Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
No deal and Kiev besieged
08
Mar
The war remains horrendous and with no prospect of a ceasefire,
the third round of talks yesterday did not even result in a ceasefire for the humanitarian corridor that would allow civilians to leave, especially from regions where the fighting is bloodier. .
Russia has declared a series of hostile actions by the adopted sanctions that strangle its economy, among them: USA, Canada and the 27 countries of the European Union, in alphabetical order the other countries: Australia, Albania, Andorra, United Kingdom, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Micronesia, Monaco, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, San Marino, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan and Ukraine.
Brazil was left out, perhaps because of the president’s speech explaining the reasons for “neutrality” on Sunday, it managed to unite right, center and left: at least a diplomatic discomfort since a large part of the world has already condemned and imposed sanctions on Russia, including China and it would have more reasons than Brazil to join: ideological.
With no prospect of peace now, attention and tensions turn to Kiev, close to the city there are small towns and forests such as the Zalíssia National Park that presented some forms of resistance, however they were rejected with denouncements of violations and war crimes, there was no negotiation that would allow the evacuation of civilians, so many civilians are in the city.
In the evenings, the curfew comes and people go to improvised air-raid shelters, train tunnels, hotel basements, buildings and even churches (the crypts), which are the usual refuges.
Whatever the outcome of this struggle, the Ukrainian people and their president have won respect and admiration around the world, while Putin and Russia will come out as villains, even though there have been peace protests, Putin’s position is strong within Russia and there is a strict control of media and narrative.
Kiev lives on hope and a motivation to defend its people (in the photo a cloud that looks like an angel photographed by resident Oksana Kadiivska, from Kiev’s Darnitsa district).
To those who have some form of belief, there is hope for a better time, also in mentalities, since warmongering, intolerance and little empathy walk the streets.
Covid: Moving average of deaths drops and new concerns
07
Mar
The moving average of deaths by Covid has been falling, but
we must remember that it reached close to 100 when it rose again with Ômicron, although the relaxation in protocols and the high infection of the variant led to a new increase.
The drop is real, but the danger of relaxing the protocols is because the virus is circulating, remember that there are many cases of asymptomatic, the possibility of new strains can worsen the situation again, the WHO itself warns and has been monitoring to be attentive to this alert.
The number of cases per infection also dropped to below 40,000 new cases, although the moving average is falling, a new strain of the virus is not ruled out, the BA.2 variants that are called stealthy, it only allows the positive result to be detected or negative, with the normal PCR test, without distinguishing the variants.
The detection and monitoring of the lines is important to verify and prevent new variants, so far the Omicron variants: BA.1, BA.2, BA.3 and B.1.1.529 according to WHO data are dominant in 99% of cases currently.
Scientists have long warned that the more the virus circulates, the greater the chances of mutations, but the less lethal omicron is not being considered in this case, and this is a concern, in addition to increasing global vaccine coverage (reduces virus circulation) protocols are also responsible for slowing the circulation of the virus, as this strain can also be among those vaccinated.
It is necessary to stop the circulation or you can be surprised in new mutations of the virus.
The dramatic hours of the invasion of Ukraine and the painful situation of that nation are for tomorrow.
The Three Temptations and the Three Scourges
04
Mar
There is a strong connection between the 3 vicious scourges of
humanity: famine, war and pestilence, and the three great temptations of Christ in the desert: food (Jesus in the desert was fed by angels), power and contempt for divine things that can limit us morally. and civilized.
Yesterday, in the conversation between the President of France and Putin, he said: “the worst is yet to come”, the lands of Ukraine are fertile and are major producers of food and Russia of fertilizers.
On Wednesday we begin Lent and perhaps the great trial of man, according to the biblical readings about the temptations of Christ in the desert (Lk 4,1-13) (see the painting by Ivan Kramskoi, sec. 19):
The devil then said to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, command that this stone be changed into bread.” Jesus replied, “The Scripture says, ‘Man does not live by bread alone”.
And (afterward) I said to him: and I said to him: “I will give you all this power and all its glory, because all this has been handed over to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. Therefore, if you bow down before me in adoration, all this will be yours.”
