Lisboa em Agosto —
Parte 4
Lucy Pepper
A saga da Lisboa
turística em Agosto chega ao fim. Com uma baixa, ou aliás, com
várias baixas. Uma crónica em banda desenhada sobre uma cidade em
mudança.
quarta-feira, 31 de agosto de 2016
Trump foi recebido pelo “amigo” Peña Nieto, mas não se livrou dos protestos / VIDEO:Clinton Blasts Trump Mexico Visit on Trail
Trump
foi recebido pelo “amigo” Peña Nieto, mas não se livrou dos
protestos
João Ruela Ribeiro
31/08/2016 – 22:07
O clima amigável
entre o candidato e o líder mexicano contrastou com as violentas
críticas à surpreendente visita do magnata.
O candidato
republicano à Casa Branca, Donald Trump, foi recebido esta
quarta-feira com honras de chefe de Estado na Cidade do México pelo
Presidente Enrique Peña Nieto. Em pleno palácio presidencial de Los
Pinos, Trump pôde vestir o seu novo fato de estadista, falou dos
desafios conjuntos entre os dois países e elogiou os mexicanos que
moram nos EUA. Mas não se discutiu quem paga, afinal, o muro na
fronteira prometido pelo magnata.
Peña Nieto
esclareceu que o convite que fez a Trump serve para “superar mal
entendidos” e falar sobre “o futuro partilhado” entre os dois
países. No final, o Presidente mexicano disse que a conversa foi
“aberta e construtiva” e chamou “amigo” a Donald Trump.
Nunca seria uma
visita fácil para Donald Trump, depois de grande parte da sua
campanha ter girado em torno de insultos ao país vizinho dos Estados
Unidos. E, no México, isso não foi esquecido. Nas redes sociais
circularam as mais diversas mensagens que variavam entre o gozo, o
repúdio e até o ódio contra o candidato à Casa Branca.
A Assembleia
Legislativa do Distrito Federal foi mais longe e declarou Trump
persona non grata, num voto que contou com o apoio de todos os grupos
parlamentares com a excepção do Partido Revolucionário
Institucional de Peña Nieto. “Não podemos permitir que uma pessoa
como Donald Trump insulte de forma permanente o povo do México, que
viole a nossa soberania nacional”, afirmou o deputado estadual
Mauricio Toledo.
Uma das reacções
mais virulentas veio do ex-Presidente mexicano Vicente Fox, que disse
que “Trump não é bem-vindo no México”. “Não permitimos que
utilize o nosso país para os seus interesses próprios”,
acrescentou o ex-chefe de Estado, que já antes se tinha envolvido
numa polémica com o candidato republicano. Em Feveiro, Fox disse que
o México nunca iria pagar “a merda do muro”, mas acabou por
pedir desculpa e até convidou o candidato a visitar o México. Esta
quarta-feira, a campanha do republicano relembrou este convite a Fox.
O anúncio da visita
de Trump ao México apanhou o mundo de surpresa. Durante a corrida à
nomeação como candidato republicano, o magnata caracterizou os
imigrantes mexicanos ilegais como “violadores” e “assassinos”,
chegando mesmo a sugerir que o Governo mexicano estava a enviar os
seus cidadãos mais violentos de propósito para os Estados Unidos. O
próprio Peña Nieto chegou a comparar a retórica de Trump à de
Mussolini e de Hitler, durante uma entrevista em Março ao jornal
Excelsior.
Enquanto Trump se
reunia com Peña Nieto, Hillary Clinton aproveitava para lembrar ao
eleitorado as posições do seu rival em relação à imigração. A
equipa de campanha da candidata democrata publicou na conta de
Twitter de Clinton um vídeo em castelhano que reúne algumas das
declarações mais polémicas de Trump durante a campanha. “Escutámos
claramente os comentários de Trump a demonizar os imigrantes à
primeira vez, à segunda, à terceira…”
Uma das medidas mais
polémicas do candidato republicano à Casa Branca é a construção
de um muro na fronteira com o México e que seria o próprio Governo
mexicano a financiá-lo, através de aumentos nos impostos sobre as
remessas dos imigrantes. Mas, nas últimas semanas, foi notório um
esforço de Trump para mostrar uma postura mais moderada no tema da
imigração.
O projecto de
expulsão dos 11 milhões de imigrantes sem documentação foi
amenizado — agora, o candidato propõe forçar a saída apenas
daqueles que tiverem cadastro. Na noite desta quarta-feira, Trump faz
um muito aguardado discurso em Phoenix em que vai delinear as suas
propostas para lidar com a imigração e tentar fazer uma quadratura
do círculo: moderar o discurso para manter vivo um apelo abrangente
o suficiente para disputar umas eleições presidenciais, ao mesmo
tempo que não afasta alguns dos sectores mais radicais que estiveram
na base da sua vitória nas eleições primárias republicanas.
A visita à Cidade
do México está inserida na estratégia de moderação que tem sido
privilegiada pela sua campanha. O convite partiu do Presidente
mexicano — cujo gabinete garantiu ter enviado convite também a
Hillary Clinton, apesar de não ter havido qualquer confirmação.
Mas ambos tinham
algo a ganhar com o encontro, escreve o colunista do Guardian Daniel
Peña. “Trump pretende voltar a ter mão no tema principal da sua
campanha, a imigração, antes do grande discurso no Arizona. Peña
Nieto, por seu lado, quer reverter a sua queda nas sondagens — está
actualmente com 23% de popularidade segundo uma sondagem recente —
ao parecer que está a enfrentar Trump.” Jorge Ramos, um dos
jornalistas televisivos mais populares do país, resumiu o encontro:
“É uma reunião entre duas das pessoas mais impopulares no
México."
Trump takes risky gamble with Mexico trip / VIDEO:What You Need to Know About Trump's Meeting With Mexico's President
Trump
takes risky gamble with Mexico trip
The
nominee’s campaign is betting the trip will look presidential. But
it could go very wrong.
