Arquivo para February, 2022
Covid: beginning of a possible fall
14
Feb
While the moving average and the number of infections remain at
high levels, there are already signs of a downward trend, 58,056 cases in the last 24 hours, however the number of deaths remains high in most states (880 deaths on average mobile), being in stability only in 4 states: Santa Catarina (SC), Amazonas (AM), Roraima (RR), Goiás (GO), did not disclose TO – Tocantis and DF – Federal Distrit Brasilia, it is necessary to emphasize that given states always refer to “known cases” because there is no policy of mass testing.
Researcher Raphael Guimarães from Fiocruz argues that the adoption of public policies for the collective control of the pandemic, in addition to the hygiene measures that are maintained, can lead the country to control the pandemic in the first half of 2022: “At this moment, Brazil gathers some favorable conditions to block the virus”, the researcher explained to the press.
Maintaining distance, for example, and limiting the number of people in collective events are important when adopted, but what is observed is that distance is not the collective behavior of the population and inspection ceased to exist in most cases, With few exceptions, the result is hospitals that are still full, together with the vaccination of influenza, which is still small, and the vaccination of children who still have only the first dose.
While in Europe the downward trend has already been observed, in Latin America 63% of people are already vaccinated, but coverage remains uneven, data from health agencies in the region (PAHO) indicate that 14 countries have already vaccinated 70% of the population while the others failed to achieve even 40% of this coverage, reports PAHO Director Carissa F. Etienne: “These data are crucial for designing targeted vaccination campaigns, maximizing the impact of doses, and saving lives,” who thanked vaccine donor countries.
Donors who “helped our region secure doses when supplies were limited”, citing donations from the United States, Spain, Canada, Germany and France, which totaled 26 million doses, but expects to reach 100 this early this year. millions of donation doses.
Public policies must be more affirmative and not give up the necessary supervision, so we can imagine a more peaceful second half of the pandemic.
Happy are the peacemakers
11
Feb
The cycle of plague, famine and war in whatever order it has taken
place in history is fed back because the forces that promote peace succumb and among them are also the true spiritual forces that desire the progress of the human soul, which is inseparable from the substantiality of life. , not only human, but of the entire planet.
The 20th century, in addition to the second world war, everyone who lived through it narrates the horror of this period and the deprivations they went through, especially the poorest, was also marked by authoritarian regimes and Franco, Salazar and De Gaule in Europe, the liberation struggles colonial times, and the civil war in Spain, all wrapped up in atrocities and many deaths.
With the end of the pandemic imminent, but it should be noted that it is still advancing in the southern hemisphere, a cycle of social deprivation approaching a war would be the least desirable and there are no diplomatic forces that can avoid it, what would be the consequences of an insanity of this type is for all analysts, unpredictable in proportion and extent.
There are forces that fight for peace in the underground of societies, today’s pronouncement (02/11) by Pope Francis is one of these forces, but even within religions and spiritualities (we have already discussed the true asceticism) there are those who sadistically (because have not lived and read testimonies of the war) are not bothered by this danger.
The pope said forcefully: “war is madness”, and asks for dialogue, several diplomatic attempts have been made but the paths of any bilateral agreement seem to be closed, in a way because the parties do not seem willing to give in on problematic points. (the presence of NATO and Russia itself in Ukraine, for example), the pope also asked that this dialogue be “serious” and that each side really be willing to listen and give in to a possible agreement.
As the hours go by, the attempts seem to be running out, the common citizens of both countries, the poor and the vulnerable, most would never approve of a war, there is hope and faith that they will be minimally spared if the absurdity happens.
On the eve of a football club world, where the dispute ends with the end of a match and in the midst of the Winter Olympics, despite all rivalries, in this case the desirable thing is that in addition to the opposing sides, everything is consummated from a certain end point, and in this case the supporters of two or more teams, is more humane than the insane dispute for territories and warlike advantages of a war with unpredictable consequences.
The biblical liturgy says, in the passage in which Jesus meets his disciples and a crowd on a plain (all on the same plane) of Tire and Sidon (Lk 6:20=21): “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the God’s kingdom! Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled! Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh!” and explains that the rich and powerful once had the solace in this world and the false prophets who are applauded, because they did not have the courage to tell the truth.
Let us hope that a remnant of serenity, tolerance and balance remain in the great world war forces and the war is avoidable.
Hunger, pandemics and wars
10
Feb
Great periods of famine in antiquity were due to wars of conquest
and pillage, the Babylonian, Assyrian period, then the Persians and Greeks and finally the Roman Empire, followed by the period of the Huns and the barbarians of Northern Europe.
