bridge-tarp...: October 2016

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Who Wants to Be the World's 5th Largest Economy? Plese, STOP THIS SHIT

***"Garbage (Plastic Debris/ Torres)" for more images of the same region see here;
Roberto Saviano (L'Espresso, 2013);
Mario Sergio Conti (Globonews) interview avec José Arthur Gianotti (a philosophe brésilien plus intérressant que Marilena Chauau & Márcia Turíbulo) [not available anymore, because Rede Globo blocked this video in Youtube];
Bonna Petit (for more A/Z videos) [I took this video out of Youtube, because I wanted to change it];

L'Affaire Duhamel: caso real de "mamadeira de p...", e devem existir outros especialmente entre essa gente decadente da universidade e inclusive que se diz de esquerda, como o Duhamel (uma esquerda alinhada com perspectivas como a defesa de Cuba); essa gente de inteligência muito ligeiramente acima da média (e que não são senão predadores capazes de calcular) domina mesmo os ambientes burocráticos, como a universidade; isso não tem nada a ver com pensador de verdade (que se sobressaem na França, mas mesmo lah se contam nos dedos, e geralmente têm uma relação muito mais esquiva com a academia), como Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva; o caso Duhamel eh muito bem representativo do caso típico e lamentável desses professores mundanamente bem-sucedidos e arrogantes, q no final das contas (incapazes de pensar) não produzem nada próprio original, e se acham os supra sumos da inteligência pq humilham alunos, manipulam colegas e se intitulam donos da verdade em certos nichos: em suma a essência mesma da intelectualidade acadêmica bem estabelecida pra quem no geral se bate palmas!!! [L'Affaire Duhamel: un vrai cas de "biberon" (fake news diffusée par la droite brésilienne pour combattre Lula et Haddad à la présidentielle de 2018), et il doit y en avoir d'autres surtout parmi ces décadents de l'université et même ceux qui se disent de gauche, comme Duhamel (une gauche alignée sur des perspectives comme la défense de Cuba); ces gens à l'intelligence un peu au-dessus de la moyenne (et qui ne sont que des prédateurs capables de calculer) dominent mainte fois les milieux bureaucratiques, comme l'université; cela n'a rien à voir avec les vrais penseurs (qui excellent en France, mais là encore ils se comptent sur les doigts, et ont généralement un rapport beaucoup plus distant avec l'académie), comme Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva; l'affaire Duhamel est très représentative du cas typique et pitoyable des professeurs arrogants, qui finalement (incapables de penser) ne produisent rien d'original par eux-mêmes, et qui se considèrent comme des sommets de l'intelligence parce qu'ils humilient les étudiants, manipulent les collègues et se disent détenteurs de la vérité dans certaines niches: bref, l'essence même de l'intelligentsia académique bien établie, généralement applaudie et félicitée!!!];

"L'ossessione dello sviluppo è cosí efficace nel nostro tempo, perché coincide col progetto biopolitico di produrre un popolo senza frattura."
Agamben, Homo Sacer

"You could say that sometimes things work in a narrow context, but they are producing havoc in a greater context. It is like the idea of making a pact with the Devil, as Faust does. He got everything he wanted, but the whole thing was worthless."

David Bohm (interview)

"O progresso é uma ação de despejo em execução."

Iberê Camargo, Gaveta de Guardados

"... la primera, Nueva España, fue una realidad histórica que nació y vivió en contra de la corriente general de Occidente, es decir, en oposición a la modernidad naciente; la segunda, la República de México, fue y es una apresurada e irreflexiva adaptación de esa misma modernidad..."

Octavio Paz (Las trampas de la fe)

"Faire partager le bien-être aux ouvriers qui l'on produit? — bien sûr, mais le vrai bien-être ce serait peut-être autre chose qu'une salle de bains, une auto ou un briquet à ressort — ce serait peut-être de fabriquer moins d'objets inutiles et affreux."

André Masson (Letre a Charles Bataille, 6 octobre 1935)

"... comment ne pas voir que les seuls esclaves ce sont les adorateurs du progrès matériel. Qu'ils soient riches ou pauvres, communistes ou fascistes; qu'ils s'appellent Monsieur de Wendel ou Madame ta concierge, Monsieur Marx ou Madame Mussolini, mais mon vieux! ils aiment tous la même merde."

André Masson (Lettre à Georges Bataille, 8 novembre 1935)

"Unbedingt jasagend, mich sogar in dem verschärfend, was ich über die Sprach-Verlumpung in Deutschland zu sagen gewagt hatte (—heute spielen sie die Puristen und können keinen Satz mehr bauen—), in gleicher Verachtung gegen die 'ersten Schriftsteller dieser Nation, endete er damit, seine Bewunderung für meinen Muth auszudrücken — jenen 'höchsten Muth, der gerade die Lieblinge eines Volks auf die Anklagebank bringt'... Man schweigt, man behandelt mich in Deutschland mit einer düstern Vorsicht: ich habe seit Jahren von einer unbedingten Redefreiheit Gebrauch gemacht, zu der Niemand heute, am wenigsten im 'Reich', die Hand frei genug hat. Mein Paradies ist 'unter dem Schatten meines Schwertes.'"

Nietzsche

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"De um lado, tem-se [no Brasil] intelectuais que da maneira mais séria do mundo, como se nada tivesse acontecido, nos falam da “violência revolucionária”, ou nos explicam que o que importa é a “história e não o bem e o mal”, ou ainda (sic!) que Cuba caminha para o comunismo (trata-se de referências literais). É uma esquerda jurássica, retaguarda e não vanguarda, que faz muito mal à juventude e só atrapalha na luta pelo progresso social. Depois se tem a turma do “fechamento” da situação. Não haveria mais nada a fazer. Eles partem no fundo do mesmo esquema clássico, só que são pessimistas. Em terceiro lugar, estão os petistas, ou, se preferir, os petistas acríticos. Estes defendem o partido e também os membros do partido diante das acusações de corrupção e denunciam um complô da imprensa. Como observou um colega, certa intelectualidade petista denuncia a imprensa (que, sem dúvida, não é inocente), mas o estilo de certa intelectualidade petista é, ele mesmo, puramente jornalístico. E jornalístico no pior sentido da palavra. Prefiro não dar exemplos. A corrupção é problema sério demais e, na realidade, veio a substituir a violência, isto é, assumiu o papel que tinha a violência no esquema antigo. Assim, a leniência de certos intelectuais petistas diante da corrupção tem raízes profundas e indica a continuidade de uma descrença geral na democracia."

Ruy Fausto (Os Dilemas da Esquerda, entrevista Rosângela Chaves/Ermira)

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— a description from HELL, that is, of Sao Paulo's public transport system at a time when Brazil was expected to become the world's fifth-largest economy (laurels to right and leftwing politicians, PT and PSDB alike):

"At rush hour commuters can line the subway platform ten people deep, and when the train pulls in, spitting out a few passengers, the crowd outside will do its best to ram its way into the crowd inside. You'll see people half-emerging from the doors, and still someone will run up and press herlself against them, seeking to enter by osmosis. Station attendants wedge people in so the doors can close. The bus experience is similar, except without air conditioning; bad shocks lurch you into sweaty strangers" (Alex Cuadros, Brazillionaires, p. 10).

#tvplimplim

#PSDBemManiacos

#foratemer

The mistake is the same: to complain against Lula with dictatorship nostalgia & to celebrate Lula as a watershed. Actually, both the military government and Lula embraced a desenvolvimentista program, backed by similar coalitions and even the same companies (with the help of people that nowadays support Michel Temer's government, such as Paulo Maluf and Delfim Netto): "Camargo Correa wasn't the only contractor to acquire power in those years. A few others leaned on regime friendships to grow their businesses—including Odebrecht..." (Alex Cuadros, Brazillionaires, p. 44).
"Since 1970, a fifth of Brazil's Amazon rain forest has been slashed and burned, an area nearly equal to that of France and Germany combined" (Brazillionaires, p. 61-62).

Right or left-wing politicians usually don't mention the things displayed in the pictures above. All of them advocate economic growth. You won't see them either in media channels like Rede Globo (#PlimPlim) or RBS (an affiliate of Globo in the South of Brazil), which actually benefit from economic growth, sometimes in the most hoggish way.

But the pictures show what follows an undertow, when the ocean throws up everything people have been disposing of near it.
The pictures are of a stretch of coast in the Northeast region of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. This is a small beach, which used to be clean.
I believe that garbage concessions in many cities are just criminal, almost mafia-like (and we need a Roberto Saviano here to expose them). On the other hand, people cast garbage away irresponsibly, thinking that the government will automatically take care of it.

