Diziam os olhos.
- Não me castre.
Respondia o sorriso.
Brigavam sempre naquele rosto machucado pelos golpes de um e outro.
Um certo dia souberam os ouvidos que a briga havia então terminado,
após vinte e poucos anos de conflito,
vencia vitorioso o sorriso,
que se esparramava provocante
quase tocando seus inimigos derrotados.
Os olhos,
para sempre fechados,
morriam de vergonha.
quando somos crianças
acreditamos que ele esta lá.
No início
temos medo de abrir as portas
depois
é o orgulho que nos impede
e, quando menos se nota,
já estamos
velhos
acreditando em guerras,
mentiras,
traições e doenças
…
são tantos os demônios do homem
que, às vezes,
sentimos saudade dos monstros de nossa infância,
e quando abrimos enfim as portas do armário,
só temos roupas,
dívidas
e um whisky
escondido,
atrás das meias e cuecas.
contra mim
minhas pegadas se juntam
para me esmagar
Sou confrontado por minha tirania
e minha vaidade
Penso em desistir,
mas sou apunhalado por meu orgulho
e permaneço sangrando sorrisos contra meu passado
…
Às 3:30 da madrugada e,
se cada dia é um universo,
cada madrugada é uma constelação deles...
As luzes artificiais e o cinza não me deixam ver a lua, as estrelas, ou mesmo um pedaço ínfimo do céu,
me volto para a telinha do computador
esperando mais um pouco de nada
e, de surpresa,
me enchem os olhos as luzes de uma estrela morta.
Ayrton Sena não brilhou nos céus,
mas nos asfaltos...
ousou ter voz
opinião
e forçou sua vez num dos meios mais sujos de nossos tempos.
Fez literalmente poeira da máfia do GP 1,
falou o que não devia,
ganhou quando não convinha,
bateu quando não podia...
e morreu...
Pelo bem desse poema haveria de casar-se a morte com um par de impacto,
mas sendo Senna o morto,
talvez seja o caso de não poder,
em seu caso não houve tempo...
morreu solitário o herói de uma época,
morreu contrariado num carro que não queria
[nem rendia]
morreu numa curva em que simplesmente não morreria.
Fico pensando,
talvez tenha se passado da morte, estando em Ímola para ceifar Ratzemberger,
ter apenas se encantado
com o Sorriso, com os sonhos e com os domingos,
e ciumenta como é,
tenha decidido levar só para ela esses domingos que deviam ser eternos.
É duro,
no despertar de uma terça-feira,
descobrir que há 17 anos
Ímola matava meus domingos
transformando o “Tema da Vitória” em requiem.
No fim das contas
acho que vale
uma lágrima.
==> Link para assistir online a um filme bem recente sobre o Senna:
http://wwwstatic.megavideo.com/mv_player3.swf?image=http://img20.megavideo.com/94ee3d86065a4f3bc150bfa308427c9b.jpg&v=FPO6Y4RR
e outras merdas,
ao meu lado estavam os melhores,
amigos.
acima
meus pais.
o cheiro de vinho, whisky e cordialidade enganava,
sonhar não foi difícil,
acordar também não
duro foi descobrir que o brilho nos sorrisos,
de boa noite e bom dia
talvez
estivessem estado lá
na calada da noite
quando jogaram meu whisky
no lixo.
não são os 200 reais da garrafa,
talvez tenha sido a traição...
duro mesmo é receber o beijo
de Judas
sem ter nem mesmo um copo de whisky
para suportar,
o frio.
and don't worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.
just drink more beer
more and more beer
and attend the racetrack at least once a
week
and win
if possible
learning to win is hard -
any slob can be a good loser.
and don't forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.
don't overexercise.
sleep until moon.
avoid paying credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.
remember that there isn't a piece of ass
in this world over $50
(in 1977).
and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong -
an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient -
time is everybody's cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery
all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continuous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you're doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you're not ready.
drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right
too.
By Charles Bukowski
outra cama
outra mulher
mais cortinas
outro banheiro
outra cozinha
outros olhos
outro cabelo
outros
pés e dedos.
todos à procura.
a busca eterna.
você fica na cama
ela se veste para o trabalho
e você se pergunta o que aconteceu
à última
e à outra antes dela…
é tudo tão confortável -
essse fazer amor
esse dormir juntos
a suave delicadeza…
após ela sair você se levanta e usa
o banheiro dela,
é tudo tão intimidante e estranho.
você retorna para a cama e
dorme mais uma hora.
quando você vai embora é com tristeza
mas você a verá novamente
quer funcione, quer não.
você dirige até a praia e fica sentado
em seu carro. é meio-dia.