By
Kyle Cheney and Ben
Schreckinger
8/31/16, 10:13 PM
CET
Donald Trump has
spent years trashing Mexico as a corrupt enemy of the United States,
whose government has looked the other way as drug dealers and
criminals stream across the border. On Wednesday, he’ll step off a
plane in Mexico City and confront a government and people that have
followed his every utterance — and rejected them.
Trump’s meeting
with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is one of the greatest
gambles of the election for Trump. It comes as he trails in most
polls and prepares to deliver a speech expected to repackage — and
perhaps walk back — his controversial immigration policies after a
year of calling for mass deportations and a 2,000-mile border wall
with Mexico.
He’ll return from
the trip in the evening and deliver his immigration address in
Phoenix.
“If he can go down
there and look statesmanlike while at the same time being firm for
what he stands for, then I think it helps shape people’s
perceptions of him as to what he would be like if he’s actually
president,” said Steve Munisteri, a Republican consultant and
former chairman of the Texas GOP. “This is a chance for him to
demonstrate to the American people what it would be like to have
Trump as president, what it would be like if he was dealing with
foreign leaders.”
Republicans see the
gambit as a high-risk, high-reward opportunity to change the terms of
the election — but only if Trump can demonstrate presidential
demeanor on the international stage. To that end, the joint press
conference he intends to hold with Peña Nieto afterward offers a
potential glimpse into what a Trump bilateral meeting would look
like.
“He wants to
establish a conversation with a neighboring country, a leader. And
also to discuss the common problems and challenges that our country
is facing,” said Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, on
Wednesday morning.
It could be a hard
sell in a country that Trump has long blamed for America’s illegal
immigration problems. Over the years Trump – primarily on Twitter –
has labeled Mexico an “enemy,” urged an American boycott,
threatened to deduct foreign aid and feuded with former Mexican
presidents about his plans to build a border wall. After hosting the
2007 Miss Universe Pageant in Mexico, Trump claimed a local
businessman owed him money and that the Mexican court system had
failed to force him to pay.
“Mexico is not a
U.S. friend,” he tweeted last year, just before announcing his
presidential bid.
Charlie Spies, a
veteran GOP lawyer, sees the move as a simple play for swing-state
white voters, rather than an attempt to appeal to minorities.
“Winning the
Hispanic vote for Donald Trump is likely a lost cause, but the
Caucasian swing voters he needs to be successful in target states
will likely see this trip to Mexico as an important outreach effort,”
he said. “He is doing a speech today that purports to outline an
immigration policy that’s really a no win situation for him because
he demagogued the issue for so long … Even if the president
embarrasses him, and/or Trump loses his cool, no matter what happens,
the visual of him on stage with a world leader elevates him.”
One complication
already threatens to cloud Trump’s trip. Though Conway insisted
Trump and Nieto would take questions from Mexican and American
reporters, Trump’s traveling press corps was left stranded in
Arizona, a break from precedent in modern presidential campaigns.
“Trump is setting
a distressing precedent today,” tweeted the Associated Press’
Jill Colvin, a member of the Trump press corps. Others noted that
Trump did provide for press to accompany him on his last
international trip: a visit to his golf course in Scotland.
Peña Nieto invited
both Trump and Hillary Clinton last week, and the Trump campaign
scrambled to pull Wednesday’s meeting together, according to a
person briefed by a senior Trump adviser.
“Trump realized
this would be a brilliant time to do it and is trying to pull it
together last minute,” a person close to the campaign who had been
briefed by a campaign staffer said Tuesday night. “Would be a major
power play. It’s like he’s already negotiating on behalf of
America.”
The person suggested
that the meeting could, for example, allow Trump to agree to deport
only criminals if the Mexican president offered some sort of
concession in return.
Mexican political
leaders, including former President Vicente Fox, questioned why Peña
Nieto would “legitimize” Trump by hosting him at the presidential
palace. It’s raised the prospect that Peña Nieto, himself
struggling amid unpopularity, could attempt to upstage Trump and
denounce his anti-Mexico rhetoric.
“The most logical
reason he would do this is so he could forcefully denounce Trump and
try to reinforce his – elevate his standing among the Mexican
voters,” Spies said.” If he doesn’t do that, then I agree with
the criticism of people like former President Fox who believe that
this is an honor that Donald Trump has not earned.”
After Trump
announced the meeting, Peña Nieto confirmed it on Twitter,
explaining in Spanish, “I believe in dialogue to promote the
interests of Mexico in the world.” The meeting is scheduled to take
place at the presidential palace in Mexico City, the New York Times
reported.
Few political
leaders in Mexico welcomed Trump’s visit. A former Mexican
ambassador to the United States, Miguel Basañez Ebergenyi, tweeted
that Trump presents the greatest danger to the Mexico-U.S.
relationship in the past 50 years. “I deeply regret the
invitation,” he wrote.
Conway, however,
pronounced the meeting a “decisive presidential move,” while
taking a shot at Clinton for not also accepting the invitation.
“We’re just
happy the president invited him,” Conway told NBC’s “Today”
on Wednesday, adding, “I mean, I feel like she keeps following the
leader here.”
Corey Lewandowski,
who held Conway’s title until being fired amid a June leadership
shakeup but still talks with Trump regularly, similarly called the
Mexico visit “leadership.”
Lewandowski
suggested that his former boss could change the tenor of his
relationship with Mexico as a result of the trip.
“Look, it’s
very, very possible that Mr. Trump goes down there, meets the
president, says, hey, look, we have more things in common than we
have apart. Let’s find a way that in 69 days from today when I’m
elected president of the United States we can work together,”
Lewandowski said.
Arguing that Trump
would not back away from his position on the wall, Lewandowski said
that proposal was an unbreakable starting point of negotiation
“We can work
together, we can find a way that Mexico can find a way to start
paying for that wall, but it is going to be built,” Lewandowski
continued. “It’s 2,000 miles. We don’t need to build a wall all
2,000 miles. Maybe it’s 1,100 miles, because [of] the topography of
the border. But that wall is going to get built. He’s never
deviated from it. And the American people aren’t going to pay for
it.”
