12.8.06

Déjà Vu



O ministro dos negócios estrangeiros francês, Philippe Douste-Blazy, tornou claro numa entrevista ao jornal Le Monde que a missão da UNIFIL não incluirá o desarmamento forçado do Hezbollah :
"We never thought a purely military solution could resolve the problem of Hizbollah," he said. "We are agreed on the goal, the disarmament, but for us the means are purely political."
No início do mês de Agosto, Philippe Douste-Blazy afirmou também que o Irão desempenha um papel estabilizador no Médio Oriente:
"In the region there is of course a country such as Iran - a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region," he told a news conference.
Anterior:
Uma imagem que vale mil palavras

Educação para a cidadania na Palestina

Ceticismo Moral?

"O importante é reconhecer que o discurso moral tem de levar em conta os casos 'fáceis', bem como os difíceis. Tem de reconhecer que há, em certos casos, respostas corretas, ainda que haja respostas não muito claras em outros. E isso é o que o cético não pode fazer exatamente porque a negação consistente dos princípios morais não o permite qualquer diferenciação entre os casos difíceis e os fáceis. Pior ainda, ao menos para o cético, a seleção cuidadosa de contra exemplos o leva a uma teia moral normativa que ele busca evitar."

Richard A. Epstein, "Ninguém é de fato moralmente cético"

(via CIEEP)

Almoços Grátis

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.
- Adam Smith
Isto não é um ethical statement, é uma constatação da realidade, logo não é passível de julgamento moral e qualquer tentativa de o fazer passa pela alteração do real e pela criação do Homem Novo que motivou e motiva tantas atrocidades.
Vem isto a propósito do artigo do Dr Pedro Norton de Matos no Semanário Económico. Diz:
Uma das frases mais infelizes no léxico da gestao,tambem muito utilizada fora dessa área,é que nao há almoços grátis.Tal expressao fere a minha sensibilidade,e apesar de a ouvir e ler com muita frequencia,quero crer que nao é verdade.Sobretudo, quando aplicada á vida extra empresa.Nesse domínio, tendo a rejeitá-la liminarmente.
Com efeito,o fundamentalismo desta afirmaçao de origem anglo saxónica,pretende dizer que nao há lugar para altruismos ou atitudes desinteressadas.Tudo terá um objectivo material ou comercial em vista.Ninguem, dá nada a ninguem.A vida seria uma continua conta corrente,em que sem contrapartidas materiais,nada feito.Que tristeza! Que deserto de sentimentos e emoçoes.
O equívoco em que o Dr Pedro Norton de Matos cai neste texto é a armadilha que justifica as utopias e as atrocidades na sua demanda. A frase “não há almoços grátis”, não é uma posição moral, é uma constatação da realidade da qual pode ou não ser extraída uma conclusão moral. Não estou a ver o Dr Norton de Matos a inquirir sobre a moralidade da rotação da Terra. Tudo o que se dá tem um custo, seja ele material ou outro. Que quem dá não o “contabilize”, é outra questão.
Quando as empresas investem/gastam em acções de responsabilidade social, isso tem um custo, seja para accionistas, consumidores ou sócios. Quer se queira, quer não. Que tenham retorno material ou outro, qual a razão porque o fazem, se se limita à imagem, é um problema diferente. A realidade não é uma questão moral.

Rand e os ratos

...Listen, what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me-it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice-your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswearable words, you'd become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of it's own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of it's own. I don't think I'm a coward, but I'm afraid of it. And that's all I know-only that it exists. I don't know it's purpose, I don't know it's nature.

Com uma diferença: sabemos o propósito, sabemos a natureza. O que torna as coisas mais aterradoras e inevitáveis.

11.8.06

Irão: um estado que se preocupa com a cultura

A pedinchice como modo de vida

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Auburnomics - Von Mises finds a sweet home in Alabama

10.8.06

Sobre os muçulmanos no Reino Unido

Something is rotten among the state of British Muslims. There is the imminent terror plot to blow up planes at a massive scale. There was 7/7. There are British Muslims supporting Hizabollah (even as other Brits go to fight for Israel). There were British Muslims going off to fight in Iraq. There were British Muslims going off to Afghanistan (although British Muslims are also part of the British army). How did it happen that a bunch of university educated First World kids started seeing themselves as some sort of revolutionists? Many Brits, for some foolish reason, pin the blame on British foreign policy. Oh, if only our foreign policy did not mimic the American foreign policy, we would stop producing home grown terrorists, because they would have no reason to hate us. Wrong. Dead wrong. (...)
Further, the European social model is different than the American such that social mobility is difficult, if not impossible. When I first arrived in American (Brooklyn) I saw there were numerous other Pakistani immigrants like me, a couple of whom I was friends with. None of us live in Brooklyn ghettoes anymore. Last I heard, one was a self-proclaimed “player” in Miami and the other moved away elsewhere. We Americans have a hard time understanding that parts of the First World are incapable of providing social mobility. Not only that, but Europeans do not seem lilkely to change, as the French protests in support of the right to stay lazy demonstrated.
Vale a pena ler todo o post. Foi escrito por um muçulmano.
(Via Michelle Malkin)

