Capa da semana

A encruzilhada portuguesa na Economist

A ler, sem demora, este artigo da Economist sobre a situação de Portugal: 

How much austerity is too much?

(...)
Mr Passos Coelho’s policies may have succeeded in emphasising Portugal’s differences from Greece. But he is also discovering that austerity cannot be pushed past a limit that is determined by voters, whether they are violently rioting in Athens or marching peacefully in Lisbon.

A capa da semana

É a pergunta que se impõe... e com a queda anunciada de Espanha, será que ainda vamos a tempo?

leituras para 11 de Setembro

http://www.economist.com/node/21528258

 The trick in the next ten years will be to win back the trust of allies (especially Pakistan), use force more sparingly, go wherever possible with the grain of Muslim sentiment instead of rubbing against it. But there can be no return to the innocence of September 10th 2001—and, sadly, no end to the vigilance.

http://boutique.lemonde.fr/hors-series/hors-series/hors-serie-monde-la-decennie-ben-laden.html#

Le choc du 11-Septembre, impossible de ne pas y revenir, dix ans après. Le recul du temps n'atténue en rien son intensité. L'effondrement des tours jumelles à New York est associé, dans l'imaginaire de tous, à une destruction radicale décidée par un ennemi invisible qui n'avait rien à négocier, qui ne souhaitait aucun échange. Quel est cet ennemi? D'où vient-il? Comment recrute-t-il? Quelles sont ses aires d'influence? Et après?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/04/lower-manhattan-comes-back-to-life.html

Lower Manhattan is a living symbol of civic resilience; it is evidence of how free people can triumph over fear. The neighborhood surrounding Ground Zero has become the fastest-growing in New York City. Daniel Libeskind is part of the influx. The Bronx-raised designer of the Freedom Tower was living in Berlin on 9/11: “I was determined to live in lower Manhattan. And I’m so happy because it’s really coming back to life ... It’s a kind of renaissance.”

http://www.time.com/time/beyond911/#

If the story of the United States has a theme so far in the 21st century, it is surely one of resilience. To hail that spirit on the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001, TIME revisited the people who led us, moved us and inspired us, from the morning of the attacks through the tumultuous decade that followed. These astonishing testimonies — from 40 men and women including George W. Bush, Tom Brokaw, General David Petraeus, Valerie Plame Wilson, Black Hawk helicopter pilot Tammy Duckworth, and the heroic first responders of Ground Zero — define what it means to meet adversity, and then overcome it.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2011/09/12/toc_20110905

Suddenly summoned to witness some thing great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness,” wrote John Updike ten years ago in these pages. He watched the towers fall with “the false intimacy of television,” from a tenth-floor apartment in Brooklyn Heights.

(...)

New York City is filled with children who have no reason to distinguish the eleventh from any other day in September. At some point they’ll learn, but for now, for them, what actually happened could never have happened.

Negócios da China... em Angola

Na Economist desta semana, um artigo muito esclarecedor sobre verdadeiros 'negócios da China' em África. Em particular, sobre os milhões (e milhões e milhões...) que se negoceiam entre essa entidade obscura que é a China International Fund e Angola, país onde, como bem lembra o jornalista da revista britânica, 90% da população de Luanda continua a viver sem água canalizada.

"WHEN the man likely to become China’s next president meets an African oil executive, you would expect the dauphin to dominate the dealmaker. Not, though, with Manuel Vicente. On April 15th this year the chairman and chief executive of Sonangol, Angola’s state oil firm, strode into a room decorated with extravagant flowers in central Beijing and shook hands with Xi Jinping, the Chinese vice-president and probable next general secretary of the Communist Party. Mr Vicente holds no official rank in the Angolan government and yet, as if he were conferring with a head of state, Mr Xi reassured his guest that China wants to “strengthen mutual political trust”.
Angola—along with Saudi Arabia—is China’s largest oil supplier and that alone makes Mr Vicente an important man in Beijing. But he is also a partner in a syndicate founded by well-connected Cantonese entrepreneurs who, with their African partners, have taken control of one of China’s most important trade channels. Operating out of offices in Hong Kong’s Queensway, the syndicate calls itself China International Fund or China Sonangol. Over the past seven years it has signed contracts worth billions of dollars for oil, minerals and diamonds from Africa."

Leitura da semana

Que grande, grande capa! O director de arte da Economist está de parabéns, provando que as grandes ideias são, quase sempre, ideias muito simples.
O artigo principal da edição, sobre os dias trágicos que se vivem no Japão, é igualmente bom:

"Up a shallow river, five kilometres from the Pacific coast in Japan’s north-eastern Iwate prefecture, lie the remains of a town. Crushed wooden houses now resemble matchwood, scattered in every direction over swampy wasteland. A purple car is partially submerged in mud. The piles of debris reach two metres high.
Only on close inspection do you see that it was never a town at all—at least not there. It was a rice paddy. The houses, shops, cars and people belonged lower down the valley. But the town is gone, washed away. Its debris settled on the field, high up the valley, that was the tsunami’s high-water mark. That is all that physically remains of Rikuzentakata."

Está aí alguém?

Será que ainda há quem passe por aqui, em busca de leituras que valem a pena? O meu bebé faz hoje dois meses e, confesso, o tempo para ler tem sido muito pouco... Obrigo-me a comprar um jornal todos os dias, espécie de ritual de «adulta» que tem ainda o mérito de me fazer sair à rua, apanhar sol na cara, sentir o cheiro do café (só o cheiro!) e ver outras pessoas. Mas leituras demoradas da imprensa internacional... tem sido mais difícil :)
Contudo, hoje li este artigo, sugerido por um amigo no facebook, e não resisti a partilhá-lo convosco. É o obituário da actriz Jane Russell, publicado esta semana na Economist. Escrever obituários é uma arte, especialmente acarinhada na imprensa anglo-saxónica. Não sei quem escreveu este texto fabuloso (o artigo não é assinado) mas tiro o chapéu a quem conseguiu centrar o tema não no talento mas no peito da actriz - e sem ser ordinário. O início chega para conquistar qualquer um:

PEOPLE seemed naturally to think in twos when Jane Russell’s name popped up. Bob Hope, her favourite kissing partner, once introduced her as “The two and only”. “What are the two great reasons for Russell’s success?” demanded the posters for her first and most censor-bitten film, “The Outlaw”, in 1943. American GIs, who worshipped her, gave her name to the twin hills that dominated a battlefield in Korea. And the little aircraft sent aloft to publicise “The Outlaw” over Pasadena simply made two large, hazy circles in the sky, with a point at the centre of each one.

The pair in question were neither voluptuous nor pneumatic by the standards of silicone inflation that came later. Miss Russell herself denied that they were even a size 38. A modest 36B was all she claimed.

Boas leituras... e até breve!