****Rupert Sheldrake on big science and politics:

"While there is a difference between countries in the question of separation of churches and state, in all modern countries there is very little separation between science and state, as you point out. All modern countries empower scientific academies and scientific expertise, and fund enormous amounts of scientific research—in the defense sector, above all. Because modern states rely so much on science as the basis of technology, innovation, and high-technology businesses, and because most politicians know very little about science, scientific experts and advisers can have a very large influence, causing governments to spend billions of dollars that they might not otherwise have done. The Star Wars program in the United States—very actively promoted by Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb”—was one example. It is probably inevitable that governments will be influenced by experts, including educational experts. Presidents, prime ministers, and ministers cannot know everything and have to rely on advisers in all sorts of different areas, including science, technology, security, business, banking, medicine, and so on," (Rupert Sheldrake's interview, TBS);

***NEW, about the Venezuela's crisis (12/02/2019):

"El gobierno de Hugo Chávez, que hace veinte años despertó alguna esperanza de cambio de esa realidad, al menos en el discurso, también quedó atrapado en la lógica de “la maldición de la abundancia” y de la funcionalidad a los intereses de grandes capitales transnacionales (entre rusos, chinos y demás, e incluso norteamericanos)...
"En especial, con Maduro en el poder luego de la muerte de Chávez, la represión adquirió un tinte brutal que, junto con la caída de los ingresos petroleros, transformó al “clientelismo” político en un burdo uso de la fuerza y del chantaje. Así, al ahogar la participación ciudadana sobre todo el madurismo terminó por vaciar la democracia, tendencia irreversible por más consultas repetidas hechas al pueblo en las urnas."
"Con esto arribamos a una explicación profunda: en la periferia capitalista, el hiperextractivismo -y la consecuente falta de transformación estructural- camina de la mano del hiperpresidencialismo, que cobija y alimenta el autoritarismo y la corrupción. O en palabras de Eduardo Gudynas, “las distintas asociaciones entre extractivismos y corrupción se articulan entre sí, derivando hacia situaciones que erosionan la calidad de la democracia”, ahondando la violencia consustancial a los extractivismos (situación vista también en otros países extractivistas, con gobiernos conservadores o progresistas, como es el caso de Ecuador y sus patologías de la abundancia)."
"Y son estos gobiernos hiperpresidencialistas los que atienden de manera paternalista y clientelar las demandas sociales obteniendo recursos de la ampliación de los extractivismos, configurando el caldo de cultivo para nuevas conflictividades sociopolíticas y ecológicas. Tal como se constata con el fin del reciente ciclo de gobiernos progresistas, no se enfrentaron estructuralmente las causas de la pobreza y marginalidad, menos aún la matriz productiva primario exportadora y dependiente (más cuando se toma en cuenta que muchos sectores burgueses que se “enchufan” al proyecto clientelar de hecho lucran de la dependencia y el estatus quo). Igualmente los significativos impactos ambientales y sociales, propios de estas actividades extractivistas a gran escala, aumentan la ingobernabilidad, lo que a su vez exige nuevas respuestas represivas…"
"En este complejo entorno emerge el actual conflicto venezolano. Las presiones e intereses del imperialismo occidental chocan con las del imperialismo de oriente, como Rusia y sobre todo China. Como plantea Emiliano Terán Mantovani, “China es también responsable de la crisis venezolana actual”; Rusia tampoco se queda atrás con los multimillonarios préstamos entregados (e incluso con las importantes ventas de armamento al país caribeño)," (Alberto Acosta, Venezuela y la guerra por el excremento del diablo, Equador Today);

*****On the Ecological Apocalipse and how to avoid it:

'For Isra, when it comes to discussing the environment, it’s crucial to talk about environmental racism – i.e., environmental and climate change issues that specifically affect black and brown communities. “There’s a pipeline being built in my state (Minnesota) and it’s going straight through indigenous treaty lands and sacred wild rice beds,” she explains. “This pipeline will destroy their water and their sacred wild rice and also just ruin their land. Some places are more privileged than others.” More than anything, we should make sure people “recognise their privilege in the movement”.'
'As far as US Youth Climate Strike is concerned, Isra says, “we try and avoid things like sit-ins or a lot of marches, only because we deal with so many minors – we don’t want any of them to get arrested – especially with youth of colour. We try and focus on really safe forms of activism so everybody can participate.”'
'Everybody gets there at their own pace. It took me some time – it probably takes everybody some time. And whether or not you get media coverage or you get a great response it doesn’t mean what you’re doing is wrong. You should know what’s best for you and what you believe in, and nobody should be able to tell you any different.”'
'“It is a lot to handle, and it’s a full-time job,” says Isra, who is a high school student, juggling her school work along with her activism. “You have to make sure you balance time and that you get your priorities right.” Self-care is a must. “There are so many things that need to be tackled, but also you come first – make sure that you are OK enough to partake in that activism,”' "How to fight for climate action, according to Isra Hirsi" (Niellah Arboine/Dazed, 05/13/2019);
'“We have shown that we are strong, we are determined,” she said. “I have never – I’ve been a police officer for 36 years – I have never known an operation, a single operation, in which over 700 people have been arrested.''Max Wedderburn, a 13-year-old from Milton Keynes, addressed crowds at the bridge and received cheers and applause. “We are getting bigger, we are getting stronger, we are gathering momentum. Together we can change the future,” he said.'
'Speaking afterwards, he said he became inspired to fight against climate change after learning about it from his mother. He explained: “My lifelong dream is to become a zoologist but I feel there is no point if half of the animals are all dead by the time I reach that goal.”'
'Around 20 activists, most of them aged under 17, had staged a brief demonstration on roads near Heathrow Airport on Friday morning and were arrested. “One thing that is unusual about this demonstration is the willingness of those participating to be arrested and also their lack of resistance to the arrests,” said a spokesperson,' "Extinction Rebellion: More than 750 protesters arrested as climate change activists block London roads for sixth day" (Independent, 04/21/2019);
'The political class, as anyone who has followed its progress over the past three years can surely now see, is chaotic, unwilling and, in isolation, strategically incapable of addressing even short-term crises, let alone a vast existential predicament.'
'Even when broadcasters cover these issues, they carefully avoid any mention of power, talking about environmental collapse as if it is driven by mysterious, passive forces, and proposing microscopic fixes for vast structural problems. The BBC’s Blue Planet Live series exemplified this tendency.'
'Our system – characterised by perpetual economic growth on a planet that is not growing – will inevitably implode.'
'... for a peaceful mass movement to succeed, a maximum of 3.5% of the population needs to mobilise.'
'When a committed and vocal 3.5% unites behind the demand for a new system, the social avalanche that follows becomes irresistible,' "Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse" (George Monbiot, The Guardian, 04/15/2019);

- Extinction Rebelion;
- UK Student Climate Network/ Youth Strike For Climate (YS4C);

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Brazil's edible plants (from a paper by researches of the University of Leiden):

"Piso indicated that roots [tubers] of S. tuberosa deserved special attention, because of the way they developed underground and their use as a refreshment [water reservoir] for feverish patients and exhausted travelers, as he experimented himself. He and Marcgrave also described how its fruits were valued as food... Currently S. tuberosa, known as Umbu or Umbuzeiro, is an important economic and subsistence food resource for rural communities in semiarid regions of northeast Brazil. Its specialized root system (xylopodia) bears tubers that store liquids, sugars and other nutrients and allow the survival of the tree during the dry seasons of the caatinga and central Brazilian savanna, where this species is endemic. The water or sweet juice of these xylopodia is still used as an emergency thirst quencher in extreme arid areas of the Brazilian sertão..."

"Several rainforest trees were highly valued for its edible fruits or seeds, such as Hymenaea courbaril L. or Lecythis pisonis L., of which the 'seeds (also called chestnuts) were eaten raw or roasted' and 'were considered aphrodisiacs.' The fruit of Macoubea guianensis Aubl. was 'appreciated for its sweetness by the indigenous peoples to eat during their travels, while Europeans used it to treat chest affections.' The fruit of Swartzia pickelii Killip ex Ducke was 'not eaten unless it was cooked, from which the inhabitants made a wholesome delicacy for the stomach called Manipoy.' The same applies to the tomato-like fruits of the African eggplant Solanum aethiopicum L., which were 'eaten cooked, after seasoning with oil and pepper; it has lemon taste'..."

- Alcàntara-Rodríguez, M., Francozo, M., & Andel, T. R. van. (2021). Looking into the flora of Dutch Brazil: botanical identifications of seventeenth century plant illustrations in the Libri Picturati. Scientific Reports, 11;

Degradation of Brazilian's flora (from a paper by researches of the University of Leiden):

"In the past centuries, the Atlantic Forest and savannah regions of northeast Brazil have been severely affected by habitat loss and degradation due to the expansion of urbanization, intensive agriculture, farming and logging. Several plant species that were abundant enough to be noted by European artists around 1640 are not common anymore today. According to the IUCN Red List, eight species in the Libri Picturati, seven in the Theatrum and one in the LP are currently experiencing population decline or are at risk of facing extinction. Several endemic plants from the northeast Atlantic rainforest and caatinga biomes appear in the illustrations. Four species in the Libri Picturati are currently CITES-listed and restricted to trade: the cacti Brasiliopuntia brasiliensis (Willd.) A. Berger, Cereus fernambucensis Lem., Epiphyllum phyllanthus (L.) Haw. and Melocactus violaceus subsp. margaritaceus N. P. Taylor. The latter is an endemic cactus of the coastal sand dunes’ ecoregion in the Atlantic rainforest known as restinga, which is severely threatened by agricultural expansion and urbanization."

