Por que também quero rever a Lei da Anistia

“Eu tenho dito que, em algum momento, o Supremo terá de ser provocado e acho que este momento está chegando. É o momento para saber se a lei de 1979 anistia os torturadores, os estupradores, os assassinatos e os responsáveis por desaparecimentos ou não” .

A fala acima é de Paulo Vannuchi, da Secretaria Especial de Direitos Humanos. Querem saber? Eu agora estou nesta campanha: vamos rever a Lei de Anistia. Acho que devemos declarar a sua nulidade para “torturadores, estupradores, assassinos e responsáveis por desaparecimentos”, como quer Vannuchi, e, por coerência, para aqueles que aderiram ao terrorismo.

Gente do Ministério Público Federal também está empenhada nesta campanha. Tarso Genro, ministro da Justiça, idem. Como sempre, a argumentação do Beccaria de Santa Maria (RS) é a mais encantadora: para ele, a tortura não era admitida nem mesmo pelo estado de exceção — e ele está certo. A anistia, assim, só teria validade para os que cometeram ações condenáveis numa democracia, mas então aceitas por aquela legalidade. Muito coerente.

Assim, por isonomia, na esquerda, os que resistiram à tirania são dignos de anistia. Já os que seqüestraram pessoas (Franklin Martins, por exemplo), planejaram assaltos (Dilma Rousseff, por exemplo), praticaram assaltos (Carlos Minc, por exemplo) ou integraram entidades que mataram pessoas (todos eles, por exemplo), bem, essa gente teria de responder por seus atos.

Eu estou cantando e andando para torturadores. Felizmente, não conheço nenhum. Nem quero conhecer. Mas entendo que a anistia política valeu para todo mundo — era esse o espírito da lei. Mais ainda: não foi uma anistia concedida depois de uma revolução dos antigos vencidos contra os vencedores. Foi, sim, uma concessão dos vencedores — o que dá à atual proposição de Vannuchi e companhia uma característica óbvia de revanche… 30 anos depois! Essa gente não aprendeu nada. Essa gente não esqueceu nada!

Mas, se querem assim, muito bem. É chegada a hora, então, de o “outro lado” contestar as anistias concedidas a terroristas que pegaram em armas, que seqüestraram, que assaltaram, que MATARAM. Quem sairá perdendo?

Qual é a participação dos “torturadores” na vida pública hoje? ZERO. Felizmente. Qual e a participação de antigos facinororos esquerdistas na vida pública? Enorme. Agora eles se converteram à democracia, certo? E os outros? Não se converteram? Continuam torturando?

Vejam que coisa: a eventual punição de antigos torturadores é irrelevante para o processo político, já que eles inexistem na vida pública. Já a eventual punição de antigos terroristas significaria uma arejada e tanto no ambiente. Assim, acho que também quero rever a Lei de Anistia…

Cadeia para torturadores e terroristas!

Ah, bem, o próprio Vannuchi precisa tomar cuidado. Disse ele numa entrevistaa: “Depois, nos tornamos militantes da ALN, nos envolvendo em situações armadas. Foi um processo crescente até atingir seu momento mais espetacular, o seqüestro do embaixador americano. Entrei para a organização dois meses antes.”

Great! Vamos rever a Lei da Anistia!

FONTE: http://veja.abril.com.br/blogs/reinaldo/

Secret of the ‘lost’ tribe that wasn’t

Tribal guardian admits the Amazon Indians’ existence was already known, but he hoped the publicity would lift the threat of logging

In pictures: the remote Amazonian tribe

• Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
• The Observer,
• Sunday June 22, 2008
• Article history

Warriors from the Amazon basin tribe, above, paint their bodies red and fire arrows to ward off the plane carrying José Carlos Meirelles, who says that he released the picture in order to highlight the plight of indigenous people in the jungle

They are the amazing pictures that were beamed around the globe: a handful of warriors from an ‘undiscovered tribe‘ in the rainforest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the aircraft that photographed them.

Or so the story was told and sold. But it has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe’s existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that ‘uncontacted’ tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.

The disclosures have been made by the man behind the pictures, José Carlos Meirelles, 61, one of the handful of sertanistas – experts on indigenous tribes – working for the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency, Funai, which is dedicated to searching out remote tribes and protecting them.