It is traditional
for major party presidential nominees to travel to foreign countries
to demonstrate their ability to perform on a world stage, but neither
candidate has put together a traditional sojourn abroad this year. In
June, Trump traveled to his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland and
held press conferences, which were designed largely to promote the
properties there, but he did not hold meetings with local leaders or
other political events. Late last year, Trump canceled plans to visit
Israel amid reports that it would provoke unrest among Palestinians
and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was uninterested in
meeting with him.
Clinton, who
traveled the world more extensively than any prior secretary of state
during her tenure in the Obama administration, has not announced
plans for any campaign trips abroad.
In a statement,
Clinton’s campaign reiterated some of Trump’s previous statements
about Mexicans and immigration, including calling some Mexicans
“rapists.”
“What ultimately
matters is what Donald Trump says to voters in Arizona, not Mexico,
and whether he remains committed to the splitting up of families and
deportation of millions,” Clinton’s campaign said.
Such trips
traditionally are high-stakes affairs that carry both risks and
opportunities. In 2008, images of the throngs of Germans who cheered
Barack Obama as he spoke at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate helped
solidify his image at home as a transcendent figure. In 2012, Mitt
Romney’s summer trip to Europe was marred by multiple memorable
gaffes, including his criticism of London’s performance as a summer
Olympics host.
But just hours
before the meeting is set to take place, Trump, who has rarely shied
from risk in this campaign, tweeted, “I have accepted the
invitation of President Enrique Pena Nieto, of Mexico, and look very
much forward to meeting him tomorrow.”
Because Mexico
relies heavily on trade with United States and remittances from
Mexican citizens living in the U.S., Trump’s vows to deport
undocumented immigrants and adopt more protectionist trade policies
have shaken the Mexican government.
In March, Peña
Nieto compared Trump’s rhetoric to that of Benito Mussolini and
Adolf Hitler, but he has since struck a more conciliatory tone,
acknowledging that he will have to work with Trump if the Republican
nominee is elected president.
Nick Gass
contributed to this report.
Authors:
Kyle Cheney and
Ben Schreckinger
Burkini não, obrigada
Burkini
não, obrigada
Em
praias francesas decidiram interditar o burkini – que deveria
chamar-se ‘burbanho’, porque de bikini não tem nada
24 de agosto 2016
Imagine a leitora ou
o leitor que, numa situação de tortura, o carrasco lhe pergunta:
prefere levar dois pares de estalos ou fazer um jogo de vólei na
praia, debaixo do sol de Verão, com um fato preto a cobri-la/o da
cabeça aos tornozelos?
A situação é
caricata, antes de mais por inverosímil: na tortura, não há
escolha – embora possa haver simulacros de escolha que constituem,
em si mesmos, um requinte suplementar de tortura.
O caso clássico da
perversão da liberdade de escolha numa forma de tortura continuada é
o de A Escolha de Sofia (romance de William Styron, filme de Alan J.
Pakula), em que um soldado nazi força uma prisioneira de um campo de
concentração a seleccionar um dos seus dois filhos pequenos para
ser morto; caso a mãe se recusasse a escolher, mataria os dois.
Sofia decide a
sobrevivência de um dos filhos (o rapaz, claro; esta escolha, que o
dia-a-dia das relações entre mães e filhos ou filhas tantas vezes
confirma, seria um tema correlativo deste) e vive o resto da vida
torturada pela culpa.
Não tenho dúvida
de que preferiria que me aplicassem uns estalos a que me obrigassem a
correr à torreira do sol metida num escafandro.
Quando vemos uma
pessoa a bater noutra, sabemos que se trata de uma situação de
violência. Mas a imagem de um par de jogadoras de vólei egípcias
naquela fatiota torturante disputando a bola sobre a rede a um par de
jogadoras alemãs em bikini correu mundo como glorioso postal do
multiculturalismo, da diversidade e da tolerância.
A mim, essa imagem
choca-me: o corpo das atletas egípcias é feito da mesma carne que o
de qualquer um de nós. Os donos de escravos também alegavam que a
capacidade de sofrimento dos negros era diferente da dos brancos.
O islamismo
fundamentalista entende que a mulher é um ser ontologicamente
diferente do homem, uma criatura cujo corpo promove o pecado e que
por isso esse corpo deve ser socialmente apagado. Em 2016, muitas
décadas depois da Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos, estas
considerações não são admissíveis, e não deveriam ser acatadas
pelo Comité Olímpico.
Há meia-dúzia de
anos, a Federação Internacional de Natação decidiu proibir uns
fatos de banho ‘milagrosos’ que ajudavam a aumentar a velocidade,
a flutuabilidade e a resistência dos atletas, a bem da igualdade de
condições entre todos os participantes nas competições. Por que é
que os códigos de equidade na indumentária competitiva não se
aplicam do mesmo modo em todas as modalidades?
O argumento
apresentado de que o uso daqueles trajes foi ‘escolha’ das
atletas egípcias (aliás, de uma delas; a outra teve de se conformar
a acatar a ‘escolha’, pelos vistos mais válida, da parceira) não
colhe.
Se um atleta não
pode escolher roupa que lhe amplie as capacidades, também não deve
poder escolher roupa que lhas diminua.
Mas a questão vai
mais fundo, e é a seguinte: só se pode falar de escolha quando se
parte da liberdade.
Pergunto-me que
liberdade de decisão sobre o seu corpo tem uma mulher criada e
educada nos preceitos do Islão, à qual desde o nascimento foi dito
que uma mulher destapada é uma pecadora destinada à condenação
eterna, e que, se o fizer, será, no mínimo, repudiada pela família.
Na Europa, a
discriminação de género não é admissível.
No entanto, o jornal
francês Libération publicava há dias uma reportagem em que
revelava existirem em França, hoje, cerca de 50 mil mulheres vítimas
de mutilação genital.
No início de
agosto, uma associação de mulheres muçulmanas tentou alugar um
parque aquático do sul de França para realizar nele o ‘dia do
burkini’, um dia em que só mulheres nesse traje poderiam
frequentar o parque, que seria interdito aos homens e às crianças
do sexo masculino com mais de dez anos. Uma mãe com um filho de onze
anos já não poderia levá-lo consigo para esse excepcional banho.
