EVOLUÇÃO DAS ESPÉCIES...

Dos sans-culottes de Paris à Paris sans-culotte, há aqui uma enorme evolução das espécies que, a propósito do "14 Juillet", é apanhada com humor feroz mas muito inteligente pelo "Verdade ou Consequência"...

" Pensamento atrasado relativo ao 14 de Julho

Em 1789 havia sans-cullotes em Paris.


Em 2008 há uma Paris sans-culottes.

Posted by dorean paxorales at 6:30 PM 0 consequências  

Labels: Uma posta à Arcebispo de Cantuária "

RÚSSIA E CHINA

análise geopolítica da Stratfor

A Stratfor faz a análise geopolítica das relações Rússia-China. “A closer look” mostra um quadro muito diferente daquele que o discurso oficial e outras vulgatas banais nos servem diariamente...

China and Russia’s Geographic Divide

July 22, 2008

By Peter Zeihan

Related Theme Page

·                       Central Asian Energy: Circumventing Russia

Since the Soviet fall, Russian generals, intelligence chiefs and foreign policy personnel have often waxed philosophic about the inevitability of a global alliance to hem in U.S. power — often using the rhetoric of a “multipolar world.” Central in all of these plans has been not only the implied leadership of Russia, but the implied presence of China. At first glance, the two seem natural partners. China has a booming manufacturing economy, while Russia boasts growing exports of raw materials. But a closer look at the geography of the two paints a very different picture, while the history of the two tells an extraordinarily different story. If anything, it is no small miracle that the two have never found themselves facing each other in a brutal war.

A Hostile Geography

Russia east of the Urals and the Chinese interior are empty, forbidding places. Nearly all of Russia’s population is hard up on its western border, while China’s is in snug against its eastern and southern coasts. There is an ocean’s worth of nothing between them. But while ships can ply the actual ocean cheaply, potentially boosting economic activity, trade between Russia and China does not come easy. Moscow and Beijing are farther apart than Washington and London, and the cost of building meaningful infrastructure between the two would run in the hundreds of billions. With the exception of some resource development and sales in the border region, integration between the two simply does not make economic sense.

Yet, distance aside, there are no real barriers between the two. Southwestern Siberia is a long stretch of flatness that flows seamlessly into the steppes of Central Asia and the highlands of western China. This open expanse is the eastern end of the old Silk Road — proof that luxury trade is often feasible where more conventional trade simply cannot pay the transport bill. But where caravans bearing spice and silk can pass, so can armies bearing less desirable “goods and services.”

 

Ominously for Russia, there is little to separate the Russian Far East — where most of the Russian population east of the Urals resides — from Manchuria. And not only is there a 15:1 population imbalance here in favor of the Chinese (and not only has Beijing quietly encouraged Chinese immigration across its border with Russia since the Soviet breakup), but the Russian Far East is blocked from easy access to the rest of Russia by the towering mountains surrounding Lake Baikal. So while the two parts of Russia have minimal barriers separating them from China, they do have barriers separating them from each other. Russia can thus only hold its Far East so long as China lacks the desire to take it.

Geography also drives the two in different directions for economic reasons. For the same reason that trade between the two is unlikely, developing Russia would be an intimidating task. Unlike China or the United States, Russia’s rivers for the most part do not interconnect, and none of the major rivers go anywhere useful. Russia has loads of coastline, but nowhere does coast meld with population centers and ice-free ocean access. The best the country has is remote Murmansk.

So Russia’s development — doubly so east of the Urals — largely mirrors Africa’s: limited infrastructure primarily concerned with exploiting mineral deposits. Anything more holistic is simply too expensive to justify.

In contrast, China boasts substantial populations along its warm coasts. This access to transport allows China to industrialize more readily than Russia, but China shares easily crossed land borders with no natural trading partner. Its only serious option for international trade lies in maritime shipping. Yet, because land transport is “merely” difficult and not impossible, China must dedicate resources to a land-based military. This makes China militarily both vulnerable to — yet economically dependent upon — sea powers, both for access to raw materials and to ship its goods to market. The dominant naval power of today is not land-centric Russia, but the United States. To be economically successful China must at least have a civil and neutral relationship with the $14-trillion-economy-wielding and 11-aircraft-carrier-strike-group-toting United States. Russia barely even enters into China’s economic equation.

