terça-feira, 30 de agosto de 2005

«ATTAC À L'ÉPREUVE DE LA LAÏCITÉ»

«Le débat contradictoire intitulé «la laïcité face à la mondialisation néolibérale» animé par Francine Palisson, membre du réseau Golias s'est déroulé avec une tribune composée de Jocelyne Clarke, militante féministe et secrétaire générale de l'UFAL, Monika Karbowska, dirigeante d'Initiative Féministe pour une autre Europe et Monique Crinon, membre d'une Ecole pour tous-tes lors de l'université d'été d'Attac à Poitiers le samedi 27 août 2005.
Les points de vue différents abordés n'ont pas détérioré l'intérêt d'un débat, pourtant très vif.
(...)
Jocelyne Clarke a démontré que l'offensive néo-libérale et l'offensive communautariste regardent dans la même direction et visent toutes deux à casser un modèle de société solidaire au service du plus grand nombre, pour lui substituer une société éclatée, privilégiant la disparité des droits au nom d'un différentialisme religieux, de sexe, de genre ou bien régionaliste. Elle a mis l'accent sur le besoin des néolibéraux de flatter les communautés ethniques et religieuses intégristes pour mettre en avant la charité et pour justifier la régression des droits des femmes donc des droits de l'homme. Elle a évoqué les curieuses alliances des intégristes des religions avec des organisations de gauche ou d'extrême-gauche qui peuvent se retrouver sur les positions d'une extrême-droite identitaire, prêtant ainsi main forte au néolibéralisme. A ce sujet une militante de la salle rappela à Monique Crinon que la thèse selon laquelle le mouvement ouvrier puisse réitérer à son avantage l'alliance des années 50 et 60 avec les catholiques de gauche est dangereuse car à l'époque les idées socialistes étaient montantes et le catholicisme en déclin; aujourd'hui le mouvement ouvrier n'est plus dans ce rapport de force car les staliniens d'hier ont perverti la gauche.
(...)
Comme les laïques refusent la marchandisation de l'école publique et de l'hôpital public, ils refusent la main mise du religieux sur les esprits en formation et sur l'accès aux soins. En d'autres termes, c'est la laïcité qui permet la constitution d'un peuple de citoyens, qui est le fondement de la loi commune sans lien avec le sexe, la religion, la couleur de peau etc. Cette volonté générale ne reconnaît aucune dérogation en faveur des religions. Si les néolibéraux préfèrent laisser les classes populaires dans les lieux de culte plutôt que dans des syndicats, les laïques ont pour ambition de lier le combat social et le combat laïque, démocratique et féministe. De la salle, on peut noter l'intervention très applaudie d'une militante qui déclara à propos du voile islamiste: "en tant que femme, je ne veux pas être considérée que comme un sexe et qu'on me le rappelle sans cesse." A contrario, Sophie Zafari, secrétaire du Snuipp et membre de la LCR, intervint sur la stigmatisation des voilées et s'emporta vivement contre les laïques, prenant à partie tant l'Ufal que le journal Respublica. Dans ce rassemblement altermondialiste, tous les participants sont d'accord pour constater l'échec de la gestion néolibérale du monde qui conduit au chômage de masse, aux discriminations, à la dégradation des services publics, à la précarité de l'emploi et à la casse du social dont les femmes et les enfants sont les premiers touchés dans le monde. Rappelons que la laïcité permet d'éviter que les plus défavorisés ne se détournent du combat pour la redistribution sociale au profit d'une croisade religieuse, sachant que le monde ouvrier a toujours considéré qu'il fallait créer des liens plus forts que tous les liens communautaristes
(Martine Lozano, UFAL Paris Centre; excerto do boletim electrónico ResPublica, recebido por e-mail.)

quinta-feira, 25 de agosto de 2005

Sim, Einstein era muito crente!

«It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it
(Albert Einstein, The Human Side)
«It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man´s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man indeed would be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
(Albert Einstein, Religion and Science)

quarta-feira, 24 de agosto de 2005

Paul Kurtz: «Where is the moral outrage?»

