‘Todos os males da Europa‘ por Marcin Król

Sabemos que a Europa esteve quase sempre em crise. A diferença entre uma apreensão permanente da crise tal como era sentida no passado e a situação atual tem a ver com o facto de que, antigamente, a Europa mantinha uma capacidade de autorreflexão e autocrítica que lhe permitia ultrapassar as crises sucessivas. Essa faculdade já não está ao seu alcance. A Europa de antes já não existe, simplesmente.
É-nos difícil imaginar o futuro do mundo sem a Europa, talvez não a Europa líder, mas a Europa portadora de normas básicas, bem como de princípios para nós próprios e para as gerações futuras. A Europa é a nossa forma de existência, a única que temos. Quando a Europa foge, desaparece e enfraquece ao extremo, olhamos para ela sem saber o que fazer.

O medo intelectual e espiritual

Na maior parte das vezes, surgem três tipos de resposta. A primeira faz apelo a um regresso às soluções já experimentadas, sob as suas diversas formas de Estado-Providência ou social-democrata.
O segundo tipo de resposta consiste em dizer que a crise não é nem única nem principalmente de natureza económica e exige uma mudança política. Entre as visões políticas mais características encontramos a de uma Europa federal, ligada por fortes laços internos. Esta visão simpática é, no entanto, tão velha quanto a Europa e sempre se mostrou errónea. O seu maior defeito é que não há uma única sociedade europeia que deseje uma Europa federal, pela simples razão de que, mesmo que conseguíssemos criá-la, essa Europa seria completamente diferente daquilo que consideramos como a nossa forma de existência.
Por fim, o terceiro tipo de resposta baseia-se na convicção de que a retoma económica irá melhorar automaticamente todos os domínios da vida europeia.
Todas estas respostas têm uma coisa em comum: buscam a solução no presente. Queremos resolver as questões aqui e agora, utilizando, de preferência, meios bem conhecidos, mas usando-os melhor. Fazemos apelo às medidas habituais, não por falta de imaginação ou de coragem, mas por que não sabemos como agir de outra maneira. Se pensarmos bem, poderemos dizer que o que caracteriza, em primeiro lugar, a Europa de hoje é o medo. E não é o medo de um possível colapso da moeda, mas sobretudo o medo intelectual e espiritual. [...]

Ver tradução do artigo original do Polska The Times na presseurop

Um curiosa perspectiva polaca sobre a União Europeia: ‘Conto das três Europas‘ cada vez mais distantes entre si

A primeira Europa, atingida pela crise da dívida, cerra fileiras para se salvar do desastre. Fá-lo com maior ou menor êxito, mas, pelo menos para já, tem-se mantido de pé.

A segunda Europa está na bancada, observando nervosamente como correm as coisas na primeira. Não se quer juntar a ela no imediato, porque não sabe se ela vai sobreviver e tal associação tem custos. Mas teme que, se a primeira Europa sobreviver, o fosso que as separa venha a aumentar muito. E que, quando finalmente se lhe juntar, não tenha peso. Uma esquizofrenia.

A terceira Europa já não é realmente Europa. Vive na sombra de uma antiga glória, coberta pela pátina de um império, convencida da sua singularidade e capacidade de sobreviver sem as outras Europas. É dominada pelo egoísmo nacional. É por isso que a terceira Europa adverte a primeira e a segunda de que não hesitará em bloquear o seu avanço, se tiver que defender os seus próprios interesses. Porque eles estão acima de tudo o resto.

Os países da primeira Europa estão a tentar avançar na integração e coordenação das suas políticas económicas, ficando o controlo dos países mais fortes sobre os mais fracos cada vez mais apertado. A Europa nº 2 está a tentar controlar o que está a acontecer na Europa nº 1, porque estamos todos no mesmo combóio. A Europa nº 3 está contente por se ter dado a divisão, porque há muito que tinha vontade de seguir o seu próprio caminho. [...]