And the way Russia does figure into that equation — Central Asia — is not a positive, because there is an additional complication.

Natural gas produced in the Central Asian states until recently was part and parcel of overall Soviet production. Since those states’ infrastructure ran exclusively north into Russia, Moscow could count on this captive output to sign European supply contracts at a pittance. The Kremlin then uses those contracts as an anvil over Europe to extract political concessions.

“China” has been around a long time, but the borders of today represent the largest that the Chinese state has ever been. To prevent its outer provinces from breaking away (as they have many times in China’s past), one of Beijing’s geopolitical imperatives is to lash those provinces to the center as firmly as possible. Beijing has done this in two ways. First, it has stocked these outlying regions with Han Chinese to dilute the identity of the indigenous populations and culturally lash the regions to the center. Second, it has physically and economically lashed them to the center via building loads of infrastructure. So, in the past 15 years, China has engaged in a flurry of road, pipeline and rail construction to places such as Tibet and Xinjiang.

Merge these two seemingly minor details and it suddenly becomes clear that much of the mineral and energy riches of formerly Soviet Central Asia — resources that Russia must have to maintain its energy leverage over Europe — are now just as close to China’s infrastructure network as they are to Russia’s. And obtaining those resources is one of the few possible means China has of mitigating its vulnerability to U.S. naval power.

All that is needed are some pieces of connecting infrastructure to allow those resources to flow east to China instead of north to Russia. Those connections — road, pipe and rail — are already under construction. The Russians suddenly have some very active competition in a region they have thought of as their exclusive playground, not to mention a potential highway to Russia proper, for the past quarter millennia. Control of Central Asia is now a strategic imperative for both.

A Cold History

The history of the two powers — rarely warm, oftentimes bitter — meshes well with the characteristics of the region’s geography.

From the Chinese point of view, Russia is a relative newcomer to Asia, having started claiming territory east of the Urals only in the late 1500s, and having spent most of its blood, sweat and tears in the region in Central Asia rather than the Far East. Russian efforts in the Far East amounted to little more than a string of small outposts even when Moscow began claiming Pacific territory in the late 1700s. Still, by 1700, Russian strength was climbing while Chinese power was waning under the onslaught of European colonialism, enabling a still-militarily weak Russian force to begin occupying chunks of northeastern China. With a bit of bluff and guile, Russia formally annexed what is now Amur province from Qing China in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, and shortly thereafter the Chinese-Russian border of today was established.

China attempted to resist even after Aigun — lumping the document with the other “unequal treaties” that weakened Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity — and indeed the Russians had more or less swindled China out of a million square miles of territory. But Beijing simply had too many other issues going on to mount a serious resistance (the Opium Wars come to mind). Once the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed early in the 20th century, Russia was able to back up its claims with troops, and the issue definitively moved to the back burner — especially as the rising colonial aspirations of Japan occupied more attention than China had to spare.

The bilateral relationship warmed somewhat after the end of World War II, with Russian energy and weapons critical to Mao’s consolidation of power (although notably, Stalin originally backed Mao’s rival, Chiang Kai-shek). But this camaraderie was not to last. Stalin did everything he could first to egg on the North Korean government to invade South Korea, and then to nudge the Chinese into backing the North Koreans against the U.S.-led U.N. counterattack. But while the USSR provided weapons to China in the Korean War, Moscow never sent troops — and when the war ended, Stalin had the temerity to submit a bill to Bejing for services rendered.

Sino-Soviet relations never really improved after that. As part of Cold War maneuvers, Russia allied with India and North Vietnam, both longtime Chinese rivals. Therein lay the groundwork of a U.S.-Chinese rapprochement, and rapid-fire events quickly drove the Chinese and Soviets apart. The United States and China both backed Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani wars. Some 60,000 Uighurs — a Muslim minority that the Chinese still fear hold separatist aspirations — fled across the Soviet border in 1962. In 1965, the Chinese energy industry matured to the point that Soviet oil was no longer required to keep the Chinese economy afloat. Later, Washington turned a blind eye to the horrors of the Chinese-bankrolled Khmer Rouge in Cambodia to destabilize Soviet-backed Vietnam. When all was said and done, the Soviet Union faced a foe to its south every bit as implacable as those on its w estern and eastern flanks.

