Cinco anos após o início da crise do subprime financeiro de 2007, EUA produto interno bruto per capita continua abaixo de seu nível inicial. O desemprego, embora abaixo de seu pico, ainda é cerca de 8 por cento. Mais do que a recuperação em forma de V que é típico de recessões mais do pós-guerra, este exibiu crescimento lento e hesitante.
Este desempenho decepcionante não deveria ser surpreendente. Temos apresentado evidências de que as recessões associadas às crises bancárias sistêmicas tendem a ser profunda e prolongada e que este padrão é evidente em toda história e países. Pesquisa acadêmica subseqüente usando diferentes abordagens e amostras encontrou resultados semelhantes.
Recentemente, no entanto, algumas op-ed escritores têm argumentado que, de fato, os EUA é "diferente" e que as comparações internacionais não são relevantes por causa de profundas diferenças institucionais de um país para outro. Alguns destes autores , incluindo Kevin Hassett , Glenn Hubbard e John Taylor - que são conselheiros para o candidato presidencial republicano, Mitt Romney - assim como Michael Bordo, que apóia o candidato, enfatizaram que os EUA também é "diferente" em que suas recuperações de recessões associadas a crises financeiras têm sido rápido e forte. Sua interpretação é, pelo menos em parte, com base em um estudo de 2012 por Bordo e Haubrich Joseph, que examina a questão para os EUA desde 1880.
They might well have expected that when fascism began taking root here, it would arise at a time of a national leadership of galvanizing charisma and sweeping, powerfully orchestrated modes of action.
But that would have been much too obvious to deny. And it would take denial, inertia, selective memory, a sense that things – bad as they are - can go on like this indefinitely, for fascism to be able gain its foothold in a country founded in its very blood trail.
In fact, it has taken the most dysfunctional, the most rudderless government Israel has ever known, to make moderates uncomfortably aware of the countless but largely cosmetized ways in which the right in Israel and its supporters abroad have come to plant and nurture the seeds of fascism.
Wrote Boaz Okun, the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronot's legal affairs commentator and a retired Israeli judge, of Israel's ban on Noam Chomsky: "The decision to shut up Professor Chomsky is a decision to shut down freedom in the state of Israel.
"I'm not speaking of the stupidity of supplying ammunition to those who claim that Israel is fascist," Okun wrote, "rather, of our fear that we may actually be turning that way."
At the weekend, Israeli police riot troops waded into a thoroughly non-violent sit-in near the entrance to this East Jerusalem settlement zone, where Palestinian residents were expelled by Israeli court order, to allow their homes to be taken over by Jews.
What was curious here was not the neck-wrenching brutality of the Yasam riot police in their gunmetal gray uniforms, bristling with assault rifles, clubs, tear gas and helmets, arrayed against the demonstrators, most of of them Israeli Jews, some of them well past retirement age.
What was surprising was not the fact that several burly officers, seeing a young Reshet Bet (Israel State Radio news) reporter interviewing one of the seated demonstrators, his microphone clearly and unmistakably marked, jumped him and dragged him away in a headlock to a police custody van.
In the end, what was peculiar was that the police seemed so entirely bewildered, so completely lacking in clear orders, left on their own to decide how to proceed in an arena of hair-trigger sensitivity. Fascism with a confused face.
Why should we be concerned by any of this? Perhaps because we have made our peace with a number of factors that can turn a society toward fascism as a solution.
1. Losing a War.
We've lost two in the space of less than three years. Our targets, Hezbollah and Hamas, are better armed and entrenched than ever. Our strategic and diplomatic standing is in decline. Iran and Syria are ascendant. And there is abundant reason to suspect that the Gaza War, a major factor in the loss of our international standing, may have been altogether avoidable, the huge civilian death toll indefensible and unconscionable. This has, in turn, led to
2. International quarantine, a sense of being scapegoated, and a search for an internal fifth column.
3. A radical redefinition of positive values.
Look no further than the name of Jerusalem's obscene Museum of Tolerance project.
4. Olfactory fatigue
We have grown desensitized to the consequences of actively denying basic staples and construction supplies to 1.5 million people in Gaza, many of them still waiting to rebuild homes we destroyed.
We have grown inured to the appropriation of Palestinian-owned West Bank land, to abusive treatment of law-abiding Palestinians at checkpoints, to the ill-treatment and summary expulsion of foreign workers, to racist, anti-democratic and, yes, fascistic rulings by extreme rightist rabbis, especially some of those holding official positions in the West Bank.
5. Fascism by rubber stamp.
"There are a million reasons why someone would be denied entry into Israel,” Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said Monday, when asked about the ministry’s border policies in the wake of the Chomsky ban.
“There may be a million reasons, but try to find a single criterion for entry refusal and you’ll hit a blank wall,” said Association for Civil Rights in Israel attorney Oded Feller. "The Interior Ministry simply doesn’t publish them, despite a court ruling that ordered them to do so.”
6. The sense that despite everything, all is well.
There will be those who argue that the fact that I, or my Haaretz colleagues, are allowed to publish what we do, is proof that there is no fascism here, nor evidence of a police state.
The fact is that were we not Israeli Jews, and part of an establishment institution, any of us could find ourselves tossed out on the same pavement, and with the same lack of due process and due explanation, as Noam Chomsky.
7. The sense that there is a war on now, when there isn't.
8. Selective enforcement of court rulings. Routine defiance of same, in particular by radical settlers
9. The 180-degree untruth that officials allow Israeli and Jerusalem Arabs to do what they want, while cracking down on their Jewish neighbors.
10. Equating criticism of the government with favoring the destruction of Israel.
This has become increasingly felt beyond Israel's borders. In San Francisco, the canary in the coal mine of free discourse within the Jewish community, the Jewish Federation [JCF] recently revised and tightened the terms under which it agrees to grant funds to organizations.
"The JCF does not fund organizations that through their mission, activities or partnerships … advocate for, or endorse, undermining the legitimacy of Israel as a secure independent, democratic Jewish state, including through participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in whole or in part."
