Milton Babbitt died aged 94
Milton Babbitt, who has died aged 94, was one of the most eminent, and controversial, American composers of the 20th century. Deeply influenced by the 12-tone music of Arnold Schoenberg, whom he met in New York in the 1930s, Babbitt extended Schoenberg's serial organisation of pitch structure to other parameters, including rhythm, dynamics and instrumentation, an approach that came to be known as "integral serialism".
With his Three Compositions for Piano of 1947, Babbitt slightly preceded his European contemporaries Olivier Messaien, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez in producing the first work in this new and stricter manner. Guardian
2011/01/30
Protests in Egypt
• 13 people have died as running battles continue
• Arrests of and attacks on journalists
• Egyptian PM apologises for violence
Guardian
BP's manipulation
BP is being investigated by US regulators over alleged manipulation of the gas market, dealing a blow to its attempts to rehabilitate its tarnished reputation following the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Guardian
To destroy artic's ecosystem
LONDON — British oil company BP announced Friday night that Russia's state-owned oil firm Rosneft will take 5 percent of BP's ordinary voting shares in a major stock swap.
In exchange, Rosneft will give BP about 9.5 percent of its shares, BP officials said. Rosneft chairman and Russian deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said the deal was worth about $8 billion. newsok
Translation: british petroleum is going to destroy artic' s ecosystem.
The country of the very, very, funtastic
Italy faces the possibility of a dynastic succession as calls grow for the millionaire daughter of Silvio Berlusconi to enter politics with a view to becoming the country's next prime minister. Telegraph
• 13 people have died as running battles continue
• Arrests of and attacks on journalists
• Egyptian PM apologises for violence
Guardian
BP's manipulation
BP is being investigated by US regulators over alleged manipulation of the gas market, dealing a blow to its attempts to rehabilitate its tarnished reputation following the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Guardian
To destroy artic's ecosystem
LONDON — British oil company BP announced Friday night that Russia's state-owned oil firm Rosneft will take 5 percent of BP's ordinary voting shares in a major stock swap.
In exchange, Rosneft will give BP about 9.5 percent of its shares, BP officials said. Rosneft chairman and Russian deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said the deal was worth about $8 billion. newsok
Translation: british petroleum is going to destroy artic' s ecosystem.
The country of the very, very, funtastic
Italy faces the possibility of a dynastic succession as calls grow for the millionaire daughter of Silvio Berlusconi to enter politics with a view to becoming the country's next prime minister. Telegraph
2011/01/16
SOUTHERN SUDAN - DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Someone may wonder by asking questions as to why this piece of article is written at this time and what is the creditability of the author to do that? And you may come up with some conclusions like: He is not the president or one of the members of South Sudan legislature, this man must be on the wrong frame of mind and all the criticisms that go with it. Well, to make it clear, I am a proud citizen of Southern Sudan, who has a right to appeal and encourage all South Sudanese citizen to vote for separation. Because I believe with the sprit, South Sudan will have a clear constitution if separated; that will favor its entire citizens and its government unlike the current Slavery-style-system. Now, let me push you back to the topic “Southern Sudan, The Declaration of Independence” since it will make my separation pledge as a prime topic a bit clearer.
There must be equal privilege for the people of South Sudan to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws must be abided, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that the law should declare the causes which impel us to the separation from Sudan’s National Islamic Front (NIF), an Al-Bashir’s brotherhood fundamentalists.
As Thomas Jefferson once said “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, Therefore in South Sudan, whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People of Southern Sudan to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their security and cheerfulness. Forethought, indeed, we shall not dictate that Governments long established and we should not be changed for light and temporary causes; and accordingly all experience that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when there is a long existence abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute dictatorship, it is right, and duty for Southerners, to throw off such a dictatorship Government, and to provide new leadership for their future security. We shall not and will not dictate ourselves, of course we’ve already been tortured by NIF, do we need history to repeat itself under different band? Absolutely not.
Sudan’s National Islamic Front (NIF) or Al-Bashir’s brotherhood fundamentalists, has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive since 1956 by seizing away their rights. NIF is taking toll to destruct us, with opportunity to fuel infighting among us (be your own witness and recall the past and current tribal wars to dispute my assertion). There never been any development in South Sudan, regardless of the enormous amount of wealth that we have. We are a nation with full pride, perseverant and dignity that if we hold the power as they, we could not have an eager to destruct them. That is what make us difference from those whom we fight.
NIF has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring it on the inhabitants of Darfur, Nubian etc, whom they misled before by enslaving them to fight us. The NIF rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions, and whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, and therefore are unfit to be the rulers of the free people.
If South Sudan will be declared as a country (I strongly believe it will be) on upcoming January 09, 2011, it will have a Right it ought to have to be Free and Independent as a State, and that all political connections between us and the North will be totally abolished; and as we will be free and independent, South Sudan will have full power like any other countries to impose War, to any other country who shall not respect or who happen to obstruct our right including Northern Sudan (if a situation allow that to occur). We will have a peace contract with our neighbors whom respect our rights as a country. We will establish trade; diplomatic relationships and links with other Nations whom we welcome and whom value our rights as sovereign nation.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm confidence on the protection of our destiny, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our prosperity, and our sacred respect. Let me conclude with some few quotes and remarks from His Highness; Haile Selassie II, a 20th century Ethiopian Emperor who once said: “That which man dreams of and to which he aspires, unless fulfilled in his own lifetime, can produce no actual satisfaction to him. It will be self-deceiving and a waste of time to advocate dialogue with those who are not ready to listen, because it is obvious that the freedom of millions is not a commodity subject to bargaining. It is better to die free than to live as slave. The ultimate resource of a nation is its people. Unless this resource is employed for the benefit of the nation, unless the latent good, which it represents, is exploited to the maximum for the common good the nation will languish, poor in spirit, lacking in achievement. Every laborer is a father; his labor is his child. Choose your project carefully and achieve is worthily. The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity, which has a truly beneficent purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations”.
With this thoughtful quotes and remarks in mind; and strong urgency for free Southern Sudan, I believe you will carry unequivocal message to your voting station and make your choice a wise one. Do not be deceived by emotional speeches like the one recently made by Al-Bashir himself in Juba or Machiavellian pledges already placed by the NIF regime. Commit to separate, declare your independence.
May God Bless You all and May God Bless This Land.
Bayak Dak Guandong*
*Bayak Dak Guandong lives in Canada and released an article last year entitled “SOUTH SUDAN IS IN JEOPARDY, BUT WHO IS GOING TO BE BLAME”. You can view this article and more on his blog at http://bguandong.blogspot.com/ (in www.southsudan.net)
Note: the capital of the Southern Sudan is likely to be Juba.
Arab despots should heed events in Tunisia
The fall from power of Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine ben Ali is one of those widely unpredicted turns of events that hindsight quickly labels inevitable.
Corrupt authoritarian regimes are generally brittle and Mr Ben Ali's was no exception. But few anticipated how quickly a spate of angry demonstrations could become a regime-changing rebellion. Other governments across the region, with populations hardly less repressed than Tunisia's, will look on in fear. Guardian
Note: France, the former colonial power in Tunisia, supported Mr Ben Ali until the very last moment. One minster offered to send riot police to help shore up the regime.
Someone may wonder by asking questions as to why this piece of article is written at this time and what is the creditability of the author to do that? And you may come up with some conclusions like: He is not the president or one of the members of South Sudan legislature, this man must be on the wrong frame of mind and all the criticisms that go with it. Well, to make it clear, I am a proud citizen of Southern Sudan, who has a right to appeal and encourage all South Sudanese citizen to vote for separation. Because I believe with the sprit, South Sudan will have a clear constitution if separated; that will favor its entire citizens and its government unlike the current Slavery-style-system. Now, let me push you back to the topic “Southern Sudan, The Declaration of Independence” since it will make my separation pledge as a prime topic a bit clearer.
There must be equal privilege for the people of South Sudan to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws must be abided, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that the law should declare the causes which impel us to the separation from Sudan’s National Islamic Front (NIF), an Al-Bashir’s brotherhood fundamentalists.
As Thomas Jefferson once said “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, Therefore in South Sudan, whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People of Southern Sudan to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their security and cheerfulness. Forethought, indeed, we shall not dictate that Governments long established and we should not be changed for light and temporary causes; and accordingly all experience that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when there is a long existence abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute dictatorship, it is right, and duty for Southerners, to throw off such a dictatorship Government, and to provide new leadership for their future security. We shall not and will not dictate ourselves, of course we’ve already been tortured by NIF, do we need history to repeat itself under different band? Absolutely not.
Sudan’s National Islamic Front (NIF) or Al-Bashir’s brotherhood fundamentalists, has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive since 1956 by seizing away their rights. NIF is taking toll to destruct us, with opportunity to fuel infighting among us (be your own witness and recall the past and current tribal wars to dispute my assertion). There never been any development in South Sudan, regardless of the enormous amount of wealth that we have. We are a nation with full pride, perseverant and dignity that if we hold the power as they, we could not have an eager to destruct them. That is what make us difference from those whom we fight.
NIF has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring it on the inhabitants of Darfur, Nubian etc, whom they misled before by enslaving them to fight us. The NIF rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions, and whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, and therefore are unfit to be the rulers of the free people.