Poucos dias depois,
várias praias francesas decidiram interditar o uso do burkini –
que deveria chamar-se, vá, ‘burbanho’, porque de bikini não tem
nada.
Disse Laurence
Rossignol, ministra francesa dos Direitos da Mulher : «O burkini não
é uma nova linha de swimwear, é a versão de praia de uma burka e
tem a mesma lógica: esconder os corpos das mulheres para que possam
ser controladas. O burkini tem um objetivo. Esse objetivo é
dissimular, esconder os corpos das mulheres para esconder as
mulheres, e o lugar em que isso coloca as mulheres é um lugar que eu
combato, que outros antes de mim combateram, e que tem algo de
profundamente arcaico».
Manuel Valls, o
primeiro- ministro francês, explicou ao jornal La Provence que o
burkini «é a tradução de um projeto político, de
contra-sociedade, fundado nomeadamente na subserviência da mulher»,
acrescentando: «Há a ideia de que, por natureza, as mulheres seriam
impúdicas, impuras, e que portanto deveriam estar completamente
cobertas. Isso não é compatível com os valores da França e da
República». Valores, oui.
Angela Merkel’s soft offensive / Merkel: 'Germany will remain Germany'
 |
Angela
Merkel’s soft offensive
Fourth
and final term would focus on securing her place in history — by
‘fixing’ Europe.
By
Matthew Karnitschnig
9/1/16, 5:24 AM CET
BERLIN — Berlin’s
government quarter was hot with speculation this week about the
“K-Frage,” a long-running political parlor game over whether
Angela Merkel will pursue another run for Germany’s chancellery.
Though few seriously
doubt Merkel wants a chance at an era-crowning fourth term as
Kanzlerin, behind-the-scenes squabbling in her conservative alliance
over the timing of an announcement has fed theories of a Plan B.
Even as her allies
and adversaries parse her public statements and body language for
clues of her plans, Merkel has quietly begun laying the groundwork
for another four-year term, her political allies say. A familiar
question is already dominating those deliberations: How to fix
Europe?
If Merkel has spent
most of her time in office putting out fires across the Continent,
from the financial crisis and Greece to the refugee influx, her next
and likely final term would focus on a subject close to any longtime
leader’s heart — legacy. Securing that place in history will
depend in large part on whether Merkel succeeds in putting Europe on
steadier ground.
“Time is not
on the side of integration but of regression” — Josef Janning,
ECFR
A combination of
economic weakness and the widespread impression that Brussels and/or
Berlin are to blame for national ills has eroded confidence in the
bloc, fueling populist movements from Spain to Sweden. If the EU
continues to unravel in the coming years, Merkel, the Continent’s
preeminent political figure, will be remembered as the leader who
lost Europe.
While Berlin
believes Europe has made strides in improving its regulatory
framework and preparing for shocks like the debt crisis, Merkel’s
camp also acknowledges that much more needs to be done to restore
trust in the EU. Brexit, they say, could be the catalyst to turn the
tide.
“In Berlin people
realize it’s important to seize the moment because it may not come
back,” said Josef Janning, head of the European Council on Foreign
Relations in Berlin. “Time is not on the side of integration but of
regression.”
That Merkel
recognizes she has a limited time frame for action was evident last
week when she met 15 national European leaders in an effort to begin
building consensus in key areas. The shuttle diplomacy, which took
the chancellor from the deck of an Italian aircraft carrier to Tallin
and points between, was partly a confidence building exercise ahead
of this month’s informal summit in Bratislava. Her message: Berlin
listens.
Wild ones
A common complaint
among Europe’s smaller members is that large countries, led by
Berlin, bigfoot them in the EU decision-making process. That fear has
strengthened the various regional blocs within the EU, such as
Scandanavia, the Baltics or the so-called Visegrád group of Central
European states.
Indeed, it was a
common rejection of Merkel’s refugee policy that led to the
often-fractious Visegrád group’s recent renaissance.
In Germany, Merkel’s
swing through Eastern Europe was widely seen as a failure because she
didn’t convince countries to accept any refugees. Yet that was
never her plan. Recognizing that countries like Poland and Hungary
wouldn’t back down, the German leader focused the talks on areas of
common ground, in particular how to improve security with more
intelligence sharing, securing the EU’s borders and preserving the
bloc’s refugee pact with Turkey.
Another area of
agreement: Brexit. Like Germany, Eastern European countries have
little interest in pursuing a punitive approach with the U.K. during
the Brexit talks and reject calls from France and other western
countries for a hard line. While Berlin wants to safeguard the
massive investments German companies such as Siemens and BMW have
made in the U.K., Eastern European states like Poland and Romania
want to protect the status of their citizens there and the
remittances they send home.
“Merkel’s aim
here was to repair Berlin’s ties with Eastern Europe that have been
strained by the refugee crisis,” said Joerg Forbrig, an analyst
with the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. in Berlin. “That’s
important for the atmosphere within the EU.”
With the U.K.
essentially out of the EU decision-making, she will try to build
broader coalitions on important questions.
Merkel’s
diplomatic offensive was also a sign that with the U.K. essentially
out of the EU decision-making, she will try to build broader
coalitions on important questions. She no longer believes Germany and
France, even together with Italy which has joined their recent
meetings, can act as a motor for the EU, analysts say. In addition to
the loss of economic muscle in both France and Italy in recent years,
Merkel’s position in key areas, in particular economic and fiscal
policy, is often far removed from those in Paris and Rome.
For Merkel, meetings
between the three are as much as about reining in French and Italian
hopes for freer spending as they are about setting the EU’s agenda.
“She’s not
trying to win them over to her course but trying to prevent them from
running wild,” Janning said.
For the German
leader, the Bratislava summit marks the start of what promises to the
arduous task of restoring confidence in an EU plagued by weak
leadership and competing national agendas. While even her critics say
she is the only leader with the stature to tackle the bloc’s
catalog of ills, they also complain that Germany’s political and
economic dominance is at the root of many of the EU’s problems.
Even with the clock
ticking, Merkel — ever the physicist — insists Europe study the
problem before taking action.
“What we need to
do is take stock of where we are,” she said this week in an
interview the German television. “Instead of rushing into action,
one should calmly deliberate.”
