Duas coisas são infinitas: o universo e a estupidez humana. Mas, em relação ao universo, ainda não tenho a certeza absoluta.
(Einstein)
But the tune ends too soon for us all (Ian Anderson)
Fareed Zakaria, in another of his spectacular programs "Global Public Square" (GPS), demonstrated, with numbers, which are the happiest countries in the world. Of course, a certain intellectual left will soon come to say either that the numbers are hammered, or that they do not match to the truth or, ultimately, and as they do not know English, the reports are not valid...
It's sad to have "moderate" intelligence...
How is it possible that people stubbornly insist that we, the Portuguese, are the best in the world? The numbers don't say that! The numbers! THE SCIENCE!
"Lord, forgive them because they don't know what they think, nor how they think, nor what they say, nor ETC!..."
Fareed Zakaria, em mais um dos seus espectaculares programas "Global Public Square" (GPS), demonstrou, com números, quem são os países mais felizes do mundo. Claro que uma certa esquerda, intelectual, virá logo dizer ou que os números são martelados, ou que não correspondem à verdade ou, em última análise, e como não sabe inglês, os relatórios não são válidos...
É triste ter-se uma inteligência "moderada"...
Como é que é possível que, teimosamente, se insista em que nós, os portugueses somos os melhores do mundo? Os números não dizem isso! Os NÚMEROS! A CIÊNCIA!
"Senhor, perdoai-lhes porque não sabem nem o que pensam, nem como pensam, nem o que dizem, nem ETC!..."
Lord Coe, the president of World Athletics, has come up with the daft and damaging idea that athletes should be paid for winning gold at the Olympic Games. In doing so, the track and field governing sports body would become the first to offer prize money in the history of the Olympics. The idea of rewarding competitors with pots of cash runs counter to the spirit of everything the Olympics supposedly stands for – which is why the International Olympic Committee has never awarded money for participating or winning a medal at the games. Competing should be glory and reward enough.
What is World Athletics proposing? Starting with the Paris Olympics this summer, track and field athletes who win gold in each of the 48 events will receive £39,360 ($50,000). World Athletics has also promised to extend cash prizes to Olympic silver and bronze medal winners at the LA 2028 Games. The awarding of prize money will be subject to ratification, which will include medal-winning athletes undergoing and clearing the usual anti-doping checks. Lord Coe says it is only right that his federation passes on the money it gets from the IOC every four years to reward athletes. Yes, but is this really the best and most sensible way of doing so? Why not funnel financial support to athletes in other ways rather than breaking with Olympic tradition in paying competitors for winning medals? His argument also ignores the fact that many medallists receive payments from their countries’ governments and from sponsors.
Coe himself acknowledges that it is ‘impossible to put a marketable value on winning an Olympic medal’, while going on to do precisely that. How long before someone points out that the prize money is not commensurate with the huge effort and commitment involved? After all, a championship-level footballer would easily earn more than £39,000 in just one week. The pressure would inevitably build for even more prize money to be offered to winners. The very essence of the Olympics – a competition in which amateurs compete for glory – would be left in tatters.
Coe has described the idea of Olympic prize money as a ‘pivotal moment’ for the sport as a whole. He is right but it raises the question of why World Athletics did not talk to the IOC in detail beforehand. Surely such a big change to existing competition formats merits wider discussion and agreement? Instead, Coe offered up the feeble idea that the IOC will ‘share in the principle’ of track and field gold medal winners earning prize money. Why would the organisers of the Olympics break with a 128-year tradition of offering no cash prizes to indulge the agenda of World Athletics?
It is no great surprise that the move has gone down well with some athletes. Greg Rutherford, who won gold in the long jump at the 2012 London games, described it as a ‘brilliant step in the right direction.’ No one can begrudge individual athletes for being in favour. The financial rewards for athletes tend to be negligible except for the lucky few, such as Usain Bolt, who became an international star with all the accompanying millions in sponsorship and advertising deals. No one is disputing the sacrifices of individual athletes but isn’t that the whole point of Olympic competition? To go that extra mile, not for money, but for the glory of the thing itself. Must everything in sport come down to money? Coe, who won gold in the 1,500 metres at the 1980 and 1984 games, is right to point out that the world has changed from his own days as an athlete on ‘the 75-pence meal voucher and second class rail fare’, going from one international race competition to another. It is also certainly the case that it is within the rights of international federations like World Athletics to make decisions based on the interests of those they represent. Yet there are bigger ideals and principles at stake. The Olympic Games already has problems aplenty, with fewer and fewer cities willing or able to spend the millions required to host the competition. The last thing it needs right now is an idea that undermines its very raison d’etre. Prize money for medals has no place at the Olympics.