Jesus replied, “The Scripture says, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.
And contempt for the power of evil and not accepting God: Then the devil took Jesus to Jerusalem, placed him on the highest part of the Temple and said to him: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down! For Scripture says, ‘God will command his angels concerning you, to guard you carefully!’ And even more, ‘They will carry you in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’
But Jesus replied, “The Scripture says, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.
This must serve first of all for religious: not to put themselves in the place of God and then for all of humanity to avoid evil is to distribute bread, renounce human power and dominion while maintaining respect for the Other and respecting sanitary rules to avoid let the plague spread.
We cannot (as humanity) break through any of these temptations, but there is hope.
Russia’s Condemnation and Solutions Desert
03
Mar
The UN General Assembly condemned the invasion of Ukraine
by Russia by 141 votes in favor (photo) and 5 against (Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria, in addition to itself), but the list of abstentions is long (35 countries) and include Russia’s traditional allies: China, Venezuela and Cuba.
Brazil voted in favor in contradiction to the position at the OAS and the president’s recent visit.
In the speech of the Chancellor of Russia at the UN 100 countries withdrew from the room in boycotting his speech, in the end the Russian Chancellor said that the economic sanctions of the West are the only possible thing threatening with nuclear weapons any other solution of military support.
Today begins the second round of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in a desert of solutions Ukraine’s non-participation in NATO may be negotiable, but Ukraine has already asked to join the European Union, and Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech was given a standing ovation by the assembly of the EU that discussed including it, but the process is long and perhaps due to the negotiation it is not the time.
A new round of negotiations for peace begins today, an immediate ceasefire must be considered, the desert of ideas is wide, at the moment each country presented only its demands, even China was willing to intermediate, but the two countries continue a direct dialogue.
Crimea is already an annexed territory, handing over the two regions of Donetsk and Luhansk to Ukraine means ceding part of its territory, a unilateral disarmament of Ukraine can be considered if the NATO issue is negotiable by the Russians.
A regional peace that does not raise a new iron curtain seems distant, Putin is weakened within Russia due to sanctions, but the impasse continues, at the world level follows a bipolarization, although Russia diplomatically leaves the UN Assembly very fragile.
It is necessary to rethink world peace, the conflict showed the fragility of the nuclear balance, territorial issues such as Taiwan and part of the former Soviet republics remain unbalanced, and many abstentions hide a veiled support for Russia and its warmongering, from which many countries do not escape of NATO without ceasing to include the United States.
There is a desert of solutions that do not involve the armed solution and the war industry grows.
Ashes of a Wednesday
02
Mar
Christians all over the world celebrate Carnival Wednesday at the
beginning of Lent, the 40 days until Easter, there was no carnival but a feast of flesh and death which is the war in Eastern Europe, we implore the growing involvement of many countries do not create a 3rd. World War.
Several ucranian cities were razed and taken by Russian military forces, to the north the already declared people’s republics of the Donbass (Don River) region Luhansk and Donesk, and now to the south Mariupol and Kherson, in the north there is still resistance in the second largest city in the world. Kharkiv parents.
Russian troops, the biggest military convoy since the second world war, arrived in the vicinity of Kiev, the night there will be extreme fighting, a communication tower was torn down and a Holocaust memorial was hit, showing that the rhetoric of fighting neo-Nazism is just a pretext for war, Ukraine was also attacked by Hitler and the memorial reminded this, of course there are neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine as in many countries.
At the beginning of the pandemic when Easter could not be celebrated in public to avoid agglomerations, we say here that it was a significant Lent, perhaps this one with so many dead we should think no longer about the passion and death of Jesus, but about the agony of our civilization, in the networks the manifestations of hatred and “twisted” are widespread, yes there is any manifestations for peace.
It is also true that all over the world there are manifestations of solidarity for peace, a lot of welcome for refugees whose number can be surprising because a country is completely destroyed and Ukraine is not a small nation, it is one of the biggest countries in Europe, below Russia it is clear.
