Renaissance

Internationalization of the World

Brazilian Senator Cristovam Buarque (Professor of Brasilia University, ex-governor of Brasilia)in October of 2000 gave a lecture in the NY University. After the lecture he was questioned about the internalization of the Amazon region.
And, this was his answer:
During a recent discussion, in the United States, someone asked my opinion regarding the internationalization of the Amazon Region. The youngster asserted that he expected a response of a humanist and not of a Brazilian.
This was the first time anyone had established the humanist viewpoint as the starting point for my response. In fact, as a Brazilian I would have responded simply against internationalization of the Amazon Region. Even if our governments have not given the attention that this treasure deserves, it is ours. I responded that, as a humanist, realizing the risk of environmental destruction that threatens the Amazon Region, I could imagine its internationalization, just as for everything else that is important to humanity.
If the Amazon Region, from a humanist΄s point of view, has to be internationalized, then we should internationalize the oil reserves of the entire the world as well. Oil is just as important to the well being of humanity as the Amazon Region for our future. Nevertheless, the owners of oil reserves feel it is in their right to increase or decrease oil production and to raise or lower the price. The rich of the world, feel they have the right to burn this valuable possession of humanity. Similarly, the financial capital of the wealthy nations should be internationalized. If the Amazon Region is a natural reserve for every human being, then it could not be burned down by the decision of a landowner or a country. To burn down the Amazon Region is so tragic, as the unemployment provoked by the arbitrary decisions of world wide speculators. We cannot permit that the world΄s financial reserves serve to burn down entire nations according to the whims of speculacion.
Before the (internationalization of the) Amazon Region, I would like to see the internationalization of all the world΄s great museums. The Lourve cannot belong only to France. Each museum in the world is a guardian for the most beautiful works produced by the human genius. It cannot be permitted that these cultural possessions, as the natural posession of the Amazon Region, can be manipulated or be destroyed according to the whims of an owner or a country. Recently, a Japanese millionaire decided to have a painting of a grand master burried with him in the grave. This painting should have been internationalized.
At the time of the meeting, in which this question came up, the United Nations convened the Forum of the Millennium and the presidents of several countries had difficulties in attending due to barriers (they faced) at the border. Therefore, I contend that New York, as the base of the United Nations, should be internationalized. At least Manhattan should belong to all of humanity. Similarly Paris, Venice, Rome, London, Rio de Janeiro, Brazilia, Recife, every city with its own beauty, its own history should belong to the whole world.
If the United States wants to internationalize the Amazon Region, due to the risk of leaving it in Brazilian hands, then we should internationalize all the nuclear stockpiles of the United States. Particularly since they have already shown that they are capable of using these weapons, causing a destruction thousands of times greater than the sad fires taken place in the Brazilian forests.
During their debates, the current U.S. presidential candidates have defended the idea of internationalizing the world forest reserves in exchange for the debt. We could begin to use this debt to guarantee the right of every child in the world to attend school. We could internationalize the children treating all of them, regardless of their birthplace, as a posession which deserves the care and attention of the entire world. Even more so than the Amazon Region. When the world leaders attend to the world΄s poor children as possessions of Humanity, they will no longer permit that these children work when they should be studying, that they die when they should be living.
As a humanist I accept to defend the internationalization of the world. So long as the world treats me as a Brazilian, I will fight so that our Amazon Region will be ours. Only ours.

Harmonium (Quebec '75)

God Bless America...and Canada for that matter

John McCain, if elected, may not live long enough to fill out a second term, leaving Sarah Palin as president (!). Yet, Palin suggests that Joe Biden might be too old for the job...
McCain stresses the importance of "ensuring that America is secure, and not dependent on oil from people like Hugo Chavez or other parts of the Middle East which is, we know, could be destabilized under certain sets of circumstances."
Hope Chavez knows Venezuela is in the Middle East...

What about the prudent Canadian PM Stephen Harper?
Trying to paint himself a moderate is hard case to make when you get caught plagiarizing an Iraq speech from war-driven Australian PM John Howard.

Divisionist

Giovanni Segantini "The Bad Mothers"

Cultural Diversity

About 250,000 women in the Southern India states of Karnataka and Maharashtra are self-described "elite" sex workers whose impoverished, or devoutly pious, parents "dedicated" them as children to the Hindu goddess Yellamma. Despite the state's outlawing the practice in 1982, the women's fate as "devadasis" remains an attractive alternative to ordinary marriage (which would usually be to poor and abusive men) and provides a degree of status, in that they dress nicely and can inherit family property, while street prostitutes cannot.

Christopher Sullivan, 43, was arrested in Oshkosh, Wisconsine, as the person who allegedly sent his upstairs neighbors threatening packages, including a Polaroid photo of three naked Barbie dolls with their heads cut off. He told police he was angry that the couple were too loud when they had sex.