If South Sudan will be declared as a country (I strongly believe it will be) on upcoming January 09, 2011, it will have a Right it ought to have to be Free and Independent as a State, and that all political connections between us and the North will be totally abolished; and as we will be free and independent, South Sudan will have full power like any other countries to impose War, to any other country who shall not respect or who happen to obstruct our right including Northern Sudan (if a situation allow that to occur). We will have a peace contract with our neighbors whom respect our rights as a country. We will establish trade; diplomatic relationships and links with other Nations whom we welcome and whom value our rights as sovereign nation.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm confidence on the protection of our destiny, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our prosperity, and our sacred respect. Let me conclude with some few quotes and remarks from His Highness; Haile Selassie II, a 20th century Ethiopian Emperor who once said: “That which man dreams of and to which he aspires, unless fulfilled in his own lifetime, can produce no actual satisfaction to him. It will be self-deceiving and a waste of time to advocate dialogue with those who are not ready to listen, because it is obvious that the freedom of millions is not a commodity subject to bargaining. It is better to die free than to live as slave. The ultimate resource of a nation is its people. Unless this resource is employed for the benefit of the nation, unless the latent good, which it represents, is exploited to the maximum for the common good the nation will languish, poor in spirit, lacking in achievement. Every laborer is a father; his labor is his child. Choose your project carefully and achieve is worthily. The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity, which has a truly beneficent purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations”.
With this thoughtful quotes and remarks in mind; and strong urgency for free Southern Sudan, I believe you will carry unequivocal message to your voting station and make your choice a wise one. Do not be deceived by emotional speeches like the one recently made by Al-Bashir himself in Juba or Machiavellian pledges already placed by the NIF regime. Commit to separate, declare your independence.
May God Bless You all and May God Bless This Land.
Bayak Dak Guandong*
*Bayak Dak Guandong lives in Canada and released an article last year entitled “SOUTH SUDAN IS IN JEOPARDY, BUT WHO IS GOING TO BE BLAME”. You can view this article and more on his blog at http://bguandong.blogspot.com/ (in www.southsudan.net)
Note: the capital of the Southern Sudan is likely to be Juba.
Arab despots should heed events in Tunisia
The fall from power of Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine ben Ali is one of those widely unpredicted turns of events that hindsight quickly labels inevitable.
Corrupt authoritarian regimes are generally brittle and Mr Ben Ali's was no exception. But few anticipated how quickly a spate of angry demonstrations could become a regime-changing rebellion. Other governments across the region, with populations hardly less repressed than Tunisia's, will look on in fear. Guardian
Note: France, the former colonial power in Tunisia, supported Mr Ben Ali until the very last moment. One minster offered to send riot police to help shore up the regime.
2011/01/04
Bomb hits Egypt church at New Year's Mass
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt—A powerful bomb exploded in front of a crowded Coptic Christian church a half hour into the New Year early Saturday, hitting worshippers emerging from a holiday Mass in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and killing at least 21 people in an attack that raised suspicions of an al-Qaida role.
The attack came in the wake of repeated threats by al-Qaida militants in Iraq to attack Egypt's Christians. A direct al-Qaida hand in the bombing would be a dramatic development, as Egypt's government has long denied that the terror network has a significant presence in the country. Al-Qaida in Iraq has already been waging a campaign of violence against Christians in that country. denverpost
Naga Hammady Massacre
Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7. On the eve of their celebrations in Egypt, Copts go to churches and celebrate the holy event. But this year an unexpected incident happened in Naga Hammady, in Upper Egypt, where an unknown criminal opened his fire randomly on people there after they finished their prayers and were on their way back to their homes. globalvoicesonline
Note: January 7, 2010.
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt—A powerful bomb exploded in front of a crowded Coptic Christian church a half hour into the New Year early Saturday, hitting worshippers emerging from a holiday Mass in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and killing at least 21 people in an attack that raised suspicions of an al-Qaida role.
The attack came in the wake of repeated threats by al-Qaida militants in Iraq to attack Egypt's Christians. A direct al-Qaida hand in the bombing would be a dramatic development, as Egypt's government has long denied that the terror network has a significant presence in the country. Al-Qaida in Iraq has already been waging a campaign of violence against Christians in that country. denverpost
Naga Hammady Massacre
Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7. On the eve of their celebrations in Egypt, Copts go to churches and celebrate the holy event. But this year an unexpected incident happened in Naga Hammady, in Upper Egypt, where an unknown criminal opened his fire randomly on people there after they finished their prayers and were on their way back to their homes. globalvoicesonline
Note: January 7, 2010.
2010/12/21
Eurokrisis
The cause of the euro crisis is not to be found in the irrationality of the financial markets. Rather, it lies in the fact that certain countries lived beyond their means. A Greek train driver earns a monthly net salary of €5,000 ($6,600), and Spanish air traffic controllers make up to €300,000 a year.
...
In 2007, the Irish government had a balanced budget, and the Spanish government even had a surplus. The financial sector, on the other hand, issued loans that made no sense at all for years. The damage is considerable, but it could be contained if Europe would introduce euro bonds.
...
Since total new borrowing for the euro zone is substantially lower than that of the United States, the euro bond would be an attractive instrument at the international level. And that's particularly the case since the market for euro bonds would be much bigger than the market for German government bonds.
...
The European Central Bank (ECB) has already asked (euro-zone) member states for a capital infusion because, since the crisis began, it has bought up close to €75 billion in troubled government bonds. And who is paying the lion's share? Germany. For the time being, the shell game being played by politicians and the ECB is still working. But things will get worse when Greece and others can no longer service their debts. Then we'll have to guarantee amounts that no one could even imagine today.
...
Without the euro, Germany would have come to resemble Japan, suffering from weak growth and always teetering on the edge of deflation. Like Japan, in order to re-establish competitiveness, we would have had to respond to every devaluation of the dollar with wage freezes. Thanks to the euro, we avoided that. And that's why it's worth doing everything we can to preserve it. Spiegel
Bloomberg to Force Disclosure of Greece Swaps
Bloomberg News filed a lawsuit against the European Central Bank, seeking the disclosure of documents showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its fiscal deficit and helped trigger the region’s sovereign debt crisis.
The lawsuit asks the European Union’s General Court in Luxembourg to overturn a decision by the ECB not to disclose two internal documents drafted for the central bank’s six-member executive board in Frankfurt this year. The notes show how Greece used swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3 cover page attached to the papers obtained by Bloomberg News.
...
“Decisions made behind closed doors helped contribute to the global economic havoc of the last few years. Money flees secrecy and unanswered questions undermine the financial system and give some participants an unfair advantage. Confidence in markets grows with information,” he said. “Bloomberg wants the ECB, as well as the Federal Reserve and other financial institutions around the world, to end this damaging opacity.” Bloomberg
Jafar Panahi arrested (II)
Jafar Panahi (Persian: جعفر پناهی ; born July 11, 1960) is an Iranian filmmaker and is one of the most influential filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave movement. He has gained recognition from film theorists and critics worldwide and received numerous awards including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
On 20th December 2010 Jafar Panahi was handed a six-year jail sentence and a 20-year ban on making or directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media as well as leaving the country. wikipedia
Note: Panahi is not the only filmmaker jailed in Iran.
Post-election brutality
Alexander Lukashenko and his black-shirted riot police reverted to type at the weekend, cracking heads and arresting opponents while fabricating a landslide election victory. This violent regression victimised the people of Belarus.
But it was also a striking setback for half-hearted European Union attempts to break Moscow's icy embrace and bring Belarus in from the cold. Guardian
The cause of the euro crisis is not to be found in the irrationality of the financial markets. Rather, it lies in the fact that certain countries lived beyond their means. A Greek train driver earns a monthly net salary of €5,000 ($6,600), and Spanish air traffic controllers make up to €300,000 a year.
...
In 2007, the Irish government had a balanced budget, and the Spanish government even had a surplus. The financial sector, on the other hand, issued loans that made no sense at all for years. The damage is considerable, but it could be contained if Europe would introduce euro bonds.
...
Since total new borrowing for the euro zone is substantially lower than that of the United States, the euro bond would be an attractive instrument at the international level. And that's particularly the case since the market for euro bonds would be much bigger than the market for German government bonds.
...
The European Central Bank (ECB) has already asked (euro-zone) member states for a capital infusion because, since the crisis began, it has bought up close to €75 billion in troubled government bonds. And who is paying the lion's share? Germany. For the time being, the shell game being played by politicians and the ECB is still working. But things will get worse when Greece and others can no longer service their debts. Then we'll have to guarantee amounts that no one could even imagine today.
...
Without the euro, Germany would have come to resemble Japan, suffering from weak growth and always teetering on the edge of deflation. Like Japan, in order to re-establish competitiveness, we would have had to respond to every devaluation of the dollar with wage freezes. Thanks to the euro, we avoided that. And that's why it's worth doing everything we can to preserve it. Spiegel
Bloomberg to Force Disclosure of Greece Swaps
Bloomberg News filed a lawsuit against the European Central Bank, seeking the disclosure of documents showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its fiscal deficit and helped trigger the region’s sovereign debt crisis.
The lawsuit asks the European Union’s General Court in Luxembourg to overturn a decision by the ECB not to disclose two internal documents drafted for the central bank’s six-member executive board in Frankfurt this year. The notes show how Greece used swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3 cover page attached to the papers obtained by Bloomberg News.
...
“Decisions made behind closed doors helped contribute to the global economic havoc of the last few years. Money flees secrecy and unanswered questions undermine the financial system and give some participants an unfair advantage. Confidence in markets grows with information,” he said. “Bloomberg wants the ECB, as well as the Federal Reserve and other financial institutions around the world, to end this damaging opacity.” Bloomberg
Jafar Panahi arrested (II)
Jafar Panahi (Persian: جعفر پناهی ; born July 11, 1960) is an Iranian filmmaker and is one of the most influential filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave movement. He has gained recognition from film theorists and critics worldwide and received numerous awards including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
On 20th December 2010 Jafar Panahi was handed a six-year jail sentence and a 20-year ban on making or directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media as well as leaving the country. wikipedia
Note: Panahi is not the only filmmaker jailed in Iran.
