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Arquivo para a ‘Economia’ Categoria

The peace that few desire

17 Jul

While bloody battles unfold without major advances in the Ukrainian counter-offensive, from side to side, one can see what the war produces: the lack of principles and a growing hatred between the parties involved, which today few countries escape.

On the Russian side, inhumanity towards the troops themselves grows, General Ivan Popov, commander of the 58th. Combined Arms Army, which operates on the Zaporizhzhia combat front, was dismissed by Minister Sergei Shoigu for accusing him of treason and little support for troops in combat, other generals are also away or “resting”.

This is certainly not counterpropaganda, as the mercenary leader also accused him of the same things, and said that troops are being killed for little logistical support.

On the Ukrainian side, after the NATO meeting on July 12th, there is a clear sign for Sweden’s entry into the bloc, we remember that neighboring Finland is already there, as for NATO, it only continues to support and promise future membership, however the minister of England declared that Zelensky should show more gratitude, Zelensky reacted by asking his defense minister who was in the audience if he has good relations with the British Ben Wallace, and then asked him to make a call to him.

What is worrying on the Ukrainian side is the delivery of cluster bombs that are prohibited in international agreements, and that the US proposes to supply to the ally.

Either because of ideological and economic interests, or because they do not believe in an escalation of a third world war, which would be the greatest civilizational disaster of humanity, there is little desire and commitment for peace, some countries and leadership that tried failed to be resilient to the decision and it shows that they, too, have a vested interest in this war.

Sincere and true humanists cannot wish that the escalation of this war continues, and it is not “another war” since it involves heavy interests and threats.

 

 

 

G7 meeting and Russian breakthrough

22 May

Reunited in Hiroshima, the G7 meeting was held: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Japan, France and Germany, to which some countries were invited, including Brazil, Australia, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, Cook Islands (president of the Pacific Islands Forum) and Comoros (president of the African Union), Zelensky’s presence was as a special guest.

The countries reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, condemning the invasion, but Zelensky’s expected meeting with Brazilian President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva did not take place, concretely on the war, only American support promising more funding for weapons.

On the battlefield, Russia registered an advance in Bakhmut with the support of the mercenary group Wagner, who were praised by Putin, but the real takeover of the region is still controversial, Ukraine claims that there are still battles in the surroundings, in short, the war will continue and not s and knows in fact the limits it will still have.

The Ukrainians had celebrated the interception of the fearsome hypersonic missiles, and only one hit the country’s soil, it is still uncertain what kind of counteroffensive will be carried out, the Battle of Bakhmut may just be a bait already taken by Russia, the fighters and powerful tanks have not yet been used.

What is worrying is that on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides there is a real danger of the use of chemical and even nuclear weapons, Zelensky said that he would win the war before “that event” and on the Russian side there is open talk of the battle of Armageddon, Russia condemned the delivery of fighter jets to Ukraine.

In the diplomatic field, little progress has been made, Russia wants the territories it has already conquered, including Mariupol and a strip of eastern Ukraine, in addition to Crimea, which has been considered territory under Russian administration since 2014.

Hypersonic missiles with nuclear charges, increased army recruitment, food security and China’s alignment are concerns.

The scenario is still one of war and there has not been a more emphatic proposal for peace, the world continues with fears of a wider war.

 

What is actually the current war

17 Apr

Increasingly, the Russia-Ukraine war is revealed with the clear contours of the interests of great empires in conflict: on the one hand, Russia, which did not accept the reduction of its territory and influence after the end of the Second World War, on the other, NATO as an arm of capitalist forces and their world influence.

In fact, the great emerging empire is China, and it has roots in the great cultural revolution, an attempt made by Mao Tse Tung, the first leader of the Chinese revolution, but the attempt to industrialize the country by taking people out of the countryside in the 50s was a failure causing more than 20 million people to starve to death.

The opponents led by Liu Shao-Chi, in 1959, removed Mao, his family and his allies, who were isolated within the Chinese Communist Party, and promoted a re-education of the population, preparing a new industrial revolution, this time attracting capital and companies from abroad. , cheap labor and the idea that it could be an opening to capitalism, Hong Kong was until recently not controlled by China, boosted this model.