We can pause to think about our civilizational process in crisis, think about the mothers and children who lose their parents, relatives and friends in the war, the young people who will have no future, the countless deaths, on the Russian side alone there are already more than 6 thousand soldiers who did not return home.
On the ashes we will be able to build a new civilization, without submitting nations to despair and disgrace, without barbaric processes of colonization, including the cultural and, finally, we will be peoples who live in peace, who resolve conflicts at a negotiation table and look at children and old people with appreciation. .
May Ash Wednesday remind us that we are dust and that life has a sacred value.
Avoid the nuclear nightmare
01
Mar
The war in Ukraine is rising in tone and becoming a threat to all
humanity, on the battlefield the Ukrainians present a resistance and heroism that few believed, the pressures on Russia in the UN Security Council and in the UN itself increased, despite many abstentions, such as India and China, the tone is one of condemnation for the principles of sovereignty of nations, the economic sanctions imposed first on Russian millionaires and Putin himself, now for the entire Russian economy are already felt, in the battlefield only increased the tone, and the first attempt at dialogue failed, the issues of each side were enumerated and a next meeting.
The war has already produced an enormous scourge, there are more than 5 thousand Russian soldiers killed in battle and certainly the number of Ukrainians must be greater, in addition to the civilians who pay innocently for the war, there are more than half a million refugees and the entry of the European countries at war create a greater fear: nuclear weapons.
These weapons are in Russia’s exclave in Kaliningrad, a discontinuous territorial part of Russia that lies between Poland and Lithuania where long-range missiles were taken, but now all European airspace is closed to the Russians, as is the passage of the Black Sea. for the Mediterranean that Turkey has closed, this country is a member of the European Union, which begins to get involved militarily in the conflict and Putin’s threat of using nuclear weapons is for this case, analysts say is a bluff, but the risk exists .
A large Russian military convoy of more than 30 km of trucks transport troops, perhaps among them are the feared Chechens who are waging the pitched battle, and Putin’s once enemies now see him as a commander, of Islamic origin now has relative autonomy and depends from Russia.
All over the world and in Russia itself, there are protests calling for an end to the war, there they are harshly repressed, the role of Brazil in voting at the UN for the condemnation of Russia and neutrality in the OAS abstaining from the vote shows the ambiguous character, the cardboard of the president to have gone to visit Russia days before the war was a huge mistake, to say the least.
Brazil depends on fertilizers from Russia, Europe depends on gas and also on grains of which Ukraine is a major producer, the effects on the economy are already being felt: the Russian ruble has fallen by 30% and the dollar begins a fall that will probably not stop, in practice beyond the economy: food and fuel must rise in price vertically.
In the cyber field that Russia is a power, the Anonymous website declared its war, however the entry of Elon Musk (Tesla owner) into the war should be viewed with caution, the second war was a business for many entrepreneurs, even Vokswagem German and American Ford were successful in the post-war period .
Kiev may not fall, but it will be a miracle, the military aid from the West may have arrived late, the symbol that exists in the central square is the Archangel Michael is the angel of battles, for many Christians and Ukrainians are Christians of their own rite, but linked to Rome (incidentally, the Vatican proposed to mediate the dialogue), that the head of the heavenly army finds a now obscure path to peace, and does not allow a scourge and a nuclear night for humanity (in the picture the angel in Kiev’s Central Square).
Covid: slight drop in deaths and protocols
28
Feb
After several highs and stability in the number of deaths, this
weekend saw the first drop in “known cases” as data providers say, as there is no testing policy (in Brazil), so the numbers of infections have also been falling, but for lack of data they are less reliable.
Vaccination of children and the total number in Brazil the country is also advancing, exceeding 80%, with a significant number of booster doses (30%), but protocols continue to be poorly managed: distancing, crowding and correct use of masks cannot be abandoned. and the next measure announced will be the release of masks in “outdoor” environments.
The number of 722 deaths per day is still high, after all they are deaths and not complicated cases or just unvaccinated people, a phase of well-administered protocols would be reasonable to make this number drop quickly and just go to any event and see that there is no more real concern, and in a political year this is not an accepted measure, for example in commerce.