- outra cama, outras orelhas, outros
brincos, outras bocas, outros chinelos, outros
vestidos
cores, portas, números de telefone.
você foi, certa vez, suficientemente forte para viver sozinho.
para um homem beirando os sessenta você deveria ser mais
sensato.
você dá a partida no carro e engata a primeira,
pensando, vou telefonar para Janie logo que chegar,
não a vejp desde sexta-feira.
Charles Bukowski [do livro O Amor É um Cão dos Diabos, L&Pm Editores, 2007; Tradução de Pedro Gonzaga]
REVIEW OF SKINNER VS KEAN DEBATE
Keane criticizes that it is possible to recover the intentionality claim of the authors behind the authors for basically two reason:
Kean says that we cannot ignore the psychoanalyst elements, like the subconscious and so on.
And Skinner talks about psychoanalysis also but he dismisses it because, according to him, while explaining an idea one should use terms that are available to the reader
Kean says that language is not a transparent toll to refer to realities but, instead, something which create meanings as well. For so, we got to understand…
Winch says that people have their belief systems, which are different, and each belief systems express itself through a language that, consequently, create a whole world.
Kean point five talks about the parts on which he agrees with Skinner.
Kean criticizes skinner for not being hermeneutics in that particular paper
Habermas, father of hermeneutics, says that any kind of interpretation Is subjective… regarding, both, the subjective of the interpreters and the interpreted.
Criticizes Skinner from inside, showing failures, and outside, as a post-structuralism.
Questions raised on all the texts so far
How can the self understand the other?
What is the relation between language and reality?
How legitimate/feasible is it to offer a critique on different societies?
Review “Humanism x Structuralism”
HUMANISM
Individual discover
Agents
Capacity to reason = common human essence of “humankind”
STRUCTURALISM
Meanings produced
Within structure of signification
Stable structures = Deep strucutures of the mind
Individual not autonomous agent but produced by structures
POST-STRUCTURALISM
Unstable structures because structures have outsiders
Overlapping structures of significations
JOHN KEANE “More theses on the philosophy of history”
Kean rejects that there is always an intentionality claim
Different from Skinner, who focused on the ideas brought by the text which were initially recognized by the classical author, Kean points that, as he is an outsider, he can recognize some influences of the classical author that were not self-recognized.
Drives t the psychoanalysis level of interpretation the writings-author reality.
Denies the Skinner concept according to which “Language is a passive transfer to reality”, by saying that “Language is productive of realities”. Language is a plastic sheet in which words comes reality.
He denies the association between outsider position and unbiased analysis. By this, he denies the Skinner goal of interpreting the past works without “contaminating” it with ones own reality. To Keane, there’s no such thing.
Quentin Skinner “Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas”
Text about history of ideas
Debate about what characterize a classic work
Skinner is sarcastic about Leo Strauss definition of classics, according to whom: “The classics are so because they contain extemporal knowledges”
Arguments:
You have to look to the text in its particular context, both the social condition and, mostly, the individual perspective.
The semiotic highlights the different meanings and understandings over a same work.
“Structure vs agent” Debate. Skinner play enfasis on particular context, but, without giving up the idea that individuals do matter in the landscape of the structures.
When you read a text you should try to discover what the author tried to meant, how he saw that. You should try to understand the meaning of the language he used to express himself according to the authors proper way to see it.
Against naturalizing meanings, which should always be investigated according to the reality on which they were used.
Importance of understanding the “speech act”.
Semiotic sense of the speeches.
Oblique rethorical strategies (n sakei qq ela quiz dizer c isso ???)...
A reading unobserving this may lead to anachronism (he explains better on pages 58-59).
Talks about the different concepts of democracy on pg. 56.
“MITH OF COHERENCE”… The coherence show it’s failures when viewed and questioned by an outsider
“RESOLVING ANTINOMICS”
He focus a lot in Platos, to show the different possible comprehensions. Mainly in his democracy concept.
Should look for the full range of meanings that the word could have meant when it was initially used.
HE WROTE THAT FOR HIS COLLEAGUES, NOT FOR A BROAD PUBLIC!!!