Outras verdades inconvenientes

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.) Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.
Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.
But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

A Guerra

Salário Mínimo

Congress can easily mandate higher wages, but they cannot mandate higher worker productivity or that employers hire a particular worker in the first place. Those of us who truly care about the welfare of low-skilled workers should focus our energies on helping them to become more productive, and a good start would be to do something about the rotten education that many receive.
Outros posts sobre a questão do salário mínimo, aqui.

"This is not about quotas"

SOMETIMES I try to imagine ministers reading Orwell’s 1984. When I was a schoolboy it seemed clear to me that you ought to sympathise with Winston and look upon Big Brother with horror. But I don’t see how those who promote the surveillance and social engineering policies of this Government could do so. They seem to take the administration of Oceania in 1984 as their model, not only for policy, but also for language.
On Monday, The Times revealed a scheme to impose racial quotas on companies that seek government contracts. If a company’s office is in an area where the population is 10 per cent black and 5 per cent Pakistani, then it will not get government contracts unless its staff is also 10 per cent black and 5 per cent Pakistani. ###
Of course, that is not how the policy is described by its supporters. According to Iqbal Wahhab, a member of the Ethnic Minority Employment Task Force and chairman of the Ethnic Minority Advisory Group, the policy simply “assists employers in making more enlightened recruitment decisions”.
In a letter to The Times, Keith Vaz, MP, claimed: “This is not about quotas, but about encouraging employers to recognise the impact their employment policies can have on a local community.” And, on the same letters page, Ian Barr, formerly of the Commission for Racial Equality, claimed: “This is not about positive discrimination and quotas. This is about using the talent that is currently under-utilised and providing equality of opportunity to succeed.”
When the policy is aimed only at “assisting” and “encouraging” employers, how can they possibly object to it? Employers might reasonably object to quotas. But remember, this policy “is not about quotas”.
The perpetrators of such deception see no crime in it. On the contrary, they believe both their policies and themselves to be virtuous. The doublespeak they use to promote all this virtue flows out of them guiltlessly, as nothing more than the standard language of contemporary politics. It is striking, but not surprising, that both Mr Vaz and Mr Barr use the preposterous construction: “This is not about quotas.”
But they are deceiving themselves as well as everyone else. If their policies really are so good, why can’t they be described honestly?

El Estado Soy Yo

Combate ao terrorismo... florestal?

A ministra espanhola do Ambiente, Cristina Narbona, afirmou hoje que o risco de incêndio na Galiza, na Catalunha, nas Baleares e no sul de Andaluzia é extremo e lançou um apelo aos cidadãos para que cooperem na luta contra o "terrorismo florestal".
E porque não, à semelhança do fez Zapatero em relação ao conflito entre Israel e o Hezbollah, exigir um cessar-fogo???

Por pouco...

A polícia britânica neutralizou, esta quinta-feira, uma conspiração terrorista na Grã-Bretanha que visava «abater vários aviões em voo, causando a perda de um número considerável de vidas», anunciou o ministro britânico do Interior, John Reid.
[fonte: Diário Digital]

9.8.06

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All those rejecting capitalism on moral grounds are deluded by their failure to comprehend what capital is, how it comes into existence and how it is maintained, and what the benefits are which are derived from its employment in production processes

Mistério insolúvel

O presidente libanês pro-sírio Emile Lahud afirmou numa entrevista ao jornal argentino Clarin que «ninguém sabe de onde vem o dinheiro e as armas» do Hezbollah, movimento que defendeu abertamente.
[fonte: Diário Digital]

8.8.06

Um ano de pérolas

Sugestões de leitura

7.8.06

Política por sondagem

As restrições ao tabagismo que o Governo pretende impor através de diploma têm "uma aceitação generalizada" por parte da população portuguesa, concluiu um estudo divulgado hoje pelo Ministério da Saúde.

O estudo de opinião foi efectuado pela Eurosondagem entre 26 e 30 de Junho e abrangeu a população de 15 anos de idade ou mais residente em Portugal continental.
No Público.

Rolling Stones e maus alunos

Dezassete pessoas foram detidas nas últimas semanas por tentarem vender bilhetes para o concerto dos Rolling Stones, no Porto, no próximo dia 12, ao dobro do preço.

As detenções ocorreram no âmbito de uma operação levada a cabo pela Autoridade de Segurança Alimentar e Económica (ASAE) que resultou, ainda, na apreensão de 53 bilhetes.

(...)