Authors:
Matthew Karnitschnig
|
Merkel:
'Germany will remain Germany'
Published: 31 Aug
2016 11:44 GMT+02:00
One year after
Angela Merkel first declared "we can do this," leading to a
huge uptick in refugees applying for asylum, the Chancellor reflected
this week on her policies and the future of Germany.
In an interview with
Süddeutsche Zeitung published online on Tuesday, Merkel seemed as
resolute as ever about the decision to take in hundreds of thousands
of refugees from war-torn countries.
When she first
uttered her now often repeated - and mocked - mantra of “we can do
this” one year ago, she said she never expected those few words to
make such an impact.
“If you asked me
before if I would introduce a distinctive phrase that would be quoted
many times over, I would not have thought of this phrase.”
At the same time,
she said that she used the phrase with “deep conviction… and with
the awareness that we were dealing with a difficult and big task.”
Merkel said that it was clear there were many hurdles and fears that
she needed to dismantle.
Merkel also pointed
out that Germany has not always been as proactive as it could be in
helping refugees in the not so distant past. She said that after
Germany took in a record number of refugees in the early 1990s from
former Yugoslavia, the country was hesitant to do the same in the
years that followed.
“We in Germany
have also long ignored the problem,” the Chancellor said.
“In 2004 and 2005,
many refugees came and we let Spain and others at the outer borders
deal with it.
“After having
taken in so many refugees during the Yugoslavian war, Germany was
happy that it was now dealing with other priorities.”
Merkel has also
recently faced a drop in approval ratings following several violent
attacks in July that involved perpetrators who had sought asylum in
Germany. In Würzburg, a 17-year-old Afghan refugee attacked a family
on a train with an axe. Within the same week, a Syrian man blew
himself up in Ansbach, injuring a dozen others.
German media later
reported that both had been in contact with members of Isis.
The Chancellor said
that it was “completely understandable” that there has been
“unease and concern” following the attacks.
She said it showed
that, among refugees there are some who did not arrive with pure
intentions. This makes integration a huge challenge, she added.
But she also
continued to reject the notion that there was a direct connection
between terrorism and having so many refugees in the country.
“It is simply
false that terrorism only first came here through refugees. It was
already here, especially with the suspected terrorists that we have
been monitoring.”
She maintained as
well that the hundreds of thousands of refugees remaining in Germany
would not change the character of the country.
“Germany will
remain Germany, with all that we love and hold dear.”
The country has
always undergone change since its inception, Merkel said, but she
would not let Germany lose the values and principles that make it
attractive.
"These are
reflected in our liberality, our democracy, our constitutional state,
and in our overwhelming commitment to a social market economy,
through which our economic strength can absorb those who are
weakest."
Tipping point for the German far-right / Merkel admits mistakes made in Germany, EU with refugee crisis
Tipping
point for the German far-right
Alternative
for Germany vying for first place in regional election.
By
Janosch Delcker
8/31/16, 5:23 AM CET
SCHWERIN, Germany —
The German political establishment’s worst nightmare could become
reality this weekend when voters head to the polls for an election in
the northeast: the far-right Alternative for Germany might, for the
first time, become the most powerful party in a state.
To make matters
worse, it could happen in Angela Merkel’s back yard.
The refugee crisis
continues to dominate the political landscape across Germany, and
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the country’s most sparsely-populated
state, and home to Angela Merkel’s constituency, is no exception.
The AfD has used the crisis to woo disaffected voters and makes it
very clear who it thinks is responsible for the country’s problems:
Merkel.
“The refugee
crisis has helped us, there’s little question about that,”
Leif-Erik Holm, the AfD’s lead candidate in the regional election,
said.
Holm’s party is
polling at 21 percent, behind the Social Democrats (28 percent) and
Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats (22 percent), but party
officials are confident of a bounce on election day. It’s happened
before: in March in Saxony-Anhalt the AfD was polling at 19 percent
and won 24 percent. It finished second in that ballot and hopes to go
one further this time.
Whatever happens,
the AfD will almost certainly enter its ninth state parliament out of
16. Number 10 will likely follow two weeks later when voters go to
the polls in Berlin, where the AfD is polling at 10 percent.
The changing face of
German politics was on display when Merkel traveled to
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in mid-August to meet with farmers,
traditionally staunch supporters of her conservatives.
The chancellor was
well prepared, telling farmers she would support their use of the
weedkiller glyphosate, answering questions about security
regulations, and describing in great detail how impressed she was by
a combine harvester in front of the farm. The farmers weren’t
angry, but they were concerned.
“I’m not just a
farmer, I am also a worried citizen,” one man told Merkel, without
explaining what he was worried about. “Please use your power so
that our children will have a safe future.”
The chancellor is
aware that, as her popularity has been decreasing, her new far-right
rival is trying to capitalize on these hard-to-explain fears.
At a campaign event
in Schwerin a day later, Björn Höcke, the leading light of the
AfD’s right wing, spoke in the main square. The former teacher was
asked to give his opinions on education, but went much further, being
cheered for comments such as “I would like to live in a democratic
state based on the rule of law. This is why I say ‘No’ to a
multicultural society,” and “we can’t take this unbearable
dictator of a chancellor anymore.”
The event ended with
the crowd chanting “Merkel muss weg” (Merkel has to go).
The AfD doesn’t
really do local issues. It’s happier to hammer home the
anti-immigration message with slogans such as “Stop the asylum
chaos.”
“National topics
clearly dominate these state elections,“ said the AfD’s Holm. The
former radio host is more softly-spoken than Höcke, but he leaves no
doubt about his ultra-conservative stance.
“First, it was the
Euro-Retterei, the [flawed] rescue of the euro, then it was the
energy transformation with Merkel overtaking even the Green Party,
and then — which marks the low point — the refugee crisis, which
caused a fear among people about what else might come,” he said.
“Those crises were managed poorly, and there was no conservative
alternative [to the ruling parties.]”
Wounded big beasts
For decades, the two
main parties — the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats —
have fought it out to see who can lead a coalition government, both
at state and national level. For a decade, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has
been governed by a “grand coalition” of SPD and CDU.
