RIO - Três dias depois do acidente de helicóptero que caiu em Porto Seguro, matando seis pessoas - uma vítima ainda está desaparecida -, o estado quebrou o silêncio e informou na segunda-feira que o governador Sérgio Cabral viajou para o Sul da Bahia num jatinho do empresário Eike Batista, em companhia de Fernando Cavendish, dono da Delta Construções. A empresa é uma das maiores prestadoras de serviço do estado e recebeu, desde 2007, contratos que chegam a R$ 1 bilhão. Além disso, também foi informado que Cabral se dirigia com o grupo para o aniversário de Cavendish num resort, onde ficaria hospedado, mas o acidente com a aeronave interrompeu os planos. Na segunda-feira, o governador se licenciou do cargo, alegando razões particulares.
Cabral, ainda segundo o governo, embarcou no Aeroporto Santos Dumont às 17h de sexta-feira no jato Legacy de Eike. Estavam a bordo o governador, seu filho Marco Antonio e a namorada do rapaz, além de Cavendish e sua família. Após o pouso em Porto Seguro, parte do grupo embarcou no helicóptero para fazer a primeira viagem até o Jacumã Ocean Resort, de propriedade do piloto, Marcelo Mattoso de Almeida - um ex-doleiro acusado de fraude cambial há 15 anos e de crime ambiental de sua empresa, a First Class, na Praia do Iguaçu, na Ilha Grande, em Angra dos Reis. A decolagem foi às 18h31m, mas a aeronave desapareceu no mar. A última visualização de radar do helicóptero ocorreu às 18h57m. Cabral, seu filho Marco Antonio e Cavendish iriam na segunda viagem, rumo a Jacumã. A volta do governador ao Rio, na segunda-feira de manhã, foi num jatinho da Líder, pago pelo governo do estado.
Eike doou R$ 750 mil para campanha
Além de Cavendish, Eike mantém estreitas relações com o estado e com o governador. O megaempresário doou R$ 750 mil para a campanha de Cabral em 2010. Eike se comprometeu ainda a investir R$ 40 milhões no projeto das UPPs, a menina dos olhos da segurança do Rio.
Desta vez, a participação de Eike, ao oferecer o passeio até Porto Seguro, não tinha relação com projetos públicos. O motivo da viagem era o aniversário de Cavendish, comemorado sexta-feira. Os laços do empresário e da Delta com o estado foram se estreitando nos últimos anos. Se é o "príncipe do PAC" por conta do expressivo número de obras do programa federal que estão na carteira de sua empresa, Cavendish é o rei do Rio, se for considerada a generosa fatia do bolo de recursos do estado que recebeu nos últimos anos ou está prestes a abocanhar, por obras como a reforma do Maracanã ou do Arco Rodoviário, ambas estimadas em R$ 1 bilhão cada. Em 2007, no primeiro ano do governo Cabral, a Delta teve empenhos (recursos reservados para pagamento) no valor total de R$ 67,2 milhões. No ano passado, o número deu um salto de 655%, para R$ 506 milhões.
Nascida em Recife, a Delta ganhou impulso, no Rio, no governo Anthony Garotinho. Hoje ocupa posição de destaque na execução orçamentária de Cabral. Apenas em rubricas com grande concentração de obras, as cifras se agigantam: o DER empenhou em favor da empresa, no ano passado, R$ 40,1 milhões, e a Secretaria estadual de Obras, R$ 67,9 milhões. Os dados do Sistema Integrado de Administração Financeira do estado (Siafem) foram levantados pelo gabinete do deputado Luiz Paulo Corrêa da Rocha (PSDB).
Os números falam por si. O faturamento da Delta no estado é crescente e nítido
- Os números falam por si. O faturamento da Delta no estado é crescente e nítido - diz o deputado, ao comentar a estreita relação entre o dono da Delta e o governo do estado que vazou com o acidente de helicóptero e já repercute na Alerj.
- Após o momento doloroso, é hora de o governador dar explicações - criticou o deputado Marcelo Freixo (PSOL). - Não fica bem ele aparecer em festinhas de empreiteiros.
Quando se consideram os valores efetivamente pagos, a posição de vantagem da Delta não muda. No ano passado, somente a Secretaria de Obras pagou R$ 91 milhões à empresa, que ficou em terceiro lugar na lista das que mais receberam da pasta, que tinha orçamento de R$ 1,1 bilhão para obras e reparos. Em primeiro lugar, com 25%, ficou o Consórcio Rio Melhor (PAC nas favelas), com R$ 269 milhões. Detalhe: a Delta faz parte do consórcio com Odebrecht e OAS. Outro exemplo do longo braço da Delta é o DER. Em 2010, na rubrica obras, o órgão tinha R$ 283 milhões e pagou 30%, ou R$ 81 milhões, à Delta, que ficou com o maior pedaço do bolo.