But the seminal event that made the Sino-Soviet split inevitable was a series of military clashes in the summer of 1969 over some riverine islands in the Amur.

Today

China and Russia are anything but natural partners. While their economic interests may seem complementary, geography dictates that their actual connections will be sharply limited. Moreover, in their roles of resource provider versus producer, they actually have a commercial relationship analogous to that of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries versus the United States — with all the angst and distrust that suggests.

Strategically, the two tend to swim in different pools, but they still share a borderland. Borderlands — where one great state flows into another — are dangerous places, as their precise locations ebb and flow with the geopolitical tides. And the only thing more likely to generate borderland friction than when one side is strong and the other weak is when both sides are strong. Currently, both China and Russia are becoming more powerful simultaneously, creating ample likelihood that the two will slide toward confrontation in regions of overlapping interest.

So why Stratfor’s interest in the topic? The primary reason the United States is the most powerful state in the international system is that it faces no challengers on its continent. (Canada is de facto integrated into the United States, and Mexico — even were it stable and rich — would still be separated from the United States by a sizable desert.) This allows the United States to develop in peace and focus its efforts on projecting its power outward rather than defending itself. For the United States to be threatened, a continental-sized power or coalition of similar or greater size would need to arise. So long as China and Russia remain at odds, the United States does not have to work very hard to maintain its position.

Which brings us back to the island battles that cemented the Sino-Soviet split: Russia is giving them back.

On July 21, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put Russia’s final signature — in a deal already signed and ratified by both sides — to a deal that commits Russia to the imminent removal of its forces from 67 square miles of territory on a series of Amur riverine islands. The Russians call them Tarabarov and Bolshoi Ussuriysky, the Chinese call them Yinlong Dao and Heixiazi Dao. These are two of the islands over which the Chinese and Soviets battled in 1969, formalizing the Sino-Soviet split. The final pullout of Russian forces is expected within a month.

When two states enter into alliance, the first thing they must do is stop treating each other as foes. There is a bit of wiggle room if the two states do not border each other as the United States and Soviet Union did not during World War II. But in cases of a shared land border, it is devilishly difficult to believe that those on the other side of the line have your back if they are still gunning for a piece of your backyard. If China and Russia are going to stand together against the United States — or really, anyone — in any way, shape or form, the first thing they have to do is stop standing against each other. And that is just about to happen.

There are still plenty of reasons to doubt the durability of this development. In terms of modern warfare, the islands are strategic irrelevancies, so their surrender is not exactly a huge gesture of trust. Achieving any semblance of economic integration between the two powers still would be more trouble and expensive than it would be worth, making any deepening of the bilateral relationship difficult. Russia’s demographic slide instills a perfectly logical paranoia in the Kremlin; Russians are outnumbered 7 to 1 by their “partner” in terms of population and 3 to 1 in terms of economic size — something that Russian pride will find far harder to accept than merely handing over some islands. There is no substitute to the American market for China. Period. Sharing Central Asia is simply impossible because both sides need the same resources to achieve and maintain their strategic aims. And neither power has a particularly sterling reputation when it comes to confidence building.

Yet while Moscow is known for many, many things, sacrificing territory — especially territory over which blood has been shed — is not on that list. Swallowing some pride to raise the prospect of a Chinese-Russian alliance is something that should not pass unnoticed. Burying the hatchet in the islands of the Amur is the first step on the improbable road to a warmer bilateral relationship, and raises the possibility of a coalition of forces with the geographic foundation necessary to challenge the United States at its very core.

Such a Chinese-Russian alliance remains neither natural nor likely. But, with the territory handover, it has just become something that it was not a week ago: possible.

COMPETITIVIDADE DOS PAÍSES

Sharon Stone 

pouco politicamente correcta e, veja-se, como a coisa lhe fica bem!

e, depois do cigarrinho, o charuto... Enquanto o DGS não apagar as imagens!