Ver artigo em presseurop e versão original no jornal polaco Gazeta Wyborcza

Regiões mais ricas querem redesenhar o mapa da Europa

A Catalunha pode ser o catalisador de uma nova vaga de separatismo na União Europeia, com a Escócia e a Flandres não muito atrás. O grande paradoxo é que a União Europeia, que assenta no conceito de soberania partilhada, reduz os riscos para as regiões que aspiram à independência.
Ao mesmo tempo que, da crise da zona euro, poderá vir a emergir uma União Europeia pós-nacional, caminhando no sentido de mais união fiscal e do controlo mais centralizado dos orçamentos e bancos nacionais, a crise acelerou os apelos à independência das regiões mais ricas de alguns Estados-membros, encolerizadas por terem de financiar as regiões mais pobres.
O presidente catalão, Artur Mas, abalou recentemente a Espanha e os mercados ao convocar eleições regionais antecipadas e ao prometer um referendo sobre a independência de Espanha, apesar de Madrid o considerar ilegal. A Escócia planeia realizar um referendo sobre a independência no outono de 2014. Os flamengos da Flandres obtiveram uma autonomia quase total, a nível administrativo e linguístico, mas ainda se ressentem daquilo que consideram ser a hegemonia remanescente dos belgas de língua francesa e da elite de Bruxelas, emoções que estarão patentes nas eleições autárquicas de 14 de outubro. Há inúmeras coisas, como casamentos, que mantêm unidos países descontentes: história partilhada, guerras partilhadas, inimigos comuns. Mas a crise económica na União Europeia está também a pôr a nu velhos ressentimentos. [...]

Ver o artigo original do NYT e a tradução portuguesa da presseurop

Paul Krugman: ‘a loucura da austeridade na Europa‘ não tem qualquer finalidade útil

So much for complacency. Just a few days ago, the conventional wisdom was that Europe finally had things under control. The European Central Bank, by promising to buy the bonds of troubled governments if necessary, had soothed markets. All that debtor nations had to do, the story went, was agree to more and deeper austerity — the condition for central bank loans — and all would be well.      

But the purveyors of conventional wisdom forgot that people were involved. Suddenly, Spain and Greece are being racked by strikes and huge demonstrations. The public in these countries is, in effect, saying that it has reached its limit: With unemployment at Great Depression levels and with erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far. And this means that there may not be a deal after all.

Much commentary suggests that the citizens of Spain and Greece are just delaying the inevitable, protesting against sacrifices that must, in fact, be made. But the truth is that the protesters are right. More austerity serves no useful purpose; the truly irrational players here are the allegedly serious politicians and officials demanding ever more pain. [...]

Ver  texto integral de ‘Europe’s Austerity Madness‘ no NYT

Primavera Árabe ou Primavera Islamista? (Parte I – o equívoco das grelhas de leitura ocidentais)

1. As revoltas ou revoluções que as populações de diversos países muçulmanos, da margem Sul do Mediterrâneo, levaram a cabo desde o início de 2011, têm sido  vistas, com excitação mal contida,  por grande parte da imprensa europeia e ocidental. Fala-se, frequentemente, numa  “Primavera Árabe” para as designar. A expressão tem uma boa ressonância para o público europeu. Evoca imagens históricas e acontecimentos quase míticos do seu passado. O apelo desta forma de designar os acontecimentos, está, também, numa certa nostalgia, na recordação de tempos heróicos e de bravura. Nesse passado, cada vez mais distante para os europeus, estes ainda se revoltavam contra a tirania e os seus regimes autoritários. Faziam-no em nome de valores mais grandiosos do que os da lógica hedonista-materialista em que vivem, ou do “valor” da competitividade, que os seus governos lhe dizem ser o único caminho possível para a salvação da crise.