The guidelines go on to state that "Presentations by organizations or individuals that are critical of particular Israeli government policies but are supportive of Israel’s right to exist as a secure independent Jewish democratic state" are "generally in accord with the policy statement," but "early JCRC [Jewish Community Relations Council] consultation is strongly encouraged and the programming should be presented within an overall program strategy that is consistent with JCF’s core values."
In another troubling sign, Rabbi Michael Lerner of Berkeley, long a vocal supporter of a two-state solution, became the object of death threats and vandalism of his house in Berkeley, California. Rabbi Lerner was also targeted in the press by Alan Dershowitz, who described him as the worst of the "rabbis of Hamas."
Can all this have spread this far, this fast? Because of Israel, have Bay Area Jews who do not believe in a specifically Jewish state, now forfeited their right to be part of the Jewish community? Have Jews who love Israel but are seen as too critical, or who support a boycott to make their criticisms manifest, been effectively excommunicated?
Abstract The rise of bloggers raises the vexing question of why blogs have any influence
at all, given their relatively low readership and lack of central organization. We argue that
to answer this question we need to focus on two key factors—the unequal distribution of
readers across weblogs, and the relatively high readership of blogs among journalists and
other political elites. The unequal distribution of readership, combined with internal norms
and linking practices allows interesting news and opinions to rise to the “top” of the blogosphere,
and thus to the attention of elite actors, whose understanding of politics may be
changed by frames adopted from the blogosphere.
Re: Teoria, teoricos, mundo
Enviado: Sex Jul 09, 2010 12:05 am
por marcelo l.
Novo cabeça pensante dos EUA para assuntos militares! Gen. James Mattis
"Fiasco"
BY THOMAS E. RICKS
By the winter of 2003-04, the Marine Corps was ordered to head back to Iraq to lend a hand. Its units would replace the Army in one of the toughest parts of the country, al Anbar province, in the western desert, and dominated by the hostile towns of Fallujah and Ramadi.
The Marines were determined to operate differently than the Army had there, as a host of units had rotated through over the summer and fall of 2003. The Corps has long had a different outlook and culture than the Army. The smaller, infantry-oriented Corps tends to see war as a matter of the spirit; in other words, it believes less in technology and machinery and more in the human factors — blood, sweat, love, hate and faith — as the decisive factors in combat. This embrace of the elemental nature of war runs from bottom to top: Marine boot camp indoctrinates recruits into a culture comfortable with killing the enemy, and Marine generals don't shy away from using the word "kill" in interviews about their line of work.
Through much of late 2003 the Marine Corps had watched Army operations in Iraq with growing discomfort. With its roots in occupying Haiti and fighting banana wars in Central America, the Corps quietly thought it had a better feel for how to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign. Some officers said privately that they thought the Army had been unnecessarily heavy-handed in Iraq, firing artillery shells from big bases and taking hostages when it should have been living among the people. Most of this discussion occurred far from public view, but it occasionally surfaced, as when Lt. Col. Carl E. Mundy III, who had commanded a Marine battalion in Iraq in the summer of 2003, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times later that year scornfully contrasting the Marine success in pacifying south-central Iraq with the war the Army found itself waging further north in the Sunni Triangle. When the Marines returned to Iraq, Mundy promised, they would follow a counterinsurgency approach that "will stand in contrast to the new, get-tough strategy adopted by American forces in the Sunni Triangle."
Unusually for a lieutenant colonel, Mundy, himself the son of a Marine commandant, was specifically critical of a general: in this case, the Army's Gen. [Raymond T.] Odierno and the tactics he had employed with the 4th Infantry Division around Tikrit. "We need to abandon techniques like surrounding villages with barbed wire and rounding up relatives of guerrillas," he wrote. Mundy was referring to Lt. Col. Steve Russell, a battalion commander in the 4th ID who had encircled the village of Auja, home of many of Saddam's relatives, with concertina wire and made military-age males who wanted to come or go show an identity card. "The insurgents should not be allowed to swim among the population as a whole," Russell said. "What we elected to do was make Auja a fishbowl so we could see who was swimming inside." Like the toy car controller Russell had used to detonate roadside bombs, the fencing of Auja showed that Russell was a battlefield innovator, seeking new solutions to the problems he encountered in Iraq. In one of his letters home, he said he was influenced in part by French tactics in Algeria. He apparently didn't subscribe to the judgment of historians that such tactics won the battles for the French at the cost of losing the war.
Kicking in doors, knocking down buildings, burning orchards and firing artillery into civilian neighborhoods was bound to be counterproductive in the long run, Mundy warned: "The continued use of such hard-nosed tactics only risks further erosion of trust." He simply was making public what more senior Marines long had been saying behind closed doors. In December, Lt. Gen. James Conway, who would be the senior Marine going back into Iraq, told the New York Times that he didn't plan to use airstrikes or artillery attacks against insurgents. "That will not be our method of operation," he said.
The Marines thought they could use in the Sunni Triangle the tactics they had employed effectively in the south. "Our expectations were pretty high that we would be successful using our stability operations that we had trained towards," Col. [John A.] Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine regiment. "We had just come out of the southern region, south of Baghdad — Hillah, Diwaniyah, Karbala and Najaf — and we had had tremendous success. Governments were blossoming, money was being spent in reconstruction efforts. So the perception that we had was, this works, we can actually get there. We can work with the locals. Â. [A]ll of these things led us to believe that our techniques and our procedures were pretty effective and we could use them in al Anbar."
MARINE MAJOR GENERAL JAMES MATTIS
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet," was one of the rules Maj. Gen. James Mattis gave his Marines to live by in Iraq. Mattis, the commander of the 1st Marine Division, began in the winter of 2003-04 to train his troops to operate differently from the Army when they returned to Iraq. Mattis was unusual in many ways, most notably in being one of the more intense intellectuals in the U.S. military. "He is one of the most urbane and polished men I have known," said retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, himself a Ph.D. in history. "He can quote Homer as well as Sun Tzu." (Once possessed of a huge personal library, Mattis gave away many thousands of books to Marine and local libraries, and in late 2005 estimated that he had reduced his load to about 1,000 volumes.) When he deploys Mattis always packs the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman who was both a Stoic philosopher and an emperor. "It allows me to distance myself from the here and now," and to discern the connection to the eternal verities of warfare, he explained. Mattis also objected to the Rumsfeld Pentagon's emphasis on "net-centric" warfare built around the movement of data. "Computers by their nature are isolating. They build walls. The nature of war is immutable: You need trust and connection." He dismissed the net-centric emphasis as "a Marxian view — it ignores the spiritual."