Post-election brutality
Alexander Lukashenko and his black-shirted riot police reverted to type at the weekend, cracking heads and arresting opponents while fabricating a landslide election victory. This violent regression victimised the people of Belarus.
But it was also a striking setback for half-hearted European Union attempts to break Moscow's icy embrace and bring Belarus in from the cold. Guardian
2010/12/10
Afghan women still suffer
Bibi Aisha, the Afghan girl whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband, was a "lucky victim" because she survived her attack and got help, a top human rights official in the country said yesterday.
While Aisha escaped her abusive family, the deputy chairman of the country’s Independent Human Rights Commission said many women in similar circumstances were less lucky.
“For sure, we have hundreds of Bibi Aishas in Afghanistan,” Ahmad Fahim Hakim said. taipeitimes
Rwanda to unveil Genocide Archive
An ambitious hi-tech project to make the Rwandan genocide one of the most thoroughly documented mass killings ever will be unveiled in Kigali today.
The Genocide Archive of Rwanda will serve as a "unified repository" for all information related to the 1994 massacres, which saw about 800,000 people killed in 100 days, mostly from the minority Tutsi population. Guardian
WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer 'used dirty tricks
Cables say drug giant hired investigators to find evidence of corruption on Nigerian attorney general to persuade him to drop legal action. Guardian
Vatican refused to engage with child sex abuse inquiry
Leaked cable lays bare how Irish government was forced to grant Vatican officials immunity from testifying to Murphy commission. Guardian
CABLEGATE
Bibi Aisha, the Afghan girl whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband, was a "lucky victim" because she survived her attack and got help, a top human rights official in the country said yesterday.
While Aisha escaped her abusive family, the deputy chairman of the country’s Independent Human Rights Commission said many women in similar circumstances were less lucky.
“For sure, we have hundreds of Bibi Aishas in Afghanistan,” Ahmad Fahim Hakim said. taipeitimes
Rwanda to unveil Genocide Archive
An ambitious hi-tech project to make the Rwandan genocide one of the most thoroughly documented mass killings ever will be unveiled in Kigali today.
The Genocide Archive of Rwanda will serve as a "unified repository" for all information related to the 1994 massacres, which saw about 800,000 people killed in 100 days, mostly from the minority Tutsi population. Guardian
WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer 'used dirty tricks
Cables say drug giant hired investigators to find evidence of corruption on Nigerian attorney general to persuade him to drop legal action. Guardian
Vatican refused to engage with child sex abuse inquiry
Leaked cable lays bare how Irish government was forced to grant Vatican officials immunity from testifying to Murphy commission. Guardian
CABLEGATE
2010/11/14
Gorecki dies at 76
WARSAW, Poland – Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, famous for his "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," including one about a woman who was held prisoner by the Gestapo, died Friday (November 12 - 2010) following a serious illness. He was 76.
Gorecki died in the cardiology ward of a hospital in his home city of Katowice in southern Poland, Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa, the director of Polish Radio orchestra in Katowice, told The Associated Press.
The composer was suffering from a number of ailments, chiefly a lung infection, she said.
Wnuk-Nazarowa said she and another Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, had visited Gorecki in the hospital on Wednesday.
"Penderecki insisted on seeing him," Wnuk-Nazarowa said. "We tried to joke, make plans for the future. Penderecki promised he would direct (Gorecki's) 'Beatus vir' for the 80th birthday" that both would celebrate in 2013.
The work was commissioned by Archbishop Karol Wojtyla before he became Pope John Paul II to mark 900 years since the death of Roman Catholic martyr, Stanislaw, bishop of Krakow — whom Pope John Paul II later made a saint. The composition, completed in 1979, is a psalm for baritone, choir and orchestra. Yahoo/AP
WARSAW, Poland – Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, famous for his "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," including one about a woman who was held prisoner by the Gestapo, died Friday (November 12 - 2010) following a serious illness. He was 76.
Gorecki died in the cardiology ward of a hospital in his home city of Katowice in southern Poland, Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa, the director of Polish Radio orchestra in Katowice, told The Associated Press.
The composer was suffering from a number of ailments, chiefly a lung infection, she said.
Wnuk-Nazarowa said she and another Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, had visited Gorecki in the hospital on Wednesday.
"Penderecki insisted on seeing him," Wnuk-Nazarowa said. "We tried to joke, make plans for the future. Penderecki promised he would direct (Gorecki's) 'Beatus vir' for the 80th birthday" that both would celebrate in 2013.
The work was commissioned by Archbishop Karol Wojtyla before he became Pope John Paul II to mark 900 years since the death of Roman Catholic martyr, Stanislaw, bishop of Krakow — whom Pope John Paul II later made a saint. The composition, completed in 1979, is a psalm for baritone, choir and orchestra. Yahoo/AP
2010/10/08
Jorge Peixinho
Jorge Peixinho (20 January 1940 in Montijo – 30 June 1995 in Lisbon) was a Portuguese composer, pianist, and conductor.
Peixinho studied composition and piano initially at the Conservatory of Lisbon (where he himself later taught), then studied composition with Boris Porena and Goffredo Petrassi at the Accademia de Santa Cecilia in Rome, graduating in 1961. After working with Luigi Nono in Venice, he studied with Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt and at the Academy of Music in Basel on various occasions between 1960 and 1970.
In 1970 he created the Lisbon Contemporary Music Group, and worked at the IPEM studio in Ghent from 1972 to 1973. wikipedia
Fine sound transformations
The aim of my music is the construction and organisation of a new and personal sound world. I have sought to explore deeply and intensively all the relationships between harmony and timbre in order to build a kind of very dense network of fine sound transformations. The main characteristic of my music is a kind of “oneiric sound atmosphere” in which small transformations are made via counterpunctual devices, harmonic and timbric filtering, etc. I also give great importance to the ambiguity between continuity and discontinuity. Jorge Peixinho
Note: I studied with him. So bad to Portugal that portuguese instituitions did not respect and treat Jorge Peixinho as a great composer, a great teacher and an involved citizen.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese opposition politician and a former General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 80% (392 of 492) of the seats in Parliament, leading some to claim that this implies Suu Kyi was elected Prime Minister. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She has remained under house arrest in Myanmar for almost 14 out of the past 20 years.
Aung San Suu Kyi was the recipient of the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the Government of India. Aung San Suu Kyi is the third child and only daughter of Aung San, considered to be father of modern-day Burma. wikipedia
Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel prize
NEW YORK – Mario Vargas Llosa, the newest winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, has never found much honor in boundaries.
"Literature shouldn't be secluded, provincial or regional," the Peruvian author said in New York after Thursday's announcement in Sweden. "It should be universal, even if it has deep roots in one place."
The 74-year-old author and political activist, a charter member of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s, has for decades been regarded as one of the world's greatest and most adventurous writers, an unpredictable and provocative mixer of literature and social consciousness in both his work and his life.
Artists are born dissenters — often, but not always, of the left. Like such recent Nobelists as Herta Mueller and Doris Lessing, Vargas Llosa is a dissenter from communism, a former party member who ran for president of Peru in 1990 as an advocate of privatization and remains a critic of leftist leaders such as Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
The author of more than 30 novels, plays and works of nonfiction, he is known for his expansive language, his alertness to the profound and the profane, and his fierce and dark disdain for tyranny. His books are not without magical touches, but he is more grounded, more a "realist" than fellow Nobel laureate and South American Gabriel Garcia Marquez. AP/Yahoo
Al-Qaeda in Iraq vows more Christian attacks
Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq has threatened more attacks on Christians following a bloody siege at a Baghdad church that left 58 people dead, saying the "killing sword will not be lifted" from their necks.
The Islamic State of Iraq's warning of further violence against Christians comes two days after the group's assault on a Catholic church in downtown Baghdad — the deadliest attack ever recorded against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries.
"We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood," the insurgent group said in a statement posted late Tuesday on militant websites.
The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq and other allied Sunni insurgent factions, also said its deadline for the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt to release Muslim women that the militant group claims are being held captive has expired. cbc.ca
Radical Muslims target Christians
The Barnabas Fund also reports that "in another attack on 20 October, a British couple in their sixties, Richard and Enid Eyeington, working for SOS Children’s villages in Somaliland were shot dead by several gunmen in their home inside the school compound while watching television. Also, in November a Kenyan Christian working for the Seventh Day Adventist mission in Gedo, South West Somalia, was murdered by Islamist radicals. The attacks appear to be deliberately anti-Christian and anti-Western. jihadwatch.org
Note: we should realise that it is not an cristian/muslim war. Different sects of islam, women that do not fully folow the islamic rules, and so on, are also a target to the radical killers.
Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
OSLO, Norway – Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights" — a prize likely to enrage the Chinese government, which had warned the Nobel committee not to honor him.
Thorbjoern Jagland, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman, said Liu Xiaobo (LEE-o SHAo-boh) was a symbol for the fight for human rights in China and the government should expect its policies to face scrutiny.
...
In a year with a record 237 nominations for the peace prize, Liu had been considered a favorite, with open support from winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and others. AP/Yahoo
My trip to Tibet
Peixinho studied composition and piano initially at the Conservatory of Lisbon (where he himself later taught), then studied composition with Boris Porena and Goffredo Petrassi at the Accademia de Santa Cecilia in Rome, graduating in 1961. After working with Luigi Nono in Venice, he studied with Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt and at the Academy of Music in Basel on various occasions between 1960 and 1970.