Funny how only in the last years we learn something on what the germans suffered in the years post-war. 75 years after the end of the IIWW. Funny how our societies deal with these things. Or not...
Série sobre o pós guerra na Alemanha. Curioso como só nos últimos anos temos a percepção desta realidade e sempre com séries de origem alemã.
As locations go, they don’t get more humdrum than the address ‘Carrera 79B, #45D/94’. It is so anonymous it sounds encrypted. Nor, in reality, does it look like anything special: a flat roof, next to a shuttered language school, above a wall of graffiti, in a lower middle-class suburb of another Spanish speaking city. But then you notice the razorwire surrounding the nearby boutique. The armed guard outside the local bank. And you remember why this address, in the inner suburbs of Medellin Colombia, is notorious: this is where fugitive cocaine warlord Pablo Escobar was finally shot by cops in 1993 as he tried to flee across that roof.
Knowing that, everything looks different. Now the razorwire and the guards tell you that – despite Escobar’s execution, and Medellin’s supposed ‘recovery’ – this is still an unsafe city, surely more unsafe than anywhere in Europe. This is a city where cab-drivers point and mutter ‘peligroso, peligroso’ (dangerous, dangerous), urging you not to get out: not to mingle with the obvious addicts in the gutter, and the 13-year-old hookers outside the Jesuit church. And then you sigh and wonder why Latin America is always like this.Sketchy.
It’s a question that has vexed historians, anthropologists, criminologists, and philosophers, for decades. Something about the Spanish colonial inheritance (or Iberian: Brazil is certainly as bad) makes for peculiarly menacing cities and countries.
And they really are menacing. Just south of Colombia is Ecuador (indeed it was once part of Colombia). In the last year murders in Ecuador, already high, have almost tripled – as the country descends into an orgy of gang violence that has left the state virtually ungovernable. Meanwhile, of the top 50 cities in the world by homicide, the first seven are all Mexican (then comes New Orleans, USA). And fully 37 of the top 50 are in Latin America, with cities from Brazil, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Guatemala and, yes, Colombia and Ecuador, adding to the list. Astonishingly, only three cities in the list are outside the Americas, and they are all in South Africa: Cape Town, Jo’burg, Nelson Mandela Bay.
By now most people will be reaching for a uniquely American explanation, perhaps involving cocaine and fentanyl, along with the USA’s libertine approach to gun usage, leaking weapons to the south. But then you spot the anomalies. For a start, Latin America’s reputation for violence long precedes the drug trade. In 1900, a British traveller in the Americas laconically noted that however bad Haiti might be (and he thought it was bad), it did not have ‘that knife-in-your back instinct which permeates so many of the Spanish-American republics’. Some 124 years ago no one was shipping narcotics across the Rio Grande.
If it isn’t cocaine and cartels, what else might explain the ‘knife-in-your-back’ ambience? Poverty and inequality? Certainly, parts of South America are poor. Colombia has a GDP per capita of $7,000, which is pretty dismal given the potential of this vast, majestic and lavishly fertile country. But then Vietnam has a GDP per capita of just $4,000 and you can wander around Hanoi or Saigon in a way which is simply impossible in Cali or Cartagena. Likewise, most of sub-Saharan Africa is notably poorer than Latin America and easily as unequal, yet urban Latin America is more dangerous than the 95 per cent of Africa which isn’t South Africa (which complicates any racial explanation, along with any attempt to blame it all on slavery).
Could it be faith? Iberian Catholicism? Some kind of fatalism induced by the religion of guilt? This is an enticing explanation when you look at the most violent country in southeast Asia – it’s the Philippines. That’s the only ex-Spanish colony, and it is uniquely and fiercely Catholic (it was also run by the USA for a while). And Manila is perilous and ‘knife-in-your-back’ in a way unimaginable in Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur.