"Some endemic species are classified as Least Concern by the IUCN or the CNC Flora (12 species), while others (13 species) have not been evaluated yet. The MC does not contain threatened species, but includes two endemic trees: Attalea compta Mart. and Eugenia cf. brasiliensis Lam., which are only found in the biodiversity hotspots of the Atlantic rainforest and the cerrado, both greatly affected by habitat loss. The mangrove vegetation along the Brazilian coast has been severely affected by urbanization, pollution by industrial and domestic waste and climate change, threatening the populations of the mangrove trees Avicennia schaueriana Stapf & Leechm. ex Moldenke and Laguncularia racemosa (L.) C. F. Gaertn. The occurrence of anthropogenic impacts and the lack of available data call for the implementation of more in-depth and continuous studies on the conservation status of these vulnerable populations."

Friday, October 28, 2016

B4 Trump Turns Real: BANALITY OF EVIL IN BRAZIL

- armed cop in a school [is this photograph true? I don't know, probably not; it was circulating in the Internet, and it is just and index of the hysteria of that time, with lots of fake news from all sides, to make things look frightening];

- the fable of the WORM & the WOLF (which might pretty well be preposterous & certainly not true);

- invasion of MST's school Florestan Fernandes by the police, Wagner Moura's testimony;

- Bonna Petit!!! (video by A/Z) [I took this video out of Youtube, because I wanted to change it];

- History of US rule in Latin America (Noam Chomsky) [I would usually dismiss much of this narrative as unreliable conspiracy theory; but since totally incredible things such as Trump, Brexit & Bolsonaro indeed turned up as totally REAL, what would be fair to believe in?! at least Chomsky gives a clear narrative from the opposite side of what has now "succeeded"];

- ex-president Lula interview (Mônica Bergamo & Florestan Fernandes, 27/04/2019);

- Mangabeira Unger's definition of Brazilian Workers Party (PT) governments as a kind of national-consumerism in which only consumption was democratized, with a backsliding on the quality of Brazilian production (regressing to the exportation of cheap commodities like soy), and no real transformation and upgrading in educational areas (he also criticises the dependence of other Brazilian governments on foreign capital, defending, however, the necessity of fiscal balance) [this video is not available anymore at Youtube];

- Ciro Gome's interview to Bob Fernandes (09/06/2020);

- L'Affaire Duhamel: caso real de "mamadeira de p...", e devem existir outros especialmente entre essa gente decadente da universidade e inclusive que se diz de esquerda, como o Duhamel (uma esquerda alinhada com perspectivas como a defesa de Cuba); essa gente de inteligência muito ligeiramente acima da média (e que não são senão predadores capazes de calcular) domina mesmo os ambientes burocráticos, como a universidade; isso não tem nada a ver com pensador de verdade (que se sobressaem na França, mas mesmo lah se contam nos dedos, e geralmente têm uma relação muito mais esquiva com a academia), como Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva; o caso Duhamel eh muito bem representativo do caso típico e lamentável desses professores mundanamente bem-sucedidos e arrogantes, q no final das contas (incapazes de pensar) não produzem nada próprio original, e se acham os supra sumos da inteligência pq humilham alunos, manipulam colegas e se intitulam donos da verdade em certos nichos: em suma a essência mesma da intelectualidade acadêmica bem estabelecida pra quem no geral se bate palmas!!! [L'Affaire Duhamel: un vrai cas de "biberon" (fake news diffusée par la droite brésilienne pour combattre Lula et Haddad à la présidentielle de 2018), et il doit y en avoir d'autres surtout parmi ces décadents de l'université et même ceux qui se disent de gauche, comme Duhamel (une gauche alignée sur des perspectives comme la défense de Cuba); ces gens à l'intelligence un peu au-dessus de la moyenne (et qui ne sont que des prédateurs capables de calculer) dominent mainte fois les milieux bureaucratiques, comme l'université; cela n'a rien à voir avec les vrais penseurs (qui excellent en France, mais là encore ils se comptent sur les doigts, et ont généralement un rapport beaucoup plus distant avec l'académie), comme Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva; l'affaire Duhamel est très représentative du cas typique et pitoyable des professeurs arrogants, qui finalement (incapables de penser) ne produisent rien d'original par eux-mêmes, et qui se considèrent comme des sommets de l'intelligence parce qu'ils humilient les étudiants, manipulent les collègues et se disent détenteurs de la vérité dans certaines niches: bref, l'essence même de l'intelligentsia académique bien établie, généralement applaudie et félicitée!!!];

- Misinformation Wars & Mass Surveillance;

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Vestibule:

Nietzsche
"... le maître d'hôtel était heureux de montrer à son maître que, bien qu'ancien jardinier de Combray et simple maître d'hôtel, tout de même bon Français selon la règle de Saint-André-des-Champs, il tenait de la Déclaration des droits de l'homme le droit de prononcer 'enverjure' en toute indépendance, et de ne pas se laisser commander sur un point qui ne faisait pas partie de son service, et où par conséquent, depois de la Révolution, personne n'avait rien à lui dire puisqu'il était mon égal."
Marcel Proust (le narrateur)

"Sinistro!!!"

Gerald Thomas, Entre Duas Fileiras

"Aparecido Laertes Calandra, codinome capitão Ubirajara, é figura carimbada em todas as listas de grupos de direitos humanos e foi reconhecido por diversas vítimas como torturador... Este estava na ativa até pouco tempo atrás. Geraldo Alckmin, governador de São Paulo, em 2003 usou a Lei da Anistia para justificar a nomeação dele para o Departamento de Inteligência do Departamento Estadual de Investigações sobre Narcóticos da Polícia Civil do estado."

Marcelo Netto & Rogério Medeiros

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"É golpe mesmo, porque a Dilma é uma pessoa honrada que não cometeu nenhum crime de responsabilidade (diferente do Bolsonaro que está cometendo de forma reiterada quatro crimes de responsabilidade tipificados na lei). A Dilma nunca cometeu, muito menos dolosamente, qualquer crime de responsabilidade. Fez um governo desastrado, como só será superado pelo governo do Bolsonaro. Por números: a Dilma derrubou a economia brasileira em 3,2% depois em 3,5% em dois anos, isso nunca tinha acontecido na história do Brasil. E a corrupção no projeto de poder do Lulo-Petismo é um dado da realidade... A gente quando denuncia a manipulação da denúncia moral como um mecanismo de disrupturas (como aconteceu com Getúlio), a gente apoia o Getúlio [como] um homem limpo. Nunca se levantou contra o Getúlio Vargas uma única acusação... o João Goulart [também]... Infelizmente, o Lulo-Petismo se corrompeu mesmo. O Antônio Palocci era braço direito do Lulo-Petismo. Roubou 100 milhões de reais e devolveu (roubou 130)... Eu denunciei pro Lula que o Eunício Oliveira tinha recebido um bilhão de reais de contrato sem licitação da Petrobras, o Lula ficou pálido, e depois eu vi que [era] ele, Lula, que tinha mandado... Eu não acho que o Lula tenha tido o devido processo legal nessa coisa do triplex, não, não me confunda... ele foi condenado por filigrana. Eu denunciei isso na data... Eu não estou falando disso não, eu estou falando é da corrupção orgânica, do assalto patrimonialista ao Estado nacional brasileiro... eu vi a lógica lá dentro. É a lógica do José Dirceu de que nós estamos numa revolução e, portanto, na revolução as armas são aquelas que a gente puder usar contra o adversário e o inimigo. E o nome disso é picaretagem, rapaz!"

