VALE a pena ler esta já datada entrevista de Luiz Pacheco ao Sol (a sua última entrevista, segundo o jornal).Uma entrevista que, claro, é uma espécie de performance..

"THE Doors' posthumous releases, in which Manazrek invariably took a major role, were different. Both An American Prayer, 1978's setting of Morrison's poetry to music, and 1983's Alive She Cried were put together with a degree of care and attention: they were albums that added something to the story, from which diehard fans could get something."(Guardian)

 

DOORS co-founder, Ray Manzarek, dies aged 74

Europe “living a Sicilian situation” - austerity a “false solution”

DURING a visit to Macau two prominent Portuguese politicians argued that the austerity implemented in several European countries is a bad option as it disregards growth.
The former Public Works and Planning Minister (1995-1999), Joao Cravinho, was especially critical of what he considers to be a biased set of policies that benefit the most powerful European states, like Germany. He said that during the past few years Europe has been “living a Sicilian situation” due to the “flexibility in law interpretation concerning the most powerful European Union countries.”
Cravinho, who was member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1994, argued that there’s “no sense of sharing the burdens” caused by the crisis and that “austerity is a false solution.”
The influential former minister added that in the current development of the European Union it is wrong to assume that “each country is autonomous and independent when sharing a common currency.”  According to him, austerity leads to “higher ratios of debt to GDP and to recession… The results in the market are exactly opposed to what was expected.”
For Cravinho, cutting wages is not part of the solution, since it would be “foolish to believe that you can get cut wages in order to compete in countries like China.” The “key element of the solution” lies in “making the Central European Bank a true central bank, in the same way as the Bank of England.” The engineer predicted that if there are no major changes during the next two years, the next Portuguese government “will be very weak, not even being able to maintain the policies that are being applied now.”
Elisa Ferreira was the other speaker during the conference-dinner hosted in Hotel Grand Lapa by the Institute of European Studies of Macau. A member of the European Parliament since August 2004, Ferreira was Minister for Environment (1995-1999) and Minister for Planning (1999-2002). Like Cravinho, she is a member of the Socialist Party and her talk came to the same conclusions, namely that austerity has became an “ideology” and that “it’s very bad when ideology replaces reality and technical assessment.”
The politician stated that “Europe must go back to basics, Europe [EU] was a political project and not economical… If you are competing with each other, the winner takes it all.” She finished her talk warning that “there are dangers growing inside Europe and you should not overplay when you’re playing with fire“.
Elisa Ferreira and Joao Cravinho were in Macau to take part in the international conference on “Reassessing the EU-Asia Pacific Relationship in the Context of the EU Crisis” that took place over Friday and Saturday. Around seventy experts participated in the conference held at the University of Macau which was co-organized by the UM’s Faculty of Law and the Asia-Pacific Association for EU Studies.
(in MDT)

A Newsweek deixou de ter edição impressa. Era de temer o pior, mas o novo site está excelentemente adaptado às novas formas de ler (smartphones, tablets, etc) e os conteúdos continuam de primeira. Veja-se este artigo sobre as novas e viciantes séries televisivas, feitas numa lógica sequencial (e não episódica). Alguns dos mais eficazes guionistas do mundo revelam como se conta uma boa história.

Here, anything goes

THE electoral Affairs Commission for the Legislative Assembly Election (CAEAL) held a meeting with media representatives to explain what is expected of them on the road to the next legislative elections.
During that meeting, which I attended, CAEAL’s President Ip Son Sang argued that the media has a relevant role in ensuring a fair election. The judge than began to try and educate the audience -  which was composed of journalists -  about what they should do to in order to avoid the pitfalls of propaganda and how to report in a balanced way. The explanation provided was confusing and some Chinese media representatives started asking what they could and could not do: “Is it ok to do an interview with a candidate?”
A director of a Portuguese language newspaper asked ironically if Ip Son Sang wanted to teach the journalists how to write news reports. The judge’s reply was still not clear about CAEL’s definition of irregular journalistic practices. More questions ensued as his speech progressed.
This introduction serves to illustrate how CAEL chose the wrong target when trying to fulfill their stated goal of “striving to improve the election culture of Macau”. Let us hope that the Commissioner Against Corruption, Vasco Fong (CAEL’s president during the last elections), will know where to find those who try to manipulate election results. Fong revealed that the CCAC had been preparing for the elections since the beginning of this year and expressed his wishes that candidates and voters will “follow the dictates of conscience and behave themselves” during the election period.
CAEL’s meeting with the local media occured on the same day as the announcement of the arrangements for the 2013 cash handout.  During a press conference held at the government headquarters, it was confirmed that the payment will start July 2 and will continue until September 13. Every permanent resident will receive MOP8,000 and non-permanent residents get MOP4,800 each. The number of people entitled to the MOP 8K payment this year is 569,780, while those eligible for the MOP4.8K payment is 68,112. The government will spend MOP4.9b under the scheme.
This announcement reveals two eye-opening facts: One is that the government decided to hand out the money later than usual. During the most recent years of the plan’s implementation, the bank cheques (or the bank transfers) were distributed to the recipients before May 1. This was seen as a way to appease the protesters and avoid confrontations during the Labor Day demonstrations.
The other is that in this election year the payments will continue until September 13. This is two days before the permanent-residents will cast their votes, since September 15 is the date for the next legislative elections.
One benign interpretation to this postponement is that the government is trying to prevent the possibility of any additional cash handouts this year. Handing out less cash than in the previous year during the first semester once resulted in a new batch of cheques during the second semester. Maybe Chui Sai On doesn’t want to repeat that.
Another interpretation is that by distributing money so close to the election date, the government is using the cash handout not only to “share economic success” (as the CE put it) but to influence the population to vote in pro-government lists (like it did to influence the May 1 protesters).
In places where the democratic culture is mature (like the US and most of Europe) it would be unacceptable for any government to distribute money days before an election. There is no need to explain why: Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.
But here, anything goes.
(in MDT)

