Arquivo para a ‘Jornais on-line’ Categoria
Other wars and heroes
16
Jun
Africa lived through a long period of colonization that it would not be an
exaggeration to call genocide or at least the erasure of a culture and an imperiocentric worldview, in the sense that every idea of liberation in Africa is accompanied by some form of epistemicide, which is the imposition of a worldview on the most unarmed nations that don’t share in the wealth.
I came across the book I got from a friend: “História Geral da África – África desde 1935” (General History of Africa – Africa since 1935) (2011, Cortez and UNESCO). I was careful to check the publishers, who are independent, and the translation was done by the Center for Afro-Brazilian Studies at the Federal University of São Carlos, where I studied and later taught.
Ali A. Mazrui was a Kenyan professor and political writer, who died in 2014. His assistant was Christophe Wondji, who died in 2015, a university professor from Ivory Coast.
Chapter 21 of the book, written by Ali A. Mazrui himself. Mazrui himself and colocabolaradores, I find a definition of the African soul in the form of a poem: “Nous sentons [we feel], donc nous pensons [therefore we think], donc nous sommes [therefore we are] (Mazrui, 2011, 763), the highlights are by the translators, we translate from it: we feel (perception) precedes we think (logos) which precedes we are (ontological), and with this we understand African ontology as perception and I would add hay intuition maybe fenomenology.
The book sets out an in-depth history of post-35 Africa, as well as part of colonized Africa (apartheid, for example, lasted until 1994) and there is a gap from 2015 onwards; in the previous period there would have been an analysis of the Kingdom of Congo, which had already been colonized since 1942.
I’ll make another point: “The colonialism of maintaining order was, in essence, a substitute for the colonialism of development. Belgian colonialism in Zaire (today’s DR Congo) was only marginally better than Portuguese colonialism in Angola” (Mazrui, 2011, p. 772), which we want to analyze.
Initially colonized by Portugal, the Republic of Zaire under Belgian rule (hence Belgian Congo) after revolts had its name and constitution changed to the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1971 to 1997. It is the second largest country in Africa (Algeria is the first) after Sudan was divided creating South Sudan, which is also experiencing a war and there are others in Africa.
Zaire suffered a military coup in 1965 led by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, after a crisis known as the Congo crisis (1965), democratically elected Patrice Lumumba did not take office, becoming the Democratic Republic of Congo, but Mobutuism became known for its nepotism, corruption and messianism and was deposed in 1995 by Laurent-Desiré Kabila, politically considered ambiguous, he is an ally of the Tutsis who are enemies of the Hutus.
The regime of the Democratic Republic of Congo is semi-presidential and the current president is Félix Tshiseked, The country will be elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2023, and the prime minister is Judith Tuluka, the country has enormous mineral wealth including the famous rare earths, important for today’s technology (columbite tantalite), and among the conflicts, the northeastern province of North and South Kivu, which involve both political and ethnic issues.
Today a young man from Kivu, Floribert Bwana Chui (pictured at a school for peace), who opposed the delivery of spoiled food to the population, died under torture and refused to be corrupted and to abandon his beliefs and values, will be proclaimed “servant of God” in a ceremony at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, with the presence of Congolese Bishop Willy Ngumbi and other cardinals of the Congo, and the presence of the Cardinal for the Causes of Saints, Marcello Semeraro.
MASRUI, Ali A., WONDJI, C. (Eds) (2011) História Geral da África: África desde 1935, v. 8, 2a. ed. Brazil, São Paulo: Cortez Editora, Brasilia: MEC/UNESCO.
Critical moment for peace
02
Jun
Although there is always talk of peace negotiations, the war already involves
countless countries, both in the Arab world in the Israel vs. Hamas conflict, and in Europe over Ukraine vs. Russia, where NATO military forces and Russia’s allies are increasingly involved.
Richard Barrons, former British military chief, said: “Russia is taking territory, but at an unsustainably high cost” and it would take 91 years to create the “buffer zone” it wants, a strip inside Ukrainian territory, with losses of more than 1 thousand soldiers a day.
An operation at the end of the month called “Pavutyna” (spider’s web) in Ukraine wiped out 41 Russian strategic bombers that could carry nuclear warheads, but Russian retaliation is increasing and hitting civilian targets, using 117 small drones (photo).
