Saturday, March 24, 2007

Om det brasilianska samhället och våldet

Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PDT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). Last year he was a presidential candidate. You can visit his homepage ¿ www.cristovam.com.br ¿ and write to him at mensagem-cristovam@senado.gov.br

Enough Already

Cristovam Buarque
www.cristovam.com.br

Enough already of all the cruelty. Of bus passengers burned alive, of young people killed, of assaults, kidnappings, massacres. And of the daily acts of violence that do not even make it into the news.

Enough already of a reality that looks like a scene from a horror movie. Enough already of a society that remains shocked only for a few days¿until Carnaval, the World Cup, the next scandal.

Enough already of the violence factory hidden in our social and economic model. Of the brutal inequality that divides our population into those included and those excluded, separated by a poorly disguised Nazi-type system of ¿apartition.¿

Enough already of promising to reduce the age at which youths are tried as adults and promising to adopt the death penalty, without assuming responsibility for the needed revolution in our social structure.

Enough already of our contribution to global warming. Also, enough already of the lie of saying that that problem can be solved without a profound reform of the development model.

Enough already of commemorating the enrollment of 95% of Brazilian children in school without asking what has become of the other 5% and when only a third of those enrolled will finish high school and only half of these with a minimally satisfactory quality of education.

Enough already of the lie of giving the name ¿schools¿ to the degraded buildings where we deposit our children for so few hours per day.

Enough already of our administrations forgetting their campaign promises, ignoring the most serious problems. Of a penal and judicial system that protects bandits¿both street and white-collar criminals¿who have access to expensive lawyers.

Enough already of a Congress divorced from the people who elected it, one forming voting blocs along party lines and not around ideas, proposals, actions. Enough already of the lie that democracy is merely the right to speak, even though nothing of relevance is said to confront the problems.

Enough already of the moralists calling for ethics in the politicians¿ behavior while at the same time forgetting to demand ethics in setting policy priorities.

Enough already of an economy that grows little and in the wrong direction without respect for the ecology, creating neither employment nor sustainability, one that neither pulls us out of backwardness nor breaks the vicious circle of inequality that binds and shames us.

Enough already of the included rich people who blame the excluded poor for the disgrace of inefficiency, of criminality, of environmental destruction, of lack of education. As if in the past it were the slaves who were to blame for the lack of liberty.

Enough already of blaming the poor for the violence when they themselves are the majority of its victims. Enough already of seeking simplistic solutions that change nothing.

Enough already of the difficulty of rigorously punishing the brutal killers of a child who happened to be in the same car as his mother and those responsible for almost a million deaths by violence in the last 25 years.

Also, enough already of thinking that punishing those bandits is sufficient, as if others with the same degree of bestiality would not replace them. As if the problem were the violence itself and not what is causing it.

Enough already of seeking justice after the crimes have been committed and not seeking the peace that would stop the violence. Enough already of the individualistic, corporativist egotism that impedes the country from seeing itself as a whole, from looking to the future, from defining its course.

Enough already of the indifference and of the arguments attempting to conceal the true causes of the greatest of the crimes¿the crime of egotism that divides our country and impedes the construction of our Nation.

Enough already of pretending that Brazil does not need a revolution or of fleeing from it, adopting small palliatives.

Also, enough already of articles.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Ett par iakttagelser av Wayne Madsen

Från www.waynemadsenreport.com
March 15, 2007 -- A couple of observations.

Former "Al Qaeda" number 3 man, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, is reportedly confessing to a number of terrorist attacks at his Military Commission trial (Combatant Status Review Tribunal in Pentagon "Newspeak") in Guantanamo Bay. He claims responsibility for 9/11 "A to Z." He also claimed he planned the 1993 World Trade Center van bombing, Richard Reid's attempted shoe bombing of a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris to Miami, the Bali bombing, an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya and an attempted missile attack on an Israeli passenger plane at Mombasa airport. Mohammed also claimed that he was behind attempted attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building in New York, the New York Stock Exchange, the Panama Canal, NATO headquarters in Brussels, Israel's port of Eilat, nuclear power plants in the United States, U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan, Israeli embassies in Australia, Azerbaijan, Philippines, and India, Big Ben in London, and London's Heathrow Airport. He also claimed that he was behind plots to assassinated Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, Pope John Paul II, President Jimmy Carter, and President Bill Clinton (why is it that Democrats are always targeted by these terrorists?) Left off the list were the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya (Mohammed must have been on vacation then) and the USS Cole (that was Sudan's doing according to a Federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia).

Tomorrow, Mohammed may claim responsibility for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, Avian flu, the sinking of the Andrea Doria, and the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

***

There was apparently a proposal at the recent America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) meeting in Washington to invite Israel to join the United States as the 51st state. Delegates rejected the idea after they learned that Israel would be limited to only two U.S. Senators.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Heeeere's Justice! (Den amerikanska smygfascismen är inte född igår!)