Edgar Winter Band

Democracy at its best

The two states whose electoral votes decided the presidential races in 2000 (Florida) and 2004 (Ohio) are provoking anxiety this time around as well. In Palm Beach County, Fla. (home of the "butterfly ballot" in 2000), 3,478 optical-scan votes disappeared between primary-night counting on Aug. 26 and the official recount a few days later (flipping the outcome of at least one race).
Ohio officials claimed that they had fixed a software-logic tabulating error in Premier Election Systems machines used in some counties (but, according to a spokesman for Premier, a company formerly known as Diebold, that error had been present for the last 10 years).
The Ohio secretary of state ordered election officials to end the practice of taking voting machines home at night during election season "for safekeeping," even though such "sleepovers" had been encouraged in order to protect the machines from tampering.)

Oh, my...

The Rape of Europa

In a journey through seven countries, The Rape of Europa documentary takes the audience into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe . For twelve long years, failed Austrian artist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But young art professionals as well as ordinary heroes, from truck drivers to department store clerks, fought back with an extraordinary effort to safeguard, rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures.
The Nazis stole one-fifth of all the known artworks in Europe. Many of the displaced art in the decade following the war was recovered, but much of the loot is still missing. Tragically, unique masterpieces were destroyed and lost to posterity forever. Other works of art—the last, forgotten victims of the war—survived but remain unidentified, traceable only with costly and difficult investigation.

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Richard Wright R.I.P.

This is turning into posthumous page... What's going on?

EX-YU: Amila

Gift from Above

Mohammed Bello Abubakar, 84, a Muslim preacher in the western Nigerian state of Niger, told a BBC reporter in August that, although he personally has 86 wives (and 170 children), other men could not handle that many. "(M)y own power is given by Allah," he said. "That is why I have been able to control 86 of them." The usual maximum for Muslims is four, but Bello Abubakar said the Quran does not specify punishment for violation. Besides, he said, "I don't go looking for (women). They come to me" because of his reputation as a healer. (Two weeks later, Reuters reported that local clerics were pressuring Bello Abubakar to divorce 82 wives of his choice, but a spokesman for the preacher said he was resisting.)

EX-YU: Dino Dvornik R.I.P.

Olympic Quotes

Some comments made by NBC sports commentators during the Summer Olympics they probably like to take back:

1. Weight-lifting commentator: "This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing."

2. Dressage commentator: "This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother."

3. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father."

4. Boxing Analyst: "Sure there have been injuries and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious."

5. Softball announcer: "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again. In fact you can see it all over their faces."

7. At the rowing medal ceremony: "Ah, isn't that nice, the wife of the IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew."

8. Soccer commentator: "Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've got eleven Dicks on the field."

9. Tennis commentator: "One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them... Oh, my God, what have I just said?"

Believers

Rocky Twyman of Washington, D.C., started Pray at the Pump, a brief, scattered national campaign in June to urge prayer to bring down gas prices. A colleague in St. Louis claimed his prayer sessions caused the price drop in July, pointing to his use of the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" (and his new verse, "We'll have lower gas prices")!!!!!

Salinas, Calif., Mayor Dennis Donohue, frustrated at this year's dramatic surge in gang violence, kicked off a campaign to urge a citywide fast, which he said was a proven technique in achieving social justice!!!!!

Spanish Art

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University presents the exhibition, El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III, made for this Spanish court four centuries ago. The show will also introduce great unknown masters of painting and sculpture. The exhibition includes 52 master paintings, including seven late works by El Greco and three early works by Velázquez, monumental altar pieces, life-sized portraits, some of the earliest still-life paintings in Europe, full-length carved and painted wooden sculptures of Spanish saints and more than 50 pieces of period glass and ceramics.

Here's Juan Sánchez Cotán, "Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber"



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Can't touch this

Because of his search for evidence on the existence of UFOs, 40-year-old Briton hacker Gary McKinnon is in trouble, awaiting extradition to the USA from his London home. He had raided official NASA site and is facing a 70-year prison sentence.
Gary claims he saw photos of alien space crafts on NASA`s site. He says he was inspired for his action by Hugh Cornwall`s Guide for Hackers and his main interest are secrets of the American government on alien space crafts and high technology. He claims he has found documents recording 400 testimonies of unidentified flying objects.
Flight controllers and persons in charge of controlling nuclear missiles wrote down their unusual encounters with UFOs. Witnesses spoke of up to date technology which they took over from UFOs or destroyed it. NASA is in possession of a large amount of photos and processed and unprocessed documents. When asked if this was just another strategic game of the American Army or a reconstruction of a hypothetic situation, Gary responded that anything was possible because it is widely known that the army wants complete sky domination.

Who? The Jam! It's raining all over...

George Benson