In 1970 he created the Lisbon Contemporary Music Group, and worked at the IPEM studio in Ghent from 1972 to 1973. wikipedia
Fine sound transformations
The aim of my music is the construction and organisation of a new and personal sound world. I have sought to explore deeply and intensively all the relationships between harmony and timbre in order to build a kind of very dense network of fine sound transformations. The main characteristic of my music is a kind of “oneiric sound atmosphere” in which small transformations are made via counterpunctual devices, harmonic and timbric filtering, etc. I also give great importance to the ambiguity between continuity and discontinuity. Jorge Peixinho
Note: I studied with him. So bad to Portugal that portuguese instituitions did not respect and treat Jorge Peixinho as a great composer, a great teacher and an involved citizen.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese opposition politician and a former General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 80% (392 of 492) of the seats in Parliament, leading some to claim that this implies Suu Kyi was elected Prime Minister. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She has remained under house arrest in Myanmar for almost 14 out of the past 20 years.
Aung San Suu Kyi was the recipient of the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the Government of India. Aung San Suu Kyi is the third child and only daughter of Aung San, considered to be father of modern-day Burma. wikipedia
Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel prize
NEW YORK – Mario Vargas Llosa, the newest winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, has never found much honor in boundaries.
"Literature shouldn't be secluded, provincial or regional," the Peruvian author said in New York after Thursday's announcement in Sweden. "It should be universal, even if it has deep roots in one place."
The 74-year-old author and political activist, a charter member of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s, has for decades been regarded as one of the world's greatest and most adventurous writers, an unpredictable and provocative mixer of literature and social consciousness in both his work and his life.
Artists are born dissenters — often, but not always, of the left. Like such recent Nobelists as Herta Mueller and Doris Lessing, Vargas Llosa is a dissenter from communism, a former party member who ran for president of Peru in 1990 as an advocate of privatization and remains a critic of leftist leaders such as Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
The author of more than 30 novels, plays and works of nonfiction, he is known for his expansive language, his alertness to the profound and the profane, and his fierce and dark disdain for tyranny. His books are not without magical touches, but he is more grounded, more a "realist" than fellow Nobel laureate and South American Gabriel Garcia Marquez. AP/Yahoo
Al-Qaeda in Iraq vows more Christian attacks
Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq has threatened more attacks on Christians following a bloody siege at a Baghdad church that left 58 people dead, saying the "killing sword will not be lifted" from their necks.
The Islamic State of Iraq's warning of further violence against Christians comes two days after the group's assault on a Catholic church in downtown Baghdad — the deadliest attack ever recorded against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries.
"We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood," the insurgent group said in a statement posted late Tuesday on militant websites.
The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq and other allied Sunni insurgent factions, also said its deadline for the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt to release Muslim women that the militant group claims are being held captive has expired. cbc.ca
Radical Muslims target Christians
The Barnabas Fund also reports that "in another attack on 20 October, a British couple in their sixties, Richard and Enid Eyeington, working for SOS Children’s villages in Somaliland were shot dead by several gunmen in their home inside the school compound while watching television. Also, in November a Kenyan Christian working for the Seventh Day Adventist mission in Gedo, South West Somalia, was murdered by Islamist radicals. The attacks appear to be deliberately anti-Christian and anti-Western. jihadwatch.org
Note: we should realise that it is not an cristian/muslim war. Different sects of islam, women that do not fully folow the islamic rules, and so on, are also a target to the radical killers.
Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
OSLO, Norway – Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights" — a prize likely to enrage the Chinese government, which had warned the Nobel committee not to honor him.
Thorbjoern Jagland, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman, said Liu Xiaobo (LEE-o SHAo-boh) was a symbol for the fight for human rights in China and the government should expect its policies to face scrutiny.
...
In a year with a record 237 nominations for the peace prize, Liu had been considered a favorite, with open support from winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and others. AP/Yahoo
My trip to Tibet
2010/10/02
2010/09/28
The Black Tulip
Kabul: Afghans proved a tough audience for the world premiere of “The Black Tulip” at the Ariana Cinema on Thursday afternoon (an evening showing was deemed too dangerous). It was meant to be a serious film about Afghanistan, by an Afghan-born director, set in present-day Kabul and even filmed on location here, but many of the Afghans who saw it said they did not recognize the society they knew.
The movie tells the story of an Afghan woman who starts a family-run Bohemian cafe in Kabul, where they serve wine in teapots and have poetry readings, which angers the Taliban. They soon begin kidnapping and assassinating the woman’s family members.
...
Ms. Cole has drawn some criticism in artistic and political circles here for her assertion that she took over the lead in the movie only at the last minute, when the Taliban cut the feet off her pick for that role, whom she named as Zarifa Jahon.
...
Just before production began on “The Black Tulip” in August 2009, the actress disappeared, Ms. Cole said. “Finally, she called me and she said, ‘You’ll never guess what happened. The Taliban chopped my feet off.’ ” Ms. Cole said the Taliban were angry about a Pakistani film the actress had appeared in. ndtv.com
Capital punishment in Iran
The founder of the Islamic Republic, Islamic cleric Ruhollah Khomeini, who was a grand Ayatollah, ruled "that the penalty for conversion from Islam, or apostasy, is death."
The sentence of death for the crime of apostasy has been applied in Iran to alleged offenders who have not claimed to have converted to another religion, and whose crime may appear to outsiders to be political rather than religious. Hashem Aghajari, for example was condemned to death for apostasy for a speech urging Iranians to "not blindly follow" Islamic clerics. wikipedia (28/09/10)
Terror plot targeting Europe uncovered
LONDON (AFP) – Western intelligence agencies have uncovered an Al-Qaeda plot to launch attacks in Britain, France and Germany by extremists based in Pakistan, security sources and media reports said Wednesday.
"The threat is very real," a European-based security official told AFP, after British and US media reported that militants were planning simultaneous strikes in London and major cities in France and Germany.
Kabul: Afghans proved a tough audience for the world premiere of “The Black Tulip” at the Ariana Cinema on Thursday afternoon (an evening showing was deemed too dangerous). It was meant to be a serious film about Afghanistan, by an Afghan-born director, set in present-day Kabul and even filmed on location here, but many of the Afghans who saw it said they did not recognize the society they knew.
The movie tells the story of an Afghan woman who starts a family-run Bohemian cafe in Kabul, where they serve wine in teapots and have poetry readings, which angers the Taliban. They soon begin kidnapping and assassinating the woman’s family members.
...
Ms. Cole has drawn some criticism in artistic and political circles here for her assertion that she took over the lead in the movie only at the last minute, when the Taliban cut the feet off her pick for that role, whom she named as Zarifa Jahon.
...
Just before production began on “The Black Tulip” in August 2009, the actress disappeared, Ms. Cole said. “Finally, she called me and she said, ‘You’ll never guess what happened. The Taliban chopped my feet off.’ ” Ms. Cole said the Taliban were angry about a Pakistani film the actress had appeared in. ndtv.com
Capital punishment in Iran
The founder of the Islamic Republic, Islamic cleric Ruhollah Khomeini, who was a grand Ayatollah, ruled "that the penalty for conversion from Islam, or apostasy, is death."
The sentence of death for the crime of apostasy has been applied in Iran to alleged offenders who have not claimed to have converted to another religion, and whose crime may appear to outsiders to be political rather than religious. Hashem Aghajari, for example was condemned to death for apostasy for a speech urging Iranians to "not blindly follow" Islamic clerics. wikipedia (28/09/10)
Terror plot targeting Europe uncovered
LONDON (AFP) – Western intelligence agencies have uncovered an Al-Qaeda plot to launch attacks in Britain, France and Germany by extremists based in Pakistan, security sources and media reports said Wednesday.
"The threat is very real," a European-based security official told AFP, after British and US media reported that militants were planning simultaneous strikes in London and major cities in France and Germany.
2010/09/21
Pierre Boulez celebrated at musikfest berlin 10
The annual international “summit” of top-flight orchestras which launches Berlin 's concert season is coming to a close. musikfest berlin 10, organized by the Berliner Festspielen in collaboration with the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker, took place this year from September 2nd to 21st. In addition to the Rundfunkchor Berlin, the RIAS Kammerchor, and Berlin 's five principal orchestras, altogether 20 guest orchestras, ensembles, and choirs – joined by 37 soloists – contributed to the ambitious festival program. The center of attention at this year's festival was shared by the compositional achievements of Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio, complemented in provocative and illuminating ways by works by Igor Stravinsky and many other 20th and 21st century composers. This wide-ranging homage to two central figures of postwar music history was greeted with pronounced enthusiasm and followed with intense interest by members of the public and specialists alike. More than 35,000 people attended the 24 concerts which took place in the framework of musikfest berlin 10 in the Main Auditorium and Chamber Music Hall of Berlin Philharmonie, in the Parochialkirche, the Gethsemanekirche, and the Konzerthaus.
This ambitious tribute to Pierre Boulez, encompassing 11 concerts in all, began on opening weekend with striking performances of his large-scale vocal compositions Le Soleil des eaux and Le Visage nuptial by the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden under the direction of Susanna Mälkki. At the concerts given by the Berliner Philharmoniker, Pierre Boulez received standing ovations as composer and conductor. Other contributors to our Boulez portrait were the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin , the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Bamberger Symphoniker, and the Ensemble intercontemporain. This tribute to Boulez was concluded by a lecture-concert presented by Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin – a thrilling finale for musikfest berlin 10 at which the composer, also in attendance, was greeted by repeated shouts of “bravo.”