The famine in this period was mainly due to looting and the transformation of the dominated peoples into slaves, in Greek Antiquity the idea of the State (city-states) is thought for the first time, but there were still slaves and in the population there was the social difference of the commoners, it was necessary to be “educated” as a citizen and there was no lack of virtues and a certain religiosity.
Also in the Bible history, many facts have been historically proven, a large number of wars, plagues and famine are narrated, especially in the period of Egyptian domination, it is estimated that the period of the flight of the Hebrew people from Egypt took place around 1391 to 1271, other historians suggest 1592 (Jerome) and James Ussher suggested 1571 as an early period.
In this period the famous 10 plagues would have happened and carrying followed by famine in that region, there are many controversies about this story.
The first great famine due to social and climatic crises was dated from 1315-1322 which hit almost all of Europe, a year of a bad spring in 1315, followed by two years of severe drought and heat, in this period there is a great number of wars when kingdoms and grand duchies were established, but then followed the period of the Black Plague (or bubonic) from 1347 to 1351, where it is estimated that 75 to 200 million people died (Table by (Peter Bruegel “The Triumph of Death”, 1562).
A period of famine also happened in Ireland in the period from 1849 to 1852 due to a fungus that annihilated the potato plantation, where food was quite dependent on this product, faced hunger, mortality and a 25% reduction of the population by death. or immigration.
The period of the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, basically for the defense of slavery to keep the south and part of the east in an agrarian model, for the north and west more industrial and that followed a period of industrialization and that makes the States States to emerge as an industrial power in the following period.
Europe in this period kept almost all of Africa (except Liberia and Ethiopia) almost entirely in a colonial model, despite this, at the beginning of the century, a cycle of financial crisis begins and the overcoming of the agrarian model and overcoming the nationalist period with many countries, in especially France, the United Kingdom and Russia with expansionist desires and the fall of the so-called Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Following this period in which the First World War broke out with more than 10 million deaths, the period of the Spanish flu and strong migrations of rural populations to Africa and Latin America, Brazil received, in addition to Italian, German and Spanish, also small populations of Ukraine, Poland and even Japanese.
The financial failure and the bad solution of the first war, in the Versailles treaties were the ferment for the second world war, the famine in Ukraine in the Stalinist period was made in this week’s post and the hunger that remains on the African continent is made in yesterday’s post .
The hunger in World
09
Feb
The Welthungerhife report shows the map of hunger 
in the world, where it is evident the concentration in Africa where the poorest countries are and also remnants of a period of colonization (there is still this presence there) that mattered little to the population.
The countries with the lowest per capita income in dollars are concentrated there: Somalia: $953, Central African Republic $996, Republic of Congo $1203, Mozambique $1338, Niger: $1503, Malawi $1503, Liberia $1623 and Madagascar $1630 , there are also wars over the division of territories, diamonds and the extraction of minerals:, as is the case with the phosphate ore in which they are involved: Spain, Morocco and Mali, but also Western Sahara rebels fight for independence in territory claimed by Morocco .
The war that has economic interests and neo-colonization behind has always been present there, Somalia is a typical example of this as it led the country to even greater misery and the Pandemic made the crisis more alarming.
There are still no conclusive studies on the real impact of the pandemic in this territory, a recent report called “The State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the world (SOFI) of 2021 trans some efforts of United Nations agencies to map and outline a policy and estimates that a tenth of the global population, estimated at around 811 million people in the world are undernourished in this period of the Pandemic, which shows an alarming picture.
A war of global proportions could further aggravate this situation, also more egalitarian health policies (a distribution of vaccine proportional to the number of inhabitants, for example) are necessary measures to prevent that, in addition to poverty, the number of deaths continues to grow in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Little history of Ukraine
08
Feb
In the 3rd century the region was inhabited by the Goths (250-375),
the region was called Aujo, there was a Cherniacove culture there, the Ostrogoths settled in 350 with the influence of the Huns, to the north there was a people who had a Kievan culture (then later Kyiv or Київ).
The origin of today’s Ukraine is in Slavic tribes that arrived in this territory in the 5th and 6th centuries, in the 9th century Viking invaders arrived, called Varigi, the Mongols invade in the 13th, King Igor I with a young Varigi teenager named Olga united the peoples, this kingdom called Rus had Kiev as its capital, the king will be killed and Olga takes power with great vigor and courage, and dominates the peoples, Olga will occupy a special role and then convert to Christianity with great work in favor of the poor .