Ciro Gomes (entrevista a Bob Fernandes, 06/09/2020, ver vídeo acima)
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"Ce qui se trouve ainsi à l'oeuvre dans les discours de tous les jours, dans l'exercice de la justice, et d'abord dans l'axiomatique du droit privé, public ou international, dans la conduite de la politique intérieure, de la diplomatie et de la guerre, c'est un lexique de la responsabilité dont on ne dira pas qu'il ne correspond à aucun concept mais qu'il flotte sans rigueur autour d'un concept introuvable. Il correspond à une dénégation dont on sait que les ressources sont inépuisables. Il suffit de dénier, infatigablement, l'aporie ou l'antinomie, et de traiter d'irresponsables, de nihilistes, de relativistes, voir de poststructuralistes ou, pire, de déconstructionnistes, tous ceux qui continuent de s'inquiéter devant tant de bonne conscience... en raison de la structure et des lois du marché tel qu'elle l'a institué et le régit, en raison des mécanismes de la dette extérieure et autres dissymétries analogues, la même 'societé' fait mourir ou, différence secondaire dans le cas de non-assistance à personne en danger, laisse mourir de faim et de maladie des centaines de millions d'enfants (de ces prochains ou de ces semblables dont parle l'éthique ou le discours des droits de l'homme), sans qu'aucun tribunal moral ou juridique soit jamais compétent pour juger ici du sacrifice — du sacrifice de l'autre en vue de ne pas se sacrifier soi-même. Non seulement une telle societé participe à ce sacrifice incalculable, mais elle l'organise..." Jacques Derrida, Donner la mort

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Main Hall:

Brazil's Eighteenth Brumaire (1964):

"Ipês's function was to unite business leaders and military officers in a conspiracy to take down João Gulart... It coordinated with the American ambassador and the CIA. Comparing the Forbes list with one of Ipês's backers, I saw some of the most powerful families in Brazil today—Klabin, Gerdau, Ermírio de Moraes—on both. It dawned on me that many of Brazil's great fortunes contained the traces of crimes committed in the name of keeping the economy free... A weatlhy cattle rancher from down south, Goulart was no commie, even if he did have radical proposals like redistributing land and capping rents... Radio stations ran Ipês propaganda claiming the Soviets had infiltrated Goulart's government..." (Alex Cuadros, Brazillionaires, p. 39);

One thing explains why international media keep more or less neutral in relation to Temer’s excesses. The Workers Party really screwed things up. While raising consumerism, both Lula and Dilma backed things such as Eike Batista's Megalomaniac Empire (a bubble of speculative capital) and dealt irresponsibly with notorious corrupted institutions such as FIFA.

In the case of Brazilian universities, they poured money into a system wrecked by bureaucracy, cronyism and even nepotism:

***"O problema é que, por uma conjugação única de circunstâncias históricas e culturais, a universidade pública brasileira, que cresceu no Brasil de forma tentacular a partir dos anos 1970, e seguiu num movimento de expansão que prossegue até hoje, acabou por se transformar numa gigantesca estatal, engessada em todas as suas instâncias transformadoras, vítima de uma centralização absoluta, e de fato consentida... a ditadura militar acabou por criar as bases da universidade com que a esquerda dos anos 1970 sonharia: um certo espírito de quartel... Não é meu interesse aqui discutir a universidade pública brasileira; é até possível que esse seja mesmo o melhor modelo para um projeto de popularização de acesso ao terceiro grau, projeto que por princípio joga para segundo plano o horizonte da excelência acadêmica, uma excelência radicalmente incompatível com o modelo..." (Cristovão Tezza, O espírito da Prosa, Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2012, p. 145-46).
***"“O PT tentou romper as oligarquias e despontar uma terceira via, mas não conseguiu e acabou fazendo conchavo... “Defendo a administração pública, seja lá que partido for... O que se fazia na secretaria [da educação] era o empreguismo. Mais de oitenta escolas e tudo o que se arrecadava era para pagar pessoal, apaniguados e correligionários. As escolas não tinham orientação pedagógica. Era a educação feita por fazer, como em muitos lugares neste país”, explica [Tiana] Tapety, famosa por ser radical em suas colocações, mesmo em relação aos aliados..." ("A cidade do Piauí que quer se tornar a Finlândia brasileira da educação, " El Pais);

Temer however represents the worse of the Workers Party legacy. Together with PSDB (#PSDBemManiacos), MBL (#MBLixo), Globo (#TVPlimPlim) and Bandeirantes (#Bundi), he hopes for nothing but tightening the belt of the general population to keep exactly the same old system running without major losses for the 0,0001%.

The following was written about a time Brazil was governed by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (#FHCinico) & PSDB: "São Paulo, a terra da desigualdade, onde um carro de R$ 300.000,00 disputa espaço com o catador de papelão, onde o almoço mais caro é visto pelo menino que não come há três dias" [São Paulo, land of inequality, where a R$ 300.000,00 car fight over space with the garbage scavenger, where the view of the most expensive lunch tantalizes the kid starving for three days] (Ferrez, Capão Pecado, p. 173).

**************************************************************

A letter to the journal El Pais (never published):

"O que é difícil engolir num texto como o publicado por Eliane Brum em sua coluna do dia 04 de janeiro de 2019 ("O homem mediano assume o poder") é a total falta de senso crítico com relação à falência moral, quer dizer, em última instância, real, de figuras da esquerda tradicional como o ex-presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Estou utilizando a palavra "real" em termos do senso comum, mas também do discurso psicanalítico, de Lacan a Deleuze, pode-se escolher. Trata-se supostamente da mesma base teórica da perspectiva da qual autores como Eliane Brum ainda partem. Porque, fazendo referências explícitas ou não, aquilo que dizem não deixa de soar como uma versão um pouco requentada de pseudo-teoria crítica (que absorve tanto o marxismo quanto a psicanálise e deveria fazê-lo em suas versões mais ousadas). Mas digo pseudo-teoria crítica requentada, porque, em última instância, Eliane traça uma linha dicotômica entre o bem e o mal, o excepcional e o ordinário/mediano, num terreno que, segundo a própria teoria crítica, em suas versões mais sofisticadas (e até mesmo segundo o senso comum), é pantanoso e escorregadio demais pra esse tipo de demarcação.

Pode-se tomar como fato consumado a excepcionalidade da trajetória histórica de Lula até a presidência? Não foi numa única eleição que ele chegou lá, e a história dele como sindicalista poderia ser dita antes exemplar que excepcional. Mesmo assim, se Jair Bolsonaro chegou onde chegou foi porque Lula, independente dessa suposta excepcionalidade, incorporou e se tornou representante de uma lógica tão universalizante que a longo prazo ela se autoinviabilizou e se revelou vazia. Os que pretendem que essa suposta excepcionalidade permaneça inabalável e incólume até hoje (senão projetada por toda eternidade do horizonte histórico) têm de se valer do álibi de raciocínios ad hoc como a narrativa do golpe, da manipulação midiática, do imperialismo.

É exatamente a mesma lógica que sustenta, até hoje, nas universidades, toda uma rede de proteção artificial a esses mesmos intelectuais que idolatram políticos como o Lula (mas até poderia ser o próprio Bolsonaro ou um Fernando Henrique), permitindo a circulação ad infinitum de um discurso muito bem intencionado, mas generalista e manjado que, a longo prazo, não foi e não é capaz de viabilizar nenhuma mudança estrutural nem mesmo dentro do seu quintal, quer dizer, das próprias universidades. Seguem os concursos e seleções com cartas marcadas, as tramoias nas agências de fomento, o compadrio generalizado, o plágio descarado na pós-graduação, o favorecimento dos discípulos e coleguinhas amigos, o analfabetismo funcional, etc.

Então você tem 2013, e depois a Dilma "sendo obrigada" a adotar da forma mais descarada uma política neoliberal que era a cópia exata daquilo que, até então feito de espantalho, tinha permitido justamente ao Lula (de forma extremamente reativa) se tornar essa suposta excepcionalidade que pra alguns ele permanece sendo até hoje!

E como ele, Eliane Brum nunca vai deixar de ser aplaudida... ad infinitum! Ao menos dentro dos quadros dessa mesma academia, dessa burocracia kafkiana sem fim (mesmo Eliane tendo construído um percurso ímpar e independente, mas no fundo dialogando com os bem formados).

Exceto se Jair Bolsonaro se revelar, concretamente, algo diferente do medíocre consumado que estão imaginando que ele seja... E isso vale pro bem e vale pro mal. E as pessoas que pretendem falar de excepcionalidade histórica, deviam se lembrar o quanto escorregadio e pantanoso eh realmente esse terreno. O neoliberalismo e a globalização, fizeram, por exemplo, muito mais pela "emancipação" efetiva de mulheres e outras minorias que toda verborragia politicamente correta de colunistas e acadêmicos. E minha posição não é anti-intelctualista. O que se requere é mais, não menos inteligência, e sobretudo mais senso crítico. Justamente pra se poder fazer frente a forças de ordem concreta. Eliane Brum, é claro, não pertence à academia, mas o tipo de texto que veicula, como o publicado nessa coluna, parece a quintessência do discurso acadêmico oficial no melhor e no pior sentido, universalizante e pseudo-universalizante, tão bem intencionado quanto anódino, acrítico, estéril."