2.  A expressão “Primavera Árabe” é, por isso, uma evocação sublime e tocante de outras "primaveras" europeias. Desde logo, a “Primavera de Praga”, ocorrida na ex-Checoslováquia, no ano 1968, numa revolta contra a opressão e autoritarismo do regime comunista. Esta foi celebrizada na literatura pela obra do escritor checo, Milan Kundera, “A Insustentável Leveza do Ser”, mais tarde adaptada também ao cinema por Philip Kaufman. Foi precursora, em duas décadas, da revolta dos países da Europa Central e de Leste, que levaram à queda do muro de Berlim (1989) e à dissolução do Império Soviético (1991). Todavia, a designação “Primavera de Praga”, um acontecimento da segunda metade século passado, já foi um remake de uma outra Primavera  – a "original"  –, ocorrida no século XIX, a que os historiadores chamaram a “Primavera dos povos” de 1848. Nessa época, desencadeou-se um conjunto de revoltas e revoluções, baseadas num misto de revindicações liberais, democráticas e nacionalistas. Ocorreram em grande parte da Europa e eram dirigidas contra as monarquias tradicionais e os Estados multinacionais, governados por casas reais multiseculares como os Habsburgos do Império Austríaco (mais tarde Austro-Húngaro).

3. Com este quadro mental bem enraizado, o europeu e ocidental interpreta, ainda que o possa fazer de forma inconsciente, a evolução histórica dos outros povos do mundo como decorrendo em direcção a uma finalidade, que é similar à sua própria evolução histórica. Assim, os povos não europeus e não ocidentais – neste caso os árabes –, estarão também destinados, mais tarde ou mais cedo, a ser como nós: a querer a democracia (pluralista e secular), a liberdade (política, de opinião, religiosa, etc.), os direitos humanos (tal como estão inscritos na Declaração Universal das Nações Unidas de 1948). Esta visão teleológica da história, misturada com o wishful thinking de que o rumo dos acontecimentos será no sentido da “boa” evolução da humanidade (pelo menos assim julgam os europeus), levou a imaginar mais uma “primavera”, agora replicada na margem Sul do Mediterrâneo. A questão é saber se este não é um dos mais comuns e enganadores equívocos de leitura dos acontecimentos internacionais, que, em vez de clarificar, não contribuirá, sobretudo, para obscurecer a compreensão de uma realidade que nos é essencialmente estranha. (Fim da Parte I - publicada originalmente a 1/11/2011).

Livro: ‘A Europa em Crise‘: entrevista na SIC Notícias, Jornal das 9

Leituras para refletir: ‘A Europa em Crise‘

O século XXI começou mal para a Europa e o Ocidente. A crise financeira iniciada em 2007/2008 nos EUA transformou-se na crise mais grave do pós-II Guerra Mundial. Em pouco tempo a União Europeia e a zona euro ficaram no centro do turbilhão. Será que o capitalismo globalizado se tornou uma “paixão nociva”? Quais são as raízes mais profundas desta crise? Como será possível ultrapassá-la? Hoje tornou-se claro que a crise é também demográfica, ética e de estilos de vida. Está em causa a sustentabilidade do modelo europeu e a influência euro-ocidental no mundo. Todavia, como portugueses e europeus, traz-nos uma oportunidade única de reflexão sobre o nosso futuro coletivo.

Europa mostra sinais do pessimismo económico à escala global

International financial markets tumbled as a darkening global economic outlook and deepening fissures in Europe over its debt crisis fueled fears the world economy could slip into a period of prolonged malaise.

The Stoxx Europe 600 index fell 4.1% Monday, with banks hard hit. The euro slid below $1.42, its lowest in a month. The declines followed a slide in Asia, where stock indexes in China and Japan dropped by about 2% Monday. On Tuesday morning Asian markets again moved lower, with Japan shares falling 1.2% by late morning. During early Asian trading the 10-year U.S. Treasury yields hit as low as 1.911%, the lowest level in at least five decades, according to traders.

U.S. markets, which were hit on Friday by a dismal job market report, were closed for Labor Day.

Monday's rout is a sign investors increasingly worry that a mix of slow economic growth and high public debt will tip the global economy back into a recession.

"There is clearly a recognition that the debt crisis started in Europe, but the story is similar across the Western world," said Silvio Peruzzo, economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.

Though both the U.S. and Europe emerged from recession about two years ago, a recent string of economic data suggests the recovery is fading on both sides of the Atlantic. A report Friday that the U.S. posted no job growth in August was a watershed, Mr. Peruzzo said, "a turning point" showing that economic risks are turning negative. [...]