*The idea of the individual is something extremely new in the history.
** Semiotics were already noted by Parmenides of Eleia, etc...
Abstract of “Representation, meaning and language” by Stuart Hall
Representation connects meaning and language to culture
Representation mean using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other person
3 different accounts or theories:
Reflective
Language simply reflect a meaning which already exists out there in the world of objects, people and events
In the reflective approach meaning is thought to lie in the object, person, idea, or event in the real world and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world.
Greeks used the notion of mimesis to explain how language, even drawing and painting mirrored or imitated nature.
They thought of Homer’s great poem. The Iliad, as imitating a heroic series of events.
Critiques:
Visual signs do bear some relationship to the shape and texture of the objects which they represent. But as was also pointed out earlier, a two-dimensional visual image of a rose is a sign – it should not be confused with the real plant.
If someone says there is no such word as rose for a plant in her culture, the actual plant in the garden cannot resolve the failure of communication between us. For us to understand each other, one of us must learn the code linking the flower with the word for it in the other’s culture.
Intentional
Language express only what the speaker or writer or painter wants to say, his or her personally intended meaning
Holds that the speaker imposes her unique meaning on the world through language.
Critiques:
We cannot be the sole or unique source of meanings in language since that would mean that we could express ourselves in entirely private languages.
Comunication depends on shared linguistic conventions
Our private intended meanings, however personal to us, have to enter into the rules, codes and conventions of language to be shared and understood.
Our private thoughts have to negotiate with all the other meanings for words or images which have been stored in language which our use of the language system will inevitably trigger into action.
Constructionist
Meaning is constructed in and through language
Neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems – concepts and signs.
We must not confuse the material world, where things and people exist, and the symbolic practices and processes through which representation, meaning and language operate.
It is not the material world which conveys meaning.
Signs may also have a material dimension.
Representation is a practice, a kind of ‘work’, which uses material objects. But the meaning depends not on the material quality of the sign, but on its symbolic function.
Signs are arbitrary, they are fixed by codes.
E.G: Traffic lights example:
We use a way of classifying the colour spectrum to create colours which are different from one another.
The creation of the colour-concept.
Other cultures may divide the colour spectrum differently. Use different actual words or letters to identify different colours.
It is the difference between Red and Green which signifies.
In principle any combination of colours – like any collection of letters in written language or of sounds in spoken language – would do so, provided they are sufficiently different not to be confused. Constructionists express this idea by saying that all signs are ‘arbitrary’.
Meaning is ‘relational’.
2 main intern distinctions:
SEMIOTIC APPROACH (Ferdinand Saussure)
DISCURSIVE APPROACH (Michel Foucault)
Some main characteristics of constructivist perspectives:
Possibility to give meaning to things through language
It is the link between concepts and languages which enables us to refer to either the ‘real’ world of objects, people and events.
Systems of representation based on two aspects:
Meaning depends on the system of concepts and images formed in our thoughts which can stand for or ‘represent’ the world, enabling us to refer to things both inside and outside our heads.
He considers this to be a very simple version of a rather complex process
We also form concepts of rather obscure and abstract things which we can’t in any simple way see, feel or touch.
It consists not of individual concepts, but of different ways of organizing, clustering, arranging, and classifying concepts, and of establishing complex relations between them
E.G: We use the principles of similarity and difference to establish relationships between concepts or to distinguish them from one another.
Classifying according to sequence
Meaning depends on the relationship between things in the world – people, objects and events, real or fictional – and the conceptual system, which can operate as mental representations of them.
Culture is sometimes defined in terms of ‘shared meanings or shared conceptual maps’.
The conceptual word we use for words, sounds or images which carry meaning is signs.
However, a shared conceptual map is not enough. We must also be able to represent or exchange meanings and concepts, and we can only do that when we also have access to a shared language.
Language is the second system of representation involved in the overall process of constructing meaning. Our shared conceptual map must be translated into a common language, so that we can correlate our concepts and ideas with certain signs.
Signs are organized into language and it is the existence of common languages which enable us to translate our thoughts (concepts) into words, sounds or images, and them to use these, operating as a language, to express meanings and communicate thoughts to other people.
Any sound, word, image, or object which functions as a sign, and is organized with other signs into a system which is capable of carrying and expressing meaning is, from this point of view, a ‘language’.