***In 12 Sep 2019, Eliane Brum wrote an astounding article in which she denounces unequivocally the ecocide that is being caused by the construction (in the region of the Amazon rainforest) of the Belo Monte hydropower dam of Belo Monte, pushed by the governments of Lula and Dilma and related to corruption schemes in their governments:
"Esta era a mensagem que a procuradora da República em Altamira Thais Santi tentava passar aos jornalistas. Os incêndios são graves e devem ser denunciados e combatidos, mas é necessário compreender também que um rio está morrendo. Morrendo. “É ecocídio, e é genocídio”, ela afirma. A procuradora não exagera. Os fatos são eloquentes, investigados e mensurados pelos melhores cientistas da área do Brasil, e também por documentos oficiais. Na história recente da Amazônia, a grande causadora e reprodutora de violências na região do Médio Xingu, onde está a cidade de Altamira, foi e segue sendo a Usina Hidrelétrica de Belo Monte."

"... É também nesta região que, nos últimos anos, outra gigante, a mineradora canadense Belo Sun, pressiona a população local e assedia políticos de Belém para obter autorização para explorar aquela que seria a maior mina de ouro a céu aberto do Brasil – e também o sepultamento oficial da Volta Grande embaixo de toneladas de rejeitos tóxicos."

"Em 2011, publiquei uma entrevista na Revista Época com Celio Bermann, professor da Universidade de São Paulo. Especialista na área energética, ele também havia trabalhado no Ministério de Minas e Energia com Dilma Rousseff no início do primeiro mandato de Lula (PT). Bermann dizia com todas as letras que Belo Monte seria construída mais para gerar propina, menos para gerar energia. E afirmava que, para gerar energia, a usina era economicamente inviável. A entrevista gerou respostas e pressões de vários protagonistas, como o então senador José Sarney (PMDB)..."

"... A destruição da Volta Grande do Xingu é acompanhada com grande interesse pela mineradora canadense Belo Sun. Com a progressiva corrosão da vida na região e a crescente impossibilidade da existência dos indígenas, as barreiras para a instalação da gigantesca mineração de ouro vão se fragilizando. Abrir a Amazônia para a mineração é um dos principais objetivos do Governo Bolsonaro."- "A notícia é: o Xingu vai morrer" (Eliane Brum/El Pais, 09/12/2019);

**************************************************************

Clipping:

- "Quando atuava no Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais do Rio, o Bope, Nóbrega tornou-se conhecido por sua habilidade com todo tipo de armas – era atirador de rara precisão – e pela crueldade com que comandava os treinamentos entre o fim dos anos 90 e o início dos anos 2000. “Ele batia nos alunos com barra de ferro. Chegou a quebrar o braço de um e a estourar o rim de outro”, me disse um policial que atuou no batalhão na época.

Tanto Adriano Nóbrega quanto Ronald Pereira foram homenageados na Assembleia Legislativa do Rio com menções honrosas propostas pelo então deputado estadual Flávio Bolsonaro. Para justificar a homenagem a Nóbrega, que ocorreu em 2003, Flávio argumentou que o então capitão prestava “serviços à sociedade, desempenhando com absoluta presteza e excepcional comportamento nas suas atividades”. Nóbrega havia sido apresentado a Flávio por um antigo colega do Bope, Fabrício Queiroz – o ex-assessor do filho de Jair Bolsonaro que está no centro do escândalo envolvendo repasses suspeitos de dinheiro para Flávio na Alerj," Allan de Abreu's "A Metástase" (Piauí, Março 2019);

- PM e ex-PM são presos pelo assassinato de Marielle Franco (O Globo);

- Crise de candidatos laranja se agrava, fecha cerco a PSL e complica Bolsonaro (El Pais);

- Milícia no Rio de Janeiro: como é a vida em Rio das Pedras (BBC);

- Flávio Bolsonaro: entenda as suspeitas e o que o senador eleito diz sobre elas (BBC);

- Como Flávio Bolsonaro ocupou um cargo na Câmara dos Deputados (BBC);

- Bolsonaro's Davos debut overshadowed by growing scandal around son (The Guardian);

- 'Climate of panic': bombings in Brazil reveal growing power of gangs (The Guardian);

- The Corruption Cabinet: Jair Bolsoaro Promised to end corruption in Brazil (The Intercept);

- Democracia Brasileira foi Corroída, diz instituto francês (DW);
- Brazil is in Crisis (The Guardian);
- CUNY Students Support Brazilian Student Occupations (Left Voice);
- Une adolescente brésilienne pour sauver l'éducation du pays (Europe 1);
- Brazilian schoolgirl's speech on education funding goes viral (BBC);
- Un millier de lycées et d'universités occupés contre les politiques d'austérité (Basta!);
- O Grande Irmão: Abin tem megabanco de dados sobre movimentos sociais (Intercept);
- Como foi o ato contra a PEC em 50 Cidades, 18 Estados e 3 Países (Ninja);
- Conheça os bilionários convidados para "reformar"a educação brasileira (The Intercept);

the fable of the WORM & the WOLF (which might pretty well be preposterous):

Unfortunately, it looks like the move of Equator's president does nothing but prove the everlasting calling for insignificance and subservience of the Latin American "elite" (sic). After all, grotesque stupidity is the essential feature of the Latin American "new" right, elected with a tacit collusion of the mainstream media (that is, in Brazil, Globo, Bandeirantes, etc. which keep giving unrestricted support to aggressive neo-"liberal" unchecked policies besides being critical of the most caricatural traits of a Bolsonaro):

'Moreno’s move against Assange has proved controversial in Ecuador. The previous president, Rafael Correa, has accused his one-time political ally of “a crime humanity will never forget” and described Moreno as “the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history”.'
'In what may have been part of a campaign to weaken Moreno, WikiLeaks was linked to an anonymous website that claimed Moreno’s brother had created an offshore company...'
'[Moreno] insisted the decision to cooperate with the British and remove Assange from the embassy was a sovereign decision of his government and was not forced upon him by any external power.'
'He also asserted he had been given guarantees about Assange’s possible extradition to the US. “For us the maximum right to protect is the right to life,” he said. “For this reason, we consulted the government of the United Kingdom on the possibility of Assange’s extradition to third countries where he could suffer torture, ill-treatment or the death penalty. The United Kingdom extended written guarantees that if extradition is eventually requested he will not be extradited to any country where it may suffer such treatment,”' "Assange tried to use embassy as 'centre for spying', says Ecuador's Moreno" (Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, 04/14/2019);

***Just as Important:

'... it was curious to hear Diane Abbott, when answering questions about Labour’s enthusiastic objection to Assange’s possible extradition to the US to face charges of involvement in a computer-hacking conspiracy, say those sexual assault charges were “never brought”. The allegations were made, she generously conceded, but the charges were never brought.'
'It really doesn’t have to be this way. It is entirely possible to believe two things at the same time, that Assange should not face extradition to the US but that we should perhaps take a look at why he jumped bail and was in hiding for seven years. More than 70 MPs and peers have now written to Sajid Javid and Abbott, urging them to focus attention on the earlier Swedish investigations.'
'There is a tendency by some on the left to have a hierarchy of worthy causes. At the top is all the big banner stuff; the US, imperialism, neocolonialism, foreign policy. Further downstream are social justice and economic redistribution. And all the way at the bottom of the waterfall are those who don’t fit quite as neatly on one side or the other of the ideological odyssey between good and evil. Women have pesky gender issues that break the solidarity with men, and if we are to protect the workers, how do all the immigrants fit in to that?'
'Assange’s threatened victimisation by the US would be a worrying precedent and a reason not to extradite him, but that does not mean that sexual assault allegations should be brushed aside, "Why is the left blinkered to claims about Assange and sexual assault?" (Nesrine Malik, The Guardian, 04/15/2019);

***A more Equitable Perspective:

'States that commit crimes in foreign lands depend on at least passive acquiescence. This is achieved in a number of ways. One is the “othering” of the victims: the stripping away of their humanity, because if you imagined them to be people like your own children or your neighbours, their suffering and deaths would be intolerable. This is what the attempted extradition of Julian Assange to the US is about.'
'Back in 2010, the then US soldier Chelsea Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents relating to US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US state department cables, and inmates imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. Assange’s alleged role consists of helping Manning crack an encrypted password to gain access to the US defense department computer network. It is Manning who is the true hero of this story: last month, she was arrested for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, placed in solitary confinement for four weeks, and now remains imprisoned. We must demand her freedom.'
'These leaks revealed some of the horrors of the post-9/11 wars. One showed a US aircrew laughing after slaughtering a dozen innocent people, including two Iraqi employees of Reuters, after dishonestly alleging to have encountered a firefight. Other files revealed how US-led forces killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, their deaths otherwise airbrushed out of existence. Another cable, which exposed corruption and scandals in the court of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the western-backed then-dictator of Tunisia, helped fuel protests, which toppled him.'
'... Assange must answer the accusation in Sweden without the threat of extradition to the US,' "Whatever you think of Julian Assange, his extradition to the US must be opposed" (Owen Jones, The Guardian, 04/12/2019);

