Leituras em tempo de crise (das finanças públicas e da democracia): ‘A ascensão dos não eleitos‘ de Frank Vibert

Sinopse do livro (em inglês): 
Unelected bodies, such as independent central banks, economic regulators, risk managers and auditors have become a worldwide phenomenon. Democracies are increasingly turning to them to demarcate boundaries between the market and the state, to resolve conflicts of interest and to allocate resources, even in sensitive ethical areas such as those involving privacy or biotechnology. This book examines the challenge that unelected bodies present to democracy and argues that, taken together, such bodies should be viewed as a new branch of government with their own sources of legitimacy and held to account through a new separation of powers. Vibert suggests that such bodies help promote a more informed citizenry because they provide a more trustworthy and reliable source of information for decisions. 

Leituras sobre uma espécie cada vez mais em vias de extinção (... a democracia): ‘Pós-democracia‘, de Colin Crouch

Leituras para a rentrée: A crise de 2007/2008 e as razões da persistência do neo-liberalismo

‘A ascensão do capitalismo de estado‘ in The Economist

Over the past 15 years striking corporate headquarters have transformed the great cities of the emerging world. China Central Television’s building resembles a giant alien marching across Beijing’s skyline; the 88-storey Petronas Towers, home to Malaysia’s oil company, soar above Kuala Lumpur; the gleaming office of VTB, a banking powerhouse, sits at the heart of Moscow’s new financial district. These are all monuments to the rise of a new kind of hybrid corporation, backed by the state but behaving like a private-sector multinational.

State-directed capitalism is not a new idea: witness the East India Company. But as our special report this week points out, it has undergone a dramatic revival. In the 1990s most state-owned companies were little more than government departments in emerging markets; the assumption was that, as the economy matured, the government would close or privatise them. Yet they show no signs of relinquishing the commanding heights, whether in major industries (the world’s ten biggest oil-and-gas firms, measured by reserves, are all state-owned) or major markets (state-backed companies account for 80% of the value of China’s stockmarket and 62% of Russia’s). And they are on the offensive. Look at almost any new industry and a giant is emerging: China Mobile, for example, has 600m customers. State-backed firms accounted for a third of the emerging world’s foreign direct investment in 2003-10.

With the West in a funk and emerging markets flourishing, the Chinese no longer see state-directed firms as a way-station on the road to liberal capitalism; rather, they see it as a sustainable model. They think they have redesigned capitalism to make it work better, and a growing number of emerging-world leaders agree with them. The Brazilian government, which embraced privatisation in the 1990s, is now interfering with the likes of Vale and Petrobras, and compelling smaller companies to merge to form national champions. South Africa is also flirting with the model.

This development raises two questions. How successful is the model? And what are its consequences - both in, and beyond, emerging markets? [...]

Ver artigo na revista The Economist

Grandes donativos árabes a universidades britânicas levam a ensinamentos ‘hostis‘

Sir Howard Davies, the director of the London School of Economics, has at last done the honourable thing and resigned from the university’s governing council. The LSE’s shameless prostituting of its good name in return for Muammar Gaddafi’s blood money (as the Tory MP Robert Halfon has rightly called it) is as great a betrayal of the spirit of a university as there has ever been in Britain.

But while it will take the LSE quite some time to regain a seat at the table of respectability, it is not the only university that has reason to feel ashamed. The LSE is said to have received no more than £300,000 of the £1.5 million it was due from Libya.

Yet, on the most conservative estimate, other British universities have received hundreds of millions of pounds from Saudi and other Islamic sources – in the guise of philanthropic donations, but with the real intention of changing the intellectual climate of the United Kingdom.

Between 1995 and 2008, eight universities – Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, University College London, the LSE, Exeter, Dundee and City – accepted more than £233.5 million from Muslim rulers and those closely connected to them.

Much of the money has gone to Islamic study centres: the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies received £75 million from a dozen Middle Eastern rulers, including the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia; one of the current king’s nephews, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, gave £8 million each to Cambridge and Edinburgh. Then there was the LSE’s own Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, which got £9 million from the United Arab Emirates; this week, a majority of the centre’s board was revealed to be pushing for a boycott of Israel. [...].

Ver notícia no Telegraph 

Leituras: ‘La dernière utopie menaces sur l'universalisme‘ de Caroline Fourest

‘Cientistas envolvidos no escândalo dos emails escondem informação ambiental‘ in Times

The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny.

The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.

The Information Commissioner’s Office decided that UEA failed in its duties under the Act but said that it could not prosecute those involved because the complaint was made too late, The Times has learnt. The ICO is now seeking to change the law to allow prosecutions if a complaint is made more than six months after a breach.