BLOGS, OPINIÃO E

FORÇAS ARMADAS

A Wired dá conta do debate que blogs e net estão a levantar no interior do aparelho militar americano... 

GANHAR A GUERRA DAS IDEIAS

É matéria sobra a qual pouco se tem produzido e escrito (e pouco mais se tem traduzido...) em português e nas línguas latinas. A bibliografia é imensa mas quase sempre em inglês. Este post do "Casus Belli" chama a atenção para a coisa e a tradução francesa do artigo temático de James Glassman, no The Wall Street Journal ...

“ Une guerre des idées multiformes

Le thème de la guerre des idées n'est pas nouveau aux Etats-Unis mais il continue d'occuper les diplomates et les chercheurs. Côté diplomates, James Glassman sous-secrétaire d'Etat à la diplomatie publique expliquait récemment "Comment Gagner la Guerre des Idées": affronter directement l'idéologie de l'extrémisme violent, mener la guerre des idées sur une longue période, soutenir des réseaux politiques, sportifs, culturels dans le monde musulman...
Côté chercheurs, le professeur Antulio J. Echevarria II préconise d'examiner la guerre des idées selon quatre grandes catégories :

1.     Les débats intellectuels : "Toute controverse dans laquelle des points de vue opposés avancent des arguments, apportent des preuves et s'efforcent de réfuter le raisonnement et les conclusions de l'autre".

2.     Les controverses relatives aux dogmes religieux : "Ces controverses ressemblent aux débats intellectuels mais elles s'en différencient par l'attention portée à l'interprétation des textes sacrés".

3.     Les guerres idéologiques : " Une guerre idéologique se distingue de la controverse relative aux dogmes religieux en ce qu'elle implique un désaccord quant à l'interprétation de textes sacrés".

4.     Les campagnes de publicité : "Les campagnes de publicité sont certainement les plus envahissantes des guerres des idées, donc les plus communes (...) L'objectif de telles campagnes est d'orienter les actes du public vers une direction souhaitée, de voter pour un candidat particulier, de visiter un endroit précis ou d'acheter un produit spécifique".

Prudent, l'auteur estime que "les résultats sans conclusion véritable ne sont pas inhabituels dans les guerres des idées"...

A lire :

• Wars of ideas and The war of ideas (PDF - 391 Ko)

Posté par altiplano à 18:41 - Stratégies d'influence - Commentaires [0] - Rétroliens [0] - Permalien [#]

.

PERTURBANTE... MUITO PERTURBANTE

Bin Laden's Nuclear Strategy

As the left prostrates itself over the global warming, global cooling climate change hoax, the real threat goes largely ignored. Of the over 11,000 Islamic attacks after 9/11 does not give you great pause or an indication of the enemy we are dealing with, you need professional help.

If the media can stop playing lapdog for Obama for 5 minutes, we'd all be better off. They have really lost it.

I know I have reported in this before and I can't give you dates and times (neither can our intel agencies) but Bin laden did as the Koran instructed: Bin  Laden to America: "I invite you to embrace Islam."

Back in April of 2006: M16 Cofirms Bin Laden's  Nukes

Bin Laden Planning Hiroshima-Type Destruction? Paul Weyrich Newsmax hat tip

Does Osama bin Laden possess nuclear weapons? Has he smuggled these weapons into the United States? Does he have a plan to detonate these weapons in multiple American c ities if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear facilities? Dr. Hugh Cort, president of the American Foundation for Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research, believes the answer to all of these questions is yes.

Cort has assembled a body of evidence which he claims supports the view that bin Laden has a plan for an "American Hiroshima" which will be implemented in the near future. He has sent this material to various U.S. officials, including Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Cort believes that the government is not doing enough to prevent an attack.

Much of his evidence centers around one Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who has conducted the only interview of bin Laden after 9/11. Bin Laden told Mir that he had acquired 20 suitcase nuclear bombs from the former Soviet Union. Mir told Cort that bin Laden's men have smuggled these bombs into the United States.

I reported this back in  here: October 29th, 2007

Nuclear attack on America: Hiroshima Paul Williams

The Global Islamic Media Front, the leading al Qaeda website, has posted a report that verifies Osama bin Laden's possession of nuclear weapons and his intent, if provoked, to deploy these weapons against the United States.