With his troops he tended to be earthier. "The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event," he told 200 Marines at a one session in al Asad. "That said, there are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot. There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim. Â. It's really a hell of a lot of fun. You're gonna have a blast out here!" He finished in Pattonesque fashion: "I feel sorry for every son of a bitch that doesn't get to serve with you."
Small, slight and bespectacled, Mattis didn't fit the Hollywood image of the fire-breathing Marine commander. But retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, himself a widely respected officer, commented, "I think he's the finest combat leader we've produced since Korea." Mattis genuinely seemed to thrive on the noise and confusion of battle. He adopted "Chaos" as his call sign when he took the Marines into southern Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 and kept it when he led the Marine part of the invasion force for Iraq in the spring of 2003. After the invasion he sent home his tanks and artillery pieces and went to Iraqi military leaders in each area his troops were in. "I come in peace," Mattis recalled telling them. "I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all."
Just before Christmas 2003 in California, preparing to take his troops back into Iraq, where they would relieve the 82nd Airborne in al Anbar province, he held a two-day meeting of his staff and commanders at Camp Pendleton to plan a different approach. Mattis's Marines would be culturally sensitive, the session decided. They wouldn't wear sunglasses when interacting with Iraqis, so there wouldn't be a barrier between them and the locals. They would learn a smattering of Arabic. They would even grow moustaches so they would look more like the locals. Marine intelligence analysts wouldn't overreact to clerics' Friday sermons blasting the occupiers. "Religious leaders are normally going to be critical publicly of the coalition," said a summary of the meeting's major points.
"Otherwise they will be seen as weak by their followers." Also, Marine commanders were warned to brace for Fridays, when Iraqis left the mosques "fired up."
To the degree possible, Marine operations would be comprehensible to Iraqis. Col. Toolan of the 1st Marines recalled: "Transparency was the name of the game. We knew we didn't know who to trust. So, go in with the mentality that we care, and we'll work with you." In a tactic that reached back to Marine "Combined Action Platoon" operations decades earlier in Vietnam, the plan called for small units of Marines to live among the people in many Sunni towns and villages to facilitate training of the Iraqi police and civil defense forces.
Don't get upset when a family lies to you about one of its members committing a crime, the Marine meeting advised, in an admonition unusual for an institution that places great value on truth-telling: "This is not an attempt to cover up, it is an attempt to save the honor the family. They know he did it. They just don't want to lose face. This is fine, you know the truth, let the family keep its honor intact." In an even more extraordinary conclusion, the Marine meeting called for an almost deferential approach to searching Iraqi houses. "If you knock at the door for a 'cordon and knock,' try not to look directly into the house when the door opens. If searching, be careful. Do not destroy possessions and furniture," and ask the leader of the household to open rooms and cupboards. Nor should that man be dishonored before his family. "If something is found, do not throw the leader of the house to the ground in front of his family," the meeting advised. "Give him some honor. Tell them he needs to explain to his wife and children that he is coming with you."
Most controversial, at least inside the U.S. military, were the steps the Marines chose to underscore to Iraqis that they weren't the U.S. Army. To emphasize to Iraqis that the Marines arriving in Fallujah and other centers of resistance were a new and different organization, the Marines planned to wear green camouflage uniforms and black Marine boots for their initial 45 days of patrolling, instead of the tan desert uniform worn by Army soldiers in Iraq. "The green uniforms will be one very visible difference and symbolically represent that break between the old and the new," said one Marine officer who attended the Pendleton discussion. It was important to do so, he continued, because of the counterproductive approach some Army divisions had taken in Iraq in 2003. "I'm appalled at the current heavy-handed use of air and artillery in Iraq. I don't believe there is any viable use for artillery or JDAMs [Joint Direct Attack Munitions, precision-guided bombs weighing 1,000 or 2,000 pounds] in the current environment." This officer, like many Marines, had concluded that, "success in a counterinsurgency environment is based on winning popular support, not on blowing up peoples' houses."
That view probably represented the most basic difference in the approach the Marines aimed to take when they returned to Iraq early in 2004. "At the end of the day it all boils down to whether you are fighting the insurgents or the insurgency," said one veteran Marine officer. "The Army, writ large — I exempt the 101st — has chosen to fight the insurgents and the Corps the insurgency." This is, he added, "the same argument we had in Vietnam." Mattis concluded the December meeting by saying that, "Both the insurgency and the military force are competing for the same thing: the support of the people." At the same time, he said, you have to kill the insurgents when you are confronted. "There is only one 'retirement plan' for terrorists."
This generally softer, more culturally sensitive approach, combined with a hard-nosed willingness to mix it up when necessary, got good reviews from some others. "The Marines are on to something here," said a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst with experience in Iraq.
"I like the Marine approach, and I think it'll succeed," said Lt. Col. David Poirier, the MP commander in Tikrit who had been appalled by some of the actions of Army soldiers, especially the 82nd Airborne, when he had operated in Fallujah earlier in 2003. "I believe that some of the insurgency is due to families acting out against American forces for deaths occurring as a result of collateral damage."
An Army major serving on the CPA staff who had studied Iraqi tribal issues also thought it was wise to try a new approach in Fallujah and the rest of al Anbar province. "I think this is a sound strategy and a good start to begin the reconciliation process," he said. His view was that the U.S. military had gotten off to an ugly start in that region on April 28, 2003, when the 82nd Airborne had fired into a crowd. "I am of the opinion that much of our trouble in the triangle is the result of the April incident in which 13 locals were killed by US forces. The tribal code demanded a restitution and reconciliation ritual, and lacking this ritual required vendetta. Â. I believe that the Marines may be able to break this cycle of violence with a fresh start."