Other highpoints of musikfest berlin 10 included appearances by the London Symphony Orchestra with Daniel Harding, the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam with Mariss Jansons, and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester with Kent Nagano, each of which presented key orchestral works by Luciano Berio in conjunction with compositions by Hector Berlioz, Béla Bartók, Richard Strauss, and Igor Stravinsky – each receiving tumultuous storms of applause. Other highlights of the Berio tribute presented in the framework of musikfest berlin 10 included a concert by musikFabrik with Peter Eötvös devoted to Berio, and a performance of Berio’s immense composition Coro by the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
musikfest berlin 2011 will take place between September 1st and 19th. Detailed information on the program and on advanced ticket sales will be announced in spring of 2011.
Press Office,
September 21, 2010
The annual international “summit” of top-flight orchestras which launches Berlin 's concert season is coming to a close. musikfest berlin 10, organized by the Berliner Festspielen in collaboration with the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker, took place this year from September 2nd to 21st. In addition to the Rundfunkchor Berlin, the RIAS Kammerchor, and Berlin 's five principal orchestras, altogether 20 guest orchestras, ensembles, and choirs – joined by 37 soloists – contributed to the ambitious festival program. The center of attention at this year's festival was shared by the compositional achievements of Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio, complemented in provocative and illuminating ways by works by Igor Stravinsky and many other 20th and 21st century composers. This wide-ranging homage to two central figures of postwar music history was greeted with pronounced enthusiasm and followed with intense interest by members of the public and specialists alike. More than 35,000 people attended the 24 concerts which took place in the framework of musikfest berlin 10 in the Main Auditorium and Chamber Music Hall of Berlin Philharmonie, in the Parochialkirche, the Gethsemanekirche, and the Konzerthaus.
This ambitious tribute to Pierre Boulez, encompassing 11 concerts in all, began on opening weekend with striking performances of his large-scale vocal compositions Le Soleil des eaux and Le Visage nuptial by the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden under the direction of Susanna Mälkki. At the concerts given by the Berliner Philharmoniker, Pierre Boulez received standing ovations as composer and conductor. Other contributors to our Boulez portrait were the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin , the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Bamberger Symphoniker, and the Ensemble intercontemporain. This tribute to Boulez was concluded by a lecture-concert presented by Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin – a thrilling finale for musikfest berlin 10 at which the composer, also in attendance, was greeted by repeated shouts of “bravo.”
Other highpoints of musikfest berlin 10 included appearances by the London Symphony Orchestra with Daniel Harding, the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam with Mariss Jansons, and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester with Kent Nagano, each of which presented key orchestral works by Luciano Berio in conjunction with compositions by Hector Berlioz, Béla Bartók, Richard Strauss, and Igor Stravinsky – each receiving tumultuous storms of applause. Other highlights of the Berio tribute presented in the framework of musikfest berlin 10 included a concert by musikFabrik with Peter Eötvös devoted to Berio, and a performance of Berio’s immense composition Coro by the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
musikfest berlin 2011 will take place between September 1st and 19th. Detailed information on the program and on advanced ticket sales will be announced in spring of 2011.
Press Office,
September 21, 2010
2010/09/18
Deutschland schafft sich ab
Rarely has a man influenced the German public discourse as much as Sarrazin has done with his book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" ("Germany Does Itself In"). In just two weeks, Germany has been hit by three waves of debate stemming from the tome.
Criticism bordering on revulsion dominated the first wave of the reaction. Politicians and opinion leaders condemned Sarrazin almost unanimously.
But then it slowly became apparent that many citizens agreed with Sarrazin. The publisher announced that, due to high demand, it was going to increase the book's initial printing to 250,000 copies. Furthermore, Internet forums and political events made it clear that Sarrazin -- a member of the center-left Social Democrats, which has initiated proceedings to throw him out of the party -- had broad public support. Many are saying he is right; or, even if he does make a mistake here and there, he isn't being treated fairly.
The following e-mail, for example, was received at Social Democratic Party (SPD) headquarters: "Sometimes I'm frustrated and even furious about the fact that, in today's Germany, it's no longer possible to speak your mind and call a spade a spade! This is the sort of thing I'm used to seeing in totalitarian countries." Spiegel
Rarely has a man influenced the German public discourse as much as Sarrazin has done with his book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" ("Germany Does Itself In"). In just two weeks, Germany has been hit by three waves of debate stemming from the tome.
Criticism bordering on revulsion dominated the first wave of the reaction. Politicians and opinion leaders condemned Sarrazin almost unanimously.
But then it slowly became apparent that many citizens agreed with Sarrazin. The publisher announced that, due to high demand, it was going to increase the book's initial printing to 250,000 copies. Furthermore, Internet forums and political events made it clear that Sarrazin -- a member of the center-left Social Democrats, which has initiated proceedings to throw him out of the party -- had broad public support. Many are saying he is right; or, even if he does make a mistake here and there, he isn't being treated fairly.
The following e-mail, for example, was received at Social Democratic Party (SPD) headquarters: "Sometimes I'm frustrated and even furious about the fact that, in today's Germany, it's no longer possible to speak your mind and call a spade a spade! This is the sort of thing I'm used to seeing in totalitarian countries." Spiegel
2010/09/06
Barbarous crimes against humanity
Six Portuguese men have been jailed after they were found guilty of sexual abuse at a state-run children's home.
Carlos Silvino was given an 18-year sentence after confessing to 639 charges relating to the abuse of children or procuring them for others.
His co-defendants, including the former TV presenter Carlos Cruz, were jailed for between five and seven years.
The boys, now aged between 16 and 22, were all residents at the Casa Pia children's home in the capital, Lisbon.
The panel of three judges in the case spent most of the day reading the full verdict in each of the hundreds of sexual abuse accusations.
After ruling that the vast majority of the charges had been proven, they handed down guilty verdicts to six of the seven people on trial.
...
One of the victims, Bernardo Teixeira, hailed the sentences.
"It was very good to hear our names as a proven fact, and to know that really somebody believes us, principally the panel of judges," he told RTP Internacional TV.
"People said we were lying, that it was all made up, and so it is very healthy and positive for us finally to have proof that we were not lying."
Another victim, Bernardo Tavares, said: "It is difficult, but... when we hear our name linked to proven facts this gives us more strength."
"There is anxiety, tensions are running high in there, our seats are probably the hottest because we have waited many years for this day. It is one of the days we have most looked forward to, the day when finally justice will be done and when finally those who have committed crimes will be sentenced for them."
Pedro Namora, a lawyer and former pupil who helped expose the scandal in 2002, earlier said: "I hope this day will allow us to show the country that the boys have told the truth from the start."
"These men have to be condemned, they committed barbarous crimes against humanity." BBC News
Six jailed in Portuguese sex abuse case
Six years after a trial began over claims of sex abuse at Lisbon’s Casa Pia children’s home, heavy jail terms have been handed out.
Well-known figures have been found guilty of hundreds of charges related to abuse that goes back to the 1990s.
...
A former Casa Pia student and victims’ lawyer, Pedro Namora, said: “For so many years we have been persecuted, threatened. They used everything, and now it comes out that we spoke the truth." Euronews
Note: only six jailed (or maybe not...)
Sex abuse trial in Portugal set to end *
In Portugal a six year trial – one of the largest in the country’s legal history and known as the Casa Pia trial - is set to reach a conclusion.
Carlos Silvinho has admitted to participating in a network that systematically abused children and implicated six other defendants including Carlos Cruz a popular television presenter who is alleged to have been part of the sex ring at the Casa Pia orphanage. He is joined in the dock by former Unesco ambassador Jorge Ritto.
It is claimed a woman provided her house for meetings with the children and the alleged pedophiles
The court is set to rule on 800 alleged crimes at Casa Pia a 230 year old institution. Not only has the protracted trial produced chilling testimonies it has also resulted in changes in Portugals legal system.
One victim voiced concern that the accused were getting more support than the victims.
“Tomorrow on Friday, I hope justice is delivered, because I think the court has played enough with us, the victims. The accused are getting more support and protection than the we are,” said Pedro Custódio, a former student at Casa Pia. Euronews
All knew of the abuse
The former secretary of state for families told parliament last December that Antonio Ramalho Eanes, the former president, Jaime Gama, the former foreign secretary, and the police all knew of the abuse. Teresa Costa Macedo said state television had filmed six boys who told Mr Eanes about the abuse, but had not broadcast the footage. The Independent
Note: it happened with Lisbon's people... and the European Union did nothing (what's about Human Rights?)!
Six Portuguese men have been jailed after they were found guilty of sexual abuse at a state-run children's home.
Carlos Silvino was given an 18-year sentence after confessing to 639 charges relating to the abuse of children or procuring them for others.
His co-defendants, including the former TV presenter Carlos Cruz, were jailed for between five and seven years.
The boys, now aged between 16 and 22, were all residents at the Casa Pia children's home in the capital, Lisbon.
The panel of three judges in the case spent most of the day reading the full verdict in each of the hundreds of sexual abuse accusations.
After ruling that the vast majority of the charges had been proven, they handed down guilty verdicts to six of the seven people on trial.
...
One of the victims, Bernardo Teixeira, hailed the sentences.
"It was very good to hear our names as a proven fact, and to know that really somebody believes us, principally the panel of judges," he told RTP Internacional TV.
"People said we were lying, that it was all made up, and so it is very healthy and positive for us finally to have proof that we were not lying."
Another victim, Bernardo Tavares, said: "It is difficult, but... when we hear our name linked to proven facts this gives us more strength."
"There is anxiety, tensions are running high in there, our seats are probably the hottest because we have waited many years for this day. It is one of the days we have most looked forward to, the day when finally justice will be done and when finally those who have committed crimes will be sentenced for them."