The report maintains that bin Laden, when asked what will happen if the US uses nukes against his terrorist organization, said: "If they hit us with them, we will hit them with the same."

In November 2001, bin Laden henchman Dr. Ayman al Zawahri provided a similar response to the same question during an interview with Hamid Mir. "We have chemical and nuclear weapons," he told the Pakistani journalist. "If America uses chemical or nuclear weapons against us, then we may resort with chemical or nuclear weapons." When Mir asked bin Laden where he obtained such weapons, the al Qaeda leader said: "It is not difficult [to acquire such weapons], not if you have contacts in the Russian underworld."

The Global Islamic Media Front report goes on to say that al Qaeda, prior to 9/11, had commissioned an Egyptian scientist to prepare its arsenal of nuclear weapons--obtained from arms dealers, such as Semion Mogilevich of the Ukraine and black-market sources in Russia, Chechnya, China, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Sudan. This scientist, according to the Front, "tested exploding a miniature nuclear bomb and caused a huge, tremendous explosion which made the leaders of the mujahadeen very happy. Sheikh Osama personally was following the project through its various phases."

There's more. Then save this:
Atlas Shrugs: WHAT TO DO IF A NUCLEAR DISASTER IS IMMINENT!

His men supposedly are waiting for bin Laden to give them the signal, then seven to ten American cities will be struck. If true it is little wonder that Iran's leader confidently predicts that the United States will be bombed back to the Stone Age.

Bin Laden supposedly has fulfilled Islamic law by warning the United States that an attack is coming and offering a truce — convert to Islam and you will not be attacked. Refusal to convert to Islam means that an attack against America is justified. Three weeks prior to 9/11 bin Laden warned that the United States would be attacked in an unprecedented way for its support of Israel.

Read the rest here.

How? Suitcase nukes of course (hat tip Michael)

A suitcase nuke or suitcase bomb is a very compact and portable nuclear weapon and could have the dimensions of 60 x 40 x 20 centimeters or 24 x 16 x 8 inches. The smallest possible bomb-like object would be a single critical mass of plutonium (or U-233) at maximum density under normal conditions.

The Pu-239 weighs 10.5 kg and is 10.1 cm across. It doesn't take much more than a single critical mass to cause significant explosions ranging from 10-20 tons. These types of weapons can also be as big as two footlockers.

The warhead of a suitcase nuke or suitcase bomb consists of a tube with two pieces of uranium, which, when rammed together, would cause a blast. Some sort of firing unit and a device that would need to be decoded to cause detonation may be included in the "suitcase."

Another portable weapon is a "backpack" bomb. The Soviet nuclear backpack system was made in the 1960s for use against NATO targets in time of war and consists of three "coffee can-sized" aluminum canisters in a bag. All three must be connected to make a single unit in order to explode. The detonator is about 6 inches long. It has a 3-to-5 kiloton yield, depending on the efficiency of the explosion. It's kept powered during storage by a battery line connected to the canisters.

Effects

External radiation occurs when either part of or all of the body is exposed from an external source, such as when a person is standing near the site of where a radiological device such as a suitcase bomb or suitcase nuke is set off and he or she is exposed to radiation, which can be absorbed by the body or can pass completely through it.

Contamination occurs when radioactive materials in the form of solids, liquids or gases are released into the air and contaminate people externally, internally or both. This happens when body parts such as the skin become contaminated and/or if the harmful material gets inside the body via the lungs, gut or wounds.

Incorporation of radioactive material occurs when body cells, tissues and organs such as bone, liver, thyroid or kidney, are contaminated.

Gamma radiation can travel many meters in the air and many centimeters once in human tissue; therefore they represent a major external threat. Dense material is needed as a shield. Beta radiation can travel meters in air and can moderately penetrate human skin, but clothing and some protection can help. Alpha radiation travels a very short distance through the air and can't penetrate the skin, but can be harmful if inhaled, swallowed or absorbed through open wounds.

Radiation in the first hour after an explosion is about 90 percent, with it going down to about 1 percent of the original level after two days. Radiation only drops to trace levels after 300 hours.