In his first interviews since the disclosure of the tribe’s existence, Meirelles described how he found the group, detailed how they lived and how he planned the publicity to protect them and other tribes in similar danger of losing the habitat in which they have flourished for hundreds of years.

Meirelles admitted that the tribe was first known about almost a century ago and that the apparently chance encounter that produced the now famous images was no accident. ‘When we think we might have found an isolated tribe,’ he told al-Jazeera, ‘a sertanista like me walks in the forest for two or three years to gather evidence and we mark it in our [global positioning system]. We then map the territory the Indians occupy and we draw that protected territory without making contact with them. And finally we set up a small outpost where we can monitor their protection.’

But in this case Meirelles appears, controversially, to have gone out to seek and find the uncontacted tribe in an area where it was known to be living.

According to his account, the Brazilian state of Acre offered him the use of an aircraft for three days. ‘I had years of GPS co-ordinates,’ he said. Meirelles had another clue to the tribe’s precise location. ‘A friend of mine sent me some Google Earth co-ordinates and maps that showed a strange clearing in the middle of the forest and asked me what that was,’ he said. ‘I saw the co-ordinates and realised that it was close to the area I had been exploring with my son – so I needed to fly over it.’

For two days, Meirelles says, he flew a 150km-radius route over the border region with Peru and saw huts that belonged to isolated tribes. But he did not see people. ‘When the women hear the plane above, they run into the forest, thinking it’s a big bird,’ he said. ‘This is such a remote area, planes don’t fly over it.’

What he was looking for was not only proof of life, but firm evidence that the tribes in this area were flourishing – proof in his view that the policy of no contact and protection was working. On the last day, with only a couple hours of flight time remaining, Meirelles spotted a large community.

‘When I saw them painted red, I was satisfied, I was happy,’ he said. ‘Because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory.’

Survival International, the organisation that released the pictures along with Funai, conceded yesterday that Funai had known about this nomadic tribe for around two decades. It defended the disturbance of the tribe saying that, since the images had been released, it had forced neighbouring Peru to re-examine its logging policy in the border area where the tribe lives, as a result of the international media attention. Activist and former Funai president Sydney Possuelo agreed that – amid threats to their environment and doubt over the existence of such tribes – it was necessary to publish them.

But the revelation that the existence of the tribe was already established will provoke awkward questions over why a decision was made to try to photograph them – a form of contact in itself – in order to make a political point.

Meirelles, one of only five or so genuine sertanistas, has no regrets, arguing that the pictures and video released to the world were powerful and indisputable evidence to those who say isolated tribes no longer exist. ‘Alan García [the President of Peru] declared recently that the isolated Indians were a creation in the imagination of environmentalists and anthropologists – now we have the pictures.’

But he is determined to keep the tribe’s location secret – even under torture, he says. ‘They can decide when they want contact, not me or anyone else.’

FONTE:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/21/amazon?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews

Bruno Tolentino

O ESPECTRO

(A Ivan Junqueira)

Não há como agarrar-te à natureza
quando a asa da noite baixa e faz
a sombra sobre a acha, a lenha presa

à luz da labareda que a desfaz;
morres despreparado ou morres bem,
mas passas pela cinza, meu rapaz.

Tudo talvez ressurja mais além,
mas ao abutre, albatroz, águia ou condor
o vôo acaba por pesar e tem

que perder altitude no esplendor:
dos páramos à esteira de uma nave
estende-se a amplidão, mas sem repor

fôlego a um coração até que a ave
recolha a asa e pronto, se acabou,
foi-se o que era tão doce! Tão suave

levitou-se e mais nada lembra o vôo…
Nada, nem mesmo a terra, eqüidistante
do que caiu como do que voltou,

com uma equanimidade impressionante.
E caso a interpelassem que diria?
Nada outra vez, ou menos que o ex-amante

fingindo-se impassível se algum dia
ouve dizer que tudo acaba assim.
Pois foi assim que o espectro da poesia

surgiu-me um belo dia, e veio a mim
assim que eu consegui levar a sério
os canteiros de Kant num jardim

à beira Tâmisa, ante um cemitério…
Lá estivera eu de mão no queixo
a espanar as lombadas do mistério,

seguindo a lógica ao seu belo fecho:
afinal, se a equação mais arbitrária
conseguiria amarrar a terra a um eixo,

qualquer cogitação imaginária
não seria nem mais nem menos frágil;
divagações da hora solitária,

arabescos da mente, sempre ágil
ao fazer de um trapézio o seu lugar.
Pois foi então que, assim como um presságio

obriga a respirar mais devagar,
mas faz bater mais forte o coração,
eu primeiro senti aquele olhar

antes de perceber a assombração
que entre o rio, o junquilho e o malmequer
vi caminhar em minha direção.

