezbollah in the state of Zulia – but such rumors are unsubstantiated and seem a bit far-fetched.
What is known – indeed, what both leaders proudly tout – is that Chavez and Ahmadinejad have frequently visited each other in recent years, and that the two governments have signed myriad cooperative agreements for future economic projects. Few doubt that Chavez is the principal point of entry to Latin America for the Ahmadinejad regime, as he has seemingly facilitated Iranian visits and incipient economic relationships with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) members such as Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Iran is also seeking to extend its presence and influence throughout areas of the region that remain more removed from Chavez’s sphere of influence, like Brazil and even Colombia (hardly a Chavez ally these days). Ahmadinejad made a highly publicized and controversial visit to Brazil on November 23 (see side box), which served as Iran’s formal introduction to South America’s strongest power and as Lula’s clear message to Washington that when it comes to foreign policy, Brazil will meet with whomever it wishes. But Chavez, not Lula, is Ahmadinejad’s principal interlocutor in the hemisphere -- and their ideological affinity is the most pronounced.
Nuisance and Threat
The catch is that while Chavez is seen largely as a nuisance by the international community, Ahmadinejad is regarded as a threat because he is believed to be actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program and simultaneously obstructing U.N. demands for inspections of Iranian facilities. His repeated denial of the Holocaust, virulent remarks against Israel, support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and the systematic crackdown on the Iranian opposition after the contested outcome of the June elections testify to the nefarious character of the regime. In this sense, Chavez comes off as the moderate one in the relationship. While Venezuela’s own authoritarian tendencies are troubling, the political system can best be characterized as oppressive rather than outright repressive like Iran’s. Rhetorically, however, the similarities are striking, and the congruity in views was clear during Ahmadinejad’s latest visit to Caracas on November 27. With the Iranian president at his side, Chavez praised him as an “anti-imperialist gladiator” and denounced Israel as the “murderous arm of the Yankee empire.”
Ahmadinejad's Visit Heats Up Brazil
* The Iranian government captured its biggest prize yet in Latin America with the visit of President Ahmadinejad to Brazil in late November...
As a measure of the concern in Washington about risks associated in the relationship between Venezuela and Iran, the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere convened an unprecedented hearing precisely on this subject on October 27, 2009. As the committee’s chairman Eliot Engel (Democrat/New York) noted, “given the nature of the regime, it can be assumed it (Iran) is up to no good in the region.” While worried about Iran’s “record of deceit, especially on the nuclear program,” Engel conceded that much is unknown about the Venezuela-Iran relationship.
The hearing came six weeks after a special briefing at the Washington-based Brookings Institution by New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau entitled, “The Link Between Iran and Venezuela: A Crisis in the Making?” For most in the audience who were aware of the bilateral relationship, Morgenthau covered familiar ground, particularly highlighting questions about possible money laundering operations to support terrorist groups in the Middle East. Though the reports were not new, the fact that they were presented by someone of Morgenthau’s stature and reputation lent the issue greater seriousness. For many observers, possible money laundering by Iran within the Venezuelan banking system, though unsubstantiated, has a ring of plausibility, as the practice is an unfortunate but widespread problem throughout much of the Americas.
And at a State Department briefing on Latin America on December 11, 2009, Secretary of State Clinton issued the Obama administration’s toughest warning yet of Iran’s relationships in the region, especially with Venezuela and Bolivia. “And I think that if people want to flirt with Iran,” Clinton cautioned, “they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them.” Unsurprisingly, those stern words provoked a reaction from Chavez three days later at an ALBA meeting in Havana, in which he dismissed such “threats” as being part of an “imperial offensive.”
Aside from opportunities for grandstanding and symbolic gestures, what does Chavez get from the relationship? The short answer is, apparently, not too much. True, Chavez’s alliance with Ahmadinejad gives him yet another reason to thumb his nose at the US with great glee, but it is doubtful that he derives many other benefits from the partnership. Trade between the two countries is notably modest (at roughly $52 million in 2008) and the array of economic projects begun by the two presidents, ranging from dairy sales to automobile production, have reportedly turned out to be more of a liability than an asset. (The same can be said in Nicaragua, where promises made by the Iranian regime for enhanced investment have reportedly not been met.) Nor is the relationship with Iran likely to yield economic dividends for Chavez in other sectors, although it does enable him to keep oil prices high (which helps at least in the short term).
An alliance with Ahmadinejad also does not strengthen Chavez’s claim that his government is working on behalf of global peace. In actuality, it hurts Chavez’s relationships with potential allies in Europe and even in Latin America that are worried about Iran’s nuclear aims. And it is not even clear that the relationship helps Chavez politically at home. Venezuelan and Iranian cultures could not be further apart. The two governments do currently share an antipathy for the United States (though, curiously, rather warm feelings historically in their respective regions towards what Chavez calls the “empire”), but Ahmadinejad is like a fish out of water in Venezuela, where he does not seem to arouse a lot of excitement even among core Chavez supporters.
For Ahmadinejad, the benefits of the relationship seem a bit clearer. Befriending Chavez opens the way for Iran’s entry into the Western Hemisphere, thus irritating Washington and projecting a more global presence. It also helps Iran overcome its status as an international pariah and gain a measure of legitimacy in a region regarded as mostly democratic. Still, while Venezuela may offer Iran some hospitable terrain to pursue its strategic objectives, it is hard to argue that Venezuela is fundamental to Iran’s foreign policy agenda. Whatever geopolitical aims Iran may have are at best only marginally advanced by the alliance with Venezuela. The economic advantages of the relationship for Iran are even more elusive.