Pedro Namora, a lawyer and former pupil who helped expose the scandal in 2002, earlier said: "I hope this day will allow us to show the country that the boys have told the truth from the start."
"These men have to be condemned, they committed barbarous crimes against humanity." BBC News
Six jailed in Portuguese sex abuse case
Six years after a trial began over claims of sex abuse at Lisbon’s Casa Pia children’s home, heavy jail terms have been handed out.
Well-known figures have been found guilty of hundreds of charges related to abuse that goes back to the 1990s.
...
A former Casa Pia student and victims’ lawyer, Pedro Namora, said: “For so many years we have been persecuted, threatened. They used everything, and now it comes out that we spoke the truth." Euronews
Note: only six jailed (or maybe not...)
Sex abuse trial in Portugal set to end *
In Portugal a six year trial – one of the largest in the country’s legal history and known as the Casa Pia trial - is set to reach a conclusion.
Carlos Silvinho has admitted to participating in a network that systematically abused children and implicated six other defendants including Carlos Cruz a popular television presenter who is alleged to have been part of the sex ring at the Casa Pia orphanage. He is joined in the dock by former Unesco ambassador Jorge Ritto.
It is claimed a woman provided her house for meetings with the children and the alleged pedophiles
The court is set to rule on 800 alleged crimes at Casa Pia a 230 year old institution. Not only has the protracted trial produced chilling testimonies it has also resulted in changes in Portugals legal system.
One victim voiced concern that the accused were getting more support than the victims.
“Tomorrow on Friday, I hope justice is delivered, because I think the court has played enough with us, the victims. The accused are getting more support and protection than the we are,” said Pedro Custódio, a former student at Casa Pia. Euronews
All knew of the abuse
The former secretary of state for families told parliament last December that Antonio Ramalho Eanes, the former president, Jaime Gama, the former foreign secretary, and the police all knew of the abuse. Teresa Costa Macedo said state television had filmed six boys who told Mr Eanes about the abuse, but had not broadcast the footage. The Independent
Note: it happened with Lisbon's people... and the European Union did nothing (what's about Human Rights?)!
2010/08/26
Opening concert Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs and Sinfonia
Just one week from now, the concert season will be launched by musikfest berlin 10, Berlin ’s international orchestra festival. Presented from September 2nd to 21st by the Berliner Festspiele in collaboration with the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker will be 24 concerts featuring more than 60 works by around 25 different composers, among them the German premieres of Quatre dédicaces and Stanze, a pair of orchestral compositions by Luciano Berio. At the centre of this year’s festival program alongside works by Luciano Berio is the creative achievement of Pierre Boulez. Appearing as conductor for two concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker will be Boulez himself. The program of musikfest berlin 10 illuminates in particular the orchestral output of these two major composers. The first part of the festival will concentrate on the music of Berio, with the focus shifting increasingly to Boulez, culminating in a grandiose homage to his music at the festival's conclusion.
musikfest berlin 10 commences with two evenings, each consisting of an orchestral portrait concert devoted to one of our featured composers. Following a concert showcasing Bach’s Art of the Fugue on the eve of the festival opening, musikfest berlin will commence on September 3rd with a performance of Berio’s celebrated Folk Songs and Sinfonia by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Daniel Harding. On September 4th, Boulez’s Le Soleil des eaux and Le Visage nuptial will receive a performance by the SWR Sinfonieorchester, the RIAS Kammerchor, and the radio choirs of the SWR and the NDR under the direction of Susanna Mälkki. Appearing as soloists will be singers Laura Aikin and Lani Poulson, pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and violinist Thomas Zehetmair. Featured at 10 of the 24 festival concerts will be additional works by Boulez, including his extraordinary cycle Pli selon pli for voice and orchestra, interpreted by the Bamberger Symphoniker with Jonathan Nott and soprano Yeree Suh on September 19th at the Philharmonie.
Altogether eleven works by Luciano Berio are found on the programmes of seven musikfest berlin 10 concerts. The German premiere of Berio’s Quatre dédicaces will be performed on September 5th by the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest of Amsterdam with Mariss Jansons. Receiving its German premiere on the following day is Berio's vocal composition Stanze in a performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with Vladimir Jurowski. Berio’s Coro will be presented at musikfest berlin 10 by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle with the Rundfunkchor Berlin and soloists Stella Doufexis, Burkhard Ulrich, and Ildebrando d’Arcangelo. Additional highlights in this series of Berio performances will be a concert performed by musikFabrik with Peter Eötvös as conductor, and an appearance by Kent Nagano with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, guests in Berlin once again after a protracted absence.
Presented in exceptional abundance at musikfest berlin 10 are the flagships of European ensemble culture: the Ensemble intercontemporain with two Boulez programs, the Ensemble Modern with Beat Furrer, and the musikFabrik with Peter Eötvös as conductor. Arriving from Belgium will be the ensemble graindelavoix, which performs late-14th century music, and the Duke Quartet from England , which performs string quartets by Kevin Volans. Also on the program are works by Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Sergei Prokofiev, Witold Lutosławski, Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Henri Pousseur, Peter Eötvös, Beat Furrer, and others.
musikfest berlin 10 comes to a close with two very special concert evenings on September 20th and 21st: the Boulez programme presented by the Staatskapelle Berlin will be accompanied by commentary delivered in person by Daniel Barenboim.
Information and tickets are available at www.berlinerfestspiele.de
Lack of skilled workers threatens recovery
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Workers with specialized skills like electricians, carpenters and welders are in critically short supply in many large economies, a shortfall that marks another obstacle to the global economic recovery, a research paper by Manpower Inc (NYSE:MAN - News) concludes.
Note: even the working people want to be a doctor (to many "doctors"...)
Russian police detain opposition leaders
MOSCOW (AP) -- Police prevented about 100 opposition activists from marching through Moscow on Sunday with a giant Russian flag and detained three of their leaders, including prominent politician Boris Nemtsov.
The opposition activists were celebrating Flag Day, a holiday honoring the tricolor flag adopted by a newly democratic Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Nemtsov said the decision to stop a march honoring the Russian flag showed the mentality of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's government.
"The flag is a symbol of freedom and democracy, only not for Putin," Nemtsov said, speaking to The Associated Press from a city police precinct.
Afghan couple stoned to death
A 25-year-old man and 19-year-old woman who eloped together have been stoned to death in a shocking display of Taliban power.
The Afghan couple were brutally killed when their own families requested that the Taliban arrest the pair after the couple, who were engaged to other people, ran away together.
Note: "their own families requested that the Taliban arrest the pair" (how horrible and disgusting people!)
It was not a spare case:
"... arrest of relatives on suspicion of killing a teenager for having friendships with boys. More than 200 such killings take place each year, said the piece, "accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey". According to Eurostat, Turkey's yearly murder rate averaged 6.1 per 100,000 population between 2005 and 2007 (the latest figures), meaning that the 200 are actually set against an annual total of about 4,400."
"Mahmod Mahmod murdered daughter Banaz
The victim of an "honour killing" had been dismissed by police as a fantasist
Mr Sulemani (Banaz's boyfriend) was deemed unsuitable because he did not come from the villages in Iraqi Kurdistan where the Mahmods originated." And thousands others that we didn't know.
Somalia: the taliban way
"Men are forced to grow beards. Women can't leave home without a male relative. Music, movies and watching sports on TV are banned.
... executions by stoning have become a public spectacle." from AP in The Kathmandu Post, August 23, 2010, page 5
Just one week from now, the concert season will be launched by musikfest berlin 10, Berlin ’s international orchestra festival. Presented from September 2nd to 21st by the Berliner Festspiele in collaboration with the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker will be 24 concerts featuring more than 60 works by around 25 different composers, among them the German premieres of Quatre dédicaces and Stanze, a pair of orchestral compositions by Luciano Berio. At the centre of this year’s festival program alongside works by Luciano Berio is the creative achievement of Pierre Boulez. Appearing as conductor for two concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker will be Boulez himself. The program of musikfest berlin 10 illuminates in particular the orchestral output of these two major composers. The first part of the festival will concentrate on the music of Berio, with the focus shifting increasingly to Boulez, culminating in a grandiose homage to his music at the festival's conclusion.
musikfest berlin 10 commences with two evenings, each consisting of an orchestral portrait concert devoted to one of our featured composers. Following a concert showcasing Bach’s Art of the Fugue on the eve of the festival opening, musikfest berlin will commence on September 3rd with a performance of Berio’s celebrated Folk Songs and Sinfonia by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Daniel Harding. On September 4th, Boulez’s Le Soleil des eaux and Le Visage nuptial will receive a performance by the SWR Sinfonieorchester, the RIAS Kammerchor, and the radio choirs of the SWR and the NDR under the direction of Susanna Mälkki. Appearing as soloists will be singers Laura Aikin and Lani Poulson, pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and violinist Thomas Zehetmair. Featured at 10 of the 24 festival concerts will be additional works by Boulez, including his extraordinary cycle Pli selon pli for voice and orchestra, interpreted by the Bamberger Symphoniker with Jonathan Nott and soprano Yeree Suh on September 19th at the Philharmonie.
Altogether eleven works by Luciano Berio are found on the programmes of seven musikfest berlin 10 concerts. The German premiere of Berio’s Quatre dédicaces will be performed on September 5th by the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest of Amsterdam with Mariss Jansons. Receiving its German premiere on the following day is Berio's vocal composition Stanze in a performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with Vladimir Jurowski. Berio’s Coro will be presented at musikfest berlin 10 by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle with the Rundfunkchor Berlin and soloists Stella Doufexis, Burkhard Ulrich, and Ildebrando d’Arcangelo. Additional highlights in this series of Berio performances will be a concert performed by musikFabrik with Peter Eötvös as conductor, and an appearance by Kent Nagano with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, guests in Berlin once again after a protracted absence.
