Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will, although operated by an intermediary, an amanuensis. He wants a dictator made in his own image.

(...)

Many popular fallacies concerning socialism are due to the mis­taken belief that all friends of socialism advocate the same system. On the contrary, every socialist wants his own socialism, not the other fellow's. He disputes the other socialists' right to call them­selves socialists. In the eyes of Stalin the Mensheviks and the Trotskyists are not socialists but traitors, and vice versa. The Marxians call the Nazis supporters of capitalism; the Nazis call the Marxians supporters of Jewish capital. If a man says socialism, or planning, he always has in view his own brand of socialism, his own plan. Thus planning does not in fact mean preparedness to coöperate peacefully. It means conflict.

If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them. We cannot expect that this problem will be solved by first communicating all this knowledge to a central board which, after integrating all knowledge, issues its orders. We must solve it by some form of decentralization. But this answers only part of our problem. We need decentralization because only thus can we insure that the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place will be promptly used. But the "man on the spot" cannot decide solely on the basis of his limited but intimate knowledge of the facts of his immediate surroundings. There still remains the problem of communicating to him such further information as he needs to fit his decisions into the whole pattern of changes of the larger economic system.

(...)

The problem which we meet here is by no means peculiar to economics but arises in connection with nearly all truly social phenomena, with language and with most of our cultural inheritance, and constitutes really the central theoretical problem of all social science. As Alfred Whitehead has said in another connection, "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." This is of profound significance in the social field. We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up.

The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use (though he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it) after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it. Through it not only a division of labor but also a coördinated utilization of resources based on an equally divided knowledge has become possible. The people who like to deride any suggestion that this may be so usually distort the argument by insinuating that it asserts that by some miracle just that sort of system has spontaneously grown up which is best suited to modern civilization. It is the other way round: man has been able to develop that division of labor on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible. Had he not done so, he might still have developed some other, altogether different, type of civilization, something like the "state" of the termite ants, or some other altogether unimaginable type. All that we can say is that nobody has yet succeeded in designing an alternative system in which certain features of the existing one can be preserved which are dear even to those who most violently assail it—such as particularly the extent to which the individual can choose his pursuits and consequently freely use his own knowledge and skill.

What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough. If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic. That is, the answer to the question of what is the best use of the available means is implicit in our assumptions. The conditions which the solution of this optimum problem must satisfy have been fully worked out and can be stated best in mathematical form: put at their briefest, they are that the marginal rates of substitution between any two commodities or factors must be the same in all their different uses.

This, however, is emphatically not the economic problem which society faces. And the economic calculus which we have developed to solve this logical problem, though an important step toward the solution of the economic problem of society, does not yet provide an answer to it. The reason for this is that the "data" from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society "given" to a single mind which could work out the implications and can never be so given.

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources—if "given" is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these "data." It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

"The Problem of Social Cost" provides more than merely a revolutionary rethinking of the question of externalities. It also suggests a new and interesting approach to the problem of defining property rights.

A court, in settling disputes involving property, or a legislature in writing a law code to be applied to such disputes, must decide just which of the rights associated with land are included in the bundle we call "ownership." Does the owner have the right to prohibit airplanes from crossing his land a mile up? How about a hundred feet? How about people extracting oil from a mile under the land? What rights does he have against neighbors whose use of their land interferes with his use of his? If he builds his recording studio next to his neighbor's factory, who is at fault? If he has a right to silence in his recording studio, does that mean that he can forbid the factory from operating, or only that he can sue to be reimbursed for his losses? It seems simple to say that we should have private property in land, but ownership of land is not a simple thing.

The Coasian answer to this set of problems is that the law should define property in such a way as to minimize the costs associated with the sorts of incompatible uses we have been discussing--factories and recording studios, or steel mills and resorts. The first step in doing so is to try to define rights in such a way that, if right A is of most value to someone who also holds right B, they come in the same bundle. The right to decide what happens two feet above a piece of land is of most value to the person who also holds the right to use the land itself, so it is sensible to include both of them in the bundle of rights we call "ownership of land." On the other hand, the right to decide who flies a mile above a piece of land is of no special value to the owner of the land, hence there is no good reason to include it in that bundle.

If, when general legal rules were being established, we somehow knew, for all cases, what rights belonged together, the argument of the previous paragraph would be sufficient to tell us how property rights ought to be defined. But that is very unlikely to be the case. In many situations a right, such as the right not to have noises of more than X decibels made over a particular piece of property, may be of substantial value to two or more parties--the owner of the property and the owner of the adjacent factory in my earlier example, for instance. There is no general legal rule that will always assign it to the right one.

In this case, the argument underlying the Coase Theorem comes into play. If we assign the right initially to the wrong person, the right person, the one to whom it is of most value, can still buy it. So one of the considerations in the initial definition of property rights is doing it in such a way as to minimize the transaction costs associated with fixing, via private contracts, any initially inefficient definition.

An example may make this clearer. Suppose that, in the pollution case discussed earlier, damages from pollution are easy to measure and the number of people downwind is large. In that case, the efficient rule is probably to give downwind landowners a right to collect damages from the pollutor, but not a right to forbid him from polluting. Giving the right to the landowners avoids the public good problem that we would face if the landowners (in the case where pollution is inefficient) had to raise the money to pay the steel mill not to pollute. Giving them a right to damages rather than giving each landowner the right to an injunction forbidding the steel mill from polluting avoids the holdout problem that the mill would face (in the case where pollution is efficient) in buying permission from all of the landowners.

The world focuses on these events, registering alarm and clucking at what Israel has wrought. Astonishingly, however, a central reason as to why Hamas has the strength it does is simply overlooked. In all that has been published on the subject in recent days, there has been nary a comment regarding UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is responsible for the Palestinian Arabs refugees.

(...)

The High Commission is mandated to help refugees get on with their lives as quickly as possible, and works to settle them rapidly, most frequently in countries other than those they fled. UNRWA policy, however, states that the Palestinian Arabs who fled from Israel in the course of the 1948 war — and their descendants! — are to be considered refugees until they return to the homes and villages they left more than half a century ago (which actually no longer exist). The principle they apply is called the "right of return."

In truth, there is no such legal principle. According to the UNRWA mandate, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 provides the basis for this right. There are, however, several problems with this — the primary one being that GA resolutions have no standing in international law. This resolution, which in fact also suggested other alternatives in addition to return, was no more than a non-binding recommendation.

Yet, for all of these years, UNRWA has not only been telling the refugees that they have such a right, they have been promoting it actively via a variety of programs. The goal is to ensure that the refugees focus on achieving that return. To that end, UNRWA policy has also been to make certain that the refugees are not too comfortable, as this would diminish their motivation to "return." Thus, for example, when the physician who was head of medical services in Gaza for Israel's civil administration from 1967-1985 wanted to improve medical facilities for the refugees, UNRWA blocked his efforts. And when Israel wanted to move refugees out of camps and into permanent housing in the 1980s, she was prevented from doing so by U.N. resolutions.