Symptoms

People in the immediate vicinity of a suitcase nuke or suitcase bomb detonation would likely die from the force of the conventional explosion itself. Some survivors of the blast might die of radiation poisoning in the weeks afterward. Those farther away from the explosion might suffer radiation sickness in the days and weeks afterward, but recover. Over time, risks of cancer in the affected area would rise, but perhaps only slightly.

A mix of physical symptoms must be used to judge the seriousness of exposure. Impact of radiation poisoning also changes if the body has experienced burns or physical trauma. In the case of treatable victims, extensive medical treatment may be needed for more than two months after exposure.

Some symptoms may include vomiting, headache, fatigue, weakness, diarrhea, thermal burn-like skin effects, secondary infections, reoccurring bleeding and hair loss.

Treatment

If detection and decontamination occurs soon after exposure, about 95 percent of external radioactive material can be removed by taking off the victim's clothing and shoes and washing with water. Further decontamination may require the use of bleaches or other mild abrasives.

Treatment of a victim within the first six weeks to two months after exposure is vital and is determined by what types of radioactive isotopes to which the victim was exposed.

Medical personnel will treat victims for hemorrhage and shock. Open wounds are usually irrigated to cleanse them of any radioactive traces. Amputation of limbs may occur if a wound is highly contaminated and functional recovery isn't likely.

If radioactive material is ingested, treatment is given to reduce absorption and enhance excretion and elimination. It includes stomach pumping or giving the victim laxatives or aluminum antacids, among other things.

If radioactive material has gotten into a victim's internal organs and tissues, treatment includes giving the patient various blocking and diluting agents, such as potassium iodide, to decrease absorption. Mobilizing agents such as ammonium chloride, diuretics, expectorants and inhalants are given to a patient to force the tissues to release the harmful isotopes. Other treatments involve chelating agents. When ingested, these agents bind with some metals more strongly than others to form a stable complex that, when soluble, are more easily excreted through the kidneys.

Posted by Pamela Geller on Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 07:43 PM in Nuclear Roulette: And the Band Plays On, World War IV | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Carta do Prof. António Brotas

ao Presidente António Costa

Sobre os “Impactos em Lisboa da travessia ferroviária do Tejo e da chegada do TGV à cidade”

António Brotas, Professor Jubilado do Departamento de Física do IST e  membro do CFIF, “bastante chocado” com o alheamento da CML de problemas fundamentais de Lisboa, decide esclarecer António Costa, presidente da CML, “que está bastante mal informado”. Como sempre, nestas matérias, o Prof. Brotas é de um conhecimento arrasador...

“Lisboa, 21 de Julho de 2008

Caro António Costa,

Fiquei bastante chocado quando no encontro promovido pela Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa no passado dia 4 de Junho sobre os “Impactos em Lisboa da travessia ferroviária do Tejo e da chegada do TGV a cidade” não vi aparecer nenhum vereador nem nenhum técnico da Câmara de Lisboa.

Vi, depois, uma intervenção sua no programa a “Quadratura do Circulo” e não pude deixar de considerar  que está bastante mal informado sobre alguns problemas que dizem respeito a Lisboa.

Permito-me, assim, como munícipe,   pedir a sua atenção para o conjunto de textos que lhe envio em anexo. Ou, no caso de não ter tempo para isso dado serem muitos, para os transmitir a algum técnico da sua confiança que deles lhe possa fazer um apanhado/síntese e que, se o desejar, poderá falar comigo.

Aproveito para o informar, desde já, que a SGL planeia organizar, no dia 30 de Outubro, um encontro sobre problemas do estuário do Tejo de manifesto interesse para Lisboa, alguns relacionados com questões que o António Costa tem abordado em intervenções televisivas.   Espero que a Câmara de Lisboa marque presença neste encontro a ele trazendo o seu contributo e nele recolhendo informações.

Ao público tem sido transmitida a ideia de que em matéria de grandes Obras Públicas, e muito em particular na região de Lisboa, há entre o governo e as  oposições divergências de fundo com opiniões  inconciliáveis que se traduzirão por inevitáveis confrontos.

Creio que não será assim. Fundamentalmente, o que temos hoje são problemas insuficientemente estudados.