De acordo com um porta-voz da ASAE, entre as pessoas detidas encontrava-se uma professora do ensino secundário, num caso que o juiz considerou muito grave “devido às suas responsabilidades enquanto educadora de crianças e jovens”. Perante a gravidade deste caso, o juiz permitiu que a professora passasse uma noite na prisão a reflectir nas suas acções.

[Correio da Manhã]
A professora e as restantes pessoas detidas estavam, somente, a fornecer um importante serviço: vender bilhetes do concerto a quem não teve possibilidade para estar horas na fila e/ou tempo disponível para se dirigir aos habituais locais de venda.

O facto de haver quem esteja disposto a pagar um preço superior pelo bilhete mostra-nos que no mercado há lugar para este tipo de serviço de valor acrescentado. Infelizmente, o juiz não compreendeu esta simples lição de economia.

Pseudo-jornalismo (3)

Nada de novo

Míssil nos....

1 ano de Combustões

A vantagem de não ser Santana ou a importância das centrais de comunicação realmente eficientes

From welfare to workfare

O verdadeiro artista

"First Casualty"

Blogs e perfumes

Isto dos blogs é um bocadinho como esta imagem: ignoram-se uns traços para sublinhar outros, com as cores que queremos e com as sombras que ocultamos.

Os media como instrumento de propaganda do Hezbollah

Large sections of the international media are not only misreporting the current conflict in Lebanon. They are actively fanning the flames.

Dia D

No matter who dies, Hezbollah is happy

Socialismo e fraqueza do Estado de Direito no Brasil

In most of the state's 144 jails and prisons, authorities long ago lost virtually all control over the activities of their 125,000 inmates, living in conditions condemned as inhumane by human rights groups.

And where the guards failed, a remarkably organized and disciplined gang has taken hold: the First Capital Command, whose leaders are accused of launching a wave of violence on Sao Paulo's streets in the last three months that killed nearly 200 people.

The imprisoned gang leaders allegedly ordered the attacks by cell phone to block the transfer of 700 of their members to the highest security prisons in the far western tip of Sao Paulo state.

1500000

Pseudo-jornalismo (2)

Reuters News Agency has announced it is cutting from its payroll a freelance photographer who altered a photograph that showed that the results of an Israeli bombing were far worse than in reality.

(...)

However, the news agency said that the photographer, Adnan Hajj, said the image was changed after he tried "to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under."

Hajj also photographed images of a dead child in the explosion in the village of Kana last week.

O Diabo e a Proscrição da Cruz

O próprio Diabo consta que foge quando em frente dele é traçado o Símbolo do Redentor. Pelos vistos, há adeptos do Futebol e autoridades que os ouvem empenhados em serem mais diabólicos do que o Diabo.
É motivo mais do que suficiente para nos benzermos.

Pseudo-jornalismo

Durante o célebre «massacre de Jenin» ouviram-se os números mais estapafúrdios, mas tudo começou com 500 mortos entre a população civil. O represente sueco da ONU chegou ao aeroporto Ben Gurion, vindo de NY, e confirmou «o massacre de Jenin», na mesma altura em que a Al-Jazeera passava imagens de confrontos e de representantes do Hezzbollah e do Hamas dizendo que estavam a dar luta aos sionistas. Uma semana depois, o representante da OLP na ONU falava em 75 vítimas. Uns dias depois, havia 37 vítimas entre os palestinianos e 23 entre os israelitas.

2 anos de dúvidas

6.8.06

Mundo Moderno

Destaque

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Jornalismo de Causas

Em que acredita Ahmadinejad?

The man in charge of hoodwinking the Western powers about Iran's now 18-year-old secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime. He'll be 50 in October.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Shi'ite creed has convinced him lesser mortals can not only influence but hasten the awaited return of the 12th Imam, known as the Mahdi. Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect holds this will be Muhammad ibn Hasan, the righteous descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the 9th century, at age 5. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war, bloodshed and pestilence. After this cataclysmic confrontation between the forces of good and evil, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.

Sobre a estratégia do Hezbollah

The surgeon led a group of journalists over what remained: mangled debris, shredded walls and a roof punched through by an Israeli shell.

"Look what they did to this place," Dr. Fatah said, shaking his head. "Why in the world would the Israelis target a hospital?"

The probable answer was found a few hours later in a field nearby. Hidden in the tall grass were the burned remnants of a rocket-launcher.

Confronted with the evidence, Dr. Fatah admitted his hospital could have been used as a site from which to fire rockets into Israel.

A loucura do Ocidente

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

Insuperável clareza

É uma geração de ilusões; quando os sonhos idealistas se tornaram pesadelos reais, demasiadamente reais, escolheram a mentira porque a verdade era-lhes insuportável. Agora resta-lhes defender as mentiras electivas fixadas como história oficial, contra os "revisionismos".

Sugestão de leitura

Sugestões de leitura

only hope can keep me together

31 de Julho de 2006, Dia da Infâmia