But the express intention of the Marines to distinguish themselves from the Army drew angry responses from many others. Retired Army Col. Lloyd Matthews said he found this aspect of the Marine discussions distasteful. "It is hardly advisable in joint operations to denigrate the tactics of the sister service that preceded you in the trenches and to suggest that you are going to do a lot better," he said. "If one is going to do better than his predecessor, it is wiser to wait and let his success speak for itself rather than trumpeting it in advance." He was especially unhappy with the intention to wear a different uniform. "The green cammy phase is for no other purpose than to differentiate the lovable Marines now in town from those detestable Army ruffians who just left."
Matthews, a former editor of Parameters, the Army's premier professional journal, was also skeptical about whether the Marine "Combined Action Platoon" program would be viable in the hostile atmosphere of the Sunni Triangle. "First, CAPs work only when they operate in a broadly secure environment," he said. "They can't go up against a significant encroaching force. Second, they fragment your own force and consume manpower. Third, CAPs presuppose the availability of a reliable, loyal, ample local militia. That may become so. It is not so now." In fact, Matthews didn't know it, but that lack of dependable local forces was to become a major problem for the Marines in the spring of 2004.
Others warned the Marines were in for a rude surprise. Lt. Col. Gian Gentile, who served with the 4th Infantry Division in the area around Tikrit, commented at the same time, "Unfortunately, the Sunni Triangle is nothing like southern Iraq or the part of northern Iraq around Mosul. Â. I hope the Marines' velvet glove works, that it saves the lives of Marines and Iraqis, and leads to a stable and secure region. But I also fear that this approach, by dismissing the cultural and tactical differences in the Sunni Triangle, will ignore the hard-won gains of Army units over the past eight months."
An Army general who was experienced in Iraq privately applauded the Marines' intentions but quietly cautioned, "I don't think it will prove as easy as it briefs. Â. Some of this reflects a degree of intellectual smugness that might be warranted after, say, six successful months on the ground." He would prove clairvoyant.
THE MEDITATIONS OF GENERAL MATTIS
To prepare his officers mentally to go back into Iraq, Mattis had them read over 1,000 pages of material culled from 72 commentaries and news articles on insurgencies, sent out in three mass e-mails during the winter of 2003-04. "Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun," he wrote to a colleague on Nov. 20, 2003. "For all the '4th Generation of War' intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc., I must respectfully say, 'Not really': Alexander the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying — studying, vice just reading — the men who have gone before us. We have been fighting on this planet for 5,000 years and we should take advantage of their experience. 'Winging it' and filling body bags as we sort out what works reminds us of the moral dictates and the cost of competence in our profession."
Each selection in "the CG's Periodical Reading List for deployment" carried an explanation by Mattis of what he considered noteworthy in it. Battalion commanders were required to certify in writing that their subordinates had read and understood the material. "While learning from experience is good, learning from others' experiences is even better," Mattis wrote in his introductory comment. Again and again, the theme of the readings was that Iraq could be frustrating, difficult and complex, and that leaders needed to prepare their troops for that environment. The articles called for maintaining discipline, honing skills and having faith in each other—and warned of what can go wrong when soldiers lost hold of those fundamentals.
The first of the 72 selections was a magazine article titled, "The Tipping Point: How military occupations go sour," about mistakes the Israelis had committed in Lebanon. The second was a news story about the mistaken shooting by a U.S. soldier of the head of the U.S.-appointed municipal council in Sadr City. The third was about a similar incident involving the 82nd Airborne. On an article about the Army bringing charges against Lt. Col. [Allen B.] West, the battalion commander in the 4th ID who fired a weapon next to a detainee's ear, Mattis wrote, "this shows a commander who has lost his moral balance or has watched too many Hollywood movies. By our every act and statement, Marine leaders must set a legal, moral and ethical model that maintains traditional Marine Corps levels of discipline."
For another article, about the assassination of two Shiite politicians, he wrote, "Recall Beirut, my fine young men, and the absolute need for Iraqis to see the American military as impartial. We will be compassionate to all the innocent and deadly only to those who insist on violence, taking no 'sides' other than to destroy the enemy. We must act as a windbreak, behind which a struggling Iraq can get its act together."
He also sent out to his officers T.E. Lawrence's "27 Articles," a distillation of everything that eccentric but insightful British officer had learned about leading and advising Arabs in combat. Article 15 in particular would resonate: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good, perhaps, as you think it is." Also, Lawrence warned in Article 22, keep in mind that these people may actually more know about certain types of fighting than you do: "Unnumbered generations of tribal raids have taught them more about some parts of the business than we will ever know." Mattis's introduction to the Lawrence article wisely emphasized what some Marines had been neglecting: In returning to Iraq, the Marines would be operating in a Sunni area, an environment very different from the Shiite south.
Mattis hammered home the message in a series of face-to-face meetings with his troops. "The general talked to every Marine in the division at least three times, usually in battalion size," recalled Col. Clarke Lethin, Mattis's chief of operations. "He wanted to talk them through, and image them through, the issues they would face. He wanted to talk about morality on the battlefield, how to go through an ambush one day and have your buddy blown up, and then face Iraqis the next day." The message: Iraqis aren't your enemy, don't let the insurgents make you think that. The people are the prize.
THE MARINES VS. AL ANBAR
When Mattis arrived in Iraq, Maj. Gen. [Charles H.] Swannack, the 82nd Airborne's commander, told him he had three pressing concerns about the Marines' contemplated approach. First, he said, you guys need artillery. "After seeing how we got mortared and rocketed in the evenings, they decided to bring it," Swannack recalled. Second, he advised them to think twice about trying to institute the Marine "Combined Action Platoon" program that would put small units out in villages. "I told them that the CAP program wouldn't work, that al Anbar province wasn't ready for it then, and maybe never, because they didn't want us downtown." Third, he vigorously objected to the Marine plan to wear their green Marine uniforms and black boots to distinguish themselves from the 82nd Airborne troops who had been in the area. "I told him that was a personal affront to me, and that a relief should be seamless," Swannack said.
Mattis deferred to Swannack on the uniform issue, not wanting to cause a breach. "What I was trying to do was break the cycle of violence. He took it personally. I appreciated his candor."