The relation between ‘things’, concepts and signs lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. The process which links these three elements together is what we call ‘representation’.
The relationship in these systems of representation between the sign, the concept and the object to which they might be used to refer is entirely arbitrary.
By ‘arbitrary’ we mean that in principle any collection of letters or any sound in any order would do the trick equally well.
The meaning is not in the object or person or thing, nor is it in the word. It is we who fix the meaning so firmly that, after a while, it comes to see natural and inevitable.
The meaning is fixed by the SYSTEM OF REPRESENTATIONS.
Codes fix the relationships between concepts and signs.
To belong to a culture is to belong to roughly the same conceptual and linguistic universe, to know how concepts and ideas translate into different languages, and how language can be interpreted to refer to or reference the world. To share these things is to see the world from within the same conceptual map and to make sense of it through the same language systems. Early anthropologists of language, like Sapir and Whorf, took this insight to its logical extreme when they argued that we are all, as it were, locked into our cultural perspectives or ‘mind-sets’, and that language is the best clue we have to that conceptual universe. This observation, when applied to all human cultures, lies at the root of what, today, we may think of as cultural or linguistic relativism.
E.G: The English make a rather simple distinction between sleet and snow. The Inuit (Eskimos) who have to survive in a very different, more extreme and hostile climate, apparently have many more words for snow and snowy weather.
SUMMARY
Meaning is produced by practice of representation. It is constructed through signifying – i.e. meaning-producing practices.
It depends on two different but related systems of representation:
Classification and organization into meaningful categories of the concepts which are formed in the mind.
The exercise of language, which consists of signs organized into various relationships.
But signs can only convey meaning if we possess codes which allow us to translate our concepts into language and vice-versa.
Codes do not exist in the nature, but are the result of social conventions we learn and unconsciously internalize.
ABSTRACT OF “BLACK ATHENA” BY MARTIN BERNAL
Differentiate among two views over ancient History, the Aryan and the Levantine (which he calls the ‘Ancient’).
Aryan
This view was developed only in the fists half of the 19th Century.
In its anit-Semitism peaks (1890’s and 1920’s and 30’s), it denied even the Phoenician cultural influence.
There had been an invasion from the north – unreported in ancient tradition – which had overhelmed the local ‘Aegean’ or ‘Pre-Hellenic’ culture.
Ancient
Is the version which arose since ancient times.
Greek culture had arisen as the result of colonization, around 1500 B.C, by Egyptians and Phoenicians who have civilized the native inhabitants. Furthermore, Greeks had continued to borrow heavily from Near Eastern cultures.
The author resorts to the Ancient Model, but with some revisions.
Agrees on the founding role of Phoenicians and Egyptians founding Greek, with further borrowings from across the East Mediterranean.
The earlier population spoke Indo-Hititite language which left little trace in Greek.
In the other hand it accepts the Aryan Model’s hypothesis of invasions – or infiltrations – from the north by Indo-European speakers sometime during the 4th or 3rd millennium B.C.
The replacement of the Aryan Model by the Revised Ancient will be necessary not only to rethink the fundamental bases of ‘Western Civilization’ but also to recognize the penetration of racism and ‘continental chauvinism’ into all our historiography, or philosophy of writing history.
The Ancient Model had no major internal deficiencies or weaknesses in explanatory power. It was overthrown for external reasons.
18th and 19th Century Romantics and racists it was simply intolerable for Greece – the epitome of Europe – to have been the mixture of native Europeans and colonizing African and Semites.
Model means to him a reduced and simplified scheme of a complex reality.
Points that such transposition always distorts.
Points that some phenomenas are best seem in two or more different ways, using different models. For this, models are not necessarily exclusive, even when they disagree radically.
Paradigm to him means generalized models or patterns of thought applied to many or all aspects of ‘reality’ as seem by an individual or community.
Points that fundamental challenges to disciplines tend to be come from outside, because people emerged in the field are shaped while still students to accept conventional preconceptions and patterns of thoughts that turn them unlikely to be able to question its basic premises.
Particularly view in the field of ancient history.
Its study is dominated by the learning of difficult languages, a process that is inevitably authoritarian: e.g. one may not question the logic of an irregular verb or the function of a particle.
Also because instructors lay down their linguistic rules and because the notions of Greek and Hebrew are taught during childhood.