Long-term Covid is not yet clinically understood and the medical recommendation is to always test, it affects children in a special way (uol’s website “viva bem” cites several cases in Brazil) and it is not present in the concerns of public environments, only masks and alcohol gel is the basic thing, there should be testing, in addition to the protocols that should be observed and are not (distancing, for example, is no longer observed in any public environment and there is no supervision).
It is expected that they will stick to the protocols in Brazil and that the moving average of deaths may drop faster than it has been so far.
Tomorrow we will talk about a second scourge of war, as we said at the beginning of the month, plagues, follow or precede wars and then hunger and social chaos will come, it is incredible that someone hopes or desires for a situation of such inhumanity, tomorrow let us return to the topic with the hope that the announced Russia-Ukraine dialogue will bear fruit.
Can the blind lead the blind?
25
Feb
In a conflict situation, the parties involved must be arbitrated by
a third party that is neutral, but does not yet exist.
The escalation of the war between Ukraine and Russia continues this Friday morning, Russian tanks approach Kiev as Ukraine’s defense troops resist as best they can with anti-tank attacks and bridge explosions, such as the one on the Teteriv River, that hamper the arrival of the Russians in Kiev, they also managed to hit some tanks with anti-tank batteries.
The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine informs that the Russian tanks would already be 32 km from the capital, and the objective is the fall of the government and the consequent Russian occupation of the country, the Eastern European allies that are part of NATO: Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia invoke Article 4. of the NATO treaty that any country affected implies a reaction from the 30 member states.
The entry of NATO would be the beginning of a world escalation of the War, certainly China would position itself in favor of Russia while the USA and its allies outside Europe would position themselves in favor of Ukraine, which is already happening, but Brazil remains in a complicated situation due to the visit of the President of the Republic at an inopportune time to Russia, but the vice president has already condemned the Russian action.
In the early hours of this Friday, the situation in Ukraine becomes dramatic with the possibility of an imminent assault by Russian forces on the Ukrainian capital Kiev, without a reaction from the allies, despite having ceded arms to the Ukrainian army, within hours of occupation of the country can be total.
The security council as we reported yesterday has already spoken out against the Russian advance, although Russian rhetoric says that it was only to keep the peace and previously that it would not invade Ukraine, it is already known that they are just war rhetoric.
Who would be the forces, countries and people capable of convening an emergency diplomatic meeting, the sanctions imposed on Russia’s banks hit three of Putin’s allies in this financial market: Gennady Timchenko, Boris Rotenberg and Igor Rotenberg.
Another sanction was the interruption of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that is ready and connects Russia with Germany, Putin accused the coup saying that this will make the price of gas soar and Europe depends on it.
But the central problem remains, who can give light to a dialogue between the blind, as the biblical reading says that alludes to the fact that a blind man cannot guide a blind man, and adds (Lk 6, 42): “how can you say to your brother?: brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when you don’t see the beam in your own eye? Hypocritical! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
It’s not about the supporters of a football match, but about human lives and the rights of peoples and nations that are at stake, there is no supporter that has light but the one that wants peace, the sides in conflict, that I allude to Biden and Putin, must accept some kind of moderation to avoid a world war, or the return of the cold war.
Beyond geopolitics, a world view
24
Feb
The lack of global vision, the idea of a cosmovision that overcomes
blindness has been addressed in several fields of philosophy, comes from the myth of the cave philosophy of Socrates and Plato, where here what men see without being in the light are just shadows of what is really the world, more modernly Heidegger expanded it to the “Weltanschauung” (a kind of worldview or worldview, but every translation is poor), a fundamental view because it stops seeing the world in a bipolar or unipolar way to see it as a everything that includes being, everything that exists beyond a particular way of seeing the world, including nature and the cosmos.
In terms of everyday life, this is fundamental both in the so-called “natural philosophy” (although it is vitiated by contemporary idealism), which includes so many fundamental values, those that already exist in international law (right to life, religious and cultural , etc.) expanding the world of mere ethics and morals to existential values, those where beyond the human condition are the rights of peoples and nations that have a certain way of being and living.
