Ora bem...

O bold é meu.

 

The Crisis of Zionism - NYTimes.com

Something I’ve been meaning to do — and still don’t have the time to do properly — is say something about Peter Beinart’s brave book The Crisis of Zionism. The truth is that like many liberal American Jews — and most American Jews are still liberal — I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide — and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world. But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism. But it’s only right to say something on behalf of Beinart, who has predictably run into that buzzsaw. As I said, a brave man, and he deserves better.

Leitura dura, muito dura....

Why Do They Hate Us? - By Mona Eltahawy | Foreign Policy

A situação das mulheres nos países árabes.

É sobre o Irão, ou de como os EUA não aprenderam nada com o Iraque, ou uma questão de "plain and simple lunacy"

Congress Pushes Iran Regime Change Over Diplomacy « naked capitalism

A política internacional dos EUA na perspectiva dos candidatos à nomeação Republicana

Mad, mad people: leiam o artigo na sua totalidade e vão vendo o Jon Stewart.

GOPers Promise you War on Iran & Torture & Poverty | Informed Comment

Saturday’s Republican debate, sponsored by CBS and the National Journal, revealed a Republican field that is promising war on Iran and a revival of the use of torture, as well as horrible relations with the new governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (according to Herman Cain, they have gotten “out of hand,” and he and Gingrich want to deal with them by supporting a muscular Christianity).

[....]

These people just like the idea of war. War is good for munitions firms and security firms, who give a lot of money to Republican candidates. They’re actively looking for a war. It is good for business, for them.

[....]

Since all the Republicans are against raising taxes on their cronies among the billionaires, there would only be one way to pay for a $9 trillion Iran War, which would be to abolish social security and medicare. Maybe accomplishing that long-desired goal is even what drives the Republican frontrunners to their fantastic dreams of another Middle Eastern War.

É sobre o manifesto do assassino de Oslo ...

Muito interessante: as consequências societais das actuais tendências demográficas e a informação sobre a evolução demográfica recente dos países mussulmanos (ou só de alguns países mussulmanos?) que desconhecia. Depois há a leitura do manifesto do assassino.

A Murderer's Manifesto and Me - By Phillip Longman | Foreign Policy

Muslim countries, as I wish Breivik had taken time to absorb, are not immune to this phenomenon. As I've written many times, birth rates in Iran have come down so steeply that the Islamic Republic is aging far faster than any country in "old Europe." Meanwhile, birth rates in Tunisia and Lebanon are also below replacement levels, and many other Muslim countries, from Turkey to Morocco, are just on the cusp. For better or for worse, subreplacement fertility is now a condition of modernity, not just of the Western civilization that Breivik proclaims to love even as he slaughters its children. 

The vast demographic transformation overtaking the human race forces issues as contentious as they come: the role of women, religion, race and ethnicity, sex, marriage, birth control, the welfare state, and, before we are done, quite likely much harsher debates over who has a "duty to die" in an aging society. We still do face a population explosion, but mostly of old people, opening the way for generational conflict as well. Added to the mix are modern-day Malthusians who want to drive down human population to arrest global warming or just for the sake of "the planet." This century is likely to be dominated by eugenic thinking, and all the more so as different populations face the specter of demographic decline and environmental threat. Let us all try to keep our heads, maybe invest more in children, and remember our common humanity.

Protestos nos países árabes, economia e demografia

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: Some Economic Underpinnings of the Arc of Protest:

[clicar para aceder a versões maiores]

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Notícias do futuro, ou de como as coisas vão ainda piorar mais ...

Artigo sobre Israel que deve ser lido. Um excerto:

Young Israelis: A Turn to the Right? by Eyal Press | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books: "A striking irony apparent in the survey commissioned by the Kulanana Shared Citizenship Initiative is that young Arabs, who are often portrayed in the Israeli press as implacably hostile to the country’s ideals, support principles such as “mutual respect between all sectors” in higher proportions than their Jewish counterparts (84 versus 75 percent). Significantly more (58 versus 25 percent) also “strongly agree” with Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which states: “All citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, will participate in the life of the state, based on the principle of full, equal citizenship, and appropriate representation in all state institutions.” The country’s founders hoped this language would serve as a set of guiding principles for the state.

“Maybe it’s not a surprise that the minority in any country is very supportive of democratic rights,” says Dahlia Scheindlin. “But it does seem ironic that in the Jewish State, which insists on defining itself as the Jewish democratic state and the only democracy in the Middle East, the Arabs are our most democratic citizens.”

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Civilizações

Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations Revisited - NYTimes.com:

Samuel Huntington [in] “The Clash of Civilizations?”[wrote that]human beings [...] are divided along cultural lines — Western, Islamic, Hindu and so on. There is no universal civilization. Instead, there are these cultural blocks, each within its own distinct set of values. The Islamic civilization, he wrote, is the most troublesome. People in the Arab world do not share the general suppositions of the Western world. Their primary attachment is to their religion, not to their nation-state. Their culture is inhospitable to certain liberal ideals, like pluralism, individualism and democracy. 

