Quote / Citação (34)

"All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals, and some of them yield important vegetable products such as rubber which in colder climates it is necessary to synthesize by comparatively expensive methods. But above all they contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever power controls equatorial Africa, or the countries of the Middle East, or Southern India, or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of the bodies of scores or hundreds of millions of ill-paid and hard-working coolies. The inhabitants of these areas, reduced more or less openly to the status of slaves, pass continually from conqueror to conqueror, and are expended like so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, to control more labour power, to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, and so on indefinitely. It should be noted that the fighting never really moves beyond the edges of the disputed areas.

(...)

but the balance of power always remains roughly even, and the territory which forms the heartland of each super-state always remains inviolate. Moreover, the labour of the exploited peoples round the Equator is not really necessary to the world’s economy. They add nothing to the wealth of the world, since whatever they produce is used for purposes of war, and the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.

(...)

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work. The world of today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly, and efficient — a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete — was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society.

(...)

Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there. From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process — by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute — the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction.

(...)

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Art (20)

Transcendence

by celadus

Choose my destiny - results

Ora fechadas que estão as votações, chegou a hora de publicar os resultados:

- na língua portuguesa:

- nas sagas:

- na pilha TBR:

- nos calhamaços:

- nos obrigatórios:

- na BD:

e nos emprestados:

Assim sendo, começando em Fevereiro e antes de quaisquer outros, este ano comprometo-me a ler e comentar os seguintes livros:

O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo de José Saramago; 

La Sombra del Viento de Carlos Ruiz Zafón; 

Fevre Dream de George R. R. Martin; 

1Q84 de Haruki Murakami; 

To Kill a Mockingbird de Harper Lee; 

The Absolute Sandman Vol.1 de Neil Gaiman; Lucifer e 

The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Ship That Sank Twice de Mike Carey; 

If This Is a Man / The Truce de Primo Levi.

Obrigado aos 37 participantes, gostei muito de acompanhar as votações e pondero repetir a experiência, se as leituras correrem bem!

Art (19)

Portrait III

by greQ111

Choose my destiny!

This is an opportunity for those who read the blog (or are just stumbling through at the moment) to choose what I'll read in 2014. I decided to ask you all which should be the first book of each of the following groups I'll read this year. I'll try to review here all of the books chosen by you. So vote away, in one to three books in each section.

Esta é uma oportunidade para os leitores do blogue escolherem o que eu vou ler em 2014. Decidi perguntar-vos por qual livro deveria começar, para cada um dos grupos definidos abaixo. Tentarei escrever uma opinião de cada um dos escolhidos no blog. Portanto votem, em um a três livros por secção!

Royals by Lorde

Royals (written by Ella Yelich O'Connor, Joel Little)

I've never seen a diamond in the flesh
I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies
And I'm not proud of my address
In the torn up town, no post code envy

But every song's like:
Gold teeth
Grey Goose
Tripping in the bathroom
Bloodstains
Ball gowns
Trashing the hotel room

We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams

But everybody's like:
Crystal
Maybach
Diamonds on your timepiece
Jet planes
Islands
Tigers on a gold leash

We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair

And we'll never be royals (royals)
It don't run in our blood
That kind of lux just ain't for us, we crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler (ruler)
You can call me queen bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule
Let me live that fantasy

My friends and I we've cracked the code
We count our dollars on the train to the party
And everyone who knows us knows
That we're fine with this, we didn't come from money

But every song's like:
Gold teeth
Grey Goose
Tripping in the bathroom
Bloodstains
Ball gowns
Trashing the hotel room

We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams

But everybody's like:
Crystal
Maybach
Diamonds on your timepiece
Jet planes
Islands
Tigers on a gold leash

We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair

And we'll never be royals (royals)
It don't run in our blood
That kind of lux just ain't for us, we crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler (ruler)
You can call me queen bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule
Let me live that fantasy

ooh ooh oh ooh
We're better than we've every dreamed
And I'm in love with being queen

ooh ooh oh ooh
Life is great without a care
We aren't caught up in your love affair

And we'll never be royals (royals)
It don't run in our blood
That kind of lux just ain't for us, we crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler (ruler)
You can call me queen bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule
Let me live that fantasy

Art (18)

I don't have a title for this one yet

by tdylan

Comissão de inquérito parlamentar: pescadinha de rabo na boca

O "Frente-a-Frente" desta semana com o Mário Crespo a moderar a discussão entre Catarina Martins e Luís Montenegro foi particularmente interessante. Não porque qualquer um deles tenha trazido novidades de monta, mas porque a conversa foi uma óptima ilustração da falta de validade de um instrumento da nossa democracia que seria, aparentemente, muito útil a complementar a acção do debate comum da assembleia da república.