What we have then are millions of Palestinian Arabs who live their lives in less-than-desirable conditions and in a never-ending state of impermanence. It has been made clear to them that they have an "inalienable" right to return to Israel, and that Israel thwarts this right.

This is a situation that generates rage: Fertile ground for radicalism and terrorism. The message of Hamas, which seeks Israel's total destruction, is one that speaks to them.

It is no accident that the UNRWA camps have been the source of an enormous number of terror attacks. Weapons are stored and explosives manufactured within the environs of the camps. Not only do the terrorists emanate from the camps, but UNRWA employees, who are themselves refugees, are often in the service of Hamas. Hamas even controls the UNRWA teachers' union.

Jewish settlers with assault rifles slung over their shoulders moved into two buildings in a crowded Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem on Wednesday, setting off clashes between Israeli troops and Arab residents.

Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, said the incident showed Israel was more interested in expanding settlements than in making peace. The settlers said they want to re-establish a Jewish presence in the neighborhood.

Israel says it will never relinquish the sector of the city it captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. In recent years, hawkish Jewish groups, with the backing of hardline governments and foreign investors, have bought several properties in east Jerusalem to strengthen Israel's hold there.

At daybreak Wednesday, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews lugged boxes, chairs, tables and potted plants into buildings in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem. A van packed with sofas and couches arrived, and settlers hauled a water tank onto the roof of one building and set up a generator.

Settlers said eight families are to move into the buildings — a seven-story apartment building and a smaller house — which investors bought for them. The Arab owner of the smaller house said his property was seized unlawfully.

The Clinton administration deserves more scrutiny because it was in control for eight years, rather than eight months, but no one can claim with a straight face that the Bushies saw what was coming; or did enough to stop it. All that should be exposed as thoroughly as possible. But what matters now in a political year is how the Bushies responded afterwards; and, to my mind, they did about as good a job as possible. The way some people are now talking, you'd think the White House hadn't targeted Afghanistan and al Qaeda before Saddam. But they went to al Qaeda's base first, taking the war to the enemy patiently and determinedly - with enormous success first against the Taliban and then against Saddam. Millions are now liberated from unspeakable tyranny; reform is afoot in the Middle East; al Qaeda has been seriously wounded. Not a bad start. But I agree with the Washington Post yesterday that the more worrying sign is the way the White House has responded. They have been close to hysterical, defensive to an absurd degree and therefore unpersuasive. Their response to Clarke evokes far more doubts about their pre-9/11 conduct than anything Clarke could have mustered by himself. More evidence that they're losing it. I think they realize they're in trouble and don't know quite how to right themselves. Hence the policy lurches - from Mars to marriage to steroids. The only inference I can draw is that their internal polling data is even more worrisome than the external stuff.

Primeiro o público: a média de idades das mais de 1.500 pessoas presentes deveria rondar os 60 anos. Era a velha esquerda que ali estava. Não, não estou a falar de nenhuma área política ou partidária. De esquerda, estava gente de todos os quadrantes. É mesmo de uma geração que falo. A geração que fez o 25 de Abril e o 25 de Novembro. Ela estava toda ali, em caras conhecidas e anónimas. E os aplausos disseram quase tudo do sentimento que dominava a sala: contra «os políticos», contra «esta democracia», contra «o sistema». Nenhuma esperança. Só amargura e desespero.

Saramago lá deu uma facada indecente no seu partido, ao dizer que fazia parte das suas listas «apenas por uma questão de fidelidade». Uma fidelidade que confessa em público a sua traição era bem dispensável, mas adiante. O apelo já claro e sem rodeios que Saramago fez ao voto em branco, a um protesto legítimo mas que nada constrói, é que marcou toda conversa. E caiu bem, mesmo que ninguém tivesse muito ar de o querer seguir. Era mais uma catarse colectiva. O que Saramago propunha era que os cidadãos «uivassem», que gritassem «estamos fartos», usando as suas próprias palavras. Ou seja, que confessassem a sua derrota a ver se «eles» (os políticos) ouviam. Eles, indistintamente. Os outros, sem nome nem culpa.

Este populismo que tomou Saramago é só a rendição final de uma geração de esquerda. E esta esquerda nega-se a si própria a obrigação de construir a alternativa. Quer ser passiva e desalentada. Estava ali uma geração que já não tem nada a perder. Estava ali uma esquerda rancorosa e cansada, de todos os partidos. E verdade seja dita, Saramago representa-a como poucos.

Concordo com os princípios. Na verdade concordo com quase tudo. No entanto, se não nos cabe a nós ir "libertar" nações que funcionam bem e cuja responsabilidade última de manter ou mudar depende das próprias populações, também não nos cabe a nós impedir os EUA, por exemplo, de irem "libertar" países que funcionam mal. Quanto muito, essa decisão caberia aos habitantes dos EUA, que são quem pagam os custos dessas intervenções. O CN tende a aceitar os problemas das ditaduras como problemas internos, mas pela mesma lógica terá que aceitar que a política externa de uma democracia como os EUA é igualmente um problema interno e que uma guerra entre os EUA e o Iraque é um problema bilateral.

(...)

Há também aqui uma espécie de paradoxo liberal. Se defendemos que todas as comunidades têm direito à não ingerência nos seus assuntos internos, então temos que aceitar que essa regra é válida para todas as subcomunidades dentro dessa comunidade, e a menor de todas as subcomunidades é o individuo. Segue-se que cada individuo, ou cada subcomunidade, dentro de uma ditadura, tem o direito de se aliar a uma potência estrangeira, formando com esta uma nova comunidade, o que está em contradição com o princípio de não ingerência.

O que é ser conservador? O que caracteriza o conservadorismo? Segundo Oakeshott, ser conservador é antes de mais, uma questão de disposição. É a disposição que observamos no homem que tem a noção que pode perder algo que lhe é caro. É, muito simplesmente preferir o “familiar ao desconhecido, o tentado ao nunca tentado, o actual ao possível, o facto ao mistério, o próximo ao distante, o limitado ao ilimitado, o suficiente ao superabundante, o conveniente ao perfeito, o riso presente à utópica felicidade” (previno o caro leitor que a beleza da escrita de Oakeshott perde com a tradução que acabei de fazer). Tudo isto se torna visível em atitudes dos indivíduos perante a mudança e a inovação.

A disposição conservadora é avessa à mudança, pois esta acaba com aquilo a que o conservador se habituou, a que ganhou afeição. Afeição é algo que, obviamente, o conservador não pode ter pelo que é novo, porque obviamente lhe é desconhecido. Mas a mudança é algo que não pode ser liminarmente rejeitada, sendo algo a que temos de nos acostumar. Mas, devido ao que atrás foi dito, o conservador prefere a mudança gradual, aquela que lhe permite uma melhor assimilação daquilo que é novo. Já a ideia de inovação está relacionada com a ideia de melhoria. Mas para o conservador, os eventuais ganhos que ela possa trazer devem ser medidos em comparação com as perdas que inevitavelmente os acompanharão. Ser conservador é acreditar que um “bem” conhecido não deve ser abandonado em prol de um “melhor” desconhecido, de forma leviana.