But here again you run into questions, because not all of Catholic Latin America is so utterly messed up: Chile is quite devout, it is also quite peaceful and prosperous. Likewise, why is Nicaragua so nightmarish, when neighbouring Costa Rica is affluent, amiable and almost European? And what exactly is El Salvador suddenly doing right (under its tough new president Nayib Bukele), that nearby Honduras apparently cannot?
At this point the puzzle begins to seem insoluble. If it isn’t religion, drugs, race, slavery, guns, politics, or the proximity of the USA, what else might possibly explain it?Could it be the simple but monumental fact of European imperialism, the original sin of the modern world, as many on the left would have us believe?
Well, no, it couldn’t be that either, because again we butt up against insuperable anomalies. For example, the British were the greatest imperialists of all – the only equivalent in human history is Rome – and we were certainly capable of wicked neglect and violence (as Ireland and India can attest) yet no British colony, with the exception of South Africa, is as dangerous as anywhere in the Latin world. Meanwhile, Britain in her imperial heyday managed to establish many of the modern world’s most magnificent cities: Sydney, Hong Kong, New York, Toronto, Singapore. And Singapore and Hong Kong are incredibly safe, with Sydney not far behind.
Is it all too difficult to solve? Maybe, but there is one final and intriguing possibility, which has been tentatively suggested in recent years. Perhaps when we look at Latin American violence we are looking at a form of legacy: an inherited memory of punishing, hallucinatory cruelty, unique to America. The Spanish empire in the Americas began, after all, with the brutality of Christopher Columbus, in Hispaniola, slaughtering and enslaving the natives: feeding them to dogs, burning them alive. At the same time, the Portuguese in Brazil were no better, arguably they were worse.
Moreover, native American empires were bizarrely cruel – even before the Europeans arrived. The Muisca here in Colombia composed special songs that they sung in chorus as they murdered their own teenage boys. In Mexico the Aztecs pulled the hearts out of living prisoners and wore their flayed skins as suits, in central America the Mayans hurled virgins down wells and played ballgames that ended in head-chopping,
Then there’s the Moche civilisation of northern Peru (100 to 700 AD) which was insanely depraved and bloodthirsty – to an extent it is difficult to comprehend. Moche aristocrats used to cut off their own noses, lips, feet, as a sign of nobility. Moche women probably had sex with pumas in special rooms, other Moche apparently masturbated and sexually penetrated partly defleshed corpses.
During their most intense rituals entire Moche clans, cloistered in darkened pyramids, would engage in sodomy and fellatio in orgiastic celebration even as they watched their siblings and children being slowly bled to death in the centre of the chamber, all to honour a strange tarantula god (also known as the decapitator god). What’s more, most of this – as in so many pre-Colombian civilisations – apparently happened in a haze of hallucinogenic drugs. The favoured drug of the Moche was called ulluchu (we are still not certain what it was); other pre-Columbian civilisations eagerly consumed peyote, yopo, san pedro, ayahuasca, coca, mapacho, and so on.
Is this, then, the answer to the paradox of Latin violence? Is it some kind of cultural inheritance of drugged-up violence, descending the centuries and the millennia? An enormous epigenetic curse? It is tempting to say Si, but of course there is no proof.
However, even if we can’t firmly explain the Great American Violence, one man seemed to predict it, and that man was Simon Bolivar, the revered liberator of Latin America. In 1830, as he was dying of tuberculosis and raving in his genius, not far from Medellin, Bolivar wrote a letter to the first president of Ecuador, where he made six famous statements about his continent of revolution, South America:
1. America is ungovernable; 2. Those who serve a revolution plough the sea; 3. The only thing you can do in America is leave it; 4. This land will fall inevitably into the hands of the unbridled masses and then pass almost imperceptibly into the hands of petty tyrants, of all colours and races; 5. Once we have been eaten alive by crime and extinguished by utter ferocity, even the Europeans will not regard us as worth conquering; 6. If it is possible for any part of the world to revert to primitive chaos, it will be America in her final hour.
As we look at the gunshot citizens of Quito, and the schoolgirl hookers by the churches of Colombia, it is hard not to link to Bolivar’s sixth and darkest prediction. And if that in turn leads to a terminus of despair, remember that Bolivar also believed, throughout his life, that South America would eventually achieve great and wonderful things. It’s just a pity he died before he could tell us how this might happen.