***Ultimate piece on Snowden and his ring (written by a woman):

"[In five years since Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA surveillance], we’ve learned much more about how Big Tech was not only sharing data with the NSA but collecting vast troves of information about us for its own purposes. And we’ve started to see the strategic ends to which Big Data can be put. In that sense, we’re only beginning to comprehend the full significance of Snowden’s disclosures... This is not to say that we know more today about Snowden’s motivations or aims than we did in 2013. The question of whether or not Snowden was a Russian asset all along has been raised and debated... [NSA's PRISM, whose documents were leaked by Snowden and disclosed by Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman] secured cooperation between the Internet companies and the NSA at the point when an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism had been targeted and the NSA wished to retrieve that suspect’s messages from the companies’ servers. Many Americans will still feel that this program constituted an unwarranted breach of privacy, but what PRISM does not do is vindicate the idea of a “deep state” operating entirely independently of the rule of law. Although this might seem like a fine distinction to some, it is an extremely significant one. But the narrative of deep-state lawlessness was too appealing... Assange’s allies, Milne included, have made clear that their allegiance doesn’t lie with liberal democracies and their values. They have taken sides with authoritarianism in their fight against the hypocrisy of liberal democracies... Assange, a former libertarian, has called Russia under Putin “a bulwark against Western imperialism”... For his part, Greenwald has repeatedly, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, decried as Russophobia the findings that Putin ordered interference in the 2016 US presidential election—even appearing on Fox News to do so. The very term “Russophobia” obfuscates the distinction between Vladimir Putin’s regime and Russia; the two clearly can’t be identified with one another... The distinction between left and right, he argues, will increasingly be replaced by the opposition between people who are pro-establishment and anti-establishment. But being anti-establishment is not a politics. It defends no clear set of values or principles. And it permits prevarication about the essential choice between criticizing and helping to reform liberal democracy from within or assisting in its demise. It encourages its partisans to take sides with a smaller, authoritarian state in order to check the power of the one whose establishment it opposes... In their book Red Web: The Kremlin’s War on the Internet, the Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan recounted the experiences of human rights activists who were summoned via an email purportedly from Snowden himself, to a meeting with him at Moscow airport when he surfaced there with Sarah Harrison, to find they were joining the heads of various pro-Kremlin “human rights” groups, Vladimir Lukin, the Putin-appointed Human Rights Commissioner of Russia, and the lawyers Anatoly Kucherena and Henri Reznik. It was clear to the independent activists that Kucherena had organized the meeting... So whether we trust [Snowden] matters. It matters whether we view him as a bad actor, or as a well-intentioned whistleblower who has shown bad judgment, or as someone who has allowed himself to become an unwitting pawn of the Russians... In a 2016 lecture by video-link at Fusion’s Real Future Fair, Snowden discouraged his audience from pursuing the legal and political remedies that liberal democracies offer... If there’s one thing Greenwald, Assange, and their followers got right, it’s that the United States became a tremendous economic and military power over the last seven decades. When it blunders in its foreign or domestic policy, the US has the capacity to do swift and unparalleled damage. The question then is whether this awesome power is better wielded by a liberal-democratic state in an arguably hypocritical way but with some restraint, or by an authoritarian one in a nakedly avowed way and with no restraint. In the five years since Snowden’s revelations, we have seen changes, particularly the election of Donald Trump with his undisguised admiration for strongmen, that compel us to imagine a possible authoritarian future for the United States," "Edward Snowden Reconsidered" (Tamsin Shaw, The New York Review of Books, 09/13/2018);

***What should have been the ultimate piece on Glenn Greenwald (& still much more on Assange):

"What’s astonishing about their ascent to heroism is the breadth of their support. The embrace of the antiwar left and the libertarian right was to be expected. But effusions of praise for the leakers can also be found throughout the liberal establishment... Contrary to [Snowden's] claims, he seems to have become an anti-secrecy activist only after the White House was won by a liberal Democrat who, in most ways, represented everything that a right-wing Ron Paul admirer would have detested... In several cases over a five-year span, Greenwald represented Matthew Hale, the head of the Illinois-based white-supremacist World Church of the Creator, which attracted a small core of violently inclined adherents... Greenwald’s other clients included the neo-Nazi National Alliance, who were implicated in an especially horrible crime. Two white supremacists on Long Island had picked up a pair of unsuspecting Mexican day laborers, lured them into an abandoned warehouse, and then clubbed them with a crowbar and stabbed them repeatedly. The day laborers managed to escape, and when they recovered from their injuries, they sued the National Alliance and other hate groups, alleging that they had inspired the attackers. Greenwald described the suit as a dangerous attempt to suppress free speech by making holders of “unconventional” views liable for the actions of others... most of [Greenwald's] writings, his critique of America abroad was congenial both to the isolationist paleo-Right and to post–New Left anti-imperialists... Along those lines, Greenwald found common ground with the upper echelons of right-wing free-market libertarianism... When bloggers confronted Greenwald about his associations with libertarians, the darling of the netroots and MSNBC left angrily batted the claims away as distortions. He need not have reacted so forcefully. Accused of working for Cato, for example, he might simply have said that he believed in addressing any organization that wanted to hear from him and left it at that. Instead, Greenwald attacked his critics as “McCarthyite” purveyors of “falsehoods, fabrications, and lies”... In 2010, Greenwald began attacking the Obama administration from the left on a variety of domestic issues, attacking Wall Street corruption, opposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and decrying inequality. Yet even as he insisted on his left liberalism, he remained a steadfast promoter of Ron Paul—“far and away the most anti-war, anti-Surveillance-State, anti-crony-capitalism, and anti-drug-war presidential candidate in either party.” (After Paul’s son, then senatorial candidate Rand Paul, questioned the Civil Rights Act, Greenwald agreed with criticism that the remark was “wacky,” but insisted that the real “crazies” in American politics were mainstream Democrats and Republicans.)... During his political pilgrimage, Greenwald became consumed: For him, the national security apparatus is not just an important issue; it is the great burning issue of our time... In the wake of the WikiLeaks frenzy, Assange often tried to clarify where he stood politically. His simultaneous embrace of leftist icons such as Noam Chomsky and right-wing libertarians seemed to indicate that he was open to ideas from either end of the political spectrum, so long as they were directed against authoritarianism. Finally, in 2013, Assange proclaimed, “The only hope as far as electoral politics presently ... is the libertarian section of the Republican Party”... Yet even that declaration was misleading. In practice, Assange has a history of working closely with forces far more radical than the Republican Liberty Caucus. Late in 2012, Assange announced the formation of the WikiLeaks Party in Australia. It had been expected that WikiLeaks would ultimately throw its support to the Green Party—especially after the party’s National Council voted in favor of such a move. Instead, WikiLeaks aligned with a collection of far-right parties. One was the nativist Australia First, whose most prominent figure was a former neo-Nazi previously convicted of coordinating a shotgun attack on the home of an Australian representative of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. Members of the WikiLeaks Party blamed the flap on an “administrative error”; mass resignations from the party’s leadership followed. Those who quit cited a lack of transparency in the party’s operations, and some pointed to remarks Assange had made blasting a Green Party proposal to reform Australia’s harsh treatment of asylum seekers... Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange have largely set the terms in the debate over transparency and privacy in America. But the value of some of their revelations does not mean that they deserve the prestige and influence that has been accorded to them," "Would You Feel Differently About Snowden , Greenwald, and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought" (Sean Wilentz, The New Republic, 19/01/2014);

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

God Save the Queen (Blake's Palace of Wisdom)

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A post shared by Alessandro Zir (@alessandro_zir)

Warhol with Camera (A/Z Instagram post);

John Lydon & Sex Pistols;
Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Nico & The Velvet Underground;
Kurt Cobain;
Pictures taken from the Internet (montage A/Z);
Me from Mommy Dearest Photo Album;
Presuming Ed from Bruce Robinson's Whitnail and I (1987);
Anselm Kiefer's Unternehmen Seelöwe (1975),
picture taken from Daniel Arasse's Anselm Kiefer;
The Sex Pistols In Brazil (The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, 1980);
Devenir Musicien & Pillage (videos by A/Z) [I took these videos out of Youtube, because I wanted to change them];

George Antheil's Violin Sonata n. 2 (Vahid Khadem-Missagh and Gottlieb Wallisch/2015, Youtube);

"Pure experience is an animated state with maximum freedom in which there is not the least gap between the will's demand and its fulfilment."