Olga is a separate chapter, after being a strong queen and to a certain extent cruel to her enemies, her son takes over the kingdom and she converts to Christianity, built churches, carried out evangelization campaigns, but was unable, however, to convert her son. Sviatoslav (Svyatoslav I), helped the poor and sick people so much that he became a saint recognized by the Orthodox Church in the year and by the Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite, his son did not convert, but his grandson Vladimir I converted and also was declared a saint.
The Variagi commanded several strategic points in Russia and explored transport and trade, so during the 10th and 11th century, the territory of Ukraine became the center of a powerful and prestigious state in Europe, called at the time Kiev Russia (recall was the kingdom of Rus) and were also the basis for many subsequent Slavic nations (such as Greater Bulgaria and Belarus, for example), in addition to the Russians themselves who were then just scattered Slavic tribes.
The state was conquered by Casimirio IV of Poland, while the heart of ancient Kievan Russia passed to the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but the marriage of Grand Duke Jagellan of Lithuania to Queen Hedwig of Poland, changed control of the sovereigns. Lithuanians to most of the Ukrainian territory and thus returned to Ukraine.
We take a leap into history, which is also rich in the medieval period, a civil war that lasted 4 years after the Russian revolution (1917) in 1921 Ukraine becomes a Soviet socialist republic, with purges and land grabs that Ukrainian farmers refused to deliver, Ukraine is a major grain producer.
The Stalinist period and the Nazi occupation of its territory, which caused more than 10 million deaths between 1930 and 1945, Ukraine resisted Russian collectivization and Nazi invasion, Ukraine in the Soviet period was responsible for ¼ of Soviet production in the agricultural sector producing 40 million cereals, a record for the time.
Finally, the problem of the Crimean territory, which has its origins in the war of 1853 and 1856 where there was a conflict between Russia and an alliance formed by France-United Kingdom-Kingdom of Sardinia (today part of Italy), in 2014 the war is reborn with the takeover by Russia, it should be clarified that there was a contract between Ukraine and Russia in a kind of leasing for the concession of the Balkan port where Russia’s largest maritime fleet is located, in Sevastopol, which was thus an independent territory of Ukraine.
Thus, among the most absurd analyzes is the one that says that Ukraine would be unviable as an independent state, it is weakened by an internal war and under Russian pressure.
Pandemic increases and countries do not care
07
Feb
The news is from the BBC in Portuguese several countries
(United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Greece and Sweden), tired of the change in routine, many countries, environments and even sanitarians relaxed in control because the Isolation is indeed difficult, in Brazil the number of deaths has reached thousands.
The pressure is actually political and economic, and the authorities will find themselves under pressure to reopen the economy and thereby free up environments for commerce and social interaction, but the economic cost can also be serious with the number of people who will leave, even Even if it is for less serious cases, it is visible in some sectors, in the case of Brazil, that many employees contract Covid in the Omicron variant, and in this case they must leave for at least 10 days, but here it was also reduced to 5, that is. , more contagion.
Last Tuesday (1/2) the WHO declared its concern about this relaxation, but European commissioners and health experts rushed to say that the end of the pandemic is near, there are small signs that the peak (we are still at it) could attenuate, but it is too early to infer that we can relax, the normal thing would be to wait for the low curve (graph).
According to Agência Brasil, Brazil Agency of Health recorded 197,442 thousand cases on Friday and 1,308 deaths in 24 hours, this amounts to 26,473,273 cases and 631,802 deaths, due to the high number it is very unlikely that the cases are just unvaccinated or children.
The vaccination of childrens for the most part is still the first dose, and in many states today they will be back to school, they could at least wait a little, but countries that return to work need to have a place to leave their children, so the motivation is also economic and not really a concern for the children.
It is very likely that the Pandemic will enter a cooling cycle, perhaps it will not disappear completely, but care should be maintained and this is not what is observed, except in some Asian countries where they seek to raise tolerance to zero, an example is the restrictions of the Winter Olympics on Pequim and also the Club World Championship held in Abu Dhabi that are in the news all over the world, just make a comparison of the measurements there and the measurements here.
Moving forward to true thinking
04
Feb
No thought is complete if it does not have a spirituality, what modernity
calls subjectivity but which is separate from objectivity as is typical of dualism, creates two realities and neither is part of the whole.