The AfD claims there
is no longer a difference between the two big beasts, thanks to
Merkel’s “social democratization” of her party as she opened
the doors to refugees from Syria and the wider Middle East.
“We basically
replace the old CDU, because Ms. Merkel moved it too far to the
left,” Holm said, echoing comments from the national party
leadership.
A crowd at an AfD
Campaign event in Schwerin, Germany, in mid-August. Two men are
holding up a sign that reads “Lying press — USA Warmonger Nr. 1 —
Ami, go home!” | Janosch Delcker
A crowd at an AfD
Campaign event in Schwerin, Germany, in mid-August. Two men are
holding up a sign that reads “Lying press — USA Warmonger Nr. 1 —
Ami, go home!” | Janosch Delcker
“For ten years,
there has been a potential for a right-wing populist party,” said
Tim Bleis, who works for an advice center for victims of right-wing
violence in Rostock, the largest city in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The state has form
in voting for the Right. At the last state elections, in 2011, the
extreme-right NPD won 6 percent of the votes to remain in the state
parliament, where it has been since 2006. The threshold is 6 percent.
However, the NPD,
which openly expresses Neo-Nazi views, is stigmatized, and the other
parties agreed on a policy called “Schweriner Weg,” essentially
an agreement to ignore the party.
Back then, the AfD
didn’t even exist.
The AfD has
morphed into an ultraconservative, anti-immigrant party that appeals
to those who harbor right-wing views.
It’s come a long
way in a very short space of time. Founded in 2013 as a protest party
against the largely German-funded bailouts for indebted eurozone
countries, the AfD has morphed into an ultraconservative,
anti-immigrant party that appeals to those who harbor right-wing
views, Bleis said, but were repelled by the extreme nature of the
NPD, as well as those wanting to rebel against the establishment.
At the AfD campaign
event in Schwerin, there were protesters holding up signs against the
“lying press” and the “warmonger United States.” One man was
wearing a T-shirt that said “Großdeutschland,” which describes
Germany’s pre-World-War-II borders.
An architect from
Hamburg, who refused to give his name, said he was there to complain
about what he called the “step-by-step Islamization” of Germany.
One woman said she wanted to protest against “gender
mainstreaming,” such as school children being taught about
homosexuality.
The only common
denominator seemed to be their disapproval of the current
government’s refugee policy.
Worried about the
rapid rise of the far-right, state officials from both major parties
are trying to distance themselves from decisions taken by the
national government in Berlin during the refugee crisis.
“To this day,
Merkel pretends that Germany could take in everyone who’s
persecuted. That’s disconnected from reality,”
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state premier Erwin Sellering of the SPD told
Welt newspaper. Sellering declined to be interviewed for this
article.
Lorenz Caffier, the
candidate for Merkel’s conservatives, has repeatedly tried to paint
his party as a stronghold of domestic security by pressing ahead with
law-and-order policy ideas, such as a burqa ban.
It’s an uphill
battle for both parties. The SPD won 35 percent of the vote in 2011
and is on course for 28 percent this time, and the CDU is polling at
22 percent, down from a historic low of 23 percent last time.
‘I have my doubts’
Out on the campaign
trail, the big two are sticking to their guns.
“The difference
from the CDU is obvious: the SPD speaks out for the man in the
street,” Rainer Albrecht, a member of the SPD in the state
parliament, told a passerby who asked him about the difference
between the two parties as Albrecht handed out flyers by a shopping
center on the outskirts of Rostock.
“I have my
doubts,” the man replied.
Behind Albrecht, a
handful of SPD volunteers folded flyers and handed out lollipops.
Every one of them was unhappy at the leadership of Sigmar Gabriel,
the economy minister and vice chancellor.
Earlier this year,
Gabriel made a policy decision that enraged the local party faithful:
he decided to raise taxes on petrol even though gas prices had
fallen. This caused outrage in a predominantly rural state where many
rely on their cars.
“Now people tell
us, ‘They are raising taxes, and at the same time there’s enough
money for all the refugees,” one of the SPD volunteers said.
It takes about five
minutes to drive from where Albrecht was campaigning to the Rostock
neighborhood of Groß Klein, which made headlines in early August
when the city decided to move young asylum seekers out of an
apartment after far-right extremists rioted in front of their house.
By mid-August, there
were campaign posters for the AfD and the NPD on every street lamp in
the main street that cuts through the neighborhood of Soviet-era
apartment blocks.
“I’m not a Nazi,
but I will vote for the AfD because something has to change,” said
one Rostock woman, who refused to give her name.
If the AfD becomes
the strongest party in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the other parties will
almost certainly club together to block it. But the effect will still
be huge.
“If we end up
becoming the strongest party in the parliament, this will have an
enormous effect [on the national stage],” the AfD’s Leif-Erik
Holm said. “There also seems to be pressure now [on Merkel] to move
further towards our direction — the question is if she wants to do
that.”
 |
Merkel
admits mistakes made in Germany, EU with refugee crisis
By Erik Kirschbaum
and Andrea Shalal | BERLIN
Tue Aug 30, 2016
2:56pm EDT
Germany and other
European Union countries turned a blind eye to the refugee crisis
building on its external borders for too long, Chancellor Angela
Merkel said in a German newspaper interview to be published on
Wednesday.
Merkel, who has
faced criticism in Germany for launching her policies of welcoming
refugees a year ago, also told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that Germany
and the EU will need patience and endurance in dealing with migration
of people to Europe.
"There are
political issues that one can see coming but don't really register
with people at that certain moment - and in Germany we ignored both
the problem for too long and blocked out the need to find a
pan-European solution," she said.
Merkel made the
comments in an unusually self-critical analysis that appeared to be
timed to the one-year anniversary on Wednesday of her now-famous
statement "wir schaffen das", or "we can do this",
when asked about the rising tide of refugees.
Her conservative
party is expected to take a beating in two regional elections next
month in part due to her refugee policies.
She said Germany,
which has taken in most of the more than 1 million refugees from the
Middle East and Asia who arrived in the EU in the past year, had let
Spain and other EU border countries deal with the refugees on their
own.