Mattis also maintained that he wasn't replicating the Vietnam-era CAP program, but adapting it — successfully, it in his view — to local cultural conditions. Each battalion would have one platoon that was given a 30-day course in Arab customs and language, and that unit in turn could help teach its company, and then the company could affect the entire battalion.
Swannack thought he had done well in Fallujah. "I think Fallujah was being managed appropriately, with surgical operations based on precise intelligence," he said.
Yet elsewhere in the U.S. military there was a growing belief that the 82nd Airborne had lost control of the city. [U.S. Central Command commander Gen. John] Abizaid and [commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq Lt. Gen. Ricardo S.] Sanchez had been pressuring Swannack to do more about Fallujah, said an Army officer familiar with those exchanges.
Mattis had a plan to handle the city. "I knew Fallujah would be tough," he recalled. But he thought he could prevail through a combining high-profile infrastructure projects, especially on electricity and water, with low-profile raids against specific individuals. "We were going to use the softer forms, focus on lights and water — and go in with small teams to kill the bad guys at night." But as it turned out, he would never get the chance to implement this approach. Instead, Fallujah went off the tracks almost immediately. In the view of some Marine officers, what would follow was a tragedy, beginning with a mistake and followed by death and retribution. Mattis's plan for Fallujah would become for the Corps' commanders, a great lost opportunity, yet another of the many roads not taken in Iraq.
Marine commanders found that their broader plan for the pacification of Anbar province would be undercut by the chronic lack of troops. Col. Toolan, commander of the 1st Marines, recalled that he had four basic missions: to control major supply routes, develop Iraqi security forces, eliminate insurgent sanctuaries and create jobs. "The challenge was, when we controlled the MSRs [main supply routes] and developed the ISF, there was no one left to eliminate sanctuaries or create jobs," Toolan recalled. "So it was like whack-a-mole." And so, within weeks of arriving, the Marine Corps, which had wanted to go back into Iraq to show how to work better with the people, would wind up instead involved in some of the most savage fighting U.S. troops had experienced in decades.
E no youtube existe a excelente série Conversations with History:
Um link ao acaso
Re: Teoria, teoricos, mundo
Enviado: Sáb Jul 10, 2010 1:05 am
por Don Pascual
marcelo l. escreveu:Eric Hobsbawn
Ah, Hobsbawn! Como eu queria esganar esse cara! Não tem como fazer uma graduação em História sem ler as "Eras" desse cara, é um classico contemporaneo... apesar de que pode-se notar um certo viés militante em suas obras, mas isso era de se esperar de alguêm que viveu em boa aprte do periodo que ele escreve, e tinha posições politicas bem definidas, portanto não chega a ser um demerito.
Re: Teoria, teoricos, mundo
Enviado: Sáb Jul 10, 2010 5:22 pm
por marcelo l.
Dizem que Hobsbawn além de simpático, suas palestras no Brasil eram em um espanhol muito agradável...eu pensava que na História se lia muito E.P. Thompson...
Por sinal, entre teoricos merece essa mulher...a entrevista tem pontos teóricos muito interessantes...
Texto do entrevistador James Zogby sobre a entrevista.
On my weekly television show Viewpoint with James Zogby I hosted PLO Executive Committee member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi to critique the July 6th White House meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dr. Ashrawi's observations are important and I wanted to share them.
In discussing Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks, Ashrawi warned that moving to direct talks when no progress has been made will lead to the Palestinian national leadership's loss of credibility with its own constituents. Responding to the question of whether President Abbas would ultimately be willing to engage in direct talks under present conditions if pressed by President Obama, Ashrawi noted:
President Obama has to understand you can push too far. You can really push people over the edge. They pay attention to Israeli democracy and public opinion and coalition requirements but they do not pay attention to the fact that the Palestinians have a very vibrant and active democracy and very active and outspoken public opinion, and they have to understand president Abbas does not have a free hand to just make unilateral single decisions like that in a vacuum...you keep pushing one person -- and I say, don't make the P.L.O. and national leadership commit political suicide. You cannot push them beyond their abilities and to lose their credibility with their own constituency. So if you need a leadership with credibility, with the ability to deliver, you cannot undermine them.
Ashrawi noted that there was a disconnect between public discourse on the talks where progress is often reported, and the reality of the talks where she said there was no progress whatsoever. "Perceptions have become much more important than substance," said Ashrawi, attributing the discord between the rhetoric and reality of the proximity talks to domestic considerations in the US and Israel, which coincided in favor of presenting an image of reconciliation and progress when none really existed"
Netanyahu wants to present his public, his coalition, with the fact that he has mended fences, that he can speak to Americans, and that he's not a liability because people saw him as a liability when it came to American-Israeli relations. Obama needs to show that he has mended fences also because of the upcoming elections...and because he's under a lot of pressure to show that he's quite willing to restore Israel to its special status position with the U.S.
Left out of this equation are the Palestinians, whose interests lie in actual progress on the ground and not the mere public image of progress. Palestinian reluctance to engage in direct talks under current conditions stems from their experience with the failed peace process of the 1990s, where the negotiations were a mere symbolic exercise which Israel used to buy time while it expanded settlements and unilaterally reshaped the facts on the ground. According to Ashrawi:
[The Palestinian] position is not just an emotional reaction, it's a well thought out position saying we've talked forever and they've built settlements forever. We negotiated in good faith and what they did was negate negotiations and destroy the two-state solution on the ground. So the question is one of urgency, and one of intervention to curb Israeli behavior. It's not a question of just talks.
Today, the Palestinians find themselves in a similar position, under pressure to negotiate while Israel continues imposing its facts on the ground with no regard for the substance of the negotiations. "The situation is extremely critical," said Ashrawi, "Palestinian public opinion is highly inflamed, and it's very intelligent, very well informed, and very critical... Palestinians judge things by what happens on the ground and they see no progress whatsoever."
Ashrawi explained that the talks are not an end in and of themselves, but are means to a just and lasting solution; and unless the Obama administration demonstrates the political will to curb Israeli policies, the talks will likely face the same failure of previous talks and for the same reason.
