quinta-feira, 31 de julho de 2025

LENA HORNE: «STORMY WEATHER»

Há canções indelevelmente associadas à memória de um interprete. É o caso de «Stormy Weather» e de Lena Horne:



 


...e também a versão de  Billie Holiday


Don't know why There's no sun up in the sky Stormy weather Since my man and I ain't together Keeps raining all the time Life is bare Gloom and misery everywhere Stormy weather Just can't get my poor self together I'm weary all the time,The time So weary all the time When he went away The blues walked in and met me If he stays away Old rocking chair will get me All I do is pray The Lord above will let me Walk in the sun once more Can't go on Everything I had is gone Stormy weather Since my man and I ain't together Keeps raining all the time Keeps raining all the time When he went away The blues walked in and met me If he stays away Old rocking chair will get me All I do is pray The Lord above will let me Walk in the sun once more Can't go on Everything I had is gone Stormy weather Since my man and I ain't together Keeps raining all the time Keeps raining all the time

terça-feira, 29 de julho de 2025

ESCOLHAS POÉTICAS: «O grau zero» [OBRAS DE MANUEL BANET]


É que chegámos mesmo ao grau zero;
o grau zero absoluto:
Não da Física; esta tem limites 
mas, nas Ciências Sociais e Humanas.
O grau zero da reflexão política,
da filosofia, da sociologia e de tudo
o que implica esforço, trabalho
interior, aprofundamento do que
havia antes da nossa ínfima existência.
Mas, isso é demasiado esperar
dos espertos que por aí abundam:
Conhecimento do passado? - Sim, 
vão buscar citações, fica bem, 
mostra «cultura»...

A ética, a coisa mais declamada 
e mais negada. Seria caso de dizer,
estamos na nulidade transcendente
do zero à potência zero, ou ao infinito.
A arrogância e o cinismo vão de par.
Acompanham ou adiantam-se
às nulidades que se passeiam, 
e, cientes da sua importância,
vão polindo, solenes, os cadeirais 
académicos...

Hoje em dia, são inúmeras as instâncias 
de nulificação no plano intelectual
mas, também nas coisas materiais.
A qualidade do que é feito
é só aparente; se queres qualidade,
terás que procurar objetos da era
industrial; não os frívolos dejectos
desta enganosa «pós-modernidade».

Serei reaccionário? - Sim, porque reajo! 
À estupidez eregida em saber
À fraude de vender falsas jóias
À mentira como maior virtude!
Tudo isto mereceria um simples
encolher de ombros, se...
fosse apenas o trági-cómico
folclore duma pseudo elite. 
Ela vai-se babando e cacarejando
medíocre, boçal e obscena
a conspurcar o quotidiano

Disse e redigo: A melhor resposta
perante a estupidez cósmica
é de erguer uma muralha
real contra a fealdade
não apenas exterior, mas do espírito
Senão, acabamos afogados,
entascados no lodaçal imundo
de vaidades e canalhices
onde prosperam exemplares
típicos da pseudo-civilização.







 

sexta-feira, 25 de julho de 2025

QUE FIQUEM CONHECIDOS PELOS SEUS FRUTOS / O GRANDE NEGÓCIO DO GENOCÍDIO



QUE FIQUEM CONHECIDOS PELOS SEUS FRUTOS (por Caitlin Johnstone)




 O GENOCÍDIO DE GAZA POR ISRAEL É UM GRANDE NEGÓCIO (por Jonathan Cook)


NO EXCERTO DO ARTIGO Dystopian Killing Fields and Starvation in Gaza POR BINOY KAMPMARK VERIFICA-SE A PERVERSIDADE DE ISRAEL EM RELAÇÃO ÀS OBRIGAÇÕES HUMANITÁRIAS E A ATITUDE CONDESCENDENTE DE SEUS ALIADOS OCIDENTAIS.

....

The statement as run by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) on 23 July is stark: “As the Israel government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families. With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste before their eyes.” Two months after the implementation of the controlled aid scheme by Israel, utilising the grotesquely named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, over 100 organisations were “sounding the alarm and urging governments to act: open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege; and agree to a ceasefire now.”

Outside Gaza, and even within the Strip, abundant supplies of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sat untouched. Humanitarian organisations had been prevented from accessing them. “The Government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.” A paltry figure of 28 trucks a day were being allowed into the Strip.

The relevant gore is recounted: massacres at food sites in the Gaza Strip are impossible to ignore; the figures from the UN suggest that 875 Palestinians had been slaughtered while seeking sustenance as of 13 July. The frequency of these “flour massacres” is also receiving comment from those in the employ of the operation being run by GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation), policed by private contractors and the IDF. Retired US special forces officer Anthony Aguilar, who resigned from working with the GHF, told the BBC that he had “witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at crowds of Palestinians.” During his entire career, he had never seen such “brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.”

The NGO statement goes on to note the rise of cases of acute malnutrition, most prevalent among children and the elderly. (The World Food Programme has warned that one in three Gazans do not eat for days at a time, with 90,000 women and children requiring treatment.) “Illnesses like acute watery diarrhoea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.”

In the face of this, international law’s decrees appear like the neglected statues of a distant land. The three sets of Provisional Measures Orders from the International Court of Justice, handed down since 2024, have warned Israel to observe its obligations under the UN Genocide Convention and address the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. In its modifying order of provisional measures handed down on 28 March 2024, the ICJ instructed Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address famine and starvation and the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza.” These include the provision of “food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care” and “increasing the capacity of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary.”