Ver notícia no Wall Street Journal 

Espasmo ou espiral? A escolha do Ocidente

 The other day a bright young diplomat from China set me an examination question. My first thought was that it sprang from that admirable Chinese trait of searching out enduring patterns in the clatter and chaos of events. Then it struck me that anyone watching the train crashes on either side of the Atlantic should be asking something similar.

The US faces an unsustainable debt burden alongside sustained political paralysis. Strategic decision-making is held hostage to ideological polarisation. Democrats and Republicans may well escape a calamitous default with an 11th-hour deal on the debt ceiling. But a sticking plaster will not bridge the rancorous divide over tax and spending that piles deficit on deficit.


In Europe, the stakes have been higher still. The European Union’s core project, the single currency, has been buckling under the weight of sovereign debt and political discord. Solidarity has been lost to resurgent nationalisms. Germany’s Angela Merkel says that 60-odd years of European integration is under threat. Yet the leader of Europe’s most powerful nation has seemed frozen in the headlights of indecision. [...]


Ver artigo no Financial Times

A consciência de culpa está a paralizar a Europa

Europe is not aging gracefully. More than half a century after it began taking the steps that eventually resulted in the European Union, it is at best a vast market without a consistent military or political personality—and one that matters less and less in world affairs. Henry Kissinger’s old witticism about Europe’s having no phone number is more relevant than ever. What happened? One can cite a number of factors: the persistence of nationalist egoism; the excessive importance of the EU’s two major founders, France and Germany; Great Britain’s aloofness and readiness to follow Washington’s instructions; the imbalance created by the influx of former Soviet satellites. But more decisive than any of these reasons is that since the end of World War II, Europe has been tormented by a need to repent. [..]

Ver artigo de Pascal Bruckner no City Journal

O que deveria ser o novo mapa da Europa in Economist

People who find their neighbours tiresome can move to another neighbourhood, whereas countries can’t. But suppose they could. Rejigging the map of Europe would make life more logical and friendlier.

Britain, which after its general election will have to confront its dire public finances, should move closer to the southern-European countries that find themselves in a similar position. It could be towed to a new position near the Azores. (If the journey proves a bumpy one, it might be a good opportunity to make Wales and Scotland into separate islands).

In Britain’s place should come Poland, which has suffered quite enough in its location between Russia and Germany and deserves a chance to enjoy the bracing winds of the North Atlantic and the security of sea water between it and any potential invaders.

Belgium’s incomprehensible Flemish-French language squabbles (which have just brought down a government) are redolent of central Europe at its worst, especially the nonsenses Slovakia thinks up for its Hungarian-speaking ethnic minority. So Belgium should swap places with the Czech Republic. The stolid, well-organised Czechs would get on splendidly with their new Dutch neighbours, and vice versa. [...]

Ver artigo no Economist

A Turquia quer projectar os seus interesses na Europa através da diáspora in Der Spiegel

Leaders of Turkish descent across Europe recently received an invitation to a fancy event in Istanbul, all expenses paid. But what sounded innocent enough appears to have been an attempt by Ankara to get members of the Turkish diaspora to represent Turkish interests abroad. Turkish-German politicians have reacted angrily to the brazen lobbying.

The invitation that numerous Turkish-German politicians received in February sounded enticing: Lunch in a five-star hotel in Istanbul, travel expenses included. The session was titled: "Wherever One of Our Compatriots Is, We Are There Too."

Around 1,500 people of Turkish descent from several European countries accepted the tempting offer. Among the speakers at the event, which took place at the end of February, were businesspeople, NGO representatives and a member of the Belgian parliament of Turkish descent. But the meeting, which has sparked outrage among Turkish-German politicians, was more than a harmless gathering of the Turkish diaspora.

The event was organized by the Turkish government, which is led by the conservative-religious Justice and Development (AKP) party, in an attempt to send a clear message to the participants that they should represent Turkey in other countries. Turks living abroad should take the citizenship of their new home country -- not, however, with the intention of becoming an integrated part of that society, but so they can become politically active, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spoke at the event. Erdogan also compared Islamophobia with anti-Semitism in his speech and said that countries which oppose dual citizenship are violating people's fundamental rights. (Germany, for example, generally does not allow its citizens to hold dual nationality.)