Från alltid tankeväckande Jeff Wells ochhans www.rigint.blogspot.com

Try to imagine Jay Leno devoting an entire Tonight Show to Michael Ruppert, and the topic of Dick Cheney's role in the attacks of 9/11. Or David Letterman conversing for an hour with Dr Nick Begich, co-author of Angels Don't Play this HAARP, on the weaponization of the ionosphere.

Because as bizarre and unlikely as those scenes would be, 37 years ago this month, Johnny Carson spent 50 minutes with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison - and millions of Americans - on the subject of the state-sanctioned murder of John F Kennedy.

Audio files of Carson's Garrison interview can be downloaded from this page, but a big note of caution: distortion makes them all but unlistenable. If anyone knows of better quality samples (or even better, video), please let me know.

Considering today's total absence of serious mainstream dialogue regarding controversial subjects, the first thought that might come to some of us is Man, the past rocked! Well no, it didn't, regardless of how tempting it is to succumb to ill-founded nostalgia whenever we can rightly say Man, the present sucks! The awful truth is that America's media was compromised then as well, and riddled with Intelligence assets doing Mockingbird journalism. (See, for instance, James DiEugenio's essays regarding the obstruction of the Garrison investigation and the exposure of Jim Phelan in The Assassinations.)

In its favour, the media wasn't yet so dumbed down and concentrated in the hands of a few defense contractors. And on that account, Garrison was able to tell a prickly and incredulous Carson:

The function of the Warren Commission was to make the American people feel that the [JFK assassination] had been looked into so that there would be no further inquiries, so that the American people would not find out the involvement of elements of the Central Intelligence Agency, so that they would think the matter was closed.

Carson was uncomfortable with Garrison's material, and his performance so querelous and off-key that NBC issued a press release that said "the Johnny seen on TV that night was not the Johnny we all know and love. He had to play the devil's advocate, because that makes for a better program." Apparently Johnny was furious at the apology, and vowed Garrison would never be on his show again.

Not that there was much chance of a return visit, anyway. Carson and NBC had to be shamed by Tonight Show guest Mort Sahl into extending an invitation in the first place.

As Garrison tells it, in On the Trail of the Assassins:

The articulate satirist, who was spending an extended period of time in New Orleans helping the office in a variety of ways, was well aware of my problems communicating with the people through the news media. Even the simplest press conference involved a process of "translation," so that what came out in the media never seemed to be precisely what I had said. Sahl, being in show business, had access to places I did not, like the Johnny Carson show. One night when he was on the program, the conversation drifted to the subject of the assassination and my investigation. Suddenly Sahl turned toward the audience and asked if they did not think Carson should invite me to be a guest on the show so that I could explain my side of the case. The response was so demonstrably affirmative that it left Carson and the network with no alternative. A few days later I received a telegram of invitation, which I promptly accepted.

Sahl is one of my favourite undersung heroes of the Sixties, for having spent the capital of a successful career in the Quixotic pursuit of justice for the murderers of America.

From the cover of Time


to "conspiracy monger"


That strikes me as the trajectory of an honourable man.

There's an interview with Sahl a couple of months later in 1968, before the epochal one-two of Dr King and Robert Kennedy, that is as prophetic as anything I've read from that time:

ARGO: Why is the truth behind the assassination of President Kennedy the last chance of America for its survival?

SAHL: Because the evidence developed by District Attorney Garrison indicates that certain people had to take President Kennedy's life in order to control ours. In other words, as Richard Starnes of the New York World-Telegram said, the shots in Dallas were the opening shots of World War III. There's been a great change in this country since Kennedy. I'm afraid a great deal of our hope was interred with his remains.

...

ARGO: What would you say are the roots of this whole era?

SAHL: Fascism. It started with the death of Roosevelt. They moved in and they negated every treaty we made with every world leader who didn't fit the fascist/militarist mold. We went back on our word. As David Schoenbrun says very well, "I am not a dissenter for saying this. Those who betrayed American policy are the dissenters." We've gone back on the dream of national independence and we were the model for the rest of the world. Then when they followed our model, we attacked them for it. Shameful. No one has a right to stain the American flag. And unfortunately, we have people in this country who did it. If America goes, it will surely be an inside job.

...

ARGO: Why is the trial that Mr. Garrison's pursuing really the trial of the American people?

SAHL: Because we have to decide. Once the neo-fascists became bold enough to slay the President on the street, they showed their hand. They showed how arrogant they had become. Now it's a question of symptom. That crime was a national symptom. If we can turn our back on that, we will pay a terrible price. That will be the end of this democracy. As a matter of fact, it's been dying since Kennedy's death. We have to cleanse our soul. It's much the same as the French when they regained their national honor, not by framing Dreyfus, but by admitting that they did.