(...)

A missão do governo não é, para o conservador, cumprir um determinado fim. Não é conseguir a justiça social. Não é proporcionar a felicidade aos cidadãos. Não é conduzi-los ao estado de perfeição da sociedade, que o conservador considerará impossível de ser atingido, nem que seja por esta simples razão que Oakeshott avança: um governo que não possua a lealdade dos seus sujeitos é um governo que não serve para nada, pois dessa forma estes não cumpriram as suas regras. Um governo que procure conduzir os cidadãos em direcção à “Verdade”, sob os desígnios da “Razão”, não obtém essa lealdade, a não ser pela força, e mesmo assim existirá rebelião, pois haverá cidadãos que não concordarão que essa seja a “Verdade”, e não quererão por isso seguir esse caminho. A missão do governo, para o conservador, é de ser um moderador, através da lei e da seu cumprimento, das “paixões humanas”, não porque estas sejam um “vício” e a moderação uma “virtude” (poderão ser ou não, mas isso não interessa para o caso), mas porque a moderação é indispensável para que as paixões não façam com que os indivíduos choquem entre si.

O Parlamento Europeu (PE) exige esta semana aos Estados-membros da União Europeia que garantam o acesso ao aborto "seguro e legal" por parte de todas as mulheres, um "direito" que considera não existir nalguns países comunitários.

(...)

O documento traça uma radiografia geral sobre os direitos fundamentais na União e verifica que, em muitos casos, continuam a existir claras situações de desrespeito.

Uma delas é o facto de, "na União Europeia, muitas mulheres não usufruírem ainda do direito ao aborto". Sendo esta uma questão de "respeito da dignidade", os Estados-membros devem garantir "a igualdade de acesso de todas as mulheres - incluindo as jovens, pobres e imigrantes - ao aborto seguro e legal", defende o Parlamento Europeu.

What is our enemies' ultimate agenda? Judge them by what they say and then do: Any who champion women are targeted. Those who are Jews should die. Expressing tolerance for other religions is a capital crime. Secular law and government are a betrayal. Apostasy from Islam justifies murder. Hypocrisy does not matter — whether that means using a hated Western computer or flocking to a despised Western capital. This craziness is actually an agenda of sorts, proclaiming to the wretched, "Purge yourself of the modern West (sort of) and fool yourself into thinking that you will have power, honor, and wealth as never before."

(...)

The terrorists have been routed from their sanctuary of Afghanistan and cannot come back as long as the United States and its allies are determined to stay the course. They are being slowly drawn and quartered inside Pakistan, where the Musharraf government has finally agreed to begin to close down its frontier border sanctuary. Terrorists' ties with rogue regimes like Saddam Hussein's and Khaddafi's Libya are now cut. Saudi, Syrian, and Iranian subsidies and sanctuaries of old are now under scrutiny. Reformists in all of those countries are organizing.

The United States has imposed a global crackdown on terrorist funding, and muscled suspect regimes like Yemen and Jordan into deporting or jailing jihadists and their sympathizers. Pakistan and India are talking, which is bad news for the fundamentalists in Kashmir and the badlands along the Afghan border. The Palestinian killers have brought only misery to their people and now a wall — ensuring that their constituents will soon have a chance to enjoy from Mr. Arafat the same good government that the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and the Iranian clerics extended to their similarly isolated people.

(...)

The problem is not "getting the message out," but having the intellectual courage to tell the truth and not to be browbeaten by faux intellectuals who talk monotonously of mythical pipelines and Zionist aggression. The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom — never.

Do Hospital de Seia, enviam-no para o de Coimbra com suspeitas de pneumonia ou enfarte de miocárdio.
Do Hospital de Coimbra devolvem-no para o de Seia muito pior de saúde do que lá chegou e sem nenhuma razão aparente. Os sintomas tinham-se agravado sobremaneira, entretanto.
Do Hospital de Seia enviam-no para o da Guarda porque cá não há Pneumologia
Do Hospital da Guarda enviam-no novamente para o de Coimbra, sem sequer entrar na Pneumologia e sem conhecimento dos familiares.
Do Hospital de Coimbra enviam-no... para a morgue.

E tudo isto sem um único tratamento, a não ser... soro!

Fica aqui o relato dos últimos 5 dias de vida do meu Pai que, acredito, possam servir a alguém que passe pelo mesmo.
Quanto mais não seja para evitar que o Serviço Nacional de Saúde mate por absoluta negligência um seu ente querido, tal como fez com o meu.

(...)

Escrevo o que aconteceu para alertar quem ler esta triste história para o estado a que chegaram os Hospitais em Portugal.

Para terminar, o pior: toda a gente conhecida que eu lá tinha, no Hospital, me perguntou: mas porque é que tu não me deste um toque? Eu acompanhava o teu pai e a coisa de certeza que não acabava assim...

Isto é que dói.
Descobrir que a medicina, no Serviço Nacional de Saúde, só funciona minimamente quando há "conhecimentos" e "amizades" entre o corpo clínico.

What is the legitimate purpose of the nation-state? Surely its chief function is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. At least that's the best justification for taxing citizens to support a police force and courts and a military. "Nation-state" is in many ways a fancy term for what is essentially a tribe with a flag. The police are supposed to catch and the courts to punish tribe members who violate personal and property rights of their fellow tribe members. The relatively modern innovation of police and courts has the salutary effect of derailing the ever-escalating blood-feuds that bedeviled earlier tribes. Meanwhile the military is supposed to stomp on tribes who attack or threaten the home tribe. But what about attacks on the life and property of tribe members by outsiders who are not sponsored by another tribe? Non-state freelance aggressors, if you will.

(...)

Most of us are rightly concerned about giving the power to determine whether or not to kill someone who poses a grave threat to U.S. security to shadowy and largely unaccountable intelligence and military officials. Of course, if non-state aggressors are captured inside our borders, they are subject to our normal judicial process. For those beyond our borders, why not adapt the judicial innovations of the modern civilized nation-states to handle them? For example, we could establish a formal transparent judicial procedure, perhaps a special court, in which non-state freelance aggressors accused of murder can be tried and if found guilty, convicted in absentia. If convicted, federal agents, including, most especially, the military would be duly authorized to capture or even kill the killer. Other nation-states may not agree with our determinations, but they would be open for all the world to scrutinize. This may sound utopian, but what's the alternative? Unending global blood-feuds?