Atônito, amparei-me a uma mulher,
semidesfalecido: o encapotado
era a cara do Charles Baudelaire

do retrato, cuspido e escarrado!
Ninguém via o que estava acontecendo,
em toda aquela gente ali ao lado

ninguém notava aquele rosto idêntico
à corola da rosa corroída
em que Blake encarnara o sofrimento.

E lá vinha ele andando! Espavorida
mas alerta, habilíssima colméia,
a mente me exigia uma saída

e, assim como o avestruz ante a alcatéia,
insistia em não ver: não, não seria,
não podia ser ele, era outra idéia

a espumejar na velha alegoria
dos nevoeiros que complicam Londres…
Mas não havia erro! A ventania

havia depenado tanto as frondes
que atirava topázios e safiras
contra o bueiro em brasas do horizonte,

mas nele havia o ar dessas mentiras
que dizem a verdade: confrontou-me
e num rápido olhar deixou-me em tiras

os trapos da razão – era o meu homem!
Há múmias que uma vez desembrulhadas
têm escrito na cara o nosso nome.

Carros, ônibus, gente nas calçadas,
um semáforo ao longe, vaga-lume
estático entre sombras apressadas,

e aquilo a se agitar que nem um cume
de palmeira no ar – e andando, andando
e desferindo o olhar como um perfume

de gangrena fatal ensarilhando
o eterno câncer da imaginação
que desorbita a mente como um bando

de morcegos agrava a escuridão.
Por fim parou-me ao lado e imaginei
ouvir (talvez sonhasse, talvez não…)

um balbucio familiar e cheio
de ecos aos que andamos pelo canto:
“Andaste num vazio sempre alheio,

entre noções apenas e, no entanto,
nunca bastou sequer a consolar-te
tanta fabulação cheia de espanto,

de dor… Buscas o todo parte a parte,
queres as perfeições da geometria,
e ao fim do sonho circular da arte

entregas tudo à fantasmagoria,
aos jogos malabares da ilusão.
Andas equivocado e nem seria

de surpreender tua equivocação,
porque, se alguma vez desconfiaste
dessa imprudência, abriste o coração

à luz conceitual, o belo traste
que temes porque o adoras e te leva,
como o refém que és do que adoraste,

de lição em lição à mesma treva.
É tudo sempre a treva tumultuosa,
não por causa da carne, que se eleva

quando quer à estação miraculosa,
mas por causa do olhar que não quer ver
e abisma-se em si mesmo, como a rosa

amada pelo verme e sem poder
de o recusar, tentando resignar-se.
Não te resignes mais a conceber

um triunfo de idéias, um disfarce
para as caras da morte neste mundo,
uma equação qualquer que a mascarasse,

como o médico mente ao moribundo
e o coitado a si mesmo: também eu
meti-me com paixão nesse infecundo

escrínio de ilusões, mas vem do céu
a luz que nos sustém, a que alucina,
a luz conceitual, nasce de um breu.

Não sigas mais a falsa peregrina
que rapta a imagem, rouba-lhe o reflexo
e entrega os dois a um jogo que termina

por desfazer de tudo a cada nexo.
A terra é provisória e improvidente,
tudo é relâmpago entre a morte e o sexo,

mas a alma faminta não consente
que lhe mintam! A Idéia te convida
mas não recebe nunca e, de repente,

entre a porta da entrada e a da saída
perdes as proporções e logo a conta,
o fio da meada e o dom da vida;

fecha-se a última jaula e a fera tonta
descobre que agoniza e morre presa.
E no entanto repara: o cisne aponta

para a altura cantando, e com certeza
essa canção no extremo transfigura
a coisa moritura e a alma surpresa

entre o número, o nada e a noite escura…

Avaliando George W. Bush

Olavo de Carvalho
Diário do Comércio (editorial), 18 de junho de 2008

O que quer que se pense de George W. Bush, seis coisas a respeito dele ninguém tem o direito de negar:

1. Ele manteve seu país totalmente a salvo de ataques terroristas por oito anos.

2. Ele derrubou um regime genocida culpado do assassinato de 300 mil iraquianos.

3. Ao contrário do que alardeia a grande mídia com mendacidade histérica, ele fez isso por meio de uma guerra que ao longo da História foi, comprovadamente, a que menos vítimas civis produziu.