There is a large military concentration in the south of Belarus, a Russian ally, NATO suspects it is to invade one of its allies, Russia has lost the support of Serbia, which was thought to be a pro-Russian government, and Germany has enormously increased its military apparatus.
In the Middle East conflict, it’s no different. In addition to the Arab world, Israel’s allies are calling for an end to the conflict and condemning Israel’s increasingly inhumane actions.
Israel, through Benjamin Netanyahu, has talked several times in the last month with the Trump administration about carrying out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying that it would take 7 hours just to just to prepare every attack in detail and arm its defense, Trump is against it.
In Eastern Europe, the problem is negotiations. Russia wants between 20% and 22% of the Ukrainian territory conquered in the current war, and what makes it difficult is the growing war environment.
Manuel Furriela, who holds a master’s degree in interior law, told the press that “it’s very difficult to negotiate with a conflict going on”, stressing the importance of a ceasefire for talks to move forward.
There is always hope for peace for people with common sense and only those who know the horrors of war can imagine the disaster of a nuclear escalation in the current period and know that there is an urgent need for a rapid response from peace negotiators to the current situation.
Blog surpasses 100 thousand readers in may
01
Jun
This blog surpassed the mark of 100 thousand readers in May.
On March 16, 2010, I wrote the first post of this blog about the iPad, even though the first iPad was launched only on April 3, 2010, thus our blog anticipated its success, even though it is critical of the company’s business model and uses Androids.On August 27, 2010, I added the first image to the blog talking about the Diáspora* network, whose development is now on a new link, but the project has not taken off yet.
In the same year, the internet was about to reach 2 billion users, we announced the arrival of the 4G model in the USA, pointing out that LTE technology was compatible with GSM,The LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology also has the advantage of being fully compatible with GSM, and the release of the book Practical Open Source for Libraries by Nicole C. Engard.
We never forget social concern, the fight in Brazil for the Ficha Limpa model against the corrupt, we commented on and popularized the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, Elinor Ostrom (2009), and her model of organizations managing common goods (Governing of Common), and we seek in various ways how to truly and directly confront poverty. I thank the readers; there is no media concern here (in the sense of personal promotion), I seek to look at all sides of social and political problems and to seek the truth.
I renew my commitment to a universal and fraternal humanity with respect for differences.
War and the lack of asceticism
26
May
The bombings in Gaza and Kiev show that we are far from any reasonable and
civilized solution to put an end to two massacres (and not just one) that continue with ideological and even religious justifications, which seem to put our concept of humanism in crisis.
It was in Elmau Castle, built in 1916, that Peter Sloterdijk took part in a conference on Heidegger at the end of the 20th century, where he spoke about the failure of human domestication and shocked part of the audience (according to him, the philosophers and not the theologians) by suggesting that something be done to the human body structure to tame it.
The castle was renovated after a fire in 2005 and reopened as a luxury hotel and spa in 2007, but that conference resulted in many debates, including Sloterdijk’s book “Rules for the human park: a response to Heidegger’s letter on humanism”.
There, Sloterdijk seems to have made a prophecy when he spoke of the incapacity for “human domestication” and that humanisms were nothing more than “a melancholic-hopeful enthusiasm for the civilizing and humanizing power of classical reading – if, for a moment, we take the liberty of conceiving Cicero and Christ side by side as classics” (Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 16).
Although Sloterdijk justifies his position using the Foucauldian question of biopower, he writes of the cohabitation and training of animals and human beings: “Only in a few places has the veil of philosophical silence been torn over the house, the men and the animal as a biopolitical complex, and what was then heard were dizzying references to problems that are, for the time being, too complex for human beings” (Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 36).
His disciple Byung-Chul Han, however, goes beyond this limit by proposing the psycho-political, which is submerged in Sloterdijk’s thinking, writing about the inhibiting and disinhibiting influences we suffer: “part of the credo of humanism is the conviction that human beings are ‘influential animals’ and that it is therefore imperative to provide them with a certain type of influence” (Sloterijk, 2000, p. 17) and this is what domestication refers to.