No passado fim de-semana, numa operação orquestrada e bem organizada, deu-se mais uma tentativa para completar a limpeza total da Província, tentando-se intimidar, aterrorizar e forçar à expulsão dos últimos milhares de sérvios que ali habitam. O número de mortes não foi muito alto, mas foram destruídas igrejas, conventos medievais e milhares de habitações.
A organização conseguiu mobilizar 51 mil pessoas naqueles actos insurreccionais, sob as barbas da Nato e da UE.
O inenarrável Solana lá veio reconhecer o falhanço total.
E lá para 2005 estão previstas umas tais de conversações sobre o "estatuto final" do Kosovo. Não deve ser preciso esperar tanto, para não exista com quem negociar. Aos bocadinhos, a coisa vai. E tudo a assobiar.

If ever there was a film with the correct title, that film is Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." Although the word passion has become mixed up with romance, its Latin origins refer to suffering and pain; later Christian theology broadened that to include Christ's love for mankind, which made him willing to suffer and die for us.

The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen.

I prefer to evaluate a film on the basis of what it intends to do, not on what I think it should have done. It is clear that Mel Gibson wanted to make graphic and inescapable the price that Jesus paid (as Christians believe) when he died for our sins. Anyone raised as a Catholic will be familiar with the stops along the way; the screenplay is inspired not so much by the Gospels as by the 14 Stations of the Cross.

(...)

What Gibson has provided for me, for the first time in my life, is a visceral idea of what the Passion consisted of. That his film is superficial in terms of the surrounding message -- that we get only a few passing references to the teachings of Jesus -- is, I suppose, not the point. This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it.

Por conseguinte, podemos dizer que o Estado contemporâneo desrespeitou o contrato social que há muito outorgara. Entrou em incumprimento contratual. Em consequência do que, nos parece que a outra parte – os cidadãos – lhe não deva qualquer obediência. Não se mantêm, a nosso ver, as obrigações contratuais do primeiro outorgante que somos todos nós, aqueles que instituíram o Estado como organização política, lhe transferiram poderes e mantêm o seu funcionamento com o produto dos seus rendimentos, cobrados por via tributária, por incumprimento contratual atribuído ao segundo outorgante. Se alguém com quem contratamos um serviço, por exemplo, de pintura de uma casa, o não fizer ou o fizer deficientemente, não estamos obrigados a cumprir com a nossa prestação contratual, isto é, o pagamento de um serviço que não foi prestado. O mesmo se deveria passar na relação contratual estabelecida com o Estado.
O problema, porém, é que este último desenvolveu uma máquina coerciva que lhe permite impor todas as arbitrariedades que entenda, legitimado pelo uso quase formal do voto universal e democrático. Na verdade, actualmente, a democracia tem um valor exclusivamente negativo, importante sem dúvida, que nos permite afastar do governo quem lá se encontra, sem recurso a métodos violentos. Mas esgota-se nisto. Encontrar no voto um fundamento legitimador para o uso do poder é, hoje em dia, com a quase absoluta ausência de limites para o exercício desse poder, um excesso.

The Iraq war began about one year ago with the swift and decisive overthrow of Baghdad and the Hussein regime. We are only beginning to understand, however, the true scope of our ongoing occupation of a nation rife with civil, ethnic, and tribal conflict. July stands as the deadline for our provisional government to relinquish control to an emerging Iraqi government, but we are kidding ourselves about just how long American forces will need to remain involved.

More than 580 Americans have died in Iraq; roughly 10,000 have been wounded. American taxpayers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars. We must not be afraid to face these facts and understand the terrible cost of war.

Were these sacrifices worth it? To answer that question, we have to look at the justifications given for our invasion of Iraq.

(...)

Is America better off as a result of our war in Iraq? The young men and women who were hurt or killed certainly are no better off. Their families are no better off. Taxpayers are no better off. Whether we are safer from terrorism here at home is an open question. We all hope and pray nothing happens. But even our own intelligence forces cautioned that an invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq could breed resentment among sympathetic Muslims and serve as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda. As commentator Lew Rockwell states, “It is not caving in to the bees to stop poking a stick into their hive.”

Are the Iraqis better off? Saddam is gone, along with his murderous cohorts, and that certainly presents a positive opportunity for the Iraqi people. But we cannot be sure that the Hussein regime will be replaced by something better. Iraq is still very unstable and divided between Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd factions. Civil war could ensue upon the departure of American troops.

Even if we assume that anything will be an improvement over the Hussein regime, the fundamental question remains: Why should young Americans be hurt or killed to liberate foreign nations? I have never heard a convincing answer to this question. If we sacrifice 500 lives to liberate Iraq, should we sacrifice five million American lives to liberate the people of North Korea, Taiwan, Tibet, China, Cuba, and countless African nations? Should we invade every country that has an oppressive government?

Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a hard-liner who rejects all compromise with Israel, was chosen Tuesday as the new Hamas leader, one day after the group's founder was assassinated by Israel.

Rantisi said he emerged from secret elections as the chief of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Khaled Mashaal, a Hamas operative based in Syria, remains the leader of the group's political bureau, the main decision-making body.

Initially Rantisi said he was the new head of the Hamas political bureau, giving the impression he was replacing Mashaal, but Hamas leaders later clarified he was only in charge of Hamas in Gaza.

Rantisi replaces Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was slain in an attack by Israel.

From the ashes of abandoned Iraqi army bases, U.S. military engineers are overseeing the building of an enhanced system of American bases designed to last for years.

Last year, as troops poured over the Kuwait border to invade Iraq, the U.S. military set up at least 120 forward operating bases. Then came hundreds of expeditionary and temporary bases that were to last between six months and a year for tactical operations while providing soldiers with such comforts as e-mail and Internet access.

Now U.S. engineers are focusing on constructing 14 "enduring bases," long-term encampments for the thousands of American troops expected to serve in Iraq for at least two years. The bases also would be key outposts for Bush administration policy advisers.

Not that we don't want to extirpate those terrorists when we can. To absorb the full two-facedness of the support of many of our European allies for the man-hunt approach, listen to what the European foreign ministries are saying about the Israeli killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, the mass-murdering chief of Hamas. The disconnect from reality is almost hallucinatory.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana wins the prize: The killing, he said, is "very, very bad news for the peace process." One has to echo Lucky Jim: The what process? The peace what?

There is no peace process: only an ongoing Palestinian terror war against Israel. There never was a peace process: only a political campaign by Yasser Arafat to accumulate as many strategic assets as possible against Israel before recommencing his terror war.

(This by the way is the same Solana who last week cautioned Europeans against "over-reacting" to the Madrid attacks. "Europe," he said, "does not find itself at war." Clearly not.)

But here's maybe the larger meaning of those words: If the European allies cannot accept the killing of the head of Hamas, who has already murdered hundreds of people, it is very hard to imagine that those same European allies would have accepted the assassination of Osama bin Laden before 9/11. And since the defining idea of American liberal Democrats is the paramount need for European approval of major American actions (see below) - then there's really no mystery at all about why the Clintonites behaved as they did before 9/11. They didn't want to upset anyone. So they did nothing. And now they're engaged in the one foreign-policy activity at which they are truly expert: blame-shifting.