Na troca de argumentos sobre as conclusões da comissão de inquérito parlamentar aos swaps, tornou-se evidente a sua total inutilidade. A maior parte da comissão é controlada pela maioria parlamentar que, na sua defesa do governo, vai muito além do simples "conflito de interesses". Assim, um inquérito feito nestes moldes permite a Luís Montenegro vir defender como verdade, como veredicto, que a culpa de tudo o que correu mal com os swaps foi do governo anterior e, em parte, dos bancos, e que nada pode ser imputado ao actual governo. Quando Catarina Martins lhe responde com casos em que os problemas advém nitidamente da actuação dos actuais governantes, o deputado do PSD esconde-se atrás da comissão parlamentar dizendo que nada disso foi concluído no inquérito. Quando a deputada do BE acusa a maioria de ter bloqueado, na própria comissão, qualquer conclusão onerosa para o actual governo, Luís Montenegro responde sorridente que a senhora deputada não pode estar à espera que os deputados dos outros partidos concordem com ela.
Ou seja, a maioria controla as conclusões da comissão de inquérito e depois usa-as para justificar os seus argumentos. É a verdadeira "pescadinha de rabo na boca".
Ora, tendo isto em conta, pergunto-me porque ainda se fazem inquéritos que podem abranger a actuação do governo em funções com comissões parlamentares. Será que somos tão cegos que ainda acreditamos que os deputados entram para a comissão e se tornam subitamente independentes e fiéis à verdade dos factos? Uma averiguação de todo o processo de contratação e cumprimento ou término dos contratos swap era obviamente necessária. Mas só é útil se pudermos confiar nas suas conclusões.

As comissões parlamentares tornam-se, assim, mais um mecanismo de atirar areia para os olhos dos demais, enquanto o governo em funções (seja ele qual for) vai actuando a seu bel-prazer. Uma tristeza para a nossa dita democracia e uma vergonha para o nosso parlamento.

Art (17)

Don't Touch - You'll Burn Your Fingers!

by pblackstone

Art (16)

Quote / Citação (33)

"It was at night that they came for you, always at night. The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you. Undoubtedly some people did so. Many of the disappearances were actually suicides. But it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable. He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had acted quickly enough: but precisely because of the extremity of his danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible. And it is the same, he perceived, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situations. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth."

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Quote / Citação (32)

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

(...)

They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice."

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Art (15)

Quote / Citação (31)

"Under ground, under ground! Down in the safe soft womb of earth, where there is no getting of jobs or losing of jobs, no relatives or friends to plague you, no hope, fear, ambition, honour, duty — no duns of any kind. That was where he wished to be.

Yet it was not death, actual physical death, that he wished for. It was a queer feeling that he had. It had been with him ever since that morning when he had woken up in the police cell. The evil, mutinous mood that comes after drunkenness seemed to have set into a habit. That drunken night had marked a period in his life. It had dragged him downward with strange suddenness. Before, he had fought against the money-code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself — to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground. He liked to think about the lost people, the under-ground people: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself for ever.

And in a way this job was what he wanted; at any rate, it was something near what he wanted. Down there in Lambeth, in winter, in the murky streets where the sepia-shadowed faces of tea-drunkards drifted through the mist, you had a submerged feeling. Down here you had no contact with money or with culture. No highbrow customers to whom you had to act the highbrow; no one who was capable of asking you, in that prying way that prosperous people have, ‘What are you, with your brains and education, doing in a job like this?’ You were just part of the slum, and, like all slum-dwellers, taken for granted. The youths and girls and draggled middle-aged women who came to the library scarcely even spotted the fact that Gordon was an educated man. He was just ‘the bloke at the library’, and practically one of themselves."

George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)

Art (14)

London Pleasures by Gordon Comstock [Quote / Citação (30)]

"Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over

The bending poplars, newly bare,

And the dark ribbons of the chimneys

Veer downward; flicked by whips of air,

Torn posters flutter; coldly sound

The boom of trains and the rattle of hooves,

And the clerks who hurry to the station

Look, shuddering, over the eastern rooves,

Thinking, each one, ‘Here comes the winter!

Please God I keep my job this year!’

And bleakly, as the cold strikes through

Their entrails like an icy spear,

They think of rent, rates, season tickets,

Insurance, coal, the skivvy’s wages,

Boots, school-bills, and the next instalment

Upon the two twin beds from Drage’s.