He recalls that the Romans considered humanitas to be indispensable to the “culture of the masses in the theaters of cruelty” (p. 19) and with this they placed a bestializing culture on the masses, but there is Heidegger’s idea of the clearing (in the photo of the lighthouse on the island of Mallorca).
Sloterdijk’s criticism of Heidegger because “he explains from his work Being and Time turns against humanism not because it has overvalued humanitas, but because it has not given it a high enough value” (p. 24), and sees it as an old practice “the most obstinate and pernicious of European metaphysical practices: defining the human being as an animal rationale. In this interpretation of the essence of man, he continues to be understood as an animalitas expanded by spiritual additions” (p. 25), and this is where asceticism comes in.
Thus, Heidegger’s statement: “it is as if the essence of the divine were closer to us than the disconcerting essence of the divine was closer to us than the disconcerting essence of living beings”, and thus an inseparable division between the animal and the human being to ‘prevent any ontological communion between the two’ (p. 25).
However, asceticism is possible, Byung-Chul Han rediscovers it through interiority, through what Hannah Arendt and some mystics call the Vita Contemplativa, and which Sloterdijk also touches on at a glance when talking about “theory” and meditation in domestic leisure: “as it appears in its old definitions, it resembles a serene gaze out of the window: it is above all a matter of contemplation, whereas in the modern age – since knowledge has come to mean power – it has unmistakably taken on the character of work” (p. 37).
Sloterdijk, P. (2000) Regras para o parque humano: uma resposta à carta de Heidegger sobre o humanismo. Transl. José Oscar de Almeida Marques. São Paulo: Estação liberdade.
Remaining in peace and love
22
May
In the stressful´s situations, uncontrollable and challenging situations arise,
the normal thing is for us to get on the “bandwagon” and what is outside passes into our interior, so being “inside” and cultivating a healthy and non-alienating interiority, because it is unaware of the dangers, is fundamental in a crisis.
The climate is already in place, it’s not the distant wars but how they splash down on souls in disarray, tormented by “monsters” like Don Quixote’s windmills, which don’t just mean a specific moment in society, but a set of ideas, values and social situations.
It’s also like that in personal life, someone who looks after the sick, drug addicts, the poor and even a wake, needs people who keep calm and point the way, in fact a path, in situations that are not very comfortable.
Querela pacis by Erasmus of Rotterdam, who saw a “religious” war between the kingdoms of his time, The Girl Who Stole Books by Markus Zuzak, which portrays the climate of an era, and now the reissue of Crooked Cross by author Sylvia ‘Sally’ Carson, are examples of people who were “outside” the climate of the time and were able to point out non-warlike paths to their contemporaries.
How these hearts, in the midst of tribulations, manage to remain serene, not cold, but on the contrary very suffering, but they maintain their calm, their humanity and their love for their contemporaries.
Absence in the oriental spirit pointed out by Byung-Chul Han, hope in the Christian spirit and empathy in a teleological sense are means that do not resolve conflicts, because they are the ones that order them to go backwards, but they point to a path in which they safeguard the human.
Picasso’s painting Guérnica (photo) in the midst of the Spanish Civil War manages to look at that despair of an irrational and inhuman battle and give a breath of humanity and awakening.
Hannah Arendt, in a dialogue with St. Augustine, in her doctoral thesis “The Concept of Love in St. Augustine”, makes one of the statements about a passage that is often proclaimed without due depth: “They did not understand […] that ‘Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you’ was in no way susceptible to different interpretations depending on whether they belonged to such and such a nation. Indeed, if this principle is applied to the love of God, then it is the end of all shameful action; if it is applied to one’s neighbor, it is the end of all crime.” (Arendt, 1973, p. 9) and I would add of all war.
Arendt, H. (1997) O conceito de amor em Santo Agostinho. Lisbon, PT: Instituto Piaget.
What precedes a war
21
May
The 2015 Politzer Prize went to the American writer Anthony Doerr,
whose novel All the Light We Cannot See takes up the question of the Second World War, and what happened in Germany in the period before the rise of birth, which was later adapted into a Netflix series.
I prefer the novel, many of these authors were based on documents, letters and eyewitness accounts from eight decades ago, films such as Schindler’s List (1993), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), The Fall – Hitler’s Last Days (2004), based on the work of Joachim Fest, author of a biography of Hitler and refused to enlist in the Hitler Youth.