Quando releio livros como este, confirmo o que se diz, à boca cheia, sobre os nossos vícios, defeitos e vicissitudes! Como é que é possível que pessoas qualificadas como Abel Mateus, Luis Valadares Tavares, Medina Carreira, Carlos Pimenta, Manuel Antunes, Costa Lobo, advirtam antecipadamente (em 2004!) para os problemas, décadas antes, façam a antevisão sistemática do que poderá vir a acontecer e depois, as nossas "elites políticas" (...) falhem sistematicamente.
(escrito quando empataram com o Benfica na Luz e asseguraram a presença na final da Taça)
Do que gosto mais neste Sporting, é a seriedade que a maior parte dos jogadores exibe em campo, sem "faz de conta", sem "quedas aparatosas", sem aquela característica tão latino-americana que ensombra, vicia e envenena o nosso campeonato.
Claro que há sempre um Nuno Santos com aquele feitio da Cova da Moura; um Geny Catamo com aquele ar de raça eleita, arrogante, que ofusca toda a sua técnica individual; ou Matheus Reis que parece querer fazer valer as suas origens; e, por vezes, um Paulinho que é uma pena, como eu digo, "cair tanto".
Existe também uma tremenda falta de eficácia nos momentos decisivos. E é também por isso que Gyokeres sobressai. Falha pouco.
Em compensação existe uma chusma de pessoas decentes: o capitão Sebastião Coates que prima pela eticidade em campo, os nórdicos (os povos que eu elejo sempre) Hjulmand e Gyokeres que não precisam de mais palavras para os definir na forma superior de passear pelo campo, o japonês Morita que é de uma invejável e sibilina constância e empenho. Adan parece-me ser, igualmente, uma pessoa séria. Gostava de ter um português neste lote. Daniel Bragança aproximar-se-á um dia? Talvez ...
Os outros, posso gostar de os ver jogar mas não reúnem as características humanas que me seduzem e que, na minha opinião, se sobrepõem às técnicas. Ponhamos as coisas nestes pés: não têm só pés. Têm cabeça e carácter.
"Last but not least" o homem que me fez voltar a ver e ouvir futebol: Ruben Amorim. Farto-me de o ver e ouvir e não me canso de o elogiar mesmo sendo - parece ser esse o caso - do Benfica. Porque não são todos assim? Simples, sem arrogância, bem educados? Claro que ajuda neste processo perceber de futebol e de homens. Mas a forma de ele estar em campo e fora dele não é despiciendo e faz com que a generalidade das pessoas encontre nele algo de diferente. Porque ele o é! Lá chegará o dia, infelizmente, em que as coisas correrão menos bem. Mas esse problema é, como eu costumo dizer, da carneirada, do rebanho. À semelhança do que se tem passado, injustamente na minha opinião, com Roger Schmidt este ano no Benfica, passará de bestial a besta em pouco tempo.
De mim só continuará a receber elogios. Parece já estar com o futuro destinado a um clube qualquer anglo-saxónico. Só podia. É assim, quando se é bom! Ainda bem por ele. Ainda mal pelo Sporting.
a) PERGUNTA - além dos 1370 milhões de euros previstos pelo PS, haveria mais 1500 milhões propostos pelo PSD?
RESPOSTA - A malta está rica,...e estúpida, claro!
b) PERGUNTA - Passos Coelho teria de falar,...mas de acordo com uma determinada agenda?
RESPOSTA - Claro, mas de preferência com uma resposta que não fosse a dele, livre!
c) PERGUNTA - o logotipo que era de um governo - e surpreendentemente também da república -, foi substituído pelo anterior que era... de outro governo mas "da ÚNICA" república?
RESPOSTA - Sim, claro, mas, porém, todavia, contudo,... COM TUDO de estúpido que isso possa acartar!
3.º assalto: enganei-me no IRS, mas o culpado és tu
O director do Expresso foi um pouco infantil, como nas desculpas de criança apanhada com um erro grosseiro numa prova: “Ó Senhor Professor, a culpa é daquele menino, que me passou uma cábula errada.”
Estamos numa fase totalmente nova em Portugal: a liderança da oposição está na comunicação social. Sem imparcialidade, nem isenção, sem independência, nem objectividade, punhos levantados e trombetas sempre assestadas.