Em maio, após romper com Cavendish, o dono de uma outra empresa da área de construção, Romênio Marcelino Machado, afirmou à "Veja" que a Delta havia contratado José Dirceu para tráfico de influência junto a líderes petistas. Segundo a revista, Cavendish, em reunião com sócios em 2009, teria dito que, "com alguns milhões, era possível comprar um senador".
A Delta não se pronunciou e a assessoria de Eike informou que ele só se manifestará nesta terça-feira.
''HUO: And that’s why you mentioned when we last spoke that you’re optimistic about China?
JA: Correct, and optimistic about any organization, or any country, that engages in censorship. We see now that the US State Department is trying to censor us. We can also look at it in the following way. The birds and the bees, and other things that can’t actually change human power relationships, are free. They’re left unmolested by human beings because they don’t matter. In places where speech is free, and where censorship does not exist or is not obvious, the society is so sewn up—so depoliticized, so fiscalized in its basic power relationships—that it doesn’t matter what you say. And it doesn’t matter what information is published. It’s not going to change who owns what or who controls what. And the power structure of a society is by definition its control structure. So in the United States, because of the extraordinary fiscalization of relationships in that country, it matters little who wins office. You’re not going to suddenly empty a powerful individual’s bank account. Their money will stay there. Their stockholdings are going to stay there, bar a revolution strong enough to void contracts.''
Why does Herman Cain think about Muslims the way racists think about blacks?
By William SaletanPosted Thursday, June 16, 2011, at 9:37 AM ET
Herman Cain says Republicans should nominate him for president in part because "my candidacy would take race off the table." Cain, a former CEO and president of the National Restaurant Association, is black. Therefore, he argues, he can't be accused of prejudice when he criticizes President Obama.
It's a plausible argument, as far as race goes. But prejudice is bigger than race. Prejudice gets peeled one layer at a time. You give black men the vote but don't see why ladies need it. You open the military to women but can't imagine homosexuals defending your country. You congratulate yourself on being an enlightened liberal even as you ridicule Mormons.
Or, if you're Cain, you rise from segregation and defy black political stereotypes while treating Muslims with the same crude bias that was once applied to you.
A few days ago, during the GOP debate in New Hampshire, Cain denied having said this. "The statement was, would I be comfortable with a Muslim in my administration, not that I wouldn't appoint one," Cain told John King. "That's the exact transcript."
Cain is familiar with this kind of group exclusion. It was done to him 60 years ago. He had to sit in the back of the bus and drink from "colored" water fountains. He graduated second in his high school class but was refused admission by the University of Georgia. It didn't matter how smart Cain was or how hard he worked. He was black, and the white society around him had decided that blacks were inferior. He was treated as a member of a group, not as an individual. In a word, he was prejudged.
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Today, the Ku Klux Klan is still around, but its racism has become more sophisticated. It uses data. "The black male is the greatest perpetrator of both petty crimes and violent crimes in the black communities," says a Klan Web site. Even "Jesse Jackson said that when he's walking down the street at night and he hears footsteps behind him, he's relieved to turn around and see a white person instead of a black person." From this, the Klan concludes, "Minorities … as a people (though there are always exceptions to the rule) are incapable of maintaining or even comprehending the rule of law and order."
That's how prejudice works in the information age. You use statistical averages to generate stereotypes and ultimately to justify differential treatment of people by category.
This is what Cain is now doing to Muslims. Last week, Glenn Beck asked him whether Muslims would have to show "loyalty proof" to serve in a Cain administration. Cain said yes. Beck pressed: "Would you do that to a Catholic, or would you do that to a Mormon?" Cain replied: "Nope, I wouldn't. Because there is a greater dangerous part of the Muslim faith than there is in these other religions."
If you measure dangerousness by sympathy for al-Qaida or the belief that suicide bombing can be justified, it's true that Muslims are, on average, more dangerous. It's a silly way to think, since this is just an average, and the percentages are very low. Islamic faith, per se, tells you nothing about the individual. But Cain doesn't want to take chances. "This nation is under attack constantly by people who want to kill all of us," hetold CNN's John King shortly after the Beck show. Therefore, Cain concluded, "I am going to take extra precautions if a Muslim person who is competent wants to work in my administration."