The latest concession from Israel to deal with this engineered humanitarian catastrophe is a promise to open humanitarian corridors to permit UN convoys into the Strip. In addition to that, COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories), the Israeli military agency overseeing humanitarian affairs in Gaza, has announced that Jordan and the United Arab Emirates will be permitted to parachute humanitarian aid to those in Gaza. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has made a small team of British military planners and logisticians available to assist Jordan in this endeavour. On 27 July, the IDF also released a statement claiming it had made the first airdrop including “seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar, and canned food.” These efforts, in their practical futility, are a reiteration of the humanitarian airdrops conducted by the US military and Jordan’s air force in March last year.

These drops will do little to alter the cruel, strangulating model of aid delivery in place, emboldening the fittest recipients capable of outpacing their adversaries. Those recipients will also be fortunate not to be injured or killed by the dropped packages, instances of which were recorded in March last year. “Why use airdrops,” asks Juliette Touma, chief spokeswoman for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, “when you can drive hundreds of trucks through the borders?” Using trucks was “much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper.” Precisely why using them is so unappealing to the IDF.

Instead of focusing on isolating Israel, its allies prefer piecemeal approaches that prolong the suffering of the Palestinians. Measures such as those announced by Starmer to “evacuate children from Gaza who need medical assistance, bringing them to the UK for specialist and medical treatment” only serve to encourage the Israeli war machine. The aid drops serve to do much the same. The objective is one of inflicting a sufficient degree of harm that will encourage the eventual depopulation of the enclave. Israel’s allies, with intentional or unintentional complicity, will clean up.



quinta-feira, 24 de julho de 2025

Martha Argerich: Partita BWV 826 de J. S. Bach




 Acima, uma notável interpretação ao vivo pela célebre pianista argentina Martha Argerich.

Esta partita de Bach faz parte* de uma recolha com claros intuítos pedagógicos, o «Clavier Übung». 

Para ouvir esta partita no clavicórdio, outro instrumento de tecla, consulte: PARTITAS DE BACH NO CLAVICÓRDIO - WIM WINTERS

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* (das notas que acompanham esta gravação) Bach's Partita No. 2 for keyboard opens with a three-part sinfonia: a dramatic and meaningful overture is followed by a playful prelude (01:06) and concludes with a fugue for three voices (03:01). Despite its compact form, this Sinfonia is multifaceted and demands great technical skill from the pianist. With the following movements of Allemande, Courante and Sarabande, Bach follows the typical Baroque scheme of a suite. Instead of a concluding Gigue, however, he uses two other movements: a Rondo and a Capriccio. Both forms were also referred to as “gallantries,” which were intended to create surprise and relaxation within a suite.

The Partita in C minor is the second piece in a series of six partitas (BWV 825 - 830), which Bach published in 1731 under the title “Clavier-Übung 1.” Bach himself described the series as his Opus 1, which he wrote for piano lovers for the enjoyment of the mind. The first “Clavier-Übung” was followed by three further collections of pieces for keyboard instruments. The four “Clavier-Übung” contain all the genres and compositional methods common during Bach's lifetime. Each of the individual pieces is very demanding. Bach had set new standards in keyboard playing technique with this compendium, which was well thought out in every respect.

quarta-feira, 23 de julho de 2025

POR DENTRO DA «GUERRA OMNIA*» COM DAVID A. HUGHES

*OMNIWAR, que traduzo por GUERRA OMNIA, significa a guerra total, em todas as dimensões da vida.



https://www.collapselife.com/


O site COLAPSE LIFE traz-nos o autor David A. Hughes, um verdadeiro intelectual com imenso valor, compreendendo dentro desta expressão não apenas a maturidade do pensamento teórico, como de uma coragem e uma ética que faltam a muitos dos ditos intelectuais nos nossos tempos. 

A sua análise sobre a deriva da sociedade dita «democrática liberal», para um tipo de «tecnocracia» é semelhante ao que vários autores, na década de 30, imaginaram. Mas, agora, esta utopia é tornada possível e está realizada, com o desenvolvimento da electrónica, da informática, da cibernética e doutras maravilhas tecnológicas que tanto nos podem emancipar, como nos escravizar à máquina impiedosa do capitalismo globalizado.

Abaixo, deixo o link para esta extraordinária entrevista (clicar no título)

Inside the Omniwar with David A. Hughes


(O site da entrevista é «Collapse Life»)


RELACIONADO

Política de sanções: A ideia por detrás das sanções é colocar a população de um país na miséria, na esperança de que ela se revolte e derrube o governo desse país. 

Isto é  ilustrado pelo novo estudo no jornal médico britânico Lancet, pelos economistas  Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, e Mark Weisbrot, que encontraram que as «sanções unilaterais estavam associadas com um saldo anual de 564 258 mortes,” que estimam seja  “semelhante ao nível de mortalidade global associada a um conflito armado”.

Notam que “ as sanções têm efeitos substanciais na saúde pública, com uma taxa de mortalidade semelhante à das guerras".

O estudo conclui que “Woodrow Wilson referia-se às sanções como 'algo mais tremendo do que uma guerra'. A nossa evidência sugere que isto está certo. Durante a década passada, estimamos que as sanções unilaterais causaram cerca de 560 000 mortes anuais em todo o mundo. É difícil de imaginar outra política, com tais efeitos adversos para a vida humana e que seja constantemente usada.”

(retirado de...)

Lancet Study: U.S. Economic Sanctions Kill 500 000 People Per Year.