No ringue do boxe político e mediático, os assaltos sucedem-se a ritmo intenso. 1.º assalto: o logótipo – o combate partiu de um primeiro desafio de Ricardo Costa, no palco da SIC. 2.º assalto: o livro – a “guerra cultural” foi aberta por uma peça matinal no Expresso, ampliada, ao fim do dia, pela grosseira distorção das palavras de Pedro Passos Coelho, nas “reportagens” das televisões. 3.º assalto: enganei-me no IRS, mas o culpado és tu – um caso que agita o Parlamento, mas tem fonte na imprensa.
Este último é o mais pitoresco. No seu discurso de abertura do debate do Programa de Governo, o primeiro-ministro, entre muitas outras medidas, anunciou “uma descida das taxas de IRS sobre todos os rendimentos até ao 8.º escalão”, apontando para a “diminuição global de cerca de 1.500 milhões de euros nos impostos sobre os rendimentos do trabalho dos portugueses face ao ano passado”.
Quem acompanha os trabalhos parlamentares não teve dificuldade em entender esta medida como reforço do que já está no Orçamento, consolidando-o e levando-o mais longe. O mesmo se diga de quem estivesse a par do que consta quer do Programa Eleitoral da AD, quer do Programa de Governo, que estava, ali mesmo, precisamente a ser discutido. Mas a jornalista do Expresso terá entendido mal, gerando uma notícia que fez sensação: “Montenegro duplica alívio de IRS este ano”. E faria a manchete de capa, na manhã seguinte: “Montenegro duplica descida do IRS até ao Verão”.
Estes títulos embateram contra a realidade – o debate do Programa de Governo prosseguia em S. Bento. E o director do Expresso publicou uma nota a justificar-se perante os leitores. Um pedido de “desculpas” em modo original: “Nota do diretor: O Expresso errou. Pior, publicou uma notícia falsa. Pelo facto pedimos desculpa aos nossos leitores. A publicação desta notícia seguiu as regras e procedimentos que exigimos antes da publicação de uma notícia. Não contávamos era com o facto de o primeiro-ministro ter, no Parlamento, ludibriado os portugueses.” O título carregava: “É mais do que um embuste. É enganar os portugueses.” O director do Expresso podia estar aborrecido, mas este processo é um pouco infantil. Como nas desculpas de criança, apanhada com um erro grosseiro numa prova: “Ó Senhor Professor, a culpa é daquele menino, que me passou uma cábula errada.”
Entre os deputados, ninguém poderia ter-se equivocado. Esta discussão no regime do IRS é antiga entre PS e PSD. A medida que Montenegro anunciou no debate parlamentar é, em substância, a mesma que propusera no Verão do ano passado. O PS reprovou-a em S. Bento, na votação de uma Resolução apresentada pelo PSD, ainda antes do Orçamento. A diferença entre os dois partidos, nesta medida relativa ao IRS, estava sobretudo no nível de redução nas taxas e no número de escalões a que se aplicaria: para o PS só até ao 5.º escalão; para o PSD, até ao 8.º escalão. Por isso, no OE2024, o PS fez aprovar a medida até ao 5.º escalão – e o PSD votou a favor, por ser uma parte do que defendia. Agora, que é governo, o PSD, em AD, completa a medida, aditando a parte que faltava na sua visão. No OE2024, a medida valia cerca de 1,3 mil milhões de euros; agora, passará a cerca de 1,5 mil milhões de euros. Foi exactamente o que Luís Montenegro afirmou: “diminuição global de cerca de 1.500 milhões de euros nos impostos face ao ano passado”. A palavra “global” é clara. E é inteiramente despropositado jornalistas e políticos da oposição tentarem a troça com o “choque fiscal”. É mais uma burla de linguagem. O primeiro-ministro, o governo e a AD nunca falaram num “choque fiscal”, nunca o apresentaram como ideia ou proposta. É expressão que, depois de 2002, só se ouve na boca do PS e demais esquerda, além de em jornalistas e comentadores alinhados.