The same goes for Sharia. "Many of the Muslims, they are not totally dedicated to this country," Cain told Neil Cavuto. "Many of them are trying to force Sharia law on the people of this country. And, so, yes, I did say it [that I wouldn't appoint a Muslim], and that is because I don't have time to be watching someone on my administration if they are not totally committed to the Declaration and the Constitution." On Laura Ingraham's radio show, Cain added: "I don't want any inkling of anybody in my administration who would put Sharia law over American law. … I don't want anybody in my administration that I'm going to have to be looking over my shoulder to figure out if they are going to try to do something against the principles that I believe in."
Hence the loyalty test or, better yet, simple exclusion of Muslims. It spares Cain the trouble of evaluating them individually and eliminates the risk that a bad one might slip through. It saves him time and worry, just as segregation relieved the University of Georgia of having to evaluate Cain's college application.
When Cain was growing up, whites used their majority status not just to hold power but to claim authority. Now Cain is in the Christian majority, and he's leveraging that power to keep Muslims in their place. "We are a Judeo-Christian nation," he told Christianity Today. "One percent of the practicing religious believers in this country are Muslim. And so I push back and reject them trying to convert the rest of us. … I do not want us, as a nation, to lose our Judeo-Christian identity." On Ingraham's show, Cain said of Muslim U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison: "If you take an oath on the Quran, that means that you support Sharia law. I support American law.Our laws were derived from principles that are biblically based." If Cain gets his way, public servants will swear on a holy book, but it'll be Christian: "Anybody that takes the oath of office in a Herman Cain administration will put their hand on the Bible, not the Koran."
Now that Cain has climbed the corporate ladder and is running for president, he faces a new kind of racism: the assumption that a black man must be liberal. Cain ridicules this stereotype. "Some black people can think for themselves," he says.
But Muslims? They all think alike. "I have not found a Muslim that has said that they will denounce Sharia law [and] support the Constitution," Cain told Ingraham. In another interview, he explained: "The reason I made the statement that I would not put a Muslim in my cabinet, or in my administration, is because I want people that are dedicated to the Constitution. … I don't know one Muslim who will denounce Sharia Law and then say that they can support the Constitution."
Cain's distrust doesn't stop at Muslims. He's skeptical of foreign heritage in general. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Cain called President Obama "an international" and argued that "he's out of the mainstream and always has been. Look, he was raised in Kenya, his mother was white from Kansas, and her family had an influence on him, it's true, but his dad was Kenyan." Speaking at a Georgia church, Cain recalled the time he went in for surgery with a doctor named Abdallah. Cain asked the doctor's assistant: "That sounds a little foreign. What is that?" She replied: "He's from Lebanon. … But don't worry, he's a Christian." Upon hearing this, Cain told the congregants: "I said Amen. I felt a whole lot better."
But feeling better is exactly the problem. It isn't Cain's discomfort that should worry us. It's his comfort. He thinks he has risen above prejudice. He thinks his experience of discrimination protects him from doing to others what was done to him. He doesn't recognize in himself the same habits of group judgment, blindness to individual differences, and majoritarian claims to national identity.
This doesn't make Cain a bad person. It just means that he, like the rest of us, still has a lot to learn.
A Saudi woman gets out of a car after being given a ride by her driver in Riyadh. (Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images)
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Getting my driver’s license as soon as I turned 16 was a major point of pride for me. I couldn’t live without driving. It’s like eating and breathing — something I take for granted as both natural and necessary.
So when I arrived in Saudi Arabia three years ago, it was strange to see that everyone behind the wheel was male. Since this is the only country in the world where females are prohibited from driving, one of my first tasks was to find a driver.
Luckily, I found Soresh. Like many drivers here, he is Indian. He’s a careful driver, he comes on time, and if he’s busy on another job, he sends one of his driver friends to ferry me around.
I would be lying if I said this arrangement is inconvenient. I get dropped at the entrance wherever I’m going. I don’t have to worry about parking. Flat tire? Someone else’s problem. Road rage? I stay oblivious in the back seat, reading or chatting on the phone. Those boring errands? Soresh delivers my packages and picks up my plane tickets.
But if you told me that I could never drive again, that my mobility would be totally dependent on another person for the rest of my life, that’s quite a different story. That would upset me.
And it upsets lots of Saudi women. Because it’s basically a way to keep them in a box.
“My driver takes me someplace, and then my husband picks me and drives me home,” said one young woman who asked not be named. “I just want, for a few minutes, to be able to go somewhere that no one knows where I am. Men don’t want you to have that freedom. You can go somewhere and they don’t know where you are? It’s their worst nightmare.”