The stolen e-mails , revealed on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, showed how the university’s Climatic Research Unit attempted to thwart requests for scientific data and other information, and suggest that senior figures at the university were involved in decisions to refuse the requests. It is not known who stole the e-mails.

Professor Phil Jones, the unit’s director, stood down while an inquiry took place. The ICO’s decision could make it difficult for him to resume his post.

Details of the breach emerged the day after John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, warned that there was an urgent need for more honesty about the uncertainty of some predictions. His intervention followed admissions from scientists that the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated.

In one e-mail, Professor Jones asked a colleague to delete e-mails relating to the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He also told a colleague that he had persuaded the university authorities to ignore information requests under the act from people linked to a website run by climate sceptics.

A spokesman for the ICO said: “The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.” Breaches of the act are punishable by an unlimited fine.

The complaint to the ICO was made by David Holland, a retired engineer from Northampton. He had been seeking information to support his theory that the unit broke the IPCC’s rules to discredit sceptic scientists.

In a statement, Graham Smith, Deputy Commissioner at the ICO, said: “The e-mails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.”

He added: “The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. We will be advising the university about the importance of effective records management and their legal obligations in respect of future requests for information.”

Mr Holland said: “There is an apparent Catch-22 here. The prosecution has to be initiated within six months but you have to exhaust the university’s complaints procedure before the commission will look at your complaint. That process can take longer than six months.”

The university said: “The way freedom of information requests have been handled is one of the main areas being explored by Sir Muir Russell’s independent review. The findings will be made public and we will act as appropriate on its recommendations.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7004936.ece

As fantasias ocidentais sobre a revolução iraniana revisitadas por Daniel J. Flynn no City Journal

The bloody scenes in Tehran, with at least 19 protestors killed so far in clashes with government forces, may seem like a repeat in miniature of the violence there more than 30 years ago. The glaring difference is that the protestors who toppled a corrupt, oppressive regime in 1979 have become the corrupt, oppressive regime in 2009.

With the 1979 Iranian revolution so close in the rearview mirror, the mistakes of Western observers then bear remembering today, as the seeds of something momentous may be again at hand. In the late seventies, some intellectuals, enamored with the idea of revolution in general and the anti-Western outlook of the Iranian revolutionaries in particular, projected their political values on the shah’s deposers. When, instead of embracing the ideology of Harvard Square or Telegraph Avenue, the revolutionaries exported terror, exhibited a toxic anti-Semitism, persecuted homosexuals, and pursued nuclear weapons, many of these intellectuals emerged with egg on their faces. As Mother Jones editor Adam Hochschild candidly admitted after Iranian reality had dashed Western dreams: “The Left is always better at seeing what leads to revolutions than at seeing what may follow them.” Though criticisms of the shah of Iran for human-rights abuses and other crimes seemed on the mark, Hochschild conceded in 1980 that his magazine had been “embarrassingly nearsighted about [the shah’s] successors.”

A year earlier, Mother Jones had been much more buoyant about the Iranian revolution’s prospects. “What kind of state might result if Khomeini or his followers take power?,” Eqbal Ahmad asked in the magazine’s April 1979 issue. “As someone who has talked with him at length, I believe that, when Khomeini speaks of an Islamic state for Iran, it is a Shi’ite scholar’s way of saying that he wants a good state in Iran. His concept of a good state includes democratic reforms, freedom for political prisoners, an end to the astronomical waste of huge arms purchases, and a constitutional government.” Ahmad ridiculed the view that “reactionary Muslim mullahs motivated by their hostility to modernization and reforms” led the revolution. “Left alone,” he speculated, “Iran without the Shah would probably evolve into a country that looked like Spain or Portugal without Franco or Salazar.” Even by the magazine’s postdated publication date, the prediction appeared ridiculous.

Sounding like the ideological tourists who visited Iran’s Soviet neighbors several generations earlier, Kai Bird opined in the March 31, 1979 issue of The Nation that “there is every reason to believe that the still unpublished [Iranian] Constitution will include all the elements of a liberal democratic system.” The future Pulitzer Prize winner exuberantly noted how merchants hawked Lenin and Marx on the streets. He imagined decentralized workers’ collectives, rather than the state, controlling Iran’s oil industry. In the April 21, 1979 issue, Bird described the economic views of Iranian oil workers as not very different from those of the average Nation reader. He wrote, “The worker komitehs want to participate in [oil policy] decisions—and if they persevere, there will be little room left for the fellows from Exxon.” In an unsigned editorial in the March 24, 1979 issue, anticipating its special correspondent’s report, The Nation excused “the revolutionary insistence on summary justice” by maintaining that it “may have staved off a far bloodier round of private vengeance.” After all, “less than forty former Pahlevi officials have been executed, and with only one possible exception, each was prominently associated with the worst excesses of state power in the Shah’s era.” But just a few months after the Ayatollah Khomeini’s triumph, events forced Bird to concede that the Islamic Revolution had been a “disappointment.”