Presented in exceptional abundance at musikfest berlin 10 are the flagships of European ensemble culture: the Ensemble intercontemporain with two Boulez programs, the Ensemble Modern with Beat Furrer, and the musikFabrik with Peter Eötvös as conductor. Arriving from Belgium will be the ensemble graindelavoix, which performs late-14th century music, and the Duke Quartet from England , which performs string quartets by Kevin Volans. Also on the program are works by Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Sergei Prokofiev, Witold Lutosławski, Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Henri Pousseur, Peter Eötvös, Beat Furrer, and others.
musikfest berlin 10 comes to a close with two very special concert evenings on September 20th and 21st: the Boulez programme presented by the Staatskapelle Berlin will be accompanied by commentary delivered in person by Daniel Barenboim.
Information and tickets are available at www.berlinerfestspiele.de
Lack of skilled workers threatens recovery
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Workers with specialized skills like electricians, carpenters and welders are in critically short supply in many large economies, a shortfall that marks another obstacle to the global economic recovery, a research paper by Manpower Inc (NYSE:MAN - News) concludes.
Note: even the working people want to be a doctor (to many "doctors"...)
Russian police detain opposition leaders
MOSCOW (AP) -- Police prevented about 100 opposition activists from marching through Moscow on Sunday with a giant Russian flag and detained three of their leaders, including prominent politician Boris Nemtsov.
The opposition activists were celebrating Flag Day, a holiday honoring the tricolor flag adopted by a newly democratic Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Nemtsov said the decision to stop a march honoring the Russian flag showed the mentality of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's government.
"The flag is a symbol of freedom and democracy, only not for Putin," Nemtsov said, speaking to The Associated Press from a city police precinct.
Afghan couple stoned to death
A 25-year-old man and 19-year-old woman who eloped together have been stoned to death in a shocking display of Taliban power.
The Afghan couple were brutally killed when their own families requested that the Taliban arrest the pair after the couple, who were engaged to other people, ran away together.
Note: "their own families requested that the Taliban arrest the pair" (how horrible and disgusting people!)
It was not a spare case:
"... arrest of relatives on suspicion of killing a teenager for having friendships with boys. More than 200 such killings take place each year, said the piece, "accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey". According to Eurostat, Turkey's yearly murder rate averaged 6.1 per 100,000 population between 2005 and 2007 (the latest figures), meaning that the 200 are actually set against an annual total of about 4,400."
"Mahmod Mahmod murdered daughter Banaz
The victim of an "honour killing" had been dismissed by police as a fantasist
Mr Sulemani (Banaz's boyfriend) was deemed unsuitable because he did not come from the villages in Iraqi Kurdistan where the Mahmods originated." And thousands others that we didn't know.
Somalia: the taliban way
"Men are forced to grow beards. Women can't leave home without a male relative. Music, movies and watching sports on TV are banned.
... executions by stoning have become a public spectacle." from AP in The Kathmandu Post, August 23, 2010, page 5
2010/06/02
José Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago (November 16, 1922 - June 18, 2010) was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor.
Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. His books have been translated into 25 languages. He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others.
In 1992, following a public spat with the Portuguese government, he moved to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Spain, where he resided until his death.
Saramago was born into a family of landless peasants in Azinhaga, Portugal, a small village in the province of Ribatejo some hundred kilometers northeast of Lisbon. His parents were José de Sousa and Maria de Piedade. "Saramago", a wild herbaceous plant known in English as the wild radish, was his father's family's nickname, and was accidentally incorporated into his name upon registration of his birth. In 1924, Saramago's family moved to Lisbon, where his father started working as a policeman. A few months after the family moved to the capital, his brother Francisco, older by two years, died. He spent vacations with his grandparents in a village called Azinhaga. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalled, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn’t mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago said, "you have no feeling." Although Saramago was a good pupil, his parents were unable to afford to keep him in grammar school, and instead moved him to a technical school at age 12. After graduating, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. Later he worked as a translator, then as a journalist. He was assistant editor of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, a position he had to leave after the political events in 1975. After a period of working as a translator he was able to support himself as a writer. Saramago married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only child, Violante, was born in 1947. Since 1988, Saramago has been married to the Spanish journalist Pilar del Río, who is the official translator of his books into Spanish.
José Saramago was in his mid-fifties before he won international acclaim, when his publication of Baltasar and Blimunda brought him to the attention of an international readership. This novel won the Portuguese PEN Club Award. Saramago has been a member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969, as well as an atheist and self-described pessimist. His views have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Members of the country's Catholic community were outraged by Saramago's representation of Jesus as a fallible human being. Portugal's conservative government would not allow Saramago's work to compete for the European Literary Prize, arguing that it offended the Catholic community. As a result, Saramago and his wife moved to Lanzarote, an island in the Canaries.
...
Saramago's novels often deal with fantastic scenarios, such as that in his 1986 novel The Stone Raft, in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from the rest of Europe and sails around the Atlantic Ocean. In his 1995 novel Blindness, an entire unnamed country is stricken with a mysterious plague of "white blindness". In his 1984 novel The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (which won the PEN Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Award), Fernando Pessoa's heteronym survives for a year after the poet himself dies. Additionally, his novel Death with Interruptions (also translated as Death at Intervals) revolves around a country in which nobody dies over the course of seven months beginning on New Year's Day, and how the country reacts to the spiritual and political implications of the event.
Using such imaginative themes, Saramago addresses the most serious of subject matters with empathy for the human condition and for the isolation of contemporary urban life. His characters struggle with their need to connect with one another, form relations and bond as a community; and also with their need for individuality, and to find meaning and dignity outside of political and economic structures.
Saramago's experimental style often features long sentences, at times more than a page long. He uses periods sparingly, choosing instead a loose flow of clauses joined by commas. Many of his paragraphs extend for pages without pausing for dialog, which Saramago chooses not to delimit by quotation marks; when the speaker changes, Saramago capitalizes the first letter of the new speaker's clause. In his novel Blindness, Saramago completely abandons the use of proper nouns instead choosing to refer to characters simply by some unique characteristic, an example of his use of style to enhance the recurring themes of identity and meaning found throughout his work. wikipedia (19/06/2010)
Kyrgyzstan killings are attempted genocide
It was early afternoon when the mob surged down an alley of neat rose bushes and halted outside Zarifa's house.
The Kyrgyz men broke into her courtyard and sat Zarifa down next to a cherry tree. They asked her a couple of questions.
After confirming she was an ethnic Uzbek, they stripped her, raped her and cut off her fingers. After that they killed her and her small son, throwing their bodies into the street. They then moved on to the next house. Guardian
Mr Barroso: the end of the democracy
Democracy could ‘collapse’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned.
In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an ‘apocalyptic’ vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money. dailymail.co.uk
Note: Mr Barroso was the portuguese First Minister and Mr Barroso left Portugal in a political and economic mess to get his European Job...
The rise and fall of British Petroleum
BP has come close to collapse before, and is a repeat offender in the US after earlier major accidents in Texas and Alaska. Internal company documents published last week by news website ProPublica revealed high-level concern that safety and environmental policies were being ignored. A BP report into the 2005 Texas City disaster, when a massive explosion at a refinery killed 15 workers, concluded there had been "apparent complacency toward serious safety risk". Guardian
Question:
how many of you complained to management about the policies and practices from which you benefited all these years? Or do you just complain when these policies and practices inflict profound economic and other costs on others, for which your company may be held responsible? Harry Shearer/huffingtonpost
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, referred to in much of the world as the Tiananmen Square massacre and in the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the June Fourth Incident (officially to avoid confusion with two prior Tiananmen Square protests), were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the PRC beginning on 14 April 1989.
Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.
An intelligence report received by the Soviet politburo estimated that 3,000 protesters were killed, according to a document found in the Soviet archive.
British killing
Saville's conclusion that none of the 14 dead was carrying a gun, no warnings were given, no soldiers were under threat and the troops were the first to open fire, marked a final declaration of innocence for the victims of the biggest British military killing of civilians on UK soil since the Peterloo massacre in 1819. Guardian
Note: "The report appeared to exonerate the army's then commander of land forces, in Northern Ireland General Robert Ford, of any blame. He had agreed to deploy the Parachute Regiment in the city against the advice of a senior police officer in Derry."
Note 2: Ford expressed this commitment directly to the soldiers on the ground as they surged forward into the Bogside, shouting: "Go on the Paras, go and get them." (Niall Ó Dochartaigh / guardian.co.uk)
The collapse of the capitalist system
Capitalism has struck the deadly reef of corruption and is now sinking fast. But passengers of the American ship of state--already drowning in the murderous waters of loss of homes and jobs--are still believing politicians' reassurances that everything's being taken care of.
The lifeboats, courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. treasury, are "saving" big financial institutions: Bear Stearns, IndyMac, and a host of others to the tune of over 24 trillion dollars so far.
José de Sousa Saramago (November 16, 1922 - June 18, 2010) was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor.
Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. His books have been translated into 25 languages. He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others.
In 1992, following a public spat with the Portuguese government, he moved to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Spain, where he resided until his death.
