Bissau: Ministro da Economia admira a Argélia

Parodiando Gabriel Garcia Márquez

“Muitos anos depois, diante do pelotão de fuzilamento, o coronel Aureliano Buendía haveria de recordar aquela tarde remota em que o pai o levou a conhecer o gelo” (in Cem Anos de Solidão).

Quando eu tinha... doze anos, uma das moradias da casa da minha mãe, no bairro de Amedalai, estava arrendada a um senhor chamado Adão.

Adão tinha dado entrada em casa umas semanas antes e eu ainda mal o conhecia quando uma tarde o vi a dirigir-se para o poço ali ao lado, de tronco nu, com apenas uma toalha enrolada à volta da cintura e um balde de apanhar água.

Eu estava sentado num banco de madeira na varanda lateral da casa, com o meu livro de matemática da sexta classe e um caderno em cima de uma cadeira, fazendo meu trabalho de casa.

Adão chegou ao poço, lançou o balde e começou a içá-lo. Poucos segundos depois levantou a cabeça e olhou para a varanda. Os nossos dois olhares cruzaram no ar e ambos sorrimos. Adão então avançou:

– Que estás a fazer?
– Exercícios de matemática
– Classe?
– Sexta
– Sabes matemática?
–Mais ou menos, respondi meio hesitante.

Surpreendentemente, Adão começou a fazer-me perguntas de álgebra, enquanto içava a corda do balde, e eu ia respondendo. Depois de umas cinco ou seis perguntas, ele olhou para mim visivelmente agradado e disse:

– Tu és bom, menino!

Imediatamente nos tornámos amigos. Adão devia ter vinte ou vinte um anos e já trabalhava. Dias depois, pediu licença à minha mãe para que passasse a sair comigo, tornando-se assim meu mentor. E foi assim que me levou pela primeira vez ao cinema.

Corria na UDIB a semana de filmes Argelinos. Pela primeira vez, embora num écrã, vi prédios altos e bonitos, fábricas com longas chaminés a turbinarem, hospitais bem equipados com médicos e enfermeiras a trabalharem com zelo, escolas com alunos alegres e bem vestidos, e autoestradas umas em cima de outras.

O filme entusiasmou-me de tal maneira que, quando saímos, enquanto ainda caminhávamos pelo passeio da UDIB, de volta para casa, eu comecei a sonhar com o dia em que a nossa terra seria como a Argélia.

Anos mais tarde, o destino fez-me conhecer prédios bem maiores, hospitais com tecnologias de ponta e universidades de classe mundial. Ainda assim, por uma magia inexplicável, o sonho Argelino continuou sempre resguardado num recanto da minha memória.

Infelizmente, como uma poderosa fantasia, o tempo encarregou-se de fazer mentir o meu sonho, ofuscando a sua beleza como as luzes de um écrã sombrio.

Muitos anos depois, diante do enorme desafio à minha frente, eu haveria de recordar aquela noite remota em que o Adão me levou a conhecer o cinema.

Bissau, 4 de Julho de 2014  Geraldo Martins, ministro guineense da Economia e Finanças

Indonésia vai escolher entre Widodo e Subianto

Indonesia's presidential election just got interesting. After spending the last 12 months as the runaway favourite, Joko Widodo, the down-to-earth reformist mayor of Jakarta, now has former military general Prabowo Subianto nipping at his heels. Recent polling data, not always reliable in Indonesia, has Mr Widodo's lead at around six percentage points and narrowing.

This election is probably the most significant since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998. Mr Widodo hails from outside of the usual elite, is untainted by corruption and would be likely to make good progress on enforcing the rule of law and improving the bureaucracy. Mr Subianto, on the other hand, is focusing on the resource nationalism that has kept Indonesia from reaching potential. Foreign investors are rightly nervous.

For the world, the collapse of the Arab Spring heightens the symbolic role of Indonesia as the largest Muslim democracy.  Indonesia will also strongly influence the future path of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, a ten country alliance with 630m people and an economy that will be as big as Germany's by 2018.