Speaking about what would be the desired peace for Russia, Putin declared that it would be a “new world order”, and in it talks with China are involved and explain Russia’s recent military maneuvers in the Pacific Ocean near Japan, the Kuril Islands which is disputed by Japan.

It was a clear nod to the partnership with China, although it, together with Brazil, is trying to form a third bloc to negotiate peace, because the Brics are closer to Russia, and this includes India and South Africa, which are also part of this economic bloc. .

On the western side, the Scandinavian countries: Finland, Sweden and Norway carried out joint maneuvers with NATO forces, the geopolitical picture is drawn with a dangerous warlike picture.

There is a fracture in the European bloc, as Macron says that France will not be a “vassal” of the American allies, however it can also be a force for the third “peace” bloc.

A peace without surrender and without winners seems the only possible way out, difficult but possible.

 

 

Leaked documents and rhetoric of tension

10 Apr

A leaked document that would contain alleged US secret information about the war between Ukraine and Russia may contain part of the information true and some false, according to US military sources, the assessment of the death toll in the war in Ukraine would be false.

Newspapers like The New York Times, on the other hand, assess that it is an effort by Moscow to provoke more disinformation than news already known as the anticipated deliveries of weapons, as well as the formation of troops and battalions according to war strategies, however this already shows that there are some gaps in US intelligence in the effort to support Ukraine.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said, “We are aware of the reports of social media posts, and the department is looking into the matter.”

The US Department of Justice opened investigations into these disclosures, which also included information from important allies such as Israel, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.

American rhetoric and Western leaders continue to assert that Russia has committed war crimes, including the “deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia, condemned by the Hague court, while Russian rhetoric continues to be one of insecurity at its borders.

What the documents reveal, although without precise data, is a probable Ukrainian offensive next month, Finland’s official entry into NATO creates another frontier of conflict and some Russian response is also expected there.

In terms of peace, the Brazilian proposal to cede Crimea, which was already Russian territory before the war, in exchange for the resumption of territories occupied in the current war, was not accepted by Ukraine.

So both Russia and Ukraine seem to be taking the war to the limits of attrition, the death of countless soldiers and the economic consequences that have begun to appear in the world economy.

China has hit back at rhetoric that it is not making enough effort for peace, saying the “West are not in a position to dictate what we should do”, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui told Izvestia.

The hope that negotiations can move forward from countries outside the conflict remains.

 

 

Civilizing passion: crisis and clearing

07 Apr

It is not the first civilizational crisis that humanity is going through today, if it has roots in the thought that developed a form of national and chauvinist polis, empires are the multinational expression of this way of looking at nations, this however has an aggravating factor: the possibility use of nuclear and biological weapons of mass extinction.

Because a passion comparing it with the passion of Jesus, we have already outlined the issue of innocence and the tragic and legal aspects that it involves throughout last week, Brazil experienced this week a drama in the city of Blumenau the death of innocent children, the world aspect is the one that from ideological conceptions and visions of the world promotes a limitless crisis, this is the passionate side (in the photo Bucha´s tragedy, Ukraine).

The entry that we announced at the beginning of the week, of Finland in NATO creates a large border area of NATO with Russia allowing a land war in an area where it is sensitive and there are remnants of recent historical intolerance, the so-called “winter war” from 1939.

If Russia takes what it calls a “countermeasure” and it could be in the military field, since in the economic and trade field there is nothing that could be more serious than the current situation between nations, military retaliation triggers a dangerous trigger. that will have a response from NATO.

A clearing is possible, the one that Heidegger claimed in the midst of these hostilities, the clarity that there will be no unilateral victories, the war with Ukraine itself does not seem to have a possible end this year, unless there is a round of peace negotiations.

China would take an offensive position in its resumption of the island of Taiwan, which it considers part of its territory, Iran is increasingly closer to Russia and a good part of Latin America currently has governments that are more to the left, in short, this complicated world scenario may be the reason to open a clearing in the middle of the forest of hatred and hostility that opens up at every step of the war.

It will be a great passion of humanity, like all suffering, this one on an unimaginable scale after a trauma and then a reflection when seeing the enormous losses that the situation involves, it will undoubtedly be in a possible tragic situation never seen before, a new “clearing” of civilizing consciousness .