"Back then, we
also rejected a proportional distribution of the refugees," she
said.
Merkel said Germany
had not supported models such as the Frontex European border agency
that would have impinged on the sovereignty of the EU member states.
"We said we would deal with the problem at our airports since we
don't have any other external EU boundaries. But that doesn't work."
The three-term
chancellor said refugees will be a long-term issue.
"We didn't
embrace the problem in an appropriate way," she added. "That
goes as well for protecting the external border of the Schengen
area," she said, referring to the EU's passport-free and
frontier-free zone.
Merkel said the EU
needed to improve cooperation with and dramatically increase
development aid to countries in Africa as well as Turkey and other
troubled regions.
Also In World News
Merkel said Germany
had long been content to focus on other problems after years of
welcoming refugees from the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the
1990s. "I cannot deny that," she said.
She admonished
German politicians to express themselves in moderate terms and not
participate in the current ratcheting up of rhetoric about threats.
A number of Germans
had always had a certain racism toward foreigners and were willing to
commit violent acts for that cause, but that tendency had grown over
the past year, she said.
The German leader,
the daughter of pastor, also cautioned against equating all migrants
with terrorists. "It's simply incorrect to say that terrorism
came only with the refugees," she said. "It was already
here in myriad forms and with the various potential attackers that we
have been watching."
(Reporting by Erik
Kirschbaum and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alison Williams)
|
The rise of robots: forget evil AI – the real risk is far more insidious
The
rise of robots: forget evil AI – the real risk is far more
insidious
It’s far more likely that
robots would inadvertently harm or frustrate humans while carrying
out our orders than they would rise up against us
Olivia Solon in San
Francisco
Tuesday 30 August
2016 14.00 BST
When we look at the
rise of artificial intelligence, it’s easy to get carried away with
dystopian visions of sentient machines that rebel against their human
creators. Fictional baddies such as the Terminator’s Skynet or Hal
from 2001: A Space Odyssey have a lot to answer for.
However, the real
risk posed by AI – at least in the near term – is much more
insidious. It’s far more likely that robots would inadvertently
harm or frustrate humans while carrying out our orders than they
would become conscious and rise up against us. In recognition of
this, the University of California, Berkeley has this week launched a
center to focus on building people-pleasing AIs.
The Center for
Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, launched this week with
$5.5m in funding from the Open Philanthropy Project, is lead by
computer science professor and artificial intelligence pioneer Stuart
Russell. He’s quick to dispel any “unreasonable and melodramatic”
comparisons to the threats posed in science fiction.
“The risk doesn’t
come from machines suddenly developing spontaneous malevolent
consciousness,” he said. “It’s important that we’re not
trying to prevent that from happening because there’s absolutely no
understanding of consciousness whatsoever.”
Russell is well
known in the artificial intelligence community and in 2015 penned an
open letter calling for researchers to look beyond the goal of simply
making AI more capable and powerful to think about maximizing its
social benefit. The letter has been signed by more than 8,000
scientists and entrepreneurs including physicist Stephen Hawking,
entrepreneur Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
“The potential
benefits [of AI research] are huge, since everything that
civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we
cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is
magnified by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease
and poverty are not unfathomable,” the letter reads.
“Because of the
great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its
benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.”
It’s precisely
this thinking that underpins the new center.
Up until now, AI has
primarily been applied to very limited contexts such as playing Chess
or Go or recognizing objects in images, where there isn’t much
scope for the system to do much damage. As they start to make
decisions on our behalf within the real world, the stakes are much
higher.
Technology is
killing the myth of human centrality – let's embrace our demotion
Read more
“As soon as you
put things in the real world, with self-driving cars, digital
assistants … as soon as they buy things on your behalf, turn down
appointments, then they have to align with human values,” Russell
said.
He uses autonomous
vehicles to illustrate the type of problem the center will try to
solve. Someone building a self-driving car might instruct it never to
go through a red light, but the machine might then hack into the
traffic light control system so that all of the lights are changed to
green. In this case the car would be obeying orders but in a way that
humans didn’t expect or intend. Similarly, an artificially
intelligent hedge fund designed to maximize the value of its
portfolio could be incentivized to short consumer stocks, buy long on
defence stocks and then start a war – as suggested by Elon Musk in
Werner Herzog’s latest documentary.
“Even when you
think you’ve put fences around what an AI system can do it will
tend to find loopholes just as we do with our tax laws. You want an
AI system that isn’t motivated to find loopholes,” Russell said.
“The problem isn’t
consciousness, but competence. You make machines that are incredibly
competent at achieving objectives and they will cause accidents in
trying to achieve those objectives.”
To address this,
Russell and his colleagues at the center propose making AI systems
that observe human behavior and try to work out what the human’s
objective is, then behave accordingly and learn from mistakes. So
instead of trying to give the machine a long list of rules to follow,
the machine is told that its main objective is to do what the human
wants them to do.
It sounds simple,
but it’s not how engineers have been building systems for the past
50 years.
But if AI systems
can be designed to learn from humans in this way, it should ensure
that they remain under human control even when they develop
capabilities that exceed our own.
In addition to
watching humans directly using cameras and other sensors, robots can
learn about us by reading history books, legal documents, novels,
newspaper stories as well as by watching videos and movies. From this
they can start to build up an understanding of human values.
It won’t be easy
for machines. “People are irrational, inconsistent, weak-willed,
computationally limited, heterogenous and sometimes downright evil,”
Russell said.
“Some are
vegetarians and some really like a nice juicy steak. And the fact
that we don’t behave anything close to perfectly is a serious
difficulty.”
terça-feira, 30 de agosto de 2016
Um homem sério
Editorial / PÚBLICO
Um
homem sério
Direcção Editorial
30/08/2016 – 19:38
Todos
tínhamos percebido menos Pedro Santana Lopes. Agora, o Tribunal
Europeu dos Direitos Humanos veio explicar: era apenas ironia.