“One thing must be clear,” warned postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault in the fall of 1978. “By ‘Islamic government,’ nobody in Iran means a political regime in which the clerics would have a role of supervision or control.” An atheist homosexual, Foucault nevertheless found himself seduced by an Islamic revolution that targeted people like himself once it had consolidated power. Writing for the French and Italian press, the celebrity intellectual made two trips to Iran in the fall of 1978 to compile material for his firsthand dispatches.

Prophetic in seeing Islam as a “powder keg” of political force, Foucault was horribly remiss in his uncritical assessment of Islamism. From his conversations in Iran, and in Paris with exiles such as the Ayatollah Khomeini, Foucault was not, unlike other Western intellectuals, deluded into believing that the shah’s overthrow would result in a secular government familiar to Westerners. Rather, he believed that an Islamic theocracy might consist of equal rights for men and women, a socialist redistribution of oil profits, and a responsive democracy, among other things.

Writing in Le Nouvel Observateur in October 1978, Foucault outlined the principles that he believed would undergird any emergent Islamic state in Iran: “Islam values work; no one can be deprived of the fruits of his labor; what must belong to all (water, the subsoil) shall not be appropriated by anyone. With respect to liberties, they will be respected to the extent that their exercise will not harm others; minorities will be protected and free to live as they please on the condition that they do not injure the majority; between men and women there will not be inequality with respect to rights, but difference, since there is a natural difference. With respect to politics, decisions should be made by the majority, the leaders should be responsible to the people, and each person, as it is laid out in the Quran, should be able to stand up and hold accountable he who governs.”

The devotion to socialism, pluralism, democracy, and disarmament that Foucault, Bird, and others imagined in their Persian proxies turned out to be remarkable delusions. Rather than looking at Iran and describing the ugliness they saw, prominent intellectuals instead looked in the mirror, reported the beauty they saw there, and called it Iran.

Their blindness offers a cautionary lesson for today. As a new generation of Iranians rebel against yesterday’s revolutionaries, conservatives appalled by the anti-Americanism of the Iranian old guard risk projecting their political values upon today’s revolutionaries. This is Iran, after all, and even the opposition candidate despises Israel, aggressively pushes for a nuclear Iran, and has heretofore shown little interest during his long political career in transitioning from government by ayatollahs and mullahs to government by the people.

President Obama, who undermines his credibility by vacillating between remaining strategically outside of the fray and inserting himself in it by telling Iranians that the whole world is watching, nevertheless seems to understand the danger of getting Western hopes up too high: “Although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, the difference in actual policies between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as advertised,” the president explained on CNBC last week. “I think it’s important to understand that either way, we are going to be dealing with a regime in Iran that is hostile to the U.S.”

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0624df.html

JPTF 2009/06/26

Leituras: As Faces de Janus: Marxismo e Fascismo no Século XX, de A. James Gregor (Imprensa da Universidade de Yale, 2000)

Descrição do livro:
Attempting to understand the catalogue of horrors that has characterised much of twentieth-century history, Western scholars generally distinguish between violent revolutions of the "right" and the "left". Fascist regimes are assigned to the evil right, Marxist-Leninist regimes to the benign left. But this distinction has left us without a coherent understanding of the revolutionary history of the twentieth century, contends A. James Gregor in this insightful book. He traces the evolution of Marxist theory from the 1920s through the 1990s and argues that the ideology of Marxism-Leninism devolved into fascism. Fascist regimes and Communist regimes - both anti-democratic ideocracies - are far more closely related than has been recognised. Employing wide-ranging primary source materials in Italian, German, Russian, and Chinese, the book opens with an examination of the first standard Marxist interpretation of Mussolini's fascism in the early 1920s and proceeds through the emergence of fascist phenomena in post-Communist Russia. A clearer understanding of the relation between fascism and communism provides a sharper lens through which to view twentieth-century history as well as the present and future politics of Russia, Communist China, and other non-democratic states, Gregor concludes.
JPTF 2009/06/24

‘Liberalismo: anatomia de uma ideia‘ in The Economist, 11 de Fevereiro de 2009

Authors who defend liberalism must often struggle just to get the word out without facing incomprehension or abuse—even today. To the left, particularly in Europe, liberalism means the free-market dogma of clever simpletons who created the present financial mess. The American right’s complaint is quite different. Forget that Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison fathered liberalism in the United States. For nigh on 30 years conservative Republicans persuaded American voters that liberals were godless, amoral, tax-happy hypocrites.