4. Ele praticamente desmantelou a resistência terrorista no Iraque, matando 20 mil militantes da Al-Qaeda e forçando a maioria dos remanescentes a buscar refúgio no Irã.

5. Ele promoveu no Iraque a mais rápida e espetacular reconstrução pós-bélica que já se viu, tornando a economia iraquiana mais próspera do que era antes da guerra.

6. Ele implantou a democracia no Iraque – e ela funciona.

Desses seis fatos tiro duas conclusões:

a) Ele foi o melhor chefe de segurança que os EUA já tiveram.

b) Ele foi o melhor presidente que o Iraque já teve.

Julgá-lo enquanto presidente dos EUA é coisa completamente diversa. Quando ele foi eleito em 2000, os republicanos tinham todas as condições de vencer as eleições presidenciais seguintes por quatro décadas, desmantelar a conspiração do Partido Democrata com a esquerda radical e curar o país segundo as fórmulas consagradas de Ronald Reagan. Decorridos dois mandatos, ele não apenas não fez nada disso mas permitiu que seu partido perdesse fôlego ao ponto de tornar quase inviável a permanência dos republicanos no poder.

Atribuir esse vexame ao fracasso da guerra no Iraque não explica nada, é pura propaganda esquerdista enganosa.

George W. Bush nunca fracassou no Iraque. Ele fracassou foi no front interno. Esse fracasso começou logo após o 11 de setembro, quando, em vez de aproveitar a ocasião para denunciar o colaboracionismo democrata, desmoralizando de vez o esquerdismo e saneando a atmosfera política americana, ele preferiu fingir que seus inimigos eram seus amigos, criando uma ficção de unidade nacional contra o agressor externo. Os democratas, ostentando o rótulo de patriotas que o próprio Bush lhes grudara na testa, e armados do prestígio assim adquirido, puderam esfaquear pelas costas o país, suas Forças Armadas e seu presidente sem que a população duvidasse um só instante de suas boníssimas intenções.

Fugindo ao confronto que eles por seu lado buscavam insistentemente, Bush deu força a seus inimigos, que eram os inimigos dos EUA. Tudo o que ele teve de valente na condução da guerra, teve de politicamente covarde na luta interna. Resultado: seu sucesso é condenado como um fracasso e seu verdadeiro fracasso não pode ser confessado em público sem desencadear, mil vezes piorada, a mesma divisão interna que ele ainda quer evitar mas que seus adversários assumem cada vez mais barulhentamente, tirando dela, contra os EUA, as mesmas vantagens que Bush deveria ter tirado em favor do país.

George W. Bush errou de profissão. É um grande comandante militar, mas não é um político de maneira alguma.

Malik Obama says Israel shouldn’t worry about Barack’s Muslim “connection”

By Israel Insider staff  June 20, 2008

Bookmark to del.icio.usdocument.write(’<img src=”../../Static/Images/digg.gif” alt=”Digg!” width=”10″ height=”10″ hspace=”5″ vspace=”0″ border=”0″ align=”baseline”><a href=”http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=’+location.href+’&title=’+document.title+’” target=”_blank” class=”deldigg”>Digg This Story</a>’);Digg This Story

Malik holds a photo of Obama and him in Muslim dress, reportedly when the two first met in 1985