Huntington correctly foresaw that the Arab strongman regimes were fragile and were threatened by the masses of unemployed young men. He thought these regimes could fall, but he did not believe that the nations would modernize in a Western direction. Amid the tumult of regime change, the rebels would selectively borrow tools from the West, but their borrowing would be refracted through their own beliefs. They would follow their own trajectory and not become more Western.The Muslim world has bloody borders, he continued. There are wars and tensions where the Muslim world comes into conflict with other civilizations. Even if decrepit regimes fell, he suggested, there would still be a fundamental clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. The Western nations would do well to keep their distance from Muslim affairs. The more the two civilizations intermingle, the worse the tensions will be. 

Huntington’s thesis set off a furious debate. But with the historic changes sweeping through the Arab world, it’s illuminating to go back and read his argument today. In retrospect, I’d say that Huntington committed the Fundamental Attribution Error. That is, he ascribed to traits qualities that are actually determined by context.

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Nunca gostei da tese de Huntington, mais que não fosse, porque atribuo grande importância ao contexto (mas não conhecia o Erro Fundamental da Imputação), e o contexto no caso dos países árabes passa por coisas, como, por exemplo, a (não) resolução do problema palestiniano - livro a ler é o de Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation (foi publicado já em Portugal, e ver também aqui).

Líbia

Zero Hour in Benghazi by Nicolas Pelham | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books: 

"The rebels’ euphoria waxes and wanes with news from the violent front—now about halfway between Benghazi and the Libyan capital Tripoli to the west—and their own efforts to forge a new governing authority. Thanks to his brutality, Colonel Qaddafi has successfully turned the democracy uprising into a war in which, while the rebels have higher morale, he has the most money and arms. By killing many times more people than died in Egypt’s uprising—in a population less than a tenth the size—he has slowed the rebellion, something that neither Tunisia’s nor Egypt’s erstwhile leaders could achieve.

[....]

Their fears are not unfounded. Though it has lost its buildings, Qaddafi’s internal security apparatus remains at least partially in place. Hotel receptionists subserviently field calls from a regime informer seeking information about al-Jazeera. Intruders broke into one of the very few European consulates still open here, stole its computers, and warned the consul, who had lived for two decades in the city, to flee. In this highly centralized state in which communications are routed through Tripoli, the Qaddafis still retain control over the Internet, which they can flick off with a switch—as they did on the afternoon of March 3 (it remains off)—and over both mobile phone companies. Mohammed Qaddafi, the colonel’s eldest son, owns all three. As the colonel noted in a recent speech, “it’s my country.”

[....]

A quick overthrow of Qaddafi might not guarantee stability either. In the past, the strong-man dominated; but with a more consensual politics each faction will demand its share. Oil workers will likely form unions, the army will want its reward for switching sides, and the tribes will seek royalties for using their land for drilling and piping oil. They all want a greater proportion of the wealth that Qaddafi hitherto kept for himself and his allies. If any of the constituencies are dissatisfied, a central authority is likely to be too weak to prevent them from resorting to force to further their claims. Thanks, after all, to their looted caches of weapons.

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Ironias

Margens de erro: Uma tese de doutoramento:

"The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions: From ‘Soft Power’ to Collective Decision-Making?", uma tese de doutoramento defendida na London School of Economics. [...]

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Para saberem quem é o autor, vão ao Margens de erro - atenção que lá vai manter-se o suspense sobre quem é o pai. Sabia que a pessoa em questão tinha estudado naquela escola, mas não sabia que tinha tido como tese de doutoramento um tema tão sugestivo, embora, desconfie qual tenha sido a inspiração e o objecto do estudo.

Histórias exemplares

Não me surpreende. Aprendemos isso em África, em condições muito mais favoráveis.

Book Review - The Wrong War - By Bing West - NYTimes.com:

In one instance, he examines the work of a group of American soldiers and civilians, known as a provincial reconstruction team, whose job was to provide development assistance to Afghan locals in Asadabad (A-Bad to the Americans) in eastern Afghanistan. It was overseen by a battalion known as the 1-32 and commanded by a lieutenant colonel named Mark O’Donnell. In June 2009, after the reconstruction team had been working there for three years, an American supply truck blew a tire on the main road. A crowd of Afghans gathered, and then suddenly a grenade exploded, killing and maiming several Afghans. A riot ensued. “Kill the Americans!” the Afghans shouted. “Protect Islam!” Only later did a videotape of the incident show clearly that an Afghan had tossed the grenade. 

About this, West writes: 

“For three years, the provincial reconstruction team had lived in a compound a few blocks from the scene of the tragedy. The P.R.T. had paid over $10 million to hire locals, who smiled in appreciation. Every time a platoon from 1-32 patrolled through town, they stopped to chat with storekeepers and to buy trinkets and candy to give to the street urchins. Yet the locals had turned on the soldiers in an instant. That the townspeople in A-Bad who profited from American protection and projects would believe the worst of O’Donnell’s soldiers — whom they knew personally — suggested that the Americans were tolerated but not supported, regardless of their good works and money.”