De resto, a declaração do primeiro-ministro não provocou no debate parlamentar a menor celeuma – e logo a provocaria, se mal-entendida. Todas as bancadas e muitos dos deputados viveram a tramitação política desta medida, desde que o PSD a lançou para a arena parlamentar no Verão passado. E, por certo, anteciparam que o governo da AD iria voltar à carga, para a alargar mais do que ficara no OE. Tinham até essa certeza, depois de lerem os programas eleitoral e de governo dos vencedores das eleições. Por isso mesmo, nas dezenas de perguntas e intervenções que logo foram feitas ao primeiro-ministro, ninguém o confrontou: “Onde é que vai buscar esses 1.500 milhões de euros a mais? Descobriu petróleo?” Todos sabiam do histórico da medida que não era assim.
Diversamente do ataque do Expresso, Montenegro não fez qualquer embuste. Nem aos jornalistas, nem aos portugueses. Limitou-se a concluir um processo político com cerca de oito meses e cumprir compromissos expressos nos programas eleitoral e de governo.
O primeiro-ministro também não tinha o menor interesse em ludibriar. O Expresso, por exemplo, anuncia – como a generalidade da comunicação social – que o desenho técnico definitivo desta medida relativa ao IRS está a ser ultimado, para ser apresentado nesta semana. Então, o governo ia enganar, no debate, para se auto-desmascarar na semana seguinte?… Não faz sentido nenhum. Têm de inventar outra.
Quem andou muito mal, além dos deputados de populismo encartado, foi Alexandra Leitão e a bancada do PS que lidera. Se há alguém que, pelo lado de lá, sabe tudo desta medida e do seu histórico parlamentar, são os socialistas. Foram o interlocutor do PSD e da AD neste específico debate político. Estão cansados de saber que não houve fraude, senão tê-la-iam logo suscitado. Tudo não passa de um aproveitamento sem razão de factos conhecidos. Porventura um jogo cruzado das “fontes”: “sim, sim, diz que foi embuste, que nós também dizemos”. Da líder parlamentar do PS espera-se mais estatura.
Este quadro em que a comunicação social se envolve, ela mesma, no jogo tem muito que se lhe diga. Quem nos dá as notícias, se a imprensa é parte da notícia? Quem medeia, se estão todos comprometidos? Vale mais o Expresso ou o Tik-Tok? Quem garante contra as fake news, se todos veiculam fake news? Quem defende contra o populismo, se todos molham a sopa no populismo? Onde fica a independência e a isenção, se todos tomam partido sobre tudo? Onde sobra a imparcialidade, se todos são partidários?
Neste começo de ciclo, os três assaltos consecutivos – logótipo, livro e falso embuste – falam por si. Não é bonito de ver. Não nos “populistas”. Mas nos doutores de sapiência.
Sophie Winkleman has narrated this article for you to listen to.
I am not often lost for words, but the five middle-aged homeless men who spoke at the Big Issue celebration in the House of Lords last month left me truly awestruck. All five had endured lives of childhood abandonment, violence, pain, destitution. All five had emerged from the darkness philosophical, hopeful and loving of their fellow man. I have not stopped thinking about them, and when I start on my usual daily beefs – signs on the Tube telling me I mustn’t give money to beggars (why not if I want to?); signs on the Tube telling me I can’t stare at people (what if someone is listening to a deafening violent video on their phone, should I deck them instead?); signs on the Tube telling me I mustn’t press into someone (try the Victoria line at 6 p.m., you TfL halfwits) – I think of these brave, strong men and I breathe in deeply.
I’m seeing these daft Tube signs rather a lot lately. My life is now hopping on the District line to Westminster for a daily fight to ban smartphones and social media for under-16s, along with a gang of cross-party MPs, writers, teachers and doctors. The facts are so bleak – the failing eyesight, wrecked concentration spans, antisocial behaviour, insomnia, depression, self-harm, anorexia, porn and gaming addictions and worse. The teens I’ve met across the country (in my role as patron of an education charity) are desperate for the damn things to be taken away.Many libertarians think the onus should be on parents to ban smartphones, not the government. That’s fair enough in principle, impossible in practice. Every atom of a teen’s life is online: travel card, bank card, social life, even homework. These machines are designed by geniuses to be more addictive than heroin – it’s not possible to put them down. Sure, middle-class parents can beg their teens to put their phone away each night, but what about our poorer children whose parents can’t always supervise them? They’re the ones whose life chances are being destroyed by the compulsive, pointless, damaging junk on smartphones, and they must be protected. The Online Safety Bill won’t go nearly far enough. It may remove some harmful content, but it won’t touch the sides of the unputdownable, isolating, focus-wrecking nature of these phones.