Intellectually, little of either charge makes sense. Twinned with “democracy”, as in what the West stood up for during the cold war, “liberal” was a term of pride. Since communism failed, the case for liberal democracy has only strengthened. Think of outstanding alternatives: illiberal Russia, undemocratic China, populist Venezuela, theocratic Iran.

Odder still, put this question to people who live, or would like to live, in a liberal democracy: “Which of the following values do you espouse—personal freedom, rule of law, active but accountable government, free but responsible markets, mutual toleration and equal concern for all?” It is a fair bet that people will tick most or all items on this list. Ask them if they are liberals, on the other hand, and many will turn contemptuously away.

That 20th-century connoisseur of doublespeak, George Orwell, would not have been surprised. Political language, it seems, has taken leave of political facts. Alan Wolfe, a professor of politics at Boston College, thinks it time to reunite them. His welcome and readable essay lays out what he thinks liberalism really amounts to and why it demands support.

Liberal politics, on his account, is rooted in a view of what matters in a human life. A gifted guide, he opens with a brisk Grand Tour of the liberal tradition. Glimpses of leading thinkers and the human values they argued for include Immanuel Kant (moral and intellectual autonomy), Benjamin Constant (protection from arbitrary power) and John Stuart Mill (promotion of human individuality).

The link with politics is that those three values all involve freedom. Whatever else it is, liberalism is about nourishing human liberty. Where liberals disagree is how that fits with a second powerful ideal, equality.

Right-wing liberals contrast “classical”, small-government liberalism and the modern, active-government kind. The one, so they claim, leaves people free while the other wrongly infringes freedom on behalf of equality. That story became popular in the 1970s, both as a history of liberalism and as a view of government’s limits.

Mr Wolfe, like other left-wing liberals, finds the contrast historically inept and conceptually confused. Making enemies of freedom and equality ignores, in his view, the democratic presumption that any one person’s liberty matters as much as the next person’s. It is deaf also to the fact that modern citizens’ freedoms are often limited by big social forces beyond their control. If all citizens are to be free in any effective sense, they require help from countervailing forces. Government is one such force.

If, the argument goes on, you take concern for everyone’s liberty seriously, you will treat the proper scale of government as a matter of circumstance, not principle. At times, government is overweening and ought to be cut back. At others, active government is required to steady markets, help the needy or serve the public good. Put abstractly, government may be called on to foster or restore equal liberty. Pragmatic, socially minded liberalism of that kind underpinned American and British government, from the New Deal until Ronald Reagan, from Clement Attlee to Margaret Thatcher. It seems, from necessity, to be with us again.

Mr Wolfe touches many topics. He defends liberals against the charge that they seek, illiberally, to keep religion and morals out of public life. In his most policy-minded section, he traces how liberal commitment to openness plays out with regard to free speech, immigration and transparent government. He notes the illiberal undertow of what he nicely calls “self-incapacitation books”, or popular-science writing in behavioural economics and evolutionary psychology claiming to show what little part reason and responsibility play in how we behave. He rebuffs the frequent charge that liberals are wobblers or dreamers. The true liberal temper, he tells us, is realistic, ironic and disabused.

Through no fault of Mr Wolfe’s, this fine defence of liberal values risks seeming to lag behind the news. He completed his book before Wall Street imploded, the American economy slumped and Barack Obama won the White House. Whether or not they buy the reasoning behind it, many readers will think Mr Wolfe’s call for active government is now merely pushing at an open door.

Faster than anyone expected, the argument among liberals has shifted. It is no more about active versus limited government, but about what active government should be doing. On that Mr Wolfe could have said more. No one with an open mind, however, can come away from “The Future of Liberalism” treating “liberal” as a term of abuse. Before long, who knows, even Mr Obama may drop his reserve and embrace the word with pride.

http://www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=13055964
JPTF 2009/02/11

Autocarro dos ateístas ocidentais anda 42 anos atrasado, diz o líder albanês Enver Hoxha

9 de Outubro de 1967

ALBÂNIA PROCLAMA:
SOMOS O «PRIMEIRO ESTADO ATEÍSTA DO MUNDO»