And if the sanctions were immoral and (aside from their military effect, which was evidently considerable) largely ineffective at softening or removing Saddam’s power over the Iraqi people, let’s also not forget the Clinton administration’s wanton and reckless bombing of the country. It seemed that every time Bill Clinton was really annoyed with something, he’d personally order the bombing of Iraq. Remember the bombs rained over Iraq on the day Slick Willy was impeached, orchestrated with claims from Bill’s loathesome coterie of supporters that to vote to impeach while “troops are in the field” was “treason” and “traitorous”? (Where were the protestors then? I guess if a “third way” Democrat kills innocent Iraqis by the score, as he did innocent Serbs, it’s just fine with that crowd. The selectivity of their outrage is disgusting.)

I think that the war against Saddam was a big mistake, but I also think that the U.N. sanctions and the Clinton Administration’s random bombing were utterly immoral. At least now the sanctions and the aerial bombardment are over. That may not justify the war, but it’s certainly a benefit of it, as is the removal of one of the most evil and horrifying regimes of the last half of the twentieth century.

Com efeito, existe uma ideia assente segundo a qual existe uma identificação do liberalismo – do “soi disant” liberalismo económico, na sua nova versão para os não liberais, denominada de “neo-liberalismo” – com a ”lei da selva”, o poder do mais forte, em suma, o caos, na sua tradução económica e social, sem qualquer intervenção do Estado e em consequência, sem a existência de qualquer planeamento.

Todavia, bastará fazer uma leitura dos vultos mais centrais do liberalismo, tanto do século passado, como deste século, para verificar, talvez com surpresa, que tal visão, não passa de uma deturpação. Na verdade, junto de ideólogos liberais como Friedrich A. Hayek e Ludwig von Mises, normalmente associados ao liberalismo mais “duro” e “radical”, podemos observar que defendem o seu liberalismo como obedecendo a um sistema de ideias e de normas estruturadas num Estado de Direito, com um papel a desempenhar e incentivador da concorrência - condição do desenvolvimento -, chegando a mencionar-se um “planeamento liberal” ou um “intervencionismo liberal”, com características específicas.

(...)

Criar as condições para que a concorrência tenha a eficácia que virtualmente possui, suprimi-la quando não é possível torná-la eficaz, proporcionar aqueles serviços que, como disse Adam Smith, “sendo embora da maior vantagem para uma grande sociedade, são de uma natureza tal que o lucro nunca é suficiente para pagar o seu custo a um indivíduo ou a um pequeno grupo de indivíduos”, tudo isto são tarefas que constituem o amplo e incontestável campo de actividade do Estado.

Nenhum sistema racionalmente elaborado pode preconizar que o Estado nada deve fazer. Um sistema concorrencial eficaz exige, tanto como qualquer outro, estruturas legais inteligentemente projectadas e continuamente adaptadas.

O planeamento e a livre concorrência só se podem combinar entre si caso se planifique para a concorrência e nunca quando se planifique contra a concorrência. O planeamento criticável é unicamente o planeamento que se opõe ao sistema da livre concorrência, o que pretende substituir este sistema. Não cabe discutir aquele planeamento que é efectivamente necessário para levar o sistema da livre concorrência a desenvolver todas as virtualidades de eficácia que possui.

O governo tem-se deixado enredar nas suas próprias insuficiências e deficiências. Sem oposição de relevo, não soube governar com rapidez, inteligência e realismo. Não conseguiu surpreender, muito menos tomar a iniciativa da acção pública, prever e prevenir. Proclama alto e bom som, mas acaba quase sempre por preferir as meias tintas e a espera. Não teve a ousadia dos grandes reformadores, nem a coragem dos revolucionários. Não conhece a serenidade dos aristocratas, nem o atrevimento dos plebeus. Está convencido de que a gestão, na sua versão mais estática, é a arte suprema da governação. Apesar das excepções, a maioria dos seus toscos ministros comporta-se como se estivesse em estágio de aprendizagem, dando embora sinais de cansaço prematuro. No seu conjunto (e salvo, uma vez mais, as excepções pessoais e sectoriais), o governo oscila entre o medíocre e o sofrível.

Gostaria, no entanto, que continuasse a cumprir o seu mandato até ao fim. Por duas razões. Primeira, porque o cumprimento de legislaturas integrais é um valor em si próprio e, salvo drama ou desastre, deve ser respeitado e preservado. Segunda, porque, com o que sabemos, o governo alternativo, chefiado por Ferro Rodrigues e composto pelos amigos que actualmente dirigem o partido, seria muito pior e mais perigoso. Reconheço que esta opção não parece ser de grande política e não é de certeza gloriosa. Mas prefiro a deficiência ao desastre. É ao que estamos reduzidos.

Outros exemplos ainda: documentos sem dúvida importantes para um julgamento equilibrado (nada mais seria preciso) sobre questões polémicas, são ,ou ignorados, ou tratados num contexto hostil. É o caso da sondagem feita no Iraque pelas grandes televisões ocidentais e reconhecida como a mais fidedigna até hoje realizada. Convenhamos que ela tem mais peso do que o senhor jornalista singular que diz que “os iraquianos com quem falei estão todos revoltados…”. Se calhar é verdade, mas talvez a sondagem tenha um pouco mais de força…

Os países não têm princípios mas interesses, caro João. Sem dúvida. Mas, também não dúvido que quem governa os países tem interesses próprios, pessoais, por vezes, que não se identificam facilmente com o "interesse" do povo espanhol, francês ou de outro qualquer. Que, muito francamente, também não me parece que seja perceptível através de um acto eleitoral.

Os sociais-democratas da Caríntia chegaram a acordo com o Partido da Liberdade (FPOe), do populista Joerg Haider, para governarem em conjunto aquela província austríaca, durante os próximos cinco anos. Segundo o "Libération", foi como que o quebrar de um tabu, pois que até agora Haider e o seu partido não eram bem vistos pelos sociais-democratas, que até chegaram a criticar o facto de o chanceler conservador ter feito uma aliança com eles. Muitos países da União Europeia decidiram em 2000 suspender as relações com a Áustria, em diversos domínios, por ela ter no seu Governo o FPOe, tido como de extrema-direita. E agora foi mesmo um grupo filiado na Internacional Socialista que, num autêntico golpe de teatro, decidiu estender a mão a Haider para que ele possa continuar a governar a Caríntia.

A estratégia da Al-Qaeda é, o próprio Bin Landen o disse, castigar os países que apoiaram os EUA no Iraque e no Afeganistão. Para tal, aquele terrorista mencionou a Austrália, a Itália, o Japão, o Reino Unido, a Polónia e obviamente a Espanha.

O objectivo de Bin Landen é isolar os EUA. Quem os apoiar sofrerá represálias. No meu entender isto é razão mais que suficiente para apoiar os americanos. Muitos o vêem como um pretexto para os deixar.

A estratégia da Al-Qaeda é dizer: “Se tu te mexes, eu mato-te”. A reacção de alguns é responder, pensando: “Nesse caso, o melhor é ficar quieto”. Ora, esta atitude é já uma cedência à chantagem dos terroristas.