Personally, I liked the movie “The Girl Who Stole Books”, written by Markus Zusak, which was adapted for the cinema in 2013. In fact, it was the movie that made me go back to the book, which at first I found too depressing because of the death that surrounds the character Lisel Meminger, but then I understood that it was a resource that the author used to create the atmosphere created by Nazism.
I would also like to highlight the works of Hannah Arendt, who thinks philosophically about the issue.
The American novelist E.L. Doctorow, who wrote Ragtime, Billy Bathgate – the Gangster Boy once said: “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist can tell you what it felt like.” We’ve already posted here about novels read by statesmen.
A book from the period of Germany in a Nazi crescendo, Crooked Cross, by Sylvia “Sally” Carson, an English author who was inspired by friends in Bavaria in the early 1930s, has been reprinted by British publisher Persehone Books, and has been highlighted in the press (BBC, Correio Braziliense and others).
The book had already pointed out the horrors of the Nazis, but with Carson’s untimely death in 1941 it fell into oblivion, but reading it you can foresee the “sensation” of Germany with Nazism on the rise.
The story tells of a Christmas gathering of the Hans and Rosa Kluger family with their three grown-up children: Lexa, Helmy and Erich, with the father without a salary from the post office, the children without a job and Erich with his seasonal job as a ski instructor.
Erich quits his job and feels “hypnotized” by Hitler, Carson writes:
“He had not been warned of the destruction that would be caused by the release of that power for which he now cried out in a voice as hoarse as the others…. Hitler was to them like a splendid liberator; a god… Their arms stretched out in the same sign – a forest of brown arms outstretched with their fingers pointing at the little god with a toothbrush moustache. Heil Hitler!”
Periods of crisis can lead us to these false liberators, “saviors of the fatherland” and captivate young people into real genocide: war, hatred and the horrors that follow it.
Periods of crisis can lead us to these false liberators, “saviors of the homeland” and captivate young people into real genocide: war, hatred and the horrors that follow it.
Peace requires people and leaders who don’t get caught up in the climate of war in the environment and who inwardly are truly people of peace, the crisis around them must be analyzed with care and serenity.
Carson, Sally, (2025) Crooked Cross. UK: Persephone Books.
New pope: Leo XIV
08
May
The American Robert Francis Prevost, who was auxiliary bishop of Peru
and prefect of the Bishops’ Dicastery, was appointed pope by the Conclave of Cardinals, and adopted the name Leo XIV. He was linked to Pope Francis and, although American, he is very attached to Peru, where he spent more than 15 years in the city of Chiclayo, working with the poor.
He was born in Chicago, but also has Peruvian citizenship and sees himself as a missionary.
He was an Augustinian friar by formation, that is, religious who follow the doctrine of Augustine of Hippo, a Christian theologian and philosopher from the 5th century AD, and he quoted Augustine’s phrase: “for you I am a bishop and with you I am a christian”.
Dialogue with the world, progress on social issues and promoting dialogue for peace.
Today is also Victory Day, which defeated Nazism in Europe 80 years ago.
Truce, Victory Day and Conclave
05
May
Three events will be important this week: Russia’s proposal for a
three-day truce, with the commemoration of Victory Day (or V-E Day) on March 8, while Ukraine proposes a minimum of 30 days, the Russian tradition of a military parade on the 9th and in the West some countries commemorate with symbolic parades and veterans of the war (now very few, since they are 80 years old).
Several governments have been invited by the Kremlin, the Brazilian government has already sent some leaders and President Lula will attend, China with Xi-Jinping has also confirmed his presence and obviously the concern for security is one of the reasons for the truce, but it could be an opportunity for negotiation and governments close to Russia could also put pressure on.
The attacks have continued to be bloody in the days leading up to the truce, with Ukraine reporting troop deployments in the Brest region of Belarus, close to Poland, but Putin, as always, has been dismissive and says that the aim is to secure a broker in Sumy, much further east in Ukraine.
The Houthis launched a missile that fell near Ben Gurion International Airport in the Tel Aviv region on Sunday (4/05), local police chief Yair Hezroni demanded a video with the airport control tower in the background (photo above) showing the crater tens of meters wide and deep that has formed, peace remains difficult in the region.