What Does Iran Want?
Much of the recent conjecture about the relationship centers on the possibility that Iran is searching for uranium deposits in Venezuela, and that there is some collaboration between the two governments on developing nuclear weapon capabilities. No convincing evidence about such work has been revealed, however, and in light of Venezuela’s mounting difficulties in carrying out elementary governmental functions, it is questionable whether the country has the technical capacity or wherewithal to pursue such a sophisticated undertaking. Still, given the sensitivity of the issue, strict vigilance by the US and others in the international community is called for, and is doubtless being practiced to the extent it is possible.
Also of considerable concern is whether Iran-supported terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are receiving any type of assistance, either financial or logistical, for possible operations in the Western Hemisphere. This possibility is presumably being closely followed, especially given the claims in some reports that these groups are building a presence in a number of Western Hemisphere countries. It is also the case, though, that these types of groups are part of global networks with extensive reach, so any Latin American links they may have are not necessarily limited to Venezuela.
Nevertheless, there are two factors to bear in mind when assessing possible terrorist involvement in the region. The first is the still-murky relationship that exists between Chavez’s government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a terrorist group that continues to wage a decades-long battle to topple the Colombian government. While the “smoking gun” linking Chavez to the FARC may not exist, there are many hints of collaboration between the two. Ample reporting has documented FARC use of Venezuelan territory for shelter from Colombian forces, and computer files belonging to former FARC leader Raul Reyes (authenticated by INTERPOL) uncovered after the Colombian military raid in Ecuadoran territory on March 1, 2008, suggested that Chavez provided financial support to the group. Chavez has not exactly hidden his sympathies, either; the monument in a Caracas barrio dedicated to FARC founder Manuel “Tirofijo” Marulanda would be hard to imagine without his blessing. Especially in view of the progressive deterioration in relations between Chavez and Colombian president Alvaro Uribe – with Chavez's increasingly bellicose declarations about “preparing for war” – it is unlikely that the Venezuelan president will distance himself from the most significant insurgency in the Western Hemisphere anytime soon.
The second important factor is Iran’s track record in the Americas, which is a cause for concern. Iran and Hezbollah are believed to be complicit in the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) in 1994, which resulted in 115 deaths and more than 500 injured. A report by Argentina’s justice ministry on the AMIA bombing identified several high-level Iranian officials and a Hezbollah operative as the attack’s material and operational authors.
These questions involving terrorism are one reason why any relationship between Venezuela and Iran is of concern to the US. Barack Obama famously said in his inaugural speech on January 20, 2009 that the United States “will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” but so far Venezuela’s relationship with Iran has changed little from the moments of enormous confrontation and heightened tension under the previous presidency of George W. Bush. The content and tone of the declarations made by Chavez and Ahmadinejad in Caracas in late November 2009 were strikingly similar to those made when the US was under an administration distinguished by its military unilateralism, disposition for regime change, and alarms about the “axis of evil” (which, of course, included Iran).
It is true that with Obama the tone of the discourse coming from Washington has markedly moderated, and the image of the United States is far more favorable than it had been. But though the ambassadors removed from Caracas and then Washington at the end of the Bush administration have now returned to their respective posts, there is scant cooperation, or even communication, between the two governments. Aside from the continuing irritation about Iran’s relationship with Venezuela, the policy differences between Washington and Caracas are tough to bridge, particularly on the Honduras crisis and the US-Colombia pact for access to military bases. Prospects for a rapprochement any time soon seem nil.
The Tension Continues
The degree to which the US-Iran relationship has once again become highly problematic and conflictive is also noteworthy. The Ahmadinejad government’s initial receptivity to the Obama administration’s suggestion to make its nuclear program open to international scrutiny appeared to augur a possible thaw, but that overture has sadly proved fruitless. Iran has in fact become more defiant than ever, determined to proceed vigorously with its nuclear program, no matter how much international opinion is aligned against it. In a vote by the United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA on November 26, 2009, a statement sharply rebuking Iran was supported overwhelmingly, even by Russia and China, with only three governments backing Tehran – Malaysia, Cuba, and Venezuela. The varying levels of concern in Washington with the political alliance between Venezuela and Iran should be seen within the context of the overall deteriorating relationship between Washington and Tehran.
Of course, from all accounts, Iran and Venezuela currently have their hands full, not only in their wider regions of the Middle East and Latin America respectively, but, perhaps most crucially on the domestic fronts. Such circumstances make a robust relationship very difficult. Chavez and Ahmadinejad's chief priority is the perpetuation of power at home, without which it will be virtually impossible to deepen ties across the globe. The Ahmadinejad government has its share of economic problems and mounting dissent and opposition, as reflected in street protests following the election. Iranian experts note signs of fissures within the country’s governing structure.
In a similar way, Venezuela is facing growing problems and vulnerabilities that are likely to consume the attention of the Chavez government. These include uncontrolled criminality, high inflation, decaying infrastructure, water shortages and electricity rationing. Iran can offer little help in addressing such deterioration. The responses will have to come from within Chavez’s model of governance and the pillars that have supported him for more than a decade in pursuit of the Bolivarian Revolution.
But as the banking crisis in early December clearly showed, some of these pillars – the so-called “Bolibourgeoise”, for example – are displaying signs of discontent with the current regime that risk producing important cracks within Chavismo. When such "seeds of decay" acquire a dynamic of their own they become harder and harder to reverse, no matter how seductive the rhetoric or bold the provocations.
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