Because there is the trend of relating the Classical or Jewish traditions with the foundation of Western Culture, what make some paradigm shift to be considered heretic. It means that even the Ancient approach today is jeopardized by their pro-Jewish aimed knowledge.
The maximum we have is a comparative studies of ‘myths’, with less value and always focusing on the same cases.
Karl Otfried, is considered the destrcuctor of Ancient Model, when, in the 18th Century, he urged scholars to study Greek mythology, however, without recognizing any specific borrowing from the East.
Since the 1840’s Indo-European philology, or study of the relationships between languages, has been at the heart of the Aryan model, however, they refuse to point any link between Greeks and Egyptians and Semitics.
Outsiders can never have the control of detail gained so slowly and painfully by experts, however, this does not mean that they are necessarily wrong.
While amateurs are usually unable to help scholarly advance within a model or paradigm, they are often the best people to challenge it.
The specialists negative opinions cannot be regarded with the same unqualified respect, for, while they have the necessary skills to make a judgment, they have direct stake in the case.
Although professional opinion should be studied carefully and treated with respect, it should not always be taken as the last word.
Ultimately, a lay jury has to rely on its own subjective or aesthetic judgment.
E.G:
Heinrich Schliemann, who excavated Troy and Mycenae in the 1870’s, made a naive but fruitful conjunction of legends, historical documents and topography, showing that much as academics might like it to be, the obvious is not always false.
The 2 most important break-troughs in Hellenic studies since 1850 – the archeological discovery of the Mycenaeans and the decipherment of their script, Linear B – were both made by amateurs: Schliemann and Michael Ventris (Anglo-Greel architect).
Time come to confirm some non-specialized hints at their time denied by specialists, such as the Continental Drift proposed by Prof. A. L. Wagener at the end of the 19th Century and the populist proposal to abandon the gold standard in the 1980’s and 90’s.
Differentiates among 2 patterns of paradigm challenges:
The crank: Tend to add new unknown and unknowable factors into their theories.
Sometimes those assumptions area validated by the discovery of such factors, as in the case of Saussure’s ‘coeficients’ to explain anomalies in IndoEuropeans vowels, which was further discovered to exist in Hittite laryngeals.
The less imaginative: Tend to remove actors rather than add them.
E.G: Ventris took away the unknown Aegean language in which Linear B was supposed to have been written, leaving a direct juxtaposition between two known entities, Homeric and Classical Greek, and the corpus of Linear B tablets. Thus he instantly created a whole new academic field.
The authors purpose belongs to this second category. It adds no extra unknown or unknowable factors. It removes two introduced by proponents of the Aryan Model: (1) The non-Indo-Europeanspeaking ‘Pre-Helenic’ peoplesupon whom every inexplicable aspect of Greek culture has been thurst; and (2) the mysterious disease of ‘Egyptomania’, ‘barbarophilia’ and interpretation Graeca which the ‘Aryanist’ allege, have deluded so many otherwise intelligent, balanced and informed Ancient Greeks with the belief that Egyptians and Phoenicians had played a central role in the formation of their culture.
The removal of these two factors and the revival of the Ancient Model leaves the Greek, West Semitic and Egyptian cultures and languages in direct confrontation, generating hundreds if not thousands of testable hypotheses-predictions that if word or concept A occurred in culture X, one should expect to find its equivalent in culture Y.
The Ancient, Aryan and Revised Ancient models share one paradigm, that of the possibility of diffusion of language or culture through conquest.
It goes against the dominant trend in archeology today, which is to stress indigenous development.
The modernity made 19th century scientists, especially archeologists, to think that their work, as well as the whole society, had been qualitatively better than any that has gone before. Nevertheless, the destroyers of the Ancient Model and the builders of the Aryan believed themselves to be ‘scientific’.
They made the Ancient version sounds so absurd as the Minotaur and other legends.
For the past hundred and fifty years, historians have claimed to possess a ‘method’ analogous to those used in natural science. In fact, ways in which the modern historians differ from the ‘prescientific’ ones are much less certain.
Today, the charge of ‘unsold methodology’ is used to condemn not merely incompetent but also unwelcome work.
Especially in archeology, all one can finds is more or less plausibility, but not certains. Thus, debates in these areas should not be judged on the basis of proof, but merely on competitive plausibility.
‘ARCHEOLOGICAL POSITIVISM’ is the fallacy that dealing with objects makes one objective.
The favourite tool of the archeological positivists is the ‘argument from silence’.