ARGO: What does Garrison mean: "The key to the whole case is through the looking glass. Black is white; white is black"?

SAHL: He means that the first thing the government did when the President was killed was to ratify his death and to appoint a group of honorable men to initial a fraudulent report. To eventually say there is no fourth bullet, even though there's a fourth bullet hole. The man was shot at from three sides, but there was only one side. In other words, the government decrees it is so. And that eventually the government may be forced to form a Ministry of Truth which will rule there was no John Kennedy, if it becomes convenient. That's what he means. When Lyndon Johnson says to us, as an example, "We have continually keep up brush fire wars to protect the peace." Well, that's Orwell. War is peace, and peace is war, and love is hate. And you finally sell it just that way; the contradiction. And you do it by making the American people mad because those are the mouthings of a madman. We can be driven mad; it's the same virus that bit the Germans.

Rest in peace, Johnny Carson.

Mort Sahl, where have you been?

Friday, March 02, 2007

Brasiliansk ekonom visar USA vad humanism och logik vill säga

Läs och njut, för det är minsann inte varje dag en brasiliansk senator och ekonom ger amerikanerna en så elegant och belevad tillrättavisning!

Under en debatt vid ett universitet i USA fick förre guvernören, förre utbildningsministern och nuvarande senatorn Cristóvam Buarque frågan vad han ansåg om internationaliseringen av Amazônia. Den unge amerikanske frågeställaren inledde med att han förväntade sig ett svar av en humanist, inte av en brasilianare.

Så här svarade senhor Cristóvam Buarque:

”Som brasiliansk medborgare skulle jag helt enkelt argumentera mot internationaliseringen av Amazônia. Hur mycket våra regeringar än har misskött detta arv, så är det vårt.

Som humanist, och medveten om vilka risker för en förödelse av miljön som Amazônia är utsatt för, kan jag tänka mig att det internationaliseras, liksom också allt annat som är viktigt för mänskligheten.

Om Amazônia av humanistiska och etiska skäl bör internationaliseras, då bör vi också internationalisera all världens oljereserver. Oljan är lika viktig för mänsklighetens välfärd som Amazônia är för vår framtid. Trots detta förbehåller sig de som äger oljereserverna rätten att öka eller minska utvinningen och höja eller inte höja oljepriserna.

På samma sätt bör de rika ländernas finanskapital internationaliseras. Om Amazônia är en resurs som tillhör hela mänskligheten, då får inte urskogen brännas ner av en ägare eller ett land. Att bränna ner Amazônia är lika allvarligt som den arbetslöshet som orsakas av det globala spekulationskapitalets godtyckliga beslut. Vi kan inte tillåta att de finansiella reserverna används till att bränna ner hela länder för att tillfredsställa ett fåtal människors girighet.

Och innan vi internationaliserar Amazônia skulle jag vilja se en internationalisering av alla världens stora museer. Louvren bör inte tillhöra enbart Frankrike. Varje museum i världen vakar över de vackraste verk som den mänskliga anden har skapat. Detta kulturarv kan lika lite som det amazoniska naturarvet tillåtas manipuleras och hanteras efter en ägares eller ett lands godtycke.

Nyligen beslöt en japansk miljonär att ta med sig en målning av en stor mästare i graven när han dog. Hellre borde den målningen ha internationaliserats.

Under FN:s nu pågående session organiserar man ett Millennieforum, men vissa länders presidenter har haft svårighet att medverka på grund av pinsamma incidenter vid inträdet i USA. Därför anser jag att New York i egenskap av säte för Förenta Nationerna bör internationaliseras. Åtminstone Manhattan borde tillhöra hela mänskligheten. Liksom Paris, Venedig, Rom, London, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Recife, varje stad med sin speciella skönhet och sin historia i världen, borde tillhöra hela världen.

Om USA vill internationalisera Amazônia därför att det är för riskabelt att lämna det i brasilianarnas händer, låt oss då internationalisera USA:s hela kärnvapenarsenal, eftersom de har visat att de är kapabla att använda dessa vapen och vålla en ödeläggelse som är tusentals gånger värre än de beklagansvärda svedjebränderna i Brasiliens skogar.

Jag stöder tanken att världens återstående urskogar internationaliseras i utbyte mot skuldbördan. Låt oss använda detta kapital till att garantera att varje barn i världen får möjlighet att ÄTA och gå i skolan! Låt oss internationalisera barnen och behandla dem alla, oavsett vilket land de är födda i, som ett arv som förtjänar hela vårldens omvårdnad. Som humanist kan jag försvara att världen internationaliseras. Men så länge världen behandlar mig som brasilianare kommer jag att kämpa för att Amazônia ska förbli vårt. Och bara vårt!”

Av uppenbara skäl publicerades inte det här uttalandet.