Peace is always possible, it is always possible to avoid the loss of innocent lives if there is prevention.

 

Thought from on High and Communion

06 Apr

What kind of knowledge is this that encompasses knowledge “from above”, beyond the human, but without contradicting it, Morin’s response and others such as Martin Buber, Emannuel Lévinas and Paul Ricoeur seem to lead to the same point, to go towards the Other without reservation.

Two mystical falsifications are possible in this direction, one that denies conscience and respect for the Other, those who appeal to a false Christian religiosity, the Bible is clear: “If anyone declares: “I love God!”, but hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 John, 4:20-21), but there are those who cry out for the extreme opposite of the materiality of faith, to these the biblical answer is also clear: “Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4 ,4), curiously opposes and does not dialogue.

Curious because the vision of the last supper of Jesus with his disciples, his great memorial and his eternal presence in his materiality (flesh and blood), is the cause of much controversy and divergence, both true that he broke the bread, and true who declared his divinity.

Thinking things from above cannot fail to have its concreteness, its materiality, you see that bread is not wheat, but wheat transformed by human hands into bread, just like wine.

It does not fail to have the most sacred and divine aspect when asking the disciples to do this in his memory and in his name, thus it is renewed and divinized by the human hands that repeat it.

How to understand communion without the presence of the Other, without dialogic with the opposite, without this paradox of understanding that even with opposition, new horizons are possible, as advocated by the hermeneutic circle, which asks that preconceptions be left “in parentheses” before .

We have a vision of truth, logic and rationality, but true communion is only possible with a step further, the belief that something divine also belongs to the Other, to the different and the opposite of my worldview, there is no communion without this , there is only tolerance.

I have always asked myself why wars, hunger, misery, injustice among men, my answer today is that there is no true communion among men, perhaps some small tolerance, some respect that hides true interests, perhaps a respect that is even human but not divine.

 

 

welcome to polycrisis

04 Apr

This is the part of title of the article by Adam Tooze, professor of history at Yale University (USA) written in the Financial Times in 2022 that drew a lot of attention: pandemics, droughts, floods, mega storms, forest fires, war in Ukraine and high prices of fuel and food, as is typical of the magazine and of today’s world, the economic aspect stands out.

But Edgar Morin’s polycrisis went deeper, the author recognizes the origin of the term, but is unaware of what Edgar Morin and many other philosophers actually think, who point to the most fundamental root of these evils: our way of thinking. thinking and the vision of the world that we create from it and implant in our societies.

The term cited by Morin was said for the first time in 1990, but in an interview with Le Monde on April 20, 2020, the French educator updated the word: “The health crisis triggered a chain of crises that were linked together. This polycrisis or megacrisis extends from the existential to the political, passing through the economy, from the individual to the planetary, passing through families, regions, states. In short, a tiny virus in an overlooked village in China has unleashed a world of disruption.”

In his view, the polycrisis crossed our ways of being, living together, producing, consuming and being in the world, challenging us to think about all our paradigms, much of what he wrote talks about new methods such as hologramatic and the danger of hyperspecialization of science that leads “to a new obscurantism” that is our inability to see the whole in modernity.

It is true that we are going through other crises, but Tooze’s article shows the implications of the war in Ukraine and the pandemic in accelerating these crises (see the Map), in the pragmatic aspect of the economic it is clear, in the spiritual and ontological aspect it is still not so clear , but it may be clearer soon.

 

 

A dangerous threshold of war

03 Apr

With the shipment of weapons to Ukraine NATO has prolonged Ukraine’s war with Russia in the tactical field for at least another year, this says Western and Russian analysts, but another front is threatened as Finland is about to join NATO only missing bureaucratic details.

It irritates Russia more than seeing its border countries join NATO, this was even the claiming limit for war with Ukraine and Finland has the longest border of NATO countries with Russia, more than 1,300 km, comparable to distance between Porto Alegre in Rio Grande do Sul and Queluz on the border of the State of São Paulo with Rio de Janeiro.

Finland erects a steel cable fence on the border (photo), and the countries have already lived through a war called the Winter War (it has this name because it started at the end of November 1939 and ended on March 12, 1940 with a treaty in which it lost part of its territory and a good part of its industrial capacity).