'Crime Against Humanity'

Participants in the session told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the Turkish prime minister then repeated a sentence which had already sparked fierce criticism when he said it during a 2008 speech in Cologne: "Assimilation is a crime against humanity." And even stronger language was apparently used by one representative of the Turkish government. According to Ali Ertan Toprak, the vice chairman of the Alevi community in Germany, who was present at the lunch, one speaker went so far as to say: "We need to inoculate European culture with Turkish culture."

The language in the invitiations already suggested the attitude of the Turkish government toward Turkish-German politicians. Ankara perceives them as being its own. Invitations sent in the name of Turkish Labor Minister Faruk Celik to German Bundestag members were addressed as "my esteemed members of parliament" and Erdogan was referred to as "our prime minister."

Turkish-German politicians and religious representatives in Germany are now voicing sharp criticism of Ankara. "It was very clearly a lobbying event on the part of the Turkish government," said Toprak. He said that he himself was shocked about how openly the Turkish government had expressed its view that Germans of Turkish descent should represent Turkey's interests. "If members of the (conservative) Christian Democratic Union who oppose EU membership for Turkey had been there, they would have got a lot of material for their arguments," Toprak says.

Highly Problematic

Canan Bayram, a member of the Berlin state parliament, said she only attended the meeting because, as an integration spokeswoman for the Green Party in the city, she felt she needed to see what an event like this was like. Of course she covered her own travel and accommodation expenses, she said. "It was important to me that I make it clear that, as a member of a German state parliament, I do not allow the Turkish government to pay my expenses." Sirvan Cakici, a member of the Bremen state parliament for the Left Party who attended the Istanbul meeting, also emphasized that she paid for her expenses herself.

"The Turkish government should pay more attention to the interests of Turks in Turkey, rather than trying to exploit Turkish-Germans as their ambassadors," said Vural Öger, a former member of the European Parliament who was also at the lunch.

Other Turkish-German politicians turned down the invitation because they saw it as highly problematic right from the beginning. "It was clear that this was purely a lobbying event on the part of the Turkish government. As a German politician, I did not belong there," says Özcan Mutlu, a member of the Berlin state parliament for the Greens. "We are not an extended arm of the Turkish government." Memet Kilic, a member of the federal parliament with the Green Party, also declined to take part for similar reasons.

'Unacceptable'

It is not, in fact, the first time that the Turkish government has sought contact to Turkish-German politicians. After the 2009 parliamentary elections, Turkish-German Bundestag members received congratulatory calls from the AKP government. And in October 2009, the Turkish government invited German parliamentarians to an AKP party congress in Ankara.

Ekin Deligöz, a member of the Bundestag for the Greens, says she has in the past received numerous invitations from the Turkish government, which she has turned down out of principle. "I refuse to represent the interests of the Turkish government simply because I was born in Turkey."

Turkish-German politicians feel that, in principle, it is acceptable if the Turkish government tries to seek contact with Bundestag members of Turkish descent. "After all, we act as a kind of bridge," says Kilic. "It's the most normal thing in the world." He adds that it is "unacceptable," however, if Ankara openly says that politicians of Turkish descent should act as a mouthpiece for Turkish interests.

Sevim Dagdelen, a Bundestag member for the Left Party who turned down the invitation to attend the February event, talks of a "parallel foreign policy" on the part of the Turkish government. "I don't want to be part of it," she says. "I find it regrettable and cause for concern that other German politicians are apparently taking part."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,druck-684125,00.html

Líder líbio Khadafi pede ‘Guerra Santa‘ (Jihad) contra a Suíça in BBC

O líder líbio, Muamar Khadafi, convocou nesta quinta-feira uma "Guerra Santa", ou Jihad, contra a Suíça.

Khadafi justificou o pedido afirmando que o país é "infiel" e está “destruindo mesquitas”, em alusão ao resultado de um referendo do ano passado em que os suíços se colocaram a favor de proibir a construção de minaretes.

"Qualquer muçulmano em qualquer parte do mundo que trabalhe com a Suíça é um apóstata (pessoa que abandonou as fé em uma religião), é contra o profeta Maomé, Deus e o Corão", disse.