I'll be watching closely on July 9th. Will this election result change your activity in south-east Asia? Let me know on Twitter @Baptist_Simon or via email on simonjbaptist@eiu.com.  The Economist

O Iraque mergulha no caos

With the lightning advance of ISIS' jihadist army to the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq is falling into chaos.
The country's Shiites are mobilizing militias to fight the Sunni terrorists, while the nation faces a good possibility of some sort of Iranian intervention.
Regardless of who ultimately wins this conflict, Iraq looks destined for a prolonged period of instability.
This once again jeopardizes a crucial source of the world's oil - crude prices spiked to $107 a barrel after ISIS attacked Iraq's biggest oil refinery, and prices will rise further if fighting spreads to the south, home to most of Iraq's oil production.
These days we cannot assume that dependable energy suppliers will remain stable. America's second-biggest oil supplier is Saudi Arabia - if that kingdom were undermined by one of the region's many conflicts, the effect on our oil supply would contaminate the whole U.S. economy.
Even outside the Middle East, the repressive communist policies of the regime in Venezuela - our fourth-largest oil supplier - have sparked economic and political crises, as such policies tend to do.
Meanwhile Nigeria, which is our eighth-biggest oil supplier, is prone to oil production disruptions and destabilizing attacks by the al Qaeda-affiliated Boko Haram terror group.
These events affect us because the U.S. relies on the OPEC cartel for around 40 percent of our oil imports. But that need not be the case much longer.
Thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling, domestic energy production is surging, with crude oil production jumping 50 percent since 2008 and natural gas production rising one-third since 2005.
Moreover, our output will continue accelerating, with shale production booming in North Dakota, large-scale shale projects expected to begin in Texas and Oklahoma, and potential shale windfalls awaiting in California, Colorado and elsewhere.
Amid these riches, the United States could very well become a net energy exporter – but our government needs to end the restrictions that for decades have kept us at the mercy of foreign suppliers.
By boosting our energy production, the U.S. could restore its diminishing influence in the world without expending blood and treasure – in fact, we would reap major economic benefits.
For example, Japan has scrambled to find reliable oil, coal, and natural gas suppliers since it shut down its nuclear power plants following the Fukushima incident.
While it has committed to some U.S. natural gas exports, imagine the economic benefits we would reap if Japan could turn to the U.S. instead of its traditional Middle Eastern suppliers to meet all its new energy needs.
Likewise, imagine the geo-strategic impact if Europe - where green regulations have strangled energy production - could rely on the U.S. for more energy and break its debilitating dependence on Russia, which has shown in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria its unwillingness to reset its aggressive policies.
And imagine the self-confidence that would infuse our foreign policy if we were no longer beholden for our energy supply to countries that will probably remain unstable for at least a generation.
Thus, as Iraq collapses before our eyes, it's more urgent than ever to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport an estimated 800,000 barrels of oil per day - more oil than currently flows through the Alaska pipeline.
Though President Obama's own State Department has verified Keystone's environmental sustainability, opposition to the pipeline has become a touchstone issue for environmental extremists.
Paralyzed, the president has refused to decide this question, afraid to either approve the pipeline and upset a key part of his support base, or reject the pipeline, forego the jobs and dependable energy it would supply, and anger the overwhelming majority of Americans who are not part of the environmental fringe.
Time, however, may be running out, as the increasingly impatient Canadian government recently approved a potential alternative pipeline that would move oil to the Pacific for likely transport to China.
Of course, the government also has to repeal self-defeating regulations that hamper nuclear power, coal production, liquefied natural gas exports, and energy exploration off our coasts and on federal lands.
It’s especially crucial that we open up the Green River Formation which, according to a Rand Corporation estimate, conceivably has as much recoverable oil as the entire world’s proven reserves combined.
But instead, the Obama administration is moving in the opposite direction, mandating draconian new emission standards that will devastate coal production.
Despite the enormous cost, Obama is wedded to his all-encompassing program to force into existence a utopian “green economy” - a textbook case of central planning whose main features, as with most such efforts, are waste, manipulation, favoritism, cronyism, and fraud.
The U.S. will likely have to deploy a wide array of counterterrorism assets for years to keep Iraq from becoming safe haven for terrorists bent on attacking us.
But there is one tactic we can employ now to begin revitalizing our international influence: We should engage in an all-out push for domestic energy production.
Not only would our economy benefit, but we’d be giving energy-poor nations an alternative supplier to the corrupt kleptocracies and fanatical sectarians who, by controlling so much of the world’s energy, control the fates of so many people.
Rep. Devin Nunes of California is a Republican member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Sudão do Sul: Milhões de pessoas sem comida

Some four million people in South Sudan are likely to face critical food shortages next month, British aid agencies have warned.

But the Disasters Emergency Committee says the cost of mounting an appeal to pay for aid might outweigh donations.

South Sudan's president has already warned of "one of worst famines ever".

More than a million people have fled their homes since fighting erupted between different factions of South Sudan's ruling party last December.

Thousands have now died in the conflict that started as a political dispute between South Sudan President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, his sacked deputy, but escalated into ethnic violence.