Saramago was born into a family of landless peasants in Azinhaga, Portugal, a small village in the province of Ribatejo some hundred kilometers northeast of Lisbon. His parents were José de Sousa and Maria de Piedade. "Saramago", a wild herbaceous plant known in English as the wild radish, was his father's family's nickname, and was accidentally incorporated into his name upon registration of his birth. In 1924, Saramago's family moved to Lisbon, where his father started working as a policeman. A few months after the family moved to the capital, his brother Francisco, older by two years, died. He spent vacations with his grandparents in a village called Azinhaga. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalled, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn’t mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago said, "you have no feeling." Although Saramago was a good pupil, his parents were unable to afford to keep him in grammar school, and instead moved him to a technical school at age 12. After graduating, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. Later he worked as a translator, then as a journalist. He was assistant editor of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, a position he had to leave after the political events in 1975. After a period of working as a translator he was able to support himself as a writer. Saramago married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only child, Violante, was born in 1947. Since 1988, Saramago has been married to the Spanish journalist Pilar del Río, who is the official translator of his books into Spanish.
José Saramago was in his mid-fifties before he won international acclaim, when his publication of Baltasar and Blimunda brought him to the attention of an international readership. This novel won the Portuguese PEN Club Award. Saramago has been a member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969, as well as an atheist and self-described pessimist. His views have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Members of the country's Catholic community were outraged by Saramago's representation of Jesus as a fallible human being. Portugal's conservative government would not allow Saramago's work to compete for the European Literary Prize, arguing that it offended the Catholic community. As a result, Saramago and his wife moved to Lanzarote, an island in the Canaries.
...
Saramago's novels often deal with fantastic scenarios, such as that in his 1986 novel The Stone Raft, in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from the rest of Europe and sails around the Atlantic Ocean. In his 1995 novel Blindness, an entire unnamed country is stricken with a mysterious plague of "white blindness". In his 1984 novel The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (which won the PEN Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Award), Fernando Pessoa's heteronym survives for a year after the poet himself dies. Additionally, his novel Death with Interruptions (also translated as Death at Intervals) revolves around a country in which nobody dies over the course of seven months beginning on New Year's Day, and how the country reacts to the spiritual and political implications of the event.
Using such imaginative themes, Saramago addresses the most serious of subject matters with empathy for the human condition and for the isolation of contemporary urban life. His characters struggle with their need to connect with one another, form relations and bond as a community; and also with their need for individuality, and to find meaning and dignity outside of political and economic structures.
Saramago's experimental style often features long sentences, at times more than a page long. He uses periods sparingly, choosing instead a loose flow of clauses joined by commas. Many of his paragraphs extend for pages without pausing for dialog, which Saramago chooses not to delimit by quotation marks; when the speaker changes, Saramago capitalizes the first letter of the new speaker's clause. In his novel Blindness, Saramago completely abandons the use of proper nouns instead choosing to refer to characters simply by some unique characteristic, an example of his use of style to enhance the recurring themes of identity and meaning found throughout his work. wikipedia (19/06/2010)
Kyrgyzstan killings are attempted genocide
It was early afternoon when the mob surged down an alley of neat rose bushes and halted outside Zarifa's house.
The Kyrgyz men broke into her courtyard and sat Zarifa down next to a cherry tree. They asked her a couple of questions.
After confirming she was an ethnic Uzbek, they stripped her, raped her and cut off her fingers. After that they killed her and her small son, throwing their bodies into the street. They then moved on to the next house. Guardian
Mr Barroso: the end of the democracy
Democracy could ‘collapse’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned.
In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an ‘apocalyptic’ vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money. dailymail.co.uk
Note: Mr Barroso was the portuguese First Minister and Mr Barroso left Portugal in a political and economic mess to get his European Job...
The rise and fall of British Petroleum
BP has come close to collapse before, and is a repeat offender in the US after earlier major accidents in Texas and Alaska. Internal company documents published last week by news website ProPublica revealed high-level concern that safety and environmental policies were being ignored. A BP report into the 2005 Texas City disaster, when a massive explosion at a refinery killed 15 workers, concluded there had been "apparent complacency toward serious safety risk". Guardian
Question:
how many of you complained to management about the policies and practices from which you benefited all these years? Or do you just complain when these policies and practices inflict profound economic and other costs on others, for which your company may be held responsible? Harry Shearer/huffingtonpost
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, referred to in much of the world as the Tiananmen Square massacre and in the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the June Fourth Incident (officially to avoid confusion with two prior Tiananmen Square protests), were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the PRC beginning on 14 April 1989.
Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.
An intelligence report received by the Soviet politburo estimated that 3,000 protesters were killed, according to a document found in the Soviet archive.
British killing
Saville's conclusion that none of the 14 dead was carrying a gun, no warnings were given, no soldiers were under threat and the troops were the first to open fire, marked a final declaration of innocence for the victims of the biggest British military killing of civilians on UK soil since the Peterloo massacre in 1819. Guardian
Note: "The report appeared to exonerate the army's then commander of land forces, in Northern Ireland General Robert Ford, of any blame. He had agreed to deploy the Parachute Regiment in the city against the advice of a senior police officer in Derry."
Note 2: Ford expressed this commitment directly to the soldiers on the ground as they surged forward into the Bogside, shouting: "Go on the Paras, go and get them." (Niall Ó Dochartaigh / guardian.co.uk)
The collapse of the capitalist system
Capitalism has struck the deadly reef of corruption and is now sinking fast. But passengers of the American ship of state--already drowning in the murderous waters of loss of homes and jobs--are still believing politicians' reassurances that everything's being taken care of.
The lifeboats, courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. treasury, are "saving" big financial institutions: Bear Stearns, IndyMac, and a host of others to the tune of over 24 trillion dollars so far.
2010/05/17
2010/05/16
2010/04/28
Suntanned women to be arrested
Iran has warned suntanned women and girls who looked like "walking mannequins" will be arrested as part of a new drive to enforce the Islamic dress code. Telegraph
Iran has warned suntanned women and girls who looked like "walking mannequins" will be arrested as part of a new drive to enforce the Islamic dress code. Telegraph
2010/04/27
Fraud charges on the killing makers
A US Senate investigative panel has released several emails that could prove embarrassing to Goldman Sachs as they suggest the Wall Street investment giant used the US sub-prime mortgage crisis to make tens of millions of dollars in profit.
The documents, made public Saturday, do not provide proof that the investment bank broke the law, but they do show that its executives sought to make a killing on the crisis that erupted in 2007.
The revelations come at a bad time for Goldmans Sachs, which seeks to improve its image in the wake of fraud charges leveled against it by the federal government. AFP/yahoo
Goldman Sachs at Senate
According to pre-released testimony, the head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, will admit that his bank failed to raise the alarm about excesses in the mortgage industry and got involved in "overly complex" derivatives deals that fuelled perceptions of Wall Street running out of control.
Blankfein will tell the committee that the Securities and Exchange Commission's $1bn (£647m) fraud case against his firm marks a low point in his career. Guardian
Ex-dictator Noriega jailed in France
PARIS - A French judge ordered former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega jailed Tuesday pending a trial for money laundering, a decision made only hours after Noriega was extradited from the United States following two decades in a Miami prison. Seattlepi
Note: another murder, Pinochet, was freed thanks to England.
A US Senate investigative panel has released several emails that could prove embarrassing to Goldman Sachs as they suggest the Wall Street investment giant used the US sub-prime mortgage crisis to make tens of millions of dollars in profit.
The documents, made public Saturday, do not provide proof that the investment bank broke the law, but they do show that its executives sought to make a killing on the crisis that erupted in 2007.
The revelations come at a bad time for Goldmans Sachs, which seeks to improve its image in the wake of fraud charges leveled against it by the federal government. AFP/yahoo
Goldman Sachs at Senate
According to pre-released testimony, the head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, will admit that his bank failed to raise the alarm about excesses in the mortgage industry and got involved in "overly complex" derivatives deals that fuelled perceptions of Wall Street running out of control.
Blankfein will tell the committee that the Securities and Exchange Commission's $1bn (£647m) fraud case against his firm marks a low point in his career. Guardian
Ex-dictator Noriega jailed in France
PARIS - A French judge ordered former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega jailed Tuesday pending a trial for money laundering, a decision made only hours after Noriega was extradited from the United States following two decades in a Miami prison. Seattlepi
Note: another murder, Pinochet, was freed thanks to England.
2010/04/25
Democracia española en riesgo
María Dolores de Cospedal ha denunciado que "algunas actitudes de personas muy destacadas del Gobierno de España "están poniendo en riesgo a la democracia", en relación con los actos y declaraciones de apoyo al juez Baltasar Garzón en su causa abierta en el Tribunal Supremo. La secretaria general del PP ha señalado que están "alentando otra vez la división" con "ataques constantes a la democracia". El Mondo
Nota: cuando un pueblo, o una parte de ello (la imbecil derecha española), no acepta la realidad de su pasado, el futuro no será exactamente espectacular...
Um portugês bem pago *
João Rendeiro recebeu €3 milhões no ano em que o BPP colapsou. No total, o banco pagou-lhe €12 milhões desde 1999.
* pelos bons serviços que prestou ao BPP, seguramente...
María Dolores de Cospedal ha denunciado que "algunas actitudes de personas muy destacadas del Gobierno de España "están poniendo en riesgo a la democracia", en relación con los actos y declaraciones de apoyo al juez Baltasar Garzón en su causa abierta en el Tribunal Supremo. La secretaria general del PP ha señalado que están "alentando otra vez la división" con "ataques constantes a la democracia". El Mondo
Nota: cuando un pueblo, o una parte de ello (la imbecil derecha española), no acepta la realidad de su pasado, el futuro no será exactamente espectacular...
Um portugês bem pago *
João Rendeiro recebeu €3 milhões no ano em que o BPP colapsou. No total, o banco pagou-lhe €12 milhões desde 1999.
* pelos bons serviços que prestou ao BPP, seguramente...
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