A Al-Qaeda quer destruir o Ocidente. Julgar que se não atacarmos esta organização terrorista nos coloca de fora do seu alcance é uma ilusão. É verdade que a Esquerda sempre nos presenteou com as suas visões idílicas do mundo. Pena é que, a maioria das vezes, todos venhamos a ser prejudicados por elas.

A direita está a cometer o mesmo erro que a esquerda cometeu após o 11 de Setembro.

A direita está a analisar os acontecimentos em Espanha como se as relações internacionais fossem regulados pela ética. Como se os espanhóis tivessem que obedecer a uma determinada ética universalista que exige a todos o mesmo comportamento em relação ao terrorismo.

(...)

Trata-se ainda de uma posição profundamente colectivista que defende que os países têm a obrigação de se sacrificarem pela segurança colectiva. Uma comunidade tem todo o direito ao isolacionismo e à neutralidade. Nada garante que o isolacionismo seja uma estratégia pior que o internacionalismo. A Suiça e a Suécia estão aí para demonstrar que a neutralidade tem as suas vantagens.

A majority of Iraqis believe life is better now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a poll released on Tuesday.

A total of 2,500 Iraqis were quizzed for a group of international broadcasting organizations including the BBC in a poll to mark the first anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.

Almost half (49 percent) of those questioned believed the invasion of their country by U.S. and British troops was right, compared with 39 percent who said it was wrong, the poll commissioned by the BBC and other broadcasters found.

Some 57 percent said that life was better now than under Saddam, against 19 percent who said it was worse and 23 percent who said it was about the same.

Iraqi people appeared optimistic about the future, with 71 percent saying they expected things to be better in a years time, six percent predicting it will be worse and nine percent the same.

O novo Governo espanhol liderado por José Luís Zapatero, do PSOE, não se vai imiscuir na vida de empresas cotadas como a Telefónica, Repsol e Endesa, cujos presidentes foram nomeados pelo anterior Executivo, afirmou Miguel Sebastián, responsável pelo programa económico do partido, em entrevista ao «Expansión».

It's a spectacular result for Islamist terrorism, and a chilling portent of Europe's future. A close election campaign, with Aznar's party slightly ahead, ended with the Popular Party's defeat and the socialist opposition winning. It might be argued that the Aznar government's dogged refusal to admit the obvious quickly enough led people to blame it for a cover-up. But why did they seek to delay assigning the blame on al Qaeda? Because they knew that if al Qaeda were seen to be responsible, the Spanish public would blame Aznar not bin Laden! But there's the real ironic twist: if the appeasement brigade really do believe that the war to depose Saddam is and was utterly unconnected with the war against al Qaeda, then why on earth would al Qaeda respond by targeting Spain? If the two issues are completely unrelated, why has al Qaeda made the connection? The answer is obvious: the removal of the Taliban and the Saddam dictatorship were two major blows to the cause of Islamist terror.

If Islamic terrorism were as rational as Irish or Basque terrorism, it would be easier. But Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, summed it up very pithily: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." You can be pro-America (Spain, Australia) or anti-America (France, Canada), but if you broke into the head cave in the Hindu Kush and checked out the hit list you'd be on it either way.

So the choice for pluralist democracies is simple: You can join Bush in taking the war to the terrorists, to their redoubts and sponsoring regimes. Despite the sneers that terrorism is a phenomenon and you can't wage war against a phenomenon, in fact you can – as the Royal Navy did very successfully against the malign phenomena of an earlier age, piracy and slavery.

Or you can stick your head in the sand and paint a burqa on your butt. But they'll blow it up anyway.

Osama bin Laden has escaped capture in Afghanistan several times and may be linked in some way to the Madrid train attacks that killed 200 people, France's chief of defense staff said Monday.

Gen. Henri Bentegeat said about 200 French troops were operating with U.S. forces in southeastern Afghanistan against the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda. The Saudi-born militant is thought to be there or just across the border in Pakistan.

"Our men were not very far. On several occasions, I even think he slipped out of a net that was quite well closed," he told Europe 1 radio. He did not specify a time frame.

The Madrid bombings changed everything. The people have decided that Islamic terrorists are responsible, though that is in no way determined yet, and they have decided that it is the fault of Jose Maria Aznar and the PP government. Congratulations to the terrorists, whether ETA or Islamic: you've done your job. You disrupted the election. You beat Aznar and Rajoy and the PP, who were way ahead in all the polls before the bombings. And congratulations to the leftist parties, too. They won this election--well, not quite fair and square, more like pretty dirty, what with exploiting the bombing to accuse the government of lying with no evidence. But they won. They won, democratically, a clear victory.

A victory for appeasement. A victory for cowardice. The Spanish people demonstrated today that they have no courage.

Em Espanha o eleitorado teve todas as condições para votar livremente. E resolveu punir o PP.

A grande diminuição da abstenção demonstra bem como aquele eleitorado sentiu necessidade de se exprimir pela "arma" ao seu alcance: o voto.

E o PP espanhol pagou nas urnas a falta de objectividade, a manipulação tentada dos últimos dois dias.

William Safire, the New York Times' in-house "conservative" – who endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992, like so many conservatives – was sure Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" would incite anti-Semitic violence. Thus far, the pogroms have failed to materialize.

(...)

But Safire argues that viewers of "The Passion" will see the Jewish mob and think: "Who was responsible for this cruel humiliation? What villain deserves to be punished?"

Let's see: It was a Roman who ordered Christ's execution, and Romans who did all the flaying, taunting and crucifying. Perhaps Safire is indulging in his own negative stereotyping about Jews by assuming they simply viewed Romans as "the help."

Mas que "Constituição" é esta que não aguenta as mais singelas negociações? Que garantias pode dar aos povos europeus um documento que se pretende fundamental e fundacional e nem sequer suporta críticas, sugestões ou a possibilidade de alterações?

Que tipo de "democracia" iluminada estão os burocratas europeus a querer construir? Boicotaram o referendo, não aceitam negociações, nem querem ouvir falar em alterações! Dizem que se o tempo passar tudo pode estar perdido!

The really pertinent question is whether it ought to be the law to prohibit insider trading, rather than an optional provision of private contracts. (A particular business can make it a matter of its own policies that employees must not trade that way or, indeed, they must arrive at some exact time for work; when they defy this, they might suffer consequences -- but this would have little to do with national federal regulation, only with the contract and thus subject only to litigation between the parties involved, not the SEC and the company.)

The bottom line is that insider trading is not wrong, actually, not if it doesn't involve failure to perform one's fiduciary duty or stealing information. If one learns of something from a friend or overhears a conversation or obtains the knowledge via a psychic, there is nothing wrong with making a profitable move that others hadn't had the chance to make. Or, to quote the Wall Street Journal, "Presumably a scrap of paper could blow into your pocket and if it contained material nonpublic information, you could be charged with insider trading for acting on it."