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The malnutrition rate has shot up since fighting broke out in December

'Slip into famine'
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) - which brings together 13 UK charities to deal with international crises - says it currently has less than half of the money it needs to "prevent the growing food crisis in South Sudan from turning into a catastrophe".

"If the conflict in South Sudan continues, and more aid cannot be delivered, then by August it is likely that some localised areas of South Sudan will slip into famine," the DEC says in its report, citing international food crisis experts.

The committee says the same experts helped predict the seriousness of the East Africa food crisis in 2011, which led to the first famine of the 21st Century in Somalia.

It predicts that responsive emergency work would cost £113m ($194m), but to date they have only received £56m.

"We are very concerned... that despite some excellent news coverage of the situation, public awareness of the crisis in the UK remains very low, making a successful appeal extremely difficult," said DEC head Saleh Saeed.

Analysis - Mark Doyle, BBC international development correspondent
Journalists call dramatic news stories "sexy". And predicting a famine - however certain the aid agencies are about it - will always be less sexy than the real thing.

The financing of humanitarian work depends to a large extent on media coverage - from the coins put in charity boxes to the much larger sums given by governments.

In this case the agency experts have even put dates on the coming hunger in South Sudan - August to November.

It will be interesting to see how much impact the prediction makes.

It didn't work in late 2010 when the United Nations and others sounded the alarm about an impending famine in Somalia and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa.

The warning bells were more or less ignored and in 2011 the worst hunger crisis this century has seen so far duly took place.

That was sexy. We covered that.

Os 85 anos de Imelda Marcos

IMELDA Marcos, the Philippines' most famous political survivor, toasted her 85th birthday Wednesday as the former first lady made plans for a triumphal return to the presidential palace.
Wearing a flowing red gown and diamond rings, the self-declared "poverty-stricken" Marcos was serenaded by throngs of supporters as she emerged from her private chambers in the family mansion in their northern stronghold of Batac.
"My only wish is for God to give me a little more strength to prolong my life," Marcos told reporters who asked about her birthday wish.
She said she had seen "the best, best, best and the worst, worst worst" in life, but insisted she has no plans to ride into the sunset just yet.
"I still have a vision and hope to bring more help to the Filipino people," she said in a free-wheeling, often rambling, interview.
She insisted that Ferdinand Marcos Junior, her senator son and namesake of her late husband, was "qualified" to contest the presidency in May 2016 when incumbent Benigno Aquino, son of the Marcoses' top political foes, ends his six-year term.
"(Returning to) Malacanang would be a great help," in implementing her projects, said Marcos, referring to the presidential palace.
The flamboyant matriarch became the symbol of excess during the brutal 20-year regime of her late husband, who was also accused of looting state coffers and whose martial law rule was marked by human rights abuses.
While the rest of the country wallowed in poverty and thousands of activists were killed or went missing, Imelda Marcos and her children enjoyed a jet-setting lifestyle.
She amassed a jewellery collection valued in the tens of millions of dollars and acquired hundreds of paintings by international masters, including Monets and Picassos.
The government conservatively estimates that Marcos plundered government coffers of about US$10 billion.
A military-backed "People Power" revolt in 1986 chased Marcos and his family into exile in Hawaii, where the dictator died three years later.
As the public stormed the abandoned presidential palace, they discovered Imelda's 3,000 pairs of shoes that came to symbolise the extent of her extravagance.
Imelda Marcos and her three children were subsequently allowed to return home, and have since regained significant political clout in the late dictator's northern home province of Ilocos Norte.
Imelda Marcos won a second term as congresswoman representing Ilocos Norte last year, the same year her son was elected senator. He has hinted at joining the presidential race in 2016.
Her eldest daughter, Imee, is the provincial governor.
On Wednesday a regal but tired-looking Imelda dramatically planted a kiss on her husband's glass coffin as photographers jostled for position.
The dictator's wax-like remains are kept in an airconditioned crypt at the family compound which has become a macabre tourist attraction.
Declaring herself the "mother of world peace", Imelda then hit out at plans by the Aquino government to auction off her jewellery collection.
She accused Aquino's mother, the late democracy hero Corazon Aquino who was installed as president after the Marcos family fled, of persecution.
"Her first act was to confiscate and sequester all Marcos wealth even before we were tried, and that was illegal," Marcos said.
She said she would prefer to have the jewels put on public display "because I want the Filipinos to know what is world-class and see that".
Marcos did not discuss her fragile health. She was rushed to hospital last year for extreme fatigue but later recovered. – AFP