Um dos piores males
humanos, não circunscrito a Portugal, mas abundante q.b. entre nós,
é a auto-consideração. Os portugueses levam-se muito a sério, têm
demasiadas certezas absolutas e ofendem-se por pouco. A história dos
duelos não é mais do que a história dos homens com excesso de
auto-consideração. De todas as figuras retóricas, a ironia é a
mais incompreendida. Em 2004 Santana Lopes teve essa dificuldade. Viu
numa ironia um insulto capaz de pôr em causa, “de forma grave e
séria”, o seu bom nome pessoal e profissional e, além disso, a
sua capacidade para ser primeiro-ministro. Esta era a frase: “Será
um delírio provocado por consumo de drogas duras, uma nova
originalidade nacional ou apenas um disparate sem nome?” Santana
Lopes é um homem sério e com homens assim não se brinca. Pediu 150
mil euros. O tribunal deu-lhe razão, mas baixou para 30 mil. Doze
anos depois, o Tribunal Europeu dos Direitos Humanos veio dizer o
contrário e lembrar que o jornalista quis, “como é evidente”,
ser irónico. E apenas isso.
Can We Save Venice Before It’s Too Late?
Can
We Save Venice Before It’s Too Late?
By SALVATORE SETTIS
August 29, 2016
PISA, Italy — A
deadly plague haunts Venice, and it’s not the cholera to which
Thomas Mann’s character Gustav von Aschenbach succumbed in the
Nobel laureate’s 1912 novella “Death in Venice.” A rapacious
tourist monoculture threatens Venice’s existence, decimating the
historic city and turning the Queen of the Adriatic into a Disneyfied
shopping mall.
Millions of tourists
pour into Venice’s streets and canals each year, profoundly
altering the population and the economy, as many native citizens are
banished from the island city and those who remain have no choice but
to serve in hotels, restaurants and shops selling glass souvenirs and
carnival masks.
Tourism is tearing
apart Venice’s social fabric, cohesion and civic culture, growing
ever more predatory. The number of visitors to the city may rise even
further now that international travelers are avoiding destinations
like Turkey and Tunisia because of fears of terrorism and unrest.
This means that the 2,400 hotels and other overnight accommodations
the city now has no longer satisfy the travel industry’s appetites.
The total number of guest quarters in Venice’s historic center
could reach 50,000 and take it over entirely.
Just along the Grand
Canal, Venice’s main waterway, the last 15 years have seen the
closure of state institutions, judicial offices, banks, the German
Consulate, medical practices and stores to make way for 16 new
hotels.
Alarm at this state
of affairs led to last month’s decision by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to place Venice on
its World Heritage in Danger list unless substantial progress to halt
the degradation of the city and its ecosystem is made by next
February. Unesco has so far stripped only one city of its status as a
heritage site from the more than 1,000 on the list: Dresden, after
German authorities ignored Unesco’s 2009 recommendations against
building a bridge over the River Elbe that marred the Baroque urban
ensemble. Will Venice be next to attain this ignominious status?
In its July report,
Unesco’s committee on heritage sites expressed “extreme concern”
about “the combination of ongoing transformations and proposed
projects threatening irreversible changes to the overall relationship
between the City and its Lagoon,” which would, in its thinking,
erode the integrity of Venice.
Unesco’s ultimatum
stems from several longstanding problems. First, the increasing
imbalance between the number of the city’s inhabitants (which
plummeted from 174,808 in 1951 to 56,311 in 2014, the most recent
year for which numbers are available) and the tourists. Proposed
large-scale development, including new deepwater navigation channels
and a subway running under the lagoon, would hasten erosion and
strain the fragile ecological-urban system that has grown up around
Venice.
For now, gigantic
cruise liners regularly parade in front of Piazza San Marco, the
city’s main public square, mocking the achievements of the last
1,500 years. To mention but one, the M.S.C. Divina is 222 feet high,
twice as tall as the Doge’s Palace, a landmark of the city that was
built in the 14th century. At times, a dozen liners have entered the
lagoon in a single day.
The inept response
of the Italian authorities to the very real problems facing Venice
gives little hope that this situation will change anytime soon. After
the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia in January 2012 off the coast of
Tuscany left 32 people dead, the Italian government ruled that
megaships must stay at least two miles from shore to prevent similar
occurrences in the future. But the Italian government, predictably,
failed to stand up to the big money promised by the tourist
companies: A loophole to that law was created just for Venice. A
cruise liner running ashore in the Piazza San Marco would wreck
centuries of irreplaceable history.
Furthermore, after a
corruption scandal over a multibillion-dollar lagoon barrier project
forced Mayor Giorgio Orsoni to resign in June 2014, he was replaced a
year later by Luigi Brugnaro, a booster of Venice’s tourism. Mr.
Brugnaro not only fully welcomes the gargantuan ships but has even
proposed the sale of millions of dollars of art from the city’s
museums to help manage Venice’s ballooning debt.
The destruction of
Venice is not in Italy’s best interest, yet the authorities remain
paralyzed. Local authorities — the city and the region — are at
odds with the government in Rome. Regardless, they have failed to
diversify the city’s economy, meaning that any changes would put
the few remaining Venetians out of work. To renew Venice’s economic
life, new policies are strongly needed, aimed at encouraging young
people to stay in the historic city, encouraging manufacturing and
generating opportunities for creative jobs — from research to
universities and the art world — while reutilizing vacant
buildings.
No effective
provision on Venice’s behalf has been enforced so far by the
Ministry of Cultural Heritage, although protection of environment and
cultural heritage is among the fundamental principles of the Italian
Constitution. Nor are authorities developing any project whatsoever
aimed not just at preserving the monuments of Venice, but at ensuring
its citizens a future worth living.
If Italy is to spare
Venice from further violation by the new plague devouring its beauty
and collective memory, it must first review its overall priorities
and, abiding by its own Constitution, place cultural heritage,
education and research before petty business.
Salvatore Settis is
the chairman of the Louvre Museum’s scientific advisory council and
the author of the forthcoming book “If Venice Dies.”
If you’ve visited
Venice or another historical site this summer and found it in need of
repair, care or conservation, we’d like to see your view of it,
taken from a unique angle. Post on Instagram using the hashtag
#OurHeritageInDanger.
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