Kitaro Nishida
"La main se crispe dans une sorte de contraction impudique..."
Canteloube (Grand Journal, 21 mai)
"Eine lange lateinische Abhandlung in Einer Nachtwache niederzuschreiben und auch noch ab-zuschreiben, mit dem Ehrgeiz in der Feder, es meinem Vorbilde Sallust in Strenge und Gedrängtheit nachzuthun, und einigen Grog von schwerstem Kaliber über mein Latein zu gießen, dies stand schon, als ich Schüler der ehrwürdigen Schulpforta war, durchaus nicht im Widerspruch zu meiner Physiologie, noch vielleicht auch zu der des Sallust—wiesehr auch immer zur ehrwürdigen Schulpforta..."
Nietzsche

"... e, uma vez, apaguei de repente, caí com a cabeça em cima dos pratos e elas me ajudaram, com massagens, estímulos e mais drogas, é lógico."
Júpiter Maçã, A Odisséia

"Ultrasonic sounds on records to cause frontal lobotomies."
"Rock & Roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back your beat so you could dream."
Lou Reed (Please Kill Me)

"Then of course Nico walked out with this gorgeous face and voice and stood absolutely motionless."
"Lou was a double-faced, insincere, grasping type."
Paul Morrissey (Please Kill Me)
"Nico was really odd. She was very icy and reserved on one level, and then annoyingly insecure on another... Beautiful, but a weirdo. You didn't have a relationship with Nico."
Ronnie Cutrone (Please Kill Me)

"I just thought Richard Hell was incredible. Here was a guy all deconstructed, torn down, looking like he'd just crawled out of a drain hole, looking like he was covered in slime, looking like he hadn't slept in years, looking like he hadn't washed in years, and looking like no one gave a fuck about him. And looking like he didn't really give a fuck about you!"
Malcolm McLaren (Please Kill Me)
"I liked Malcolm because he liked me... There weren't that many people who gave us any respect, you know?"
Richard Hell (Please Kill Me)
"The first song that the Sex Pistols played was I Wanna Be Your Dog, the greatest punk song ever written to this day."

Danny Field (Please Kill Me)

"The profanity hooked me first (I was fourteen), Johnny Rotten's 'fuck this and fuck that/Fuck it all and fuck her fucking brat.' More than the naughty words themselves, it was the vehemence and virulence of Rotten's delivery—those percussive 'fucks,' the demonic glee of the rolled rs in 'brrrrrrrat.'"
"From that point onward, McLaren decided that Rotten was at heart 'a constructive sissy rather than a destructive lunatic,' and focused his energy on molding the more suggestible Sid Vicious into the Pistol's true star, a cartoon psychopath, wanton and self-destructive."
"Although they found nothing, Lydon was taken to the local police station and had to walk home in his pijamas."
Simon Reynolds

"Andy said to me, 'Don't... don't... don't make me laugh. I hurts too much."
Billy Name (Please Kill Me)
"In a desperate plea for the attention of her idol, she snatched Andy Warhol's wig."
James St. James (Party Monster)

"... et du chaos d'un sommeil plein de songes tu évoques à la lumière du soleil les visages des beautés depuis longtemps ensevelies, et les physionomies familières et bénies, nettoyées des outrages de la tombe. Toi seul, tu donnes à l'homme ces trésors, et tu possèdes les clefs du paradis, ô juste, subtil et puissant opium!"

Baudelaire/De Quincey (Les Paradis artificiels)

"... virei mentor dum garoto judeu e gay... Eu dizia, você não acredita em nada? Marilyn Monroe? Elvis Presley, George Harrison?"

Júpiter Maçã, A Odisséia
"What's wrong with tits? The queen's got'em."
Geri Miller (Please Kill Me)

"After the gig we were visited in our dressing room by none other than Lady Helen Windsor, a minor royal and great-granddaughter of King George V. Seems she was a mad Cure fan, too! Truth is stranger than fiction, truly."

Lol Tolhurst (Cured: the tale of two imaginary boys)

"The society ladies who appear to Bloom, Mrs. Yelverton Barry (a name modified from that of a suspected transvestist) and Mrs. Bellingham (an actual name) are as fond of wearing furs as Wanda."

Richard Ellmann

"Dr. Spock personalizes quantum psychology: 'Treat your kids as individuals, as singularities.' Here was the most radical, subversive social doctrine ever proposed, and it was directed to the only groups that can bring about enduring change: parents, pediatricians, teachers."
Timothy Leary

"In India, many people visit holy men and women for their darshan, literally their look, which is believed to confer great blessings. Perhaps an unconscious survival of the same kind of belief is involved in the popular desire to see in person the Queen of England, the President of the United Sates, the Pope, pop stars, or other luminaries."

Rupert Sheldrake

"When Queen Elizabeth came here and President Eisenhower bought her a hot dog I'm sure he felt confident that she couldn't have had delivered to Buckingham Palace a better hot dog than that one he bought her for maybe twenty cents at the ballpark... Not for a dollar, not for ten dollars, not for a hundred thousand dollars."
"Think rich. Look poor."
Andy Warhol

"Giving up Beethoven, the emotional climaxes and all, is fairly simple for an American. But giving Bach is more difficult. Bach's music suggest order and glorifies for those who hear it their regard for order, which in their lives is expressed by daily jobs nine to five and the appliances with which they surround themselves and which, when plugged in, God willing, work... Jazz is equivalent to Bach (steady beat, dependable motor), and the love of Bach is generally coupled with the love of jazz. Jazz is more seductive, less moralistic than Bach. It popularizes the pleasures and pains of the physical life, whereas Bach is close to church and all that. Knowing as we do that so many jazz musicians stay up to all hours and even take dope, we permit ourselves to become sympathetically at least, junkies and night owls ourselves: by participation mystique. Giving up Bach, jazz, and order is difficult. Patsy Davenport is right."

"Ten years ago the New York painters were for the most part poor as church mice. Did they then or do they now have a place in American society?"

John Cage (Indeterminacy)

"In Washington DC, we experienced the sharper side of American life. We were shocked when we pulled into town and realized it was divided into the haves and have-nots, ghettoized in a way we had not experienced before... In London it appeared to us that all the races mixed together..."

"In the United Kingdom, punk was more of a cultural/political movement—it had to be, given the circumstances—whereas in the United States it felt more like a social/fashion happening... this being New York, we had our first brush with the celebrity circuit. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, along with David Johansen of The New York Dolls, turned up to our first-night gig at Hurrah's..."
Lol Tolhurst (Cured: the tale of two imaginary boys)

"Not that I'm especially patriotic or anything, but it's also striking how both the sixties and the postpunk movement were periods during which Britannia ruled the pop waves..."
"The No Wave scene in New York was virtually wall-to-wall painters, filmmakers, poets, and performance artists. Gang of Four, Cabaret Voltaire, Wire, and the Raincoats are just a handful of the U.K. bands that were started by fine-art or design graduates. Especially in Britain, art schools have long functioned as a state-subsidized bohemia, where working-class youths too unruly for a life of labor mingle with slumming bourgeois kids too wayward for a middle-management career."

"... it was a particular kind of 'art rock' that postpunk pledged allegiance to... the minimal-is-maximal lineage that runs from the Velvet Underground through Krautrock and the more intellectual Bowie/Roxy end of glam. For a certain breed of hipster, the music that sustained them through the 'wasteland' of the seventies was made by a cluster of kindred spirits—Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Brian Eno..."
"For those prepared to live somewhere that looked almost as bombed-out as Beirut, and where heroin was easier to buy than groceries, the Lower East Side was a paradise... 'We didn't have someone like Mayor Giuliani breathing down our necks. It was a very loose time. There wasn't much to fight against, except tradition, where you came from, what your parents were. It was like you'd been thrown into this adolescent adult fun fair and left to figure it out' [Lydia Lunch]."
"By the late seventies, French thinkers of the sort Green [of Scritti Politti] had been devouring were flirting with the once unthinkable (for the Left) notion that American capitalism, despite its faults, offered a lot of space for doing it yourself and bending the law."
"Early MTV was a curious animal, almost inadvertently radical. Because videos from domestic major labels acts were scarce, the channel depended on promos from the U.K. and Europe, where the pop video was already well established. Artists such as Queen, David Bowie, Abba, and Boomtown Rats had specialized in striking promo clips."

Simon Reynolds (Rip It Up)

"When David said in Melody Maker that he was gay—then he changed it, and said he was bisexual, which was what he really meant—he never would have had the balls to do that unless he'd been hanging around with Iggy and Lou."
"... Iggy actually read, you know, Dostoevsky and all that kinda crap..."
Angela Bowie (Please Kill Me)
"Johnny Rotten asked me, 'If they don't like me will they beat me up?' He thought the Ramones were a real gang, ha ha ha."
Arturo Vega (Please Kill Me)
"I felt that what we had done as a joke in New York had been taken for real in England by a younger and more violent audience."
Mary Harron (Please Kill Me)
"By the end of the seventies, the philosophy was that you couldn't do anything without a lot of money... the anger was simply about money, that the culture had become corporate, that we no longer owned it and everybody was desperate to fucking get it back."
Malcolm McLaren

"Nous sommes invités, Rose et moi, à Boston, la semaine prochaine pour un banquet — nous commençons à en prendre l'habitude! et même je n'ai plus de trac quand il faut parler devant 200 personnes. C'est la vie américaine. J'aime ce pays de plus en plus: j'aurais d'ailleurs mauvaise grâce à ne pas m'y plaire car nous y avons été reçus avec chaleur et compréhension."