This week sees the start of the conclave of cardinals of the Catholic Church to elect a new pope to lead Catholics around the world. The name con-clave (indicates with a key) is used because they are locked in with speeches and discussions about the future of the church and scrutiny until the name of the new pope emerges.
Some well-known cardinals, such as the Hungarian Petér Erdö and the archbishop of Guine Robert Sarah, are mentioned for their in-depth knowledge of theology and are more conservative, for the wing that is more open to dialogue and “pastoralist”, which is how it is called within the church, that is, that seeks out society and its problems, along the lines of Francis, such as the Filipino Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle and the Italian Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s current Secretary of State.
There is a saying that whoever becomes pope at the Conclave becomes a cardinal, that is, the election almost always comes as a surprise, Francis’ for example was not expected, and the cardinals are looking for a name that is conciliatory, that fights for peace and that maintains the unity of the church.
Blackout in Europe was a rare phenomenon
28
Apr
The blackout that occurred today (04/28), which affected
communications and urban mobility (subways, trains and even traffic due to traffic lights), led to comments in the early hours about sabotage, attacks even on official public bodies.
However, Portugal’s electricity grid operator, REN, claims that the blackout was the result of a fault in the Spanish grid, may be related to a rare atmospheric phenomenon called “induced atmospheric vibration”, which led to variations in high-voltage lines (photo) due to high temperature variations in inland Spain.
We thought this explanatory post was necessary to avoid false speculation, fake-news and many untrue versions of what actually happened.
The Spanish newspaper El País has stated that Incibe (the National Cybersecurity Institute) is checking whether the power outage was a cyberattack, and Portugal’s Minister of State and Territorial Cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida, has also spoken about this possibility, but there are no facts.
The numerous comments and alarms were due to the fact that such a widespread power outage is very difficult to happen and a combined population of 50 million, of course, affected a lot of people.
Authorities from Spain’s electricity grid have stated that “plans to restore the electricity supply have been activated in collaboration with companies in the sector following the zero outage in the peninsular system”, and that the restoration could take up to 6 hours (which would have already been completed), but there is still no information at this time.
By the evening, much of the blackout had settled down and the power had returned to normal.
The necessary truce
28
Apr
The internal difficulties of a war are no different external ones: death,
destruction and the lack of a minimum of miseri-cordis (a humble heart capable of feeling the pain of the Other), among the various wars on the planet, two point to this “exhaustion” of internal forces.
Russia continues to destroy military and civilian targets, stations and civilian targets are not spared in a war without truce (the Easter war failed) also in the Middle East, the destruction of military targets does not spare civilian targets civilian targets, a real humanitarian crisis.
The threat between Iran and Israel is growing, but there is a negotiation with the Hamas group for a five-year truce and this could could make a return to serenity possible in that region. also follows a similar path, serious threats and at the same time possibilities of a truce in the diplomatic field.
Zelensky, Trump, Macron and Starmer (UK) (photo) met at the Vatican during the met at the Vatican during Pope Francis’ funeral ceremony and then Zelensky and Trump spoke personally.
The consequences are already visible in the military field: a growing armament and a threat to world stability in both the structural structural (economic and humanitarian) as well as in the political field, the weapons used for political for the political struggle are no longer proposals and speeches, they go beyond the field of of legality, justice and common sense.
A truce can restore the seriousness and serenity of the political leaderships, they must be open to sincere dialogue, to fair and reasonable proposals, eliminating the “enemy” by force is the path to more humanitarian losses and authorization for authoritarian regimes.
Imperial potentials parade their technological and military prowess: ever more powerful, threatening planes and warships with greater destructive power, an insanity.
In the midst of so many threats, there are voices capable of making appeals for peace, diplomats are entering the field and trying to negotiate, a truce that can be seen on the horizon would help to cool down the warmongers a little, nobody wins a war today, humanity as a whole will lose and the death of innocent civilians will be inevitable.
Economic warfare doesn’t help either, it’s not a path to anything, major agreements on trade and the exchange of goods between nations are part of a globalized world where only national relations are no longer possible, neither in economics nor in politics.
All that remains is for a truce to be brokered, albeit under enormous suspicion, to help calm spirits and give peace a boost.