E.G. The Thera eruption during the Late Minoan IB.
It’s impossible to prove absence.
Moderns archeologist can’t be compared exactly to the racist ones of the 19th and 18th Century, however, they are working with models set up by men who were crudely positivist and racist.
This does not in itself falsify the models, but – given what would be seen as the dubious circumstances of their creation – they sgould be very carefully scrutinized, and the possibility that there may be equally good or better alternatives should be seriously taken into account.
THE 16TH SAARC, HELD IN THINPU (BHUTAN) – 2010.
This last meeting of the group came under the name of “Towards a Green and Happy South Asia”.
In a movement that weakened the institutional settlement of the organization but possibly strengthened their individual capability to go ahead the rethoric history of promises never lead ahead of the paper, this time the main core was the recover of dialogue between India and Pakistan, ended since the 26-11-2008 terrorist attempt in Mumbay.
This is institutionally harmfull for the SAARC was buil under the clausule of not hosting bilateral differences in its foras.
Pression of all the neighbours and the previous pressure of Obama in his visit to India made India and Pakistan recover dialogue, and that’s clearly the main achievement of the Fora.
However, other dynamics were played, with special emphasis to the Bhutanese goal of improving clean technology transfer and political agreements on management of common goods, mainly watter.
The more concrete decisions on this purpose, however, were barried by the Pakistani refusal of taking part in a Afghani-Bangladeshi road and in a Rapid Response to Natural Disasters Mechanism.
Among the many old projects just in the paper, they mentioned the South Asia University, and settled an academical seminar on the issue to August.
It was also meaningful to note that by the first time civil-society enjoyed a full opinative role, and brought many ideas… it’s expected that this trend continue even after a not so comprehensive chairmanship of the SAAR summit.
The next will be in the Maldives in 2011.
The bilateral approach was not only regarding Indo-Pak… Afghanistan also raised severe critiques to the Pak hosting terrorism.
India didn’t mention that issue in the main speech, just in the parallel meetings and under others auspices… its main speech pointed for the urgency of embodying the vast rethoric of SAARC.
Maldives president stated that the Indo-Pak issue is locking the regional development and urged it to be solved soon… therefore pressuring for the recovery of dialogue.
By its time, Pakistany prime-minister pointed that terrorism is rooted in social-historic lack of justice, implicitly denying its guilt on hosting terrorism and, at the same time, suggesting the continuation of such practices.
SOUTH ASIAN REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND SAARC
It was just in 1977 that Bangladesh President Zia-ur-Rehman first suggested a regional organization (circuled a report on that).
Some say he pursued that for domestic economical problems.
Developed was the main goal since South-Asia is the n. 1 in poverty and exploding population in world.
ASEAN was settled in 1967
SAARC established in 1985 in Dhaka (India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives).
India and Pakistan didn’t join promptly for fearing a misuse on each other benefit, therefore they included a clause prohibiting bilateral issues to be arose under SAARC, and also to develop any activity contrasting to bilateral policies.
Same operational framework as the IBSA (TECHNICAL – STANDING COMMITEES-MINISTERS-SUMMITS).
South Asia was the last region to take a regional step in world.
The expansion process of SAARC was initially marked by the Afghani and Myamar possibilities.
In the beginning Myamar was waiting its acceptance in ASEAN and didn’t want SAARC, what was institutionalized after its acceptance in ASEAN
Before the end of the Cold War, Afghanistan framed a regional unbalance favourable to India, therefore Pakistan showed resistence.
After Cold War than there was a process for Afghanistan, but Pakistan was trying also to include other central and north Asian countries as to strength its muslim links… however, in 2006 Afghanistan signed only.
1995 SAPTA (South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement) willing to become a full SAFTA (S. A. Free Trade Agreement) as early as in the first decades of the 21st century.
Problems: SAARC countries have 97% imports from outside South Asia and export 96% to outside the region
Bilateral issues like Kashmir and Farraka, locking the regional cooperation
Lack of capital
In 1995 Delhi round India offered a list of 106 items for preferencial trade, while the thers offered less than 20 each.
Besides, the items offered by other countries has no demand.