O Presidente Guebuza encontra-se em Portugal

Guebuza sublinha complementaridade da

indústria extractiva e dos sectores tradicionais

 O carácter finito destes recursos naturais aconselha-nos a prosseguirmos nesta direcção e a assegurarmos que os megaprojectos também impulsionem o desenvolvimento desses sectores tradicionais da nossa economia que caracterizam o sector das pequenas e médias empresas – Armando Emílio Guebuza, Presidente da República de Moçambique

REFINALDO CHILENGUE, em Lisboa

Presidente Armando Guebuza defendeu esta terça-feira em Lisboa que os megaprojectos da indústria extractiva e os sectores tradicionais se complementam em Moçambique, garantindo que os fundamentos da economia "são estáveis" e as perspectivas de desenvolvimento "são promissoras".

"Para nós, em Moçambique, não há contradição entre os megaprojectos e as pequenas e médias empresas. Pelo contrário, existe uma complementaridade e uma relação de simbiose que cria as sinergias necessárias para que ambas contribuam para o crescimento económico", declarou Guebuza ao discursar na cerimónia formal de abertura do fórum de negócios Moçambique-Portugal na capital lusa no âmbito da visita oficial que realiza a Portugal até quinta-feira.

Guebuza destacou que os recursos naturais existentes em Moçambique "colocam o país sob os holofotes do mundo das finanças e investimentos e da imprensa internacional", garantindo o empenho das autoridades em "atrair e acarinhar megaprojectos da indústria extractiva para explorar o seu potencial para a industrialização no país e para benefício do resto da Humanidade".

Guebuza sublinhou, entretanto, que esta esfera é "complementar e não substituto dos sectores tradicionais que têm sido responsáveis pelo crescimento" da economia moçambicana – na ordem dos sete por cento nos últimos 15 anos.

"O carácter finito destes recursos naturais aconselha-nos a prosseguirmos nesta direcção e a assegurarmos que os megaprojectos também impulsionem o desenvolvimento desses sectores tradicionais da nossa economia que caracterizam o sector das pequenas e médias empresas", enfatizou Armando Guebuza.

Confraternização de Ramos-Horta com os golpistas guineenses

Militares homenageiam Ramos-Horta

Posted on June 19, 2014 no blog de José Ramos-Horta    

O quartel da antiga Fortaleza de Amura, em Bissau, foi o palco para uma cerimónia de homenagem da Chefia das Forças Armadas guineenses, ao Representante Especial do Secretário-geral.
O Chefe do Estado-Maior das Forças Armadas, General António Indjai, entregou ao Nobel da Paz de 1996, uma estatueta com um guerreiro balanta, peça de artesanato tradicional do País.
José Ramos-Horta passou em revista forças militares em formatura, e pouco depois participou numa breve confraternização.
O General António Indjai, expressou a sua gratidão ao contributo dado por José Ramos-Horta, desejando-lhe “longa vida, bom trabalho e boa viagem”, a poucas horas do Representante Especial do Secretário-geral da ONU terminar a sua missão no Pais.
Uma missão assim destacada pelo porta-voz do Estado Maior, Brigadeiro-general Daba Na Wa: “ permitiu que a Guiné-Bissau regressasse à Ordem Constitucional, esperamos que o seu trabalho produza frutos e que a paz venha”.
José Ramos-Horta disse estar comovido com esta cerimónia de despedida organizada pelas forças armadas guineenses, com quem conversou muitas vezes: “levo para Nova Iorque a boa notícia de que há paz na Guiné-Bissau e as forças armadas e de segurança contribuíram decisivamente para a estabilização do País”. O Nobel da Paz está também confiante num diálogo que haverá entre militares, o novo Primeiro-Ministro e Presidente da Republica eleitos. Ramos-Horta reiterou ainda os apelos para que a Comunidade Internacional desbloqueie os fundos de emergência necessários para que o Governo possa pagar salários em atraso e fazer face a outras prioridades de tesouraria.
José-Ramos Horta, nestas declarações na Fortaleza de Amura, disse que deixa “parte do coração nas tabancas, a outra nas ilhas” guineenses e garantiu que mesmo depois de deixar as funções de Representante das Nações Unidas, continuara a apoiar a Guiné-Bissau, ajudando em áreas como a educação.
Pouco depois, o Nobel da Paz dirigiu-se ao Palacio Presidencial, onde o Presidente da Republica da Transição, Manuel Serifo Nhamajo, o Primeiro-ministro cessante, Rui Duarte Barros e outros membros do Executivo lhe apresentaram cumprimentos.