«The closing of 2,169 churches, mosques, monasteries and other religious institutions during the past six months represents the concluding phase of the campaign against formal religious institutions and at the same time the intensification of the final phase aimed at eliminating the informal manifestations of religion in Albania. This information, along with the allegation that Albania has become the "first atheist state in the world", appeared in the September issue of the Albanian literary monthly Nendori (November). The monthly's editorial, in dealing with the role of Albanian youth in the "revolutionary" campaigns during 1967, states: What youth is capable of achieving has been best shown especially since comrade Hoxha's speech of February 6. The entire Albanian generation of youth. in support of the students' initiative of the Naim Frasheri school in Durres1 rose in unison to transform into reality the party's call against feudal-bourgeois ideology, against harmful habits and against religious ideology. As a result of this sharp class struggle initiated by the youth against everything foreign to the party's culture and ideology, and with the full support of the population, religion was forced to turn over to the young people by May 1967, 2,169 churches, mosques, monasteries and other religious institutions. The major part of these institutions are being turned into cultural centers for the younger generation. The party and comrade Enver assigned to our revolutionary youth the task of successfully implementing this great mission. Under their shining guidance (party and Hoxha), together with the entire populace, the youth has created the first atheist state in the world. Now it is up to the cultural organs to turn these former religiouscenters into effective institutions for theideological-cultural education and entertainment of youth.»

NOTA: O primeiro estado ateísta do mundo hoje é membro da Organização da Conferência Islâmica...
http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/2-5-40.shtml
JPTF 2009/01/14

Leituras politicamente correctas: ‘Baa baa (black) rainbow sheep‘ de David Mortimer e Gavin Mortimer

‘As Humanidades afastam-se da Universidade‘ in City Journal, Outono de 2008,vol. 18, nº 4

por Victor Davis Hanson

Until recently, classical education served as the foundation of the wider liberal arts curriculum, which in turn defined the mission of the traditional university. Classical learning dedicated itself to turning out literate citizens who could read and write well, express themselves, and make sense of the confusion of the present by drawing on the wisdom of the past. Students grounded in the classics appreciated the history of their civilization and understood the rights and responsibilities of their unique citizenship. Universities, then, acted as cultural custodians, helping students understand our present values in the context of a 2,500-year tradition that began with the ancient Greeks.

But in recent decades, classical and traditional liberal arts education has begun to erode, and a variety of unexpected consequences have followed. The academic battle has now gone beyond the in-house “culture wars” of the 1980s. Though the argument over politically correct curricula, controversial faculty appointments, and the traditional mission of the university is ongoing, the university now finds itself being bypassed technologically, conceptually, and culturally, in ways both welcome and disturbing. [...]

OBS: Ver artigo completo  em http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_classical_education.html 

JPTF 2008/12/06

Deliriums philosophicus num mundo pós-moderno

‘Os fracos e os falhados devem perecer: primeiro princípio da nossa caridade. E há mesmo que os ajudar a desaparecer! O que é mais nocivo do que todos os vícios? – A compaixão da acção por todos os falhados e fracos [...]‘. (Nietzsche, O AntiCristo, 1888, p. 16, 2).

Livros: ‘É um mundo PC! O que significa viver numa terra que se transformou em politicamente correcta‘ de Edward Stourton

O livro do jornalista Edward Stourton, apresentador do programa Today da BBC Radio 4 propõe-nos a uma visita guiada ao fantástico mundo do politicamente correcto (PC), através de um relato... neutral?! (Note-se que, com alguma honestidade intelectual, o autor reconhece ser tão fácil ser neutral neste assunto como escrever livros ‘imparciais‘ sobre o conflito do Médio Oriente...). A leitura adivinha-se estimulante para a intelligentzsia portuguesa, habitualmente tão fascinada com as ‘inovações‘ e ‘boas práticas‘ dos países mais desenvolvidos. Um dos lugares mais vibrantes deste ‘admirável mundo novo‘ é, sem dúvida, a cidade britânica de Luton (um cenário inimaginado, apesar de tudo, pelo escritor Aldous Huxley nos anos 30 do século XX). Esta exemplifica o novo paradigma da sensibilidade PC made in UK e as boas práticas de gestão autárquica do século XXI. A falta de atenção dada ao mesmo no livro, pode constituir, por isso, um motivo de desapontamento. Trata-se de um caso de estudo, a nível nacional britânico, mas também internacional, para os ‘profissionais da diversidade‘ e para todos os que se preocupam com a sensibilidade do ‘outro‘. Entre as ‘boas práticas‘ implementadas pelo executivo municipal encontram-se, por exemplo, o fim das iluminações de Natal nas ruas da cidade e o abandono das decorações com motivos alegóricos à Natividade (ver o artigo de Oliver Burkeman no jornal Guardian, intitulado The phoney war on Christmas). Ah, esta crise onde nos está a levar... Não, não é a crise financeira, é a ideologia multiculturalista, estúpido!