Pakistan refusal to grant India the “most favoured nation status” (this would assure India to have the same trade advantages Pakistan concede to other nations he recognize as being MFN)
India got discontent as Nepal and Maldives supported the Pakistani claim for a mechanism to help settling bilateral issues (it goes against the clause exempting bilateral issues from being raised in SAARC)
After that India has increased it’s “look east policy”
1991 India become a sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN
1995 India become a full dialogue partnership
1997 Male Summit took decisive measures to implement SAFTA until 2001, but till now it didn’t become a reality.
Advantages: Intern trade is becoming more necessary as international aid is stoping.
Buthan suggested a S. A. Development Fund (SADF) in 1991, and it started in 1996.
The fund is divided into 3: proposing action; developing actions; and maintaining SAARC activities
They have proposed 13 already.
BRICS Summit 2011
With Beijings efforts to focus on economic aspects, limiting political claims to the trade and financial organizations reform, the concession of a place to SA and the emergence of the Libyan issue arose some unexpected political debates (Libya) which lead this summit to produce one of the most meaning joint communiqués in the BRIC history.
First meeting with the South African presence, ratified in December 2010.
The meeting was named “Development, peace and sharing”.
Based on annual growth of trade between partners of 26%, what combined represents 16% of total world GDP and 40% of worlds population.
The South African inclusion is accounted to Chinese efforts which used this symbolical gesture to strengthen links with Africa, on which it depends for raw materials, especially taking the long term perspective.
This inclusion may have caused bad effects on South Africa itself for the alignment with Russia and China can be seen as opposite to the democratic changes being operated since 1990.
Zuma’s declaration that western critiques on China are post-colonialism were very harmfull for their democratic process.
Beijing intentions with the meeting were clearly announced also to foster bilateral conversations in between the 2 days summit.
China-Brazil: Brazil took a 400 businessman commission to foster development in this country; in the last 2 years China has displaced US as Brazil’s larger trading partner; China is also planing to extend its investments in Brazil; Chine refused to built Brazilian Embraer’s planes instead of its owns; Brazil didn’t raise the issue of Chinese forced devaluation, which is a barrier among them… maybe because in the recently held G 20 meeting chineses were imperative on defending their economic sovereignty and accusing US for being imperialistic.
Indio-China: Both countries resumed the exchange of military exchange and joint exercises, which was frozen since last july for China didn’t give the full visa for an Indian-Kashmiri general for implicitly recognizing this region as Pakistani.
Indian interest on that occasion was to safeguard the border limits it has with Pakistan regarding PoK (Azad Kashmir), what can proof to be a landmark for Chinese claims in case India ever gets Kashmir totally back and sit for border negotiations with China.
The relations between them is still very tense for the increasingly Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean and the Indian closer bonds with US, which contrast to Chinese regional project.
The Chinese interests on BRICS are more economics than political, and it work hard to avoid any political shaping of BRICS as opposing to the international order, as can be notice on the Indian and Russia action, and also on the Brazilian.
China abstain from political reforms propositions other than those regarding the trade and financial system.
The summit arose the issue of reforming IMF, enlarging the role of developing countries, a trend gaining force since last November decision of redistributing the voting power of European countries among developing ones, and also by the Chinese currently position as the 3rd voting power of IMF.
A point which gained importance in light of the Washington IMF meeting occurring in a short close time, as well as the G 20. Press made a sort of competition between both meetings.
This issue, the political agenda and the issue of replacing the US dollar – raised in 2009 Russia summit – is leading BRICS to oppose US.
Parallel to the summit there was a trade minister’s meeting.
Following Chinese guidelines, the joint cominiqués aimed IMF reforms, control on commodities price fluctuation, and a minor and rethoric statement on environmental issues.
One important political issue was the joint denounce of the bombs in Libya, what can be viewed as an outcome of the South African inclusion since their president – Zuma – was ahead of the rejected AU project of political settlement of the issue, not accepted by the SC for not including clear measures to take Gadaffi of power.
The Indian endorsement of this joint position, as well as its abstention in the SC session on Libya may have caused some barriers on the current process of approximation with US.
However, the Indian position was based also in its personal interests, which accounts for a huge investment and raw material import from this country.
Chinese potential loss there is of 18 million and share on the oil trade
Russia is of 7 million on weapon trade and railway building
Chinese interest on forming a group position against military actions in Libya possible account for its support in the declaration favorable to a UNSC reform and the highlight of the important role to be played by India, Brazil and South Africa.
However, this didn’t clearly mention any permanent seat, neither can be accounted for a shift in the Chinese position against a permanent seat to India.