Re: Teoria, teoricos, mundo
Enviado: Sáb Jul 10, 2010 5:48 pm
por marcelo l.
Do lado israelense vale esse autor que uso muito para pensar no que ocorre no OM...Shir Hever
Paul Jay: Então, conversando com as pessoas em Israel, uma coisa que eu ouço constantemente é a luta aqui é sobre a identidade nacional, sobre a defesa do Estado judeu. Eu não ouvi muito sobre a economia de Israel, ou a economia de ocupação. Assim como a identidade nacional se relaciona com a economia aqui?
Shir Hever: Bem, a realidade económica de Israel, naturalmente, desempenha um papel em cada aspecto da existência de Israel - na política, na sociedade, e, naturalmente, também em questões de identidade também. A ocupação dos territórios palestinianos Israel define a economia de um modo geral. Cerca de dois terços de sua história Israel, tem sido uma potência ocupante, controlando territórios palestinos. Mas mesmo antes que a ocupação, Israel criou um sistema muito particular de controle econômico que se destina a promover a idéia de um Estado judeu. O Estado judeu não é apenas uma ideia cultural, não é meramente uma idéia simbólica, é uma realidade material que é projetado para redistribuir a riqueza, a fim de chamar tantos judeus quanto possível a esta área e para manter um controle sustentável da população judaica um pedaço de terra que é, por natureza, bi-nacional.
Paul Jay: Agora, em termos de economia de Israel, o percentual em cima controla a maior parte da economia de Israel em termos de propriedade?
Shir Hever: Israel é muito centralizado em termos de capital, muito mais do que a maioria das economias desenvolvidas do mundo. Cerca de 18 famílias em Israel controlar cerca de 60 por cento do valor do patrimônio de todas as empresas em Israel. Portanto, é concentrado nas mãos de 18 famílias. Claro, existem outras pessoas ricas em Israel, que controlam mais de 40 por cento do que outros.
Paul Jay: Então o que estamos falando? Que tipo de coisas que eles controlam, em termos daquilo que constitui o grosso da economia de Israel e à propriedade?
Shir Hever: A economia israelense tem um setor bancário muito forte e setor financeiro, que inclui também as companhias de seguros, de modo que uma parte muito grande da economia israelense. Mas Israel também é um dos maiores exportadores mundiais de diamantes, Israel é um dos maiores exportadores mundiais de fertilizantes químicos, e há uma grande quantidade de indústrias de alta tecnologia. Muito do que a indústria de alta tecnologia realmente os laços com um grande e famoso indústria muito em Israel, que é o comércio de armas, a indústria de armas. Uma boa parte da tecnologia de desenvolvimento de alta em Israel é realmente o que é conhecido como tecnologia de segurança interna. E assim, muitas empresas, especialmente as empresas criadas por ex-oficiais militares, especializados no desenvolvimento de produtos de segurança interna projetada para controlar os indivíduos e para ajudar os governos ou corporações -.
Paul Jay: O que sabemos, foram vendidos no passado a África do Sul, Colômbia, Honduras.
Shir Hever: Yeah. Bem, até o ano de 2000, Israel foi sobre o décimo maior exportador de armas do mundo, mas a quarta maior exportador de armas do mundo em desenvolvimento, porque Israel estava disposto a vender armas aos clientes, aos clientes que outros países estavam relutantes em vender a , tais como a África do Sul durante o apartheid e assim por diante. Mas depois de 11 de setembro, após os atentados, houve uma famosa citação de Benjamin Netanyahu, que atualmente é primeiro-ministro de Israel. Ele disse que esses ataques são bons para Israel, eles mostram ao mundo que Israel luta contra o terrorismo - ou lutando contra o Islam, basicamente - é uma coisa boa.
Paul Jay: Então, essas 18 famílias, estamos falando de famílias que são bilionários e, em seguida, em termos de - entre as famílias - a riqueza que tem sido acumulada. Em termos do tamanho das fortunas em uma escala global, são importantes fortunas?
Shir Hever: Bem, eles são significativos nesses setores. No sector dos diamantes e do setor de armas e no setor de fertilizantes Israel é um jogador global. No setor de alta tecnologia não muito, mas definitivamente no sector da segurança interna.
Paul Jay: Então, então, essas famílias, em termos da política israelense, partidos políticos, e os vários governos que vêm e vão, são a divisão das famílias? Ou eles estão envolvidos em todas as partes?
Shir Hever: Bem, todos os partidos sionistas em Israel - a partir da chamada esquerda sionista assim ou os partidos liberais e todo o caminho para a extrema-direita, quase partidos fascistas - são, na verdade quase indistinguíveis uns dos outros. E os controladores, as famílias ricas sabe disso. Eles contribuem com cerca igualmente aos partidos centristas, ou o chamado centrista partes assim, porque eles sabem que isso realmente não importa se vai ser Likud ou do trabalho ou Kadima. Estas partes têm a mesma agenda, a mesma estratégia, e da mesma plataforma.
Paul Jay: Agora, até que ponto a luta com os palestinos tomam a atenção fora das 18 famílias? Ou como são visíveis as 18 famílias em termos de percepção popular?
Shir Hever: Bem, eles são visíveis. Acho que as pessoas sabem de certa forma que existem estas pessoas que possuem as empresas que pagam o dinheiro a cada dia. Você sabe que o seu telefone celular vem de uma grande e poderosa empresa muito - você vê os seus sinais a cada dia. E assim eles sabem sobre essas empresas. Muitas pessoas também sabem até os nomes dos donos dessas empresas. Mas quando você quer amarrá-lo para a luta com os palestinos, então, naturalmente, que desempenha um papel através de diferentes formas. Você sugeriu que talvez a luta com os palestinos ajudou a chamar a atenção do capital centralizado. No ano de 2002, o presidente da Associação dos Fabricantes de Israel disse que por causa da luta com os palestinos, por causa da intifada, os israelenses têm que aprender que não pode esperar um aumento do salário mínimo, ou talvez até mesmo eles devem esperar um diminuição no salário mínimo, o que significa que as restrições de segurança são usados como justificativa para reprimir a luta social.