UM grande doc sobre um homem com alma de poeta:

FEDERAL investigators secretly seized two months of phone records for reporters and editors of The Associated Press in what the news organization said Monday was a “serious interference with A.P.’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”

"O livro “Portugal na Imprensa Estrangeira – O Olhar dos Correspondentes” reúne textos de 16 correspondentes estrangeiros em Portugal, de 9 nacionalidades diferentes. Um retrato do país do fado, do bacalhau, da revolução e, claro, da crise. A propósito do livro, quatro depoimentos sobre o que é o país."

A melancolia crónica do jovem português excelentemente cantada pelo JP Simões (um filósofo):

Primeiro single do álbum "Roma" (2013) à venda a partir do dia 17 de Maio

O Café Santa Cruz faz 90 anos. Continua a ser o meu café preferido e sempre que vou a Coimbra faço questão de passar por lá. Aqui está a sua história contada no blog Aventar.

REVISITANDO os Doors, uma entrevista com o pouco subtil John Densmore.

ISTO é diferente (e bom), eu vi-os na decrépita Phnom Penh quando estavam a começar:

What will Cotai be 50 years from now?

IAN Fleming was already famous when he was invited by the Sunday Times to visit  “the most exciting cities in the world” and write about his travel impressions. The creator of James Bond took two trips between 1959 and 1960 and visited 13 cities. Macau was one of the chosen and the articles originally written for the London paper made it into a book titled “Thrilling Cities”, first published in 1963.
Fleming’s work has recently been republished in an edition that, besides Hong Kong and Macau, includes his remarks on Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Hamburg, Vienna, Geneva, Naples (including nearby Capri island) and Monte Carlo.  The new edition by Thomas & Mercer (specializing in “mystery books” and owned by Amazon) is not a mere reprint and, according to information included in the book’s introduction, “restores the original observations, maps, and language used at that time”.
The new edition is a good excuse to learn more about mid-20 century Macau. Reading Fleming one can envisage how the city changed up to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable. During the pre- Stanley Ho times, Macau’s premier nightspot was the still standing Central Hotel, which Fleming dubs “the largest house of gambling and self indulgence in the world”. Built in 1928 to take the role previously occupied by Rua da Felicidade [Happiness Street] - “one great and continuous street of pleasure” - the hotel is marvelously described:
“The Central Hotel is not precisely a hotel. It is a nine- story skyscraper, by far the largest building in Macau, and it is devoted solely to the human vices. It has one more original feature. The higher up the building you go, the more beautiful and expensive are the girls, the higher the stakes at the gambling-tables, and the better the music. Thus on the ground floor the honest coolie can choose a girl of his own class and gamble for pennies by lowering his bet on a fishing rod contraption through a hole in the floor on to the gaming-tables below. Those with longer pocket can progress upwards through various heavens until they reach the earthly paradise on the sixth floor. Above this are the bedrooms.”
The green hotel still functions in Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro (known as San Ma Lou) but has lost all its charm and has become a seedy two-star lodging. As it had previously replaced the picturesque Happiness Street, it too was replaced by Stanley Ho’s Casino Lisboa. This was a sign of a new era in Macau (the gaming monopoly that lasted until 2003) and a landmark building that caused awe amongst Chinese visitors. But Lisboa has now been overshadowed by modern casinos and the Cotai (by then just a man-made isthmus connecting Taipa to Coloane) development built upon reclaimed land, a project far from imagined at the time. As the poets sing, all things change, nothing stays the same… And a question arises in my mind: What will replace Cotai fifty years from now?
Also curious in Fleming’s remarks about Macau are his attempts to find “a genuine Bond villain” here. He picked the “mysterious” Dr Pedro Lobo, an influential Macanese businessman and Leal Senado president at the time.  “Not only did Macau have no income tax or exchange controls, it was not subject to the Bretton Woods agreement which artificially fixed the gold price at an unsustainable $35 an ounce. The Doctor was said to have ingeniously exploited that loophole, buying gold at the official price and legally re-selling it at a higher unofficial market price to anyone who cared to visit Macau. Where they took it afterwards was their business.”
But Lobo didn’t turn out to be the villain Fleming expected to meet, although he wasn’t reassured by the Catholic religious art in his mansion.  The “powerfully built butler, who looked more like a judo black-belt than a butler” was another cause for concern, despite offering Johnny Walker. But Lobo, an amateur composer, was “charming, and, on request, played some of his compositions on a gramophone”. They ended up talking of gold, triads, and opium: “It is a terrible thing, Mr Fleming. These people give all their money for opium. Soon they lose their interest in food… They become sexless, neuter, and waste away. It would be much better if they drank beer, even too much beer, as I believe is sometimes the case in your own country. But what do you think of my coffee? This is my own coffee from my estate in Timor, ” Lobo wanted to know.
(in MDT)