For if in careless summer days

In groves of Ashtaroth we whored,

Repentant now, when winds blow cold,

We kneel before our rightful lord;

The lord of all, the money-god,

Who rules us blood and hand and brain,

Who gives the roof that stops the wind,

And, giving, takes away again;

Who spies with jealous, watchful care,

Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways,

Who picks our words and cuts our clothes,

And maps the pattern of our days;

Who chills our anger, curbs our hope,

And buys our lives and pays with toys,

Who claims as tribute broken faith,

Accepted insults, muted joys;

Who binds with chains the poet’s wit,

The navvy’s strength, the soldier’s pride,

And lays the sleek, estranging shield

Between the lover and his bride."

George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)

Pela Sua Saúde de Pedro Pita Barros (Ensaios da Fundação #33)

A Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos tem publicado nesta colecção "Ensaios da Fundação" trabalhos sobre temas relevantes para pensar e repensar Portugal de uma forma informada. Fiquei logo com vontade de ler alguns, de várias áreas, com algum destaque para a saúde, a economia e o estado social. A Daniela ofereceu-me o Pela Sua Saúde, pelo que foi por este que comecei a explorar a colecção. O autor - Pedro Pita Barros - é um economista, professor catedrático e investigador nessa área e editor de revistas de Economia da Saúde, pelo que se propõe a olhar para o Serviço Nacional de Saúde analisando os seus problemas, as possíveis melhorias e os caminhos para a sua evolução, tendo particularmente em conta a limitação de recursos do estado português.
A leitura deste pequeno ensaio foi bastante enriquecedora, mesmo tendo em conta que já parti com bastante informação sobre o tema. O autor aborda de forma lúcida e relativamente isenta as principais questões de relevo na discussão da dita "sustentabilidade" de um serviço de saúde financiado pelo estado. O livro começa por uma descrição geral do SNS, segue para a análise directa da sua sustentabilidade financeira, examina a organização e funcionamento do SNS e por fim a relação entre o cidadão e o sistema, terminando com algumas considerações gerais.
Como ensaio curto, este não é um livro em que os temas sejam explorados à exaustão, com bases científicas e ideológicas explicitadas e bem destrinçadas. Um exemplo disto é a sua abordagem das taxas moderadoras, que discute tendo em conta o seu aumento e aplicação diferencial mas nunca analisando as provas (ou ausência delas) da sua eficácia como factor redutor de desperdício em saúde ou da possível criação de desigualdade e potencial impedimento de acesso a cuidados que se querem universais. No entanto, o autor consegue atingir o seu objectivo: fornecer ao leitor as bases e os pontos fulcrais para que possa pensar sobre o assunto, informar-se mais detalhadamente e participar activamente na sua discussão.

Assim sendo, recomendo a leitura de "Pela Sua Saúde" como ponto de partida para quem quer participar activamente na discussão eterna sobre o SNS, sabendo desde já que terão que progredir de seguida para outras leituras no sentido de criar e fundamentar opiniões. Pretendo ler mais livros desta colecção e agradeço recomendações a quem já tenha lido alguns.

Quote / Citação (29)

Something deep below made the stone street shiver. The tube-train, sliding through middle earth. He had a vision of London, of the western world; he saw a thousand million slaves toiling and grovelling about the throne of money. The earth is ploughed, ships sail, miners sweat in dripping tunnels underground, clerks hurry for the eight-fifteen with the fear of the boss eating at their vitals. And even in bed with their wives they tremble and obey. Obey whom? The money-priesthood, the pink-faced masters of the world. The Upper Crust. A welter of sleek young rabbits in thousand guinea motor cars, of golfing stockbrokers and cosmopolitan financiers, of Chancery lawyers and fashionable Nancy boys, of bankers, newspaper peers, novelists of all four sexes, American pugilists, lady aviators, film stars, bishops, titled poets, and Chicago gorillas.

George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)

Art (13)

Quote / Citação (28)

"It was so rarely that he could attain the peace of mind in which poetry, or prose for that matter, has got to be written. The times when he ‘could not’ work grew commoner and commoner. Of all types of human being, only the artist takes it upon him to say that he ‘cannot’ work. But it is quite true; there are times when one cannot work. Money again, always money! Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present consciousness of failure — above all, it means loneliness. How can you be anything but lonely on two quid a week? And in loneliness no decent book was ever written. It was quite certain that London Pleasures would never be the poem he had conceived — it was quite certain, indeed, that it would never even be finished. And in the moments when he faced facts Gordon himself was aware of this.

Yet all the same, and all the more for that very reason, he went on with it. It was something to cling to. It was a way of hitting back at his poverty and his loneliness. And after all, there were times when the mood of creation returned, or seemed to return."

George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)