For this, a vision of the world is needed that goes beyond the limits of nationalism and the selfish desire for domination of peoples, decolonization, the limitation of the power of the superpowers and a truly effective role for the UN, which must go beyond the mere Union of Nations, in order to true unity and peace among peoples.
We quote the book The plague of Camus, when he worked clandestinely in the newspaper Combat in the fight against Nazism he wrote> “Letters to a German friend” (1945), which reads: “Letters to a German friend” (1945): there were feelings common issues such as separation or fear, but continued to put personal concerns at the forefront. Nobody had yet truly accepted the disease”, in this case not a plague, but the war, we have already posted here the relationship between them, and now we relate it to the fear that is existential.
No one else but the Ukrainian people feels this today, but Germany and the UK are already involved, the president of Ukraine has already met with Lithuania and Poland, also the Russians, USA and China and all of Europe feel it in a way, but they will say It’s not me, it’s the neighbors, that’s what Camus’ Letter warns, it’s not the neighbor, in addition to the economic sanctions that will already have an impact on the world economy, the expansion of the bipolarization of tension is already spreading little by little: the plague.
The relationship with the virus is similar, it gradually enters, one, two, dozens and then hundreds of contaminated people, until it becomes a war-cide, a general war if not in terms of war, it would be a disaster due to nuclear weapons, in existential and worldview terms, there are no limits to hate speech, a hate is a hate, a not peace.
That it is possible to see beyond conflicts, the existence and the right to life of peoples and nations, and that conflicts remain within the limit of diplomacy (in pictured UN Security Council meeting).
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On War and Blindness
23
Feb
It is always blind or just egocentric that inability to look at the Other,
they want your attention just to demand their gifts and accomplishments, so they are egocentric, but social and cultural blindness is broader, in it lies the inability to accept different cultures and peoples, they say they do not constitute a relevant group or do not have an advanced culture, where the issue of advancement depends only on the referential, the most common in both cases is to claim the other’s gaze on themselves, without there being reciprocal.
The essay on blindness by José Saramago, which we have already posted here, talks about this social blindness seen as a virus that spreads and begins to blind everyone, and which was turned into a film by Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles, with a screenplay by Don McKellar, and we call it our post-essay of Intermittencies of Death, another essay by Saramago.
Camus also described in his novel The Plague, about a disease that hit his native country (he was Algerian) and that saw that there comes a time when the truth seems to offend everyone, even the once sensible: “but there comes a time in the story in which anyone who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death” because it is “an idea that may make you laugh, but the only way to fight the plague is honesty”, this forgotten and even ironic virtue nowadays.
Camus says that overcoming fear and pain “I understood that all the misfortune of men came from not having a clear language. So I decided to speak and act clearly, to put myself on the right path”, this implies not only wisdom and courage, but also overcoming human blindness.
In a more forceful passage the author will say: “Men are more good than bad, and in fact that is not the point. But they are more or less ignorant, and this is what is called virtue or vice, the most desperate vice being that of ignorance, which thinks it knows everything and then authorizes itself to kill”, but then there is hatred and war.
This seems to be a path of no return that we are walking, not just on the lit fuse in Ukraine and Russia, but in all humanity, the blindness of the time of the wars seems to have returned in full and everyone is pointing the finger at each other, and Karl Klaus warned journalists who were also riding the wave: “War, at first, is the hope that we will get along well; then there is the expectation that the other will get screwed; then, the satisfaction of seeing that the other did not do well; and finally, the surprise of seeing that everyone was screwed.
The Bible also does not lack this metaphor: the blind Bartimaeus who begs for sight, for the healing of the man born blind (incredible because he did not have a cognitive system to see) and went to wash himself in the pool of Siloam and the two blind men of Galilee, is It is clear to most theologians that this cure is to see the truth that men refuse to see: Love and Peace.
The regional and national polarizations are gradually becoming global and the feeling that the other is going to “get screwed” is the growing and pure blindness, we will all get screwed.