JPTF 2008/11/08

Partido comunista-maoista venceu as eleições no Nepal

Quase duas décadas passaram desde a queda do muro de Berlim e do desmoronar generalizado dos regimes comunistas de inspiração soviética (mraxista-leninista). Todavia, nos contrafortes dos Himalaias, a ideologia comunista (maoista) está viva e parece de boa saúde, talvez devido ao ar puro da montanha mais alta do mundo. A região dos Himalaias tem-se mostrado um excelente frigorífico para a ideologia comunista, permitindo-lhe sobreviver aos ventos quentes da globalização capitalista neo-liberal que varreram o mundo. Nas recentes eleições do Nepal, o partido comunista venceu as eleições obtendo 61 dos 108 lugares do parlamento. Desta forma, dentro de poucos meses a Assembleia Constituinte deverá votar a abolição da monarquia e do trono detido pelo actual monarca, Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, dando assim lugar ao nascimento de uma nova republica maoista. Ver notícia do Corriere della Sera.
JPTF 2008/04/14

Berlusconi: ‘a esquerda não tem gosto, até mesmo nas mulheres‘

Na campanha eleitoral para as eleições parlamentares Silvio Berlusconi está no centro de mais uma polémica, devido às suas características afirmações provocatórias e gaffes políticas. Desta vez terá dito que ‘a esquerda não tem gosto, até mesmo nas mulheres, pois quando olhava à volta no Parlamento, reparava que as deputadas de direita eram as ‘mais bonitas‘. Em perspectiva fica um final de campanha mais fashion e com ‘troca de mimos‘ entre os candidatos a Primeiro-Ministro. Já quanto ao governo, resta saber se a Itália não irá de mal a pior... Ver notícia da BBC.
JPTF 2008/04/10

O que é o multiculturalismo? (como ideologia e política pública) - Parte III

1. É conhecida a apetência sociológica portuguesa pelos produtos importados, sejam eles banais bens de consumo, ou produtos culturais sofisticados. Esta apetência leva, não invulgarmente, a tentar reproduzir modelos de outros países que, frequentemente, são apenas conhecidos de forma parcial e nas suas facetas mais atractivas, e se auto-justificam pela autoridade que lhe é conferida pelo facto de terem origem num país mais desenvolvido, associada à novidade da sua introdução em Portugal. Aparentemente é isto que se está a passar na propensão para importar o multiculturalismo. Todavia, isto não é apenas uma questão de moda, ou de apreciar a diversidade dos sabores gastronómicos com origem em várias partes do mundo (como na série de selos lançada pela European Postal Organisation PostEurop, em 2005). Por isso, valeria a pena olhar com mais atenção para a experiência canadiana. Esta, pelas razões anteriormente apontadas, é um caso de (in)sucesso muito mais complexo e problemático do que normalmente é apresentado. Para além disso, convém não perder de vista que a experiência histórica do Canadá como Estado soberano, e a matriz sociológica da sua população, pouco ou nada têm a ver com a portuguesa. Aliás, o país até esteve à beira de uma secessão do Quebeque, rejeitada por uma margem de 1,6% em referendo, o que mostra bem a dificuldade e/ou sua (in)capacidade em formar canadianos.

2. Por último, a experiência de outros países com tradições em políticas multiculturais, como, por exemplo, o Reino Unido, a Holanda ou a Austrália, poderia de facto ajudar-nos. E ajudar-nos especialmente a não cometer os mesmos erros. Efectivamente, em ambos, a partir dos anos 60 e 70 do século XX, foram implementadas políticas multiculturais que, em graus variáveis, fracassaram na integração cultural e na formação de cidadãos oriundos de grupos minoritários e de outras culturas. Nesses países já se percebeu que a utopia multicultural contemporânea - a utopia que sucedeu à velha utopia da sociedade sem classes -, se pode transformar, em pouco tempo, num verdadeiro «drama multicultural» (a expressão é do sociólogo holandês Paul Scheffer). Assim, actualmente estão já numa fase de reversão das suas políticas, como mostra bem Christian Joppke no seu artigo A Retirada do Multiculturalismo do Estado Liberal. E nós, será que vamos continuar a não aprender com as experiências dos outros e a cair nos mesmos erros que estes cometeram há trinta ou quarenta anos atrás?