This, by the way, is so elementary that it is amazing that more editorialists and pundits do not make note of it. After all, in the newspaper business a great deal hinges on scooping the competition. Indeed, reporters receive prizes for doing this, namely, jumping ahead of the crowd with information only they got a hold of so as to score! They and their editors should be especially keen on condemning federal insider trading laws -- by the logic of such laws, scooping would have to be prohibited.

How silly these laws are can be gleaned from the fact that in personal conduct getting the jump on someone is often quite simply prudent. Say, a single woman learns that a very eligible and desirable potential mate has turned up in her neighborhood. Before she makes a move to get acquainted she surely doesn't owe it to all the other single women in the region to report this fact. Quite the contrary, she should do her best to get to the potential mate before anyone else has learned of the situation.

O fogo também não terá sido criminoso, mas acidental, devido às más condições de segurança. Felizmente que agora é um bocadinho melhor, não muito. Graças, estou à espera que diga um blogue liberal, à infinita generosidade dos patrões e não aos melgas dos sindicatos.

Greek conservatives swept to a landslide victory Sunday in parliamentary elections that ended 10 years of Socialist government and assigned a new caretaker to the troubled preparations for this summer's Olympics.

With 56 percent of votes counted, the New Democracy party was beating the Socialists 47 percent to 41 percent as part of a deep reshuffling of Greece's political order.

Socialist leader George Papandreou conceded defeat after various exit polls showed New Democracy with a strong lead.

The conservatives, led by 47-year-old Costas Caramanlis, broke into celebration. Car horns blared and champagne corks popped during street parties joined by thousands of people under a full moon. Fireworks exploded overhead. A blitz of cell phone text messages featured the New Democracy emblem and proclaimed: "We're coming!"

Logo, o cerne de uma verdadeira política que procura evitar os abusos monopolísticos deve ser, não impedir a sua constituição, mas garantir a inexistência de barreiras à entrada nos mercados. Como bem lembra Mises essas barreiras são, na maior parte das vezes, criadas por via administrativa (veja-se o caso das farmácias).

Se bem me lembro, durante alguns anos, antes de ser aprovada a célebre lei da rádio o panorama radiofónico nacional era bastante liberalizado. Existiam as célebres "rádios livres" que o Governo tolerava. Qualquer um podia criar uma rádio. A escolha dos objectivos (lucrativo ou apenas por ludico) e programação era da inteira responsabilidade dos seus donos. A única barreira à entrada era o custo do equipamento (que variava conforme a qualidade e o alcance desejado). Não me recordo de, na altura, serem levantados os problemas da "diversidade" ou "monopólio". Com a aprovação da lei da rádio o panorama alterou-se significativamente. Para se poder emitir era necessária uma licença (com um custo) e obedecer a determinadas regras de programação. Dado que a oferta foi administrativamente limitada tornou-se necessário introduzir limites ao numero de rádios que uma mesma empresa, ou individuo, podia deter.

Tal como é posta, a questão sobre se Kant pode ser assinalado como um pensador liberal não só não é fecunda como é sobretudo, nesses termos, indecidível. A caracterização depende, como é óbvio, da “tradição da liberdade” a que se recorre, para usar o título de um livro de João Carlos Espada. Se partirmos do utilitarismo anglo-saxónico, não me parece que Kant possa ser caracterizado como tal. Se partirmos daquilo a que na Tradição da Liberdade se chama “iluminismo igualitário”, com o que João Carlos Espada se refere às luzes francesas e, penso, particularmente a Rousseau, então dir-se-ia que a relação de Kant com este iluminismo é de grande intimidade, simultaneamente com uma admiração e distância essenciais.

Exiled Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier told a television reporter he wants to return to his homeland now that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has fled.

"This is my country," Duvalier told WFOR-CBS4 on Monday in an interview in Paris. "I'm ready to put myself at the disposal of the Haitian people."

Mel Gibson says his new movie, "The Passion of the Christ," is a story about love. For months critics have said otherwise--that it's gratuitously violent with anti-Semitic undertones, or that it risks sparking violence against Jews.

Now millions of Americans are judging for themselves. What they are figuring out is that the controversy surrounding this film says more about those who would have kept it off the silver screen than about the film itself. This is a powerful, important film that lays down a cultural marker at a time when the nation is facing its own struggle of overcoming evil without compromising its moral character. It's the right movie at the right time for America.

(...)

Judging by the applause that erupted in the Brooklyn theater where I saw the film with a mixed crowd of Saturday night moviegoers, it's getting a good reception from a much wider audience than anyone predicted. Which of course is exactly the outcome the cultural elite feared--a low-budget, subtitled movie based on the Gospels becoming a blockbuster. It broke all the rules--no one utters a word in English, it's deeply religious and is not geared for the lucrative late-teen-to-early-20s age group--and still it became a hit. When such a film reaps $76 million at the box office on its opening weekend, it is reflective of a larger cultural phenomenon. Movies don't have to be dumbed down to be successful, because the public is hungry for serious, moral films. And since nothing moves Hollywood like money, Mr. Gibson's gamble may now pay off for the rest of us. This will likely have a greater impact on movie content in coming years than any government regulation ever could.

A inflação em Fevereiro deverá ter recuado 0,1% em termos mensais, segundo os dados apurados pela Direcção-Geral da Empresa. Em termos homólogos, o índice de preços deverá situar-se nos 2,1% enquanto a variação média esperada é de 3%.

A este propósito – e por contraste –, deve dizer-se que a duração do governo de Salazar deveria ser mais relacionada pelos historiadores com a sua política monetária e financeira: o rigor orçamental e o “escudo forte”, que controlaram a inflação e as derrapagens das contas públicas, tornaram o seu governo politicamente sólido no médio e no longo prazo porque permitiram um crescimento real do rendimento dos particulares num cenário em que a moeda perdia muito pouco do seu poder aquisitivo, bastando um ligeiro crescimento anual do P.I.B. para esse efeito de enriquecimento deslizante descomprimir as tensões (e a sua sempre possível “politização”) decorrentes das expectativas das pessoas.

Ora, as pressões no sentido de abandonar o enquadramento “macro-económico” criado por Salazar sempre se tinham manifestado desde 1945 (as políticas “industrialistas” à Daniel Barbosa era isso que pediam) e os conselhos que povoam o célebre livro do Prof. Valentim Xavier Pintado (Structure and Growth of the Portuguese Economy, Genebra: E.F.T.A., 1964; reed. Lisboa: I.C.S., 2002) – e que formaram a geração “reformista” que chegou ao poder na burocracia estatal em meados da década de 60 – iam no mesmo sentido. Caetano chegou assim à chefia do governo num clima já favorável da “opinião técnica” vigente a maiores gastos com programas keynesianos de distribuição da riqueza e de demand management; daí que, em demanda de uma legitimação da sua liderança entre a nova geração de quadros e profissionais, Caetano tenha optado por aquilo que ele próprio denominou “Estado social”, com o seu modelo universal de educação, saúde e pensões de reforma.