Contemplating the whole means considering the depth of our Being and understanding that we are part of an immense universe full of mysteries, and that our soul yearns for infinity and that is where a true spirituality walks, which is not separated from the substantiality of life (the which is called objectivity in modernity, which is just the part) and that without it we do not contemplate and live the whole, we live a segmented life.
To replace it with a small part, small vices and pleasures, is to walk in frivolity, in superficiality, no true asceticism does without a spirituality, and there is no spirituality without contemplating the human soul as part of the whole of our Being, thus surpassing anthropotechnics and to arrive at an onto-anthropotechnic that looks at things and also at the soul.
Many exercises, from the physical to the spiritual, are done seeking this asceticism, at this point Sloterdijk is right almost all of them are “despiritualized” but his explanation is incomplete because there is no eschatology in their spheres, this reasoning is done especially in Spheres II, which is the whole towards which we walk, it is possible to go to Him.
Yes, it is possible if we move towards deeper waters, seek the completeness of our substantiality, overcoming anthropocentrism and understanding the Earth and the Universe as our home, our abode, but mainly walking and casting the nets for deeper thoughts and spiritualities, there is at high sea, even if raging, what our soul longs for: the eternal.
The biblical passage Lk 5:4-5 says, right after Jesus taught the crowds and Peter (Simon) complained that they had not caught anything, Jesus answers him: “when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon: “Go into deeper waters, and cast your nets for fishing”, Simon replies that he worked all night and caught nothing, but obeyed and cast the nets.
The result was a great fishery. Here, the substantiality of the food and also the spirituality of advancing “to deeper waters” are worthy.
Different reactions to dominant thinking
03
Feb
In countries that were colonies of Europe, the term decolonization
emerged, which differs from decolonization because it penetrates precisely into the dominant thought and epistemology (some authors will call it epistemicide), which is not the simple liberation of domination, but also the resurgence of cultures. subalterns.
Thus, authors appeared in Africa (such as Achiles Mbembe), in Latin America (Aníbal Quijano and Rendón Rojas y Morán Reyes), as well as authors of original culture such as indigenous peoples (Davi Kopenawa and Airton Krenak), but a dialogue with European authors is possible. open to this perspective like Peter Sloterdijk (speaks of Europe as the Empire of the Center) and Boaventura Santos (speaks of epistemicide and also some concepts of decolonization), there are many others of course.
Christian culture must also be highlighted in these cultures, seen by many authors as a collaborator of colonialism, one cannot deny the historical perspective and also the doctrine that is the liberation of peoples and a culture of fraternity and solidarity, it is also a minority today in Europe and persecuted in many cases.
Among the Europeans who defend a new humanism, or a humanism in fact, since the Enlightenment and materialist theories failed to contemplate the human soul as a whole, and are therefore a one-legged humanism, among the Europeans I highlight Peter Sloterdijk and Edgar Morin, the first who defends the concept of community as a “protective shield” capable of saving our species, and the second, a planetary humanism, where man is a citizen of the world and diversities are respected.
Both consider the proposals populist, it is good to know that there are left and right, they must lose with the current crisis and global consumerism depends on an atmosphere of “frivolity” or superficiality that humanity will be forced to rethink, we will not go back to that what we consider stable, the original writers themselves, as Davi Krenak highlights in several interviews, what we want to return to was not good, there was no real happiness and well-being in what was considered normal.
As an aspect of the construction of thought, in Sloterdijk I highlight anthropotechnics, for him modernity was a de-verticalization of existence and a de-spiritualization of asceticism, while the knowledge and wisdom proposed in antiquity leave the empirical and the deceptive to go towards the eternal and of the true, as religion does not exist for him, it would be a movement of wisdom and knowledge, and not just an asceticism of exercises, where the immortal soul was exchanged for the body.
In Edgar Morin’s perspective, it is the hologrammatic perspective that can give man a vision of the whole, now fragmented by the specialization and particularity of each branch of science, a paradox of the complex system in which man is a part that must be integrated into the whole, where “not only the part is in the whole, but in which the whole is inscribed in the part”, the pandemic taught us this, but the lesson was still poorly learned, in the middle of the pandemic crisis it was decided that everything is released and there is no protocol for protection of all in each (each part), and there is no co-immunity.
Scientific truth and humility
02
Feb
From the Copernican revolution, with the discovery of Galileo
and with the scientific advances it should be clearer, even more now with the discoveries of unknown forces of the universe and with the new telescopic James Webb, it should be more and more clear that the man does not he is the center of the universe, although he is capable of doing a lot of damage if he does not put aside the anthropocentric and enlightened vision that places him as an “all-powerful”.