The driving ban is increasingly upsetting Saudi women, who now make up more than half of this country’s university students. Graduating in record numbers, they are looking for jobs and they want to drive themselves to work, to the shopping mall, to the grocery store and to their children’s schools.
The secret paramillitary killings in Pakistan. Is the ISI responsible? Why are these innocent people being killed?...
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DAYournalist for the story.
This is the right they have been demanding in recent weeks through a campaign on Facebook called “I will drive my car myself,” and Twitter (#women2drive)urging women to grab the car keys and drive themselves on an errand on June 17.
The new social media tools and recent peaceful street action in other Arab countries like Egypt have given the campaign quite a bit of steam. It got even more after one of its most high-profile organizers, Manal Al Sharif, was detained for 10 days last month.
Aiming to publicize the planned protest, Al Sharif posted a video of herself driving on YouTube, along with another video advising women on what they should do on June 17. For one, since demonstrations are forbidden in Saudi Arabia, there should be no converging on the same location. And no slogans.
As their Facebook page noted, “We are not here to break the law or demonstrate or challenge the authorities, we are here to claim one of our simplest rights.”
Only women with valid international driver’s licenses should participate, organizers said. Many Saudi women drive when they travel and hold licenses from Egypt, Lebanon, Britain and the United States.
According to Saudi sources, Sharif was released on orders of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, who has gained a reputation here as a supporter of women’s rights. Like many other officials, he has no objections to women driving.
The government’s problem, however, is a vocal constituency of conservatives, both men and women, who regard women driving as the litmus test in the government’s commitment to maintaining a Saudi life-style distinct from Western societies.
These opponents of female drivers justify their stance by quoting from ultra-conservative religious sheikhs who contend that women who drive are putting themselves into temptation to sin.
Sheikh Abdulrahman Al Barrak, for example, said: “Muslim clerics have declared women driving to be [forbidden] not because of the act itself … [of] turning the ignition. But allowing women to be issued licenses and be free to drive alongside men is a wide open door for evil and sin.”
Al Barrack added that the women behind the June 17 driving campaign are “Westernized,” and what they are planning “is a sin.”
No Saudi law prohibits women from driving. Rather, it is a social custom given a religious gloss by Islamic conservatives back in 1990 after more than 40 Saudi women drove around Riyadh for an hour to protest not being allowed to drive.
Those women were harshly punished — banned from international travel and suspended from their jobs. Mosque preachers called them “harlots.” Afterwards, to please religious conservatives, the kingdom’s top religious authority issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, that said women should not drive.
In the 21 years since, however, things have changed. Some religious sheikhs are speaking out against the hardliners, arguing that there is nothing in Islam preventing women from driving. They point out that in rural areas, Saudi women drive without interference and that in Prophet Muhammad’s time, women drove the transport of the day: camels.
In addition, critics note that hardliners are inconsistent: They forbid men and women from mixing, but then say it’s OK for a woman to be in a car alone with a male driver.
The tissue of religious justification, however, is wearing very thin, especially with a young generation of women. “It’s very simple,” said a woman who supports the June 17 driving campaign. “They don’t want us to be independent.”
Something else eroding the driving ban is that for many Saudi families, and divorced women, drivers are an economic hardship. In addition to a monthly salary ranging between $300 to $400, they have to be fed and housed. Most of these drivers are foreigners from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines.
One Saudi prince recently estimated that letting women drive would be result in an estimated 750,000 foreign drivers being repatriated and thus reduce the 8 million-strong expatriate worker population.
Households with several females means they have to adjust their schedules around a shared driver — unless a brother, husband or son is around to drive them to school, hairdresser, doctor and drug store.
Since there are no public transportation systems, women lacking drivers or relatives free to transport them have to depend on taxis. And these are often unreliable or unpleasant, smelling of cigarette smoke or lacking seat belts. The drivers don’t always know how to get to a desired destination.
In recent months, more and more women have been breaking the ban and driving themselves. Sometimes they get away with it. Sometimes they get caught. When that happens, they are brought to a police station until their male guardian — usually husband or father — comes to pick them up and is forced to sign a pledge that he won’t let her drive again.
This lenient penalty is why many women were preparing to get behind the wheel on June 17.
But that is now in doubt. In recent days, the Ministry of Interior has been informally putting out the word to women: We don’t care if you drive on June 15 or June 16 or June 18 but don’t even think about driving on June 17 unless you want to end up like Manal Al Sharif with an extended stay in jail.
The ministry’s mixed message reflects the government’s muddled stance on the matter as it tries to please two divergent constituencies.
It has already had an effect, with some women announcing that they have decided to drive on another day, not on the 17th.
They appear to see a detour, not a stop sign, in the road up ahead.
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