OBS: Texto baseado no artigo originalmente publicado na revista Atlântico nº 10 (2006): 37-39
JPTF 2008/04/01

O que é o multiculturalismo? (como ideologia e política pública) - Parte II

1. Deve a um sikh ser permitido conduzir sem capacete, por ser uma prática cultural do seu grupo o uso habitual do turbante? Deve uma muçulmana poder fazer a chamada «circuncisão feminina», por ser esta a sua tradição religiosa e familiar? Deve um hindu estar isento dos feriados religiosos (cristãos) dos países ocidentais, podendo abrir, por exemplo, as suas lojas comerciais em dias em que está proibida a sua abertura por motivo de celebrações religiosas do Cristianismo? Devem os curricula escolares ser alterados em disciplinas como a História e/ou a Literatura, para dar «voz aos que não têm voz» e aumentar a auto-estima dos grupos minoritários em detrimento do estudo dos clássicos Dead White Males como William Shakespeare, que reflectem a cultura «eurocêntrica» (anglo-saxónica) da maioria branca, protestante e masculina (WASP) ? Vistas a partir de Portugal estas questões são não só novas como podem até parecer um pouco bizarras e fazer-nos sorrir. Todavia, estas são controvérsias sérias e bem conhecidas não só do debate teórico , como do cidadão comum nos países onde o multiculturalismo não é apenas uma palavra fashion para políticos ou comentadores. É que aí os efeitos das suas políticas são uma realidade bem palpável no dia a dia. Quais são esses efeitos? Vejamos o caso do Canadá.

2. Muitos dos principais «cultores» do multiculturalismo são de facto canadianos. Desde o seu «pai político» nos anos 60 do século XX, o senador de origem ucraniana, Paul Yuzyk, até aquele que o Wall Street Journal já designou como sendo o guru global do multiculturalismo, Will Kymlicka. Todavia, este país é um caso particularmente curioso pois o entusiasmo das elites políticas e académicas pelo multiculturalismo esfria-se bastante quando se chega à população, que supostamente seria a grande beneficiária dessas políticas. É o que mostra um livro cáustico sobre culto do multiculturalismo no Canadá, da autoria de Neil Bissoondath, um canadiano nascido em Trinidad. Entre outros dados que contrariam o discurso oficial de sucesso, este refere que, num inquérito feito em meados dos anos 90, a maioria dos canadianos acreditava que o «mosaico multicultural» não estava a funcionar; por sua vez, mais de 70% afirmavam que as políticas multiculturais deveriam dar lugar a uma «absorção cultural» do género do melting pot dos EUA. Para este escritor cujo livro se tornou rapidamente num best-seller, tendo ganho o Montador Award de 1994, o multiculturalismo é uma espécie de novo apartheid que cria «canadianos com hífen» (afro-canadianos, muçulmano-canadianos, sino-canadianos, russo-canadianos hispano-canadianos, etc.) e não apenas «canadianos» tendo um efeito oposto ao proclamado oficialmente: afasta as minorais da cultura dominante levando-as ao ghetto cultural, o que lhes diminui as possibilidades de integração e de sucesso económico e social.

3. Ainda no Canadá, em 2004/2005 diversos movimentos conservadores e islamistas tentaram a criação de tribunais que aplicariam a Xária (Sharia) – a lei islâmica –, para as questões de família entre muçulmanos na área de Toronto (ver o filme Sharia in Canada, dirigido por Dominique Cardona e produzido pelo National Film Board of Canada). Essa tentativa evidenciou a fragilidade das políticas multiculturais canadianas e a ‘janela de oportunidade‘ que estas representam para os movimentos que têm por objectivo a (re)islamização da sociedade. Foi à enérgica acção de uma advogada canadiana, nascida no Irão, Homa Harjomand, activista dos direitos humanos e das mulheres que, em grande parte, se deve o fracasso dos ‘tribunais xária‘. Vale a pena destacar aqui um excerto da sua fortíssima reacção de indignação contra as políticas multiculturais e o relativismo cultural que as suporta, tão ao gosto das elites canadianas e ocidentais: «Em nome do ‘respeito pelo multiculturalismo‘ e das vergonhosas ideias do relativismo cultural que deixam as pessoas sujeitas ao arbítrio da sua própria cultura, os Estados deixaram as portas amplamente abertas para as religiões e aderentes de antigas tradições promoverem escolas religiosas e centros; para legalizar casamentos arranjados e forçados; para segregar rapazes a raparigas com idades muito novas na escola, nos autocarros escolares e nos recreios; para impedir as raparigas de obterem iguais oportunidades em todos os aspectos das suas vidas; ver mas ignorar os homicídios de honra e muitas outras práticas… Todas estas práticas desumanas acontecem também no Ocidente.»