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Guerra civil

war of position | afoe | A Fistful of Euros | European Opinion: 

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PS: Oil prices: The markets watch the revolution, cont. he Economist: Conditions have deteriorated in Libya, where open civil war appears to have broken out. Some of Libya's oil production has been disrupted, and prices continue to rise around the world. How serious are matters? .... The interesting thing about recent market moves is that they're pricing in the possibility that instability speads. And it well might. But for now, all eyes are on Libya, where the primary danger is not to the global economy but to those caught in the conflict.

Um blogue egípcio

Blog « 3arabawy via Reading the Egyptian leftist movement | afoe | A Fistful of Euros | European Opinion.

Vale a pena visitar pelas fotografias e vídeos.

À luz do que se está a passar hoje no Cairo, Mubarak não necessita do conselho!

The How-To of Fascism: A Guide for Aspiring Dictators - Grasping Reality with Eight Tentacles:

.... And so that brings me to a useful piece of advice for any readers who are aspiring dictators, one that the Communists knew, Suharto knew, but that some modern day tyrants seem to have forgotten. There is always a level of civil unrest that outstrips the capability of even the most loyal and largest regular armed forces to deal with. In all likelihood, as a medium sized emerging market, you will have a capital city with a population of about five or six million, meaning potentially as many as three million adults on the streets in the worst case. Your total active-duty armed forces are unlikely to be a tenth of that. When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you. 

And that is, a reactionary citizens' militia, to combat the revolutionary citizens' militia. Former socialist republics always used to be fond of buses full of coal miners from way out the back of beyond, but the Iranian basijis are the same sort of thing. Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren't interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, arseholes. Arseholes, considered as a strategic entity, have the one useful characteristic that is the only useful characteristic in the context of an Egyptian-style popular uprising - there are f---ing millions of them.

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Isto é óbvio, mas é óbvio desde sempre

B.E., Before Egypt. A.E., After Egypt. - Thomas L. Friedman - NYTimes.com: "

This is a perilous time for Israel, and its anxiety is understandable. But I fear Israel could make its situation even more perilous if it succumbs to the argument one hears from a number of senior Israeli officials today that the events in Egypt prove that Israel can’t make a lasting peace with the Palestinians. It’s wrong and dangerous.

....

I had given up on Netanyahu’s cabinet and urged the U.S. to walk away. But that was B.E. — Before Egypt. Today, I believe President Obama should put his own peace plan on the table, bridging the Israeli and Palestinian positions, and demand that the two sides negotiate on it without any preconditions. It is vital for Israel’s future — at a time when there is already a global campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state — that it disentangle itself from the Arabs’ story as much as possible. There is a huge storm coming, Israel. Get out of the way.

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O livro a ler sobre o Próximo e Médio Oriente é: "The Great War for Civilisation, The Conquest of The Middle East", Robert Fisk (existe tradução em português). O artigo acima deve ser lido na totalidade.

Para perceber o mundo, ora bem, são necessárias estatísticas...

E estas são mesmo interessantes, sem mais qualificações (tirem as vossas conclusões sobre o futuro - o artigo deve ser lido na totalidade):

Op-Ed Columnist - The Tel Aviv Cluster - NYTimes.com: "But it’s more likely that Israel’s economic leap forward will widen the gap between it and its neighbors. All the countries in the region talk about encouraging innovation. Some oil-rich states spend billions trying to build science centers. But places like Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv are created by a confluence of cultural forces, not money. The surrounding nations do not have the tradition of free intellectual exchange and technical creativity. For example, between 1980 and 2000, Egyptians registered 77 patents in the U.S. Saudis registered 171. Israelis registered 7,652."

Isto vai dar sarilho?

Dubai Emirato em risco de falência construiu grande sucesso imobiliário e turístico nos últimos anos - Expresso.pt

Sobre Israel, Gaza e Cijordânia

A opinião é de um israelita: a situação é feia, e aquilo que se diz é feio. É leitura obrigatória: o terrorismo islâmico começa ali, que não haja qualquer dúvida sobre isso (perceber porque o mal surge, é condição de debelá-lo de modo eficaz e eficiente; não é justificá-lo):

NYRblog - Israel Without Illusions: What Goldstone Got Right - The New York Review of Books: "Questions of human rights abuses in Israel and the charges of war crimes put forward by the UN’s Goldstone report have produced little more than the usual disingenuous accusations of anti-Semitism. Even Moshe Halbertal, an unusually cogent Israeli participant-observer, takes the Goldstone commission to task in The New Republic for trying to link the Gaza campaign to the wider setting of the occupation and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. “Why,” he asks, “should a committee with a mandate to inquire into the operation in Gaza deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at large?”"

Quem não está por nós, está contra nós, e não há inocentes!

'An interview with a Taliban Trained Suicide Bomber {With English S/T}' by umer123khan - YouTube - RichardDawkins.net

De como as disfunções da política interna norte-americana, conformam a situação no Próximo Oriente

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: " An Israeli columnist issues a scathing indictment of Israel and calls on the U.S. to apply pressure."