Paul Jay: Até 18 famílias, disse, 60 por cento da capitalização própria em Israel?
Shir Hever: Yeah.
Paul Jay: Agora, em termos de programas sociais em geral, rede de segurança social, quanto a redistribuição ocorre entre os cidadãos de Israel?
Shir Hever: Bem, Israel é o país mais desigual no mundo desenvolvido, atrás apenas dos Estados Unidos. No ano de 2009, Israel ignorada México pela primeira vez, com a mais desigual do que o México, fazendo com que Israel de fato um dos países mais desiguais do mundo. E isso é porque, enquanto a maioria dos países do mundo desenvolvido gastar alguns dos seus orçamentos nos esforços de redistribuição, como saúde, desemprego, infra-estrutura, criando empregos, esse tipo de coisa, Israel realmente gasta cerca de 75 por cento menos, em comparação com o rácio a maioria destes países, com os países da OCDE, e que é porque Israel gasta tanto em matéria de segurança, dos militares.
Paul Jay: Bem, quanto é porque eles gastam tanto em matéria de segurança, e quanto é devido ao acúmulo de 18 famílias? Eu acho que, deixe-me fazer a pergunta para o outro lado: como são tributados a 18 famílias?
Shir Hever: Bem, eles são um pouco menos tributados do que na maioria dos países desenvolvidos, principalmente porque Israel criou um sistema de lacunas que permitem, sobretudo, rico povo judeu ao redor do mundo para trazer a sua propriedade para Israel, sem fazer perguntas. Então, tem havido muitos casos de milionários judeus muito próximos a Israel com sua propriedade, dizendo que eles estão fazendo um ato sionista, mas na verdade não havia ações permanentes contra eles em outros países. Israel não vai extraditá-los. . . . E essa foi uma das razões que Israel foi capaz de desenhar um monte de capital nas últimas duas décadas.
Paul Jay: Portanto, se grande concentração da propriedade e da riqueza no nível superior, não que a tributação não muito, rede de segurança social muito grande - em que medida há um movimento social exigindo mais justiça econômica para os israelenses?
Shir Hever: Bem, Israel historicamente teve um forte movimento social muito e era considerado um estado quase socialista. Em 1965, houve um levantamento de todos os países do mundo em termos de igualdade, e Israel foi classificada entre os Países Baixos e Finlândia - um dos países mais igual no mundo. Hoje, como eu disse antes, Israel é um dos países mais desiguais do mundo. Então algo aconteceu.
Paul Jay: Okay. Então, o próximo segmento de nossa entrevista, vamos descobrir o que aconteceu.
Shir Hever é um economista do Informação Alternativa Center e autor de A Economia Política do de ocupação de Israel (Pluto Press, agosto 2010). Este vídeo foi lançado pela News Real em 06 de julho de 2010. O texto acima é uma parcial transcrição editada da a entrevista.
Re: Teoria, teoricos, mundo
Enviado: Dom Jul 11, 2010 12:52 am
por Don Pascual
marcelo l. escreveu:Dizem que Hobsbawn além de simpático, suas palestras no Brasil eram em um espanhol muito agradável...eu pensava que na História se lia muito E.P. Thompson...
Thompson também. Na verdade os marxistas da "new left" inglesa são muito lidos (Hobsbawn, Lowy, Thompson, Anderson, entre outros). Os Annales franceses também, são classicos (Bloch, Febvre, Braudel, Le Goff, etc.). Fernand Braudel, inclusive, foi professor na USP, ajudando a organizar a Universidade, que tinha acabado de ser criada.
Re: Teoria, teoricos, mundo
Enviado: Dom Jul 11, 2010 10:47 pm
por Ilya Ehrenburg
Don Pascual escreveu:
marcelo l. escreveu:Dizem que Hobsbawn além de simpático, suas palestras no Brasil eram em um espanhol muito agradável...eu pensava que na História se lia muito E.P. Thompson...
Thompson também. Na verdade os marxistas da "new left" inglesa são muito lidos (Hobsbawn, Lowy, Thompson, Anderson, entre outros). Os Annales franceses também, são classicos (Bloch, Febvre, Braudel, Le Goff, etc.). Fernand Braudel, inclusive, foi professor na USP, ajudando a organizar a Universidade, que tinha acabado de ser criada.
Hoje trás no seu bojo medíocres, como Magnoli...
Que coisa.
Re: Teoria, teoricos, mundo
Enviado: Seg Jul 12, 2010 7:41 pm
por marcelo l.