Schopenhauer also followed, one of the first to criticize the Kantian “thing-in-itself” and his metaphysical system of putting in its place a “Will” (which is the same thing as when man was placed as the center of the universe and the earth where its center inhabits), opened a new philosophical perspective where nothing exists on purpose, everything and we are all consequences of an endless system, with determinations and goals, and that we are responsible for one fate hurting the other, we are hurting ourselves.
In this way Schopenhauer wanted to represent in a compassionate way that he can represent in himself the pain of another, and this would be a great step towards peace, although the phrase of this philosopher is capital: “Man is properly speaking, an animal that attacks” (Arthur Schopenhauer), which goes back to the “wolf man of man” and justifies an aggressive state.
The well-known foundation of Kantian ethics is the categorical imperative (act in such a way as to be a model for others) that serves to guide the actions of subjects, and this in turn is the principle of a “factum” of reason, which is part of the world. numenic, which manages to influence (not in principle sense) the phenomenal world, in order to guide the actions of the rational subject in a universal and necessary way, Schopenhauer at this point makes an important criticism, although it is not enough for a deep criticism of this ethics.
For him, the Kantian ethical program is meaningless because it has as its ultimate foundation of action a metaphysical aspect that disqualifies actions that come from any other instance than reason, the relationship that exists between reason and metaphysics (see that the Kant’s metaphysics is not part of the world, but it is neither theological nor divine), is that rational subjects (transcendental in relation to objects) share the unknowable, since they are able to think about metaphysical things, but not know them.
Numenic refers to what is known without being part of the senses, it is a criticism of empiricism but does not recognize the phenomenal (which manifests itself as a thing).
This gap where there is no mystery, it is natural that it has distanced itself from divine and theological transcendence, but it is an objectified reason, without subjective aspects, that is, proper to the subject, and Schopenhauer correctly points to the pain of the other who is capable of conceiving. , but this principle of compassion will not have a development, other phenomenological authors deal with the question of the Other, and this is a principle for the critique of reason.
Deeper look at the war
01
Feb
In times of crisis, the most difficult thing is to understand the
depth and extent of the crisis: social, political, ecological and human, the pademia has accelerated to greater levels and there are no great analyzes or thoughts that take into account the reality, in fact, a lot of guesswork and sophism, easy ways out of complex problems, the worst of which a possible war.
Karl Kraus complained about the journalism and the mentality of his time about the possibility of a new war, which in fact happened the First World War, in his irony he expressed himself like this: “there are superficial imbeciles and deep imbeciles”, and little by little the war of made.
The crisis between Russia and the United States returns to the tension over which humanity lived the entire period of the Cold War, which had apparently moved away, but we remember the 2014 crisis in Ukraine itself, where Crimea returned to Russian possession, the various crises with Iran and Afghanistan, the crisis with North Korea and the permanent crisis with China, which ranges from the commercial field to the military.
In the midst of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, already as serious as the Spanish flu and the black plague, covid 19 is now approaching an endemic disease, a disease with which we will have to live, but it is good to remember that care must be maintained, and health authorities cannot lose sight of control and preventive measures.
Peter Sloterdijk and Edgar Morin demand a greater depth in the look at the humanitarian crisis, they already complained before the pandemic, certainly now they have an even more sharp and critical look at the superficiality with which we deal with such serious issues and in need of a deep analysis, right now: a possible war.
Looking at the analysis, it seems that the media is interested in possibilities of victory for one of the sides, in strategies and positions that each side can take, a possible cut in Russian gas that supplies Europe that is in the middle of winter, but the humanitarian and global consequences for everyone, with greater gravity for Russia and Ukraine of course, it can have consequences that make the planet itself and civilization unrecognizable if the war alarm sounds, everyone will lose and the poorest will be taken to total penury with rising prices and food shortages.
Yes, the negotiation stages continue, Russia reaffirms that it will not invade, but the accumulation of forces around Ukraine is an escalation proportional only to the period of the second world war, the positioning is also strategic for a war, the UN Security Council which in the relay process now has Russia in the presidency, meets to try to make the diplomatic path viable.
Who will give in, what is it possible for each side to give in, NATO does not make Ukraine a member country and Russia stops supporting the forces that act internally in Ukraine, but the reasoning that there is a planetary ideological polarization cannot be left aside , the origin of the tension is this polarization and it is present today in every country, a new culture of peace is necessary for humanity, and this depth of reflection cannot be left aside.