Another major factor in the degradation of children’s minds is the shift to digital education. This should have been an emergency move during lockdown, then straight back to books, paper and pens. Most intelligent countries are chucking tech out of the classroom as overall progress and IQ levels glide downwards like dying birds. Here in Britain, far more scepticism should be applied to these shiny platforms which serve only to stoke screen addiction, further damage eyesight and encourage shallow, short-form thinking.
It was lovely to bump into a fellow fighter in the anti-screens movement yesterday. Daisy Greenwell and I walked straight into each other on Quay Street in Orford, Suffolk, where I’ve come to visit my parents for Easter. Fortunately, our children were all walking the no-tech walk – mine up a tree, hers sandy, tousled and clutching buckets and spades. We embraced as old friends, though we’ve never met before. I’ve joined her and Clare Fernyhough’s triumphant movement Parents for a Smartphone-Free Childhood and she’s read some of my scribblings – an instant bond founded on a common goal and a shared god in the form of Jonathan Haidt, psychologist and author of our bible, The Anxious Generation. Perhaps the most frustrating refrain we hear in this fight is ‘the genie is out of the bottle’. Such defeatism confounds us. We are talking about mass social, educational, cognitive and developmental harm. In other words, mass brain damage. We have the bottle; we must cram the genie back in.
Out here in somnolently peaceful, pure-aired Orford, I feel I can breathe. The glorious 14th-century church, the fairytale castle built by Henry II, the village shop with its locally made pork pies and fairy-cakes, the allotments chirruping with chiffchaffs, tits and finches, banks of nodding daffodils and endless vistas of flat, dreamy waterscapes – it all fills me with love for England. While I like meeting strangers every day in London, the sight of village regulars I’ve known for 30 years is calming to the spirit. From Guy the churchwarden who takes my girls up to the bell-tower, to Adrian the fisherman who delivers me a dozy lobster every time I’m in the village, to Laura, who can carry two 20kg sacks of salt as if they’re babies, and Sue, who always saves me a box of those fairy-cakes – it’s a blessed respite from the bustling solipsism of the Big Smoke. Right, off to visit the Palm Sunday donkey now. Happy Easter everyone.
40 anos depois, o Athletic ergue a taça do Rei, de novo.
Bom dia Elias.
Espero que estejas bem.
Já sei que os tempos são outros. Hoje em dia a escola do Athletic nada tem a ver com a de há 40 anos atrás.
Mas é apenas um pretexto para te dar um abraço, desejar tudo de bom na vida e agradecer-te a amabilidade de, em 1998, me teres trazido o barrete e o cinzeiro do Athletic
Um abraço
Boa tarde Luis:
Uma sorpresa muito agradável teu mail. Não conseguia fazer a ligação do apelido Carvalho com Boavista e achava que teu mail era engano ou se calhar um fraude, mas depois já cheguei a pôr o meu neuronio em ordem.
Alguma vez que vi o falei com Salvado e Silva perguntei por ti e agora lembro a tua grande afição pelo Atlhetic de Bilbao e tens que estar muito contente com o seu jogo e a Taça que volto a ganhar depois de 40 anos. Se calhar tinhas que estar agora em Bilbao olhando para a Gabarra paseando no Nervion.
Estás em Lisboa? Algum dia temos que tomar um café.
A migrant boat is rescued in the Mediterranean sea (Credit: Getty Images)
There was good and bad news for the European Union last week: the number of migrants arriving in Europe on the Central Mediterranean route in the first two months of 2024 dropped 70 per cent compared to the same period the previous year, the latest figures revealed. The bad news was that they were up 117 per cent on the eastern Mediterranean route. The really bad news was that they were up 541 per cent on the West African route as Malians, Senegalese and Mauritanians arrived in large numbers on Spanish territory. The nationalities crossing the Eastern Mediterranean in the greatest number are Afghans, Syrians and Egyptians.
The figures will rise in the months ahead
January and February are traditionally the slowest months of the years for crossings, so the figures will likely rise in the months ahead as the people smuggling gangs make the most of the more clement weather.