"As massas de muçulmanos devem ir a aeroportos do mundo islâmico e impedir a aterrissagem de aviões suíços, aos portos e impedir a chegada de navio suíços e inspecionar lojas e mercados para impedir que produtos suíços sejam vendidos."

"Vamos combater a Suíça, o sionismo e a agressão estrangeira", completou.

O líder líbio ressaltou que "existe uma grande diferença entre terrorismo e o direito à jihad, ou resistência armada".

Referendo

No referendo de 29 de novembro, a maioria dos suíços votou a favor de uma lei que proíbe a construção de minaretes.

O governo suíço havia aconselhado a população a votar contra a proposta, argumentando que ela violaria a liberdade religiosa.

O Ministério das Relações Exteriores suíço disse que não comentaria as declarações de Khadafi.

A Líbia rompeu relações com a Suíça em 2008 após a prisão de um filho de Khadafi em um hotel suíço, acusado de maltratar empregados.

Ele foi libertado pouco depois da detenção, e as acusações foram retiradas, mas a Líbia cortou a venda de petróleo para a Suíça, retirou bilhões de dólares depositados em bancos suíços e prendeu dois empresários suíços que trabalhavam em território líbio.

A Líbia afirma que as prisões dos empresários e a do filho de Khadafi não têm ligação.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/2010/02/100225_libia_rc.shtml

(Re)leituras: Europaeum vol 8, nº 1 (2007) - Medieval Roots of Europe

‘Irão diz que a Europa não está mais qualificada para as negociações do program nuclear‘ in EU Observer

Iran says Europe is no longer qualified to hold nuclear talks due to its meddling with the post-election protests in the country, with Sweden, as the new EU presidency, calling up officials from the 27-member bloc to discuss the next diplomatic move.

The EU has played a significant part in international efforts to make Tehran comply with the world's rules on nuclear power. Three EU states - Germany, France, and the UK - have been leading the negotiations along with the US, Russia and China.

But Iran's military chief of staff Major-General Hassan Firouzabadi on Wednesday (I July) said that the alleged "interference" of Europeans in the riots following the June presidential election means the bloc has "lost its qualification to hold nuclear talks."

The statement came after Tehran's action against local employees of the UK embassy, accused by Iranians of meddling with the opposition protests.

Nine persons were detained over the weekend but most of them released on Monday and Wednesday. Two British staff members are still in jail.

In a bid to protest the handling of the situation, other EU states are also considering withdrawing their ambassadors from Tehran, with Britain pressing hard for a joint gesture while Germany and Italy, as Iran's key trade partners, prefer to keep on speaking terms with the country.

"It is easier to get everyone in the EU to agree on tough language on Iran, as happened last weekend, rather than take tough action," one British diplomat said, according to the Financial Times.

Just two days into its six-month chairmanship of the European Union, Sweden has called on member states' senior officials to discuss the issue on Thursday (2 July).

Speaking to journalists at the official opening of the presidency, Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeld made clear that Europe wants to support the democratic forces in Iran but also avoid isolating the country from the rest of the world. "That's the balance we need to strike," he said.

Tehran's political unrest broke out following the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on 12 June. Iranian supporters of his rival, opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, argue that the poll had been rigged and demand its complete re-run.

Iran's police chief Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moghaddam said that 20 people were killed and more than 1,000 arrested in the wave of protests, AFP reported on Wednesday.

http://euobserver.com/9/28404

JPTF 2009/07/03

Leituras: ‘A Europa como Império. A natureza da União Europeia Alargada‘ de Jan Zielonka

O fim (previsível) da Obamania na Europa: ‘de facto também vamos odiar Obama‘ por David Aaronovitch in Times

It amuses me that some of those who criticise the present US Administration for its Manichaeism - its division of the world into good and evil - themselves allocate all past badness to Bush and all prospective goodness to Obama. As the ever-improving myth has it, on the morning of September 12, 2001, George W. and America enjoyed the sympathy of the world. This comradeship was destroyed, in a uniquely cavalier (or should we say cowboyish) fashion, through the belligerence, the carelessness, the ideological fixity and the rapacity of that amorphous and useful category of American flawed thinker, the neoconservative. They just threw it away.