This article updates and corrects the one previously published on June 13, 2008 with newly uncovered evidence of the audio recording at the center of the controversy. Apparently the Jerusalem’s Post’s sloppy paraphrase of a radio interview with Barack Obama’s half-brother created the false impression that he had explicitly confirmed the “Muslim background” of the likely Democratic Presidential nominee. The newly uncovered recording presents more ambiguous evidence. The Jerusalem Post reported on June 12 that “Barack Obama’s half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background. In an interview with Army Radio he expressed a special salutation from the Obamas of Kenya.” The link above is from Google’s cache of the Post, but the article has since been pulled from its live website. Israel Insider had relied on that quote as confirmation that Malik himself had spoken explicitly about Barack’s Muslim background. ABC News obtained from Israel Army Radio a recording of (only) Malik’s side of the interview, and the unavailability to date of the interviewer’s side of the conversation injects some uncertainty about the references of his answers. Malik says, in response to the interviewer’s question: “I don’t think that’s in any way going to be something to worry about. I myself am not speaking for him. But we are here, we love people in general. People love us. I myself love people who love me. You know, so, everything’s mutual. I can’t go [sic] in terms of Israel and Kenya and America, and so forth, you know, but based on what else I’ve heard him say and what I know of him as an individual, I don’t think Israel should worry too much, you know, about the connection. Because, I am a Muslim myself, and I don’t think that my being a Muslim has got anything to do with my brother being the President of the United States.” The context clearly indicates that “the connection” being asked about had something to do with Barack Obama’s relationship to things Muslim — although without hearing the question, it is uncertain what exactly is the connect. Malik answering “because I am a Muslim myself” might imply that Barack, in his mind, is a Muslim too, but on the other hand Malik asserts that “my being a Muslim” did not have “anything to do” with his half-brother being President [sic].” (Presumably Malik meant that their shared heritage would not impact Barack’s actions should he be elected.) The rambling and genial answers do not prove, nor disprove, the depth of the Obamas’ connections, past or present, with Islam — except of course the undenied fact that their common father was a Muslim convert. (By the laws of Islam that makes Barack Obama a Muslim.) Jake Tapper, ABC News senior national correspondent, commenting on the recording in his blog, observes that “nowhere in there does Malik expressly say anything about Obama having a Muslim background. And nowhere does he ‘confirm’ anything about Obama having a Muslim background. Malik refers to Obama having a ‘connection’ to something, perhaps Islam, which could clearly be a reference to Obama’s father.” The Obama brothers’ father, a senior economist for the Kenyan government who studied at Harvard University, died in car crash in 1982. He left six sons and a daughter. All of his children – except Malik — live in Britain or the United States. Malik and Barack met in 1985 in the US. “He was best man at my wedding and I was best man at his,” said Malik in a 2004 interview with an AP reporter. Their paternal grandfather, Onyango Hussein Obama, was one of the first Muslim converts in Nyangoma-Kogelo, Malik said.” In a denial issued last November that still stands on the official campaign website, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement explaining that “Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.” Melanie Phillips is the most recent commentator to draw attention to the massive body of evidence that leaves no doubt that Barak Hussein Obama was born a Muslim (Islam is patrilineal) and raised a Muslim (so registered in school, acknowledging attending Islamic classes, reported accompanying his step-father to the mosque, and able to recite the Koran in the original Arabic). Reuven Koret, Aaron Klein and Daniel Pipes have previously pointed to the attempts by Obama and his campaign to conceal the candidate’s Muslim background. The well documented evidence draws upon the on-the-ground interviews by researchers in Indonesia and Kenya, published quotations of Obama’s childhood friends and his school records, as well as the candidate’s own autobiography.

FONTE: http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/12918.htm

Declaration Principles

Abraham Lincoln said, in Independence Hall, February 22nd, 1861: “I never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

We who share Lincoln’s views must make clear to ourselves and to our countrymen what those “Declaration sentiments” are.

We hold that what Lincoln referred to as the “sentiments” of the Declaration are the principles of the American Republic. And we understand them to include the following:

• All men are CREATED equal. Hence they have equal natural rights as a gift of the CREATOR.
• Our duty to seek and follow the will of the Creator is prior to all government. Accordingly, so is the liberty of religious conscience.
• The authority of the Creator as prior to all civil society and human authority must be respected for liberty to endure.
• There is a natural right to life, prior to all positive law, including the Constitution.
• There is a natural right to acquire, secure, and use property for safety and happiness.
• Men have a right and a duty to form governments to secure their rights, and to assist one another in striving for happiness.
• Men are authorized by the Creator to defend these rights, and accordingly, so are the governments they form. From this authority proceeds the right and duty to defend national sovereignty and security.
• Governments are made legitimate by the consent of the free and equal persons who form and sustain them. Governmental powers are always to be understood as a delegation from the persons who compact to form the political community.
• To enjoy the right of political self-government, men must be capable of personal self-government–the virtue of self-control. A people without decency cannot be secure in its liberty.
• The institutions by which the life of liberty is fostered, especially the marriage-based two-parent family, the churches, and other associations aiming at the good life, are to be protected and cherished.
• The vocation of citizenship in a free republic is noble and honorable. Public service, especially in the defense of the rule of law, merits praise and respect.
• The right to self-government entails the right to arms by which tyranny can be resisted and new government established when necessary.
• Governments may fail in many ways and still be tolerated. Peace is a precious good, and the people may be well advised to be patient with occasional governmental abuse to avoid rashly unleashing the season of popular passion and violence that will accompany any change in the fundamental form of government.
• But the worst failures, tending irrevocably to excessive concentration of power, consolidating the branches and depriving the people of its liberty, or withdrawing the protection of the laws from the people, constitute tyranny or anarchy, and may and sometimes should be resisted, even to the point of rebellion, as our Founders declared.
• Free speech and a free press are both required for the practice of responsible liberty, as necessary means by which the people can act together to govern themselves according to the laws of nature and of nature’s God.
• All persons have a right to equal treatment under the laws without regard to race, creed, or ethnicity.
• It is the duty of the people, individually and in their associations, private and public, to declare the principles of self-government, including the fundamental American creed that our liberties come as a gift of the Creator.
• Personal religious belief is not a requirement for American citizenship, but acknowledgment of our national belief that human equality and rights come from an authority beyond human will is a moral duty of citizenship. Its rejection constitutes a denial of natural rights and human equality, and is inconsistent with ordered liberty.

On the basis of these principles, we would like to add a new term to American grassroots politics: DECLARATIONIST. A “Declarationist” is anyone who believes in the principles of the American Republic as outlined in the Declaration of Independence. (Prepared by Alan Keyes and others.)

FONTE: http://www.renewamerica.us/readings/principles.htm

Citação.

“Sem missão não há homem.”

Ortega y Gasset, José

The Marxist roots of the global warming scare

Wes Vernon

Wes Vernon
June 16, 2008

The late Natalie Grant Wraga once wrote, “Protection of the environment has become the principal tool for attack against the West and all it stands for. Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist values.”

And who was this person?

Natalie Grant Wraga (who died in 2002 at age 101) was an internationally-recognized expert on the art of disinformation. In her Washington Post obituary, Herbert Romerstein — veteran intelligence expert in the legislative and executive branches of government — described Grant/Wraga as “one of our leading authorities” on Soviet deceit.

In a 1998 article appearing in Investors Business Daily (IBD), reporter John Berlau wrote that some of the most respected scholars on Soviet Intelligence have credited this woman with teaching them how to penetrate desinformatzia, Moscow’s term for its ongoing operation to deceive foreign governments.

John Dziak — onetime senior intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) — is quoted by IBD as saying were it not “for someone like Natalie, we would have had more failures, and the Soviets would have had more successes.”

Which leads us where?

In many of her writings, she dropped her last name and wrote under the byline Natalie Grant. That takes us to the spring 1998 issue of The Register. Therein, Grant identified Green Cross International (GCI) as a Non-Government Organization (NGO) founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last communist dictator of the Soviet Union. The aim of GCI was worldwide enforcement of a rigid environmental agenda.

Concurrent with the advancement of GCI, there was the birth of yet another NGO called the Earth Council, chaired by Maurice Strong, a key environmentalist mover and shaker at the United Nations. According to Wikipedia, Strong — a Canadian — describes himself as “a socialist in ideology and a capitalist in methodology.” The bio also notes that “some consider Strong a frightening power seeker.” And then this: “He shares the views of the most radical environmentalist street protester, but instead of shouting himself hoarse at a police barricade at a global conference, he’s the secretary general inside, wielding the gavel.”

Meanwhile, about a dozen people participated in the organizing meeting of Gorbachev’s GCI, including then-U.S. Rep. James Scheuer (D-N.Y.). The congressman had publicly stated that regardless of whether the allegation of man-made “global warming” was valid or exaggerated, the U.S. should proceed to take the steps required to fight it because those steps supposedly would benefit the planet. (As explained in last week’s column, the Cap and Trade — “Tax and Rob” — legislation aimed at carrying out the radical enviro agenda at a steep cost to American consumers and taxpayers was dropped like a hot potato in the U.S. Senate June 6, lest the great unwashed arise in anger and deliver an unwelcome verdict at the polls. It will be back in 2009. Connecting these dots is relevant. But I digress.)