Other factors will also contribute to the surge in migrants making their way to Europe. This year record numbers of Sudanese refugees have been arriving in Tunisia as the Civil War in Sudan displaces more people. In a recent article for Chatham House, Rosalind Marsden, former British Ambassador to Sudan, said the country was in the grip of ‘a humanitarian disaster’, with 11 million people displaced inside or outside the country. According to Marsden, Sudan has become a ‘proxy war’ with Russia and Iran providing military and financial support to the rival factions. ‘The conflict has the potential to destabilise already fragile neighbouring countries, create large new migration flows to Europe, and attract extremist groups,’ explained Marsden.
That is already happening as refugees escape to neighbouring countries. While some head to Tunisia, an estimated four million Sudanese have crossed into Egypt, placing more pressure on a country already confronted with a humanitarian crisis on its northern border. There are approximately 1.4 million displaced Palestinians in makeshift camps in and around the southern city of Rafah, just across the border from Egypt. Egypt provides aid to the refugees but has so far refused to allow them to cross into their territory, fearful that once across they won’t be permitted to return by the Israelis.
To assist Egypt in its aid efforts, the European Union signed a €7.4 billion (£6.4 billion) deal in Cairo on Sunday. There is a large degree of self-interest for Brussels in signing the agreement, as there was with previous similar agreements with Libya, Tunisia and Mauritania. A migrant crisis in any North African country is inevitably a crisis for Europe.
The deal was signed in the presence of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and several leaders from the Bloc’s 27 Member States. Officially titled a ‘Strategic Partnership Document’, the pact covers political relations and sustainable investment and trade.
European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen and Egypt president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (Credit: Getty images)
The EU’s press release about the partnership plays down the significance of the migrant crisis, mentioning it briefly towards the end in the jargon of bureaucracy. The Union will provide financial support to Egypt on ‘migration-related programs that entail developing a holistic approach to migration including legal migration pathways in line with national competences’. This support is to the tune of €200 million (£171 million). There was also a commitment on both sides to protect ‘the rights of migrants and refugees’.
Despite these commitments, the deal was condemned by some left-wing European politicians. ‘Under the impetus of Mrs von der Leyen, Europe is being transformed into a world bank for authoritarian regimes and dictatorships,’ said the French Green MEP Mounir Satouri. He accused the Egyptian government of corruption and of political repression.
When it comes to Europe’s migrant crisis, Von der Leyen has a thankless task. Criticised by the left for being too tough on migrants, she is savaged by the right as too soft. One of her most implacable foes is Frenchman Fabrice Leggeri, the former head of Frontex, the EU’s border agency, and now a National Rally candidate in June’s European Elections. He joined Marine Le Pen because he believes hers is the only party capable of resolving the migrant crisis.
In recent weeks, Leggeri has been doing the rounds of the broadcast media in France and von der Leyen is a favourite target of his scorn. So too is Ylva Johansson, EU commissioner for Home Affairs. Leggeri alleges that during his time as Frontex chief, Johansson reminded him: ‘Your job as border guards is to welcome migrants and let them in’. (The EU has rejected the claim).
Leggeri has little confidence that the EU will ever get to grips with the migrant crisis; not just because of inept leadership but because of what he describes as ‘the tyranny of both NGOs and European law’. In his view, the pro-migrant NGOs have power and influence within Brussels, and no matter how many deals von der Leyen cuts with North African countries, these NGOs, together with human rights lawyers, will render them ineffective.
In 2021 – the year before he was forced out of his job after allegations of misconduct – Leggeri warned that ‘there is a risk of terrorism when migrants come from a conflict zone’. This risk has intensified in the three years since because of the proxy war being fought in Africa by Russia and Iran.
Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, admitted last week his concern that Islamist terrorists may attempt to attack July’s Olympic Games in Paris. The month before the Games, France will host world leaders in a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day. The European elections are in the same week. Emmanuel Macron is trying to turn Russia into the main election issue; the right – not just in France but across Europe – want to keep the focus on immigration.
And yet the polls repeatedly show that what worries the French most is the cost-of-living crisis. The war in Ukraine and mass immigration have squeezed the working and middle classes and their quality of life has diminished. Who do they blame most: Putin or migrants? That essentially is how politicians are trying to frame June’s election.
Nowadays I really don't know if a film like this would get the awards it did. Surely not!
There is no camera with weird shots or always following the character, there are no consecutive changes in time. There is no gender ideology, no gays, lesbians, no obese people, blacks or yellows, and there are no pressing issues like nuclear or climate change.