Pontos de vista sobre o "teórico" General James Mattis
Prepared Statement Robert SolowProfessor Emeritus, MIT House Committee on Science and TechnologySubcommittee on Investigations and Oversight“Building a Science of Economics for the Real World”July 20, 2010
Deve ser incomum para esta comissão, ou de qualquer comissão do Congresso, a realização de uma audiência, que é dirigido principalmente a uma questão de análise. Neste caso, a pergunta é sobremacroeconomia, o estudo do crescimento e as flutuações dos grandes agregados nacionais -renda nacional, o emprego, o nível de preços, e outros - que são fundamentais para o nosso paíspadrão de vida. Como é que estes agregados fundamental determinada, e como devemos pensarsobre eles? Embora estes são difíceis questões analíticas, é evidente que as respostas têm um impacto directoinfluência sobre as questões mais importantes da política pública.Pode ser incomum para a Comissão centrar-se sobre uma questão tão abstrato, mas é certamentenatural e urgente. Aqui estamos nós, ainda perto da parte inferior de uma recessão profunda e prolongada, com aimediata futuro incerto, desesperadamente carente de empregos, ea abordagem que a macroeconomiadomina o pensamento sério, certamente nossas universidades de elite e em muitos bancos centrais e outrascírculos políticos influentes, parece ter absolutamente nada a dizer sobre o problema. Não sóele oferece nenhuma orientação ou conhecimento, ele realmente parece ter nada de útil a dizer. Meu objetivo nopróximos poucos minutos é tentar explicar porque falhou e está fadado ao fracasso.Antes de eu ir, não é algo prejudicial que eu quero deixar claro. Em geral sou umamuito economista mainstream tradicional. Eu acho que o corpo de análise económica que temosempilhados e ensinar aos nossos alunos é muito bom, não há necessidade de derrubá-lo em qualquer atacadistacaminho, e nenhuma sugestão aceitável para o fazer. É evidente que existem importanteslacunas em nossa compreensão da economia, e há muitas coisas que pensamos que sabemos quenão são verdadeiras. Isso é quase inevitável. O nacional - para não mencionar o mundo - economiainacreditavelmente complicada, e sua natureza é geralmente mudando debaixo de nós. Portanto, não há chance
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2 que ninguém nunca vai obtê-lo muito bem, uma vez por todas. A teoria económica é sempre einevitavelmente muito simples, que não pode ser ajudado. Mas é ainda mais importante manter a apontarloucura onde quer que apareça. Especialmente quando se trata de matéria tão importante comomacroeconomia, um economista mainstream como eu, insiste em que toda proposição deve passar oteste cheiro: isso realmente faz sentido? Eu não acho que o DSGE atualmente popular modelospassar o teste do cheiro. Eles tomam como certo que toda a economia pode ser pensado como seera uma pessoa única e consistente ou dinastia realização de um plano racionalmente concebidos, a longo prazo,ocasionalmente perturbado por choques inesperados, mas adapta-los de forma racional e coerente.Eu não acho que essa imagem passa o teste do cheiro. Os protagonistas desta ideia de fazer uma reclamação pararespeitabilidade, afirmando que se baseia no que sabemos sobre o comportamento microeconómico,mas eu acho que essa afirmação é geralmente falsa. Os advogados acreditam que, sem dúvida, o que eles dizem, maseles parecem ter parado de cheirar ou ter perdido o seu sentido de cheiro completamente.Isso é difícil de explicar, mas vou tentar. A maioria dos economistas estão dispostos a acreditar que a maioriaindividual "agentes" - os consumidores investidores, devedores, credores, trabalhadores, entidades patronais - as suasdecisões de modo a fazer o melhor que podem para si próprios, dadas as suas possibilidades e seusda informação. É evidente que nem sempre se comportam desta maneira racional e sistemática desviosvalem bem a pena estudar. Mas esta não é uma má primeira aproximação, em muitos casos. O DSGEescola preenche a sua economia simplificado - lembre-se que toda a economia é de cerca simplificadoeconomias como a biologia é simplificado sobre as células - exatamente com a combinação únicatrabalhador-proprietário-consumidor tudo o mais que os planos de frente com cuidado e vidas para sempre. Umconseqüência importante deste agente "representante" pressuposto é que não haja conflitos deinteresse, sem expectativas incompatíveis, sem enganos.Isso para todos os fins-decisor essencialmente executa a economia de acordo com suas própriaspreferências. Não diretamente, é claro: a economia tem de operar através geralmente bem-comportadomercados e preços. Sob pressão dos céticos e da necessidade de lidar com dados reais,DSGE modeladores têm trabalhado arduamente para permitir várias fricções e imperfeições de mercado comoA rigidez dos preços e salários, as assimetrias de informação, lapsos de tempo, e assim por diante. Isso tudo é para o bem.Mas a história básica sempre trata a economia como um todo, como se fosse uma pessoa, tentandoconsciente e racional fazer o melhor que pode, em nome do agente representante, dada a suacircunstâncias. Isso não pode ser uma descrição adequada da economia nacional, que é bastantevisivelmente não prosseguem um objectivo consistente. Uma pessoa pensativo, diante do pensamento quepolítica econômica estava sendo perseguido nesta base, poderia razoavelmente saber que planeta ele ou elaestá ligado.Um exemplo óbvio é que a história DSGE não tem espaço real de desemprego dotipo que vemos na maioria das vezes, e especialmente agora: o desemprego que é puro desperdício. Hátrabalhadores competentes, dispostos a trabalhar pelo salário vigente ou mesmo um pouco menos, mas o potencial de empregoé obstruído por uma falha de mercado. A economia é incapaz de organizar uma situação ganha-ganha que é
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3 aparentemente lá para fazer exame. Esse tipo de resultado é incompatível com a noção de que oeconomia está em busca de um objetivo racional e compreensível. A única maneira que DSGE e afinsmodelos podem lidar com o desemprego é fazê-lo de alguma forma voluntária, uma escolha de cursolazer ou um desejo de manter algum tipo de flexibilidade para o futuro ou algo parecido. Mas issoé exatamente o tipo de explicação que não passe o teste do cheiro.Trabalhar para fora uma história como esta não é apenas um jogo intelectual, embora sem dúvida é um pouco deisso também. Na medida em que a economia observada é realmente fazendo o melhor que pode, dada acircunstâncias, já está se adaptando melhor forma para qualquer esperados ou inesperados perturbaçõesvir. Não se pode fazer melhor. Daqui resulta que a política pública consciente só pode tornar as coisaspior. Se o governo tem melhores informações que o agente representativo tem, então tudo o que tema fazer é tornar pública essa informação. Se os preços estão imperfeitamente flexível, então o governopode torná-los mais flexíveis, atacando os monopólios e os sindicatos de enfraquecimento. Na verdade, essaproposição é duvidoso sobre os seus próprios.O ponto que eu estou fazendo é que o modelo DSGE tem nada de útil a dizer sobre o anti-recessão política porque tem construído em seus pressupostos, essencialmente, à conclusão plausível "que não há nada para fazer política macroeconômica. Acho que acabamos de ver como isso é falsopara uma economia ligada a um altamente alavancadas, fracamente sistema financeiro regulamentado. Mas eu acho quefoi tão visivelmente falsa em recessões anteriores (e em episódios de superaquecimento inflacionário) queseguido completamente diferentes padrões. Há outras tradições, com melhores formas de fazermacroeconomia.Pode-se encontrar outras razões mais restrita estatística, por acreditar que o DSGEabordagem não é uma boa maneira de entender o comportamento macroeconómico, mas este não é o momento de irneles. Uma questão interessante continua sendo a razão pela qual a profissão levou-se a macroeconomiaeste caminho jardim particular. Talvez possamos chegar a esse ponto mais tarde