But there isn't anything that can't be fixed with a sprinkling of genuine fairy dust. What Bush lost, Obama can find. Where the Texan swaggered, the Chicagoan can glide. Emotional literacy will replace flat iteration, persuasion will supplant force as the preferred means of achieving what needs to be achieved, empathy will trump narcissism. Those who hate America may find their antipathy waning, those who were alarmed by unilateralism will warm to softer, moral leadership. A new dawn will break, will it not?

Some on the Left are getting their count-me-outs in already, realising that Mr Obama is, after all, a big-game hunter, a full-trousered American candidate. They, I think, are more realistic than those who manage on one day to laud the Democrat as not being a real politician, and on the next to praise him for his sensible left-trimming when seeking the party's nomination and his equally sensible centre-hugging once it was in the bag. I say the antis are more realistic because, eventually, we will hate or ridicule Mr Obama too - provided, of course, that he is elected and serves two full terms.

George W.Bush, of course, represents a particular kind of offence to European sensibilities. He blew out Kyoto, instead of pretending to care about it and then not implementing it, which is what our hypocrisies require. He took no exquisite pains to make us feel consulted. He invaded Iraq in the name of freedom and then somehow allowed torturers to photograph each other in the fallen dictator's house of tortures. He is not going to run Franklin Roosevelt a close race for nomination as the second greatest president of the US.

But even if he had been a half-Chinese ballet-loving Francophone, he would have been hated by some who should have loved him, for there isn't an American president since Eisenhower who hasn't ended up, at some point or other, being depicted by the world's cartoonists as a cowboy astride a phallic missile. It happened to Bill Clinton when he bombed Iraq; it will happen to Mr Obama when his reinforced forces in Afghanistan or Pakistan mistake a meeting of tribal elders for an unwise gathering of Taleban and al-Qaeda. Then the new president (or, if McCain, the old president) will be the target of that mandarin Anglo-French conceit that our superior colonialism somehow gives us the standing to critique the Yank's naive and inferior imperialism.

Often those who express their tiresome anti-Americanism will suggest, as do some of the more disingenuous anti-Zionists with regard to anti-Semitism - that they, of course, are not anti-American, and that no one really is. But, coming as I do from an Anti-American tradition that wasn't afraid to proclaim itself, I think I know where the corpses are interred. For example, the current production of Bernstein's Candide at the English National Opera is a classic of elite anti-Americanism, in which we are invited to laugh at the philistine invocation of “Democracy, the American Way and McDonald's”. The laughter that accompanied this feeble satire showed our proper understanding that we, the audience, had a proper concept of democracy, and would never soil ourselves with an Egg McMuffin.

The true irony went way above the sniggerers' heads, which was that Leonard Bernstein was the American cultural import that we were, at that very moment, enjoying. But the prejudice is that American culture has had a negative influence on the world, tabloidising our journalism, subverting the gentle land of Ealing with the violent pleasures of Die Hard 10 and commercialising our most intimate lives. And so we have ever complained; my father, back in the early Fifties, once wrote an entire communist pamphlet about the terrible effect of Hollywood and jazz on the land of Shakespeare and Elgar.

This week you could hear the author Andrew O'Hagan on Radio 4, reading from his collection of self-conscious essays, The Atlantic Ocean, in which - despite his own claims - every impact of American life on Britain is somehow configured negatively. He writes of an exported popular culture “born in the suburbs of America” and defined as “Spite as entertainment. Shouting as argument. Dysfunction as normality. Desires as rights. Shopping as democracy.” This in the country that has sent Big Brother, Pop Idol, Wife Swap and Location, Location, Location over the Atlantic in the other direction, while taking delivery of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Wire.

I should admit that I am irked by O'Hagan's dismissal of the “idiots who supported that bad and stupid war (ie, Iraq)” and am willing to match my idiocy against his intelligence in any debating forum that he cares to name. More interesting, though, is the desire to blame America. For all that O'Hagan claims that the US has lost its purchase on the world's affections, it remains the chosen destination for the most ambitious of the planet's migrants. For all that he claims that this change in sentiment is recent, I can't help recalling those - the most honest - who commented, in journals he writes for and on the very day after September 11, that the Americans had had it coming.