«"... the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action."- British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, quoted in the "Downing Street Memo"
Perhaps the evangelicals are right-perhaps America is in a moral free fall. After relentless media disclosures, Capitol Hill testimony, and the recent damning "Downing Street Memo," a belated reversal in American public opinion may be underway. Polls say a slim majority now realizes that we who opposed the Iraq war from its inception were right: there were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's noxious regime posed no global threat, and it was never linked to September 11.
So... why did the Bush administration invade Iraq?
How disquieting that today, most Americans still respond to that question with a figurative shrug and some mumbled rhetoric about freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam or bringing democracy to the Middle East.
Those are laudable goals. But they're not the reasons America went to war.
America unleashed its devastating arsenal, killing and wounding (literally) uncounted numbers of innocent Iraqi civilians, bringing about the deaths of more than 1,700 Americans and the wounding of thousands more-and all of the reasons the Bush administration offered at the time for doing this are now known to be untrue. Even if worthwhile things come to be as a result of the campaign-something proponents will argue, and we will dispute-such results are afterthoughts at best, accidents at worst. The moral question is, when America's leaders chose this terrible path, did they have compelling reasons? Testifying on May 17, 2005, before a U.S. Senate subcommittee probing the United Nations oil-for-food scandal, the rambunctious British M.P. George Galloway answered that question for the ages. Riposting Senator Norm Coleman (R.-Minn.), a war supporter, Galloway announced: "Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies."[1]
That is the truth, and-apparently-most Americans now know it. So where is the moral outrage? Representative Walter Jones (R-N.C.), a former Iraq war hawk, made headlines in June when he admitted to ABC's This Week that "the reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there." The arch-conservative Representative Jones, not normally a man slow to judgment, could not muster moral outrage at this. The most he would say is "We've done about as much as we can do," then call for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops... someday.
Where is the moral outrage? In Iraq, the United States of America engaged in precisely the sort of behavior we condemn in our adversaries. Our leaders leapt to the ultimate human rights violation-"preemptive" warfare-for reasons that were either simply untrue or worse, known to be untrue. Today, America stands discredited among nations, an aggressor, its moral authority shattered. Does saying "We've done about as much as we can do" come anywhere near to capturing the enormity of the needless carnage? Does it come anywhere near to capturing what our beloved country has done to Iraq... or to itself?
Where is the will to admit that we as a nation have done wrong? Where is the demand that those who led us down this twisted path be called to account? Where is the moral outrage?
And if our nation is incapable of moral outrage even in the face of so reprehensible a provocation as this... whither America?
»

terça-feira, 23 de agosto de 2005

Revista de imprensa (23/8/2005)

  1. Salman Rushdie deu uma entrevista à revista Reason em que declara preferir a laicidade à francesa ao separacionismo estado-unidense. Justifica-se explicando que prefere um espaço público sem religião a um espaço público onde convivem todas as religiões. O mais famoso dos apóstatas do Islão afirma que a democratização dos países de população muçulmana passa por retirar o Islão dos fundamentos do Estado, o que implica mudar radicalmente a forma como os muçulmanos encaram a sua religião. Num artigo publicado no Washington Post, Rushdie desenvolve a ideia de que é necessária uma reforma do Islão, sugerindo que os seguidores desta religião a deveriam estudar dentro do seu contexto histórico (melhor documentado do que no caso do cristianismo) e não presumindo-lhe uma origem sobrenatural, algo que não acontece neste momento entre as elites dos países de população muçulmana. Exige também que se levantem vozes entre os muçulmanos demarcando-se da violência terrorista, o que efectivamente não acontece tanto como seria desejável.
  2. Hélio Schwartsman escreveu na Folha de São Paulo sobre um curso de astrologia promovido numa Universidade pública brasileira e, apesar de sempre ter votado em Lula, já discute a sua deposição. Tempos de decepção e amargura para os brasileiros...
  3. E ainda o último artigo de Hirsi Ali, uma das poucas pessoas que nos pode ajudar a navegar evitando quer o abismo da xenofobia quer os escolhos da complacência com o islamismo.
Nota: voltei de férias, mas este blogue não será, nos meses vindouros, de alta frequência de publicação de artigos.