Although Finland has a small army, at the time even smaller and is now arming itself, it resisted heroically, but lost a significant part of its territory (see our post) and feels threatened by the current war in Eastern Europe.

There is another likely target of the war which would be Moldova, there is already a small separatist region called Transnistria, but in the geopolitical aspect it is Finland’s entry into NATO that most affects Russia and creates a strong pole of tension and now the new iron Curtain.

Sweden is bigger and has a larger population, practically more than twice that of Finland and it has also been arming itself and the process of joining NATO is slower, but the war could accelerate this process and military aid to Sweden would be inevitable.

An appeal by Belarus, an ally of Russia, for a peace agreement and the recent visit of Xi Jinping to Russia, which was expected to have a greater commitment to peace, remains unknown and it is possible that Putin has exposed his plans, and this includes Brazil for being part of the BRICS and having postponed the trip to China due to pneumonia from president Lula, but China is waiting for the visit.

An eventual war with Finland would open a delicate pole of the war, since it is practically a member of NATO and military retaliations could come into play in an explosive way.

The horizon of a possible peace is becoming more and more distant and the possibilities remote.

 

 

War becomes dangerous and can get out of hand

13 Mar

As the war scene advanced in Eastern Europe, several analyzes were made here showing an increasingly cybernetic war and with chances of being nuclear, now both international news (such as CNN for example) and the American intelligence services, point out this tragic evolution.

Officials of the US Senate Intelligence Committee spoke last Wednesday (08/03) of this scenario affirmed what is written in the report of the Office of National Intelligence: “degraded Moscow’s conventional land and air capabilities and increased its dependence on weapons nuclear weapons”, so a window for peace is becoming smaller and smaller.

The battle of Bakhmut, which could pave the way for a larger invasion of Ukrainian territory, is costing both sides dearly, but will intensify the war on Ukrainian soil, with losses and unpredictable scenarios.

While the Russians announce victory in Bakhmut, the Ukrainians say that each Ukrainian soldier killed cost the lives of 5 Russian soldiers, propaganda aside, Russia does pay an expensive cost for the dispute in the region and shows that it will be a war step by step and costing many lives, in addition to refugees and material destruction.

At the global level, NATO’s involvement grows as Russia seeks allies beyond China.

The involvement with weapons and even training of troops from Poland and Germany, as well as the already evident involvement of NATO since the beginning of the war, can extrapolate the limits of Russia and Poland and pass to the entire European continent, already a Russian “new Pearl Harbour”. , launching long-range missiles into American territory would start a global tragedy by the power of weapons.

Weapons are available and there is also tension in the East, now with South Korea and Japan approaching Western forces.

Peace is always possible, but it requires an environment of cooperation and understanding between nations.

 

 

In the week of a year of war

20 Feb

There are intense bombings on the combat fronts in Ukraine and missiles over the country, there is no prospect of ceasing shooting, internally Ukraine had a 30% drop in its production, while Russia manages to circumvent international sanctions, but not internal dissatisfaction.

The fear of a more intense war is so great that a part of Russian pregnant women, who can travel, went to Argentina, for the sympathy of the government there and it cost, since Argentina has a serious economic crisis that devalued the currency. .

The military maneuvers in the South Atlantic generated protests in the West, Russia, South Africa and China carried out joint military exercises, from the countries that make up the economic bloc of the Brics, Brazil maintains neutrality and should talk this week with Zelensky, while India makes efforts her peace.

The Brazilian government refused to deliver ammunition to the tanks that Germany is sending to Ukraine, but the conversation between Zelensky and Lula could change the scenario, since there is an express request from the American government, and Lula met with Biden recently.

This all shows that there is not just an ideological context, the geopolitical context is thought of, there is even an undeclared agreement between Russia and Israel, which throws the Arab world to the Soviet side, among these forces the fearsome Iran that has been sending drones to Russia.

All this is a cold analysis of the war, but some sources point to 60,000 dead in clashes on the Russian side, and more than 100,000 on the Ukrainian side, thousands of mutilated people, an absurd number of exiled Ukrainian people, in addition to material damage.

In the State of São Paulo, the governor decreed the end of mandatory vaccines in public environments and the federal government will no longer release daily reports on the pandemic