In part I think that anti-Americanism is linked to a view of change as decline. The imagination is that dynamic capitalism, associated with the US, is destroying our authentic lives, with our own partly willing connivance. It is a continuing and - at the moment - constant narrative, uniting left and right conservatives, which will usually take in the 19th- century radical journalist William Cobbett (conveniently shorn of his anti-Semitism), and end with an expression of disgust over the Dome, the Olympics or Tesco. Just as bird flu is a disease from out of the East, runaway modernity is a scourge originating to the West.

So Barack Obama, en fête around the world, will one day learn that there is no magical cure for the envy of others. What makes America the indispensable power (and even more indispensable in the era of the new China), is precisely what makes anti-Americanism inevitable.

OBS: Artigo originalmente publicado a 22/07/08
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article4374704.ece
JPTF 2008/11/07

‘Crash nas bolsas europeias‘ in Euronews, 6 de Outubro de 2008

A Europa viveu, neste primeiro dia da semana, uma queda acentuada nos índices bolsistas, aquilo a que muitos já chamam um crash. As praças de Lisboa e Paris foram as que mais perderam na Europa ocidental, com quedas impressionantes, de mais de 9%. O índice pan-europeu eurostoxx 50 perdeu mais de 7%. As outras principais bolsas da Europa, como Londres, Milão, Zurique, Madrid ou Bruxelas, viveram também um dia de quedas há muito não vistas, de entre 6% e 9%. Diz um corretor norte-americano: “Estou aqui há 30 anos e nunca vi uma coisa assim. É desconcertante ver a situação dos mercados. Sempre quisemos uma economia global, mas agora ela voltou-se contra nós. Se a Europa desce, nós descemos com ela”. No caso de Lisboa, foi a maior queda diária de sempre. O sector energético liderou as descidas, com a EDP a perder mais de 16%, a Galp com uma queda de 11% e sector da banca também em queda a pique. O governo português anunciou já que vai juntar-se aos países que garantiram a segurança das poupanças dos particulares, face à crise financeira. A bolsa mais penalizada, nesta segunda-feira negra, foi a de Moscovo. O índice RTS começou a semana com um deslize de mais de 19%, devido aos medos de que a Rússia não consiga fazer face à crise.
http://www.euronews.net/pt/article/06/10/2008/crisis-fears-pummel-worldwide-stocks/
JPTF 2008/10/06

‘FTSE cai mais de 7% e a crise financeira global acentua-se‘ in Telegraph, 6 de Outubro de 2008

The UK's index of leading shares initially dropped more than 240 points before recovering slightly to 4,876.56 shortly after the market opened at 8am. In Europe, shares fell in Italy, Germany and France.
Earlier Asian shares fell as deteriorating credit markets prompted European governments to pledge bailouts for troubled banks.
Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Australia's Macquarie dropped more than 6pc after Germany agreed on a $68bn package for Hypo Real Estate Holding and Britain said it's ready to support its banks.
Sumitomo Metal Mining lost 4.1pc after copper and gold prices sank amid concern a $700bn US bank bailout won't prevent a slowdown in global economic growth.
"It will probably be a rough week for global investors as they realize the credit crisis has a long way to play out," said Frederic Dickson, who helps oversee $25bn as chief market strategist at DA Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
"US action was an absolutely essential first step, and global intervention is needed."
The broader MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 2.8pc to 101.68 in Tokyo and is poised for its lowest close since July 27, 2005. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index futures fell 1.6pc, while the euro fell 0.9pc to $1.3642.
Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 3.3pc to 10,575.04. Mitsui Fudosan, the country's largest real-estate company, tumbled after UBS AG slashed its recommendation.
All markets open for trading in Asia declined, with benchmark stock indexes in South Korea, Taiwan and Australia falling more than 3pc.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/3143690/FTSE-100-falls-as-global-banking-crisis-deepens.html
JPTF 2008/10/06