OBS: Texto baseado no artigo originalmente publicado na revista Atlântico nº 10 (2006): 37-39
JPTF 31/03/2008

O que é o multiculturalismo? (como ideologia e política pública) - Parte I

1. A palavra «multiculturalismo» é ambígua e tem pelo menos dois sentidos diferentes: i) um sentido descritivo, onde se refere a um facto da vida humana e social, exprimindo a diversidade cultural étnica, religiosa que se pode ver no tecido social, ou seja, um certo cosmopolitismo que actualmente é fácil de observar em qualquer grande cidade da Europa e da América do Norte; ii) um sentido prescritivo, onde designa as políticas de reconhecimento de identidade e de «cidadania diferenciada» que os poderes públicos devem pôr em prática, em nome dos grupos minoritários. Importa sublinhar que enquanto a maior parte da opinião pública, pelo menos em Portugal, interpreta o discurso do multiculturalismo no sentido descritivo do conceito, o que está em causa neste debate é essencialmente o sentido prescritivo do mesmo. Isto naturalmente leva-nos à questão das já referidas políticas de reconhecimento de identidade e/ou de «cidadania diferenciada», que os defensores do multiculturalismo sustentam como sendo a «boa» orientação política e fundamentam em princípios democráticos e em valores morais e de justiça social, argumentando com «casos de sucesso» como o do Canadá. Mas, visto que se trata de políticas públicas, que ideias e/ou ideologias prescrevem essas políticas? Para respondermos a este questão, vamos efectuar uma breve referência ao debate teórico sobre o multiculturalismo no universo cultural anglo-saxónico, e às «guerras de cultura» que este alimenta.

2. Se é claro que o multiculturalismo, como política pública, é um produto cultural que está associado, em graus variáveis, aos chamados países anglo-saxónicos (Canadá, Austrália, Nova Zelândia, Reino Unido e EUA) – embora tenha também raízes noutros Estados como a Holanda – o que já é menos claro é saber como se chegou à ideia da necessidade de políticas públicas multiculturais, bem como saber quais são as concepções ideológicas que sustentam essas políticas. Na imensa literatura teórica que existe na América do Norte sobre este assunto, um dos poucos pontos consensuais é que o multiculturalismo – pelo menos na sua versão mais extrema –, é um produto daquilo que podemos designar como «marxismo cultural» por falta de uma designação mais rigorosa. De facto, na sua origem encontram-se os Estudos Culturais britânicos da «Escola de Birmingham», desenvolvidos a partir dos anos 50 do século XX, os quais têm duas grandes fontes de inspiração. Uma primeira está ligada aos trabalhos do revolucionário e fundador do Partido Comunista italiano dos anos 20 e 30, Antonio Gramsci. Nos seus «cadernos da prisão», Gramsci desenvolveu a ideia que as «inevitáveis» revoluções comunistas anunciadas por Karl Marx e Friedrich Engels não ocorreram devido à «hegemonia cultural» da burguesia, a qual levou a que as classes trabalhadoras e os oprimidos se identificassem com o seus valores impedindo a revolução. Então, impunha-se prosseguir uma nova estratégia: minar a hegemonia cultural burguesa, deslocando o combate (que já se anunciava perdido) do terreno da economia para o mais prometedor terreno da cultura. Não é por acaso que os neo-gramscianos procuram criar «trincheiras de resistência» nas disciplinas culturais (Estudos Culturais, Literatura, Antropologia, Sociologia, Comunicação Social, Ciências da Educação, etc.).

3. Mas uma outra fonte de inspiração alimenta também o multiculturalismo. Esta encontra-se nos trabalhos dos pensadores marxistas não-ortodoxos (ou seja, não alinhados pela doutrina oficial dos partidos comunistas de influência soviética) da chamada «Escola de Frankfurt» (Walter Benjamim, Theodor Adorno, etc.) e na sua crítica de índole cultural à sociedade capitalista. Esta linha teórica foi outra proveitosa fonte de inspiração para os Estudos Culturais britânicos e para muitas das posteriores inovações da teoria social. Actualmente são os continuadores destas linhas de pensamento – que agora não se auto-designam habitualmente como marxistas –, que pretendem justificar com a sua «autoridade científica» e promover junto dos decisores políticos estaduais a necessidade e as virtudes morais do multiculturalismo. Subjacente a esta argumentação, está, sobretudo, o argumento da impossível neutralidade do estado liberal face à diversidade cultural e a consequente opressão que resulta dessa impossibilidade de neutralidade cultural, para os diferentes grupos minoritários. Nesta visão, é lugar comum afirmar-se que «todas as culturas têm igual valor» merecendo por isso igual tratamento e respeito, não havendo, então, qualquer motivo para valorizar umas em detrimento das outras. Outra ideia em que assenta este argumentário é a da impossibilidade de uma verdade objectiva, de tipo transcultural, ou seja, de uma verdade comum às diferentes culturas. Como se pode já imaginar, esta ideia leva facilmente a um relativismo cultural extremo a que os seus defensores chamam a «incomensurabilidade» das diferentes culturas.

OBS: Texto baseado no artigo originalmente publicado na revista Atlântico nº 10 (2006): 37-39
JPTF 2008/03/30