Sousa Franco, o político que declarou que o governo de António Guterres era o pior governo jamais havido em Portugal desde os tempos de D. Maria I, o político que mimoseou o governo PS com frases como «esta política é tão medíocre que até dói» ou «é urgente pôr fim a este Inverno do nosso descontentamento», foi escolhido como cabeça de lista do PS para as eleições europeias. Todos se lembram das crispações criadas entre Sousa Franco e diversos dirigentes socialistas no tempo em que, entre 1995 e 1999, ocupou a pasta das Finanças e todos se recordam das afirmações contundentes que Sousa Franco produziu depois da sua saída, referindo-se à actuação do governo PS.

Poder-se-ia pensar que seria uma forma dourada de exílio face às diatribes com que imprecou o governo PS. Mas o exílio para Bruxelas destina-se a políticos notórios e incomodativos. Presentemente, Sousa Franco já não era nem uma coisa nem outra. Logo, não se trata de um exílio.

Será porque Sousa Franco representa a política financeira que é o paradigma que o PS irá defender?

Mas Sousa Franco lançou os alicerces para o despesismo orçamental que Pina Moura tentou, já no final do guterrismo, pôr algum controlo, o que lhe valeu o despedimento, e que tem sido o quebra cabeças do actual governo PSD/PP.

(...)

Sousa Franco entrou no governo de António Guterres ao som de fanfarras. Era o político competente e incorruptível por excelência. Era o político não-político, porque a sua imagem era de neutralidade, circunspecção e competência. Acabou afinal por ter, naquele governo, o comportamento circunspecto e neutral de um elefante numa loja de louças. Humilhou pessoalmente Guterres diversas vezes. Provavelmente não seria essa a sua intenção. Um indivíduo como Sousa Franco, que se tem num conceito tão elevado, não humilha os míseros mortais que o rodeiam. Age naturalmente do alto da sua suficiência. E se os outros se sentem humilhados por Sousa Franco é porque se julgam, ingenuamente, da mesma craveira que ele, o que é, por postulado de Sousa Franco, absolutamente impossível.

(...)

Afinal Roma, agora, paga a traidores. Não com prebendas e mordomias dentro dos seus muros, mas com chorudos proconsulados nas Gálias nordestinas.

With Pierre Bourdieu's death from cancer in 2002, France lost one of its most active and significant intellectuals. Having written over 25 books and founding the magazine Liber in 1989, Bourdieu was a leading voice for the left, both in France and throughout the world.

In Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market 2, seven of Bourdieu's speeches from 1999–2000 are collected in this slim volume. Unfortunately for Bourdieu, his final written attempt to exposit the danger of the capitalist market is a failure. His words come off as if they are the desperate, rambling plea of a disgruntled ideologue in the winter of his life. Worried that after dozens of books his message still hasn't been consumed, he offers 96 pages of clichéd, socialistic vitriol.

His thesis is two-fold: first, he attempts to implicate the market-driven ideology of neo-liberalism for most of society's ills, and second, he calls on intellectuals to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Emile Zola; there must be an active resistance to market-driven tyranny, not resigned criticism.

(...)

Firing Back reads well enough as a call-to-arms for socialist intellectuals. In regards to economic analysis, however, Bourdieu's inability to grasp economic realities dampens the book's impact markedly. His curious economic assertions abound in the book. On page 28, for example, our author states that firms pursue ever higher profit returns on capital investment only through mass layoffs. If this were the case, and increased profits could be garnered simply by firing people, then perhaps GM and Microsoft could turn a huge profit next quarter if they lay-off everyone!

While his economics may not be Stalinist, his vocabulary in describing the market economy most certainly is. For here, over 150 years since the publication of The Communist Manifesto, and almost fifteen years since the death knell of communism was sounded, Bourdieu writes of the "blind forces of economics," the "tyranny of the rates of profit" or the "petty bourgeois."

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In Bourdieu's mind, mankind has not progressed economically in the past two hundred years. Despite the fact that those countries where the industrial revolution began enjoy the highest standard of living in the world to date, he cannot see the benefits of free markets. His ideological glaucoma narrows his field of vision to the mundane aspects of globalization. He writes, "…the prototype of the unskilled worker of the 'new economy' is the supermarket checkout girl whom bar-coding and computerization have converted into a genuine assembly-line worker, her cadence timed, clocked, and controlled across a schedule determined by variations in the flow of customers: she has neither the life nor the lifestyle of a factory worker, but she occupies an equivalent position in the new structure."

The battle for liberty is in the end a battle over ideas. If Firing Back is the last testament of one of the greatest intellectuals on the left, the struggle for freedom and capitalism is indeed a hopeful one. Yet for all his erroneous claims, Bourdieu's spirit represents what Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek envied in the socialists, viz. the courage to dream big (although in Bourdieu's case, to dream horribly wrong). This book represents a romantic plea for radical participation, a sentiment not often found among the capitalist intellectuals. While the world can live without the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, it could use his sense of passion.

Quando soube que George W. Bush havia decidido invadir o Iraque, perguntei a mim mesmo: Por que o Iraque? Por que não o Paquistão, que tem bomba atômica e distribui tecnologia nuclear no mercado do terrorismo internacional? Por que não o Irã? Por que não a própria Arábia Saudita, de onde jorra dinheiro para Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah e tutti quanti?

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Nos últimos dias da guerra, porém, quando se abriram os cemitérios clandestinos nas prisões iraquianas e começou a contagem dos cadáveres, não pude deixar de perceber -- e escrever -- que a decisão de George W. Bush tinha sido moralmente acertada e até obrigatória: qualquer país que mate trezentos mil prisioneiros políticos tem de ser invadido e subjugado imediatamente, ainda que não represente perigo nenhum para as nações vizinhas ou para a suposta “ordem internacional”. As soberanias nacionais devem ser respeitadas, mas não para além do ponto em que se arrogam o direito ao genocídio. Escrevi na ocasião e repito: cada protelação da ONU custou, em média, a morte de trinta iraquianos por dia, mais de vinte mil ao longo de dois anos de blá-blá-blá pacifista, isto é, só nesse período, cinco vezes mais que o total de vítimas da guerra. Por ter estancado esse fluxo de sangue inocente, com um número reduzido de baixas de ambos os lados e com a menor taxa de vítimas civis já observada em todas as guerras do século XX, o presidente norte-americano, quaisquer que tenham sido os seus erros, merece a gratidão e o respeito de toda a humanidade consciente.

A correção moral intrínseca da ação americana é tão patente e inegável, que, em todas as discussões que se seguiram na mídia internacional e brasileira, esse aspecto da questão teve de ser sistematicamente escamoteado, para concentrar o foco da atenção pública no problema de saber se Saddam Hussein tinha ou não as tais armas de destruição em massa e, portanto, se ao alegar esse motivo em particular – entre inumeráveis outros – George W. Bush tinha acertado ou não.