André Masson (Lettre à Daniel-Henry Kahnweilver, 2 December, 1941)

"Il fait un drôle de temps ici: le pays a l'air d'être retouché par Turner — brumes et brouillard, sans doute pour ne pas trop dépayser les Anglais qui sont ici."

André Masson (Lettre à Georges Bataille, 2 Juillet 1936)

"Pour ce qui est de l'Angleterre, je ne saurais vraiment rien vous dire, car il s'agit d'un pays cagot, livré aux femmes, ce qui signifie autant qu'une totale décadence."
Strindberg à Nietzsche (Klossowski's translation)
"En effet, je retrouve bien dans Hogarth ce je ne sais quoi de sinistre, de violent et de résolu, qui respire dans presque toutes les oeuvres du pays du spleen."
Baudelaire (Quelques caricaturistes étrangers)

"Lui et ses trois soeurs étaient fort jeunes quand leur père mourut, laissant à leur mère une abondante fortune, une véritable fortune de négociant anglais."

Baudelaire (Les Paradis artificiels)

"La marca de fábrica, en la culata, saltaba a la vista: Liverpool, 1891."

Mario Vargas Llosa (La guerra del fin del mundo)

"This danger was more real in London under the Blitz, which dominated everyday life in 1940-1, as Britain alone opposed Germany."
Matthew Gale

"É o sentimento que os ingleses chamam de spleen, e que não tem correspondente na língua portuguesa. Em noites assim, a nossa realidade interior se mistura à atmosfera que o fog torna ainda mais densa, apagando os contornos da vida. O silêncio ao redor de nós como que se materializa. Os movimentos se fazem em câmera lenta, de peixes no mundo das águas. Ectoplasmas de nós mesmos, flutuamos no ar, integrados à eternidade do nada."

Fernando Sabino (A Morte Vista de Perto)

"Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring tide of our blood and humours runs high,—where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason,—the height of our wit and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities,—and accordingly, we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain. It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and could,—wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way;—so that sometimes for near half a century together, tehre shall be very little wit or judgment, either to be seen or heard of amongst us..."

Tristram Shandy

"The fashions which Charles II brought with him and which were adopted by his Court were among the strangest male garments ever worn. Subsequent historians have regarded them with an unfavourable eye. 'Taste and elegance', says F. W. Fairholt, 'were abandoned for extravagance and folly.'"

"In essence the change consisted of a decreasing emphasis on the French Court style and an increasing adoption of English country clothes. There was, in short, a trend towards practicality and simplicity. Coats were plain, had narrower cuffs and the skirts were sometimes cut away in front for ease on horseback."

"This was due in no small degree to the superior skill of London tailors, trained to work in wool broadcloth. Such cloth, unlike light silk and other flimsy materials, can be stretched and moulded to the body. The clothes of the eighteenth-century aristocrat were in general very badly made and did not fit at all snugly to the body. Such snug fitting was the very essence of dandyism, and George Brummell prided himself on the fact that his clothes did not show a single wrinkle and that his breeches fitted his legs like a natural skin. Dandyism does not imply gorgeousness in male attire; the exact opposite is the case."

"The dandy was shown not only by the cut of his clothes and the snugness of his breeches but by the elaboration of his neckwear. The collar of the shirt was worn upright; the two points projected on to the cheeks and were kept in place by a neckcloth, either in the form of a cravat or a stock. Some dandies were alleged to spend a whole morning in the arrangement of their cravats... There is the well-known story of a caller visiting Brummell in the middle of the morning and finding his valet arranging his cravat. On the floor was a large heap of discarded cravats, and when the visitor inquired what they were, the valet replied, 'Sir, those are our failures.'"

"Of course the dandies, who still persisted into the 1840s, spent very much more than this. They were regarded as relics of a former, dissipated age. The dominant figure in English life was now a respectable bourgeois, who had no desire to make himself conspicuous but wished merely to present a gentlemanly appearance..."

"Like the King [Edward] himself it favoured the mature woman, cool and commanding with a rather heavy bust, the effect of which was further emphasized by the so-called 'health' corsets which, in a laudable effort to prevent a downward pressure on the abdomen, made the body rigidly straight in front by throwing forward the bust and throwing back the hips. This produced the peculiar S-shaped stance so characteristic of the period."

"As a commentator of the time remarked, 'the angular English woman, over whose lack of embonpoint papers like La Vie Parisienne have been making merry for two generations, now became accepted type of beauty."

"Young people around the globe danced to the new American rock 'n' roll music, and it was from this date that the fashion and music-industries became inextricably linked."

"The chief fashion story of the period was the miniskirt. Hemlines rose just above the knee in 1961 and had reached the upper thighs by 1966.... It was a style best suited to a skinny, pre-pubescent physique, epitomized by the schoolgirl model Lesley Hornby, known as Twiggy... The designer most often credited with introducing the 'mini' was Mary Quant..."

"The anarchic Punk style, which appeared on the streets of London during the mid-1970's, and which spread in diluted form throughout Europe and North America, was to have an enormous impact on both streetwear and high fashion. It was a style which consciously sought to shock, combining—for both sexes—black tight trousers and striped mohair sweaters with customized leather jackets and heavy-duty Doctor Marten boots. Some female Punks wore miniskirts, fishnet tights and high stiletto-heeled shoes. Fetishistic leather and rubber were an integral part of the Punk look, as were trousers with bondage straps from knee to knee, and bondage collars. Clothes were slashed and ripped, embellished with safety pins, zips and studs. T-shirts were printed with aggressive, anarchistic slogans. The most famous retail outlet for Punk garments and accessories was the shop Seditionaries in London's King's Road, run by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren..."

"American retailer The Gap, founded in San Francisco in 1969, universalized the popularity of garments such as the hooded sweatshirt and cargo pant (the latter contributing to a massive downsizing in teh denim market), making once-basic items a wardrobe staple for all generations."

James Laver (Costume and Fashion)

***To raise the dead— &/or evidence for the villainous affair, the tale of family disonour, Romish church's pact with the devil (considered the greatest outrage against sense and decency, to be plagued and pestered, though solemnly ratified, à Dieu rien n'est impossible, menteur avéré, nom d'un chien):

"Although Greek names were sometimes applied to the church modes and the principle of diatonic octave scales is found in both systems, certain significant discrepancies seem to belie any direct historical connection. Most conspicuous is the different meaning attributed to the names of the Greek octave species and of the church modes. Comparing the two systems provides a plausible explanation: medieval theorists apparently assumed wrongly that the Greek octave species were named in ascending rather than descending order. The Greek octave species Dorian (E–E), Phrygian (D–D), Lydian (C–C), and Mixolydian (B–B) thus appeared in the church modes as Dorian (D–D), Phrygian (E–E), Lydian (F–F), and Mixolydian (G–G)," (from "Mode," entry in Brittanica, by Mieczyslaw Kolinski);

About

Distinctively & as immemorially concocted in the Anti-Shandean pasquils of the likes of G. Richter & F. Wedmore (against which they till nowadays survive), the posts here assembled have a merit of their own many do not wish to understand (and have little to recommend save the eccentricity of their titles). They do not feel much, though a few find genious in insanity and amateur prodigy (popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered me, since years ago I became a person of high promise; scandal—oh mystère effroyable, paradoxe, aporie: trop d'exemples, un à chaque pas, aaaaai, larvale simulacrum, tô com fome! however, is an insidious form of fame). Quis ille? Paucis accipe: of a breed holding by ancient roots to the heights of Rotzo (& later marooned in the bogs of the land of the Southern lapwing), Alessandro Zir is PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies by Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada), where Ian Hacking was the external (& eternal) examiner of his thesis. He (the poor Wight of a Dedicator, homem sem profissão, sob as ordens de mamãe) has publications in Brazil, Canada, Chile, England, Germany, Poland, Portugal and USA, including a book (Luso-Brazilian Encounters of the Sixteenth Century, Lanham), and otherwise just "small" works such as chapters of books, literary and movie "criticism", papers, translations, and fragmentary fictional texts. As any good old & new kerosineshchik, he also plays the piano and has experimented with video and other arts. Among his translations (not even mentioned for the Jabuti you never heard about) are books from Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, Georges Simenon, Charles Baudelaire and Petronius (CV in English and Portuguese). Living in a bye corner of the kingdom.

Clarification

About the many quotations you find in these posts: they appear within quotation marks and an author is always identified. In the case of fiction, I might occasionally attribute them directly to the characters. More rarely, I may even use a nickname for the author. In any case I don't bother to give full details for most quotations (page, year, publishing house, even title!), because the purpose of this site is to stimulate people to think, and do their own research. On the one hand, I work here like an "arranger," in the same way James Joyce's narrator was characterized by people like David Hayman. On the other hand, I leave traces for future developments, for my own work and the work of others.