The main organizing events

Other GCI meetings were to follow, including what Grant called “The Big Event — the Moscow Conference,” in January 1990. Then-Senator Al Gore was among the speakers. Only two years before, he had conducted hearings on Capitol Hill where the “global warming” theory was showcased.

As the Moscow conference got underway, the Soviet Union was then was on its last legs — down, but not yet out, you might say. Gorbachev, still the Soviet leader, voiced his government’s demand that the nations push for a nuclear test ban, an international environmental monitoring system, a covenant to protect “unique environmental zones” (a mindset that has since led to an international fight over UN efforts to disallow snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park on American soil), support for United Nations environmental programs, and a follow-up conference in June 1992 in Brazil.

Grant writes that while Gorbachev was expressing the “views” and “suggestions” of the Soviet Communist Party, those suggestions did not fall on deaf ears. “Before long, the activities of the movement began to reflect the communist ‘recommendations.’”

Update: 2008

Now, why all this background?

On May 28, here in Washington, the featured speaker at the annual dinner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) was The Honorable Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic.

Klaus’s book Blue Planet in Green Shackles had just been released. As the Czech head of state put it at the dinner, the purpose of the book was to outline his firm belief that much of organized environmentalism is “an ideology I consider the most dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity in the current era.”

Was Schumpeter right?

Klaus believes that the United States — for all its problems — is “the most free country in the world and the inspiration for all of us. I emphasize it here and now mainly because of my growing frustration with the developments on the other side of the Atlantic where I’ve just come from.”

President Klaus then referred to the philosopher Joseph Alois Schumpeter, whose knowledge of tyranny came from such events in his life as having to flee Nazi Germany. Klaus noted that “[Schumpeter's] evolutionary theory of the demise of capitalism [would be] based on its very success.”

Here’s how that theory plays out: Innovations would become a matter of routine, progress would be mechanized, problems would be “simply solved” by reason and science, entrepreneurship would be replaced by mere calculation, individual motivation would subside, collectivistic mentality would prevail and the growing teamwork in large corporations would lead to the gradual obsoleteness and at the end the disappearance of the crucial player (or perhaps mover) of capitalism — the entrepreneur.

This column would interject here that in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam years of the late seventies, there were early signs the Schumpeter theory might eventually become reality. The optimism and humming economy of the eighties got America (and much of the world) back on track.

However, Klaus believes Schumpeter’s theory “seems to be too pessimistic.” The world simply has not followed that script. “As one who in my country actively participated in the dismantling of communism and the building of a free society,” he says, “the collapse of [the Soviet empire] and the explicit acceptance of capitalism almost all over the world [is something which] with all due respect is clearly incompatible with Schumpeter’s hypothesis.”

Then what is the problem?

As Klaus told his CEI audience, there are other factors “by which capitalism could be brought to an end, [such as in] the enormously expanding and growing disbelief in the ingenuity of man and in the advantages of the market process.”

In the past, the Czech chief executive noted, socialist arguments were laced with slogans about “the immiseration of the masses” (workers of the world, unite, etc.). Now instead, there is “a more dangerous slogan: the immiseration (or perhaps destruction) of the Planet.”

In the older times, it was easy to prove in relatively short order whether people (i.e., workers) were better off. “Now it will take centuries to come up with convincing proof that the Planet has been destroyed or does not find itself on the brink of destruction.”

In other words, “The free riding [of] this horse is therefore much easier. The ambitious politicians who try to mastermind the world and their fellow citizens have been dreaming for decades to find such a marvelous, from reality-immunized doctrine. Years or decades of cold weather will not disprove it — to my great regret. It is almost religious. My certainty that this ideology becomes the main vehicle for the destruction of the free market was my main reason for writing the book.”

And just to pinpoint the problem, Klaus adds: “Schumpeter was hopefully wrong in his predictions. And in addition to it, he has been dead now for almost six decades. Al Gore, however, is very much alive.”

The Marxists’ new propaganda weapon

Or — again — as the late Natalie Grant put it, “Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist values.”

When she died, Natalie Grant Wraga’s obituary quoted her as saying, “One must give the Soviets their due. No other country is capable as are the Soviets of manipulating public opinion in the West.”

Just delete the word “Soviets” and replace it with “environmental Marxists,” and you get a pretty clear picture of what faces us today.

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Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.

© Copyright 2008 by Wes Vernon
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/vernon/080616

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