Penso,   assim, que o próprio estudo dos problemas nos encaminhará para excluir as  soluções  inaceitáveis e  escolher as mais convenientes, como foi o caso na escolha da localização do NAL,   na Ota ou em Alcochete.

As próprias dificuldades financeiras  em que o país se encontra obrigam-nos, em  matéria de grandes Obras Públicas, a adoptar o calendário possível... e de bom senso.

Para o provar,   vou-me referir a três conjuntos de obras directamente relacionadas com Lisboa.

          1-O governo decidiu avançar com a linha de bitola europeia de Caia (Elvas Badajoz) ao Poceirão (na Península de Setúbal) onde está prevista uma plataforma logística. Esta linha, absolutamente fundamental para a nossa economia, e muito em particular para as indústrias da Península  de Setúbal,   permitirá o trânsito das nossas mercadorias por via ferroviária até à Polónia. Com um pequeno acrescento, do Poceirão ao Pinhal Novo (onde há uma estação da FERTAGUS)  pode, também, começar a ser usada, quase imediatamente, para o trânsito de passageiros entre Lisboa e o Alentejo e, ainda, para os primeiros  TGV de Madrid  para a Área Metropolitana de Lisboa.   De todas estas funções, esta última é, possivelmente,   a menos importante. Infelizmente, os problemas  das mercadorias e o do desenvolvimento do  Norte de Alentejo têm sido ignorados. E quase só vemos discutido o problema  dos TGVs.   Acho que a Câmara de Lisboa devia insistir na ligação a curto prazo do Poceirão ao Pinhal Novo.

          2- A terceira travessia ferroviária do Tejo  (TTT) é uma obra em absoluto necessária, mas não urgente. As duas soluções mais referidas, a da ponte para o Barreiro e a da ponte ou túnel para o Montijo, têm custos financeiros  e impactos ambientais muito grandes que estão  longe de estar avaliados.   Em qualquer caso, a decisão sobre a TTT não pode ser tomada sem, simultaneamente, ser decidido o trajecto à saída de Lisboa  da futura linha de bitola europeia para o Norte, que não é urgente, mas um dia será feita.   Decidir uma coisa sem decidir a outra é pura cegueira e irresponsabilidade.   Tanto quanto o sei, neste momento, a ideia da RAVE é a de que à saída de Lisboa os comboios de bitola europeia sigam para o Norte pelo vale do Trancão.   Ora, quem olhar a carta topográfica 34-B, 1/50.000, editada pelo Instituto Geográfico Cadastral vê, imediatamente, que este trajecto é altissimamente contra indicado. Sustento que há soluções muito mais indicadas e espero que a Ordem dos Engenheiros se interesse por estes assuntos. Em qualquer caso, parece-me evidente que aquilo com que a  Câmara de Lisboa  se tem de preocupar, é em evitar decisões precipitadas e mal estudadas, que podem ter consequências gravíssimas para a cidade.

      
         3-  O novo aeroporto de Lisboa  (NAL) deve ser encarado como uma fonte de riqueza. Temos, desde o início, de ter uma ideia do seu futuro impacto na Área Metropolitana de Lisboa, em particular, na margem Esquerda. A sua construção  de um modo faseado, no entanto, não nos obriga a um esforço financeiro inicial demasiado elevado. Os financiamentos dos seus  futuros desenvolvimentos  devem, depois, ser negociados   com as companhias aéreas e outras empresas interessadas na sua exploração.   O essencial para nós, é que o NAL, peça fundamental do nosso desenvolvimento e futura projecção internacional do país, seja controlado pelo Estado português, e não por entidades estranhas, que  defenderão, obviamente,   os seus interesses, que podem não coincidir com os nossos, nem com os do país nem com os da região. Acho  que a Câmara de Lisboa deve  com intransigência defender este controle que temos a obrigação de transmitir às gerações futuras.  

Penso que em  todos estes pontos as forças políticas representadas na Câmara de Lisboa poderão chegar a posições de consenso.   Mantenho, assim, um razoável optimismo sobre estas matérias. Surpreendeu-me, no entanto, como disse no início, a não presença de elementos da Câmara num  encontro em que elas foram  debatidas.

Permito-me,